Gnome 3 First Impressions

Last week, I decided to pull the trigger and install Gnome 3 on my Ubuntu laptop.  I made an attempt to embrace Unity when it was first released — that didn't last long.  Aside from a few configuration disturbances, my first impression is that Gnome 3 rocks.

Time for change
So why change at all?  I've been using a Gnome 2 desktop environment for years.  It looks good, it works as you'd expect a desktop to work, and it's open source — all good enough reasons to stick with Gnome 2.

However, things change.  Sometimes a radical departure from the norm is necessary to spearhead innovations.  This is true of any discipline — not restricted to desktop environments, nor information technology in general.  Every field occasionally partakes in a drastic shakeup.  Otherwise, be become too complacent and nothing ever happens.

Ubuntu recognized the potential user experience improvements — improvements in how users engage the operating system.  Not minor tweaks, not smoothing out rough edges, but an exorbitant change in the fundamental workflow.  Ubuntu introduced Unity as an enhanced desktop experience.  Not a new desktop environment, but a guise for the traditional Gnome 2 environment.

I was intrigued by this idea and was looking forward to what Unity would look like and how it would change my daily routine — hopefully for the better.

The failed experiment
Once the shock wore off — the shock of my desktop being transformed into something completely foreign — I started to familiarize myself with Unity.  At first, it seemed like it had potential.  While I was still acquainting myself with the new Ubuntu, I started to listening to some of the frustrations voiced by the Ubuntu user community.  The unanimous question about Unity seemed to be how do I turn it off?

Hearing almost nothing good about this new environment, aimed at making life easier for users, I found it difficult to ignore.  Granted, many complaints about Unity I was taking in were a little nit-picky and couldn't relate to.  So I carried on, determined to change how my desktop worked for the better.

I must say, I admire the ambition behind the project — Unity definitely had potential but there were just too many minor issues.  Aside from the bugs, Unity just didn't mesh well — didn't feel like part of the desktop.  So more than just subtle bugs — Unity was a failed experiment in desktop experience.  Once I switched back to Gnome 2, in it's traditional form, I felt home again.  It was like I had gone on a vacation and had everything go wrong.  Switching to Gnome 3 felt like a permanent vacation.

Almost, getting there...
I used the traditional Gnome 2 environment happily for about four months after turning Unity off.  Then my restlessness desire for change kicked in again.  I knew Gnome 3 had been released, why couldn't I try it out?  It seemed like the logical evolution for my desktop environment.  Luckily, I found a guide that helped me get Gnome 3 going in about an hour.

This was last week, so I'm still a new citizen here.  Gnome 3 has a semblance to Unity only it doesn't feel like an addition to the desktop.  The enhancements in Gnome 3 truly feel like part of the whole experience.

One common goal both Unity and Gnome 3 have is to better utilize the screen space.  This means that you don't have a static task bar that shows the user all their currently open windows.  The idea instead is to only show the currently running applications when it really matters.  Like when I want to switch windows.  In Gnome 3, I just click activities in the top left of my screen.  This gives me a nice preview of what I have open at the moment.

Let's say I want to launch a new application.  I can click activities again to see my favorites pane where I've added my commonly used applications.  However, there is also the application menu, beside my currently open windows.  I can click here to browse applications by category.  This is handy if I don't know off hand the name of the application I want to run.  Alternatively, when you click activities, you can just start typing the name of the application — this will bring up matches for you automatically.  I've found this to be an incredibly powerful feature.  I hardly ever use the favorites pane in favor of just typing a few characters and hitting enter to launch something.

In this era of streamlined desktop environments — one where space is of virtue, it's sometimes difficult to find your way around.  I don't think these radical changes brought on by Unity and Gnome 3 are workflow defects, just something new and different.  We've been using the standardized desktop layout for a really long time.  So even if this is the sub-optimal approach to desktop computing, it's what we're used to.  We've grown attached to the way we do things in our local environments, I know I have.  Change is difficult, but Gnome 3 makes it a little less painful.  It isn't perfect, but I truly believe it is a step in the right direction.

Tomboy Wiki

Taking notes is an important activity for any professional that wants to get anything done. Whether you are jotting down notes for a blog entry or highlighting some aspect of a software component under development, using the right tool usually helps. The tomboy notes application is a nice little note-taking utility for Gnome. The power of this application lies in its' simplicity. It doesn't strive to be the next killer work processor disguised as something it isn't. It is designed for taking notes with a few additional features related to note-taking.

The notes that one may create with tomboy notes aren't limited to plain-text. But, keeping with the philosophy of simplicity, this feature set is minimal. You can bold, italicize, highlight, and create lists. Those are the most basic text-formatting features available and are realistically you you could ever need for taking notes. The focus of note-taking is on content, not form, as tomboy notes clearly understands this.

The wiki aspect of tomboy notes comes from its' ability to create links to other notes within the same system. I don't really consider these text links to other notes as part of the text-formatting feature set. It is really part of the wiki feature set and that set length is one. The reason these links have a wiki feel to them is because users have the option to automatically highlight works that are in camel case. Clicking these links will create a new note while retaining the link, just like a wiki.

Open Source Accounting

An entry over at linux magazine discusses some of the financial side of the Gnome and KDE open source projects and how both organizations might be spending their money.  It, for myself, is interesting to think about because not very often is the financial side of big open source projects considered.  I say big open source projects because the smaller projects generally don't have a financial side to them.  In fact, many large open source projects do not have a financial backing.  Does this mean they are of lower quality than the projects who put money where their mouth is?  I think not.  They are just different.  Besides, for most end users of most open source projects, the financial situation of the project is of little to no importance.  The software is free.

Another notable aspect of Gnome and KDE specifying where their money comes from is that most people don't care who the big corporate sponsors of the project are.  And, even the ones who do care, the acquisition of such insight is unlikely to influence them positively toward the project.  Big open source projects should advertise the fact that the smaller contributions of users are what matter.  They are more influential toward other users making a similar small donation.  I think both Gnome and KDE do a good job of this.

Strange Gnome screenshot behaviour

I noticed some strange Gnome behaviour when attempting to take a screenshot. This only seems to happen in firefox. If I want to take a shot of an expanded menu on a form, Gnome wont let me. I assume that this has to do with the window focusing. It seems to me that this would be, well, not a common requirement but it is a failed use case nonetheless.

Qt-based Gnome a step closer

In a 2008 interview, Mark Shuttleworth spoke of the possibility of a Qt-based Gnome desktop. It looks like that possibility has moved a step forward with the Qt library now being available under the LGPL.

I think there is nothing wrong with the visual appeal of the current Gnome. I also really like Qt so it is a win-win for me.