GNOME Shell Extensions Are Live

DrXym writes "GNOME Shell has been criticized for certain shortcomings when compared to GNOME 2.x. Chief amongst them was that 2.x offered panel applets whereas 3.x is seemingly lacking any such functionality. What most people don't know is that GNOME Shell has a rich extension framework similar to Mozilla Firefox add-ons. Now, the official site to install extensions has gone live. So if you yearn for an application menu, or a dock, or a status monitor, then head on over. Extensions can be installed with a few clicks and removed just as easily."

It's not just GNOME 3.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of major open source projects that have gone stupid over the past year or two. Firefox is the other big one, of course. But we've seen similar stupidity from Thunderbird and Ubuntu, for instance.

It's like a big mass of unemployed web designers have moved on to fucking up real applications, perhaps because nobody will hire them to do web development any more, given similar fuck-ups in the past.

No, we don't want gradients and curved corners all over the place. No, we don't want the menus to be removed. No, we don't want the status bar to be hidden. We just want software that works, and these failed designers just can't provide that!

Extensions suck

[0123456]

Sure, they're good in theory, but after you've been using some extension for years the Gnome developers decide that they want Change and then your extension breaks and the developer hasn't updated it in a long time because it's done and there's really no way to improve it, and now it's dead unless someone else learns whatever arcane Gnome-isms are required to fix it.

Users simply can't rely on anything outside the main code development tree, and with Gnome you can't even rely on that.

Re:Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Xfce is great if you thought windows 95 was a little too fancy. As Torvalds said yesterday, Gnome 3 should come with gnome-tweak-tool right in settings.

Once you've used that, there's really no competition.

Re:Dead -- to nerds

[Shadow of Eternity]

No, it's not a problem at all. The problem is the fallacy that in order to make a UI that appeals to new users you must automatically get rid of everything that your old users liked about the original. You CAN have both, just bury the option to switch somewhere that only the old power users will find and you're fine.

Re:Dead -- to nerds

[DemonGenius]

I'm a nerd, but I also like to get meaningful work done without having to tweak a UI everyday. Up until Ubuntu 10.10 I had the benefit of an attractive AND functional desktop, heck, I even finally perfected my ideal desktop configuration with 10.10, even with warming up to the stupid-application-buttons-on-the-left-side-of-the-title-bar-because-we-want-to-be-like-Apple. However, as much as I like change, the kind of change that prevents me from effectively using my main computer exactly the way I want will drive me away. They could have at least had the courtesy to make the new UI into a separate DE that can be selected at the login screen, but apparently that was too much to ask... bastards. This is why I've switched to Mint and will not look back until the Mint team gets on the idiot UI bandwagon.

Re:It's not just GNOME 3.

[rapidreload]

thats why linux values freedom of choice most of all. If you don't like it, switch and quit your bitchen. try fluxbox or Awsome. The gnome expatriate DE of choice has been XFCE but i think theres a branch of metacity being mantained like there's a kde3 branch being maintained

I really hate this retort. A lot of people used GNOME 2 because it was the best at what it did. Either KDE was too complicated (too many options/controls) or XFCE was too lean (lacking in functionality). GNOME 2 had a nice middle-ground. With GNOME 3 fucking up things, we have a problem. We can stick with GNOME 2 until it falls into disrepair (which does happen when libraries are upgraded but the DE is not), or we can switch to something like MATE which is still in development.

The problem with the argument of how Linux provides options is that they aren't necessarily any good. People generally use one DE over another because it provides something the others don't. If the development direction of said DE makes it no longer desirable, all the freedom of choice doesn't help much if now ALL of your options are lackluster as opposed to all but one.

Re:And yet...

[icebike]

By "dock" I mean, some form graphical display that lists currently running programs intermingled with programs that you can lauch if you wish.

So, a mashup of popular items from the 'Start' menu and the currently running windows list. A list of two completely different things - action buttons and status buttons

See, that doesn't bother me a bit. The only thing I use that type of facility for is High Frequency items, email, browser, file manager, command shells. If one of those is ALREADY open I want the open one 99.94444% of the time, and if I want a new one, its left click.

You keep most menu items in the start-bar menu / what ever you want to call it. But the high frequency items I want handy, and If they are running already chances are I want the running one, and not another one.

It may not be to your liking, but it is very well thought out in all the implementations I've see of something like that. Why dig thru application menus? Computers are supposed to be intuitive. See icon, click Icon, get the desired result. They are not two completely different things. Its the way people work.

Re:And yet...

