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GNOME 3 Delayed Until September 2010 419

Posted by Soulskill from the ready-when-it's-ready dept.
supersloshy writes "Contrary to popular opinion, GNOME 3 will not be released in March next year. It has been delayed until September 2010, six months later. According to the news message, this is because 'our community wants GNOME 3.0 to be fully working for users and why we believe September is more appropriate.' GNOME 3's main goal is to re-define the ways people interact with the desktop, mainly through a new UI design (currently called 'GNOME Shell'), while GNOME 2.30, set for release in March, will have a focus on being stable. An early visual tour of GNOME 3 has been posted at Digitizor."
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GNOME 3 Delayed Until September 2010 More

GNOME 3 Delayed Until September 2010

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  • ...this is because...and why... (Score:5, Funny)

    by anglophobe_0 ( 1383785 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:09AM (#30095592)
    for POST in $(cat slashdot); do
    beGrammarNazi $POST
    done

    I couldn't resist.

  • Looks like ice cream, Batman, and football [gnome.org] are the culprits.

  • How can xterm be improved? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SpaghettiPattern ( 609814 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:19AM (#30095628)
    All GUI experiences I had always were some combination of stuff that's around since ages. Artistic freedom in CS is at its best when it is heavily curbed. Hell, saving your document in MS Word has become an art form. Even my Mac, which allegedly comes with the most wonderful GUI on the planet, drives me up the wall. All I want and all we need is Firefox, Eclipse, a terminal and Openoffice and plain and simple menus with it. Anything else just plain and simple. Brothers unite and let's get back to the roots. I say "No more rotating, sliding, enlarging, diminishing menus!" Saving a document is best done using a simple key sequence :w

    • Re:How can xterm be improved? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:24AM (#30095652) Homepage Journal

      Its hard to know when to stop. Windows has been done. This is evidenced by the two most recent versions which don't actually do anything more than XP. It may be the same with gnome. This happens all the time, and not just in software.

      There is always FVWM for me. That will never change.

    • Vista/win7 actually made one seemingly minor but actually huge improvement. They killed the start menu. Though they later killed the quick start toolbar which i put back myself, no idea wtf they were thinking there. Anyways!

      In vista/7 to open Firefox I:
      Click the windows button.
      push the f key
      hit enter.

      For word instead of f i hit wo. Hamachi I hit h. WMP classic I hit c.

      It is so efficient and easy I don't actually need anything within the start menu itself. With explorer notepad++ and FF pinned to the sta

      • Re:How can xterm be improved? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by XanC ( 644172 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:50AM (#30095730)

        You're looking for Yakuake [kde-apps.org]. It's just like Quake: hit the tilde and a command console drops down from the top.

      • Re:How can xterm be improved? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Daniel Weis ( 1209058 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:50AM (#30095736)
        Try GNOME Do [davebsd.com].

        The "Docky" frontend is a fantastic dock experience as well.

      • Re:How can xterm be improved? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @04:26AM (#30096016) Homepage

        Linux needs this

        Most Linux desktop environments have this. The default in Gnome is to use to pop up a run dialogue, that will autocomplete recently used apps. I configured the same thing in openbox, with lxpanel.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by devent ( 1627873 )
        In KDE4 I so exactly the same. Hit the KDE icon, I menu pops up. I enter 'fire' and hit enter. I enter 'wo' and hit enter for OpenOffice.org Word. Linux have this for about 1 year now, since KDE4 came up. What's more convenient, I can setup any hot key I want for any application. For example, Win+W is Firefox, Win+F is file manager, Win+C is calculator and so on. There is more. Hit Alt+F2 and you get the KRunner, which you can use the same way as the menu I described before. And you can use it as a calcul

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by richlv ( 778496 )

        so windows 7 FINALLY implemented alt+f2 launcher from kde and gnome, but the huge improvement was that they made it appear instead of the start menu ? :)
        i've been using launcher for years now, and i completely agree that it is very convenient. but somehow i see this as windows following what was available on linux long time ago, except that they have brought commandline in front of the user as opposed to gui. very simple commandline, but still we get people complaining that "if you have to enter text into s

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by aztracker1 ( 702135 )

