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GNOME GUI Software Linux

SolusOS Forks Gnome 3 Fallback Mode 162

Posted by Soulskill from the will-now-attempt-to-fall-forward-or-to-the-side dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Linux distribution SolusOS has forked the GNOME 3 'fallback mode' that the GNOME Project decided to scrap with the upcoming 3.8 GNOME release. According to SolusOS, the fork, named Consort, can 'maintain an experience virtually identical to GNOME 2, but vastly improve it with no need for hardware acceleration such as with GNOME Shell or Cinnamon.' It 'will bring back all the old features, such as right click-interaction on the panel, GNOME 2 applet support, creating desktop launchers, etc' and 'allow Python GNOME 2 applets to run natively on consort-panel.'"
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SolusOS Forks Gnome 3 Fallback Mode More

SolusOS Forks Gnome 3 Fallback Mode

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  • UI's do help... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's good to see that there are people out there taking up the good fight in developing *good/usable* user interfaces that just work. If the Gnome 3 developers didn't literally have their heads up their arses, this necessity wouldn't be happening. Though...Windows 8 actually makes Gnome 3 look somewhat usable...that's not saying much.

    • Literally! (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If the Gnome 3 developers didn't literally have their heads up their arses, this necessity wouldn't be happening.

      And by "literally", you mean "figuratively, but with strong emotion!". That is, unless there have been some bizarre death scenes among the Gnome 3 devs I haven't read about yet.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by drankr ( 2796221 )

        Nitpicking on people's grammar when they're in distress, tsk, tsk!

      • If you used Unity you would understand that he very well have some intimate knowledge of the design process.

        • I have tried to use the Unity interface, and I it definitely feels like someone has literally had "intimate knowledge" of it in the biblical sense.

  • vs MATE? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So what are the actual differences? Does the fallback mode use GTK3 or something? It sounds like everything promised is exactly Gnome 2.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by krammit ( 540755 )
      I'm sure someone will politely correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that MATE is largely tied to GTK2 with a transition to GTK3 planned as a major milestone for the project. This could provide a gnome2-like experience without the major hurdles the MATE developers find themselves facing. As with everything involving desktop Linux at the moment, it'll be interesting to see if this gains traction/viability.

    • Re:vs MATE? (Score:5, Informative)

      by UltraZelda64 ( 2309504 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:41PM (#42630063)

      Sounds like the same concept of MATE and Cinnamon, with the main differences being:

      --GNOME Shell is the atrocity most people think of when they think GNOME 3. For the most part, it *is* the official GNOME 3.
      --MATE really is just GNOME 2--GTK+2 and all. Creaky and old, not exactly modern, but with a few programs renamed to avoid conflicts with the official GNOME versions and to allow it to exist on a machine with GNOME 3.
      --Cinnamon is a GNOME 2 clone written in GTK+3 on top of GNOME 3, requiring all the extra crap GNOME 3-proper does; for example, 3D hardware acceleration.
      --Consort sounds like yet another environment based on GNOME 3/GTK+3, but being based on the deprecated "fallback mode" it will bring a GNOME 2-like experience without the need for 3D hardware acceleration.

      Beyond that, I honestly have no clue which one is better, they're all relatively new and probably under heavy development. I'm not sure if MATE or Cinnamon have made it to the point where they are free of annoying bugs (in other words, usable), but last time I tried them they definitely had some problems. But they're all probably much better than the crap that the GNOME Project officially provides.

      Once they've all stabilized and have become good to use, I would assume that your hardware (3D acceleration or not) and your desire for nice integration of the latest GTK+3 programs will become some of the most obvious differences. I'm not sure if MATE will eventually port the desktop to GTK+3 or not... if they do, assuming all of them survive, that will likely make the choice even more difficult.

      • yes mate has become stable and works pretty well but enough of the forks we all know unity and gnome 3 suck.
      • I've been running LMDE [linuxmint.com] for the past 12 months and find that Cinnamon is usable. Stability has definitely improved with Update 5 & 6. I wouldn't say it is perfect, but having previously used Gnome 2, it lets me get work done.

