13 ms·

GNOME 44

208 points by pabs3 4y ago

rbanffy 4y ago
To me, GNOME is what makes Linux a desktop OS as pleasing to use, if not more, than macOS. The apps are neat and focused, do one thing and do it well, and everything “just works”.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Except for devs, that need to enjoy doing XML by hand for GUI layouts, as the wannabe replacement for Glade is yet to deliver, and even then it is based on Web stack instead of Gtk. Ah those JavaScript extensions all over the place.
  - zorr 4y ago
    I am currently working on kotlin native bindings for the whole gtk/gobject/glib stack and with a small DSL/fluent api layer on top, building UI's by composing Widgets without XML is not that complicated anymore.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Some people prefer language agnostic graphical designers, like Glade. Or better said, used to prefer, when the tooling actually was supported.
  - criddell 4y ago
    > it is based on Web stack instead of Gtk Why would they do that? Is that implying web technologies are superior to the tools they are making?
    - prohobo 4y ago
      In a sense, yes. HTML and CSS (with JS?) are the best UI creation combo anyone could ever design, because so much effort has gone into making websites look nice over the decades. Millions of people and thousands of companies trying to create websites has pushed the standards really far ahead of any other UI kit. I think eventually they'll become integrated with operating systems natively, rather than requiring webview. But that means desktop managers will become much more integrated with the web as well. Basically I see a future where your OS is your internet browser as well as window manager, process manager, etc.
      - alexvoda 4y ago
        Like what FirefoxOS was doing.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Windows Active Desktop and ChromeOS have shown how "great" it happens to be. Even WebOS has support for Qt based applications, and ChromeOS had to add support for Android and GNU/Linux containers to run alongside the Chrome stack.
      - bandrami 4y ago
        Stockholm Syndrome is real. There were far, far better UI kits in the 90s, which is why programs were a lot more usable back then. NeXT comes to mind. It doesn't help that Linux has wasted the past decade struggling to solve the difficult problem of (checks notes) who is logged in to a graphical seession.
      - kaba0 4y ago
        > In a sense, yes. HTML and CSS (with JS?) are the best UI creation combo anyone could ever design, because so much effort has gone into making websites look nice over the decades Even with all that effort it has just recently surpassed the era of WinForms. How much effort is it to customize a date picker in web tech? Layouting was completely broken for decades, only now is it semi-okay. WebComponents are also a recentish development, but they are absolutely essential. Also, how come WYSIWYG editors are not common?! They were everywhere.
        lproven 4y ago
        > the best UI creation combo anyone could ever design Hahahahahahabonk.
      - LorenDB 4y ago
        No. No! NO! HTML and CSS are not the answer. If anything, you should be scared off by the fact that webpages require at least three languages to implement anything useful (HTML, CSS, and JS), and that doesn't count whatever you could use for a backend (PHP? I'm not a web developer, so I don't know what the cool kids use, other than maybe Node.js.) In my book, the fewer langauges you use, the better: I will even extend this to Qt and QML (and it should be pointed out that I am passionate about using Qt and QML!). Multiple languages necessitate (often fragile) bridges to work together; plus, they take much more time and effort to learn. If you could learn one language and use it to make an app, wouldn't you jump at that instead of learning 3 or 4 languages before you could make an app? Others have already added some great comments about the wisdom (or rather the lack thereof) of integrating a web browser into the OS. Myself? I don't wish anybody a future of bloated webapps for everything.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Because reasons I guess, see for yourself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27783545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27783545 https://events.gnome.org/event/9/contributions/191/ https://events.gnome.org/event/9/contributions/191/ https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/cambalache https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/cambalache
  - JanisErdmanis 4y ago
    Furthermore documentation to learn to do XML by hand sucks a great deal. It’s admirable how beautiful the Gnome desktop have evolved which such a subpar developer experience. QML is light years ahead.
- baq 4y ago
  Using macOS for ~5 months now after decades of Windows and Linux and it's... subpar. Which is surprising since it has so many devoted evangelists. I'd honestly rather use Gnome than macOS on the desktop.
  - 000ooo000 4y ago
    Can you select the default button on a dialogue with space bar on macOS yet?
    - tuyiown 4y ago
      You mean, the colored one that is always pressed on enter key ?
    - satysin 4y ago
      Space will select the currently selected/highlighted button Return will select the default whether it is selected or not Escape will select cancel whether selected or not
    - SkyArrow 4y ago
      In addition to what others have said, you should enable Keyboard Navigation in System Settings > Keyboard to control more of the UI by pressing Tab.
      - 000ooo000 4y ago
        Cool, thank you. I've been off Mac for about a decade but I was surprised back then that those kinds of KB controls weren't on by default.
    - fdo91 4y ago
      Yeah, it is just an accessibility setting that needs to be turned on.
