Enabling Gnome 3 in Trisquel 6 - now works

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MagicFab
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Joined: 12/13/2010

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Hi

I asked this a few months ago, while using Trisquel 6 beta Gnome 3 was
broken.

I am happy to report this isn't the case anymore :) I had to reinstall
Trisquel 6 on my home PC, after a hard disk failure, and after the
initial install I had to add the following packages to enable Gnome 3:
gnome-session gnome-shell

Once added, a new option will show up for the session, at login -
choosing just "Gnome" instead of "Gnome Classic" will then bring up
Gnome 3 after login.

Many thanks to starchild who responded immediately on the IRC channel :)

Cheers,

Fabian

- --
Fabián Rodríguez
http://trisquel.magicfab.ca
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sirgazil (not verified)
sirgazil

Thanks for the info!

Dave_Hunt

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Joined: 09/19/2011

This is great news for those who can benefit from using the new shell;
thanks for sharing! Looks easy! I was afraid to try this on Trisquel
6, given my epic fail when trying to put the shell in 5.5.

sirgazil (not verified)
sirgazil

One thing I see, however, is that some options in the user menu (top right) doesn't seem to work:

* Clicking on the avatar does nothing.
* Clicking on Online accounts does nothing.

I don't see how to change my user status either.

I'll have to go ahead and read GNOME 3 desktop manual.

sirgazil (not verified)
sirgazil

The user status issue gets fixed installing Empathy.

sirgazil (not verified)
sirgazil

For Online accounts I installed gnome-online-accounts, but still doesn't work.

sirgazil (not verified)
sirgazil

The only way I found to access Online accounts was through Applications -> Accesories -> Contacts . The option in the user menu still doesn't work for me.

sirgazil (not verified)
sirgazil

I figured out how to make the Online accounts option work correctly:

1. Install gnome-online-accounts.
2. Open alacarte (press Ctrl+F2 and write alacarte).
3. Select Accesories in the left column.
4. Search for "Online accounts" and activate it.
5. Close alacarte.

After following these steps, the "Online accounts" option in the user menu to the top-right should work.

oysterboy

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I've started using Gnome-Shell with this new release of Trisquel. It takes some time getting used to it, but I don't think it's as horrible and unusable as some people say. Fortunately some extensions enable some interesting customization.

I am currently using the following extensions:

Alternative Status Menu
Replaces GNOME Shell Status Menu with one showing Suspend/Hibernate and Power Off as separate items

Coverflow Alt-Tab
Replacement of Alt-Tab, iterates through windows in a cover-flow manner.

Frippery Applications Menu
Replace Activities button with an Applications menu

Places Menu
Add a menu to the top panel for quickly navigating places in the system

Remove Accessibility
Remove the accessibility button from the top panel.

Terminal in UserMenu
Adds a shortcut to the terminal in the user menu.

WindowOverlay Icons
Add application icons to window overview

Dave_Hunt

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I would never claim the shell is unusable, just that it seems to require
a bit much for something that just switches and launches applications.
3-d graphics rendering, just so 'alt+tab' and 'alt+`' can work? I find
moving around in the classic menu system a lot faster than messing with
the over-view area. To launch apps from the shell, I find myself
opening the 'run' box with 'alt+f2', and typing application names and
arguments.

Extended Status Menu, Places Menu, and that extension that lets my Orca
screen reader speak the clipboard contents are very useful. I like the
ease of adding shell extensions; maybe the shell extension mechanism has
great potential I just haven't yet seen realized.

Magic Banana

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I do not get how Alt+F2 and typing the whole application name (I know: auto-completion works) can be more convenient than typing the Windows key and typing any part of the application name (or even of its expanded name) until the good one is selected (which is almost immediate if the application is often used since they are ordered in this way).

For instance, to launch Abrowser or switch to its window (if it is already launched), I only need to type Windows-a-[Enter] or Windows-w-[Enter] ("w" like Web) or Windows-n-[Enter] (my system is in French and "browser" starts with a "n" in this language).

A page anybody trying GNOME Shell should read to become efficient is https://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

Dave_Hunt

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I find that, once I hit the 'super' key, I may have to wait as long as
30 seconds for the text entry area to come up. Once I've entered enough
text, I may have to wait another 10 to 20 seconds for the choices to be
displayed. Typing the whole name is faster on this box, if I know what
app I want to launch.

onpon4
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You must have a really slow computer, then. On mine (an old 2007 budget laptop with an Intel Celeron processor and Intel GMA), it's practically instant.

