• eli@lemmings.world
    0·
    13 days ago

    It’s a fine DE… But boy making appindicator/KStatus an un-officially-supported extension is dumb

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      12 days ago

      You can change it up with gnome tweaks and extensions. By default you can set accent colors and the background. (Plus move apps around the dashboard)

      • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        12 days ago

        But plugins break every update and gnome tweaks doesn’t let you change gnomes gtk theme anymore and from what I heard they added it in Gnome 3 bcs there was alot of drama

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          12 days ago

          Extensions require time to be updated to support the newest gnome version. It is only any issue if you update right after the newest gnome release. It is better to stay on something stable anyway since you probably will find bugs in the latest and greatest.

          As far a gnome tweaks is concerned it is still actively maintained and is needed for those who want to do more tweaking. It is important to note modern gnome is all libadwaita based which means it doesn’t use GTK themes. You can still set the theme for legacy apps but for libadwaita you need to set the colors you are looking for. The old style GTK is pretty much retired in gnome because it caused lots of inconsistent and non inclusive UI elements. Libadwaita makes everything the same and looks more modern than basically everything out there. (My opinion)

          • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            12 days ago

            1. YEAH true I can see plugins being used on something like Debian.

            2. Oh that’s why gnome tweaks got read of gtk theming I saw a forum post saying gnome devs don’t want customization especially they have this page: https://stopthemingmy.app/

            • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
              0·
              12 days ago

              I don’t want customization. The biggest users of gnome is probably enterprise Linux. In the enterprise or business space you want reliability and predictably.

              • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
                0·
                11 days ago

                Ok that would make sense why Most Enterprise oriented distros only ship Gnome

  • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
    0·
    13 days ago

    Old gnome is nostalgic to me, because my first venture into Linux was Fedora Core 4. I was still using Win98 at the time, and gnome 2.10 felt so modern in comparison, with rounded corners and soft gradients.

    Coming back to Linux after having not touched it for a very, very long time I tried gnome again and I just do not like it at all. It’s weird looking. Maybe too modern for me, i don’t know.

      • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
        0·
        10 days ago

        I’ll check that out, thanks! It does look nice. I have two PCs with Mint with Cinnamon, I’m pretty happy with. I have one more PC to switch over to Linux, I’ll probably try MATE on that.

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
    0·
    13 days ago

    GNOME looks like it is touch friendly, but try to run it on a tablet and it’s really fucking not. I had to DL a bunch of tweaks tools to make it useable at all and now the tablet breaks whenever there’s a Gnome update that the tweaks weren’t designed for.

    • salarua@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      I get distracted/overwhelmed fairly easily, so GNOME is a godsend. minimalistic top bar + on demand workspaces to throw my extra windows into = I can actually get stuff done.

  • hardcoreufo@lemmy.world
    0·
    13 days ago

    Every time I try kde I get pissed off that every time I make a settings change I have to hit apply as well. Gnome I just change the settings and close the window. Plus I can never figure out how to switch workspaces. I like super+scroll wheel or swiping on a laptop.

    • stevedice@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      I like super+scroll wheel or swiping on a laptop.

      Nevermind that you can configure it to do whatever you want. Swiping is literally the default in KDE.

  • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth
    0·
    13 days ago

    most of the things in gnome extensions should be built in and available from the settings. that being said there’s nothing stopping me from just using something else, hence why I use kde.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      0·
      13 days ago

      What is the difference between adding a extension and enabling a setting other than that a disabled feature is just bloat?

      I mean any distro can serve the extension it wants

      • crater2150@feddit.org
        0·
        13 days ago

        I don’t use GNOME, but from what I’ve read (and from experience with other software that has extensions) they often break when GNOME updates.

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
          0·
          13 days ago

          The features would break if they were built in.

          GNOME has clear philosophy and they work for themselves, not for you so they decide what features they care to invest time and what features they don’t care about.

          Having a standardised method for plugins is in my opinion good enough, nobody forces you to use extensions. And if you don’t want extensions to break, then wait till the extensions are ready prior updating GNOME.

          • derek@infosec.pub
            0·
            12 days ago

            The features would break if they were built in.

            You can’t know that and I can’t imagine it would be true. If the plugins many folks find essential were incorporated into GNOME itself then they’d be updated where necessary as a matter of course in developing a new release.

            GNOME has clear philosophy and they work for themselves, not for you so they decide what features they care to invest time and what features they don’t care about.

            You’re not wrong! This is an arrogant and common take produced in poor taste though. A holdover from the elitism that continues to plague so many projects. Design philosophy leads UX decision making and the proper first goal for any good and functional design is user accessibility. This is not limited to accomodations we deem worthy of our attention.

