I stopped using Gnome a long time ago, but I still get nostalgic now and again because of all the time I spent customizing it to be absolutely awesome. I tried the Gnome shell back when it was still in development and it sucked then.
Gnome 3 Fallback Desktop Better than Gnome 3 itself
I don’t like the Gnome 3 desktop.
If all you use a computer for is facebook and instant messaging, you’ll probably love it.
Gnome 3 desktop hides everything from you under multiple layers of mouse clicks in order to try to simplify the user experience. But what it actually does is over categorize everything!
I don’t like to have to constantly click-click-click to get to where I’m going. I don’t care how easy it is to respond to instant messages as they pop up along the bottom of my screen, I don’t like this new interface at all! This would work just fine on a tablet pc, but I’m on a desktop or full laptop most of the time.
If you’re like me, you try out new .iso image distributions in virtual machines. It’s easier to install, reinstall, and play with different settings all while easily resetting back to a fresh installation with a click of the revert-to-snapshot button.
The only downfall is that I don’t get to fully utilize the pow-wah of my graphics cards. I’m currently using a pair of NVidia GTX 470′s, but inside a Virtual Machine the host is using a slow Virtualbox software driver. Gnome 3 doesn’t even attempt to play with my slow non-3D accelerated graphics.
So it drops to a fallback desktop… that rocks!!
I like Gnome 3′s Fallback Desktop!
Ahh that warm fuzzy comfy feeling I get from the familiar surrounding of Gnome panels along the top and bottom of my desktop. But it’s not just because I’m used to it and know where everything is, it’s the usability. It’s all right there just like before, only now it looks more polished.
In order to try out the fallback desktop, you’ll have to go dig around in the new interface.
1. Click “Activities”
2. Change to the “Applications” tab near the top.
3. Click “System Tools” along the right, near the bottom.
4. Click the button “System Settings”, in the middle area.
Timeout!!!
Do you see how this is going? Jump around here, hunt and peck there. Am I supposed to be feeling productive just because I had to jump all over the place to get a single action performed? Continuing on…
5. System Info
6. Graphics
7. Forced Fallback
5. System Info
6. Graphics
7. Forced Fallback
The image i’m playing with is the Fedora 15 iso available at http://www.gnome3.org/tryit.html . Your Gnome 3 fallback desktop may not have panels already started, but the methods are the same as Gnome 2. Take a look in ~/.gconf and ~/.gnome2 for the xml files too.
26 thoughts on “Gnome 3 Fallback Desktop Better than Gnome 3 itself”
Leave a Reply
26 thoughts on “Gnome 3 Fallback Desktop Better than Gnome 3 itself”
-
-
I think you’re using gnome3 wrong. Don’t click all those menus. Press your windows key. Start to type ‘System.’ There’s system tools. You should never ever have to click applications. just start typing. There’s also a system settings option under your username in the upper right corner. All your applications that you use frequently, you can mark as favorites, and you can get to them with one swoop of the mouse, tap the corner of the screen and then click the Icon.
Yes, stuff is buried in menus, but the menus filter themselves just by typing. And you sort through everything. I think Gnome3 makes everything much faster, if you use it correctly. It does suck, though, that you need nice graphics drivers.
-
Press “window” key. Type system info. Press Enter.
System Info in 3 steps
-
I have to say, I hated it at first, but oh well, as everything changes eventually I’m trying to embrase it. I had the upgrade to gnome3 today with my Archlinux install. The main thing is that I can press [ALT+T] anytime to still bring up the terminal to do anything so that’s the main thing :) I’m gonna stick with it and see if it grows on me likc the guy above…
-
Click your status bar (your username and status) and system settings is right there :(
-
They broke Alt+Tab (you can now only tab to the first instance of that type of application)
They broke most keyboard shortcuts – what used to take me 4 button presses now takes a point and 4 clicks
You can no longer see the titlebar of a minimized window (get a new email in gmail/hotmail etc.. and the title bar will flash to alert you no longer)
The top left corner now has some significance – this is very stupid. Why not the middle or the right bottom. Who cares? It’s dumb.
