Discovering GNOME 3 : My experience, and why you should give it a shot
A week ago, I felt it. The itch. The yearly distro hopping itch.
I was sick of my DE. It was time for a change.
Feeling the urge to get the hell out of Unity as fast as possible, I immediately started work on my arduous endeavor; finding a new distro to try. There were many options, and my criteria were very simple:
- Ubuntu/Debian based: Helps me develop quickly
- Great window management, workflow improvements
- No-hassle config: get me up and running quick
- Fast: minimal lag in animations
- Uses GTK: Personal preference.
After looking at various sources *cough* DistroWatch *cough* for a while, I settled with the following options:
- Elementary OS: Looks beautiful. Seems lightweight enough.
- Ubuntu Budgie: Loving Raven (notification center), uses GTK.
- Ubuntu GNOME: I hate it. “GNOME 3 sux ballz”
So I immediately started downloading every ISO and installed them for a couple of days each.
Elementary OS
Pleased with the aesthetic, I quickly decided this would be the winner. I installed the NVIDIA drivers, and behold; my new operating system was up and running. I proceeded to install oh-my-zsh and the usual programmer things, when I noticed; when more than one window was open, there was graphical lag everywhere in the OS.
Confused, I went Googling for reasons to this, as I am on a relatively beefy computer (Alienware Alpha). I found multiple recommendations and tried them, but nothing worked.
And this is basically how I spent the following week. I asked for help in the Reddit, where a very helpful individual tried to assist, but we did not find anything out of the ordinary.
I narrowed it down to an internal issue in Gala’s (the window manager) graphics stack. Disheartened, I had to let go of such a beautiful OS. I had loved every aspect of it, including the multitasking switcher and the gorgeous icons.
TL;DR While beautiful, not mature enough for my needs, and suffers performance issues on my system.
Ubuntu Budgie
So I decided to go forward and look at the second contender in my list; Budgie. Installed in the partition, booted it up, was greeted with a beautiful desktop. Everything worked fine and fast.
Every app was integrated very nicely. Raven was smooth even with many programs open. The customization options were great. It felt like a truly next-gen desktop experience.
So why did I decide to let it go?
It was lacking multitasking switcher options and workspace management. It’s currently not very mature but once it gets these features, I will definitely give it a shot. It’s a very promising operating system.
TL;DR Promising, but needs more productivity options.
Ubuntu GNOME
Running out of options, I found myself desperate. I hated the default theme in GNOME 3. It looked ugly in my opinion and UI elements looked way too big. However, after banging my head against the wall many times, I bit the bullet and installed it.
It was fast, everything moved very smoothly, but I wasn’t surprised at all. I hated how it looked.
But then, I was enlightened. I had overlooked this. I didn’t know about this feature, and it changed everything. I had hated GNOME 3 since the beginning of time. Since I first saw the screenshot browsing the web.
It’s customizable
I knew about GTK themes; I knew you could install them, but didn’t know about the secret sauce…
EXTENSIONS!
I watched with amazement as the install button in extensions.gnome.org turned blue for the popular extension, “Dash to Dock”.
My dash had transformed into a great-looking dock.
I immediately scoured tweak tool to see if it was customizable; and to my surprise, the extensions are theme-able and have settings of their own! I started going through every aspect, customizing GNOME to become the OS of my wet dreams. Extension after extension, theme after theme, I integrated and customized GNOME, tailoring it to my workflow and personal preference. Then I reached desktop environment nirvana.
It’s productive
Window management in GNOME is a breeze. Moving the mouse towards “Activities” opens an expose-style window switcher by default, which is great for productivity and quick workspace switching. All your windows are there, and the animations are fluid and fast. Search works reliably and searches through your stuff in a breeze.
I quickly found myself adopting the Activities menu and my productivity skyrocketed. It’s great for programming and moving through several windows. Window management in GNOME is fast, mature, and stable. What else could I ask for?
It’s integrated
An aspect I really love about GNOME is how every app is built from scratch for it. Everything is tightly integrated under one toolkit and it shines. There’s GNOME apps for everything. Apps for reading books, playing Minesweeper, and even virtualization! They’re all built by GNOME which means they’re integrated tightly with the desktop.
I love beautiful, unified experiences like this. It helps push towards a consistent, well thought out experience throughout the OS.
Concluding
A very important life lesson was learned here; try new things. Turns out sometimes you don’t like the look of things at first but after all, turns out they’re great. It’s like eating fancy food. Looks strange at first, tastes like glory.
GNOME 3 gets a lot of hate from the community, and I used to listen to it without having tried it. Jumping on the hate bandwagon, I typically commented on how it looked horrendous (again, personal preference, I hate Adwaita). Turns out it’s not bad at all. In fact, I’m loving it.
Give it a try. It won’t disappoint.
