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GNOME 3.0 released
Groton, MA, April 6 2011: Today, the GNOME Desktop project released GNOME 3.0, its most significant redesign of the computer experience in nine years. A revolutionary new user interface and new features for developers make this a historic moment for the free and open source desktop. Within GNOME 3, GNOME Shell reimagines the user interface for the next generation of the desktop. This innovative interface allows users to focus on tasks while minimizing distractions such as notifications, extra workspaces, and background windows. Jon McCann, one of GNOME Shell's designers, says of the design team, "we've taken a pretty different approach in the GNOME 3 design that focuses on the desired experience and lets the interface design follow from that." The result: "With any luck you will feel more focused, aware, effective, capable, respected, delighted, and at ease." GNOME Shell aims to "help us cope with modern life in a busy world. Help us connect, stay on track, feel at ease and in control." GNOME Shell, he says, will keep users "informed without being disrupted." The GNOME 3 development platform includes improvements in the display backend, a new API, improvements in search, user messaging, system settings, and streamlined libraries. GNOME 2 applications will continue to work in the GNOME 3 environment without modification, allowing developers to move to the GNOME 3 environment at their own pace. The GNOME 3 release notes include further details. Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu CTO at Canonical, praises GNOME 3: "In the face of constant change, both in software technology itself and in people's attitudes toward it, long-term software projects need to reinvent themselves in order to stay relevant. I'm encouraged to see the GNOME community taking up this challenge, responding to the evolving needs of users and questioning the status quo." Miguel de Icaza, one of GNOME's founders, celebrates the new release: "GNOME continues to innovate in the desktop space. The new GNOME Shell is an entire new user experience that was designed from the ground up to improve the usability of the desktop and giving both designers and developers a quick way to improve the desktop and adapt the user interface to new needs. By tightly integrating Javascript with the GNOME platform, designers were able to create and quickly iterate on creating an interface that is both pleasant and exciting to use. I could not be happier with the results." GNOME 3 is the cumulative work of five years of planning and design by the GNOME community. McCann notes: "Perhaps the most notable part of the design process is that everything has been done in the open. We've had full transparency for every decision (good and bad) and every change we've made. We strongly believe in this model. It is not only right in principle -- it is just the best way in the long run to build great software sustainably in a large community." In partnership with Novell, Red Hat, other distributors, schools and governments, and user groups, GNOME 3 will reach millions of users around the world. Over 3500 people have contributed changes to the project's code repositories, including the employees of 106 companies. GNOME 3 includes innumerable code changes since the 2.0 release 9 years ago. Users and fans of GNOME have planned more than a hundred launch parties around the world. Users can download GNOME 3 from http://gnome3.org to try it immediately, or wait for distributions to carry it over the coming months. GNOME 3 continues to push new frontiers in user interaction. The GNOME Project was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people across the world, it is the most popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. The desktop has been utilised in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments, and the project's developer technologies are utilised in a large number of popular mobile devices. For further comments and information, contact the GNOME press contact team at gnome-press-contact@gnome.org. (Log in to post comments)
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 15:12 UTC (Wed) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link]
Bravo.
I've been running the beta through Fedora 15 (Rawhide) for a while, and while I may not personally agree to everything, this is a start of something new and fresh for the Gnome project.
Gnome shell at times feels a bit hampering, but if you do not make a release until it's "perfect" you'll never get a feel of where you want to go. So, in this case, I'll applaud a release.
Great job, and most definitely the start of something wonderful.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 16:30 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I like it.
Using Gnome-shell is a lot faster for me (once I got used to it) then older MS Windows-style setup.
Also thank goodness for gnome-tweak-tool. :)
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 15:13 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link]
This is a press release; not *the* release. We make these available to the press early so that journalists can be prepared. We haven't launched yet. Just hang on to your seats: we're all working hard put the final polish on the web sites.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 15:17 UTC (Wed) by sumanah (guest, #59891) [Link]
Yeah, my fault on this for not specifying alongside the press release that GNOME 3 will actually be released in a little under 5 hours. Mea culpa!
