Gnome is Rethinking Window Management

According to the comments here, innovation should not happen because we already have something. It seems everything needs to be a Windows clone with extra settings and worse UI for it to be considered here. Nothing clean or new that could genuinely help the Linux desktop adoption in the mainstream. The FOSS Gatekeeping continues as always.

I think it is kind of sad that so many people are opposed to such innovations as this is truly what we need as an OS if we want it to be mainstream: differentiating features and a distinct experience. Not a clone that makes people think "oh it looks and behaves mostly like Windows, so it must work just like it!" and then run into a brick wall. I think the main reason people who switch to MacOS succeed and stay and even love it is because 1. MacOS is really easy to learn and 2. People go in not expecting to be like Windows, instead they expect to have to learn a whole new workflow.

If Linux could have such an experience I really think it could help sell the idea of Linux as a separate OS experience/product rather than something that looks and feels like a slightly worse Windows with no telemetry and no forced updates.

61

Yeah, GNOME is fine. I used KDE for years and got tired of the jank, so now I'm back in GNOME. It's fine, it launches applications, browses files,and tells me the time, which is about all anyone really needs from a desktop environment. It does a lot more too.

I think it's a great experience. It's not for everyone, but nothing is. Use what makes you happy and cheer on projects that fit others' needs, because the more people use Linux with different configurations, the more functionality we'll all get and the more bugs will be fixed.

19
- The beauty of Linux is the freedom you get to do whatever you want. What's not so beautiful however is the people that will tell you the choice you made is wrong and you should feel bad about it and that you are stupid for using not what they chose to use.
  
  9
Sounds like a great design direction to me. I'm excited to see how it turns out.

1
Replacing something that works fine, just because it's old, with something targeted specifically for children is not an innovation. It just makes me fight my tools instead of using them to do my job.

1

This is very well thought out, I'm excited to try this.

50

Everyone in here shitting on GNOME clearly haven't tried it in the last 3-4 years and its fucking obvious.

34

I shit on GNOME, and I use it as my daily driver at work. 8h a day...

16
I'm not shitting here shitting on GNOME but I haven't tried it since gnome 3 released.

I got kinda stuck on tiling wms because I hate having to think about laying out windows and so this blog post is exciting! They're very correct that tiling wms only partially solve the problem because you often have to tweak for proper line length or just deal with random void space in settings apps.

Obviously mosaic isn't in yet, but if I wanted to dip into GNOME can it do (or are there addons or alternative more efficient things to try) for the following:

snappy keyboard only application launching e.g. dmenu style.

a way to activate a tiling wm mode for when you're doing something like software Dev or at least a way to save and lock particular layouts?

tell software to always open on a particular monitor?

manipulate windows without using the mouse + move focus to different screens without using the mouse?

display a string in the status bar (I assemble my status bar using a custom shell script which outputs a string. I'd like to not reinvent it)

Cause reading this blog I'm kinda keen to see where they take GNOME and get in early so it's easier to learn.

Like I said, I last used GNOME 2 so it's been a while and I'm sure in my head it's unfairly judged.
4
Gnome to me was like a DE trying really hard to be like Mac, I don't want that. I didn't want any of what Gnome 3 was offering and I still don't.

I have a Debian VM that I jump into to try out latest KDE and Gnome just to see how things are and I honestly do not want what Gnome is still trying to offer.

So I'd happily shit on it and then find that corner of it to hook out the remaining crap from my butt cheeks.

I'm glad you like it, but allow other to have their own opinion without making the assumption that people have simply not used it and that's why they dislike it so hard.

-6

I'm always cautious when GNOME says they're reconcepting a process that we're happy with. I'm curious to see where this goes but unfortunately GNOME already lost me to KDE :(

I worry that the changes will forced.

27

Automatically do what people probably want, allow adjusting if needed

This is probably the thing that irks me the most about it. Most everything I open remembers where it was last time I opened it and just goes there. So I only have to decide once where and how big I want a window to be, generally. I don't want that to be contextually different depending on what else is open the vast majority of the time either, so I don't want to fight with my DE over where and how big a window should be.

