Heaps of tweaks and improvements incoming with GNOME 42 After the project reorganized its version numbering, GNOME 42 consolidates the ongoing modernization effort. Bear in mind, we're describing the release candidate, so some of the details might change before it comes out. The Reg looked at GNOME 40 about a year ago. That was a major release, and one of the big changes was new …
More of a case of 'fiddling while gnome burns' IMHO.
The excellent usability of Gnome 2 is a mere memory that has to be expunged from everyone's memory in their view of the world.
Like Windows, it seems that the whole concept of 'ease of use' has gone the way of the Dodo.
and TRIPLING DOWN apparently on the 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE FLATASS rounded-look scrollbar (that is WAY too FORNICATING SKINNY to properly grab with a mouse) and FUGLY Micros~1 Windows-Ape/Win-10-nic/FLATTY look. YUCHHKKKKK!!!!!
NO. Just NO.
TraditionalOk, please, or similar, or GTFO.
But having ALL WEB PAGES AND APPLICATIONS COMPLY with my theming choice for GTK3 and GTK4?? THAT I *WANT*!!
And you can BET YOUR SWEET ARSE that on MY machines, it will NOT be ADWAITA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Within Mate, getting rid of adwaita requires an extra step:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences \
theme 'TraditionalOk'
For Firefox, this (about:config):
widget.content.gtk-theme-override = "TraditionalOk"
widget.non-native-theme.enabled = false
Yes it WAS a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ARSE to figure this out. It PISSED ME OFF SO MUCH I *BOTHERED* to figure it out. Those 2D FLATASS millenial SMUGS can SUCK MY FREEDOM OF CHOICE instead of FORCING ME into their 2D FLATSO HELL!!!!!!!!
(see icon - this 2D FLATASS ANTI-FREEDOM crap REALLY pisses me off!!)
Said shite scrollbar is also being peddled by Firefox in a bid to drown out the carefully selected and tailored-to-my-need skin that every other frikkin's window on my desktop adheres to.
And what desktop is that? Why, it is of course that well-known fork of Gnome 2 which calls itself MATE after the South American herb tea.
Long live desktop productivity!
Why use scrollbars at all? They're a terrible UI. I want to be able to middle-click and drag and release to chuck whatever I'm looking at in a direction with a certain velocity, and have it scroll with momentum until it decays away, or I stop it scrolling by grabbing it with the middle mouse button again.
middle click still works. But I want non-hiding scroll bars that show me about where I am on the page based on their relative position. When searching through a doc or source file or whatever for specific text, and it wraps around, the scroll bar will bounce back up to the top and let you know you've "wrapped".
That and I tend to grab the thing and scroll it like was intended.
Besides - it IS my computer and my theming choice. They SHOULD respect it!
Can gedit have its menu back please? For nearly thirty years I've used Alt-F-S to save a file.
Oh, and when my mouse goes outside the window can I click on the window behind it please?
Oh, and can I have the little ticks on the windows slide bar back? And can you please make it wider? And can you please stop it disappearing when I move away? Oh, and ...
Never mind. :-(
As was said in an earlier comment... Gnome devs have given a huge middle finger to any remaining ease of use that Gnome 2 might have had.
Well F..K them. I'm done with this POS.
Honestly, I hope you all burn in the firey pits of hell that you have been digging since Gnome 3.0 came out.
[Article author here]
Just FWIW, there is a set of forks of the more important GNOME accessory apps, maintained by the Mint team, intended for use on the Win95-like Gtk desktops (Cinnamon, MATE, PIXEL, Xfce):
https://linuxmint-developer-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/xapps.html
So for example the X-Apps version of Gedit is called Xed:
https://github.com/linuxmint/xed
I used to use it all the time on openSUSE.
It's forked off Gedit 3 so it's a bit more current than Pluma, the MATE text editor, which is forked from Gedit 2 in GNOME 2.
