Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance [LWN.net]

Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance

Posted Aug 24, 2011 18:25 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
In reply to: Gnome Shell pain and Gnome 2 deliverance by scripter
Parent article: Announcing the release of Fedora 16 Alpha

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

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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.