Introduction to Gnome 3 • Hacker News Board

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#71

Post by cmeiklejohn » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 4:25 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #21

cmeiklejohn wrote: post #17

Ubuntu's decision to move to Unity made me go back to Debian for GNOME/Clearlooks for the first time in a while, but what am I going to do now with the way GNOME 3 looks?

It seems that you switched before you tried. I don't know much about unity, but I was following the beginnings of gnome shell and I can't wait to get it in my hands. Activities / creating desktops as you need them is exactly what I wanted. But there are other cool things included too.

No, I used unity in the netbook edition in both 10.04 and 10.10. I switched when I heard it would become the default.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#72

Post by cmeiklejohn » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 4:26 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #21

cmeiklejohn wrote: post #17

Ubuntu's decision to move to Unity made me go back to Debian for GNOME/Clearlooks for the first time in a while, but what am I going to do now with the way GNOME 3 looks?

It seems that you switched before you tried. I don't know much about unity, but I was following the beginnings of gnome shell and I can't wait to get it in my hands. Activities / creating desktops as you need them is exactly what I wanted. But there are other cool things included too.

No, I used unity in the netbook edition in both 10.04 and 10.10. I switched when I heard it would become the default.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#73

Post by cmeiklejohn » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 4:27 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #21

cmeiklejohn wrote: post #17

Ubuntu's decision to move to Unity made me go back to Debian for GNOME/Clearlooks for the first time in a while, but what am I going to do now with the way GNOME 3 looks?

It seems that you switched before you tried. I don't know much about unity, but I was following the beginnings of gnome shell and I can't wait to get it in my hands. Activities / creating desktops as you need them is exactly what I wanted. But there are other cool things included too.

No, I used unity in the netbook edition in both 10.04 and 10.10. I switched when I heard it would become the default.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#74

Post by jamesgeck0 » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 7:00 PM UTC

acabal wrote: post #51

sciurus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting thing about the Gnome Shell design process is that it has been very open and responsive. Although there was a heavy focus on creating design principles up front, the actual design has evolved a lot over the few years that the project has been active. The overview of the current design at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design has many relevant links that you can explore if you're interested. I know t…

Interesting, I didn't know about that. One thing that concerns me is that they only decided to do usability testing in Feb 2010, but according to the Wiki page Gnome 3 has been in development since Jul 2008. Shouldn't a huge UI overhaul receive incremental user testing to stamp out bad ideas before significant dev time is invested? After an alpha is delivered, does anyone really think that if one of their big paradig…

A significant amount of Gnome 3 development time has been spent on things which will be mostly invisible to the user; overhauling libraries and such.

It looks like Gnome Shell has been in development since late 2008, but only got to a state where it was very usable in late 2009. http://gnomejournal.org/article/85/easy-breezy-beautiful-gno...

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#75

Post by jamesgeck0 » Wed, Jan 19, 2011, 7:05 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #12

junkbit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an old gtk theme. The GTK3 look fits better with the new titlebar http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakubsteiner/5201953378/sizes/o...

It's getting better, but that screenshot has plenty of it's own problems. That titlebar, menu, icon row and tabs takes up like 200+ px. Versus like 60 with Chrome. What's the deal ?

Large objects are easier to target. (That, and Chrome doesn't have a menu bar, which would at least bump it up to 80px.)

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#76

Post by joe_the_user » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 2:21 AM UTC

naveens wrote: post #63

joe_the_user wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify this? Do you actually know that Gnome is actively "code around" some alleged patent violation? Programming around any imaginable patent violation actually seems really bad, especially given that software patents aren't looking as strong as they once were. I vaguely Linus or someone saying it's better not to research existing patents, it limits your liability. But just on the principle of letting cor…

Start here: http://david.freetype.org/cleartype-patents.html

I've heard of the free-type patents and I found references to the patenting of OS dock (hasn't end free docks in Linux as far as I can see - especially, the Gnome Shell look a lot like a dock).

I oppose that Free-type patents like all software patents but they don't scare me too much because sub-pixel rendering's value is debatable and it's not something that should affect programming at a higher level.

On the other hand, in the context of the thread, when rbanffy said "Don't forget Apple (among others) has tons of silly patents regarding text rendering that Gnome developers have to program around", in response to "truncation in OS X is much much smarter", he seemed to imply there were patents on the level of simply truncating text.

Are there?

If there are, it sound horrible.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#77

Post by carussell » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 3:05 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #35

Gnome 3 "Made of Ugly." How is it possible that the aliasing on those fonts in the example image is allowed on the front page of their marketing. Every third line is a different size and has a blurry appearance.

That's the result of bad post-processing on the image.

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#78

Post by jauco » Thu, Jan 20, 2011, 4:27 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #60

rbanffy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, truncation in OS X is much much smarter: Don't forget Apple (among others) has tons of silly patents regarding text rendering that Gnome developers have to program around while everybody else can just cross-license with their own silly little patents. It may be possible they simply cannot afford the risk of doing the obvious thing.

Could you clarify this? Do you actually know that Gnome is actively "code around" some alleged patent violation? Programming around any imaginable patent violation actually seems really bad, especially given that software patents aren't looking as strong as they once were. I vaguely Linus or someone saying it's better not to research existing patents, it limits your liability. But just on the principle of letting cor…

Spring loaded folders: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-February/m...

Re: Introduction to Gnome 3

#79

Post by joe_the_user » Fri, Jan 21, 2011, 7:12 AM UTC

jauco wrote: post #78

joe_the_user wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you clarify this? Do you actually know that Gnome is actively "code around" some alleged patent violation? Programming around any imaginable patent violation actually seems really bad, especially given that software patents aren't looking as strong as they once were. I vaguely Linus or someone saying it's better not to research existing patents, it limits your liability. But just on the principle of letting cor…

Spring loaded folders: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2003-February/m...

OK...

Well, if this is wide-spread, I find frustrating, even infuriating that it only appears in bits and pieces rather than there being a large "this is what software patents are imposing on us". The worst possible thing is to let this happen silently.