Chris's Wiki :: blog/linux/Gnome3Out Commentshttps://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/Gnome3Out?atomcommentsDWiki2011-08-29T18:50:55ZRecent comments in Chris's Wiki :: blog/linux/Gnome3Out.By Chris Siebenmann on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:2fbecdf5a4045e3b76f08f91c9ac02be4caf85bcChris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>The information about custom shortcuts is useful. Note that at least
the Fedora 15 version of Gnome 3 doesn't come with a 'launch terminal'
shortcut defined; you have to know that this is possible (and where
to find it, which is now in Keyboard). It also turns out that you can
control-click an Activities thing to always launch a new instance
instead of just switching to its window, which addresses one large
irritation (I found this out from <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/jwy3k/gnome_3_im_out/">the reddit discussion of this
entry</a>.)</p>
<p>As for shell extensions, well, the news is mixed as I wrote in
<a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/Gnome3ExtensionFail">Gnome3ExtensionFail</a> and as a commentator pointed out. The current state
is immature (to put it one way), the extensions are lacking, and at
least some of the Gnome 3 developers seem significantly hostile to
having a really healthy, featureful extension system. Since the Gnome
developers have a long history of acting on what they feel is best
instead of what users want, I am at this point not optimistic about the
ability of extensions to significantly change the Gnome 3 environment
into something that I really like and find particularly useable.</p>
<p>(One of my strong feelings is that the Gnome 3 developers are targeting
people who use their computer in a significantly different way than I
do. This probably really calls for a full entry, so I'm going to wave my
hands for now.)</p>
</div>2011-08-29T18:50:55ZFrom 85.226.50.203 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:e2e993f9aec67f84edba4c8bec5aadfb27ce0ebbFrom 85.226.50.203<div class="wikitext"><p>Yet another one who fail to do his homework... what is it with people? You could get your functionality with extensions. Extensions will soon be as easy to install as a Firefox add-ons. Gnome3 and shell are in many ways a lot better than Gnome2. </p>
<p>I guess people are just lazy... The funny part is that people like this are the same who redirect others to google when they ask for help.</p>
</div>2011-08-29T10:50:09ZFrom 98.193.92.209 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:873819490cfbc0def091d8e900528b8ea43756feFrom 98.193.92.209<div class="wikitext"><p>If you're still using Xfce, check out the theming work done by the Shimmer Project. They are the artwork team that has done the Xubuntu artwork, but their stuff of course works on other Xfce distros.</p>
</div>2011-08-29T02:32:44ZFrom 67.167.81.145 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:c6f7d9bc699a4aa96916934b4fd910e923fd7020From 67.167.81.145<div class="wikitext"><p>I switched to XFCE too. I love it.</p>
</div>2011-08-28T22:03:02ZFrom 50.73.126.69 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:def82242e428f3e79133bef3dc319b065ee60a12From 50.73.126.69<div class="wikitext"><p>By the way, you can set custom shortcuts to custom commands very easily in the keyboard settings window. I use alt+F3 for a terminal, for example.</p>
<p>Sure, it lacks in certain areas and the settings utilities are incomplete, but nothing else I've seen is as good looking and easy to setup/use as gnome 3.</p>
</div>2011-08-28T20:31:40ZFrom 82.228.149.26 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:7a4827a46077c591aeafa2fd6417efc12dcaceb6From 82.228.149.26<div class="wikitext"><p>What about just using the Ctrl+N shortcut of gnome-terminal (or xterm or whatever) ?</p>
</div>2011-08-28T12:52:20ZBy Chris Siebenmann on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:8784588e383f23dee114088415056eb7690b5ed5Chris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>A belated note: the shortcut key for Activities and searching there
doesn't really help, because it has general Activities problem. If I
already have a terminal window running, it's a special menu entry to
start another one; just hitting return only pops up the existing one.</p>
<p>(Alt-F2 is worse, since it needs enough of the program name to
autocomplete it and 'Terminal' is actually 'gnome-terminal'.)</p>
