Gnome Shell updates for 3.2

[thristian]

Ubuntu switched their default UI from GNOME 2.x to Unity in 11.04, and after trying it out for a while I decided it felt clunky and awkward, so I decided to try out GNOME 3 from the official unofficial PPA - and man, I'm glad I did. The overall feel is just... more polished than Unity, and even more polished than GNOME 2.x. I like being able to bring up the overlay with a keystroke, then start typing the name of the app I want to launch, or browse the virtual desktop list, or pick an app from the dock. The Alt-Tab switcher has a big icon for every app I have open (like OS X), but if the app has multiple windows, they appear in a kind of submenu and I can navigate with the arrow keys to the one I want. I even love the notification system - when an app on another desktop wants the focus, an unobtrusive pop-up appears at the bottom of the screen; if I miss it, I can clink my mouse-cursor to the bottom right to see all the notifications awaiting me.

It took me a while to make it recognise my preferred keybindings, and I've had to resort to poking through gconf-editor and dconf-editor to make it respect my personal preferences, but overall I really like it, and I'm looking forward to seeing where GNOME 3 goes from here.

[jamesgeck0]

Is Gnome 3's system tray still off-limits to 3rd party applications? I like having Dropbox's sync indicator and Tomboy's note list running in the tray, and I'm not sure how that functionality would be replicated in Gnome 3.

[ch0wn]

The one thing I really like about Unity is the ability to switch between the windows with Super + [1-9]. Is there a similar functionality in Gnome 3/Shell?

[yoklov]

I've been using GNOME 3 on Fedora 15 for a while now and I'm pretty pleased with it, that being said, it's far from perfect. There are several interface choices they've made that remove what I would consider obviously desirable functionality and hide it away or remove it outright.

Removing shutdown and restart from the user menu. Sure, if I hold down option or control or whatever the key is those menus appear, and of course I can also open up the shell and 'shutdown -r now' my way to freedom but the point of the menu is convenience, and that's not.

Removing the minimize button from the windows /is/ a gutsy choice, and I do respect them for it as they appear to have a good plan in place, however they do have to understand that if you are using a system with multiple monitors, which in my experience is not uncommon on Linux computers, having multiple workspaces seems redundant. Though, for me only one screen has the workspace change, and I might be more fond of them after that bug has been worked out. ((note: It is possible to bring the minimize and maximize button back, and you always can minimize and maximize by right clicking on the titlebar, but again that's not the point :p))

[hendi_]

Regarding only one monitor switching when changing workspaces: that's intended behaviour, see [1]

You can change that using gconf-editor and setting /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/workspaces_only_on_primary to false.

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/22/multimonitor-support...

[ninwa]

I've been using F15 since it was released and these are both things that had user add-on patches within a week. Finnbarr Murphy is responsible for a great deal of extensions that I use: http://www.fpmurphy.com/gnome-shell-extensions/

[Maskawanian]

> Easier window resizing

Thank goodness! This alone about GNOME Shell has infuriated me more than anything else. I can deal with changes in how to do things (even though I added a window panel back). But this alone was terrible!

[thristian]

Every window manager I've used since WindowMaker back in 1998, including Metacity (GNOME 2), Compiz (Unity) and Mutter (GNOME 3) has supported resizing windows by holding down Alt and dragging anywhere on the window with the right mouse button.

Metacity and Mutter default to resizing with Alt+middle-drag rather than Alt+right-drag, but you can fix that in gconf-editor: "/apps/metacity/general/resize_with_right_button"

[mixmastamyk]

edit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

Then modify:

    <frame_geometry name="frame_geometry_normal" ...>
        <distance name="left_width" value="3"/>
        <distance name="right_width" value="3"/>
        <distance name="bottom_height" value="3"/>

[bergie]

Quite cool, lots of small improvements, and a major shift towards service-orientedness and touch friendliness.

It would be an appealing idea to try GNOME Shell on my ExoPC tablet when 3.2 gets released.

[nedrichards]

I can guarantee that it works pretty well on the ExoPC.

[ignifero]

Thank <insertnamehere> for XFCE.