8 ms·

Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. The fact that they break (and some are let to rotten)

Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. The fact that they break (and some are let to rotten) after every major release is just to beat a dead body. Just a few weeks ago I tried Gnome 3 again (again!) and it still sucks as a productivity environment. I have better things to do. But as a geek, I'll be checking Gnome 3 again maybe in a year or more. No holding my breath for any surprises.

Touche 13y ago
Why do you think people need a ton of shell extensions? What is missing from base?
- hrkristian 13y ago
  I've got about ten extensions running, most of them I feel makes sense aren't in the base. The one exception is one modifying alt-tab behavior so it doesn't group programs on different workspaces together. Honestly, that's the one behavior I cannot understand exists in the first place, makes navigating by keyboard nigh impossible.
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    > The one exception is one modifying alt-tab behavior so it doesn't group programs on different workspaces together. Honestly, that's the one behavior I cannot understand exists in the first place, makes navigating by keyboard nigh impossible. To each its own but I really like the fact I can alt-tab between all applications as I tend to stick one application per screen because I mostly use a 1024x600 monitor. Thinking about it can see how that would be a problem with larger resolutions though. You would have to mentally discard icons that aren't relevant to the screen you are looking at. I like gnome but I think Unity solved that problem in a more elegant way (icons on the dock can recall any applications whatever the screen it's living on).
  - amboar 13y ago
    As paulyg mentioned above, you can use Alt-` (tilde) to cycle through multiple instances of an application after using Alt-Tab to select the group. I think it actually make the experience less tedious.
    - hrkristian 13y ago
      Indeed, or Alt-| in my case (Norwegian layout), and it works for currently focused application, as well. Try doing that with multiple instances (3+) of your browser though. I've got general browsing on WS1, Netflix on WS2, tutorials and the likes on WS3, and usually Gmail etc on WS4. Imagine cycling through those, and sometimes more for various reasons, without separating by workspace. Tedious, tedious, tedious.
      - amboar 13y ago
        Right. Yes - I missed the workspace specific part of your complaint before replying - sorry about that.
buzaga41 13y ago
It's productive to me. I've tried Unity some times already and can't get used to it and at the moment I'm on Gnome Classic because of an issue when upgrading and I'm missing Gnome 3, so maybe each person has their preferences?
hahainternet 13y ago
> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself Other than 'native window placement' I find that pretty much every extension I have installed is a customisation where I want something to work in a particular way. It's not that Gnome is unusable by default, it's just more the minimal set of features that everyone uses. For example, including a time tracker on the top bar by default would be wasteful, as would a timer. I want both of these though, so I go to a website and click a button and they work. However, the lack of proper sandboxing / permissions breakthrough for the extensions is a real problem I don't believe has been solved yet.
- sramkrishna 13y ago
  And that is being worked on: https://wiki.gnome.org/Events/Hackfests/WestCoastSummit2014 https://wiki.gnome.org/Events/Hackfests/WestCoastSummit2014 We have an entire stack showing up to fix things in the right places not just in GNOME itself.
rufugee 13y ago
Barely usable? I'd hardly call it that. I find it very usable. I don't quite like the alt+tab default functionality, but barely usable is really a stretch. I find it a very productive environment with no extensions whatsoever. That said, I do use a few extensions, and I'm exploring writing ones as well. The fact that extensions are written in javascript is really nice (or awful, depending on how you feel about javascript). The built in debugger/console looking glass (type ALT+F2, then lg, the press enter) is very helpful, and window identification/selection is very simple. Being able to extend the environment in a relatively easy way with a scripting language is a big win in my book ymmv, but I find it to be a nice environment. I'm not 100% satisfied, but I'm far more satisfied with it than, say, OSX or Windows, and slightly more satisfied with it than Unity or KDE.
- paulyg 13y ago
  For those complaining about the alt-tab thing maybe you don't know about alt-`. Alt-` cycles through windows/instances of the current app! I just learned about it two days ago and I've been using gnome 3 for a year (there is a lesson in there, why was this not publicized more?). On a more general note put me in the camp that feels gnome is getting better and better every release. I like what they have done with the header bars. Very clean interface. Initially i did nit like Gnome 3. I gave Unity and Cinnamon fair shots, 3 months each. Neither wowed me. Then I gave Gnome 3 another chance (it was 3.4 by then) and have not looked back.
