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Made of Easy: The Gnome desktop upgrades to Version 3 Wed!

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Vanillalite

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Gnome3.org
The Gnome Project
The Gnome Foundation

WHAT IS THE GNOME PROJECT, ANYWAY?

The GNOME Project is an international community which comes together to make great software. GNOME software is Free Software: all our work is free to use, modify and redistribute. Everyone is welcome to participate in its development. See the GNOME About page for more information.

For GNOME 3, the GNOME Project has started from scratch and created a completely new, modern desktop designed for today's users and technologies. Here are some of the things that you can expect from the new GNOME:

overview-bigresizedgz6v.png


SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL

GNOME's new desktop takes elegance to a new level. We've swept away the clutter and made a simple and easy-to-use desktop, and we've made this the most beautiful GNOME desktop ever, with a new visual theme, a refined new font and carefully crafted animations.

AN OVERVIEW AT A GLANCE

The activities view provides an easy way to access all your windows and applications. It is also a great way to keep track of all your activities. We have provided several fast and convenient ways to access the activities view, including the activities keyboard key (often known as the Windows key) and the activities hot corner.

Fewer Interruptions Video

chat-bigresizedn93l.png


MESSAGING BUILT-IN

Communication is an important part of the modern desktop, but it's a hassle when you have to switch windows to reply to a message. That's why GNOME 3 will let you continue your conversations without changing focus. The ability to enter a reply straight into messaging notifications makes instant messaging quick and effortless.

DISTRACTION-FREE COMPUTING

GNOME 3 is designed to reduce distraction and interruption and to put you in control. Our new notifications system subtly presents messages and will save them until you are ready for them, and the GNOME 3 panel has been styled so that it is part of the background, not the foreground. These changes allow you to focus on your creative tasks.

Working With Windows Video

search-bigresizedkapn.png


EVERYTHING AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

With the new GNOME desktop, everything can be quickly accessed from the keyboard. Press the activities key and search: it's as simple as that. You'll love this feature if you're a user who likes things to happen fast.

REDESIGNED SYSTEM SETTINGS

Our system settings have been completely redesigned for GNOME 3, making them easier to use than ever before. GNOME 3 also provides a new way to browse your settings, and our settings categories have been reorganised, making it quick and straightforward to find the setting that you want.

Creating a Workspace Video

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE

GNOME 3 is crammed full of new features. Here are some of the other things that you can look forward to from GNOME 3:

- Side-by-side window tiling to make using several windows simple and easy
- A redesigned file manager
- Redesigned workspaces so you can easily organise your windows
- Major changes under the hood to give you a faster, smoother experience
- A satisfying experience, whatever kind of computer you use: GNOME 3 will feel right at home on netbooks as well as larger machines

OTHER INFO!

RELEASE NOTES!

Gnome 3.0 Release Notes!

HOW DO I GET GNOME 3?

GNOME 3 is scheduled for release on 6th April 2011 and will be available via popular distributions after that time. See the Try It page for more details and for links to a live demos.

TRY IT OUT NOW!

Try It Out! Comes in both a 32bit and 64 bit flavor based to try it out with if you can't wait the 2 odd days + some hours.

LINKS TO STUFF!

DistroWatch - Put the Fun Back in Computing!
Linux.com
Linux Foundation
Linux Distro Noob Thread of Linux Noobs: The Official NeoGaf Linux Thread!
UNetBootin - Handy USB Tool for Win/OSX/Linux to put and run distros direct from your USB!
Linux Live USB Creator tool for Win/Linux to put and run distros direct from your USB!
 
The classic interface is still an option in GNOME 3, right? If it ain't broken don't fix it. That video dude is super fucking creepy.
 
Polari said:
The classic interface is still an option in GNOME 3, right? If it ain't broken don't fix it. That video dude is super fucking creepy.
Click to expand...

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE OLD VERSION OF GNOME?

The GNOME 2 desktop had a long life, and parts of it became difficult to maintain over that period. As a result, continued releases of the entire GNOME 2 desktop was never a practical option for the GNOME Project, and several parts of the old GNOME 2 desktop will not receive new releases after GNOME 3 is released. The traditional GNOME 2 desktop will not disappear overnight, however: releases of GNOME 2 will continue to be supported by distributions for years to come.
 
It looks like they took a lot of inspiration from OS X honestly. I see what looks like Expose and a dock, and Expose fucking rocks.

If those were around for ages before OS X don't slaughter me GAF
 
The_Technomancer said:
It looks like they took a lot of inspiration from OS X honestly. I see what looks like Expose and a dock, and Expose fucking rocks.

If those were around for ages before OS X don't slaughter me GAF
Click to expand...

Honestly many would say Gnome 2 looks a lot like OSX as it is. Just add in say Docky and you can basically simulate OSX as it is now. So it's natural IMO Gnome 3 has similar similarities.
 
gnome sucks, KDE 4 life yo!


