The 9to5 article is poorly written. In the first paragraph 9to5 says a new window system is "scheduled to replace" the current one, but this is not true. The cited blog post explicitly says "There’s no timeline or roadmap at this stage". The Gnome developers are merely experimenting with a new window management system and at this early stage it's impossible to know what the finished product may look like if these experiments go anywhere at all.
Here's a link to the original blog post where Gnome developer Tobias Bernard explains their dissatisfaction with existing window management systems and discusses the techinical challeneges developers face.
The translation feature is based on the Bergamot project to provide users with a privacy-aware translation engine where the translation is done locally using machine learning, it’s never sent to a third party, and it’s optimized for consumer hardware.
I was always a GNOME guy. Not sure why really, maybe it was the state of KDE3 vs GNOME2. Never really looked at KDE again and assumed there is a reason all the popular distros pick GNOME. then 3 years ago I tried KED, and was blown away. Now I’ve completely flipped my position on it.
Gnome provides a more consistent user experience because Gnome apps usually have fewer features and don't offer many customization options by default. KDE apps usually have a lot of settings and customization options, but the user interface might be a little less intuitive or you may have to search in a settings menu to find what you're looking for.
In my experience Gnome is pretty, intuitive, and well integrated, but I tend to settle on KDE Plasma because KDE apps often have more advanced functionality and more options for configuration. If you're the type who likes to explore device/app settings to configure things exactly how you want, then consider KDE Plasma. If you'd rather have a minimal but consistent experience out-of-the-box without any tinkering then Gnome is probably the better choice for you.
For me, Plasma is awesome but I can usually find some bugs in a few days of using it. Gnome is usually rock solid, although there has been times when it also has been buggy.
I switch back and forth a lot and it adds to the fun I think.
I use KDE on a RHEL system via epel and it’s been pretty rock solid. I’m not the type to update very often, but it’s been stable for the year I’ve been running it.
Honestly for me it’s very subjective. With GNOME, I need to install and configure a lot of extensions to get it to work the way I like. I was surprised how many of these small tweaks and features are already part of KDE. Out of the box it’s a lot closer to what I want and the rest of the small customizations I want are just right there in KDE as options.
With GNOME extensions I always have to wonder “which crappy extension broke now, and what is the new one everyone is moving to/how to fix it”.
Just generally a lot less headache for me. I also could swear it’s more performant and generally feels snappier, but it’s so hard to tell on modern fast hardware anyway.
And it look until like 5.14/5.15/5.16 for Plasma 5 to finally be stable enough IMO.
The memes of Plasma being unstable and buggy were very real.
Comparing the first Plasma 5 release to 5.27 would be night and day, it went from being straight up unusable trash to a competent, powerful, mostly stable experience. Such a massive improvement.
I’m glad they’ve postponed Plasma 6 again so they can get things right. Plasma being buggy for so long is what caused Gnome to supplant them in the first place, they’re right to try to shake that image.
not just that, the Just Perfection dev argued that they (extension devs) much rather have that instead of an API because the API wouldn’t be as flexible/free
I’ve been using GNOME on Wayland for over 5 years and I can’t recall it ever crashing. Hangs and freezes, yes, but not a full crash. I guess the fact that users feel the need to track “crash recovery” as a feature is indicative of KDE’s stability.
I’ve been on Gnome for few a months now, and have already had plenty episodes of it freezing, or crashing, or not coming back out of sleep, or dropping to the login screen with all my programs gone.
That’s really odd. I have been using it for like 3 years so far and I haven’t had many problems like those, and when I did they were intel/amd gpu driver bugs/crashes or kdenlive as I mentioned before.
KDE is nowhere near as bad as it used to be for bugs and instability.
Don’t get me wrong, IMO Gnome is still substantially more stable and bug-free, but you’d be surprised how much more stable Plasma has become over the past year.
And unlike with Plasma 4 and early Plasma 5, for Plasma 6 KDE actually seems to want to have it be a fairly stable system on release. They’re moving in the right direction.
KDE was not even properly functional and very buggy for me when I installed it to try on a vanilla Debian last month. GNOME on the other hand was smooth, not hogging 70% CPU, and was zipping.
There was a Lemmy post with a video about how things have changed, which I even commented on, but I can’t find anymore.
What I remember was that yes they did address most of the concerns. There were some issues still (unrelated to data collection iirc), and there’s one other fork that’s being maintained if you don’t want that
Edit: I think the was the video, I don’t want to watch it again but I’ll link my TLDW if I find it: m.youtube.com/watch?v=QfmDn1IaDmY
Gradually rolling out in Fx119, Firefox now allows you to edit PDFs by adding images and alt text, in addition to text and drawings.
If you’re migrating your data from Chrome, Firefox now offers the ability to import some of your extensions as well.
As part of Total Cookie Protection, Firefox now supports the partitioning of Blob URLs, this mitigates a potential tracking vector that third-party agents could use to track an individual.
