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Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 14:34 UTC (Wed) by scripter (subscriber, #2654)
Parent article: Announcing the release of Fedora 16 Alpha

I can't stand Gnome Shell, even though I've been using it for a few months. I like the vision, but for now it's too painful and counterproductive. From the release notes, it doesn't sound like F16 alpha addresses the pain.

I've been a dedicated RedHat and then Fedora Linux user since 1995. As of today, I've decided to download and try Linux Mint, which reportedly contains Gnome 2. If Mint doesn't work out, I'll be switching from Fedora to CentOS 6 (which has Gnome 2) until Gnome Shell matures to a less painful state.

Pain points of Gnome Shell:
- Some keyboard shortcuts are different
- Dual screen desktop switching only switches a single screen
- No quick launch icons (single click -- not buried in an Activities submenu) without installing an extra tweak addon. I use quick launch icons more frequently than I thought.
- No system monitor tray applet.
- ALT-F2 command history is lacking.
- No wobbly windows. I know it's only eye candy, but I miss it.
- Power off is hidden by default. Maybe I'm unusual, but I do power off my machine frequently.
- I have to install several tweaks to make it even approach being usable.
- Too many clicks to get the old application menus back. I love being able to type what I want in order to load it quickly, but finding things in the list is painful. And when I type "terminal", it's hard to distinguish between the terminal applications that are available. Which one is gnome-terminal and which one is the XFCE terminal?
- What's with the trend to make the active window have a window border that looks almost the same as inactive windows? I like having a very distinct window border that's different from inactive windows.

(Log in to post comments)

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 16:57 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

ALT-F2 really needs some love.

It could be expanded out to full shell command line with filename completion and even pipes.

At the very least it needs to show a list of possible completions on a double-Tab.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:07 UTC (Wed) by sjj (subscriber, #2020) [Link]

I'm afraid that kind of useful functionality is confusing to the mythical Gnome target user who powered on his or her brand new computer for the first time ever today.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 19:45 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

Is that kind of Gnome user likely to be using Alt-F2? It's like the Windows user who uses Win+R. Users of Win+R are either advanced users or they are copypasting from a web page.

alt+f2

Posted Aug 24, 2011 20:52 UTC (Wed) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

That's exactly right; alt+f2 is quite explicitly a power user feature and I'm sure stuffing more power-user-y features into it would be quite welcome. (Unlike, say, alt+f1.)

On the other hand, it's a low priority. I'm sure they're taking patches, though. :)

alt+f2

Posted Aug 24, 2011 20:59 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

I don't know if I'll have time to learn Gnome internals and write a feature for it because I signed up for the free on-line Stanford Introduction to AI class.

Maybe I'll learn how to write a program to write programs for me. :-)

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:00 UTC (Wed) by sjj (subscriber, #2020) [Link]

I was hoping to use Centos6 on my laptop to escape from Gnome 3 until 3.2 or 3.4 or whatever, but it just doesn't support Intel core i5 graphics enough.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:46 UTC (Wed) by colo (subscriber, #45564) [Link]

I have tried Scientific Linux 6.1 for a short while on my Sandy Bridge workstation (with Intel HD Graphics) only, but everything there seemed to work perfectly (including xv and GLX/OpenGL). I did not read any changelogs for the EL6.1 release, but it may very well be that they fixed the problems you experienced. You should be able to check using the SL live media.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:25 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

I'm going to cherry pick some of the items that I feel I can make constructive comments on.

"- No quick launch icons"

You can pin items into the sidebar thingie as a "favorite" I've pinned revelation there on my machine for example. Seems to work for me.

"And when I type "terminal", it's hard to distinguish between the terminal applications that are available. Which one is gnome-terminal and which one is the XFCE terminal?"

I've had that problem forever even in the gnome2 menus with tooltips turned off. Using generic names as menu names has this particular drawback when multiple DEs do it. The solution of course is to find a way to present Native/Non-Native DE generics in the .desktopfile. We already have OnlyShowIn to hide DE specific apps. What we need is a way to mark apps like "terminal" as a "DE generic" in the desktop file. So when its presented outside of the DE it was designed for the name is different. gnome-terminal in GNOME is just "terminal" but under XFCE it would be something less generic. And similarily for the XFCE terminal, it would be Terminal under XCFE and something less generic under GNOME. I can't think of another sane way to deal with "generic name" usage when you have non-native DE apps available.

"- Dual screen desktop switching only switches a single screen"

I actually like this feature. It's actually easier for me to use one monitor as a sticky area for reference material or monitoring windows while I context switch between my main focus in the other monitor. Though my personal workflow should of course does not discredit your preferred workflow needs in any way.

And it should not be construed that I agree or disagree with any of the other items in the list that I did not choose to comment on.

-jef

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:35 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

I think the dual-screen behavior is horrific. Happily, though, it's easily turned off if you know the right registry variable to tweak.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:44 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Can you tell me which key that is for future reference. If they revert the behavior I'll still want to enable it for myself and just keep on keeping on without making a fuss that the default doesn't fit my preferred workflow.

And while your at it. If you know which key I can use to change the primary desktop from the right-most to the left-most that would be great. I'd actually prefer to have a left most primary monitor and have the pinned monitor on the right. I guess I'd could shake my fist a bit and get all hyperbolic about that bit of default workflow mismatch.

-jef

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:59 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Go into gconf-editor, click down through desktop/gnome/shell/windows, and tweak workspaces_only_on_primary.

I'm not sure about changing the primary, but I do know that you can move the black bar by dragging it in the "displays" dialog. Whether the black bar takes the "primary" designation along with it is not something I've tested.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 19:05 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

That displays dialog trick was the trick. thanks for that.

-jef

Gnome Shell registry tweaks

Posted Aug 25, 2011 23:06 UTC (Thu) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link]

It seems to me that the fedora projects needs a Gnome Shell tweaking FAQ. Apparently, it already exists: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263006 (thanks to Google for helping me find it) and http://littlethorpe.net/wordpress/?p=334 and http://chris.wailes.name/?p=111

I really miss having the system monitor tray applet. I use it all the time, on every machine where I use Gnome 2. XFCE doesn't have it, I don't think.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 26, 2011 21:03 UTC (Fri) by stonedroid (guest, #59530) [Link]

Juan Nushio Rodriguez got sick of the Gnome Shell too and set out to bring back some sanity. See http://k3rnel.net/tag/bluebubble/
- -
Q: What exactly is BlueBubble?
A: Its an effort to bring back the Gnome 2.32 desktop in Fedora 15, or as Hannah would put it.. The best of both worlds.
- -

I have used the repository since June, apart from some small problems uninstalling gnome 3 (due to some legacy packages, fixed with forced rpm uninstalls) it has been smooth sailing. Yum complains about package dependency problems, but as explained in the installation instructions, you use "--skip-broken" and ignore them.

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 25, 2011 10:44 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link]

I'm using Fedora 16 and XFCE. With a very little bit of tweaking the experience is similar to GNOME 2.

All you need to do is:

yum install @XFCE

and then log out, and on the login screen select "XFCE session".

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 25, 2011 16:17 UTC (Thu) by SiliconSlick (subscriber, #39955) [Link]

then log out, and on the login screen select "XFCE session".

The trick there being to select it from the gdm login (after selecting your account/username) and not using the usual desktop switching tool (which is broken).

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 27, 2011 20:23 UTC (Sat) by nb (subscriber, #61815) [Link]

That way also makes it easy to switch if you want to use different desktops, like Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc., all on the same computer.