          Umn, SUPER+R has been in windows since Win9x iirc. The search box in the start menu is much more functional, as it also searches recent documents, and installed applications. It can be configured for more as well. IMHO Win7 finally does a doc/taskbar right. Though it is a pretty big rip off of OSX and for those that remember, OS/2. The GUI desktop is an evolutionary approach, though ideas can be burrowed from other sources. I think the new Gnome screenshots look a lot like KDE taken to the next level

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ink ( 4325 )

        The Gnome version of that is Gnome Do [davebsd.com], which started as a project to port Quicksilver to Linux. Quicksilver was purchased by Apple and put into OSX 10.3 several years ago. I use Gnome, and I no longer have any sort of task bar or "start menu"; they are pointless wastes of screen real estate. If I want to chat with my buddy Mike, I just hit meta-space, and then type "ch", which auto-completes to "Chat", then I hit tab and type "mi" which auto-completes to Mike. Gnome-Do will then launch Pidgin and open a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jgrahn ( 181062 )

      All I want and all we need is Firefox, Eclipse, a terminal and Openoffice and plain and simple menus with it.

      I don't understand your point ... you seem to argue for simplicity and against bloat, but then you mention Eclipse (which according to people who *like* it regularly needs *gigabytes* of RAM) and Openoffice?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        He wants his GUI to be simple and his apps bloated, rather than the UI to be bloated and the apps simple?

        Most people have an OS to use their apps, rather than as an end to itself. They don't want to spend most of their time tinkering with the O/S - they want to spend their time getting stuff done.

        Nowadays the O/S often gets in the way of doing stuff - with the animations and "cool cutscenes" (which impresses noobs, but just slows things down).

        I've just proposed something to GNOME to make it more efficient (

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jesus_666 ( 702802 )
      1.) Install Gentoo Linux
      2.) USE="-alsa -cups -dbus -gstreamer -kde -gnome -mono -opengl" emerge xfce4-meta firefox terminal openoffice eclipse-sdk

      I am aware that xfce4-meta contains unneccessary cruft but you should be able to deal with it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bazer ( 760541 )
      Hear, hear. Since I've replaced metacity with a simple tiling manager (xmonad) and stuck to one application per workspace, I have one thing less on my mind: arranging the freaking windows in the first place. This has the added benefit of maximizing screen real-estate for each application and every running app is two keystrokes away (Alt + workspace number). It takes some time to get adapt but it's worth it. The manager is a little rough around the edges (for example doesn't work well with GIMP) since it's s

  • WTH (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Idiomatick ( 976696 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:19AM (#30095630)
    Gnome3 looks unusable anyways, delay it forever. Go through the early tour and tell me that is more usable. I've no idea wtf they were thinking.

    Lose the ability to 1click to open aps. Clock takes a huge chunk of real estate. The aps button is needlessly large and boring text. Opening a common folder takes more time now. This is just my first look at it but still wtf...
    • Showing what ap you are currently using is not fucking useful at all.
      Being able to view all desktops at once while useful is a minor change and could be accessed through a button... like holding alt while dragging a window or some shit.

    • Feel Like I've Been Punched In The Stomach (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "Gnome3 looks unusable anyways"

      I just switched to Ubuntu 9.10 it has been ok. Very rough, buggy, and unpolished compared to Windows but I really wanted to soldier on.

      Seeing this Gnome 3 garbage just makes me want to throw my hands up and go right back to Windows.

      Something is very, very wrong with the Gnome developers to have them honestly thinking this fiasco of an effort is going to attract anyone but the most diehard of existing Linux users.

      Grow the fuck Gnome devs. No one wants yet another retarded attem

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by fnj ( 64210 )

        Yep. Gnome 3 is a mental disorder. It's what happens when you spend all your time dreaming about how to come up with a new UI paradigm when there is already a highly satisfactory, perfectly usable, and well accepted paradigm that has stood the test of time, and that no one is complaining about. It is new for the sake of new. Kde 4 was much the same thing, but at least they optimized their infrastructure and cleaned up some rough edges in the process (while hopelessly screwing up some basic stuff).

        Despai

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mR.bRiGhTsId3 ( 1196765 )
          KDE also now has the advantage of being able to more or less replicate the "Traditionalist" desktop paradigm. I'm not convinced that will be the case with Gnome 3 from the screenshots I've seen. Big oops.

