old GNOME 2

After spending some time with Unity in Ubuntu 11.04 (on my laptop) and GNOME Shell in Fedora 16, I've been saying that I won't miss GNOME 2 at all when I switch from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04 and from Debian Squeeze to Debian Wheezy.

But, I've never met a DE or WM that I didn't like, especially after getting used to it, and the same applies to old GNOME 2. I'm finding that I still enjoy using it in 10.04 and in Squeeze, and I have to admit that there are a few things about it that I like better than in GNOME 3.

Only a few things, though.

One thing is that there's a lot to be said for the "traditional" panel set-up. I can't say that I miss gnome-panel in GNOME Shell, but I do wish that the GNOME Shell's top panel had some good configuration options.

And I'm not so thrilled with the new-look Nautilus file manager in GNOME 3. Well, I guess it's basically the same as the old Nautilus, but in trying to create a cleaner, more streamlined, more refined look, they got rid of the the toolbar that contains some useful buttons -- most importantly to me, the "up" for moving to the parent directory. But I guess that's minor stuff, in the end.

Here's Nautilus in Debian Squeeze, in GNOME 2:

And here's Nautilus in Fedora 16, in GNOME 3:

One thing I've decided after playing around with different file managers -- Dolphin in KDE, Thunar in Xfce, and Nautilus, Konqueror, emelFM2, among others -- is that there is no "best" file manager. It's all subjective, of course; it depends on what you like. I kinda prefer Dolphin; the toolbar is great, it has tabs (which are useful at times), and the Information panel on the right side is very helpful. Dolphin is still my favorite file manager.

But I've gained a new appreciation for Thunar, thanks to Anthony Nordquist, the SalineOS developer, and my ol' pal ComputerBob. Nordquist provided a script for adding several useful Thunar custom actions, and ComputerBob gave me some additional Thunar tips. Then I went back to Nautilus in both GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 and sorta rediscovered some things I could do with that file manager. So I guess it doesn't really matter which one I use; each one has some things (and is missing some things) that you won't (or will) find in another one.

So, maybe I will miss the old GNOME 2 a little bit, after all. It has served me well; I remember back when I first started with Linux, and I only liked KDE. It took me a while to get used to GNOME, but I finally became comfortable with it, and I really don't have much bad to say about it. Still, it's time to move on. I use GNOME Shell without trying to make it look like the old GNOME, and I have no interest in things like the Linux Mint projects, MATE and Cinnamon.

And, I love Xfce, which really isn't too much unlike GNOME 2, anyway. So if I do end up missing the old GNOME 2, I certainly won't be missing it much.