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 15:14 UTC (Wed) by coulamac (guest, #21690) [Link]
The release notes do not appear to have been published yet. You may want to link to them when they go up, since they will likely be more extensive than the gnome3.org page.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 20:26 UTC (Wed) by sumanah (guest, #59891) [Link] Try http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.0/
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 16:08 UTC (Wed) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
I'm in the sad camp. Been running GNOME since it started as a way to save the Free Software world from the Qt/KDE licensing trap. But no more.
Were I running a tablet or smartphone or perhaps even a netbook I might make peace with Gnome Shell. But it and it's whole design philosophy have no place on my desktop. So I switched to Xfce after seeing the F15 Alpha and won't be going back until there is an alternative to Gnome Shell that works for a desktop with a large (or multiple) display.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 16:51 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
works for me in dual-head set ups.
the support for sane multi-head landed after Fedora 15 released the Alpha - so you should really give it a go again using one of the live CD images on gnome3.org.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 16:57 UTC (Wed) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] Will the images run in a virtual machine?
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 17:16 UTC (Wed) by ken (subscriber, #625) [Link]
no. or well yes it will start but it wont run gnome-shell.
I downloaded the gnome 3 live iso and nowhere on the web page was it mentioned that you need 3d acceleration and got very confused when I run it under kvm.
Not sure how smart this is a lot of people in companies doing development run linux in vmware.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 18:58 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
Implementing the core desktop with JavaScript so Web developers could contribute was not smart. Rewriting large chunks of working code that could have been evolved with all the NE features and UI was not smart. Breaking well understood and widely known desktop paradigms was not smart. Requiring 3D drivers on an OS known for shoddy 3D driver support on real hardware (much less virtualized hardware) was not smart.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:28 UTC (Wed) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]
"Implementing the core desktop with JavaScript so Web developers could contribute was not smart."
Why not?
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:15 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
Web developers are the lowest of the low. They're utterly incompetent, even at Web development.
The only Web developers that are worth the oxygen they consume are the ones who are _also_ real programmers, and hence don't need you to use JavaScript just so they can cut-n-paste code snippets from webmonkey (or whatever other repository of horrifically bad code is popular these days). These people only know JavaScript in the first place because they have to for their current job, not because it was "easy to learn" or because it's their preferred language. These people learning programming on C, or LISP, or even Java.
I for a time was in the Web industry, and it was just horrific. Every single freaking project I came onto was nothing but a mass of absolute shit. I could find multiple blaring security holes within minutes of looking at the codebase. I could replace thousands of lines of JavaScript code with a tiny single-digit number of lines of more correct (and more efficient) code. Every "experienced" 10+ year Web developer we hired or contracted to was more useless than the Freshmen kids at pretty much any real university. I met all of two people in the industry who could actually work at my level of competence and efficiency; one used to write databases (as in the actual implementation of a database, not just stored procedures and such), and the other used to work on large-scale telephony systems. Everyone else -- all the people who decided to learn programming and started out with freaking JavaScript, PHP/VB, and HTML -- were totally useless in every single possible way.
The video game industry for a time used to think like the GNOME3 devs are thinking now. They started adding scripting languages to their game engines with the idea that then game designers could implement game logic on their own. Lo and behold, a non-programmer is a non-programmer and can't fucking program. The code they wrote was illogical, hacky, inefficient, unmaintainable, buggy, and only even got that far by having the designers constantly pestering the programmers with "how does 'if' work again" types of questions. Eventually everyone figured out that you only want real honest-to-goodness programmers writing code, of any kind, period. The script languages were retailored to focus more on coding efficiency rather than something moronic like "newbie friendliness."
Meanwhile, GNOME is trying to make gnome-shell's code more newbie-friendly so non-programmers (e.g. anyone who proudly proclaims to be a Web developer) can add thousands of lines of poorly architected buggy inefficient broken code to your core desktop shell.
Don't get me wrong, the stupid C OOP API needed to be shot and buried. Moving to JavaScript just to be Web-friendly is the single worst choice that could have been made. Python would have made more sense (and I say that as a staunch anti-Python-ist), C++ would have made a lot more sense, and even some less common-place language like Vala would have made more sense.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:39 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
That has been raised before (using Python) and it was discussed. In short: We're still using Javascript. And we got more contributors due to that. But actually Javascript vs Python is not interesting at all. We can support loads of things now due to Gobject introspection. That is the interesting thing.