Dave_Hunt

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It's a netbook with an Atom cpu and a gig of ram. Slow chip + orca
overhead = very lagged GNOME Shell. :)

onpon4
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That settles it, then: GNOME Shell just isn't a very good choice for your machine. ;) There's nothing wrong with that, of course.

I tend to imagine that it's your RAM that's causing the slowdown rather than your CPU or GPU speed. With only this Abrowser window (with only this tab) and GNOME Shell + a couple of Shell extensions, I'm using about 550 MiB of RAM right now. Of course, only you can ascertain this, and it very well might just be a slow CPU, for all I know.

Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross
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Joined: 09/17/2012

I have a Intel Atom N570. duel care 1.66 per core but with 2 more
"virtual cores" and *2GB* ram. When my 4GB swap gets to 14% used, my
system starts to become unusable.

Attached is my Conky config. Conky is a system monitor that is running
at the bottom of my screen which displays status info like my ram and
swap usage. So with a quick glance I can have a look at my state of my
system and know if it's about to get unusable and so to do something
about it.

btw there is a dot char at the beginning of the config file name. Don't
forget your file manager will hide this file.

On 18/03/13 23:03, Dave Hunt wrote:
> It's a netbook with an Atom cpu and a gig of ram. Slow chip + orca
> overhead = very lagged GNOME Shell. :)
>

Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross
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Joined: 09/17/2012

I think this is related to ram and swap usage. How much swap and ram are
you using? I believe what’s happening is, it is loading all those nice
big icons from swap. That's why if you haven't accessed activities for a
while it takes 10 secs.

On 18/03/13 22:39, Dave Hunt wrote:
> I find that, once I hit the 'super' key, I may have to wait as long as
> 30 seconds for the text entry area to come up. Once I've entered enough
> text, I may have to wait another 10 to 20 seconds for the choices to be
> displayed. Typing the whole name is faster on this box, if I know what
> app I want to launch.

AndrewT

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Gnome Shell gets such a bad rap. Far from being counterproductive to getting work done, I think it's an improvement in that department. And it's quite pretty, in a way that isn't too crazy (I'm looking at you, Enlightenment). With all the extensions, you can still customize it a lot.

icarolongo
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Joined: 03/26/2011

Now you can install Ekiga, Epiphany and others too. Now works =)

Andresm

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i am still on 5.5.using gnome3 absutly loving it.
luckly i do not need orca so it runs decently on my netbook.

thanks for the cheatsheet.
i really liked
alt+printscrn
ctl+shift+alt+r for video recording *webm file that plays in browser is in home folder
and middleclicking on an icon to load an aplication in the next workspace.
+typing to load apps is good plus if you keep typing it will give you websearch. i set it for duckduckgo if wikipedia i just type !w whatever.

Magic Banana

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What does Alt+PrintScrn do? In my system, it just seem to make a screenshot (like PrintScrn without the Alt).

icarolongo
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For default Alt+Print take screenshot of a window. Shift+Print take screenshot of area and only Print take all the screen. You can see in the System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Probably this is default in GNOME 3.

GustavoCM

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Yes, it is. Thanks for the tip!

sirgazil (not verified)
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Does anyone have GNOME 3 login appearance working?

https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.2/figures/gdm.png.en_GB

Andresm

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i do not have that login appearance.
in other lines, did you all change the default search engine to ddg?

freeme
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I am running Trisquel 6.0 w/Gnome 3 on my netbook, which is an Acer d255e, which has dual core 1.66 Ghz atoms. I upgraded the ram from 1 GB to 2 GB and replaced the Broadcom wireless NIC with an Atheros. (Thanks Chris for the recommendation!) Gnome 3 works perfectly and even feels 'light' on this weak hardware. Actually, I hadn't touched Gnome since the 1.x days, when they removed all configurability at the dawn of 2.0, so I never went back to Gnome until now.

I tried Parabola's Gnome 3.8 on the same hardware and it was way too heavy for the machine, but Parabola in general is much heavier than Trisquel.

I owe the Gnome developer's an apology, since I have trashed Gnome 3 from the beginning, due to the radical nature of the UI overhaul. On this smaller netbook screen, I can finally understand why the Gnome developers did what they did. It's the perfect UI for smaller screens and this is coming from a absolute freak for KDE.

So anyway, Parabola KDE on the desktop and nothing but Trisquel Gnome 3 on the netbook is what works for me. Trisquel is actually the only distro in 12 years where I can't find a reason to change the wallpaper. It's very well done.