Gnome 40

https://forty.gnome.org/

by pbui • 5 years ago

378 240 5 years ago

forty.gnome.org

It looks heavily inspired by macOS. Especially if you scroll down to the “Core Apps” section. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

zserge• 5 years ago

As the one who works simultaneously with macOS and Linux, I would be happy to see some unification. I'm not speaking about visual differences or look-n-feel of the apps, but common tasks like desktop switching or window switching - things you do hundreds times a day. Those IMO should involve as little brain as possible and rely on muscle memory.

ziftface2• 5 years ago

This is my favorite thing about this update. That along with that mac hotkey tools for linux should make the transition back and forth easier.

happymellon• 5 years ago

I want to be able to set Super+C/V to copy/paste in Linux, including the terminals rather than different key configurations depending on the context. Is this now available in Gnome?

caslon• 5 years ago

GNOME has, unfortunately, been on this train before macOS was; when Big Sur came out there were many threads on other sites pointing out how strange it was that macOS seemed to be taking after GNOME 3.

joana0353• 5 years ago

It was inspired by webOS, a Linux based OS for Palm.

greatgib2• 5 years ago

So not ergonomic and osx copycat compared to gnome 2.

So sad...

Shared404• 5 years ago

I like the look of a lot of these changes.

if the Pop!_Shell extensions get made mainline in addition to the changes here, I will probably go from disliking/tolerating vanilla GNOME to possibly daily driving.

calvinmorrison2• 5 years ago

What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason.

Firstly, without major versions it does not single anything to end users and end developers. Is '40' still mostly compatible with the gnome 3.x.x API? Is there a major divergence between 40 and 41? Is 41 and 40 a total rewrite?

3.x.x works and there's a reason why. It conveys a lot of information quickly and is well understood.

reducing things down to a single number is meaningless and clearly branding drivel. I guess they want to obfuscate as much as possible and dumb things down for users like they have been doing for close to a decade.

Yawn

dvirsky2• 5 years ago

Actually this numbering scheme conveys to me, intuitively, that changes are more gradual and hints at backwards compatibility. If there's no major/minor/patch semantics I just assume versions are small incremental additions. I could be wrong but that's what the browser versioning schemes have instilled in me.

antihero• 5 years ago

Which is bizarre, because if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do?

grumpyprole• 5 years ago

and hints at backwards compatibility.

To me it communicates no commitment to backwards compatibility, i.e. no semantic versioning. This might be enforceable if one is Apple, but doesn't sound good for an open-source platform.

ximm• 5 years ago

As far as I understand "40" is just short for "3.40.0". The expectation is that they will remain compatible with the 3.x.x series for a long time, so the 3 is somewhat redundant. This release contains more UI changes than usual, but it is very far away from the change from gnome 2 to 3.

ufo5• 5 years ago

Not much point in keeping the "3." around when we don't expect a "4.0" version to happen in the foreseeable future.

AshamedCaptain• 5 years ago

And when Gtk4 inevitably happens, or the gnome-shell toolkit is changed again, breaking about all the gnome-shell extensions, we'll just call it Gnome X.

ac29• 5 years ago

Nope, the version numbers on GNOME 40 packages are 40.0, not 3.40.0.

freedomben2• 5 years ago

Your question is valid (and I have the same one) but this is about as uncharitable a thing to say as you can, especially without providing evidence/examples:

I guess they want to obfuscate as much as possible and dumb things down for users like they have been doing for close to a decade.

The Gnome project has done an enormous amount to push the open source and free desktop forward. The least we can do is not impute sinister motives to them. What do they stand to gain from "obfuscat[ing]" their version number when their code is all open source?

fiddlerwoaroof5• 5 years ago

I strongly disagree: the gnome project and the systemd mess are both severely damaging Linux. The good thing, though, is that KDE Plasma seems to have recovered nicely from the KDE 3->4 mess.

yepthatsreality• 5 years ago

Agreed it’s very shallow backwards logic that will only cause issues when an actual Gnome 4.0 is released. The irrationality will have to be fought similar to Iphone by using “Gnome 3.40” when discussing it.

longstation• 5 years ago

I just want to mention, if you feel there's some excessive padding and it's a waste of space (especially vertically), I suggest you take a look at a compact theme at GNOME Look.

Currently, not all themes work properly with GTK 4, but they will eventually get there. Personally, I use the Mojave-gtk-theme. It wastes no space and is beautifully designed.

[edited for grammar]

Perizors2• 5 years ago

yeah, that is one of the things I do after a fresh install. I am using Nextwaita from gnome-looks. It changes very little from the vanilla gnome, except for a slighter grey color scheme and less padding.

imbnwa• 5 years ago

I dunno which it is, but the typography/font rendering is just jarring in these screens. I imagine there's a bunch of hacking you can do to make it look crisper/aligned but no way I'd have time for that.

vetinari2• 5 years ago

Cantarell. Some consider that font a crime against humanity, on the level of MS Comic Sans or Papyrus.

