[NCLUG] GNOME 3.x

[Michael Milligan]

On 09/24/2012 12:33 PM, Ben West wrote:
> I have to say that, while there are some maturity problems with gnome3 It's
> much better, now that's it officially released;  before the release, using
> it was a complete hack;

I wasn't intending to bash on gnome-shell (realizing now that it could
have been taken that way), I actually use it on my primary laptop, but
just wanted to give Kerry fair warning that it is still a work in
progress and will require some technical know-how on the users part to
do many kinds of customization, even simple stuff like changing your
mouse focus policy, which requires running dconf-editor and also
gconf-editor to change that setting.

> I'd also like to challenge new users of gnome3 to consider changing their
> basic workflow to something that requires less change to gnome3.  I realize
> I sound like a complete fanboy, but I agree with most of the gnome design
> decisions and find that doing things the 'gnome 3 way' has substantially
> improved my productivity. It's not what I would run in an
> entertainment-oriented situation, but for actually writing prose, code, or
> communication, I find the unobtrusiveness and minimalism refreshingly
> distraction-free.  Adding more widgets and extensions takes away from that
> almost immediately.

I echo this sentiment.  The workflow is much cleaner.  And more and more
extensions keep coming out that make life easier to get functionality
you may want, e.g.,
https://github.com/paradoxxxzero/gnome-shell-system-monitor-applet

However that said, the extension facility, though good in concept, is a
huge problem right now because the Gnome guys keep changing the API and
breaking extensions with each new micro-release.  That's just a bad
practice...  they need to be much nicer to other developers and
encourage extension creation, not discourage it as they are currently
doing.  A lot of really nice extensions that worked under 3.2/3.3 are
broken past 3.4 and have been left to die.  :(

> As far as adding launchers to the desktop, nautilus hasn't substantially
> changed, so doing so follows the long-standing approach of right-click ->
> add launcher -> select a target ->save.

This assumes you've turned on that "have file manager handle desktop"
via the tweak tool...  I don't think it's on by default.

Regards,
Mike