What's New In GNOME 3.18

prisoninmate writes: In this release, GNOME improves the general user experience for users and new developers alike. GNOME 3.18 adds a feature called "Automatic Brightness," which, when enabled, it will make use of your laptop's light sensor to dim or increase the screen's brightness depending on the surrounding lighting. GNOME 3.18 also improves the touch screen experience, especially when selecting and modifying text, implements a new view in the Nautilus (Files) sidebar, which collects all the remote and internal locations in a single place.

Comments

Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[squiggleslash]

Screenshot on that page showing a screen you'd only love to use on a tablet.

8.1 was a very nice tablet UI. Unfortunately, Windows, like GNOME, is almost always used on desktops. Controlled by mice and keyboards. Perhaps it's time the GNOME team recognized the need to focus on that again and made the desktop the priority of the project.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[mccalli]

Disagree - the linked video shows a very desktop-oriented device, not tablet. They do seem to have some UI guidelines around touch which they alude to in the video, but on the whole - it looks like a nice desktop update.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[msobkow]

I find Gnome 3 to be very usable on a desktop with no touch devices. I thought the same as you until I actually used Gnome 3 for more than 5 minutes to "test" it.

It is not a "Windows Clone" UI, but it is quite usable.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[Lunix Nutcase]

Screenshot on that page showing a screen you'd only love to use on a tablet.

Not true. It's actually shitty even on a tablet.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[jcupitt65]

I just don't think that's true, there's nothing touchy about the design of gnome3, it's a desktop UI and always has been. They are only now starting to add touch stuff, and only because most laptops now come with touch screens.

It does aim to be a very minimalist desktop. You have your application windows and ... that's about it. All the stuff for launching applications, managing workspaces, managing windows and so on is on the overview screen. I think the idea was that the desktop should get out of the way and just present your work without distraction.

I didn't like it much when it came out, but it's grown on me. I now prefer it to KDE and Unity, the two main rivals. The extension system is especially nice: you just go to the gnome extension site and turn the things you like on and off.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Giant icons, hamburger menus, icons that don't give any hint to functionality, calling programs "apps", etc, etc. Yeah, this is definitely tabletizing the user interface.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[Hognoxious]

There's already a way to get an overview of the apps that are installed - a properly structured custom menu.

GNOME it's getting really good

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite all the negative buzz against GNOME 3, latest releases are, in my opinion, very good (and I hated GNOME 3 with a passion when it came up).

Also, they're putting efforts on style consistency and usability which is very welcome.

The times they are a changin'

[juanfgs]

I was a former Gnome user and I ditched it, but to be honest, new users seem to like Gnome 3, for the obvious reason that touch interfaces are more familiar to them. They are more used to "slide to unlock" behaviours and such, big icons for rapid identification.

Sometimes it's worthy to make a little of self-criticism and realize that many of us aren't from this era of interfaces. I recognize that I hardly use a computer in the same way the average person uses it, I often rely on the terminal, I tend to remember programs by name rather than icon, and my workflow is probably way different than those born in the "apps" era.

It's Gnome for me? not anymore. Should it be? no, why should I force developers to do things as I like.

Gnome 3 is a good thing to have, because it enables free software to reach people that otherwise wouldn't be interested. Luckily for us, there are a plethora of options if you are fond of the old interface, and they seem to keep getting better and better (MATE, Xfce , KDE).

Re:The times they are a changin'

[Eunuchswear]

I often rely on the terminal, I tend to remember programs by name rather than icon, and my workflow is probably way different than those born in the "apps" era.

That's the normal way of working with Gnome3 -- you launch programs by hitting window key, typing the first few characters of the program name then enter.

Re:GNOME 3.x worsens the general user experience

[armanox]

Slackware recieves regular security updates, so claiming it hasn't been updated in that time is false. Version.next has been in Alpha for a little long now - usually Slackware releases once per year.