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Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

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Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#261

Post by BearOso »

croh wrote: post #205
noir_lord wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of Wayland support is the single thing I have wish it had. Gnome is so smooth on Nvidia in comparison but in every other way I prefer and still use cinnamon

Cinnamon with Mint is very stable and tuned, very good to get job done. It has very low cpu consumption. I don't know why but gnome always eats lots of resources. Plus this very old famous bug, keep me away from gnome-shell for good. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=733297

> Cinnamon with Mint is very stable and tuned

Unfortunately not. Muffin, the compositor is based on a really old version of Mutter, and it’s missing a lot of performance work and fixes that make latency lower and output less likely to hitch, hidpi works better, etc. They need to just drop their fork and use the upstream version. They haven’t added anything significant to Muffin to justify keeping it—-the differences to gnome are done with other packages.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#262

Post by Doxin »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #258
mleonhard wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using multiple monitors because managing windows across them is difficult. Now i use a single large monitor. I wish a company would make a good portable computer to fit my work style: - tall 20" x 12" matte screen with built-in stand to raise it up to eye level - detachable corded tenting keyboard - detachable corded tenting vertical mouse - hot-swappable battery with various weights available - thin 20-foo…

This sounds like an amazing design. What does "tenting" mean in this case?

It usually refers to a split keyboard where each half is raised on one side, allowing for a more natural wrist posture. See this diagram for an example: https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/computerworkstations/images...

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#263

Post by petepete »

II2II wrote: post #105
petepete wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, some people are just a little dramatic about it.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a horror show, but do find it genuinely unpleasant to use. In a default configuration GNOME's task switcher seems to assume that there is only one window open for each application. Switching between multiple windows in the same application is rather inconvenient. The title bar stuffs in frequently accessed options then hides the menu bar under the hamburger icon. Those frequently us…

GNOME's task switcher has two modes, the one you're using switches between applications. Alt+(the key above tab) switches between windows within an application.

The hamburger menu keeps the applications looking clean, if there's anything I use that frequently I'll just use the keyboard shortcut.

It's improving every release, but if you want traditional, I'd choose XFCE.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#264

Post by minkiu »

Symbiote wrote: post #132
skeletal88 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, but the fact that the default is so braindead and annoying, and that I have to configure it to make it usable, is well.. very annoying. Like, why would they think that it is a good idea? No other desktop does this.

Isn't Gnome just copying Mac OS X? Cmd+Tab switches between applications, and Cmd+~ switches between windows of the current application.

Just checked, and the equivalent of Cmd+~ on GNOME is Cmd+`.

That said, I rarely use Cmd+Tab anymore, I just move the mouse to the top left corner and pick, now that screen could use some UX improvements (i.e. hotkeys for the apps, and maybe grouping, since when you have a lot of open apps, it is hard to find what you are looking for).

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#265

Post by minkiu »

xorcist wrote: post #191
yrro wrote: post #39

I find the app-based window navigation in vanilla GNOME 3 rather frustrating, and try as I might, I just can't get comfortable navigating between what I think of as applications. This is because I have a few applications (Firefox, Terminal) that are really not applications in and of themselves; the applications are really Outlook, JIRA, Confluence, Slack, OpenShift (logged in as cluster admin), OpenShift (logged in a…

You can bind back alt-tab to switch-window: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications '[]' gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-windows '[" Tab"]' There are more settings like that which you can find in the manual, or from other frustrated users. These settings seem to be stored in a binary format so the resulting rc-files can not easily be commited to git. I keep a dozen lin…

You can do it from Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#266

Post by barrkel »

petepete wrote: post #263
II2II wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a horror show, but do find it genuinely unpleasant to use. In a default configuration GNOME's task switcher seems to assume that there is only one window open for each application. Switching between multiple windows in the same application is rather inconvenient. The title bar stuffs in frequently accessed options then hides the menu bar under the hamburger icon. Those frequently us…

GNOME's task switcher has two modes, the one you're using switches between applications. Alt+(the key above tab) switches between windows within an application. The hamburger menu keeps the applications looking clean, if there's anything I use that frequently I'll just use the keyboard shortcut. It's improving every release, but if you want traditional, I'd choose XFCE.

A "clean" UI is often a less functional or efficient UI; cleanliness is usually achieved by adding indirection or removing functionality. But Gtk3 isn't even clean; it's often cluttered. Just look at the title bar on dconf-editor when you're 5 levels deep in a config tree.

Menus are ideal for commands which are individually infrequently used, but collectively frequently used. That is, where any given menu item isn't used often enough to warrant learning the keyboard shortcut (not that Gtk3 menus show shortcuts, because they don't), but the menu as a total is visited to execute a command frequently. Consider things like IDEs, photo manipulation, video editing, sound editing, basically anything with a lot of tools to apply.

