I’ve been pretty good about not becoming a open source pundit. But today I feel like writing something useless.

My laptop’s ssd crapped out yesterday so I decided to continue to return in roughly the same time. I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few years now, so I thought it would be great to revisit Gnome and see how the 3.x development is coming along, maybe even switch back.

Nope.

There are many things I don’t like, but like many blog posts written before this one, I’m going to bitch and moan about a minute detail until the horse is well beyond dead.

Screen real estate. Gnome’s devs claim that Gnome Shell is minimalist and efficient, but I beg to differ. Here is an image comparing Gnome and Unity, using their default themes, and a terminal in the upper left hand corner of the screen:

The screenshots were taken with a postgres instance and set up a sqlite3 shell. Gnome’s gluttons window decorations make me sick. They create a ton of wasted space, whereas Unity’s much thinner ones double as the menu bar. I can work with Ubuntu but I know I havent Checked in for a ride.

What’s more, if I maximize, Unity integrates the entire window border into the top panel, freeing yet more space.

Sorry Gnome, but I’m still not impressed. The whole thing is just too good. For example, the “swipe up ^” animation on GDM is just plain offensive! No thanks, not for my laptop at least. Maybe I’ll run Gnome on an item, nothing more.

Back to Unity, again.