Canonical, could you please make the Ubuntu font really-SIL-free, so that Cantarell can be taken behind the barn and shot? Pretty please?

JellyBeanThief• 5 years ago

God yes. I don't know why I hate it so much, but I do. Switching to Apple's San Francisco font is one of the first things I do.

ungzd• 5 years ago

Topmost bar still consists of lots of unused space with clock in the center — a design decision surely copied from old mobile phones. Too much of screen space is wasted, in the most "expensive" area, where "Rule of the infinite edges" of Fitts's law applies.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

You used to be able to stick a global menu bar up there in GNOME 2, similar to the one on macOS. I switched to Plasma because you can still do that.

kaba05• 5 years ago

And what would you put there? I do like some sway/i3-like bar with many stats, but I don’t miss that on gnome, it is sort of a feel-good thing there for me.

Aardwolf3• 5 years ago

The open windows don't even have visible taskbar buttons in the fancy presentation it shows at the top

I have no idea how you can productively work that way

The reason for getting 4K monitors is not to have less stuff that can make you productive visible

KDE 3.5 was the top of OSS desktops, in my opinion

JorgeGT2• 5 years ago

I think I'm missing something... Where is the taskbar? Do you need that "overview" animation each time you want to bring an application to focus? And where are the menus of the focused application?

pmontra2• 5 years ago

The menus should be in the hamburger menu on the top right of each window. A time waster and a recent fad coming from small screen devices.

I can't answer your other questions. Not only I don't have GNOME 40 but I greatly tweaked Ubuntu 20' GNOME to disable all animations, remove the launcher, move the top bar to the bottom, use those very same horizontal virtual desktops they introduced in 40 (hurrah) and add an old Windows like taskbar. It feels much more productive than the default settings.

Aardwolf3• 5 years ago

No, that's not at all what I mean. I prefer no animations and no hidden things at all!

I prefer a taskbar at the bottom with one button per window in it, so that I can have an overview of which windows are open, which document each has, and quickly switch to it with mouse (when not using alt+tab to switch between recent windows).

What I do not want is to have to activate something, or have some animation, first, before seeing what I want to navigate to.

ufo5• 5 years ago

If you have an app that is hidden under other windows, you have to use the overview or alt+tab to bring it to the front.

However, often we don't need to do that because GNOME encourages us to spread our windows over several workspaces. The animation for switching workspaces is practically instantaneous.

christophilus2• 5 years ago

I guess that's why we have options. I like Gnome. It's by far my favorite DE. I don't want my screen cluttered up with stuff. I know what I've got running, and finding anything is really easy: Super + type whatever I'm thinking, and presto, it's there.

tasuki2• 5 years ago

Super + type whatever I'm thinking, and presto, it's there.

I often have several windows of the same application open at the same time (particularly browser and terminal). When I want to switch from say the IDE to the _right_ browser window, how do I do that in Gnome? (I use Workspace Matrix[0] as I'm a visual type, and that works for me, but perhaps there's a better way?)

Delk• 5 years ago

This might be just a matter of what I've gotten used to, but I have the "Activities" view (which shows previews of open windows, as well as the dock-like thing for launching applications) bound to the super/windows key which is nearly always very easily accessible.

If I'm switching windows and I'm not alt-tabbing, I usually just hit the super key and select the window from the thumbnails/previews.

I don't find that to be unproductive, but then, I haven't really been even trying to change the basics of my desktop or experimenting much in a while, so it might be that I've just settled for it to some extent.

If I had to first move the mouse to one location in order to get a list of windows, and then again to another location to select the window I want, I don't think that would work at all. But with a very easily accessible keyboard shortcut for the first part it does.

ufo5• 5 years ago

I love that they are making the compose key feature more discoverable. It's the best way to type strange characters like å, ř or ©.

renke1• 5 years ago

Let's hope it actually reads the available combinations from ~/.XCompose. I am pretty sure that this was not the case (at least at some point in the past).

ufo5• 5 years ago

GNOME 3.38 allows adding custom sequences using the .Xcompose file. The only thing that doesn't work are include directives. I'd imagine it will be the same with GNOME 40.

anthk• 5 years ago

If you are a Romance language speaker you get tired of the local layout fast, specially for programming. A lot of people use the US+compose key for accents/ñ.

offtop53• 5 years ago

I feel really stupid to ask , but can I install this on Windows.

iulian_r• 5 years ago

You can only install this on windows in a VM (like Virtual Box). You also can't install it directly, you would need a Linux distribution as well. It would be easier to wait until Ubuntu or Fedora releases a new version which contains this version of GNOME. Desktop Environments on Linux are basically GUI themes.

