Introducing GNOME 46, "Kathmandu"
release.gnome.org
release.gnome.org
Another pet peeve of mine is the lack of type ahead. The relatively recent type ahead efforts were blocked (or stalled) by "design considerations" https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/whiteboards/-/issues/1... As the result Gnome Files is very unpleasant to use for deep trees with thousands of files in every directory on spinning media (zfs). The standard search feature also destroys context, i.e. being able to see the files filtered out by the query.
This release is also consecutively the third time they moved the list of ongoing file operations -- from top right, to top left, to bottom left. With all the obsession about "not confusing users" that the Gnome's leading figures declare the constant change in the UX should be one of the primary sources of the actual confusion users experience.
So why does GNOME continue down this path. Is it a fear of being "just like everyone else" by using a tried and true dock/application bar? Is it a desire to not be the front running WM and be more "niche" to power users? I still don't really understand their decision making process.
The separate process is an interesting point, back in the day dynamically loading code into the host process was the way to go, due to hardware resources and how demanding would be to use UNIX IPC for everything.
Now a couple of years later, with the existing hardware resources, and the ongoing stability and security issues of loading code into process, turns out separate process is a good idea after all.
there's no gnome extension to do roll-up windows?
"GNOME Shell and extensions are written in GJS, which is JavaScript bindings for GNOME Platform APIs. For an overview of how extensions fit into GNOME Shell and the platform, see the Architecture page."
Roll-up was never an extension on UNIX windows managers, having to install one is a joke on us.
As for the GNOME developers stance on that, https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/1028
Meanwhile XFCE, KDE, Windowmaker, Afterstep, Enlightment.... do them just fine.
I generally quite like the out-of-the-box gnome3+ experience, it fits my use cases pretty well (when I don't have a highly tweaked custom tiling window manager setup).
It's nice to actually get choice, rather than 5 "choices" that are all chasing exactly the same style, if you prefer the XFCE or KDE experience, then that's what XFCE or KDE are for.
But GNOME explicitly hates customizability.
And who is forcing you to switch DEs over one simple thing? The parent comment is merely suggesting that we use the DE that we like the most (or--I'll add--hate the least).
And the situation where you have to choose between several options that all suck, and use the one that you hate the least, is exactly the one I'd rather avoid, but also the one that seems to most accurately describe the current state of software - precisely because of increasing lack of customizability and outright hostility to it.
Certainly better than the tiny little window you get on every other OS.
Evidence? The Gnome project has performed UX studies[0] to validate their design, and has continually made changes in response (some of which I disagree with, FWIW).
For instance, no button to minimize and maximize a window, no taskbar to switch between windows, what the actual...
Last time i tried GNOME was last week and gave up after a day.
Granted, the applications button icon is quite nondescript (9 dots). But it's still just 2 clicks of prominent UI elements away.
Same # of clicks as Windows (Start -> Program Files) and MacOS (Finder -> Applications).
EDIT: Oh, I guess these are hidden by default? I don't remember enabling them on my setup but I've been using Gnome a few years now. I agree it would be better if they were visible by default.
I'm not saying systematic ways of thinking are universally useless, but the appearance of being "systematic" or "objective" certainly seems to attract some people who use complexity as a means of obfuscating, and of reducing other people to a passive object of study or subject of control. In those cases, "research" isn't a way of finding what's correct. The important thing to them is that they're correct; they already know that they are, and the "studies" are meant to make sure you know it too as they do whatever they already wanted to do anyway.
Such individuals rarely seem to care about "evidence" at the start of their decisions. Only when they're trying to shut down subjective critical opinions, or rationalize the actions they've already taken.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Controversy_over_...
In fact, the same thing is sorta playing out even right now with GTK4 and other GNOME stuff, though I think with somewhat less public spectacle but arguably even larger development efforts behind it:
https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/building-an-alternative-...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/08/system76_developing_n...
https://blog.system76.com/post/closing-in-on-a-cosmic-alpha
https://github.com/BuddiesOfBudgie/budgie-desktop/issues/141
https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e...
UX changes always elicit negative opinions and the studies show that once the change is familiar people prefer the new UX.
I’m reminded of the MS ribbon which was so heavily derided but a few years in, OpenOffice/LibreOffice also had to implement something similar because users significantly preferred it when set side by side.
But the bigger problem is that these days, even when it is the case, by the time you get used to the new UX, it's not new anymore - and now it is on the way out, because the new crop of UX designers have yet another drastically different idea in mind (and they have UX studies to prove that it's better). But change itself carries a usability cost with it, and that is usually not accounted for at all. When it comes to desktop software specifically, quite frankly, what we had 20 years ago was already "good enough".
