GNOME Shell 3.26 Beta Drops Autotools Support

[andrei_me]

... to pick up stock Gnome, declare it sucks and move on without investing the required time to customize it to the user's workflow.

That's how I started to like KDE, I used to just try for 10 minutes and say it sucks and walk away, but after trying for a couple hours, really trying to use it as a daily driver, I enjoyed it's customizability and modern look, doesn't look that I'm stuck at the 90's

[oleid]

Build2 seems really interesting! Didn't know about it. I need to evaluate it against meson for a larger code base.

[bkor]

GNOME is Meson. Meson is GNOME.

One person is heavily involved in both Meson and GNOME. He's been talking about Meson for multiple years. Due to that involvement he caused not only interest into Meson, but also ensured it would work really well with GNOME.

[unixfan2001]

For me Gnome is the most functional, fast and efficient desktop once tailed to my workflow. It seems pure ignance to pick up stock Gnome, declare it sucks and move on without investing the required time to customize it to the user's workflow. Every other desktop shell requires the user spend time learning the hotekeys (i3) or customizing it in some way (KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, etc...)

If a person really just doesn't like something it's okay -- no reasons or excuses are required -- but when I hear these BS excuses it just comes across as hateful jabbing with a annoying alternator motive -- like X user, or X idology pisses me off so I'm gonna be passive aggressive and just say X sucks. (I'm not confirming that you are among these but if you do fit the stereotype then Jesus why can't people just fucking enjoy some vanilla ice cream instead of bitch and moan about how chocolate is better or some other purely personal preference. News Flash -- different users have different needs and different GUIs suit each of their workflows differently.)

Just out of sheer curiosity.
What extension is that start menu and is there a straightforward way to remove the little anchor "bubble" or have it stick closer to the titlebar? My OCD would prevent me from using it floating like that. Just looks ... aesthetically wrong.

[theghost]

It seems pure ignance to pick up stock Gnome, declare it sucks and move on without investing the required time to customize it to the user's workflow.

I don't know but for me it's more a sign of having a bad design.
Sure it's always good to have a DE which is heavily customizable but if I would be the developer of a DE, I would ask myself: "Why customizes every user my stock DE? What can I do to improve the UX."
And regarding this Gnome can improve a lot because almost every user installs the tweak tool and a lot of extensions just to get started.

[OneBitUser]

I assume it's this latter tray they're getting rid of. It's always been ugly - like it's not really a proper part of the UI, just an afterthought for supporting apps that need somewhere to put their icons. I'm not sure what they're doing with it, though - whether they're abolishing it entirely, or if they're moving it into the top bar where it would be more useful. There's a case to be made either way - there are definitely apps that need that functionality, but it's also something that's tied to X11 protocols, not very Wayland-friendly.

And why is this a good thing?
In my understanding this is essentially removing another bit of functionality.
Stock gnome is already pretty wasteful when it comes to "screen real estate": very little functionality taking up a lot of space.
So far at least I could unify the entire shell functionality into a single bottom panel that incorporated the legacy tray, thanks to extensions.

I have seen a lot of reasoning from gnome developers on mailing lists, blog posts, etc., explaining the choices made during development.
Not a single explanation was based on functionality: they were mostly giving ideological reasons as to hwat each part of the GUI should do.
For instance the explanation for the existence of the separate legacy tray was that people have been using the system tray wrong *Autistic screaming*, since it is not meant for programs to display small "launchers". So instead of accepting that the paradigm of this UI element has changed over the years, they chose to separate the programs from the "proper" system tray stuff.
Nothing about obsolete X11 protocols, just this ideological BS.

Also, is there a Wayland alternative to providing this X functionality? Because I seem to remember that a lack of such alternative methods was the reason stock gnome cannot have icons on the desktop on a Wayland session. If there is no such alternative, then this is just another leap forward into nothing. Modern technologies are all well and good, but please do not force us to use them as long as they do not provide basic functionality.
I do not like it when GUI design is centered on ideology and not focusing on functionality.

For me Gnome is the most functional, fast and efficient desktop once tailed to my workflow. It seems pure ignance to pick up stock Gnome, declare it sucks and move on without investing the required time to customize it to the user's workflow.