EarthIsHome• 5 years ago

Not only are they GUI themes, some desktop environments come packaged with different utility software. (e.g. Gnome comes with GTK-based utility software like Gedit, and KDE comes with KDE-based utility software like Kwrite.

offtop53• 5 years ago

Has anyone ever made a Windows gui them. I need the functionality of windows, but I much tire of the way Windows looks now

MayeulC• 5 years ago

Not sure about Gnome, but one used to be able to install KDE on windows https://www.maketecheasier.com/install-kde-in-windows/

IIRC even KDE plasma worked. But these days there are a few KDE apps on the microsoft store or on kde.org.

Even if you could install that on windows (compiling everythong with cygwin?), it wouldn't really be windows, mind you.

ht_th• 5 years ago

Yes, sort of. Use WSL2 and a Xserver like https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/ that runs on Windows.

offtop53• 5 years ago

Any way to get it to run Windows applications. Would it be possible to build something like that

throwaway123x22• 5 years ago

Still no match for Gnome 2's UI. RIP that old interface, the best of the *nix desktops.

29athrowaway• 5 years ago

Gnome 2 and GTK 2 have no support for HiDPI.

It is possible to mitigate some of that inconvenience by using a theme where everything is scaled up (and there are tools to generate them), but there will be still GTK 2 software that looks bad.

probably_wrong• 5 years ago

You should give Mate a try then [1]. It's essentially Gnome 2 but actively maintained.

[1] https://mate-desktop.org/

throwaway123x22• 5 years ago

does it have compiz?

greatgib2• 5 years ago

So far i'm using Linux Mint with Cinnamon for a few years, and it really good.

hedora2• 5 years ago

Have they fixed the file chooser yet?

Specifically, I want to be able to click around on directories to choose where to save a file, type the file name, then press enter. This should save the file, not filter the directory listing.

Also, I don’t want it to default to overwriting some file I saved last week.

brian_herman2• 5 years ago

I also want them to just make it so I can right click and create a new empty file. Linux is file based right? If I right click on a opened folder I want to create a file.

turbinerneiter• 5 years ago

You can do that, make a folder called Templates and put your templates in there.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding.

wayneftw• 5 years ago

Agreed 100%. As soon as the dialog opens, I usually just want to start typing the file name to save and then press enter to save.

The workaround is that I must remember to hit Alt+N to focus on the filename box before typing. Usually I forget though.

superkuh3• 5 years ago

No. I actually went to GNOME's IRC network the other day to talk to them about gtkfilechooser's multiple problems. Yours, and then the lack of text input for typing or pasting file paths. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938 . They said they have no one assigned to gtkfilechooser bugs and none will be addressed.

I was able to download the debian source for a couple gtk applications (ie, gedit/pluma) and apply community sourced patches to them to get back the text/file path entry box. But there's no way I am going to be able to fix Gtk itself. And fixing every application on my system by compiling from source and making new debian packages, well, I might as well linux from scratch.

nerdponx• 5 years ago

Purely out of curiosity, what else is the Gtk team currently working on? People have been complaining about the file chooser for years.

I'd be willing to donate a good chunk of money just to support "basic UX" improvements to FOSS software and toolkits like Gtk.

Should we start a "Fix the Gtk file chooser" Gofundme?

acqq• 5 years ago

And now everybody should look for a text from 2003 written by jwz mentioning the "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers model" and slowly read it again, then think how much time passed since.

xiaomai• 5 years ago

the main text entry ("Name", the one that starts out focused) lets you type/paste paths.

swiley• 5 years ago

I'm glad to hear putting hamburger menus in all the window title bars is prioritized over having a functioning UI.

stockerta• 5 years ago

Probably they will deprecate it soon, and gnome apps will randomly open a file for you. Just to be easier to use. A file picker dialog can confuse the user.

hallarempt• 5 years ago

Well, given that that's what macOS Big Sur has done, it's a dead cert. You no longer get a file picker dialog by default when saving, but a place where you can type a name and a label that says where saving will happen.

dasweffar• 5 years ago

I've lurked on HN for more than a decade but created an account to concur with this comment. Accidentally filtering for folders (who even wants this) instead of typing a filename is truly awful and affects me daily. I would bail on gnome for this issue alone if I didn't have to use it on a work machine.

Does anyone know of an issue in their tracker with an official stance on it?

hollerith• 5 years ago

I would bail on gnome for this issue alone if I didn't have to use it on a work machine.

Both Google Chrome and Firefox use GTK's file picker (at least when "saving link as..." at least on Fedora 34 Prerelease) so what would you do for a web browser?

MarkyC4• 5 years ago

Probably something like[1]:

Because of the release of GNOME $next, and the lack of interest in maintainership of GNOME $prev, the gnome-core product is being closed. If you feel your bug is still of relevance to GNOME $next, please reopen it and refile it against a more appropriate component. Thanks...

