
Gnome 3.12 Released - bkor
http://www.gnome.org/news/2014/03/gnome-3-12-released/
======
dmix
Looks great. I've been extremely happy with Gnome UI after switching from OSX.
It's fun being able to play with a desktop that is constantly improving on a
rolling-release platforms like Arch Linux, where new updates stream in
constantly. Instead of having to wait a year or more for big waterfall
releases like OSX (Mavericks was also pretty disappointing).

My only complaint is how every gnome upgrade the majority of gnome shell
extensions break and the dev community is really slow to update them.

~~~
gtirloni
Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely
usable is a problem in itself. The fact that they break (and some are let to
rotten) after every major release is just to beat a dead body.

Just a few weeks ago I tried Gnome 3 again (again!) and it still sucks as a
productivity environment. I have better things to do. But as a geek, I'll be
checking Gnome 3 again maybe in a year or more. No holding my breath for any
surprises.

~~~
Mikeb85
Gnome is very usable for many of us. I'm tired of seeing the same 'it sucks as
a productivity environment' comments.

If it's not your preference, you can say that, but Gnome Shell is perfectly
fine when it comes to productivity. Quick app switching, searching, app
launching, etc... How do these things hurt productivity?

I personally dislike KDE, but that's just my taste. Some people love XMonad or
XFCE, and some people even like Unity.

Dunno, I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome
Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'.

~~~
subsection1h
> I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome
> Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'.

I'm also a developer whose workflow involves several different tools. One of
those tools is Firefox, and I currently have several hundred tabs open in more
than a dozen Firefox windows. I want to be able to instantaneously switch from
Emacs to a specific Firefox window. I don't want to switch from Emacs to
Firefox and then switch to a specific Firefox window (e.g., using Alt+`) like
some desktop environments force their users to do.

The best solution I've found is to use a desktop environment or window manager
that will display the Alt-Tab window list vertically with full titles
displayed for all windows (which is similar to how I display tabs in Firefox
using the Tree Style Tab extension). KDE and Openbox support this setup, and
the last time I checked, Gnome didn't. So using Gnome would hurt my
productivity.

~~~
ubernostrum
_I currently have several hundred tabs open in more than a dozen Firefox
windows._

This is not a typical use case. I do periodically see people leaving comments
which claim that they usually have the entire World Wide Web open
simultaneously, but not often enough for it to be a use case worth optimizing
for.

~~~
visakanv
Look up OneTab, it improved my quality of browsing the web x100+

~~~
hajile
Onetab basically refuses to load all previous tabs when you open the browser.
By default, Firefox doesn't open old tabs until you move to them. Firefox also
offers tab groups by default as well. Most importantly, Firefox uses only
around half as much memory as chrome and (in my use) seems to be more
responsive with lots of tabs open.

------
mixmastamyk
There are many annoyances in these new unfinished desktops, but one I miss the
most was the Gnome2 clock applet. A must if you have people in other
timezones:

[http://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ftcd.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1Ftcd.png)

Note the map with day/night marked. Allows one at a glance to figure out if it
is a reasonable time to make contact.

I've managed to get a version almost as good on a Saucy laptop, but now
Locations doesn't stay open by default, and has some new bugs.

These are the kinds of rich functionality that consistently get lost in the
"reinvention shuffle" linux software goes thru every 5 years.

~~~
krakensden
Gnome used to have lots of things like that that were just really wonderful
touches.

The calendar integration is still there, at least- if only I could get EDS to
work with exchange...

------
webkike
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I love Gnome, and it just keeps improving.
It's got some annoying issues, such as when the designers decide to willy-
nilly drop important features inbetween releases (like the Ethernet connection
indicator, and the backtracking in gparted), but it's been great otherwise. A
genuinely good desktop manager for linux.

~~~
broodbucket
No change they made ever had consequences as dire as when they removed
transparency from GNOME Terminal.

Never forget.

~~~
krakensden
It's sad, but I've switched to xterm

~~~
sramkrishna
a strange switch, xterm doesn't have transparency eitiher and as far as
correctness goes, gnome-terminal is very correct compared to others. So I have
no idea why you would switch to xterm.