"On the other hand, new users generally got up to speed more quickly with Endless OS, often due to its similarity to Windows. Many of these testers found the bottom panel to be an easy way to switch applications. They also made use of the minimize button. In comparison, both GNOME 3.38 and the prototype generally took more adjustment for these users.
“I really liked that it’s similar to the Windows display that I have.” —Comment on Endless OS by a non-GNOME user"
I tried using tiling window managers, but they didn't give me the niceties of the out of the box gnome experience. I do have one extension for topicons. (sometimes I use gsconnect, but not recently) I don't need anything else.
Gnome doesn’t have an opinion on a desktop application launcher because it expects the distribution to add it.
The only distributions which don’t are GnomeOS which is intended for developing Gnome, and Fedora, which is intended to be a bleeding edge distribution to mass release stuff before it’s included in RHEL.
Turns out, however, that a lot of people actually like the default Gnome look and so are happy with using Fedora.
But in practice this isn’t an issue for anyone because their distribution will come with an application launcher.
And even better you can completely change and/or add an application launcher because they are implemented through extensions.
I don't think this is true at all. Where have you read this? If GNOME intended for distributions to customize it, I can't imagine why they'd keep harping on about how custom theming is awful. See: https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2021/09/18/the-truth-they-a..., and https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-a...
I'm honestly surprised they still support adding extensions via extensions.gnome.org.
Because it's great and everyone apart from a tiny but incredibly vocal minority get on just fine with it.
I used to use plasma but it was just too buggy for me. Just today a random user realized that installing a theme from the built-in theme selection thingy deleted all his data...
I have some hope for cosmic DE as it seems like they try to emulate GNOME's workflow with some twists.
I'm now actually quite satisfied with KDE (although I continue to use GNOME apps too). I guess every one of these DEs has their own share of bugs.
I’m not sure what you are meaning by a launcher here - to me there’s a fairly reasonable ambiguity about what is meant. On windows people still seem to use shortcuts on the desktop as a primary launcher (especially given the current start menu abomination, sheesh talk about destroying one of the most effective bits of UI MS ever produced), on Mac I actually mostly use spotlight (though that usage is subject to the “secret chord” problem), but most normal users use the dock for common apps and the applications folder for everything else.
I keep meaning to retry kde at some point but I’m waiting for more asahi work to support my desktop (they are reasonable to focus on the laptops but my laptop is my work machine so less willing to surrender disk space when llvm builds already consume half a TB).
It’s weird to me that back when I was a primarily Linux user gnome was The(tm) commercial Linux desktop and kde was the clunky also-ran, I assumed the gnome was destined to win in the long term due to gtk APIs, commercial support, and at the time seemingly more polish and completeness. I guess things can change given a decade or so of development :D
I just click super, see my workspaces, all of my running apps and can just directly start typing and find the app I'm looking for.
Why would I ever need a start menu? It's soo good that KDE added something similar recently.
I don’t really use it that much. I find opening search and typing what I want much faster. Or I use the dock
Super, type 2 or 3 letters of the program I want, enter. Works really well for me.
Even in this article they mention adding a widget that displays shortcuts.
I don't use GNOME and can't speak for softirq, but what you're describing sounds to me like a command line interface. I can imagine two problems with it:
- Ergonomics. People who usually keep a hand on the mouse would have to move to the keyboard whenever they launch an app, and then move back again. Not a showstopper, but definitely a time waster. (And perhaps just as annoying to some people as it is to me when no keyboard shortcuts are available for common actions.)
- Discoverability. If someone knows what they want to do but doesn't know (or forgot) the names of the apps that can do it, they're left to type in guesses until they find something that works out. Also, if they just want to browse the apps that came preinstalled on their system, an application launcher provides, while a command line interface does not.
Docked apps also show up in this view, along with a button to show all apps. (Similar workflow as Start -> Program Files.) Keyboard is unnecessary.
It's somehow faster than every hardcore keyboard-based WM I've used (I was a longtime wmi/wmii/i3 user... all of which needed two keystrokes to open the app launcher, e.g. Super+P) and also every mouse-based WM I've used, and also works fantastically from my touchscreen when I'm feeling particularly lazy.
As far as discoverability, they have Gnome Tour now which opens on first launch that explains all this stuff interactively.
> I don't use GNOME and can't speak for softirq, but what you're describing sounds to me like a command line interface. I can imagine two problems with it:
Don't imagine. Get in the lab, see how people are using it and how you are actually using it.
