Coming back to linux desktop

[sourceninja]

So I've been a mac user for the last 4-5 years. I still manage a over a hundred linux servers (all headless) on a daily basis, so I'm not concerned with using/managing linux.

What I'm trying to find is the distro with the most polished Gnome 3 environment. I really like gnome3/shell and I have installed in vm's ubuntu 12.10 beta, fedora 17, and even mint to try to find the most polished desktop experience with plain old vanilla gnome 3.4 or 3.6.

So far I'm leaning to Fedora which seems to have the best gnome environment. I'm not a big fan of the tweaks mint has made and I'm not sold on Unity. I really feel vanilla gnome 3 has the best 'keyboard centric' design.

Anyone recommend a distro better than fedora? Should I look at Debian is their gnome any different than Ubuntu's version (which doesn't feel like vanilla gnome).

I should point out that this distro needs to have a smooth install on a mid-2010 macbook pro. ( MacBookPro6,2 Intel Core i7 Dual Core 2.66 GHz Ram: 8 GB )

 

[lxskllr]

I'm not a fan of Gnome3, so I don't follow it closely, but I'd assume fedora would give the best experience. I'm a fan of Debian in general, so even if I liked Gnome3, I'd try Debian first to see how they did it. YMMV

 

[theevilsharpie]

I briefly used GNOME 3 on Ubuntu 12.04, and everything seemed to fit together and function properly. I'm not sure what else you're looking for.

Fedora's GNOME 3 experience will probably be a bit more "integrated," but at the expense of using a bleeding-edge distro.

 

[H54]

I would recommend either Fedora if you don't mind all of the extra stuff that comes pre-packaged or Arch if you don't mind a little bit of configuration.

I run Arch with Gnome Shell and really like it. Not having the touch the mouse very often does wonders for workflow. The packages in the Arch repositories are probably about as vanilla as you can get.

 

[Demo24]

I dislike GNOME3 a lot, found it difficult to get to what I wanted to do and annoying to change tasks when multitasking. I do like unity though, especially with the side bar where I lock all the most commonly used applications and quickly flip back and forth between them. With a 27" wide screen I can afford to use the space the unity bar takes up( don't like it to auto hide ).

I tried switching to fedora and wasn't terribly pleased, tried cinnamon interface, then tried to get the unity port installed with no success. Just went back to Ubuntu.

 

[MrColin]

I'm on Fedora 17 right now with gnome-shell, I love it for the most part but I have been thinking of making a video to demonstrate some of the UI behaviors that bother me. ie the squirrelly systray icons that slide away from the mouse, no pager.

If you need a closed source video driver, watch out for kernel updates. They aren't handled as well as with ubuntu. The learning curve for SELinux is steeper than for apparmor but it does more too. Next time a major issue comes up with my ubuntu headless server I'll probably go Fedora or CentOS on that too. It could be a while though.

 

[theevilsharpie]

the squirrelly systray icons that slide away from the mouse

😵

 

[Jodell88]

They don't slide away from the mouse. They expand to show the name. This behaviour is also changed with Gnome 3.6 because you have some massive icons to click on now.

 

[sourceninja]

I'm still leaning to fedora right now. I've got ubuntu and fedora running side by side in a VM and while ubuntu is my old favorite, I'm really not liking Unity and I try to keep my desktop as close to distro default as possible.

 

[lxskllr]

I'm still leaning to fedora right now. I've got ubuntu and fedora running side by side in a VM and while ubuntu is my old favorite, I'm really not liking Unity and I try to keep my desktop as close to distro default as possible.

Try Debian. It's like Ubuntu. and as of now Gnome3 is default. That doesn't mean as much in Debian though. Their defaults are more like suggestions. It isn't as planned out as some distros. They're switching to using Xfce as default for Wheezy, which I think is a good thing. Debian's about stability, and that's the antithesis of Gnome atm.

 

[sourceninja]

Try Debian. It's like Ubuntu. and as of now Gnome3 is default. That doesn't mean as much in Debian though. Their defaults are more like suggestions. It isn't as planned out as some distros. They're switching to using Xfce as default for Wheezy, which I think is a good thing. Debian's about stability, and that's the antithesis of Gnome atm.

Yea, I've used debian for years. My problem with them has always been the lag in terms of staying current. Maybe that has changed, but that was what drew me to ubuntu when it first hit the market. The beauty of debian with actual recent packages of software.

We use debian, ubuntu, and redhat here in the office (with almost everything slowly moving to redhat). Debian has always had a place in my heart.

 

[lxskllr]

Yea, I've used debian for years. My problem with them has always been the lag in terms of staying current. Maybe that has changed, but that was what drew me to ubuntu when it first hit the market. The beauty of debian with actual recent packages of software.

We use debian, ubuntu, and redhat here in the office (with almost everything slowly moving to redhat). Debian has always had a place in my heart.

Stable is always lagging behind, but if you track testing or unstable, you'll get pretty new packages. Testing is currently frozen, so the updates haven't been very plentiful, but once Wheezy gets released, they should start flowing again.

Ubuntu's based on testing. They take a snapshot, freeze it, add their bits, then ship it out.

 

[sourceninja]

Just found the 'gnome shell remix' version of ubuntu. Cuts out unity and just has gnome shell. This could be good enough to get going.

I'm still leaning to fedora however. With our entire company moving away from debian/ubuntu and focusing on redhat exclusively it would do me some good to have my desktop OS made by the same company. If anything it will help when the company enviably asks me to go get some redhat certs.