ThemeSelector: GNOME Shell Extension To Change Themes (With Previews)

GNOME 3 (with GNOME Shell) is truly great and I especially like how easy it is to extend it through extensions like the new ThemeSelector extension.

ThemeSelector GNOME Shell extension is a new, unofficial GNOME Shell extension that adds a new tab in the Activities overview where all the GNOME Shell themes (not GTK themes!) installed under ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/themes show up. To change a theme, all you have to do is click it and you don't even have to reload GNOME Shell.

Here's a screenshot with the new ThemeSelector extension:

The theme previews aren't exactly great, probably because of my large screen too, but the ThemeSelector GNOME Shell extension is still in beta.

To use the ThemeSelector extension, you need to install GNOME Shell Extensions and the GNOME Shell User Theme extension. But don't worry, despite a first look on the installation steps below, installing all of these is actually quite easy. Read on!

Install GNOME Shell Extensions and the User Theme extension in Ubuntu / Fedora

If you've compiled GNOME Shell using JHBuild (tested in Ubuntu):

cd ~/gnome-shell/source
git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
cd gnome-shell-extensions
./autogen.sh --prefix $HOME/gnome-shell/install/ --enable-extensions=user-theme
make && make install

If you use Fedora, you can probably find Gnome Shell Extensions and the User Theme extension in the repositories. If not, download the .rpm files from here (I'm new to Fedora so I'm unsure how the repositories work ... for now :D) : GNOME Shell Extensions Common and GNOME Shell Extension User Theme


If you've installed GNOME Shell from the GNOME 3 PPA in Ubuntu 11.04 (not tested):

A. Compile Gnome Shell Extensions:

cd
git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
cd gnome-shell-extensions
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --enable-extensions=user-theme
make && sudo make install

B. Convert Fedora .rpm to .deb (again not tested - thanks to ycDref for the tip!).

This is an option for those who can't get GNOME Shell extensions to compile for some reason. Using alien is not recommended.


Download the .rpms from here: GNOME Shell Extensions Common and GNOME Shell Extension User Theme

Install alien:

sudo apt-get install alien

Then convert all downloaded .rpm files to .deb:

sudo alien -d --scripts *.rpm

And install the resulting .deb files (you can also directly install them using "-i" instead of "-d").

Install the Themeselector GNOME Shell extension

The ThemeSelector extension already comes with 5 great GNOME Shell themes by half-left: Atolm, Smooth Inset, Elementaty, Dark Glass and Deviant Art GNOME Shell themes. Here's how to install it.

Download the Themeselector Gnome Shell extension, extract it and place "extension.js" and metadata.json under the /.local/share/gnome-shell/themeselector@fpmurphy.com/ folder (if it doesn't exist, create it). Then copy all the folders you've extracted to the ~/.themes/ folder (it's a hidden folder in your home directory; if some of those folders exists, merge the data).

Now restart GNOME Shell and you should have a new Themes tab in the Activities overview.

Also see:

• Change GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell Or Classic) GTK / Mutter / Metacity Theme
• GNOME Shell Extensions: Additional Functionality For GNOME 3 (Dock Task-Switcher, Windows Navigator, User Theme, Etc.)

Post updated with a newer ThemeSelector version (0.9) - instructions for extracting the ThemeSelector changed!

GNOME Shell Themeselector info and the extension itself - thanks to blog.fpmurphy.com; Many thanks to Charles Bowman for the tip!

ThemeSelector: GNOME Shell Extension To Change Themes (With Previews)

GNOME 3 (with GNOME Shell) is truly great and I especially like how easy it is to extend it through extensions like the new ThemeSelector extension.

ThemeSelector GNOME Shell extension is a new, unofficial GNOME Shell extension that adds a new tab in the Activities overview where all the GNOME Shell themes (not GTK themes!) installed under ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/themes show up. To change a theme, all you have to do is click it and you don't even have to reload GNOME Shell.

