GNOME In 2020 Saw Many Optimizations, GTK 4.0 Released, GNOME 40 In Development

[arQon]

What I really like is the GTK GUI look.

I think that's the inertia in the general case too: especially for users who've been around long enough that they came from the GNOME2 era when GNOME was actually good.

The stupidity of CSD though means you can kiss any *consistency* in the UI goodbye, and that train is already a long way down the track. Now not only do you have to deal with cases where an app decides to randomly have its own controls within the app window, but even the window controls can't be trusted.

sigh. It's like watching time go backwards, with stable consistent interfaces degenerating into per-app UIs again; and even the most utterly basic functionality like being able to choose a freaking *color scheme* (or, as shown above, just NOT have junk like compulsory background images) being removed from the WM and DE.

GNOME's hegemony, thanks to its rigid control of *GTK* rather than any merit of GNOME Shell itself, isn't going anywhere. What will be interesting to see is whether the teams developing decent DEs (i.e. Mint, MATE, XFCE) continue to be Charlie Brown to GNOME's Lucy with the football in 2021, or if they opt to focus on GTK3 instead so that they at least have a stable underlying toolkit that they can actually fix bugs in and add features to.

[Mez']

Yep
IIRC, this option has been removed with this background setting redesign.

"We remove features" on a large wall ad or on a flying banner ad.

Wouldn't know how to represent Gnome better.

[chocolate]

I tried the latest Ubuntu over the summer and discovered that there was no way to set a solid background through the settings interface (control panel / whatever it's called). You have to edit that config file. What is wrong with these developers?

Oh, I don't know. I have trusted them for too long. With the shell redesign, it's now clear to me that their mantra is to redesign everything capriciously without consideration for the positive aspects of the status quo, and without bothering to reach feature parity first (well, with the exception of special cases such as icons on the background, those I can understand). Come to think of it, as organized as they now seem to be with their GitLab and everything, there is no official feature list anywhere. I guess they sort of mentally reverse engineer a basic set of features from their own mockups. I might be wrong, though.

[gedgon]

I tried the latest Ubuntu over the summer and discovered that there was no way to set a solid background through the settings interface (control panel / whatever it's called). You have to edit that config file. What is wrong with these developers?

Yep
IIRC, this option has been removed with this background setting redesign.

[atmartens]

Or try this to have no wallpaper (solid black background):
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri ""

I tried the latest Ubuntu over the summer and discovered that there was no way to set a solid background through the settings interface (control panel / whatever it's called). You have to edit that config file. What is wrong with these developers?

[Mez']

But please keep in mind that I love GNOME and its app ecosystem big time. If something on my system has a GUI, it's probably a GNOME app, especially if it makes use of libhandy, which I totally dig. Me being bitter about the shell taking this awful turn is precisely because I use GNOME Shell everywhere, even though it lacks tiling. I've been exploring System76's tiling extension on Fedora for a while... it's the only viable option if you want a truly graphical desktop with tiling without going full Sway.
Also don't disregard everything coming from 144Hz . Yes they're funny sometimes but they have posted many useful links in the past.

Of course coming up with stuff and going full steam ahead with it just because you are in a position of power is not meritocratic, quite the opposite in fact.
As you say, it's the method that's flawed. After reading blog posts that introduce radical changes to GNOME's larger audience for the first time post factum, surely I won't be the one to waste time writing a detailed bug report on GNOME's GitLab only to have it shunned.

I do use Gnome as well, although I need 18-20 extensions to "make do". But I barely use the app grid, and I sure as hell haven't used the shell once.
I don't use many Gnome apps either (except the calculator maybe). They're mostly NIH, not many people use them since there are far more advanced and popular apps on the market. In the end, it's a waste of resources when Gnome would need those devs big time to offer options by default (at least the top 10 downloaded extensions should be in vanilla) and for their maintenance.

What I really like is the GTK GUI look. QT has always felt toyish and childish to me, same as the Apple stuff.

Gnome 3 is backed by the biggest Linux company, Red Hat (around 75% of total commits), and has been around for a while so it's stable (through quantity, not quality). Which is why it's the most tolerable GTK environment right now. And the reason why I've been using it. Not because I like it, but by lack of a better option since Unity was dumped.

