Gnome Shell 1.6.6 (debian package 1.6.7-1)
Ye gods.
I thought I had it bad last time I loaded up the darn thing, but it appears that the simplistic, baby interface I had then was the "fallback, more usable mode" it does when the graphics drivers aren't present.
So, let's see. They've removed everything I use from the task bar, except the clock. There is no system tray anymore, the is in fact a hidden area offscreen so I can't see what's running and what's not running without putting my mouse in the bottom right corner. They've removed any configurability in the menu bar - this is on top of the fallback mode's obvious, intuitive options of "use leftalt+right-alt+right-click to get the menu for changing the plugins you have in the bar or moving them around"... They've helpfully provided me with an IM client that I'm forced to use on every machine, even though I have a client I use on one machine, and I don't want one on each of the other four I log into pretty much every day, thankyouallthesame. They've provided me with universal access menu, which will be of inestimable use should I ever suddenly go blind or lose a hand halfway through my chat session.
They've disabled the scroll button on the mouse. Not only that, they've disabled it so that it doesn't work on any of the machines I connect to via synergy[2]. They've removed the shortcut keys I had configured, so that windows+t no longer starts up a shell. Except sometimes, the first time. And sometimes, the second time. But not always, and it may take four or five seconds to open up a new urxvtcd[1]. If I want to swap to one of the nine desktops I had configured, I can only swap vertically up and down, rather than in a grid pattern as I previously had them. Not only that, it'll automatically add desktops if I scroll down, and open something on the last one, and then try to scroll down again. So I can't leave an empty desktop to split between multiple work areas. And if I _do_ use the mouse to scroll, I can't use the scroll wheel as I used to, instead I have to click on the desktop, then click on the particular window I wanted on top, even if all of them are non-overlapping.
Focus Follows Mouse is Gone. This is the thing that truly gets on my tits. I use this _all_ the time, _all_ day, _every_ day. It's not an optional improvement, it's a critical part of how I manage to get so much done in so little time, and massively increases my ability to switch between tasks.
While we're on the subject of task switching, I now have to slap windows button, then type the name of the command I wanted, and hope that it's somewhere in the non-menued menu; yes, now the entire list of all configured applications on the whole machine is one massive great hash list. Which will display by default. "Select the one you want from these three pages, duh". Unusable. For example, urxvtcd does not supply a .desktop file, so it doesn't show up in the list. So you don't get to open it, at all. This was never a problem before, because I could add it to a custom menu. Wait, those are gone, too. Or I could use my shortcut. See aforementioned win+T shortcut.
The default applications has a menu on the left of everything you have open, plus evolution (not my mail client), libreoffice Writer (not my editor, either; I use it about once a month at most), a file manager that I presume is Nautilus (I don't use that ever, if I can help it), and a help button. Oh, and if you open that menu, it locks the mouse onto that screen, so you can't use the other screens in synergy while leaving the menu open for reference...
Whatever else they've done to it, they've managed to screw it up so badly that the mouse on _other_ machines is broken as well.
And all of this is in less than two days of usage. I've no idea who they got to beta-test it, but whoever it is must be on either a lot of illegal, or a hell of a lot of legal substances.
I was planning on making a go of it, but.. really? Is it _really_ necessary to make the interface believe the users are _this_ stupid? I mean, I want to be able to run a couple of system tray apps, so I can look in the corner of the screen and see them running. I want to run tomboy notes. Okay, it did that, but they're offscreen, which means I'll never see them trying to gain my attention. Which is kinda the point of a notification alert. I want to run a dozen terminals, and no, not tabs. It's very hard to look at two tabs at once, or to have two tabs with totally different window sizes and shapes. If I want tabs, I'll run screen inside my terminal, thankyouverymuch. A group of terminals on each of four or five desktops. And I want to run a couple of browsers, each on it's own desktop, with two to four windows and four to thirty tabs in each. Oh, and a background image, although I can get by without that.
Is that really so hard to manage that you had to make the interface not able to do this? About the only part it managed was the background, and that's the least important of my requirements.
I'm gonna go test fallback mode. But chances are, I'm going to wander off to lxde, and just wave bye-bye to gnome panel. It's the last of gnome I was using, and I was using it because it works really well for what it does. But, while gtk3 is nice, and I don't mind pretty in my desktop... I'd much rather have functional. If I wanted pretty, I'd go spend huge sums on a mac. Or I'd install ubuntu. I don't. I just want functional.
And gnome-shell 3 just isn't.
[1] urxvtcd is a daemon process. You start one, and all the others are spawned as threads. Advantage, shared memory between them, fast startup time, and low footprint. Disadvantage, if one crashes, they all die. I haven't had that happen for a couple years now.
[2] Synergy is an app that lets you use one mouse and keyboard to control more than one machine. At home, I control my usual desktop and laptop with it. At work, I control four machines through it; desktop, windows, laptop, and a monitoring desktop. I have 7 monitors on my desk at work, and use them. Woo.