Here's a screenshot with the new ThemeSelector extension:

The theme previews aren't exactly great, probably because of my large screen too, but the ThemeSelector GNOME Shell extension is still in beta.

To use the ThemeSelector extension, you need to install GNOME Shell Extensions and the GNOME Shell User Theme extension. But don't worry, despite a first look on the installation steps below, installing all of these is actually quite easy. Read on!

Install GNOME Shell Extensions and the User Theme extension in Ubuntu / Fedora

If you've compiled GNOME Shell using JHBuild (tested in Ubuntu):

cd ~/gnome-shell/source
git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
cd gnome-shell-extensions
./autogen.sh --prefix $HOME/gnome-shell/install/ --enable-extensions=user-theme
make && make install

If you use Fedora, you can probably find Gnome Shell Extensions and the User Theme extension in the repositories. If not, download the .rpm files from here (I'm new to Fedora so I'm unsure how the repositories work ... for now :D) : GNOME Shell Extensions Common and GNOME Shell Extension User Theme


If you've installed GNOME Shell from the GNOME 3 PPA in Ubuntu 11.04 (not tested):

A. Compile Gnome Shell Extensions:

cd
git clone http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions
cd gnome-shell-extensions
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --enable-extensions=user-theme
make && sudo make install

B. Convert Fedora .rpm to .deb (again not tested - thanks to ycDref for the tip!).

This is an option for those who can't get GNOME Shell extensions to compile for some reason. Using alien is not recommended.


Download the .rpms from here: GNOME Shell Extensions Common and GNOME Shell Extension User Theme

Install alien:

sudo apt-get install alien

Then convert all downloaded .rpm files to .deb:

sudo alien -d --scripts *.rpm

And install the resulting .deb files (you can also directly install them using "-i" instead of "-d").

Install the Themeselector GNOME Shell extension

The ThemeSelector extension already comes with 5 great GNOME Shell themes by half-left: Atolm, Smooth Inset, Elementaty, Dark Glass and Deviant Art GNOME Shell themes. Here's how to install it.

Download the Themeselector Gnome Shell extension, extract it and place "extension.js" and metadata.json under the /.local/share/gnome-shell/themeselector@fpmurphy.com/ folder (if it doesn't exist, create it). Then copy all the folders you've extracted to the ~/.themes/ folder (it's a hidden folder in your home directory; if some of those folders exists, merge the data).

Now restart GNOME Shell and you should have a new Themes tab in the Activities overview.

Also see:

• Change GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell Or Classic) GTK / Mutter / Metacity Theme
• GNOME Shell Extensions: Additional Functionality For GNOME 3 (Dock Task-Switcher, Windows Navigator, User Theme, Etc.)

Post updated with a newer ThemeSelector version (0.9) - instructions for extracting the ThemeSelector changed!

GNOME Shell Themeselector info and the extension itself - thanks to blog.fpmurphy.com; Many thanks to Charles Bowman for the tip!

Adwaita Improved: Reduced Padding For Adwaita Combo Boxes / Nautilus Breadcrumbs [GNOME 3]

If you think the new GNOME3 default theme - Adwaita - uses too much padding, try "Adwaita Improved" by yes, Half-left again :)

Adwaita Improved comes with reduced padding for combo boxes and Nautilus breadcrumbs bar as well as a tweak to the Nautilus sidebar to blend with the background color. Check out these before and after images by Half-left:

To use the Adwaita Improved theme:

• extract the downloaded .zip and then move the "Adwaita" folder to the ~/.themes directory (if it doesn't exist, create it).
• press ALT + F2 and type "r" to reload GNOME Shell

Download Adwaita Improved @ DeviantArt

Adwaita Improved: Reduced Padding For Adwaita Combo Boxes / Nautilus Breadcrumbs [GNOME 3]

If you think the new GNOME3 default theme - Adwaita - uses too much padding, try "Adwaita Improved" by yes, Half-left again :)

