Today’s the 27th of March. Just 10 days to go for the release of the next version of the most popular X Desktop environment: GNOME 3. I decided to give its beta a try, and downloaded and installed the latest versions of GNOME Shell, and other GNOME programs (empathy, nautilus, gnome-control-center, gnome-themes-standard including Adwaita, etc) from the GNOME3 Ubuntu Natty PPA.
A couple of things entered my system, due to some conflicts some other not-so-important things were removed, but the system didn’t break. To get a nice experience, I even changed my wallpaper to the blue lines one which is default in GNOME 3. Then I ran gnome-shell –replace.
The first experience
My first experience: WOW!. I decided at that moment that I’ll never come back to Unity. The GTK theme, the activities view, everything seemed to blend so well, that I thought that this was the end of the GNOME vs KDE war and GNOME vs Unity war. I launched up applications, played around with its workspaces, etc. I liked the new ‘sheet’ way of representing modal dialogs. For one whole hour, I was using GNOME Shell and liking it.
But it all ended there, atleast for me.
Getting productive
Well. GNOME Shell became a bit slow for me. I thought it may be because I had been running the 2GB RAM computer for a long time. I restarted the system and the I opened up my mail account, and got down to my work. I use Thunderbird for my mail work. Apart from TB, I opened up gnome-terminal for some bug-fixing and other stuff. Now this is where the advantages of GNOME Shell ended for me.
Whenever I needed to switch a window, I had to open up the Activities view. This was time-consuming and cumbersome. To prevent windows clutter, I moved my windows on to 2 separate workspaces, one containing Firefox and the other containing terminal and TB.
I found myself pressing Ctrl+Alt+<arrow keys> to move around the workspaces, which used to work for me when I had been using Unity. But it didn’t work here anymore. I opened up the Activities view to switch between workspaces. Now here I noticed one major bug in the design: long mouse movements. Just to change workspaces, I had to first move mouse on the top left corner, then move mouse to the right till the end of the screen where the workspaces were. Then I had to click the required workspace and then select the window to which I had to move to, in the middle. Compare this to the keyboard navigation system and the workspace switcher in Unity (I’ll be comparing GNOME Shell and Unity later on in detail).
Whenever I open up the Activities view and then click on ‘Applications’, it takes around 3-4 seconds for the applications list to come up. Irritating.
Another thing which I found irritating was that system indicators are rendered nicely at the top right, but app systray icons are at the bottom right. Not a big problem, but this is going to be frustrating for newcomers.
For two more hours, I was hacking around on Ubuntu packages, fixing bugs, browsing through bug lists, mails, etc. All I wanted was to get my job done. Quickly. So it has now been 3 hours since I installed GNOME shell. By the third hour, my system began to get slow. This was kinda weird for me, as my system didn’t slow down when using Unity continuously and multitasking more heavily for 5-6 hours at a stretch. So the third hour of me using GNOME Shell ended slowly.
The fourth hour
I continued with my work. Now Mutter began to show its darker side on me. What is mutter? Mutter = Metacity + Clutter. It’s a new windows manager made exclusively for GNOME Shell. It has a couple of features, but its still not at par with the other composting window managers out there, such as Compiz.
So, back to the darker side of Mutter. What were the problems I faced? Many. I have already mentioned about my system getting slow. It now became so slow that the mutter animations were no longer ‘animations’ but were jagged images moving around bumpily (sorry, I don’t know the exact English word for that). Switching to the Activities view became a slow experience. There were some other issues that I faced: top-left corners of windows became invisible, text on the top panel wasn’t rendered properly, etc.
Things became worse. My computer slowed down to a snail’s pace even when I had closed all windows and also closed background services of empathy, gwibber,etc. I started up gnome-system-monitor to find out that gnome-shell was taking up a massive 400MB of memory.
How it all ended
I must say: I had had enough. I was getting frustrated with stuff. I turned off my computer (There is no ‘power off’ option in the session menu in shell, and I was stuck until someone on Twitter helped me by asking me to press <Alt> while on the menu), and went out for a walk. After coming back, I started up my computer again, and my computer slowed down in less than an hour. And I was fed up with moving my mouse madly around the screen just to switch workspaces/open applications/switch windows.