Will give it a look when it launches. Gnome 3 VS Unity battle begins!
 
markot said:
Whyd they get rid of min/max >_<?
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See the OSX comparison. They are going for that dock + expose look and figured meh to the min max. That being said they still might be in there depending upon the settings and the distro.
 
I've read the common questions, but I still don't know what the fuck this is, other than it looks beautiful. Skin? Operating System? Is this going to prevent any regular programs I have from running? Do I need to format?

Sorry, I'm ignorant, but very interested!
 
Mr. Snrub said:
I've read the common questions, but I still don't know what the fuck this is, other than it looks beautiful. Skin? Operating System? Is this going to prevent any regular programs I have from running? Do I need to format?

Sorry, I'm ignorant, but very interested!
Click to expand...


Is a desktop for Linux. There are several distributions which are including it already on their beta releases. So basically this + linux is the whole OS.

You can test it on a usb drive with no need for installation here -> http://www.gnome3.org/tryit.html
 
itxaka said:
Is a desktop for Linux. There are several distributions which are including it already on their beta releases. So basically this + linux is the whole OS.

You can test it on a usb drive with no need for installation here -> http://www.gnome3.org/tryit.html
Click to expand...

Yeah good thing about things like this is you can try it on a USB stick without having to actually install it or anything. Then you can just restart and remove your usb stick. Only downside is the OS might not feel as snappy as being natively installed.

Another thing to add is you could always wait for a well known distribution to come out with a new version that has Gnome 3 installed as it's primary desktop interface. I'd highly suggest going with Fedora 15 which is releasing on May 24th!
 
Hey so some thoughts after 15 minutes of use, turns out it's actually not as shit as I had expected. In fact, it's pretty good. Is it ready for primetime? Not quite, but it's definitely not a KDE 4.0 level disaster either. It's a little bereft of settings and could use some polish, but it's definitely a step forward for both the GNOME platform and desktop interfaces in general.

One pleasant surprise was how quick it was running off a USB stick on my lowly Atom-based netbook. I'm sure the Fedora team deserve to share some of the credit, but overall it was slick, fast and stable.

Unfortunately the interface scaled weirdly to my 10-inch netbook display making it pretty uncomfortable to use. Many of the elements seem far too large and it makes what should be a very efficient interface for smaller screens far too unwieldy. I couldn't find any settings that would relate to this, theming or fonts although I hope they're in there somewhere.

More disappointingly on my desktop the display was completely corrupted and unusable. I'm guessing the proprietary nVidia drivers would fix this, but I expected GNOME to resort to some kind of fallback to make it at least usable.

All in all it seems to be a promising start. I think I'll upgrade on my desktop (driver issues pending), but wait until at least 3.2 on the netbook. It's a shame Ubuntu seem to be set on their Unity malarkey.
 
I dunno if I like what I see... But it's gotta be better than Unity...

Any word on if there will be a GNOME-based split of Ubuntu eventually? I know both GNOME and Unity are included now, but that can't be the case forever. Will we see Gubuntu down the line?

@Polari, what did you think were the problems with KDE 4?
 
Hitokage said:
KDE 4.0 wasn't a finished product and the KDE devs even admitted as much.
Click to expand...

Ah, I figured there was something philosophically wrong with the release.
 
Hitokage said:
That, and being a huge step back from the incredible KDE 3.5.
Click to expand...

Care to explain? I love learning why people like and dislike certain interfaces.
 
Ubuntu still uses Gnome it just uses Unity in replacement for Gnome Shell. Confusing as fuck I know.

PS: KDE 4 was buggy and not ready for primetime, but unlike many I found the general idea to be a step forward. It just needed another 6 months to get the features and bug testing down pat.
 
Andrex said:
I dunno if I like what I see... But it's gotta be better than Unity...

Any word on if there will be a GNOME-based split of Ubuntu eventually? I know both GNOME and Unity are included now, but that can't be the case forever. Will we see Gubuntu down the line?

@Polari, what did you think were the problems with KDE 4?
Click to expand...

I encourage to check out the Fedora live image, I was really skeptical but it's actually surprisingly decent.

I'd bet on a GNOME Ubuntu split by 11.10. Seeing as there is KDE, XFCE, LXDE variants, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine someone doing it.

KDE 4.0 was a half-baked release. They had already seen the release date slip so much they just pushed what they had out the door even though it was beta quality at best. In retrospect it probably made sense in terms of focussing development efforts, but it came at a marketing cost.

Hitokage said:
Because of a random decision in a random email. I'm not joking.
Click to expand...

