A look at GNOME 3.8

I have talked many times about the things I like about KDE, to the point where many people reading my blog consider me a KDE fan. That´s not exactly true, though. In fact, in the last three Fedora releases, I have always installed KDE and GNOME side by side on the same box, so I could get an actual understanding of how they fair against each other.

For several releases now, it would always be the same thing. I would like some of the concepts in GNOME Shell, but after a while, I would always end up going back to KDE. Applications were better, the overall feel was more familiar and, even if certain things worked better in GNOME, it was a trade off I was happy to accept... Until GNOME 3.6 came about, that is.

GNOME 3.6 had improved significantly over the original, included several new applications that I loved, and it got cloud integration down perfectly. On top of that, its aesthetics had improved and the overall quality gains were interesting enough for me to actually LEARN HOW TO USE IT. I can´t stress this last point enough, because most of the frustration I see around GNOME Shell is essentially based on ignorance. People make claims that are most often not true and, if they actually bothered reading how GNOME Shell works instead of trying to make it work like legacy GNOME, they would have better chances of appreciating the amazing elegance, simplicity and performance of GNOME.

Now, GNOME 3.6 is awesome, but if one looks at 3.8, things get even better! Here´s a quick video highlighting some of the most interesting new features.



As part of the series of articles I am working on, which cover the stuff I use on a daily basis, I will cover GNOME Shell in depth, demonstrating some of its strengths, but mostly concentrating on some misconceptions or grey areas that have got people to ditch it without actually giving it a proper chance.