

Gnome Shell updates for 3.2 - senko
http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/news-from-gnome-shell-land/

======
thristian
Ubuntu switched their default UI from GNOME 2.x to Unity in 11.04, and after
trying it out for a while I decided it felt clunky and awkward, so I decided
to try out GNOME 3 from the official unofficial PPA - and man, I'm glad I did.
The overall feel is just... more polished than Unity, and even more polished
than GNOME 2.x. I like being able to bring up the overlay with a keystroke,
then start typing the name of the app I want to launch, or browse the virtual
desktop list, or pick an app from the dock. The Alt-Tab switcher has a big
icon for every app I have open (like OS X), but if the app has multiple
windows, they appear in a kind of submenu and I can navigate with the arrow
keys to the one I want. I even love the notification system - when an app on
another desktop wants the focus, an unobtrusive pop-up appears at the bottom
of the screen; if I miss it, I can clink my mouse-cursor to the bottom right
to see all the notifications awaiting me.

It took me a while to make it recognise my preferred keybindings, and I've had
to resort to poking through gconf-editor and dconf-editor to make it respect
my personal preferences, but overall I really like it, and I'm looking forward
to seeing where GNOME 3 goes from here.

~~~
ch0wn
The one thing I really like about Unity is the ability to switch between the
windows with Super + [1-9]. Is there a similar functionality in Gnome 3/Shell?

~~~
sciurus
I use Unity every day at work and Gnome 3 every day at home. There are two
things about Unity that make me like it a lot more than Gnome 3:

1) The window placement. Since in both Unity and Gnome 3 you can't replace the
window manager, having some measure of tiling built in is a necessity. In
Unity you can manually tile windows using the Ctrl-Alt-Numpad keys. Gnome 3
just has the much more limited "aero snap" feature. From what I've seen on the
mailing list, there's interest by outside developers in adding tiling to Gnome
3 but it won't be easy.

2) The fixed workspaces. I like to have a fixed number of workspaces on a grid
so I can place certain windows on specific workspaces and easily switch to
them. Unity allows this. Gnome 3 dynamically creates and destroys workspaces,
and it lays them out on a line. This eliminates a lot of the value in
workspaces for me.

~~~
thristian
_In Unity you can manually tile windows using the Ctrl-Alt-Numpad keys. Gnome
3 just has the much more limited "aero snap" feature._

If you mean 'make windows neatly line up against each other', try holding
Shift while you're dragging a window around in GNOME 3. This is an old feature
of Metacity from GNOME 2, which Compiz (Unity's WM) only approximates.

------
yoklov
I've been using GNOME 3 on Fedora 15 for a while now and I'm pretty pleased
with it, that being said, it's far from perfect. There are several interface
choices they've made that remove what I would consider obviously desirable
functionality and hide it away or remove it outright.

Removing shutdown and restart from the user menu. Sure, if I hold down option
or control or whatever the key is those menus appear, and of course I can also
open up the shell and 'shutdown -r now' my way to freedom but the point of the
menu is convenience, and that's not.

Removing the minimize button from the windows /is/ a gutsy choice, and I do
respect them for it as they appear to have a good plan in place, however they
do have to understand that if you are using a system with multiple monitors,
which in my experience is not uncommon on Linux computers, having multiple
workspaces seems redundant. Though, for me only one screen has the workspace
change, and I might be more fond of them after that bug has been worked out.
((note: It is possible to bring the minimize and maximize button back, and you
always can minimize and maximize by right clicking on the titlebar, but again
that's not the point :p))

~~~
hendi_
Regarding only one monitor switching when changing workspaces: that's intended
behaviour, see [1]

You can change that using gconf-editor and setting
/desktop/gnome/shell/windows/workspaces_only_on_primary to false.

[1] [http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/22/multimonitor-
support...](http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/22/multimonitor-support-in-
gnome-shell/)

------
Maskawanian
> Easier window resizing

Thank goodness! This alone about GNOME Shell has infuriated me more than
anything else. I can deal with changes in how to do things (even though I
added a window panel back). But this alone was terrible!

~~~
mixmastamyk
edit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

Then modify:

    
    
        <frame_geometry name="frame_geometry_normal" ...>
            <distance name="left_width" value="3"/>
            <distance name="right_width" value="3"/>
            <distance name="bottom_height" value="3"/>

~~~
Maskawanian
Thanks!

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bergie
Quite cool, lots of small improvements, and a major shift towards service-
orientedness and touch friendliness.

It would be an appealing idea to try GNOME Shell on my ExoPC tablet when 3.2
gets released.

~~~
nedrichards
I can guarantee that it works pretty well on the ExoPC.

~~~
bergie
Somebody should package GNOME Shell for MeeGo. Another cool UX :-)

------
ignifero
Thank <insertnamehere> for XFCE.

