Tom's Hardware Tests and Reviews Fedora 16 and Gnome 3 101
New submitter LordDCLXVI writes with a review at Tom's Hardware that starts out with some loaded questions about GNOME 3, as included in the newest version of Red Hat's Fedora: "While most other distros are passing up or postponing GNOME Shell, Fedora is full steam ahead. Does Red Hat know something the rest of us don't? Or is GNOME 3 really as bad as everyone says?" Writes LordDCLVXI: "This massive article amounts to a full-blown guide to Fedora 16 'Verne' and complete dissection of GNOME Shell. It begins with an installation guide, with instructions for enabling third-party repos, proprietary graphics drivers, Wi-Fi, Flash, Java, multimedia codecs, and 32-bit libs. Next up is a GNOME Shell tear-down, including customization options and methods to 'fix' the Shell or mimic GNOME 2. Finally, Fedora is benchmarked against Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7. [While the author] adds to the voices criticizing GNOME Shell, he also points out that the extensions can empower distributors to create unique, yet compatible layouts. One of the most fair and constructive critiques of GNOME 3 — definitely worth the read, and even makes GNOME 3 worth a second look."
I went with XFCE (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the Ubuntu version of Gnome3 didn't work right because of my AMD/ATI graphics card, I went with the XFCE4 Spin when I installed Fedora. Runs like a champ!
Gnome 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
I see it still sucks, then.
I've honestly never understood why Red Hat would believe that pushing a tablet interface on an OS that's primarily used for servers and corporate desktops makes the slightest amount of sense.
Re:I went with XFCE (Score:5, Interesting)
I use a mix of XFCE and OpenBox. OpenBox and KDE are apparently one of very few desktops these days that can handle 4+ monitors correctly. Even that stock XFCE window manager doesn't work correctly. What a shame.
GNOME 3 can't do it at all. If I load it on my 4 monitor setup (two twinview screens) it gets all screwed up with only half the screen rendering and the rendering is done on the opposite monitors from where the actual mouse clicks are detected. It's seriously broken.
10 years ago this setup worked perfectly. It's sad to see so much software getting worse with age.
Re:I went with XFCE (Score:5, Interesting)
If you liked Gnome 2, then MATE is an obvious choice:
http://mate-desktop.org/ [mate-desktop.org]
It's an active fork of Gnome 2, and is included in the current Mint distribution, though you can get a more recent version from the developers' repository (which also supports Debian and Ubuntu):
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download [mate-desktop.org]
Third party rpms for Fedora 16 are now available too.
Re:Why the keyboard hate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it really that hard to use the keyboard instead?
It's a GUI, dude. If I wanted to be using the keyboard, I'd use a CLI.
And yes, having to move my hands between mouse and keyboard all the time because they've totally fscked up the mouse interface for no good reason would be incredibly annoying.
You see, here's the thing. Changes are supposed to take what we have and... improve it. When you do that, users are happy and start using the new features and few people complain. But all these new GUIs are a big step backward for desktop users, merely to support a tablet market which does not exist. Android and iOS own the tablet market right now, Microsoft might get a small market share, but no-one is going to be pushing Red Hat tablets any time soon.
Re:Gnome 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I went with XFCE (Score:4, Interesting)
Is XFCE the best desktop alternative to gnome3/unity for PCs intended to be used with a mouse and not touchscreen?
Both xfce and KDE would be good choices. Neither Gnome 3 nor Unity is acceptable in their present incarnations.
I've converted our Ubuntu gnome desktops to xfce, with a little customization (preparing for the 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS migration). The laptop has been xfce for a while. From many trials using VMs, my opinion is that Unity is an abomination - nobody in the family likes it - and Gnome 3 sucks on multi-display systems.