System76 Continues Working On GNOME Improvements For Future Ubuntu

[mike44]

Gnome need a lot of work to reach Unity's workflow level.

[t.s.]

Gnome need a lot of work to reach Unity's workflow level.

Well, unity exists because Canonical want to make Apple-ish UI that is user friendly, usable for everyone. Gnome, OTOH, want to make UI they developer want. Imagine, in Gnome land, you MUST use something like Gnome tweak tool OOTB. It is that difficult to include those settings in Gnome-settings. Isn't it amazing?

[zanny]

Well, unity exists because Canonical want to make Apple-ish UI that is user friendly, usable for everyone. Gnome, OTOH, want to make UI they developer want. Imagine, in Gnome land, you MUST use something like Gnome tweak tool OOTB. It is that difficult to include those settings in Gnome-settings. Isn't it amazing?

If you were paying for Gnome, it would be fine to say it is the developers responsibility to meet your needs.

Since Gnome is an open source effectively community project with minimal involvement from Red Hat, it will always certainly respond to Red Hat's needs, but you aren't a paying customer.

With free software, the developer gets to write what they want. The Gnome developers want the desktop they have now, and they don't want it to be customizable.

Which is absolutely fine. If you want Gnome with some other feature, you can fork it and add it, and try to market your changes as an improvement. If enough people support you over Gnome proper, maybe they will be forced to adopt your changes to appease the general userbase.

If you don't want to do that work, but you don't like Gnome... don't use Gnome. There is no limit on the number of desktops in Linux. I do think it is a problem when the most popular desktop is also the singular vision and design of a very select group of people who don't want it to be configurable, but that desktop is then popular for a reason. People want it that way.

As long as KDE remains viable I'm happy over here, and Gnome can do whatever it wants. It is of course a shame that at some point Gnome and KDE didn't merge, but it is understandable to varying degrees like the C people wouldn't want to touch C++ / Qt and why the C++ people don't want to touch C / Glib. The former is crazy complex and hard to debug, the latter is cumbersome and error prone.

[berarma]

Gnome developers are doing a good job at keeping the code base simple but extensible. I like the simplicity of Gnome, but anyone can make it as complex as he/she wants. Just don't ask Gnome developers to do a custom version for you for free. You'll have to write your own extensions or convince/hire someone to do it. I prefer them to keep the good development pace and stability at the cost of some fancy features that not everybody needs. Remember Gnome is a free product with constant evolution and improvements. Take what they're giving for free and make it better if you can.

[Geopirate]

The problem with that statement is the failure to clarify what usability is about.

If you took 3 seconds to google the word "usability" and read the second line of Wikipedia, it would be this:

"In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use.<sup>"

There are plenty of criticism to level against the Ubuntu folks, but they can take something and improve user satisfaction for a large swath of people. Look at all the people upset about them ditching Unity which has been running on just bug fixes for 5 years! Arguably it would have taken less effort to produce the same result on the Gnome stack. The main issue people have with Gnome are all the things that are hardcoded and can't be changed. This is a job almost tailor made for the Ubuntu folks. If they were bad at doing this, they would have been just another tiny Debian fork, we wouldn't be talking about them, and there wouldn't be nearly as many Ubuntu specific .deb files of popular software.</sup>

[labyrinth153]

The problem is Ubuntu got where it was by pretending to be the good guys. They attracted a lot of users and followers with the promise of Linux for human beings. An enterprise class Linux distribution, free and tailored for common everyday workstation users and advanced enterprise support features for businesses.

The money made on the enterprise profits canonical as a business and the non service features are made free for casual or hobbiest users.

This ended up all being a lie as suddenly Canonical adopted a different branding, refused to participate in the majority of standard projects, filled the void with Ubuntu only NIH software, and abandoned all existing community efforts.

Their reasons for not participating in wayland for example were widely critized and fact checked by software developers at the time.

I highly recommend you run as far away from Ubuntu as possible. They are apple without the focus on privacy and the environment and without a pedigree of success.

[finalzone]

"In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use."

With that definition, look at the highlighted keywords. Contrast with the following sequence

The thing is the main real weakness of Gnome is the usability for many people.

Care to elaborate who are those "many people".

There are plenty of criticism to level against the Ubuntu folks, but they can take something and improve user satisfaction for a large swath of people. Look at all the people upset about them ditching Unity which has been running on just bug fixes for 5 years! Arguably it would have taken less effort to produce the same result on the Gnome stack.

The major issue with Unity is the specific codes through libraries for Ubuntu making harder to port on other distributions. Functions like Hub can be easily converted as extension now the API is stabilized.

