[NCLUG] Fedora 17 Gnome 3

[Michael Milligan]

On 11/20/2012 08:12 AM, Mike Loseke wrote:
> Still happily using Gnome3 here. My workflow includes xterms, browsers and
> the ability to easily spread and organize these over a dynamic set of
> workspaces.  I'm glad that there's less desktop manager to get in the way.
> The complete lack of any kind of dock (I disable the dash) or hierarchical
> menuing system (also disabled) is a huge plus for me.
This is the main attraction for me in Gnome Shell is the minimalist
desktop.  I absolutely love the "press Windows key, type first few chars
of app name, hit return to launch it".  For a coder/dev, so much faster
than mousing to (even a one-level) menu.  And similarly, "press Windows
key and mouse click in app to switch to", which is really smooth with
the Native Window placement extension. and it also gives you access to
the multiple workspaces.  The workflow is so clean and fast.  There's
even a sort-of tile feature.

I honestly don't miss apps on my desktop or terminals in drawers.  I
have all my terminals set with their own .desktop files with the name of
the system they ssh to, so all i have to do is type the system name and
launch it.  Faster, simpler.

But the downsides right now keep driving me to look elsewhere.  1)
bloated memory use and leaks that can't seem to be fixed, 2) unstable
extensions API (actually, there really isn't an API), i.e., upgrade
gnome-shell and all your extensions will almost certainly break, 3) just
not very stable, likes to crash at critical moments, 4) hard to find
useful error messages, and 5) my BIGGEST BUGGABOO focus-follows-mouse
(a.k.a. "sloppy" mouse setting via gsettings) does not stick, it will
turn off after some combination of window open/close.  No rhyme or
reason that I've found.

So, YMMV.

Cinnamon keeps drawing my attention because its a quite a bit more
stable but it's based on Gnome3 core so has the memory bloat/leak problem.

Regards,
Mike