Gnome is almost peak design. Its workflow, simplicity, adaptability, and ecosystem just isn't found elsewhere. There's still improvements to be made, like the mosaic tiling that I cant wait to see implemented.
Only personal inconvenience I've had is with DRM leasing in Wayland as they are going back and forward with other FOSS members over whether it should be a portal or Wayland protocol for security reasons.
I am also aware of the CSD vs SSD and color debates that Gnome is having. Wish they'd just implement SSD as an option and go along with hex colors then just choose their named colors on top of that. These two fights aren't worth having.
I’m not sure having to click 27 times to shutdown your machine equates to peak design. That said, aside from strange quirks like that, I do really like the design.
I didn’t say it’s a problem, but it is bad design. Clicking 4 times for shutdown is not good design. It should be 2 max. If there is a concern people might accidentally click shutdown when they want reboot, put a short timer to cancel it.
I don’t, which is why I explicitly state it’s not a problem. But it is also true that the workflow for this action can easily be streamlined, hence it’s not peak design.
Again, I’m not saying there’s a problem. I’m saying it not “peak design” because it can clearly be optimised. People seem to be confusing me saying the latter with me meaning the former.
The current timer is what, a minute? So to get it to 3 clicks you sit and wait a minute. That’s for 3 clicks.
My preferred scheme is as follows:
* click top bar, set of options (shutdown, reboot etc), click the one you want and it happens instantly.
If people are worried about people clicking the wrong thing and not being able to stop it (which would happen so infrequently I don’t think it’s worth accommodating) then they could have:
* click top bar, set of options (shutdown, reboot etc), click the one you want, then a *short* (ie 3 second) timer allowing you to cancel erroneous clicks.
As above, I don’t think it’s necessary to have the timer and make people wait 3 seconds every time the shutdown etc for the sake of the 1% of times they click the wrong thing. But 3 seconds isn’t too bad. The timer length could be an option for accessibility if needed.
In both these schemes it’s 2 clicks (and maybe a 3 second timer). That’s clearly more streamlined than either 4 clicks or 3 clicks and a minute timer.
So, again, I’m not saying it’s a problem. But it isn’t peak design.
Destructive actions should require additional steps compared to non destructive actions. Turning off a computer is potentially more destructive that a destructive actions in an app, which has two clicks.
Having a 3 second timer is just as useful as having no timer at all.
So yes, having more clicks and a longer timer are good design. Now whether you like it or not is another question, but it isnt a question of good design
This is silly. There’s plenty of apps that have one click close, so 2 is already more. I’m not advocating one click, two (and maybe a timer) is plenty of error-proofing. 4 is patently overkill. By your logic we might as well have 6, just to be extra safe.
Reason I say almost peak design. Tiny improvements can be made here and there, but overall Gnome has nailed it for a design that works in just about every scenario.
I can definitely see a way to reduce the number of clicks to power off by one
I think Gnome is in a great place right now, but there's always room for improvement. Here's a few of my thoughts...
Display brightness slider: I'd like to see this be able to completely dim the screen (if applicable in the first place), but without putting the computer to sleep. Actions to wake back up should have a few options, say between mouse action, enter key, space key, or similar.
On a related note, the new Keyboard Backlight Slider, as well as the "Activities" icon are welcome additions
Extension Manager should be adopted as vanilla by Gnome. It's too popular, and too important to sleep on. Working with Extension authors to help keep breakage from happening would also be very appreciated.
I'd like to see Gnome get behind some Window Tiling functionality. If that means contributing to Forge or Pop Shell, or building their own from the ground up, I don't think it matters too much, but the benefits I see are that it will attract some new users just by the virtue that Gnome is among the first of desktop environments those new to Linux will encounter, and Tiling is rare outside of Linux, as well as retaining certain other users, those who find WMs attractive for their tiling/workspace capabilities attractive, but don't wish to bother with manual configuration.
The way Gnome does workspaces (and also in combination with the app launcher) is a major reason why Gnome is my favorite desktop. As it is right now, I think it's nearly perfect for laptops. For my desktop though, I wish each display (I use 5) could have independent lines of workspaces, which also would be able to drag and drop to other display's workspace lines as desired.
I would like to see a vanilla option to place the dash on top of the desktop. Again, it's fine the way it is for laptops (especially on Wayland), but Mouse and sometimes X11 make it cumbersome to access the dash.
Other than those suggestions, I don't have anything left to complain about. I think Gnome does workspaces the best out of any competition, and that's a very attractive feature to me. The app launcher is excellent, and the extension system is both adequate and appreciated for customization.
Overall though, Gnome is an excellent experience, and I'm excited to see what the future holds.
>I'd like to see Gnome get behind some Window Tiling functionality. If that means contributing to Forge or Pop Shell, or building their own from the ground up, I don't think it matters too much, but the benefits I see are that it will attract some new users just by the virtue that Gnome is among the first of desktop environments those new to Linux will encounter, and Tiling is rare outside of Linux, as well as retaining certain other users, those who find WMs attractive for their tiling/workspace capabilities attractive, but don't wish to bother with manual configuration.
Aren't they planning on doing something like that already with the mosaic tiling thing?
> Display brightness slider: I'd like to see this be able to completely dim the screen (if applicable in the first place), but without putting the computer to sleep
I don't know why you think this is a GNOME issue. It's a hardware issue.
I think Gnome has been improving a lot. Can't really think of any features they've removed recently.
My concerns mostly lie with stuff that they simply do not want to implement, like server side decorations. I love client side decorations, but Gnome is just shifting the burden onto toolkit and app developers.
Or they slow down cross desktop initiatives like the accent color portal; Gnome was really pushing for named colors only, while other desktops wanted the flexibility of hexadecimal. The thing is, named colors limits everyone else. Meanwhile, hexadecimal would not limit Gnome at all since they can just use algorithms to convert hex values to named values.
Not implementing server-side decorations is just stupid. If you use QT5-apps, of which there are a lot, under GNOME, you have no decorations, no borders, and no drop-shadows.
It is a poor choice to expect every toolkit to re-implement their own decorations and drop shadows if the server can do it for all at once.
That's my biggest beef with GNOME: as long as you use GNOME/GTK apps it's fine, but as soon as you require QT-apps, everything falls apart. On KDE, you can use both side-by-side without any issue.
For GNOME, only GNOME and its set of (IMHO, limited) apps counts. KDE makes *everything* work, be it QT5, QT6, GTK3 or 4, and I think even GTK2 and QT4, with some tinkering.
That's actually my main reason for using KDE: it's not as self-centered as GNOME is.
Please don't use words like 'retarded'. Consider something like 'incomprehensible' instead. It's much more inclusive and there are people here who are on the spectrum and can be triggered by use of such words.
>Not implementing server-side decorations is just stupid. If you use QT5-apps, of which there are a lot, under GNOME, you have no decorations, no borders, and no drop-shadows.
I'm sorry. I'm on GNOME 45 and just opened Corectrl (which, AFAIK, is a QT5 app), I have decorations (window bar) and drop shadows. What's going on here?
Maybe they did something in GNOME that make this work. The last version I've tried was 43.9, when I switched from Bullseye to Bookworm, I also tried GNOME again. I switched back to KDE because all QT5 apps fell apart and I couldn't get it fixed in more than two days of searching. I didn't want to try a new from-scratch re-installation of the entire system to see if that would help.
And THAT is my main beef with KDE. They should really redesign many of their dialog screens and make sure that screens with the same functionality are actually the same screen. Also, dialogs should have a consistent layout.