Now, the final solution for me was:
sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
Yes. I was fed up. All I wanted was a nice desktop which allows me to do what I want, without any bounds.
Comparison with Unity
Unity is the name of the desktop shell which will be default in Ubuntu 11.04. Unlike Shell, Unity runs on top of Compiz.
So these are the advantages of Unity over GNOME Shell:
1) A clean launcher which does what it says on the tin and much more. By default the launcher is set to intellihide, which is a nice feature. The launcher makes switching between windows easy.
2) A clean dash which is swift and fast in opening, swift in launching apps and opening folders.
3) AppIndicators are clean, easy-to-use and fast.
4) Workspaces are easy to use, and moving apps between them is easy and fast. Switching between workspaces is also very easy thanks to Compiz.
5) Compiz is fast, doesn’t hog up memory, has nice visual effects.
Now for the advantages of GNOME Shell over Unity:
1) More customizable thanks to themes written in CSS.
2) Nice looks, suites casual users.
Conclusions
People moving from GNOME 2 will find Unity much better, mainly because it behaves in a way more similar to GNOME Panel.
GNOME 3 is more properly targeted at casual users who don’t do multitasking very much. GNOME 3 looks better on screenshots and screencasts, but the story of usage is quite different. Its mainly suitable for those who don’t have many windows open at any time, don’t work much on a computer, and are fans of eye-candy and customization.
Unity is undoubtedly the ‘One size fits all’ desktop shell out there. It suites everyone. It won’t disappoint anyone out there. It does what it is expected to do plus many more things (such as quicklists, launcher emblems, etc) which make the desktop experience intuitive, fun and swift.
One month is still remaining for the release of Ubuntu 11.04, and Unity will get even better in this month. Bugs will be fixed, the UI experience will be polished, etc.
Disclaimer: The views presented in this article are my own views. These are not biased towards either Canonical or GNOME. Though I am an Ubuntu Member, my views are not a representation of Canonical’s views on GNOME.
I too feel that going back to the Activities view is very inconvenient to switch windows. Also, why is the “quick launch” dock (not sure what they call it) within the activities view. I feel that it should be available on any workspace if it is a quick launcher. And I want minimize button back !! Once these are done, design wise it would be like Unity itself. Hence proved that Unity is the optimal design !!
About GNOME 3 being slower…well I tried it with Fedora-15 daily build on my 1 GB RAM, 1.86 GHz DuoCore system, It was fast enough !! Maybe we differ on what “fast” is
It becomes slow after some usage. In the beginning its fast.
This is simply not true. I’ve been using GNOME-Shell builds for over a month, and it’s snappy! (I use openSUSE.)
That’s called a ‘bug’. Something’s leaking memory. It’s not typical behaviour; if it were, many more people would have noticed it. I’d file a bug, but first check if it’s specific to the Ubuntu build – test with a Fedora nightly and/or the SUSE-based gnome.org builds.
To switch workspaces: ctrl-alt-up and ctrl-alt-down (not left and right). There’s a reason this changed, but I don’t remember it at present. I think ctrl-alt-left and right are reserved for something else for some reason.
You can switch apps without using the overview. Just use alt-tab. I kinda thought everyone did that anyway.
I have not tried gnome-shell but one thing that unity could improve is its workspace switching, the workspace switching in mutter unity was really ace. I hope it will change in Oneiric.
> I found myself pressing Ctrl+Alt+ to move around the workspaces, which used to work for me when I had been using Unity. But it didn’t work here anymore.
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet (maybe you catched a bug)
> Its mainly suitable for those who don’t have many windows open at any time, don’t work much on a computer
Nah, i think you do have some “bad” habits
And if you need a dock in GS, well just install any (cd, awn, whatever).
Looks like there was a bug or some misconfiguration. Even alt+f2 didn’t work for me. So, well, you’re right. The feature for changing workspaces *is* there. My fault.
If you are up to it, compiling the Shell as described on live.gnome.org has in the past given better results than using the Ubuntu PPA. That may solve some of your problems.