It's not a command-line. I run awesome and <super> r is a command line, as in "if i don't type the exact name of the application it won't work, if i don't type the exact first letters then tab won't work". Try out gnome and see how it doesn't behave the same.
My point was simply that the actions described by the person to whom I replied fail to satisfy some common use cases, and do not refute the original complaint. It doesn't take a research project to see that. I wasn't commenting on whether there might be some other way to satisfy them.
In any case, I have tried GNOME recently, and found that it doesn't suit me. Opinionated UI isn't always bad, but this one is full of opinions that I find counterproductive.
> My point was simply that the actions described by the person to whom I replied fail to satisfy some common use cases, and do not refute the original complaint. It doesn't take a research project to see that. I wasn't commenting on whether there might be some other way to satisfy them.
No, your points are simply not grounded in real usage:
> - Discoverability. If someone knows what they want to do but doesn't know (or forgot) the names of the apps that can do it, they're left to type in guesses until they find something that works out.
Absolutely not. The default gnome launcher is still browsable with the mouse. You only have to scroll, which is way easier than clicking back and forth in kicker or tree based default menu where you have to guess which category the app you are looking for falls in. With Gnome, all the icons/apps are laid out.
They are not left to type in guesses.
Guesses ? "Jeez, I wonder which word I should type in to start libreoffice of firefox, let me try Internet navigator and word muncher". What weird imaginary use case is that.
> Also, if they just want to browse the apps that came preinstalled on their system, an application launcher provides, while a command line interface does not.
Also... what ? Op wrote "Super, type 2 or 3 letters of the program I want, enter. Works really well for me."
"Program I want". Why are you bringing up discoverability as a counter-argument when it's not what OP is doing ? It's like complaining a terminal is problematic to start an app because there isn't a list of icons to select. This is just moving the goal post from "starting an app" to discoverability.
> I wasn't commenting on whether there might be some other way to satisfy them.
> In any case, I have tried GNOME recently, and found that it doesn't suit me. Opinionated UI isn't always bad, but this one is full of opinions that I find counterproductive.
Okay, I see, this is just pissing on gnome for the sake of pissing on it then.
You don't, but I'm done with your rudeness. Goodbye.
1. Average users primarily use mouse based workflows.
2. Super isn't discoverable.
3. It confused users coming from other DEs.
4. It actually takes more keypresses than clicking a favorited app on a dock that is always available.
Overall it's less discoverable, less efficient, and not baked into the mind of computer users who are coming from almost any other bistro.
I see what you did :).
You've just described basically every modern desktop user interface. Windows Start Menu ("Windows Key"), Cinnamon menu, KDE defaults, XFCE (w/ Whisker Menu), etc. all support the [Super]→[Start typing]→[Enter] launch workflow.
The criticism some people have of Budgie is that it feels like a customized version of GNOME rather than its own thing - but that's what I'm looking for. I'm not looking for something to ditch the good parts of GNOME. I'm looking for something that will just give me a regular desktop where things feel like what macOS or Windows have been offering for a couple decades.
Nothing against Budgie, I'm just curious what made it stand out for you.
This is where I think your analysis starts to break down. Tiling and keyboard-oriented are almost orthogonal. There's no a priori reason that a tiling WM has to be keyboard-oriented, nor that floating WMs are inherently less accommodating to keyboard-oriented workflows. As an anecdote, way back in my youth, I had all kinds of keyboard shortcuts for resizing and moving windows by different amounts in my Openbox WM setups. Likewise, I really tried to like the popular tiling WMs (i3, xmonad, AwesomeWM), but I eventually realized that I can't literally be focusing on content from multiple windows simultaneously, and it makes way more sense for me to size and position each window so that I can optimize my interactions with that one when I am focusing on it.
> do not make sense for the "default" WM that is picked up by casual converts who are used to a point and click system. Overall it's just a confusing mess for new users, which Canonical/System76 rationally get rid of (which is probably a majority of the GNOME user base).
Let's be real, though. The year of Linux On The Desktop is not coming--hell, The Desktop is pretty much dying altogether. So, I really don't care if we optimize for the "casual computer user" who just happens to stumble into a chair in front of a Linux desktop, because that person doesn't exist. It may sound selfish, but I rather they optimize for users who already exist.
> GNOME has come a long way, but its stubborn insistence on not having a desktop with a real application launcher remains a huge usability misstep. > [...] > So why does GNOME continue down this path. Is it a fear of being "just like everyone else" by using a tried and true dock/application bar?
