I’ve just installed Fedora 15, and one of the things that surprised me was GNOME 3. I knew from the release notes that GNOME was coming to Fedora 15, but I didn’t bother looking at the details nor at the larger versions of screenshots. I knew that GNOME 3 was going to be better than the older versions, but never thought that it was this good.
Workspace
Empty workspace
App List
The App List can be accessed by pressing the logo (Window) key. Typing-in the first few letters of the name of the application and it filters the list to your desired application. This is very useful if you prefer minimal usage of the mouse. But if you prefer using the mouse, you can also access the App List by hovering your mouse to the top-left corner of the workspace and selecting Applications.
You can also pin your frequently used apps in the dash (left side) so you no longer have to sift through all the apps to get to your favorite apps.
App List
Activities Overview
This practically replaces the taskbar where we can click any of the running applications to put them to focus.
Activities Overview showing one application (Firefox 4)
Activities Overview showing several windows
Some other nifty things you can do with GNOME 3:
- Pressing the logo (Windows) key launches the Activities Overview.
- Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes the window. Dragging it down returns the window to its original size.
- Dragging a window to the left or right side snaps the window to fill half the screen, which allows you to view two windows side-by-side. Dragging the window away from the side returns the window to its original size.
- Pressing Ctrl + Alt + Up | Down moves you to different workspaces.
- Ctrl + Shift + Alt + R to start/stop recording a screencast.
There’s more to GNOME 3 than what I can show you via screenshots. For more on GNOME 3, checkout the release notes: GNOME 3 Release Notes
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One thing you cannot do without: A Taskbar
Install and run: “gnome-panel –replace”.
This will give you a top and a bottom panel; the top one covered over by the default panel.
Install and run: “dconf-editor”
Edit: org -> gnome -> gnome-panel -> layout -> toplevels -> top-panel
Set option to auto-hide the top panel, and that gets it out of the way at the top.
Alt/right-click on the bottom panel and choose the Options;
set Background to “Solid Color”; choose black (rgb:000); set Style to 60% transparant.
Alt/right-click and choose ‘Add to panel’; search for ‘Main Menu’ and ‘Add’;
Alt/right-clock on the new ‘Main Menu’ icon, and select ‘Move’, than drag the icon to the leftmost corner on the taskbar.
Add other items as needed.
To startup the newly configured taskbar upon login:
run ‘gnome-session-properties’ and Add ‘gnome-panel –replace’