We're not aiming for 'Web developers'.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:29 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Yes. It was not smart....
It was brilliant. The 'well understood and widely known desktop paradigms' sucked. The drivers are being improved massively. We have a simple interface that is easily extensible, and they got rid of the dependency on legacy and obsolete features. As as well as numerous other improvements and whatnot.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 20:46 UTC (Wed) by nyfle (guest, #72967) [Link]
Gnome 3.x certainly brings some revolutionary, perhaps even brilliant ideas. But completely ripping out important accessibility features (one size fits all? check!) and releasing that as stable? Not quite so brilliant in my book. Sure, such accessibility features such as font and colour customisation settings - you know, the basics - will likely reappear in the not too distant future. But until then, Gnome 3.x has lost quite a few prospective users...
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:15 UTC (Wed) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
gnome-tweak-tool (packaged on Fedora 15 Beta RC1 and accessible through command or Alt+F2) allow to change fonts, icons, windows to name a few. Colours setting is not available yet but the basis is already there.
Brilliant? Posted Apr 7, 2011 5:27 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Brilliant is what I call kwin's compositing support: it's completely optional and can even be turned on/off at runtime through a simple keyboard shortcut. So I can easily safe 0.5W of power at the expense of some graphical features if I need it. Or have a working desktop which just looks a bit less nicely if the drivers go through another unstable period.
_That's_ utterly brilliant.
Brilliant? Posted Apr 7, 2011 7:16 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
When GNOME Shell development was getting funded by Red Hat, it also was funding the Xorg driver development so that hardware acceleration support can made a reliable thing. In Fedora 15, we have acceleration for most hardware with support in Intel, Radeon and Nouveau by default. This sort of coordinated development across the stack is that we need to push desktop forward and this is the advantage that Apple has traditionally. Isolated feature additions which are optional don't cut it.
Brilliant? Posted Apr 7, 2011 8:04 UTC (Thu) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]
So using endusers as testers for unreliable *drivers* is what Linux need to push desktop formard??
ROFL!
Brilliant? Posted Apr 7, 2011 9:20 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
We can either sit on "unreliable drivers" for years and workaround it in a desktop environment or spend our time fixing it so it can be reliable and depended upon instead of being fragile.
I wasn't referring to testing. I was talking about coordinated development however if you want to talk about testing, what is being done is have dedicated testing days where we have written down test cases, have the developers involved sit on IRC for the whole duration to get feedback from testers and answer questions on it. There is also create live images for that purpose so that testers can provide feedback without having to disrupt their software. This allows "end users" to participate in the development without a major barrier to entry.
Lack of drivers kills 1/8 of market Posted Apr 9, 2011 2:14 UTC (Sat) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] we have acceleration for most hardware with support in Intel, Radeon and Nouveau by defaultThe Xorg Radeon driver seemingly intends to support only R300 series cards and above (Radeon 9500 and later; see model history) This blows away 1 out of every 8 or 9 potential users. A Radeon 9250 (RV280) card introduced in 2004 is not supported, even though the hardware works fine, including hardware compositing. Cards down to Radeon 7500 (RV200; 2001) have the required hardware, but the driver works poorly. For such cases the intent is auto-fallback to a GNOME2-like desktop, but that is not available today. GNOME3 Desktop is very good advertising for XFCE Desktop.
Lack of drivers kills 1/8 of market Posted Apr 9, 2011 3:45 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I don't know where you are pulling stats from but assuming your statement is true, you get fallback mode and that works just fine without acceleration drivers. If you want to use Xfce, nobody is going to stop you either. The world is not ending.
Lack of drivers kills 1/8 of market Posted Apr 10, 2011 18:40 UTC (Sun) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link]
As of today (using updated Fedora 15 branched, the latest Fedora 15 nightly LiveCD, or the latest Fedora 15 beta test compose) automatic fallback mode does not work. On both cards I get a GNOME3 Desktop that is trying to use acceleration but which is unusable because of graphics corruption. The GNOME world *is* ending for any Radeon card less than a 9500.
Lack of drivers kills 1/8 of market Posted Apr 10, 2011 18:44 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
If fallback mode doesn't work, report a bug in bugzilla. LWN isn't the place for that. Claiming the world is ending because of some bugs in a pre-beta release is silly.
