If you’re looking for a fancy new way to launch your favourite apps in GNOME Shell the awesomely innovative GNOME extension featured below should appeal!
It’s called Fly-Pie and despite being at an early stage in its development (i.e. expect bugs, missing features, possible death, etc) it’s already looking pretty functional as this YouTube video ably demonstrates.
Neat. Not sure if it’s for me – the mouse movements seem slow, and not as fast as simply using something like uLauncher – but at least it’s a little bit different.
It’s nice to see some devs thinking out of the box. But, yeah – not sure it’s for me either.
From the linked article, there’s a comment by the author:
Simon Schneegans
I think I have to jump in here to prevent a misconception: Fly-Pie is *not* primarily intended to be an application launcher. This is much better accomplished by GNOME Shell itself. Fly-Pie provides shortcuts for actions you do very often (much more often than launching applications). It is similar to hotkeys, but for many people remembering hotkeys is difficult – remembering a gesture is oftentimes much easier!
And obviously it’s designed for people working with one hand at the mouse anyways. It’s not indented for people who do not use a mouse frequently.
There are many applications which require a lot of mouse input, in these applications Fly-Pie can drastically improve your efficiency (3D modelling, audio editing, spread sheets,…).
It’s like a prettier, cartoonish version of TheBrain.
2012: https://youtu.be/GFqLUBKCFdA
2008: https://youtu.be/xarxdH7-XCI