Today I installed the Fedora 20 Alpha release with GNOME on my laptop to test it. Regarding the changes in GNOME 3.10, I love the move to merge title bars and toolbars into header bars. It’s good to save vertical space. The new applications like GNOME Photos, Music and especially Software are also nice, but I’m not sure about the integrated system status menu. It simply takes a lot more clicks to connect to a WiFi network now. As always, I’ve filed some bug reports and commented on some old ones:
Fedora:
- Bug #904052 – Eye of GNOME should be the default application for viewing images
- Bug #981963 – no touchpad edge scrolling in Fedora 20 with GNOME
- Bug #1028734 – LibreOffice banner shown during installation of F20 alpha is outdated
- Bug #1028758 – no easy way to change computer name before or during installation
GNOME:
- Bug #329652 – add OpenSearch support to GNOME Web
- Bug #664915 – GNOME Web uses wrong fonts on nos.nl
- Bug #711774 – GNOME Software doesn’t display progress for downloads
I think the first and fourth Fedora bugs are evidence that the Fedora developers don’t spend as much time on usability as they should. The second one is a very nasty bug, but knowing Fedora’s development I doubt it will be fixed in time for the final Fedora 20 release. Fedora releases should be more polished.
The first two GNOME bugs are still preventing me to switch to GNOME Web from Firefox. They’re very old and there is no indication that they’re going to be fixed any time soon, I wish I could do it myself.