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Comment by moreentropy | Hacker News Reader

I can honestly say that I'm generally very happy and productive with Gnome 3. It looks and feels way better than Unity.

With Gnome 3 I can launch, place, and switch all applications with a few keystrokes and without touching the mouse at all, all while "normal" people can still use the very same configuration. I like that it's basically just an unobstrusive shell to launch and switch applications.

People always complain that Linux desktops just mimic Windows 95, now that Gnome has done something entirely new (and good!), people complain that it's different to what they're used to.

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OK. So basically just what Unity does then?

Not trying to belittle your comment or anything, but had you not prefixed your comment "With Gnome 3 I can", I would just have assumed you just described Unity. Because Unity does all that very well too.

So what's different about it? What makes it better?

I haven't really used Unity apart from launching a terminal and a browser on someone else's desktop. Unity and Gnome 3 seem very similar, both visually and by paradigm. I guess Unity is a brainchild of Ubuntu's NIH attitude.

Personally as a Gnome 3 user, when having to use Unity i got annoyed because my muscle memory keystrokes didn't work as expected (hit win, type "term" hit return, hit win-uparrow, expect a fullscreen terminal), but there's no point in expecting Unity to behave exactly like Gnome 3, I'm sure a similar workflow exists in Unity.

> hit win, type "term" hit return, hit win-uparrow, expect a fullscreen terminal

Unity version: hit win, type "term" hit return, hit F11, expect a fullscreen terminal

Also: hit win, type "term", hit return, hit alt-space x, expect a fullscreen terminal.

Don't want to come across smug but in Awesome and many other tiling WM:

meta+Enter

That's it, your fullscreen terminal is there.

hmm, also in Windows 95.

That's blatantly not true. You have to press: ctrl+esc, up arrow, enter, c, m, d, enter, alt+m, enter (or something along those lines) And in the end I'm pretty sure the windows command prompt doesn't allow you to maximise it because it can't adapt to the changing line and row number.

Also how do you get Windows 95 to manage your X session? ;) Seriously though, we're all talking about Linux here.

edit: I understand your confusion now, I think you failed to realise that meta+enter also opens the said terminal

I think you failed to realise that meta+enter also opens the said terminal

ah yes, didn't know that. was referring to full-screening.

Ah, nope, that's maximised, not fullscreen. Try both to see the difference.

> Ubuntu's NIH attitude

GNOME is implementing their vision for the desktop.

Ubuntu is implementing their vision for the desktop.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing really. Let them to what they want with their resources.

I'd just say that with the current state of Unity and Gnome 3, it doesn't really make sense to have them both, since they're quite similar in look & feel. So I might suspect that right now Ubuntu's vision is to have something own they control. Which doesn't make sense to me but is their right.

Ctrl-Alt T, F11

Launch terminal, go fullscreen, much faster.

You are right about muscle memory. I hated Ubuntu until I forced myself to learn the shortcuts, now I love it.

Maximize is control-win-uparrow -- I'm not sure if you meant that or fullscreen.

>> People always complain that Linux desktops just mimic Windows 95, now that Gnome has done something entirely new (and good!) [..]

If by 'entirely new (and good)!' you mean 'just mimic the OS X desktop' (badly), then yes, Gnome is doing great :-/

Well I beg to differ. I really like the Gnome 3 Shell, and I think it's a mature and usable interface. Of course paradigm stealing is happening since 1984 Mac OS (or before), but there's enough to Gnome 3 to make it not just a bad copy of something else.

Of course there's some stuff that sucks badly, for me it's some changes in Nautilus' drag&drop and keybindings, they seem to just change stuff there for the cause of being different. And the crude notification space on the bottom of the screen is pretty unimaginative and annoying.

I have to agree with this post. Gnome 3.1 is really great, and I feel they've finally moved away from the 95 look and feel.

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