Why is gnome 3 so bad

They don't share a single thing in common beside their name. It is important to keep voicing alive! They change their mind like every release. It is a mess when it comes standard. All the GTK3. In case you didn't know why there a lot of hate going on, here is one strong reason.

Like many have mentions, sure it do cool things, but they got define what's is cool, and if you aren't doing it the GNOME way, you are pretty much not welcome. GNOME twist exist for this exact reason.

Even you have mention that it doesn't get a lot of good theme, until recently. In Traditional DE, you got a windows tab panel somewhere to tell you, what you are running. Open up the app menu? Dynamic Desktop? Epic yes, usefulness, not of many, myself included. However, coming from more industrial background, that's crazy.

Things should be stable enough at day 1. As a DE, I agree that it should be the most stable piece of software they should be beside the Kernel, assuming you don't work in the text world. Maybe 2 years, Maybe 3? And like I mention, its internal standard for Themes and stuff are still not stable, it is all over the place. Not really. That's why there's Mate, it is not like people can't let go of the past, it is more like the future didn't offer any better.

Personally I switch to i3wm early this years, and I much say, it would never go back to any DE have I used. And I only have one reason for that, it is able to achieve more with less. Everything is truly out of the way. When it comes to customization, it is hard because it allows you to do pretty anything you want, in order word, you need to do what you really want, how to achieve the result you want, not to mention you pretty much all the options out there to choose from.

To be fair, this problem exist on any DE you can use under Linux. But really, I am longing for exciting innovative DE comes to Linux. I'm a Gnome user and have been for years. Gnome is a great interface, but more recently 3. If you install Gnome onto a btrfs system, be careful about your extension choices.

Some that work on ext4 systems will lock up your Linux user, or the entire Linux box. There is a problem with bug reporting, which is a human problem when most maintainers are volunteers. If you are the only one to report a bug, then its not likely that the bug will be fixed. It takes a half dozen different complaints before that bug will raise a "fix me up please" flag.

So, you are essentially on your own if you find a common bug, but others do not bother to also post a bug report or add their id to your bug report. One of my favourite extensions is TaskBar by Zpydr.

Installing this extension will allow you to do away with a few others. The concept is clever, the code clean, easily configurable and ergonomically well done. A complementary extension is GNO-menu. I don't need others, though I do install caffeine, openweather,. Gnome desktop is perfect for me. I'm not going to sit and debate why I think this, because in all reality everyone's idea of what a desktop should be to make it perfect is different But Linux? Linux gives you your browser, e-mail client, media player, office suite, games, text editor, and a host of other tools and then let's YOU choose what desktop environment YOU want those apps to "live" in.

There is nothing better than that period. Which desktop is the best for running Linux? Anyone familiar with the "start" command in Windows? It would open a document with the default program from the command line. I always create these two aliases, since I live at the command line:. For me, the first desktop requirement is the fruibility over internet.

I am an internet company which provides the VDI over the cloud. Unfortunately I didn't able to use Gnome 3 efficiently due e lot use of bandwidth by the graphis movements. I do the same thing with Gnome and it works fine I think one of the few criticism I have with Gnome is the lost screen real estate that Gnome produces with the top panel, the title bar of the window even full-sized and then the toolbar. It is a lot of wasted space that Unity and OS X addressed by allowing the menu bar to move to the top panel.

You cannot edit or move the panel. The only way to access your applications is to invoke the Activities overlay - slam the mouse cursor into the top-left corner or hit the Super key and then type. Useless, unnecessary actions that serve no purpose. On a classic desktop, you need a single mouse click to run programs from their relevant shortcut bars. In Gnome, it's at least two clicks, provided the apps actually show in your Favorites. No window min and max buttons - more smartphone nonsense.

A waste of time. No show desktop button. If you want to minimize everything - for whatever reason - you need to individually action each program like a monkey. You also have no list of open apps - again, like on mobile devices - so you can't really switch quickly if you need to. The whole concept is so bizarre and sad I'm actually watching funerals online to cheer myself up. If a program cannot fulfill basic functions - it's useless. In this case, if a desktop does not provide the user with what they need, then it does not matter how detailed, clean, cluttered, or cool the interface is.