Lack of drivers kills 1/8 of market Posted May 5, 2011 19:33 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] The Xorg Radeon driver seemingly intends to support only R300 series cards and above (Radeon 9500 and later; see model history) This blows away 1 out of every 8 or 9 potential users. A Radeon 9250 (RV280) card introduced in 2004 is not supported, even though the hardware works fine, including hardware compositing.Well, my ancient 9250 works fine, though I haven't tried kernel modesetting and obviously a lot of acceleration that works on later cards is just not posible on this one. Fixes for cards right down to r100 regularly go into the xf86-video-ati git tree.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 7, 2011 14:14 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> We have a simple interface that is easily extensible
OK, now show me those extensions.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 7, 2011 14:37 UTC (Thu) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 7, 2011 5:18 UTC (Thu) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
gnome-shell starts in VirtualBox-OSE-4.0.2 with VirtualBox-OSE-installed and 3d acceleration for guest enabled, but there are artifacts and is too slow to be usable at least for me (running on host with i945).
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 17:26 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
you'll need vmware5 or new virtualbox. in any case, a VM tech that allows hardware acceleration from the host machine.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:22 UTC (Wed) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
May I ask what's wrong in KDE and Qt licensing? KDE SC uses LGPL license for libraries and GPL for applications, so it's better than Gnome where some applications are MIT licensed - Banshee. As for Qt you are free to choose between GPL, LGPL and Commercial Developer License.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:53 UTC (Wed) by BlueLightning (subscriber, #38978) [Link]
I think jmorris42 is recalling the days before Qt was available under the GPL. That was quite a long time ago, of course.
A day of celebration for some, a sad day for others.... Posted Apr 7, 2011 1:38 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
Yup, back in the long ago mist shrouded elder days. Back when RMS was (correctly) preaching the evils of depending on Qt instead of flogging the dead GNU/Linux horse. :)
Citation needed Posted Apr 6, 2011 16:21 UTC (Wed) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
" it is the most popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and
UNIX-type operating systems"
But it is magical?
Citation needed Posted Apr 6, 2011 17:04 UTC (Wed) by nyfle (guest, #72967) [Link]
No. That particular feature is still yet to be re-adeed...
Citation needed Posted Apr 6, 2011 18:49 UTC (Wed) by sumC (subscriber, #1262) [Link]
No, thats reserved for anything that Steve Jobs touches...
Citation needed Posted Apr 8, 2011 4:10 UTC (Fri) by ThinkRob (subscriber, #64513) [Link]
> No, thats reserved for anything that Steve Jobs touches...
<looks at GNOME 3 screenshots>
So again, we ask: is GNOME 3 magical?
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:37 UTC (Wed) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
"Used by millions of people across the
world, it is the most popular desktop environment for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems."
I wonder how do you know this? Even if this is true I'm sure Gnome3 will change the situation. I've got the feeling someone has shot himself in the foot with this release. It's even worse than KDE 4.0, because KDE didn't turn user experience by 180 degrees.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 19:54 UTC (Wed) by Frej (subscriber, #4165) [Link]
I'd really like to know how you turn user experience 180 degrees? Flip it over?
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 20:14 UTC (Wed) by Pawlerson (guest, #74136) [Link]
Bring something like Gnome-shell and move some options to different places or hide them completely.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 20:48 UTC (Wed) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link] move some optionsThis is GNOME. It doesn't have options.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:12 UTC (Wed) by handock (guest, #73633) [Link]
Yes. it's absolutely awful.
Where can I change the font settings? (I want unhinted fonts with vrgb subpixels) Where can I change the ugly default font? The list goes on and on.
This doesn't feel like Linux anymore;
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:17 UTC (Wed) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
Install gnome-tweak-tool to change setting. Be in mind not all of them such as colour are implemented.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:32 UTC (Wed) by handock (guest, #73633) [Link]
So it took them 9 years to come up with
this release and I have to install an additional tool to change the most basic font setting?