  - JDShu 13y ago
    It's also worth mentioning that this behavior exists on OS X as well.
    - ollyfg 13y ago
      And also on Unity (if you're into that).
      - espadrine 13y ago
        And also on KDE. Wait, is Windows the only one not to have that implemented?
keithpeter 13y ago
If we all posted a few minutes worth of screencam video showing the pain points in typical tasks, without compromising confidentiality, it might help developers understand the issues. http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=531271#p531271 http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=531271#p531271 Does anyone have any better references to usability research on Gnome Shell?
Mikeb85 13y ago
Gnome is very usable for many of us. I'm tired of seeing the same 'it sucks as a productivity environment' comments. If it's not your preference, you can say that, but Gnome Shell is perfectly fine when it comes to productivity. Quick app switching, searching, app launching, etc... How do these things hurt productivity? I personally dislike KDE, but that's just my taste. Some people love XMonad or XFCE, and some people even like Unity. Dunno, I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'.
- subsection1h 13y ago
  > I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'. I'm also a developer whose workflow involves several different tools. One of those tools is Firefox, and I currently have several hundred tabs open in more than a dozen Firefox windows. I want to be able to instantaneously switch from Emacs to a specific Firefox window. I don't want to switch from Emacs to Firefox and then switch to a specific Firefox window (e.g., using Alt+`) like some desktop environments force their users to do. The best solution I've found is to use a desktop environment or window manager that will display the Alt-Tab window list vertically with full titles displayed for all windows (which is similar to how I display tabs in Firefox using the Tree Style Tab extension). KDE and Openbox support this setup, and the last time I checked, Gnome didn't. So using Gnome would hurt my productivity.
  - droelf 13y ago
    I see your (valid) point but I am also positive that you could, if you wanted to, create an simple js plugin for gnome shell that would have the desired effect, as others have created alternative alt+tab switchers: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    While this may be an issue for you, I doubt having so many Firefox tabs open is all that common. I wouldn't consider this a failure of Gnome. Personally, having that many tabs open would make my head hurt. I'll generally have Vim open with a few open buffers, one browser window, one terminal, and the running program I'm working on...
sinkasapa 13y ago
These days what do you need other than a web browser, terminal emulator and text editor? Gnome is similar in usability to TWM and so it works. ;-)
davidw 13y ago
> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. You might give xfce a try, as that's more like "real Linux" if you're a hacker used to something like fvwm2 where you have pretty much total control over the desktop. I too am kind of disappointed in the "chasing Mac taillights" direction that Gnome has taken, dumbing things down. I guess it'd be ok if they were making significant inroads into the "mom" market where Macs are strong, but I don't think they are, and in the process seem to be losing some of the hacker market.
Pxtl 13y ago
> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. Idunno, FireFox pretty nicely demonstrates that a simple, straightforward platform with an emphasis on extensions can be great. Your use-case doesn't necessarily match my use-case, and letting the users get lost in a sea of config files to customize them has kind of proven to just cause havoc... so why not focus on extensions?
- dagw 13y ago
  Extensions per se are good and fine. The big problem with Gnome extensions is that the Gnome people aren't really treating them as first class citizens and happily break some of them every update. So each time a new version of Gnome comes out you either have to wait a few month while all your extensions get updated or go a few month without all your favorite extensions.
- lmm 13y ago
  I think firefox lost its way because it focused on extensions for things that should have been browser core functionality. What does firefox stand for these days? Why would I use it over Opera or Konqueror?
stormbrew 13y ago
One of the reasons I switched away from OSX a few years ago (not to Gnome Shell, to Mint and then later to i3wm) was because every new version of OSX required me to tweak more things and install more third party things to make it usable, and I figured if I was going to have to keep going down that road I might as well go whole hog to something designed for me to do that instead of something that fought me at every step [1]. [1] Did you know that in order to rebind cmd-tab on a mac, you have to kill the Dock of all things, run the program that binds cmd-tab, and then re-run the Dock? Every other key combo is explicitly configurable, afaik.
rbanffy 13y ago
> Just a few weeks ago I tried Gnome 3 again (again!) and it still sucks as a productivity environment. I am sorry it sucks for you. For me, it works great.

