An icon taskbar for the Gnome Shell | Hacker News Reader

An icon taskbar for the Gnome Shell

github.com

37 pointsdanny0067 comments

thanks but no thanks, I really like vanilla gnome UI. I understand some people will keep complaining, but probably those are the same people who never even put a bit of effort to try and understand the concept of the new gnome desktop. Still, choice is good, and its great we can have this extensions.

>>some people

Most downloaded gnome shell extensions[0]:

2. Dash to Dock

4. Dash to Panel

6. Apps Menu

I get where you are coming from and I am in the same boat. However, marginalizing everything simply because of the GnomeWay™ is counterproductive.

[0]https://extensions.gnome.org/#sort=downloads

That doesn't take into account the people who use no extensions, probably the vast majority.

It still shows real grievances of real users (combined 13643662 installations) that usually get happily ignored or marginalized by gnome enthusiasts.

hi@

Ubuntu, probably the most popular distro, has this type of extension as a default.

Devils advocate that them being popular does not mean they’re necessarily solving a serious problem. Coming into gnome I used these because community consensus seemed to be they were essential (and still is).

2 weeks of forcing myself to do a trial of vanilla a couple years ago and I completely flipped on most of those “essential” plugins that I’d installed by default for years.

>> It still shows real grievances of real users (combined 13643662 installations) that usually get happily ignored or marginalized by gnome enthusiasts.

hi@

Also Ubuntu/PopOs... why is it so hard to just admit that there is a problem? The cognitive dissonance is always flabbergasting when interacting with the gnome community.

AFAIK GNOME did not did any real, comprehensive user testing or survey before removing stuff and changing things, what sucks is that GNJOME users like you dismiss other GNOME users that give feedback. Sometimes this projects get under the control of some big ego person or group that push their "vision", this people are incompetent and refuse to accept their stuff has flaws and you get this negativity.

This happen in KDE Plasma too, there was there a guy with big ego too, he created the thing called a "cachew" and refused to give the option to hide it , yeah a KDE guy with a GNOME mentality, but in the end the guy was gone and normality was restored , not even you have the option to hide the crap, it is GONE now https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbo...

I hope GNOME also will get rid of big ego people and Red Hat manages to hire competent designers , developers and honest PR people .

This has been an issue since gnome shell was released, I don't believe it will get any better from now on.

Can you explain exactly who the ego individuals and groups are within GNOME right now?

GNOME works great for me.

I stopped following GNOME and Linux drama so I can't name the people, there was the designer that had no idea what XFCE is, the PR guys that were lying that GNOME has no File Picker with thumbnails because it is not the GNOME way and later it surfaced that they would love the feature but they are incapable of implementing it.

So the GNOME guys were explaining the GNOME way to upload a image, it was something about using the File Manager to browse the iamges and then D&D the image in the browser and they claimed that it was the superior way (like all GNOME workflows all are superior).

The guy that refused to allow GNOME to be customized, he wanted like Apple to force the superior GNOME color scheme and wallpaper on users, he failed to see that the hard core GNOME fans are split in distros and each distro has a different brand color and the "superior GNOME experience" where a guy chooses the best color by forcing it on everyone his personal opinion was dropped a bit, though there is still a group of big egos dudes that are still trying to force apps to not be customizable.

Also I did not named the big ego KDE Plasma guy even if I still remember him, and his stupid refusal to give us the option to hide the cachew, don't want to name hi, probably he forgot by now about his assholery and hopefully is not an asshole with other people still .

Won't name him but there is an specific Gnome developer who has become a lolcow on the level of Terry Davis in computing related image boards due to his huge ego and arrogant behavior. Aside from Terry himself I have never seen something like that before and it should tell you something about his attitude, he is not the sole offender from the gnome team just the most prominent one.

I regret even asking this question.

> the same people who never even put a bit of effort to try and understand the concept of the new gnome desktop

Why are you so dismissive? A desktop environment should aid intuitively the user, not have the user search for information to "get" the desktop.

These are probably the people that still haven't been for long on the GNOME train, and still trying to make it fit their classical interpretation of a desktop. It's classic for a reason, because it worked, and GNOME 2 was peak GNOME.

It's just a matter of time before they stop fighting it and switch to a different DE, or accept the default. And when that group settles, you're going to have another influx of GNOME users, that don't get why it doesn't behave like a classic DE and will try to tweak it to match one.

This is the major frustration I have with GNOME. I mostly like GNOME and I've been using it for years. Most of the time without extensions. The trackpad controls are great and it's the closest thing we have to macOS.