      • I just switched to Ubuntu 9.10 it has been ok. Very rough, buggy, and unpolished compared to Windows but I really wanted to soldier on.

        Gnome is just fine -- certainly better than Windows Vusta/7. Just switch to any other theme/color scheme.

    • Re:WTH (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Clovert Agent ( 87154 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:07AM (#30095794)

      Some of it's just a big mental jump, and I think I could get used to it, especially if some of the appearance and behaviour can be customised.

      One thing grabbed me right away, though. The idea of slightly minimising the desktop while I'm working with the menu is interesting. But in the examples, look how every item in the menu is truncated. It's all "Home..." and "OpenO..." and "Docu..."

      That alone would drive me crazy. If nothing fits in your menus, then your menus are badly designed. If there isn't a option to show just a list, instead of a grid of too-large icons with ellipses everywhere, it's definitely a no for me. Might seem trivial, but I'm going to be looking at that annoyance a LOT.

      • Well TBH i think the truncated names will be fixed it is quite beta... but the idea of having my whole desktop contort when I go to change between aps or open something or look for something or... looks annoying as hell. It'd probably be less annoying if the whole screen went black. If I'm opening something from the menu I don't know why I'd even need to see my desktop...

    • Re:WTH (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BikeHelmet ( 1437881 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:22AM (#30095842) Journal

      I respect that they're aiming for stability (quite different from what KDE did), but I'm not sure I like the direction their UI is going. I'll probably hop to KDE or LXDE.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        KDE feels largely like a shadow of its former self at this point.

        Back in the 3.x series, KDE was my favorite desktop environment. It was fast, intuitive, and entirely configurable. I preferred it gnome at that point. It just seemed better developed.

        Then 4.0 was released. What a disaster. It had fewer features than the 3.x series, and was filled with significantly more bugs. Even things like the desktop were broken - all for the sake of a few cool-looking but generally not that important desktop widgets. The

      • Re:WTH (Score:5, Funny)

        by Rhapsody Scarlet ( 1139063 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @07:04AM (#30096550) Homepage

        I respect that they're aiming for stability (quite different from what KDE did), but I'm not sure I like the direction their UI is going. I'll probably hop to KDE or LXDE.

        So it's finally happened. After months of "I hate where KDE is going with KDE 4, I'm switching to GNOME!", now it's GNOME that's making unpopular changes and people are saying "I hate where GNOME is going with GNOME 3, I'm switching to KDE!".

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by celle ( 906675 )

          "...people are saying "I hate where GNOME is going with GNOME 3, I'm switching to KDE!"."

          I've actually dumped them both and gone back to twm.

    • Damned if they do, damned if they don't, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:40AM (#30095894) Homepage

      Maybe they're trying to innovate and do something new and different. I don't share your doubts but if I did, I would rather give them the benefit of any doubt then criticize before I had even tried the software. It seems to me that they're in a tough spot: do what UIs have been doing for a long time and get accused of copying rather than doing something new, or do something new and get bad word from people who reject the free software out of hand at their "first look".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      It appears they are trying to unify everything into a more task centric "start menu" like experience. This in itself is not a bad thing as Windows and particularly Windows 7 have used a start menu for ages and it is a fairly well understood concept. It also works very well in W7 when combined with Aero preview panes and suchlike. GNOME has used two bars in the past (one at the top and one at the bottom) to accomplish the same and there really isn't any need to. The question is whether they are going to rele
      • Start menu in windows 7 is a button you hit to bring up the text box where you type in the first 2 letters of whatever app you need. Since I've switched to win7 I haven't really used the actual start menu itself more than a handful of times.

        Also windows7 moves away from the startbar, it has a mac like launcherbar thing and Quick launch... plus you can add your own toolbars.
        Also it still has the currently open apps displayed on the screen... not in a start bar.

        And it is bad, you add a click and time to ev

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DrXym ( 126579 )
          Windows has had the ability to add bars for years, including a shortcut bar. I used to have icons for my most commonly used apps sitting next to the start menu. In W7, they've improved the task bar so you can pin shortcuts directly to it. You can still do it the old way but the new way is working out quite well for me so far. The behaviour is somewhat similar to the dock in OS X, but it's also an evolution of what came before.

