this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023

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GNOME 44.4 Is Out to Improve Epiphany, GNOME Software, and More - 9to5Linux (9to5linux.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I already see the commends and only have one question, why are Linux users so fucking dum? countless people enjoy KDE, countless enjoy Gnome and others prefer Cinnamon or Pantheon, can't we agree to say which we like/don't like whenever it's relevant rather than trash on the other DEs every time the name pops up?...

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People that didn't grow up mentally and continue their Xbox vs. PlayStation trash talk from their childhood.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Surely you mean Sega vs Nintendo

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Let's cut to the logical conclusion.

Rock vs Stick

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Paper beats rock so the superior choice is clear.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

true, they need to shut up and accept that people have different use cases

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Someone here used many words to try to convince me that I was incapable of good decision making and therefore owed him and the thread an apology for saying that I liked debloated OS installs while also liking GNOME.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Gnome is the default on many important distro, but it is not flexible. A default DE has to fit to most people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

The way I see it, gnome is friendly enough to use that new users who don't care about its flexibility will continue using it without issues while people who are bothered by the lack of flexibility are knowledgeable enough to change their DE or install a spin of the distro with their favourite DE

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Most people just want a browser and a word processor plus simple spreadsheets once in a blue moon. For extremely simple and popular use cases many distros already work okayish OOTB, including those with GNOME DE.

While I absolutely don’t like GNOME and its design principles (prefer KDE), but I can see why it works for many people.

Now, for anything but the most popular use cases, that’s a whole different story altogether. I just spent the whole weekend installing and reinstalling every imaginable flavour or Arch and OpenSUSE and trying to get Hyprland or KDE to work on my NVIDIA gpu without issues and failing, then trying to stop my screen from flickering like a drowning sailor desperately trying to Morse code and SOS while on Alder Lake iGPU, and failed too. Two hours ago I wiped for what seemed like the 420th time and went crawling back to W11.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

While GNOME 44.3 was skipped for some reason

Skipped by who? I'm running 44.3 right now

Edit: it was a tagged release on their gitlab too

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Maybe he meant his distro skipped it. I'm also on the latest. :)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I can't be the only one who couldn't care less about Epiphany. I have zero faith behind a completely random browser that's just made on the side. What's the point, who is it for? Firefox beats it on like every use case scenario. Waste of dev time imo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

They think for open web, like what KHTML did in the past. Ends up being safari

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Why is the image showing a non official panel ? Have they added that as an option?

To have that layout, I have installed several extensions. Will I need no extensions to achieve that result in GNOME 44.4?

Or is this some random pic that they grabbed without thinking about it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yes yes that all goo and what but does this mean the file pick will finally show thumbnails, and will that feature roll out distros?

[+] [email protected] -37 points 10 months ago (1 children)

One more version trying to rethink what was long figured out by others :D

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You think we have reached the ultimate desktop experience?

[+] [email protected] -23 points 10 months ago (5 children)

For a keyboard and mouse yes.

The ultimate desktop would be something like: KDE’s usability in terms of a bottom bar, notification area and menu (or ArcMenu and Dash to Panel under GNOME) + the design consistency of GNOME + optional desktop icons + window switching like Apple’s old Exposé or the current Windows Task View (Win+Tab).

Windows got one thing (almost) right, fast and snappy multitasking and that’s about it. GNOME adds long animations and takes the focus from the applications to itself - it become the “center of user's attention”. This isn’t good, a DE should be almost invisible, as minimalistic as it can be so the user can quickly switch between windows and get their job done specially on smaller screens. I guess most people run/enjoy GNOME never touched Apple’s old Exposé (macos Tiger and before?) or the current Windows Task View (Win+Tab) thus aren’t aware how far and how productive they can be on a very small screen with a simple way to move around.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

KDE looks and feels like ass.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Well, let's be polite and say it's not for everyone. TCB13 isn't the only person to really love this DE 😛

I don't get the enthousiasm either, there is always to much information for me on the screen and inconsistent UI all over the place 🤷

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago

Yes 😀 But at least they don't outright refuse to have basic desktop functionality. GNOME has good UI while KDE has good UX.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

@[email protected] and @[email protected] just to make my position clear, I hate KDE and all it's design inconsistency but they actually got a better bottom bar / notifications area. GNOME designs things well but they kinda kill it all with their backwards approach and total refusal to have basic desktop functionality.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Gnome was nothing but terrible for me. Lacking of very basic features and many apps, including the freaking file explorer, would constantly crash. I cannot fathom how people use this garbage. Really made me appreciate KDE even more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Really? I haven't had any issues. What was wrong with the file explorer.

