Is there a future for Gnome Classic?

Solution 1:

The Gnome Classic in 11.10 is Gnome Panel 3. It has been ported to GTK 3, so there's no reason not to support it. The question of development is mostly a question of popularity. Gnome Panel 2 have been very popular, but I'm not entirely sure that's because of the panels themselves, but because of the large number of available applets that is available for it. From a users perspective, these were quite nice, but from a developers perspective, the technology they were based on, are horribly outdated. So the question remains if anyone is going to actually port them to the new platform. If that happens, then I think Gnome Panel 3 can have a good future, but it requires quite a bit of effort and somebody has to do the work.

Because of this, I am a little bit sceptical that it will "take off". It seems more likely to me that people who want a similar environment to Gnome 2 will move on to Xfce, which already has a community and some momentum. I don't think Gnome referring to it as a fallback helps create enthusiasm to rebuild the Gnome 2 experience on Gnome 3.

But this is pure speculation. It's impossible to tell how this will unfold.

Solution 2:

Perhaps Gnome Classic should be renamed Gnome Panel or Gnome Expert Mode. I don't want to use Gnome Classic as a way of holding onto the past but as an approach I prefer. Others may prefer Gnome 3 or Unity and I am happy for them.

Solution 3:

Your question calls for speculation. So here's mine...

I would wager that, with time, Unity shell and Gnome shell will add back the menu features found in Gnome2 so that users can use whichever approach is most efficient for a given task. Or at least I hope that's what will happen. But in the meantime, I'm using Gnome shell along with Cairo Dock (cairo-dock), which offers a Gnome2-like menu among many other goodies. That way, I get the best of all worlds.