          Importantly, it doesn't break the old functionality. I can see what apps (at lea

    • Re:WTH (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fnj ( 64210 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @05:18AM (#30096184)

      Oh, for Pete's sake. That's unbelievably lame. If you lose single-click-to-open capability, then it's a huge step backward and a crock. Double click is an abomination. It BARELY had some feeble justification when there was only a single mouse button, but it's a complete crock in the real world of 2 or more buttons.

      If it takes even longer to open a folder than current Gnome, that's just unacceptable. Compare navigating folders containing thousands of files using the Gnome file-open dialog now, against the Kde file-open dialog. It's night and day. The Kde version is faster when you first hit such a folder, and then it caches the contents and is blazing fast after that. Night and day.

      Time to branch at 2.28 and maintain a sane alternative.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by teg ( 97890 )

        That's unbelievably lame. If you lose single-click-to-open capability, then it's a huge step backward and a crock. Double click is an abomination. It BARELY had some feeble justification when there was only a single mouse button, but it's a complete crock in the real world of 2 or more buttons.

        I would argue that consistency - both with itself, but also with other common GUIs (Windows, Mac) - is one of the most important properties of a desktop environment. Maybe the most important one. Single click is co

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fnj ( 64210 )

          I understand your concern with consistency. I'm a big consistency proponent. I actually think consistency argues _against_ double-click.

          I think it's been over 10 years since I set up any Windows or Linux computer withOUT single-click-to-open, going back to NT 4.0. If you watch new users try to understand the rationale for double click, and try to master the operation (it's really unnecessarily demanding of manual dexterity), you will perhaps come to see it as both senseless and weird. You don't double-c

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        Double click is perfectly justifiable. Accidentally single clicking on an app is far more costly and annoying than clicking on a hyper link. Inadvertantly clicking on something like OpenOffice, Eclipse or whatever might waste a minute waiting for the bloody thing to start in order to shut down again.

  • GNOME Shell == Clusterfuck (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:19AM (#30095632)

    Do we laugh or cry? It's like KDE and Gnome are in some sort of frantic struggle for who can botch desktop Linux the most.

    I hope some commercial company like Google puts grownups to work like they did with Android on some replacement for these two basketcase projects.

    • Re:GNOME Shell == Clusterfuck (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14, 2009 @04:48AM (#30096104)

      It is a major ongoing failure. The problem with relying on people that are motivated by their inspiration is that you tend not to get "normal." You have to pay people to work on "normal". Refining and polishing is not fun. Inventing your own bespoke miracle from whole cloth and taking it no more than 10% of the way to functional before you lose interest and wander off is infinitely more fun.

      There are some amazing products among the Gnome and KDE collections. Amarok, kate, konsole, k3b, etc. Individually these are nice programs.

      KDE 4 is and ongoing failure. I haven't bothered to get my hands on 4.3 yet because 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 killed all hope. They haven't had the 5 years it's going to take to fix what's wrong with 4.x. I'm sticking with 3.5.x until that interval has passed.

      Gnome is still plagued by Nautilus [1]. Dolphin appears to have a point, although pursuing it at the expense of a real file manager is another fail. The vast collection of background services sucking down hundreds of MB of RAM doing who the hell knows what is also on-going and ever worsening problem.

      Both systems pollute home directories with vast file hierarchies hidden in dot-file directories making a shared NFS home a practical impossibility. You'd think they were being paid by the dot-file. No one in either group seems to realize why this isn't desirable. It doesn't even occur to them that it might not be!

      [1] Just boot XP and clone Windows Explorer, mkay...? A badly done clone of Explorer would trump anything Gnome/KDE has produced to date wrt file management. And remember kids, detail/list view is, if not pretty, absolutely fucking critical; alphabets replaced pictographs for a reason.

      • Gnome is still plagued by Nautilus

        I have changed default directory browser application to Thunar, and changed file manager in "mandatory" applications to /bin/false. If I want to see desktop icons (that I usually don't) I add xfdesktop to the session.

        It looks like Dolphin may be a better (though fatter than Thunar) file manager for Gnome.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mat128 ( 735121 )

        And let us use the contextual menu (right click) in list view even if it's loaded with items! I hate going back to icons view just to be able to right click to create a folder!!

