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Help Improve Gnome

blogs.gnome.org

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Re: Help Improve Gnome

#51

Post by dark-star »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #45

GNOME 3+ is confusing and difficult to use. Many of the design decisions are strange and break GUI conventions that have been around for decades. I have tried to understand and use GNOME 3+, but it is utterly frustrating and does not work for me. I have to use GNOME 3+ at work because RHEL is the blessed Linux distribution and IT does not allow EPEL / third-party package repos that are not strictly required for busin…

My experience is pretty much the same. This is nothing new, too, since I have been using Gnome on and off since about 20 years ago. From confusing UI dialogs or elements, to the continuous reduction of changeable settings (and replacement of those by some dubious defaults), almost everything makes me think that even Windows 11 has a better UI/UX than Gnome

On my personal laptop I switched from Xfce to KDE a while ago and never looked back. The experience is just so much better IMHO

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#52

Post by smoldesu »

asoneth wrote: post #34
bxparks wrote: post #10

I used to use GNOME for many years, mostly because it was the default on Ubuntu. Now it's one of my least favorite desktops, I'll use almost anything else. I got frustrated at the seemingly random, user-hostile, backwards-incompatible changes from one version to the next. From my rough memory: * The desktop icons and click-and-drag shortcuts got removed a few years ago. This is a GUI workflow that I've been using on…

KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon seem like great desktop environments and potentially better implementations of the "Windows-style" (i.e. Windows 95 through Windows 7) desktop environment than Windows these days. I'm glad they exist even if I don't personally use them. But I'm also glad that the GNOME folks have decided to chart a different path even when that results in the occasional (or not-so-occasional) design misstep. T…

> But I'm also glad that the GNOME folks have decided to chart a different path even when that results in the occasional (or not-so-occasional) design misstep

I would agree with this if GNOME also didn't treat their own technologies as an all-or-nothing scenario. One of the biggest problems I have is that GNOME is genuinely incapable of admitting when they're wrong; to a lesser extent with stuff like implementing EGLStream in GBM, and to a larger extent things like ignoring tickets because they don't fit their personal agenda. I'd argue that GNOME's development philosophy is what's holding back technologies like Wayland, Flatpak and even PipeWire. Their refusal to make modest concessions in the name of usability end up whittling down their desktop environment to little more than an iPad. They're welcome to design whatever they want, but forcing everyone else to jump through their hoops and threatening downstream vendors is simply not a good look.

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#53

Post by pmontra »

> sudo snap install --classic gnome-info-collect

I was tempted to install it but it's a snap on Ubuntu. I don't really like that Canonical is pushing snap so much. Hopefully it will go the way of Unity but it will take too long for me. I'm considering to switch to a different distribution, Debian derived.

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#54

Post by smoldesu »

pid-1 wrote: post #39
asoneth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon seem like great desktop environments and potentially better implementations of the "Windows-style" (i.e. Windows 95 through Windows 7) desktop environment than Windows these days. I'm glad they exist even if I don't personally use them. But I'm also glad that the GNOME folks have decided to chart a different path even when that results in the occasional (or not-so-occasional) design misstep. T…

GNOME by far the most supported and mature desktop environment for Linux. KDE et al might look and feel better, but you have annoyances like bad multi monitor support, bad dock support, etc... So while I agree with many feeling others have expressed, I'm happy to use a distro that ships a DE that just works.

It can be. Then again, if you're using an Nvidia machine you'll be treated to random segfaults on GNOME regardless of which driver you use. The reason for this is simply because they never wrote a proper Mutter backend for Nvidia, which doesn't really confer "just works" to me.

