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GNOME GNU is Not Unix Open Source

GNOME 40 Released (phoronix.com) 49

The GNOME 40 desktop update has been released with a bunch of new improvements. Phoronix summarizes the major changes: GNOME 40 is out with the GTK4 toolkit in tow, many improvements and alterations to the GNOME Shell including major changes to the dash and workspaces, Mutter has continued refining its Wayland support, Mutter also added a native headless back-end for testing, atomic mode-setting is now supported, input handling is now done in a separate thread, and a wide variety of other improvements. And, yes, there is also the big shift in GNOME's versioning practices moving forward while still sticking to the same six month release regiment. The release announcement and release notes can be found at their respective links.
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GNOME 40 Released

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  • Shudder... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by innocent_white_lamb ( 151825 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @05:05PM (#61194306)

    Shudder...

    https://mate-desktop.org/ [mate-desktop.org] for me, please.

    Gnome seems to want to be Windows, hiding more and more of the nuts and bolts behind pretty pieces of fabric and cardboard that you have to sort of feel your way around and through in order to get anything done.

    And forget less is more. Their less is less. Icons that disappear into the background, functionality that suddenly disappears, menus that are now hidden, notifications that simply are no longer available.

    They've fixed it to a point that it's no longer suitable for purpose.

    In my opinion....

    • MATE is what happens when features are added and added and nothing is ever taken away. It is the desktop equivalent of a hoarder.

      It can work once you get everything customized just right, but if you make the mistake of going into the basement that is the various control panels and options, you will be overwhelmed by the mess.

      Gnome 3 made some weird design decisions I disagreed with, but I prefer having to add extensions to make it work how I want rather than having every option installed by default and sift

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • I used to jump around between Gnome and KDE, but Gnome 3+ cemented me as a KDE user like no amount of KDE 4.0 through 4.6 ever could.

          I mean, after KDE 4.0, I jumped wholeheartedly to Gnome... I thought. Then they released Gnome 3 a couple years later and I was like "how bad could KDE 4 be?" That answer was "ok" in 4.6, and rapidly improving instead of devolving into whatever Gnome is now.

    • In my opinion....

      And not only yours. I may not be the best example but I one stopped using plain Ubuntu once they changed [back] to gnome and I spent far too much time trying to make it still work for me.

  • Unfortunately... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @05:07PM (#61194326)

    So when KDE did their big reinvention with KDE 4 and had a uselessly anemic experience and a huge regression from KDE3, they (eventually) pretty much ultimately recovered and restored the function.

    Gnome shell at least has not recovered much of the functionality from the latter gnome 2.x days. Of course the difference is that KDE didn't intend to be less featureful, they just didn't get everything done by 4.0 and Gnome is quite deliberate in their design choices to be pretty limited. I'm not sure who they think the audience is (enthusiast Linux users find it too limiting, embedded is going to use some Kiosk arrangement, and 'casual' linux users are going to be using Android or ChromeOS.

    If I wanted a desktop environment so limiting, I might as well run Windows.

    Some of the Gnome family of applications are pretty good though.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      It is even worse when you consider that for all the progress kde has made, the qt toolkit is suddenly being closed off more and more. Combine that with the absolutely braindead design of gnome, resource bloat of xfce, and lack of major app support for other DEs and you have a worst case scenario for open source desktops right now. Why the hell is everything in GNOME so damn big now? A single option in a settings box seems to take up a whopping quarter of the screen in a 1900x1200 display... what the FUCK
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The one thing I'd really LOVE to see in KDE (or in Gnome apps?) is better support for switching the file picker to whatever environment you're running in. I've grown to really enjoy KDE's picker.

    • by John Allsup ( 987 ) <slashdot&chalisque,net> on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @06:09PM (#61194522) Homepage Journal

      Modern GNOME is horrendously limiting compared to modern Windows,

    • and 'casual' linux users are going to be using Android or ChromeOS.

      And you just answered your own question. Linux has a casual user problem, and Gnome was trying to address just that. Android or ChromeOS are not Windows alternatives.

      If I wanted a desktop environment so limiting, I might as well run Windows.

      The great thing about Linux is that you have choices. I don't use Gnome either, that doesn't mean there isn't a potential market for what they are doing.

      • by Junta ( 36770 )

        The issue I have is that a more constrained DE isn't really going to move the needle for casual adoption. In fact, I would say Microsoft is finding that certain things they previously thought would be a nightmare to even make possible don't even cross the paths of casual users (notably, virtual desktops, WSL, etc).

