Ubuntu moving back to Gnome

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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I dont want to take the topic to far away. But I assume this is just bad wording? What did they remove in the last release?

GNOME 2 > 3 was a drastic change and the initial releases were bare, but you can have a release with something or nothing at all. As far as i'm aware they haven't removed any significant features from GNOME 3? at least I can't remember the last time they did (mouse setting maybe? Not sure when that happened), only features they've added. that's not to say there isn't loads of things they could improve on and implement more of.

FYI, here's the roadmap for Nautilus https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Nautilus/Roadmap, considering essentially one person works on it, its going well, and its honestly improved greatly the last few releases.

gnome-tweak-tool is definitely an unfortunate name from when it was originally made i think, it would be nice to see it integrated into the main settings in some way. But it is an official gnome package and continually updated with more features for literally system tweaks. But I do agree, flat mouse profile for example, is in the tweak tool rather than settings (though its a very recent feature).

I can see why remove them?. if its easy and not costly to maintain, its an odd removal, maybe they didn't get any usecases from anyone? I actually didn't even notice they were gone until you mentioned it. That said its still in GTK+3, but looks like it wont be in GTK+4 (note: still in dev, so it might just not be documented). In saying that again (to play devils advocate), I assume you don't like chrome, or firefox, or steam, all of which aren't GTK and don't have icons or a normal menu(firefox)?

Interestingly menus in GTK do have icons, but I assume the usecase and style guidelines for them shifted to a different type of use more like how firefox uses icons in menus.

Heres hoping more manpower means faster feature turn around. Now if only I knew more C id jump in as well.

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Canonical had to do this. They thought they had a strong market share and could go their own way, but they lost an obscene amount of their user base to derivatives and alternatives (Mint-Cinnamon, Manjaro-XFCE, KDE Neon, etc...), so in the end they are paying people to maintain the upstream of their competitors, because that's how Shuttleworth thinks.

Now the reality is that this is also good news for Gnome. Gnome is pretty much a Red Hat project, and that really shows. The focus has been on Wayland, and that is good, it is necessary, but it has gotten Gnome stuck in a rut, features are lacking, extensions are broken and abandoned, graphics are not evolving, and most importantly, gtk is really holding Gnome back. Gnome needs not only Wayland, but it needs a new gtk. More and more prevalent applications are popping up for Qt5/Plasma 5. You can have the best DE in the world, but you need an evolving ecosystem of applications. KDE has that, and they rule their application universe, they are in charge, and they are the record holders in terms of commits and in terms of development.

Gnome has quite some catching up to do, but there is no real community incentive. For RedHat, the main thing is the technology they can score with in RHEL. Gnome is not high on the list. Most of their applications universe is dependent on third party development. Canonical could thorw its development community and third party development base in the scale, and make Gnome tip over towards a larger development community instead of a RedHat-exclusive.

I don't personally think that mobile works as a target for open source based commercial ventures. Canonical is basically wrapping that up. These large companies have been passing by very important markets. For instance, embedded linux GUI's. Modern industrial applications require more modern GUI's, and they require it on linux, because that's a given these days. People don't want to spend thousands or millions on an industrial or scientific device and be stuck with a hopeless and unupgradeable Windows CE in two years. That is why Keysight is now Keysight and not HP or Agilent and why they are selling rebranded MicSig, Hantek and Siglent devices. That is why you see Owon devices in automotive garages and maintenance centers and not Tektronix any more.

Gnome is already there, and they can make it better and adapt it for specific applications for a fraction of what it costs them to even keep Mir semi-alive or what it costs to debug Unity 8.

However, what they really should do, is get behind MATE instead, get it on Wayland.

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23

Yeah the trasition from Gnome 2 to 3 and the drastic changes that came with that.
Allot of the traditional desktop functionality got either completely stripped out, or very well hiden.
Like i said above with the Nautilis filemanager as a good example.

I agree on the tweaktool, that should be intergrated in Gnome settings,
to make it nicer for anyone.
I dont say that Gnome3 is bad by all means, its very modern.
But in my opinion its not very desktop use friendly out of box without tweaks.
And Unity is even more limmited in that regard.
And i think thats one of the reasons why Cannonical with Unity has failed.

I think that Cannonical made a very wise decission.

24

Im going to miss the HUD. To search for something inside an app and have that pop up was cool.

Hope they port/bring it to GNOME.