That said, there are quite a few number of issues that stick out like a sore thumb, only to find that it's not a problem that the community is willing to recognize, let alone fix. I look at the issues and every time I see it getting dismissed as a me issue. That users like me are absolutely clueless. It drives me nuts, and I find myself considering a switch to Plasma even though it's too Windows-y for my taste.

> I understand some people will keep complaining, but probably those are the same people who never even put a bit of effort to try and understand the concept of the new gnome desktop.

Is it not possible that they understand GNOME just fine and still don't agree with its design decisions?

possible but not likely. There're countless other DE that adhere to that "standard" way, why insisting on gnome, and then force it to be like everything else?

I could easily imagine a person who thought that GNOME was 99% good but wanted one thing changed, and this doesn't require said person to lack understanding.

I notice on my Windows 10 machine, I still have it configured like Windows 2000: small icons, title on, no grouping: https://msfn.org/board/uploads/post-70-1091783680.gif . It's convenient because I can directly see the title of the window I want to go to.

Of course it's also 6 "lines" high, with the bottom line being the address bar: with auto-complete it's a convenient place to navigate to directories and files. In Windows 2000 it was even possible to type in a path to a file there, and then drag and drop it to a window to open that file, but somehow they changed this, in XP or 7 it did something else, and in 10 it doesn't allow me to drop the file (represented by the icon) in a text editor or windows Explorer.

Windows 11 (as of 23H2) doesn't allow small icons.

Windows 11 (22H2) didn't allow title on and no grouping either; that was added back in 23H2.

I used to be a big fan but I don't use it anymore.

Now if I'm using the keyboard I just alt+tab to change windows. If I'm using the mouse, hot top left corner and I see the activities view which shows all the windows opened, the dock and the different workspaces.

To me it's just faster this way. Same thing on my mac. The dock is there but I almost never use it, so to me the top bar with the date and app indicator is enough.

Yep, this is my experience. From force of habit, I thought I could not function without seeing my list of open applications somewhere on the screen at all times. I decided to try the vanilla Gnome experience for a few weeks without any panel extensions like this to see what I was missing. I quickly found that switching apps via the hot-corner (or the three-finger swipe-up when using a trackpad) was intuitive and convenient. I also appreciated the extra screen real estate that comes from not having the app list displayed all the time...

I've been using this extension for years, and I can confirm it's fantastic.

Lots of configurability make it so that I can have the exact panel that I want. In my case, it's Auto-hide + app shortcuts + windows with no grouping + keyboard shortcuts all apps and windows and for unhiding.

The best thing about Linux desktops is personalisation.

Real question: can some Gnome enthusiast help me understand why, by default, the top panel is always displayed, but seems chronically underutilized? (By default there is very little content in the panel. It stretches all the way across the top of my widescreen monitor as mostly just an empty black bar.)

Am I missing something here? If minimalism is the goal, why stick with a horizontal panel? Is there a way that folks typically configure this to make it more useful (or less obtrusive)?

GNOME feels that a nearly-useless top panel is important to give them a distinctive visual style; their brand is a very big deal.

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/m... / https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/m...

(I am aware that I'm linking to messages from 2011. All evidence is that this is still exactly how GNOME operates, and this simply is the best case of its devs writing down what they think that I know about. Anyone with evidence of a change of heart is welcome to share.)

what do you mean underutilized? the utilization is not measured by how many pixels of the panel are taken by text and icons, but how useful the information in it is, no matter how small it might be. For me, it has the date, clock, and a few important icons. I use it to quickly toggle settings or access my calendar and notifications. it is VERY utilized

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5143/dashbar

if you just want quick launch, this is ~500 loc and gets updated on time for new gnome releases

It's great, that GNOME has decent plugin system to allow users customizing their own system to their linking. Most software these days have already forgotten the importance of customization and that is sad.

I see there's a progress.js file. Is this supposed to show a progress bar for some apps? Which linux app support this?

Thank you! I feel an anxiety if I don't see open applications.

This needing to be a third party extension (which if we're being honest, will probably be broken / abandoned eventually) seems like a damning indictment of Gnome.

Why? It is an emulation of a feature from other OS; why it should be indictment of Gnome? Gnome is perfectly usable without it. This widget is only for those, who are so used to windows-ism and cannot let it go.

Similarly, there is dash-to-dock extension, which emulates a feature from another popular OS. It is also indictment, that Gnome doesn't have macOS-like dock in the core? Is it an indictment of Windows shell, that is doesn't have such feature at all, neither in core nor in extension?

> a feature from other OS

From virtually every other OS for the past 25 years. That is reason enough to support it.

