thanks but no thanks, I really like vanilla gnome UI. I understand some people will keep complaining, but probably those are the same people who never even put a bit of effort to try and understand the concept of the new gnome desktop. Still, choice is good, and its great we can have this extensions.
AFAIK GNOME did not did any real, comprehensive user testing or survey before removing stuff and changing things, what sucks is that GNJOME users like you dismiss other GNOME users that give feedback. Sometimes this projects get under the control of some big ego person or group that push their "vision", this people are incompetent and refuse to accept their stuff has flaws and you get this negativity.
This happen in KDE Plasma too, there was there a guy with big ego too, he created the thing called a "cachew" and refused to give the option to hide it , yeah a KDE guy with a GNOME mentality, but in the end the guy was gone and normality was restored , not even you have the option to hide the crap, it is GONE now https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbo...
I hope GNOME also will get rid of big ego people and Red Hat manages to hire competent designers , developers and honest PR people .
> the same people who never even put a bit of effort to try and understand the concept of the new gnome desktop
Why are you so dismissive? A desktop environment should aid intuitively the user, not have the user search for information to "get" the desktop.
These are probably the people that still haven't been for long on the GNOME train, and still trying to make it fit their classical interpretation of a desktop. It's classic for a reason, because it worked, and GNOME 2 was peak GNOME.
It's just a matter of time before they stop fighting it and switch to a different DE, or accept the default. And when that group settles, you're going to have another influx of GNOME users, that don't get why it doesn't behave like a classic DE and will try to tweak it to match one.
This is the major frustration I have with GNOME. I mostly like GNOME and I've been using it for years. Most of the time without extensions. The trackpad controls are great and it's the closest thing we have to macOS.
That said, there are quite a few number of issues that stick out like a sore thumb, only to find that it's not a problem that the community is willing to recognize, let alone fix. I look at the issues and every time I see it getting dismissed as a me issue. That users like me are absolutely clueless. It drives me nuts, and I find myself considering a switch to Plasma even though it's too Windows-y for my taste.
> I understand some people will keep complaining, but probably those are the same people who never even put a bit of effort to try and understand the concept of the new gnome desktop.
Is it not possible that they understand GNOME just fine and still don't agree with its design decisions?
possible but not likely. There're countless other DE that adhere to that "standard" way, why insisting on gnome, and then force it to be like everything else?
Devils advocate that them being popular does not mean they’re necessarily solving a serious problem. Coming into gnome I used these because community consensus seemed to be they were essential (and still is).
2 weeks of forcing myself to do a trial of vanilla a couple years ago and I completely flipped on most of those “essential” plugins that I’d installed by default for years.
I notice on my Windows 10 machine, I still have it configured like Windows 2000: small icons, title on, no grouping: https://msfn.org/board/uploads/post-70-1091783680.gif . It's convenient because I can directly see the title of the window I want to go to.
Of course it's also 6 "lines" high, with the bottom line being the address bar: with auto-complete it's a convenient place to navigate to directories and files. In Windows 2000 it was even possible to type in a path to a file there, and then drag and drop it to a window to open that file, but somehow they changed this, in XP or 7 it did something else, and in 10 it doesn't allow me to drop the file (represented by the icon) in a text editor or windows Explorer.
I used to be a big fan but I don't use it anymore.
Now if I'm using the keyboard I just alt+tab to change windows. If I'm using the mouse, hot top left corner and I see the activities view which shows all the windows opened, the dock and the different workspaces.
To me it's just faster this way. Same thing on my mac. The dock is there but I almost never use it, so to me the top bar with the date and app indicator is enough.
Yep, this is my experience. From force of habit, I thought I could not function without seeing my list of open applications somewhere on the screen at all times. I decided to try the vanilla Gnome experience for a few weeks without any panel extensions like this to see what I was missing. I quickly found that switching apps via the hot-corner (or the three-finger swipe-up when using a trackpad) was intuitive and convenient. I also appreciated the extra screen real estate that comes from not having the app list displayed all the time...
I've been using this extension for years, and I can confirm it's fantastic.
Lots of configurability make it so that I can have the exact panel that I want. In my case, it's Auto-hide + app shortcuts + windows with no grouping + keyboard shortcuts all apps and windows and for unhiding.
The best thing about Linux desktops is personalisation.
