GNOME 3 vs Ubuntu Unity.

[Sandeep Awasthi]

Gnome 3 vs Ubuntu Unity.

As there was lot of talk about Unity which is released with Ubuntu 11.04. I tried for 2 days when Ubuntu 11.04 released. I did not find it much user friendly. From last two months I am using GNOME 3 on OpenSUSE 11.4. I liked GNOME 3 very much. In the beginning it looked something different. But as I kept on using it , I found it good. The only problem I face with it when I open too many windows. I think you will have to use workspace efficienty. The other thing to keep in mind that it is keyboard centric rather than mouse centric. You will have to use keyboard shortcuts more often than mouse. It's hardware integration looks better than Unity so graphics it better than Unity ( at least on my laptop ). There is talk that Ubuntu 11.10 is going to include GNOME 3. I installed first beta of Ubuntu 11.10 on virtual machine. I installed GNOME shell as well but unfortunately could not login into GNOME shell for some unknown reason. Since it is beta 1 and I read some where that 11.10 beta 1 has unstable GNOME 3, I did not try much. But GNOME 3 look to me much better than Unity. I am using it from last two months on OpensUSE.

Following are some useful links if you want to try.

Install GNOME 3 on OpenSUSE 11.4 http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:GNOME_3.0 ( One click install did not work for me, I installed using text install)

GNOME 3 cheatsheet at Arch Linux. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME

Adding application to GNOME 3 launcher http://bloggezmoy.com/2011/05/17/how-to-add-an-application-to-the-gnome-3-application-launcher/


Note that : Be careful while adding GNOME 3 extensions, it crashed for some extensions for me in the beginning.

In the end my vote is for GNOME 3 against Unity.

[Maneesh Godbole]

Agree about Unity. It is not that user friendly. They tried to replicate the netbook UI and failed in my opinion. However, you can still run the classic UI, if you select the option before logging in

[Sumit Bisht]

I've been using Unity since ubuntu 11.04. After being frustrated with its user friendliness, I am also considering migrating to Mint. However, under unity too, if you know the commands, you can perform quite a lot of things via keyboard.

[Sandeep Awasthi]

Maneesh Godbole wrote: However, you can still run the classic UI, if you select the option before logging in

No I m not talking about GNOME classic. I am talking about GNOME 3 vs Unity. Which is better at this stage.

Many Ubuntu user wanted GNOME 3, but Ubuntu pushed Unity. This is the reason someone started his own project called gNatty. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1754198. Since this project is not officially supported, I did not talk about it.

[Sandeep Awasthi]

GNOME 3 is included in Ubuntu 11.10 beta2.

[Pat Farrell]

Sandeep Awasthi wrote:GNOME 3 is included in Ubuntu 11.10 beta2.

That is good news. I generally wait 6 weeks or more after a release to let others shake the bugs out.
I hate unity.

[Sandeep Awasthi]

Pat Farrell wrote: I generally wait 6 weeks or more after a release to let others shake the bugs out.

Agree. I install beta versions on one of old PC just to get feel of what is coming in new release. In 11.10 release they built Unity on GNOME 3.

Between, here I found good tutorial for GNOME 3 shell.
http://ubuntumanual.org/posts/401/gnome-3-and-shell-a-complete-user-guide-part-1 (Do not try it on Ubuntu 11.04 through PPA though. It does not work properly on 11.04, I already have tried it.)