I don't know, to each their own I suppose. Tons of people seems to like Gnome, so I don't want to hate on it... But it feels like they are making a DE for people that don't want to learn to use a computer, people that have mostly only used tablets and phones, or people that want the device to make the decisions for them... Which doesn't sound at all like the people that are switching to or already using Linux. I don't know, I have to assume I am just missing the magic something that Gnome provides to others.

6
- To give what I hope is an apt analogy: Imagine you have desk where you do all your work. Every other DE handles this desk like a human would just putting stuff everywhere, moving and grabbing as needed.
  
  This proposal and gnome in general take that desk and make it an auto-sorting desk so you can always grab what you need as fast as possible at all times without doing any organization yourself. Oftentimes I use a lot of different apps sporadically so having something that can auto-sort them is a dream come true.
  
  The real magic of gnome is A: how pretty and polished it and the apps are and B (arguably more important): how little you have to fight it to get work done. I spend zero time thinking on gnome, I just hit the super key or three finger swipe and what I want is done. This proposal brings me even more of that. I’m like 2x more productive than my windows coworkers and most of that is due to gnome.
  
  5
Permanently Deleted

0
- Why is this the sanest thing? There are many people that enjoy using gnome including myself. Don’t you think this is an extreme take for something that just doesn’t align with your views on how the Linux desktop should be?
  
  20
- They have moved their Gnome specific stuff in GTK to a library called libawaita. You can easily use GTK without much Gnome specific stuff.
  
  6
- Fuck off with this hot-take shit. Gnome is fucking beautiful and powerful if you spend the 30 seconds necessary to find the necessary extensions to cater to your delicate sensibilities. After that - you'll never have to worry about it ever again.
  
  2

again???

21

" Traditional tiling window managers solve the hidden window problem preventing windows from overlapping. While this works well in some cases, it falls short as a general replacement for stacked, floating windows. "

In 10 years of working with tiling WMs productively on a daily basis this has been an issue exactly 0 times. Even in a world that is tailored to non-tiling WMs they just perform better. Period.

20

I used i3wm for some time, configuring default placements based on window metadata and used it for work. after some time I realised I'm 40 years old and shit like this is a waste of time. I just want it to think for me

13
- I relatively recently switched from ion3 to hyprland - not having a predefined layout with rules where windows go was a bit weird at first, but got used to it pretty quickly. I have a bunch of rules about which desktop specific applications should go, but other than that just use dynamic splits at the cursor location, and then move windows around as needed.
  
  1
In 10 years of working with tiling WMs productively on a daily basis this has been an issue exactly 0 times...

...for you.

Different people have different needs.

5
Seems like using a window manager could be a whole rabbit hole. Where do you begin?

1
- start with i3wm/sway or openbox. openbox is a floating window manager so it should be more familiar and i3wm is a tiling window manager. personally i use kde nowadays but i always preferred tiling window managers when i chose to use one. it all comes down to your choices so first see if you prefer tiling or floating window managers and then go from there
  
  2
- I'd recommend sway and waybar. Waybar offers some cool customizable templates. Currently I also use bemenu as a launcher and dunst/poweralertd for notifications. I make heavy use of stacked or tabbed layout during general use.
  
  sway has pretty decent mouse support, but for optimal productivity try to get used to the keyboard shortcuts. As soon as moving/resizing windows and changing desktops becomes muscle memory it's a whole different ball game.
  
  1

Gnome devs have a nasty habit of "rethinking" things while ignoring tons of usability issues. I'd like them to stop rethinking things until they addressed those first...

19

You're right! All other developments should be stopped and all further innovations halted until separated workspaces on multiple monitors is addressed. As the most popular issue on Gitlab, this is clearly where the shoe presses.

Really bothers me when people waste their time creating new features of free software when existing software don't even meet the well-established universal criteria for perfection yet. What a waste.

18
- I would love for this to be a thing, but as long as the WM stays EWMH compliant (like most full blown DEs right now), it won't happen. It's the one thing keeping me on true tiling WMs. I want virtual desktops to be tied to a monitor, not an X display.
  
