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That's really interesting material, thanks! I'm conflicted about GNOME. I like it and it is my favorite desktop environment for Linux. They really did some nov
by captainmuon 9y ago
That's really interesting material, thanks!
I'm conflicted about GNOME. I like it and it is my favorite desktop environment for Linux. They really did some novel things with the window management and the application launcher in GNOME Shell. I'm looking forward to trying all the work that went into containers, Nautilus, GNOME Builder, and so on. GNOME was always the "simpler" desktop. Some may say it is "dumbed down", but in general the choices made were pretty good and you could fall back to the command line if you needed to do something more involved. So this was never a big problem for me.
However, I really don't like that there is so much "churn" in the GNOME/Gtk world. To me, the height of the Linux Desktop was around ~2009 (I think), with the final years of Gtk2. Everything was crisp, polished, stable. Only recently has Gnome3 caught up in polishedness, IMO.
Also, they lost a lot of features over time. Just a few random ones:
- Theming (in the core UI). This shouldn't be a second class citizen in gnome-tweak-tool, it should be in the main UI and the theming interface should be stable. Customization was always a major draw for Linux Desktops.
- Little things like menu icons.
- As a low-level example: Bonobo! I only learned of this when it was already deprecated. This was a component model very close to Windows' COM. You could create components in-process and in separate processes, or use it for IPC. It was used for the old GNOME panel applets for example. I perfectly understand why it was removed, it was quite complicated and badly documented, and had little concrete value for apps. But it was also misunderstood and parts were quite elegant.
If I had two wishes for GNOME, they would be:
- A new, "crisper" and more compact theme. It's hard to define, but crisp UIs were the Windows Classic theme, the Shiki Gtk theme, macOS. Non-crisp ones are many Qt themes, Motif, most web apps. Its about looking consistent, professional, having depth, clear affordances, looking physical, and not wasting space.
- Stable versions receiving feature updates. This was awesome in the Gtk2 era, you develop something with Gtk 2.14, and years later in 2.28 it still works, but with new themes and UI features. You have to keep a bit of ballast for a few releases, but it makes it a lot easier for both developers and users.
- rhinoceraptor 9y agoI'm also hoping fractional display scaling will ever be implemented in GNOME (displays can only be scaled 1x, 2x, 3x, etc. right now).
- jacek 9y agoThey are working on it: http://blog.3v1n0.net/informatica/linux/gnome-fractional-and-multi-monitor-scaling-hackfest-the-report/ http://blog.3v1n0.net/informatica/linux/gnome-fractional-and... . It might be included in the next release (maybe as experimental feature). I can't wait for fractional scaling. Currently, scaling on my 14 inch WQHD screen is a pain in the neck.
- Mayzie 9y ago> It's hard to define, but crisp UIs were the Windows Classic theme, the Shiki Gtk theme Ew.
- captainmuon 9y agoWhat look & feel would you prefer? I'm not necessarily describing pretty or good UIs here, just ones that feel "solid" and "crisp". You can see what is clickable, what has focus, and everything is consistent, and not distracting. On the opposite side of the spectrum are, lets say, GPU driver UIs written in HTML. Crispness is necessary IMO for good UX, but by no means sufficient.
- NoGravitas 9y agoFor a more compact theme: Try searching for the "Minwaita" theme. It's a more compact version of the default Adwaita theme, and includes several Gnome Shell themes as well as GTK themes.