Cheers,
Patrick
“What is mutter? Mutter = Metacity + Clutter. It’s a new windows manager made exclusively for GNOME Shell”
GNOME Shell adopted an existing window manager called Mutter originally created by Intel for use in MeeGo and adopted by GNOME Shell developers who created GNOME Shell as a Mutter plugin.
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2009-March/msg00106.html
You must use Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down instead of Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right
“instead”? With a 2d-layout of workspaces you can still use both, I hope?
Gnome Shell has a vertical workspace layout.
I agree with you. I tried Gnome-shell this week, and the first impression is : wooow !!!
I playing with the funcionality and i see good ideas, but bad idea too. It’s very difficult to work with GS.
Unity it’s not perfect either, but it’s more efficient.
There’s not much point running GNOME 3 from the gnome3-team PPA unless you’re intending to help with the packaging and transition prior to natty+1.
Because of the unfortunate (but understandable) delta between natty and the GNOME 3 packages, you’re simply not getting a complete GNOME 3 experience — it’s essentially a franken-GNOME.
If you want to test a more complete GNOME 3 experience, try the GNOME 3 LiveCD (built on openSUSE) which you can download from gnome3.org.
Hi Jeff,
Yes, I tried that from a LiveUSB last week, and I liked it. Since I can’t use a LiveUSB all the time, I moved to the PPA. I didn’t see any difference between the PPA and latest LiveUSB. It was regular usage which made me come back to Unity.
There are important version skew differences that would have an impact on robustness, which in turn would likely lead to a less than stellar experience. (I’d also point out the number of things you weren’t aware of while using it, which others have pointed out in the comments.)
Can you point out which parts of the packaged PPA are franken? We can fix that.
Application Indicators and notify-osd aren’t canonical GNOME3 and we patch a lot of apps for support as I understand. I suspect the request would be to unpatch these packages to provide the intended GNOME3 notification and tray experience by default.
Regardless I tried GNOME-shell on the gnome3 liveusb image and I really enjoy the experience. I thus tried to enable the PPA and totally creamed my setup without getting a succesful GNOME-shell session running.. so that would likely be where I would start.
My main problems with the LiveUSB image is it is very young and lacks a lot of software (while Banshee is advertized on the site e.g. it does not appear to be available). The experience could also benefit from some polish which I am sure will happen in 3.2 and beyond. Being the owner of an ARM netbook (A8 based, very slow) long term I would also like to see the image support this architecture though for that to work with GNOME3 we’d have to convince the ARM guys to solve their massive video driver problem.
My view on Gnome3 to continue the flamewar: DOA [Dead on arrival] (at least shell)
A little thougth why: At the university here, there are a few linux rooms.
Till this term there were two options at login, gnome 2 and kde 3 based on debian 4.
And now they’ve done an update to kde 4, gnome 2 still existing. (I don’t know if they upgraded debian but think so).
And now (maybe in the next year) the admins will think “do we upgrade our gnome to version 3″ hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
No!
Why? Exactly, there are not only hackers which are using the pcs in our linux rooms. It’s for learning and so on. Can’t imaging people get the point of the shell for learning developing i.e. with eclipse.
Whatever good luck, gnome. I will stay with KDE4 since years of gnome usage.
Running Gnome-Shell from a PPA via –replace can’t/won’t give you the Gnome 3 experience. If you really want to spend some time with Gnome 3 I would recommend Fedora 15. Then you have to accept the fact that you will be doing things differently (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet). Accept the fact that familiar isn’t always better, then give it more than 4 hours.
Personally, I’ve never used my mouse so little, launched apps so fast or switched between them (both within & between workspaces) so easily. I’m hooked!
I’m looking forward to Gnome-shell to solve my window management woes, and I am willing to live with the drawback of having to go to the activities view in order to do substantial window management.
I’d be overlapping my windows, and using multiple workspaces instead of trying to cram everything into one workspace and looking for window switching alternatives. The truth is I am hardly ever using any more than 3 out of my more than 30 open windows for any given task.
Welcome Gnome shell. I am ready to try a different way of managing my workflow. The current panel, task list approaches are not satisfactory to me.
My feelings exactly!
I guess I will say it. I’m not a fan of Unity in the very least. I found it somewhat useful on a netbook due to the screen size issues, but even there I went back to regular gnome.