</div>2011-08-18T15:31:44ZFrom 98.245.155.174 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:2e4d990167ddbe9f70570ae84a5ecc4ae52521b9From 98.245.155.174<div class="wikitext"><p>I also really like Gnome 3. One thing I don't think most people realize is that there is a keyboard launcher like Gnome-Do built in already. if you want a mouse-driven experience most of the time, then yeah I don't think Gnome Shell is going to be the best choice. I use the keyboard as much as possible though, and Gnome Shell works great.</p>
<p>For me to launch a terminal I do
<super>ter<enter></p>
<p>what this does:</p>
<ol><li><super>: Shortcut key for the Activities screen</li>
<li>ter: In the Activities screen, typing starts searching for things in Applications, Settings, and in Recent Items. ter is what i need to type to pull terminator to be the auto-selected item.</li>
<li><enter>: launch the currently selected item.</li>
</ol>
<p><super>chr<enter> launches chrome.<br>
<super>na<enter> launches nautilus</p>
<p>Some extra work for this mode, is definatly still needed, but I really like the workflow. Especially as after, everything gets back out of my way. I don't have to worry about a dock taking up screen real estate, I don't have to worry about an open windows panel or a workspace switcher.</p>
</div>2011-08-10T20:32:22ZFrom 82.69.60.196 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:3c7a7c640ff3e8d2ba2c0a757af40c64e0ce0c79From 82.69.60.196<div class="wikitext"><p>There's a mild risk you're going to come across like <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/1990sLinuxUser">http://twitter.com/#!/1990sLinuxUser</a> :-) Rumour has it there are extensions that provide may provide what you are looking for (e.g. <a href="http://www.fpmurphy.com/gnome-shell-extensions/">http://www.fpmurphy.com/gnome-shell-extensions/</a> , <a href="http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions">http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions</a> and <a href="http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html">http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html</a> ) but it does seem unlikely that they will go into default GNOME 3...</p>
<p>(Don't you remember people complaining about things when GNOME 1 switched to GNOME 2? The screams about metacity versus sawfish versus Enlightenment and so on? Plus ça change...)</p>
</div>2011-08-09T23:27:24ZFrom 195.26.247.141 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:74e29a34a23e10125b20fc7d349c063986a0e14eFrom 195.26.247.141<div class="wikitext"><p>(This may or may not be helpful, but...)</p>
<p>I gave up with Gnome a while back, and "desktop environments" in general as they tended to be too heavyweight and at random points in their development they would add things I didn't like or remove things I did.</p>
<p>Instead I've found that a plain window manager (stumpwm in my case) with just enough config to allow for some hotkeys (browser, emacs, terminal) and `wicd' for wireless/wired connections is much more palatable.
(I never got on with NetworkManager, it seems to die or get angry with particular networks too often for my liking)</p>
<p>Both are an apt-get away for me (not sure about yum, but I assume so), and my wm config (and various others) slurp from version control quickly enough.</p>
</div>2011-08-08T09:21:42ZFrom 166.216.194.83 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:2b3ebd39cce927c9b3ddc86f9c75ea80ae950b1aFrom 166.216.194.83<div class="wikitext"><p>I've been running gnome 3 for a while on ubuntu and overall I like it. What I like most is how much it stays out if my way. I always use a launcher like gnome do, or synapse though. Ctrl + space start typing what you want, like "terminal", after a letter or two its autocompleting and pores enter to launch a new instance of the program. Like you I spend the majority of my days in one of many console sessions. I never use any dock shortcuts so having all of those menus hidden I like, I could do it with gnome2 also, but the notifications in. gnome 3 are less obtrusive.</p>
<p>--
Nick Anderson
Http://wwe.cmdln.org</p>
</div>2011-08-07T20:24:42ZFrom 90.168.118.112 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:6d276f3702969e0ba943fe76d3d35c42b32d7982From 90.168.118.112<div class="wikitext"><p>my laptop suspends/hibernates great with SL 6.x and everything is a yum command away. NetworkManager just works (wifi, 3G, vpn). I really do not see the benefit of running fedora on this one (F12 was great, F13 and F14 were buggy). I no longer bother with F15, to be honest.</p>
</div>2011-08-06T22:10:29ZFrom 76.113.53.175 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:7a398a0980ff9963538bb1aa9c6ee6dae6984a48From 76.113.53.175<div class="wikitext"><p>"Run Command" is Alt-F2 in GNOME 3.</p>
