
Fedora 16: Linux home for lost Ubuntu GNOMEs - darkduck
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/04/fedora_16_beta_review/
======
silon3
I recently tested the gnome-shell in Fedora 15 for the first time. This is my
showstopper list:

    
    
      1. Application oriented
      2. Alt+tab sucks (mostly because of #1)
      3. Terminal doesn't open new window by sefault.
      4. Terminal is single-process (see #1)
      5. Can't use other window manager.
      6. Sometimes slow
    

Now using XFCE. Will see how many of these got fixed with the new version.

~~~
eitland
Sounds like a free version of Mac OS X to me.

(Fanboy downvote protection: I'm on my third year using a Mac. I love mag-
safe. I love how it is usable out-of-the-box. I love the screen, the backlit
keyboard. List goes on.

I was happy to see

    
    
      * window resizing by any border and a 
      * decent attempt at fixing fullscreen and virtual desktops in Lion this year.
    

For next update I'm hoping for Apple to introduce a

    
    
      * "super-intuitive CMD-Tab that will let you switch 
        through all you *windows* in the order the were last 
        used" and 
      * "Menus now follow your windows" so there's less need 
        to move across a laptop screen and a full Cinema 
        Display to find the menu. Sounds familiar btw.
    

A sad thing Gnome keeps copying not only the good stuff but also the super
annoying.)

~~~
sirn

         * "super-intuitive CMD-Tab that will let you switch 
           through all you *windows* in the order the were last 
           used" and 
    

Ugh! Please no! Switching between application rather than window is my main
reason of switching to Mac back in PowerPC days.

You may love Witch[1] though. Or a good-ol' Ctrl+(fn)+F4.

[1] <http://manytricks.com/witch/>

~~~
aklemm
No idea why someone would prefer app switching, but the info in your post
proves you're an awesome person! I've looked all over for a window switching
solution and never found ctl+fn+f4. Ahhh, much better.

------
forgottenpaswrd
How is that ?

They don't let you use Gnome 2.x so in fact they are using the same strategy
that Ubuntu is using: forcing users to use what they what them to use.

You also can easily switch to Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. At least there is a "classic
mode" on Ubuntu.

Gnome guys were the ones that behave wrong here, with their pride, they
changed a lot of things(in a wrong way) and did not let their users to vote
giving them the option to use it.

E.g I need compiz cube, when you give a talk people watching need to know what
you did with the screen. Every time I talked with devs about it they say that
"you don't really need that, it is a flashy thing". Sorry I need it way more
than "auto logging on IMs".

The new "cube equivalent" both on gnome and Unity crash on my computers.

~~~
darklajid
No one is forced to use anything. Two companies offer a ~primary~ (ignoring
Kubuntu, Xubuntu et al and you can get KDE etc. on Fedora as well) desktop
experience. You take it or leave it. For some the difference is that one
offers something created in-house while the others offer something created in
public.

Fedora 15 has a classic mode. I'm not sure about 16, but I'd expect the same.

You could replace the sentence about Gnome with one putting Canonical/Ubuntu
as a subject and it would be just as misplaced and just as (..) correct.

You are really the first guy (no kidding) that I heard describing the spinning
cube as a worthy feature. I don't understand your usecase, but you have to
agree that you're in a minority here, no?

~~~
Skalman
I think it's a wonderful use case, even though I'd be too annoyed to use it.
When somebody else is looking at your screen and you quickly switch desktops,
they might not understand what's happening. The cube shows what's you've done
quite clearly.

------
greatquux
I like GNOME 3 a lot better than Unity, but until it can give me multiple
independent virtual desktops on all my monitors, I'll be sticking with one of
the few window managers that can: Enlightenment (0.17 from the Bodhi Linux
repositories running on 11.10).

~~~
darklajid
Haven't used e for a long time. Is that feature the single criteria for you?
If not, can you list some more ~nice~ things here to lure potential candidates
(me) into giving it a try again?

~~~
greatquux
That's one criteria, but I've found I'm just more productive using E because
it mostly gets out of your way. It also looks good and it's a lot faster, even
on modern hardware, than GNOME 3 or KDE or Unity. It finally comes with a
basic compositing manager module and a 'scale windows' plugin for Expose like
effects, although I don't really need to use it much since its pager window
has minimized icons that give me visual cues as to where I put certain apps.
It's not a whole DE, and I do run gnome-settings-daemon in the background and
use Nautilus or PCManFM to browse files and such, but I keep going back to it
and I've been using it since 2005.

------
onosendai
I doubt many people will switch distros from Ubuntu to Fedora due only to
GNOME 3 because the former still has many advantages (huge repositories, apt-
get, large community, overall fit and polish, etc..) and on 11.10 GNOME 3 is a
fully supported DE, only an apt-get away in the repositories.

~~~
darklajid
(Disclaimer: Fedora user here)

Do you happen to know a couple of examples for differences in the relevant
repositories? I mean - I agree that they are probably not equal and w/o
checking I'd even agree that probably Debian + Ubuntu + PPA > Fedora in terms
of numbers. But I've yet to stumble upon a problem.

apt-get (did you mean aptitude? What's the difference?) and yum are
~comparable~ for most use cases. End users probably care more about a decent
UI instead of the underlying package format. One point for Ubuntu here, the
'Store' thing looks nifty.

Community is too broad to comment. Look at the fedoraproject site, there seem
to be lots of passionate people over there (no clue, I tend to live on my own
island here).

"Fit and polish" is where you lost me. This is just too subjective a claim to
make.

So - up until this point I'd say "Both are the same".

Now I happen to use Fedora. Why?

\- I was turned off by Ubuntu's polish in the past. Purely personal and matter
of taste:

* Most early themes (brown? really?)

* Crappy release names

* A 'better than Debian/the rest' attitude (regarding backports, crying for an 'Ubuntu' SO subsite instead of a 'Linux' one etc..)

\- I disliked design decisions

* Multiple patches (most famous: The notification area) to Gnome just didn't sit right with me. I wanted a "vanilla" Gnome experience

* Now: Creating an in-house shell replacement that disconnects Ubuntu from all the rest.

* Future: Wayland, pressed forward instead of offering it and letting competition decide if it's a project worth looking at

~~~
sapphirecat
> apt-get (did you mean aptitude? What's the difference?)

aptitude is a TUI front-end for apt-get (which is to yum as dpkg is to rpm).
synaptic and the Ubuntu Store are GUIs into the same system, though I think
the store is further layered over aptdaemon and/or PackageKit. (I don't use
the store much, since I'm used to synaptic, so I'm foggy on the details there.
At any rate, the store UI isn't blocked while installs progress.)

~~~
sciurus
aptitude also has a CLI. For a while it was recommended over apt-get/apt-
cache/apt-file because it tracked packages that were installed only in order
to satisfy dependencies and let you automatically remove them when you
uninstalled the package that needed them. However, now apt-get does that too.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
You can search for a name with aptitude, whereas you can't with apt-get. Thats
why I prefer the former anyway.

------
lhnn
I guess the author hasn't heard of Debian.

DNRTFA

