Under a Gibbous Moon

Gnome, for those who don’t know, is a Graphical User Interface for Linux. It’s the default GUI that ships with Ubuntu. I’ve used Gnome off and on for several years and for that time it has been reminiscent of Mac OS.

The main task bar runs along the top of the screen with another bar running along the bottom that lists the various windows that you have open. A whole gallery of widgets can also bad added (along with additional bars) to further customize your experience. Gnome also supports multiple virtual desktops which I find to be exceptionally useful to organize all the different programs and windows that I have running at any given time.

Gnome 3, which will come by default with the next version of Ubuntu, is available for testing via the following code:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

This will install the proper packages, then restart and run

gnome-shell –replace

This will close out your Gnome 2.x and start Gnome 3. Gnome 3 is a complete overhaul. The first thing that you will notice is that there is no longer a bottom bar. The application menu has been replaced with an Activities menu. When you drop it down there is a menu on the left that has all of you applications and recent documents. On the right, the space is used to display your desktops and thumbnails of all the windows contained within. This screen is now used to switch between running applications (you can also bring up this menu with the Windows key or switch applications with alt-tab as usual). Virtual desktops are no handled more fluidly with a ‘Plus’ button to add more desktops and then each additional desktop having a minus button the remove it.

The system setting have been consolidated under the user menu in the upper right corner. There is also a sidebar option for those who can’t get by without some type of bar on the screen.

Now, for the things I don’t like. Most of these complaints, I believe are do to it not being fully integrated into the distribution. The IM button is gone and there doesn’t seem to be a way to customize the activities button. Of course, this completely different way of organizing your desktops introduces a learning curve to Gnome 3.

I do like it, I wonder if it is such a good idea since it could add yet another hurdle to adoption by Windows based users. I’ve alsoread of graphics instability (though haven’t experienced any) but that is probably due to its relatively early development phase and will hopefully be ironed out by the final release.

The recent document menu, which is something that the Gnome developers are obsessed with, is far too prominent. It takes up almost half of the application menu. While hopefully it will be customizable but I doubt it given that the Gnome developers have been unwilling to even give you the option to turn it off.

Finally, you cannot kill a window from the activities menu without bringing it into focus first. This just adds completely unnecessary step to something that people do very regularly.

In conclusion, I do like Gnome 3. The new interface is slick, much faster, and I see how it can be a dramatic improvement over other GUIs that I have used. It currently has some shortcomings that I hope will be addressed in future releases, particularly with regard to being more customizable.