GNOME 40 Released With Many Improvements

[finalzone]

Blaming the user it's usually a symptom of poor design...

Empty statement without context just for the sake of steering debate. You are smarter than that.

[fafreeman]

Seems usable for desktop usage if you like the UI. Though on Wayland
-cursor still has input lag of a software cursor
-frame presentation with vsync < refresh rate for games in Wine/Proton looks more stuttery than it should
-grabbing scroll bar in FF Wayland isn't smooth

Not directly related to Wayland:
-changes to GPU gamma ramps still use legacy interface and thus cause missed vblanks
-Nautilus' performance of displaying folder content is still really bad

Nice progress overall, but I really hope the next version will be suited better for gaming.

damn... i had just messed with gnome 40 by booting up a fedora core 34 beta usb and was impressed with it. felt really responsive. but my concern was gaming since i couldn't test that on a live usb. they really need to improve input because the laggy input hurts fast paced games. like cs:go or even rpg's like the outer worlds.
i also saw they didn't fix the bug where gdm refresh rate doesn't match what's set in the desktop and wayland on gnome is still not defaulting to my correct refresh rate either by default. having a native 165hz panel that even my motherboard's bios defaults to 165hz, but wayland on gnome does 60 is annoying. even if i set it to 165hz in gnome, gdm doesn't follow it. gdm still defaults to 60hz.

other than that though i do like the changes they made. i really like the horizontal work spaces. i like how they moved the dock to the bottom of the screen finally after a decade lol. desktop did feel really responsive. i just hope they make strides into improving input in gaming.

edit:
I filed the report: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1721

[finalzone]

I assume Gnome 40 is using GTK 4, or is it still on GTK 3? Or can it use either, or does it use a combination of both? It doesn't really matter, but I am curious and the GTK 4 release seems a positive direction overall.

Yes GNOME 40 use GTK 4 as extension are required to switch to that toolkit for compatibility.

https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2021/03/20/extensions-rebooted-porting-your-existing-extensions-to-gnome-40/

[JackLilhammers]

Empty statement without context just for the sake of steering debate. You are smarter than that.

You're right, I rushed my comment.
But the idea still stands.

And it's not even an issue with the new design, in fact I like it. I think it's a step in the right direction and should have been even more like Mission control (on Mac os), because the workspaces at the top are tiny, practically unreadable.

It's just that I don't like when people bring up a potential issues and are told that's their "fault".

[George99]

I tried fedora beta in a VM today and it seems to havy only small issues so far. While I don't see the point in horizontal workspaces it doesn't bother me so much either. Some important extensions are still missing: DING for desktop icons (who needs a desktop w/o icons?) and an extension to disable the activities menu. I am used to the application menu in that spot so I always failed today opening that menu.

[Zan Lynx]

I put the new Fedora on my laptop today. I don't know who was complaining about input and scroll lag, but for me the Firefox scroll bar appears to be nailed to the touchpad. No delay at all.

I did crash gnome-shell within 30 minutes of using the new install. All I did was open Thunderbird. So that's not promising.

[sarmad]

Unusable from your point of view suggesting the inability to adapt and learn on a minimalist desktop environment. In this case GNOME Shell major changes is the overview displayed by default, position of the dash at the bottom similar to MacOS, improvement of workspace navigation and keyboard (essential the same but enhanced). The desktop workflow is very easy to work on without distraction. GNOME Classic is still available for the more conservative users.

You failed to mention the biggest change, which is the horizontal workspace layout (yes, it's more than just the dash being at the bottom). This change shows that Gnome focuses on a single primary market, which is those using only a laptop with no mouse and no external monitors; other configurations (multiple monitors, ultra wide monitors, etc) are considered a secondary market of little importance. I don't know if there are any statistics of how many users use external monitors or prefer mouse over touchpads, so I won't judge whether Gnome's decision is right or wrong. Personally, while I absolutely prefer the vertical layout, I don't think I'll switch away from Gnome, simply because I'm not aware of an alternative that is good enough and does it vertically; everyone seems to focus on that same market of laptop exclusive users. KDE offers vertical workspace layout, but then KDE's workspaces view was useless the last time I tried it.

[eydee]

So the Linux ecosystem has a major release, and it is a desktop release, which also means visuals. How your stuff looks, how things are arranged is important, right?

Yet this article managed to be super short one without a single screenshot, 10 lines, 2 links. Go read somewhere else. Thanks for the click tho.

Nice.

[Charlie68]

I tried it live on the Fedora beta, to tell the truth I was also about to install it, but I got stuck on the anaconda partitioner. I would love to know who designed that GUI, after half an hour trying to figure out how to install on a particular partition, I gave up. I still have Tumbleweed so it will come sooner or later. However, it doesn't seem bad to me, of course, as always, Gnome has a user experience of its own, so you have to want to adapt. The new configuration is not bad, but in my opinion it is better than the previous one. The rest seems to me more or less the same as before. We'll see...

[TemplarGR]

You failed to mention the biggest change, which is the horizontal workspace layout (yes, it's more than just the dash being at the bottom). This change shows that Gnome focuses on a single primary market, which is those using only a laptop with no mouse and no external monitors; other configurations (multiple monitors, ultra wide monitors, etc) are considered a secondary market of little importance. I don't know if there are any statistics of how many users use external monitors or prefer mouse over touchpads, so I won't judge whether Gnome's decision is right or wrong. Personally, while I absolutely prefer the vertical layout, I don't think I'll switch away from Gnome, simply because I'm not aware of an alternative that is good enough and does it vertically; everyone seems to focus on that same market of laptop exclusive users. KDE offers vertical workspace layout, but then KDE's workspaces view was useless the last time I tried it.

I don't know if an extension to revert to vertical exist, but someone should make one if it doesn't.