The main issue people have with Gnome are all the things that are hard-coded and can't be changed.

Do you mean an extensible core function from Gnome Shell with a defined standard?

[jonathonp]

Gnome developers are doing a good job at keeping the code base simple but extensible. I like the simplicity of Gnome, but anyone can make it as complex as he/she wants. Just don't ask Gnome developers to do a custom version for you for free. You'll have to write your own extensions or convince/hire someone to do it. I prefer them to keep the good development pace and stability at the cost of some fancy features that not everybody needs. Remember Gnome is a free product with constant evolution and improvements. Take what they're giving for free and make it better if you can.

In KDE Plasma Desktop and Mate Desktop, i can right click with the default file manager and create a document [A nice little TEXT file! Hooray!!]. This functionality has been removed from nautilus file manager in Gnome Desktop from what i can see.

My point is quite simple. Basic functionality has been removed from nautilus making the desktop totally unusable for me when i need to get work done. A gnome user might want to ask a few basic questions.

1. Are the developers in touch with reality?
2. Do they understand the purpose of a file manager eg right click create folder, file etc? Yes i can create a folder but what creating a document?

From what i remember nautilus file manager in Gnome 2 had such basic functionality. Are the developers drunk or are they just idealistic and enjoy forcing their limited understanding of a file manager on the Gnome user. The year is 2017!! No excuse for this kind of garbage. The whole thing reminds of me of Apple and how they force the user (a person who happens to be using their system) to be a part of their ecosystem. I love freedom, i like to configure things and don't like having my hands tied behind my back. I do use gnome at times and my daughter likes it but it's not the ideal desktop for me. Mate and KDE wins hands down over the Gnome limitations in functionality.

Gnome developers have done a good job with HiDPI support and implementing Wayland so i give their credit where it's due. i will be interested to see what Ubuntu does with Gnome.

[slalomsk8er]

In KDE Plasma Desktop and Mate Desktop, i can right click with the default file manager and create a document [A nice little TEXT file! Hooray!!]. This functionality has been removed from nautilus file manager in Gnome Desktop from what i can see.

My point is quite simple. Basic functionality has been removed from nautilus making the desktop totally unusable for me when i need to get work done. A gnome user might want to ask a few basic questions.

1. Are the developers in touch with reality?
2. Do they understand the purpose of a file manager eg right click create folder, file etc? Yes i can create a folder but what creating a document?

From what i remember nautilus file manager in Gnome 2 had such basic functionality. Are the developers drunk or are they just idealistic and enjoy forcing their limited understanding of a file manager on the Gnome user. The year is 2017!! No excuse for this kind of garbage. The whole thing reminds of me of Apple and how they force the user (a person who happens to be using their system) to be a part of their ecosystem. I love freedom, i like to configure things and don't like having my hands tied behind my back. I do use gnome at times and my daughter likes it but it's not the ideal desktop for me. Mate and KDE wins hands down over the Gnome limitations in functionality.

Gnome developers have done a good job with HiDPI support and implementing Wayland so i give their credit where it's due. i will be interested to see what Ubuntu does with Gnome.

I had the same problem and found that Nautilus file manager still has this capability but someone messed up and now it is very much hidden from the user.
The fix is to add template files to the ~/Templates folder.
I like this setup as it is simple and flexible.

Your distribution and the gnome guys messed up by not helping the user to find this feature by setting a sane default.

[Geopirate]

With that definition, look at the highlighted keywords. Contrast with the following sequence


Care to elaborate who are those "many people".


The major issue with Unity is the specific codes through libraries for Ubuntu making harder to port on other distributions. Functions like Hub can be easily converted as extension now the API is stabilized.


Do you mean an extensible core function from Gnome Shell with a defined standard?

If you can't find "many people" who have issues with Gnome's interface I have no idea where you have been for the last 5 years or so. It seemed to play a significant part in Unity being a thing in the first place.....Mate, Cinnamon, Budgie.

I started by saying there are plenty criticisms, I'm not sure what your point is with your specific issue that isn't at all related to anything else mentioned here?

Yes there are extensions that can fix some issues. They are not available out of the box as they are with other DE's. Many of them are not officially supported by Gnome and/or break with Gnome updates. You shouldn't need to be an engineer to tweak trivial things with your desktop. I personally am an engineer and can make the required changes and Gnome is the main DE that I've used for several years now. The thing is my 9 year old can use just about anything else and tweak the interface to her heart's content out of the box....but Gnome....