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:36 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
but you aren't supposed to change the font settings, the desire to do so makes you an 'advanced user', not part of their target market.
or so I understand from watching this train wreck.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 22:34 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
they are not "basic". if you can articulate the difference between any of these settings then you are (like me) a geek, and not a generic user.
for those, like you and me, there is a tweak tool, hosted on gnome.org, that allows you to tweak the configuration at your liking. it's easy to hack on, and it doesn't even require installation to try it out. it's called gnome-tweak-tool:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-tweak-tool
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 23:44 UTC (Wed) by dougsk (guest, #25954) [Link]
... then the MS Windows desktop is only for geeks then?
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 2:17 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Whatever you think about GNOME 3, it's certainly the case that Windows 7 is for geeks, yes. Normal users get it shoved down their throats however, by hardware vendors and lots of advertising.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 8, 2011 4:13 UTC (Fri) by ThinkRob (subscriber, #64513) [Link]
> but you aren't supposed to change the font settings, the desire to do so makes you an 'advanced user', not part of their target market.
No, the desire to change font settings makes you a normal user. GNOME's misguided notion of what users want is what makes you an "advanced" user.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 4:56 UTC (Thu) by engla (guest, #47454) [Link]
You might as well say that it took us 13.7 billion years to make GNOME 3 from scratch.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:47 UTC (Wed) by nyfle (guest, #72967) [Link]
From what I've seen, gnome-tweak-tool seems to have been very much an afterthought; I could throw together a more comprehensive tool in an evening. And I haven't touched GTK in years...
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 22:19 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
I honestly, and thoroughly, would like to see you even try and accomplish that. though *now* it's easy: you already have a template.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 1:18 UTC (Thu) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
> I honestly, and thoroughly, would like to see you even try
> and accomplish that. though *now* it's easy: you already > have a template.
Yes, THAT'S what we need, a desktop project that responds to user complaints by belittling those users and baiting them to do better.
IMHO, an appropriate and non-belligerent response would be something like, "I hope you'll try using the tweak tool some more and report any bugs or request improvements in our bugzilla; we always welcome patches to improve our work."
Clemmitt
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 7:44 UTC (Thu) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
Yes, THAT'S what we need, users who complain by whinging incessantly on forums about how godawful everything is now and how it was obviously better in the 1990s and anyone who can't see otherwise is an idiot and why do they want to kill the free desktop :(
If people can carry on like that, then why don't they do better? Since it's obvious to everyone how much better their ideas are and only an idiot would think otherwise, and it's really easy to do too.
Turns out a bit of politeness and common courtesy (otherwise known as 'not being rude, abrasive, and generally making yourself unwelcome') goes a long way. Who knew?
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 16:14 UTC (Thu) by csigler (subscriber, #1224) [Link]
> Turns out a bit of politeness and common courtesy
> (otherwise known as 'not being rude, abrasive, and > generally making yourself unwelcome') goes a long way. > Who knew?
Indeed. Answering user complaints negatively or impolitely is counterproductive. Two wrongs have never and will never make a right. (But three lefts make a right, just one block up....)
Clemmitt
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 9:50 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>If people can carry on like that, then why don't they do better?
Because they honestly believe that doing nothing *is* doing better.
I can't speak for Gnome 3 as I've not tried it, but there have been several 'upgrades' in the free software world over the last decade which in my opinion would have been improved by simply rolling the clock back 2 years.
It's infuriating when something you're using not only doesn't improve, but gets *actively worse*, and then any complaints are silenced with cries to do better - when all you really wanted was the thing not to be messed with in the first place.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 10:30 UTC (Mon) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
Er, but is anyone forcing you to upgrade? If everything is perfect now, then you can just stay there and never upgrade: pretend the new versions don't exist. Job done. Changing software for its own sake is absolutely pointless. You only change it because you want improvements, surely ...
(Also, 'worse' is obviously subjective -- the people making it, the distributions shipping it, and the userbase of the latter who hasn't revolted and forced them back to the old version clearly don't agree. Try replacing 'the new version is worse' with 'I don't like the new version'.)
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 10:40 UTC (Mon) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]
> You only change it because you want improvements, surely
Sometimes people upgrade software because of security bugs or for the sake of compatibility with other (modern) software they use. It's true this isn't about force. Perhaps a more helpful meme should be "if you don't like our release management, why don't you help out with code review" instead of "if you don't like the latest regression, why don't you fix it".