Adwaita Improved comes with reduced padding for combo boxes and Nautilus breadcrumbs bar as well as a tweak to the Nautilus sidebar to blend with the background color. Check out these before and after images by Half-left:

To use the Adwaita Improved theme:

• extract the downloaded .zip and then move the "Adwaita" folder to the ~/.themes directory (if it doesn't exist, create it).
• press ALT + F2 and type "r" to reload GNOME Shell

Download Adwaita Improved @ DeviantArt

Install GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell Or Classic) GTK / Mutter / Metacity Themes

In the latest GNOME 3, changing the theme isn't as easy as you're used to. Using Gnome Tweak Tool you can change the GTK theme but how about the titlebar (Mutter/Metacity theme)? Read on!

How to install GNOME3 GTK themes

To change the GTK theme in GNOME 3 (with or without GNOME Shell), you can use Gnome Tweak Tool which is available in the GNOME 3 Ubuntu PPA, Fedora 15 official repositories, etc. If you're using Ubuntu 11.04 and the GNOME 3 PPA, run the following command to install it:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

To be able to use a GTK theme, make sure it's installed in /usr/share/themes/ and not in ~/.themes/ as Gnome Tweak Tool doesn't display the themes found in ~/.themes.

Then, to change the GNOME3 GTK theme, open Gnome Tweak tool and select the theme you want to use on the "Interface tab":

On the same tab in Gnome Tweak Tool you can also change the icon theme. But please note that the top panel icons in GNOME Shell will not change when chaging the icon theme (however, if you're using the classic GNONE 3 panels, the icons will change everywhere).

How to install Mutter (titlebar) GNOME Shell theme

To be able to change the GNOME 3 Mutter theme (I hope that's how it's called now) - that's the titlebar theme in GNOME Shell -, you need to install the theme under the ~/.themes folder. Yes it's weird, but that's how it works right now, hopefully this will change in future GNOME 3 releases.

Then, to change the GNOME Shell titlebar theme you need to edit some gconf settings so press ALT + F2 and enter: "gconf-editor" (if not installed, search for gconf-editor in your Linux distribution repositories) and navigate to desktop > shell > windows and change the "theme" value with the name of the theme you want to use:

The changes don't take effect immediately so you'll have to logout for the changes to take effect, or press ALT + F2 and enter: "r".

Important: for the "theme" value, enter the folder name of the theme you've copied to your ~/.themes folder. So if you've installed the Elementary theme under ~/.themes/egtk folder, use "egtk" for the "themes" key value.

How to change The Metacity theme in GNOME 3 (classic)

If you use the classic GNOME3 desktop, changing the titlebar (Metacity) theme is different then changing it for GNOME Shell. First of all, you don't have to copy the theme under ~/.themes/, it will work with /usr/share/themes/ too.

To change the Metacity theme in the GNOME 3 classic desktop (with GNOME panels), press ALT + F2, enter "gconf-editor", navigate to apps > metacity > general and change the "theme" value to the name of the theme you want to use:

Update: for switching GNOME Shell themes easily (not GTK themes - GNOME Shell themes are different), see: ThemeSelector: GNOME Shell Extension To Change Themes (With Previews)

The instructions in this post were tested on Fedora 15 beta (with GNOME Shell), GNOME Shell built using jhbuild in Ubuntu 11.04 and the classic GNOME3 session in VirtualBox.

Install GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell Or Classic) GTK / Mutter / Metacity Themes

In the latest GNOME 3, changing the theme isn't as easy as you're used to. Using Gnome Tweak Tool you can change the GTK theme but how about the titlebar (Mutter/Metacity theme)? Read on!

How to install GNOME3 GTK themes

To change the GTK theme in GNOME 3 (with or without GNOME Shell), you can use Gnome Tweak Tool which is available in the GNOME 3 Ubuntu PPA, Fedora 15 official repositories, etc. If you're using Ubuntu 11.04 and the GNOME 3 PPA, run the following command to install it:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

To be able to use a GTK theme, make sure it's installed in /usr/share/themes/ and not in ~/.themes/ as Gnome Tweak Tool doesn't display the themes found in ~/.themes.

