• Registered: 2011-03-02
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Topic: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

Now this is not a bash of either just some insights into what I think. ( Views Expressed are not of the management) wink

I been playing with Gnome 3 and Unity, giving each a try and a fair shake or as fair as I could make it.

Gnome 3 is not bad, but it is so different you kinda  feel like you must learn how Gnome 3 wants you to do things and not really how you want to get things done. I am not saying that this is bad but, I would like to see more ways to customize it. ( Now I am a Crunchbang/Openbox/Xfce fanboy) so take what I say with a grain of salt. I found I used my mouse more, to trigger the menus, yes you can use your super key to bring up a search box but the mouse in my experience was always involved, While the eye candy was nice, after using it for a bit, I felt  tired, just felt like I was being trained to use my machine (I  know that sounds stupid).

I tried the Ubuntu Alpha, Beta 1 and Beta 2 only to find it frustrating to me ( I am a Stupid Crunchbang user hmm after all ) It feels like Gnome 3 and Ubuntu had a baby and called it Unity. I know what they are trying to aim for, New Users and making it a friendly desktop for them. It needs work even Mark Shuttleworth said they will not nail it down until the next release. Thats why they are including classic desktop---which is sort of a Hybrid/Gnome 2 desktop. I heard that the goal was to make Linux easier to learn and to insulate the user more from the inner working of the system.  Some people I have chatted with seem to think most Linux users like the feeling of the underdog and do not want to more users as they will not be special. I know this might be so for some people, but I find most Linux users will meet you halfway if you even make a small effort. So this is one of the reasons given for these new DE's. I just wonder is KDE, Openbox, or XFCE too hard for the average person ?

So after playing the beta testing game, I am back using Crunchbang and feeling much more rested. Black is so much more restful. I am sure they will make improvements to each of them, but they are not the Death for other DE's.

Cheers
wb4bbc

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  • Registered: 2008-11-29
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

wb4bbc wrote:

I just wonder is KDE, Openbox, or XFCE too hard for the average person ?

I don't know if anything has changed recently, but in the past many people suggested KDE for new Linux users as it is a very Windows-like environment.

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  • From: Ontario, Canada
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I dont think XFCE is for sure, its probably the easiest out of the 3.

As for KDE, We have it running on our labs at school (on Debian stable, so thats not so bad).
I find its actually a lot more confusing for windows users than XFCE is.

Even i stumble with it sometimes, because the location of everything is rather jumbled, and not very intuitive.

just call me...
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

^ +1

Gnome 2 is very much like Windows XP with an extra panel (in the Ubuntu setup anyway).  XFCE feels similar, but a little more like and unusually crashproof Win98.  (I liked the Win98 interface; I had my XP box set up to look & feel like 98.)  KDE, especially with the plasma desktop, is like...KDE with the plasma desktop.  Tried it a couple times on my netbook - the Debian version really wasn't too slow, but it just felt awkward.

I *might* try Gnome 3 or Unity at some point...maybe when/if they get upstream to Debian. roll

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  • Awebb
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

The day they are upstream in Debian will be long after Gnome 3 is finally stable and all the distros switched to Wayland as the standard display server.

I tried Gnome 3 in the Arch Linux testing repository. I don't know what to do with the interface. It's confusing and based on big icons. My mouse and eyes have to circle all over the screen all the time. It feels too much like an embedded UI for a small device. They claim it's made to make desktop usage a distraction-free experience, but it's getting so annoyingly in my way that I usually forget what I wanted when trying to find my windows in the shell.