      • Fallback mode is going away in GNOME 3.8. But recognizing that some people miss the functionality provided by the old panel, there are going to be some official extensions to emulate some of it [worldofgnome.org].

        No, it's not going to be exactly the same. So those who like to complain can still do that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tenco ( 773732 )

          The point is, this mode uses Gnome-Shell. I can't use Gnome-Shell on my Netbook, because i use external monitors with it in extend desktop mode and the intel driver for my hardware doesn't support 3d acceleration with these "large" virtual resolutions. So making Gnome-Shell look like Gnome 2 doesn't help at all.

          • The point is, this mode uses Gnome-Shell. I can't use Gnome-Shell on my Netbook, because i use external monitors with it in extend desktop mode and the intel driver for my hardware doesn't support 3d acceleration with these "large" virtual resolutions. So making Gnome-Shell look like Gnome 2 doesn't help at all.

            But that, technically, is not the Gnome developer's fault, but instead the hardware manufacture's fault. I run an ASUS eee PC with an external monitor with Gnome 3, but not in extend desktop mode and it works. I assume if the mode you are trying to run in requires 3d then Unity is out, too. XFCE or KDE sound like your best bet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by miknix ( 1047580 )

        Just a nitpick,

        --Consort sounds like yet another environment based on GNOME 3/GTK+3, but being based on the deprecated "fallback mode" it will bring a GNOME 2-like experience without the need for 3D hardware acceleration.

        Unlike mate, consort will just fork the window manager and panel from Gnome 3's fallback mode and make it behave as metacity and panel from Gnome 2. So as far as it goes (if they do it right), consort will be the Gnome 3 environment with just a different window manager and panel. I'm saying "if they do it right" because, IMHO their fork will only be successful if they make the panel to integrate nicely with the Gnome 3 environment (like using the gnome-online-accounts and evolution-data-serve

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ssam ( 2723487 )

      MATE is a quick functional fix. The GNOME2 code may have been old but it was not broken. it was working well for many people. MATE just took the existing code, and made sure that it was still installable on a modern distro. due to the way GNOME3 had been done this entailed renaming everything. (GNOME devs really did not want to to be easy to have GNOME2 and 3 installed together).

      This meant that in 2011 and 2012 people could easily keep using a GNOME2 style desktop. So for the people that value that, MATE is

      • Mate currently works, just as you say. However, where it will fail is as more applications make use of Gnome 3 libraries and GTK 3, whether because Redhat/Fedora use it or Ubuntu uses it under Unity, eventually using Mate as your desktop will mean you will have a mix of all sorts of libraries and their will inevitably be conflicts.

        Holding on to Gnome 2 is like holding on to Windows XP. It may still work, but eventually, you will be forced to upgrade to something more current because new releases of software

  • GNOME devs are so blind (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:16PM (#42629801)

    How can they not see the destruction of their ecosystem right in front of them? They worked so damned hard to make GNOME 2 the best damned environment, and it grew like a weed with Ubuntu. And then sometime around 2009 everyone just lost their damned minds and destroyed it all for no good reason at all.

    All they've done is make all of the users unhappy, removed and broke functionality. They're too busy cutting off their own limbs to fix actual problems anymore. How do the leaders in GNOME not see this happening? It's a damned shame.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      i for one found gnome2 great. with some caveats.

      1. i already had removed the bottom bar, using virtual desktops + alt-tab for my window switching. (closer to gnome3)
      2. the panel was full of glitches (icons jumping around, misbehaviour when switching resolutions, etc...good riddance).
      3. laggish menus everywhere.

      i find gnome3 to be a bit more usable. still the bottom bar is a bit glitchy (they dont yet know how to present programs to the user in a useful manner). (app menu is a bit disorganized, finding a pro

      • Re:GNOME devs are so blind (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jones_supa ( 887896 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @07:19PM (#42630381)
        The glitchiness that you talk about really creeps me. It seems that Linux desktops usually can't reach the last mile to do the proper quality assurance to iron that crap out. No matter what DE we are talking about, this problem affects them all more or less.

