GNOME 40 Released With Many Improvements

[Nocifer]

Really wish that there was standardisation around use of the compose key for the generation of emoji.

ie [compose]+( "smile" [enter]
or [compose]+( ":-)" [enter]

or some such relatively intuitive pattern, and have the gnome keyboard settings app actually list what these patterns are instead of having everyone on the planet googling it because there's no coordination between the developers and the UI designers.

In Gnome you can press Ctrl+Shift+e and you'll get an input prompt for emoji. Simply type in what you want, be it e.g. "smile" or ":-)", and then press Space and you'll get your input converted to an emoji. If at that point you want to see more choices or explore similar patterns, just press Space for a second time and you'll get exactly what you're asking for. There's also an equivalent widget for Unicode symbols with Ctrl+Shift+u.

Also, IBus provides a separate tool called Emoji Picker which you can use as an IME for emoji, though I find that Gnome's internal tool is more than perfectly adequate for the job.

I have never seen Gnome 1.x but the difference between Gnome 2.x and 3.x was abysmal. I would be expected the same pattern between Gnome 3.x and Gnome 40.x ... ... But unfortunately Gnome 40.x looks quite similar to Gnome 3.x it is always ugly but differently...

Let me ELI5 that for you: in its GTK3 incarnation, Gnome has seen 40 releases up to this day. Up to the previous 38th release, the versioning scheme was tightly coupled with the GUI toolkit used to produce Gnome, aka GTK3, thus we had a pattern of GTK.Gnome, e.g. 3.38.

Moving on, the Gnome devs have decided that instead of doing major re-releases of their software every few years, the kind that usually end up producing more issues than they solve (Gnome 2 -> 3, KDE 4 -> 5, Windows 7 -> 8, etc), they will instead maintain a single product and constantly improve on its design and technical quality in controlled increments (which seems to be the trend across all major desktops nowadays).

The first step in that direction was to decouple Gnome's updates from GTK's updates, which in its GTK3 iteration has remained at 3.24 ever since. The second step was rebasing Gnome to GTK4. The third step was to remove the (now redundant in every single way) "3" in the versioning scheme and only track the DE's releases.

Thus, what would have been "Gnome with GTK3, release 40" has now become simply "Gnome release 40" and it just so happens that behind the scenes the GUI toolkit has switched from GTK3 to GTK4.

Thanks for reading, dear layman.

[Mez']

Funny, I just tried to open Gedit and

(gedit:701575): GLib-GIO-ERROR **: 12:54:41.926: Settings schema 'org.gnome.nautilus.preferences' does not contain a key named 'confirm-trash'
Trace/breakpoint trap

So, in fact, the removal of the confirm trash option is actually problematic for me...

[JackLilhammers]

oshan.wisumperuma
BesiegedAce

It's clear that Gtk and Nautilus don't care about people who work with images.
It may suck, but they're not Red Hat's user target.

[Nocifer]

Funny, I just tried to open Gedit and


So, in fact, the removal of the confirm trash option is actually problematic for me...

If you're on Arch, it's probably because they've began selectively updating Gnome components to v40, but Gedit is still at v3.38.1 which is not compatible with the changes in Gnome 40. See here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1931180 (follow the link to the duplicate bug report for more info).

[Mez']

If you're on Arch, it's probably because they've began selectively updating Gnome components to v40, but Gedit is still at v3.38.1 which is not compatible with the changes in Gnome 40. See here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1931180 (follow the link to the duplicate bug report for more info).

Thanks, I'm on Manjaro and they did update selectively indeed.
I've downgraded both nautilus and gsettings-desktop-schemas and that solved it. Gedit is working again. I've also added them to Ignorepkg to hold them for now.

[curfew]

If you're on Arch, it's probably because they've began selectively updating Gnome components to v40, but Gedit is still at v3.38.1 which is not compatible with the changes in Gnome 40. See here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1931180 (follow the link to the duplicate bug report for more info).

I have to say the Gnome package maintainer of Arch Linux is an incompetent moron. For every damn release of Gnome the packages are pushed to repos one at a time, breaking the whole desktop and even GDM if you happen to upgrade at the wrong time. Yes, they are in the "testing" repository, but probably most Arch users have been running "testing" packages for years without any hiccups bar this r3tarded Gnome mess. (I know I have.)

[Nocifer]

I have to say the Gnome package maintainer of Arch Linux is an incompetent moron. For every damn release of Gnome the packages are pushed to repos one at a time, breaking the whole desktop and even GDM if you happen to upgrade at the wrong time. Yes, they are in the "testing" repository, but probably most Arch users have been running "testing" packages for years without any hiccups par this r3tarded Gnome mess. (I know I have.)

Let's just say that for quite some time now Arch as a whole has generally lacked in quality (especially that kind of quality that made it famous in the first place), and leave it at that. It's my hope, especially after watching some of the recent Arch Conf 2020 presentations, that the new project leadership will hurry up and fix these issues sooner rather than later, otherwise I fear that Arch will end up being deprecated to a kind of Debian, i.e. a base for other, better distros to build upon (if you ignore the server aspect, which Arch isn't suitable for).

[MrCooper]

Though on Wayland
-cursor still has input lag of a software cursor

Speaking as someone who actually used software cursor with GNOME Wayland for some time[0], I can assure you it's not really the same.

[0] Due to amdgpu kernel driver bugs; maybe you're hitting that as well? Check

journalctl [email protected] -b0

for cursor related messages.

-frame presentation with vsync < refresh rate for games in Wine/Proton looks more stuttery than it should

There is ongoing work which might help for this (Dynamic frame clock dispatch max render time for reduced input latency and WIP: Automatic frame-clock-dispatch and frame-callback delaying for reducing input- and presentation latency), but didn't make it for 40 unfortunately.

(The first one should improve HW cursor latency as well)

-grabbing scroll bar in FF Wayland isn't smooth

Which Firefox version? With WebRender enabled?

Not directly related to Wayland:
-changes to GPU gamma ramps still use legacy interface and thus cause missed vblanks

Actually this is directly related to Wayland (otherwise this is done in Xorg). This can be improved now that atomic KMS support has landed in 40, will happen for colour management / HDR support at the latest.

[aufkrawall]

Do you have bug reports for any (or all) of that?

I mostly only report bugs to projects that I use, so no.

BTW: cursor is always "software". The GPU does not talk to the touchpad or the mouse adapter. Input lag refers to the lag in handling input events and converting them into cursor position updates or rendering commands (which happens on the CPU, obviously). Hardware rendering of the mouse cursor (which has been implemented in Mutter/Wayland quite some time ago) has nothing to do with input lag.

Yes, it has. Only a hardware cursor can avoid the vsync latency of a compositor. Which Gnome Wayland unfortunately doesn't achieve yet, despite of being hardware or not.

[Danielsan]

Thanks for reading, dear layman.

I didn't recall to have requested a lecture over the least interest of my life: Gnome 3 and upper. Gnome 3 was so good that the community created 3 brand new desktop environment and resumed Gnome 2 into mate. Despite all the workforce that RH is able to tuck into Gnome, smaller teams with almost zero resources did more, and better, with less. Elementary, Budgie, Zorin even POP-Shell try to fix Gnome, have better usability and better ergonomic and do not blame people when thing are simply counter-intuitive.

Someone wanted shift Gnome from a project into a product and things can just go worst. And what it is the point to have a DE that every six months break the ABI/API? Where is the stability? I am happy and productive with another solution that allows me to tailor my environment the way I need because it is designed to empower me not to restrict me.

To finish, once Compiz was a reason to use Linux today Gnome 3(4,5,6 etc...) is a reason to not use it at all...