[Tfug] Gnome usage

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 01:39:06AM -0700, erich wrote:
>I don't want the whole cow,
>
>        Just the cream. There's almost nothing of gnome
>that I use: evince (pdf reader) Image Viewer. These
>I like.
>        Totem is so restricted as to be almost useless.
>You're not allowed to view your own videos with
>it. There's some database out there, and only the
>videos on that are you allowed to see with Totem.
>
>        Enter Gnome 3.8. The amount of stuff that
>needs to be installed is mind-boggling.  Are there
>satisfied consumers of it out there? Is it worth
>the hassle?

I've been using Gnome 3.10 from Debian/testing on my laptop for a while now.
The dependencies are a bit excessive, but I tend to lean towards GTK+/Gnome
programs over Qt/KDE stuff so I already had most of the required bits
installed.

In retrospect, I probably should have installed Gnome 3.8 instead as Gnome
development and packaging under Debian can be glacial at times.  *Most* of the
gnome-* packages are at 3.10, but there are still a few important ones, like
power management and bluetooth, that remain at 3.8 and that does cause some
issues.

In the grand scheme of things, I don't use many "official" Gnome apps, just a
lot of programs which make use of GTK+ and/or Gnome libraries.

Gnome-shell, on the other hand, I have grown to like as the version number has
climbed.  A lot of this is due to the handful of extensions I have installed
which have allowed me to tailor the operation of gnome-shell to my liking.  If
it weren't for the healthy extension ecosystem my feelings toward gnome-shell
wouldn't be negative, but they wouldn't be nearly as positive either.

Aside from gnome-shell, the only other offical parts of Gnome that I use would
be evince, for viewing PS/PDF files, and the Nautilus file manager, but only
rarely.  Like most of you, I do most of my work in terminals and an editor
(Emacs) and so I do most of my file handling in the terminal as well.

As for being worth the hassle... that's really a personal choice question.  If
you like the *basic* operation of gnome-shell and are willing to install
extensions from the website (which they have made extremely easy to do) to
tailor it to your preferences (and also use gnome-tweak-tool), then yes, it's
probably worth it.  If you prefer something simpler with *far* lower system
and memory requirements, then no.

I used AfterStep for many years before finally switching to Gnome 2.something
a while ago.  I didn't stop liking AfterStep, but more and more programs
started offering Gnome compatibility (status messages/toasts, systray icons,
etc.) and I liked that even more.

I do use other window managers for other tasks.  When I run a VNC session on
my server I use XFCE (no particular reason except that it's relatively light
on resources).  And my MythBox frontend uses BlackBox since I need *some* sort
of WM, but only in the most minimal way possible since X is only ever called
on to run a single GUI program (mythfrontend).


-- 
--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
Try Weasel Reader for PalmOS  --  http://weaselreader.org
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood
of my enemies!"
        --Sam of Sam & Max
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