Generally the X-Apps are IMHO a lot more usable than the modern CSD-equipped menubarless GNOME ones. E.g. I use Xviewer, their fork of the GNOME Document Viewer.
"The GNOME environment continues to both grow and become more closely integrated, subsuming what was once third-party functionality, such as mapping and telephony. "
Good God! That sounds like the systemd manifesto,
What is it with these people, do they want to follow in Apple's footsteps and control everything?
Even gedit wasn’t GNOME enough for them and is being replaced with something less functional. All their modern integrated apps are inferior to independently developed equivalents these days, not due to “failing to keep up” but due to the newer versions being vastly inferior to their older counterparts.
Linux is also making more than its fair share of closed standards, locking out the BSDs and other systems to try and carve out a scope for lock-in (similar to what Google Chrome does). I’m not sure if folks really are better off with open source software any more given the rate of trash development (change for the sake of change) we see these days.
Even gedit wasn’t GNOME enough for them and is being replaced with something less functional.
Gedit's interface is just bizarre now. The few things it can do are all under a "Settings" icon (gearwheel) at the top right, exactly where you wouldn't expect it.
Integrated mapping and telephony?
I always thought the focus on dancing glitz could have only one end in mind.
Now it is out in the open that GNOME 3 is a smartphone UI in direct competition with Android for the shite end of the market.
Icon for the target user base.
If you want a desktop you can actually do something useful on, go look elsewhere, you stupid last-millennium retard.*
*A badge I wear with pride, less there be any misunderstanding.
Actually, the new version of the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines doesn’t say "Fuck you, luser", surprisingly enough. Not for the most part:
https://developer.gnome.org/hig/principles.html
But it’s easy to get that impression based on how Gnome 3 as delivered violates almost every known principle of usability, and then doesn’t allow much customisation, barring the user from implementing practical workarounds.
Everything on that page is a public relations front put on by the developers (or future stockholders?). At least you hope, otherwise the developers have the memory of a Goldfish.
Gnome has been twisting truths and breaking their own designs for. Apparently they're trying to position themselves into a lucrative payoff in a similar fashion QT did. That bothers users because QT to boot was headed for a payoff but, Gnome by all accounts never presented that goal. Well, never until it has now become obvious.
But back to that page of "principles". Forget Gnome 2 and all the hoopla of everything else Gnome related, simply and _ONLY_ compare that page with the latest GTK and see if you can find anything of truth in those principles. I'm almost certain you can't and it's in that contrast of those 2 simple things which reveals Gnome's private intentions.
Eek... I still shudder when I think back to the time I once fired up good ol' reliable pre-GTK3 Gedit on some Ubuntu system and screamed WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS... THING!
Luckily, for some reason over ssh The Thing frequently just displayed as a big black rectangle, which was a good excuse to jump ship to a better all-purpose editor (Geany, as it happens... oh noes, that also went GTK3, but at least still bears some semblance of its former self).
I generally agree with you but would offer a warning: I don't actually sell anything to end users, but work for others who do and one of them, with an old fashioned GUI that hasn't changed much since 2000, regularly gets potential customers who look at a demo of the software and say "You expect me to buy something that hasn't been developed since 1999?" The software is under constant development and changes almost every week and actual users love it, but the GUI remains the same and that seems to put newbies off. However, the developer can't afford to lose so many customers so we are undergoing an intensive project to "Prettify" the software so it doesn't scare potentials away. So looks "Can" be important; it depends on context.
Using Win7 updated right now & a boot DVD version of Zorin OS. I really like the flexibility this version gives you. And really like the stability from design/function side. https://zorin.com/os/
Mozilla Firefox browser has started this campaign of becoming a Chrome clone & makes changes to functions that users already like & are use to. Changes the GUI to match Chrome. We are forced to search out workarounds to return to what we like/want. Mozilla is silent to our comments. A lot of us chose FF because it was NOT Google Chrome. Have downloaded & am using Ungoogled Chrome just in case Mozilla stays stupid.
