As a data point for a bystander: I much prefer Unity over Gnome 3. Here's the quick list of things that prevent me from taking Gnome 3 seriously:

Alt+Tab is completely broken: it gathers windows from all virtual desktops, ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops. There are plug-ins that help, but they keep breaking after version updates and they don't function as sleek as Unity's built-in default window switcher.

Gnome's "workspaces" are not as powerful as traditional virtual desktops. The biggest problem is that they're dynamic: for example Gnome won't let you have an empty workspace - it will kill it and re-arrange apps from adjacent workspaces to fill the space.

Last, but not least, Gnome's way of launching apps gives me nausea: it insists on animating every pixel on my 30" desktop every time I want to launch an application.

Finally, Unity is much more responsive and less buggy, at least on my (modest) hardware: 2 year old i5 with Intel graphics.

1. Alt+Tab is completely broken - in fact you have a choice on how you want the alt-tab to work: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ or https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/38/windows-alt-tab/ or https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/97/coverflow-alt-tab/ or https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/310/alt-tab-workspace...

2. static workspace - this is actually fixed in 3.10 (part of 14.04) now. Enabled by the Gnome Tweak tool

3. slow animation - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/277/impatience/

Gnome 3.10 is really good and incredibly good slick alternative to Mac - without being a clone. 3.12 is likely to be better.

I've been using 3.12 with 14.04 beta2(using the gnome staging ppa). I can't say it's very different from 3.10, but it feels a bit faster, and they fixed a few UX problems in the settings menus etc. Most extensions I wanted work with it. There are a few bugs that are probably due to working with an unstable distro with an unstable gnome ppa, but overall it's nice.

>Alt+Tab is completely broken

This is kind of an opinion. There is no rule book that says it needs to behave a certain way. I prefer this.

>ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops

I use virtual desktops to separate windows in overview mode so when they're presented for picking they aren't really small. And also for organization.

>Gnome's "workspaces" are not as powerful as traditional virtual desktops. The biggest problem is that they're dynamic: for example Gnome won't let you have an empty workspace - it will kill it and re-arrange apps from adjacent workspaces to fill the space.

Why would you need an empty workspace (except at the end, which gnome provides)? Seems to make since to me. It doesn't really "re-arrange apps" it just moves the work spaces to fill in the empty gap.

>Last, but not least, Gnome's way of launching apps gives me nausea: it insists on animating every pixel on my 30" desktop every time I want to launch an application.

Eh.. Animations aren't for everyone. They have not bothered me though, and I think for most users it provides a better experience than just having things "happen".

>Finally, Unity is much more responsive and less buggy

I'm running gnome 3.11 on an i5 with intel graphics also, and it seems pretty snappy, after all, it's just javascript. I have not experienced any bugs outside of experimental software I installed. To be honest, I have never experienced a snappier desktop than gnome 3.

  Why would you need an empty workspace (except at the end, 
  which gnome provides)? Seems to make since to me. 
  It doesn't really "re-arrange apps" it just moves 
  the work spaces to fill in the empty gap.

To each their own, I guess, but I think it's related to how we mentally map our workspace. For example, I know that my code editor and shell are on workspace 2, and my time tracker and music player are on workspace 4, so it's two keystrokes to get between them. If workspace 3 were munched due to being empty (I normally use it for Github and code review), it would be __very__ jarring to be in the wrong workspace when I switched workspaces twice to the left from my last workspace.

In practice, that's not likely to happen to me often, since I leave all of my workspaces open and populated nearly all the time, but it's still an option that I would turn off if I could.

> This is kind of an opinion. There is no rule book that says it needs to behave a certain way. I prefer this.

In case you wanted more proof of this I think both of these are wrong and it should be by window not application. Thankfully MATE does this and is coincidentally available now in Ubuntu 14.04.

Alt+` does this, right next to Alt+Tab, within a single application. So if you wanted to pick a particular window, and you have five apps with three windows each open, instead of pressing Alt+Tab ceil~14 times, you press Alt+Tab until you have the app you want (possibly zero times) then Alt+`, potentially saving 12 or more keypresses.

Or, sometimes even better, press Alt-Tab once, then hold Alt and use your mouse to select which app then which window you want.

> MATE does this

That's also the default on Xfce.

Every point you make except, to my knowledge, the last, is easily fixable via the gnome tweak tool or extensions. I found the same things to be frustrating when I switched to gnome, but I've been able to tweak it to the point that I now find it to be a productive work environment. That said, I've used gnome, unity, cinammon, xfce, mate and KDE, and have found each to be good in its own way and frustrating in others.

I love the fact that I can choose between many great options.

"...tweak tool or extensions."

To me, this is the problem. I don't want to rely on extensions that will potentially break when Gnome updates or be abandoned when their developers move on to other things. I also don't want to be forced to spend hours fiddling with settings in order to get something that isn't completely broken. I just want my stuff to work.

