The first thing I learned was that 7GB of disk space would be required to install this puppy. Most of my virtual boxes are 10GB and I didn't think that was enough. Thus I installed Ubuntu Gnome on a 16GB memory stick which was quite easy to do. The usual set up and updates were performed and then the login screen appeared. It was a nice graphic reminiscent of MATE's but cleaner. After that the Gnome desktop appeared:
I don't know what I was expecting, but I thought there would be more than a single menu item called "Activities" on the upper left of the desktop. The upper right has the usual network, sound, and battery icons plus a drop down menu for adjusting screen brightness and a few other things. This brightness control eliminates the need for me to hunt down a display menu to do something very basic. In the center is the time date which opens up into a calendar when you hover over it, and adjustments for setting the time. It's a spartan desktop, but very convenient.
When I clicked on "Activities" to see what would happen, the following screen appeared:
Well now we are getting somewhere. I recognized the familiar Ubuntu launcher and some of the app icons placed there by default. The defaults are, Firefox, Evolution, Empathy, Rhythmbox, Shotwell, LibreOffice, (system) Files, Help, and Show Applications at the bottom. Originally there were no apps that I can recall, but as I got to playing with the system the apps I have used are shown when clicking that bottom icon.
Like Ubuntu's Unity, when you start typing in the search box, relevant apps that match your search characters show up. This is lovely for a fellow like myself who has spent a lot of time exploring Ubuntu, but I thought this was a GNOME implementation. Why does it look so much like the old familiar Ubuntu 14.04 LTS?
OK some things take on the Gnome-ish look, but still. I see a blend of Unity and Gnome instead of the classic desktop presented by MATE. I've not tried to do much yet, but have noted that Ubuntu Gnome has a hard time remembering settings made on the fly. File views, for example, revert to icon view no matter how often I tell it to show me a list. This might have something to do with the media and no persistence partition. But I never had to configure such a thing for other flavors of Ubuntu so that I'm thinking there is an bug in the distro (at worst) or an irritation brought upon myself (at best) due to the memory stick media. Either way I didn't go much further than a cursory exploration of Ubuntu Gnome. I will pursue it further and probably report back here on what I find. It looks promising. I like the combination of classic and contemporary desktops, but including Gnome in the name of the distro is misleading. It's way more than that. If you are looking for the Gnome look and feel, it seems that Ubuntu MATE is a better choice than Ubuntu Gnome.