            Good artists set ego aside to better serve their art. Engineers must set pet peeves aside to better serve their projects. If what they find irksome gets in the way of their ability to build functionally better bridges, homes, and software then it isn’t reality which has failed to live up to the Engineer’s standards. This is where GNOME, and many other projects, fall short. Defenders standing stalwart on the technical correctness of a volunteer’s lack of obligation to those whose needs they ostensibly labor for does not induce rightness. It exposes the masturbatory nature of the facade.

            Engineers have every right to bake in options catering to their pet peeves (even making them the defaults). That’s not the issue. When those opinions disallow addressing the accessibility needs of those who like and use what they’ve built there is no justification other than naked pride. This is foolish.

            Having a standardised method for plugins is in my opinion good enough, nobody forces you to use extensions. And if you don’t want extensions to break, then wait till the extensions are ready prior updating GNOME.

            I agree! Having a standardized method for plugins is good, however; the argument which follows misses the point. GNOME lucked into a good pole position as one of the default GNU/Linux DEs and has enjoyed the benefit of that exposure. Continuing to ignore obvious failures in method elsewhere while enshrining chosen paradigms of tool use as sacrosanct alienates users for whom those paradigms are neither resonant nor useful.

            No one will force Engineers to use accessibility features they don’t need. Not needing them doesn’t justify refusing the build them. Not building them as able is an abdication of social responsibility. If an engineer does not believe they have any social responsibility then they shouldn’t participate in projects whose published design philosophy includes language such as:

            People are at the heart of GNOME design. Wherever possible, we seek to be as inclusive as possible. This means accommodating different physical abilities, cultures, and device form factors. Our software requires little specialist knowledge and technical ability.

            Their walk isn’t matching their talk in a few areas and it is right and good to call them to task for it.

            Post statement: This is coming from someone who drives Linux daily, mostly from the console, and prefers GNOME to KDE. All of the above is meant without vitriol or ire and sent in the spirit of progress and solidarity.

      • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth
        0·
        13 days ago

        extensions (in my testing, typically in a VM of fedora or openSUSE) are a pain in the ass to use. it’s also difficult to find the one that I’m looking for because there’s generally several with the same name. something like a system tray (iirc the extension is “app indicators”) or having the dock always visible on the desktop (idk what the extension is called) are features that most people who don’t already use gnome rely on to some degree. these things are core functionality of most desktops precisely because most people use and like these features, and adding a few of the most popular features won’t add enough extra data to really be bloat.

        quick sidenote, while typing this I realized the way I have been phrasing things may sound a little aggressive. it's not meant to, this is meant to be more of a breakdown of why I think what I do about gnome as a desktop. I'm not sure how to rephrase this to be less aggressive, so I'm leaving this bit right where I noticed it instead.

        I personally am very big on having all the customization I can get (kde user, obviously) but I actually did almost stick with gnome once. I tried vanilla is because orchid has just come out and while I was messing with it I found out that it had the dock extension available by default (was new to Linux at the time and didn’t know how to actually use extensions yet) and with that dock extension I didn’t mind gnome as much. the thing with gnome is that it has a lot of good ideas but it ruins a lot of them by only half-implementing what everyone else is already doing. most people would probably find it a lot more usable if it just had features that have been standard since literally the beginning of GUIs, and used to be standard in gnome.

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
    0·
    13 days ago

    In a land where desktops can be ripped out and replace with ease - what’s the point in arguing? GNOME isn’t my thing but I’m glad it’s an option.

    • wer2@lemm.ee
      0·
      13 days ago

      My main complaint with how Gnome does stuff is in environments where it is the only option (e.g. RHEL).

      • 3laws@lemmy.world
        0·
        13 days ago

        Which then is no longer an issue with GNOME but rather RHEL. But again, it’s not like we can’t figure out a way to install whatever in Hanna Montana’s dreams is allowed. 🤙

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      0·
      13 days ago

      Mainly because gnome is harder to ignore than a lot of other opinionated DEs.

      It’s been the default target for fedora and red hat, and like other choices rh makes, it propagates throughout the broader ecosystem.

      Even if you ignore them, they dictate how Linux desktops are broadly allowed to work by largely asserting authority over FreeDesktop and by extension Wayland.

      One of these is that they absolutely hate the concept of server side decorations, as a result even as they begrudgingly allowed it as a Wayland protocol, they insisted that it must not be mandatory and they are allowed to ignore it. This means applications that do not care about their decorations otherwise now must care about their decorations. As a user, the consequence is that any GTK application you might use is likely to just pop out as a gnome looking window among a bunch of otherwise consistent windows.

      • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        I avoid all of the modern gnome apps now as a result of this.

        Even Windows allows the equivalent of server side decorations…

          • Flipper@feddit.org
            0·
            13 days ago

            Depends on your login flow. There is a session manager which normally boots up and let’s you choose. But you can also configure it to auto login and send you to the Lockscreen of your window manager.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            12 days ago

            It will be goofy as the config files will still stick around between desktops.

            I would runs desktop in a container or VM.

          • gimsy@feddit.it
            0·
            13 days ago

            You can also mix login manager, window manager with desktop background managers, wallet managers etc…, in practice you can build your own desktop experience

            • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
              0·
              13 days ago

              I know the answer is “just build it” but man I want to be able to have adm<username login under something like nemo and a terminal window only. But then have username login under full Mint Cinnamon. Would be quite dope. Just don’t feel like making it happen at the moment. I’ll have to reconfigure permissions to revoke from my standard user.

              Edit: oops you can comment out text in Lemmy?

  • Faresh@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    13 days ago

    I actually like Gnome. I like the way it looks and I have no problems with UX. I also don’t feel the need to use any extensions.

    ¯\_(‘_’)_/¯

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
    0·
    13 days ago

    I feel like the majority of DE developers are just back-end developers, which like, of course that’s not going to be a great user experience lol

  • Sestren@lemmy.world
    0·
    13 days ago

    Gnome does some questionable things, and some are just personal preference, but there is at least one thing that they do that makes zero sense regardless of how you use your system…

    The AppIndicator extension SHOULD be default. There is no reason for it to be an extension other than pure stubbornness. There are applications that literally require it in order to function at all.

    • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      13 days ago

      That you need an extension to disable the overview at startup still boggles my mind and the arrogance of the developers in the thread that started it didn’t lessen my antipathy for Gnome at all.

          • Emerald@lemmy.world
            0·
            13 days ago

            It provides easy access to search. I understand now though why you wouldn’t want it to open automatically (if you have startup programs you want to see instead).

        • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          13 days ago

          In my case because I have my PC connected to the TV and Steam starting automatically in big screen mode. But according to the devs I’m doing it wrong and should get used to it because it’s the better experience when I can go and grab my keyboard to start typing the name of the program I want to start.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      There’s a new Wayland protocol that probably will land in the next gnome release. The new protocol is supported by KDE and other desktops as well.

      The reason that it was removed is because it is extremely hacky and bad. There have been talks within the project to just reads support since the extension got so many downloads but the new API is better anyway

      • Sestren@lemmy.world
        0·
        13 days ago

        Their solution to a problem is to pretend like it doesn’t exist simply because it will go away in the future? It’s a reason, but it isn’t a good one.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          I won’t disagree with you there. They should’ve had a replacement before deprecating it. In there defense there was a alternative being developed but it ended up stalling over disagreements between KDE and gnome. The whole thing is a dumpster fire honestly. I’m glad they are cleaning it up. KDE and Gnome want the same thing for the most part they just kept getting into pointless bickering.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
            0·
            13 days ago

            It literally was developed by gnome. The merge request is coming from a gnome developer.

            You don’t have to like gnome but it is silly to try to gate keep over it.

            • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
              0·
              13 days ago

              “I understand that some compositors have no interest in allowing clients to show arbitrary content in tray areas. GNOME, for example, doesn’t even have a tray area and it is my understanding that they believe that even the current SNI protocols allow clients too much freedom. Such compositors should not implement this protocol.”

              –the page you’re referencing, by the creator of the protocol

              • jj4211@lemmy.world
                0·
                13 days ago

                Which I find to be a weird stance.

                Gnome also believes that a window must have control over its own titlebar to draw it as it sees fit while simultaneously declaring it must not have control over a tray icon.

                Also funny that Gnome seems to have objected to KDE proposal and wrote their own even though they seem to say point blank that while they are dictating how all the other DEs will do it, they themselves will be ignoring it. Why get in the business of a protocol you don’t even want to implement in the first place…

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      Default the cursor to the Search field on a Save dialog is possibly the absolute fucking stupidest thing ever.

      • Zloubida@lemmy.world
        0·
        13 days ago

        I love GNOME and everytime I tried an other DE I came back to GNOME. But the cursor in the search field is annoying and incomprehensible…

        • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          I’ll be honest, I could probably use Gnome if I had to, with a few addons. But when I try it, the second I get to that dialog and it does that, I just shut it down and install something else. To me, it just epitomizes the contempt the developers have for the users, that it continues to exist after this long.