Test drive: Ubuntu 13.04 Gnome beta (Live) on the EEEPC 900

I'm definitively a Gnome user. I started my Linux adventure with the good-old Gnome 2. I don't like so much version 3, but I switched to it once I realized it kept, at least in part, its flexibility thanks Gnome shell extensions. I'm actually using Gnome 3 on my desktop computer so, once I heard that Ubuntu was going to have an official Gnome derivative distribution, I started thinking of replacing the Linux Mint 12 installation on my EEEPC 900.

First impressions

The daily-build ISO image I downloaded was quite big (about 958 KB) so that I couldn't use my usual old 1GB USB disk. Not a big problem (I used a 4GB SD card) but I really hope they'll manage to keep the disk image size smaller in the definitive version. Once the SD card have been prepared I rebooted my EEEPC. Ubuntu Gnome boots on the usual featureless default Gnome 3 screen

The side-bar, in the activities screen, appears a little too crowded on the small EEEPC display. This, unlike Unity, means dealing with microscopic icons.

Developing Gnome 3 extensions (on the EEEPC)

When I decided to install Linux Mint on the EEEPC 900 I was, among other things, particularly interested by the hidden flexibility of Gnome 3. Linux Mint interface MGSE proved Gnome 3 being far more flexible and configurable than I would ever imagined by seeing it at first. At last I managed to find some time to give a look on how Gnome 3 extensions are written. There are many sites on the Internet about developing Gnome extensions I based my experiments mainly on articles on this blog.

“Hello-worlding” in Gnome-Shell

A command-line utility “gnome-shell-extension-tool” is provided to prepare all files needed in a gnome-shell extension. Once executed:

gnome-shell-extension-tool --create-extension

it asks for the extension name, “helloworld” in my case, some descriptive info and the extension unique identifier. This identifier can be any string but it takes the following mail-like form: <extension-name>@<your-name>.<your-address>.
By the way my extension identifier was “helloworld.musante@EEEPC900”.

Choosing the desktop ...

Since I bought the new desktop computer I planned testing some desktops, among the many available for Linux, to experience with the different interaction ways they offer and to choose the one I felt more comfortable. My previous hardware poor performances limited me on using only light-weight desktops (I used XFCE). XFCE is a honest and robust desktop indeed, but I felt someway limited provided programs like, for example, Thunar.

Unity

I'm not a Unity fan but I have to admit that it's a great desktop for beginners. My wife started using Unity (2D) on the old computer and she found it easier to use than XFCE. I so decided to install Ubuntu from the beginning on the new computer in order to make her preferred interface available in the shortest time.

Test Drive: Gnome 3 Live (on Fedora) on the EEEPC 900

Among this Linux spring novelties the release of the latest Gnome desktop version has probably been the most awaited. There has been on the Internet a lot of discussing about this Gnome release and if it could have been more fit than Unity as Ubuntu's default desktop. I know I will not add a lot of information to the whole discussion but, anyway, I couldn't not to give a look myself to the so long awaited Gnome 3.

Download and preparation

The easiest, and cleanest, way to test a desktop environment is running it from a live distribution disk. On Gnome download page there are two distributions available: one based on openSuse , the other based on Fedora. I decided to download and test the Fedora based disk image, almost a random decision since I was interested in testing only Gnome and not the whole distribution. For some reason Ubuntu USB disk preparation tool seems not to work with non Ubuntu images. Fortunately I had Unetbootin already installed and it had no problems to prepare a bootable SD card from the downloaded image.

First impressions

After the boot (that has been quite fast indeed) Gnome 3 welcomes you with a neat empty screen