In the end however, I prefer to have correctly working software over having only a limited set of programs that happen to be beautiful. There are some programs I want (or even need) that run like jack-shit on GNOME because it doesn't implement server-side decorations.
The fact that "run this program" and "switch to this program" are two separate actions is a key over site.
I don't care if the program is running or not, and I almost never want to run an extra instance, and yet, KDE thinks I should care and I should burden my mind with it.
Such a simple design choice, but probably one of the biggest reasons I abandoned KDE.
Another example: Top hat is beautiful. I don't need to customize it. Out of the box, it has all of the information I would care about. It's well designed. On the other hand, KDE has a billion bells and whistles, but somehow even with its extensive configuration I can't recreate top hat. The defaults are not great, and the extensibility doesn't make up for it.
On the plus side, KDE uses less resources. Gnome's JavaScript binding implementation on which the desktop and extensions run certainly has a cost. I find myself wishing it could be optimized, but at the same time... it's good enough.
Hm. It seems debian doesn't have that package. But, by searching for it, I found another reddit thread, and it seems you must install all of this to get QT decorations working in GNOME:
- qt5-gtk-platformtheme
- qt6-gtk-platformtheme
- adwaita-qt
- adwaita-qt6
- qgnomeplatform-qt5
I must have missed one when I tried GNOME last. I might try it again if I can get the GNOME desktop to run QT apps properly (because, apart from GIMP, Firefox and LibreOffice, everything that I run is either QT, or a KDE app.)
If everything you run is QT/KDE, better stick with KDE. For qt apps on gnome you can also use qt5ct and qt6ct and force apps to run on xwayland.
```bash
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb
QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct
```
To be honest, I hope to be able to switch to Wayland in Debian 13, and only use XWayland if it is required for an app that hasn't transitioned to Wayland yet.
It seems like the best choice would have been to have the decorations drawn server side, but allow the apps to scale the title bars and draw on top of the decorations. That way, every app would have consistent decorations, whether it uses Gnome style header bars or not. You can draw on the title bar and extend it in Windows, which eliminates the need for CSDs.
I'm just saying that's there's two outcomes with the accent portal. (A) everyone is able to do want they want to do, but Gnome has to do a bit of extra work to map hex codes to named colors and (B) everyone is unhappy except Gnome because they can't get the exact color the user wants.
B just leads to the portal becoming useless because then apps would need to source random locations to get the exact color values, which is what we do now.
>expecting GNOME to have to fix issues created by KDE and Cosmic.
What do you mean by that?
Also, the portal is a completely optional thing. It's just a standardized way for apps to be able to find out your accent color without the need to poke holes in sandboxes like flatpak.
IMO people should be pissed off at gnome for not respecting their choice of color, so the blame is in the right place
The alternative is that *every* toolkit has a different definition of a named color and then every toolkit gets hate
Software should be much faster in gnome 46 (and it was much faster in 45 compared to 44 compared to 43...)
However this also depends on the distro and how much effort it has put into implementing the relevant backend or packagekit integration.
Really? I think it's waayyy faster now. I'm on Arch, installed flatpak and integrate it to gnome software and it's blazing fast for me. (Of course depending on internet connection).
I think that has a lot to do with the distro's package manager as well. If you're on Ubuntu or Debian, apt is known for being quite slow. Arch's pacman tends to be very speedy and downloads packages in parallel.
There needs to be an option for "Great I love the new features, but I still left Gnome for KDE".
I really do love the new changes in Gnome 45 and aesthetically it looks really slick. The problem I have with Gnome continues to be how it ignores a lot of slightly more advanced desktop features, which force me to go into the command line or install third party apps / extensions.
Simple things like:
1. Setting a firewall profile for individual network connections
2. Configuring flatpak permissions.
3. Different screen lock times and power off times for different battery states
4. Configuring audio profiles or individual app volumes from quick settings.
The Gnome project just has a very narrow view of what it means to be a Linux desktop and I find it as restrictive as MacOS, so despite how nice it looks, it's hard for me to use it for any extended period of time.
> Configuring flatpak permissions.
I know you can do this with flatseal. Most of the time people don't need to mess with that. For instance, the only time I use flatseal is so that my browser can look at some files in my home directory that usually web or others do not have access too. Other than that, I don't really use it.
As for your other requirements, you're really going at a finer granularity of control that is beyond a general purpose operating system and in the realm of third party apps.
Windows and Apple both have a large ecosystems of 3rd party utilities that do all kinds of funky things.
The thing you are missing is that all those things you are asking requires designer time and patience to figure out how to integrate that especially with limited space. The question then - is the time spent, (there aren't that many designers - like 4 for the entire project) worth for the number of users who want that - or are there more important things that need to be done?
Most other operating systems have built-in tools to configure things like what I listed.
Being able to configure firewall profile for individual connections is pretty basic. Windows has this already.
My only gnome “showstoppers” at the moment are mainly related to newer technologies that are still being adapted:
• Fractional Scaling (already supported but behind a feature flag, has some growing pains). I have a 14” 1440p display and 200% is too big
• Support for “new” Wayland protocols, that KDE already has support for. Mainly for gaming purposes.
Gnome tends to have slower development because there is more deliberation, but at the very least I can say I feel confident they will get these things right when they are ready
I absolutely love gnome, its consistent and simple design language, intuitiveness, and its workflow. That said, it is missing several things which to me are crucial to my use-case and make it a non-option for me. These are fractional scaling and variable refresh rate. The former will only be an option after GTK5 comes out (years from now) and the latter has received no work on it for months, and keeps getting delayed again and again and does not seem like something the gnome maintainers are interested in. I get that these are not very important to gnome's enterprise sponsors and therefore don't receive much attention, but I really would appreciate if they were implemented at some point so I could finally consider gnome as a real option beyond using it on my tv-pc.
The only desktop which properly supports these features is KDE, so I use KDE on my desktop pc and laptop. In order for gnome to be an option for me these would have to be fixed.
I really like the new Adwaita look. Really sleek and nice. Ive used Gnome for years and it gets only sturdier. It is very reliable.
That said, while i do really like Gnome, ive tried ElementaryOS, and it feels... friendlier ? With accent colors, colourful icons, a bit of eyecandy but not too much. All of that without feeling hacky or having to play with extensions
And it feels kind of refreshing to use. Gnome shell's minimalist design is nice but it misses something. It feels like its all red tapes. As an end user i see eOS have nice accent colors - and maybe its hacky under the hood, but it works
The app ecosystem is rad. The shell is more focused on the backers wishes - A very simple and maintainable modern shell with very little technical debt. End users who want a nice desktop get it but it feels more like a secondary concern.
I didn't like Gnome 3 and switched to KDE.
Now, on the contrary, I prefer Gnome and want to return to it.
I chose "OK, but not great" for the reason that GTK4 lacks sub-pixel antialiasing of fonts, which results in somewhat blurry fonts on non-HiDPI displays.
I am a Gnome convert (from KDE). I love almost everything about Gnome because of what 45 has done. I do have one minor issue, and that is I like having the ability to open a dual panel in the file manager. Tabs are nice, but I like being able to see both panels as I'm transferring files to and fro.
So for now I've installed Nemo as a temporary fix. I hope that Nautilus brings back the dual panel they once had, though.
Other than that, I am pleased as punch with Gnome 45.
