New Gestures Code Squeezes Into GNOME 46

[fitzie]

Oh, that's easy to debunk. "why bother" you say? There's been an initiative going on for a while to streamline tooltips in *all* GNOME apps. It means they care about desktop/mouse workflows, but tooltips didn't make sense for quick toggles in a system tray.

debunk as in yes, this is a problem, and they did that rewrite for touch, and oh just a year ago they decided it's time to start to add tooltips, which is more of a linter/a18y/translation issue issue then a coding one, and somehow it's still in progress.

also, I'm not talking about the quick toggles, I'm talking about the ones above it. I had no idea what that screenshot button was. until I dared click on it. because of course it could very well do anything, and people like you would be defending it no matter what.

[Zeioth]

Now that messaging apps are interoperable, my next phone is 100% gonna be Linux. That was literally the only thing stopping me.

[mxan]

Why should gnome-shell developers prevent other developers improving the mobile capabilities if they do not harm the desktop/power users?

If they do not harm?? LOL.. chasing this mobile-friendly design has come entirely at the cost of desktop and power user features. Just look at Nautilus in the earlier GNOME 3 releases compared to today, they cut out absolutely all of the power user features. Look at the horrendous Console app with absolutely zero features. Look at GNOME Shell itself which took all its design patterns from Android and Maemo, phone/tablet OSes whose designs just don’t make sense with a mouse, and can’t be customised at all without 30 fragile extensions that break all the time. Not to mention everything having gigantic buttons so your 1080p screen feels like half that. Microsoft made the same mistake with Windows 8 and learned very quickly that a desktop OS should work like a desktop OS, not a phone OS. You cannot do both at the same time, one side of the experience will alway suffer simply because a desktop and a phone need different things.

[You-]

i've used gnome from the beginning. every design decision for the last 15 years has been for touch interface. it is peak gas lighting not to admit this.

I am guessing you wont have used gnome on a touch device then.

Gnome is primarily a keyboard focussed platform. Gestures are a nice addition that do not detract from its keyboard focus by improving on a ... trackpad. Something all laptop keyboard users have.

(but going back to the original topic. this merge request, once again, is plumbing that allows future improvements, not subject to any feature freezes or part of any secret cabal that wakes up every morning with the sole aim of ruining your day.)

[You-]

the one thing gnome-shell has going for it is that the phoc/phosh people aren't getting it done, and they are the only gnome-ish touch interface out there. maybe once cosmic shows them the way to build a lean gnome interface for desktop, the phosh/phoc people will rebase their work on cosmic. that would be interesting for sure.

You missed the whole tussle over the past few years: System76 and Purism do not get along. Remember all the arguments between System76 and "gnome" a couple of years ago? They were almost exclusively with developers who had been subcontracted by Purism.

When Purism developers managed to gain traction for LibAdwaita, System76 decided to make their own desktop instead.

I used a big ultra wide screen monitor, and I am pleased with the direction gnome has gone in in recently. Many of the designers also use ultrawide monitors so I may be benefiting from that and therefore able to see how the desktop is not being made into a touch-first interface.

[ojsl1]

Still waiting for 4-finger gestures to be un-hardcoded (in both gnome and kde).

[Modu]

Gnome as it is, is a laptop friendly platform. Why do people say over and over that it's a touch GUI or st I don't understand.

[yump]

This and previous major feature freeze exceptions gone into this release shows just how unnecessary and counterproductive such concept is.

From what it looks like, feature freeze exists to give a simple stop to non-inside development so the golden boulward can get more time allocated to their special needs..

Merge requests sitting around for years seems to be the norm for GNOME

if mutter ever gets traction on mobile I'll be very impressed and will apologize for doubting them all this time. but for now it's a shame that gnome-shell folks decided to put a as of now non-existant mobile/touch interface userbase on par with desktop use case, let alone us power users.

[fitzie]

You missed the whole tussle over the past few years: System76 and Purism do not get along. Remember all the arguments between System76 and "gnome" a couple of years ago? They were almost exclusively with developers who had been subcontracted by Purism.

When Purism developers managed to gain traction for LibAdwaita, System76 decided to make their own desktop instead.

I used a big ultra wide screen monitor, and I am pleased with the direction gnome has gone in in recently. Many of the designers also use ultrawide monitors so I may be benefiting from that and therefore able to see how the desktop is not being made into a touch-first interface.

i didn't know the back story on system76 and purism, thanks. as for being non-touch. it's really amazing how you think it's not a touch first interface, or at least aspires to be. I cannot remember the last time there was a gnome dev talking about power users. i have like 40-50 windows open right now. and the shell does nothing for me to manage that. the idea that I can just put them into different virtual desktops just doesn't work, of course the fact that I have to reboot once a week because wayland gnome cannot be restarted like xorg gnome was trivially able makes it hard to even consider virtual desktops, since it's hard enough to restart.

I wish the gnome-devs would remove their mouse from their computers for a week and really see how messed up things are. also, they should just change all the icons to random letters to show how impossible it is to understand the desktop if you don't already know what the pictures mean.

[oleid]

I cannot remember the last time there was a gnome dev talking about power users. i have like 40-50 windows open right now. and the shell does nothing for me to manage that.

Some call it power user, others window hoarding disorder.
Jokes aside, those windows are probably not all from different applications. Mutter has keyboard shortcuts to navigate the windows of the same application or windows of different applications. Works fine for me. As You- said: GNOME is quite keyboard focused. Maybe not so much for mouse nudgers. But I don't know if preferring keyboard control makes one a power user. Maybe there are lesser and greater power users 🤔?