Review: GNOME 3

Shell Main Screen

About 2 months ago, I previewed GNOME 3. At that time, it was many weeks away from the final release, so there were still many things to be done. Since then, many things have changed, and a few days ago, GNOME 3 was finally released for the whole world to see.

The biggest change in GNOME 3 is of course the GNOME 3 Shell. This has gotten several changes, updates, and other revisions through its development. Since then, however, a GNOME 3 fallback mode has also been added. One of the common complaints about GNOME 3 has been that the new Mutter WM requires 3D effects to work correctly, and not all computers have this, especially older ones. This is where GNOME 3 fallback mode comes in, so in addition to trying out GNOME 3 Shell, I have also tried GNOME 3 fallback mode.

Fallback Main Screen +
Calendar Applet +
User Profile Menu Applet

I did all this thanks to the efforts of the Fedora developers in building the latest live ISO image of GNOME 3; I made a live USB of it using UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see how much has changed in two months.

Comparison Test: Epiphany 2.30 vs. Midori 0.2.9 (on Tech Drive-in)

Yay! I've got another guest post on Tech Drive-in! This time it's a comparison test between the web browsers Epiphany 2.30 and Midori 0.2.9.
Here's a little snippet of the article I wrote:

Since then, Epiphany has also jumped onto the WebKit bandwagon. I've used both browsers before, but I've never tested them side-by-side. They are quite similar (at first glance) in nature and goals. Both aspire to be relatively lightweight GTK+ browsers. Both are built on the WebKit rendering engine. Both score 100/100 on the Acid3 browser standards compatibility test. But I want to see if there are any significant differences beyond that.

You can read the rest of the article here. Please support Tech Drive-in in any way possible. Enjoy!

Featured Comments: Week of 2010 October 3

The 2 posts that garnered comments this week were both my previews of Debian 6 "Squeeze" (which I had embarrassingly misspelled as "Sqeeze" in both article titles — eek!). As always, I won't be able to include every comment, but don't feel bad if yours isn't included.

Preview: Debian 6 "Squeeze" (Part 1: GNOME)

An anonymous reader pointed out a way to have both a stable Debian base combined with the newest versions of other applications. "I like a very stable system but newest desktop software (firefox, chromium, vlc, banshee, thunderbird...) that can be easily achieved in Debian by using apt pinning.
So, my system has all the new packages for desktop and all the stable packages for the bare system which makes it rock solid.
Who says you can't have it both? :)" S/he details how to do this in a later comment (which is too detailed to include here).
Another anonymous commenter reasons out the inclusion of Epiphany vs. Midori: "I'm a KDE fan myself, but as for Midori replacing Epiphany in Debian's default install, I don't see that happening. Epiphany is GNOME's default browser, and I doubt that will change any more than Rekonq replacing Konqueror as KDE's default browser (which is good, as I don't like Rekonq at all, no offense to its developer). Debian sticks to the default, hence Epiphany being included."
It was commenter Ivan who pointed out the spelling error: "Titulo mal escrito: squeeze no sqeeze". I tip my hat to him!
Reader Bob Robertson has this to say about Debian: "Debian Live is a great development. I hope that the "standard" Debian installation becomes the Debian Live for "desktop" systems, and the Bootable Business Card "network install" for those (like me) who like to do things interactively, building a system up from the bottom. Debian is as relevant now as it has ever been. Thank you, Debian Developers!"

Preview: Debian 6 "Squeeze" (Part 2: KDE)

Reader lefty.crupps had this to say about Debian and KDE: "It seems surprising that KPackage isn't installed by default, but AFAIK there isn't (yet??) an update-installer thing for KDE. While I love KDE, its too bad that distro people seem to figure we won't want Firefox (with Oxygen theme!) or won't want the OpenOffice.org to be themed to KDE. Debian with KDE is currently my favorite setup. It is fast and slick and KDE is rather default. However, for new users, yes I agree that Mepis is great and the next release will be even better."

Thank you all for commenting, and remember, if you enjoy this material, please do sign up for RSS, Atom, or email updates!

Microsoft Windows Vista: Certifiably Terrible

The computer that I am now using (on my vacation) is not mine. Also, it has Microsoft Windows Vista (and, to be sure, no other OSs on it). I am thus stuck with Vista.
When I first started using this computer, to my surprise, it was actually quite quick in loading applications (like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Office 2007). As it turns out, this is because the computer (somehow, for whatever reason) has not been restarted in days. Someone else made the computer shut down about a half hour ago. (UPDATE: This was as of yesterday. I am now typing this from a different computer that uses Microsoft Windows XP. However, I will continue this post.) For one, it took about 5 minutes to shut down because Vista decided to sneak in updates before shutting down; other Windows users have complained about this unwanted behavior, so count me among them as well. Then, when I turned the computer on, I got past the initial screen (allowing for modification of the BIOS) and moved on to the Vista loading screen. One minor complaint I have is that there is no symbol (except for small print at the bottom) to show that this is Windows Vista; previous versions of Windows would have a giant Windows symbol along with the version codename and a loading bar.
Then, the screen went black for 5 minutes (I did, in fact, time this). At first, I thought the computer might have frozen, but then I reminded myself that it may just be taking a very long time to load. (This computer is only about 2 years old, so it is (or should be) much faster than my 6-year old computer.) Sure enough, after those 5 minutes was when I finally saw the login screen. After logging in, it took another 5 minutes to reach a usable instance of Mozilla Firefox (I also timed this). (I used Firefox because (1) it is the browser with which I am most familiar and (2) no major operating system preloads the Firefox libraries, so performance should not be biased due to operating system choice (e.g. Konqueror's libraries are preloaded by KDE, Epiphany's by GNOME, Internet Explorer's by Windows, and Safari's by Mac OS).)
Really? 10 minutes from powering it on to reach a usable webpage?
That is, in a word, ridiculous.