Gnome 3 -The switch!

Postby **viking60** » 02 Oct 2011, 00:39

I updated to Gnome 3.2 today. At the first glance my themes and tweaks were gone. But I could turn most of it it on again in gnome-tweak-tools,
However that stubborn Gnome dev who does not like to turn off or reboot his computer has made it extra hard to tweak it again;
He changed the name of the file so that he alone could decide what is best for our laptops :berserkf

But he did not count with Berserks - here we go:
To get back the power off button in the user menu:

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sudo nano /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/userMenu.js

Find:

this._haveSuspend = this._upClient.get_can_suspend();

and comment it out like this:

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// this._haveSuspend = this._upClient.get_can_suspend();

On the line under add this:

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this._haveSuspend = false;

Restart the GUI with <ALT>+<F2> and type r and hit <ENTER>
That takes care of it. The Arch Wiki is not up to date on this point yet! So that will not work until it is changed (I'll go over there as soon as I am finished here :mrgreen:

)
I cant believe that the Gnome guys are so stubborn about this.
Edit:
The Arch Gnome Wiki is up to date now on this particular point :coffee_cup:

The permanent fix as described there:

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# pacman -S gnome-shell-extension-alternative-status-menu

Does not work anymore,, but I leave that to some Arch guru.

Postby **viking60** » 02 Oct 2011, 15:18

On my Thoshiba Equium laptop the upgrade ended up wit a "Oh something went wrong try to turn off some of these functions" message. And shoving me the "on" and "off" buttons from the Gnome tweak tool.
Even if I turned them all of the message persisted so I could not log in. I am dual booting with kde here and I use fusion-icon with the compiz setting. That might be it or it could be something else.
So I just decided to get rid of Gnome shell on this box and that is not as easy as it sounds because pacman comes up wit a load of dependencies. So I had to search the back of my mind to some equivalent of * that would do it (I just want to remove everything that starts with gnome-shell) and........EUREKA:

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sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qq | grep gnome-shell)

Here pacman queris the database for everything conataining gnome shell and comes up with this list that I did not have the patience to remove manually:

Gnome3 is still unfinished - not ready for production use - obviously! I did not have time to find out what it was - but I bet it was the fusion-icon setting. Or me using Slim as the login manager. We will never know.
I leave it to the Gnome "know it all" devs to fix it and if not? We follow Linus

After a reboot; Gnome3 booted into Fallback-mode as expected.

Postby **viking60** » 02 Oct 2011, 16:18

Ok having done this I will know reinstall gnome-shell and set it to force fallback mode on boot. Simply because it is to unstable to autologin into gnome shell.
That way I can always start gnome-shell from the fallback-mode by hitting <ALT>+<F2> and write gnome-shell --replace (That works, so my suspicion goes to Slim now)
Edit: It looks like others have a similar problem: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=127598
Gnome3-shell with pretty much every extension activated now has a text menu on the upper left. So the gnome guys have been listening to some of the criticism. Adding the flexibility to implement it is always good.

Edit:
After todays update Gnome3-shell fubared my other laptop in exactly the same way. This thing is unstable. I take back all conclusions about Gnome3 being better than KDE. This is simply bad and cannot be used in production. Maybe when it is finished.......

Postby **viking60** » 04 Oct 2011, 10:22

It turns out that it is the extensions that make gnome3-shell chrash. Removing all files containing gnome-shell-extension will let you start the shell again.
I will now try to re-install them one by one until it crashes....
.. So far it looks like it is gnome-shell-extension-alternative-status-menu that makes gnome-shell crash. When removed it works again.
Edit:
When in trouble; the fallback mode has been working all the time. So when gnome-shell goes moody on you there always is an alternative. One that many seem to prefere over gnome-shell.

Postby **viking60** » 05 Oct 2011, 10:04

It seems that creating a new user solves a lot of problems. Suddenly most of the extensions work. (except the one mentioned above). The desktop is getting more efficient with the apps-menu extension (that works in the new user), it saves one click or movment of the mouse to the upper left corner.
The Gnome wallpaper changer works fine and animates my backgrounds nicley when added to the

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gnome-session-properties

with the command perl wallpaper.pl.

YouTube · Postby **dedanna1029** » 05 Oct 2011, 22:47

Nice, 'cept for the smartphone look on this one. Was the first thing to turn me off to Gnome 3.

Now, don't know what it will do. Have been away from my computer so long, the updates will more than likely be a pain, and then I won't know what to expect. We'll see when I can get settled.

Postby **viking60** » 06 Oct 2011, 00:15

Well I recommend you having set to fallback mode before you upgrade- Gnome-shell has potential, but can be a bit moody. As the observant reader may have grasped; I get somewhat annoyed every time I have to re-install it. :berserk2

YouTube · Postby **dedanna1029** » 06 Oct 2011, 16:34

Yeah. Can see how it would be annoying. I think I'll stay in fallback mode. It's how I started with Gnome 3 pretty much, and will probably always be there.

Postby **viking60** » 06 Oct 2011, 19:43

Yes and you can still hit <ALT>+<F2> and type gnome-shell --replace to try it out whenever you want.

YouTube · Postby **dedanna1029** » 06 Oct 2011, 20:03

Exactly. I don't mind gnome-shell at all, as in just before Gnome 3 broke. After Gnome 3 took off, and they made gnome-shell the absolute "thing" for Gnome, that's when I took a nose-dive with it and decided to stay there. Keep with compiz and emerald.

Postby **viking60** » 20 Nov 2011, 01:04

I have been using Gnome3-shell for some time now and it has matured. Even if I do not like the "we have thought of everything for you" attitude I find myself using it as a standard.
The gnome-tweak-tool is getting better every day making it easy to customize. It is like KDE3/KDE4: a lot of noise initially but this will probably blow over.
Also there is an extension for Gnome3 that makes it look like Gnome2, for the conservatives.

Postby **viking60** » 29 Nov 2011, 18:42

For Suse and Mint and Windows fans there is a possibility to get that bottom bar back even in Gnome3 shell.

Install MGSE and activate the menu extension and bottom panel in Gnome-tweak-tool and you have it:

Of course you do not have to put the menu in the bottom panel:

You have to install gnome-shell-mgse-git from AUR in Arch to get it.
This stuff gives you back some of the good old flexibility.
Here is a video:

To add programs to the menu manually you could install alacarte (alacarte 0.13.2-6)
from AUR in Arch.

It seems to work again in Gnome 3.2

I hit <ALT>+<F2> and started alacarte and there I picked system tools and added alacarte to the menu.

Gnome3-shell just got a whole lot better!

bjoernvold.com

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