Review of new Ubuntu with Gnome 3
Brian Green
Brian C. Green
"Knowledge is knowledge. Once we accept that some of it is too important for ordinary people to have, we are no longer at Orwell's doorstep but sitting in the parlor discussing proper placement of the furniture."
- Robert B. Laughlin (The Crime of Reason)
David A. Harding
> First -- I plan on coming to the meeting in June at the Voorhees library,
Great!
> Have any of you switched to Gnome 3? Might make an interesting discussion.
Bryan gave us a demo of the new GNOME shell using Christina's netbook
back in March. But I'd love to hear more about all of the other changes
as well as what people think about them.
Every year I hear of more and more people like your friend switching to
alternative window managers. Since we probably won't have a projector
at the June meeting, it's a great opportunity for everyone to bring
their laptop running their favorite window manager.
(Suggestion: if you want to let other people play with your laptop
hands-on, create a "demo" user account so you don't have to worry about
people accessing your personal files. [Assuming you use a secure
umask.])
I'm willing to demo the Notion (nee Ion) window manager on my
ailing netbook.
Bryan--care to demo the GNOME 3 shell again?
Dave--you're using some tiny distro, right? Care to demo its window
manager?
Joe Terranova--Are you using Unity now? Care to show us what you
lovehate about it?
Any XFCE or KDE4 users care to give a demo? Anyone want to demo another
window manager?
-Dave
--
David A. Harding Website: http://dtrt.org/
Email: da...@dtrt.org
Jabber/XMPP: dhar...@jabber.org
Bryan Quigley
They both have things that I dislike. (Like showing the name of the application you are currently in, in the main/top bar like it's important). But I am a huge fan of Gnome 3 and can't stand Unity.
Gnome Shell (the key part of Gnome 3) can be installed on Ubuntu, but only by using a PPA that has a disclaimer to the effect of - you can't downgrade from the PPA and it breaks Unity. (and may break a lot of other gnome things, hence why I am not using Ubuntu on my machine for this)
Bryan--care to demo the GNOME 3 shell again?
Absolutely! I'll also demo Lubuntu (LXDE) which is my lightweight of choice (I found XFCE to be just as "heavy" as Gnome2). It will not be as exciting a demo, but that is the point!
-Bryan
David Bicking
> Dave--you're using some tiny distro, right? Care to demo its window
> manager?
The Crunchbang folk would care to differ with that assessment: they are
more the no-bloat type people. The recently got an extremely lukewarm
review on Distrowatch, which basically said; "nice distro, but what's
the point? It is too big to be a 'tiny' distro, yet too minimalistic to
be the typical desktop environment." The Crunchbang faithful would
counter that Crunchbang starts off at the right sweet point where you
can remove stuff to make it smaller, or add stuff to make it bigger. The
key is it is focused on people tweaking the setup to their liking.
On my home system I am using the XFCE version, which uses the XFCE
desktop environment but with the default XFCE window manager removed and
Openbox added in.
My laptop is my work machine, and I have decided NOT to surreptitiously
put Linux on it. I do, however, have a USB stick that will let it boot
Crunchbang Openbox version. I'll be happy to let people play with that.
David
PS. Am I right that since we are talking June meeting there will be no
meeting in May?
PPS I'd love to be running Slitaz which is a full fledged Linux weighing
in at 30MB, but the latest version just aren't working with my hardware
and I haven't been able to figure out why.
David A. Harding
> [Fedora and GNOME 3 Shell] both have things that I dislike. (Like
> showing the name of the application you are currently in, in the
> main/top bar like it's important).
Could that be for people like me who use $PS1 and other tricks in their
shell to display useful information about what's going on in their
terminal? For example, the terminal holding my ncurses-based mail reader
(mutt) has this application title right now,
=lists.chlug 4 old [1 NEW] 8 boxes
while another terminal says,
[0 jobs] IDLE
It's true that I mostly want to know this information when I'm switching
windows, but it also helps me tell that I'm in the right terminal.
> But I am a huge fan of Gnome 3 and can't stand Unity.
Can't wait to hear you elaborate on that at the meeting.
> > Bryan--care to demo the GNOME 3 shell again?
>
> Absolutely! I'll also demo Lubuntu (LXDE) which is my lightweight of choice
Great! So here's the current window manager line up in alphabetical
order:
GNOME 3 Shell Bryan Quigley
LXDE Bryan Quigley
Notion Dave Harding
Openbox Dave Bicking
Hopefully someone will agree to show Unity so we can see what all of the
fuss is about, and I've love to have demos of KDE (which went through
its own controversy a couple years ago) and XFCE (which keeps attracting
GNOME users--I assume for good reason).
Thanks Bryan!,
David A. Harding
> On 05/01/2011 07:14 PM, David A. Harding wrote:
> The Crunchbang folk would care to differ with that assessment:
Whoops. Sorry.
> The key is it is focused on people tweaking the setup to their liking.
I like tweaking.
> My laptop is my work machine, and I have decided NOT to
> surreptitiously put Linux on it.
A choice every working person here can respect. Work is stressful enough
without wondering what your boss will do when she or he finds out you're
using unauthorized software. (Besides, adapting Linux to a
Windows-centric office is a PITA.)
> I do, however, have a USB stick that will let it boot Crunchbang
> Openbox version. I'll be happy to let people play with that.
That sounds awesome. I've heard about Openbox for years, but I never
tried it. I look forward to checking it out.
> PS. Am I right that since we are talking June meeting there will be
> no meeting in May?
That's correct, we're not meeting in May. The next meeting is
Friday, June 3rd.
> PPS. I'd love to be running Slitaz which is a full fledged Linux
> weighing in at 30MB, but the latest version just aren't working with
> my hardware and I haven't been able to figure out why.
If the problem is running the LiveCD/LiveUSB Slitaz on your laptop, then
I suggest you bring everything to the meeting and we can try to figure
it out.
(If you don't mind driving up to Hamilton, you can try the LUG/IP
hardware Special Interest Group (SIG) which meets tomorrow. Helping
people solve Linux hardware problems is the reason they exist. I've been
there several times and they're a friendly and helpful bunch. Details:
http://lugip.org/node/117 )
Thanks Dave!,
-(The Other) Dave
David A. Harding
> If you don't mind driving up to Hamilton, you can try the LUG/IP
> hardware Special Interest Group (SIG) which meets tomorrow.
Update: they're NOT meeting tomorrow. Apparently, the Hamilton library
wants to charge a fee that LUG/IP can't afford. Details:
http://lists.lugip.org/pipermail/lugip/2011-May/000452.html
(For those not closely following the thread, this doesn't affect CHLUG
at all. We're still meeting at 19:00 (7pm) Friday, June 3rd.)
-Dave