
GNOME 3.8 Released - krakensden
https://www.gnome.org/news/2013/03/gnome-3-8-released/
======
kunai
After losing faith in Unity (the workflow sucks) I reluctantly switched to
Gnome Shell. Originally I thought I would have been back to Xfce or Openbox or
WindowMaker in an instant.

I was wrong. Gnome Shell has turned out to be quite the bit of kit. It's
polished, fast, smooth, and now really stable. The workflow is also incredibly
productive and fast.

The only thing I miss is a minimize button, but because the workspace system
is so great in Gnome Shell, I don't find myself wanting it all too often, and
when I do, I just add another workspace or switch focus.

It's amazing how much thought seems to have been put into this interface. It's
equally amazing how many are so quick to shun it.

~~~
mixmastamyk
For me the problem isn't so much the new stuff, but what is continually lost.
For example, I was a heavy user of emblems and a frequent user of spatial
mode, but they are now gone without replacement. I now stumble through
hundreds of folders that all look the same.

Want to change the colors they've chosen? No can do... but you know what could
do that? Windows 3.1 (and basically every other OS since ~1990) could. :/

That gigantic new clocks app is less useful than the elegant
Calendar/Locations dropdown from Gnome2. It's still around in classic-mode but
it no longer stays open by default (dunno why).

Five+ years ago I remember there were also helpful apps, like a "service
control manager" gui, similar to the Windows MMC that actually worked. Oh, and
Ubuntu removed sessions too.

My experience is that the Linux desktop loses as much as it gains every year.
Almost twenty years of work and it still feels like a 0.5 alpha. The SGI I
worked on 20 years ago could save my session automatically for x-sake, and the
GUI was about as good.

~~~
anonymous
Have you tried the latest KDE? It's very customisable and hasn't crashed or
required manual restart for me once in the last 3 years, even when I leave it
running for days.

Edit: It also has session-saving support.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I did try it again (after many years) just last month, unfortunately I find it
hideous and cluttered, even after an hour or two of tweaking. You're right it
should be the answer, but I felt deeply unhappy using it. (My problem I know).

------
aroman
I think the "Classic mode" is really the biggest, most game-changing thing
here. There are a whole lot of people who hate GNOME Shell (I am not one of
them. I'm not a fan either, but I don't think the shell is a step backwards)
and are either staying on the outdated GNOME2 platform or hacking on top of
GNOME3 to bring back GNOME2.

This, I think, is a great solution which acknowledges the desire/need, but
addresses it in a way that embraces newer technologies ("classic mode" is
built on GNOME3, in fact), rather than simply rolling back to older dated
ones.

Kudos to the GNOME team for this and the entire release!

~~~
ovis
So what do you think this means for MATE and Cinnamon?

~~~
andyking
With any luck, a speedy demise.

It doesn't make any sense to have in one corner, an out-of-date desktop
environment in MATE, and in the other corner, Cinnamon fragmenting things yet
further.

I want a "traditional" DE in the GNOME 2 style, I don't feel the need to have
a tablet UI on my desktop PC with keyboard and mouse. But I'd rather not have
to go back to ye olde software to do this. I'd like GNOME to take into account
those of us who want to use the new technologies without pretending our
17-inch monitor is a 7-inch tablet.

~~~
Grue3
After what GNOME developers did with GNOME 3, I wouldn't trust their classic
mode one bit. Cinnamon devs clearly understand the UI needs of users, and
Cinnamon is already superior to pretty much every DM out there in usability.

------
rayiner
It's interesting to me how all the major next-gen UIs (GNOME Shell, OS X Lion,
Windows 8) are all getting huge pushback from users.

~~~
breakall
You may or may not consider it a "major next-gen UI", but I'd throw Ubuntu's
Unity in that list as well.

While I'm on the topic, I love the way Unity consolidates system bar, app
title bar, and app menu bar. This single screen real estate saving technique
is what keeps me using Unity. Every time I switch into Gnome, *box, etc., open
Firefox, and see 3 bars all taking up screen real estate, I go back to Unity.

Are there any other shells/window managers/whatever that do this same bar
consolidation???

~~~
duaneb
Mac OS X only has one bar.