  4
- New bridge syndrome. New bridges are exciting, less cruft to work through, and you get a ribbon cutting ceremony. Fixing pot holes is expected and you make drivers mad shutting lanes down.
  
  That said, volunteers that are up to it, bug fixes (and creating good bug reports too) and documenting code is generally seen very appreciatly by code maintainers, but for users of unpaid for FOSS products, you're going to get bugs and people will fix them when they feel like it.
  
  If users want bug fixes in a certain time frame they need to pay somebody for SLA to fix bugs.
  
  1

I have never understood why gnome seems to the go-to choice for default DE for so many distros

18

Because it just works and looks really good out of the box. Its the only DE with good, seamless fingerprint support for example

34
- I didn't know that about fingerprint support, but my experience of it is it not working but getting in the way, and looking a bit pants compared to kde
  
  5
- Its the only DE with good, seamless fingerprint support for example
  
  What do you mean? I've never had a problem with it on KDE, Fedora at least
  
  4
Why not? It works pretty well.

KDE is janky, and most of the rest are kind of limited in functionality. GNOME just works.

I actually switched to GNOME recently because Wayland works just fine with it and KDE seems to crash, despite me having an AMD GPU. I want it because I have two monitors with different refresh rates and one supports FreeSync, and GNOME Wayland handles it perfectly, whereas KDE doesn't even launch. I don't know of any other DE that would work well with my setup.

I don't particularly like GNOME, but it works well. I used KDE on openSUSE for >2 years now, and I always seemed to run into random bugs and whatnot. I switched to give it a shot after years of using GNOME on Arch, and now I switched back to GNOME on openSUSE and those janky problems went away.

I'd love for KDE to work well, it just gets in my way too much. GNOME just works, so I use it. Maybe I'll go back to a tiling WM (maybe Sway?) at some point, but since my kids use my computer, I'll probably put off doing that.

29
- In my experience, KDE works well and gets out of my way, while gnome does stupid shit and is non-configurable. I don;t have multiple monitors with different refresh rates so I can;t comment on that, but I do not run into bugs in KDE often at all!
  
  (I mean I did accidentally lock up my computer by opening several hundred copies of the screenshot app, but that was my fault - I accidentally put a banana on the print screen key!)
  
  10
Because it's fucking amazing!

15
- I will admit I am amazed by it at times... not in the way you mean though
  
  -4
Old history - Qt had licensing concerns, gtk+ was guaranteed FOSS, so major distros shipped Gnome2 by default, and it stuck.

8
- Yeah I know, i was there (and I always preferred KDE... migrated to it from Windowmaker of all things, I never could get the hang of Enlightenment, pretty though it was). But that was sorted literally decades ago!
  
  4
it has less information on screen at any given time than stock dwm so it looks clean an professional on screenshots

5
- Hmmm, I guess that's plausible. Awful reason, but plausible
  
  5
- So does openbox /s
  
  3

Mfw my bug report is open on the videos lol

17

as a crusty suckless dwm user if this works as advertised I'll switch

10

This actually sounds like a really good idea! This could be big! I wanna try this for myself to get a feel for it.

10

I like this idea, interested to see how they get on with it

9

Content aware tiling would be my preferred option I think. Tiling currently is a huge pain and doesn't work well.

9

Hope they come to the conclusion they shouldn’t be doing it and stop.

-7

Window management is one of those areas I’m fascinated with because even after 50 years, nobody’s fully cracked it yet

The article begins with a false premise, misrepresenting the capabilities of Windows and macOS in terms of window management. In reality, both operating systems have been offering effective window management features for years, dating back to Apple's Exposé release with macOS Panther in 2003. On the other hand, current versions of iPadOS, and GNOME are plagued by poor desktop experiences that hinder efficient multitasking.

Most of us simply want a DE that doesn't get in the way, but the "solutions" proposed by GNOME often create more obstacles, slow down multi-tasking, and obstruct proper window management. Instead of addressing these issues, the GNOME team continues to introduce convoluted features that fail to improve the user experience. For instance, requiring users to switch to a full-screen interface to access other applications is subpar UX design - Windows 8 did this and proved it was the wrong approach. Additionally, GNOME's lacks a decent notification area / menu bar like Windows and macOS. Where's a way to control what icons show up and what are hidden? What about reordering them?

