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The new GNOME environment starts users off with a blank desktop that seems to serve only as a sort of wallpaper for one’s computer—there are no icons to interact with, and if you store files in the “Desktop” folder, they don’t show up on the desktop. Across the top of the screen, there’s a panel with date and time, volume control, network status, power manager and a small settings and login button.
Moving the cursor to the upper left side of the screen brings the environment to life, pulling up a desktop overlay, with a panel containing application links to the left and a virtual desktops panel to the right. Also on the right is a search box that I could use to locate applications on my test system. I was also able to browse through a grid of installed applications by clicking an “Applications” button toward the top of the overlay.
Moving the cursor to the bottom right of the screen pulls up a second panel, where applications that typically stay running in the system tray live. For instance, once opened, Fedora’s chat application lives in this bottom panel, and when new instant messages come in, a notification window pops up from the panel with the message text. On my test system, I could respond to instant messages from this same notification window.
After opening an application, I noticed that application windows lack maximise or minimise buttons, though I could access these commands by right-clicking on the title portion of the window. For applications such as the instant messenger client, clicking the “close” button serves the same purpose as minimising, and the bottom panel provides a place to reopen the minimised application.
By default, Ubuntu application menus follow the Apple OS X global menu convention—the menu of the active, foreground application appears across the top of the display. I’m not a fan of this menu configuration, so I was pleased to find that it was possible to revert to the previous menu behavior.
As with GNOME Shell, Unity taps search for locating and launching applications installed on one’s system, although Unity also suggests applications available for installation from Ubuntu’s software repositories.
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View Comments
Jason,
I recognize that there are many changes to both UBUNTU and Fedora. Gnome3 has a mode of GUI interface that you omitted, either by number of inches to write, by lack of time, or just a standard omission.
The Gnome3 interface without fall-back to "Graphics Off" mode is a real time waste. There are too many keystrokes to get what you need to see. If you have two items open, they are typically on different "Desktops". Sliding them together onto the same desktop makes each non executable.
However....
With the graphics off mode, we get most of the new functionality, and the familiar ability to set up more than one desktop as we could do in the past. Gnome3 fall-back is the winner, and the lifesaver for Gnome, in my opinion.
Please do a follow up article about the Gnome3 fall-back option.
In contrast, Unity allows you to view (4) desktop images on your display, and by clicking on one of them, it expands to full screen. This is another approach to satisfy we old Gnome/KDE users who are accustomed to having 4 desktops.
In closing, I enjoy your writing style and excuse my verbose feedback.
Leslie (Montreal QC, Canada)