Then, to change the GNOME3 GTK theme, open Gnome Tweak tool and select the theme you want to use on the "Interface tab":

On the same tab in Gnome Tweak Tool you can also change the icon theme. But please note that the top panel icons in GNOME Shell will not change when chaging the icon theme (however, if you're using the classic GNONE 3 panels, the icons will change everywhere).

How to install Mutter (titlebar) GNOME Shell theme

To be able to change the GNOME 3 Mutter theme (I hope that's how it's called now) - that's the titlebar theme in GNOME Shell -, you need to install the theme under the ~/.themes folder. Yes it's weird, but that's how it works right now, hopefully this will change in future GNOME 3 releases.

Then, to change the GNOME Shell titlebar theme you need to edit some gconf settings so press ALT + F2 and enter: "gconf-editor" (if not installed, search for gconf-editor in your Linux distribution repositories) and navigate to desktop > shell > windows and change the "theme" value with the name of the theme you want to use:

The changes don't take effect immediately so you'll have to logout for the changes to take effect, or press ALT + F2 and enter: "r".

Important: for the "theme" value, enter the folder name of the theme you've copied to your ~/.themes folder. So if you've installed the Elementary theme under ~/.themes/egtk folder, use "egtk" for the "themes" key value.

How to change The Metacity theme in GNOME 3 (classic)

If you use the classic GNOME3 desktop, changing the titlebar (Metacity) theme is different then changing it for GNOME Shell. First of all, you don't have to copy the theme under ~/.themes/, it will work with /usr/share/themes/ too.

To change the Metacity theme in the GNOME 3 classic desktop (with GNOME panels), press ALT + F2, enter "gconf-editor", navigate to apps > metacity > general and change the "theme" value to the name of the theme you want to use:

Update: for switching GNOME Shell themes easily (not GTK themes - GNOME Shell themes are different), see: ThemeSelector: GNOME Shell Extension To Change Themes (With Previews)

The instructions in this post were tested on Fedora 15 beta (with GNOME Shell), GNOME Shell built using jhbuild in Ubuntu 11.04 and the classic GNOME3 session in VirtualBox.

GNOME Shell Atolm - Another Beautiful GNOME Shell Theme By Half-left

Half-left (who has created the amazing Smooth Inset Gnome Shell theme) has created yet another beautiful theme for Gnome Shell called Atolm (based on Atolm by SkiesOfAzel).

Check it out - firstly some screenshots from my computer:

And a screenshot by Half-left:

Remember, Gnome Shell themes are not regular GTK themes - they only theme the top panel, the GNOME Shell "dock", ALT+TAB / ALT+F2 dialogs and so on, but not the application windows.

Install Atolm for Gnome Shell

GNOME Shell - Atolm is compatible with GNOME Shell beta, RC and 3.0 stable.

To install it, you must overwrite the GNOME Shell "themes" folder (I for one couldn't get the GNOME Shell themes extension to work). So extract the downloaded archive and depending on where you've installed GNOME Shell, replace the "themes" folder (make a backup first to be able to restore the original theme!) under:

• if you've installed GNOME Shell from a PPA / use a Linux distribution that ships with GNOME Shell: /usr/share/gnome-shell/
• if you've compiled GNOME Shell using jhbuild: ~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/data

Then press ALT + F2 and enter "rt" (without the quotes) and press enter to reload the GNOME shell theme (or enter "r" to reload the whole GNOME Shell).


Download GNOME Shell - Atolm

GNOME Shell Extensions: Additional Functionality For GNOME 3 (Dock Task-Switcher, Windows Navigator, User Theme, Etc.)

Are you missing a task switcher in GNOME Shell? Want the power-off button back? Well, you'll be glad to know that GNOME Shell supports extensions and a pack has already been released, covering these as well as some other features that you may want in GNOME Shell.