    • Re:GNOME Shell == Clusterfuck (Score:5, Insightful)

      by QCompson ( 675963 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @06:50AM (#30096484)
      So true... both desktop environments are missing the point. You have misguided ego-hounds like Aaron Seigo chasing after some elusive new "desktop paradigm" which no one has asked for nor wants.

      The formula for a popular successful desktop is so simple: something fully integrated with all options available via menus (program launching, suspend/hibernate, screensaver, etc), and something fast and stable. Very few everyday users care about some translucent twitter widget on the desktop. They want a platform to launch applications from that is simple, fast and stable. That should be priority number one.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mpyne ( 1222984 )

        So true... both desktop environments are missing the point. You have misguided ego-hounds like Aaron Seigo chasing after some elusive new "desktop paradigm" which no one has asked for nor wants.

        Except that people have asked for and do want it. Do you really think Plasma appeared out of thin air (or fully-formed from Aaron's over-active imagination)? The answer is no. When Aaron took over maintainership of KDE 3's kicker application one of the most popular third-party KDE programs was one called SuperKaramba, which added widgets to your desktop, similar to other third-party programs for Mac and Windows.

        What Aaron "innovated" was that there's no reason that you don't have to have two processes to

  • New Gnome? (Score:4, Informative)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:20AM (#30095638) Homepage Journal

    80% percent of the tour looks like stuff in the current gnome. I mean we already have a NetworkManager and you already get a calendar when you click on the clock.

    Virtual desktops get more recognition. The UI is more modal and Mac like. So what if their default configuration has just the one panel? Thats how I configure it anyway.

  • Problems on the horizon for Gnome 3! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Akir ( 878284 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:21AM (#30095640)

    Yeah, lots of people will be in an uproar! There are millions of problems with Gnome 3! For starters, it won't be enough like KDE 3, so everyone will think it's broken when there's really no problems with it!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pmontra ( 738736 )
      Why should they care about people using KDE? They should care about people using Gnome 2. I for once really don't know how KDE 3 looks like. Maybe a little like Windows but I'm not sure the screenshots I show where really KDE 3 (or 4 or something else). I'll search youtube.
  • Until then the Gnome developers can just keep using their Apple laptops running OS X, as that seems to be all they ever to write about. Makes me wonder if they even use Gnome. In the meantime, I'll be sticking to Fluxbox. While they keep making things for Joe Average (who won't use Linux).

  • and they sure didn't fix it.

  • Glad it's delayed. It's rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thaig ( 415462 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:05AM (#30095780) Homepage

    This isn't what I'm missing in Gnome. I'm missing desktop sharing and conferencing software like Livemeeting. I'm also missing some ease-of-use dealing with very simple things like cutting and pasting a link to a windows share and using it to look at a remote directory without having to edit all the slashes.

    Instead, some *person* for want of a better word, thinks I need to have yet another new way to select the same applications, wants to "improve" (i.e. remove the choice from) the task list to be *more* application-centric (so retrograde it's laughable).. What a waste of time. What about an Object-Oriented or task-oriented desktop? How about some *actual* innovation? Being force-fed this kind of thing is pretty unpleasant;.

    • Re:Glad it's delayed. It's rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rocketpants ( 1095431 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:26AM (#30095866)

      Being force-fed this kind of thing is pretty unpleasant

      If the was Microsoft, and you didn't know better, then perhaps it's fair to say you are being "force fed" this change. However, this is OSS, and nobody is forcing you to use Gnome Shell. You have options: stick with Gnome 2.x, use XFCE, KDE or any of the other window managers available. Just stop whinging about how you don't like it.

    • Re:Glad it's delayed. It's rubbish. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vagabond_gr ( 762469 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @04:04AM (#30095960)

      I'm also missing some ease-of-use dealing with very simple things like cutting and pasting a link to a windows share and using it to look at a remote directory without having to edit all the slashes.

      If gnome (and linux in general) wants to escape the geek-in-a-basement marketshare, it has to focus on the average non-tech user. And no, pasting a link to a windows share is not what this user does.

