Has anybody tried out Natty/Gnome3 yet?

[cimorene]

I've seen the odd mention of it, but I've been trying to give it some time to get more bugfixed before I make the attempt. On the other hand, I'm really itching to play with it.

Relatedly, I was trying to explain the Ubuntu-Gnome split to a friend who knows nothing about Linux and her response was, "Makeup sex!" Then I realized that their story is basically an epic breakup fic, and now I have a new Yuletide fandom.

Comments

[pixel]

Then I realized that their story is basically an epic breakup fic, and now I have a new Yuletide fandom.
A+ would read ;)

I haven't tried it yet myself, even if I'm kinda itching for a look at gedit3.... I don't know if I plan to or not, it's basically all the things I'm not sure I like about Unity, and none of the benefit, which is basically, not having to jump through hoops in order to stick with Ubuntu.

[dragonwolf]

I've been playing with Natty on my desktop (holding off on my laptop, because it's my work machine and I have enough productivity disruptions as it is) and I have mixed feelings on it.

The biggest issue I have is the universal menu bar thing. It assumes you want your windows maximized and you'll only have one window per application open, regardless of your screen size, or how many screens you have. As such, it's awkward, to say the least, on my dual 22" widescreen monitor setup.

The side panel is pretty cool, and helps remedy the "can't see the desktop behind all those windows" issue for those that use desktop icons, but it's still a little buggy (not all applications can be added to the bar right now; this is a known bug).

I hate the menu system, or rather, lack thereof. There's now a single button, which opens a GIANT overlay with GIANT icons (seriously, did all the UI designers suddenly decide that their users were blind? I had this issue with Win7, too), and only a couple submenu things. If the app you're looking for isn't in one of the two submenus, then you get to fish through the list of all your apps to get to what you want (this is even more cumbersome with things like Wine, where instead of having a "Wine" folder, you have all the Wine stuff spilled out into this main one). It is a little better with the search , thing, but I'm a menus kind of person. This one kind of reminds me of the fiasco M$ had with Office 2007 -- theoretically great idea, spectacularly unsuccessful execution.

Unfortunately, Gnome3 is the same way, though theoretically more polished (Unity runs on Gnome2, btw, because Unity and Gnome3 play about as well together as oil and water), though both have a fallback to the old menu system. So if you have either Gnome3 or Unity, you can force it into fallback mode and have the old menu system (Gnome's is still revamped under the hood).