[KugelKurt]

KDE Activities: a stunning failure rammed thru by a pigheaded minority to meet a need that did not exist,replacing perfectly good alternatives, and in the process, alienated the vast majority of the KDE user base

WTF?!? Activities in Plasma Desktop were never ever forced on anyone. Everybody who doesn't want them simply doesn't use them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Dead -- to nerds

[Shadow of Eternity]

I repeat: ...the FALLACY that in order to make a UI that appeals to new users you MUST automatically get rid...

Do you think they would've been doing worse if they'd still gone to windows 95 but kept the powerful features available for when people needed/wanted them?

Re:Dead

[DMFNR]

I wonder how many people hate Gnome 3, without having tried it, for no other reason than the fact that it is a change from what they're used to. Now I can totally understand that, most people on a site like Slashdot use their computer for work, there is no reason for one to mess up his long developed work flow for the new shiny. Gnome 3 is quite different and it will require quite a few adjustments to get comfortable in the new environment. I recently moved from Ubuntu 10.04 to Fedora 16 after my system ended up fucked after months of maintaining a pretty much custom compiled system because I was too stubborn to make the move away from the environment I was so accustomed too, but I still wanted to take advantage of all of the improvements in the compilers and libraries. I was apprehensive at first, but I learned to adapt pretty quick, and after a week or two there really isn't any impact on my productivity using Gnome 3, and there are some great benefits. There are also some issues, but the shell is still young and I'm sure some of them will be addressed as it matures. On the good side, losing the bottom panel gives me a bit more screen real estate, which I can use all I can on a laptop with a widescreen. I always had to have that around in Gnome 2, even though all of my window/workspace switching was done by keybindings, having it taken away turned out to be a good thing. I like the way Gnome 3's workspaces function, how it just generates a new one when I need it, which is real nice for me because when I'm developing I tend to have everything I need full screen on workspaces, and it always seemed that I would end up needing one more workspace than I had when I was using Gnome 2 and I would either have to go and create a new one, or switch between multiple windows on a single workspace, which does slow me down a bit. On the bad end, it does require quite a bit more mouse movement if that is how you navigate through your desktop environment, and I'd imagine for a lot of people that's how they do it. I usually navigate via keybindings, so things work pretty much the same as Gnome 2 in that respect. I've noticed an issue with Gnome 3 where I have to enter some key combos twice to get them to work, like the shell is eating the first one before using it for what I want, and that is kind of irritating. I wish the run dialogue would also function like a sort of search dialogue like I've seen in pictures of Unity, in fact I think Gnome 2's run dialogue was better because at least it would bring up a list of options. It's fine when I know exactly what I want to do, but it's a pain in the ass trying to run a new application and running a bunch of combinations and spellings trying to get it just right with no suggestions. I also find the configuration options of the desktop to be lacking, like many others, and find it silly that I have to install a bunch of extra applications and extensions just to change some basic things like entries in the Applications menus or applets in the top panel.

My point with all of this is, I understand why there is so much hate for Gnome 3 and Unity, they're taking away the environment you're used and forcing you to change how you work. Whether you stick with Gnome, or you move to something else, you have no choice. Gnome 2 will succumb to bitrot sooner or later, and then it's gone. It's not the type of application that you'll just be able to install and run like it's 5 years ago in 2017 and have everything work just like you remembered it. I just wish people would give it a solid chance before they knocked it, at least give it a fair assessment. In a way, a lot of geeks are kind of like Gnome, they'll stick with the one thing they're used to come hell or high water. The world's changing though, Windows 95 is quite limited for the type of tasks we do today, and if you don't move forward you die, that's just how things go. If you're still writing 16 bit real mode because you're more comfortable with segment addressing and don't want to deal with all of that hipster protected

Re:It's not just GNOME 3.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how all this GNOME 3 flaming happens in the comments of a newsitem that basically is about the solution to one of the main gripes people are (rightfully, to an extent) complaining about. GNOME 3 extensions can basically turn the whole thing back to like how GNOME 2 worked, if that's how you preferred it. Many power user extensions are out there, and very likely now that GNOME 3 has most distributions it wouldn't surprise me of many many new extensions popup filling every possible niche. What's more, it's fairly straightforward to create your own, if you know some CSS/JS (which are pretty easy to pick up anyway). GNOME 3 may have stripped out a lot of stuff, and for sure I defiintely felt lost for a while after switching to GNOME 3, but it put in place a very nice extension system that easily makes up for it, if you ask me.

The only thing that still bothers me is GNOME 3's heavy dependance on accelerated 3D graphics, given that Linux GPU drivers are generally in such a poor state (improving, but still..), and because somehow, despite today's GPU's power, things still feel more sluggish than they did in GNOME 2