Next Gnome delayed until 2011 Linux users on Gnome must wait a full year before their favorite desktop is updated – the first such delay in the project's short history. Gnome 3.0 has been postponed until March 2011 from the scheduled September due date that would have been in keeping Gnome's six-month release cycle, in practice since 2004. Instead, the …
Thank $DEITY!
Gnome Shell is, IMHO, one of the most draconian rewrites of the GUI paradigm that has ever been foisted on the Gnome user community.
I used to be a big fan of KDE until KDE 4.x came out. At that point, I switched to Gnome. One of the reasons I've liked Gnome so much is that it has (to this point) seemed to be more stable and easier on resources than KDE 4.x, didn't overwhelm you with a buhzillion fiddly options, and (usually) shipped with common-sense defaults.
Sure, the current edition of Gnome is nowhere near as fast and light as LXDE or Fluxbox, or even Xfce (although Xfce has recently started to get a bit top-heavy as well), but it can work on pretty much any graphics card minted since, say, 2003-ish.
However, I can't say the same thing about Gnome 3.0 (especially Gnome Shell). It's almost guaranteed to **require** hardware-accelerated graphics to run properly, with all of it's "Hey! Let's shrink the whole desktop to make room for the Activities menu!" [**] and what-not, and likely strong acceleration to boot (read: nVidia G9x core / ATi R600 core, or better). Not even KDE, with all of its current resource requirements, is **that** bad.
Oh, and Clutter/Mutter (graphics toolkit/window manager toolkit) as used by Gnome Shell is incompatible with Compiz.
[**] Wanna see what I'm talking about? Then check here:
-- YouTube (GNOME 3: Gnome Shells)
-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQUuH2dIFHM
(Badgers, because Web2.0 tech is invading my GUI toolkit.)
I agree, having looked at various videos and screenies of gnome-shell I can't say I'm looking forward to it, however if you read up on it at gnome.org you'll find that the gnome 2 style desktop will still be supported and available. Hopefully they'll make gnome-shell a totally optional paradigm because it's not something I'd ever want to use. Should they try to force it on the users then I think I'll be switching to xfce.
Not so. I've run Gnome Shell on my tiddly little netbook and it's snappy as you like (more than can be said for Compiz on the same hardware). Your 2003 gfx card might be fine, but my 2003 cpu just isn't powerful enough for Gnome. If I want to run a system on older hardware, I choose LXDE or Openbox or something - but I'd never put those systems in front of my Mum - but she's happy using Gnome 'cos it's got all the bells and whistles she needs and expects from a computer. Linux no longer needs to please the geeks, we've got enough options already. It needs to be usable by Normals, and Normals want slickness and polish and widgets and so on.
The shift in the way the gui works is pretty radical, but it's also pretty good. Try it for a little while, rather than just watching videos. I did. It felt weird at first, but became slick and powerful after a very short adjustment period - I didn't want to go back, but at that point there was no stickyKeys support and that's a deal-breaker for me. Yes, you shrink the desktop to use the overview (which includes the Activities menu) - but why not? Why not make the menu more accessible and easier to navigate? It's what most people need, so it makes sense! Power users like us can carry on using the shell and keyboard accelerators like deskbar etc, but for new users, it's friendly and simple and it does what they need.
Gnome as loads of options, it's just it tends to have them - as you say - defaulted sensibly. This won't change, it'll just be different (and gSettings is a lot better than gConf ever was). Mutter is, as you say, currently incompatible with Compiz. Can't see that lasting long.
Also I'm pretty sure that someone will keep the 2.x branch going, so y'know - just run that if you want. Isn't having choice wonderful?
Or was it only in your head?
The vast majority of people yet to dip a toe in the penguin don't even know the difference between gnome and KDE, you're just projecting here.
Also, colour management, yay. About bloody time. Also, better to release when it's ready than rush with a feature incomplete and flaky attempt a la KDE 4 (which took them a while to recover from).
...if you take a deltree /y c:, a format c: /u or fdisk your hard drive and install a proper OS on it first :)
Then take the "Recovery" CD, nuke it in the microwave for a couple of seconds and watch the fireworks, then hang the CD outside as a bird scarer. Do the same with any Windoze driver CDs then put the reams of multi-lingual manuals (300 pages, of which 2 are English) in your recycling box.
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