I find it particularly ironic that Gimp - the OG Gtk - doesn't use a hamburger menu, because that would be ludicrous.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#267

Post by p_l »

barrkel wrote: post #266
petepete wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNOME's task switcher has two modes, the one you're using switches between applications. Alt+(the key above tab) switches between windows within an application. The hamburger menu keeps the applications looking clean, if there's anything I use that frequently I'll just use the keyboard shortcut. It's improving every release, but if you want traditional, I'd choose XFCE.

A "clean" UI is often a less functional or efficient UI; cleanliness is usually achieved by adding indirection or removing functionality. But Gtk3 isn't even clean; it's often cluttered. Just look at the title bar on dconf-editor when you're 5 levels deep in a config tree. Menus are ideal for commands which are individually infrequently used, but collectively frequently used. That is, where any given menu item isn't…

Another point with menus is that the typical top-of-the screen, and nowadays "hamburger" menu is just dumping ground for all functionality, and should be at most of a secondary use to common and context-specific actions represented by buttons/context menus/etc.

Something usually lost in "clean" UIs...

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#268

Post by mijoharas »

ews wrote: post #223
dkersten wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently switched to Sway because gnomes workspaces annoyed me too much. Let me choose a workspace independently on each monitor please! On i3 I was getting really bad screen tearing, even with conpton/picom otherwise I’d have just used that, but Sway/Wayland has no such problems. Sadly a few things don’t work so well in Wayland. For example, Windows games under Proton work fine on X but not on Wayland/Xwayland (I…

Same, after years of X/i3 tearing and unsuccessfully tweaking compton, I switched to sway/wayland on arch and couldn't be happier.

The only thing I find annoying is the lack of screen sharing on zoom. Zoom claims they support wayland on arch, but unless I made a mistake or something, that's just not true.

Some wine things don't work properly too, which is somewhat annoying, but I only have one wine application I run very rarely, so it's not too onerous to boot back into i3 for that.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#269

Post by linuxdaemon »

I have tried to like tiling window managers and for whatever reason, it just hasn't clicked for me. I have really come to like the way default Gnome works. That said, I have used material-shell for about 1/2 an hour, and so far this is the first time I can see myself actually liking a tiling window manager.

At the risk of being the guy who has used it for a minimal amount of time and starts complaining about it because it doesn't work like I'm used to...There are a couple preference things for me that I wish were a little different.

I like gnome's no-frills fullscreen. You only have the app and the top panel stuff. In material-shell, I can SUPER+ESC to get full screen, but I think I want to be able to just mouse-over to the left side to bring up the panel while in full screen. To get to anything at the panel I have to SUPER-ESC first. Which is ok, I'd just rather it optionally auto-hide.

Kind of the same as the left-panel, the top-panel workspace list looks especially jumbled when you have an app like a browser maximized. So you see the workspace list, then your titlebar, then your browser tabs. It just adds extra "business" that I would prefer to not see. And again, enabling fullscreen with SUPER+ESC basically gets me what I want so it's not that big of a deal.

Finally, I understand why people would like it, but for me I would prefer to not have the "+" in the workspace switcher at all. Or at least minimally have it skip being part of my SUPER+A/SUPER+D switching. I REALLY don't like it showing up when nothing is open on my workspace or when I have a vertical split workspace, and only one thing on the screen and it shows the "+" content window. I am so accustomed to just hitting SUPER and then typing the app that I want, its way faster to do that and I'd rather the whole "+" window go away.

All-in-all, I'm pretty satisfied with material-shell and will definitely be using it as my desktop.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#270

Post by II2II »

petepete wrote: post #263
II2II wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a horror show, but do find it genuinely unpleasant to use. In a default configuration GNOME's task switcher seems to assume that there is only one window open for each application. Switching between multiple windows in the same application is rather inconvenient. The title bar stuffs in frequently accessed options then hides the menu bar under the hamburger icon. Those frequently us…

GNOME's task switcher has two modes, the one you're using switches between applications. Alt+(the key above tab) switches between windows within an application. The hamburger menu keeps the applications looking clean, if there's anything I use that frequently I'll just use the keyboard shortcut. It's improving every release, but if you want traditional, I'd choose XFCE.

I would far prefer an organized UI to one that tries to look clean by tucking away functionality under a hamburger icon.

This is not to say that I insist upon menus. Since I never had much invested in Microsoft Office, I do appreciate the ribbon bar. It does a fairly good job of organizing and exposing functionality in an otherwise complex piece of software. Contrast that with GNOME's approach. It is rather difficult to design a complex piece of software when most of the functionality is hidden behind a single menu.

At the other extreme, you have software that is somehow command driven. The interface can be kept clean by hiding away all of the functionality. (An example of this would be vim.) Yet that is not what GNOME is trying to provide. GNOME is a graphical interface that is supposed to facilitate discoverability. Discoverability will always be a trade-off between visual clutter or a reduced feature set. The only other option is to hide functionality, which is dangerous in a GUI.

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