The visibility of fonts to websites has been restricted to system fonts and language pack fonts in Enhanced Tracking Protection strict mode to mitigate font fingerprinting.
Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) is now available to Firefox users, delivering a more private browsing experience. ECH extends the encryption used in TLS connections to cover more of the handshake and better protect sensitive fields.
Firefox is now available in the Santali (sat) language.
Several enhancements have been made to the Inactive CSS styles feature. This feature assists in identifying CSS properties that have no effect on an element. Pseudo-elements such as ::first-letter, ::cue, and ::placeholder are now fully supported.
The JSON viewer is particularly useful for debugging REST APIs, as it displays formatted JSON responses. Now, if the JSON is invalid or broken, it automatically switches to a raw data view, improving the user experience.
Grouping of items in an array (and iterables) is now easier by using the methods Object.groupBy or Map.groupBy.
Hmm, only system fonts doesnt seem to help? Wouldnt that circumvent having the browser in a fake environment like Torbrowser does that, with the same fonts?
i’m not even sure it’s worth having an option. i don’t think i’d even have noticed a difference, apart from the menu button being in a slightly different place to every other gnome app. it’s fine; but it wasn’t worth the development time
The last thing I want is an option for this. My gosh, imagine the amount of options you would end up with if every single design choice was turned into an option. Who in the world would like that many options.
I'm happy to just have a design team work on whatever they think looks better and works best for the user experience, and implement it after some rounds of public review and testing. This looks neat enough to me - slightly less cluttered than what my current Nautilus window looks like while maintaining the same functionality.
Seriously, I envy you guys. Every time I try to use Plasma, I end up spending all my time tweaking the desktop, and by the time I’m done, I realize I’ve just recreated the Gnome workflow…
I had to look up Fitts’s law, and I’m not sure I get it. Could you explain what you mean?
ETA: I kinda feel like mine was about KDE not being a fit for me personally, and yours was a slam on Gnome rather than a statement of personal preference.
I had to look up Fitts’s law, and I’m not sure I get it. Could you explain what you mean?
basically; the speed that it takes to click a button is dependant on the size of the button and the distance from the cursor. however, buttons at the edge of the screen have effectively infinite size, as they can’t be overshot. the most used actions should be placed there, as they are the easiest to click by muscle memory (particularly the corners, as they have infinite size in both dimensions)
on windows, kde, cinnamon, etc.; by default the bottom left is start, the bottom right is show desktop (this one i can’t explain), and the top right is close maximised window. the top of the screen is also used for other window-related actions like minimise, restore, change csd tabs, etc.
gnome flouts this by having most of the top of the screen doing nothing (most of it is completely empty) apart from rarely used actions like calendar and power. and the bottom right and left doing nothing[^1]
did i explain well?
ETA: I kinda feel like mine was about KDE not being a fit for me personally, and yours was a slam on Gnome rather than a statement of personal preference.
nah it was very much a personal thing: some people like having a minimal and clutter-free feature set; i like having as many features as possible, because then i find features i didn’t even know i liked.[^2]
as for the top bar: this one confuses me - it just seems objectively bad. but obviously it’s not as some people clearly like it. i haven’t had anyone actually explain to me why, though
I personally love the feature set of Gnome, but I can see your point. Compared to other DEs, it might seem like a lot of wasted space. And I guess in a way it is, but I don’t miss those other functions.
The top right corner doesn’t even need a click to go to overview, which brings up my desktop view and the app launcher - that’s the bottom left and bottom right functions you described in one place, which makes sense to me since in my head they’re related.
The top right is still close maximized windows, but because of the way the Gnome workflow is structured, I don’t really use minimize basically ever, so I don’t miss it. Also in the upper right we have volume control and battery feedback.
I never have more virtual desktops than I’m actually using. Everything is exactly where I expect it to be. My brain is wired for the Gnome workflow, and extra options justbatent needed.
I’ve used Dolphin’s terminal in file manager thing, and while I can see the utility, I prefer my right-click -> open in Console setup. That’s just me, though.
Eh. It takes all kinds to make the world go round, I guess. FTR, I am a huge fan of the KDE project. Their contributions to the Linux world are massive and cannot be overstated. Krita alone is amazing, and I used calligre as my main office software for a few years.
I found it rather laggy. Maybe I should give it more of a chance just felt clunky and laggy to me (I assume because it’s superimposed ontop of GNOME not integrated into it)
Edit: I gave it another chance and I actually really like it thank you for calling me out on that
Think it was only clunky because I already had a bunch of stuff open before turning it on
Well I just switched to KDE Plasma last week and I’m pleasantly surprised just how many things are configurable via a menu and how well it runs on Wayland With a Nvidia GPU.
I used to despise KDE Neon, and used Gnome for a bit, but I don’t think I can go back anymore until their design philosophy changes again.
