6 ms·

Fedora 16: Linux home for lost Ubuntu GNOMEs

49 points by darkduck 15y ago

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
How is that ? They don't let you use Gnome 2.x so in fact they are using the same strategy that Ubuntu is using: forcing users to use what they what them to use. You also can easily switch to Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. At least there is a "classic mode" on Ubuntu. Gnome guys were the ones that behave wrong here, with their pride, they changed a lot of things(in a wrong way) and did not let their users to vote giving them the option to use it. E.g I need compiz cube, when you give a talk people watching need to know what you did with the screen. Every time I talked with devs about it they say that "you don't really need that, it is a flashy thing". Sorry I need it way more than "auto logging on IMs". The new "cube equivalent" both on gnome and Unity crash on my computers.
- darklajid 15y ago
  No one is forced to use anything. Two companies offer a ~primary~ (ignoring Kubuntu, Xubuntu et al and you can get KDE etc. on Fedora as well) desktop experience. You take it or leave it. For some the difference is that one offers something created in-house while the others offer something created in public. Fedora 15 has a classic mode. I'm not sure about 16, but I'd expect the same. You could replace the sentence about Gnome with one putting Canonical/Ubuntu as a subject and it would be just as misplaced and just as (..) correct. You are really the first guy (no kidding) that I heard describing the spinning cube as a worthy feature. I don't understand your usecase, but you have to agree that you're in a minority here, no?
  - Skalman 15y ago
    I think it's a wonderful use case, even though I'd be too annoyed to use it. When somebody else is looking at your screen and you quickly switch desktops, they might not understand what's happening. The cube shows what's you've done quite clearly.
  - Rusky 15y ago
    In any case, both Unity and Gnome Shell still have animations when switching between workspaces. You shouldn't specifically need the cube.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  There is a "classic" mode in Gnome 3 as well. It appears to me it didn't receive much love, but it's functional.
  - bkor 15y ago
    It takes a lot of effort to keep the fallback mode working. I don't see how you think it didn't receive much development work. Loads of work went into the 3.0 fallback mode, and the same for 3.2. It doesn't appear to be used much though, so when the software rendering is good enough, it likely will be removed.
silon3 15y ago
I recently tested the gnome-shell in Fedora 15 for the first time. This is my showstopper list: 1. Application oriented 2. Alt+tab sucks (mostly because of #1) 3. Terminal doesn't open new window by sefault. 4. Terminal is single-process (see #1) 5. Can't use other window manager. 6. Sometimes slow Now using XFCE. Will see how many of these got fixed with the new version.
- darkduck 15y ago
  Fedora 15 has Gnome 3.0 Fedora 16 will have Gnome 3.2 Here are my findings of Fedora 15 with Gnome 3: http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/fedora-15-with-gnome-3-better-than.html http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/fedora-15-with-gnome-3...
- eitland 15y ago
  Sounds like a free version of Mac OS X to me. (Fanboy downvote protection: I'm on my third year using a Mac. I love mag-safe. I love how it is usable out-of-the-box. I love the screen, the backlit keyboard. List goes on. I was happy to see * window resizing by any border and a * decent attempt at fixing fullscreen and virtual desktops in Lion this year. For next update I'm hoping for Apple to introduce a * "super-intuitive CMD-Tab that will let you switch through all you *windows* in the order the were last used" and * "Menus now follow your windows" so there's less need to move across a laptop screen and a full Cinema Display to find the menu. Sounds familiar btw. A sad thing Gnome keeps copying not only the good stuff but also the super annoying.)
  - randallsquared 15y ago
    "Menus now follow your windows" so there's less need to move across a laptop screen and a full Cinema Display to find the menu. Maybe you're looking for SecondBar: http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79 http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79 ?
  - sirn 15y ago
    * "super-intuitive CMD-Tab that will let you switch through all you *windows* in the order the were last used" and Ugh! Please no! Switching between application rather than window is my main reason of switching to Mac back in PowerPC days. You may love Witch[1] though. Or a good-ol' Ctrl+(fn)+F4. [1] http://manytricks.com/witch/ http://manytricks.com/witch/
onosendai 15y ago
I doubt many people will switch distros from Ubuntu to Fedora due only to GNOME 3 because the former still has many advantages (huge repositories, apt-get, large community, overall fit and polish, etc..) and on 11.10 GNOME 3 is a fully supported DE, only an apt-get away in the repositories.
- hactually 15y ago
  I'm not many people but I did switch for Gnome 3. I miss APT but now I know yum so it's not a massive loss. I've also switched my family, who were using ubuntu, over as well - mainly as none of them got on well with Unity and that if I've got to support something - it may as well be something I'm using!
  - greatquux 15y ago
    But why couldn't you just do apt-get install gnome-shell?
    - hactually 15y ago
      If something's the default it tends to get more focus and polish. I probably could've done it that way, but at the time of the move Gnome 3 wasn't in the repos, nor was GTK3 and I don't see the point in swimming against the flow.
      - thristian 15y ago
        GNOME 3 is still absent from the 11.04 repositories (although GTK3 was there from day 1). However, the Ubuntu GNOME maintainers have an officially-unofficial GNOME 3 PPA, which I'm using right now and am very happy with. I greatly admire Fedora's tradition of sticking close to whatever upstream releases, but I don't think I could leave behind the breadth of Ubuntu/Debian's package archive, or the ability to do in-place version upgrades.
        hactually 15y ago
greatquux 15y ago
I like GNOME 3 a lot better than Unity, but until it can give me multiple independent virtual desktops on all my monitors, I'll be sticking with one of the few window managers that can: Enlightenment (0.17 from the Bodhi Linux repositories running on 11.10).
- darklajid 15y ago
  Haven't used e for a long time. Is that feature the single criteria for you? If not, can you list some more ~nice~ things here to lure potential candidates (me) into giving it a try again?
  - greatquux 15y ago
    That's one criteria, but I've found I'm just more productive using E because it mostly gets out of your way. It also looks good and it's a lot faster, even on modern hardware, than GNOME 3 or KDE or Unity. It finally comes with a basic compositing manager module and a 'scale windows' plugin for Expose like effects, although I don't really need to use it much since its pager window has minimized icons that give me visual cues as to where I put certain apps. It's not a whole DE, and I do run gnome-settings-daemon in the background and use Nautilus or PCManFM to browse files and such, but I keep going back to it and I've been using it since 2005.
- sciurus 15y ago
  In dconf, try changing “/schemas/desktop/gnome/shell/windows/workspaces_only_on_primary” to false.
  - greatquux 15y ago
    Did that already - it creates one big virtual desktop like in GNOME 2.x, but does NOT give me 2 workspace switchers (one for each monitor) so that I can change the workspace on one independently. That's what I'm after.
    - eru 15y ago
lhnn 15y ago
I guess the author hasn't heard of Debian. DNRTFA

