Ubuntu Gnome

I finally gave up on Fedora. Fedora 18 has been just a tad too unstable for my liking. After doing a software update last week, I lost the ability to log into my machine. It would load the GUI, but would not accept my password. I even tried 'Ctrl-Alt-F2' to get to a console for log in and had no luck.

Forunately, I was able to boot into a USB key and recover all my data. After that I decided to start shopping for a new distribution. I like the Gnome 3 interface, but it is treated like a second class citizen on many other Linux distributions. I was a long time Ubuntu user but they lost me with Unity. I wanted Ubuntu with Gnome 3. To my surprise, after visiting the gnome website, I learned that Ubuntu finally offers an offical Gnome 3 spin of Ubuntu. I installed it and am very pleased so far.

The Gnome 3 integration with Ubuntu is great but not as tight as Fedora's integration is. Ubuntu Gnome uses Ubuntu's software center instead of Gnome's software browser. This is fine because is still uses the GTK toolkit and doesn't clash with regular Gnome apps. There are also a couple of ubuntu specific applications that have low resolution icons that clash with the newer high resolution icons of Gnome 3. Fortunately, I don't see them very often. I'm just surprised the icon's haven't been updated for Unity.

Ubuntu Gnome seems to be a little faster to boot and I feel the UI is smoother. Gnome 3 window dragging always seemed jerky in Fedora even with the proprietary nVidia drivers. My computer has plenty of processing power, RAM, and a discreet video card. There was no excuse for the lousy UI performance I saw in Fedora.

I'm glad Ubuntu finally gave the blessing for an official Gnome 3 release. Getting things working is much easier and my system feels much faster. I also use Debian on my servers so I find administering Debian based systems to be a much easier.