2010 m. rugsėjo 19 d., sekmadienis

Gnome Shell review

What I like
  • Workspaces

Really nice thing. First of all, new workspace can be added when needed and removed when no longer useful. Application can be started in any workspace using drag&drop, windows can be very intuitively moved between workspaces as well.
  • Alt+Tab

Finally Alt+Tab done right. It's amazing, how little was needed: support for arrow keys and mouse. Grouping by application first seemed unusual, but became loved feature after discovering Alt+` hot-key (switch between same application windows).
  • Overview mode

Generally nice idea. All applications, recent documents and places in one place. The only disadvantage I see is windows in workspaces, which are a little to small to identify on my screen. You have to get used to look at applications list for running applications, rather then looking at workspaces. Unfortunately, I was somehow intuitively looking at workspaces and trying to identify things there.
  • Search

It's always nice to have search feature. Looks very promising, if it will be well integrated into entire desktop.
  • Notifications

New notification system is really great. Not everything worked well on my system, but it all looks really great. I wait for the stable release.



Needs improvement
  • Launching applications

Launchers in Gnome-panel are very useful. I miss something like that in Gnome-shell. What about hot bottom left corner, something like notifications?
  • Application menu

Favourites are great, but the list of all applications not very. Categorised view is better for my taste and I hope to see it, when final version ships.