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I'd definitely disagree with that. While I'm sure there are some people who do like it, I think Gnome Shell is objectively flawed usability-wise. Just to list

by acabal 15y ago

I'd definitely disagree with that. While I'm sure there are some people who do like it, I think Gnome Shell is objectively flawed usability-wise. Just to list a couple obvious examples: -The top bar is almost entirely wasted space; -Having the bar at the top violates Fitt's law access to a window's close buttons; -Again for Fitt's law, the top-right corner is wasted because that menu is rarely accessed by most, and there's nothing in the bottom-left corner; -The messaging notifier thing frequently fails to let me know there are new messages, the accordion effect makes it hard to click individual notifications, and the popup notifications take an obscene amount of space at the bottom of the screen and often overlap with something I'm reading; -There's no way for me to tell at a glance what programs I'm running, so I often forget that I already have a window with work open and my workspaces end up even more cluttered and disorganized. I could go on but that's just off the top of my head. All of those are objectively bad design decisions when you approach G-S from a desktop use case. Clearly they're trying to shoehorn a touch UI into a desktop UI, but they're different use cases and when an unskilled design team tries to smash them together, you get the worst of both worlds. I don't think people dislike G-S because it's revolutionary; I think people dislike it because it's genuinely--and perhaps irreversibly given the silly politics Gnome plays--flawed. The Mint guys seem smart, so if they feel that a fork is necessary then it's probably the only way to do what they want given the constraints. They've shown a good track record of putting quality solutions out, so if they release Cinnamon at some point I'm sure it'll continue to be developed. Edit: I also find it a bit funny that G-S was developed at all, because with a little customization you can get extremely similar functionality in Gnome Panel. Just install AWN, enable the Scale plugin in Compiz with a hot corner at the upper-left, move your panel to the top, and set a gconf setting to remove minimize and close buttons. There--you've just re-created 80% of G-S functionality and without having to spend years in development.