But then, just because Apple succeeded with a phone that has a single button, it does not mean everyone can - or even should, EVER - attempt something like that. Especially not on a desktop that is controlled by a three-button mouse and a key typewriter.

This remains the worst flaw in Gnome. I can sort of accept the weird pseudo-touch vision. Somehow, somewhere, it might answer some weird need or whatever, so it could possibly be justified. But then, to not be able to change it, that's too much. If you wish to have a classic desktop, and that would be: panel with icons, application menu, show desktop button, and application windows buttons, not too much, right, then you need to invest a lot of time and energy to get this in order.

It's not like everyone's mentally slow and Gnome guys are suddenly bringing about this amazing revolution. There's a reason why after odd years of graphical computing things are the way they are. So what you need - I've outlined this in my Gnome accessibility article - is the following sequence: install Gnome Tweak Tool GTT , which gives you control over some aspects of the desktop and application windows.

Through GTT, enable window buttons. Three, setup Gnome extensions. This alone takes two separate actions. You need a Gnome extension for your browser and an additional software package that allows your browser to install extensions.

Once this is in place, we move to step four five actually. There's a nice one called Dash to Panel D2P , and it will satisfy both this basic need AND also allow you to fix the show desktop thingie, so two birds with one stone.

There's also an additional extension for the menu, if you want. Technically, seven separate actions, none of them trivial or intuitive, before you can have what every other desktop environment gives you by default.

And this may yet change, because Gnome has often removed functionality between releases. To be able to list folders before files in Nautilus, you need to be familiar with the dconf command line utility or install dconf-editor, a Windows registry-like utility that allows you to make changes to the Gnome schemas, and here, again through a sequence of non-intuitive actions, you can make this tweak. All other desktop environments do this by default, and even if not, they have the necessary option in their relevant settings menu, which allows you to list folders before files.

But with F17 comes gnome3. And I knew I'd have trouble, but also knew that most of the worst crap could be fixed with extensions, and I'd used 3. Alas, his hopes were soon crushed. Still Torvalds bravely soldiered on. That gets things usable. Finding your way through Fedora 17 Gallery. Or does it make things usable? But now extensions. Oh wait, no, it's actually just that the chrome plug-in seems broken.

Fire up Firefox instead - now it works. And I can get panel settings and enable auto-hide so that I don't need to look at that butt-ugly thing that has clearly been designed by some goth teenager that thinks that black is cool. It doesn't seem to work any more. And how do I add --enable-webgl --ignore-gpu-blacklist to the google chrome favorites entry? I'm pretty sure I was able to edit the startup details for the favorites in some version of gnome3 with some random installed extensions probably the frippery set , but it's impossible to find now.

Like Liked by 1 person. I did. I asked around in the IRC channel and looked everywhere, in the Internet and configurations, and it still was slow. I used Enlightenment a long long time ago, but now Xfce is the best; it just works, everything is snappy and smooth. Was this E17 or E18? Are you really going to try and use that kind of logic against me? Again, you are trying to defend with an agnostic position, which is completely incapable of defending the position you want to defend.

Phil mentality? Again, address the point, what would actually count as evidence to you that they listened? How soon is too soon to decide against what the complaint is proposing? So now what? Unfortunately, what you want is necessarily a negation of what I want.

I want simplicity and focus and as little clutter as is meaningfully possible. If they had run a survey, some polls, an ideastorm, or simply enabled voting in bugzilla. Any of those would show they were interested in user feedback. On the basis that you want simplicity. This is bullshit, I already tackled the argument in the article. I think the user deserved at least one sentence rational.

That particular problem was solved properly in Very interesting post, Felipe, thanks. I have a strong bias towards KDE since that was what I used in the early days of my own Linux explorations Mandrake 8.

I found it to be quite good at first, but as it developed through 3. So true. And so very sad. Neither W8. How can designers be so distant from the user community?? In any case, in the last months I continue to read very bad reviews and comments from many different people. I have been evaluating a bunch of current linix distros in an effort to totaly get off the windows crap. My history with this goes back 40 years, built linux disk drivers for REAL unix many years ago.. Plasma is ok, but this is going the route of bloatware real fast, leaving the possibility of putting it on many of my older machines behind….