But Unity 7 is alive till 2021 in 16.04 LTS. So i have a lt of time to use that feature if they dont bring it over to Gnome.

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i was actually looking forward to U8, as it looked sleeker than 7 and i liked the icons. i'm not really a fan of Guhknowm, but i would imagine they're not going to just rip 7 out of people's lives. Ubuntu, contrarians to the end it seems.

26

Meh. After their Ubuntu Edge PR stunt I don't care much about what Canonical does. And even before that, I believe there were ads inside your "local" search (lenses and shit) and spying/data leaks - at least those allowed user to opt-out, but the very attempt was ridiculous. Now they're jumping on IoS bandwagon. And clouds, right. I've seen so many Ubuntu Server installations in the wild! (not really)
Canonical can do whatever they want, it's a free world. Good for them, but, again, meh.

27

So now there will be a unitybuntu (or something like that) for those few who actually liked Unity. The best part is the Wayland will probably be standard for all distros that is ubuntu based. Less problems and more dokumentation.

I was actually a bit concerned with Mir if all other ubuntu based is going to use wayland and ubuntu itself is not. Should not be a problem with that in theory but I know it would have been a problem in practice.

28

Finally, Canonnical euthanizes their down syndrome baby. Fantastic news.

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I guess this means that Mir got the chopping block too? Hopefully this translates to some better combined efforts - maybe some Mir devs could bring some of their experience to Wayland (though goodness knows those guys are stuck in their ways).

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Good for the desktop and makes sense for canonical to focus on IoT and cloud. Mir was dead on arrival and wayland+gnome is a very nice prospect.

But i am a bit sad for the Phone. I really think an alternative for Android is needed and unity on the phone and tablet had real potential. Having used the phone, apple and android feels primitive in terms of UI now. It is a shame...

31

While I adore the choice of Linux, including the choice in DE's, I see this as a welcome thing to happen.

Unity caused fragmentation; not because it was another DE, but because for the last few years it has only been usable on Ubuntu. Arch tried for a while, but ended up not working. So if someone who loved Unity wanted to distro hop, they were SOL.

This is a good thing IF this means more development for GNOME and Wayland; especially for Wayland IMO.

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I hated unity the first time I tried it, and I still do. Though it did not seem quite as bad the last time I messed with it, maybe I am just a little more familiar than before.

In all, I think this move will be good for the Linux community as a whole.

That being said, I've never used gnome either. This may give me another reason to try Ubuntu.

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4 Likes
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Please explain with words what your opinion is. This is not the lounge lol

1 Like
35

Does this mean Mir is also being dropped?

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Too lazy to source the relevant OMG UBUNTU article, but an article of theirs noted that Shuttleworth said that Mir can live on without Unity 8.

The article also noted accurately that there isn't much to Mir outside of Unity 8, so we shall see. It's all up to the community at this point.

37

Qt pretty much got that covered, don't you think? Is there really competition to Qt in the Linux embedded world? I don't think it looks like it. Qt runs on most other embedded OS:es too.

I don't particularly like Unity or Gnome really. Gnome devs seem to think users should not have any options, 'cause that will just confuse them (or something, I head many convoluted explanations). So they take them away as much as possible. I hate that. I haven't looked at KDE recently, mostly keep on running Cinnamon as it does what I need. I don't think I'll miss Unity.

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In the last one - nothing in particular that I would object - the removal of the "indicator bar" where most applications have/had their icons I was not happy about - than the legacy tray I was even less happy about - but now with the extension top icons plus I am very happy agian XD

I know :slight_smile: last I want is to lessen his work - I am just not all to happy with the UI and functionality decisions made ^^

I can not see why - never the less the answer to weather I like or not like certain programs - I get used to it; I fought it as long as long as gtk+3 still had the switch at least in geconf or dconf now - but as they removed it - well eat or die?

Where do I miss them most: Thunderbird - its awefull long list - and finding certain functions with their distinctive icons "was" easier than fast reading the whole list.

for your nautilus screenshot - the three on top I do not object or talk about - the utter lack of those next to "save as .." and so on - but yeah I got used to them missing - even if it was with a tear :wink:

Me neither - I use it every day since gnome2

39

Looks like it, along with Ubuntu Phone, tablet etc. All the convergence stuff is in the trashcan. I think it's for the best, more work into Wayland. Qt 5.8 has a Wayland Compositor, for example.

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Was this posted on April 1st because ubuntu mobile is really popular.