[ale] gnome3. I give up.

[Jim Kinney]

I have spent since Fedora 15 was released trying, really trying, to like
gnome 3.

I give up.

Yes. It has pretty eye candy that will appeal to someone. I will grant it is
visually attractive.

But like the stunning woman who walks into a crowded room and all eyes turn
her way, eventually someone makes the comment about "high maintenance" and
the brief moments of fluttering hearts is over.

Gnome 3 is high maintenance.

I find it stupid hard and too many mouse clicks to do ANYTHING _I_ want to
do. I I wanted to be told what I could do with my desktop, I'd use a Mac.
Gnome 3 is even clunkier than the Mac desktop I used a few years back.

The single most frustrating aspect is the default behavior when I click to
open a second terminal. Um. No. I already have one open it kindly shows me
by whisking me away from where I am to where I don't want to be. But I
wanted a terminal where I was. So I have to right click and select another
option of yes I really want another terminal on this screen thanks for
asking.

Granted, it is possible to adjust the widths of the window decorations to
make a larger mouse grab area to facilitate resizing but why was it made a
whopping 1 pixel wide to begin with? Why does the systems control panel
always project off the bottom of the visible screen area with no way to
adjust it to fit? Why do I have to change the screen orientation to portrait
so I can adjust other control panels that have the "OK" button off the
bottom of the screen? Granted my laptop is another example of entertainment
trumps effectiveness in that it has the w i d e s c r e e n because I must
be like the rest of the sheeple and plan to watch movies on my laptop as my
main use and any real WORK is secondary. And yes, now I print everything in
landscape just because it fits my screen better and I like being obnoxious
that way ( I really don't but I am).

Javascript to control the actions of my desktop. Yeah. OK. I did just see a
javascript machine emulator that had a Linux kernel running in it. That has
potential for all kinds of recursive fun on the desktop. But now the desktop
is controlled by a similar process as the browser so cross-system scripting
issues are next on the radar of security vulnerabilities.

Did I mention it's slow? Many seconds elapse between clicking the
"applications" button (after the alt-f1 to get access to it or tossing the
mouse in the upper left corner) and actually seeing the applications. And
then they go and show me ALL APPLICATIONS. Not even something intelligent
like Recent Applications or just a menu on the right and a blank screen. No.
I have to schlog through a menu on the right to select different screens
full of icon from each category. But why start with All? So I can be
impressed? I'm not. And many of the icons don't scale to the screen
resolution so they are visually clunky and blurry and just super unpolished
for a full 3.0 release.

And then there's the power management. Not specifically a gnome 3 thing but
totally useless nonetheless. Any screen power down or blanking or suspend or
hibernate can only be recovered from by a full
hold-the-power-button-till-it-dies reboot. Most annoyingly, it also is a
requirement about half the time that I ctl-alt-bksp after a simply screen
lock as it won't provide the login box again.

Frustrated. Irritated. But most of all, deeply, deeply disappointed. Linux
is turning 20. Gnome is more than 10 years old now and still the principle
designers appear to lack a solid understanding of workflow. I can't support
rolling this desktop out to other people who are expected to actually get
things done.

But I can support rolling it back to the Fallback Desktop which does make
nearly all of my complaints go away (System Settings window still falls off
the bottom of the screen. Testing power management next).

See here for how to make gnome 3 usable:
http://www.rootninja.com/gnome-3-fallback-desktop-better-than-gnome-3-itself/

-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
- *2011 Noam Chomsky*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20110606/09924520/attachment.html