GNOME Shell To Ship New App For Managing Extensions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME Shell To Ship New App For Managing Extensions

GNOME 3.36 will begin shipping a new application as part of the GNOME Shell to manage desktop extensions...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...Extensions-App

[mroche]

This is now the primary way for users to manage extensions. It supports globally disabling extensions, uninstalling and updating user extensions, and toggling individual extensions on or off.

Is there a GNOME dev discussion around this topic I can go through? Reading the brief note on this, it's almost exactly like the extensions part of GNOME Tweaks. Though I like the touch of being able to update without needing to open a browser, and adding removal directly into it.

This seems to still require the use of the browser extension and extensions.gnome.org in order to install anything (unless you manually install the extension yourself). Did they add back the option to install extensions from tarballs right in the UI? I'm a bit confused by this change.

Cheers,
Mike

[144Hz]

mroche The intention was to split ways with Gnome-Software and have a dedicated app with better supports for configurations, updates, disabling distributors’ session extensions etc. At the same time it elegantly mitigates future problems with a fully sandboxed and locked down app store.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues/1968

The UI follows GNOME design patterns so it all feels natural. I don’t use any extensions but like it anyway.

[mroche]

144Hz I never use GNOME Software, so until a few minutes ago I didn't realize extensions were accessible through it. I only use a handful of extensions on my system, two from the extension site, and the rest are all bundled in RHEL repos.

There will be no extension installation in the Extensions app - they must be installed from extensions.gnome.org

I feel like this is a missed opportunity but that's a personal preference.

Cheers,
Mike

[George99]

I don’t use any extensions

Highly unlikely as GNOME desktop w/o extensions is almost useless.

[cynical]

I can understand what they’re doing, but as a web person, the duplication is odd. Why not just have Gnome Software pull extensions from the site? You could have extension management built-in while being accessed through a tab in Gnome Software, and then even source user reviews all from the same place.

I think the distro software model going to be a challenge moving forward. Rolling release with rigorous testing makes more sense imo. It seems like it costs more effort, but imagine not having to maintain old versions or backport security patches.

Maybe rolling + LTS releases for servers.

[Britoid]

Highly unlikely as GNOME desktop w/o extensions is almost useless.

I use GNOME Shell without extensions and find it more useful than KDE and Windows.

[Volta]

Will Gnome 3.36 get into Fedora 31?

[144Hz]

Volta No. Fedora 32 only.

[aaahaaap]

Anyone have any idea why this isn't integrated into settings?