At the same time, I’m not a fan of Gnome 3 either, though I can see it as “usable”. I’m tired of developers and projects thinking innovation just means shiny, in both cases they sacrificed some usability and simple ease of use (funny, because I use a Mac quite often and find it very usable – I think something got lost in the translation). I like the Applications menu in Gnome. I do not like opening some new window to open an Application that isn’t already in the launcher.
To that end I’ve switched to Xubuntu and will probably not be going back. It’s missing a couple of features (surprisingly few), but at least they aren’t likely to rewrite the whole UI any time soon.
GNOME 3 has helped me enormously with improving my work-flow, and I’d bet it will do the same for you!
Because you learned how to use Alt+Taab?!?
I have used Ubuntu and Gnome for years. However, I do not like either gnome3 or Unity. Sure I can continue with the “classic gnome” but this has also changed in the natty build and I don’t like it. I recently switched to Bodhi Linux with the enlightenment desktop. It is incredibly fast and configurable using a total of 256Mb of ram for the entire running OS. You have to love Linux for the amount of choice.
I don’t understand Unity nor Gnome 3. I’ve tried Unity on my netbook and was frustrated because some applications just didn’t work correctly due to the size of windows. I also don’t like the applications bar, whats the point? I quickly switched back to Gnome 2.
Both Unity and Gnome 3 seem to me to be a waste of development and are trying to copy OSX. If those devs really want to innovate, then how about developing a true 3D desktop.
There is already a true 3D desktop
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/lookingglass/
You’re talking about Mutter Unity (the unity in Ubuntu 10.10). The Compiz Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 is way better.
There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all desktop environment. And the monstrosity that is Unity, while better than Gnome Shell, certainly does not answer everybody’s needs. It rather looks like a poor man’s Mac.
A few points (probably been covered before):
* Alt+Tab is the most sane way of switching between windows
* Control+Alt+(up, down) is the way to switch workspaces now (workspaces are vertical)
* The reason for “indicators” being split between the top and bottom right corners is because the “top bar” is supposed to be system-owned, so status indicators live there, and user application notifications queue up in the bottom right
* Mutter’s memory use seems to be a lot better in current packages (2.91.*) than a few months ago
I understand the reason for getting rid of the task list is because abstract icons and buttons are less recognisable than a preview of the window itself.
GNOME 3 is there to break your habits, not to cater to them.
I know it’s hard to break habits like finding for you open windows by staring at the panel; but believe me, using the overview you’ll find your windows more easily and faster.
I’ve worked with GNOME 2, 3, KDE 3.4, 4, Mac OS X, Windows 3-7 – and GNOME 3 is easily the best of them.
To those alt+tab-fanatics: Just hit the super(Windows)-key instead an select a window with your mouse.
See, that kind of disrespectful thinking to users is the problem. I don’t need some smart ass trendy 20 something developer to prescribe for me how to accomplish my work.
Gnome have just taken themselves out of the equation for any serious desktop use. And there aren’t enough causal netbook users around to fill that void.
I’m relaying my personal experience with GNOME 3, I’m not a developer.
Anyone who’d rather like to stick with the known instead of trying out the better, can use the fallback desktop.
I mean, everyone’s free to choose; there’s lots of people who insist on using Windows XP, for example!
Oh, and don’t forget that that ‘smart ass trendy kid’ is the one who you owe your GNOME 2 to, in the first place. Or did you program it yourself?
@eet Apologies if this came across as a personal attack, it was not directed at you.
Nice post but I think you ought to revisit gnome-shell by installing one of the nightly composes for the Fedora 15 alpha which can be found here http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/. I have been running gnome-shell since March 10th on the F15 alpha and haven’t experienced the issues you describe. For me gnome-shell has been very stable and useable with the one downside being that it is not easily configured from the defaults.
I installed the Ubuntu Natty Alpha and updated to current and kept having crashes with Compiz. Overall I found Unity to be slower and buggier than gnome-shell. It is interesting to see a similar concept applied slightly differently between gnome-shell and Unity.
Biggest mistake you will ever do is try to use full blown GNOME 3 system using PPA. Unfortunately, Ubuntu doesn’t make it easy to try out GNOME 3, so I tried it while using Fedora 15 Alpha.
