Plans for Gnome 43 and Beyond | Hacker News Reader

Plans for Gnome 43 and Beyond

blogs.gnome.org

I end up with the default Gnome desktop every time I install a new Fedora Linux instance. Sometimes I even use it for a while. It looks pretty, and performance issues seem to be a thing of the past, even on 10 year old machines.

But given time, on a machine I really plan to use, I switch to Mate. The older desktop paradigm is just more efficient. You can put frequently used apps right on your toolbar and launch them with one mouse movement and one click. Icons cluttering your desktop can get out of hand, but they are practical. And minimize/unminimize, while no longer cool, is just about as practical as the "reveal" cloud of miniaturized thumbnail windows even if sometimes you end up opening the wrong one briefly.

On Gnome, even if I have an app pinned to the launcher, I have to mouse to the top left corner, click, mouse to the dock, click. That's twice the work of launching something pinned to the toolbar in Mate (though there's probabably a keybinding for the first part).

Linux on the desktop has arrived, despite all the articles saying it never will. It is the easiest OS for my mom these days, because Mate works the way she's used to desktop environments working.

The preferred method of launching an app on GNOME is hitting the super key, typing the first few letters of its name, and hitting enter to launch it.

Regarding minimizing apps, etc, GNOME classic is available for a MATE-style experience, but its on GTK4 instead of GTK2.

I figured there might be a better way.

Now can anyone explain the rationale for moving the dock to the bottom? Looks more like a Macintosh, therefore cool, right? Except that the left-edge deck was closer to the upper left corner, meaning less mouse movement to get to.

Seems like the GNOME strategy is to prepare the desktop environment for unconventional mobile form factors rather than workstations. Which is bewildering and confusing because I wouldn't think to use something like a Linux distribution on anything but a workstation. Though in my opinion Windows (WSL) and MacOS (UNIX) provide elegant developer experiences and advanced capabilities for workstation machines.

It's hard to say where GNOME fits in these days and if it's still relevant. These sorts of changes are great and I appreciate GNOME's work so I have a balanced perspective. Steam Deck even uses KDE Plasma and not GNOME so I don't know other than Endless Mobile where GNOME has opportunities to deploy this other than as a sort of proof of concept demo.

Oh the strategy was there since the premises of Gnome 3. One size fits all, tv-desktop-tablet-phone are all the same. RH even hired UI/UX designers to push this agenda. Unsurprisingly, it failed.

It then became "all about keyboard" to not loose all the devs. And now the one size fits all is back in full swing and if it can hurt the Cinnamon, Mate and al "competition" in the process all the better.

It made the desktop on Linux stagnate and did not "win" any tablet, tv or phone market share in the process. What a waste.

Integrating the file chooser with Nautilus is awesome. I think it should have happened ages ago in the Gnome 2 era, when there were facilities for embedding a widget from one application in another (e.g. Bonobo). It is infuriating that there are small differences between the file chooser and the file browser. Windows gets this pretty much right, since it uses a special shell widget in the file picker. You get all the same context menus, and can copy files between windows via drag+drop.

The new image viewer looks nice!

Theming is a bit disappointing - instead of accent colors, I would prefer full support for themes, but that ship has sailed for Gnome.

How are non-gnome gtk apps supposed to choose files? I suppose this has always been an issue with gnome, but it kind of seems like an abuse of trust if it makes tools like Firefox depend on the gnome desktop environment.

Call the system's default file chooser via an xdg-desktop-portal protocol (FileChooser). Could be Nautilus, could be KDialog.

No longer will we have to hardcode specific toolkit dialogs!

Firefox has supported this since v64.

I'd guess if they haven't completely lost their minds you could still just use the old or whatever ways. Just like you still get the old gtk2 chooser with some programs today. Qt apps have also always done their thing.

Integrating the file chooser is just one more dick move to make the life of other desktop solutions that relying on GTK harder.

"We will remove more features and add more random changes in design to confuse our users to an even further extent."

The feeling when the sarcasm quotes aren't sarcasm quotes :(

Which features are being removed?

"ideally the file chooser should become part of GNOME’s core rather than part of GTK" .. Stop destroying GTK for F.... sakes !!! ¬¬

They're trying to avoid Gtk bloat by delegating the file chooser to the desktop environment. How is this "destroying Gtk"? They're finally freeing it from the specifics of GNOME design and letting just be an efficient toolkit!

How do you suggest pure Gtk applications on regular window manager to open files?

Call the right D-Bus API (https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/#gdbus-org.free...) and fall back to the Gtk file picker if this specific portal is not implemented or there's no D-Bus server.

With a regular window manager it's up to the user to choose an xdg-desktop-portal implementation of their liking, so you always need to fall back if nothing's available.

To fall back into the Gtk file picker it must still be part of the Gtk source tree.

> "...ideally the file chooser should become part of GNOME’s core rather than part of GTK."

There will always be a file-picker in Gtk's tree, or the current/an alternative file picker will become the de-facto fallback.

Needing a fallback is one of the nuisances of dealing with the Linux desktop, so there will always be an obvious fallback option one way or another.

Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t File Chooser in Nautilus mean the legendary no image preview meme would finally be fixed?

That’s what I understood from the article

More decisions to keep users away from GNOME, decrease GTK features, oh well.

I check the screenshots and there is something that got my attention, no Minimize button

How do gnome users minimize their windows?

https://blogs.gnome.org/christopherdavis/files/2022/04/nauti...

Or is that the mobile file manager app? i guess it is since their focus seems to be mobile platforms?

Looks like moving forward Gnome will be a desktop environment mainly for mobiles?

There isn't a minimizing button since the idea is that basic apps are generally meant to be ephemeral; that a task should be a quick one-and-done (or so I was told when I asked on IRC years ago). You can add the button back and even put it on the left side of the window via the GNOME Tweaks tool. If you want to hide a window, slide it into another workspace. It felt weird at first but it makes more sense as I continued to use GNOME. I call it the "control panel workspace". At least you can multitask with workspaces easier than you could on Windows.

Can't speak for mobiles. The desktop though is surprisingly more keyboard-friendly than it appears. It may have flaws, but GNOME feels like a better desktop than anything else I've tried.

I think "hiding the window" (Super+H) replaces minimize on GNOME (applications that do have a minimize button seem to act like hidden windows).

It isn't used often, since GNOME has no bottom bar, remember? But if you hide windows, they disappear, but are still viewable in the window overview (Super key), where you can select them or drag them around.

Although my theme has a minimize button, I think didn't use for more than a decade. If you need space go to a new desktop. And organize your files in you home directory sub-folders, if you need temporary space, use /tmp which will delete it on the next boot (beware of privacy issues if other people are also using your computer).

Since I got used to multiple desktops, I really don't see much value on the minimize button. I makes harder to use the app. If I want to alternate to another app, I just click it or alt-tab to it; minimizing it makes it harder to alternate to.

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