    - philistine 4y ago
      This is such a weird request; perhaps an OS has deemed this shortcut superfluous?
- askvictor 4y ago
  Mostly, yes. But... can you configure three-finger touchpad swiping to perform back/forward actions yet (like on just about every other platform)? Last I tried it was essentially impossible (well, short of getting into the code and re-compiling your own). The built in browser (web/epiphany) was the only app that implements three-finger swipe, but lacking extension support until very recently, wasn't really an option.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    Firefox on Wayland does it out of the box.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    I just adapted to it moving me one desktop to the side. Sensible defaults is a good approach.
    - askvictor 4y ago
      I could adapt if I exclusively used Gnome, but I regularly use a few different computers with different OSes, so some consistency would be nice. Would also make it easier for people who are switching to Gnome/Linux.
- marcyb5st 4y ago
  Not a GNOME user, but i3. The fact that on MacOS I can't put more than 2 windows side by side to tile the screen space drives me nuts. Sadly, it's a work laptop and can't install 3rd parties to have a similar UX as i3.
  - brightball 4y ago
    Pop Shell extension will give you something close.
    - laurentlbm 4y ago
      They were talking about MacOS, not GNOME.
  - dsego 4y ago
    Not optimal but should be able to hover or option+hover on the green circle to tile or position windows side by side. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windows-mchlp2469/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windo... There is rectangle, which has nice keyboard shortcuts, but it is a 3rd party addon. https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      This can be assigned a kb shortcut fyi. I'm currently using rectangle as well, but the built in tiling is ok if you just need a L/R split
  - beachwood23 4y ago
    I use the Magnet.app extension, which supports basic tiling commands on MacOS.
  - mFixman 4y ago
    You can use BetterTouchTool and configure it to tile an arbitrary amount of windows. As a bonus those windows don't have to be in full-screen mode, so you can cmd-tab quickly. I agree that the windowing system of MacOS is an unusable mess.
- tarokun-io 4y ago
  I've written code in Windows, Mac and Linux (Ubuntu & PopOS) for years, and man, Windows and Mac are so far behind GNOME in every aspect. Today I think I even prefer Windows + WSL rather than Mac.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Indeed, why use Visual Studio or XCode, when one can write XML layouts by hand on gedit.
dry_soup 4y ago
I must have missed a few versions. The last version of GNOME I remember using is 3 point something
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  [sarcasm] I am looking forward to the days when we ditch memorable release versions and just use the git commit hash to identify a release. [/sarcasm]
  - favadi 4y ago
    Why would anyone want to use Ubuntu 4ee7bb27a0ff1cbc203a0df93919980ccbcfd4f1 over Ubuntu 22.04?
  - tuyiown 4y ago
    dates. dates are good. YYYY.MM.patch.
  - rolisz 4y ago
    Why? There is value in having some sort of easily identifiable ordering to versions
    - HeckFeck 4y ago
      Absolutely. I was being sarcastic. I'm not fond of this rabid incrementation that originated with Chrome.
  - Maken 4y ago
    You should work for Asus.
  - zorr 4y ago
    How would that work for deprecations and new API introductions? GNOME is built on top of glib/gobject/gtk and a host of other libraries which all have to be ABI-compatible in some way. And GNOME itself is used as a base platform for applications. Having a predictable versioning scheme helps limit the number of releases for downstream application maintenance work. You can't expect applications to have the full git tree available at build or runtime to make some features conditionally available.
callahad 4y ago
Varnish seems to be having issues, but I can still reach the release notes at https://release.gnome.org/44/ https://release.gnome.org/44/
hsn915 4y ago
[flagged]
Kwpolska 4y ago
> We are also providing our own installer images for debugging and testing features. These images are meant for installation in a vm and require GNOME Boxes with UEFI support. We suggest getting Boxes from Flathub. os.gnome.org What if I’m on Windows and want to try out the latest GNOME before making a decision to migrate to Linux? What makes Boxes so special? Is it really so hard to make your images usable with other common virtualization tools?
- yoavm 4y ago
  I don't think anything is holding you back from loading the ISO file in any other virtualization tool. https://os.gnome.org/ https://os.gnome.org/
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Tried booting it in Hyper-V, didn’t work. I got it to work in VirtualBox (although I had to switch to UEFI and make sure to select Linux as the OS) - and it’s not a live system, but a very dumb installer.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Better try out your distro of choice in a VM like VirtualBox or VMware, but even then, most distros perform way differently in VMs than they will on the bare metal your system happens to be using due to the different HW (emulated or not) and drivers.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Its GNOME Boxes and therefore the best and nothing else matters according to GNOME logic. This is the Desktop Environment in an ecosystem where the window manager draws the title bars that decided the app needs to draw the title bars so you can really easily get two title bars on a GTK app when used on not GNOME.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  I ran Fedora on an old laptop plugged into my desktop peripherals and began to realize that I wasn't using my Windows desktop anymore so I installed it on the desktop. My suggestion is to install it on another machine if you have one. Fedora 38 (currently in beta) comes out in a month and will have Gnome 44. Fedora 37 is on Gnome 43. They tend to time their releases to include the latest Gnome. Boxes isn't that special but it is built in, easy, and doesn't require privileges like virtmanager. I like it.
