Re: Very disappointed in Gnome 3

[Olav Vitters <olav vitters nl>]

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 09:32:56PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> So I am very interested in whether it is possible to configure Gnome 3
> to have no icons on the desktop, not even for launching applications,
> and a solid light color wallpaper. 

Depends on what you define as desktop. The background behind all windows
does not have any icons. You can configure the background to have just a
color, nothing more.

However, in overview mode (what appears after you press the 'Windows'
key) you will see icons when you want to launch a new application.
Though you can also use ALT-F2 to launch something.

The idea behind 3.0 is to focus on the current application, and give
anything else less visibility. You can even hide those notification
messages if you're really busy and don't want such distractions.

But if you're into tweaking, loads of things can be tweaked using
gnome-tweak-tool and furthermore GNOME shell has extensions. Currently
you do need to know about the extensions (the ones available), but
hopefully for 3.2 we'll have a website listing that. Not totally sure
if 3.2 timeframe is realistic for this because we're nearing UI freeze
and I haven't seen this being committed yet.

> Failing that I would like to know about the "fallback option" quoted
> above. What exactly is the "fallback option"? Would it allow me the
> same configuration in Gnome 3 that I have with 2.32.0?

Basically a GNOME panel ported to Gtk+3 and a few changes (basically:
hold down alt to make changes + applets align only left/right/center) .
In GNOME 3.2 you'll have various applets back.

You can force that fallback mode with 'System settings'. It should allow
for pretty much the same experience though, aside from a few changes.
-- 
Regards,
Olav