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Lobotomizing Gnome

eklitzke.org

151–160 of 224 posts

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#151
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no experience with Mate, but the feature I miss the most in the traditional desktops is starting programs by hitting the super (Windows) key and typing the programs. I know that you can use Alt+F2 for this, but using super is much more ingrained for me since I've seen Windows Vista (I am using Linux at home and Windows systems at work)

>hitting the super (Windows) key and typing the programs That's how Unity (Ubuntu's default DE) worked, until they transitioned to GNOME.

It works in Gnome too!

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#152
A lot of the comments here are arguing for or against the author's specific choices, but I would like to point out how great it is that Linux desktop environments are this customizable in the first place.

I recently switched back to Linux after using a Mac for a couple of years, and was blown away with how far Gnome has gotten in terms of customizability -- even if most of it is done through extensions. Moreover, if you can't tweak it to your liking, perhaps xfce or i3 or KDE will prove more accommodating...

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#153
post #3

I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45' in the middle of an extremely important moment) Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2/3 extension?) I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it's way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances. Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years,…

2018 is, after all, the year of the Linux desktop. I was surprised to find that Ubuntu 16.04 worked better on my Thinkpad T450s than the stock Windows 10 install (which came with a lot of crapware). I had sound stutters and mult-monitor issues on Windows, and everything worked out of the box on Ubuntu.

To be fair, 200X was the Year of the Linux Desktop for us Linux users.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#155
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say for certain that I have never had a package update interrupting me in the middle of an extremely important moment, and for a very simply reason. I do not update my packages during extremely important moments. I have never had the itch in the middle of a presentation to say "Wait everyone, a update came so lets have you all sit and wait and look while the machine do a 45 minutes update".

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but forced updates have already come to linux: https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for... Even applications you'd expect to be native (apt packages) like `gnome-system-monitor` are included as snaps by default in the desktop version of ubuntu 18.04. All it takes is a someone with sufficient authority to make disabling snaps very difficult.[1] Unfortunately, th…

Has come to Ubuntu flavors of Linux* and it seems, especially, just GNOME? I don't have this problem with Arch and pacman -Syu at my leisure. I refuse to use autoupdating software out of principle and am saddened so many people choose convenience over security.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#156
post #142

The author wants to remove JavaScript from their desktop and does this by disabling all extensions in the hope that it will also disable Gnomes JavaScript engine. What the author does not appear to understand is that extensions are written in JavaScript because Gnome shell is written in JavaScript. Gnome works very well for my workflow, and I find much of the "bloat" to be quite useful in day to day usage, but can un…

Wow. Gnome Shell is written in javascript? How much of it is javascript? I find this a really odd decision.

AFAIK the window manager/shell is javascript. You can bring up a JS console and inspect/move windows around, or extend the shell UI - sort of like you would create a browser extension.

I suspect they made that choice because... well.. javascript is everywhere and there are lots of developers that know it.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#157

Open-source desktops are never perfect for anyone, but everyone expects them to be. For everyone who says they are too bloated, someone else says they are too spartan. That's probably why there are so many of them. I would expect working on Gnome (or KDE or Cinnamon or Mate or XFCE or LXDE, the list goes on) to be a thankless task. You try to please everybody and yet please nobody. The imperfections of Linux desktops…

I tried to switch to Linux for philosophical and customization reasons. Found it nearly impossible to configure stuff reliably and such it wont crash in new interesting ways. For example: Create a new keyboard layout and have it appear in KDE keyboard settings. Good luck. Input Manager for macOS: done.

AFAIK you cannot create a new keyboard layout in macOS. How did you do?

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#158

Meanwhile on KDE I can change all my configuration to my personal tastes without needing to edit a single text file or doing obscure and magic things with third party tools.

That's not always a good thing, everytime I've tried a post-plasma KDE version I've always ended up spending too much time regularly tweaking the whole setup.

I find that the GNOME way of doing this, need a lot more of work that simply doing : Preferences -> "Change stuff here"

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#159

The author wants to remove JavaScript from their desktop and does this by disabling all extensions in the hope that it will also disable Gnomes JavaScript engine. What the author does not appear to understand is that extensions are written in JavaScript because Gnome shell is written in JavaScript. Gnome works very well for my workflow, and I find much of the "bloat" to be quite useful in day to day usage, but can un…

I use XMonad but used to have lots of Gnome based services running in the background, in order to have sensible "modern" plug-and-play and easy configurability (e.g. printers, monitor layout, network, etc.) Sadly, as they move more and more things to the Shell, this is becoming a harder task. gnome-control-center which used to be very useful even in my custom setup, is now useless if you don't run a full gnome-sessio…

Similarly I run StumpWM as my main WM. I just run a full gnome session on a separate x server and when I want to setup a printer or whatever I just switch to gnome with ctrl-alt-F2.

Re: Lobotomizing Gnome

#160
> … my personal feeling is the less Javascript in my life the better.

I couldn't agree more. But I also feel much the same way about GNOME; that's why I use StumpWM[0]. It doesn't do everything out of the box which GNOME does, but it's extensible in a dynamic language, which means that it's easy enough to add most everything.

0: https://stumpwm.github.io/

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