Sounds like GNOME 42 is headed in the same direction. A Google/Chrome/Windows clone. Only with ZERO options. You either like/accept the changes or you are free to choose another version.
I like Win7 & Zorin OS. I am done with M$ after Win7. Will be buying Zorin OS Pro version just so I can give some financial support to developers. Their current work & future plans match what I want in an OS. Definitely NOT change for changes sake. If it ain't broke then DON'T fix it. Include options that keep the current users happy & new options to attract the new crowd. The KEY is don't FORCE change on happy users. Listen to them first. Either/or will lose one side or the other. Both gives them options that keep them using.
[̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)̲̅$̲̅] https://zorin.com/os/
Have the blurred text bugs, sorry, _features_ in GTK4 been addressed yet?
The reason I ask is because most people believe they are immune to computer eye strain, even though medical studies have shown that nearly everyone who uses computers for work suffers from eye strain even if they aren’t consciously aware of it.
People using GTK4 apps have noticed that text is often excessively blurred.
The GTK4 features in question are:
1.) Deprecation of subpixel antialiasing. The “subpixel” part is a bit misleading, because if you remove subpixel antialiasing you’re flushing 2/3 of your horizontal resolution down the toilet. To explain why this is the case requires going into some depth on how the human eye works, and how >95% of currently existing laptop and desktop displays work. Yes, I know Apple has started doing this, but they can get away with it. Most people don’t have a super high resolution screen.
2.) Subpixel positioning by default. This is where virtual pixels straddle the physical pixels of the display. You lose about half of your resolution that way. There are valid use cases for subpixel positioning, particularly when doing the final fine-tuning layout of a document for print on paper. Text for reading on a sceen is _not_ one of the valid use cases.
Basically the assumption behind these decisions was that the only situation where people will be viewing text in Linux is where the text is animated, rotating at arbitrary angles, in bright colours, semitransparent against a complex background, on a $2000 monitor that few people can even afford. Basically, the familiar situation in software development – and beyond – where developers get so excited about fun new features that they forget about supporting basic functionality.
There was some heated discussion about this over at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/3393 and https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
So heated, that one of the developers wrote – about barely legible text – “That could be described as more blurry, but its not a bug.” Classic.
Quote: "...improvements incoming with GNOME 42..."
Pardon me, but to put the word "improvements" and the word "GNOME" in the same sentence was only permissible while GNOME 2 was a thing! That was years ago! (Comment: XFCE is excellent in 2022!)
Since then we've had the abomination called Gnome 3. And the abomination called Gnome 4.
In recent years some of us have had to struggle with GTK3, somewhat ameliorated by using Glade! I've recently considered upgrading some of my personal applications from GTK3 to GTK4. Surprise, surprise:
(1) The programmer guidance for GTK3 to GTK4 conversion contains hundreds of injunctions which say "Do not use X".
(Link: https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/migrating-3to4.html)
(2) Glade is not going to move from GTK3.
......so it looks like my programs will be stuck in GTK3. Did anyone actually consider "backward compatibility"? Did anyone think about the lessons learned moving from Python2 to Python3?
I must be missing something here......but all this looks like multiple retrograde steps!
Huh... I've always seen KDE as the go-to desktop for OpenSUSE. At least, I seem to recall that being the default option when I last installed Leap. I'm stuck using Gnome Desktop on a VM at work -- KDE isn't available to load -- and can. Not. Stand. It. (But it does give me an environment that minimizes my need to use the underlying Windows 10 so it's got that going for it.)
[Article author here]
SUSE, the paid-for enterprise version, comes with a customised GNOME 3 and it does not have KDE in the repos at all any more. There is a community version that you can add, though.
openSUSE, the free community-backed project, offers both including a fairly well-integrated KDE setup *and* GNOME. Quite a lot of SUSE staff favour KDE.
