I have been using GNOME shell for the last couple of weeks with a pre-release of Fedora 15. It's strikingly elegant and most of the time a pleasure to use.
For the purpose of constructive critism, I will outlie my biggest gripes.
The saving grace is you that you can access the old configuration via launching "nm-connection-editor". In my personal case, I have PPPoE at home and plain old DHCP/ethernet at work. So everytime I go home or to work I find my self having to go and delete the old connection and create a new one with "Connect Automatically". Uggggh. Annoying. But I can live with it -- as long as it's just because of lack of time / resources, as opposed to actually thinking this is good.
BTW I found a really neat trick. Run "gnome-panel --replace" from within GNOME shell and it's actually really awesome and works fantastic, and makes GNOME shell rock. The only problem I have, is I want to the panel on both monitors, with a window list each. Anyone know how I can get this? :)
Edit: It turns out you can "Alt+Right Click" on the fallback gnome-panel to get the old options. And "Alt+Drag" to move. Ridiculously undiscoverable. The old right click and "lock" vs "unlock" was way better.
Anyway, mandatory screenshot of the awesomeness:
The drag-a-window-to-edge to get it to snap to half the monitor is really nice! The one thing I'd like though, if there was a keyboard hotkey for this. :)
Also properly supported gnome-panel integration with gnome-shell has serious potential :)
For the purpose of constructive critism, I will outlie my biggest gripes.
Network Manager
The only positive thing I can say about it, is the menu looks nice. If you have to actually use it, for (you know, for switching connections) -- it's a not only a massive step down from the old applet, but actively retarded. For instance the "Options..." button that allows you to edit a connection only works when the connection is active. So if the details are wrong, and you have no connection. You can't change it?! Wtf. The first time I entered in some details wrong, and then couldn't fix it because it couldn't connect?!The saving grace is you that you can access the old configuration via launching "nm-connection-editor". In my personal case, I have PPPoE at home and plain old DHCP/ethernet at work. So everytime I go home or to work I find my self having to go and delete the old connection and create a new one with "Connect Automatically". Uggggh. Annoying. But I can live with it -- as long as it's just because of lack of time / resources, as opposed to actually thinking this is good.
Lack of shutdown
There's no shutdown option in the menu. Seriously? Yes, I'm aware everyone bitches about it. Yes, I know there's an extension to fix it. Holding down alt does add it. It's just the whole philosophy of this decision annoys me. Especially because my computer doesn't actually come out of suspense (it does with the opensource nvidia drivers, but not with the proprietary one -- so I won't complain too much).
No window list
God knows I've tried very hard to adapt to the the new gnome shell, but I really, really like my window list (ala gnome panel) and find myself way more productive with it. I fully understand that this isn't the default. But having a window-list as an option would be really really great. Maybe for GNOME 3.2? :)BTW I found a really neat trick. Run "gnome-panel --replace" from within GNOME shell and it's actually really awesome and works fantastic, and makes GNOME shell rock. The only problem I have, is I want to the panel on both monitors, with a window list each. Anyone know how I can get this? :)
Edit: It turns out you can "Alt+Right Click" on the fallback gnome-panel to get the old options. And "Alt+Drag" to move. Ridiculously undiscoverable. The old right click and "lock" vs "unlock" was way better.
Anyway, mandatory screenshot of the awesomeness:
Activity Bar (correct name?)
This is my biggest idealogical and implementation complaint, and something I haven't been able to resolve. Not only does it make the bottom right of my monitor unusable (and hard to click application buttons in the bottom right, when it pops up) it defeats the entire purpose of having application status! I hate it so much. Here's an idea: put the application status-icons with the other applicatiosn in the top (with the "system" status icons) and have something to hide icons like KDE or Windows. The current setup is just really just bad. Also, when it's empty -- why does it have to popup anyway. Ugggh. I hate you activity bar!!Run
I find going to the "overview" mode a bit too jarring when I want to start a new application. So I tend to use the "Alt+F2" run menu and launch an application. It'd be really nice if this more like GNOME Do (or just reusing some of the stuff from the overview mode).Snap-left / Snap-rights
The drag-a-window-to-edge to get it to snap to half the monitor is really nice! The one thing I'd like though, if there was a keyboard hotkey for this. :)
GNOME panel
The single biggest mistake of the GNOME 3 release IMHO has been hiding gnome panel. It's actually still really great, and a perfect solution for everyone not totally bought on gnome-shell. The one thing in need of fixing is the whole "Alt+Right Click" for menu. That's just *really* stupid, and people can be happy with their old gnome-panel design with a new and improved UI.Also properly supported gnome-panel integration with gnome-shell has serious potential :)