GNOME Shell Extensions is a collections of extensions providing additional functionality for GNOME Shell. The first public release was made two days ago but the extensions didn't really work because of a bug in GNOME Shell - which was fixed today.

GNOME Shell Extensions

Alternative tab: use the classic ALT + Tab

Alternative Status Menu: adds a "Power off" menu item visible at all time (and not just when pressing the ALT key) in the status menu.

Dock: shows a dock-style task switcher to the right side of the screen and is visible all the time (unlike the Dash "dock" displayed on the left that's only displayed in the "Activities" view). Right now, the dock looks almost the same as the Dash dock except it's smaller.

Gnome Shell Dock Extension comes with very basic functionality: display a list of running applications and add/remove applications as favourites:

Auto Move Windows: you can assign a specific workspace to each application.

Gajim: Integration with Gajim, a Jabber/XMPP instant messaging client.

User Theme: Loads a shell theme from ~/.themes/THEME_NAME/gnome-shell.

Windows Navigator: Allow keyboard selection of windows and workspaces in overlay mode: when you hold the ALT key, a number is assigned to each window (displayed in the top left corner) and you can then press the number to switch to that window:

Xrandr Indicator: Replace the GTK+ based indicator from gnome-settings-daemon with a native one. Lets the user rotate the laptop monitor and open display preferences quickly.

I couldn't test all the extensions because it seems not all work in Jhbuild (built in Ubuntu 10.10). But you can watch a quick video with the Dock, Windows Navigator, Power-Off back in the status menu and Alternative Tab GNOME Shell extensions below:

Apologies for the video quality (I had to stop sometimes so GNOME Shell doesn't crash because of a memory leak when recording; also the font is broken in the video for some reason - unfortunately I don't know how to fix that).

You can get the extensions @ http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions/

GNOME 3 (With GNOME Shell) Has Finally Been Released

GNOME 3 has finally been released a few minutes ago. You can check out all the new features (videos and screenshots) @ gnome3.org - but unfortunately the website is down at the time I'm writing this post. The videos are also available on the GNOME Desktop YouTube channel.

Due to a GNOME Shell bug (which doesn't seem to like my graphics card), I couldn't record a proper video so I've joined all the videos provided on the gnome3.org website into a single video with all the major new features in GNOME 3:

All the credits for the video go to Gnome Desktop YouTube channel.

If you want to try Gnome 3, you can download an openSUSE or Fedora ISO @ Gnome3.org - but again, the website is down for now. To write the ISO to an USB stick, use USB Image Writer and the exact instructions provided on the Gnome3 website - in my test using the Startup Disk Creator in Ubuntu or Unetbootin fails.

There's also a new Developer website: developer.gnome.org, but this one is down too for now.

Introducing Gnome Tweak Tool - GUI To Configure Gnome 3 / Gnome Shell

If you've been following the Gnome Shell development, you probably know that it doesn't provide a GUI tool to tweak some basic settings like changing the GTK, Gnome Shell theme or icon theme, re-enable the minimize and maximize buttons, and so on.

For this reason, John Stowers has created "Gnome Tweak Tool", a 'power user' application you can use to tweak Gnome 3. But I think this tool will become very popular for any Gnome 3 user and not just power users considering how useful it already is. Read on!

Features

• enable disable menu and button icons
• change GTK and icon theme
• define the titlebar double click, middle click and right click actions
• tweak the fonts: change the default font for document, desktop and so on, change the hinting, antialiasing and text scaling factor
• Gnome Shell tweaks: show date in clock, re-enable the minimize and maximize (or just minimize) window buttons
• Install and switch Gnome Shell theme (this option requires you install a Gnome Shell extension called "User Theme")
• change action for laptop lid close on battery and AC
• allow file manager to handle desktop and draw the desktop

Screenshots

While the application is still very new, as you can see it already can handle most stuff the old Gnome 2.3x used to allow and even more. For instance, the option to display icons in menus and buttons was removed in Gnome 2.28 (I'm not sure if that's when this change was introduced, but it was definetly not there in 2.28) but you can easily enable this using Gnome Tweak Tool.

