The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 15:08 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by aigarius
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

I've found that there's been a net reduction in time to reach an application in Shell. For example, I frequently cannot remember if I already have a terminal window open among the 10 windows that I commonly have open. Instead of hunting for it in the taskbar (old way) or going to the overview and clicking on it (as you indicated), I hit the Logo key and type "term" and press enter. It takes me about 800ms to complete this action. If it's not already running, it's started. If it is already running, it is brought to the foreground and I can either use the existing or open a new tab (Ctrl-Shift-T.)

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The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 15:47 UTC (Wed) by aigarius (subscriber, #7329) [Link] (8 responses)

That does sound good, but: 1) I usually have 4-5 different terminals open and would like to switch to a particular one, they are often named by title so I can find it in a rather easy way, 2) for me personally typing is far more disruptive to my mind flow than clicking.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 15:51 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link] (7 responses)

Then you may find that there is a penalty. In my case, I use a laptop with a nib in the center of the keyboard so combining keyboard and mouse operations is quick. I frequently, hit Logo, and nib over to the dash, for example. In the multiple window case, I right click and look at the list of window names in the popup menu and choose the one I want.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 17:18 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

While for me I generally have at least three different classes of terminals open at once (in separate tabbed terminal emulators). Each are in different places in the (2D) pager: it is at most two keystrokes to get to any of them, and on my keyboard at least all the keys to do this are under my fingers or thumbs anyway (though this is not true on normal QWERTY keyboards). Each workspace with a terminal emulator in it also has a chorded function key associated with it, which means they're all one chord away, and any arbitrary terminal in each of them is no more than two more chords away.

(My keyboard has a trackball in the centre, but, y'know what? doing large-scale movements with a trackball or a nib is *terribly* slow compared to hitting a couple of keys.)

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 17:23 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link] (5 responses)

If your trying really hard to hunt for an obscure reason that GNOME 3 isn't going to work for you without having even *tried* it, then I'm afraid there isn't anything that I could say that would change your mind.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 17:51 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

No, I'm not. I'm trying to point out valid existing working patterns that *do not fit* your ostensibly 'fit for everyone' working pattern. (I didn't try it because I have actual work to do and cannot spend every day or every weekend trying out the latest desktop of the week. The criticisms of people for not trying desktops with fixes committed only three weeks ago and not even in rawhide yet are hilarious from my perspective. Do you think these people have nothing else to do?)

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 16, 2011 17:54 UTC (Wed) by me@jasonclinton.com (subscriber, #52701) [Link] (3 responses)

My point is that you have nothing to add to this conversation being that you are not informed.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 17, 2011 23:01 UTC (Thu) by rwmj (subscriber, #5474) [Link]

Specifically it's not going to work for Nix for the same reason it doesn't work for me .. lack of focus-follows-mouse.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 18, 2011 10:45 UTC (Fri) by nyfle (guest, #72967) [Link]

For what it's probably not worth, unlike nix, I am a Gnome user with a workflow that is almost 1:1 with his, and I have tried doing day-to-day things with it for roughly half a day. And what can I say, it looks nice (shiny things are always a plus), but my productivity was severely reduced because of the necessary keyboard-mouse-keyboard dance. I'm sure non-power users will love it - but what about the rest of us?

I do wonder why opinions/insights from non-Gnome users are being, in my opinion, so arrogantly shot down. UIX feedback is always good, no? And this is a general observation by the way, not necessarily aimed at you personally. I've seen quite a bit of "Don't like it? Sod off, then." attitude over the past few weeks...

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 24, 2011 13:37 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>My point is that you have nothing to add to this conversation being that you are not informed.

And you and I have nothing better to add than randomly trolling people, but that hasn't shut us up.