Gnome 3.8 classic mode in RHEL 7
I'm a day-to-day user of RHEL 6 desktop, looking to upgrade to RHEL 7 when the time comes.
I recently tried out Fedora 18, treating it as a preview of sorts for RHEL 7. While the new Gnome interface (v3.6) is visually appealing at first, I found it to be rather confusing to use (annoying to be honest). I've tried the "fallback mode" for a more traditional feel, but it seems that it has less features than the current Gnome 2.28 interface in RHEL 6.
Searching on the web about the direction of the Gnome 3 interface resulted in the following blog, made by a Gnome developer:
http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2013/01/25/gnome-3-7-at-the-halfway-mark/
In the above blog entry there is a mention of "classic mode" which is going to replace the fallback mode in Gnome v3.8.
The classic mode in Gnome v3.8 looks less challenging to use than the current default Gnome v3.6 setup, and it appears to be closer to Gnome 2. Given this, it would be very useful to have the classic mode in RHEL 7.
Responses
I'm a long time Fedora user (sine Fedora core) and the Fedora 18 gnome desktop a no-go for me.
Cinnamon (based on gnome) is my favorite desktop and should be part of RHEL 7. Should be no problem for RedHat to integrate it because it always uses the actuell shipped gnome 3 desktop.
Thanks and BR
DM
http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/
This is an awesome idea. Gnome 3, in my opinion, has always seemed like it was meant to be used on a tablet. It would be great to have an option to use classic mode. I'm excited to hear that it will be running on the same code, so hopefully it will be as featured as the normal Gnome 3.8.
I used RHEL as my desktop, and my organization has a few developers and application support persons that do as well. But shouldn't RHEL focus on the its intended purpose as an enterprise-class server OS? Most of which do not employ/require any graphical desktop.
We as SysAdmins can install whatever desktop environment we 'like'. I, myself, hate Gnome 3. And perfer Cinnamon for several reasons. But can someone make a logical argument for deploying Gnome 3 on a server? And this is nothing more than a use-case question. I cannot think of a logical arugment for doing so myself.
I run RHEL6 on a Thinkpad T410 as my only OS. I live in Windows RDP sessions and Linux SSH sessions all day, so I can afford to spend some CPU on eye candy. But I'm being torn in all directions. First, I was using a Displaylink USB adapter to support a third monitor. The last update to xorg broke that, so I've been considering downgrading xorg to get my third screen back.
But then Google Chrome decides that gtk 2.18 is too old and they will be doing further development on 2.20+ only.
So I'm not going to move anything backwards, but I have no idea which way I will move forward. I sure miss that 3rd monitor :)
Guru
2135 points
There are many companies out there using RHEL as a workstation platform, especially in the Oil/Energy field.
You may not have a need for something, but please don't extrapolate that need to cover everyone's needs.
D
While not an answer to the original suggestion/question, as a long time user of earlier versions of both Gnome and KDE I finally settled on XFCE after the turns KDE and Gnome took with 4.x and 3.x respectively.
And before someone bites my head off, while tt's easy to get CDE-flashbacks from the default XFCE look, but it's a very small amount of work to make it look and behave like Gnome 2, and you get that without feeling like a second class citizen UI(this may be a personal thing but I always felt like the Gnome developers didn't much like the idea of Gnome 3 looking and feeling like Gnome 2). I've been using it sinec 4.10 now and it's been entirely stable and I really have no complaints that I can think of.
It's probably not the answer to an enterprise wide deployment scenario but for the lone workstation user it's a very viable alternative. Just thought I'd give a heads up in case people have missed or forgotten about it. It's available in EPEL, but it would be nice as an official alternative as well, perhaps in the optional-channel.
According to this bug in bugzilla it looks like RHEL 7 will use Gnome 3.8!
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=959472
Quote:
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): gnome-shell-3.8.1-2.el7.x86_64
So clasic mode will be avaible.This makes me very happy :)
I have used Fedora since version 1. Before that I used Red Hat versions 5-9. I use the latest GNOME in Fedora 18. While it took some getting used to at first, I've grown to thoroughly enjoy most aspects of the new GNOME interface. The thing I miss most is the way Nautilus used to work. I've resorted to using PCManFM instead, and it works fine in GNOME.
For desktop alternatives, I find that MATE, XFCE, and LXDE are are acceptable.
My only concern regarding the updated GNOME is it seems to want updated hardware (i.e. 3D support.) While we rarely run a GUI on a server, in the rare case we might do such a thing I suspect that the updated GNOME is going to fall back to classic mode.
I find LXDE to be one of the best options out there as far as desktops go. Light, fast and simple. Like someone already mentioned above, we spend most of the time on a terminal anyway - when we do get to use the full GUI, something like LXDE is not only just convinient, it's pretty good for most of the stuff.
Red Hat
Guru
7257 points
RHEL7 will be shipping with GNOME Classic Mode as the default desktop.
This was announced at Red Hat Summit this year by our Director of Software Engineering, Denise Dumas.
Late late late followup here but I too am dealing with GNOME on RHEL 7.4 and must say I can not work with this day to day. In order to do trivial things like change the desktop background I had to create a 1920x1080 black image just to get a black background. Sad. I have no idea how to modify the timeout for desktop lock which happens way way too fast. So I need to figure out a build of my own LXDE ( or XFCE or similar lean mean trim desktop ) or modify GNOME config. This desktop even has a Microsoft Windows looking "Home" folder and a trashcan on the desktop!?! If I wanted MS Windows .... just no. So I will keep digging to see if I can trim down the fat on GNOME or just go rogue and build XFCE.
followup : found the solution. XFCE is available from some repo called "rpmfusion" or similar.
# yum groupinstall xfce
Loaded plugins: langpacks, product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager
There is no installed groups file.
Maybe run: yum groups mark convert (see man yum)
epel/x86_64/metalink | 12 kB 00:00:00
rpmfusion-free-updates | 3.0 kB 00:00:00
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates | 3.0 kB 00:00:00
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package Thunar.x86_64 0:1.6.11-1.el7 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: libexo-1.so.0()(64bit) for package: Thunar-1.6.11-1.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libxfce4ui-1.so.0()(64bit) for package: Thunar-1.6.11-1.el7.x86_64
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