rcarmo 4y ago
Still lets you turn off Bluetooth with a single click, even when all you have is a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Seriously, I only use USB input devices on desktops to bootstrap the system, and then unplug them and tidy the system away. For a few times now I've clicked that button by mistake (it's there in GNOME 43, just without the ">") and promptly turned off Bluetooth and had to go fetch a USB mouse from storage, crawl under the desk, and plug it in to turn everything back on.
- smhg 4y ago
  Logitech's dongles (and possibly others) mimic a USB connection while still being wireless. They also allow you to access your BIOS. Things being what they are, I don't think Bluetooth is the right setup for input devices.
  - MayeulC 4y ago
    I'm always uncomfortable when typing a password on a wireless keyboard.
    - rcarmo 4y ago
      Oh, come on. All of it is now end-to-end encrypted. Unless you're using some cheap Chinese setup.
      - felixg3 4y ago
        Or Logitech Unifying and did not install a firmware update manually
        rcarmo 4y ago
        Well, Bluetooth does the encryption part "properly", at least.
        jjraden 4y ago
dsego 4y ago
Warning, rant ahead: File chooser grid view (ie thumbnails) - that's nice, but I'm so jaded at this point to care anymore. I've been using ubuntu on and off as my personal system for the past 15 years, it sure beats windows in many respects (typing this on MacOS). But I'm just too old to be excited by UI features that should've been here long ago and that were the standard in the software of the late 90s and early 2000s. There has also been a vocal part of the community defending the lack of thumbnails in the file picker, so this whole story has a bitter taste to it. One more thing, it feels like open source systems and UIs are developing at a glacial pace these days, either the tools used to develop open source software are sub-par or maybe there is a lack of people working on it and effort put into it. So glacial that in the age of AI, a grid view is somehow a notable feature. There seems to be less to be excited about these days and I have given up expecting great things.
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  This seems like a misrepresentation of the entire file picker saga. The “vocal parts of the community” were not against the UI change. For the most part, being the ones who were charged with putting in effort to make this improvement for free, they were pointing out the significant technical challenges it involved, and they couldn’t find someone to volunteer their own personal time for free to take on this challenge. As Gnome has made massive strides towards simplifying its codebase, these changes become far more achievable and reasonable (click through to the developer changes page and you will see GTK4 has deprecated something like 20 possible file picker classes, in favor of 3, which provide equivalent functionality). Of course, the same people who complain but are unwilling to either put effort or money towards fixing these supposedly deal breaking problems, have also spent the last 2 years complaining about the code and architecture cleanup effort Gnome devs have made to make it possible to fix those problems.
  - onli 4y ago
    That is unsubstantiated. How would we know that the same people complained about code cleanups and not having a file picker? Do you have any proof? Users like me who got annoyed by never being able to easily select the wanted image (when in a gtk app), for many many years now, had no insight into any architectural changes or code cleanups of gtk4. So there weren't any complains from this group there. This is the typical "everyone is against us" you often hear from the gnome side. It's a shame to read this under such a nice release, which has only positive changes as far as I can see, it really seems to address a lot of the criticism in a good way.
ramboldio 4y ago
So many UIs these days try to shove some random idea of a PM into ones face recently E.g. "OneDrive this", "Adobe Cloud that" on just saving a document. GNOME apps would simply need to show up to become a superior experience in the long term. Great to see that they do so much more than 'just show up'.
wildrhythms 4y ago
Error 503 first byte timeout first byte timeout Error 54113 Details: cache-ewr18148-EWR 1679570726 3839313703 Varnish cache server --- HN hug of death?
- dveeden2 4y ago
  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/03/22/introducing-gnome-44/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... And the release notes are on https://release.gnome.org/44/ https://release.gnome.org/44/
doodlesdev 4y ago
Website is down for now. Archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20230323094802/https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/03/22/introducing-gnome-44/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230323094802/https://foundatio... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/03/22/introducing-gnome-44/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
rsolva 4y ago
I just upgraded my laptop from Fedora 37 to 38 Beta and the transition was painless. I have done this since Fedora 35 and the upgrade process has been excellent, far better than on Windows and macOS in fact. For me, Fedora has surpassed the macOS "out-of-the-box" experience, and I have seen how non-techies and older people "get" the UI much faster than both Windows and macOS.