Touche 13y ago

Why do you think people need a ton of shell extensions? What is missing from base?

hrkristian 13y ago
I've got about ten extensions running, most of them I feel makes sense aren't in the base. The one exception is one modifying alt-tab behavior so it doesn't group programs on different workspaces together. Honestly, that's the one behavior I cannot understand exists in the first place, makes navigating by keyboard nigh impossible.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  > The one exception is one modifying alt-tab behavior so it doesn't group programs on different workspaces together. Honestly, that's the one behavior I cannot understand exists in the first place, makes navigating by keyboard nigh impossible. To each its own but I really like the fact I can alt-tab between all applications as I tend to stick one application per screen because I mostly use a 1024x600 monitor. Thinking about it can see how that would be a problem with larger resolutions though. You would have to mentally discard icons that aren't relevant to the screen you are looking at. I like gnome but I think Unity solved that problem in a more elegant way (icons on the dock can recall any applications whatever the screen it's living on).
- amboar 13y ago
  As paulyg mentioned above, you can use Alt-` (tilde) to cycle through multiple instances of an application after using Alt-Tab to select the group. I think it actually make the experience less tedious.
  - hrkristian 13y ago
    Indeed, or Alt-| in my case (Norwegian layout), and it works for currently focused application, as well. Try doing that with multiple instances (3+) of your browser though. I've got general browsing on WS1, Netflix on WS2, tutorials and the likes on WS3, and usually Gmail etc on WS4. Imagine cycling through those, and sometimes more for various reasons, without separating by workspace. Tedious, tedious, tedious.
    - amboar 13y ago
      Right. Yes - I missed the workspace specific part of your complaint before replying - sorry about that.

buzaga41 13y ago

It's productive to me. I've tried Unity some times already and can't get used to it and at the moment I'm on Gnome Classic because of an issue when upgrading and I'm missing Gnome 3, so maybe each person has their preferences?

hahainternet 13y ago

> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself Other than 'native window placement' I find that pretty much every extension I have installed is a customisation where I want something to work in a particular way. It's not that Gnome is unusable by default, it's just more the minimal set of features that everyone uses. For example, including a time tracker on the top bar by default would be wasteful, as would a timer. I want both of these though, so I go to a website and click a button and they work. However, the lack of proper sandboxing / permissions breakthrough for the extensions is a real problem I don't believe has been solved yet.

sramkrishna 13y ago
And that is being worked on: https://wiki.gnome.org/Events/Hackfests/WestCoastSummit2014 https://wiki.gnome.org/Events/Hackfests/WestCoastSummit2014 We have an entire stack showing up to fix things in the right places not just in GNOME itself.

rufugee 13y ago

Barely usable? I'd hardly call it that. I find it very usable. I don't quite like the alt+tab default functionality, but barely usable is really a stretch. I find it a very productive environment with no extensions whatsoever. That said, I do use a few extensions, and I'm exploring writing ones as well. The fact that extensions are written in javascript is really nice (or awful, depending on how you feel about javascript). The built in debugger/console looking glass (type ALT+F2, then lg, the press enter) is very helpful, and window identification/selection is very simple. Being able to extend the environment in a relatively easy way with a scripting language is a big win in my book ymmv, but I find it to be a nice environment. I'm not 100% satisfied, but I'm far more satisfied with it than, say, OSX or Windows, and slightly more satisfied with it than Unity or KDE.

paulyg 13y ago
For those complaining about the alt-tab thing maybe you don't know about alt-`. Alt-` cycles through windows/instances of the current app! I just learned about it two days ago and I've been using gnome 3 for a year (there is a lesson in there, why was this not publicized more?). On a more general note put me in the camp that feels gnome is getting better and better every release. I like what they have done with the header bars. Very clean interface. Initially i did nit like Gnome 3. I gave Unity and Cinnamon fair shots, 3 months each. Neither wowed me. Then I gave Gnome 3 another chance (it was 3.4 by then) and have not looked back.
- JDShu 13y ago
  It's also worth mentioning that this behavior exists on OS X as well.
  - ollyfg 13y ago
    And also on Unity (if you're into that).
    - espadrine 13y ago
      And also on KDE. Wait, is Windows the only one not to have that implemented?

keithpeter 13y ago

If we all posted a few minutes worth of screencam video showing the pain points in typical tasks, without compromising confidentiality, it might help developers understand the issues. http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=531271#p531271 http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=531271#p531271 Does anyone have any better references to usability research on Gnome Shell?

