New Gestures Code Squeezes Into GNOME 46

[lakerssuperman]

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.

I have to push back on most of your points. Gnome is keyboard/trackpad friendly. Sure, they want to be able to use it on touch devices as well, but it's complete usable on with a mouse. Gnome 3 was rough early on, but once I tried to fully embrace how Gnome wants to work, I am highly productive. I have three main setups I use. My main computer has a 27 inch 1440p display. On this setup, I fully use virtual desktops. I have a specific set of windows I keep open on each workspace and I either slide between them or alt-tab to a specific program and Gnome brings me to the correct workspace. I find this VASTLY better than juggling windows and minimizing etc.

My work computer is 3 1080p monitors. Here I don't use virtual desktops as much, but I also don't have issues moving between windows. Once I embraced alt-tab and the focus on the keyboard in Gnome everything made more sense.

Finally, I use Gnome on my Dell laptop. With the swipe gestures, I can move around the smaller 14 inch screen VERY quickly. Using the overview, alt-tab, swipe gestures and virtual desktops, I can get a lot done with limited screen real-estate.

I can't speak to your stability with Wayland issues as I don't have those on my end, but to your point about the devs swearing off their mouse, I would say that they would probably not find that a bad proposition given the keyboard focus I've mentioned.

My experience and view on Gnome is no more valid than yours, but I do know that I found great success with Gnome when I truly attempted to embrace their design paradigm.

[sobrus]

Apart from things already mentioned, like crippling Nautilus, I wish GNOME designers stop using full screen animations so often, especially instead of "start menu".
Good UI is no fancy+clean look contest. Using gnome with large screens is no fun, there should be epilepsy warning somewhere. And do we really need 5cm large icons? What is this? Fisher-Price UI?

Also, they don't want UI to be customizable, they want good defaults. Problem is, there are no good defaults. It all depends on who is using it and on which device. And if their "good defaults" is like having "take a screenshot" a first and most important option in a window manager menu, then we are doomed.
I don't always take screenshots of all the windows i see, but when I do - i use GNOME.

[fitzie]

I have to push back on most of your points. Gnome is keyboard/trackpad friendly. Sure, they want to be able to use it on touch devices as well, but it's complete usable on with a mouse. Gnome 3 was rough early on, but once I tried to fully embrace how Gnome wants to work, I am highly productive. I have three main setups I use. My main computer has a 27 inch 1440p display. On this setup, I fully use virtual desktops. I have a specific set of windows I keep open on each workspace and I either slide between them or alt-tab to a specific program and Gnome brings me to the correct workspace. I find this VASTLY better than juggling windows and minimizing etc.

My work computer is 3 1080p monitors. Here I don't use virtual desktops as much, but I also don't have issues moving between windows. Once I embraced alt-tab and the focus on the keyboard in Gnome everything made more sense.

Finally, I use Gnome on my Dell laptop. With the swipe gestures, I can move around the smaller 14 inch screen VERY quickly. Using the overview, alt-tab, swipe gestures and virtual desktops, I can get a lot done with limited screen real-estate.

I can't speak to your stability with Wayland issues as I don't have those on my end, but to your point about the devs swearing off their mouse, I would say that they would probably not find that a bad proposition given the keyboard focus I've mentioned.

My experience and view on Gnome is no more valid than yours, but I do know that I found great success with Gnome when I truly attempted to embrace their design paradigm.

i have success with gnome, which is why I use it, but I'm not under any delusion that they care about power users. I really appreciate the polish in nautilus, and how the desktop is mostly put together well, but since gnome 3 it's been a non stop experiment on what they think a desktop should be rather then what would help it's users. This was largely okay when there was real pioneers leading the effort, but now the desktop is run by people that, while skilled, don't have a particularly compelling vision on how to make gnome better. I think most people will only see this in hindsight, when we're all rocking cosmic DE.

[fitzie]

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 🤔?

what gnome extensions do you use to make your desktop work for you?

[oleid]

what gnome extensions do you use to make your desktop work for you?

Barely any. If I recall correctly (I'm away from my desktop) I use native window placement and a tea timer extension. And certainly I configured a few things in gnome-tweak-tool.

[lakerssuperman]

i have success with gnome, which is why I use it, but I'm not under any delusion that they care about power users. I really appreciate the polish in nautilus, and how the desktop is mostly put together well, but since gnome 3 it's been a non stop experiment on what they think a desktop should be rather then what would help it's users. This was largely okay when there was real pioneers leading the effort, but now the desktop is run by people that, while skilled, don't have a particularly compelling vision on how to make gnome better. I think most people will only see this in hindsight, when we're all rocking cosmic DE.

I agree that it was rough early on, but they've been really awesome about iterating to a better overall product and technology stack.

I'd also ask for your definition of power user. I am encoding Blurays for my media server, doing home server administration from my machine and all manners of other things. I stress my machine an system often. I find the keyboard shortcuts I have at my disposal to be very power user oriented. Gnome can't do what KDE can, but it has plenty of power if you want to tap into it.

[fitzie]

I agree that it was rough early on, but they've been really awesome about iterating to a better overall product and technology stack.

I'd also ask for your definition of power user. I am encoding Blurays for my media server, doing home server administration from my machine and all manners of other things. I stress my machine an system often. I find the keyboard shortcuts I have at my disposal to be very power user oriented. Gnome can't do what KDE can, but it has plenty of power if you want to tap into it.

i think at the core, power users juggle several apps at once, often with diverse set of apps legacy apps, command line apps, different toolkits, etc. if you look at the evolution of macos between the dock and stage manager, these are certainly geared to this type of user.

[lakerssuperman]

i think at the core, power users juggle several apps at once, often with diverse set of apps legacy apps, command line apps, different toolkits, etc. if you look at the evolution of macos between the dock and stage manager, these are certainly geared to this type of user.

I have 4 virtual desktops open currently. I have a web browser, two terminals, Handbrake, MakeMKV, two Nautilus windows, mkvToolnix GUI and a bunch of other random stuff open. I feel like this would qualify as a power user type of workload. When I try out other desktops that aren't Gnome, I find myself banging my head against the wall because I've become so used to the workflow Gnome affords me that I get slowed down when I don't have it.

I think you can absolutely be a Gnome power user if you adopt the shell workflow just as you can be a power user of more mouse oriented desktops. I think you see the same type of split with MacOS and Windows. A power user of one likely isn't as proficient or doesn't like the flow of the other as much as the one they use constantly.