ak3ldama's Journal: Fedora 15 and Gnome 3

First significant release of GNOME in years - supposedly about 9! They should have waited longer. Where to start?

The upgrade of Fedora from 14 to 15 broke my networking. I had set it up to be automatically enabled every bootup. It is a desktop with a wired connection. I couldn't find how to enable it and the manager said it was "unmanaged". Forgivable I suppose. This was probably something that changed with the new startup mechanisms.

So I did a fresh install. Added the FedoraFaq setup to play mp3s. Had to manually download and setup the GPG key information. Forgivable. While setting up the podcasts Rhythmbox crashed and blew away the updates. Then while doing so again it wasn't able to readd one of them. I then had to delete its xml storage file to be able to finish setting up rhythmbox. Not very Forgivable.

Then comes some more core Gnome things. Both dual monitors and the management of the wallpaper is close to broken. Applications on the second monitor aren't part of that "workspace" anymore. Keep in mind I am using the open source ATI driver and configured my desktop with the typical GNOME screens tool.

The second thing that is noticable is that a wallpaper set to tile doesn't actually span both screens. The third thing is that a transparent terminal window doesn't show transparently.

Lastly is the common gripe that the GNOME 3 theme is part of the black pixel lobby. There is no way yet to configure to a different one.

Those are what I consider some of the "relatively" minor gripes about GNOME 3. That doesn't take into account the loss of the old panel applets. Showing the values from sensors? The cpu scaling on the fly? The latest weather and temperature in the area? Where is the recent file list? It is there when I search but not upon first popup of their new flyout. It is understandable that people will have a hard time adjusting to certain new behaviors and muscle memory actions needing to be forgotten. But things really do take longer now. I used to have Firefox and Terminal and Rhythmbox shortcuts on the main top panel. As well you could click on the workspace and just go there. I will try to stay open minded, but my premonition about waiting a release or two longer was probably right.

Quick Added Note

[ak3ldama]

I really do like the new flyout's searching for applications, settings and recent items. That itself is pretty neat. I do not want to be yet another person demoralizing the developers of GNOME 3 and the new GNOME Shell. I am merely saying the cost of said functionality and the complete overhaul to the panel is too much to bear. I can also understand a certain lack of refinement for a point zero release. I just want to indicate - as others have - that as a desktop user and a long time GNOME user these other