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Gnome 40

forty.gnome.org

11–20 of 244 posts

Re: Gnome 40

#11
post #8

What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason. Firstly, without major versions it does not single anything to end users and end developers. Is '40' still mostly compatible with the gnome 3.x.x API? Is there a major divergence between 40 and 41? Is 41 and 40 a total rewrite? 3.x.x works and there's a reason why. It conveys a lot of information…

Actually this numbering scheme conveys to me, intuitively, that changes are more gradual and hints at backwards compatibility. If there's no major/minor/patch semantics I just assume versions are small incremental additions. I could be wrong but that's what the browser versioning schemes have instilled in me.

Which is bizarre, because if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do?

Re: Gnome 40

#12
post #8

What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason. Firstly, without major versions it does not single anything to end users and end developers. Is '40' still mostly compatible with the gnome 3.x.x API? Is there a major divergence between 40 and 41? Is 41 and 40 a total rewrite? 3.x.x works and there's a reason why. It conveys a lot of information…

Actually this numbering scheme conveys to me, intuitively, that changes are more gradual and hints at backwards compatibility. If there's no major/minor/patch semantics I just assume versions are small incremental additions. I could be wrong but that's what the browser versioning schemes have instilled in me.

> and hints at backwards compatibility.

To me it communicates no commitment to backwards compatibility, i.e. no semantic versioning. This might be enforceable if one is Apple, but doesn't sound good for an open-source platform.

Re: Gnome 40

#13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually this numbering scheme conveys to me, intuitively, that changes are more gradual and hints at backwards compatibility. If there's no major/minor/patch semantics I just assume versions are small incremental additions. I could be wrong but that's what the browser versioning schemes have instilled in me.

Which is bizarre, because if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do?

Improve existing stuff, add new stuff. That can be done with backwards compatibility if you have a well defined API. I haven't looked at Gnome's API in years so I'm not sure what's its state, but one shining example for this is Redis which is backwards compatible to 11 years ago.

Another great and more relevant example is browsers.

Re: Gnome 40

#14
The open windows don't even have visible taskbar buttons in the fancy presentation it shows at the top

I have no idea how you can productively work that way

The reason for getting 4K monitors is not to have less stuff that can make you productive visible

KDE 3.5 was the top of OSS desktops, in my opinion

Re: Gnome 40

#15
I love that they are making the compose key feature more discoverable. It's the best way to type strange characters like å, ř or ©.

Re: Gnome 40

#16

What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason. Firstly, without major versions it does not single anything to end users and end developers. Is '40' still mostly compatible with the gnome 3.x.x API? Is there a major divergence between 40 and 41? Is 41 and 40 a total rewrite? 3.x.x works and there's a reason why. It conveys a lot of information…

As far as I understand "40" is just short for "3.40.0". The expectation is that they will remain compatible with the 3.x.x series for a long time, so the 3 is somewhat redundant. This release contains more UI changes than usual, but it is very far away from the change from gnome 2 to 3.

Re: Gnome 40

#17

It looks heavily inspired by macOS. Especially if you scroll down to the “Core Apps” section. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

GNOME has, unfortunately, been on this train before macOS was; when Big Sur came out there were many threads on other sites pointing out how strange it was that macOS seemed to be taking after GNOME 3.

Re: Gnome 40

#18

The open windows don't even have visible taskbar buttons in the fancy presentation it shows at the top I have no idea how you can productively work that way The reason for getting 4K monitors is not to have less stuff that can make you productive visible KDE 3.5 was the top of OSS desktops, in my opinion

I think I'm missing something... Where is the taskbar? Do you need that "overview" animation each time you want to bring an application to focus? And where are the menus of the focused application?

Re: Gnome 40

#19
post #16

What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason. Firstly, without major versions it does not single anything to end users and end developers. Is '40' still mostly compatible with the gnome 3.x.x API? Is there a major divergence between 40 and 41? Is 41 and 40 a total rewrite? 3.x.x works and there's a reason why. It conveys a lot of information…

As far as I understand "40" is just short for "3.40.0". The expectation is that they will remain compatible with the 3.x.x series for a long time, so the 3 is somewhat redundant. This release contains more UI changes than usual, but it is very far away from the change from gnome 2 to 3.

Not much point in keeping the "3." around when we don't expect a "4.0" version to happen in the foreseeable future.

Re: Gnome 40

#20
post #18

The open windows don't even have visible taskbar buttons in the fancy presentation it shows at the top I have no idea how you can productively work that way The reason for getting 4K monitors is not to have less stuff that can make you productive visible KDE 3.5 was the top of OSS desktops, in my opinion

I think I'm missing something... Where is the taskbar? Do you need that "overview" animation each time you want to bring an application to focus? And where are the menus of the focused application?

The menus should be in the hamburger menu on the top right of each window. A time waster and a recent fad coming from small screen devices.

I can't answer your other questions. Not only I don't have GNOME 40 but I greatly tweaked Ubuntu 20' GNOME to disable all animations, remove the launcher, move the top bar to the bottom, use those very same horizontal virtual desktops they introduced in 40 (hurrah) and add an old Windows like taskbar. It feels much more productive than the default settings.

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