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#55

Post by modzu »

pmontra wrote: post #44
bxparks wrote: post #10

I used to use GNOME for many years, mostly because it was the default on Ubuntu. Now it's one of my least favorite desktops, I'll use almost anything else. I got frustrated at the seemingly random, user-hostile, backwards-incompatible changes from one version to the next. From my rough memory: * The desktop icons and click-and-drag shortcuts got removed a few years ago. This is a GUI workflow that I've been using on…

> I think there is still no image preview in their file explorer. I don't know, I don't use it anymore. Not in list view, but it's there (obviously) in icons view. It's always there in the file picker. I'm a little torn here. I want the file explorer window to be as small as possible and I don't need the preview most of the times. However I'd like to have a preview when exploring a folder of picture, and the list vie…

back in the day gnome files had image previews for the icon in the list view -- it was handy and got me by with the lack of image previews in the filepicker. but they recently took them out :/ iirc one of the devs said they couldnt make out the 16px icons on their screen anyway, and poof.. its easy to rag on gnome for some of this stuff but i really love it for the most part. i love that it's minimal and out of my way. anyway. thanks gnome team. let the haters hate

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#56

Post by jmillikin »

petepete wrote: post #30
bxparks wrote: post #10

I used to use GNOME for many years, mostly because it was the default on Ubuntu. Now it's one of my least favorite desktops, I'll use almost anything else. I got frustrated at the seemingly random, user-hostile, backwards-incompatible changes from one version to the next. From my rough memory: * The desktop icons and click-and-drag shortcuts got removed a few years ago. This is a GUI workflow that I've been using on…

> The desktop icons and click-and-drag shortcuts got removed a few years ago. This is a GUI workflow that I've been using on Windows, MacOS, Atari OS, Amiga OS, going back to the 1980s. Gone. Gnome hasn't had desktop icons for 11 years. I think you must've been using a third party plugin.

Desktop icons were removed from Nautilus about 4 years ago: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/merge_requests/46

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#57

Post by modzu »

otherme123 wrote: post #23
bxparks wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you believe that it took me 1-2 years to figure that out? I swiped that little arrow awkwardly with my mouse for 1-2 years, before I accidentally hit a key to get that login screen. I think the issue was that I'm sitting in front of a graphical user interface , which to me means using a mouse . It never occurred to me that I had to hit a key on a keyboard to get a login screen on a graphical user interface. I t…

Now imagine yourself sending anonymous tracking data to Gnome: "wow, this user is so happy with the swipe-up login screen, he didn't use the any-key bypass for two years! This is a 100% cool feature". And with you, 500 users like you. Meanwhile, the 10-20 users frustrated and asking in their forums to remove the feature are ignored, because anonymous data tells another story.

its not funny because it's true. the mcnamara fallacy is alive and well

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#58

Post by asoneth »

pid-1 wrote: post #39
asoneth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon seem like great desktop environments and potentially better implementations of the "Windows-style" (i.e. Windows 95 through Windows 7) desktop environment than Windows these days. I'm glad they exist even if I don't personally use them. But I'm also glad that the GNOME folks have decided to chart a different path even when that results in the occasional (or not-so-occasional) design misstep. T…

GNOME by far the most supported and mature desktop environment for Linux. KDE et al might look and feel better, but you have annoyances like bad multi monitor support, bad dock support, etc... So while I agree with many feeling others have expressed, I'm happy to use a distro that ships a DE that just works.

That's unfortunate, we could use healthy competition between desktop environments.

With respect to distros picking a conservative default, it does look like Red Hat Enterprise Linux ships with GNOME Classic by default, so perhaps that's one way to address that point.

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#59

Post by bezier-curve »

pjmlp wrote: post #9

No need for a tool, it is quite easy. Stop using JavaScript all over the place, use compiled languages. Don't outsource basic features to extensions, or third party tools. Bring basic stuff like thumbnails and desktop folders back.

> Stop using JavaScript all over the place, use compiled languages.

This is one of the things I like about GNOME. There is something to be said about a tech stack that's accessible and easy enough to use.

Re: Help Improve Gnome

#60

Post by herbst »

I love gnome. I don't understand why people prefer the win95 environment over everything but every desktop experience basically felt the same since then. Even Mac didn't feel intuitive at all to me.

Gnome however (I mean gnome, not whatever Ubuntu ships) removed all the unecessary things and made sure that whatever I need it's just a tab away. Nothing is intrusive or annoying, it's so out of your way that everything else I've tried the past years feels 'in your face' and constant diversion.

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