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I've been forcing myself to use GNOME-shell for the past few months, just to see if it was as bad as most people make it out to be, and I have to grudgingly adm

I've been forcing myself to use GNOME-shell for the past few months, just to see if it was as bad as most people make it out to be, and I have to grudgingly admit that some of the design choices are elegant. For example, I find myself liking the activities overview more and more since it combines together functionalities that you'd have to access separately on other desktop environments, namely a keyboard based application launcher, windows scale (or exposé for the Mac crowd) and virtual desktop manager. It's problematic that each environment maxes out at 8-9 windows before it becomes unmanageable, but the philosophy seems to be new desktops on demand, which are quick to create (just drag a window to the blank desktop or middle click an application to launch it in a clean desktop) And the new Alt+Tab behavior does have a silver lining in that it scales much better for large number of windows since it allows you to drill down much quicker to the window you're looking for: Alt+Tab until you reach the application, Alt+<above tab> to reach the specific window you want. Or Alt+Tab, then use the mouse to highlight the application and then the specific window. Another little know functionality is that the shell comes with a screen recorder: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R to start recording, again to stop, the video is saved as WebM on the root of your home dir. It's far from perfect, some functions take way too many motions to execute, and I wish they allowed you to bind mouse shortcuts (it would be perfect to enter the overview), but the basis for what could become a pretty decent desktop environment are there.

avar 15y ago
I completely agree, it's much better than GNOME 2.x. Another major thing that's changed in my workflow is that I never use the menus to find programs anymore, it's now much faster to use the built-in search engine to launch applications. E.g. launching a terminal is Windows key + typing "Ter" + pressing Enter.
- downx3 15y ago
  I've always used alt+F2 to launch apps that I already know are installed on my system. I find menus are great for browsing/scanning applications that I don't know. And they are quick to use. Whereas the app menus in Gnome 3, are really hard on my head. The icons, just don't really add anything for me, it feels cluttered.
Andrex 15y ago
Another agree here, I really feel like its elastic workspaces and brain-dead simple "expose" are killer features that should be in every desktop environment. It's a shame so many people lump Unity and Gnome 3 together.
- mattbriggs 15y ago
  i hate unity with a burning passion, but gnome 3 is my favorite environment in linux right now :)
mattbriggs 15y ago
I find there are a few killer extensions like https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/ and https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/60/overlay-icons/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/60/overlay-icons/. The first one means you aren't forced to grab the mouse in overlay mode (which was my biggest complaint), the second means you have a chance in hell of recognizing what something is when you have more then around 4 windows open. I like it too, but the big things for me (after stability issues) are 1) the notification area feels not well done. I am constantly triggering it when I don't want to, and I find it is a pain to trigger when I do want it. 2) the search function in overlay mode is really choppy, which is funny because I would consider this a solved problem in gnome (with gnome-do) I think its a definite improvement over gnome 2, but it probably needs another 2-3 years of dev time before things are as polished as what you would expect nowadays.
- sandGorgon 15y ago
  http://extensions.gnome.org http://extensions.gnome.org is really the killer feature of Gnome-shell. Its really unfortunate that it is not publicised more. I mean seamless installation and control of desktop extensions from the browser? awesome!
  - downx3 15y ago
    The site is totally borked for me. Do I have to run it within Gnome 3?
- bkor 15y ago
  1) it is less easy to trigger in 3.4. Agree it is still a bit weird to use. 2) reading of .desktop files is not well done. It has been like that for many years, just wasn't that noticeable in 2.x.

avar 15y ago

I completely agree, it's much better than GNOME 2.x. Another major thing that's changed in my workflow is that I never use the menus to find programs anymore, it's now much faster to use the built-in search engine to launch applications. E.g. launching a terminal is Windows key + typing "Ter" + pressing Enter.

downx3 15y ago
I've always used alt+F2 to launch apps that I already know are installed on my system. I find menus are great for browsing/scanning applications that I don't know. And they are quick to use. Whereas the app menus in Gnome 3, are really hard on my head. The icons, just don't really add anything for me, it feels cluttered.

Andrex 15y ago

Another agree here, I really feel like its elastic workspaces and brain-dead simple "expose" are killer features that should be in every desktop environment. It's a shame so many people lump Unity and Gnome 3 together.

mattbriggs 15y ago
i hate unity with a burning passion, but gnome 3 is my favorite environment in linux right now :)

mattbriggs 15y ago

I find there are a few killer extensions like https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/ and https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/60/overlay-icons/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/60/overlay-icons/. The first one means you aren't forced to grab the mouse in overlay mode (which was my biggest complaint), the second means you have a chance in hell of recognizing what something is when you have more then around 4 windows open. I like it too, but the big things for me (after stability issues) are 1) the notification area feels not well done. I am constantly triggering it when I don't want to, and I find it is a pain to trigger when I do want it. 2) the search function in overlay mode is really choppy, which is funny because I would consider this a solved problem in gnome (with gnome-do) I think its a definite improvement over gnome 2, but it probably needs another 2-3 years of dev time before things are as polished as what you would expect nowadays.

sandGorgon 15y ago
http://extensions.gnome.org http://extensions.gnome.org is really the killer feature of Gnome-shell. Its really unfortunate that it is not publicised more. I mean seamless installation and control of desktop extensions from the browser? awesome!
- downx3 15y ago
  The site is totally borked for me. Do I have to run it within Gnome 3?
bkor 15y ago
1) it is less easy to trigger in 3.4. Agree it is still a bit weird to use. 2) reading of .desktop files is not well done. It has been like that for many years, just wasn't that noticeable in 2.x.