------
jmhain
If anybody uses Fedora 20 and wants to test out the new release, Richard
Hughes set up a COPR for 3.12. I've been using it for a couple weeks without
any major issues.

[http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/02/24/gnome-3-12-on-
fedo...](http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/02/24/gnome-3-12-on-fedora-20/)

------
tenfingers
Gnome is a perfect example of what designing with too much sense for
aesthetics and no usage experience looks like.

It's nice looking, yes. On the surface things seem to be good enough. But
start using the software, and discover how little though most of the features
have been given.

Window cycling is one thing, but the issues go _way_ deeper than that. Small
examples come from the file open/save dialog being into "Recent" mode by
default, despite being totally useless since the dialog has no notion of what
has been done outside of other applications (and come _on_ , on Linux having a
terminal open to script is pretty much the norm). There's an option to switch
the dialog to directory mode (in "current cwd") [1], but of course there's no
such fine-tuning in gtk3. I'm supporting users using Ubuntu in our facility,
and they all hate this "recent" mode.

[1] [http://askubuntu.com/questions/63202/can-i-stop-apps-from-
se...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/63202/can-i-stop-apps-from-selecting-
recently-used-by-default-in-file-chooser-dialog)

The list of gothas like this would be so awfully long that I stopped caring
about Gnome first, and then Gtk3 entirely, since they are pretty much on the
same development line of thought.

Luckily, thanks to XDG and several other common practices, a full DE like
Gnome or KDE is pretty much useless on Linux. There are some many alternatives
to choose from, that any complaint is largely irrelevant.

My suggestions to people liking Gnome though is this: dont' focus on looks,
please try the alternatives. If you miss some "integration", ask for a
standard or some consensus, not for any DE-specific feature.

~~~
andor
_but of course there 's no such fine-tuning in gtk3_

The startup-mode was apparently brought back in Gnome 3.10.

[https://mail.gnome.org/archives/commits-
list/2012-November/m...](https://mail.gnome.org/archives/commits-
list/2012-November/msg05423.html)

[https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/org.gtk.Settings....](https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/gtk/org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser.gschema.xml?h=gtk-3-10#n98)

------
exacube
I still don't understand why they insist on removing window-based task
management when they continue to use window-based applications and workflows,
so I will continue to complain about this

~~~
GhotiFish
I'm confused, what's window based task management?

~~~
geminitojanus
Window-based task management is "Windows", App-based task management is
"Metro".

We spent the last 25 years of computer history teaching both the users and the
computers how to multitask, only for the most recent user designers to try
their damnedest to take it away from us.

~~~
derefr
> App-based task management is "Metro".

App-based task management is also pre-CS5 Photoshop on OSX. Programs which
have multiple windows per document need those windows brought to the front
together.

------
jifu
In case there are some people who still avoid Gnome3 due to experiences from
the early versions, I strongly recommend giving this one a chance. I myself
was a Unity user for a couple of years because I liked the fact that they were
trying to do something new. I had tried Gnome3 as well but the first versions
were pretty messy. Now, though, after getting fed up with Canonical and
switching to Manjaro (highly recommended as a fairly easy rolling release
distro), I've been very positively surprised about Gnome's progress. It looks
good, fits my usage patterns very well, and the minor annoyances I had were
pretty much fixed via a couple of extensions.

------
rcthompson
They talk about better Hi-res (i.e. "retina") display support. Does anyone
have a screenshot or video of this working?

~~~
rubiquity
I'm curious about this as well. Having a nice HiDPI laptop but being stuck
using 1366x768 sucks :(

~~~
viseztrance
There are many tweaks that can help. For instance, I'm currently using gnome
3.10 on a 11.6 inch laptop at 1920x1080, without any major issues.

For my setup, I've done the following:

* Increased the font scaling in gnome-tweak-tool to 1.5

* Made the cursor larger with a setting in gconf ([http://askubuntu.com/a/66216](http://askubuntu.com/a/66216))

* Adjusted the zoom level in the firefox about:config. Updated layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to 1.6

------
emehrkay
So it is pronounced "ga-nome" and not "nome"? Interesting.

