GNOME Shell UX Continues Improving For GNOME 40

[phoronix_anon]

I love GNONE. I used to hate it tóo until I forced myself to only use the keyboard for navigation. I think today's youth are accustomed to point-and-clicking which is why you see the vitriol here. GNOME took me out of my comfort zone, but now I am much more efficient than I was on Mate/cinnamon/windows and I would never go back to a point and click interface.

[Mez']

I love GNONE. I used to hate it tóo until I forced myself to only use the keyboard for navigation. I think today's youth are accustomed to point-and-clicking which is why you see the vitriol here. GNOME took me out of my comfort zone, but now I am much more efficient than I was on Mate/cinnamon/windows and I would never go back to a point and click interface.

Only devs and some very old geeks have the keyboard-for-everything approach nowadays. Gnome is intended to devs with its keyboard-centric workflow and a "few use cases"-only focus.
But it lacks ease of use when it comes to the mouse. And these days most people use primarily the mouse.
I'm not even young anymore (nor old) and I remove my hands from the keyboard the moment I'm done using it for something. It's less straining to keep your hands close to you rather than having them extended all the time. And you can scratch your butt more easily or watch your phone or whatever else.
That's one of the reasons why their vanilla UI is horrible for non-devs. It's like they took Unity/Gnome 3 metaphor/paradigm and only developed it around one quarter of the way, while Unity did it 3/4 of the way. That's why it's really frustrating, so much potential yet so little delivered. Doesn't mean we don't like the metaphor, it's just their implementation that kind of sucks. No other DE offer that metaphor (except maybe Budgie) since Unity was left to rot (yes it still works, but unmaintained). And that's why some of us can't move away from Gnome. Also, it can get half decent with 5-10 extensions. 20 for me on my desktop currently and 12 on my laptop. I can use it, it's still frustrating but I can get back the workflow I'm confortable with since Unity.

Mez' Take a +1. The distributors find it easy to use extensions and themes to differentiate their products.

It’s by far the most efficient way of doing things.

You got me wrong. I find it really sad that users need so many extensions to make Gnome decent. It lacks customizations, options, configurability for basic stuff. Not even as much as KDE, I don't ask for a catalogue of options, just give me stuff like seats and gears and a GPS, not just the car body, tires and the steering wheel. That's barely enough to go from point A to point B.
They don't take responsibility and always are like "you can make an extension if you're not pleased" (just make your seats yourself) when other DE devs just make it happen and offer it as an option (if its standard, basic stuff any other DE offers, not the catalogue of options).

It's the least efficient way. Only simpletons who say yes to everything can be happy with that.

A common comment that I heard from the simulation experts was that the RedHat Gnome systems worked exceptionally well when you only had to work continuously with a few programs because they only needed to remember a few shortcuts/hot keys to get the programs they needed use up and running. However (and this is my and their experience only), when there had to be many things going on at the same time, the extra mouse clicks/hot key sequences would slow them down. It was/is convenient for many people to be able to use desktop icons or task bars as shortcuts to quickly access high priority/or current projects/document/applications/whatever.

That's where Ubuntu with Unity then the Ubuntu Dock (from Dash-to-dock) or Manjaro with Dash-to-Dock (and another 10 extensions installed by default) got it right, and understand their users and UI/UX.
Going to your dock with a click to minimize the current window, and a scroll to regain focus or a click to open another one is faster in any way you can think of. The gesture is shorter to reach the side than the hot corner then back to select the window of choice. Shorter means it's easier to be precise. And in the window picker your window preview is not specifically at the same position than last time if you opened other windows in the meantime. So you need to spot it first, delaying the moment it's ready even further, while with with a dock if you have pinned your app you get a fixed icon and know instantly where it is and if there are instances open and how many.

For non-pinned apps you use less often, it's faster to stop scratching your butt and reach for alt + f2 or uLauncher/synapse and such than open them than this super slow app grid with little icons per screen where you quickly need to scroll through 7-10 pages before finding you app. That's where you're losing the majority of users (the non-devs).
Although, finally taking Unity approach with categories will definitely help to open apps faster with the mouse.
But again Gnome is 10 years late.

