I’ve been following developments in the GNOME community for a while. In particular, I’ve been watching the battles rage over decisions made in the development of GNOME 3. The GNOME developers have tried to rethink the way we use desktop environments and window managers, and they’ve made some very controversial decisions.
For example, they’ve done away with the maximize and minimize buttons. Windows now sport only a close button. Maximize is done by double-clicking the title bar or by dragging the window to the top of the screen. Restore is done by either double-clicking again or pulling the window down. There is no obvious method to minimize, but you can do so by right-clicking the title bar and selecting Minimize.
The developers and interface designers argue that max and min buttons are rarely used and, in my case, they’re right. They argue that buttons that don’t get used are just a visual distraction and should be removed. Again, in my case, I agree. Not everyone does, though, and that’s caused quite a stir.
People forget that GNOME 3 is not an incremental upgrade. It’s an attempt to rethink how we use the desktop. It’s a genuine effort to come up with something new. As such, it should be applauded. Before you condemn it, you should at least try it. See if the new work flow and UI suits you. If it doesn’t, fall back.
I set out to try GNOME 3 this weekend and, at the same time, break away from my normal default Ubuntu install and play with Arch Linux. Arch Linux has a decidely different feel from Ubuntu or Fedora. It’s a rolling release distribution, which means it’s always up to date. That also means that you’ll install from a snapshot and the first thing you need to do is bring everything up to date by downloading and installing updates. This took the better part of a day for me due to my crappy Internet connection.
Once ready to go, though, Arch performs very well. GNOME 3 installed painlessly from their testing repository. It’s fast and looks very good. I’m still playing around with GNOME 3 but my initial impressions are very positive. I like the work flow, and I like the window management. It’s a cleaner, less cluttered look than previous GNOME incarnations. I’ll spend some time with it and share more thoughts as I go.
#1 by Mohammad on 13 July, 2011 - 2:42 am
I think gnome 2 was way better than gnome 3. Yes, gnome 3 has some cool visual effects, but it consumes too much resources and it seems buggy on my Arch Linux. Currently, I have no options but to use gnome 3 as it made it through Arch main repository. Hopefully they fix all the bugs and annoying things with Gnome Shell.
#2 by chris on 13 July, 2011 - 9:20 am
Can’t you install an alternate desktop manager?
I’ve actually gotten used to Gnome 3, and I’m quite liking it now. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but they seem to be pushing out updates at a good rate.