I agree with you, even though I am a happy KDE user.
Gnome can be pretty snappy and functional, with appropriate extensions.
Though I would just like to add that I don't think stock Gnome fits any users' workflow at all, which should get developers thinking...
Another problem is that extension-based workflows can break upon update... that's why I did not use a heavily customized Gnome Shell on my Tumbleweed installation.

By the way: are you running that Gnome session on Wayland or X?

[gbcox]

For me Gnome is the most functional, fast and efficient desktop once tailed to my workflow. It seems pure ignance to pick up stock Gnome, declare it sucks and move on without investing the required time to customize it to the user's workflow. Every other desktop shell requires the user spend time learning the hotekeys (i3) or customizing it in some way (KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, etc...)

If a person really just doesn't like something it's okay -- no reasons or excuses are required -- but when I hear these BS excuses it just comes across as hateful jabbing with a annoying alternator motive -- like X user, or X idology pisses me off so I'm gonna be passive aggressive and just say X sucks. (I'm not confirming that you are among these but if you do fit the stereotype then Jesus why can't people just fucking enjoy some vanilla ice cream instead of bitch and moan about how chocolate is better or some other purely personal preference. News Flash -- different users have different needs and different GUIs suit each of their workflows differently.)

It's great you like GNOME and got it configured the way you wanted it - but you missed my point and went off on another tangent about excuses, hateful jabbing and ice cream. I didn't say it was impossible to configure, I said that to customise it, you have to install a bunch of stuff or start editing files. Yes it's true for every desktop there is a learning curve - but they don't require you to go on a treasure hunt to find extensions (which btw, may or may not work since the vast majority are not officially supported). What other desktop does this? Especially one that is the default on the majority of major Linux distributions - and people wonder why the Linux desktop isn't more popular.

[gbcox]

...
So far at least I could unify the entire shell functionality into a single bottom panel that incorporated the legacy tray, thanks to extensions.
I have seen a lot of reasoning from gnome developers on mailing lists, blog posts, etc., explaining the choices made during development.
Not a single explanation was based on functionality: they were mostly giving ideological reasons as to hwat each part of the GUI should do.
...
Nothing about obsolete X11 protocols, just this ideological BS.
...
I do not like it when GUI design is centered on ideology and not focusing on functionality.
...
Gnome can be pretty snappy and functional, with appropriate extensions.
Though I would just like to add that I don't think stock Gnome fits any users' workflow at all, which should get developers thinking...
Another problem is that extension-based workflows can break upon update... that's why I did not use a heavily customized Gnome Shell on my Tumbleweed installation.
...

I agree with much of what you are saying... I haven't done the research on the "ideological" reasons, but that appears to be true just from trying to configure the darn thing. Extensions appear to be an afterthought as a response to user complaints - but are weakly integrated and as you point out, can break upon update (because the vast majority are not officially supported). I still don't get why it is so popular. Maybe just because major distributions made it the default and people don't know better. With so many people apparently working on it, you'd think they would at least make the customizations officially supported.

What other desktop has people saying "Yeah, it pretty much sucks out of the box, but install these (unofficial) extensions and it will be so much better."

[grok]

Have to say the above looks very pretty ; there's a mix of symbolic and realistic icons but it's the same deal even on MATE (icons for zoom it, zoom out, open/save file. or perhaps that's the theme). The "symbolic" icons seem relegated to system stuff / GUI controls. This is rather good.
Except for those top-right icons in Nautilus which look very meaningless unless you press them to learn what they do lol.

I might also say it looks like you put some work into only storing directories in the ~ folder and spent time finding pretty icons and applying them to the folders.
Anyway, I suppose this late Gnome 3 stuff will get more popular with Ubuntu 18.04 though millions will keep their luddite desktop crap with File Edit View... and tray icons, don't forget that.
I "only" have a dual core and 8GB and all that RAM is wasted by the apps and file manager etc., would consider Gnome 3 if I had quad core and 16GB RAM 'cos I can't really spend a half gig on that prettiness and the CPU load cost of "accelerating" it with 3D hardware and other CPU bloat of being "modern" and javascripted.

In fact some people like to run LXDE on even powerful machines, I might do if I need/want to free some RAM and CPU load as while Mate is good even on single core and 512MB to 1GB RAM, it's spending over 10MB RAM on the clock.

[starshipeleven]

gnome is meson. Meson is gnome.

hail hydra !!!!!!