GNOME Shell 3.26 Beta Drops Autotools Support

[starshipeleven]

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...)

That screenshot does not like vanilla GNOME by a long shot.

[starshipeleven]

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.

FYI: the whole "uses too much RAM" is a bullshit argument once you're past the 4GB point.

Unless you use Chrome browser, that is. Then every bit of RAM helps.

[OneBitUser]

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.

What do you mean?
Is it bad to want functionality?
Should people happily accept the deprecation of tried and proven GUI paradigms, just because the developers said so?
I do not think so...

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.

I have to agree with starshipeleven that once you have more than 4GB RAM it is pretty pointless to worry about the DE using too much of it.
I do understand your point, but the CPU load part is a lot more troubling in my opinion.
I would also add that Gnome effectively spends all those resources on nothing... and once you add back functionality with extensions, the resource usage gets even higher.

On some level I do agree with you, though: I have a Ryzen 5 1600X, 32GBs of RAM and a GTX 970 (all to be OCd during the weekend), and I still would not want my DE to waste resources, even though they are aplenty.
I do run a "heavy" DE in the form of KDE Plasma, but here at least I get tons of functionality for the higher resource usage. More than I know what to do with, to be honest... plus, it IS pretty.

[Guy1524]

I really don't get why GNOME is popular. I just tried it out again and just seems like a kludge. I did a few google searches and people are saying, oh it's not so bad if you install the GNOME Tweak Tool - which I did and it was of little help. Seems like it is so simplified it's difficult to do anything productive... and to customise it, you have to install a bunch of stuff or start editing files. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hate the toolbar on the top, but to change it you have to install an extension. In Plasma, you just put it wherever you want. KDE isn't perfect of course, nothing is -- but geez...

Agreed, we as a community should move away from gnome. Keeping only their good projects, like Wayland.

[gbcox]

Agreed, we as a community should move away from gnome. Keeping only their good projects, like Wayland.

I don't have an issue with people using GNOME. It just seems weird that most people don't like the defaults and the solution was to patch together unofficial extensions which may or may not work - and that this is the default desktop solution which the big players have all embraced. I really don't get the reason behind it, unless they're just embarrassed and figure in for a penny, in for a pound.

[grok]

What do you mean?
Is it bad to want functionality?
Should people happily accept the deprecation of tried and proven GUI paradigms, just because the developers said so?
I do not think so...

I used one wrong word to say "stuff" or "environment" and might have written sarcasm into the post without thinking about it.

In any way, in ubuntu for example you can mostly easily install another lightweight desktop or X session, when the .deb is robust enough. i.e. you might install lxde with apt-get, this one sets itself up and doesn't get polluted by the system nor pollutes it, as it has no dependencies.
I used it several times along a more complicated desktop (e.g. a try at a cinnamon mint install, or a PC where someone had put ubuntu with unity on) it gives a fallback if your graphics work wrong or if you're messing up the big desktop's configuration.
So it might be practical for me to have a gnome 3 installation with lxde also installed ; then have a try at the idea of several gnome sessions e.g. one default/clean settings session, another one that is messed up, one well tweaked.

If there's still a Gnome Classic session I can also use that, with the file manager and image viewer from lxde if I want to. This feature of several Gnome 3 sessions is what will make it practical for me and not feel trapped. Does ubuntu come with three of them? There'd be "clean" Gnome, Ubuntu's Gnome session and Gnome Classic. I suppose I can I add one of my own.

Even in the default state, it would give three default configurations and so the user has some choice at least.

[k1e0x]

I really don't get why GNOME is popular. I just tried it out again and just seems like a kludge. I did a few google searches and people are saying, oh it's not so bad if you install the GNOME Tweak Tool - which I did and it was of little help. Seems like it is so simplified it's difficult to do anything productive... and to customise it, you have to install a bunch of stuff or start editing files. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hate the toolbar on the top, but to change it you have to install an extension. In Plasma, you just put it wherever you want. KDE isn't perfect of course, nothing is -- but geez...

Oh there are reasons.. Top area of the screen is the easiest to access with the mouse.. you can fall on it with your hand in a very general motion and hit the top. The finer the movement the worse / harder it is. If your still using a task bar in the bottom, most OS's have come to realize thats bad design also because it's easier to look at a picture of the app you want to switch to than it is to scan a list for the name. Android, Mac OS, etc.. Even Windows knows this too but they take a hybrid approach with thumbnails prob because they have been doing it wrong for so many years they don't want to shock ppl.

You have to change things sometimes to make them better.. and change isn't always well accepted.

[woprandi]

I really don't get why GNOME is popular. I just tried it out again and just seems like a kludge. I did a few google searches and people are saying, oh it's not so bad if you install the GNOME Tweak Tool - which I did and it was of little help. Seems like it is so simplified it's difficult to do anything productive... and to customise it, you have to install a bunch of stuff or start editing files. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hate the toolbar on the top, but to change it you have to install an extension. In Plasma, you just put it wherever you want. KDE isn't perfect of course, nothing is -- but geez...

Because it just works

[finalzone]

If there's still a Gnome Classic session I can also use that, with the file manager and image viewer from lxde if I want to.

Gnome Classic session still exists and is the default on enterprise distributions like RHEL and CentOS while also avail for Fedora.
Extensions are more accessible via Gnome Software starting on 3.24 without requiring the browser.

[grok]

Didn't know it was default in some places.

Oh there are reasons.. Top area of the screen is the easiest to access with the mouse.. you can fall on it with your hand in a very general motion and hit the top. The finer the movement the worse / harder it is. If your still using a task bar in the bottom, most OS's have come to realize thats bad design also because it's easier to look at a picture of the app you want to switch to than it is to scan a list for the name. Android, Mac OS, etc.. Even Windows knows this too but they take a hybrid approach with thumbnails prob because they have been doing it wrong for so many years they don't want to shock ppl.

You have to change things sometimes to make them better.. and change isn't always well accepted.

But in some cases you might have 15 generic looking windows ; grouping by application may suck as well (so, you make me click twice to get my browser window. Thanks, win 7/8/10.)
I only wish Mate supported a dual row task bar properly (if you try to do that, you get giant icons on non-tasklist elements)