In practice it's not really a big deal. Maximise is still there, it's just a matter of dragging the window to the top of the screen. I'm more peeved about making "Shut Down" rely on a modifier key. To me that's just fucking cuckoo and I expect it to be changed by 2.32. I can't remember whether they ever backed down on the spatial navigation in Nautilus or not since I haven't used stock GNOME for a long time. At least there was some rationale for that, no matter how flawed it might have been.
 
ghostofsparta said:
Im a typical Ubuntu noob >.<

What does this mean to me as an Ubuntu user?
Click to expand...

Nothing you will be using Ubuntu Unity instead - there will be a way to install gnome 3 on ubuntu when it is released.


Is there a way to switch between windows quickly, like the old task bar? Or is it always a 2 click affair, 1 click to bring up window list another click to select.
 
colinisation said:
Nothing you will be using Ubuntu Unity instead - there will be a way to install gnome 3 on ubuntu when it is released.


Is there a way to switch between windows quickly, like the old task bar? Or is it always a 2 click affair, 1 click to bring up window list another click to select.
Click to expand...

Alt-Tab. Also the window list is a hotspot, so you don't technically have to click it.
 
Polari said:
In practice it's not really a big deal. Maximise is still there, it's just a matter of dragging the window to the top of the screen.
Click to expand...
That feature is nice to have, but it's not easily discoverable.
 
itxaka said:
Mark already confirmed that they are dropping gnome support for 11.10.
Click to expand...

Now THAT I didn't know. How does that work anyways? I've always based my thoughts from this quote...

"Unity is a shell for GNOME – it may not be GNOME-Shell but it is a shell for GNOME." Shuttleworth told the audience on the potentially contentious issue of this move being seen as moving away from GNOME.

OMGUbuntu Article
 
itxaka said:
Mark already confirmed that they are dropping gnome support for 11.10.
Click to expand...

GNOME 2.x support. Which isn't really surprising.

Andrex said:
So what does everyone think of Xfce?
Click to expand...

Xfce's a great relatively lightweight desktop. Personally I think they've got a little ambitious and preferred it when it was just a pretty straight and simple CDE clone but I realise that's probably a controversial opinion.
 
yay, i already tried this a few weeks and it was pretty great. hopefully they have fixed the slowdown on the effects.

its basically expose and spaces in one, and has a neat gnome-do style launcher built in, and a really nice way of showing system tray icons and stuff like that.
 
As a NooB: What kind of driver suport and shit should I expect?
I want to UNDERclock my GPU for heat issues and I've had a LOT of difficulty doing it. I imagine ti would be even harder finding somerhing with linux right?
 
Andrex said:
So what does everyone think of Xfce?

And I hadn't heard of LXDE until now.
Click to expand...

XFCE4 was basically GNOME-light when I used it. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it has all the necessary stuff and a couple of other things. I really liked it, but then I went back to gnome on my laptop for some reason.

I use LXDE on my netbook and it's great. It is even more lightweight than XFCE, but still easier to use and setup than something like OpenBOX. It's basically OpenBOX + a panel and a theme manager. There's also the file manager PCManFM which is pretty decent, though I do miss some simple features that I'm used to in Nautilus, like the ability to right click on a bookmark on the left and open it in a new tab. Seems like a simple thing but it can't be done yet. Oh well. Overall I can definitely recommend LXDE if you're on a low-performance computer.

Edit: To be on-topic, I have to say that I'm skeptical of GNOME 3, but I am looking forward to trying it out.
 
I think my biggest block in my mind is I just feel weird using the alternative distro versions. So if I distro is stock gnome that's what I use. If it's stock KDE then that's what I roll with. Since my go to quick small distro is puppy that means I use that not often used JWM (who else uses this but stock puppy? LOL).

Tying this back into Gnome... I'll only really use Gnome 3 if it's the main window manager for a a big distro I'd actually come in contact with. I think that's why the KDE fallout with the initial 4.0 release wasn't a big deal to me because I don't come in contact with many distros that are KDE default. Open Suse is probably the big one, and I haven't really messed with that in a long ass time. I usually just live usb Kubuntu if I want to see the newest version of KDE just for kicks (I know sounds contradictory test running Kubuntu but I never actually install and regularly use alternative distro versions).

Thankfully I won't have a problem with Gnome 3 and my little quirk seeing as Fedora is one of the biggest distros out there, and surprise suprise it's going with Gnome 3 stock. This does leave me to another point and question though.

Does anyone else's feelings about window managers really seem to heavily tie into what you feel about a distro as a whole? I say this because I feel like my feelings on Gnome 3 will be heavily influenced by my feelings on Fedora 15. Considering in reality Gnome 3 really is separate component that can be used with many different distros you'd think I'd independently judge the window manager itself. Yet I know I inevitably won't, and tie my feelings to the distro as a whole.
 
GNOME 2.x support. Which isn't really surprising.
Click to expand...