I love it and the concept. There is a large learning curve here, people ae not going to make it unless they think things are stable for at least 2 years time… 3.

Way too much attention on visual feature crap.. NO one but weenies really care about this. Professionals in the real, commercial world do not…If you want glitz and aggravation.. No one wants to fix bad code.. IMHO, this is a passing fad anyway.

Real speech recognition is very close to a true reality.. Unity is total garbage.. These people are only interested in making money, they will eventually sell this to someone, and bail. They are using the community only to prop up their efforts.. Some code, some ports some libs.. Do you want the installed base to grow or not? Is this just a nice hobby, or do you really want to take over the world?

Think about it…answering these simple questions honestly will point everyone in the right direction. If you want linux to survive, you all need to embrace something that lets commercial apps move over without taking years…. Forget about the java crap not all comerical apps are web oriented or care about this..

I too am similarly unimpressed with Gnome 3 and could write a long list, but these are my main complaints. I miss the desktop weather app too, which was promised years ago. What a terrible waste. Felipe — Speak for your self.

Dave, you are right and GNOME 3 works for you but the point is that I have never seen so many bad reviews for an open source solution. All that matters for me with an OS is that it stays out of the way while I get my work done. This incorrectly assumes no differentiation among users, no differences in interests, skills, needs, etc.

This suggests it would be better to release a product and then go immediately into bug-fix mode, with no future changes. FOSS, and Linux, projects lack the resources to test and vet new code before it is released.

As a result, Release One of new code is typically something less than beta quality. Ditto Release Two. Some people like not needing to spend hours fussing with software before it becomes tolerable. Certainly, configurability has its place. So, too, does software that hits the mark out of the box. With about 5 minutes effort, I can have Gnome-Shell configured as I please.

Meanwhile, it takes an hour or so to get KDE — king of configurabilty — to be at all tolerable mostly turning useless things off , and I can never get it to be a useful and enjoyable system. Linux is developer-centric. They run the show, not users. Linux developers have nothing tangible to gain by slavishly catering to user desires. As it turns out, Gnome Shell works for me and corrects the annoyances I found always present in Gnome 2.

Bottom line: You, like so many others, are attacking Gnome 3 because it is not Gnome 2. Of course, it does not work like Gnome 2, and of course you cannot tweak it to really work like Gnome 2. Nor can you tweak a year-old-VW Beetle to function like a Toyota. Gnome 2 is dead.

Some of us like it for that. Get over it. We are discussing software. I already showed you are wrong. Proof; Linux. If the Gnome devs or rather designers, why the heck do designers decide about functionality??? Maybe I did. What do you think is the reason for this massive fragmentation? The high quality and statistfaction of users with the highly tolerable Gnome 3, that breaks every customisation intentionally extensions, themes with every new minor version upgrade again and a gain and again just to make sure that Gnome again looks as designed by these brand identitiy freaks?

In any case, GNOME3 is one of the most extensible note: extensible instead of configurable DE out there: the customization opportunities offered by the extension system in the Shell are quite unmatched.

Jeannie — Mere existence of extensions does not make something a bug. It only means that peopel want to add features. A bug is something that makes a program not run right. Dave I recall the same brouhaha when KDE switched from version 3 to 4.

It was so bad for so long that I no longer consider using KDE. You could look up the Trinity Desktop and see that I am not alone with my disgust at the new paradigm switch that KDE took. For those of us that want a full featured Desktop with a proven workflow model on Linux where do we look? Now both are experimental DEs. Eric — My only point wiht bringing that up was that it happened, very much like the way people are grumping about the changes introduced in Gnome3.

If you leave the definition of a bug to a developer, we could always say they are features, not bugs. Yes, the user is important.

Without us, there is no point to writing the program. In our particular case, wiht Gnome, we point out the unexpected behaviour that we believe is a bug; and the programmers reply as to whether it is or not. There are cretainly programmers who are enough of a jerk to igonre the users, and try to say there are no bugs, just undocumented features…. Dave So what was your point? Great, I want good defaults too.