Titlebars are like 1 inch long (at least in Fedora) ugly
The OS wants to know if I am busy. None of your freaking business. 1) this does NOT WORK WITH ANY IM CLIENT. 2) You are an operating system my status is none of your business unless you are a screensaver or background process both of which do not use that feature. 3) Nothing uses that feature, it’s an invasion of privacy and nothing more
Fallback mode, (the only good thing) does not support the graphical acceleration. So if you like me hate gnome 3 and decide to switch to fallback mode (which isn’t the same or as good as gnome 2) then no graphical acceleration for you.
Where’s the dang off switch? I can’t find the off switch. I had to open a terminal just to turn the dang thing off.
Search – maybe you like a search to help you “Find” programs or documents on your computer. But I do not. I know the difference between a program and a file. I know what I want and how to get to it. I do not need search built into my desktop. I do not ever ever want to accidentally search for a file and mistakenly get google results and/or desktop widget BS as a search result.
Gradients / Curves – even fallback mode is full of gradients / curves. I prefer a high contrast solid color on solid color UI. I like to know where my desktop ends, and exactly where can I click. Morons are tricked by gradients / curves making them thing that the thing works better/faster. Prople like us (linux users) are not fooled by stupid nonsense like this.GNOME3 = FAIL
-
and ..
In console if you hit Up, Up, Up until you have gone past the list of history the entire screen flashes. Black for 1/2 a second then back to normal. -
Want to see something funny?
http://www.gnome.org/news/2011/05/gnome-3-photo-competition-results/
Check out the winner. I believe the same person who judged these photo’s also Okay’ed Gnome 3 -
To all the commenters that said “press Windows then type system and press enter”:
That only works if you know the name of what you are looking for. Sometimes you don’t remember the exact name and you have to browse to the categories until you find it, that’s when it’s most annoying -
When they came out with KDE4, I became a quick convert to Gnome and fell in love with it. I actually feel like I’m in mourning right now. Gnome 3 just sucks. Talk about system bloat. I liked KDE because it used less resources on my computer, and allowed for all the customization I wanted to throw at it. Where the hell are the context menus? I can’t move the stupid clock or add anything to the menu bars in fallback mode (at least not easily).
I believe this marks the end of my relationship with Gnome. XFCE is a suitable alternative for me even though it’s quirky sometimes. I just can’t believe they made such a radical change to Gnome. It’s a pity and I will miss it.
-
So glad I switched to “fallback mode”! Now my Fedora 15 laptop is actually useful again! Gnome 3 felt to restrictive like something I would give my 8yr old to use. If that’s the direction the gnome developers want to go at least make a “Gnome 3 sleek” and a “Gnome 3 Power User” option to easily switch between. “fallback” sounds so crippled!
-
It takes some time getting used to Gnome3; You will end up liking it.
PS. Try adding commonly used apps like terminal as “favorite”.
-
Even the gnome fallback is tedious for me. It just doesn’t have the functionality and options that we have grown used to with older versions of the gnome desktop. Need I add that it is the most popular desktop environment for linux in the world, so if they were reasonable thinkers surely they would have KEPT ON DOING WHAT THEY WERE OBVIOUSLY DOING SO WELL ALREADY! Unfortunately, popularity is obviously not what gnome developers want…
-
I have a problem. After upgrade F14->F15 Gnome 3 starts only in Fallback mode and gedit start whit new document even if i open an existing file. :) So right now i use KDE.
-
Gnome 3.0 looks like the lovechild of Vista and OSX after they did a lot of meth. While fallback mode looks similar to Gnome 2, it sucks as well. I see no point of using it, unless you want a cripped version of Gnome 2, which is what it really is.
I say that because:
– You can no longer change the position of the gnome panels.
– You can’t add or remove panels.
– You can’t customize existing panels
– You can’t hit Ctrl+Alt+D to minimize all windows
– The desktop is practically useless. Can’t have launchers, can’t drop files there for quick access to something while you’re working. It’s just there for the sake of being there.I usually don’t mind drastic changes as long as it’s really an improvement over previous versions, but this is plain retarded. They’ve sacrificed features in order to make it pretty. Who knows, maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe it is possible to use the Gnome 3.0 engine to make a better UI than the default but nobody has done that yet.
I still like Gnome 2 over all the other window managers I’ve tried. It probably won’t be long until someone decides to fork Gnome 3 and make it the way it should’ve been. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Fedora 14 after all.