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 10:50 UTC (Mon) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
OK, so it sounds like the classic case where your views and those of upstream have diverged so far that you need to fork or use another desktop environment.
FWIW, the same arguments were made in the same (if not higher) quantity, with the same volume/force, for GNOME 2.0's release. And also when they switched the button ordering around (anyone remember GARNOME?). Yet here we are today, and GNOME still has a userbase. *shrug*
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 19:40 UTC (Mon) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]
What are you arguing against? I never even said I dislike GNOME 3. I was suggesting a productive way for frustrated people to help out.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 22:06 UTC (Mon) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> Yet here we are today, and GNOME still has a userbase.
But that isn't the question. Will GNOME3 do as a the developers believe, bring in new users? I say no.
Because I deal with end users and there is no way in heck my users will ever see GNOME3. The support pain would be unbearable so I ain't going there. When I hit a point where I'm building a system image to push to my patron lab PCs and the choice is GNOME3 or XFCE I'm not going to make GNOME the default anymore, if things don't get a lot better before then I doubt GNOME3 will even get installed.
I might (but can see no reason to) be able to retrain staff to adjust to GNOME3 but the general public? Madness!
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 22:34 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"But that isn't the question. Will GNOME3 do as a the developers believe, bring in new users? I say no."
I think it too early to say one way or the other but from the feedback we have received so far, it appears that new users like it much better than long time users of GNOME 2 who are just trying it out now. I am not surprised about that.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 12:07 UTC (Thu) by nyfle (guest, #72967) [Link]
Maybe when Gnome 3.x has matured a little and I can actually use it to power my desktop, like I can with Metacity/gnome-panel now, I'll revisit gnome-tweak-tool. And if it's still a skeleton of a customisation app, I'll share my accomplishments.
And FWIW, it wouldn't be easy because I "already have a template"; it would be easy because I've used Gnome for nearly ten years and I can, just as easily, recall the number of "tweaks" and preferences that have been hidden from view and/or removed from this average user's desktop experience.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 2:20 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Sorry, what are you complaining about? There is plenty of choice on Linux if you don't like GNOME. Imho GNOME 3 is brilliant - executing a vision ruthlessly, I respect that. And it actually works. If it doesn't work for you - well, too bad, try XFCE or KDE until GNOME 3 has gotten the features you need again.
Or stay on GNOME 2.x, not hard at all - openSUSE 11.4 is just released with GNOME 2.32 and will be maintained for the next 2 years.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 21:52 UTC (Wed) by sumanah (guest, #59891) [Link] Check out this article about the history of Cantarell and about changing your font settings in GNOME 3.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 6, 2011 23:36 UTC (Wed) by kenmoffat (subscriber, #4807) [Link]
I'm running enough of 2.30 to use epiphany on the installation where I'm logged in at the moment. For some reason, that link on tweaking Cantarell is unreadable until I enlarge it several times.
But - why should a different font be a major part of the desktop experience ? If I don't have the specified font, I expect freetype to produce a workable version of the glyphs. Gnome managed to do that for years, and it was the one area where kde4 improved on kde3. Ocasionally, that doesn't look pretty (for some of the most obscure European glyphs, like k with caron, on my machines freetype falls back to freefont, and some of the glyphs in that are somewhat anaemic). But for almost everything I encounter, the existing fonts work perfectly well.
At the moment I'm trying to bite my tongue, but this gives every impression of "change for the sake of it".
ken
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 5:17 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
I wonder if they finally eliminated Emacs edit-key bindings. They have been working toward that for a long time, first by wiping it out of the dialog box, and then deleting the on-line documentation in gconf.
Using it now. Very nice. Posted Apr 6, 2011 22:33 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
I'm running it from a LiveCD now and it all works. It's more polished than I expected.
I still need to find how to put a cpu/resource monitor into the bar along the top of the screen (I know applets are gone, but maybe the by-javascript-extensibility will offer a way...).
Using it now. Very nice. Posted Apr 6, 2011 22:38 UTC (Wed) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
the library that powers the cpu/memory usage applet in gnome2 (libgtop) received introspection love at the end of the 3.0 cycle, in full UI freeze - so no extensions were written. now it's possible to use from the Shell extension mechanism, and I fully expect a CPU/Memory/I/O/Network usage extension to be written before 3.2 is out.
you could even contribute to it; if you need assets, I'm pretty sure the gnome-design and art teams will be glad to help you figuring out a sane and pretty way to display the sampled data.