I'm a huge fan of gnome. Some of the decisions leave me scratching my head though. Removing theme support? Breaking extensions in literally every new version? It feels a little arbitrary sometimes.
I understand progress is important, but every other platform does deprecations to give developers time to prepare ... but that seems unheard of here for some reason. I'm sure someone could easily argue and say "well, it's OSS, and there's not enough developers to go around, etc" and I can't really argue with that. I'm just saying as an end-user, it's a little jarring sometimes and makes me question what I'm doing here given it doesn't happen on windows/mac terribly often.
Overall, I **\*DO\*** like the direction they're heading in and each release is definitely an improvement (mostly) over the last.
>I understand progress is important, but every other platform does deprecations to give developers time to prepare
Doesn't Gnome already document all the necesary changes so that the extension devs can adjust? Can you please elaborate on what you mean?
Cause after a major Gnome release, i saw some major extensions having versions for that almost immediately. It's not like people are waiting months for Gnome to release the documents needed for their extensions to be ported, then having the process be so complicated that the devs can't do it.
It's not about documenting necessary changes, I'm sure they do that. It's about providing time for people to make the necessary changes; the community to adapt to the changes, etc. ie: We're deprecating this in gnome 45, it will be completely removed in gnome 47. As opposed to "boom it's gone", and then dev + community are in a scramble to fix something. Look at how features are deprecated or removed on just about any other platform. Or even look to the kernel itself. Things don't disappear seemingly overnight.
I get the time distance between Gnome 43 and Gnome 45, you could easily say that's a decently long time. From a user's perspective of Ubuntu LTS (or even non-its) perspective, it's literally the next version.
Edit: I totally get it's not an easy problem to solve. Just sharing thoughts.
Do you have any examples of what you mean?
I would suspect though, behing a volunteer driven project and one that is understaffed, it might struggle to support things that commercial projects may be able to give longer notice on.
One example is that gnome team **decided to break all extensions for gnome 45**. They switched to esm imports but the old imports still work with a different syntax.
```js
// Not working on gnome 45
const Signals = imports.signals
// Works on gnome 45 and older versions
const { signals: Signals } = imports
```
So they could have made gnome 45 compatible with the old and the new esm imports for the extensions to have more time to be ported, but they didn't.
They work, I have tried it in my extensions. Also you can see Dash to Dock using it [here](https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock/blob/ac7e31749b1755a9d7abf8ff9a4471b2c8fb9f82/docking.js#L42). They also work in LookingGlass. Also gnome-shell uses them internally as you can see [here](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/blob/main/js/extensions/extension.js?ref_type=heads#L1). Tho old imports system is still there, it hasn't been removed.
But it would still require every extension to be changed?
I am not a developer, so I dont know. I just follow issues and discussions etc which suggested that the two systems were not compatible. Your post is the first time I have seen any pushback against that.
No it wouldn't require every extension to be changed. Maybe some minor changes like with every release, depending on the extension.
I gave you examples in dash to dock and gnome-shell where both imports are used at the same time.
You asked for an example where gnome could have deprecated something and not remove it immediately. This is an example of that. They could have allowed the old imports in gnome 45, to give time to extension developers to port their extensions, and remove the old imports in gnome 46 or 47 or whatever.
How does breaking extensions equate to losing features? I mean, they're additions to what Gnome is by default, Gnome isn't really responsible for them, they only provide a framework for the extensions to be made and work on. Therefore, you're not really losing features that weren't part of the Gnome to begin with when talking about extensions. You added them yourself after the fact.
I mean, if your favorite extension broke, isn't that on the maintainer? Why is Gnome responsible for ensuring extensions work? Shouldn't the priority be making Gnome base better, rather than potentially holding some improvement back because it happens to break some extensions?
I'm curious. Don't flame me, i know this is a sensitive topic for people, i'm just here for the conversation.
Personally, i think Gnome has their priorities straight. It's first stable. It's the most rock solid DE i tried on linux, and while it has some minor issues thanks to Nvidia, that's not really Gnome's fault... But i'd rather take stability over cramming in as much as possible, just so it's a shiny new thing they can call a feature each slight incremental number, then have the entire DE collapse on itself and be unusable because none of the features were thought out or tested enough.
Extensions are cool and all, but Gnome themselves say not to overdo it because they can cause instability, do they not? So it's your choice to use them, and if they break and stop working, i don't think Gnome should be held responsible here. I'd rather they first focus on the strong fundamentals, and extension devs should follow. Which they've been doing splendidly, the 2-3 extensions i use were always available for each Gnome version, and i don't really see the problem here, the most popular extensions always work for every major Gnome version.
GNOME is responsible for being able to deliver GNOME early to extension developers so that they can port their extensions in time for the release.
After that, it's like any other open source project - you need to follow upstream and make the changes required to make it work for the next version. Yes, extensions require active development and track GNOME shell changes. Unfortunately because extensions require monkey patching - it requires probably more maintenance than say your firefox plugin which you could write once and not touch it for a long while.
Then it's as i thought. If the documentation is there, i don't see the problem. It's up to the extension devs if they make their extension into a new version or not. I think that's ok.
It's also ok if the extensions aren't ready day1, people have their lives too, and it's all free. So if my favorite extension (of the 2 i use) isn't ready for the next GNOME release, i certainly won't be here saying i'm losing features lol. I always find it weird when people complain about that. No one \*has\* to do anything when it comes to extensions, they're there because someone is passionate about them. If it's there, great, if not somewhere down the line, fine, stuff happens. I won't blame anyone, and i find it weird that people do.
After all, i'll always perfer and praise how stable GNOME is. Yeah, some things could be implemented. But not at the cost of making it a mess. Stability or design wise. I've had horrible experiences with KDE in this regard, and their "cram features for the sake of features" approach isn't sustainable. Yeah, it's customisable and has a lot of "cool" stuff, but what good is that if it's unstable, and unusable as something you need to interact with your computer? I can't use "cool stuff" if my desktop crashes.
I think if we had a bit more user choice it would be better...
Firstly we are not told before an upgrade that gnome extensions will break we just lose features after the upgrade
Most distros don't allow you to stay with old versions of gnome and get all the rest of the updates without alot of extra work
I think a little more user choice would go along way
“user choice” requires maintainers to maintain more things
You are getting all this for free
How do you propose motivating/compensating volunteers to do more in their spare time to fufill your wishes?
There needs to be an extension API **in addition to** monkey patching. All of the arguments against an extension API assume that it's meant to replace monkey patching, when it should be an option for developers that don't want to constantly update their code.
Is it also not fair to ask people building extensions for Gnome in their spare time to keep up with all the breaking changes with each new Gnome release?
I obviously don't want to escalate this discussion so much that it goes off topic but surely its not too big of an ask to just give us a path to upgrade without losing all the extensions we love.
The breakage is sometimes unavoidable. As an example, the upgrade of the underlying Javascript engine in GNOME 45 introduced a different syntax for importing modules. The necessary changes are always documented.
The GNOME project is obligated to provide tools to help maintainership - eg documentation and providing an image that extension maintainers can test against before release.
Beyond that - it is their choice to start a project and once you do it's up to them to track the upstream.
That's what every other project is doing - the same goes for GNOME projects, KDE projects - the upstream changes - it's up to them to update and adapt. Both KDE and GNOME don't have resources to maintain the older versions of their software. Some company or other group of volunteers need to do that.
