Fedora 15 is a lot like Windows OS's.. irritating, offensive, difficult to use with ease, nauseating to try...

[Mark Eggers]

On Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:23:26 -0700, Frederick N. Brier wrote:

> On 09/02/2011 07:31 AM, Stefan Held wrote:
>> Am Freitag, den 02.09.2011, 09:44 -0400 schrieb Darryl L. Pierce:
>>
>>> Great points. If we didn't have change and innovation we'd all still
>>> be using 80x25 monochrome text mode terminals.
> What was wrong with 80x25 monochrome?  I liked the Hercules display :).
> No, but seriously, Gnome3 is irritating.  To have to click on Activities
> to change and repaint the whole screen, and then select the category of
> an item you want (if you have not added it to your favorites), then
> click on it, then repaint the screen again.  And the screen real estate
> for the Activities text does nothing else.  Nothing.  You can't even
> right click on it.
> 
> You also can't right click on the "desktop menu items" and bring up
> their properties.  Can't copy and edit them (I like that for rdesktop
> and other commands that have parameters).  No, you have to find the old
> MainMenu utility and create an item in the non-existent menu so it will
> show up.  Maybe there is another way, but it ain't intuitive.
> 
> What's with no right clicks?  Only one mouse button?  Instead of Unix's
> 3 buttons?  Is this a lowest common denominator solution for someone who
> installs Linux on a Mac?
> 
> I have been using Gnome3 for over 3 weeks now.  I tried adding AWN.
> Tweaking different parameters.  It is STILL annoying.  And SLOOOOWWWWW.
> There is a reason why menus have been around so long.  So yeah, I guess
> I think the Gnome guys fumbled the ball.
> 
> I liked Gnome2.  Mostly I liked all the nice GUI utilities built on top
> of it.  And now I am not sure what I am going to do.
> 
>> It was only a change, no innovation .....
>>
>> http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/76280/
>>
>>

This is going to be long, and I'm commenting late.

First of all, a few general comments and caveats.

Comment: Notice how the person responsible for starting this flame-fest 
wrote one message and hasn't reappeared?

Caveat: I am a KDE user (mostly) or a WindowMaker user. However, I've 
been using Gnome 3 on and off since Fedora 15 was released. Take my 
comments with the above caveat in mind.

Like many people, I find a lot of the UI changes in Gnome 3 to be a bit 
irritating. However, I have found several reasonable work-arounds.

1. Switching virtual desktops

The left-screen / right-screen tango with a large monitor is cumbersome. 
Many have commented on this. I find it unpleasant as well.

The work-around I use is Ctrl-Alt up-arrow and down-arrow. This allows me 
to easily page through my virtual desktops. The virtual desktops don't 
wrap around, and they're not labeled, but it's certainly better than the 
mouse equivalents.

2. Applets

Quite frankly, I don't miss these at all. I have a weather plugin for 
Chrome, and I use gkrellm for system monitoring.

If you alt-right-mouse click on gkrellm, you can choose "Always on 
visible Workspace" which lets you see your machine's suffering on every 
desktop :-p.

3. Items on desktop

I've never been a fan of items on the desktop. I usually have too many 
things running so double-clicking on a desktop item is counter-productive.

That said, you can probably manage a lot with having Nautilus show up on 
every workspace. Again, just right-mouse click on the title bar and 
select "Always on visible Workspace".

4. Right-mouse click on the desktop

I've not missed this nearly as much as I thought I would. I find that Alt-
F2 and entering a command works for most of my needs. I actually use this 
a lot (see Applications menu below).

Things I don't like

1. Performance

On this old machine (2.6 GHz P4, 1.5 GB memory, overclocked Nvidia 7600GS 
AGPx4 card), Gnome 3 consumes the most memory and renders the slowest of 
KDE 4 / WindowMaker / Gnome 3. Hopefully the Gnome developers will 
improve performance in the upcoming releases. Early versions of KDE 4 had 
performance problems as well, so one can hope.

2. Uncontrollable workspaces

This one is irritating. I tend to lay out my workspaces in a particular 
order. I group running tasks on particular workspace based on what I'm 
doing. Think of it as an alternative to the KDE activities concept.

I find now that if I don't open programs in a certain order, then they 
get placed on an unfamiliar workspace. While this isn't a huge problem, 
it makes setting up workspaces based on tasks more cumbersome than it 
should be. I can get around some of this with alt-tab (through all 
programs), but this is less than optimal.

3. Workspace behavior when ending last program

This one is a bit convoluted to explain. I have gkrellm visible on all of 
the workspaces. If I go to the last workspace and start a new program, 
everything works as expected. However, if I close that program, I get the 
same view as if I put my mouse cursor in the upper left-hand corner of 
the screen - the activities view. I have to hit the escape key to bring 
me back to a workspace view.

This also happens if I launch a KDE program - let's say amarok - and send 
it to the system tray.

4. The applications menu

This one is a real mess. I am a software packrat. I have lots of 
programs. I have a couple of versions of some programs. The default 
behavior of the application menu on a smaller system is pretty much 
unworkable.

4A. Speed

The first time I bring up the Applications menu, it will take several 
seconds to appear. During that time I can obviously do nothing else on 
the computer.

Scrolling through this mess is also an issue, as well as a CPU hog.

4B. Organization

Alphabetic? Really? Yes, there are menus on the right hand side, but this 
does not come up by default. Also, there are no tool tip style comments 
when you hover over an icon. If you have several lightly used 
applications, you get to guess what the names are and what they do.

4C. Icons

Mostly icons are not a problem. However, some icons are still .PNG or 
other bit-mapped graphics. These scale poorly with the default icon size.

Because of this mess, I end up using Alt-F2 / command a lot. While this 
works for my most commonly used programs, it certainly doesn't work 
(being forgetful) for programs I don't use as often. In short, it places 
a barrier to finding the right application for the task at hand.

5. Playing nicely with KDE

GTK 3 applications no longer play nicely with KDE. Newsreaders like pan 
are ugly (garish background on menus, blocky fonts). Google Chrome 
doesn't automatically start up the key manager, so none of the saved 
passwords are available. You can enter them in and save them, but as soon 
as you start Chrome under Gnome 3 again, you will lose the passwords 
stored while in KDE.

6. Playing nicely with Java

I do a lot of Java work in NetBeans. The GTK look and feel is quite 
broken with GTK 3. Horizontal positioning is off when using an 
application in full screen. There are no menu shadows. There are no menu 
borders. Font rendering is different than the default GTK applications 
(and spindly).

7. Multiple open copies or windows

If you have multiple copies of an application open, or multiple windows 
of a single application open, Alt-tab only gets to the most recently 
active window. You have to use the arrow key to maneuver to other windows 
of the same program or other instances of the same program.

This isn't quite so bad. Alt-tab once, and then use the arrow keys for 
everything (this works). It's a bit clumsy, but I'm not sure how else to 
approach this issue.

Nits

Theming is painful. Hopefully I can poke around with the
gnome-tweak-tool to fix the look of running GTK applications under KDE.

Resource usage is higher than other windowing systems. I realize this is 
the first release. I hope that the Gnome developers will focus on 
performance / efficiency in the upcoming releases.

What is the point of having the active program display on the title bar? 
If I click on the entry (for example gedit), all I get is an option to 
quit. Why is this any more beneficial than using Ctrl-Q from within the 
program? I just trying to figure out why this is a good UI design.

All in all, Gnome 3 has some potential, but there are certain warts that 
really need to be addressed in order to make it useful (IMHO).

. . . . just my two cents.
/mde/