I just upgraded my trusty Belinea b.book2 to Fedora 15. I'd previously had a little play around with the new gnome interface when trying out Arch Linux but this is the first time I've really played about with it. So far I'm not that keen, I liked the old gnome and I miss my desktop being on a 3d cube

Same here on Arch. The first time this thing came up, I paniced. All icons: gone, all decorations: gone, all settings: gone, screensaver: gone...
The wallpaper looks like something on the walls of a 19th century boudoir and it "hides" a lot of stuff, like user settings.
It's a lot faster though...but it feels like driving around in a stripped down Lambo, while you did want all the trimmings...

I consider the move to XFCE, as soon as I get assurance it will not break my system - this thing is a lifeline for me..

Thor

I've installed Fedora 15 on a laptop since the beta arrived a few weeks ago.
I'm getting used to it.
Switching between identical apps is nice (Alt `) for example cycling between all your open gnome terminals.
Launching an application is nice too. I don' t regret the many menus of Fedora 13. Just press this to start a terminal:
Alt F1 term
then press enter and you're done. It will even switch to a previously launched terminal to prevent having tons of them open at the same time.

I do miss the notification area always visible, especially for Skype, I hope they bring it back, for example in the empty space between "Activities" and the time.

I also miss the possibility to have a program such as Skype launched at login, but it's not as bad as the missing notification area.

I'll probably wait until they fix the notification area to switch my main computer to Fedora 15.

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I'm using LXDE; F15 works fine for me. For you, is XFCE+compiz an option?

Don't like it one bit. I might be being a bit closed minded, but I hate GNOME3 as much as Unity. I've used KDE, GNOME2, and XFCE for at least a month each, but GNOME3 looks pretty but it's not the best way to get around. I've wanted to switch to Fedora to get away from Unity, but it's making me reconsider Linux as a whole. I want Linux for customization and configurability, but Unity and GNOME3 seem to take away that joy. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty, but not my cup of tea. Guess I gotta use XFCE or try Fluxbox. Btw, does anybody know any distress with GNOME 2? My fascination with Fedora is becoming short lived.

Scientific Linux and CentOS are both similar to Fedora and neither will have Gnome 3 any time soon.

I did try the G3 livecd at work, due to my hardware is not G3 compatible, and I liked it from the one day of using it.

Have you guys checked out any of the extensions? You can tweak the hell out it from what I've heard.

Okay, same here, but...is that a reason to force a fallback that is not really that nice to look at?

And...yes, it is faster, possibly more stable...but is is a stripped-down Lambo, if you ask me...

Thor

Since the original post I've looked up the shortcuts and have to say that it's actually grown on me a lot since. I use OSX at work (like now) so would have liked it if all the shortcuts used the same key combinations but that's ok. I think Gnome 3 will probably improve a lot in time. I'd like to see customisation options / themes. Am going to stick with it anyway.

Uhhh, I don't use G3 at all. I'm waiting till I get a new system this summer. I did install F15 LXDE version and use Openbox mostly.

- Static elements of the display still reduce the usable desktop space. In Gnome2, these were the menu bar which contained the application menus and the the applets and the dock at the bottom where open windows were shown. Gnome3 removes the application dock which provides more vertical space.

- I create control panels for monitoring embedded systems. I do not like wasted space on my desktop. That being said, I have to multitask and work with other people so I need notifications when I receive email and timers that tell me when I need to perform a time sensitive action. The applets for Gnome2 were useful for this. I can install AWN to support the applets but these are not visible by default so I have to manually check for notifications manually periodically. This is less that optimal.

- Gnome2 was not good at organizing large numbers of applications. Gnome3 organization is different but not much better though the search tool is useful if you already know what you want to find. It only seems to search by application name. It would be more useful to help you find applications by what you want to do.

- I had thought that the way to improve Gnome2 was to have an alternate personalized menu that you could switch to with a simple key press or mouse button action. This would show only those applications that you added to the menu. All other application would not be presented at all. This is similar to the favorites that Gnome3 has but you would be able to setup directories to organize things. You would also be able to replace the application names with your own label so you can give it the name of the type of work you are doing. For instance, you would label gimp with the string "Edit Photo" or label Rythmbox with "Play Song".

- It is nice getting the icons off of the desktop. I have long thought that they should only be displayed when needed.

- I think that it is a good start and will get better as people start tweaking it to make it more friendly. As for all the complaints. This always happens when there is change. There is room for improvement but it is as bad as all that.

I miss the panel apps and the workplace switcher in Gnome 3. After a brief look, I reinstalled Fedora 14. When Fedora 16 is released in six month's time, I'll take another look at Gnome 3

And here I want icons on my desktop. Choice is good, and, fortunately, there are lots of choices both in terms of formal desktop environments and components from which one can assemble a personalized DE.

You're not alone. I'm going back to 14.

That's not a good idea, what when Fedora 14 will not be supported any more?

Switch to a distro that still offers GNOME 2 (such as Mint), or try another desktop (such as Xfce, which looks similar to GNOME 2).

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