Another much requested feature was an easy way to change the Gnome Shell theme - this is different then the GTK theme because the GTK theme only changes the application look but doesn't affect Gnome Shell (workspace switcher, Dash, top panel). Thanks to the 'User Theme' Gnome Shell extension and Gnome Tweak Tool, you'll no longer have to manually replace system files to apply a new Gnome Shell theme. Unfortunately because I've tested Gnome Tweak Tool on a Live CD, I couldn't install the 'User Theme' extension so I was unable to test this feature (and while I've compiled the latest Gnome Shell in Ubuntu today, unfortunately a bug in GS 3.0.0 prevents the extensions from working).

In the future, the application might also allow easily enabling / disabling Gnome Shell extensions but we'll cover that in a future post.

Download

Gnome Tweak Tool doesn't come with Gnome 3, but is available @ git.gnome.org. If you've installed GNOME 3 via the semi-official GNOME3 Ubuntu 11.04 PPA, you can install GNOME Tweak Tool using the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

What do you think?

Thanks to John Stowers for the tip!

The Board Finally Gets A PPA [Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Only]

The Board is a place for quick access to notes, photos, videos, audio and more. It's really hard to describe what The Board really is so take a look at the video below:

Please note that this is an older video demoing text selection in The Board.

Because The Board is still experimental, it was quite hard to try it out but installing it in Ubuntu just got a whole lot easier thanks to the packaging done by Robert Ancell and a PPA set up Lucas Rocha (The Board developer).

Install The Board in Ubuntu 11.04

Before adding the PPA, please note that this is still experimental (it may crash, explode or not run at all) and it will only work in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. The Board didn't play too nice with Unity running in VirtualBox so it's probably best to only try it if you're running Ubuntu 11.04 on your computer (and not in VirtualBox).

To be able to in stall The Board, you must firstly enable the Universe repository. To do this, open Synaptic Package Manager, go to Settings > Repositories and enable it on the "Ubuntu Software" tab.

Add the PPA and install The Board in Ubuntu 11.04 using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:the-board-team/dev-snapshots
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install the-board

Now you should be able to start The Board from the Unity menu (Dash).

Oh, and here's a screenshot with The Board running in VirtualBox - not a pretty thing to watch but that's because of VirtualBox:

The Board currently doesn't integrate very well with either Unity or Gnome Shell but The Board is still experimental so this will definitely improve in the future.

Lucas also mentions that you can try The Board using the GNOME 3 Live CD. Download it from HERE.

Thanks to lucasr.org for all the info; Screenshot credits: Lucas Rocha.

Smooth Inset: The First Real Theme For The New Gnome Shell

Half-left has released what's probably the first "real" theme for the new Gnome Shell (with the new automatic workspaces, overview re-layout and so on). Gnome Shell already looks pretty cool but check out Half-left's theme called "Smooth Inset":

The theme only works with the latest Gnome Shell from GIT (at least version 2.91.90) - check out or Gnome Shell Ubuntu 10.10 installation post if you want to build the latest Gnome Shell from GIT. 

Unfortunately there are no built-in settings in Gnome Shell to allow changing the whole Shell theme so to install it you'll have to manually copy some files to the ~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/data/ folder. Hopefully this will change soon.

I expect to see a lot more amazing themes for Gnome Shell once Gnome 3 will be released because anyone with CSS knowledge can do it: it's all CSS and images.

Smooth Inset - download and installation instructions @ DeviantArt

[via UbuntuSecrets.it]

How To Add Minimize And Maximize Buttons Back In Gnome Shell

As you probably know, Gnome Shell has removed the minimize and maximize buttons and the windows now only have a close button, but just as it was when the window controls to the left, you can change this.

