A fresher Linux desktop

Let's hope they don't fail like KDE4.0. At least they are pushing back their release, hopefully so they can fully alpha test 3.0. Gnome good luck you'll need it.

Let's hope there's a better configuration editor. The current one - never mind. It's so bad that it can't be described with words.

My understanding (I could be wrong) is that it will be an upgrade rather than a completely new desktop. Existing applications will continue to work the way they do now. I guess we'll have to see.

Well let's hope so. And I agree with you on the configuration editor, it's an arcane POS. Worse than the old Ford Tarus.

Its hard to see, from the point of view of ordinary users, what exactly needs changing. I usually set up gnome for them with one bottom task bar, multiple windows and the apps in them, plain color background of their choice. Show them how to set preferences, and away they go. Oh, you have to add a direct delete to Nautilus, and you used to have to disable those ridiculous proliferating windows in Nautilus but they seem finally to have accepted the universe on that one.

Gnome is very irritating in terms of its Mac type attitudes - my way is the right way, and there really is such a thing as a valid HIG, and you will adhere to it, and they are always taking out things you need in order to make it allegedly easier to use. And their manuals seem written for the learning challenged in search of someplace not to find any information. But compared with the ongoing disaster that is KDE4, its a dream come true. Very sad. KDE 3.5 was perfectly fine, there was nothing at all wrong with it, and what we ended up with by improving it was a hobbyist nightmare.

All that energy would have been far better spent on KOffice. Kexi in particular.

I've had a play with a version of the GNOME 3 desktop, That was last year sometime. I'm not at all sure it works well, at least not the version I played with, in the context of a standard size screen desktop, it seemd rather cumbersome, and switching between desktop contexts wasn't as instictive as saay the 3D cube or even te desktop wall. I hope they''ve fixed that.

As a desktop metaphore on a netbook or even a tablet, I think it was quite good, though.

In the final analysis, I found the menu on the desktop didn't work for me in the context of hi res monitor. See here http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/09/gnome-3-quick-visual-tour...

I rather had high hopes for GNOME 3, but unless they've made radical changes I've not seen, I'm looking for a demo distro with the latest version, I think it's a bit of a disappointment. Rather like KDE4 was for me.

@tracyanne:

I'm thinking that the hi-res monitor problem probably stems from the brain-dead default of 72DPI in GConf, which makes for some small text when the actual DPI goes much higher.

But it isn't GNOME's fault, really. Some monitors mis-report their capabilities, so the DPI obtained by the X server can't be trusted. (I think that's also behind tuxchick's much more brain-dead monitor problem.)

No gus I was referring to the way the menu is displayed on the desktop (netbook remix style), rather than as a drop down (standard GNOME 2 style). It doesn't make sense to me when used that way on a large hi reoslution screen. Makes the whole thing feel clunky.

I also found it difficult to remove virtual desktops and transfer between them. But until I've retried a new version, I can't comment further.

Some things just felt non intuitive. It didn't flow well for me.