In nutshell – it is desktop for casual users, not powerkiddies. And surprise, suprise – it has PROPER “Classic desktop”, aka fallback mode with gnome panel ported to GNOME 3!
Unity is ovedesigned, “I wanna be Mac OS X and KDE in once” feeling. It is not bad though, and lot of users won’t mind. From other side, RedHat now have chance to get a little footing with Fedora using GNOME 3 – as it looks very marvelous.
Anyway, in the end apps will rule. Desktop enviroment are less and less important in terms of usability – if it’s done right, it doesn’t stand in user’s way.
“In nutshell – it is desktop for casual users, not powerkiddies”
And this is the hill that Gnome 3 will have to climb. May people believe that there is nothing wrong with the current panel/taskbar design and others are too dependent on their mouse. For those who are willing to learn a new methodology … there is Gnome 3.
As I mentioned earlier … “I’ve never used my mouse so little, launched apps so fast or switched between them (both within & between workspaces) so easily”. To me, these things ARE what separates power-users from casual users.
The ‘fallback mode’ isn’t for ‘proper’ users or ‘powerkiddies’ or whatever you want to call it. It exists to cater for systems where Shell won’t run, notably virtual systems at present.
Well, no. At first, it was designed as fall back, but currently there is notion that this could and should be used (as you can “force” fall back mode) in enterprise, where changing to drastically different environment like GNOME 3 (and Unity) is a no go, at least for next 3 – 4 years. Heah, I know, official statement is “gnome panel won’t receive active development”, but it is still in officially supported packages, therefore if someone picks up the pieces and keeps it in touch with rest of GNOME 3 desktop (at least where it is reasonable), it will ensure that you can use GNOME 3 with gnome panel without worrying much.
I appreciate your optimism, but “if someone picks up the pieces and keeps it in touch with rest of GNOME 3 desktop (at least where it is reasonable), it will ensure that you can use GNOME 3 with gnome panel without worrying much.” isn’t exactly a reliable road map. I wonder what larger companies and enterprises will do with their desktops. Probably hold on to a long term supported version of 2 and hope for the best for in 2-3 years time.
In any case, I’m mostly using Xfce and Openbox and Gnome only when it’s thrown at me as default in some distros, but trying the Fedora 15 Alpha on real hardware, not virtual, put me into fallback mode with two panels. Looks absolutely appaling and is not like Gnome 2 at all, no right click menu. I can only hope (for the people who actually like to use Gnome as their main Environment) that this option will improve, by a lot.
I don’t get either the unity or gnome 3 design decisions at all. They seem absolutely awful to me. There will be a handful of people that will like them simply because they’re “different”, but they’re not going to work for the average user… and distros that tie themselves to this “smartphone” concept are going to suffer in the long term. They would have been better off putting the resources into fixing the existing issues and building better customization options. I see Microsoft making inroads into areas where linux was once considered the best (e.g., desktop customization or home networking).
That’s a bold statement for someone who hasn’t even tried to use it…
Ummm… how do you know he hasn’t tried to use it?… I’ve used both and I kind of agree :-/
Because his comments are all too common. The “average user” & “smartphone” statements pretty much secure the fact that this person is commenting based on screenshots or a Live CD with no real use put behind it.
I haven’t tried to use it and have no intention of trying it. You can tell just by looking at it how awful the context is for a desktop. I’d probably just move back to Windows before accepting this style of desktop environment.
I rest my case.
Your case isn’t particularly compelling. I don’t need to actually drive a three-wheeled car to know that it’s not for me.
Like I said, some people will like the new desktop style. Maybe the average linux geek will even tolerate it. But I’m fairly confident that most people will dismiss it out of hand and either stick with their Windows or look to a distro that uses something different.
The feedback so far on this is pretty mixed, which generally indicates a poor outlook.
“Your case isn’t particularly compelling.”
My “case” was only that “this person (you) is commenting based on screenshots or a Live CD with no real use put behind it”. A position you so conveniently confirmed with your follow-up comment “I haven’t tried to use it and have no intention of trying it.” Pretty air-tight.
I really like gnome-shell. I prefer upstream gnome anyway, and that is the main reason I will switch to Fedora in May (currently using Ubuntu).
