Agreed, new Pamac UI is horrible, older style was much simpler and streamlined and I’m glad they decided to revert back to it.
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Actually Pamac was reverted because it was built for stable branch by a mistake. It’s not ready yet. So it’s not because some users yelled that they don’t like the new design.
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The new design has improved lately, and the biggest issues have been addressed. For some it’s good now, however not everything is pink and unicorns. The new look is heavily Gnome alike, thus more confusing (especially on the options part) and more alien to non-Gnome environments than ever, but apparently this is a feature now…
I’m sure it will be pushed to stable as soon as the dust from the testing update settles, which means pretty soon.
That looks great. How you get it?
That doesn’t look like the new layout, but the reversed layout. The new one looks very different now. For me, it looks like this:
I’m on a testing branch.
This 
New Pamac is designed to fit Gnome DE, so there is no point to bash Pamac because of it. I think the whole thing would look a bit different if LordTermor have time to develop Qt version. From what Philip mentioned, XFCE will follow CSD rout. Don’t know anything about MATE, for now they stay with traditional title bar. And there are CSD opponents. In my opinion if they don’t like mainstream way, they should engage in projects like gtk-classic and learn a bit how to help their developers, so they don’t stay behind. If you don’t like pop music, do you trying to convince pop “artist” to play in more metal style, or you just listen metal bands?
…and Phosh on ARM. 
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Yeah, I forgot to mention. My brain merged both and save this data under Gnome bookmark, so if I write for Gnome it means for mobile as well 
My brain is under Gnome possession. Gnome, Gnome, Gnome, Gnome good.
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Lovely GNOME! Wonderful GNOME! GNOME GNOME GNOME!
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That’s a bad analogy. You can choose whatever music you like (for most of the time), while we don’t have a choice (aside cli, which isn’t the same) and are forced to use Gnome-alike app for non Gnome environments. Since pamac-qt is stuck and nowhere near to be finished (if ever), we are left with more and more Gnome-like interface, which creates bigger dissonance than ever.
I bet there are ways to make UI touch friendly without Gnome-look, so I still think the current (and past) UI decisions are big mistakes. Besides, the chaos in options became even bigger in the new version. It takes me so much longer to find proper options. I’m looking at them, can’t see them, check other tabs, don’t see them, go back to previous ones, etc. It’s not for the first time. I did it over a dozen of times and I still can’t remember what is where. It’s like Android UI nightmare. You always look randomly for things you need.
While the biggest issues of the new design has been resolved, it’s still suffers from a lot of design issues and old problems became bigger. Sure, it’s more touch friendly now, but less user-friendly in general. Pamac doesn’t have too many options and yet it’s still hard to find them. This is a masterpiece of how can you screw the usability from bad to worse.
Is it bad to want to have a desktop app that doesn’t suffer from mobile UI limitations? Why we go to extremes and forget that most of the users are still desktop users?
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It’s not the idea that GTK apps are not welcomed on KDE, and by the the way GTK apps looks great in KDE, the problem is the idea of forcing mobile design/layout on desktop users, they put everything in the middle and wasted space, for desktop users with big screen and laptops the app doesn’t look good and the experience bad. Look at what KDE Plasma mobile devs are doing : they are creating specific apps for mobile devices and kept all desktop apps untouched, why ? because the two usage are different and the idea of merging them will never succeed.
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My analogy was addressed to gtk3-nocsd and gtk3-classic.
Technically you’re not forced to use it, you can always delete Pamac, nobody catches your hand and say “nay, nay”. Besides, it’s not guinux fault that there are no metal bands in the neighborhood, plus it’s for greater good. I’ll be happy to buy a smartphone without android on a board.
Another thing is that Pamac is not even finished yet. I believe that when basic functionality will be in place for desktop and mobile, there will be time to thinker about how to make desktop experience better.
What if guinux actually likes the gnome look, or it’s in his opinion the best way to achieve the goal?
guinux is only one guy, not a team of programmers, M-Team and testers help as they can, but he’s the only one who type code. Will be cool to have proper UI, UX designers but instead of that everybody engaged in Pamac are learning new things on the fly and under pressure.
Talking about how everything related with gnome and CSD sucks doesn’t make the situation better, and doesn’t make morale on proper level to work. If I was on guinux place, after update to 10.1.x, KDE, gtk3-nocsd and gtk3-classic users will be welcomed with full-screen dialog box with middle finger in center and sentence: “For everyone who hate CSD :)” or something like that.
And mobile user don’t deserve for nothing? I know that if something is for everything it’s actually for nothing. But in current situation, both sides needs to be addressed. Like I mentioned before, we can learn how to program in Vala fast or rather very fast, or figure out how to clone guinux.
I’m using Pamac 10.0.6-2 stable with fluent dark compact GTK+ theme.
If you navigate in the center of the screen it’s pretty comfortable, but with one thing I can agree. GTK apps on wide or ultra-wide screens in full screen mode can look like a missed idea. Few options in center and blank background all around. Personally my biggest concern are title bars, sometimes they are look like they can be arranged better. In other hand many of GTK programs are rather simple, so even if we want to fill CSD better there are not enough options to populate it. Kinda paradox.
