GNOME Shell Continues Eyeing Improvements As It Approaches 10 Years Old

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME Shell Continues Eyeing Improvements As It Approaches 10 Years Old

While GNOME 3.0 didn't debut until early 2011, GNOME 3.0 and GNOME Shell have now been in development for a decade. While GNOME Shell has come a long way over the past ten years, the UI/UX folks are still eyeing further enhancements to this widely used Linux desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Shell-Mid-2020-Plans

[bash2bash]

So many years with the worst user interface...

I hope GNOME4 stops using this android/mac interface and moves to something more usable.

[misGnomer]

To paraphrase J. Lennon: "Mutter, you had me, but I never had you..."

Congrats to the GNOME developers for persisting with their beliefs for an entire decade and probably beyond.


Personally, after GNOME suddenly abandoned the established workflow of the Gnome 2.x desktop line there was some wandering in the wilderness in the early 'teens, but eventually Cinnamon and Mate started picking up shattered pieces and evolving... building something familiar from its ashes. I recall hearing that even Xfce may have had a .point release in recent years...

I did have a look at the blog entry though [took over a minute to load and the videos gave a format/MIME type error] and some of the usability improvements look positive. Hopefully some of those can be adapted/adopted by the ever-more-distant evolutionary relatives without unsurmountable issues.

[MihaiBojescu]

So many years with the worst user interface...

I hope GNOME4 stops using this android/mac interface and moves to something more usable.

I'm mainly a Plasma user. Before Plasma I used Gnome for more than a year, and I can say I actually liked its UI and its philosophy. Its performance though... not so much (main reason for moving to Plasma).

[skeevy420]

Very detailed blog. Clearly a lot of thought went into this.

Yeah, can't disagree with that. I think their Distraction Free section cancels out wanting to add stuff or improve Launching and Initial State outside of an initial start/first run tutorial. First run tutorials are always welcome and we can always skip or close if we don't need them. The whole point of a distraction-free experience is not having bullcrap come at you from all over the place like on a random person's Windows machine where you get blasted with 14 game launchers, a gorilla, a paperclip, some Java updaters, and Microsoft trying to sell some OneNote on boot/login. Outside of click here for help, please leave it bland and let the user go full retard.

I noticed that everything they listed under Strong Points can be done with KDE after digging around in its settings since I slightly mimic the GNOME workflow in KDE. Instead of the GNOME styled alt/tab hot corner I use a the workspace/activities changer since I use a taskbar and can alt/tab which makes the GNOME style corner seem redundant to me. I only mention that because they repeated various versions of the following quote so I found it to be a bit disingenuous.

No other desktop OS has a core workflow this simple and straightforward, and many people really really love it. This is another core strength we want to build on.

I'm gonna leave them calling themselves a "desktop OS" alone.

[misGnomer]

FWIW I don't nor I ever have hated Gnome or most anything. I recall some effort at moaning though over my ilk being dumped from Gnome userbase, especially as I had been helping quite a few people migrate to Linux (and Gnome 2.x) courtesy of the still-new-and-idealistic Ubuntu.

Not to mention having just picked a fun pun username for Phoronix...

At least "misGnomer" still works to some extent!

[prueba_hola]

So many years with the worst user interface...

I hope GNOME4 stops using this android/mac interface and moves to something more usable.

+1

i really loved the days on GNOME 2 but GNOME 3.... is terrible

[mos87]

10 years of unusablity unergonomicness uselessness and performance compatability and feature wise losing out to "ancient" system(s)
but at least its all done with conpositing in mind from the get go, uses javascript, and carries control elements in the most unexpected places! And punishes the user for actually trying to, well, use it.
ah yes its possibly geared for touchscreens, but alas (?) we'll never know for sure (not in the forseeable future). So in the opinion of backers from RH let them (try) use it on desktops meanwhile...
The conspirologist in me thinks that it (further fracturing the historically difficult free desktop scene) could've been done on purpose, since the desktop market is not really for RH... But for some of their "partners" instead..

[ssokolow]

Out of interest though whats the Gorilla?

Probably a reference to BonziBuddy.

[bison]

I don't see why people still get on the 'hate gnome' bandwagon these days

Speaking for myself, I don't hate it, I just intensely dislike it.

Gnome Shell tries to turn a 24-inch monitor into a giant phone. I don't want my desktop to be a phone -- I want it to be... a desktop.