SLE, i.e. paid-for SUSE, and openSUSE, are *not* the same things. The Leap version of openSUSE is synchronised with the enterprise release, but it includes a great many more packages, desktops and so on.
Me personally, I used Xfce, because I like my taskbar vertical and MATE can't do that properly. KDE does it, but not well (huge start button, huge clock, window buttons that change size according to how many there are, and other misfeatures).
There is a staggering lack of nice things being said in these comments about GNOME 4.
Even SystemD has its advocates among our commentards.
This should surely be telling the GNOME developer community something.
P.S. To all those struggling with this shite, I cannot recommend the MATE desktop highly enough.
I believe that in the GNOME developer community, contemptuous disdain for the (remaining) users is the standard approach. For that reason I imagine they would be delighted to see the comments here.
I use Xubuntu, but in the past have always added Nautilus and Gedit to use in place of Thunar and Mousepad. No longer.
I have to say I'm loving the tirade of hate for Gnome, I mean the developers must feel the constant waves of hate for their desktop environment their echo chamber can't be that good surely, unless their so deep in the mess now they simply can't say "no this stinks, change it".
There is a solution for this though they're called Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce. I use the former its nice, familiar and doesn't hide the functions I need most, it only very occasionally does a whoopsie
This is going to sound harsh, be here goes: I’ve used Gnome on almost a daily basis for about four years, and the _best_ thing about Gnome for me is that it’s forced me to learn how to use the command line. If the terminal is more user-friendly for a novice than the graphical shell, that says something about the graphical shell. (Scroll down for a few suggestions how to fix Gnome)
The problem is that Gnome in its current state shows a nearly complete lack of understanding of modern user interface design (unless “modern” is being used here as a euphemism for “complete disregard for usability”).
I think one reason for this is that most of the important work is done by a handful of volunteers on their spare time. It’s hard, time-consuming work that doesn’t necessarily leave enough spare time and energy and mental space to learn graphical user interface design. Also, co-ordinating volunteer efforts is harder than herding cats. Those few who _are_ paid to do development for Gnome are going to have other priorities. It’s the old “incomes and outcomes” problem that plagues both FOSS and proprietary projects. On top of that, project management is notoriously hard. In any large project, there’s going to be a danger of scope creep, turf wars, office politics, harmful ideologies, and difficulty maintaining focus.
A few suggestions:
0.) A meta-suggestion: Read up on user interface design. A excellent starting point is the collection of guides at
https://www.nngroup.com
Follow that up with reading the Linux-specific tips at:
https://medium.com/@probonopd/make-it-simple-linux-desktop-usability-part-1-5fa0fb369b42
1.) A graphical application launcher that’s compatible with a large screen, pointing device, and more than a dozen GUI apps. The current application launcher (the Android-like grid thingy) is optimised for a small touchscreen, turning what ought to be a worst-case O(log n) search into an average-case ~O(n^2) search. This is compounded slightly by the tendency to make all icons look more and more identical to each other. There is also Gnome “dash”, their clone of the macOS Dock, but that’s good for only the most frequently used half dozen or so apps. In the name of “convergence”, the limitations of a smartphone are forced onto laptops and desktops. Ideally, a Linux graphical shell can detect what display and input devices are present, and adjust accordingly. Or allow the user a choice of launchers to match their use case and work flow. People have tried to do this through third-party Gnome Extensions, but it’s turned out to be too much of an uphill battle, with Extensions breaking with every Gnome update.
2.) Some thought and planning put into menu organisation. The natural temptation is to hide most functionality in a so-called “clean” interface, burying frequently-needed inputs and controls deep inside parallel nested mystery-meat hamburger menus. This is made worse by placing the newest (but least frequently wanted by users) features in the most prominent locations, forcing users to dig through a mountain of cruft, and do multiple clicks, to get at the items needed for everyday tasks. These unintentional “dark patterns” harm discoverability for new users, and productivity for experienced users, and should have no place in FOSS software. Users should be able to get stuff done with a minimum of searching and actions. Menu bars, top bar menus, global menus are proven to work well. Use them.