How to display CPU, memory and IO load data Posted Apr 7, 2011 8:01 UTC (Thu) by walles (guest, #954) [Link]
Since I wrote this I'm of course biased, but this is how I like to have my CPU, memory usage and IO load displayed:
http://www.nongnu.org/bubblemon/
Still no GNOME 3 port, but when GNOME 3 goes into Debian Testing I intend to do it.
Cheers :-) //Johan
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 7, 2011 9:57 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Anyone know if there will ever be multiple GNOME UXen? I'm thinking here that one UI won't be optimal on all devices or for all people.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 11, 2011 2:24 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
It's not exactly the vision of GNOME Shell. Shell is good for desktops and netbooks. For touch devices and the like, something new will be written I'd expect - easy enough in Javascript. Device spectrum is the philosophy behind something from 'the other camp': http://plasmanotmart.blip.tv/file/4613935/ ;-)
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 13, 2011 9:39 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Hmm, sounds like GNOME folks might be deluded. There are way more device types than just desktops and laptops out there.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 13, 2011 12:46 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
So what? One UI doesn't need to fit everything.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 17, 2011 6:35 UTC (Sun) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Exactly my point. GNOME 3 folks seem to disagree with you and I.
GNOME 3.0 released Posted Apr 17, 2011 7:33 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I don't see how. GNOME is proposing one UI for everything. GNOME Shell is for desktops and maybe notebooks. They haven't it advertised as a general purpose UI. If someone wants to create a UI for a specific target, say tablets, it is easy enough to do so with the frameworks provided.
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 7, 2011 13:58 UTC (Thu) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
On the GNOME 3 site, I notice that the still from the main video apparently shows a bunch of WebM files and Ogg playback, but one has to fire up a Flash player to see the actual video. It would be nice if the GNOME people actually used open formats to promote their open format features.
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 7, 2011 14:39 UTC (Thu) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
the videos are all using the HTML5 YouTube playback. no flash needed.
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 8, 2011 2:20 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Sadly one cannot view the videos without JavaScript turned on, can that be fixed?
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 8, 2011 18:59 UTC (Fri) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
Such issues can easily be fixed by turning on JavaScript ;)
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 11, 2011 2:25 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
GNOME Shell depends on javascript, so does gnome3.org - not a coincidence I'd say ;-)
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 8, 2011 2:24 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
With Firefox 3.5 I get prompted to install non-free flash, no HTML5 version is available.
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 8, 2011 7:24 UTC (Fri) by Darkmere (subscriber, #53695) [Link]
But firefox 3.5 doesn't do html5, meaning that flash is the fallback.
Flash videos showing Ogg playback Posted Apr 8, 2011 11:05 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Can't the site just link to the open format videos? I'm pretty sure that a well-configured browser on a free operating system will be able to either launch the videos in a separate application or even show them in the browser window if properly embedded. I appear to have the Totem plugin which manages to handle the latter.
GNOME 3.0 released - set mouse speed? Posted Apr 7, 2011 17:30 UTC (Thu) by mchazaux (guest, #64024) [Link]
Is it possible to slow down the pointer speed? All to the minimum in the dialog gives a amazingly fast pointer, crossing my 1920 pixel wide screen for 15mm of mouse movement. Acceleration set to minimum still gives a non linear movement of the pointer, which I find very difficult to use. Usually, I use these commands to have a usable mouse :
xinput list xinput list-props <mymouse> xinput set-prop <mymouse> <prop> value And I set Accel profile to -1, and Constant Deceleration to 2.
But xinput is not present on the live Fedora image.
GNOME 3.0 released - set mouse speed? Posted Apr 8, 2011 5:47 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Having different preferences for mouse speed, or having different visual acuity or monitor DPI to the GNOME shell devs makes you an 'advanced' user...
GNOME 3.0 released - set mouse speed? Posted Apr 11, 2011 21:20 UTC (Mon) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]
User menu → System Settings → Mouse and Touchpad, Acceleration slider.
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