I want Gnome 40! Why doesn't Manjaro ship Gnome 40 Shell yet?

Support GNOME
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Hi Gnome Fellows,

Manjaro currently ships a mixture of Gnome 3.38 Shell and Gnome 40 Apps, as long as it works together for a while now in Stable and Testing branches. Gnome 40 Shell and other newer packages you may find in our Unstable branch. The following packages we hold back (plus needed extensions):

gnome-control-center
gnome-control-center-x11-scaling
gnome-settings-daemon
gnome-shell
gnome-shell-extensions
gnome-tweaks
gsettings-desktop-schemas
mutter

This is the minimal set of 3.38 packages. Exception is gsettings-desktop-schemas, which is a patched 40.0 version.

One of the reason we are doing this is the new workflow approach upstream has decided to do:


GNOME’s decision to move from vertical (fixed) workspaces to horizontal (dynamic) ones is the most controversial change in this release.

New touchpad gestures for navigating workspaces and entering/exiting the overview are enabled by default in GNOME 40 Shell. A three-finger swipe left or right moves between workspaces, while a a three-finger push up enters the Overview and, if you keep pushing, extends the app launcher. A three-finger drag in the posit direction will return you to your selected workspace.

Our developers are keen in finding solutions so our unique look and feel of Manjaro Gnome will be still available and you are in power to decide on your own, if you want to switch to horizontal or keep the vertical workflow.

You may download our latest Development Editions from Github:

  • Gnome (3.38)
  • Gnome Minimal (3.38)
  • Gnome-Next (40)
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Thanks for taking the time to give us the choice to keep the current look and feel of Manjaro. It makes much more sense to me and I’d definitely stick to it if available.

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For those that want to follow the development of extensions for themselves, here are some of the extensions that are installed by default in manjaro right now which are being ported to gnome 40.

These are still in development by their respective developers and seem to work, but with some bugs that are being worked on:

These seem to be ported and complete, since they’ve had several releases since implementing support:

This is a new plugin for vertical workspaces that’s being worked on. Still a work in progress as far as I can tell.

E: Moved Pop to the complete section in regards to the post below.

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Currently in unstable branch

  • Dash-to-panel works mostly, and unworking elements are not used in default configuration
  • Dash-to-dock works, but has graphical glitches and side dock conflicts with horizontal workspaces
  • Pop-shell works with xorg, but on Wayland tiles only qt apps
  • Night theme switcher works
  • Kstatusnotifier works
  • Material-shell works, but is super weird with horizontal workspaces
  • Gsconnect works
  • Unite works

When dash-to-dock and dash-to-panel are ready, we can move forward and transition to gnome40, but it will be difficult to make the update without breaking existing user configurations.

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This is a new plugin for vertical workspaces that’s being worked on. Still a work in progress as far as I can tell.

Manjaro devs should include it in the desktop customizer app that ships with the OS. As soon as it’s ready of course :slight_smile:.

Also, is there an ETA on when the gnome-shell will be moved down from the unstable branch? What’s keeping it up there anyways? Is it buggy or is it because DTP and DTD aren’t ready yet?

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There are some quite minor bugs, but overall it is really solid. I’ve running the development version as my daily driver since December. It’s just the extensions. We always try to make sure that none of the userspace we ship by default gets broken in the stable branch. If you have your own custom config we cannot promise anything, but we do our best to ensure that the defaults don’t break.

For me, pop-shell is actually a bigger issue than dtp and dtd. The latter two are quite usable already, but pop-shell actually legit breaks.

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gnome-shell-extension-vertical-overview is now available in the unstable branch. We’re looking at creating a new vertical layout in gnome-layout-switcher. Stay tuned.

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I will be doing a fresh install with Gnome 40 to avoid any errors.

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…or you could make a backup then update. If everything goes well, you saved yourself some time. :wink:

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R8…your suggestion is better & easier. :sweat_smile:

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Pop-shell works now in unstable and gnome-layout-switcher now supports all gnome 40 with all the old layouts. It also sets the keyboard shortcut direction based on the chosen layout

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Great, gimme gimme, I’m ready for 40!

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Hello, Manjaro is a great distribution. I think Manjaro should release two versions of Gnome,
One Vanilla Gnome with slight Manjaro additions, and your Current Gnome edition. Gnome and its users understand that Gnome always tries to innovate and try new ideas, with the understanding that this tends to break things. As long as there is no hard breakage, Manjaro would be able to release the full Gnome Desktop as soon a possible instead of holding things back if there is no hard breakage. broken Extentions etc could be continued to be worked on as long as the Gnome Desktop continued to function as the Gnome developers intended.

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We already release Gnome on daily basis as soon as it is out. Give it a try. Get Gnome-Next for 40 shell.

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Thank you all for the great work.

Out of curiosity, has anyone heard if the excellent “Extended Gestures” extension is being updated for Gnome 40? As someone who doesn’t use multiple workspaces the default three finger gestures to swipe workspaces is wasted for me and I’d love to reassign them.

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As I understand it, it will be better to perform a fresh install than an upgrade (from 3.38 to 40) when Gnome 40 will be full available right ?

Do you think that Gnome 40 will be available in middle May for the stable branch ? Or must we wait another two months ?

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You can switch to Gnome 40 Shell right now by changing to unstable branch. We make sure that a seamless update will be possible. When it will land in stable branch we can’t tell. Maybe weeks, maybe months …

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@philm: I downloaded the GNOME-Next ISO to see what Gnome Shell 40 looks like. I hope we will no have to wait many months to have a stable version of Gnome 40.

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There is a Problem With manjaro-gdm-theme.

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