If we are talking about Pamac… we have Pamac developers but without “s” at the end.
If we are talking about GTK in general, the idea is a universal layout, at least for simpler apps or not that complex like software for graphics etc. I’m not sure, but I have never seen something like hidden elements in GTK. When the window is small, part of options are moved to a dropdown menu or something like that. Wider window more options in CSD. That would be cool. Maybe my brain fools me, it is a bit late in my area.
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I completely agree with michaldybczak : new Pamac is a disaster, big mistakes on the design point of view. I would be sad to see a fork here (many have left XFCE when 4.16 was announced with the horrible CSD mess)…please consider staying with KDE look & feel and backtrack to previous UI design (can be improved without going the ugly and inconsistent GNOME way). This is just my opinion.
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can you link me the theme?
True. However, what do you propose? We dislike CSDs (well, they look good in certain situations but in overall their functionality is limited) and what? We can’t talk about it? If we stay silent as we did for a long time, too many assume that CSDs are the future and happily promote them. This feels like we didn’t exist and we have nothing to say. And then when we speak up, it’s not welcomed. So what is the right approach here?
I believe we should voice our opinion, because too many voice opposite ones, so it feels like you are trampled by not doing anything. So here we are discussing and showing that there is a strong group of users who have VALID REASONS to dislike the UI choices of pamac or UI trends in general.
Thanks for the info. That is really a hard situation to be in. This is understandable that with limited time, there is no time to reflect on the many aspects of UI, while the horde of users voices their opinions, not always positive ones. So probably till there will be no stronger development group, we can’t really expect some things to change, which is regretful, but it is how it is.
Agreed, but too many development trends feel like throwing baby with the water. Let’s make app mobile friendly - and then the desktop app becomes mobile app, barely usable on desktop. Heh?
For example, hamburger menu is HORRIBLE from usability point of view on desktop, but is needed and a genius solution on mobile or with limited space. So it’s great if app is adaptive and with limited space converts menus or toolbar to hamburger menu. What is wrong is that normal, desktop UI elements get throw up and REPLACED with mobile one (hamburger menu) and then it’s called progress and expect us to be happy with it. Again, adaptive UI that looks or works good both on desktop and mobile is the goal, not the replacement of desktop UI for mobile UI.
However, given the limited human resources, I know understand that proper solution may be harder to implement and that is why we get this bad, one-sided design. Having pamac as GTK app feels even more limiting with time. KDE with Kirigami gives more flexible choices for proper adaptive behavior. Or maybe this is also possible on GTK but we simply don’t know it? If so, it probably needs more coding, which means time. In Kirigami this behavior is built in so to speak. Since pamac was always GTK, I can’t expect it to be rewritted for kirigami. Pamac-Qt was started but paused because lack of time and it also doesn’t use Kirigami if I’m not mistaken, so it’s also not properly adaptive.
See how Discover behaves when you change the size of a window. The same with Elisa (with some limited scope thou). Those apps are desktop and mobile ready, and they work properly on both platforms. No bad compromises and throwing baby with the water. I wished the same for pamac, GTK or not, doesn’t really mater. It should be adaptive and designed for both desktop and mobile, alas, this probably require more time on GTK, time which guinux doesn’t have.
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CSD can do a lot actually:
- it’s possible to dynamically change layout, move left, right, center, replace all content with something else
- buttons can have text, icons or both
- buttons can be used to execute dropdown menu, change window content
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s possible to put into it CPU sensors output or something similar, CSD works the same, or very similar to window.
How useful it will be, depends on how will be programmed, for example Sequeler.
So many unused space right? Check out how layout is changing while using the program.
Other example, Akira
You dislike CSD, so you want to force everybody who likes it to don’t create software with it?
The issue is not because you talk about it. But how this “debates” looks like. I’m reading this tread from the beginning and when I think about CSD/new Pamac look opponents my first thought is “new look/CSD is utter s##t, kill it with fire”. It reminds me how Philip was treated some time ago when he was saying something on forum. You’re doing something for people, and in return you’re thrown invectives. That’s the spirit.
I use Catfish and Lifrea and in both you can switch between CSD and traditional toolbar. In Catfish you can switch in preferences and in Lifrea there is Header Bar plugin which changes header bar into Gnome style. So it’s possible to make everybody happy.
Same thing rather can be done with Pamac, but it will require help not just talking how bad is CSD.
I don’t see a reason why unhappy users just can’t do something to help with improvement, development instead of preaching opinions.
In other hand, there are others distributions which use Pamac, and in theory work on Pamac should go fast and smooth but in reality everybody run in exercise wheel like hamsters, because maintenance takes every spare minute.
Some time ago I read an interesting article: The Open-Source Software bubble that is and the blogging bubble that was
I’ll try to reply tomorrow for the rest of your reply, it’s almost morning
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