- rcarmo 4y ago
  I have written https://taoofmac.com https://taoofmac.com for the last 20 years, and have spent the last year progressively using GNOME and Fedora more and more. I use the WhiteSur GTK theme (https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme) so that I don't have to decipher the nuances of the standard GNOME iconography (some of it is... well, not as pretty, and definitely not as intuitive). I love this setup, but if GNOME decides to keep breaking user themes, I will have to look elsewhere (most likely a different Fedora spin, although definitely not KDE).
- PennRobotics 4y ago
  I'm excited to fresh install F38 Beta if only to provide the counterexample to this "transition is painless" statement. Every startup, I need to "killall gnome-control-center" because it loads and hangs. (I also can't access "About" and a backtrace basically tells me I'm in a glib application.) The default file manager gets wonky scrolling up with an MX Master 3. I replaced it with something else but now double clicking a zip file will open the terminal to my home directory. Some apps (GTK or otherwise) need workarounds or "downgrading" to X11 because of using a 30-bit monitor: Room EQ Wizard, anything based on JetBrains, OpenSCAD, GIMP. That was a lie, Room EQ Wizard doesn't work at all after installation. No workaround to be found. Anything related to codecs or graphics has been a headache---whether aptX, H.265, VP9, WebGL, ... ----- If these problems could simply go away, I'd be a much more productive coder.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > The default file manager gets wonky scrolling up with an MX Master 3. If it’s any consolation it’s wonky with a laptop touchpad too. Like super-annoyingly wonky. But, something always seems to break after an update. Usually little things but can’t complain because I don’t help out in any way.
nanna 4y ago
Gnome 44 feature list https://release.gnome.org/44/ https://release.gnome.org/44/
jmclnx 4y ago
Desktop Environments are OK, but they do not give me anything I cannot already do with fvwm (or other window managers). I am not looking forward to the day Wayland is forced upon us by various Linux Distros. Seems Red Hat type distros are marching full speed ahead to Wayland. Thus no fvwm for me (at least on Linux).
- anthk 4y ago
  Switch to OpenBSD, you get FVWM (and CWM) by default. Or Hyperbola, where libre licenses, a BSD-like philosophy and light desktops (no XFCE, Gnome or even KDE, just Lumina and JWMKit) do a match. OFC you get FVWM and CWM too. EDIT: I omitted some words, sorry.
  - jmclnx 4y ago
    I used OpenBSD for this comment via fvwm :)
    - anthk 4y ago
      No problems then.
- petepete 4y ago
  How do you add printers in fvwm?
  - okasaki 4y ago
    You open http://localhost:631 http://localhost:631 in your browser and follow the cups gui?
    - petepete 4y ago
      Next you'll be telling me to get an FTP account, mount it locally using curlftpfs and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
curious145454 4y ago
Does anyone find "Activities" a poor naming choice? I'd rather see Gnome's logo there, or simply nothing (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/744/hide-activities-button/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/744/hide-activities-b...).
- asoneth 4y ago
  Agreed. Alternately renaming it to something like "Overview" or "Home" might better match new user expectations about what will happen when it is clicked.
  - tokai 4y ago
    Or just Start ;P
modzu 4y ago
missing from the fixes to Files is the ability to scroll :( do you have a directory with more than 10 files in it? buckle up.
- tristan957 4y ago
  Scroll works just fine for me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - modzu 4y ago
    youre doing it wrong
capableweb 4y ago
> GNOME Circle is a fantastic collection of apps that are developed as part of the GNOME Project. Since GNOME 43 was released, ten new apps have joined: > Zap, Boatswain, Emblem, Lorem, Workbench, Komikku, Chess Clock, Eyedropper, Elastic, Clairvoyant I think I probably understand just what three of those do (Eyedropper, Lorem and Chess Clock), the rest seems indecipherable by name only. Is it really that impossible to come up with creative yet understandable names?
- berkes 4y ago
  I actually like Gnome for it's no-nonsense names. "Web", "Email", "Calendar" etc. Often the "under the hood name" is different, e.g. Image Viewer is "internally" called "Eye of Gnome or eog" or "Videos" is internally called Totem. This is for Core, though. Circle has - indeed- many apps with funky names. But quite often easy to find using terms you expect "edit markdown -> Apostrophe"
toastercat 4y ago
I like GNOME, but every time I've tried using it, it eventually begins to suffer from one issue or another (text randomly disappearing; stutters; high RAM usage). Each time I try it, I eventually get fed up and return to XFCE.
imwithstoopid 4y ago
why are so many comments here just cheapshots from macos users? I'm happy that you're happy in Apple's walled garden...but what does this have to do with Gnome?
unethical_ban 4y ago
I have Fedora 38 beta/G44 on my laptop. I don't use my laptop too much; mostly as a terminal or browser portal for research and chilling. I don't code or compile much, and I don't access local filesystems often. I think the navigation and UI of Gnome 44 looks great. I love the redesigned system tray - Mac-ish but functional and informative. Capable of touch-based but not ridiculously so. I don't have the experience with the filesystem to complain about the navigation or view there. Windows has always had the best file viewer IMO - MacOS is confusing as hell and Gnome has always had limited viewing options as well.