[1] adapted from: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

christophilus2• 5 years ago

Gnome is my daily driver, and overall I'm a fan. But this is one of the dumbest file pickers I've seen.

amelius• 5 years ago

Also, the file chooser should show previews, like in Nautilus.

als0• 5 years ago

Kind of interesting and surprising that Gnome has gradually moved from a traditional Windows desktop look to a more macOS style with gestures and exposé included.

kitsunesoba• 5 years ago

Interestingly, if you take a look at old screenshots of Gnome 2.x, GTK apps have had more "mac like" layout/distribution/whitespace of controls within application windows for a very long time, even if the Gnome itself took more after Win9x in other aspects (like having a taskbar).

By contrast KDE/Qt has always had a stronger Win9x feel through and through.

dopeboy• 5 years ago

I was brought up on Gnome but after using Cinnamon, it's hard to go back. Better applets, better window management, easier default keyboard shortcuts. Little slower, though.

naranha2• 5 years ago

I was a bit sceptical, but I have to say that the horizontal workspaces work pretty well. Working with GNOME 40 is both efficient and aesthetically pleasing. And as a side note performance is much better too on Fedora 34.

dsego2• 5 years ago

the horizontal workspaces work pretty well

Like on all the other desktops?

yjftsjthsd-h5• 5 years ago

AFAIK, most DEs place virtual desktops horizontally or in a grid, and I'm actually not aware of any other DEs that dynamically add new desktops as you use them rather than statically defining them up front.

naranha2• 5 years ago

My concern was more about the animations switching workspaces being too jarring, but they are pretty smooth.

ogre_codes7• 5 years ago

Been a few years since I’ve used Gnome, I hadn’t realized they’d pivoted so much to following MacOS.

It looks like they’ve taken a lot of the best parts of MacOS and built something really nice atop it.

joana0353• 5 years ago

s/MacOS/webOS/g

from Palm

ogre_codes7• 5 years ago

You need to check your dates.

MacOS’s fundamental look has a pretty consistent chain all the way back to NextOS in the 90s. The Dock, the dot indicator, and many other core pieces are visible in versions of MacOS which predate the launch of webOS. MacOS borrows some bits from webOS as well, but the fundamental Dock layout is right out of NextStep.

symlinkk• 5 years ago

It’s been like this since Gnome 3 was released in 2011. This is why I've always been confused by people who say Linux has an “ugly, inconsistent, unprofessional” UI - to me this looks and feels better than Windows.

reader_mode3• 5 years ago

Gnome is just one part of the story - the gnome shell was always decent looking and had good themes.

But the apps and the ecosystem really is ugly, messy and inconsistent. For example if you look at the controls you got with GTK out of the box in GTK3 era (when I last tried to build something with it) I remember huge paddings, unintuitive UX (the GTK file picker is the worst I've used) and poor layout controls. Go check out an app like https://inkscape.org and compare it to something like Illustrator or Gnome to Photoshop. The messy jumbled stacks of options with huge icons and paddings instead of being condensed and easy to use - most of it stems from GTK controls being bad.

Now this is all with a huge disclaimer that I haven't used a Linux desktop in over 5 years at this point, maybe things got better but I doubt it - I still use Inkscape for example from time to time and Gimp on OSX and putting the non-native issues aside the apps look terrible on their own because of what I already said.

ogre_codes7• 5 years ago

Looking and feeling better than Windows is a low bar. Or at least it was a low bar in the Gnome 3.0 days.

I was mostly stricken with how much many of the features they are highlighting look straight out of stuff which was unveiled in MacOS about 5+ years ago. Extensive gesture support being a biggie.

dgllghr• 5 years ago

Yea gnome gets a lot of hate, but I've been using it as a daily driver for a few years and I have a slick, productive workflow with minimal customization. It's free software, it looks nice, and every release is a nice improvement.

legulere• 5 years ago

I have the feeling it also happened the other way around as well. When Gnome 3 came out the big buttons and huge whitespace seemed ridiculous, especially with Big Sur MacOS looks very similar.

pseudalopex2• 5 years ago

Apple doing it doesn't make it better.

niutech• 5 years ago

Have a look at elementary OS (https://elementary.io), it's much more resembling MacOS.

staplung• 5 years ago

Can you use Super (Cmd) as the modifier key yet? E.g. Cmd-c to copy?

drEv0• 5 years ago

Also curious about this. It's doubtful. Given the growing number of people coming from Apple it would be great if the DEs provided an option in settings to default to using ctrl or cmd. DEs already make similar accommodations for users coming from Windows. For instance, in KDE you can press Win+E (Explorer) and get the file manager.

sagarm2• 5 years ago

I really need the opposite: the option to use control for copy/paste on Mac.

pentagrama• 5 years ago

Ubuntu user here.

Was looking for when this GNOME version will be integrated to Ubuntu to check them out, it will not land in the next Ubuntu version.