    • And with the abomination that is Windows 8, they picked the worst possible time to do it. I loved Gnome 2 ... it was damn close to perfect. I gave Unity a shot. It was slow, buggy, and generally deficient. I gave Gnome-shell a shot. I liked it to a degree, but found I needed lots of extra fiddling to make it work the way I wanted. Things frequently crashed. The developers said that they didn't think people should be installing extensions or even themes. With an attitude like that, I was obviously headed fo

      • Heh. I found Unity OK from a usability standpoint, but its probably the slowest desktop I've ever used. Windows 7/8 run circles around it, while MS used to be the bloat king a decade ago.

        • I found the first iteration of Unity pretty sluggish, but the version I'm on now (whatever ships with 12.04 LTS) seems snappy enough. Not much lag on my Atom-powered Eee PC netbook; notably better than the netbook performs with Windows 7 (which is still installed on a dual boot partition) and no worse than Android (it came with an "instant on" Android dual boot, which is no-longer resident on my hard disk). On my full desktop it runs smooth as butter, although that's not saying much (it's a quad core brute)

      • I use KDE now (although I like Xfce on my older machines as well).

        I have a P4 that runs KDE *acceptably* - though boot times from power on to a functional desktop are glacial. Though I upgraded the RAM because of a bug in the intel graphics driver that would claim too much shared memory.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Gnome 3.12 = Gnome 4.0 = Gnome-OS. Coming to us in March 2014.
      They don't care about the Distro community, they want to go up against Android.

      http://www.slideshare.net/juanjosanchezpenas/brightfuture-gnome/ [slideshare.net]
      Slide 18 up .

      They have been deliberately breaking Community themes and extensions, because of their "brand" image.
      Blog with links for those who are interested.

      https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes// [wordpress.com]
      Anon.

      • This has been tried and failed with Maemo's Hildon. (Though it has been ported to GTK+ 3 in the form of Cordia-HD)

        Nokia decided that Gtk+ was such a dog's breakfast (perhaps due to the difficulty of porting it to Symbian) that they'd go out and buy Trolltech and base their offering on Qt. Which was starting to show promise in the N9. Its legacy lives on in Ubuntu mobile, Sailfish, KDE Plasma Active, BB10, open webOS - which are all Qt based.

        What exactly does GTK+ 3.x bring to the table that will catapult i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      How do the leaders in GNOME not see this happening?

      There's a word [wikipedia.org] invented for this.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      It looks very much like those earlier devs are gone and newer ones with little experience on a *nix platform have wandered in and decided to put their own stamp on things. They've managed to bring the equivalent of DLL Hell to *nix for the first time and broken things so badly that you've got a choice of all gnome2 or all gnome3 and not a mix of apps. Getting the new version of gimp to run with an old version of gnome may be solvable, but not in any obvious way so it's easier to run the thing in a virtual

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jbolden ( 176878 )

        From the perspective of the Gnome group how exactly is that broken? They've made it hard for you to use a product they want you to switch away from. That sounds like they are accomplishing their objective, you just dislike their objective.

        As for .DLL hell and Linux. Linux has always had "DLL hell" that's why distributions caught on so quickly vs. configure / make / install. The only system without .DLL hell funny enough is Windows XP and newer since they did a lot of work to avoid it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by k8to ( 9046 )

          Wrong.

          DLL hell referred to a problem where all apps installed their private DLLs into shared system directories.

          This meant that apps would collide their dll files, and break each other.

          In UNIX/Linux, shared libraries (.so) always were installed with versioned filenames, so multiple versions of the same dll could be installed and the system could deal with it.

          Additionally, in UNIX/Linux, apps did not install libraries shared between projects on install. If building from source, you would simply build the de

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbolden ( 176878 )

            I wouldn't unify all Unixes here. Unixes used all sorts of approaches and the distribution RPM/DEB system originated with Linux Sun for example more or les encouraged static linking and using the /opt filesystem for complex installs which was never the culture on Linux.