-
Developers may have as many genial ideas as they want to, but if the implementation is not intuitive, it will not gain popularity among users. I think this is a most important mistake made by the Gnome 3.0 developers. I only hope that this will be somehow “fixed” in the future Gnome 3.x releases. But at the moment, I am still a victim of Gnome 3 because F14 cannot be installed on my new HW (Intel DQ67SW motherboard).
-
I hate this tablet like mac wannabe android app icon filled abomination! I was never in the past 13 years so upset about a new release of GNOME! Gnome 3 SUCKS!
-
painful choice for work. Use gnome 2 instead.
-
Why did you destroy Gnome?!. It’s a sad day now. R.I.P. Gnome. You will be
missed!!!!!PS: Gnome 3 sucks!!!!!
-
I really don’t understand the whole point of typing to find things. I thought the whole point of a graphical desktop environment was so you didn’t have to type. If I wanted to type (or typo as often is the case) then I’d just work with a command line. Even more annoying for me is that Gnome 3, even in classic mode with no effects runs heavy where Gnome 2 used to run great. I know they are trying to compete for space on in the touchscreen environment, but not all of us are using touch screens. Some of us may even be using old CRT’s.
-
Sorry, but I have to say Gnome 3 is a complete and total disaster. Just another case of developers programming to their own feelings at the moment with little regard for the users. Gnome 2 was clean, simple, and most important – it worked. Gnome 3 is none of the above, and on top of that they seem to have removed nearly all of the customization options that would allow you to set it up as you see fit. It is a shell of what was just a matter of months ago a great desktop manager.
I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and my computer has become absolutely worthless. Not only did 11.10 have some major bugs that rendered my OS unbootable for days, they have completely removed Gnome 2 along with all of the settings that I have been customizing for years, and replaced it with this complete garbage. Fallback mode sucks, it is a trimmed down version of Gnome 2 with major handicaps added for no logical reason I can think of (I can’t even change my wallpaper). The non-fallback mode, needless to say, is horrible.
Absolute arrogance on the part of the developers who decided to put this crap out.
-
@spankyH
I wouldn’t call it “power” mode since it’s not nearly as powerful as Gnome 2 standard mode. How about “slightly less crappy” mode?
-
You really think gnome3 is hard to use? I remember a LOT more click-click-click action in previous versions of Gnome. I use linux for lots of things in a virtual environment without a GUI; that said, the few things I need to do on my host machine (parallel or serial port programming, for instance) are no harder to do now than they were before. I also like being able to create custom launchers (with icon!) for my own scripts and have them pop up in gnome3 when I start typing the name. Did you break off your windows key? Are you incapable of moving your mouse to the top-left corner? Is Alt-F2 too difficult to press in order to enter a command line?
Cry more.
-
man I had to trash gnome 3, exactly what were they thinking? did the enemy develop that thing, impossible to add a firefox icon to the desktop, yes I tried it all gconf everything, then theres the silly shutdown issue, no minimize maximize out of the box? really? no right click? and whats with all the huge icons? sheesh, just because you want to release an upgrade it doesn’t mean you have to destroy it because you want changes, maybe it was perfect the way it was, never remove features or change the way things are done, people learn something one way and thats how they like it, guess I’m going to XFCE or KDE till gnome is repaired?
I stopped using Gnome a long time ago, but I still get nostalgic now and again because of all the time I spent customizing it to be absolutely awesome. I tried the Gnome shell back when it was still in development and it sucked then.
I think you’re using gnome3 wrong. Don’t click all those menus. Press your windows key. Start to type ‘System.’ There’s system tools. You should never ever have to click applications. just start typing. There’s also a system settings option under your username in the upper right corner. All your applications that you use frequently, you can mark as favorites, and you can get to them with one swoop of the mouse, tap the corner of the screen and then click the Icon.
Yes, stuff is buried in menus, but the menus filter themselves just by typing. And you sort through everything. I think Gnome3 makes everything much faster, if you use it correctly. It does suck, though, that you need nice graphics drivers.
Press “window” key. Type system info. Press Enter.
System Info in 3 steps
With the shortcuts it’s not so bad! But it would be nice if they were more intuitive and/or suggested somehow. A one-time popup per event, with an explanation of how I could have gotten there quicker with ctrl-alt-q or something would be nice.
