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What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason. Firstly, without major versions it d

What's with the change over to these '40' style naming schemes? I absolutely detest it if it's not done for a real reason. Firstly, without major versions it does not single anything to end users and end developers. Is '40' still mostly compatible with the gnome 3.x.x API? Is there a major divergence between 40 and 41? Is 41 and 40 a total rewrite? 3.x.x works and there's a reason why. It conveys a lot of information quickly and is well understood. reducing things down to a single number is meaningless and clearly branding drivel. I guess they want to obfuscate as much as possible and dumb things down for users like they have been doing for close to a decade. Yawn

dvirsky 6y ago
Actually this numbering scheme conveys to me, intuitively, that changes are more gradual and hints at backwards compatibility. If there's no major/minor/patch semantics I just assume versions are small incremental additions. I could be wrong but that's what the browser versioning schemes have instilled in me.
- antihero 6y ago
  Which is bizarre, because if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do?
  - dvirsky 6y ago
    Improve existing stuff, add new stuff. That can be done with backwards compatibility if you have a well defined API. I haven't looked at Gnome's API in years so I'm not sure what's its state, but one shining example for this is Redis which is backwards compatible to 11 years ago. Another great and more relevant example is browsers.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    > if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do? You change the name. Like "Raku" instead of "Perl6". Once you've reached a certain level of stability and usage, any substantial breaking change is going to inevitably result in a fork, so embracing that up front is going to result in a much better experience.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      Yeah, I like Rich Hickey’s critique of semantic versioning. Major version changes just overload the name and cause confusion: if you must break compatibility, fork and rename.
  - josefx 6y ago
    You change the name of the software, like consoles? The next big Gnome version could then be called Gnome 360 followed by Gnome 1, Gnome 64 or Gnome 3.11 for work groups.
- willtim 6y ago
  > and hints at backwards compatibility. To me it communicates no commitment to backwards compatibility, i.e. no semantic versioning. This might be enforceable if one is Apple, but doesn't sound good for an open-source platform.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    To me it communicates a commitment that they'll never have any significant breaking change ever again without changing their name, fork style.
    - willtim 6y ago
      An insignificant breaking change is still a breaking change; and over time they build up. This may explain why so many developers have been unhappy with GTK3.
    - npteljes 6y ago
      Yeah like how Firefox got rid of XUL extensions in version 57.
  - geofft 6y ago
    What would semantic versioning for a UI even mean? What's the API promise?
    - xorcist 6y ago
      It could mean that all applications still run unmodified and can show all the dialog boxes they used to. That may not sound like much of a promise, but it is. Applications written for GNOME 2.x won't run under 3.x.
    - aembleton 6y ago
      x.y.z x would increment on the removal of a feature y would increment on the addition or change of a feature z would increment on a bug fix
ximm 6y ago
As far as I understand "40" is just short for "3.40.0". The expectation is that they will remain compatible with the 3.x.x series for a long time, so the 3 is somewhat redundant. This release contains more UI changes than usual, but it is very far away from the change from gnome 2 to 3.
- ufo 6y ago
  Not much point in keeping the "3." around when we don't expect a "4.0" version to happen in the foreseeable future.
- AshamedCaptain 6y ago
  And when Gtk4 inevitably happens, or the gnome-shell toolkit is changed again, breaking about all the gnome-shell extensions, we'll just call it Gnome X.
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    Gtk4 already happened. Not sure if Gnome apps to it, however, but I'm pretty sure they'll just break extensions as they've always done. Most use internal APIs AFAIK after all, so they're designed to break.
    - BearOso 6y ago
      Gnome shell doesn’t even use Gtk, or at least not for drawing and such. If it’s there, it’s completely abstracted away in their JavaScript layer. And yeah, most extensions broke from 3.38-40 already anyway.
      - mixedCase 6y ago
        I'm almost sure they do use it, through GJS. And those are the official JS bindings to Gtk. And they definitely did break from 3.0 to 4.0 as I experienced by simply trying to get a sample application from the docs running, and failed to.
freedomben 6y ago
Your question is valid (and I have the same one) but this is about as uncharitable a thing to say as you can, especially without providing evidence/examples: > I guess they want to obfuscate as much as possible and dumb things down for users like they have been doing for close to a decade. The Gnome project has done an enormous amount to push the open source and free desktop forward. The least we can do is not impute sinister motives to them. What do they stand to gain from "obfuscat[ing]" their version number when their code is all open source?
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  I strongly disagree: the gnome project and the systemd mess are both severely damaging Linux. The good thing, though, is that KDE Plasma seems to have recovered nicely from the KDE 3->4 mess.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    I'm not trying to argue, I'm surprised and legitimately interested at your comment and would really like to understand where you're coming from. Are you a current Linux desktop user? How long have you been? What distros do you use? If Gnome had just paused or become what MATE is today, would we be better off? If you were suddenly emperor of the Gnome Foundation, what would you direct them to do?
    - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
      I’ve been using Linux on the desktop since Mandrake 7. I mostly use Debian these days (ever since Ubuntu switched from Gnome 2 to Unity). For a while I just used tiling window managers (xmonad, stumpwm) because I couldn’t make Gnome 3+ work for me. Recently I tried Plasma again and I’ve mostly settled on that being good enough. At this point, I have no confidence in most of the people involved in the Linux desktop initiatives: I’d probably fund MATE and maybe even the Trinity Desktop environment: the best Linux desktop setup I ever had was KDE 3 apps on Gnome 2
      - 6y ago
yepthatsreality 6y ago
Agreed it’s very shallow backwards logic that will only cause issues when an actual Gnome 4.0 is released. The irrationality will have to be fought similar to Iphone by using “Gnome 3.40” when discussing it.

