Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

9 Improvements Needed in GNOME

Filed under
Software

Although I regularly use KDE, Xfce, and other desktops for GNU/Linux, I keep returning to GNOME. Sometimes I use the default Metacity window manager, and other times the quicker Sawfish, but, with either choice, GNOME has an uncluttered look that allows me to focus on my work rather than my software. It also contains enough customization that I can easily set my increasingly long list of preferences with a minimum of effort.
However, my loyalty is far from unqualified. Despite being in development for a decade, GNOME still lacks one or two utilities that I consider essential. Other default tools are lacking in functionality, or could stand a modern redesign. I also question some of GNOME's policy decisions.

If I can be excused from building dream castles and planning to move on the first of next month (as Harlan Ellison would say), here are the improvements that I would most like to see in GNOME:

* A font manager: Font administration is a basic necessity for any graphic designer. Designers need to load and unload fonts, so that they don't overload their system with thousands of fonts. They also need to enable or disable fonts by groups, so they can load all the fonts for one project with a minimum of mouse clicks. KDE 4 can manage fonts this way, so why can't GNOME? If nothing else, it could make Fontmatrix part of the default installation.

* A multiple-item clipboard:

More Here




Only 9?

Working in a Gnome shop and using it at work for more than a year, I've switched back to KDE. I've found much more than 9 improvements are needed before it can harness the power and capabilities that KDE gives me.

Insert_Ending_Here

Perspective

Well, let's be fair. GNOME is a great desktop, but it's a matter of personal needs. I typically use KDE too, but I doubt my parents would use all the features.

Useless points

Every desktop environment still has major issues.
The thing I don't like about these articles is that although they are correct and Gnome does need major work, almost all of the points made by the author are nonsense.

There are far more issues with Gnome:
1. Too much reliance on gstreamer. I think Gnome should use one api that in turn has a gstreamer backend. This way someone can write a xine-lib backend.
2. No coordination with gtk+ releases. Gtk+ 2.12.0 was a catastrophe. Not until gtk+ 2.12.8/9 were all visible issues fixed.
3. Releasing each 6 months isn't always good. Even if a dot zero release is rock stable, I would like to see at least two more months for feedback from distribution developers.

But otherwise, I see no problems with Gnome.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.