Gnome 3 is growing on me. I didn’t like it at first, but the more I use it the more little things I stumble upon. I’m still using Xfce as my go-to desktop for now, however, I am looking forward to seeing how things progress over the next year or two.
I have to say, I hated it at first, but oh well, as everything changes eventually I’m trying to embrase it. I had the upgrade to gnome3 today with my Archlinux install. The main thing is that I can press [ALT+T] anytime to still bring up the terminal to do anything so that’s the main thing :) I’m gonna stick with it and see if it grows on me likc the guy above…
Click your status bar (your username and status) and system settings is right there :(
They broke Alt+Tab (you can now only tab to the first instance of that type of application)
They broke most keyboard shortcuts – what used to take me 4 button presses now takes a point and 4 clicks
You can no longer see the titlebar of a minimized window (get a new email in gmail/hotmail etc.. and the title bar will flash to alert you no longer)
The top left corner now has some significance – this is very stupid. Why not the middle or the right bottom. Who cares? It’s dumb.
Titlebars are like 1 inch long (at least in Fedora) ugly
The OS wants to know if I am busy. None of your freaking business. 1) this does NOT WORK WITH ANY IM CLIENT. 2) You are an operating system my status is none of your business unless you are a screensaver or background process both of which do not use that feature. 3) Nothing uses that feature, it’s an invasion of privacy and nothing more
Fallback mode, (the only good thing) does not support the graphical acceleration. So if you like me hate gnome 3 and decide to switch to fallback mode (which isn’t the same or as good as gnome 2) then no graphical acceleration for you.
Where’s the dang off switch? I can’t find the off switch. I had to open a terminal just to turn the dang thing off.
Search – maybe you like a search to help you “Find” programs or documents on your computer. But I do not. I know the difference between a program and a file. I know what I want and how to get to it. I do not need search built into my desktop. I do not ever ever want to accidentally search for a file and mistakenly get google results and/or desktop widget BS as a search result.
Gradients / Curves – even fallback mode is full of gradients / curves. I prefer a high contrast solid color on solid color UI. I like to know where my desktop ends, and exactly where can I click. Morons are tricked by gradients / curves making them thing that the thing works better/faster. Prople like us (linux users) are not fooled by stupid nonsense like this.
GNOME3 = FAIL
and ..
In console if you hit Up, Up, Up until you have gone past the list of history the entire screen flashes. Black for 1/2 a second then back to normal.
Want to see something funny?
http://www.gnome.org/news/2011/05/gnome-3-photo-competition-results/
Check out the winner. I believe the same person who judged these photo’s also Okay’ed Gnome 3
To all the commenters that said “press Windows then type system and press enter”:
That only works if you know the name of what you are looking for. Sometimes you don’t remember the exact name and you have to browse to the categories until you find it, that’s when it’s most annoying
When they came out with KDE4, I became a quick convert to Gnome and fell in love with it. I actually feel like I’m in mourning right now. Gnome 3 just sucks. Talk about system bloat. I liked KDE because it used less resources on my computer, and allowed for all the customization I wanted to throw at it. Where the hell are the context menus? I can’t move the stupid clock or add anything to the menu bars in fallback mode (at least not easily).
I believe this marks the end of my relationship with Gnome. XFCE is a suitable alternative for me even though it’s quirky sometimes. I just can’t believe they made such a radical change to Gnome. It’s a pity and I will miss it.
So glad I switched to “fallback mode”! Now my Fedora 15 laptop is actually useful again! Gnome 3 felt to restrictive like something I would give my 8yr old to use. If that’s the direction the gnome developers want to go at least make a “Gnome 3 sleek” and a “Gnome 3 Power User” option to easily switch between. “fallback” sounds so crippled!
It takes some time getting used to Gnome3; You will end up liking it.
PS. Try adding commonly used apps like terminal as “favorite”.
Even the gnome fallback is tedious for me. It just doesn’t have the functionality and options that we have grown used to with older versions of the gnome desktop. Need I add that it is the most popular desktop environment for linux in the world, so if they were reasonable thinkers surely they would have KEPT ON DOING WHAT THEY WERE OBVIOUSLY DOING SO WELL ALREADY! Unfortunately, popularity is obviously not what gnome developers want…
I have a problem. After upgrade F14->F15 Gnome 3 starts only in Fallback mode and gedit start whit new document even if i open an existing file. :) So right now i use KDE.