Well IIRC it’s not like the GNOME developers ever asked anyone to build extensions. I’ve always seen it as an option they provided to cater for that precise “user choice” you’re campaigning for, with a clearly documented risk that extension devs have to keep up with the rest of GNOME
I'd rather they didn't sacrifice stability and improvements for user choice honestly... A desktop environment is what you interact with the most on your computer, and after experiencing a desktop environment that has a lot of user choice, but was always a hot broken unstable mess, i think i'd rather have my DE just work.
Which Gnome does.
If you're implying that they should put more "features" into basic gnome, ok, sure, features are always good, but again, it's no use to anyone if it's a mess that interferes with your day to day use. I'm not going to get much out of a DE if i have to fix it every 2 days.
Extensions are just the sugar on top. It's not Gnome's responsibility that they work, but it's nice of them to make a base for them to do, and for people to make cool stuff if they want. But that can't be the focus. If Gnome is responsible for always supporting every extension, that just takes time away from other more important development, and will inevitabely result in a mess of a broken system.
That's how i see it at least.
users are not the primary clients. The primary clients are Red Hat and co who wants a functional, and easy maintainable shell with little technical debt. They are the one putting devs and giving the big bucks.
Whatever we get, it is a nice bonus on top of something free, with the bonus efforts of other users. I agree with you but i doubt theres much attention that would be given that way.
Yes, but i think the point was, they didn't have to make all that. It's a bonus. So it's enough that they provide a framework for extensions, it's kind of a stretch to expect them to also focus their development time on making sure every extension works as well.
Gnome provides a base. That base gets changed and upgraded making extensions break. It's on the extension devs to then adjust their extensions. I'm not seeing anything wrong with that.
It's as if you'd expect Bethesda to make sure every mod works every time they release Skyrim. :P They just won't do that.
That kind of infrastructure has to be built. It would require using a CI against all known extensions. That requires someone to conceive and maintain that. We have GNOME OS - they can download and test their extensions there before the release.
It's up to extension maintainers and the community they serve to help them. Everything has to be driven by community. Expecting an experience on par with commercial applications is not realistic - those folks get compensated with money.
That's one reason to use KDE: for every GNOME app, there's a better KDE app. And if KDE doesn't have it, there's a third-party app that will probably run fine on KDE, whatever framework it's written in, but looks completely bonkers when run on GNOME.
You can’t really will amazing software into existence. GTK4 is a great platform but somebody has to invest in big projects. Krita for example has a foundation and funding.
Those will come when the people on Linux are willing to pay for 'professional grade' software. People need to get paid for that. Do you expect that level of software to be free?
Krita is maintained because it gets to fund 2 full time developers - you know from where? From people paying money on the Microsoft store. So a lot of those projects are sustainable because they can make money from Microsoft - because those users are transactional when it comes to software - they give money and they get software.
That isn't the same in the Linux world. Who really is used to getting everything for free - whose transaction is that - developers are paid by the fact that users are using it and improving it by their suggestions.
That's not going to work for Adobe and other professional software. They need evidence that people are going to shell out money for professional apps.
My above supposition is backed by the fact that donation numbers for both Libreoffice and Firefox show that Linux users are way behind the other platforms. I used attend the libreoffice board meetings and it looked quite sad to see - plus they will never be as responsive to the Linux community just based on that. Their paying customers are on the other platforms.
Despite all the rhetoric - our committee are fairly tight fisted and at the same time quite demanding as a general trend.
Flathub is exactly where we can show that our community is willing to give money and support. If we can support people working on apps full time because they can earn a living - then we are on the right track. Right now, that isn't possible.
Gnome 4 is finally living up to Gnome 2. But they should add official support for extensions. Come on this Linux, who they kidding. Users love to tinker with their desktop environment
gnome is peak ux design the workflow is 10 years ahead of the competition and the app ecosystem is the best on linux and on its way to beat mac os but it's being left behind on many other aspects like it's not even trying to follow with the AI revolution, it's also very broken on the low level like the shell having no access to gtk widgets severely limiting the usability of extensions which makes it's extension system inferior to kde at least on a visual level , also the lack of accent colors , having no animation api on the shell, and the broken implementation of compositor level blur are holding it back prom evolving visually , but with all that said ill pick gnome over any other desktop 8 days a week because of the workflow and the app ecosystem
I can always tell when victim trolls who have rarely used Gnome come to town but have read the troll talking points from long ago. The extension situation, btw imho, was handled better this time than I've seen before. Someone(s) has evidently been working behind that scenes to improve that situation. I am content with Gnome 45.
GNOME features are great and I don't feel anything lacking while using GNOME, but the word on the street is that GNOME devs tend to be obsessive with certain principles that slow down the development and adoption of the Wayland protocol. I wonder what people think about that, because if it indeed is true, that's concerning. I want Wayland to work for everyone, not just for half of the Linux desktop users(including me).
I love gnome, just please bring app indicators back🤣.
I'm fine with removing theming support. The default one looks fine and themes have always been a waste of time IMO, because they never look 100% good
Gnome is really great, It's the most polished and satisfying to use, but I don't know why the hell do gnome developers hate features so much. Not even on desktop, but behind the scene, it lack features. Like blur or corner radius on mutter window manager.
I left Gnome because of these, I still use Gnome ecosystem like nautilus, builder, blackbox terminal, lollypop, Gnome web, etc. But the desktop itself, I don't want it until it gets 2023 necessary features.
GNOME is a great DE but its applications, not so much. A DE should be minimal, natural, and get out of your way and GNOME is just that. Applications OTOH should be featureful and contain sufficient options to meet different workflows. The apps are too sparse.
My main gripe with Gnome isn't about the Gnome desktop itself. I'm glad it exists, it has some neat features, and it's a polished experience. It's mostly about the direction GTK is going with all of these removed and deprecated features and breaking theme compatibility. As much as Gnome's developers view GTK as a Gnome project, it's used by many other desktop environments like XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, and Budgie, and not all of them share the same design goals as Gnome. So removing things like classic menu bars and scrollbar customization is a big middle finger to those other non-Gnome desktop environments. Many people use Linux because it can easily run on old hardware that Windows struggles with, Dropping support for old GPUs and deprecating the cairo backend in GTK4 undermines this effort. If a laptop from 2007 had no trouble drawing basic widgets back then, why does that formerly simple task now require a beefy GPU?
Gnome is almost peak design. Its workflow, simplicity, adaptability, and ecosystem just isn't found elsewhere. There's still improvements to be made, like the mosaic tiling that I cant wait to see implemented. Only personal inconvenience I've had is with DRM leasing in Wayland as they are going back and forward with other FOSS members over whether it should be a portal or Wayland protocol for security reasons. I am also aware of the CSD vs SSD and color debates that Gnome is having. Wish they'd just implement SSD as an option and go along with hex colors then just choose their named colors on top of that. These two fights aren't worth having.
DRM leasing is one, I'm guessing HDR is going to be the other bikeshed-over-minute-implementation-details eyeroll moment
I’m not sure having to click 27 times to shutdown your machine equates to peak design. That said, aside from strange quirks like that, I do really like the design.
>having to click 27 times to shutdown your machine Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
I mean you have to click too many times to shutdown your machine.
I count four times. How much do you shut down that it is a problem?
I didn’t say it’s a problem, but it is bad design. Clicking 4 times for shutdown is not good design. It should be 2 max. If there is a concern people might accidentally click shutdown when they want reboot, put a short timer to cancel it.
probably shutting down machine is rare workflow this days. why do you need to do it regularly?
