GNOME 3.12 Released

New submitter Sri Ramkrishna writes: "Like clockwork, the next version of GNOME has been released with updated applications, bugfixes, and so forth. People can look forward to faster loading times and a little better performance than before. A video has been created to highlight the release! Check it out!" The release features "... app folders, enhanced system status and high-resolution display support. This release also includes new and redesigned applications for video, software, editing, sound recording and internet relay chat. Under the hood, support for using Wayland instead of X has progressed significantly." There are a bunch of new features for programmers too.

Comments

Re:Meet the new boss:

[erice]

Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.

You mean: "Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss". Gnome keeps removing features. Session saving for gnome-terminal was removed several versions ago supposedly because they have a new way of doing this. Only they didn't actually implement the new way. They just took out the old and left it.

Re: Meet the new boss:

[iggymanz]

even if you were at home on a desktop, GNOME would be making your screen into a big goddamn single-task-at-once cell phone anyway

Unity-ish UI

[trainman]

And I see they're still jumping on this Unity-ish sidebar UI bandwagon... ugh, I guess I'll be using xfce for a while longer so I can actually have a normal top and bottom panels. Running apps and workspace picker along the bottom, Application (etc) menus along the top with various system controls... its worked well for over a decade, yes some people might like the newer Vista/OSXy way to set things up, and fine that can be the (annoying) default, but at least give us the *option* to set up our workspace as we like. Saying "we don't support user customization anymore" is simply arrogant and not an option for open source software which was supposed to be all about the user having control.

It looks nice, and I commend them for all the hard work, I'm sure a lot of hours went in to it, but I won't be in any rush to upgrade if I still can't even do something simple like move my panels around.

New submitter

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Jezus, I've been on this site since Malda was still using it as a tab on his website. It took them this long to actually accept a submission of mine.

File, Edit, View.... gone!

[jabberw0k]

Wonderful, the unusable interface of 'evince' (Print is hidden under a sun icon or a gear, or something -- with no known way to open the menu from the keyboard) now comes to gedit. Now editing a file becomes impossible too! Please, folks, follow CUA , the Common User Access protocols, with named menus we can access with Alt+keystroke or F10. Arrrrrgh! Stupid! Make it stop! Give us back our File, Edit, View menus and all the rest!

Why not extensions

[efitton]

Because:

• -They are Beta software
• -They are not typically upgraded when Gnome upgrades, if at all
• -They are an attack vector
• -They can and do conflict causing stability and speed problems
• -Only can be installed when online

But mostly because just about every extension is really something that should be a preference and is every way inferior to a checkbox.

Re:Why not extensions

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Anything added to the web site is code reviewed for attack vectors. Most of the extensions are fairly simple and easy to write. The extension I wrote to put a lockscreen on the topbar was all of 20 lines. Yes, only online because of attack vectors as you said earlier. We should see some improvements, some of the breakages come from the fact that gnome-shell is in active development and so some times extemsopms break because the code is getting refactored. In the past, we were not able to put out an image for extension writers to test. Now we have both a continuous integration build that extension writers can literally test everyday for breakage and also a QA team is spinning up so that we can at least check the popular extensions and bug extension writers to port. Once gnome-shell becomes more stable extension breakage will happen less.

Putting in prefs and checkboxes also increase code complexity as that is just more than you have to test and secondly the behaviour should be correct the first time without having to modify the behaviour. Basically it should do the right thing 99% of the time. If there are cases that it doesn't work that way then agree a preference should be put or if there something that a user does need a choice due to hardware or some behaviour.

The irony is that if created a bunch of preferences, a number of you will abandon the platform because it is bloated and move to i3 or awesome or something perceivably "light" like XFCE.

Re:Good riddance Gnome (and KDE)

[enter to exit]

You're right about GNOME. Those guys won't be happy until they've reduced the Desktop to a single close button and a window.

I think you're being too harsh on KDE though. The usual KDE criticism is that they have too many advanced options. On my machine, KDE (and all it's related processes) are consuming about 90MB of RAM (even with some bling turned on), to compare Chromium is consuming about 400MB.

KDE4 has a unfair reputation for being wasteful. I think the stigma is mainly caused by Anakondi's initial one-time file indexing processes being heavy. People tend to switch to something else before it finishes and leave with bad impressions.

After watching the video..

[sc0ob5]

After watching the video I find I have been pronouncing Gnome incorrectly for all these years. Ga-nome, I've been saying Nome..

Slightly more user friendly than Windows 8

[lophophore]

Gnome 3.12: **slighltly** more user friendly than Windows 8, which is like saying it is slightly more user friendly than a rabid zombie wolverine in a kindergarten playground.

I watched the video. Gnome 3.12 still sucks. It is an embarrassment to Linux; it is one of the reasons why after 10 years we still don't have "the year of the Linux Desktop". This is a continuing example of the developers deciding how the users should work, not thinning about how the users are used to doing things. Yecch.

Thank goodness for XFCE. XFCE's developers seem to actually have the user experience in mind.

Re:Gnome = good

[lennier]

They took out the the duel pain feature?!?!?! WTF.

Yeah, I hate it too when I score a counter-riposte to my opponent's flying parry and there's just a beep on the referee's scoreboard and no blood.

Re:Good riddance Gnome (and KDE)

[drinkypoo]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, KDE looks like a widget factory exploded on your desktop. Of course, GNOME looks like they're experiencing a widget shortage, perhaps due to a widget factory somewhere being out of production due to an explosion.

I'm all in favor of many complex options, but there's no need to present all of them at once.