</div>2011-08-06T20:36:23ZFrom 70.95.102.101 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:1cd5106b01c7aa84e0055c086db6c231bf1781e6From 70.95.102.101<div class="wikitext"><p>Try unity for even more ugliness and increased effort at simple tasks. To launch a program from the menu bar in Gnome 2 it was just "click the 'start' button, move to program group, click the icon". Under Unity it's now "click the 'start' button, click the name of the group, click 'all items', scroll down through rows of ludicrously large buttons to find the app you want, then click". Gnome 3 was interesting, I think I share similar frustrations to you with it. It works well, but it doesn't work in anything approaching a productive way for me.</p>
<p>I'm now running Xubuntu on my workstation and netbook for productivity reasons. Yes XFCE is fairly raw in comparison to Gnome 2, but it really does 'just work' and does virtually everything I need it to. About the only thing I miss is being able to click the date in the panel and get a simple month view pop up. On the netbook I've got it running really minimal so the system is barely pushing 100Mb of footprint fully loaded. With the netbook being as relatively underpowered as it is, small footprint helps a lot.</p>
</div>2011-08-06T18:05:48ZBy Chris Siebenmann on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:e7d8e607497a92449e524957aec742a7d75bcbf3Chris Siebenmann<div class="wikitext"><p>The important thing for me in a casual usage machine (including my
laptop) is that I do not have to take much effort to configure the
environment; thus, I want the desktop environment to come stock with
the operating system and make all sorts of things just work (like
wired and wireless network access, suspending a laptop when I close
the screen, and so on). Anything that is not a '<code>yum install @whatever</code>'
fails this criteria. (I wrote about this at more length in
<a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/MyThreeDesktops">MyThreeDesktops</a>.)</p>
<p>If I abandon this criteria I would build a version of <a href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/MyDesktopTour">my usual
desktop environment</a>, since I am already
extremely familiar with it and like it a lot.</p>
<p>If I ever wind up using Gnome 3, I'll remember to look for shortcut
keys. But my cynicism says that the Gnome 3 developers do not consider
'start a terminal' to be sufficiently important to make accessible;
instead, I rather expect that they feel that needing a terminal is an
evidence of failure in their desktop environment.</p>
</div>2011-08-06T17:52:40ZFrom 115.70.79.176 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:a8c83692d6ace9d3a815c7264c80fc0389d307e4From 115.70.79.176<div class="wikitext"><p>What about all those press-shortcut-to-open-run-dialog things, like OSX's command-space, or Windows' winkey?</p>
</div>2011-08-06T09:26:07ZFrom 90.168.118.112 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:d0ad148b59b030bd810e0ebc63b51321df85d63fFrom 90.168.118.112<div class="wikitext"><p>I just installed SL 6 (was fed up waiting for centos 6 to come out) and have a nice gnome 2 environment for the next 6 years, I guess.</p>
</div>2011-08-06T09:01:52ZFrom 77.183.88.196 on /blog/linux/Gnome3Outtag:CSpace:blog/linux/Gnome3Out:36e4f9e0ec44f9bf5d784a87fb20ef46e9bbe2daFrom 77.183.88.196<div class="wikitext"><p>I had good success with <a href="http://awesome.naquadah.org/">awsome</a> so far. It's a very usable tiling WM, the Lua based configuration is friendly enough and the defaults are quite sane. Super-RET starts a new terminal, Super-[1-9] switches desktops, Suoer-R gives an input line to launch shell commands. The rest follows a vi-like pattern mostly.</p>
<p>My "Desktop" consists of a 16px high bar containing a desktop-switcher, 5 Buttons for most-used apps, a taskbar, tray and clock, nothing more. A few conditionals ensure I can just copy my config to any host where i need it.</p>
<p>If you prefer floating WMs, you could take a serious look at <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/FVWM-Crystal">fvwm-crystal</a>. It brings all the fancyness of things like gnome/enlightenment/etc. to fvwm while still remaining a quite readable config (for fvwm levels of readable of course ;)). Since you are already quite familiar with fvwm it should be easy to bend this to your needs. (This might provide the "generic" part to your fvwm config since it relies on scripts to detect system-specific stuff.)</p>
<p>Both WMs have the unbeatable advantage of being configured through simple text files instead of a registry-like XML behemoth and whatever KDE uses now. I'd have no idea how to transplant a Gnome or KDE config from one host to another.</p>
</div>2011-08-06T07:53:00Z