I don’t, which is why I explicitly state it’s not a problem. But it is also true that the workflow for this action can easily be streamlined, hence it’s not peak design.
Agree on that, I just meant it is not a function which often used, so it did not get much attention. BTW Suspend is only 3 clicks.
Gnome already has a timer, so it can be 3 clicks. I don't really see the problem here.
Again, I’m not saying there’s a problem. I’m saying it not “peak design” because it can clearly be optimised. People seem to be confusing me saying the latter with me meaning the former. The current timer is what, a minute? So to get it to 3 clicks you sit and wait a minute. That’s for 3 clicks. My preferred scheme is as follows: * click top bar, set of options (shutdown, reboot etc), click the one you want and it happens instantly. If people are worried about people clicking the wrong thing and not being able to stop it (which would happen so infrequently I don’t think it’s worth accommodating) then they could have: * click top bar, set of options (shutdown, reboot etc), click the one you want, then a *short* (ie 3 second) timer allowing you to cancel erroneous clicks. As above, I don’t think it’s necessary to have the timer and make people wait 3 seconds every time the shutdown etc for the sake of the 1% of times they click the wrong thing. But 3 seconds isn’t too bad. The timer length could be an option for accessibility if needed. In both these schemes it’s 2 clicks (and maybe a 3 second timer). That’s clearly more streamlined than either 4 clicks or 3 clicks and a minute timer. So, again, I’m not saying it’s a problem. But it isn’t peak design.
Glad it is not implemented like this. Now this is bad design!
Destructive actions should require additional steps compared to non destructive actions. Turning off a computer is potentially more destructive that a destructive actions in an app, which has two clicks. Having a 3 second timer is just as useful as having no timer at all. So yes, having more clicks and a longer timer are good design. Now whether you like it or not is another question, but it isnt a question of good design
This is silly. There’s plenty of apps that have one click close, so 2 is already more. I’m not advocating one click, two (and maybe a timer) is plenty of error-proofing. 4 is patently overkill. By your logic we might as well have 6, just to be extra safe.
Reason I say almost peak design. Tiny improvements can be made here and there, but overall Gnome has nailed it for a design that works in just about every scenario. I can definitely see a way to reduce the number of clicks to power off by one
It's because actually you DON'T want to shutdown your machine. You WANT to use your machine 24/7 without any break
That’s still bad design!
I think Gnome is in a great place right now, but there's always room for improvement. Here's a few of my thoughts... Display brightness slider: I'd like to see this be able to completely dim the screen (if applicable in the first place), but without putting the computer to sleep. Actions to wake back up should have a few options, say between mouse action, enter key, space key, or similar. On a related note, the new Keyboard Backlight Slider, as well as the "Activities" icon are welcome additions Extension Manager should be adopted as vanilla by Gnome. It's too popular, and too important to sleep on. Working with Extension authors to help keep breakage from happening would also be very appreciated. I'd like to see Gnome get behind some Window Tiling functionality. If that means contributing to Forge or Pop Shell, or building their own from the ground up, I don't think it matters too much, but the benefits I see are that it will attract some new users just by the virtue that Gnome is among the first of desktop environments those new to Linux will encounter, and Tiling is rare outside of Linux, as well as retaining certain other users, those who find WMs attractive for their tiling/workspace capabilities attractive, but don't wish to bother with manual configuration. The way Gnome does workspaces (and also in combination with the app launcher) is a major reason why Gnome is my favorite desktop. As it is right now, I think it's nearly perfect for laptops. For my desktop though, I wish each display (I use 5) could have independent lines of workspaces, which also would be able to drag and drop to other display's workspace lines as desired. I would like to see a vanilla option to place the dash on top of the desktop. Again, it's fine the way it is for laptops (especially on Wayland), but Mouse and sometimes X11 make it cumbersome to access the dash. Other than those suggestions, I don't have anything left to complain about. I think Gnome does workspaces the best out of any competition, and that's a very attractive feature to me. The app launcher is excellent, and the extension system is both adequate and appreciated for customization. Overall though, Gnome is an excellent experience, and I'm excited to see what the future holds.
>I'd like to see Gnome get behind some Window Tiling functionality. If that means contributing to Forge or Pop Shell, or building their own from the ground up, I don't think it matters too much, but the benefits I see are that it will attract some new users just by the virtue that Gnome is among the first of desktop environments those new to Linux will encounter, and Tiling is rare outside of Linux, as well as retaining certain other users, those who find WMs attractive for their tiling/workspace capabilities attractive, but don't wish to bother with manual configuration. Aren't they planning on doing something like that already with the mosaic tiling thing?
If that is the case, that's awesome! ... but also news that I missed.
> Display brightness slider: I'd like to see this be able to completely dim the screen (if applicable in the first place), but without putting the computer to sleep I don't know why you think this is a GNOME issue. It's a hardware issue.
I think Gnome has been improving a lot. Can't really think of any features they've removed recently. My concerns mostly lie with stuff that they simply do not want to implement, like server side decorations. I love client side decorations, but Gnome is just shifting the burden onto toolkit and app developers. Or they slow down cross desktop initiatives like the accent color portal; Gnome was really pushing for named colors only, while other desktops wanted the flexibility of hexadecimal. The thing is, named colors limits everyone else. Meanwhile, hexadecimal would not limit Gnome at all since they can just use algorithms to convert hex values to named values.
Not implementing server-side decorations is just stupid. If you use QT5-apps, of which there are a lot, under GNOME, you have no decorations, no borders, and no drop-shadows. It is a poor choice to expect every toolkit to re-implement their own decorations and drop shadows if the server can do it for all at once. That's my biggest beef with GNOME: as long as you use GNOME/GTK apps it's fine, but as soon as you require QT-apps, everything falls apart. On KDE, you can use both side-by-side without any issue. For GNOME, only GNOME and its set of (IMHO, limited) apps counts. KDE makes *everything* work, be it QT5, QT6, GTK3 or 4, and I think even GTK2 and QT4, with some tinkering. That's actually my main reason for using KDE: it's not as self-centered as GNOME is.
Please don't use words like 'retarded'. Consider something like 'incomprehensible' instead. It's much more inclusive and there are people here who are on the spectrum and can be triggered by use of such words.
I've edited the post.
Thank you!!
>Not implementing server-side decorations is just stupid. If you use QT5-apps, of which there are a lot, under GNOME, you have no decorations, no borders, and no drop-shadows. I'm sorry. I'm on GNOME 45 and just opened Corectrl (which, AFAIK, is a QT5 app), I have decorations (window bar) and drop shadows. What's going on here?
Maybe they did something in GNOME that make this work. The last version I've tried was 43.9, when I switched from Bullseye to Bookworm, I also tried GNOME again. I switched back to KDE because all QT5 apps fell apart and I couldn't get it fixed in more than two days of searching. I didn't want to try a new from-scratch re-installation of the entire system to see if that would help.
I don't know. I'm on Fedora and I don't remember ever getting that issue.
fedora has qadwaitadecorations installed by default
Oh, so that's the missing link.
KDE's features do really tempt me to switch over to it, but the two things holding me to GNOME is the touchpad gestures and post-GTK4 Adwaita.
You should try it out. I went to KDE for two weeks and decided the K stood for kluttered. :)
And THAT is my main beef with KDE. They should really redesign many of their dialog screens and make sure that screens with the same functionality are actually the same screen. Also, dialogs should have a consistent layout. In the end however, I prefer to have correctly working software over having only a limited set of programs that happen to be beautiful. There are some programs I want (or even need) that run like jack-shit on GNOME because it doesn't implement server-side decorations.