49 points by darkduck 15y ago

How is that ? They don't let you use Gnome 2.x so in fact they are using the same strategy that Ubuntu is using: forcing users to use what they what them to use. You also can easily switch to Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. At least there is a "classic mode" on Ubuntu. Gnome guys were the ones that behave wrong here, with their pride, they changed a lot of things(in a wrong way) and did not let their users to vote giving them the option to use it. E.g I need compiz cube, when you give a talk people watching need to know what you did with the screen. Every time I talked with devs about it they say that "you don't really need that, it is a flashy thing". Sorry I need it way more than "auto logging on IMs". The new "cube equivalent" both on gnome and Unity crash on my computers.

darklajid 15y ago
No one is forced to use anything. Two companies offer a ~primary~ (ignoring Kubuntu, Xubuntu et al and you can get KDE etc. on Fedora as well) desktop experience. You take it or leave it. For some the difference is that one offers something created in-house while the others offer something created in public. Fedora 15 has a classic mode. I'm not sure about 16, but I'd expect the same. You could replace the sentence about Gnome with one putting Canonical/Ubuntu as a subject and it would be just as misplaced and just as (..) correct. You are really the first guy (no kidding) that I heard describing the spinning cube as a worthy feature. I don't understand your usecase, but you have to agree that you're in a minority here, no?
- Skalman 15y ago
  I think it's a wonderful use case, even though I'd be too annoyed to use it. When somebody else is looking at your screen and you quickly switch desktops, they might not understand what's happening. The cube shows what's you've done quite clearly.
- Rusky 15y ago
  In any case, both Unity and Gnome Shell still have animations when switching between workspaces. You shouldn't specifically need the cube.
rbanffy 15y ago
There is a "classic" mode in Gnome 3 as well. It appears to me it didn't receive much love, but it's functional.
- bkor 15y ago
  It takes a lot of effort to keep the fallback mode working. I don't see how you think it didn't receive much development work. Loads of work went into the 3.0 fallback mode, and the same for 3.2. It doesn't appear to be used much though, so when the software rendering is good enough, it likely will be removed.