Look at the issue from other way: if you want this feature, you have a virtually every other OS to choose from. Those, who specifically do not want this feature, do not have such a luxury. They can choose this environment.

It is hardly the primary reason for anyone to choose OS or environment. Most people are starting and getting used to other interfaces. Sometimes people are using multiple OSes at the same time. For all those people consistency matters, either for smoother learning curve or for productivity. Thus either Gnome remains a niche solution for a very small group of people or it expands market share by adopting UX patterns from mainstream.

This is really a non-factor, that has lim(0) impact on Gnome adoption.

Mac never emulated this windows feature and it never hurt its adoption. If anything, it helped, because it wasn't associated with annoyances that the new users were getting away from.

Btw, I'm also using windows/mac/(fedora,ubuntu,alma) at the same time. Bigger annoyance is changes between different versions of the same system (i.e. windows 10 -> windows 11) than difference between different systems.

Gnome has practically no learning curve. Everything you need is top left/right corner and win/esc key.

> Sometimes people are using multiple OSes at the same time. For all those people consistency matters

I don't understand this statement. They are using multiple OS', are they really struggling to switch between MacOS and Windows that much? If they are, then Gnome is going to be the least of their problems.

Let me explain then: Linux has plenty of options for desktop environment. As a long time Windows user, I don’t care much about their features, I need a job to be done. I will not try to adapt (even if it is easy) or figure out why Gnome is better, I will choose something familiar and good enough. Gnome lost me before I even tried to use it. I don’t have such choice on Mac, so I‘m forced to use MacOS UI and adapt, and that’s not trivial thing for someone who knows their primary OS well. Difference in UI paradigms is visible and does hurt the performance.

If you are wanting something familiar to Windows, a start button and task bar will be the least of your issues.

There is no desire to cater to Windows users because they move the target, "Oh you might have made this to be like Windows like we asked, but actually this is also not like Windows so I'll never use it anyway."

If you want the "feature" of not having this feature, you can disable it in most other DEs (certainly the Linux ones at least.). Gnome isn't doing anything clever by not having this widget as a first party option for users.

Feature parity matters, especially if adoption is a goal. I'm not sure Gnome cares about adoption, but since they're on the back foot, and if they're wanting to increase adoption, it'd be in their best interests to have feature parity so that supporting Gnome does not require extra code to support entirely different UX paradigms.

I personally love Linux, love Gnome, and, when I'm not paid, I only use these platforms. However, it is incredibly difficult to justify spending time on workarounds, and it is emotionally painful to see the Gnome team dig in their heels. I can't blame them for wanting to do things the way they see fit, they are a volunteer organization after all, but seeing them be actively averse to adoption is difficult.

> actively averse to adoption

The Linux community has the weirdest gatekeeping. "We're not going to let you do that because it reminds us of proprietary software."

When the Start menu is nothing but advertisements and user data is forcibly uploaded to the cloud, Windows users will look up and shout "save us!" and the Linux community will look down and whisper "no".

Well, when windows users demand "windows, but gratis and without the annoyances", linux isn't it. You have to do some minor adjustment; just like you had to do with iPhone. It doesn't have task panel by default either.

Simplicity is feature on its own, you can't please everyone and you have other choices. Considering feature parity - I used small window managers in the past: Fvwm, Fluxbox, Pekwm... what made me eventually stick with Gnome was that It made things like Wifi, printing, mounting disk... seamless - on par with Windows. That is a lot more important for most users than customization, which can be overwhelming in environment like KDE (I haven't used it in years).

I agree, simplicity is cool. That is why I love to support platforms that are simple to support. Say, if you have a piece of software that has it’s main entrypoint be a status icon, it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult to support gnome, since different distros will ship with different versions of gnome, which support different versions of status icon plugins, which work differently and sometimes they dont even have the plugins in the repo. Suddenly a feature that just works turns into a 3 page ordeal in the user manual do deduce what plugin must they install where to make our app work.

If it is an ordeal, maybe you are doing something wrong?

Maybe your app sole entry point should not be a systray icon, especially, since users might not have systray at all (intentionally).

You will have similar issue with Android, and how it handles (persistent) notifications, background tasks and activities in foreground.

If it works everywhere except Gnome, requiring a custom solution on Gnome alone, it's definitely Gnome's fault. Gnome people have this weird ego thing where they expect the world to conform to them, even developers who are only including Linux support as a courteous afterthought to users. Anything Gnome does in a unique way adds friction for these developers, to the detriment of all Linux users.