ajross 15y ago
Interesting. I've never seen Fitt's law invoked to cover close buttons before. Note that serious users (who are the ones complaining the hardest about gnome-shell) never touch the close button: closing a window is a keyboard shortcut (generally Ctrl-w, though sometimes Alt-F4 if the app doesn't handle that) in my world. For a while I was running a custom metacity theme with no window controls or title bar at all, actually. And I don't follow the "no at a glance view" of your work space argument. Hit the windows button and Ctrl-Alt-Up/Down and you can actually see all your windows, with no overlap. That's something that was never possible before, and I love it. Obviously there's a lot of taste at work. Gnome 3 is a big change, and big changes break workflows and piss off experienced users. But I honestly think a lot of your "objectively flawed" argumentation is just nonsense. Smart people can like gnome-shell and use it very effectively. You just don't like it.
- acabal 15y ago
  The point is that those corners are some of the most important screen real estate, taken advantage by other DEs. Take Windows, for example. Upper-right=close, upper-left=context menu, bottom-left=start menu, bottom-right=show desktop. Compare to Gnome Shell: Upper-right=settings/account menu (rarely used IMHO), upper-left=activities, bottom-right=missed notifications, bottom-left=nothing. Where Windows puts something useful in all 4 corners, G-S only has something useful in 2. Obviously one can argue about what is and what isn't useful, but from a purely objective viewpoint, one can definitely say that Gnome-Shell doesn't take full advantage of those extremely important corners. As for my other points, for example the top bar: how can you deny that it's mostly wasted space? It's 80% unclickable black bar. That's not "nonsense", that's just how it is. Other DE's put something there: the window menu bar, an activities list, etc. True that I can get an activities list by pressing super. But that's not "at a glance." That's "at a keypress, then a visual scan, then a click to go back to what I was doing." Most other DE's provide some sort of window overview at an immediate glance, ie., an always-visible taskbar. I think my other points also stand. I don't doubt that some people do use G-S effectively, but that doesn't mean it isn't deeply flawed. If it weren't, then more people would like it.
  - ajross 15y ago
    Upper right in gnome-shell is where the shutdown and suspend options are. I use them every day. And the upper-left in windows (by which you really mean a maximized windows app -- windows puts nothing there, and I only occasionally have anything maximized) is the "context menu", which is near useless, being duplicated functionality with the existing window buttons. Note that Chrome doesn't use a context menu button, for example. I think arguing that windows puts something "useful" there is disingenuous. Windows merely puts "something" there. I guess the top bar argument is valid, though note that there are a bunch of gnome-shell extensions that like to use the space. And the significantly thicker windows panel is likewise largely a waste of space (just a big bunch of icons duplicating what in gnome-shell would be the overview). Looks: you hate gnome-shell. Good for you. You're not alone, lots of people do. I don't begrudge you your opinions, I'm just calling you out for trying to turn them into "facts" when they clearly aren't.
fmoralesc 15y ago
> The Mint guys seem smart, so if they feel that a fork is necessary then it's probably the only way to do what they want given the constraints. These are the constraints for him, as far as I know (looking at the gnome-shell code): 1) extensions can't modify the original layout of the shell, because they are loaded after the shell elements are created. You can monkey-patch the shell, but only so much. 2) There is no easy way of destroying the panel (or other ui objects). 1) happens to be true because of the extensions constraint that they should have the ability to be turned on/off. That means that their entry point in the shell gets to be after the main ui objects are created. You can add new behaviors to them, and override them, except for their initialization (obviously). The extensions system doesn't expose an API that allows for multiple entry points (for example, having extensions derive from an Extension class with Base and Restartless subclasses). This might be a design oversight, but for the most part it is sane, since it creates a base of code one can expect to be there, that any extension could depend on (again, simplifying inter-extension compatibility). Extensions written for gnome-shell won't be compatible with extensions written for cinnamon, which is extremely bad in my opinion. It means the developer community that's been growing around the platform might break into multiple directions, which can hurt users. If there was a way of destroying the panel (or other main ui objects), though, there would be no need at all for this fork.
bkor 15y ago
"Silly politics Gnome plays" Care to explain? Note: I'm a long time GNOME release-team member, GNOME sysadmin, GNOME bugmaster.
- acabal 15y ago
  Essentially the entire "damn the torpedos, we're right and there's no going back now" approach Gnome seems to be taking. I've seen lots of people submit valid and thoughtful criticisms of Gnome Shell, and the only response Gnome seems interested in giving is "we have our grand vision and if you aren't submitting a finished patch that we may or may not accept then fuck off." Maybe "politics" wasn't the best possible word choice but the idea is ego over engineering: a few guys at the top are making these decisions and more or less putting their fingers in their ears. At least that's the impression I've been getting.
  - bkor 15y ago
    We gave loads of test images before the release of GNOME 3.0. The "no going back", we've been making loads of changes based on feedback. I've listed some of these changes in the 3.2 release notes. Wording like "fuck off" is completely unacceptable; I either warn or ban people (everyone, random person, developer, etc) for that. "A few guys at the top": That is not how it works. If you're respected, people listen to you. That is how it works within GNOME. Saying "valid and thoughtful criticism": valid maybe for you. But GNOME isn't about supporting every different idea. If an idea completely goes against the thought behind it (quite simply: focus on one task at a time), then yeah, use something else. Having an idea and going for that, to some that comes across as arrogant. But simply stated, GNOME is not right for everyone. That is what is meant with this. But at the same time, there is an extension system in place and loads of code is in javascript, loads of stuff can be done via gobject introspection (meaning: access libraries easily via javascript). GNOME 3.0 was the initial release. Further improved with 3.2, more design ideas will be implemented in 3.4, etc. Not saying 3.0 is bad (IMO, it was great), but eh.. there is a goal and it hasn't been achieved. I've been around during GNOME 2.0, a lot of the feedback was the same. I think your impression is off.

by acabal 15y ago

ajross 15y ago

Interesting. I've never seen Fitt's law invoked to cover close buttons before. Note that serious users (who are the ones complaining the hardest about gnome-shell) never touch the close button: closing a window is a keyboard shortcut (generally Ctrl-w, though sometimes Alt-F4 if the app doesn't handle that) in my world. For a while I was running a custom metacity theme with no window controls or title bar at all, actually. And I don't follow the "no at a glance view" of your work space argument. Hit the windows button and Ctrl-Alt-Up/Down and you can actually see all your windows, with no overlap. That's something that was never possible before, and I love it. Obviously there's a lot of taste at work. Gnome 3 is a big change, and big changes break workflows and piss off experienced users. But I honestly think a lot of your "objectively flawed" argumentation is just nonsense. Smart people can like gnome-shell and use it very effectively. You just don't like it.

