I’ve considered other DEs, yes. I use Budgie/Gnome 50/50. I still need Gnome for now, and I don’t intend to change that in the short term.
I might boot back into Ubuntu (sticking to 3.38) if I really face dependency hell with holding these few packages on Manjaro, at least until the extension situation wrt v40 is sorted out.
And Fedora is the exact opposite of my philosophy. So I’d rather stick to Manjaro.
But let’s not digress too much. i don’t want to hijack the topic.
I will start by downgrading 2 levels from the unstable to the stable branch, this should already delay it somewhat.
For me Gnome is unusable without Dash to panel and Arch menu so I guess it’s gonna be a long wait. Doesn’t matter a lot though as I only have it on a separate partition for testing. Would take a lot to pull me away from KDE.
Yeah, I’m pretty amazed that in 2021 a Gnome version would ever be formally released without making sure that Dash to Dock or Panel is ready to go as well considering how critical an extension it is for what I am guessing is a majority of the Gnome ecosystem. Especially when they’ve been trumpeting better coordination with extension developers as a feature of Gnome 40:
Gnome: “We’re doing much better coordination with extension devs than the past…”
Community: "Great! So “Dash to” is ready to go?
Gnome: “No.”
Oh well. The inevitable extension breakage is absolutely the most painful part of using what is otherwise an excellent DE. The laptop gestures in Wayland are really excellent and essential.
Very unlikely. Software go from Unstable - Testing - Stable when they were enough tested and validated as stable (accidents may happen). Latest version of a python library, it could be quick.
Here, it’s a major release of one of the biggest Desktop Environment. Stable will have it only when it is safer and sufficiently tested/fixed.
They can take their time, go on holidays, visit the world, take a career break, anything really. Then push it to stable in 6 months time. No emergency there.
This has been addressed a few posts earlier in this thread. Basically, it will likely be quite a while before Gnome 40 hits stable. It rolled into unstable today and dropped like a bomb, as expected.
Standard switching between windows (through Activities button) is awful. I wonder, if GNOME developers use it themselves without any extensions. They should dismiss their interface designer. I’m very waiting for dash to dock or dash to panel, because they are must have.
Why is everybody so used to DTD? This is not the concept the Gnome 40 is designed for. We have to see on how it goes.
On our end we have to see which extensions we used on our 21.0 release and how we upgrade our default installations from 3.38 to 40. If that works in a decent way, we may update stable.
Since Gnome 40 apps are mostly still based on GTK3, except chess, they would work just fine with 3.38 shell. This we have to see, as we shouldn’t hold back any updates to our stable branch cos of Gnome 40.
Why?
Well, it’s a typical contradiction between design and pragmatism of use.
Gnome is backed financially in huge majority by Red Hat, which is an IT and dev-oriented company, with Fedora users being dev-oriented as well for a good proportion. Gnome design is pushed by developers for their developers use case, instead of being pulled by users feedback to accommodate their non-geek work- or entertain- flows.
Not every one is a nerd or geek, not everyone keeps his hands on the keyboard at all times. Non-geeks tend to use the mouse and rest the other hand. Gnome is keyboard-centric, for devs, and not user-centric (mouse-friendly).
So what happens is that some distros have a more mainsteam user base (Ubuntu or Manjaro, probably 15-20x more users than Fedora between them) that have other use cases and other ways to fulfill them. It is difficult with the rigidity of Gnome-Shell to satisfy the variety of those use cases since it was designed as a single version of the truth, a one size fits all, and only few options to diverge from that.
Now, beyond the context…
I don’t think (e.g. Ubuntu…) users use the overview or worskpaces much or at all, but they use the dock for favorite and opened windows and the app grid to launch non-favourite apps (non-pinned in Ubuntu Dock/Dash-to-dock).
Having a view on which apps and how many instances of the apps are open at all times is an important visual cue
Easier to handle minimize windows with a dock and unclutter your active windows of overlapping inactive windows in the background (how many times did I click on the inactive window behind because it was white on white or black on black and I didn’t see the border in between)
If you use a mouse, going for the overview or the app grid versus an icon in the dock (for click or scroll) takes the same time, but you don’t have extra steps with the dock once you’ve done that, while you still have more gestures with the overview
When not having your hands on the keyboard (like most non-geek), by the time you reach for super with your left hand, I’ve already launched an app or changed the active window (if already open) with the mouse since…
Opened windows (via their icons) on Dash-to-dock for pinned apps or opened apps have a fixed location, you know exactly where to reach for
While in the overview, you never know where the window will be, you need to look for it, it takes a reaction time to capture the information, like braking when you drive and see an obstacle.
In the overview, if you’re full keyboard, you’ll have to go for a 2nd shortcut if you have 10 windows open to get to it or to skip 1-2-5-10 to reach it.
For some, the overview is a distraction from being productive and it gets in the way. For hardcore Gnome fans, it’s the other way around. Problem is, the latter try to impose that unilateral view and their specific use cases to everyone.
That’s why you have Dash-to-dock. To go through the grass in a park because the detour of the alley designed by the architect slows them down from the straight line they could go for. Pragmatism.
I used to use DTD and some other extensions, but eventually decided to try to get used to using ut with no “theming” and zero extensions. Once I gave it a chance it was pretty amazing! The only thing I would change is the way right-click functions by default, but even that is not a big issue.
I think it’s kind if funny how people try to force Gnome to work differently to the way it was intended and get upset when their “hacks” stop working. It’s almost like the equivalent of a glitch being fixed by a patch in a game.
After I got used to vanilla Gnome I decided to try this approach with software in general. Their is a reason developers make certain decisions I believe, maybe to keep a cohesive design as intended by their philosophy
Changing their decisions breaks that.
Unpopular opinion: If people REALLY need these extensions then they should fork Gnome or use a Gnome-derived DE like XFCE or Pantheon. If they still want to use official Gnome then they’re on their own when/if these hacks stop working - it has nothing to do with the Gnome team, otherwise it would be a part of Gnome by default.
Or use Gnome on a fixed release distro. For instance, I use Gnome on Fedora, and I only do an in-place upgrade to the next Fedora release only when the latter release is at least 3 months into its existence. That way, the basic extensions that I use (DTD, ArcMenu, mpris indicator button) should have updated to work with the newer Gnome by then.
PS. I also use Gnome on Anarchy (arch-based), so whenever there is a big Gnome upgrade, I hold off updating the distro for about 2 weeks. If some extensions still don’t work with the latest Gnome when I finally update, I bear with it until the extensions are finally ready. Since I have so many other distros I can use on my machine, it doesn’t hit me that badly.
So, what you’re saying is:
“Someone designed something for themselves, but they know better than myself how I should handle my workflow in all its diversity, so I will hand them over all the power to decide for me how I should do it and just comply”.
I don’t know you and by what I’m gonna say I don’t mean to judge or be rude but (on the principle itself and only that) this seems like you would be a good subject for a dictatorship, or a good soldier.