~~~
breakall
Yes, and I know Unity got this from OSX. I should have said, are there other
Linux-based shells, etc. that have this feature.

~~~
duaneb
Ahh, well it is a pretty sweet use of real estate. I use tiling wm's on linux
so I really can't speak to that.

------
CoffeeDregs
I've really enjoyed Gnome3 and have appreciated the quick cycle of updates.

I just looked at upgrading to 3.8 on Debian Sid/Experimental. Looks difficult,
but not too bad... BUT gnome-settings-daemon 3.7.92 depends on __systemd __.
Interesting. This may force the conversion from init... And it's systemd v44
(so pretty crusty).

------
chousuke
Gnome is showing steady improvement with every new release. Really impressive.
The first versions of Gnome 3 were sort of lackluster, but nowadays I much
prefer it over its predecessor.

------
antoncohen
I knew Red Hat was going to do something to make Gnome 3 more 2-like. It looks
like this is it, Classic will be the default in RHEL 7
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=917679>

------
ebtalley
I finally got fed-up with unity on my laptop and followed some blog
instructions to pull the latest apt version of gnome (3.6) and I have to say
that so far I have been pleasantly impressed. Its a paradigm shift from
classic window managers that I have cut my teeth on but all in all the polish
is so much greater than unity.

congrats to the gnome team, not everyone has bought into it but you've
converted me.

------
Spittie
As a KDE user, I'm constantly impressed by the amount of polish the Gnome team
put into Gnome Shell.

While I don't like some of their design choice, They are coherent and try to
focus on their ideals.

3.8 looks like a nice release, I might try it those days. Anyway, great work
and good luck about the future Gnome team!

------
donniezazen
The only thing that I still can't get my head around is Gnome 3's message and
notification tray. Gnome 3.0 was released in Oct 2011 and software developers
have showed no interest in Gnome's message tray. Most software still don't
support or even care about it. In spite of this reality Gnome developers have
refused to make any changes to their ideology of system icons and
notification. TopIcon extension that puts system tray back to where it
belonged has made Gnome useful for me.

~~~
fmoralesc
Weird, but GNOME 3's notification system is what sold it to me. I hated to
have tray icons visible all the time, specially because I don't neeed them all
the time at all. But that's just me, I guess.

------
olympus
I wonder what will happen when Gnome 4 rolls out in the future. Will users
jump to it like what happened from Windows Vista -> Windows 7? Will they still
yearn for the days of Gnome 2, like some people still wish for Windows XP even
though Windows 8 has been released? And why does every situation happening
with Gnome seem to have a Windows analogy?

~~~
kimagure
people are often rosy-eyed about things they used first/most so they often
think things are nicer than they really are.

i remember for the longest time i thought my time with dwm were some of the
nicest and yearned for tiling wm's in windows, but after trying it again i'm
really glad i switched to win vista/7.

------
10098
I never really understood WHY they felt the need for this radical change in
UI. It may have gotten better with new releases, but why did they have to
break everything in the first place? What, the usual desktop was not working
well? Anyway, I'll give this a try and I'll do my best to not be biased...

~~~
ctbeiser
I never really understood why people feel the need to keep the UI mostly the
same. It may not be as good at the first release, but why do people object to
them breaking everything at first? What, was everything perfect already?

~~~
mixmastamyk
Because they didn't leave any option to "break everything". If the new stuff
was mature when released it might be a different story.

Some people actually have work to do however and don't appreciate being forced
from a 2.0 to a 0.5alpha without option. Unless you wanted to stay on an
unsupported dist for years as I did with Natty (until recently).

Despite my complaints, experimentation is fine in my book... The best way of
handling this would be to ship Gnome2 and 3/Unity side-by-side and let the
user choose, but 2 was dumped immediately for something broken, unknown, and
undocumented. There's no way to stay current without "busting" your desktop.

------
josteink
I see there's mixed responses here, but more praise than I expected.

That said, too little, too late for me. I've now moved to a tiling window
manager (i3) and I'm not planning on going back.

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Yaggo
Wow. OS X influence is pervasive, but despite (or because of) that, it looks
great.

------
nvrmor
screencast <http://youtu.be/ete5Us0-IpY>

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frozenport
Looks like SkyOS

------
WayneDB
I went to the release notes to see how they implemented the Classic Mode. I
was happy to read "Built entirely from GNOME 3 technologies..."

\- <https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.8/>

