GNOME Shell's Icon Grid Could See Almost Double The Performance

[Delgarde]

I kind-of agree here. I never use it, I just press the Super key and type the name of the application. I think Gnome should assess the use for the Grid, re-think it and come up with something more powerful.

That's the thing I don't get about the complaints about the grid... because I've been using Gnome 3 pretty much since it came out, and I've almost never used that feature. Everything is so readily keyboard accessible, that if they completely replaced the grid with something different in the next release, I probably wouldn't notice.

[lumks]

You know what is not properly tested? KDEPIM. It’s 2020 and KDE can’t do basic communication or mails in a reliable way.

Sadly not the only thing. KDE Plasma is great as browser-launcher, might also be great to develop. But it doesn't work in an office environment.

• PIM is, as you said, broken.
• SMB is in many cases barely usable.
  • Large file needs to be transfered to the cache until they can get opened.
• KDE provides an Indexing service, that is also broken, but even if it works ↓
• KIO is an Inselloesung and will not work with non-kde apps. So you might not be able to search and share a files, depending on the framework your apps use
• Displayrotation is still a hard problem.
  • Sometimes I can scroll inside my 2 screens (one is rotated 90°)
• Printer setup is a nightmare
• WiFi Password management is in many cases just a fight with kwallet

Yes, there are also MANY problems on the GNOME side of things. Both of them are not perfect in any way. I need some things, because I do my work with and for the last 2 years, that's not possible with KDE Plasma, but works just fine with Gnome and thats the thing. Gnome is slow, but works. KDE is fast, but broken.

[Danielsan]

Danielsan My hybrid laptop identity as a tablet.

He said "preinstalled".

Beside what I said, when is supposed to be useful a grid of application when you:

1. do not remember the name of that application;
2. do not remember the icon of that application either;

The grid is the lower point of UX/UI, probably it had a minimum sense when at the beginning you had 5 applications or less on your smartphone, it has never modified because it is a bad habit that was inculcated to the end user consumers, and since market products follows end users behaviors now it cannot be changed anymore.

As a matter of fact a menu organization exists from the very first existence of any UI, it is the more natural and rational way to organize entries, but a simple grid sorted by use or alphabetically does not have any rational organization; and when it became superior to a menu organization is something that happened in one of the esoteric and hidden Gnome coven reunion...

[polarathene]

Way before Qt isn't in full control of a greedy company anymore.
You know, developing actual FLOSS software, software that isnt also sold under a greedy proprietary license is a thing of passion for the community, not a race.

I use nvidia and proprietary drivers, I legit don't care to that extreme. I've found Plasma to be a better experience than I ever had with Gnome which was full of bugs/crashes and performance issues.

Considering the financial support and contribution power difference between Gnome and KDE, I think Plasma does pretty well for itself thanks.

[Azpegath]

That's the thing I don't get about the complaints about the grid... because I've been using Gnome 3 pretty much since it came out, and I've almost never used that feature. Everything is so readily keyboard accessible, that if they completely replaced the grid with something different in the next release, I probably wouldn't notice.

I agree, as long as you know the exact command you're looking for. But there are serious flaws with the design of the grid, for instance that it limits text to fairly few characters and that it overflows (...) without a decent tooltip. For instance, I have 6 different Firefox icons, but all of them are named "Firefox (...)" because it limits the name to like 7-8 characters. I would like to know that it's "Firefox (Wayland)"/"Firefox (Xorg)"/"Firefox-bin (Wayland)"/"Firefox-bin (Xorg)".
So in this sense, the grid actually prohibits me from using it correctly. I must consider this to be a (perhaps minor) design flaw.

That aside, it would be interesting to see a more usability-wise powerful paradigm of listing applications. I can't tell you what I want, but I know I want something better =)
The semi-old windows start-menu is actually better, there you have both a hierarchy that is navigable AND you can launch stuff by only typing.

[polarathene]

Yes, there are also MANY problems on the GNOME side of things. Both of them are not perfect in any way. I need some things, because I do my work with and for the last 2 years, that's not possible with KDE Plasma, but works just fine with Gnome and thats the thing. Gnome is slow, but works. KDE is fast, but broken.

Odd, no kwallet issues here, I remember that years ago being a problem but it hasn't been for some time now.

The KIO/SMB issues have also been handled afaik with some recent updates mentioned in Nates blog. SMB may need an additional package installed that some distros may ship or acquire on-demand, but other distros may not have any integration out of the box and expect the user to install the package themselves. I don't personally use SMB so I can't comment much more beyond that, I use several GTK apps and haven't run into any KIO problems.

Last I used Gnome(which was a few years back), it was slow, buggy and kinda ugly(I could use a theme, but it'd often break with updates). The issues with Gnome was on a few distros iirc and I had tried it on several systems(home and work) before moving to KDE Plasma, which wasn't perfect(especially back then), but still provided me with a system I could actually use, which wasn't really the case with Gnome.

[Danielsan]

The semi-old windows start-menu is actually better, there you have both a hierarchy that is navigable AND you can launch stuff by only typing.

Have you ever tried the Arc Menu extension?it makes Gnome for humans...

[duby229]

I run GNOME 3 on a 2011 laptop with Sandy Bridge CPU (Intel HD3000)

That must be a horrible experience..... It's no wonder so many noobs think linux sucks, they get there first exposure to it on old hardware running Gnome3.... Ughhh!

[Azpegath]

Have you ever tried the Arc Menu extension?it makes Gnome for humans...

No, I haven't heard of it. I'll check it out!

[Vistaus]

I can't stand its spaghetti design, hyperlink options and inconsistency.

Same here. Hey, I agreed with you again! This is turning out to be a great week lol