Gnome 3.0 looks like the lovechild of Vista and OSX after they did a lot of meth. While fallback mode looks similar to Gnome 2, it sucks as well. I see no point of using it, unless you want a cripped version of Gnome 2, which is what it really is.
I say that because:
– You can no longer change the position of the gnome panels.
– You can’t add or remove panels.
– You can’t customize existing panels
– You can’t hit Ctrl+Alt+D to minimize all windows
– The desktop is practically useless. Can’t have launchers, can’t drop files there for quick access to something while you’re working. It’s just there for the sake of being there.
I usually don’t mind drastic changes as long as it’s really an improvement over previous versions, but this is plain retarded. They’ve sacrificed features in order to make it pretty. Who knows, maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way. Maybe it is possible to use the Gnome 3.0 engine to make a better UI than the default but nobody has done that yet.
I still like Gnome 2 over all the other window managers I’ve tried. It probably won’t be long until someone decides to fork Gnome 3 and make it the way it should’ve been. Looks like I’ll be sticking with Fedora 14 after all.
Developers may have as many genial ideas as they want to, but if the implementation is not intuitive, it will not gain popularity among users. I think this is a most important mistake made by the Gnome 3.0 developers. I only hope that this will be somehow “fixed” in the future Gnome 3.x releases. But at the moment, I am still a victim of Gnome 3 because F14 cannot be installed on my new HW (Intel DQ67SW motherboard).
I hate this tablet like mac wannabe android app icon filled abomination! I was never in the past 13 years so upset about a new release of GNOME! Gnome 3 SUCKS!
painful choice for work. Use gnome 2 instead.
Why did you destroy Gnome?!. It’s a sad day now. R.I.P. Gnome. You will be
missed!!!!!
PS: Gnome 3 sucks!!!!!
I really don’t understand the whole point of typing to find things. I thought the whole point of a graphical desktop environment was so you didn’t have to type. If I wanted to type (or typo as often is the case) then I’d just work with a command line. Even more annoying for me is that Gnome 3, even in classic mode with no effects runs heavy where Gnome 2 used to run great. I know they are trying to compete for space on in the touchscreen environment, but not all of us are using touch screens. Some of us may even be using old CRT’s.
Sorry, but I have to say Gnome 3 is a complete and total disaster. Just another case of developers programming to their own feelings at the moment with little regard for the users. Gnome 2 was clean, simple, and most important – it worked. Gnome 3 is none of the above, and on top of that they seem to have removed nearly all of the customization options that would allow you to set it up as you see fit. It is a shell of what was just a matter of months ago a great desktop manager.
I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and my computer has become absolutely worthless. Not only did 11.10 have some major bugs that rendered my OS unbootable for days, they have completely removed Gnome 2 along with all of the settings that I have been customizing for years, and replaced it with this complete garbage. Fallback mode sucks, it is a trimmed down version of Gnome 2 with major handicaps added for no logical reason I can think of (I can’t even change my wallpaper). The non-fallback mode, needless to say, is horrible.
Absolute arrogance on the part of the developers who decided to put this crap out.
@spankyH
I wouldn’t call it “power” mode since it’s not nearly as powerful as Gnome 2 standard mode. How about “slightly less crappy” mode?
You really think gnome3 is hard to use? I remember a LOT more click-click-click action in previous versions of Gnome. I use linux for lots of things in a virtual environment without a GUI; that said, the few things I need to do on my host machine (parallel or serial port programming, for instance) are no harder to do now than they were before. I also like being able to create custom launchers (with icon!) for my own scripts and have them pop up in gnome3 when I start typing the name. Did you break off your windows key? Are you incapable of moving your mouse to the top-left corner? Is Alt-F2 too difficult to press in order to enter a command line?
Cry more.
man I had to trash gnome 3, exactly what were they thinking? did the enemy develop that thing, impossible to add a firefox icon to the desktop, yes I tried it all gconf everything, then theres the silly shutdown issue, no minimize maximize out of the box? really? no right click? and whats with all the huge icons? sheesh, just because you want to release an upgrade it doesn’t mean you have to destroy it because you want changes, maybe it was perfect the way it was, never remove features or change the way things are done, people learn something one way and thats how they like it, guess I’m going to XFCE or KDE till gnome is repaired?