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Substructure

The GNOME developers also made quite a few basic changes. For instance, GNOME 3 uses version 3 of the GTK+ graphics library, which was released in February. This library offers various improvements and has shed a considerable amount of inherited waste that had accumulated in the GTK+ 2 after many years of backward-compatible maintenance.

GNOME uses the Clutter library for certain graphics effects. The desktop environment's compositing window manager is no longer Metacity, which was used in GNOME 2, but a derivative called Mutter. As in the GTK+, the GNOME developers have also removed from the Desktop a quantity of inherited waste that had accumulated over the years.

Alternatives

You're a GNOME 2 user, and you don't like the new GNOME? Then you're probably best advised to stay with GNOME 2 for now; next autumn, check out GNOME 3.2 to see if you like it better.

You've lost all hope? In this case, KDE is the most obvious alternative. However, KDE is also quite different from GNOME 2 in many areas – switching to KDE will, therefore, require a time investment for adapting work flows and figuring out the UI that is similar to what's required for upgrading to GNOME 3. The same may, to some extent, be true for the Unity desktop developed specifically for Ubuntu; this desktop will be included in Ubuntu 11.04, which is expected at the end of the month, and could be a good alternative. However, the best current alternative for GNOME 2 aficionados is Xfce because it can, with only a few adjustments, be made to look and behave very much like GNOME 2.

Useful?

The GNOME Shell showed no sign of stability problems during our tests. Our primary test systems were a desktop computer with Radeon HD 4350 and a notebook with Intel's G965 chip-set; both systems were running preview versions of Fedora 15.

Having been a GNOME 2 user, the author of this article was able to befriend GNOME 3 after some initial reluctance during the first days. However, in various areas the desktop does differ substantially from that of GNOME 2 and other desktop environments. GNOME 3 also forces users to adopt certain methods of working and offers very few possibilities to customise the desktop's look and behaviour – which, while it might make things easier for new GNOME users, will annoy many Linux freaks and seasoned GNOME 2 users.

The GNOME desktop is consequently bound to lose some of its fans with the release of the new generation; whether the chosen direction is a favourable one will probably only become apparent in a couple of years. However, GNOME 3 is only the start of a new development line, as the developers will surely add many improvements, and perhaps even re-evaluate some of the areas for which they have already been criticised, in the coming weeks and months. With Zeitgeist and other new additions, GNOME 3.2, as well as GNOME 3.4, which is expected in about a year, are bound to make users happier than version 3.0. A similar situation existed when version 2.0 of GNOME was released and scared off a number of GNOME users – some of whom returned later, when more advanced versions of the desktop became available. (thl)

Further information

Plenty of additional information on GNOME 3 can be found online. The first port of call should be gnome3.org, which gives an inside view into the aims of and background to the next generation GNOME. The front page also includes a number of videos available on GNOME's YouTube channel which illustrate some of the new features.

The release notes take a more general look at the new features in the GNOME platform, rather than focusing exclusively on GNOME Shell. The tour and cheat sheet do, by contrast, focus on GNOME Shell, the latter offering numerous useful tips for day-to-day GNOME 3 use. Both documents can be found in the GNOME wiki which is also a rich source of further information. The entry on GNOME Shell design, for example, goes into more detail on some of the ideas behind the shell and includes links to many additional sources of background information. The April issue of Gnome Journal, which covers the release of GNOME 3, also contains a number of articles on the next generation GNOME.

The GNOME project is celebrating the release of GNOME 3 with nearly 150 Launch Parties.

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