208 points by pabs3 4y ago

To me, GNOME is what makes Linux a desktop OS as pleasing to use, if not more, than macOS. The apps are neat and focused, do one thing and do it well, and everything “just works”.

pjmlp 4y ago
Except for devs, that need to enjoy doing XML by hand for GUI layouts, as the wannabe replacement for Glade is yet to deliver, and even then it is based on Web stack instead of Gtk. Ah those JavaScript extensions all over the place.
- zorr 4y ago
  I am currently working on kotlin native bindings for the whole gtk/gobject/glib stack and with a small DSL/fluent api layer on top, building UI's by composing Widgets without XML is not that complicated anymore.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Some people prefer language agnostic graphical designers, like Glade. Or better said, used to prefer, when the tooling actually was supported.
- criddell 4y ago
  > it is based on Web stack instead of Gtk Why would they do that? Is that implying web technologies are superior to the tools they are making?
  - prohobo 4y ago
    In a sense, yes. HTML and CSS (with JS?) are the best UI creation combo anyone could ever design, because so much effort has gone into making websites look nice over the decades. Millions of people and thousands of companies trying to create websites has pushed the standards really far ahead of any other UI kit. I think eventually they'll become integrated with operating systems natively, rather than requiring webview. But that means desktop managers will become much more integrated with the web as well. Basically I see a future where your OS is your internet browser as well as window manager, process manager, etc.
    - alexvoda 4y ago
      Like what FirefoxOS was doing.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Windows Active Desktop and ChromeOS have shown how "great" it happens to be. Even WebOS has support for Qt based applications, and ChromeOS had to add support for Android and GNU/Linux containers to run alongside the Chrome stack.
    - bandrami 4y ago
      Stockholm Syndrome is real. There were far, far better UI kits in the 90s, which is why programs were a lot more usable back then. NeXT comes to mind. It doesn't help that Linux has wasted the past decade struggling to solve the difficult problem of (checks notes) who is logged in to a graphical seession.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      > In a sense, yes. HTML and CSS (with JS?) are the best UI creation combo anyone could ever design, because so much effort has gone into making websites look nice over the decades Even with all that effort it has just recently surpassed the era of WinForms. How much effort is it to customize a date picker in web tech? Layouting was completely broken for decades, only now is it semi-okay. WebComponents are also a recentish development, but they are absolutely essential. Also, how come WYSIWYG editors are not common?! They were everywhere.
      - lproven 4y ago
        > the best UI creation combo anyone could ever design Hahahahahahabonk.
    - LorenDB 4y ago
      No. No! NO! HTML and CSS are not the answer. If anything, you should be scared off by the fact that webpages require at least three languages to implement anything useful (HTML, CSS, and JS), and that doesn't count whatever you could use for a backend (PHP? I'm not a web developer, so I don't know what the cool kids use, other than maybe Node.js.) In my book, the fewer langauges you use, the better: I will even extend this to Qt and QML (and it should be pointed out that I am passionate about using Qt and QML!). Multiple languages necessitate (often fragile) bridges to work together; plus, they take much more time and effort to learn. If you could learn one language and use it to make an app, wouldn't you jump at that instead of learning 3 or 4 languages before you could make an app? Others have already added some great comments about the wisdom (or rather the lack thereof) of integrating a web browser into the OS. Myself? I don't wish anybody a future of bloated webapps for everything.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Because reasons I guess, see for yourself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27783545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27783545 https://events.gnome.org/event/9/contributions/191/ https://events.gnome.org/event/9/contributions/191/ https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/cambalache https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/cambalache
- JanisErdmanis 4y ago
  Furthermore documentation to learn to do XML by hand sucks a great deal. It’s admirable how beautiful the Gnome desktop have evolved which such a subpar developer experience. QML is light years ahead.
baq 4y ago
Using macOS for ~5 months now after decades of Windows and Linux and it's... subpar. Which is surprising since it has so many devoted evangelists. I'd honestly rather use Gnome than macOS on the desktop.
- 000ooo000 4y ago
  Can you select the default button on a dialogue with space bar on macOS yet?
  - tuyiown 4y ago
    You mean, the colored one that is always pressed on enter key ?
  - satysin 4y ago
    Space will select the currently selected/highlighted button Return will select the default whether it is selected or not Escape will select cancel whether selected or not
  - SkyArrow 4y ago
    In addition to what others have said, you should enable Keyboard Navigation in System Settings > Keyboard to control more of the UI by pressing Tab.
    - 000ooo000 4y ago
      Cool, thank you. I've been off Mac for about a decade but I was surprised back then that those kinds of KB controls weren't on by default.
  - fdo91 4y ago
    Yeah, it is just an accessibility setting that needs to be turned on.
  - philistine 4y ago
    This is such a weird request; perhaps an OS has deemed this shortcut superfluous?
askvictor 4y ago
Mostly, yes. But... can you configure three-finger touchpad swiping to perform back/forward actions yet (like on just about every other platform)? Last I tried it was essentially impossible (well, short of getting into the code and re-compiling your own). The built in browser (web/epiphany) was the only app that implements three-finger swipe, but lacking extension support until very recently, wasn't really an option.
- doubled112 4y ago
  Firefox on Wayland does it out of the box.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  I just adapted to it moving me one desktop to the side. Sensible defaults is a good approach.
  - askvictor 4y ago
    I could adapt if I exclusively used Gnome, but I regularly use a few different computers with different OSes, so some consistency would be nice. Would also make it easier for people who are switching to Gnome/Linux.
marcyb5st 4y ago
Not a GNOME user, but i3. The fact that on MacOS I can't put more than 2 windows side by side to tile the screen space drives me nuts. Sadly, it's a work laptop and can't install 3rd parties to have a similar UX as i3.
- brightball 4y ago
  Pop Shell extension will give you something close.
  - laurentlbm 4y ago
    They were talking about MacOS, not GNOME.
- dsego 4y ago
  Not optimal but should be able to hover or option+hover on the green circle to tile or position windows side by side. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windows-mchlp2469/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-with-app-windo... There is rectangle, which has nice keyboard shortcuts, but it is a 3rd party addon. https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    This can be assigned a kb shortcut fyi. I'm currently using rectangle as well, but the built in tiling is ok if you just need a L/R split
- beachwood23 4y ago
  I use the Magnet.app extension, which supports basic tiling commands on MacOS.
- mFixman 4y ago
  You can use BetterTouchTool and configure it to tile an arbitrary amount of windows. As a bonus those windows don't have to be in full-screen mode, so you can cmd-tab quickly. I agree that the windowing system of MacOS is an unusable mess.
tarokun-io 4y ago
I've written code in Windows, Mac and Linux (Ubuntu & PopOS) for years, and man, Windows and Mac are so far behind GNOME in every aspect. Today I think I even prefer Windows + WSL rather than Mac.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Indeed, why use Visual Studio or XCode, when one can write XML layouts by hand on gedit.

