It was lobbying by the GNOME devs that made GNOME 3 the default on Fedora, but now it seems that somebody has had enough. That somebody has proposed making the Cinnamon the default desktop environment on Fedora 19.
I don’t blame him.
I’ve always been of the opinion that as far a desktop computing goes, and how people interface or interact with their desktop, that there’s something fundamentally wrong with GNOME Shell. It sits atop beautiful technology, but that UI just doesn’t compute. And the problem is that the GNOME devs are not willing to accept that simple fact.
But if this proposal is accepted, they will lose a major distro and, hopefully, will be forced to rethink the GNOME Shell.
According to Eric Smith, the guy behind this proposal:
The Gnome 3 interface is substantially different that the traditional desktop interfaces on both Linux and Windows. While it is good that there is research into new user interface concepts, many users prefer to have a traditional interface that they are accustomed to. … I’m not trying to start (or continue) a flame war here, so I won’t state any of my own criticisms of Gnome Shell here, but I will observe that a number of very high profile people in the Linux community, such as Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox, have publicly announce that due to problems with Gnome Shell they are switching to a different desktop and/or Linux distribution.
I submit the proposition that it is easier for a user doing a new Fedora install to start with a traditional desktop, and switch to the Gnome Shell if they prefer that, than to start with Gnome Shell and switch to a traditional desktop.
His proposal gets my vote.
Desktop environment is choice, it depends on the user, please don’t badmouth/destroy gnome3 just because you do not like it, people like me and others on comment above who like it will suffer just because of your own preference.
What about http://www.trinitydesktop.org/?
I hated Gnome 3 at first, because it required changing the way I was used to doing things. Now that I am used to it, I find it far superior to anything else out there, including Windoze, KDE, Cinnamon, Unity, etc. It is fast, efficient, and highly configurable. All of the little annoyances most people complain about are easily tweaked. I think for as many people that complain about it, there are just as many who like it.
Gnome 3 is useless for program development. May be great from surfing, playing games, and impress people who are impressed with shiny things that move and flash.
I want somebody who is using gnome 3 (or unity) for development to make video on youtube how they use them for java and C++ programming and configuring their OS, configuring MySQL, Tomcat, changing security permissions to protect their assets, and so on. So far all the videos of proponents of gnome 3 (or unity) show videos of shiny, flashing things being moved around.
gnome 3 okay for cell phone – suc^%$ for program development.
I’m not a developer, so I don’t know much about this, but what are the specific issues that you as a developer face with GNOME 3 or Unity?
well, I would do that but currently I’m using KDE (and I cannot show anything related to the company I work on so doing a video would imply post editing and I’m bad with that), I left GnomeShell because it was not stable, at least, not for my situation. I’m a software developer, in a normal day I’m using 2 virtual machines, connected to multiple remote windows desktops, having oracle 11g with 2 database, using eclipse for an easy debug process (just for java), around 10 tabs in firefox, using thunderbird, using skype, at least 3 consoles, building the application I work on could take between 6 to 20 minutes depending on the amount of modules I have to modify, running junits would last 30 minutes per module. How I used Gnome-shell? well, I work on a laptop with an additional monitor, so I used the additional monitor to contain skype and the consoles, the other programs were distributed through multiple workspaces. I used it for more than a year, however gnome-shell had a lot of chrashes, in normal situations it restarted automatically, in my case, it never happen, my solution: ctrl+alt+f2 and restart gnome-shell. 2 weeks ago I tried KDE and it was amazing, no chrashes, no blocks, no desktop restarts, it just fit my needs.
I suggest that GNOME 3 becomes the standard on distros that aims to be user-friendly and easy to understand. The experienced users (like Linus and Alan) have no trouble configuring their own desktops to suite their taste anyway.
After the initial shock of experiencing the GNOME3 interface, I found it to be the best choice for me personally (beeing a designer and web developer). I hated it at first – now I can’t live without it 🙂
I have also tested GNOME3 distros for family and friends, and they understand it intuitively – much more so than OS X and Windows. If we aim to make a complete experience for non-technical users, GNOME3 is the way to go!
Ruben, I completely agree. I saw the potential of GNOME 3 from the start of GNOME-Shell, and it has continued to address the concerns of users with updates and improvements. I could never switch back to the “classic” desktop after using it for the past couple of years.
This is just plain silly. If you’re going to switch default desktops, switch to one that is mature: KDE4.
Fedora already has a KDE Spin.
1. gnome2 is for large and/or multiple displays – it is simply productive
2. gnome3 and unity are for tablets and smartphones – they are fun – and can be productive.
Prediction: gnome3 will never ever be the default for RHEL
You already failed with your prediction because Gnome 3 will be default for RHEL for one of reasons: classic mode which replaces fallback mode.
http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2013/01/25/gnome-3-7-at-the-halfway-mark/
But that proves the point. Classic mode has the look and feel of GNOME 2 or Cinnamon or MATE. So, underneath, there would be no difference between Classic mode and Cinnamon because both UIs are sitting atop GNOME 3 code.
My argument has always been that GNOME 3’s default UI sucks, even though it is sitting on top beautiful technologies.
I’m sorry, but the Gnome3 classic mode was so unsatisfactory that I started shopping desktops. Because Mate wasn’t stable or fast enough at first, I went to KDE4 after trying xfce and LXDM. Recently I’ve tried Mate again, and now that’s my desktop. But Gnome3 classic is not sufficiently usable to replace Gnome2. It is inferior to every other desktop I’ve tried (well, except for Gnome3 non-classic).