I see some people ranting "if you don't like Gnome, don't use it", well it's not always that simple as explained above. I like the Unity/Gnome 3 paradigm/metaphor, I just have trouble with how limited Gnome is in terms of options. How the devs restrain the user. I've written in length about it. To summarize, they push stuff down users' throat, while Canonical, Manjaro, Mint, Pop Os, Solus and the likes listen to their users and pull stuff from their userbase. That's the better approach, let people give you feedback on their workflow and create something encompassing (but not in all possible directions either) from there. That's the issue with Gnome (and with Red Hat in general), they're kind of oppressive and trying to decide for everyone what's best for them, while other distros accknowledge that users know themselves what's best for them. It is sad to see such a wonderful metaphor/paradigm go to waste after Unity was dumped (I know it still works but come on, it's not maintained or anything) because Gnome devs feels empowered to the point they can think what's best for everyone. While they actually deliver so little (3rd party extensions is where it all happens). That's arrogance in my book.

[Alexmitter]

I have tried Plasma Mobile. It is actually quickly becoming pretty sharp, and it runs smoother than phosh thanks to full GPU acceleration in QT which Phosh does not currently have.

That reminds me of this video showing off plasma mobile https://youtu.be/mMdH-PXrPgc, the first smooth app he opened was gnome 2048. Qt runs like dogshit on that hardware while GTK3 runs at least acceptable.

Plus it's not even released yet.

KDE seems to think it is ready enough for a community edition pinephone

Give it a few months however and i think it will be in a daily driver state

Plasma Mobile, unlike Phosh is now nearly 10 years old originating in the Plasma Active codebase from 2011, you would think it would be more by now then a unoptimized quickly hacked together UI preview in QML.

Not to mention Plasma Mobile has more features.

if crashing and stuttering the whole time is a feature, then yes. it has more of those.

[Alexmitter]

but why bother when you can use something like Cinnamon, which is modern and usable

Ah yes, the good old Cinnamon. Gnome Shell 3.2x with a few extensions baked in. Because that is exactly what Cinnamon is, a hopelessly outdated Gnome Shell with some extensions build in. In fact, before the fork, the same code was provided as extensions by the Mint people for Gnome as that was what they shipped back then.

[skeevy420]

I didn't think they could make it more annoying to use, but they're literally adding an extra click to do things.

Mez' That's a big post and I don't want to quote it, but I disagree about the distributions that ship with plugins by default like Manjaro. I've used it and it's not integrated and seamless and it feels like a cobbled together experience. Maybe if someone at Manjaro took all 10 plugins and combined them into one for the Manjaro Experience it'd be better; maybe doing something like what PopOS does with their shell. While I agree that what they offer is somewhat better than stock GNOME, it's still only curated plugins and has that "I'm using random plugins" feel.

[f0rmat]

I love GNONE. I used to hate it tóo until I forced myself to only use the keyboard for navigation. I think today's youth are accustomed to point-and-clicking which is why you see the vitriol here. GNOME took me out of my comfort zone, but now I am much more efficient than I was on Mate/cinnamon/windows and I would never go back to a point and click interface.

You are right about the youth that grew up with mice and touchscreens. I too used keyboards for navigation in my younger days on VAX/VMS 9000s, Sun SPARC Workstation, DEC Ultrix Workstations, a Cray Y-MP, and hell even TRS-80s (you old folks may remember the "Trash 80"). But I am past 50 and my hands do not "respond" as quickly as they did before. And it is exceptionally hard to get people in general, and younger people and older people specifically, out of their comfort zone. Young people have to fight their ignorance, impatience of youth, and lack of convenience and older people have to fight their experience, "traditional ways," and their comfort zone. It is a two-edged sword. I am glad the keyboard works for you. For those of us with f****d up hands, it is difficult. Use whatever makes you the most productive, meets your needs, and makes you happy. I am glad that you are to meet all of those requirements with Gnome. I, fortunately or unfortunately, cannot. That is why I enjoy Linux - take what you want, and ignore the rest (within reason ). I love having a choice.

[duby229]

After tweaking it and shipping it with 5-10 extensions. And another one to start with the session directly.

Sure.

Except it breaks extensions and themes again... And at least some current extensions will never be compatible...