[ Edited at 04:10 AM. ]
I thought I had it bad last time I loaded up the darn thing, but it appears that the simplistic, baby interface I had then was the "fallback, more usable mode" it does when the graphics drivers aren't present.
So, let's see. They've removed everything I use from the task bar, except the clock. There is no system tray anymore, the is in fact a hidden area offscreen so I can't see what's running and what's not running without putting my mouse in the bottom right corner. They've removed any configurability in the menu bar - this is on top of the fallback mode's obvious, intuitive options of "use leftalt+right-alt+right-click to get the menu for changing the plugins you have in the bar or moving them around"... They've helpfully provided me with an IM client that I'm forced to use on every machine, even though I have a client I use on one machine, and I don't want one on each of the other four I log into pretty much every day, thankyouallthesame. They've provided me with universal access menu, which will be of inestimable use should I ever suddenly go blind or lose a hand halfway through my chat session.
They've disabled the scroll button on the mouse. Not only that, they've disabled it so that it doesn't work on any of the machines I connect to via synergy[2]. They've removed the shortcut keys I had configured, so that windows+t no longer starts up a shell. Except sometimes, the first time. And sometimes, the second time. But not always, and it may take four or five seconds to open up a new urxvtcd[1]. If I want to swap to one of the nine desktops I had configured, I can only swap vertically up and down, rather than in a grid pattern as I previously had them. Not only that, it'll automatically add desktops if I scroll down, and open something on the last one, and then try to scroll down again. So I can't leave an empty desktop to split between multiple work areas. And if I _do_ use the mouse to scroll, I can't use the scroll wheel as I used to, instead I have to click on the desktop, then click on the particular window I wanted on top, even if all of them are non-overlapping.
Focus Follows Mouse is Gone. This is the thing that truly gets on my tits. I use this _all_ the time, _all_ day, _every_ day. It's not an optional improvement, it's a critical part of how I manage to get so much done in so little time, and massively increases my ability to switch between tasks.
While we're on the subject of task switching, I now have to slap windows button, then type the name of the command I wanted, and hope that it's somewhere in the non-menued menu; yes, now the entire list of all configured applications on the whole machine is one massive great hash list. Which will display by default. "Select the one you want from these three pages, duh". Unusable. For example, urxvtcd does not supply a .desktop file, so it doesn't show up in the list. So you don't get to open it, at all. This was never a problem before, because I could add it to a custom menu. Wait, those are gone, too. Or I could use my shortcut. See aforementioned win+T shortcut.
The default applications has a menu on the left of everything you have open, plus evolution (not my mail client), libreoffice Writer (not my editor, either; I use it about once a month at most), a file manager that I presume is Nautilus (I don't use that ever, if I can help it), and a help button. Oh, and if you open that menu, it locks the mouse onto that screen, so you can't use the other screens in synergy while leaving the menu open for reference...
Whatever else they've done to it, they've managed to screw it up so badly that the mouse on _other_ machines is broken as well.
And all of this is in less than two days of usage. I've no idea who they got to beta-test it, but whoever it is must be on either a lot of illegal, or a hell of a lot of legal substances.
I was planning on making a go of it, but.. really? Is it _really_ necessary to make the interface believe the users are _this_ stupid? I mean, I want to be able to run a couple of system tray apps, so I can look in the corner of the screen and see them running. I want to run tomboy notes. Okay, it did that, but they're offscreen, which means I'll never see them trying to gain my attention. Which is kinda the point of a notification alert. I want to run a dozen terminals, and no, not tabs. It's very hard to look at two tabs at once, or to have two tabs with totally different window sizes and shapes. If I want tabs, I'll run screen inside my terminal, thankyouverymuch. A group of terminals on each of four or five desktops. And I want to run a couple of browsers, each on it's own desktop, with two to four windows and four to thirty tabs in each. Oh, and a background image, although I can get by without that.
Is that really so hard to manage that you had to make the interface not able to do this? About the only part it managed was the background, and that's the least important of my requirements.
I'm gonna go test fallback mode. But chances are, I'm going to wander off to lxde, and just wave bye-bye to gnome panel. It's the last of gnome I was using, and I was using it because it works really well for what it does. But, while gtk3 is nice, and I don't mind pretty in my desktop... I'd much rather have functional. If I wanted pretty, I'd go spend huge sums on a mac. Or I'd install ubuntu. I don't. I just want functional.
And gnome-shell 3 just isn't.
[1] urxvtcd is a daemon process. You start one, and all the others are spawned as threads. Advantage, shared memory between them, fast startup time, and low footprint. Disadvantage, if one crashes, they all die. I haven't had that happen for a couple years now.
[2] Synergy is an app that lets you use one mouse and keyboard to control more than one machine. At home, I control my usual desktop and laptop with it. At work, I control four machines through it; desktop, windows, laptop, and a monitoring desktop. I have 7 monitors on my desk at work, and use them. Woo.
[ Edited at 04:10 AM. ]