Bilal, just an idea: using the keyboard a little bit more may result in a better gnome-shell experience for you.
What is apparent to me is that GNOME3 makes you use the keyboard a lot more. I find it cumbersome to move my mouse to the top left corner every time I want to start another application etc., so I’ve got used to press the “super key” instead – a real time saver! Then just start typing the application’s name, (use arrow keys,) press enter, and it’ll pop up. Certainly faster than trying to locate it in a the old gnome “applications” menu, but admittingly something to get used to.
Though one thing I’m not happy with is the bold window and top bar designs, and the almost unreadable programme names under the icons. Waiting for a distro to beautify that – hope that’s possible.
I don’t like either of them, really… Maybe I could get used to it, but I think the average user – esp. the novice will be initially too confused and turned off by their approach…
And why doesn’t “Acitvities” show me *all* activties – not just the one’s on the current workspace? Sheesh.
[Sent from inside GNOME 3 Shell/Fedore Live CD]
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Unity is a usability nightmare too. May be it suits tiny netbook screens, but not large monitors. With my ≥ 20 inch monitor I don’t need autohiding. Moreover, I don’t want autohiding at all. I don’t want global menu. I don’t want apps will open fullscreen at first launch.
I want convenient out of the box DE, like Gnome 2 was. I don’t need my PC looks and acts like a huge smartphone.
I must say that gnome3 and gnome-shell is a MUCH better experience for me. I am using it with Fedora 15 at the moment. I have always used Ubuntu, but because how much I like how gnome-shell works I am sticking with F15 at the moment. I feel more comfortable with a Debian based distro because that’s what I’m use to but I’m finding my way around Fedora just fine so far.
Gnome-Shell seems much faster to me, more polished looking and I just like how it’s all laid out. I like how you manage windows and access your favorite applications. When I hit the super key and search for an app, it is like night and day compared to Unity. Unity has a pause and you have to wait for it to fully fill in with all the apps it finds before you can hit enter. With Gnome3 you type in your app and hit enter and it launches instantly. What I miss here in both of them is the keyboard shortcut to select results in the dash. Tab and Shift-Tab would be the best binding IMO to navigate back and forth between searched results.
Either way, that is just my 2 cents. Gnome shell works very well for me and is a much snappier and polished looking experience for me. I’ll be looking forward to a complete and stable Gnome3 in Ubuntu and Debian in the future.
Ubuntu is weaksauce. They’re just a bunch of marketers, packagers and evangelists and their lack of coding chops really reflects in the overall quality of the distro. Give Fedora a chance as your primary distro of choice. The docs are somewhat more sparse than Ubuntu’s but the distro itself is much better engineered.
OK, so I loaded both Fedora 15 and the new Ubuntu without reading a single review. I had heard they come with new DE’s, but didn’t read a single article on them. Without any prompting, the first thing I said was “looks like a Smartphone”. And I mean that in the most derogatory term possible.
Smartphones act like…well, smartphones because they have to, not because it’s a great design decision for someone with a keyboard and mouse. It’s not. Gnome 2 is far more usable and for the moment I’m using the new Mint 11 to get work done. After that, I’m not sure what I will go to.
Now, hit the Window key and start typing the name of an app you want to use.
It has a lot of features that people seem to love. It borrows heavily from Expose. Moving apps between desktops is drag-and-drop. It has a hidden dock, on the left. It’s dead simple, imho, and doesn’t borrow the bad ideas from smartphones (think: swiping for notifications.)
My biggest gripe is how they handle legacy apps that use the systray: they’re relegated to the lower right-hand corner of the screen, hidden.
Have you tried revisiting GNOME 3 since reviewing the beta version? Many of the shortcomings you found have been much improved.
For example pressing the windows key/activity button and searching for an application in GNOME 3 is extremely fast, whereas Unity has a noticeable delay (Ubuntu 11.10).
Also the ctrl+alt+arrow key shortcuts work fine to switch workspaces.
You also mentioned some memory/performance issues which must have been ironed out as the latest GNOME 3 release is very slick and responsive.
I do miss the wobbly windows and eye candy in Unity, but switched over to GNOME 3 recently and prefer it overall.