[duby229]

During the Gnome2 days Linux Desktop adoption in general was on the rise and Marketshare hit at least 3%, then Gnome 3 launched and Gnome lost 2/3rds of its userbase and overall Linux Desktop marketshare dropped below 1%... Now it's at around 2%, lets see how much marketshare they can lose and how bad Gnome can hurt linux this time...

[Mez']

I didn't think they could make it more annoying to use, but they're literally adding an extra click to do things.

Mez' That's a big post and I don't want to quote it, but I disagree about the distributions that ship with plugins by default like Manjaro. I've used it and it's not integrated and seamless and it feels like a cobbled together experience. Maybe if someone at Manjaro took all 10 plugins and combined them into one for the Manjaro Experience it'd be better; maybe doing something like what PopOS does with their shell. While I agree that what they offer is somewhat better than stock GNOME, it's still only curated plugins and has that "I'm using random plugins" feel.

Doesn't really matter to me how it's done. Especially since it's quite transparent, even more so on Manjaro than on Ubuntu. Distros make do with what they have. Since 3rd party is the only way, it's difficult to bundle these extensions together. I only see the Ubuntu dock as an example, Ubuntu took Dash-to-dock and simplified it.
Actually, Ubuntu Budgie might offer what you describe but it's a different GTK experience. Budgie Welcome displays a selection of layout to pick from and it install specific stuff depending on your selection. You can still modify it piece by piece afterwards though.

The important thing is that they can't ship that useless UI as is. Vanilla Gnome is unusable except for (Fedora) nerds. You can't put that into non-geek hands (a lot of Linux users are curious and more IT literate than average Joe's but still no geeks or nerds), it's a given failure. If only for the cheap and outdated Gnome basic theme (without user theme extension you can't change the original theme).

You can't do anything easily or configure anything with bare Gnome. Users would freak out.

[Baguy]

That reminds me of this video showing off plasma mobile https://youtu.be/mMdH-PXrPgc, the first smooth app he opened was gnome 2048. Qt runs like dogshit on that hardware while GTK3 runs at least acceptable.


KDE seems to think it is ready enough for a community edition pinephone


Plasma Mobile, unlike Phosh is now nearly 10 years old originating in the Plasma Active codebase from 2011, you would think it would be more by now then a unoptimized quickly hacked together UI preview in QML.



if crashing and stuttering the whole time is a feature, then yes. it has more of those.

#1 it just had major performance improvements just this last week, and infact Plasma Mobile uses less ram and CPU than Phosh.

#2 KDE Neon has something wrong which is causing performance degradation and more crashes, which is not a result of Plasma Mobile. Manjaro Arm Plasma Mobile Dev images are the best to test it with. This is why the KDE edition pinephones will ship with Manjaro's Plasma Mobile.

#3 There's definitely slowdowns in dolphin, but that is not a result of the QT framework. If GTK is so good, then when does Gnome-software still have so many issues? It's not the framework at fault for that either.

#4 Plasma Mobile has been slow to develop because there has not been a reliable hardware platform for it to be worked on. They recently announced they are dropping support for halium and focusing solely on the pinephone because of the fact that the old android devices the developers were using were not working well, and they hadn't had access to reliable hardware for years by now. The good thing is that the KDE foundation has announced the Pinephone will be it's official Plasma Mobile hardware, and after that announcement there has been much more activity in Plasma Mobile's code base. I should note that the Pinephone being it's official hardware of choice will likely mean even further speed optimizations, as the developers improve the performance for the Pinephone's low end hardware. As i said before, just these past weeks there has been a bunch of performance otpimizations such as the switch to a newer theme which not only looks better but uses a lot less resources. I anticipate when people receive their KDE edition pinephones that development will pickup even more, as was the case with phosh. Not to mention it definitely does have more features: Word suggestions in the keyboard, A built-in theme switcher, Full integration with KDE-Connect, Notifications with individual clear buttons unlike phosh (and there will likely soon be a full DND system with individual app blacklisting), Night mode built right into the drawer, It shows a OSD when you press the volume keys unlike phosh, It has support for desktop widgets like Plasma Desktop, Ability to import contacts into the dialer right from the UI, A browser with *full* GPU acceleration, An actual file browser app that is fully convergent, The toggles in the drawer actually toggle the features instead of opening the system settings, There is gestures for navigation of the UI, etc.