            As for a counter example to your position. Gnome 3 and Gnome 2 cannot coexist. That was the entire reason for Mate and what GP was complaining about. I've run into "dll hell" a lot with packages that required 2 versions of MySQL for examp

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dbIII ( 701233 )
              I probably should have called it something like subapplication hell although there are also some libraries involved - but it's an almost identical concept - a stupid naming scheme creating incompatibility.

              As for a counter example to your position. Gnome 3 and Gnome 2 cannot coexist

              With respect - that's my entire fucking point so using it as a counterexample is wrong. Gnome have managed to bring something indistinguishable from DLL hell to *nix for the first time via a very stupid naming scheme.
              Your WinXP e

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by k8to ( 9046 )

                Well, it's definitely distinguishable.

                Gnome has built, at the application layer, services which exist in ram, rather than loaded by library name. And they've done this in a way that does not have runtime versioning.

                They've basically re-created the pain of DDE/OLE.

                Granted, it's the same era of error with the same level of foolishness, but it's a slightly different problem.

                It's not like this has newly surfaced though. In early days of gnome (2), bringing up a gnome program without going through the "proper

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by dbIII ( 701233 )
                  That sums it up well. I have to agree the problem has been around for quite a while but it's a bit more obvious to more people with the gnome2 to gnome3 changeover. From the weird corba stuff to the nasty registry clone of gconf it's been full of stuff like that that keeps being left hanging after a few versions.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jbolden ( 176878 )

                @dbill --

                Look above I think you are merging two responses. The Gnome 2 / Gnome 3 counter was citing your example in response to someone who was disputing that such problems exist at all.

                As for the Windows 2K machine example, that's not .dll hell. That's just incompatibility with newer versions essentially. You shouldn't have an older VBRUN.DLL that's essentially an OS specific file not a program specific file. I can't blame Microsoft for that one at all.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by dbIII ( 701233 )

                  That's just incompatibility with newer versions essentially. You shouldn't have an older VBRUN.DLL

                  Excuse me? What exactly do you think DLL hell is if not a short way of describing the problem of incompatible libraries with the same name preventing software from working? That really puts your comments above in context if you don't have the merest clue about what you are replying to.

                  I can't blame Microsoft for that one at all.

                  It's not only their short sighted library system but in this case also their lib

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by jbolden ( 176878 )

                    .dll hell is programs conflicting with each other. In other words

                    1) you have OS version X
                    2) you install application A which installs dll R
                    3) you install applications B which overwrites R with S and A no longer runs.

                    That's .dll hell. That's what Microsoft solved. That's not the problem you are facing. The problem you are facing is

                    1) you have OS version X
                    2) you install application A which installs dll R and that doesn't work with X

                    That's OS incompatibility, no dll hell. An entirely different problem

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by dbIII ( 701233 )

                      That's .dll hell. That's what Microsoft solved

                      That's what Microsoft created when everywhere else had library version numbers. That's mostly in the past thanks to dotnet handling it more sensibly, but there's no point trying to pretend MS was perfect from day one just because I happened to mention an earlier MS problem to illustrate a current problem with gnome. Please lay off the mindless cheerleading, it's just making it more difficult to communicate.

                      Also the problem with gnome3 vs gnome2 is precisely t

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by k8to ( 9046 )

              Packaging is pretty independent from policies surrounding dynamic linkers and installations of soname objects.

              All unixes, once dynamic linking became prevalent, pretty much did not have this problem. Unixes which died not embrace dynamic linking also did not have this problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by olau ( 314197 )

      Look, the thing is that the rest of the platforms switched to new tech long ago. It was felt that GNOME had to do something serious about if it wasn't going to end up looking like Windows 95 does today.

      Whether you like or not, most people prefer the interfaces of newer Windows releases to Windows 95 or XP for that matter.

      That's the reason. It really isn't more complicated than that. You can loose the battle if you listen too much to your existing power users. Look at Kodak.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chthon ( 580889 )

      They should probably read A Whack on the Side of the Head [amazon.com] and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants [amazon.com]. Not to be more creative, but to learn that success can lead you to ruin.

      Quote: "There is a greater need to extinguish arrogance than a blazing fire"!