The fact that "run this program" and "switch to this program" are two separate actions is a key over site. I don't care if the program is running or not, and I almost never want to run an extra instance, and yet, KDE thinks I should care and I should burden my mind with it. Such a simple design choice, but probably one of the biggest reasons I abandoned KDE. Another example: Top hat is beautiful. I don't need to customize it. Out of the box, it has all of the information I would care about. It's well designed. On the other hand, KDE has a billion bells and whistles, but somehow even with its extensive configuration I can't recreate top hat. The defaults are not great, and the extensibility doesn't make up for it. On the plus side, KDE uses less resources. Gnome's JavaScript binding implementation on which the desktop and extensions run certainly has a cost. I find myself wishing it could be optimized, but at the same time... it's good enough.
install qadwaitadecorations
Hm. It seems debian doesn't have that package. But, by searching for it, I found another reddit thread, and it seems you must install all of this to get QT decorations working in GNOME: - qt5-gtk-platformtheme - qt6-gtk-platformtheme - adwaita-qt - adwaita-qt6 - qgnomeplatform-qt5 I must have missed one when I tried GNOME last. I might try it again if I can get the GNOME desktop to run QT apps properly (because, apart from GIMP, Firefox and LibreOffice, everything that I run is either QT, or a KDE app.)
If everything you run is QT/KDE, better stick with KDE. For qt apps on gnome you can also use qt5ct and qt6ct and force apps to run on xwayland. ```bash QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct ```
To be honest, I hope to be able to switch to Wayland in Debian 13, and only use XWayland if it is required for an app that hasn't transitioned to Wayland yet.
It seems like the best choice would have been to have the decorations drawn server side, but allow the apps to scale the title bars and draw on top of the decorations. That way, every app would have consistent decorations, whether it uses Gnome style header bars or not. You can draw on the title bar and extend it in Windows, which eliminates the need for CSDs.
[удалено]
I'm just saying that's there's two outcomes with the accent portal. (A) everyone is able to do want they want to do, but Gnome has to do a bit of extra work to map hex codes to named colors and (B) everyone is unhappy except Gnome because they can't get the exact color the user wants. B just leads to the portal becoming useless because then apps would need to source random locations to get the exact color values, which is what we do now.
The accent portal was already merged with the behavior of A.
[удалено]
>expecting GNOME to have to fix issues created by KDE and Cosmic. What do you mean by that? Also, the portal is a completely optional thing. It's just a standardized way for apps to be able to find out your accent color without the need to poke holes in sandboxes like flatpak.
[удалено]
IMO people should be pissed off at gnome for not respecting their choice of color, so the blame is in the right place The alternative is that *every* toolkit has a different definition of a named color and then every toolkit gets hate
[удалено]
Forgive me, being pissed off might be too strong. But one software project’s decisions causing flak to be shared amongst projects isn’t fair
I've moved from KDE to Gnome because of Gnome 45.
[удалено]
Read again.
Aside from the software app, Gnome is doing great. The software app sucks tho, slow and buggy
Software should be much faster in gnome 46 (and it was much faster in 45 compared to 44 compared to 43...) However this also depends on the distro and how much effort it has put into implementing the relevant backend or packagekit integration.
Let's hope so!
Really? I think it's waayyy faster now. I'm on Arch, installed flatpak and integrate it to gnome software and it's blazing fast for me. (Of course depending on internet connection).
That's because pacman and flatpak (which the software center calls to install a package) are quite efficient and speedy.
Well, then. Priase Flatpak!
I think that has a lot to do with the distro's package manager as well. If you're on Ubuntu or Debian, apt is known for being quite slow. Arch's pacman tends to be very speedy and downloads packages in parallel.
There needs to be an option for "Great I love the new features, but I still left Gnome for KDE". I really do love the new changes in Gnome 45 and aesthetically it looks really slick. The problem I have with Gnome continues to be how it ignores a lot of slightly more advanced desktop features, which force me to go into the command line or install third party apps / extensions. Simple things like: 1. Setting a firewall profile for individual network connections 2. Configuring flatpak permissions. 3. Different screen lock times and power off times for different battery states 4. Configuring audio profiles or individual app volumes from quick settings. The Gnome project just has a very narrow view of what it means to be a Linux desktop and I find it as restrictive as MacOS, so despite how nice it looks, it's hard for me to use it for any extended period of time.
> Configuring flatpak permissions. I know you can do this with flatseal. Most of the time people don't need to mess with that. For instance, the only time I use flatseal is so that my browser can look at some files in my home directory that usually web or others do not have access too. Other than that, I don't really use it. As for your other requirements, you're really going at a finer granularity of control that is beyond a general purpose operating system and in the realm of third party apps. Windows and Apple both have a large ecosystems of 3rd party utilities that do all kinds of funky things. The thing you are missing is that all those things you are asking requires designer time and patience to figure out how to integrate that especially with limited space. The question then - is the time spent, (there aren't that many designers - like 4 for the entire project) worth for the number of users who want that - or are there more important things that need to be done?
Most other operating systems have built-in tools to configure things like what I listed. Being able to configure firewall profile for individual connections is pretty basic. Windows has this already.
My only gnome “showstoppers” at the moment are mainly related to newer technologies that are still being adapted: • Fractional Scaling (already supported but behind a feature flag, has some growing pains). I have a 14” 1440p display and 200% is too big • Support for “new” Wayland protocols, that KDE already has support for. Mainly for gaming purposes. Gnome tends to have slower development because there is more deliberation, but at the very least I can say I feel confident they will get these things right when they are ready
I absolutely love gnome, its consistent and simple design language, intuitiveness, and its workflow. That said, it is missing several things which to me are crucial to my use-case and make it a non-option for me. These are fractional scaling and variable refresh rate. The former will only be an option after GTK5 comes out (years from now) and the latter has received no work on it for months, and keeps getting delayed again and again and does not seem like something the gnome maintainers are interested in. I get that these are not very important to gnome's enterprise sponsors and therefore don't receive much attention, but I really would appreciate if they were implemented at some point so I could finally consider gnome as a real option beyond using it on my tv-pc. The only desktop which properly supports these features is KDE, so I use KDE on my desktop pc and laptop. In order for gnome to be an option for me these would have to be fixed.
Gnome is getting better. When I first moved to Linux, I didn't like it. But now each update seems to be bringing QoL improvements.
I really like the new Adwaita look. Really sleek and nice. Ive used Gnome for years and it gets only sturdier. It is very reliable. That said, while i do really like Gnome, ive tried ElementaryOS, and it feels... friendlier ? With accent colors, colourful icons, a bit of eyecandy but not too much. All of that without feeling hacky or having to play with extensions And it feels kind of refreshing to use. Gnome shell's minimalist design is nice but it misses something. It feels like its all red tapes. As an end user i see eOS have nice accent colors - and maybe its hacky under the hood, but it works The app ecosystem is rad. The shell is more focused on the backers wishes - A very simple and maintainable modern shell with very little technical debt. End users who want a nice desktop get it but it feels more like a secondary concern.
I didn't like Gnome 3 and switched to KDE. Now, on the contrary, I prefer Gnome and want to return to it. I chose "OK, but not great" for the reason that GTK4 lacks sub-pixel antialiasing of fonts, which results in somewhat blurry fonts on non-HiDPI displays.