The GNOME team's fixation on their own unique desktop vision holds back the progress of desktop Linux as a whole. With its potential to excel in this space, GNOME has an opportunity to become a top-tier DE, but poor decisions such as removing desktop icons and insisting on subpar window management keep it from reaching its full potential, becoming the face of Linux desktop.

-7

Window management in macOS is not even as good as current Linux stuff

24
- Yeah, but it used to be. Why can't we just pick the good parts instead of the garbage...?
  
  0
The GNOME team's fixation on their own unique desktop vision holds back the progress of desktop Linux as a whole.

nah, this is totally wrong, want to have a windows like ui?, switch to every other DE that exist, it's thwir project, they do what they want, and they can experiment thungs if they want, that's the beauty of linux

yes, they can take bad decisions sometimes, but don't act like they are slowing down progreds, because they aren't, why we want have 200 looklike DEs?

20
Those preset layouts you get in Windows 11 when you hover over the maximize button are a huge step forward. Also nice is the way it remembers your window groupings and treats them as a single unit when you hover over the icon of any of the applications involved in the task bar, so you can restore the whole window group with a single click.

That said, on my Linux machines I use Cinnamon and KDE, and I haven't found either frustrating for window management. Gnome lost me during their first major overhaul.

5
- KDE would've been great if they had some sense of design and knew how to properly apply spacing and proportions across the DE. But in terms of pure usability they are orders of magnitude above the crap GNOME is pushing for.
  
  -3
Windows is always one step ahead because they experiment a lot. their experiments may flop, they may face outrage, but they are always trying new things. and when they find something good they stick with it.

Things appearing suddenly on screen is more distracting than 200ms animations. On Gnome you're supposed to click the meta key, type the first 3 letters of the app name, click enter, and the app opens. If you can do it fast enough then you won't even see the animations, if you can't then the animations aren't the problem.

MacOS window management sucks, and Gnome/Plasma are already the face of the Linux desktop.

0
- Things appearing suddenly on screen is more distracting than 200ms animations
  
  No, it is not.
  
  1
For instance, requiring users to switch to a full-screen interface to access other applications is subpar UX design

no?, it's simply easier to click and find the app, it's not like you are looking anywhere ense when you open windows start, and i use KDE with the fullscreen start-menu

https://youtu.be/GkxAp2Gh7-E

and windows 8 did a lot more shit to just blame it in the start-menu

-1
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/GkxAp2Gh7-E
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  4
- it’s not like you are looking anywhere ense when you open windows start
  
  That's just not true, at least in my experience. I typically use the search box to open what I am looking for, and frankly would be very annoyed if I had to switch to something that takes over my entire screen to do that. I don't even have to do that on my phone, and that is my biggest complaint with Gnome is that it looks and feels like they are trying to make a mobile interface first, not a PC interface. And if I have to browse for something, I do still much prefer a small organized menu to something filling my entire screen. I'm on an ultra-wide screen, I don't want to have to physically turn my head to see the entire list. Maybe this makes sense on very small screens but that circles me back around to feeling like Gnome is meant for a tablet and not my desktop PC.
  
  Clearly we all have different ideas and work flows that we like, and that's fine. I'm very happy there are alternatives to Gnome as I've hated it every time I've tried it; but, obviously there are a lot of people that like what they are doing. I just probably won't ever understand those people.
  
  3
- His ideas are mostly disjointed. Windows got one thing very right, very fast and snappy multitasking and that's about it. GNOME adds animations, takes the focus from the applications and the information inside them to become the "center of users attention". This isn't good, a DE should be almost invisible, as minimalistic as it can be so the user can quickly switch between Windows and get their job done specially on smaller screens. I guess most people running GNOME that say they enjoy never touched Apple's old Exposé or the current Windows Task View (Win+Tab) this aren't aware how far and how productive you can be on a very small screen with a simple way to move around.
  
  0

Why?

-10

inovation, they can basicly

6