But then all the configuration options are unsupported, beta extensions that break with an upgrade. How is that better than a checkbox? Rember the whole lwn. Honestly, the words arrogant assholes is what comes to my mind.

Why not just use Mint, or some of the other DE spin offs? I might jump to it later but frankly it is a bit too minimalist for me. Cinnamon will get a look this summer. While my wife would probably find XFCE acceptable, it is not the easiest sell for the household computer. Kelsey Judson So what do you suggest for a full featured proven desktop model on Linux? Or am I permanently banned to Windows? Clearly GNOME 3 is problematic with a large portion of Linux users and some former Linux users unhappy with its direction and not content with the remaining choices.

Matthew J. Sure, that would be cool. Are you really trying to tell me that the command-line is not ideal for advanced users? Hello, scripts? Now sure, the minimalistic approach to many of the apps might not suit everyone. In which case, use another Linux or switch DEs entirely. That applies to nearly everything in life too.

You can design for a wide audience sure, but never for everyone. I highly doubt at this point if there were not a significant number of us that the project would still be following the same course. Facts are facts. You have every right to be annoyed, but whining incessantly solves nothing. Move on. They are going a revolutionary and fast journey to compete with them. So there is no wrong with breaking theme and etc because still it is not fully completed.

Some of users are blaming about GNOME 3 developers about giving more priority for designers to define functionality. Design is how it works. You mentioned Trinity yourself though, so what is wrong with that? Have you tried MATE? Linux has grown 2. Blogs, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Gnome Classic is Gnome 3, and it makes sense that RHEL would choose it given their target audience which is not desktop users 5. There are those with genuine complaints, but judging by the amount of misinformation particularly around the idea that Gnome Shell is predominantly a tablet interface lead me to believe that there are just as many who are not speaking from first hand experience as a day to day user, and never truly gave Gnome Shell a chance in the first place.

In fact, technically it means very little at all. Only the future will tell for sure whether Gnome has made a good or bad choice. Any claim to the contrary is premature. But given forks such as MATE, the actual impact is a little overblown. Dumindu: I agree. I can use much of the software I used on Linux. Absolutely fantastic.

Make sure you disable the file indexing though, a good performance upgrade to be had. I have tried Gnome 3. I have found 3. So I geuss we agree at this point? Further proof of that is your attempt to argue for the sake of arguing this very point. I said bugs are found by users; users determine whether something is a bug or not, because a bug is defined as unexpected behavior, and unexpected behavior is determined by the people that do have expectations about the software; the people that use it.

We do agree on who can find a potential bug, unexpected behaviour — that is anyone; users, designers, etc… Where we diverge is on who has the say as to if that particular behaviour is truly a bug, unexpected. Whereas I said those who design a program know what behaviour is unexpected, a bug. I actually really like Gnome 3 controversial, I know , I am on 3. I decided to give Gnome 3 a try again when 3. I find it very fast, pretty and easy to use, sure it takes some time to get used to after Gnome 2 it is a very different UI paradigm.

I recommend using it for a couple of weeks as your primary DE before passing judgement if you are still one the fence. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires.

The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented.

Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice. If you were truly aware, then you were just trolling. I would like you to act as a sales representative and tell a client that the reported a bugs are not bugs, because your developers decided so.

By that rationale the only thing a developer has to do to create bug-free software is decide there are no problems with the software. This was partly addressed by moving to sysfs….. Contgrats, you got me to write a reply, even though I said I would not.

I have been discussing the topic with you; and how things tha tyou say are bugs, just may not be. I never said that. I said I would do that if you keep your trolling and red herrings, which you demonstrably did. On that topic not so long ago sd? Learning new interfaces takes effort and gets in the way of doing what you really want.

The main reason users want configurability is so they can change things to what they are used to… to change it back to how it was before. Donovan Baarda: Thank you. With apologies to Artemus Ward for the paraphrase, people who like that sort of thing are clearly finding that Gnome 3 is the sort of thing that they like.

What Gnome 3 is awful at being is a credible replacement for its predecessor, a widely-used, well-accepted, well-understood and perfectly serviceable DE about which the worst thing I ever heard said was that its underpinnings were getting old and unwieldy—a problem that could have easily been addressed without a wholesale change to the user interface paradigm.