When Gnome 3.0 will be released, you should be able to add back the minimize and maximize buttons from the "GNOME Plumbing" panel in the Control Center or using "gsettings" (command line tool). Until then, if you use Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 10.10, you can set it to use "minimize, maximize, close" buttons using the following command:

gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/button_layout ":minimize,maximize,close"

You can change the button order in the above command. For instance, to set the buttons to the left side of the window like in Ubuntu 10.10, you would have to edit the command like this: "close,minimize,maximize:".

You can also do this the visual way: press ALT + F2 and enter "gconf-editor", then navigate to desktop > gnome > shell and change the "button_layout" value as explained above.

Update: a new tool has been created for adding back the Minimize and Maximize buttons in GNOME shell as well as many other options like changing the theme, icons, fonts and much more. See GNOME Tweak Tool.

Gnome Shell 2.91.90 Released - Screenshots And Video

Gnome Shell 2.91.90 was released yesterday getting some final adjustments according to the release announcement:

This release just about concludes user interface changes anticipated before GNOME 3.0. The only significant change we expect after this release is to add a native network indicator based on NetworkManager 0.9.

Gnome Shell 2.91.90 video

Here is a video I've recorded with the latest Gnome Shell 2.91.90 - not the best quality but as usual, the Shell recorder doesn't play very nice with my Nvidia graphics card:

What's new in Gnome Shell 2.91.90

- Gnome Shell now uses automatic workspaces - we've already covered this so I'll not get into details.

- The minimize and maximize buttons were removed from the window titlebars. This is something awkward in my opinion: while I understand why they've removed the minimize button (there is nowhere to minimize a window because Gnome Shell doesn't have a window list like the old Gnome panels), the maximize button will be missed by many. Sure, you can drag a window to the top of the screen to maximize it, but that's not enough. Further more, I've noticed that there's no close button ("X") for the windows that have a "Close" button.

- Hold notifications while the user is marked busy. This sounds a lot like the "Silent mode" proposed for Unity that we've talked about a while back.

- Added a PolicyKit authentication agent; requests to the user for authentication from PolicyKit now show up as shell-themed dialogs. Check out THIS post for more info and videos (including fingerprint authentication).

- Suspend now shows up in the user status menu while Power Off is hidden and only shows up while holding down the ALT key. This is yet another new feature for which I don't see the point but maybe you can guess why they've done this.

- Larger icons the the launcher and application browser

- The panel now uses round corners



Other changes:

• You can now change workspace by mousewheel scrolling over the thumbnails
• Add audio feedback when scrolling over the volume status icon
• Remove the window filtering and highlighting when using the dash application menu
• And many other minor improvements. A complete list can be found HERE.

If you want to try out Gnome Shell you can use the Fedora or openSUSE live CDs or compile it yourself in Ubuntu.

Gnome Shell Gets Automatic Workspaces [Video]

Remember the Gnome Shell automatic workspaces mockup we've talked about a while back? It has just been added to the main Gnome Shell branch today.

However, the automatic workspace Gnome Shell implementation seems to have more in common with this Unity mockup than the initial Shell mockup: the Unity mockup proposed to always have an empty workspace so the user doesn't have to create it while the Gnome Shell mockup proposed to never have an empty workspace. Either way, the idea seems very good so it doesn't matter where it came from. Too bad this won't be in Unity too - unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth turned it down.

The initial automatic workspaces mockup suggested that you can launch an application on a workspace by simply dropping the launcher on that workspace, but this didn't work in my test so either they gave up on this idea or it just wasn't implemented yet (it probably still needs some work, considering it was just merged into the main Gnome Shell branch).

But enough explaining, here's a short video so you can see exactly how this works:

As always, our Install Gnome Shell (From GIT) In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat post is up to date so you can give Gnome Shell a try and see the new automatic workspaces for yourself.

What do you think?

Thanks to John for the tip!