So my short review in points:

Looks: ********--
Speed: ******----
Usability: ***-------
HURRDURR!!11: **********

Last edited by Awebb (2011-04-15 16:38:50)

I'm so meta, even this acronym
  • Unia
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I'm actually using GNOME3 at the moment and must say I like it. Of course, there are some things that I'd like to see in a future release, such as:
*music player in sound menu applet
*ability to hide the accessibility applet
*mouse-controled desktop switching
*themes
*keyboard control in the activities view

(yes.. I keep a list lol )

Let's do it and don't screw it.
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  • Registered: 2011-02-08
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I still haven't gotten around to trying gnome 3 stable (though I played around with the beta and pretty much agree with Awebb).  I'm a bit annoyed with gdm3, which is on my wife's comp.  I was trying to set it to autologin, so I went to gdm-setup, and it wouldn't let me unlock it to change anything.  So then I figured out with the setup program is called and ran it with gksudo and it still wouldn't let me change any login settings.  Then I figured, ok I'll mess with the config files.  But I couldn't find any clear documentation or simple answers anywhere.  I don't understand how they went from something straightforward and easily configurable, like gdm, where any one of those methods would have worked (as well as  a few others) to something that seems impossible to configure.

It seems like a huge step back to me, and I haven't seen any noticeable performance improvements over gdm...so what gives?  Why are they fixing something that wasn't broken?

Also, regarding usability, etc.  i think there's a lot to be said for continuity.  XFCE is great because it looks so much like Windows XP.  My mom can use it without having to ask me how to do everything.  I don't think I could ever get her to switch to something like gnome-3.  Seems like they've gone from something with wide appeal to something that only appeals to eyecandy obsessed early adopters who are really into linux-but also don't care about things like configuration. If they're going after mac users, they're going to need prettier hardware.

Just to make sure no one mistakes my tone...I'm not mad at gnome.  I've already moved away from it for other reasons, so it doesn't affect me.  I'm just confused.

Last edited by bobrossw (2011-04-15 20:20:11)

  • aaro
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I wanted to see what's the big deal and i downloaded ubuntu 11.04 beta2 and fedora 15 alpha and give the usual ride in virtualbox.... but wait! it doesn't work in virtualbox because they require some 3d support, but virtualbox provides 3d support... forget it, still doesn't work. Well why don't burn it to a cd and try them on real hardware? no thanks, i wanted to try them but not that much!

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  • Awebb
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

aaro wrote:

it doesn't work in virtualbox because they require some 3d support, but virtualbox provides 3d support...

Try qemu-kvm.

I'm so meta, even this acronym
  • Unia
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I think this might be interesting for some of you to see what might be upcoming for the future 3.2 release:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop- … 00109.html

Let's do it and don't screw it.
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  • Registered: 2011-03-02
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

Will be intresting to see how Gnome 3 changes after a few releases

Last edited by wb4bbc (2011-04-19 07:37:46)

  • Registered: 2011-04-22
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I think the release of Gnome 3 is much akin to the release of KDE 4. It took some time before all the kinks were worked out of KDE 4.

Unity, on the other hand, just seems like an attempt to turn Linux into MacOS.

  • Registered: 2011-02-08
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

^nothing wrong with having a macOS-like linux distro...look how popular that got, and how fast.  Maybe if ubuntu got as popular as Mac is now, more drivers would be open-or at least make an effort to support each kernel...and maybe linux devs would get more resources and be able to turn things like the gimp into real competitors for photoshop, or at least force high-end commercial software makers to consider making linux versions. -a rising tide raises all ships.

Last edited by bobrossw (2011-04-25 00:16:19)

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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

bobrossw wrote:

^nothing wrong with having a macOS-like linux distro...look how popular that got, and how fast.  Maybe if ubuntu got as popular as Mac is now, more drivers would be open-or at least make an effort to support each kernel...and maybe linux devs would get more resources and be able to turn things like the gimp into real competitors for photoshop, or at least force high-end commercial software makers to consider making linux versions. -a rising tide raises all ships.

On the other hand, that would also make linux users a better target for viruses and whatnot

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  • aaro
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

If Apple is good at something, that is in trend/fashion making. They made it with the ipod. They made it cool to use the white little earphones while walking in the street. And now i see gnome3 and unity and i just see that it's the Apple trend again, this time mac osx. They (gnome and unity) change little things and add some others but in general the key osx elements are there:

1- Global menu bar.
2- Dock with mixed launch/taskbar functions.

