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

[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

[DrXym]

GNOME works great on a desktop. There are also lots of extensions that add stuff like task bars, app launchers etc.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, that's the point. What you're given by default (and what GNOME's developers seem to focus on) is the touch oriented interface. Getting the desktop means installing extensions.

Microsoft made the same mistake with Windows 8. You could get to the desktop with the default UI, and you could add extensions to make it more optimal (albeit not from Microsoft, at least GNOME's own developers are doing the equivalent of "giving you a start menu"), but it wasn't what desktop users wanted.

Windows 10, for all its faults (and it has a million of them) fixed that and focuses on the desktop. It's time GNOME did the same thing.

Re:Ah, no lessons learned from Windows 8

[theguyfromsaturn]

I use Gnome on a Desktop exclusively. I haven't tried 3.18, but in general, GNOME 3 made my desktop experience more enjoyable. In particular, dynamic virtual desktop allocation, mouse swipe the the corner to reveal the dash etc, are actually very productivity enhancing for me. I don't know how good the interface would be on a tablet, but to me, it is definitely a superior desktop paradigm for the desktop. Gnome shell applets and various settings can be tweaked to improve on the overall experience (like a mounted volume indicator on the task bar etc.). The only issue I have with Gnome, is that Gnome Tweaks should not be an optional additional application to install, but should be integrated in the default settings of Gnome. Personally, I wouldn't go back to the antiquated hierarchical menu, as my apps are much easier to find now (this I think is definitely more oriented towards the desktop, as typing in search terms in a touch screen sucks).

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:GNOME 3.x worsens the general user experience

[AntEater]

Thanks to Gnome3 I moved back to XFCE. This is a good way to prepare for next step, as systemd is enforcing a move back to FreeBSD.

Check out Slackware before you run all the way back to FreeBSD (not that there's anything wrong with FreeBSD). Slack ships with a good XFCE desktop. It's a great Linux distribution without the systemd infection.