This is not Gnome

Ubuntu Linux Every now and again, even I am taken by surprise by a screenshot. It’s not often, but kerry_s‘s work with JWM, tricking it out to give it a Mist-ish Gnome look in grey, did it this time.

You’ll have to sign in to the forums to see the images there, but I don’t think he’d mind if I reproduced them here.

Amazing work. It’s a pity the real Gnome doesn’t look as good as that, and run on the same hair’s breadth of memory.

9 thoughts on “This is not Gnome”

Mark 2009/02/26 at 4:20 AM

I can tell its not Gnome. The three menu bar buttons don’t have borders in Gnome.

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zmjjmz 2009/02/26 at 7:43 AM

@Mark: But it would be trivial to replicate that in GNOME.

chris4585 and I are working on a distro (maybe not Ubuntu based, it’s giving us issues) that implements this configuration.

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Byaryoga 2009/02/26 at 6:04 PM

Hi. You might consider Patriot’s work on Puppy Linux forum.

Here’s the thread http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=273262#273262

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K.Mandla Post author2009/02/26 at 8:22 PM

Hmm. I have to be honest, my reaction is just “meh.” Rounded corners — JWM or otherwise — don’t spark my interest.

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James 2009/02/27 at 5:11 AM

Meh. Looks nice, but it’s not as usable as Gnome or IceWM for one simple reason: JWM has had a complete lack of attention paid to Fitt’s Law.

Fitt’s Law is a common usability principle which states that the larger a target something is, the easier it is to click. Because you can’t move your mouse past the very edges and corners of the screen, those areas are infinite in size, and some of the easiest places to click.

This is why it’s an EPIC FAIL to have a toolbar against the edge of the screen, but force the user to have to move the mouse pointer up a few pixels to click a button.

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