Is that setup really functional/usable in the long term or just a transient trend? time will tell.

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  • Val_B
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

anonymous wrote:
wb4bbc wrote:

I just wonder is KDE, Openbox, or XFCE too hard for the average person ?

I don't know if anything has changed recently, but in the past many people suggested KDE for new Linux users as it is a very Windows-like environment.

Basically it is IMO, but with one huge exception, and that is that I always lock the widgets before letting windows users at it, or let them use KDE 3.5 which while showing it's age, it and QT3 are still totally viable.

The real thing is that KDE is only as complicated as you want it to be, you could for instance never open  systemsettings and you would never have any complication really, but if you want to, you can make it do just about anything, but the average user never needs to.

In any case one of the strengths of KDE IMO was the centralized system settings, it is good to see Gnome3 heading in that direction too, many of the windows people who I met who had tried gnome were confused by the settings being the way they are. Of course everyone is different, and has their own stumbling blocks.

wb4bbc wrote:

( Now I am a Crunchbang/Openbox/Xfce fanboy) so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Well, I would call myself a KDE fangirl, but at the same point every user has preferences I think you did a pretty good job of not jumping to conclusions and criticizing without merit, so good job in my view at least.

  • Registered: 2010-05-25
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I use Crunchbang on my netbook, Ubuntu on my desktop. I really like #! on my eeePC, and I liked the Gnome 2 desktop well enough on my "big" machine. I recently upgraded my "big" machine to Natty, and as a "bonus" received the Unity desktop environment. I've been using it since the upgrade. I'm sitting here been trying to find something nice to say about it, but I can't.  I'm not happy with it, and I will not be using it in the future.

Last edited by gdimike (2011-05-31 22:00:31)

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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

^ This is one of the joys of Linux. The freedom to choose and so many options to choose from. Personally I love seeing Ubuntu and Gnome 3 distros blazing their own path. Ubuntu will always be large enough to have a majority support base although I notice this is slowly being eaten away at. In the long run canonical will head in the direction that is best for canonical which if it maintains Linux's diversity can only be a good thing smile They may pay a price for heading in a seemingly proprietary direction but then again it may prove to be very popular. If nothing else the future of Linux will be an interesting and dynamic one smile

hmm, I think I'm wandering a little OT....

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  • aaro
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

I thought about about posting this in the windowmaker thread but i think is more intended to this thread:
Reading a bit about windowmaker and its history, it's interesting that it was created to emulate the nextstep system gui, and nextstep was at that time a closed source system that later became the foundation for mac osx... history is a circle... don't you think? wink

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  • pvsage
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

^ I think elements of the Windowmaker/NEXTstep interface were actually used in Macintosh System 8.  The Mac OS has changed quite a bit since then...

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • From: the 408
  • Registered: 2009-03-04
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

Some of the super-early betas of OS X (Rhapsody, which I guess became OS X Server 1.0?) used an OS 8-like interface.

Then they threw the whole thing out for the interface we know and may or may not love.  smile

--Ben
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  • Registered: 2011-04-18
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity DE's (A CrunchBanger's Thoughts)

Ok so I fought Fedora and won thanks to Debian/#!
See post here: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … allsolved/

So I played with it... has not crashed... base install is using under 500mb of RAM.... not bad... kind of OK... I feel like I'm using my android phone.... ALMOST getting bored!

Then comes this guy and geeeez hmm

http://blog.fpmurphy.com
http://www.fpmurphy.com/gnome-shell-extensions/

Makes me want to play with it a bit...specially with Javascript knowledge from a previous life as a web programmer  big_smile

In any case... those links are good info for anyone looking to get a little deeper into the new Gnome3.

Cheers!
P.S #! still rules cool

Last edited by Root-Minuz (2011-06-02 01:22:33)