dry_soup 4y ago

I must have missed a few versions. The last version of GNOME I remember using is 3 point something

HeckFeck 4y ago
[sarcasm] I am looking forward to the days when we ditch memorable release versions and just use the git commit hash to identify a release. [/sarcasm]
- favadi 4y ago
  Why would anyone want to use Ubuntu 4ee7bb27a0ff1cbc203a0df93919980ccbcfd4f1 over Ubuntu 22.04?
- tuyiown 4y ago
  dates. dates are good. YYYY.MM.patch.
- rolisz 4y ago
  Why? There is value in having some sort of easily identifiable ordering to versions
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    Absolutely. I was being sarcastic. I'm not fond of this rabid incrementation that originated with Chrome.
- Maken 4y ago
  You should work for Asus.
- zorr 4y ago
  How would that work for deprecations and new API introductions? GNOME is built on top of glib/gobject/gtk and a host of other libraries which all have to be ABI-compatible in some way. And GNOME itself is used as a base platform for applications. Having a predictable versioning scheme helps limit the number of releases for downstream application maintenance work. You can't expect applications to have the full git tree available at build or runtime to make some features conditionally available.

callahad 4y ago

Varnish seems to be having issues, but I can still reach the release notes at https://release.gnome.org/44/ https://release.gnome.org/44/

hsn915 4y ago

[flagged]

Kwpolska 4y ago

> We are also providing our own installer images for debugging and testing features. These images are meant for installation in a vm and require GNOME Boxes with UEFI support. We suggest getting Boxes from Flathub. os.gnome.org What if I’m on Windows and want to try out the latest GNOME before making a decision to migrate to Linux? What makes Boxes so special? Is it really so hard to make your images usable with other common virtualization tools?

yoavm 4y ago
I don't think anything is holding you back from loading the ISO file in any other virtualization tool. https://os.gnome.org/ https://os.gnome.org/
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  Tried booting it in Hyper-V, didn’t work. I got it to work in VirtualBox (although I had to switch to UEFI and make sure to select Linux as the OS) - and it’s not a live system, but a very dumb installer.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Better try out your distro of choice in a VM like VirtualBox or VMware, but even then, most distros perform way differently in VMs than they will on the bare metal your system happens to be using due to the different HW (emulated or not) and drivers.
goosedragons 4y ago
Its GNOME Boxes and therefore the best and nothing else matters according to GNOME logic. This is the Desktop Environment in an ecosystem where the window manager draws the title bars that decided the app needs to draw the title bars so you can really easily get two title bars on a GTK app when used on not GNOME.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I ran Fedora on an old laptop plugged into my desktop peripherals and began to realize that I wasn't using my Windows desktop anymore so I installed it on the desktop. My suggestion is to install it on another machine if you have one. Fedora 38 (currently in beta) comes out in a month and will have Gnome 44. Fedora 37 is on Gnome 43. They tend to time their releases to include the latest Gnome. Boxes isn't that special but it is built in, easy, and doesn't require privileges like virtmanager. I like it.

