I haven't used gnome3, or any Linux desktop in earnest for a long time... But I used to be semi-obsessed with tweaking and configuring various Linux desktops. And back when I was doing that, there were dozens of desktop programs available, from super lightweight bare bones window managers, to full blown desktop environments that do everything under the sun (and of course, everything in between).
So my question is: while gnome3 might not float your boat, why not try one of the countless other desktops? It's all open source...
FWIW, I was never a fan of full blown desktop environments like kde/gnome simply because I had a preference for lightweight, standalone window managers. My favorites were fluxbox and icewm.
Besides those, off the top of my head, I know of: blackbox, openbox, Joe's wm, window maker, and enlightenment 16 in the simple/lightweight window manager category. Xfce has already been mentioned, and there's also lde and the latest enlightenment in the full-on desktop environment category.
A little elbow grease may be required, but, I'm certain there's *a* Linux gui out there for everyone. On Jan 24, 2016 12:20, "Joacim Melin" listor@joacimmelin.se wrote:
On 24 Jan 2016, at 17:45, Peter Duffy peter@pwduffy.org.uk wrote:
On Sat, 2016-01-23 at 20:27 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 20:05:02 -0500 Mark LaPierre wrote:
The main reason I'm still using, nearly obsolete, CentOS 6 is because I don't want to have to deal with Gnome 3.
Install Mate on Centos 7 and you never have to touch Gnome 3. I did, and my desktops don't look or work any different today than they did under Centos 6.
Trouble is that when you go from 6 to 7, you also have the delights of systemd and grub 2 to contend with.
I'm also still using CentOS 6, and currently have no desire to "upgrade". I'm still in shock after trying to upgrade to Red Hat 7 at work, and after the upgrade (apart from being faced with the gnome3 craziness) finding that many of the admin commands either didn't work, or only worked partially via a wrapper. (And the added insult that when I shut down the box, it gave a message something like: "shutdown status asserted" and then hung, so that it had to be power-cycled. Then when it came back up, it went through all the fs checks as though it had shut down ungracefully.) I allowed some of the senior developers to try the box themselves for a while, and based on their findings, it was decided to switch to Ubuntu (which (at least then) didn't use systemd,) together with Mate and XFCE.
Similarly with others who have commented, I simply cannot understand why the maintainers of crucial components in linux have this thing about making vast changes which impact (usually adversely) on users and admins, without (apparently) any general discussion or review of the proposed changes. What happened to RFCs? Maybe it's a power thing - we can do it, so we're gonna do it, and if ya don't like it, tough!
It would be very interesting to know how many other users are still on CentOS/Red Hat 6 as a result of reluctance to enjoy all the - erm - improvements in 7. Maybe it's time to fork CentOS 6 and make it look and behave like 7 without systemd (or even better, with some way of selecting the init methodology at install-time and afterwards), and with gnome2 (or a clear choice between 2 and 3). Call it DeCentOS.
I'm still on 6.7 and have no plans to upgrade my 20+ servers running it. KVM runs fine, all my services runs fine. Everything is stable, fast enough and I can find my way around a CentOS 6.x system like the palm of my hand.
I tried installing CentOS 7 when it was released without knowing about all the changes. I spent about an hour trying to understand what had happened and where things where located. And with "trying" I mean searching, googling and just feeling really frustrated.
I then realised that it was simply not for me - lots of (IMHO unnecessary) changes had been made and I guess when the time comes to really upgrade my servers I will go with Ubuntu, FreeBSD or whatever seems to be the the best option.
I'm sure there are technical reasons to upgrade to CentOS 7, I'm yet to be bothered to find out though since it's damn near impossible to actually get work done with it installed.
A fork of CentOS 6 would be very, very, very interesting to run from my point of view.
Joacim
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