This kind of complaint about GNOME is pretty common. I'm actually kind of surprised GNOME is the default for so many high profile distros despite the controversial UX.

That said, I personally find vanilla GNOME pretty easy to use. It only took me a day or so to get used to not having things like a taskbar. If you use the hot corner (which is also hated), you can switch to any open app with one mouse click just like with a taskbar.

So either I'm an alien, or people are more adaptable than they give themselves credit for, and will go impressive lengths to not adapt (e.g. making a taskbar for a desktop that's perfectly usable without one).

I don't think UX is controversial, if you look at it from the perspective of average person. I was annoyed time to time by changes in Gnome UI. But I would not say I find KDE, XFce, Windows 11, Mac... more productive. I switched my old man from Windows to Gnome and had zero complains (which is rare). Having Gnome default makes sense as switching will not be a problem for advanced users. I personally don't have reason to switch.

>I'm actually kind of surprised GNOME is the default for so many high profile distros despite the controversial UX.

I've never understood this, and it sometimes seems like a conspiracy. It's a very controversial DE and has gotten a lot of negative reactions for many years now, and it was so bad that different devs made not 1, but 2 forks of it: MATE and Cinnamon, in addition to all the other competing DEs out there (KDE, LXDE, Xfce, etc.). But for some odd reason, all the highest-profile distros push Gnome. If they wanted to get more converts from Windows, or pitch themselves as an OS for office use that Windows users could easily switch to, you'd think they'd push KDE as the first choice, because it's the most similar.

Ubuntu extends the Gnome desktop in ways that make it a more "traditional" desktop environment.

Yeah, that's another thing I don't understand: why? If they want it to be like a traditional desktop, why not just use KDE? Instead, they're trying to shoehorn unwanted (by the Gnome devs) features into Gnome and taking on a huge maintenance burden.

OpenSUSE at least gives you the choice without nudging you toward any.

I don’t think it is. Gnome is usable without this behavior that, as it states in the repo description, is mostly an attempt to replicate the behavior of windows or KDE. This can be good for some users, but Gnomes goal is not to replicate other DEs, but to create a good user experience.

The default gnome dock behaves differently, but is (mostly) usable without this extension, just via different patterns. If you expect to have a desktop that consistently behaves like KdE, you’re probably better off switching to KDE (which is funny given some LDE users rice their desktops to almost look like gnome).

> which is funny given some LDE users rice their desktops to almost look like gnome

Do you (or anyone else here) know any way to recreate the touchpad desktop switching on KDE? I prefer its capabilities but admire gnome's aesthetics.

On KDE Neon and Kubuntu I can do a three finger swipe on the touchpad to change desktops.

Thanks, I'll check out Neon first

The gnome API has been quite the moving target through the 40s versions. The community around these plugins are surprisingly resilient. Glad it’s calmed down a bit and great extensions like these have weathered the changes. I really enjoy gnome and all the plugins.

People easily install these without being concerned about security or privacy. I am actually more curios if these are audited at all or the risk is solely on users?

I use GNOME only in throwaway VM, but even there - only the extensions available in official repository are used.

Not really. Most of us just get on with our work happily.

There's a small but vocal minority who have been crying about the direction for 13 years, but still want to use it. Must be doing some things right.

> crying about the direction for 13 years, but still want to use it.

Part it is the frustation of seeing it come so close to being a viable replacement for Windows back in the mid-2000s, only to jump the shark and become something we wouldn't use ourselves, let alone recommend to a would-be Windows refugee. (To be clear, I'm not saying it's unusable now - but I was shocked by just how slow and unresponsive the first version of Gnome 3 was.)

Unfortunately Gnome doesn't exist in a vacuum, and decisions made there do impact the rest of us - thanks to Gtk it's getting harder and harder to avoid the ingress of hamburger menus into desktop-oriented software - even developer / technical focussed stuff like a text editor VCD waveform viewer.

GTK supports a menubar, so I don't understand your concern.

Some of us are forced to use it because Red Hat removed support for KDE.

Being forced to switch from KDE to Gnome was a very painful transition. Having the Dash to Panel and Dash to Dock extensions was the only thing that made it palatable.

Vanilla Gnome may be fine as a streamlined tablet OS for casual web browsing but it is not suitable to doing real desktop work.

Why not? What are you missing?

Sounds like a skill issue.

A proper taskbar. Needing to install a third party extension to achieve the type of taskbar that has been expected from desktop OSes for the past 20 years is lunacy. I was fortunate to be able to get my IT dept to allow third party extensions when we moved to RHEL 8, but I'm sure most in the corporate world aren't so fortunate.

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