dvirsky 6y ago

Actually this numbering scheme conveys to me, intuitively, that changes are more gradual and hints at backwards compatibility. If there's no major/minor/patch semantics I just assume versions are small incremental additions. I could be wrong but that's what the browser versioning schemes have instilled in me.

antihero 6y ago
Which is bizarre, because if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do?
- dvirsky 6y ago
  Improve existing stuff, add new stuff. That can be done with backwards compatibility if you have a well defined API. I haven't looked at Gnome's API in years so I'm not sure what's its state, but one shining example for this is Redis which is backwards compatible to 11 years ago. Another great and more relevant example is browsers.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  > if you do want to have a breaking new version, what exactly do you do? You change the name. Like "Raku" instead of "Perl6". Once you've reached a certain level of stability and usage, any substantial breaking change is going to inevitably result in a fork, so embracing that up front is going to result in a much better experience.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    Yeah, I like Rich Hickey’s critique of semantic versioning. Major version changes just overload the name and cause confusion: if you must break compatibility, fork and rename.
- josefx 6y ago
  You change the name of the software, like consoles? The next big Gnome version could then be called Gnome 360 followed by Gnome 1, Gnome 64 or Gnome 3.11 for work groups.
willtim 6y ago
> and hints at backwards compatibility. To me it communicates no commitment to backwards compatibility, i.e. no semantic versioning. This might be enforceable if one is Apple, but doesn't sound good for an open-source platform.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  To me it communicates a commitment that they'll never have any significant breaking change ever again without changing their name, fork style.
  - willtim 6y ago
    An insignificant breaking change is still a breaking change; and over time they build up. This may explain why so many developers have been unhappy with GTK3.
  - npteljes 6y ago
    Yeah like how Firefox got rid of XUL extensions in version 57.
- geofft 6y ago
  What would semantic versioning for a UI even mean? What's the API promise?
  - xorcist 6y ago
    It could mean that all applications still run unmodified and can show all the dialog boxes they used to. That may not sound like much of a promise, but it is. Applications written for GNOME 2.x won't run under 3.x.
  - aembleton 6y ago
    x.y.z x would increment on the removal of a feature y would increment on the addition or change of a feature z would increment on a bug fix

ximm 6y ago

As far as I understand "40" is just short for "3.40.0". The expectation is that they will remain compatible with the 3.x.x series for a long time, so the 3 is somewhat redundant. This release contains more UI changes than usual, but it is very far away from the change from gnome 2 to 3.

ufo 6y ago
Not much point in keeping the "3." around when we don't expect a "4.0" version to happen in the foreseeable future.
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
And when Gtk4 inevitably happens, or the gnome-shell toolkit is changed again, breaking about all the gnome-shell extensions, we'll just call it Gnome X.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  Gtk4 already happened. Not sure if Gnome apps to it, however, but I'm pretty sure they'll just break extensions as they've always done. Most use internal APIs AFAIK after all, so they're designed to break.
  - BearOso 6y ago
    Gnome shell doesn’t even use Gtk, or at least not for drawing and such. If it’s there, it’s completely abstracted away in their JavaScript layer. And yeah, most extensions broke from 3.38-40 already anyway.
    - mixedCase 6y ago
      I'm almost sure they do use it, through GJS. And those are the official JS bindings to Gtk. And they definitely did break from 3.0 to 4.0 as I experienced by simply trying to get a sample application from the docs running, and failed to.

freedomben 6y ago

Your question is valid (and I have the same one) but this is about as uncharitable a thing to say as you can, especially without providing evidence/examples: > I guess they want to obfuscate as much as possible and dumb things down for users like they have been doing for close to a decade. The Gnome project has done an enormous amount to push the open source and free desktop forward. The least we can do is not impute sinister motives to them. What do they stand to gain from "obfuscat[ing]" their version number when their code is all open source?

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
I strongly disagree: the gnome project and the systemd mess are both severely damaging Linux. The good thing, though, is that KDE Plasma seems to have recovered nicely from the KDE 3->4 mess.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I'm not trying to argue, I'm surprised and legitimately interested at your comment and would really like to understand where you're coming from. Are you a current Linux desktop user? How long have you been? What distros do you use? If Gnome had just paused or become what MATE is today, would we be better off? If you were suddenly emperor of the Gnome Foundation, what would you direct them to do?
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    I’ve been using Linux on the desktop since Mandrake 7. I mostly use Debian these days (ever since Ubuntu switched from Gnome 2 to Unity). For a while I just used tiling window managers (xmonad, stumpwm) because I couldn’t make Gnome 3+ work for me. Recently I tried Plasma again and I’ve mostly settled on that being good enough. At this point, I have no confidence in most of the people involved in the Linux desktop initiatives: I’d probably fund MATE and maybe even the Trinity Desktop environment: the best Linux desktop setup I ever had was KDE 3 apps on Gnome 2
    - 6y ago

yepthatsreality 6y ago

Agreed it’s very shallow backwards logic that will only cause issues when an actual Gnome 4.0 is released. The irrationality will have to be fought similar to Iphone by using “Gnome 3.40” when discussing it.