Real question: can some Gnome enthusiast help me understand why, by default, the top panel is always displayed, but seems chronically underutilized? (By default there is very little content in the panel. It stretches all the way across the top of my widescreen monitor as mostly just an empty black bar.)
Am I missing something here? If minimalism is the goal, why stick with a horizontal panel? Is there a way that folks typically configure this to make it more useful (or less obtrusive)?
(I am aware that I'm linking to messages from 2011. All evidence is that this is still exactly how GNOME operates, and this simply is the best case of its devs writing down what they think that I know about. Anyone with evidence of a change of heart is welcome to share.)
what do you mean underutilized? the utilization is not measured by how many pixels of the panel are taken by text and icons, but how useful the information in it is, no matter how small it might be. For me, it has the date, clock, and a few important icons. I use it to quickly toggle settings or access my calendar and notifications. it is VERY utilized
It's great, that GNOME has decent plugin system to allow users customizing their own system to their linking. Most software these days have already forgotten the importance of customization and that is sad.
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This happen in KDE Plasma too, there was there a guy with big ego too, he created the thing called a "cachew" and refused to give the option to hide it , yeah a KDE guy with a GNOME mentality, but in the end the guy was gone and normality was restored , not even you have the option to hide the crap, it is GONE now https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbo...
I hope GNOME also will get rid of big ego people and Red Hat manages to hire competent designers , developers and honest PR people .
GNOME works great for me.
Why are you so dismissive? A desktop environment should aid intuitively the user, not have the user search for information to "get" the desktop.
These are probably the people that still haven't been for long on the GNOME train, and still trying to make it fit their classical interpretation of a desktop. It's classic for a reason, because it worked, and GNOME 2 was peak GNOME.
It's just a matter of time before they stop fighting it and switch to a different DE, or accept the default. And when that group settles, you're going to have another influx of GNOME users, that don't get why it doesn't behave like a classic DE and will try to tweak it to match one.
That said, there are quite a few number of issues that stick out like a sore thumb, only to find that it's not a problem that the community is willing to recognize, let alone fix. I look at the issues and every time I see it getting dismissed as a me issue. That users like me are absolutely clueless. It drives me nuts, and I find myself considering a switch to Plasma even though it's too Windows-y for my taste.
Is it not possible that they understand GNOME just fine and still don't agree with its design decisions?
Most downloaded gnome shell extensions[0]:
2. Dash to Dock
4. Dash to Panel
6. Apps Menu
I get where you are coming from and I am in the same boat. However, marginalizing everything simply because of the GnomeWay™ is counterproductive.
[0]https://extensions.gnome.org/#sort=downloads
2 weeks of forcing myself to do a trial of vanilla a couple years ago and I completely flipped on most of those “essential” plugins that I’d installed by default for years.
Of course it's also 6 "lines" high, with the bottom line being the address bar: with auto-complete it's a convenient place to navigate to directories and files. In Windows 2000 it was even possible to type in a path to a file there, and then drag and drop it to a window to open that file, but somehow they changed this, in XP or 7 it did something else, and in 10 it doesn't allow me to drop the file (represented by the icon) in a text editor or windows Explorer.
Windows 11 (22H2) didn't allow title on and no grouping either; that was added back in 23H2.
Now if I'm using the keyboard I just alt+tab to change windows. If I'm using the mouse, hot top left corner and I see the activities view which shows all the windows opened, the dock and the different workspaces.
To me it's just faster this way. Same thing on my mac. The dock is there but I almost never use it, so to me the top bar with the date and app indicator is enough.
Lots of configurability make it so that I can have the exact panel that I want. In my case, it's Auto-hide + app shortcuts + windows with no grouping + keyboard shortcuts all apps and windows and for unhiding.
The best thing about Linux desktops is personalisation.
Am I missing something here? If minimalism is the goal, why stick with a horizontal panel? Is there a way that folks typically configure this to make it more useful (or less obtrusive)?
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/m... / https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-June/m...
(I am aware that I'm linking to messages from 2011. All evidence is that this is still exactly how GNOME operates, and this simply is the best case of its devs writing down what they think that I know about. Anyone with evidence of a change of heart is welcome to share.)
if you just want quick launch, this is ~500 loc and gets updated on time for new gnome releases