Easily Test Gnome Shell Using A Live CD!

Testing Gnome Shell just got a whole lot easier! There are now live CD Gnome Shell (Gnome 3) ISO files available for both Fedora and openSUSE - you don't have to install them, all you have to do is write the ISO files onto an USB stick or CD, boot and enjoy Gnome Shell.

It is said this should work in VirtualBox too, however the openSUSE Live CD (the only one I've tested which is supposed to come with built-in VirtualBox Guest Additions) failed to run Gnome Shell and I only got the classic Gnome interface. I've managed to run it from a terminal ("gnome-shell --replace") but it looked broken (that's why there's only 2/3 of a screenshot in the beginning of the post) so it seems the best way to do this is to just use a live USB or CD.

But of course, that doesn't mean you can't try it in VirtualBox, maybe it works for you! Just remember to enable the 3D option. Oh, and if when you boot the Live CD you get the classic Gnome desktop, log out and log back in a few times and if it still doesn't work, try to run it from a terminal: "gnome-shell --replace".

More info: Fedora | openSUSE


Direct download links for the ISO files: Fedora | openSUSE


If you want to build the latest Gnome Shell in Ubuntu, check out the following post: Install Gnome Shell (From GIT) In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (updated frequently).

[via DownloadSquad]

Zeitgeist For Gnome Shell Goes Public [Video]

Seif posted a video with Zeitgeist + Gnome Shell in action, which you can view below:

The code is now available for anyone who wants to try it out - for now there's no GIT branch or such and instead, you must download an archive and replace the ~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/js folder with the js folder from this archive. You can downloaded it from HERE.

[via Seif]

Gnome Shell Daily Build (January 24th, 2011) Video

As requested by many of our readers, here is a video showing the latest GNOME Shell daily build (as of January 24th, 2011). There have been many changes to Gnome Shell since our last video, including the overview relayout (which is default for some time), notification changes, side-by-side tiling as well a functional notification area and many other changes.

Unfortunately the Gnome Shell recorder tool doesn't work well with Nvidia graphics cards so I had to make a lot of smaller videos which I've then used to create a single video (Gnome Shell crashes when recording after around 10 seconds of intense activity). Further more, there was a bug (which was fixed just after I've finished uploading the video on YouTube) which caused the cursor not to show up in the video. Anyway, you get the idea - it's not the best video but it should be enough to get an idea on how Gnome Shell looks like today (fresh GIT build):

Remember: GNOME Shell is still work in progress and a lot of improvements will be made until it's released!

If you want to try out the latest GNOME Shell from GIT in Ubuntu, check out our post: Install Gnome Shell (From GIT) In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat - the post is constantly updated.

Gnome Shell Might Not Be Available In The Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Official Repositories

A bug submitted @ Launchpad points out that Gnome Shell might not be available in the official Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal repositories.

Gnome Shell has been available in the official Ubuntu repositories for the past three releases, however some recent changes in Natty broke Gnome Shell and it seems it can't be fixed, which might lead to Gnome Shell being "removed and blacklisted" in Ubuntu 11.04:

Due to the state of the GNOME3 stack in natty, we won't be able to upgrade gnome-shell to 2.91.x. In addition, due to libraries that have already changed, (Bug #685225 and Bug #677382), gnome-shell is currently broken. We also have the xulrunner-2.0 transition to consider. Due to all this, we believe it best to remove gnome-shell from natty.

The bug description (which was submited by Micah Gersten, an Ubuntu member) mentions that the current plan is to get it built in the GNOME3 PPA and reintroduce it when GNOME3 makes its way into Ubuntu.

Gnome Shell And Zeitgeist

Gnome Shell and Unity may have started on separate paths, but they are definitely heading to the same direction. Seif Lotfy has just posted a screenshot (not mockup!) of his current work: Zeitgeist and Gnome Shell:

For comparison, this is how Unity in Ubuntu 10.10 looks:

[via Seilo @ Geeky Ogre]