    • How can they not see the destruction of their ecosystem right in front of them? They worked so damned hard to make GNOME 2 the best damned environment, and it grew like a weed with Ubuntu. And then sometime around 2009 everyone just lost their damned minds and destroyed it all for no good reason at all.

      All they've done is make all of the users unhappy, removed and broke functionality. They're too busy cutting off their own limbs to fix actual problems anymore. How do the leaders in GNOME not see this happening? It's a damned shame.

      Didn't Gnome 2 come out about the time Windows XP did? That was 11 or 12 years ago. Yes, Gnome 2 had numerous upgrades and additions through 2009, but in reality, it's core was over a decade old.

      People complained when Apple came out with OS X, too. 9.0 was so much better. And yet, you don't see many people today wanting to return to 9.0. The same will be true for Gnome.

      There are people who don't know where their next meal will come from or don't have a place to even call home. There are wars and terroris

  • Instead of helping GNOME to modernize fallback mode (it used deprecated GNOME technologies like Bonobo, etc) as they were saying they didn't have the manpower for that, these people forks, no matter there ir already another fork Matte (that I think could be avoided if people helped modernize GNOME fallback mode)

    Fallback mode was scrapped because no one wanted to maintain deprecated and ugly things like orbit and Bonobo, if someone volunteered to udpate GNOME Panel to new technologies, including GTK3, I woul

    • Re:Another fork for control (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geek ( 5680 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:19PM (#42629839)

      Instead of helping GNOME to modernize fallback mode

      GNOME didn't want to modernize it. They abandoned it.

      • Abandoning fallback mode is such a dreadful mistake.

        I love GNOME 3, but the reality of current driver support on Linux is that many systems which aren't even very old are incapable of running GNOME 3 properly. Not to mention, remote desktop software such as FreeNX is incapable of 3d acceleration at all, and so a solution that does not require hardware acceleration is vital for that use as well.

        I can certainly understand the desire to kill off fallback mode in the long run, but hastening its demise will jus

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fnj ( 64210 )

      Would you mind repeating that in English and without the misconceptions and non sequiturs?

  • Less Hand-Wringing, More Get Shit Done (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oakgrove ( 845019 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:18PM (#42629829)

    Maybe it's the cynicism growing on me but I don't get the constant bitching and moaning over desktop decorations. Back in the day I used KDE3.x and it was fine. Then I used Gnome 2.x and it was fine. Now I use Unity and it is just fine too. On my low-end tinker-boxes, I use Openbox and Fbpanel. And it's all fine. Alt-f2, Alt-tab, Alt-f4, and Alt-Space work everywhere. Focus on your applications, fellas; that's what's important.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fnj ( 64210 )

      Alt-f2, Alt-tab, Alt-f4, and Alt-Space work everywhere

      The hell they do.

      Focus on your applications, fellas; that's what's important.

      We can't because shitty abortions like Gnome 3 and Unity make it almost impossible to get to them.

      • Alt-f2, Alt-tab, Alt-f4, and Alt-Space work everywhere

        The hell they do.

        Sure they do [die.net].

      • Re:Less Hand-Wringing, More Get Shit Done (Score:4, Informative)

        by unapersson ( 38207 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:44PM (#42630105) Homepage

        I'm using GNOME3 right now and my applications are right here in front of me and the DE is out of my way. How does that make them impossible to get to again? I'm seeing less DE chrome than I used to with GNOME2.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by drankr ( 2796221 )

          When you manipulate GS via the keyboard the DE makes all the sense in the world. Using the mouse, it's a mess, it gets pretty much disorienting, and I'm not surprised people who are used to working that way totally reject it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ssam ( 2723487 )

            Depends. most of the time i am a keyboard person. sometimes i have a mug of coffee in 1 hand and a mouse in the other. In GNOME2 i could do anything easily either with just the mouse, or with just the keyboard. A useful skill to have when dealing with hardware with either a broken mouse or keyboard.

            With GNOME3 is seems that some tasks require a keyboard (or you are forced to use a long slow mouse method). Also there seem to be things that are harder to do with the keyboard (maybe just because i have not lea

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      Logic like that would have us still using Program Manager.