      Instead, this user is interested in finding "that god-damn file" that he saved somewhere yesterday morning and has no idea where it is. He doesn't organize his files, he doesn't care about file hierarchies, he just wants his file. He also wants to easily find that openoffice window that got lost in the 20 windows he opened and never closed in the last hour. Believe it or not, no desktop environment makes it really easy to do such basic stuff.

      IMHO Gnome Shell and Zeitgeist [gnome.org] is a step in the right direction for the average user.

      • Re:Glad it's delayed. It's rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Arker ( 91948 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @04:45AM (#30096096) Homepage

        Make a system any idiot can use and only idiots will use it.

      • So you are saying to the non geek modifying links to support windows instead of linux is easier than just pasting it? Do tell...

      • Re:Glad it's delayed. It's rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by u38cg ( 607297 ) <calum@callingthetune.co.uk> on Saturday November 14, 2009 @05:46AM (#30096264) Homepage
        I'm yet to be convinced that that is the correct approach. Users should learn to save their god-damned files somewhere sensible so they can actually find them again, and close windows when they're done with them. This isn't a technical user, this is a user with a clue, for goodness sakes. If you're so dumb you can't learn the concepts behind these tasks, I really do wonder whether you are suited to the operation of a Turing machine.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Stormwatch ( 703920 )

        He doesn't organize his files, he doesn't care about file hierarchies, he just wants his file.

        Gawd, the hell. I want a system that forces the user to organize his stuff. I'm sick of seeing desktops so cluttered with icons that there's no room for anything else. I wouldn't mind shoving that Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface down their throats. I mean, I make my desktop a mess too, but I clean up my shit eventually. Tons of people (like my sis) simply DON'T, EVER. EVERYTHING GOES ON THE DESKTOP. That's ridiculo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by moreati ( 119629 )

      I'm missing desktop sharing and conferencing software like Livemeeting. I'm also missing some ease-of-use dealing with very simple things like cutting and pasting a link to a windows share and using it to look at a remote directory without having to edit all the slashes.

      Regarding desktop sharing, are you aware of the newer features in Empathy? It can do video/voice and desktop sharing (for xmmp at least).I believe (like Livemeeting), both end would need to have Empathy installed.

      Regarding the link clicking,

    • I wish there was a split-mod, because I'd love to mod the first half of the post insightful or informative and the second half Troll.

  • Not going to comment about the actual product... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by asaz989 ( 901134 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:26AM (#30095862)

    ...but from an Ubuntu scheduling perspective this sounds like good news. The last thing Ubuntu needs for its next LTS release (10.04) is a big new jump to GNOME 3. It'll be nice to have an LTS that will let less bleeding-edge users wait until GNOME 3 has a year and a half of polish, integration, and (most importantly) actual user feedback to upgrade, while still retaining full support

    Plus, it'll be just plain interesting to see how Mark Shuttleworth reacts to this frankly rather iffy-looking overhaul. (Oh well, so much for not commenting about it.) Although let's be nice - the screenshots in the link seem to be design mockups, while in the actual screencasts they seem to have solved the billions-of-elipses problem.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bob54321 ( 911744 )
      My first reaction when I saw this news was that it was delayed specifically for the Ubuntu LTS release. Probably just a coincidence though, but everybody likes a good conspiracy theory.

  • just kill gnome 3, please (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mister Blonde ( 589948 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:49AM (#30095932) Homepage
    Lack of taskbar makes it unusable.. Ubuntu remix way is so much better than this.. so gnome people.. please stop working on useless stuff like gnome 3. I was considering giving some money to the foundation but when i see where they're heading to.. no thanks.
  • What GNOME really needs (in my mind): * better dual screen support * customizable virtual desktops (different layouts for work, entertainment etc) - would be cool if the second display could be one virtual desktop * fixed theme management (everything should be configured from one place) * "run as root" in the menu under right mouse click * "open terminal in current location" * better drag&drop * better networking configuration (usb and bluetooth modems) - like to see why something isn't working.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by westyvw ( 653833 )
      I have many problems with gnome as well, but several of the things you mentioned are available now. But the menus do need to be more configurable. I am annoyed that everything has to be so damn big. And they could use to get single clicking right, which only KDE ever pulled of effectively.
    • I think all of these are good ideas!
      Also ... related to ""run as root" in the menu under right mouse click" I think it'd be nice if when you tried to do something that needed root but you weren't root it should popup asking for your password ALL THE TIME... It does it for some things atm but not everything. I've no idea why that isn't more normalized.