Mikeb85 13y ago

Gnome is very usable for many of us. I'm tired of seeing the same 'it sucks as a productivity environment' comments. If it's not your preference, you can say that, but Gnome Shell is perfectly fine when it comes to productivity. Quick app switching, searching, app launching, etc... How do these things hurt productivity? I personally dislike KDE, but that's just my taste. Some people love XMonad or XFCE, and some people even like Unity. Dunno, I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'.

subsection1h 13y ago
> I'm a developer and my workflow involves several different tools, Gnome Shell certainly doesn't hurt 'productivity'. I'm also a developer whose workflow involves several different tools. One of those tools is Firefox, and I currently have several hundred tabs open in more than a dozen Firefox windows. I want to be able to instantaneously switch from Emacs to a specific Firefox window. I don't want to switch from Emacs to Firefox and then switch to a specific Firefox window (e.g., using Alt+`) like some desktop environments force their users to do. The best solution I've found is to use a desktop environment or window manager that will display the Alt-Tab window list vertically with full titles displayed for all windows (which is similar to how I display tabs in Firefox using the Tree Style Tab extension). KDE and Openbox support this setup, and the last time I checked, Gnome didn't. So using Gnome would hurt my productivity.
- droelf 13y ago
  I see your (valid) point but I am also positive that you could, if you wanted to, create an simple js plugin for gnome shell that would have the desired effect, as others have created alternative alt+tab switchers: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  While this may be an issue for you, I doubt having so many Firefox tabs open is all that common. I wouldn't consider this a failure of Gnome. Personally, having that many tabs open would make my head hurt. I'll generally have Vim open with a few open buffers, one browser window, one terminal, and the running program I'm working on...

sinkasapa 13y ago

These days what do you need other than a web browser, terminal emulator and text editor? Gnome is similar in usability to TWM and so it works. ;-)

davidw 13y ago

> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. You might give xfce a try, as that's more like "real Linux" if you're a hacker used to something like fvwm2 where you have pretty much total control over the desktop. I too am kind of disappointed in the "chasing Mac taillights" direction that Gnome has taken, dumbing things down. I guess it'd be ok if they were making significant inroads into the "mom" market where Macs are strong, but I don't think they are, and in the process seem to be losing some of the hacker market.

Pxtl 13y ago

> Just the fact that people need a ton of shell extensions to make it barely usable is a problem in itself. Idunno, FireFox pretty nicely demonstrates that a simple, straightforward platform with an emphasis on extensions can be great. Your use-case doesn't necessarily match my use-case, and letting the users get lost in a sea of config files to customize them has kind of proven to just cause havoc... so why not focus on extensions?

dagw 13y ago
Extensions per se are good and fine. The big problem with Gnome extensions is that the Gnome people aren't really treating them as first class citizens and happily break some of them every update. So each time a new version of Gnome comes out you either have to wait a few month while all your extensions get updated or go a few month without all your favorite extensions.
lmm 13y ago
I think firefox lost its way because it focused on extensions for things that should have been browser core functionality. What does firefox stand for these days? Why would I use it over Opera or Konqueror?

stormbrew 13y ago

One of the reasons I switched away from OSX a few years ago (not to Gnome Shell, to Mint and then later to i3wm) was because every new version of OSX required me to tweak more things and install more third party things to make it usable, and I figured if I was going to have to keep going down that road I might as well go whole hog to something designed for me to do that instead of something that fought me at every step [1]. [1] Did you know that in order to rebind cmd-tab on a mac, you have to kill the Dock of all things, run the program that binds cmd-tab, and then re-run the Dock? Every other key combo is explicitly configurable, afaik.

rbanffy 13y ago

> Just a few weeks ago I tried Gnome 3 again (again!) and it still sucks as a productivity environment. I am sorry it sucks for you. For me, it works great.