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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

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 15y ago
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?
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I hate that. I had a ton of Emacs shortcuts mapped to Super combos... Now I need a keyboard with a Hyper key...
- sciurus 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
- wavded 15y ago
  I have seen a plugin on WebUpd8 for this functionality in Gnome Shell but don't have the link ATM.
- dimitar 15y ago
  There is a plugin which can switch windows with the alt key in the activities view.
jamesgeck0 15y ago
Is Gnome 3's system tray still off-limits to 3rd party applications? I like having Dropbox's sync indicator and Tomboy's note list running in the tray, and I'm not sure how that functionality would be replicated in Gnome 3.
- bho 15y ago
  Dropbox's sync indicator is still in the corner for me, just as it always has been, so it seems to work fine. How is everyone's alt-tab performance? I've been trying to like it, but alt-tab is so slow that it's barely usable. I don't have another GNOME3 computer to compare it to, so I don't know if it's something wrong with my configuration or hardware.
  - tapoxi 15y ago
    I've been running Gnome 3 on Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04 (via the PPA) on my Thinkpad W500 since April or so. This laptop has a discrete (FireGL 5700) and integrated graphics (GMA 4500) chip I can toggle between for power management reasons. No performance issues, alt-tab or otherwise, under either. It's been such a solid desktop that it's been my main development environment for these past few months.
  - thingie 15y ago
    Good. No problem. On the other hand, typing anything in the activities overlay is very painful. I do it only by a mistake, because it's sooo slow, not only for the first time, but always. So is switching from Windows to Applications.
  - nodata 15y ago
    alt+tab is the same speed as it always was. are you running on a really old pc by any chance? Things I dislike about Gnome 3.0: * Alt-tab is between apps, with alt+(thing above tab) for between windows in an app * Super+L doesn't work from the zoomed out view * Screen lock is partially broken: gnome-screensaver doesn't guarantee to lock the screen when switching users or suspending. It continues on whatever happens.

ch0wn 15y ago

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?

rbanffy 15y ago
I hate that. I had a ton of Emacs shortcuts mapped to Super combos... Now I need a keyboard with a Hyper key...
sciurus 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
wavded 15y ago
I have seen a plugin on WebUpd8 for this functionality in Gnome Shell but don't have the link ATM.
dimitar 15y ago
There is a plugin which can switch windows with the alt key in the activities view.

jamesgeck0 15y ago

Is Gnome 3's system tray still off-limits to 3rd party applications? I like having Dropbox's sync indicator and Tomboy's note list running in the tray, and I'm not sure how that functionality would be replicated in Gnome 3.

bho 15y ago
Dropbox's sync indicator is still in the corner for me, just as it always has been, so it seems to work fine. How is everyone's alt-tab performance? I've been trying to like it, but alt-tab is so slow that it's barely usable. I don't have another GNOME3 computer to compare it to, so I don't know if it's something wrong with my configuration or hardware.
- tapoxi 15y ago
  I've been running Gnome 3 on Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04 (via the PPA) on my Thinkpad W500 since April or so. This laptop has a discrete (FireGL 5700) and integrated graphics (GMA 4500) chip I can toggle between for power management reasons. No performance issues, alt-tab or otherwise, under either. It's been such a solid desktop that it's been my main development environment for these past few months.
- thingie 15y ago
  Good. No problem. On the other hand, typing anything in the activities overlay is very painful. I do it only by a mistake, because it's sooo slow, not only for the first time, but always. So is switching from Windows to Applications.
- nodata 15y ago
  alt+tab is the same speed as it always was. are you running on a really old pc by any chance? Things I dislike about Gnome 3.0: * Alt-tab is between apps, with alt+(thing above tab) for between windows in an app * Super+L doesn't work from the zoomed out view * Screen lock is partially broken: gnome-screensaver doesn't guarantee to lock the screen when switching users or suspending. It continues on whatever happens.