GNOME 41 Alpha Released With Many Desktop Changes Accumulating

[jacob]

i wish if Xfce/LXQt/LXDE jump to wayland bus

I haven't been following those for a while and I'm not sure what the status is, but generally speaking for it to happen they must 1) fully move to GTK >=3 or Qt >=5; and 2) implement a compositor. For the latter point some of such desktops have been considering Mir. Otherwise they would have to develop their own which is a HUGE endeavour (wlroots can take them a long way towards that, but the price would be forfeiting nVidia compatibility).

[Cotyso]

a Office use case. .

I have a question, what are those functionalities? I use vanilla Gnome on Fedora, without extensions (except one that controls syncthing), and I've found it better at my office workflow. The overview panel (activities) is better implemented than its alternative in KDE. Plus KDE seems to have an issue with rendering text, at least on my machine there were quite a lot of artifacts. Firefox also had an issue in which fonts couldn't be changed.

[ElectricPrism]

Press space bar to preview a selected .jpg or .png.

Thanks, that sounds like it offers some improvement.

(Part of that criticism is just apps being stuck in GTK2 File Chooser, it's been a long 10 years and a consistent problem on Craigslist, Ebay and other sites for my Gnome users.)

>, lack of Split Pane in Nautilus,

Hardly missed, up to that power user to create an extension for that purpose and then propose to the team.

It's mostly a non-issue, I can always spawn a second window and tile one to the left and the other to the right -- the siderbars might add some extra dead-space. I think Dolphin just did such an amazing job even with "Copy Here"/ "Move Here" on drag&drop & "[Copy to/Move to Right" on Split pane.

On which application? Will you be able to demonstrate the usefulness on that application and propose a suggestion like this example ?

Typeahead was removed but patched back in by some devs -- you can get the patched Nautilus here:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nautilus-typeahead/

Basically for old users who had developed a workflow on Windows (90s/00s?) Type-ahead allows you to jump to directories/files by typing the first few letters of the name. So if you have 1000 files in a directory you can quickly find what you are looking for without using the "Interactive Search" which takes out out of the Directory File Tree. (I prefer to know where things are located and not do the apple thing where the entire contents of the hard drive are in a single alphabetized searchable directory)

>lack of launching .desktop launcher's or having a workaround,
Where exactly? On Application view where icons can be placed inside a folder application?

I maintain my own custom .desktop launchers similar to `~/.local/share/applications` -- essentially Nautilus removed the functionality to execute the launchers. I 100% understand they were simplifying and dropping legacy to move to GTK4, and that idealistically (and I agree) there could have been a 3rd party launcher that essentially opened that file-type to achieve the same functionality.

Similar to removal of Desktop Icon functionality (which was later re-implemented as a Gnome Shell Extension), the .desktop Launcher support really needed to be seperate of the "File Manager" the same way that "Explorer.exe" in Windows 98 really had no business browsing Local Files aswell as being a Web Page Browser.

>I've always hated the taskbar auto-hiding on Windows and it's the same on Linux -- I want to see what actions / commands are available to me not "hide them" someplace and pretend they don't exist.
GNOME Shell does not use taskbar by default for a long time. Depending of the distribution, GNOME Classic, an extended GNOME Shell, provides taskbar for peruse.

Right, I had used Gnome since the 2.x days. I'm proud of them for the 40.x bottom dock. My complaint was merely that it's hidden behind a auto-hide.

Think GNOME as a different desktop environment rather than clone of another desktop environment like KDE. Majority of ordinary users care less about the advanced application like Dolphin to access their files through clutter.

Of course, we have successfully used Gnome in multiple offices with extensions and their claim to fame has always been keeping it simple. Sometimes they just have a habit of oversimplifying which leads to complicating like features that should be in Gnome Settings are in Gnome Tweaks to name one oversimplification.

The forum is hardly a place to address the issue, filing a ticket with a detailed rationale on a feature you deem useful not only for an individual but for the public.

I agree, and I assure you many a time I have done just that -- filed tickets with rational to try to get consideration as design changes are about to occur in Gnome / Nautilus. Many people have done the same too, usually with limited success -- the problem with visionaries is that they are often more disagreeable than agreeable -- and like I said in my original post -- I 100% respect devs right to work on features that interest them & pursue their vision of perfection. A lot of the rational I have heard is that to push forward old code must be dropped. Some people enjoy different things about Gnome (I know I have), but by and large their reputation befits that they generally don't incorporate feedback about their design decisions from their users.

It may not have been apparent from my original post but I am _NOT_ a KDE user, I haven't been for 15 years and before that 20 years ago I was probably a Gnome user. I am merely interested in exploring for myself what made Valve choose KDE over Gnome for their upcoming Steam Deck. To my knowledge Gnome & KDE devs are actually friends and complementary of each-others hard work & achievements.

I do miss the days when you could take a Shell module like gnome_panel and use it with whatever window manager you wished. Everything seems so all-in-one these days, a kind of "take it, or leave it" -- Pantheon Shell thankfully has the Slingshot Launcher & Plank Dock severable from the Window Manager/Shell.

[unic0rn]

The forum is hardly a place to address the issue, filing a ticket with a detailed rationale on a feature you deem useful not only for an individual but for the public.

If the GNOME team would give a damn about the public, GNOME 3 wouldn't be the clusterfuck it is.

[tomas]

jacob

wlroots can take them a long way towards that, but the price would be forfeiting nVidia compatibility)

Nvidia is planning to release a driver based on GBM (yes, say good bye to EGLStreams mess). Then the "compatibility" problem will be gone. This means wlroots based compositors like Sway will automagically start to work with Nvidia GPU. 😊

[jacob]

jacob


Nvidia is planning to release a driver based on GBM (yes, say good bye to EGLStreams mess). Then the "compatibility" problem will be gone. This means wlroots based compositors like Sway will automagically start to work with Nvidia GPU. 😊

That would be excellent news, do you have some source for that?

[smitty3268]

That would be excellent news, do you have some source for that?

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/..._requests/9902

It's not 100% clear to me if that will fully replace EGLStreams or if it's just something extra in case of XWayland, but it certainly seems like it should.

[andrea76]

Sorry to tell this, but GNOME standard is totally useless and unintuitive.

For example: someone writes you in a chat on Pidgin. There's NO way, without sound, to have a visual signal on this event. Because of the removal of these components:

- application taskbar
- systray

If GNOME is going to be like ANDROID ... learn ANDROID, at least they have a similiar systray.

Will be start menu removed at GNOME 50 ?

[andrea76]

- GJS has better stability.

it's funny that a javascript engine is the no. 1 responsible of every GNOME crashes.

[rastersoft]

wake me up when gnome decided to make DE for PC user who don't have and like touch-screen stop copying mac and windows 8 look
maybe add server-side decorations support too

Just install a couple of extensions and... BANG!