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On 31/08/13 11:58, Gordon Henderson wrote: > > So after 25 years of plain old X window type interfaces (openview, > twm, olvwm, fvwm1/2, lxde, xfce4) I've taken the plunge and given > Gnome3 a go... > > It was mostly prompted by my wife wanting something a little flashier > too - we were both running xfce4 which was fine, but she felt her PC > could do better... And until yesterday my PC wouldn't support the 3D > necessary (anyone want to buy a 3-core AMD + APU motherboard?) > > And you know what... It's growing on me. My previous virtual desktops > have been usually arranged in a 3x3 manner and my work is almost > always inside Xterms so I was a little unsure how I'd get on - however > I also got a new monitor (24", 1920x1080 HD thingy) so it can host > many full height (height is more important for me when working) > terminals. > > And actually taking a few moments to read the help browser and a few > googles and off I went. > > There is even a traditional "desktop" mode where you can have the file > manage maintain the desktop - MS Windows fashion. I've never used > this, (coming from twm origins) but wifey used it a lot, coming from a > Win environment, but she's not enabled it yet. > > I've been able to do a few tweaks (It has a "registry" type > configuration which I bet is a million lines of xml somewhere) to do > things I like like auto-raise windows and grab focus on mouse-over and > add a few hot-keys to max-height a window with Ctrl-UpArrow, etc. > > I was even able to add new applications into it by creating new files > in /usr/share/applications for firefox and thunderbird (which wifey > uses - I'm still on alpine here!) It does try to make you use > Evolution all the time though. > > Evolution vs. Thunderbird? I've done a few searches - seems much a > muchness (Reports of Evolution being slow with imap - which is all we > use) - but Gnome prefers Evolution for things like notifications, > calendar, etc. anyone have a view? > > > There are things I don't like about it - the bar along the top - damn > you, I want it at the right - give me back those vertical pixels! But > I'm getting used to using the "Windows" Key now. > > Still - it's fast and smooth - which I guess it ought to be, using the > on-board GPU thingy, although my mobo is nothing special by todays > standards - picked more for lower power than anything else - Intel > "ivybridge" i3 processor and Asus motherboard with 4GB of DDR3 RAM. > (Wifes PC is a little older with a Core2 Duo processor) > > Not quite as fast yet as maybe the old xfce4 was at moving between > virtual desktops - Move mouse to little virtual 3x3 representions & > click vs. Ctrl+Alt+ up/down arrows moves between them, or Windows key > + click - so it'll be intersting to see how I get on with some real > work where I'd typically have 6 or 7 virtual windows open with xterms > & apps running inside - but the extra screen real-estate might help to > reduce that... > > Not sure it would run om my old 512MB laptop though - it's all a bit > heavyweight - the current top (sorted by memory) is: > > %Cpu(s): 0.8 us, 1.3 sy, 0.0 ni, 97.9 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 > si, 0.0 st > KiB Mem: 3831912 total, 2010652 used, 1821260 free, 642984 buffers > KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free, 789664 cached > > PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND > 5369 gordon 20 0 835m 257m 41m S 1.0 6.9 6:35.24 firefox > 6104 gordon 20 0 540m 113m 41m S 0.7 3.0 3:00.88 gnome-shell > 5437 gordon 20 0 208m 42m 19m S 0.0 1.1 1:06.58 > plugin-containe > 4011 gordon 20 0 56324 26m 12m S 0.3 0.7 1:14.34 xchat > 3637 gordon 20 0 233m 20m 13m S 0.0 0.5 0:09.92 > gnome-settings- > 4033 gordon 20 0 171m 17m 12m S 0.0 0.5 0:45.07 > xfce4-terminal > > There's no "widgets" though (think they're called indicators) - unless > I'm missing something obvious - so missing things like cpu meter, > weather, and stuff like that. There's mention of them being in sid - > sticking to wheezy for now though. > > So ther you go. Not too much screaming, but a lot of dragging and > -so-far- it's passing the wife test! > > I have noticed an SDL application I have doesn't play nice when > running it in full-screen mode though - maybe SDL2 will help there... > > Gordon > Hello Gordon, and welcome to the dark side! Firstly, congratulations for jumping in at the deep end and even coming back to say "you know what, I've just tried something new and I like it" - it seems a lot of us skilled nerds are very stuck in our ways and too quick to rubbish stuff that sometimes we haven't even properly looked at. I'm *really* surprised you even tried Gnome3, let alone quite liked it. I've nearly always been a Gnome user, after CDE - mainly because all of UNIX boxes I used to work on daily standardised on CDE initially (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris/SunOS