I meant as in the gnome desktop. There is not gonna be a "Ubuntu Classic Desktop" anymore and you will have to resort to PPAs in order to have gnome 2/3

As fas as I know, they can't drop complete support as lots of applications have hard dependencies which they can't get rid of.
 
It really is beautiful, but I'm not at all sold on some of the features.

In fact, I don't understand how it's even supposed to work, but I've never used OS X which this apparently is a lot like, so maybe the problems I see don't actually exist.

How does Gnome 3 hold up when having 30 windows open instead of the 1-3 in the demos? I need my 5 gedit instances, 2 web browsers, a movie player visible on every desktop, a dozen file manager windows and more. Is this use case possible? Or practical?
 
I'm really interested to see how the desktop ends up looking and feeling once most of the major applications have gnome 3 native versions. I wonder if that'll change much of anything.

Only 20 some odd hours left till release now!
 
pmj said:
It really is beautiful, but I'm not at all sold on some of the features.

In fact, I don't understand how it's even supposed to work, but I've never used OS X which this apparently is a lot like, so maybe the problems I see don't actually exist.

How does Gnome 3 hold up when having 30 windows open instead of the 1-3 in the demos? I need my 5 gedit instances, 2 web browsers, a movie player visible on every desktop, a dozen file manager windows and more. Is this use case possible? Or practical?
Click to expand...

TBH I don't really know how you manage that many windows in GNOME 2. I think you're going to find GNOME 3 more efficient though, as you can actually see an overview of your windows rather than what sounds like it would be a heavily truncated list and new workspaces can be created as you need them. All the standard keyboard shortcuts are still there.

One feature I'd like to see is the ability to search through open windows, for example if I have NeoGAF open in a window, I can just search "NeoGAF" under Windows to bring it up. Zeitgeist should make that possible in 3.2 though, I guess.

Also, GNOME 3 is nothing at all like Mac OS X. They have the dock in common, but that's not even visible in GNOME 3 all the time.
 
Polari said:
TBH I don't really know how you manage that many windows in GNOME 2. I think you're going to find GNOME 3 more efficient though, as you can actually see an overview of your windows rather than what sounds like it would be a heavily truncated list and new workspaces can be created as you need them. All the standard keyboard shortcuts are still there.
Click to expand...
Well, I have five workspaces with predefined uses. I put web browsers on the first one and here also goes a terminal or two, development on the second one, third one is for temporary stuff and more terminals and so on. I know where everything is, and nothing is more than 2 quick clicks away. Since organization of windows is so easy, I see no reason to ever close anything down if I think I might need it at some point.

Creating workspaces on the fly seems like it would lead to you never being sure where your things are, and having to rely on functionality in Gnome to locate things for you. But maybe you can still do in Gnome 3 what I'm doing now in Gnome 2.
 
pmj said:
Well, I have five workspaces with predefined uses. I put web browsers on the first one and here also goes a terminal or two, development on the second one, third one is for temporary stuff and more terminals and so on. I know where everything is, and nothing is more than 2 quick clicks away. Since organization of windows is so easy, I see no reason to ever close anything down if I think I might need it at some point.

Creating workspaces on the fly seems like it would lead to you never being sure where your things are, and having to rely on functionality in Gnome to locate things for you. But maybe you can still do in Gnome 3 what I'm doing now in Gnome 2.
Click to expand...

You can still do that. Whether you're going to find it easier or more difficult with GNOME 3 is something that will come down to personal preference I guess.
 
Zombie James said:
Site's getting hammered...
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I figured as much. I'll download it when I get home later after I hang out with my GF. Hopefully traffic will be slowed down by then!
 
panda21 said:
its basically expose and spaces in one, and has a neat gnome-do style launcher built in, and a really nice way of showing system tray icons and stuff like that.
Click to expand...

And with that I'm excited for it. Had no idea what it was about going by the screenshots, so I wasn't expecting much out of it, but this sounds cool now that I'm hearing more about it. I'll probably check it out later tonight.

edit: Ars has a review up. Haven't had a chance to read it yet though.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/...tm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
 
Brettison said:
I figured as much. I'll download it when I get home later after I hang out with my GF. Hopefully traffic will be slowed down by then!
Click to expand...
stealth brag post?

also this makes me want to install Ubuntu....again.
 
shadowcomplex said:
stealth brag post?
Click to expand...

No more like lame post because I am going over to mow the grass at her place, and kind of want to skip out on doing that. LOL

BTW I updated the OP with the release notes link... Check it out IF you can get it to load.
 
So what's the best distro that's gonna be running Gnome 3? I assume Red Hat.
 
The thing that really annoys me about Gnome (and Gnome 3 apparently) is the enormous buttons & UI elements. Why are they so huge?! Who needs all that whitespace in the buttons? It's an enormous waste of screen estate.

Are there any plans by the Gnome developers regarding this?
 
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