      Not everyone is content to just passively accept what is shoved at them. That was true even in the days of Program Manager. Replacements were available and some of us even tried to use them.

      The fact that Linux users are less likely to be passive herd followers should be no surprise to anyone.

      • Logic like that would have us still using Program Manager.

        Or it would have us debate these things on actual merit rather than the hysterical hyperbole often seen when the timeless window manager/DE of choice discussion pops up.

        Choice quotes on this very page:

        People who have real work to do are already using XFCE.

        Have you ever used Gnome3, you dumb fuck?

        Windows 8 actually makes Gnome 3 look somewhat usable

        And on and on and on.

    • Focus on your applications, fellas; that's what's important.

      This is a good point to remember us about every now and then. These days, there's huge wanking going around different UIs (not only on Linux) and we forget to concentrate on what we actually do with the computers.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Unity on the lowend is laughable. Clicking the search button is nearly as much of a kiss of death as the old keyboards with standby buttons on Win98.

      • Unity on the lowend is laughable. Clicking the search button is nearly as much of a kiss of death as the old keyboards with standby buttons on Win98.

        That I can pretty much agree with. They have some minimum requirements [ubuntu.com] but 700 MHz seems a little low to me. Anything under my purview ranking lower than about a 2 GHz P4 gets the Openbox treatment.

    • Could it be that you're not really doing much of any interest on your desktop PC.
      Yes it could.
      So. please don't clutter /. Thanks.

      • So. please don't mutter [ubuntu.com] /. Thanks.

        There now. FTFY

        Don't mind me, I'll let you get back to designing that infinity drive powered fusion anti-matter sparko-manoflap thing. Or whatever "important" stuff you and you're computer happen to be doing.

    • the problem is desktop decorations went from a side project to required. they also went from eye candy to just plain annoying with no real use. and being Microsoft steals all there idea from linux they did this to windows 8 as well and just like on the linux side of things nobody likes or wants it. the devs on both markets simply have gone from listing to what the users likes to we will tell you what you like.
  • ...and already the same old discussion of "I use {inset DE} therefore it is the only good one and all others are dumb" has started.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by csirac ( 574795 )

      No, that's the thing. Most Linux users bitch about the fact they've had to settle or compromise on the least-worst DE they could get productive with. I know scarcely few who are enthusiastic advocates for their chosen DE (except perhaps a two or three using awesome or KDE).

      I never got along with KDE: been using Gnome since 1.x. I use KDE these days, despite its total utter lack of monitor management (*every* time I dock it forgets how to set my screens), and why would it EVER be appropriate to show only FOU

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Hi, fellow KDE user here.

        total utter lack of monitor management (*every* time I dock it forgets how to set my screens)

        Drawing a blank here, I never used a dockable computer. I often attach my laptop to a VGA beamer, though, and the Krandr applet picks the last used configuration just fine.

        why would it EVER be appropriate to show only FOUR THINGS in the alt-tab list? Yes, I changed it, but this is a worthless default on my 12" notebook let alone for the pair of 24" screens on my desk.

        Mind that something has to be the default. Be glad that you had the possibility to change it, unlike in other desktop environments.

        I despise the K-menu (MORE clicking, BIGGER icons)

        The new style menu objectively fares better in the usability studies, you likely are not exploiting all its features yet and thus are slowed down due to long mousing distances. Drag yo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by csirac ( 574795 )

          Thanks, it's embarassing when you let a rant out on the internets... bad day perhaps. I appreciate your advice to participate in bug-reporting and forums, however these bugs and discussions already exist.

          FWIW, Gnome 2.x nicely remembered the resolution and rotation settings for monitors even if it was weeks since you last had said monitor connected (via dock or otherwise). I'm given to understand that this feature was limited and made some assumptions that didn't always work out for 100% of users, but for t

  • Options are good. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GreggBz ( 777373 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:44PM (#42630093) Homepage
    Before Gnome 3 and Unity we had KDE, Gnome 2 and XFCE along with a host of other lightweight desktop environments.