Ubuntu 21.04 will NOT include GNOME 40. Bew Ubuntu releases typically include the newest GNOME release but this time it won’t. Why? Well, GNOME 40 features bold design changes that Ubuntu devs feel they need more time to ‘adapt’ to. [1]

Overall I like the refresh, but for me the real UX test is when you use it for a week/month. Will have to wait!

[1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/ubuntu-21-04-release-fea...

onnnon4• 5 years ago

It's interesting to see the focus on these desktop management features. I've been a long time macOS user and have never found "Launchpad", "Mission Control / Expose", or "multiple Desktops" useful in practice. I just use multiple monitors with everything I need on them in the same workspace. Do you guys actually use these features? I find the contextual switching distracting.

cmiles74• 5 years ago

I used MacOS for years, out of your list the only feature I ever really used was "multiple desktops". I would group apps roughly by function (email and messaging was on one desktop, the code editor was on another). I definitely wasn't pushing the boundaries and never used more than three desktops.

In my opinion, your skepticism about the general appeal of these features seems reasonable. I would expect the average laptop owner uses these rarely if ever. People who spend a lot of time with their machine may use only one or two, I bet. Spotlight in particular seems to be eating Launchpad's lunch.

progman32• 5 years ago

KDE user, but I do the same thing in any WM. I use multiple desktops more than I use the task switcher bar. I find a spatial arrangement of related windows much more practical to maintain. Multiple monitors don't scale beyond 2 or 3.

vsviridov• 5 years ago

When on MacOS I really enjoy full screen apps with multi-finger virtual desktop switch. My workflow usually limited to one full screen browser and one full screen terminal window (with tmux inside).

shrimp_emoji• 5 years ago

I have three monitors, and recently started using multiple desktops. I can hit Meta+{1,2,3,4} to go between them or Meta+Tab on KDE. It's amazing.

If my main desktop has tons of windows open, and the panel is crowded as heck with browser, file manager, text editor, and terminal windows (all of which can occupy all of your monitors when you're doing a given thing because there's that many of them), it's overwhelming. It's like browser tabs piling up out of control, except the tabs are also windows you have to maximize and minimize. Dedicating multiple desktop to multiple task (main, tinkering, work, etc.) is so much better.

eyelidlessness2• 5 years ago

I don’t personally use Launchpad but I can definitely imagine it’s useful for some. While it obviously took its design from iOS, it’s also a throwback to At Ease[1], which I definitely saw used widely when it was available.

And I no longer use Mission Control/Expose, but I certainly did find it useful on smaller screens (I now use a comically large 43” 4k@1x).

Same with multiple desktops, and I’ve seen it used on nearly every screenshare I’ve been on this past year.

My workflow now is probably more fussy than it could be, but I pretty much just use cmd-~ and cmd-` now.

Edit to add: I think it also depends quite a bit on input device. Seeing others mention trackpad gestures, I remember finding Mission Control/multiple desktops much more useful when I primarily used my MBP on my lap.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

onnnon4• 5 years ago

Screen sharing does seem like a very good use-case for multiple desktops.

coldtea2• 5 years ago

I just use multiple monitors with everything I need on them in the same workspace.

Well, many of us use a single monitor or a laptop to get work done. Thus multiple workspaces make more sense.

Virual workspaces have been in Unix/Linux/X-Windows since the 90s (or even before) anyway.

Do you guys actually use these features? I find the contextual switching distracting.

Yep.

Why would it be more distracting than looking to another monitor (and thus having to physically turn your gaze/neck as opposed to a single keyboard shortcut)?

For me, the purpose of multiple desktops is to reduce distration. Instead of many things visible to you all the time (in one or more monitors) and competing for your attention, you can have several things open, but only focus to one at a time, separate them by work, or program type, or workflow step, etc.

elros• 5 years ago

I’ve been using Macs full time for almost a decade now.

I never use Launchpad, but Mission Control is the main way I switch between applications. I find it convenient that it’s bound (not sure if by default) to the “four fingers towards the screen” gesture on the trackpad.

I use multiple desktops constantly, it’s the main way I organize my work. I also find them convenient to switch between since they’re mapped to the sideways flick four fingers gesture. I guess using virtual desktops is something I was doing before I started using Macs anyway.

I keep most of my apps full screen which I guess fits this workflow better. Before I used Macs I was using tiling window managers on Linux such as AwesomeWM and XMonad, so I had some resistance to using full screen a lot, but somehow I adapted. My terminal is still tiled and it’s what matters the most.

throwaway744678• 5 years ago

Not using Launchpad nor multiple desktops (like you, I find two monitors are enough), but exposé mapped on hot corners is very useful, to either switch to an invisible app, or access the desktop. A quick mouse move to the top-right (with mouse acceleration, you don't need the movement to be long, just fast), and there you go.