and to a lesser extent Tru64 and even Irix supported it) before slowly switching to early versions of Gnome (modern Solaris always uses Gnome these days, if you're using a GUI at all) so it's just what I got used to when I started using Linux as well. I've tried every DE pretty much - with KDE being the only one I still hate with a vengeance - mostly sticking with XFCE or Awesome myself during the uncertain transition to Gnome3, before I eventually, tentatively, started to like it. Or at least tolerate it - you've chosen a good time to jump on board: most of the horrific early bugs have been excised and Debian Wheezy is particularly good about keeping their version sane and stable. My bleeding edge boxes are already up to Gnome 3.8 where the idiotic devs have removed transparency for some reason... Your biggest problem is going to be those devs, who really seem to be their own worst enemy and certainly have scant regard for any of their users. But anyway, as a bit of a Gnome3 veteran, I have some hopefully useful tips for you: https://extensions.gnome.org/ This is your first stop to tame Gnome3 - I know it seems weird going to a webpage to install customisations to your DE (and it *is* weird, quite frankly - you can install some extensions manually through the repos as per normal but they're always lagging behind), but, hey ho, it is what it is. I've got quite a bunch installed, but I'd recommend looking through them and seeing what you want. I recommend: Alternate Tab (fixes alt+tab behaviour) Remove Accessibility (gets rid of unnecessary Accessibility menu) Desktop Scroller (use mouse wheel at left of screen to flick between virtual desktops) Gtile/ShellShape (both add tiling desktop style options to control your open desktop apps) Quit Button (remove annoying pic+name+status thing in top right, replace with quit icon) TopIcons (shifts missing statusbar icons like Dropbox, etc to the top right bar and makes them permanently visible) UserThemes (restores missing customisation abilities) PlacesStatusIndicator (adds old Gnome2 style quick launcher to top bar) I don't mind the top bar where it is (I'm using a 24" standard HD monitor like you as well) but there are a couple of extensions that can move it to the right or left, autohide it, etc, so it sounds like you might be needing that as well. Lastly, if you don't have it already, install gnome-tweak-tool from the repos as that will give you direct access to some more settings, most particularly, restoring the usual three buttons to the top right of every window. Depending on your preferences and setup, Debian may have adopted some of the hideous Mac-cloning behaviour of Ubuntu's Gnome3 implementation as well, meaning you may need to exterminate anything relating to "appmenu" or "globalmenu" via apt with extreme prejudice. The CPU meter, weather and lots of other gadgets are definitely all available on gnome extensions as well (I have a funky conky setup for that, so don't use any myself). For the last couple of things - Gnome3 on your 512Mb laptop is going to royally suck. It was unbearable on my old Toshy 1.5Gb RAM laptop - stick to whatever lighter DE you normally prefer. Evolution vs Thunderbird isn't even an argument: Evolution is *terrible*. Stay, well, well away from it - sadly, the Gnome3 devs (whom we tend to call the underpants Gnomes, not fondly either) have made it almost impossible to completely purge from a Gnome system - eventually your "apt-get purge evolution*" will end up sucking in meta-packages to remove as dependencies and it won't end well. Get rid of as much of it as you can, install Thunderbird (which has lightning available for calendaring, etc) and never look back. I seriously doubt your "real work" is going to cause any problems - much like you, I tend to have many, many shells, xterms, log windows, X-forwarded sessions, firefox/thunderbird, Thunar (yes, weirdly, I do prefer to use the XFCE file browser on Gnome3) all open at the same time and I usually end up with 10-15 crammed virtual desktops simultaneously open and it's all been fine. Gnome3 isn't perfect by a long shot, but come to think of it, I don't think the stable version of 3.6 I've been using for ages on this system has ever totally crapped out on me yet. I've run into the occasional glitch, and shutting it down last night, after safely exiting some apps, the virtual pager to the right showing all my desktops weirdly just disappeared but that's literally the only problem I've had. I think I use to crash out Gnome2 more often than this. Hope this might be of some use to you in your new Gnome3 adventures! I suppose really this means that I should for the billionth time take a deep breath, reinstall KDE and try it again. I don't know why, but I just hate it - over the years I've gone back to it again and again and again, but it's never ended well. Regards -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq