10 ms·

> Ubuntu has done a bit of tweaking so that you can actually put launchers, folders, and files on your desktop, which should be welcome news for many Ubuntu use

• tuomosipola 8y ago
  It seems strange that Gnome is heading to an non-intuitive direction. You could have all the cool stuff but I think you also should provide the familiar Desktop metaphor elements. I already made a comment about the missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser, which decision destroys many people's workflows.
  • sandworm101 8y ago
    >> It seems strange that Gnome is heading to an non-intuitive direction. Really? I've never heard anything but non-intuitive ramblings from UI design people. None of them seem to ever actually use computers. Rather, they dream up use cases based on contrived scenarios. I want one thing: The icon is where it was yesterday. Gnome, unity all the others have one job: Let me launch the program I need and get the F out of my way. UI stability is why I years ago abandoned the chaos of Ubuntu for the stability of Mint. Windows XP got it right. Start button->office->word. Start button -> Email. Most everything after that is fluff.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Seconded. Also I have the impression that everyone in the UI design space forgot that the software is means to an end, not an experience, and it's supposed to help users achieve their goals in maximally efficient way. (Oh wait, but actually companies make money by making software into experience, so I guess that's where the overall trend comes from.)
    • dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      > Windows XP got it right. I'd say Windows 95 in this context. XP was the first stable version of Windows (yes, the first one deserved to be called Windows 1.0), but the Start menu was working well in Windows 95/98/ME, too.
      • digi_owl 8y ago
        I'd say the label of stable goes to Win2k. XP was in many ways Win2k with new theme and a more aggressive license verification scheme.
        • mjevans 8y ago
          XP would also boot / run quickly compared to NT. It was more desktop focused instead of desktop as an afterthought.
    • walterbell 8y ago
      We need the equivalent of CSS user stylesheets for UX, where user preferences can contextually override publisher/designer preferences. The relationship between the user and other sources of “design input” can be adversarial. Open-source rule engines can help users to negotiate this adversarial space.
      • teddyh 8y ago
        > CSS user stylesheets for UX Isn’t this, quite literally, what Gnome Shell Extensions are? https://extensions.gnome.org/ https://extensions.gnome.org/
  • dm319 8y ago
    > missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory. I also missed split-screen functionality, and the inability to right click and fire up a terminal from that location. Oh, and also looks like they've dropped being able to double-click on an executable .sh file to run it. Luckily none of this bothers me as there is Caja.
    • rav 8y ago
      >> missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser > I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory. I agree, but FWIW you can press Ctrl-L to focus the address bar, which allows you to enter a relative path, e.g. name of a file/directory in the current directory.
    • q3k 8y ago
      Restore sanity by applying the following patch: https://code.hackerspace.pl/q3k/q3kverlay/tree/x11-libs/gtk+/files/gtk+-3.22.26-typeahead.patch https://code.hackerspace.pl/q3k/q3kverlay/tree/x11-libs/gtk+... (or just use this overlay if you run Gentoo)
      • sametmax 8y ago
        Any tutorial on this ? And above all, how to automate it so that it's applied after updates ?
        • q3k 8y ago
          Depends on the distribution you use. Some (Debian, Ubuntu) make it extremely annoying to apply your own patches to packages, while others (Arch, Gentoo) make it very easy.
        • halkotron 8y ago
          You can try https://launchpad.net/~lubomir-brindza/+archive/ubuntu/nautilus-typeahead https://launchpad.net/~lubomir-brindza/+archive/ubuntu/nauti... I'll try to keep it up to date. (or the Nemo file browser, which also retained split-window functionality)
  • sametmax 8y ago
    This one is so annoying to me. I keep typing names of file and it searches it recursively, so instead of going to what I want faster, I waste time. It's such a weird decision, as searching recursively something is a rare task, so having a dedicated button would be fine. While going to a file/folder in the current dir is pretty much the basic interaction with a file manager. I don't get their reasoning there. If somebody knows of any trick to get the old behavior back (even patching the damn nautilus), I'll take it. I'll probably upgrade in a few month and I'll need it badly.
    • dm319 8y ago
      Can you install Caja? Someone posted a patch in reply to my comment just above.
• danpalmer 8y ago
  From what I understand, and I don't follow this particularly closely, so I might be wrong... They are removing the ability to have a Nautilus backed set of Desktop icons, with the intention of replacing this with something built in a more standard way for the rest of Gnome (which I think means web technologies?). As I understand it this not about removing desktop icons, it is about replacing unmaintained legacy code with more a modern alternative. I don't think the alternative is ready yet, but that's not to say that the direction they want to go is not having the feature.
  • lbenes 8y ago
    Yes, that's the logic behind GNOME's move, but it doesn't address the user's concerns. First of all they are removing code of a popular feature before it has been replaced. Secondly, they are adding to code duplication by creating 2 totally separate code bases. In both OS X and Windows your desktop is just a folder with a background set to icon grid view. From right clicking to dragging, the UX is and should be identical to the file manager. So it makes sense to have that part of the UI handled by the program that's already a file browser. Now a developer is going to recreate all of the features provided by Nautilus in a JavaScript and CSS extension. Any differences will make a janky experience for the end user.
    • thinkmassive 8y ago
      Why should the desktop metaphor be constrained to “just a folder with a background set to grid view” though? Phones are already far ahead of most desktops by having widgets. Perhaps we’ll see innovation in the area of desktop UIs from Gnome when they get the next generation in place.