acabal 15y ago
The point is that those corners are some of the most important screen real estate, taken advantage by other DEs. Take Windows, for example. Upper-right=close, upper-left=context menu, bottom-left=start menu, bottom-right=show desktop. Compare to Gnome Shell: Upper-right=settings/account menu (rarely used IMHO), upper-left=activities, bottom-right=missed notifications, bottom-left=nothing. Where Windows puts something useful in all 4 corners, G-S only has something useful in 2. Obviously one can argue about what is and what isn't useful, but from a purely objective viewpoint, one can definitely say that Gnome-Shell doesn't take full advantage of those extremely important corners. As for my other points, for example the top bar: how can you deny that it's mostly wasted space? It's 80% unclickable black bar. That's not "nonsense", that's just how it is. Other DE's put something there: the window menu bar, an activities list, etc. True that I can get an activities list by pressing super. But that's not "at a glance." That's "at a keypress, then a visual scan, then a click to go back to what I was doing." Most other DE's provide some sort of window overview at an immediate glance, ie., an always-visible taskbar. I think my other points also stand. I don't doubt that some people do use G-S effectively, but that doesn't mean it isn't deeply flawed. If it weren't, then more people would like it.
- ajross 15y ago
  Upper right in gnome-shell is where the shutdown and suspend options are. I use them every day. And the upper-left in windows (by which you really mean a maximized windows app -- windows puts nothing there, and I only occasionally have anything maximized) is the "context menu", which is near useless, being duplicated functionality with the existing window buttons. Note that Chrome doesn't use a context menu button, for example. I think arguing that windows puts something "useful" there is disingenuous. Windows merely puts "something" there. I guess the top bar argument is valid, though note that there are a bunch of gnome-shell extensions that like to use the space. And the significantly thicker windows panel is likewise largely a waste of space (just a big bunch of icons duplicating what in gnome-shell would be the overview). Looks: you hate gnome-shell. Good for you. You're not alone, lots of people do. I don't begrudge you your opinions, I'm just calling you out for trying to turn them into "facts" when they clearly aren't.

fmoralesc 15y ago

> The Mint guys seem smart, so if they feel that a fork is necessary then it's probably the only way to do what they want given the constraints. These are the constraints for him, as far as I know (looking at the gnome-shell code): 1) extensions can't modify the original layout of the shell, because they are loaded after the shell elements are created. You can monkey-patch the shell, but only so much. 2) There is no easy way of destroying the panel (or other ui objects). 1) happens to be true because of the extensions constraint that they should have the ability to be turned on/off. That means that their entry point in the shell gets to be after the main ui objects are created. You can add new behaviors to them, and override them, except for their initialization (obviously). The extensions system doesn't expose an API that allows for multiple entry points (for example, having extensions derive from an Extension class with Base and Restartless subclasses). This might be a design oversight, but for the most part it is sane, since it creates a base of code one can expect to be there, that any extension could depend on (again, simplifying inter-extension compatibility). Extensions written for gnome-shell won't be compatible with extensions written for cinnamon, which is extremely bad in my opinion. It means the developer community that's been growing around the platform might break into multiple directions, which can hurt users. If there was a way of destroying the panel (or other main ui objects), though, there would be no need at all for this fork.

bkor 15y ago

"Silly politics Gnome plays" Care to explain? Note: I'm a long time GNOME release-team member, GNOME sysadmin, GNOME bugmaster.

acabal 15y ago
Essentially the entire "damn the torpedos, we're right and there's no going back now" approach Gnome seems to be taking. I've seen lots of people submit valid and thoughtful criticisms of Gnome Shell, and the only response Gnome seems interested in giving is "we have our grand vision and if you aren't submitting a finished patch that we may or may not accept then fuck off." Maybe "politics" wasn't the best possible word choice but the idea is ego over engineering: a few guys at the top are making these decisions and more or less putting their fingers in their ears. At least that's the impression I've been getting.
- bkor 15y ago
  We gave loads of test images before the release of GNOME 3.0. The "no going back", we've been making loads of changes based on feedback. I've listed some of these changes in the 3.2 release notes. Wording like "fuck off" is completely unacceptable; I either warn or ban people (everyone, random person, developer, etc) for that. "A few guys at the top": That is not how it works. If you're respected, people listen to you. That is how it works within GNOME. Saying "valid and thoughtful criticism": valid maybe for you. But GNOME isn't about supporting every different idea. If an idea completely goes against the thought behind it (quite simply: focus on one task at a time), then yeah, use something else. Having an idea and going for that, to some that comes across as arrogant. But simply stated, GNOME is not right for everyone. That is what is meant with this. But at the same time, there is an extension system in place and loads of code is in javascript, loads of stuff can be done via gobject introspection (meaning: access libraries easily via javascript). GNOME 3.0 was the initial release. Further improved with 3.2, more design ideas will be implemented in 3.4, etc. Not saying 3.0 is bad (IMO, it was great), but eh.. there is a goal and it hasn't been achieved. I've been around during GNOME 2.0, a lot of the feedback was the same. I think your impression is off.