Re: [tlug] Holy smokes, Unity and Gnome 3 suck worse than I ever could have imagined.

[Martin G <ebisumartin@example.com>]

Jonathan said:
> Also, developing good design sense takes decades.

This is part of my problem with the whole shift taking place in Gnome3
and Unity. I feel that Gnome 2 *evolved* over at least a decade or so.
Minor tweaks here and there, and more customizable as time went on. So
it was great design, and the "sense" came from collective
contribution.

As soon as some "designers" get it into their head they know what is
the "best" design for everyone, they impose their will and you get a
steaming pile like Unity. And another steaming pile like Gnome3
Desktop. (Not to say that designers always fail. The Mac design team
does very well, and I don't think Windows UI is a failure for the most
part. The point just being that designers *can* fail, and I think they
failed spectacularly with Unity/Gnome3.)

Some people talk about the old Gnome as if it were some kind of
holdback to decades old standards, but lets face it, the technology
hasn't changed. We still use a mouse and keyboard to interact with a
flat 2D interface. The whole drop down menu thing fits that model,
and, for me, trying to squeeze some kind of "better" experience out of
it is like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic - pointless.

The real changes in interfaces will come on that day when we can speak
naturally to computers, like they do on Star Trek, or when we have
some kind of immersive VR or something.

Until then... just gimme my Gnome 2.2!

Anyway... So, I was wondering about something. As far as I understand,
both Unity and the new Gnome Shell are both running on new Gnome
codebase. There's some name confusion because talking about Gnome
seems to refer to both the code underneath and the shell. Just to be
clear, I'll use Gnome3-Code and Gnome3-Shell to separate out the code
from the UI.

Now, if I have that straight, the new Gnome3-Code is a serious
improvement over the old Gnome2-Code. I can actually tell that it is
significantly more responsive and I presume more stable and rational.
So that's good.

And, if I'm right about all this, Unity and Gnome-Desktop are both
just shells on top of the new Gnom3e-Code. It's on the shell layer
that dumb-ass decisions like having a "launcher" that can only be on
the left side are made.

So my question is this: Would it not be possible to use the new
Gnome3-Code and make a new shell that is basically the same UI as the
Gnome2-Shell?

Aren't all the UI level decisions essentially arbitrary? Is there some
reason why you couldn't have panels and Compiz effects and all that
jazz?

I notice that Gnome3-shell is not compatible with Compiz, but Unity
is. So, surely it would be possible to make a shell that recreated
Gnome2-shell.

Of course, I have absolutely no coding expertise in this area
whatsoever. But is there a place or a way I can plant the seed of
suggesting that someone fork a Gnome2-shell for Gnome3-code?

I have looked around the net, and the hatred for Unity and
Gnome3-shell is pretty significant. I bet if someone went in the
direction of a new Gnome2-shell, it would soon become a defacto
standard.

Just putting the idea out there.

Dave M G