JD557• 5 years ago

It's funny, because as a MacOS user I pretty much never use multiple desktops, although I used it a lot in GNOME 2, because of how obvious it was that there was something in another desktop[1]. I think it really help multiple desktops feel more "grounded in space", like another monitor.

In MacOS, other desktops feel like a background thing that it's easy to forget (kind of like having a process running on another `screen` session).

1: The widget in the bottom right corner https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.32/figures/gnome...

onnnon4• 5 years ago

That does seem useful to have some sort of UI to see your open desktops.

qwerty456127• 5 years ago

If it's meant to be distraction-free then why the panel? In traditional WMs it could show running apps or the application menu you would use somewhat actively, now it only shows the clock (which I find useful but unnecessary - not worth dedicating an entire panel) and some indicators I certainly don't need to see all the time. The whole dash is also an additional entity of questionable value - I never felt like I need a full-screen launcher nor a full-screen workspace switcher.

Dig1t• 5 years ago

This looks really cool, but how do I get it? Is it out yet? The page is pretty unclear.

Barrin92• 5 years ago

on some of the rolling distributions (suse tumbleweed, arch, fedora rawhide) it's probably in the repos soon. Technically I guess you can go to gitlab and try to build it from source but I think that's pretty adventurous and likely going to break stuff

ufo5• 5 years ago

It should eventually trickle down to the various Linux distributions. I'm waiting for Fedora 34, which is just around the corner.

z77dj3kl• 5 years ago

One of the best things about macOS is how well integrated the touchpad is with the desktop environment. As in, I can do the four-finger swipe to move between workspaces, and if I drag it slowly and halfway, then yank back, the animation will follow my movements exactly.

Seems Gnome now has a bunch of those features. Are there any touchpads for which it's this well integrated and works? Or is it the same that it's always been: there's some kind of binary "gesture" recognizer that is then executed with a pretty animation?

This is one of the biggest things keeping me on macOS at the moment.

kaba05• 5 years ago

I believe it depends on libinput which is a heroic one-man project.

It can’t possibly be good on every device ever created, but it is pretty good I would say. Four-finger swipe up down works on gnome 3 already and it is a smooth motion, not a binary recognized thingy fortunately.

canada2us• 5 years ago

There is little usability in Gnome, just I think it is better.

dgan• 5 years ago

am I being too conservative using stock XFCE?.. maybe missing something

dsego2• 5 years ago

support for hidpi maybe? not sure about the current status

lproven• 5 years ago

IMHO, no. I give GNOME a re-assessment every time there's a new Ubuntu release, and it seldom takes more than an hour or so (if that) to find a reason why I'm glad my work boxes run Xfce and my home ones run Unity.

devit• 5 years ago

Back in the GNOME 3 debut days, the joke was that GNOME 4 would be just a black screen, the ultimate result of removing superfluous options and features and making a system that is as easy to use as possible.

oshanz• 5 years ago

GNOME has no thumbnails in the file picker

https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbna...

411111111111111• 5 years ago

i dont even remember the last time i used a file picker to select a picture on a desktop......

i couldn't care less about this "issue", which supposedly shows that desktop linux is a "joke". he's not really convincing.

(it would be a nice to have feature, yes. but his reaction is way overblown)

This is why Free desktop operating systems are a joke and haven’t been popularly adopted [...] GtkFileChooser remains broken

hojjat120002• 5 years ago

This is a dead meme. Boring and annoying specially to the Gnome developers. I have used Gnome for many years now. Never have this been an issue. If you look at the issue tracker[1], they are open to pull requests to add the thumbnail, we just need one person who cares about this feature!

There are many other issues with Gnome that actually is their decision and it is a problem. This specific one is a GTK issue. But for example their decision on window decoration in wayland is just wrong and makes the whole environment look weird[2].

[1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/233

[2] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217

yjftsjthsd-h5• 5 years ago

That seems excessively dismissive; it's hardly a dead meme while the issue remains open, boring only to the GNOME developers who have decided that little things like what users want is irrelevant, annoying only because it's been a decade with zero attempt at a solution. It's nice that you never use this feature, but unhelpful to others who do. And yes, it's terribly generous of them to be willing to consider merging a fix if someone else does the work.

cosarara• 5 years ago

we just need one person who cares about this feature

Uh no. There have been at least 3 separate attempts at implementing this. One of them actually lives as a fork on github, and it works. None of them have been merged. The gtk devs don't care.

Aengeuad2• 5 years ago

Various patches have existed for at least a decade but every time they're proposed some issue is found and they're not merged so the goal posts shift from 'just write your own patch' to 'just become a Gnome maintainer' with no guarantees that you'll get the assistance you need to implement the feature or whether it'll even be merged, and fair enough, the Gnome team really don't owe anybody anything, but in that case getting annoyed that the community keeps referencing a 17 year old issue is just a natural part of the exchange.

Saris• 5 years ago

Why are people so dismissive about this? It's a significant usability problem among many, many others that gnome has.