Problem for me is KDE is dependant on configuration to get it to look nice, GNOME looks nice and works well out of the box but sucks if you want to do anything ontop of that base
The idea is that you’re not supposed to minimize windows at all under Gnome’s workflow, and you maximize by double-clicking the headerbar to save space. You get used to it.
It’s a bit weird to me how, on a post regarding a GNOME update, people feel the need to come out of the woodwork to explain how they prefer to use Plasma or any other DE or WM.
This is Linux, you can use whatever you feel like using. Let people be happy with what they’re happy with.
I think “modern” can be interpreted as nice and clean UI which is beautiful to watch and only the absolutely most important stuff is shown and the rest is hidden. So, like apple design approaches, I guess. Say form over function. Microsoft tends to go that route as well. Luckily for user who like function over form, there are different flavors of Linux.
Clearly the dark mode is the modern one! Jokes aside, I just realized that there THREE menu options on that toolbar: hamburger, kebab, and waffle! I realize they do different things, but no wonder people are confused by and scared of computers. Also, now I’m hungry!
as someone who’s not scared of computers, i have no idea what they do. i assume the right one is icons/list/compact[^1] not a waffle menu, but the hamburger and kebab? i have no clue
[^1]: though why it’s showing list when the current view is icons, i don’t know either
maybe; but if the location of menu buttons hints at their use then the hamburger should collapse the side drawer like the one on e.g. youtube, but i doubt it does
It has the same options as right clicking on an empty space in a directory. Stuff like Create a new folder, Create a new file, that sort of thing. “Actions you might wanna make on this directory”. When you start searching, there is another button that appears and that one is the one that let you filter search options
I dont see the usefulness of that button tbh. Its like it assumes good ol right click isnt discoverable on its own. Idk anyond who has a mouse and hasnt pressed right click ever.
List/grid view are in the top right. This is an unfair comparison having one in list and one in grid, when they both clearly have a button (in the same location even) to switch modes.
Dark is clearly the modern one though, but presumably you can switch between dark and light.
It’s just my opinion (since it’s not in the article) but a thing that makes Gnome and Libadwaita a “modern design” is the fact that the production behind it tries to bridge the gap between a “mouse and keyboard” and a “touch screen” workflow.
None of the other DEs come even close to Gnome when used on a tablet
meh, subjectively i find that creates a “worst of both worlds” situation. but this comment was more about the futility of the development time that went into this specific feature
this comment was more about the futility of the development time that went into this specific feature
yeah sorry, I should have been more specific with my answer: features like this are supposed to help you in a touch screen situation or in general with smaller screens.
When the window is resized under a certain size, the left panel becomes hidden and with it part of the top bar, to make it less cluttered and confusing.
The difference is minimal, in the newer version you have 1 less element when the sidebar is collapsed (the hamburger menu).
Generally speaking Gnome 44 is already well optimized, 45 is going to be a more “tweaks and small improvements” kind of update rather than a big design changes
All of them have premium prices, but not a single one of them freemium, or always-online, meaning you get what you pay for and what you pay for is high quality software.
Presonus if you need a pro tracker, or even the chance at mixing Atmos on Linux (though the hardware needs to be supported OS-side of things).
Mixbus 32C is cool, because it’s EQ’s and compressors are analogue modelled after their classic console. They got that real nice vintage sound.
Bitwig is basically a mixer/sequencer DAW, meant for electronic music and live performances.
Now if only Ableton Live could be ported to Linux :( pretty please?
I think this looks amazing. I do like the behaviour of tiling WMs, but having a DE is too comfy for me to give up. This could possibly bring the bestof both worlds.
Krohnkite went unmaintained a while ago, which is when Bismuth forked from it. So, Bismuth is basically a straight upgrade. The dev implemented tons of features, which you may or may not need, but I think, there were also some fixes for stability and Plasma version compatibility.
Polonium came about, because Plasma 5.27 introduced a (manual) tiling system of its own, which partially broke Bismuth, but also meant it made sense to develop a new KWinScript, which makes use of this native system.
As such, it is a step back from Bismuth. I think, it’s roughly comparable to Krohnkite in terms of features now, but still a very young project, so not as stable yet…
I’ve tried all 3 and krohnkite felt like the more polished, can’t tell you which doesn’t do what but the others felt a bit clunky in the way they handled resizes and such
Chiming in with another great alternative, Tactile lets you tile windows and stack at the same time. Between the Tactile hotkeys, Alt+Tab and Alt+~ I never need to use the mouse for window manipulation anymore.
I really can’t stress how good PaperWM is in combination with a touchpad. I wouldn’t recommend it at all on a mouse-only environment, but when you can use multitouch gestures to scroll through the workspace it works really well.
You could try Pop!_OS. There you get the full DE, plus tiling implemented by a GNOME extension. You can also just install that extension, of course, or another.
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