That being said, my system is base Fedora plus a few extensions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I've had a thread listing most short term issues here: https://kbin.social/m/linux/t/152231/Nobara-Gnome-is-just-a-terrible-experience

For the file explorer it mostly boiled down to the fact that every time I searched something, which is mandatory since it does not have a "jump to" feature, it would very likely crash.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You were using a niche distro maintained by a single person and encountered problems? Shocking.

To be fair, I used Nobara myself for a bit until I got tired of suffering from the problems GE was creating himself. But regardless, experience on something like Nobara is not a fair way to evaluate Gnome. Try it on actual Fedora or something else mainstream that isn't constantly fuckering around with all kinds of shit and breaking stuff.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure what he could've done that affected the file explorer to such a degree? And obviously that was just one extreme example of many other problems I had. I don't think he removed basic functionalities that I require, I am pretty sure that's just Gnome being so hell bent on being puristic that they just don't ship with it, which breaks my workflow entirely without offering any sort of replacement steps.

And if his stuff breaks so much, why does KDE just works? I only have / had two issues since then. First one was that Dolphin just crashed instantly, which was a known Dolphin bug and required me to manually create the thumbnail folder. The second is the inability to drag & drop out of Firefox, like my finished downloads can't be dragged into a folder anymore - and I know this was a feature from my previous distros (namely EndeavourOS & Manjaro). So, if it was caused by GE, then surely there would be all sorts of things broken with KDE too, right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'll test this stuff out of curiosity later tonight!!

It occurs to me now I never searched for anything through the explorer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can I ask how you usually quickly jump to a specific sub-folder if you don't type in the letters of the folder name?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I usually click around the gui like a ham-fisted animal

I search in the terminal.

The tasks are separate for me. I usually launch the explorer at pwd to do my clicks, and close it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That seems very convoluted to me. Let's say I have a mod folder for a game, somewhat deep folder structure thanks to Wine and such, containing hundreds of mod folders and sub folders. I download updated mod files for one mod, how would you quickly reach the corresponding folder and copy the files into that? I typically have a shortcut to the mod folder in my gaming folder, so that's somewhat quickly to reach. I'd then go into / through the correct subfolders by typing out the letters contained in the folder names and then just copypasta the corresponding files. Is there a better way than that without losing track of things?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Hmm. This case comes up for me regularly. I usually have a hidden file on level lower than my home directory that is linked to the directory in question. I then launch nautilus, and drag and drop as needed.

If it happens often enough I create a bash script that automatically launches nautilus at that location.

Is it better? Prolly not, but it's how I do it 😅

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's similar to the shortcut I mentioned, but wouldn't really solve reaching the corresponding sub folders within the folder structure. It would only work if I'd threw all the mod files in the same folder, and pray that the mod authors never actually rename their mod files and that I never have to remove any specific mod. I tried that once, it wasn't a good idea. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, I usually mod games like WoW or w.e. so the file structure lends to it being easily modded.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yeah, that's as far as I know usually just graphical mods, mostly of the kinky kind.
It gets more complicated when you look at mods that add functionality through script mods, with various mod dependencies, update breakages, etc.
Games like the Sims, or Bethesda RPGs, which are highly moddable and where you install hundreds or even thousands of mods & assets.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That delay can be removed with plugins so its instant but I agree - adding delays makes no sense to me either.

And yeah I havent used windows or macs in a long time now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The problem with plugins is what we can see with desktop icon extensions nowadays. GNOME removed their native desktop icons some time ago and all the subsequent extensions that popped up to get that functionality simply aren't are good - you can't drag and drop to some other places, there are weird things happening when you move icons and/or the selection box doesn't make sense.