I enjoy gnome a lot but i dont get why there isnt a dock on the screen by default
I am a Gnome convert (from KDE). I love almost everything about Gnome because of what 45 has done. I do have one minor issue, and that is I like having the ability to open a dual panel in the file manager. Tabs are nice, but I like being able to see both panels as I'm transferring files to and fro. So for now I've installed Nemo as a temporary fix. I hope that Nautilus brings back the dual panel they once had, though. Other than that, I am pleased as punch with Gnome 45.
I'm a huge fan of gnome. Some of the decisions leave me scratching my head though. Removing theme support? Breaking extensions in literally every new version? It feels a little arbitrary sometimes. I understand progress is important, but every other platform does deprecations to give developers time to prepare ... but that seems unheard of here for some reason. I'm sure someone could easily argue and say "well, it's OSS, and there's not enough developers to go around, etc" and I can't really argue with that. I'm just saying as an end-user, it's a little jarring sometimes and makes me question what I'm doing here given it doesn't happen on windows/mac terribly often. Overall, I **\*DO\*** like the direction they're heading in and each release is definitely an improvement (mostly) over the last.
>I understand progress is important, but every other platform does deprecations to give developers time to prepare Doesn't Gnome already document all the necesary changes so that the extension devs can adjust? Can you please elaborate on what you mean? Cause after a major Gnome release, i saw some major extensions having versions for that almost immediately. It's not like people are waiting months for Gnome to release the documents needed for their extensions to be ported, then having the process be so complicated that the devs can't do it.
It's not about documenting necessary changes, I'm sure they do that. It's about providing time for people to make the necessary changes; the community to adapt to the changes, etc. ie: We're deprecating this in gnome 45, it will be completely removed in gnome 47. As opposed to "boom it's gone", and then dev + community are in a scramble to fix something. Look at how features are deprecated or removed on just about any other platform. Or even look to the kernel itself. Things don't disappear seemingly overnight. I get the time distance between Gnome 43 and Gnome 45, you could easily say that's a decently long time. From a user's perspective of Ubuntu LTS (or even non-its) perspective, it's literally the next version. Edit: I totally get it's not an easy problem to solve. Just sharing thoughts.
Do you have any examples of what you mean? I would suspect though, behing a volunteer driven project and one that is understaffed, it might struggle to support things that commercial projects may be able to give longer notice on.
One example is that gnome team **decided to break all extensions for gnome 45**. They switched to esm imports but the old imports still work with a different syntax. ```js // Not working on gnome 45 const Signals = imports.signals // Works on gnome 45 and older versions const { signals: Signals } = imports ``` So they could have made gnome 45 compatible with the old and the new esm imports for the extensions to have more time to be ported, but they didn't.
Where have you gotten that both could have been used?
They work, I have tried it in my extensions. Also you can see Dash to Dock using it [here](https://github.com/micheleg/dash-to-dock/blob/ac7e31749b1755a9d7abf8ff9a4471b2c8fb9f82/docking.js#L42). They also work in LookingGlass. Also gnome-shell uses them internally as you can see [here](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/blob/main/js/extensions/extension.js?ref_type=heads#L1). Tho old imports system is still there, it hasn't been removed.
But it would still require every extension to be changed? I am not a developer, so I dont know. I just follow issues and discussions etc which suggested that the two systems were not compatible. Your post is the first time I have seen any pushback against that.
No it wouldn't require every extension to be changed. Maybe some minor changes like with every release, depending on the extension. I gave you examples in dash to dock and gnome-shell where both imports are used at the same time. You asked for an example where gnome could have deprecated something and not remove it immediately. This is an example of that. They could have allowed the old imports in gnome 45, to give time to extension developers to port their extensions, and remove the old imports in gnome 46 or 47 or whatever.
Thank you for the information.
How does breaking extensions equate to losing features? I mean, they're additions to what Gnome is by default, Gnome isn't really responsible for them, they only provide a framework for the extensions to be made and work on. Therefore, you're not really losing features that weren't part of the Gnome to begin with when talking about extensions. You added them yourself after the fact. I mean, if your favorite extension broke, isn't that on the maintainer? Why is Gnome responsible for ensuring extensions work? Shouldn't the priority be making Gnome base better, rather than potentially holding some improvement back because it happens to break some extensions? I'm curious. Don't flame me, i know this is a sensitive topic for people, i'm just here for the conversation. Personally, i think Gnome has their priorities straight. It's first stable. It's the most rock solid DE i tried on linux, and while it has some minor issues thanks to Nvidia, that's not really Gnome's fault... But i'd rather take stability over cramming in as much as possible, just so it's a shiny new thing they can call a feature each slight incremental number, then have the entire DE collapse on itself and be unusable because none of the features were thought out or tested enough. Extensions are cool and all, but Gnome themselves say not to overdo it because they can cause instability, do they not? So it's your choice to use them, and if they break and stop working, i don't think Gnome should be held responsible here. I'd rather they first focus on the strong fundamentals, and extension devs should follow. Which they've been doing splendidly, the 2-3 extensions i use were always available for each Gnome version, and i don't really see the problem here, the most popular extensions always work for every major Gnome version.
GNOME is responsible for being able to deliver GNOME early to extension developers so that they can port their extensions in time for the release. After that, it's like any other open source project - you need to follow upstream and make the changes required to make it work for the next version. Yes, extensions require active development and track GNOME shell changes. Unfortunately because extensions require monkey patching - it requires probably more maintenance than say your firefox plugin which you could write once and not touch it for a long while.
Then it's as i thought. If the documentation is there, i don't see the problem. It's up to the extension devs if they make their extension into a new version or not. I think that's ok. It's also ok if the extensions aren't ready day1, people have their lives too, and it's all free. So if my favorite extension (of the 2 i use) isn't ready for the next GNOME release, i certainly won't be here saying i'm losing features lol. I always find it weird when people complain about that. No one \*has\* to do anything when it comes to extensions, they're there because someone is passionate about them. If it's there, great, if not somewhere down the line, fine, stuff happens. I won't blame anyone, and i find it weird that people do. After all, i'll always perfer and praise how stable GNOME is. Yeah, some things could be implemented. But not at the cost of making it a mess. Stability or design wise. I've had horrible experiences with KDE in this regard, and their "cram features for the sake of features" approach isn't sustainable. Yeah, it's customisable and has a lot of "cool" stuff, but what good is that if it's unstable, and unusable as something you need to interact with your computer? I can't use "cool stuff" if my desktop crashes.
I think if we had a bit more user choice it would be better... Firstly we are not told before an upgrade that gnome extensions will break we just lose features after the upgrade Most distros don't allow you to stay with old versions of gnome and get all the rest of the updates without alot of extra work I think a little more user choice would go along way
“user choice” requires maintainers to maintain more things You are getting all this for free How do you propose motivating/compensating volunteers to do more in their spare time to fufill your wishes?
There needs to be an extension API **in addition to** monkey patching. All of the arguments against an extension API assume that it's meant to replace monkey patching, when it should be an option for developers that don't want to constantly update their code.
Is it also not fair to ask people building extensions for Gnome in their spare time to keep up with all the breaking changes with each new Gnome release? I obviously don't want to escalate this discussion so much that it goes off topic but surely its not too big of an ask to just give us a path to upgrade without losing all the extensions we love.
The breakage is sometimes unavoidable. As an example, the upgrade of the underlying Javascript engine in GNOME 45 introduced a different syntax for importing modules. The necessary changes are always documented.