It should be annoying that the issue keeps coming up.

It's not a 'meme' that gnome lacks an extremely basic feature that is incredibly common in other GUIs.

dleslie2• 5 years ago

This is an issue for me; I don't enjoy having to work around it by finding the file in a separate file browser window.

Aengeuad2• 5 years ago

Also an issue for me, it does nothing for the already abysmal photography/image editing workflow. I try to use Qt programs where I can or xdg-desktop-portal where it's supported but some programs like Gimp still don't support it.

hctaw4• 5 years ago

Clearly this isn't an issue that people care about enough to do anything about, otherwise someone would have gone and implemented it.

k_bx• 5 years ago

“Stop being poor” kind of an argument

jeroenhd3• 5 years ago

I'm annoyed but not annoyed enough to learn proper Glib C for so I can fix it. I can probably make it work if I tried, but my attempts would never get accepted back into the code base because of the terrible mess I'd turn the code into.

This issue is one of the things that a normal, non-technical user would run into if they'd ever try Linux. If the file picker can't even get feature parity with Windows XP's, you're not attracting a lot of growth.

I'm fine with waiting for someone to eventually fix it in Gnome 8 or 9, but this is a real usability issue that indicates an entire area of the framework can use some work.

unethical_ban2• 5 years ago

I loathe this line of thinking.

Yes, "It's FOSS, go fork it" and all that malarkey.

Painting with broad strokes: MacOS and others make money on things being polished, consistent and understandable. They don't get to use their hacker blinders and say "Who needs a GUI for that" or act like Firefox and rearrange the UI every six months.

Thus, often times, the usability of OSes with a financial incentive for broad accessibility will be the most polished.

Ubuntu for a period wanted to break into the desktop OS market. They focused on polish and went so far as to create their own desktop environment (and display server)! They didn't fully succeed, but the point stands: There are many people outside the hacker community who are not going to write their own DE, who nevertheless hold the valid (and often, IMO, correct) opinion that Linux UIs blow more often than Windows/Mac.

PS: This isn't an argument about rights and obligations; I'm not saying randomGnomeDev123 has some moral obligation to do as randomUser345 asks. Just don't confuse "lack of obligation" with "being right".

dleslie2• 5 years ago

The people most likely to be impacted will be artists, photographers, and similar.

This is a useless viewpoint when the grief is held by mostly non-devs.

epidemian• 5 years ago

I wish things worked worked like that. That users could actually tell you exactly what would make their lives easier. Even more: that they would go ahead and implement those things themselves!

Good software design encompasses listening to and talking with users, and actually discovering what they need, where their pain points are, etc. They won't tell you explicitly.

Apart from being a software developer, i'm also a user of course. I use GNOME every day, and even though i'm affected by this, i haven't found the time, patience and dedication to actually go and try to fix it. I understand that the GNOME developers might not have the time either. But it's not like this issue does not exist, or that it's not important.

And if i, and many people who see this as an issue and could potentially fix it, don't do it, then how can we expect that non-technical users would?

I have tried to teach my mother how to copy files between devices countless times in Windows. It's not an easy task for someone who hasn't grown using a computer. I'd love to advocate for more people to use Linux, but i won't, because each little thing like not being able to see the image whumbnails when picking files can be a road-blocker for non-technical people, and add up quickly.

coldtea2• 5 years ago

Or alternative: Gnome devs are OK with missing basic functionality and a broken experience for 2 decades on, otherwise one of them would have gone and implemented it.

ndiddy• 5 years ago

There are several submitted patches that add this functionality on the bug report but Gnome developers have not merged them. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141154&

craftoman• 5 years ago

This is due to a missing package. Some distributions are not well structured and removing one package may lead to these errors.

ceronman2• 5 years ago

I would like to thank the Gnome community for this release! I can't wait to upgrade to Fedora 34 to use it.

I use Mac OS daily on my work computer and Gnome daily on my personal computer. Yes, I know there are a lot of Linux open source applications that are not very polished, but the quality in Gnome and its core applications is extremely high. There are even some things that Gnome does better than Mac OS.

Now, you might not like Gnome and that's perfectly fine. Fortunately, Linux is the land of choice and there is an alternative for every person. It baffles me to come here and read so much negativity! Come on! this is a big milestone for a community that has been working a lot to bring you something of quality for free! They have been doing this for decades already and they have put a lot of effort and love into this. How many open source projects fail to abandonment after just a few months?

Why is it that so many people in internet communities such as HN can't take a minute to appreciate the effort and instead the only thing that they are motivated to do is to nit-pick something and trash. Criticism is always welcome, there are even some appropriate channels to do it, but seriously why is this the only thing that you are able to say about a community driven product? Why is there only space for negativity? Why not a small "thanks" or "I liked that feature" before your criticism? They are bringing this thing for you for free, why can't you at least say something nice?

yjftsjthsd-h5• 5 years ago

Is GNOME as a community project? My reading of https://hpjansson.org/blag/2020/12/16/on-the-graying-of-gnom... is that it is driven largely by Red Hat and to some degree other companies.

