Fedora 15 - Gnome 3

These are the comments that I posted elsewhere and thought they were worth keeping.

http://ostatic.com/blog/fedora-15-released-gnome-3-looks-good

(not me)

by Enzo on May. 25, 2011

Looks good, works bad. I'm trying to give Gnome 3 a fair chance and have been using it for awhile now on a daily basis, but a few things still bug the shit out of me and plenty of other people as well.

1) Stop trying to hide all of the configuration options. How can I change my system fonts? Have to hack it. 2) Then you hide the important stuff - like how to restart the fucking system - put that in the menu option when I click my user name - why should i have to hold down the ALT key to make Suspend go to Poweroff? or logout in order to restart? 3) No real screensaver - really? Who's the dipshit that thought of that? 4) Minimize - the old minimize missing button war - i've read all of the reason behind it, but if i can still right click on the window bar and minimize the window, all of those reasons are bullshit. Put the fuckin' minimize button back on the window. 5) Accessing workspaces requires me to move my mouse to the upper left hand corner hotspot to get the desktop overview display and then all the way back to the right to select my workspace. Again, who's the dipshit that though of that? Why not create a hotspot in the upper right hand corner that brings up the workspaces? This is not that hard folks. Is anyone who works on Gnome 3 actually using Gnome 3?

It is not complete horrible, but it is not good either. There are definitely some complete morons working on this project from an overall design and usability perspective.

(me)

I agree with Enzo. Trying to turn my machine off was confusing and so i got pissed and found a terminal window. It has been off for 2 days now while i decide if i want to deal with this again. I came over to Linux so that I could customize and change things. Gnome 3 is very reluctant to let me do that.

Wasn't aware of Enzo's observation about the (lack of) screensaver and use of the Alt key.

I am a new Mac owner and I have to tell you this is not what i was looking for in my Linux desktop. I see a lot of potential in Gnome 3 but right now it's utter crap. Why would you release a version of software with so many glaring usability flaws? It feels like they were trying to push this release out the door the way Mozilla crew is pushing out FireFox and Thunderbird quicker just to inflate their release numbers.

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Now that I've had 24 hours to reflect on things and play with Gnome some more, I still feel the same way.  One of the old jokes about Linux is "fixing stuff is part of the fun of using it."  Bull shit.  That mindset went out the window five years ago when they got the brilliant idea to believe it could be a threat to the desktop world.  If people want to make an interface that kicks ass then they should spend the time to make it instead of churning out a half finished product and expecting everyone to put in a lot of work to finish it.  If they have a vision as to what they're trying to build then to hell with the release dates and version numbers... finish the damn product!

The other argument I've heard for years is that since it's open source it's OK that things aren't working perfectly.  You should expect it to be a bit buggy and you get what you pay for.  Sorry but that's a cop out.  Most people involved in these projects do this for a living where their code is held to a standard.  Dare I say, experienced coders would bring a level of professionalism.  I'm sure most are genuinely upset that people like me are unhappy with their product but then the entire team should not only take pride in their accomplishments but also feel ashamed of their short comings.

For what it's worth, I finally figured out how to change the background on my desktop but no chance at changing the theme colors or even a screensaver.  Took me 30 min to figure out where Firefox went when minimized it and wasn't too happy to find all 15 of my instances when i did figure it out.

Gnome 3 is failing for me right now...