The lock screen work that we landed in 3.36 was the outcome of a long-running programme of UX work, which we first put together at the GNOME UX hackfest in London, back in 2017. There are still some outstanding pieces of the login/unlock experience that need to be filled in, and this is something that we hope to work on over the coming development cycle. However, we are also turning our attention to other aspects of the shell, which we have wanted to update for some time.
In the rest of this post, I’ll describe some of the areas that we’re hoping to improve, before going on to talk about how we’re going to do it.
An overview of what to expect from upcoming GNOME releases.
My suggestion: wipe the whole git tree, copy the MATE one and work on that…
Surely you didn’t have to be so abrasive? You don’t like GNOME, that’s OK. Move along. ignore posts about it. No need to be hateful.
Would be a terrible downgrade, IMO.
What for? Making another MATE?
I like GNOME much more than MATE. In fact, it’s my favourite DE at the moment.
If you like MATE, use it, no amount of Gnome is going to take it away from you.
So you’re implying that the Mate desktop is horrible and you want the Gnome devs to fix it for you? No, thank you, I don’t want that legacy crap on my computer. Gnome FTW!
There are plugins to make 3 work exactly like 2.
BTW, Gnome2 was god awful, and Gnome3 is much better. 😛
I don’t use Gnome3 myself but I believe it works now. It can’t really be called a standard Linux DE the way Gnome2 once was – it’s just too divisive, too limited and too late.
My main grip with it is that from a strategic point of view, Gnome3 was an utter disaster. It has damaged Linux desktop to the point it will never recover.
Back in 2011~12 there were many Windows users unhappy with Vista/Windows 8 and with XP being EoL’d. Linux at that time had a fairly robust desktop (Gnome2) – not flashy but functional and clean looking. The whole reason Ubuntu was gaining users so quickly was that it managed to standardize Linux desktop on Gnome2 and cleaned it up to remove many papercuts that bothered Linux users. There was briefly a time mainstream devices (netbooks) were coming preinstalled with Linux running Gnome2.
And what have we done next?
– We have thrown Gnome2 away – not just stopped developing it. Gnome guys made it sure whoever wanted to continue working on it would _have_ to go through the effort of forking it. Not least because of naming clashes with Gnome3. This was entirely avoidable and was 100% Gnome’s fault. In their hubris they thought they can hijack Gnome2’s status of a default Linux DE and force people to use Gnome3.
– We came up with multiple ideas for a tablet-like UI on a desktop – exactly the kind of UI Windows users were flocking away from. Except, each was half baked, buggy, missing features and slow. To be fair Gnome was not the only project at fault (Unity). Other projects (Cinnamon, Mate, Xfce, KDE) were all scrambling to fill in the gap – good efforts in their own, but it all resulted in fragmenting the Linux desktop even more.
So, instead of getting the most from the biggest chance desktop Linux ever had (mainly because of Microsoft’s own mistakes), we have shot ourselves in a foot. And, unlike Microsoft, we didn’t have stockholders to bring sanity to our developers.
Do any of their improvements include making it intuitive to use, or providing granular enough user settings that users can set up their desktop to suit themselves, and not be restricted to what Gnome devs think is good for them? No?
I’ll pass.
‘zdzichu
Surely you didn’t have to be so abrasive? You don’t like GNOME, that’s OK. Move along. ignore posts about it. No need to be hateful.”
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How is speaking the truth being hateful?
Gnome 3 was and has been an utter mess since the day it was conceived and that’s the utter truth.
Thank you very much. It’s completely true what you wrote: GNOME 3 was a terrible design from start and what are doing nowadays is just stitching back the rotten flesh pieces that are falling from that monstruosity.
And to @zdzichu, despite what you lie saying I feel without any proof at all, I do like GNOME (version 2), that’s why I suggested to roll back and work on a cleaner solution. If I hadn’t like GNOME (as you falsely stated I did) I would have suggested KDE, Enlightment or whatever other thing.
Just stop trying, IBM, and get your employees to work on KDE instead.
Gnome 3 isn’t terrible technology. The problem I have with it is that it doesn’t provide the workflow I like and which isn’t possible to get without using kludgy extensions, which are more trouble than they are worth. Default Gnome 3 is stable, but too spartan for me. Gnome 3 with extensions is good for my prefered workflow, but flakey and every upgrade of Gnome breaks the extensions in one way or another.
I threw in the towel this winter and switched to KDE and I don’t have to contend with a desktop that doesn’t quite fit my needs anymore. I wish the Gnome devs a good development run, but I am luckily no longer fully dependent on the outcome of that.
“2020-04-20 6:27 am
r_a_trip
Gnome 3 isn’t terrible technology. The problem I have with it is that it doesn’t provide the workflow I like and which isn’t possible to get without using kludgy extensions,”
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You give just gave the perfect example of why Gnome 3 technology is so useless and horrible.
Who in their right mind wants to deal with this kind of garbage when you don’t have to and for over 20 years you *DIDN’T* have to?