3.) Fix the text rendering regressions in GTK4 (see my comment on that topic above). Re-introduce subpixel rendering where appropriate, and switch off subpixel rendering where it’s inappropriate. It’s as if it never occurred to the GTK4 developers that people might want to read and write text in Linux.
4.) There are specific problems with multiple apps bundled with Gnome. Without getting into too much detail:
a) Make efficient use of screen space, such that frequently-needed UI elements are visible (not hidden) and clickable elements more than just one pixel wide. Lots of empty space in a topbar? Put useful stuff there. Clutter is best dealt with by thoughtful organisation, not sweeping the clutter under a bed (AKA a hamburger menu). The general principle here is that the most frequently needed inputs and controls should be the quickest to access.
b) Allows users some flexibility and customisation, since use cases vary. If you think the sole purpose of a graphical shell is to passively consume commercial entertainment media, think again. Think of the graphical shell as a workplace and playground, not a cable TV (there are apps for that). Allow users to set their own directory structure within their /home directories. Allow users access to their own files as defined by unix and ACL permissions. Go easy on hard-coding things. Let go of the users-are-livestock mentality of proprietary OSes. I get it, functionality confuses users. The way to deal with that problem is gentle nudges, not frustrating brick walls. Resist the very real temptation to be a control freak; I’ve often been one myself!
I could go on, but that’s enough for one post.
What you see as “lots of hate”, I see as people who believe in FOSS holding FOSS software to a high standard because they want it to succeed.
I would suggest maybe a site like this full of tech geeks doesnt really understand modern user interface design and would rather use a terminal.
a) while getting work done, I have a LOT of mate-terminal sessions running on multiple virtual desktops under Mate - and each has a specific name and a specfic purpose. (I count 9, only one of that has no application windows open on it at the moment)
b) Mate terminal sessions are often ssh'd into other things, so I leave them open out of convenience. And since on FreeBSD my default shell is 'csh' it's nice to have all of that easily searched command history there.
c) pluma with syntax highlights and 'trim extra space off the ends of lines' is my go-to code editor, for everything from C and C++ to php, html, and javascript/css. If you have a hybrid project, that's kinda necessary.
d) if you set up your Xorg correctly (and do not forget to firewall port 6000 if you do this) you can use 'export DISPLAY=some-workstation:0.0' and run pluma natively on THAT machine, with no need to (let's say on an RPi) use an 800x480 touch screen to edit code. Just have it run on your big bad workstation with it's yuge monitor and keyboard and mouse, edit away, use a git repo to manage source files across the multiple machines.
(yeah probably described how a LOT of productive people get things done)
Oh, and that word modern - probably does NOT mean what you think it means!
Does GNOME 4 depends on systemd? Why yes it does, that dependency was introduced with version 3. Whatever gave you the idea it might do? ;o(
The systemd-free Devuan does not offer it (though of course you can still add the pair of them post-install if you really want to defeat the object of Devuan in the first place)
"As GNOME Software supports Flatpaks, and [update downloads] can be big"
Flatpak only downloads deltas and the underlying OSTree deduplicates files. I find Flatpak updates tend to be smaller and faster than system package updates even though my Flatpak apps are bigger.
It's entertaining to see the frothing hate here for Gnome. Try KDE.
Just installed the β of Fedora 36, comes with Gnome 42 beta. Changes are subtle but welcome.
I use Fedora and Gnome for my work machine all day every day, and productivity slumps only for those odd moments when I have to boot into Windows 10 for some reason. The new screenshot tool is good (long time coming...) and I can't complain about the font rendering, all looks fine to me. But then again, I don't even subscribe to the religion of systemd-hating, I just got used to using systemctl/journalctl and enjoy the benefits.
The distraction free / limited user choice philosophy of Gnome's design has its merits, lack of countless hours of fun "optimising productivity by customising every little detail just right for me" aside.
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