rcarmo 4y ago

Still lets you turn off Bluetooth with a single click, even when all you have is a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Seriously, I only use USB input devices on desktops to bootstrap the system, and then unplug them and tidy the system away. For a few times now I've clicked that button by mistake (it's there in GNOME 43, just without the ">") and promptly turned off Bluetooth and had to go fetch a USB mouse from storage, crawl under the desk, and plug it in to turn everything back on.

smhg 4y ago
Logitech's dongles (and possibly others) mimic a USB connection while still being wireless. They also allow you to access your BIOS. Things being what they are, I don't think Bluetooth is the right setup for input devices.
- MayeulC 4y ago
  I'm always uncomfortable when typing a password on a wireless keyboard.
  - rcarmo 4y ago
    Oh, come on. All of it is now end-to-end encrypted. Unless you're using some cheap Chinese setup.
    - felixg3 4y ago
      Or Logitech Unifying and did not install a firmware update manually
      - rcarmo 4y ago
        Well, Bluetooth does the encryption part "properly", at least.
        jjraden 4y ago

dsego 4y ago

Warning, rant ahead: File chooser grid view (ie thumbnails) - that's nice, but I'm so jaded at this point to care anymore. I've been using ubuntu on and off as my personal system for the past 15 years, it sure beats windows in many respects (typing this on MacOS). But I'm just too old to be excited by UI features that should've been here long ago and that were the standard in the software of the late 90s and early 2000s. There has also been a vocal part of the community defending the lack of thumbnails in the file picker, so this whole story has a bitter taste to it. One more thing, it feels like open source systems and UIs are developing at a glacial pace these days, either the tools used to develop open source software are sub-par or maybe there is a lack of people working on it and effort put into it. So glacial that in the age of AI, a grid view is somehow a notable feature. There seems to be less to be excited about these days and I have given up expecting great things.

rhaway84773 4y ago
This seems like a misrepresentation of the entire file picker saga. The “vocal parts of the community” were not against the UI change. For the most part, being the ones who were charged with putting in effort to make this improvement for free, they were pointing out the significant technical challenges it involved, and they couldn’t find someone to volunteer their own personal time for free to take on this challenge. As Gnome has made massive strides towards simplifying its codebase, these changes become far more achievable and reasonable (click through to the developer changes page and you will see GTK4 has deprecated something like 20 possible file picker classes, in favor of 3, which provide equivalent functionality). Of course, the same people who complain but are unwilling to either put effort or money towards fixing these supposedly deal breaking problems, have also spent the last 2 years complaining about the code and architecture cleanup effort Gnome devs have made to make it possible to fix those problems.
- onli 4y ago
  That is unsubstantiated. How would we know that the same people complained about code cleanups and not having a file picker? Do you have any proof? Users like me who got annoyed by never being able to easily select the wanted image (when in a gtk app), for many many years now, had no insight into any architectural changes or code cleanups of gtk4. So there weren't any complains from this group there. This is the typical "everyone is against us" you often hear from the gnome side. It's a shame to read this under such a nice release, which has only positive changes as far as I can see, it really seems to address a lot of the criticism in a good way.

ramboldio 4y ago

So many UIs these days try to shove some random idea of a PM into ones face recently E.g. "OneDrive this", "Adobe Cloud that" on just saving a document. GNOME apps would simply need to show up to become a superior experience in the long term. Great to see that they do so much more than 'just show up'.

wildrhythms 4y ago

Error 503 first byte timeout first byte timeout Error 54113 Details: cache-ewr18148-EWR 1679570726 3839313703 Varnish cache server --- HN hug of death?

dveeden2 4y ago
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/03/22/introducing-gnome-44/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:... And the release notes are on https://release.gnome.org/44/ https://release.gnome.org/44/

doodlesdev 4y ago

Website is down for now. Archives: https://web.archive.org/web/20230323094802/https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/03/22/introducing-gnome-44/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230323094802/https://foundatio... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://foundation.gnome.org/2023/03/22/introducing-gnome-44/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

rsolva 4y ago

I just upgraded my laptop from Fedora 37 to 38 Beta and the transition was painless. I have done this since Fedora 35 and the upgrade process has been excellent, far better than on Windows and macOS in fact. For me, Fedora has surpassed the macOS "out-of-the-box" experience, and I have seen how non-techies and older people "get" the UI much faster than both Windows and macOS.

