Recent Improvements to the Linux Experience
And a convenient program called kupfer to make your life better
So it's been a long time now since the GNOME 3 disaster, and what do I think? Well, it's still kind of hard to tell, but basically there seems to be a new equilibrium. For me, XFCE really did turn out to be the answer, and the new version 4.10 included some subtle upgrades that made my life better.
But the main reason I think that the Linux desktop experience got better in the last year is that most people aren't using GNOME shell. According to a recent survey, they've lost more than half of their users. I know some people that still use it, and I'd have to say that all the users that GNOME 3 have left basically like it. So that's one part of the equation, but what happened to all those other people (like me)?
Basically, they went all over the place. Some went to KDE, which is a pretty much the ultimate in customization, and even Linus Torvalds appears to be satisfied with it. Many switched to Unity by default, which is a decent solution, or at least a convenient one for Ubuntu users. Cinnamon doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, which in hindsight makes sense. If you don't like GNOME 3, why bother using something based on it. And I don't know how many people went to XFCE. I'm the only one I know.
KDE still scares me too much to actually put it on any of my computers. The last time I did that it ruined all my shortcut keys, and I couldn't even use Ctrl+S to save things. Not sure how that was possible. I need to have at least one positive experience before I become a convert. In the mean time, XFCE released a new version, and it had almost no changes.
But that's kind of a good thing! They did one thing that's pretty awesome. You know that thing Windows 7 did with pressing the Windows key plus a direction to make the window take up half the screen? Well that turns out to be the kind of thing that you can't live without once you've had it, and now XFCE (or more specifically xfwm4) has it, too.
The one thing that both Unity and GNOME have that is really appealing is the ability to press one key and have a nice menu to search all your programs and recent documents, etc. I feel kind of dumb for not thinking of this in hindsight, but I realized that there basically had to be stand-alone programs to do something like it. Duh. So anyway, I highly recommend kupfer for this purpose. It doesn't take up your whole screen or all of your memory, and it has a ton of options. Now I can have a working search and a traditional task bar. You should try it.
