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Comment by GrayShade | Hacker News Reader

And you had to install an extension for it.

Honestly, why is that a problem? Installing shell extensions is trivial.

For the average non-technical user going through the trouble of installing an extension to put files on the desktop is a non-starter. If I switched my parents to Linux with GNOME they would be completely lost being unable to put files on the desktop. If people want Linux to be the next great desktop OS then things like this are a huge barrier to usability.

It might be trivial, but it's something that can annoy new Linux users.

And they also break on every GNOME release, often enough that I kinda' gave up on my favorite GNOME extension (Dash to Dock). Not that I blame the extension developers, but e.g. the review times on extensions.gnome.org are atrocious, and the build system is fiddly enough that I can't remember what I did to install it manually 6, 12 or 18 months earlier.

From the link pjmlp posted [0], to install extensions in Gnome 40 you need to install a 3rd party browser extension (not available through Firefox add-on store) and then from your package manager install the browser-shell-connector. These will let you enable and disable extensions, but you still can't configure them.

To configure your newly enabled extensions, you need to install the Gnome Extensions flatpack.

And to do that, you're off to the command line to add Flathub as a remote repo.

I don't know that the desktop icons extension requires any configuration, but based on the fact that you need an extension for it I'm guessing that there are similarly weird decisions being made elsewhere, and being able to change extension settings is going to be useful. And to get to that point you have a four stage install including a trip to the command line?

Why not ship Gnome Extensions by default with the OS? Is this like Steve Jobs with his "you're holding it wrong" remark, and people who want to put icons on the desktop are supposed to just stop wanting to do that?

[0]: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gnome-40.html

I suppose so. On my distro (Arch, BTW) I need the browser extension, and I can use the non-Flatpak GNOME Extensions just fine (used to be Tweaks before).

I think the GNOME developers want to stop hearing about packaging issues for their apps, so they ask everyone to use the Flatpak versions. I have nothing against it, but there's no point as long as the distro-provided version still works.

Glad to hear distros are shipping gnome extensions, situation is not quite as ridiculous as it sounded from reading that

GNOME Shell integration extension is available on the add-on stores of both Firefox[0] and Chrome[1]. Their preferences are available either from the installed page or the `gnome-extensions` CLI tool included with GNOME Shell or the Extensions app you're talking about.

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/gnome-shell-inte...

[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integr...

The extension is available, but you need the native component too:

> You MUST install native connector for this extension to work.

Yes, as OP already said. Nevertheless you can also install them by downloading them and then via the CLI tool.

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