GNOME is actually fairly close to macOS in this regard. Yes, macOS has a dock with an application launcher, but if I didn't already know what the application launcher icon looks like, I'd have no idea how to get to its application launcher: the icon I'm looking at right now on my work Mac is a square icon with a 3x3 grid of colored squares inside it--what the hell does that mean? Is it a color picker app? Some kind of Tetris or Candy Crush game?
GNOME's top-left stupid oval button is equally bad, but not worse, than macOS's UX discoverability, IMO.
And I have to wonder how truly "intuitive" the Windows situation is, either. The old Windows versions used to have the word "Start" on the button, which at least gives some kind of hint that my computing journey "begins" there. I think since Vista or 7, it's basically just been the Windows icon. I suspect it's more intuitive than the macOS or GNOME analogs, but probably only a tiny bit if I were to sit someone down who hasn't used a Windows PC in their life.
The most debilitating issue that I kept running into over and over again was extension memory leak.
After a restart and within a week, gnome shell process would end up using 10GB. And all guides on how to debug this seem to say: turn off extensions one at a time to see what's leaking.
Speaking to others I realised that I'm not the only one facing this.
I just threw in the towel and switched to KDE. It has been smooth sailing since.
Gnome shell desperately needs a resource monitor for extensions IMO.
Besides, the aesthetics and workflow are portable from GNOME to KDE with some configuration (though not the other way around).
If not, then your comment is a non sequitur.
I do understand the gnome team wanting to guarantee a good user experience with extensions, but I can't help but think the damage caused by breaking every extension on every release is worse than some of them working unpredictably.
Every time I look at the release notes for Gnome, I continually find myself either not excited or disappointed in different decisions, additions and removals that were made.
I've tried i3/sway and hyperland recently. The problem is they don't work well with all the applications I need to support (zoom, slack). Gnome typically "just works" and is why I wind up continuing to use it.
> Every time I look at the release notes for Gnome, I continually find myself either not excited or disappointed in different decisions, additions and removals that were made.
This extends into the toolkit as well. I was happily using XFCE until it adopted Gtk 3, at which point it quickly went downhill. The GNOME maintainers' insistence on designs that I find frustrating, the frequent removal of common desktop features that I use, and the general fragility imposed on applications that surfaces whenever the toolkit gets minor updates, all conspired to drive me away.
It took some time and effort to migrate to KDE Plasma, but it was worth it. I'm pretty happy with my desktop again.
I appreciate that both exist free of charge as the result of a lot of time that people didn’t have to volunteer and shouldn’t be taken for granted. I’m glad both exist and continue to be maintained, but regardless, the situation leaves me much less jazzed about the Linux desktop than I’d like to be.
Window manager setups might be a solution, but they take a lot of effort to make as polished as any of the major DEs, requiring the user to hunt down daemons to get tray items and the like. They also have a strong disposition towards hyper-minimal tiling which isn’t my thing, something along the lines of openbox is probably the most minimal I’d want to go but WMs like that don’t see much fanfare.
I used to daily drive it and was a big fan- it's basically i3 + gnome for stuff like settings etc. So you get a nice simple tiling window manager, but don't have to install something new whenever you want to (eg) get Bluetooth working.
My current setup: https://i.redd.it/fnwnmfzvr4pc1.png
NeXTSTEP had them in 1986.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns
Here are two reasons I stick with macOS:
1) Miller Columns
2) The Magic Mouse
But one thing I know that if I disagree with Gnome developers then I'll have a hard time working around and hacking my own way in. I've usually ended up starting to patch Gnome/Gtk components at which points I just realize that it is absolutely futile and I give up.
Gnome used to be the marvel of configurability. Around Gnome2 time there were gazillion settings and options that you could change, and even more via gsettings/gconf. Then the UI was gradually dumbed down but you could still configure most things. "Tweak" tools appeared. Now it seems I bump into an ideological obstacle left and right, and even the tweak tools won't let me change anything much besides some cosmetic properties.
Mate has some rough edges but it's pretty much the only thing that still works for a power user that wants an UI with a traditional window manager of my choice instead of whatever tiling configuration is in hype this year.
Plus, I can finally boot off ZFS and a mirrored boot drive with no worries thanks to an excellently written guide and first-class ZFS support (just pick the latest ZFS-compatible kernel via a special config that automatically does this for you!)
The negative of course is that Nix/NixOS have a learning curve. Once you grok it, though, you will literally want to install it on ALL your machines. It has eliminated so many headaches (assuming you can find the right option to tweak).
The only I still bother are classical desktop like towers and NUCs, on laptops I have less headaches with a VM.
Then for everything else, my distributions are Android/Linux, WebOS/Linux and whatever Sony decided to use on their Blue Ray players.