I went on holiday recently and took the laptop of mine with the best battery life, which happens to be running Fedora 15 and, of course, Gnome 3. I've been in two minds about the controversy over the Gnome 3 and Unity desktops — Ubuntu has opted for Unity as its default. So spending a week with Gnome 3 was going to be an interesting experiment. I was really surprised at the result.
My issues with Fedora relate mostly to a lack of specific packages I have grown used to on Ubuntu. But I wanted my holiday experiment to be about Gnome 3 in particular. After a week, I now believe that with a few tweaks Gnome could be far better than anything else available. Here are some things about this new desktop which won me over.
1. Minimalism
I like uncluttered desktops, and Gnome 3 offers about as clean a desktop as you'll find without running E16. The only object on the desktop is the panel — until you reveal the launcher. But Gnome 3's minimalist approach does not make it difficult to use. On the contrary, once you're familiar with it, Gnome 3 is one of the most user-friendly desktops available.
Captions by: Jack Wallen, TechRepublic
Image credit: Gnome