silon3 15y ago

I recently tested the gnome-shell in Fedora 15 for the first time. This is my showstopper list: 1. Application oriented 2. Alt+tab sucks (mostly because of #1) 3. Terminal doesn't open new window by sefault. 4. Terminal is single-process (see #1) 5. Can't use other window manager. 6. Sometimes slow Now using XFCE. Will see how many of these got fixed with the new version.

darkduck 15y ago
Fedora 15 has Gnome 3.0 Fedora 16 will have Gnome 3.2 Here are my findings of Fedora 15 with Gnome 3: http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/fedora-15-with-gnome-3-better-than.html http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/fedora-15-with-gnome-3...
eitland 15y ago
Sounds like a free version of Mac OS X to me. (Fanboy downvote protection: I'm on my third year using a Mac. I love mag-safe. I love how it is usable out-of-the-box. I love the screen, the backlit keyboard. List goes on. I was happy to see * window resizing by any border and a * decent attempt at fixing fullscreen and virtual desktops in Lion this year. For next update I'm hoping for Apple to introduce a * "super-intuitive CMD-Tab that will let you switch through all you *windows* in the order the were last used" and * "Menus now follow your windows" so there's less need to move across a laptop screen and a full Cinema Display to find the menu. Sounds familiar btw. A sad thing Gnome keeps copying not only the good stuff but also the super annoying.)
- randallsquared 15y ago
  "Menus now follow your windows" so there's less need to move across a laptop screen and a full Cinema Display to find the menu. Maybe you're looking for SecondBar: http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79 http://blog.boastr.net/?page_id=79 ?
- sirn 15y ago
  * "super-intuitive CMD-Tab that will let you switch through all you *windows* in the order the were last used" and Ugh! Please no! Switching between application rather than window is my main reason of switching to Mac back in PowerPC days. You may love Witch[1] though. Or a good-ol' Ctrl+(fn)+F4. [1] http://manytricks.com/witch/ http://manytricks.com/witch/

onosendai 15y ago

I doubt many people will switch distros from Ubuntu to Fedora due only to GNOME 3 because the former still has many advantages (huge repositories, apt-get, large community, overall fit and polish, etc..) and on 11.10 GNOME 3 is a fully supported DE, only an apt-get away in the repositories.

hactually 15y ago
I'm not many people but I did switch for Gnome 3. I miss APT but now I know yum so it's not a massive loss. I've also switched my family, who were using ubuntu, over as well - mainly as none of them got on well with Unity and that if I've got to support something - it may as well be something I'm using!
- greatquux 15y ago
  But why couldn't you just do apt-get install gnome-shell?
  - hactually 15y ago
    If something's the default it tends to get more focus and polish. I probably could've done it that way, but at the time of the move Gnome 3 wasn't in the repos, nor was GTK3 and I don't see the point in swimming against the flow.
    - thristian 15y ago
      GNOME 3 is still absent from the 11.04 repositories (although GTK3 was there from day 1). However, the Ubuntu GNOME maintainers have an officially-unofficial GNOME 3 PPA, which I'm using right now and am very happy with. I greatly admire Fedora's tradition of sticking close to whatever upstream releases, but I don't think I could leave behind the breadth of Ubuntu/Debian's package archive, or the ability to do in-place version upgrades.
      - hactually 15y ago

greatquux 15y ago

I like GNOME 3 a lot better than Unity, but until it can give me multiple independent virtual desktops on all my monitors, I'll be sticking with one of the few window managers that can: Enlightenment (0.17 from the Bodhi Linux repositories running on 11.10).

darklajid 15y ago
Haven't used e for a long time. Is that feature the single criteria for you? If not, can you list some more ~nice~ things here to lure potential candidates (me) into giving it a try again?
- greatquux 15y ago
  That's one criteria, but I've found I'm just more productive using E because it mostly gets out of your way. It also looks good and it's a lot faster, even on modern hardware, than GNOME 3 or KDE or Unity. It finally comes with a basic compositing manager module and a 'scale windows' plugin for Expose like effects, although I don't really need to use it much since its pager window has minimized icons that give me visual cues as to where I put certain apps. It's not a whole DE, and I do run gnome-settings-daemon in the background and use Nautilus or PCManFM to browse files and such, but I keep going back to it and I've been using it since 2005.
sciurus 15y ago
In dconf, try changing “/schemas/desktop/gnome/shell/windows/workspaces_only_on_primary” to false.
- greatquux 15y ago
  Did that already - it creates one big virtual desktop like in GNOME 2.x, but does NOT give me 2 workspace switchers (one for each monitor) so that I can change the workspace on one independently. That's what I'm after.
  - eru 15y ago

lhnn 15y ago

I guess the author hasn't heard of Debian. DNRTFA