      • Analemma_ 8y ago
        We tried widgets on the desktop: both macOS and Windows had them in previous versions, announced to great fanfare. Nobody used them and they were quietly removed. Same thing with notification centers: another thing that both Mac and Windows added assuming it would be just as vital on the desktop as it was on phones. AFAICT they see very little use; I can't remember the last time I opened the notification center on either the Macs or PCs I use. Not that new developments on the desktop aren't welcome, but widgets aren't it. Not every innovation that works on mobile can or should be brought to the desktop.
• tapoxi 8y ago
  > the Desktop filesystem metaphor is used by almost every single computer user I have ever seen Smartphones, tablets, and Chromebooks are incredibly popular and lack a desktop. ChromeOS is the most similar to GNOME here, in that it has a desktop wallpaper but you cannot create anything there.
  • mkasu 8y ago
    Most of these smartphones and tablets have homescreens which serve a pretty similar purpose. And people are used to having links to all their favorite apps on it.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • hollerith 8y ago
    >Smartphones, tablets, and Chromebooks are incredibly popular and lack a desktop. Are you suggesting that Ubuntu should follow smartphones, tablets and Chromebooks in not providing the user a way to access the local file system?
  • sametmax 8y ago
    Yeah, but I've yet to see somebody to be productive on those. Either the setup is too limitating : trying to do anything multi task on a phone OS is excuciating, you can't have your 3D rendering software/IDE/veracrypt/... installed in chrome OS, you don't have enough hard drive space, Or on the other end of the spectrum, I even got friends who are minimalistic, they have no windows decoration, all is keyboard based, with an arch and dvorak layout, doing everything in VIM. Well in the end, they are slower, because they have to keep so many things in their head to do the most basic thing. Like 70 keyboard shorcut (on 3 different keyboard in case they are not on their perfect seup) layout and the position/index of their windows and names of files to just edit + switch. You can literally see them think before every action that requires context switching, which is brain power that they don't use for fixing the problem. And by the way, they spend a lot of time taking care of that setup, despite the fact they advertise it as rock solid.
• _phaq 8y ago
  > It seems wilfully destructive to remove something that is depended on by so many without making sure there's a replacement in place first. Could cut straight to the GNOME logo after that sentence. This is sort of what they do, yeah. And they do have their niche with that, which is big enterprise-y, centrally administered systems. If the user doesn't need to administer things themselves, then not exposing ways of administration in the GUI means less ways for the user to hurt themselves. Or rather to do something not so smart and then need tech support to fix it. Can't accidently hide your panel, if you actually cannot hide your panel at all. I have no problem with one of the many desktop environments specializing in that, but the Linux desktop is mainly controlled by companies who then develop and set GNOME as default on their distros, which are also used by people who do need to administer their PC. Ubuntu and Fedora have GNOME as default. Debian, too, which doesn't really have an opinion, but it's what they've always used and it's stable. Arch and Gentoo don't have an opinion at all, for obvious reasons. openSUSE is still holding against, but SUSE uses GNOME in SLED, too, and has been spreading a sort of "We like all desktop environments in *SUSE-land"-mentality, which makes me feel like they're wanting to swap out KDE here, too, at some point. But yeah, if you haven't yet, do yourself and the Linux desktop a favor and give KDE a fair try. Or pretty much anything else than GNOME. I'm not saying it's impossible for you to like GNOME better, but there's so many desktop environments out there that are developed from users for users, which are actually objectively better than GNOME in so many categories. Even the most lightweight of desktop environments like LXDE/LXQt often have more features than GNOME. And KDE is what you get when you take this feature per resource usage ratio of these lightweight environments and then multiply it by the resources that a modern system can easily provide. If you ever wanted to have all of the features and options that a desktop OS could have, KDE comes far too close to that. It's the flagship experience for power users (not the type that only ever wants to see a terminal).
  • hedora 8y ago
    Devuan and Mint do a decent job shipping gnome 2 style environments by default. As far as I know, Gnome 2 is the last example of a Linux desktop environment that underwent professional usability testing (on regular people and power users) before shipping. Personally, these days, I prefer minimalist WM’s and CLI administration tools for stuff like WiFi, but all the newer heavy DE’s I’ve tried have obvious (to me) usability regressions vs gnome 2. It is funny how little usability testing is done on desktop environments these days (I also wonder if Microsoft bothered with Win 8, or if apple is with iOS these days cough podcasts cough).
• bokchoi 8y ago
  Good riddance. I just want to maximize or tile my windows -- I've never found it useful to have desktop icons. The desktop just ends up as a sea of icons that you have to hunt through to find the one you want.
  • gkya 8y ago
    In other news people like you and I are such freaking minority that a well-targeted meteor rain can kill us all off. My usual desktop is Xmonad w/o any bars etc, Emacs w/ 2 windows and qutebrowser. I'm not a programmer, so people that look at my computer are usually non-techies, and they usually find it frightening.
  • _phaq 8y ago
    No one forces you to use the feature, just because it's there. Other people do find it useful and they have every right to do so.
• Immortalin 8y ago
  Try Ubuntu Budgie, it's much more user-friendly.
• Barrin92 8y ago
  > It seems wilfully destructive to remove something that is depended on by so many without making sure there's a replacement in place first. Seems the answer is in that last link of yours: >Nautilus had have a feature called “the desktop” which adds icons on the background of the user workspace, similar to Windows.[..] if you look you will see that the desktop is composed by more than 10.000 lines of code That's a big mess and I finally understand why opening nautilus on i3wm always completely messes the desktop up. Using the file manager as a hack to build a desktop is a bad abstraction and I can understand why it they'd want to rebuild it.
• vondur 8y ago
  I'd imagine Canonical could fork nautilus, or just use one of the other file managers for example from Mate, that allows for desktop icons.