  • Well at Least... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by coaxial ( 28297 )

    it looks like GNOME is now copying MacOSX instead of Windows *eye roll*.

    At least now their copying something that at least works, but still, they're copying, and thus ensuring that they are always playing catchup, and creating an inferior product. This is not a new problem, and has been talked about repeated on /. 2005 [slashdot.org], 2006 [slashdot.org], and even last June [slashdot.org]. With the notable exception of Firefox, there hasn't been anything original, innovative, and well good from the F/OSS community, which is very disturbing.

    Hell, rea

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by howlingmadhowie ( 943150 )
      i thought wave is foss. you don't stop developing foss just because you work for a company.

    • it looks like GNOME is now copying MacOSX instead of Windows *eye roll*.

      Now copying? How long do you think the current ordering of Cancel/OK buttons in GNOME had been there for?

    • Tons of unique things come from the FOSS ppl ... they just don't make it mainstream until other people have it. BTW try running KDE and you'll see a shit ton of next 5 years stuff. Some of it might catch on some won't but a lot of it is new and innovative.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leereyno ( 32197 )

      Actually some of us WANT them to copy Windows.

      Macs have their followers, but over 90% of computer users run Windows. You sit the average person down in front of a computer and they are going to expect it to follow the Windows UI conventions.

      I'm not a Gnome user. I use KDE. I do this precisely because it has always followed the windows UI conventions.

      If the Mac fanboys in the Gnome project want to copy the Mac, then they should so in such a way that this behavior can be chosen by the user.

      Gnome should hav

  • Reading about Gnome Shell reminded me somewhat of what the Enlightenment guys were going after with E17, quite a few years ago.

    Of course Raster et. al. would work for a while and then decide to start again from scratch, what, three times at least with E17? So maybe Gnome 3 will get there first...

  • Please fix the window manager (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @04:41AM (#30096082) Homepage Journal
    • I have two applications A and B in different workspaces
    • Drag app A to the same workspace as app B
    • Workspace shows B
    • Click on A in the task bar (window list)
    • Application A minimises. I expect it to come to the front.
  • I used to like KDE 3.5 more than Gnome. Now I like Gnome more than KDE 4, because all handy things of the desktop are lost with KDE 4's new way. And now Gnome is also going that route? NOOOOO!

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @05:51AM (#30096282)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Stop fucking with the interface (Score:5, Insightful)

    by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @06:31AM (#30096406) Homepage Journal

    Imagine you were looking to buy a new car. Going to a dealership, you are presented with a sedan that is marketed as "redefining the way drivers interact with their automobile." Getting behind the wheel, you discover that standard conventions like the steering wheel, turn indicator, gear shift, accelerator and brake pedals have all been replaced with New and Improved devices that the salesman assures you are so much Better.

    Would you buy the damned thing?

    I'm sick and tired of coders who pretend they are cognitive psychologists or ergonomics experts.

    Just implement a standard GUI using normal conventions. Anything more and people like me will either find ways to turn the bullshit off, or we'll avoid using your product.

    Microsoft is about to learn this the hard way with their new bullshit replacement for the task bar.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DMiax ( 915735 )

      I'm sick and tired of coders who pretend they are cognitive psychologists or ergonomics experts.

      And I'm sick and tired of idiots that tell coders to do something so-and-so because they know oh-so-much-better.

      I'm not even a GNOME user, but even KDE got this crap, with morons telling how stupid and idiotic every developer is. Guess what: there are real usability experts in both projects. Not many however, so if you want they will be happy to get some help in testing. Use their bugzilla or mailing list, get in touch with them and do something.

      You will also have to explain what is a standard GUI with norm

      • Re:Stop fucking with the interface (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @12:31PM (#30098860) Homepage Journal

        Not only that, but this supposedly "fucking with the interface" doesn't actually happen. In KDE4, you still close windows by single-clicking the small [x] up in the right corner of the window, you still open apps by clicking icons in a menu, you can still put files on your desktop. Yet, you have masses of assclown know-it-alls like the GP who will complain that everything is ruined, because, oh -- they never really say, they just whine, whine, whine.