But in the GTK workd, I believe Unity or Budgie have a much better design (because flexible enough for the users to decide their own workflow) and the philosophy behind them (listen to the user and offer him/her the most demanded options) feels right (contrary to the Gnome dictatorship and avoidance of responsibility). Budgie is not there yet though (multi monitor handling is even worse than Gnome's) but it has much more potential in my opinion. When you listen to your users by embracing a user-pulled design, those users are more forgetful and patient than when facing a dev-pushed design. Therefore bound to be satisfied.
I'm working as a link between operational end users and IT, and this a very well known principle. The more you involve end users, the less they complain after implementation.
With Gnome, there's close to no involvement of the end-user in the design process, and as you would expect from the abovementioned principle the satisfaction is polarized with a hell of a lot of criticism. No wonder.

[chocolate]

So glad to read these comments. Completely in line with what I've been saying and basically half of the comments I've been reading around Gnome.
Spot on.

Some blinkered yes men cultists like 144Hz will fake positivism (with silliness and gullibility, probably paid by Red Hat) without even an ounce of critical mind, but the image of Red Hat and Gnome is slowly being chipped away. Proof that there is something wrong with their method.

But please keep in mind that I love GNOME and its app ecosystem big time. If something on my system has a GUI, it's probably a GNOME app, especially if it makes use of libhandy, which I totally dig. Me being bitter about the shell taking this awful turn is precisely because I use GNOME Shell everywhere, even though it lacks tiling. I've been exploring System76's tiling extension on Fedora for a while... it's the only viable option if you want a truly graphical desktop with tiling without going full Sway.
Also don't disregard everything coming from 144Hz . Yes they're funny sometimes but they have posted many useful links in the past.

Of course coming up with stuff and going full steam ahead with it just because you are in a position of power is not meritocratic, quite the opposite in fact.
As you say, it's the method that's flawed. After reading blog posts that introduce radical changes to GNOME's larger audience for the first time post factum, surely I won't be the one to waste time writing a detailed bug report on GNOME's GitLab only to have it shunned.

[chocolate]

What do you mean by "VRAM utilization"? I have an RX5700 and two 2560x1440 displays attached. Both with the (in)famous Mojave wallpapers that come with in 5120x2880 sizes. My VRAM usage with normal desktop work sits somewhere below 1GB and according to MangoHUD I have never come close to an 8GB VRAM usage in ANY of my games.

As reported by radeontop under "VRAM". I don't come close to 8GB in many games either, but having less of it consumed by GNOME leads to less stuttering. It's totally perceivable, not sure about measurable. I don't know what's happening inside the GPU; might it be a "GTX 970 case" with partitioned RAM?

I suggest you try the same. I wanted to keep using one of Pop!_OS' default wallpapers, so I cropped it and then scaled it with GIMP 2.10. Make it fit into the correct screen ratio with "Image > Canvas Size..." and set the resolution accordingly (not needed in your case, but mine was 16:10 IIRC). Then scale it down with "Image > Scale Image...".

Or try this to have no wallpaper (solid black background):
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri ""

while you have a terminal with radeontop open. Wait several seconds.

[Mez']

Mez' Sure disregard whatever facts you want. It’s not like anyone cares about your opinion anyway And don’t expect anyone to waste time discussing such poor trolling.

Fact is that the distributors just use GNOME, including its powerful and flexible theming and extension options.

Your facts are not facts and I just gave you some clues on the why. You're a fanboy troll, so not much of what you say has any value. You're in your little pink world, fed by Red Hat little dream pills. Far away from reality.

Fact is less distros than before use Gnome as their main DE, and when they do or it comes as a variant they don't use it vanilla. Theming only means it's already not vanilla (user themes extension), which means Pop!_OS is out for example.

Distros are a lot about visual identity (green for Manjaro or OpenSuSe, etc...) and the rest is package management. I believe Fedora doesn't have much personality anymore, it has become rather dull without any kind of visual identity and that's obviously not what users want since it has become a second level distro. In fact, in recent years, I haven't seen one single distro growing popularity or usage while using Gnome 3, except maybe Pop! Os (which gained traction but little usage). Fedora was popular back in 2005 because it had some distinct identity. Now it just looks like a sandbox experiment. That's not what users want. They want polish, identity. Hence the substantial dip in usage.

Vanilla Gnome just plainly gets in the way, that's why almost no distro makes use of it.

[omer666]

Every time I read news related to GNOME, I know the comments section is going to be full of trolls.
So let me state the obvious:

• The new Activities view has nothing to do with Apple or macOS.
• I use vanilla GNOME since 3.8, coming from an OpenBox + tint2 + PCManFM configuration. I like its minimalism and the fact it doesn't "get in the way"
• It doesn't feel heavy or clunky at all. In fact it's pretty stable by the time Fedora ships it.
• Some users should stick with CDE or GNUStep and be happy with their 1993 desktop.