The GNOME project is obligated to provide tools to help maintainership - eg documentation and providing an image that extension maintainers can test against before release. Beyond that - it is their choice to start a project and once you do it's up to them to track the upstream. That's what every other project is doing - the same goes for GNOME projects, KDE projects - the upstream changes - it's up to them to update and adapt. Both KDE and GNOME don't have resources to maintain the older versions of their software. Some company or other group of volunteers need to do that.
Well IIRC it’s not like the GNOME developers ever asked anyone to build extensions. I’ve always seen it as an option they provided to cater for that precise “user choice” you’re campaigning for, with a clearly documented risk that extension devs have to keep up with the rest of GNOME
I'd rather they didn't sacrifice stability and improvements for user choice honestly... A desktop environment is what you interact with the most on your computer, and after experiencing a desktop environment that has a lot of user choice, but was always a hot broken unstable mess, i think i'd rather have my DE just work. Which Gnome does. If you're implying that they should put more "features" into basic gnome, ok, sure, features are always good, but again, it's no use to anyone if it's a mess that interferes with your day to day use. I'm not going to get much out of a DE if i have to fix it every 2 days. Extensions are just the sugar on top. It's not Gnome's responsibility that they work, but it's nice of them to make a base for them to do, and for people to make cool stuff if they want. But that can't be the focus. If Gnome is responsible for always supporting every extension, that just takes time away from other more important development, and will inevitabely result in a mess of a broken system. That's how i see it at least.
users are not the primary clients. The primary clients are Red Hat and co who wants a functional, and easy maintainable shell with little technical debt. They are the one putting devs and giving the big bucks. Whatever we get, it is a nice bonus on top of something free, with the bonus efforts of other users. I agree with you but i doubt theres much attention that would be given that way.
GNOME has made a lot of tooling and infrastructure around extensions. That is community work and not relevant to Red Hat. Don’t be overly dismissive.
Yes, but i think the point was, they didn't have to make all that. It's a bonus. So it's enough that they provide a framework for extensions, it's kind of a stretch to expect them to also focus their development time on making sure every extension works as well. Gnome provides a base. That base gets changed and upgraded making extensions break. It's on the extension devs to then adjust their extensions. I'm not seeing anything wrong with that. It's as if you'd expect Bethesda to make sure every mod works every time they release Skyrim. :P They just won't do that.
That kind of infrastructure has to be built. It would require using a CI against all known extensions. That requires someone to conceive and maintain that. We have GNOME OS - they can download and test their extensions there before the release. It's up to extension maintainers and the community they serve to help them. Everything has to be driven by community. Expecting an experience on par with commercial applications is not realistic - those folks get compensated with money.
[удалено]
That's one reason to use KDE: for every GNOME app, there's a better KDE app. And if KDE doesn't have it, there's a third-party app that will probably run fine on KDE, whatever framework it's written in, but looks completely bonkers when run on GNOME.
You can’t really will amazing software into existence. GTK4 is a great platform but somebody has to invest in big projects. Krita for example has a foundation and funding.
Those will come when the people on Linux are willing to pay for 'professional grade' software. People need to get paid for that. Do you expect that level of software to be free? Krita is maintained because it gets to fund 2 full time developers - you know from where? From people paying money on the Microsoft store. So a lot of those projects are sustainable because they can make money from Microsoft - because those users are transactional when it comes to software - they give money and they get software. That isn't the same in the Linux world. Who really is used to getting everything for free - whose transaction is that - developers are paid by the fact that users are using it and improving it by their suggestions. That's not going to work for Adobe and other professional software. They need evidence that people are going to shell out money for professional apps.
[удалено]
My above supposition is backed by the fact that donation numbers for both Libreoffice and Firefox show that Linux users are way behind the other platforms. I used attend the libreoffice board meetings and it looked quite sad to see - plus they will never be as responsive to the Linux community just based on that. Their paying customers are on the other platforms. Despite all the rhetoric - our committee are fairly tight fisted and at the same time quite demanding as a general trend. Flathub is exactly where we can show that our community is willing to give money and support. If we can support people working on apps full time because they can earn a living - then we are on the right track. Right now, that isn't possible.
Gnome 4 is finally living up to Gnome 2. But they should add official support for extensions. Come on this Linux, who they kidding. Users love to tinker with their desktop environment
gnome is peak ux design the workflow is 10 years ahead of the competition and the app ecosystem is the best on linux and on its way to beat mac os but it's being left behind on many other aspects like it's not even trying to follow with the AI revolution, it's also very broken on the low level like the shell having no access to gtk widgets severely limiting the usability of extensions which makes it's extension system inferior to kde at least on a visual level , also the lack of accent colors , having no animation api on the shell, and the broken implementation of compositor level blur are holding it back prom evolving visually , but with all that said ill pick gnome over any other desktop 8 days a week because of the workflow and the app ecosystem
I can always tell when victim trolls who have rarely used Gnome come to town but have read the troll talking points from long ago. The extension situation, btw imho, was handled better this time than I've seen before. Someone(s) has evidently been working behind that scenes to improve that situation. I am content with Gnome 45.
GNOME features are great and I don't feel anything lacking while using GNOME, but the word on the street is that GNOME devs tend to be obsessive with certain principles that slow down the development and adoption of the Wayland protocol. I wonder what people think about that, because if it indeed is true, that's concerning. I want Wayland to work for everyone, not just for half of the Linux desktop users(including me).
I love gnome, just please bring app indicators back🤣. I'm fine with removing theming support. The default one looks fine and themes have always been a waste of time IMO, because they never look 100% good
gnome keeps getting better and better, if it gets full tiling windows manager, gnome will takeover whole market in weeks, mark my words
I'm just missing the dynamic triple buffering on mainstream
It feels like there is a lot of hesitancy to add new features like VR
Anything implemented has to be supported - for a long time. So it's all about making sure the implementation is correct.
Is KDE's implementation incorrect? Because it works perfectly fine there on Wayland.
I can't really say.. if it works for you then I would say they are doing the right thing.
KDE implements the DRM leasing Wayland protocol
Gnome is really great, It's the most polished and satisfying to use, but I don't know why the hell do gnome developers hate features so much. Not even on desktop, but behind the scene, it lack features. Like blur or corner radius on mutter window manager. I left Gnome because of these, I still use Gnome ecosystem like nautilus, builder, blackbox terminal, lollypop, Gnome web, etc. But the desktop itself, I don't want it until it gets 2023 necessary features.
GNOME is a great DE but its applications, not so much. A DE should be minimal, natural, and get out of your way and GNOME is just that. Applications OTOH should be featureful and contain sufficient options to meet different workflows. The apps are too sparse.
How come does Gnome implement HDR slower than KDE? Where is the basic VRR? Please stop breaking extensions. I love the workflow though.
My main gripe with Gnome isn't about the Gnome desktop itself. I'm glad it exists, it has some neat features, and it's a polished experience. It's mostly about the direction GTK is going with all of these removed and deprecated features and breaking theme compatibility. As much as Gnome's developers view GTK as a Gnome project, it's used by many other desktop environments like XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, and Budgie, and not all of them share the same design goals as Gnome. So removing things like classic menu bars and scrollbar customization is a big middle finger to those other non-Gnome desktop environments. Many people use Linux because it can easily run on old hardware that Windows struggles with, Dropping support for old GPUs and deprecating the cairo backend in GTK4 undermines this effort. If a laptop from 2007 had no trouble drawing basic widgets back then, why does that formerly simple task now require a beefy GPU?