I also find the graphical nonsense in Gnome 3 and KDE 4 nauseating. They make for some sexy Youtube videos (like Compiz when it first came out) but for day-to-day use I find them awful (and shockingly buggy, but that's another debate).

actually the extensions system in gnome is kind of magical. You go to extensions.gnome.org using Firefox and click a button and suddenly your alt-tab behavior has changed. It is awesome - I think the phrase "extensions" has come to connote "complications" ... but is not the case in Gnome.

I'm actually impressed at how they built a javascript API to be able to mess with core UX !

It took me all of 10 minutes to get it working the way I like. And the extensions are simple javascript....easy to hack if you need to. I get what you're saying, but I think you're overstating things a bit...probably because you just haven't tried it.

Giving it a try now, but I have to say the amount of space wasted by the header bar of each window really bothers me.

Example: http://i.imgur.com/bKGyEo3.png

This is a great resource: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME

See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME#Reduce_title_bar_...

But the tweak tool lets you change the font size which was enough for me. I also installed htitle to firefox to hide the title bar when full screen.

Thank you! I will give it a go.

Keep in mind a few of the commands only relate to arch linux, but I think if you're comfortable using the terminal you should be able to figure things out.

The header bars finally see more use in 3.12; for Firefox, I'd recommend something like HTile, which removes the header when it's maximized.

there you go - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/354/maximus/

FTFY

I'm a Unity & Xface (short time) user and honestly I find the latest Unity version to be well suited for my needs&habits but your recommendation made me curios but not curios enough to wipe out my current (fresh) Unity install in order to try out Gnome. I think I checked Gnome some time in the past and it didn't convince me to stay with it. If you would like to enumerate some of the (newer?) differences and strong points of Gnome over Unity it will be appreciated. Thanks.

I don't like Unity animations and I want to change it. The only way to do that is to change compiz plugins. However, they always break. Gnome extensions are way easier to install, and even you can code them because it is JS/CSS, for that reason there are so many extensions in extensions.gnome.org .

For me the Unity animations are the perfect balance between the elegance I notice and appreciate when I'm in "relax" mode and the usability and snappiness I need when I'm in "work" mode shifting between many windows and workspaces. 14.04 snappiness improved noticeably and that's great !

it's mostly the UX - I really like the way Gnome gets out of your way and still is very, very slick.

Plus, if you dont like certain things - you can customize it within seconds using extensions.gnome.org (for example - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ )

I think all the design decision by Unity are a bit jarring for me - including all the left-window-close-maximize things. BTW, if you follow my script, Unity is not really wiped out, but certain heavy applications (like Nautilus/Gedit) are replaced by lightweight alternatives (like Nemo/Geany).

P.S. were you not surprised by the weird way Nautilus groups icons now ?

I noticed Nautilus moved a menu I rarely used from toolbar into the main menu but that does not bother me much (actually "Show hidden files" is more accessible now) and they added back "backspace = up directory" feature which for me is great. I think we are lucky to have so many GUI alternatives while still being able to reuse the best tools GNU/Linux can offer. And what's great is they are evolving even if slowly and backtracking (like backspace in Nautilus :)).

I'm totally with you on most of your post... But how is Gedit "heavy"?

I'm not sure what was happening, but I used to have many gedit processes running in the background. Geany is much, much lighter for me.

Same with Nautilus.

On my atom n280 geany is really snappy while gedit is slow when moving around and bringing out menus.

Agreed. It gets out of your way and looks good.

You don't need to wipe anything. Just install ubuntu-gnome-desktop and select gnome 3 on login.

I tried that some time ago with 13.10 & xface-desktop and I ended up with some weird mix of the two (randomly some parts from unity and some fonts and menus + shutdwon splash screen definitely from xface). And I was not able to totally remove the xface packages from unity again. So I'm quite reluctant now :).

Granted, that concern is valid. Just let me note that it is normally not that difficult to reconfigure unity to use its own designs everywhere, but I think as well that it is not particularly nice that this is necessary.

I've been a staunch Xubuntu user for the past couple of years and I'm completely pleased with my setup, but I'm interested in giving Gnome a try.

The main thing that's holding me back is that my machines aren't massively powerful - do you know if Gnome is as resource-hungry as Unity?

Both have gotten much better in this department than they used to be. I would say they're about equivalent.

Nowadays, GNOME and Xfce consume about the same amount of resources by default.

The only difference is that GNOME makes more serious use of your graphics card.

KDE with lots of effects >> Unity ~= KDE with fewer effects > GNOME ~= Xfce >> LXDE

GNOME seems to be a little snappier than Unity to me, But I have not yet installed the latest Unity.

FWIW: Gnome on wheezy is way snappier than unity (12.04 with or without unity-2d and 13.10 14.04 with unity) on my old and trusty eee-pc (n280+gma950).

You should install http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/localepurge for a leaner install.

How much does that really save? A base install of Ubuntu is only around 6-7GB anyway. Very surprised to see it didn't even take up half of the 16GB on an Acer C720 Chromebook.

my recipe for leaner is more about CPU and RAM and less about diskstorage.

One of the first things I recommend is aptitude over apt-get and that manages your stale packages much better. (for e.g. aptitude will offer to remove unused packages each time you remove an installed package, whereas apt-get will only do that if explicitly asked to with apt-get autoremove.)