rcarmo 4y ago
I have written https://taoofmac.com https://taoofmac.com for the last 20 years, and have spent the last year progressively using GNOME and Fedora more and more. I use the WhiteSur GTK theme (https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme https://github.com/vinceliuice/WhiteSur-gtk-theme) so that I don't have to decipher the nuances of the standard GNOME iconography (some of it is... well, not as pretty, and definitely not as intuitive). I love this setup, but if GNOME decides to keep breaking user themes, I will have to look elsewhere (most likely a different Fedora spin, although definitely not KDE).
PennRobotics 4y ago
I'm excited to fresh install F38 Beta if only to provide the counterexample to this "transition is painless" statement. Every startup, I need to "killall gnome-control-center" because it loads and hangs. (I also can't access "About" and a backtrace basically tells me I'm in a glib application.) The default file manager gets wonky scrolling up with an MX Master 3. I replaced it with something else but now double clicking a zip file will open the terminal to my home directory. Some apps (GTK or otherwise) need workarounds or "downgrading" to X11 because of using a 30-bit monitor: Room EQ Wizard, anything based on JetBrains, OpenSCAD, GIMP. That was a lie, Room EQ Wizard doesn't work at all after installation. No workaround to be found. Anything related to codecs or graphics has been a headache---whether aptX, H.265, VP9, WebGL, ... ----- If these problems could simply go away, I'd be a much more productive coder.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > The default file manager gets wonky scrolling up with an MX Master 3. If it’s any consolation it’s wonky with a laptop touchpad too. Like super-annoyingly wonky. But, something always seems to break after an update. Usually little things but can’t complain because I don’t help out in any way.

nanna 4y ago

Gnome 44 feature list https://release.gnome.org/44/ https://release.gnome.org/44/

jmclnx 4y ago

Desktop Environments are OK, but they do not give me anything I cannot already do with fvwm (or other window managers). I am not looking forward to the day Wayland is forced upon us by various Linux Distros. Seems Red Hat type distros are marching full speed ahead to Wayland. Thus no fvwm for me (at least on Linux).

anthk 4y ago
Switch to OpenBSD, you get FVWM (and CWM) by default. Or Hyperbola, where libre licenses, a BSD-like philosophy and light desktops (no XFCE, Gnome or even KDE, just Lumina and JWMKit) do a match. OFC you get FVWM and CWM too. EDIT: I omitted some words, sorry.
- jmclnx 4y ago
  I used OpenBSD for this comment via fvwm :)
  - anthk 4y ago
    No problems then.
petepete 4y ago
How do you add printers in fvwm?
- okasaki 4y ago
  You open http://localhost:631 http://localhost:631 in your browser and follow the cups gui?
  - petepete 4y ago
    Next you'll be telling me to get an FTP account, mount it locally using curlftpfs and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

curious145454 4y ago

Does anyone find "Activities" a poor naming choice? I'd rather see Gnome's logo there, or simply nothing (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/744/hide-activities-button/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/744/hide-activities-b...).

asoneth 4y ago
Agreed. Alternately renaming it to something like "Overview" or "Home" might better match new user expectations about what will happen when it is clicked.
- tokai 4y ago
  Or just Start ;P

modzu 4y ago

missing from the fixes to Files is the ability to scroll :( do you have a directory with more than 10 files in it? buckle up.

tristan957 4y ago
Scroll works just fine for me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- modzu 4y ago
  youre doing it wrong

capableweb 4y ago

> GNOME Circle is a fantastic collection of apps that are developed as part of the GNOME Project. Since GNOME 43 was released, ten new apps have joined: > Zap, Boatswain, Emblem, Lorem, Workbench, Komikku, Chess Clock, Eyedropper, Elastic, Clairvoyant I think I probably understand just what three of those do (Eyedropper, Lorem and Chess Clock), the rest seems indecipherable by name only. Is it really that impossible to come up with creative yet understandable names?

berkes 4y ago
I actually like Gnome for it's no-nonsense names. "Web", "Email", "Calendar" etc. Often the "under the hood name" is different, e.g. Image Viewer is "internally" called "Eye of Gnome or eog" or "Videos" is internally called Totem. This is for Core, though. Circle has - indeed- many apps with funky names. But quite often easy to find using terms you expect "edit markdown -> Apostrophe"

toastercat 4y ago

I like GNOME, but every time I've tried using it, it eventually begins to suffer from one issue or another (text randomly disappearing; stutters; high RAM usage). Each time I try it, I eventually get fed up and return to XFCE.

imwithstoopid 4y ago

why are so many comments here just cheapshots from macos users? I'm happy that you're happy in Apple's walled garden...but what does this have to do with Gnome?

unethical_ban 4y ago

I have Fedora 38 beta/G44 on my laptop. I don't use my laptop too much; mostly as a terminal or browser portal for research and chilling. I don't code or compile much, and I don't access local filesystems often. I think the navigation and UI of Gnome 44 looks great. I love the redesigned system tray - Mac-ish but functional and informative. Capable of touch-based but not ridiculously so. I don't have the experience with the filesystem to complain about the navigation or view there. Windows has always had the best file viewer IMO - MacOS is confusing as hell and Gnome has always had limited viewing options as well.