  • Commendable, but (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pmontra ( 738736 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @06:50AM (#30096482) Homepage

    The idea of designing a new approach to the desktop is commendable and shows one of the advantages of open source. If people doesn't like it they can switch to other alternatives. The idea of making it work well is also a positive innovation on some well established practices of both the FOSS and proprietary camps.

    However there are for sure some strange things in this Gnome Shell.

    • The absence of the task bar will puzzle a lot of people used to it since Windows 95 (but I had no problems working without it on X Terminals before then) so removing it is a very bold and risky decision.
    • I cannot understand why the clock is so important to be in the middle of the top bar. Considering how many times one needs to know the time and how many times one needs to do something else, hiding it into a corner looks just right. Maybe there is a need to fill the top bar after having removed all the open application icons/names from it. It surely has to look bare and empty.
    • I also don't understand why is so important to show the name of the current application. Another way to fill all that empty space in the bar? But it if is so empty maybe the right thing to do is to remove it and leave only an Activities button to the left and the icons and clock to the right. That leaves more useful space for the applications and vertical space is always precious.
    • Some people will really get sick when the screen moves so much every time they open the menu. This interface may be not for everybody.
    • The Plus button to add new desktops uses up so much space (it takes a whole bottom bar with it) that it hints that a lot of people actually use multiple desktops. I do, but are they really so popular?

    On the positive side, the large Activities menu could be very useful on the forthcoming generation of touchscreen computers because it provides a larger target for fingers than the menu items we have now. It reminds me a lot of the interfaces used by some Linux distributions for netbooks it is seems good. Maybe it's not so handy for computers that only have a mouse (too much travel).

    Finally I hope that the top bar can be moved to the bottom because I just hate top bars. They are placed right where my eyes look by default but they are the less important piece of information on the screen. Apple made it totally wrong IMHO and MS improved their design, maybe the only time they did it.

    So, I'll be using Gnome Shell in its present form? Maybe I'll give a try but I bet I'll soon switch to something else, back to Gnome 2 if I can. Other desktops I so for Linux look to much like Windows, something that cannot be good considering all the years I had to use it and never liked the way it worked.

  • NO JOHN RINGO NO. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <peter@NOsPAm.slashdot.2006.taronga.com> on Saturday November 14, 2009 @08:58AM (#30097088) Homepage Journal

    I'm seeing this kind of "MMO style" user interface more and more, where the desktop becomes more and more obscured by locked down immovable user interface elements. I've gotten used to the task bar on Windows and the Menu Bar on the Mac and the Panel, I can deal with that, there's one box and it's pretty small and I can stuff everything into it... but Microsoft keeps turning menus into big obtrusive blocks (ribbons and sidebars and the start panel and so on) and this new Gnome scheme seems to be putting this horrid scheme on steroids.

    No, no, no, ten thousand times, no.

  • Does not fix the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zoxed ( 676559 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @02:53PM (#30100182) Homepage

    My experience with *inexperienced* users always shows one thing that no Desktop GUI seems to have addressed/solved yet: the User who does not care whether the program they want is already running or not, they just want to use it. At the moment you look to see in one area if, say, you have a web browser already running and if not then you start one. This is one step too many. The User should just have one button to press per app and then the GUI decides whether to simple bring an existing app window to the front, or start the app for the first time. (Some programs play well with multiple startups, others do not.)

  • Stability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ChrisMaple ( 607946 ) on Saturday November 14, 2009 @10:34PM (#30103340)

    I hope they use the extra time to make things stable, organized, configurable and documented. More descriptive tooltips would help, too.
          I recently installed Fedora 11 and in only 3 weeks I've lost the abilty to see the top of the cube, to focus on no windows, to zoom using the scroll wheel, and to bring up a menu by clicking over the desktop. Compiz configuration is hopelessly disorganized. Advice from user forums points to menu entries that don't exist and suggest changes that have no effect.
          On the plus side, gnome has the first edge flip I've ever used that is good enough that I don't turn it off after a few days. Now if they'd only make an option to require an ALT key or button press for edge flip and I'd be a lot happier.
          Also, it crashes occasionally, but I don't know for sure that the fault is with gnome and not firefox or something else.

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