Kshitij Sobti

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Posted on 15-04-2011

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• KDE celebrates its 15th birthday
• KDE releases version 4.7 of their desktop environment
• RIP Aero Glass; Windows 8 sticks a fork in familiar UI

Gnome 3 is a major new update to the Gnome desktop environment that redefines the desktop interface entirely. The Gnome developers have left no stone unturned, and have come up with new paradigms for the way you interact with windows and workspaces.

In the process of evaluating every aspect of the desktop environment, many of the the things that you may have taken for granted have been removed or changed significantly.

Are all these changes for the better? That answer will depend greatly on how you use your computer. First things first, Gnome 3 still comes with the a fallback Gnome 2-like UI. However, this is just a temporary measure while there is still hardware that is incompatible with Gnome 3. The old UI will probably be going away, so we will not consider that option, and will instead talk only of the new Gnome Shell, and here-on all our references to Gnome 3 mean Gnome 3 with the new shell. Gnome is more than just the shell though, it also includes a number of great applications such a Nautilus for browsing files and folders, and Empathy for instant messaging. These applications have also been updated, and some have better integration with the shell now.

There is one thing for certain, Gnome 3 is a lot less flexible than Gnome 2 was, and Gnome 2 wasn't very flexible ‒ at least not compared to KDE. If you have become used to moving panels around and arranging widgets to your linking, we're sorry to say you're out of luck with Gnome 3, better luck with KDE or stick to Gnome 2!

Despite that, Gnome 3 is beautiful! A clean interface, and smooth animations ‒ as long as you have a supported graphics card ‒ make this a significant step up from Gnome 2, which while being a brilliant desktop environment, was somewhat dated. If you've never used a computer before, Gnome 3 is brilliant way to get introduced, and will instill an aversion to what we might call traditional interfaces.

Let us begin with some of the immediately-visible changes, and then go deeper down the rabbit hole.