        It's not that desktop environments provide a 'too hard' experience, it's just that Microsoft and Apple largely got a lock on the home desktop in the 90s and that momentum has continually carried o

        • I couldn't disagree more. Linux has a reputation as the hard hacker OS that isn't suitable for normal use. Sure Windows has a stranglehold, but nothing demonstrates this point of Linux's reputation more than how easily ChromeOS overtook its desktop market share.

          Linux has both an image problem and we also suck at marketing.

          I do agree with the issue about Gnome being "primary" choice. There's no need for that, and the disapproval of the community demonstrates that nicely through the existence of forks that do

          • by Junta ( 36770 )

            ChromeOS share has grown because it was a device that was marketed as 'just enough device to just let Google take care of everything for you and your device doesn't matter'. Meaning the point of the device is that if it got lost or stopped booting, you could just pick a new one and pick up where you left off. So people got it for schools and people who were tired of being afraid of their device breaking being the end of their data. It isn't because they wanted a variant on the general purpose desktop, it's

            • You made my point for me. It was simple, well marketed and cheap. Linux runs on absolute potatoes. The only thing missing is marketing and an easy UI.

              Although...

              and your device doesn't matter

              You must be remembering a different ChromeOS because I for one remember it being released on laughably overspec'd and expensive laptops which we openly mocked here on Slashdot. The kind of "low cost" device that had a 4K display when the default laptop was still 1080p.

              Linux desktop distributions want to cater to the same general usage model that OSX and Windows do: devices that are locally capable and generally pretty open ended in the sorts of applications and files you want to run. There is no amount of 'easy' that will make people go away from OSX and/or Windows without some fundamental change like how Chromebooks are pseudo-thinclients to cloud hosted data.

              That is spectacularly ignorant of the role of an OS. It's not the OS that decides

  • Is GNOME for phones? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2021 @05:13PM (#61194342)
    Because everything is so ridiculously gigantic by default, it seems to think I'm running it on a 6 inch screen.
    • The simplified Linux UI for the retiree's My First Linux GUI distro. It all needs to be big so they don't need to get their reading glasses.

      • Hey, I resemble that remark!

      • You must have meant retardees, not retirees.

        Retirees have been using computers 30+ years and wouldn't touch gnome with a 10-foot walking pole. Grumpy old people want usability, not elegance and rounded-corner-cuteness.

  • I don't like it when hide stuff away in the name of "cleanness" ( eff you Marie Kondo ) and I hate it when you can't get to stuff you need to when you want to ( with a right click, say ).
    I left Gnome a long time ago because it did this.
    Is this version any better ?

    • by sgage ( 109086 )

      No, it's worse. It is dumbed down to the point of idiocy.

  • I did a double-take on my calendar just to verify it wasn’t April 1...

  • Can I have my desktop icons back?
    Like on the Macintosh in 1984?

    • And whatever happened to right-click an icon or object to get to the properties? Intuitive like every other GIU out there.

  • All my computers are running Linux Mint MATE, so I have only a little experience with Mac OS X and almost no experience with GNOME. So I could be completely wrong here.

    But looking at the announcement for GNOME 40, it struck me that it's a lot more like Mac OS X than it used to be. In the early release of GNOME Shell, there were these little previews of the various workspaces, and IIRC you started with one and could ask for more. Now the workspaces seem to be arranged next to each other, like MATE does or

    • P.S. Does GNOME 40 let you have a "minimize" button on your windows now?

      It is in Gnome Advanced Configuration app (gnome-tweaks), which probably is not installed by default.

  • ...The Year of the Linux Desktop?! Has Netcraft confirmed it?
  • Enterprise IT departments don't like an infinite number of different customizations that have been set by their users, creating a maintenance headache when a problem arises. Enterprises like homogeneity.

    That is also the reason why each Windows release offers less and less customization options.

  • And, yes, there is also the big shift in GNOME's versioning practices moving forward while still sticking to the same six month release regiment.

    The word is not regiment, it's regimen. A regiment is "a permanent unit of an army typically commanded by a colonel and divided into several companies, squadrons, or batteries and often into two battalions." A regimen is "a prescribed course of medical treatment, way of life, or diet for the promotion or restoration of health."

  • by nagora ( 177841 )

    Every release of Gnome has been uglier than the previous one. The whole team needs replaced. Preferably by people who don't design their numbering based on irrelevant and illogical issues amongst thick people.

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