    The big three all had the same or similar overall UI elements. A "start" menu, icons on the desktop, windowed applications and a task bar.

    Now, we have Unity, KDE, Gnome 3, Gnome 2 forks, XFCE, the same collection of various lightweight window managers and desktop environments. Also, apparently, this.

    Personally, I'm glad major players diverged significantly from the GUI elements we've all seemed to carry along from Windows 95. It is, in fact, a brave new world with touch screens and tablets. Sure it's arduous, and not cool for desktop productivity but it's only been 2 or 3 years. Maybe it will get better, or maybe some other options will become more popular. The point is, I'm glad I have something new to play around with.

    And besides, it's not like you don't have choices if you liked the old way. I was a die-hard Gnome 2 fan, but now I use XFCE and I can hardly tell the difference.
    • the thing is most of those so called touch screen friendly ui failed the touchscreen test. kde is smart bought this they do not dump the desktop ui for another but have sepret projects for touchscreens and net-books.

  • kudos (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drankr ( 2796221 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @06:44PM (#42630097)

    As long as there are people willing to use and fund these forks I don't see a problem. The devs are investing their own time - why should anyone complain?
    I even find it poignant in a way, the "bringing back old features" pitch. Trying to revive the past, being nostalgic... but above all, having the skill to actually do something about it instead of just whine - so kudos to whoever is behind this.

  • README --- what about Compiz? README -- README - (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mister Liberty ( 769145 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @08:32PM (#42630859)

    Personnaly I'm sick and tired of all the distro's: Ubuntu, Fedora and
    even Mint/Cinnamon.

    They ALL spell REGRESSION.
    R E G R E S S S I O N.
    regression.
    Niosserrger... ...backwards, sideways, upside down, mirrored, whatever.

    And there isn't a mouse or tablet or gesture or kick in the groin that
    will do them any good or correct this wanton purposeful dimwittery.

    So, -- for me, compiz, plus cairo-dock, plus emerald, will get my
    attention.

    • Didn't you get the memo?

      Compiz is dead [wordpress.com]

      It's all about Wayland now...

    • >> " just vastly more productive using that interface?"

      Some of have never like pointless wiggly windows and ugly, gaudy over-large shiny dock icons that look like they were designed by a 1950's middle school art class.

      Compiz irritated me for years. Turning it off was always top of my agenda. I like and use docks, but can't stand Cairo. I don't know what taste is, but Cairo has never had it.

      Use what you like. So will I. But neither of us gets to equate what we like with what is better.

    • we have always had many distros and uis but the Ubuntu gnome 2 combo was the number 1 choice among users.then gnome decided to blow up a good thing. so ubuntu hates this and well we all did but rather then do the smart thing and fork gnome 2 they come up with the horrid unity.

  • Gnome 2 was a good companion that was dragged to the street and shot in the head without a emotion by its devs, since there has been a handful of forks and workalikes. I cant find anything on these except opinion and dont have time to sit down and fiddle fart installing DE's to find out what the differences, quirks, and compatibilities are.

    There is just not enough signal in the noise on the gnome 2 wannabe's IMO

  • Choice is good (Score:3)

    by sensei moreh ( 868829 ) on Friday January 18, 2013 @11:03PM (#42631775)
    Personally, I like the fact that more DE options are appearing. Given that many are Gnome forks, I think it shows that the Gnome developers have gone off in a less-than-satisfying direction for many long-time users. So be it. I don't pay them to develop for me; I'm perfectly ok with letting them scratch their own itches. I don't like Gnome-Shell, I don't like Unity, and I haven't tried Mate, but Cinnamon seems pretty agreeable to me. I'll give Consort a shot - who knows, maybe I'll like it.
  • Imagine you have a nice and shiny turd. It looks okay from a distance, but when you get closer, you realise it smells rather bad and you can't use it for anything more useful than throwing it at the primates watching you in the zoo. Then take all the shine off it, let's call it a fall back turd. You are left with an ugly stinking turd. Why would you want to polish it? Gnome3 fall back mode is all the bad parts of the gnome3 shell, without all they eye candy. It's bad for productivity and usability, no matte

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