Comments on: My desktop in a GNOME shell http://geek.co.il/wp/2009/11/27/my-desktop-in-a-gnome-shell Thoughts about the universe in general Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:57:02 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1-alpha By: gnome-blog — Deskbar applet for blogging « Amit Agarwal http://geek.co.il/wp/2009/11/27/my-desktop-in-a-gnome-shell/comment-page-1#comment-219687 gnome-blog — Deskbar applet for blogging « Amit Agarwal Sun, 28 Mar 2010 07:53:56 +0000 http://geek.co.il/wp/?p=1245#comment-219687 [...] My desktop in a GNOME shell (geek.co.il) [...] [...] My desktop in a GNOME shell (geek.co.il) [...]

]]> By: Oded http://geek.co.il/wp/2009/11/27/my-desktop-in-a-gnome-shell/comment-page-1#comment-214819 Oded Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:58:54 +0000 http://geek.co.il/wp/?p=1245#comment-214819 Keyboard indicator: this is current implemented as an applet in GNOME, which you can optionally add in the original GNOME panel. As there are no applets in the new shell, obviously its gone. Although I wouldn't have necessarily chosen this as the most important applet, it is a must in a multilingual world and I don't see how they can justify putting just that back in without allowing all applets - which as I understand, getting rid of is one of the original design's goals. Activities: maybe your segregation of activities is not right for you? I use email;development;terminal;browsing;vms+remotes;misc. IMs can live everywhere (and often are "show in all desktops"), and transitory stuff like videos show where I open them (usually from the web or email) and gone when I stop watching them. I do switch a lot, but I enjoy the deterministicity (is that a word?) of finding the correct application by going directly to the workspace where it is (using the non-default keyboard mapping of CTRL+F< #> to go to that workspace). So activities usually work for me and I like the capability of being able to start a session by throwing the applications to the workspaces where they should be in - with original GNOME I either have to start each application by going to the correct workspace, launching it, wait until the window shows up (which in the case of Eclipse takes forever and a half), lather rinse repeat; or launch all my applications and then start sorting them out to workspaces. Minimizing: it takes time to adjust living without the crutch of a task list ;-p I personally never minimizes windows so I'm not sure what the use case for that may be. In the mean time I will give them the benefit of assuming they know what they are doing and will solve all the usability problems by end of next year. That being said, knowing GNOME devs are hostile to suggestions of giving more control to users, I may be overly optimistic. Keyboard indicator: this is current implemented as an applet in GNOME, which you can optionally add in the original GNOME panel. As there are no applets in the new shell, obviously its gone. Although I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen this as the most important applet, it is a must in a multilingual world and I don’t see how they can justify putting just that back in without allowing all applets – which as I understand, getting rid of is one of the original design’s goals.

Activities: maybe your segregation of activities is not right for you? I use email;development;terminal;browsing;vms+remotes;misc. IMs can live everywhere (and often are “show in all desktops”), and transitory stuff like videos show where I open them (usually from the web or email) and gone when I stop watching them. I do switch a lot, but I enjoy the deterministicity (is that a word?) of finding the correct application by going directly to the workspace where it is (using the non-default keyboard mapping of CTRL+F< #> to go to that workspace). So activities usually work for me and I like the capability of being able to start a session by throwing the applications to the workspaces where they should be in – with original GNOME I either have to start each application by going to the correct workspace, launching it, wait until the window shows up (which in the case of Eclipse takes forever and a half), lather rinse repeat; or launch all my applications and then start sorting them out to workspaces.

Minimizing: it takes time to adjust living without the crutch of a task list ;-p I personally never minimizes windows so I’m not sure what the use case for that may be.

In the mean time I will give them the benefit of assuming they know what they are doing and will solve all the usability problems by end of next year. That being said, knowing GNOME devs are hostile to suggestions of giving more control to users, I may be overly optimistic.

]]> By: Arik http://geek.co.il/wp/2009/11/27/my-desktop-in-a-gnome-shell/comment-page-1#comment-214810 Arik Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:55:27 +0000 http://geek.co.il/wp/?p=1245#comment-214810 Let me tack my impressions here, as I've used it for almost a week now. One of the things I miss the most is the keyboard layout indicator. I like to know which layout I'm with right now. For example I started typing the message with the wrong layout. oops. Most monolinguals won't notice though. The activity orientation bothers me some. I've got 4 desktops now - media, browsing, misc and IM. I find myself switching way too often. Maybe I just have an attention deficit, or maybe the split into activities is a bit artificial - for example I like to watch a movie during a slow going IM conversation... so I have to drag the VLC window onto the IM activities desktop. Another annoyance is when you minimize something it goes nowhere. woo scary. It still shows up in the activities view and you can click it and it restores, but... annoying. I don't think I'll stay here forever, I'll return to gnome proper and wait some more. -- Arik Let me tack my impressions here, as I’ve used it for almost a week now.

One of the things I miss the most is the keyboard layout indicator. I like to know which layout I’m with right now. For example I started typing the message with the wrong layout. oops. Most monolinguals won’t notice though.

The activity orientation bothers me some. I’ve got 4 desktops now – media, browsing, misc and IM. I find myself switching way too often. Maybe I just have an attention deficit, or maybe the split into activities is a bit artificial – for example I like to watch a movie during a slow going IM conversation… so I have to drag the VLC window onto the IM activities desktop.

Another annoyance is when you minimize something it goes nowhere. woo scary. It still shows up in the activities view and you can click it and it restores, but… annoying.

I don’t think I’ll stay here forever, I’ll return to gnome proper and wait some more.

– Arik

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