It looks good too, I like the way modals open from a thin line to its full
size.

~~~
ssprang
Yep, just like GNU:
[https://www.gnu.org/pronunciation/pronunciation.html](https://www.gnu.org/pronunciation/pronunciation.html)

~~~
kremlin
Even though I'm fully aware of the 'correct' pronunciations, my preference for
"Gee Enn You" and "Nome" is too strong. The standard way of pronouncing those
is too cacophonous for me.

~~~
fixedd
I still pronounce it "new" and "nome" and I don't care :)

------
e12e
One of the best news for Gnome is their (updated/clarified) stance on
portability, that I found linked in the section for developers[d] linked from
the actual release notes[r]:

[http://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2014/02/19/on-
portability/](http://blogs.gnome.org/desrt/2014/02/19/on-portability/)

"GNOME is not “Linux-only” and it never should be. People are running GNOME on
FreeBSD, OpenBSD and very many other non-GNU/Linux systems. People are running
GNOME on GNU/Linux systems that don’t have systemd. This will continue to be
the case. We need to continue supporting these people."

[d] [https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-
notes/3.12/developers.ht...](https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-
notes/3.12/developers.html.en) [r] [https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-
notes/3.12/](https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.12/)

~~~
lmm
Those are encouraging words, but what do they mean in practice? E.g. are they
reverting the changes that had gnome's login manager depending on systemd?

~~~
e12e
I read it like the intention is to introduce comparability layers for certain
"rough" APIs such as logind, and have Gnome depend on those, rather than eg:
"just" logind.

I've yet been able to track down any recent comment from the _bsd side of
things (I don 't follow the _bsd-dev lists) -- so I'm not sure what the
schedule is like.

------
nelmaven
I've been a Gnome user since the start of the month and it has been the best
Linux experience I ever had so far. I was thoroughly impressed by its
performance too.

------
b6fan
I think GNOME3 is breaking *nix philosophy: do one thing and do it well; to be
highly configurable. You have freedom to use compiz in GNOME2, but not in 3.
There are a lot of good GTK2 themes but gitg and d-feet have hard-coded styles
so only default GNOME3 theme will look sane. Super+p is somewhat hard-coded
and you cannot customize it ... and there are more annoying issues. I am happy
that mate-desktop is still alive.

~~~
sramkrishna
No the difference is that GNOME is moving towards a 'product'. Everything is
designed to work together, to be consistent everywhere. When you mix and
match, you just get medicority because none of them were designed to work
together at all. I would not call that even a Unix philosophy, it's just
something that happened organically.

Doing what GNOME is doing is hard. Making hard choices on what to keep and
what not. Fixing the things in the other parts of the stack instead of band
aiding it in their own.

------
dvirsky
If any Gnome developers are reading this - please disregard the bullshit (of
course constructive criticism isn't bullshit) - you guys are doing an awesome
job, and I wouldn't trade Gnome for any desktop environment out there. Period.
Yes, including OSX. I think this will finally have me upgrade my 'buntu.

------
sanimal
Honestly I don't use any of the extensions anymore. I just install Docky and
call it a day.

------
AnthonBerg
Hey what do you know – I find myself not caring very much. After using Gnome 2
for a long while as my main work desktop and actually really trying to use
Gnome 3 for a while. Now I'm not even curious to know what's in the new
release.

~~~
mkhpalm
I understand the initial shock as a long-time user of gnome as my primary
desktop. (since gnome 1) I was like you but now have to admit, since 3.8, I am
very happy with all the changes. I prefer its look and feel over everything
else these days.

------
chinhodado
The best feature for me is automatic text reflow in terminal. It's finally
here!

------
orkoden
Gnome is usable only with gnome do.
[http://do.cooperteam.net](http://do.cooperteam.net)

------
hhsnopek
So these updates are only available for Ubuntu 14.04 and other flavors? I'm
unable to upgrade from 3.10 to 3.12

~~~
GhotiFish
I think these updates are available for everyone, I just don't think ubuntu is
going to do it for you until a later release.

~~~
derefr
Not just Ubuntu; it's not even close to being packaged for debian-testing yet.
([http://www.0d.be/debian/debian-
gnome-3.12-status.html](http://www.0d.be/debian/debian-
gnome-3.12-status.html))

~~~
hhsnopek
Damn, they need to hurry up on that ^-^

