20

April
2011

Gnome 3 better than KDE?

I was never a big fan of Gnome. It didn't provide any advantage over the other desktops (in my point of view), so why bother. However, I've tested gnome 3 few days ago, to give it a shot.

I don't like that the first quarter of my wide screen is filled up by extra large window title and application menu.

I don't need to chat so often so I don't prefer such deep integration of the desktop with Instant Messenger. I can imagine the huge dependencies needed due to that.

Tapping my touchpad doesn't click. I had to enable that in mouse settings.

On the other side, I love the rest. Just the way how gnome 3 removed the Start menu is brilliant. In fact it didn't disappear, it is now 'in fullscreen', called Activities. There is no fixed amount of virtual desktops, since Gnome 3 manages them itself, there's always just one empty desktop for future use; and if you move some windows to it, another empty desktop appears automatically. Ingenious.

I think that this is very usable piece of software. I'm looking forward all the new versions.

User comments
novah 2011-04-21 07:23

may be, nevertheless remain on the kde(Trinity)?

Elder-Geek 2011-05-05 15:28

For me the the way Gnome 3 automatically handles virtual desktops does not work. I place particualr apps on particular desktops. In my mentl model I have

4 Mail/Music <-- 1 WebBroswer/Office --> 2 VirtualMachines --> 3. ExtraProjects

So 1 is my main desktop and I can just key left or right to get to the desktop I need. Or I can even wrap around.

Gnome 3 breaks all of this. Desktops pop up as needed. But also go away when not needed. The moment I accidently close out my web browser, that desktop goes away. Now all the desktops after the web browser desktop shift down. This forces me to have to work to remember which desktop has what. Or to take the time to move apps around to get back to a particular configuration. Worse yet the keyboard navigation is not left/right but up/down and no wrap around.

It breaks a decade of work habbits to change how virutal desktops are handeled in hopes that new users will start using them because they are visible there on the side, handled automatically, and GNOME 3 encourages apps to be run full screen so mutliple desktops help with that workflow.

Michel 2011-06-11 20:32

Whoever came up with the gnome 3 crap should be shot

Barnabyh 2011-06-16 12:35

I've got Gnome 3 on a testing partition and tried it keeping an open mind. It's not bad, looks elegant, however I find it overly simplistic and restrictive. The very fact that Gnome developers are unhappy about the existence of Shell extensions speaks volumes. They are probably too much like the applets of old to them and that's what they wanted to get rid off in pursuit of distractionless computing. However, without them I find 3 barely usable, and too much mousing around. It boils down to me keeping the install around to follow its evolution, through the constant updates on Arch, more out of interest than actually using it.

Trinity KDE, a slim KDE4, or Xfce will probably be a better choice. Would love to see the first and the third option, as Porteus now already comes with KDE4 and LXDE.

Anyway, it's up to you Tomasz. Thanks for all your work over the years!

Animesh 2011-06-16 22:52

I think KDE is now too bloated. Simple stuff like brightness doesn't work. It didn't work on my mac even with mbp-nvidia-bl installed. With gnome brightness and keyboard lights work perfectly. Also the power consumption is way reduced. Battery lasts till 5 hours (maybe thats a kernel issue)...but still KDE could only keep up till 3 hours. KDE is slower by each release.

Gnome 3 might feel restrictive...at first.but I feel after a few days of working it's much better and faster. Graphics don't slow down the speed..and desktop effects are faster in gnome than they were in KDE. KDe in my opinion has become a bloated hog.