To your general point (why attack the project): GNOME has a reputation (IMO deserved) for aggressively not caring about the opinions of users or outside projects (ex. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795901). So at some point it comes to "GNOME hates everyone else, so everyone else hates GNOME".

ehwhyreally• 5 years ago

Companies that charge you for their distribution are only charging for support. not really the distro, for this reason if you have a UI that shits itself on every corner it does not look good and ends up costing you more time and money, that's why it's largely driven by them.

circularfoyers• 5 years ago

I think concluding that "everyone" hates GNOME is hyperbole when people who like GNOME are less likely to post about it than someone who has a problem with it and that regular users who make up the majority are not ones who frequent these types of forums or are ones commenting on the issue tracker about this.

I think the only way to properly understand the topic would be to do surveys across different demographics, which I believe GNOME has done. It might feel like GNOME are ignoring "everyone" when everyone is the subset of it's users (or not of it's users) who frequent the same forums you do.

loudmax• 5 years ago

GNOME is the default desktop for nearly every major Linux distribution. It's the desktop that nearly everyone experiences if they decide to give Linux a try. As such its shortcomings are much more apparent than for something like, say, Xfce that you have to go out of your way to experience.

My frustrations with GNOME are not about polish, they're about reliability. Users don't care about polish when they update their OS and suddenly wifi doesn't work. I sincerely hope GNOME is more reliable now than it was in the past.

kaba05• 5 years ago

It is the default because it is deemed the most feature-complete and stable. Unfortunately not being too stable is all-around true of linux desktop (though I really like the recent trend with wayland - many previously hacky parts just work now!)

bluepoint• 5 years ago

This comment made me feel a bit guilty. Yes it is truly very easy to judge and forget that people work to deliver a useful tool for free. Thanks Gnome!

rsj_hn• 5 years ago

Curious, what hardware do you run gnome on?

ceronman2• 5 years ago

I have a 4k thinkpad x1 carbon 7gen.

Zren• 5 years ago

Is Meta+Alt+Left/Right a new standard? Last I recall was Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right in Gnome2 days (which is what I have configured it to in KDE).

SamuelAdams• 5 years ago

Can they add a toggle that switches between these "fat" top window bars and "skinny" top window bars? Basically strip out about 90% of the extra padding from buttons and bars and compress the UI down to what OS 10.6/7/8 use. Otherwise I always have to tack on a theme just to fix this one issue.

Realistically, how many people are using Gnome on touch screen displays? Personally I always use it on a laptop so 90% of their touch screen optimizations, like bloated bars, end up wasting screen real estate.

jeroenhd3• 5 years ago

Gnome and GTK are heavily opinionated towards client side decorations. That means the fat borders are part of the application, not necessarily of the desktop manager.

You can make your own themes pretty easily though, if you want to change the theme. There's some quite-good-but-not-quite-there macOS themes that aren't too bad, especially with the top menu bars that Ubuntu used to have.

kasabali• 5 years ago

Client side decorations doesn't necessitate having gigantic buttons with swath of padding.

rubyist5eva• 5 years ago

I installed the Fedora 34 Beta yesterday, and I am really impressed. I thought the move to a horizontal workspace from years of using the vertical one would be a big change but it really feels quite a lot better. Everything is also just snappier, more responsive and smoother overall - probably in no small part due to GTK4 being hardware accelerated now.

Overall system performance is fantastic so far with Fedora 34, super excited to keep tinkering with it.

Great work by the Gnome Team, and I'm super excited for the future of Gnome!

mikevm• 5 years ago

Gnome really needs a way to restore windows after restart (especially Nautilus windows with tabs), otherwise using multiple workspaces becomes annoying as soon as Ubuntu performs an upgrade that requires you to restart. Mac OS handles this pretty well.

O_H_E• 5 years ago

Not dismissing you comment. Just FYI.

Well the nice thing is Ubuntu never forces you to restart (unless _you_ want to use a newer kernel). You can always press "later" until you are done with the work you are doing.

clircle• 5 years ago

Is it faster though?

loloquhwonedeo• 5 years ago

"Switch workspaces faster than ever with the handy new Super + Alt + Scroll shortcut." that's going to suck for left-handed mouse users as "super" tends to not be accessible with the non-mouse hand on most compact keyboards.

vfclists• 5 years ago

When will this be fixed - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=679658#c10 ?

abenga2• 5 years ago

Right on there it says it's closed as WONTFIX, so you're not asking this in good faith. If it's a dealbreaker, I guess you have your answer.

4gotunameagain• 5 years ago

GNOME 40 will be coming to a distribution near you in the coming weeks

laughs in Debian

Gnome 40

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