GNOME June 2024: C'mon you can do better

Dariusmiles2123 , 3 days ago

I’ve only spent a few hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro which was still running Catalina (now Fedora) back in the days, and I didn’t think Gnome and MacOs were so similar.

To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.

But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.

I don’t have a lot of experience with other DE on Linux, but they lack the clean aesthetic of Gnome.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.

Just because you aren’t used to the macOS workflow it doesn’t mean it is bad - that’s the same argument you GNOME fan boys do with Windows users ;)

But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.

Yes, it’s okay, and that was never an issue in this discussion. The issue is that they didn’t took enough inspiration on basic UX patterns.

Dariusmiles2123 , 2 days ago

Well what I meant is that if Gnome was taking so much inspiration from MacOs, being a Gnome user, I wouldn’t have felt lost on MacOS.

I also don’t mind Gnome taking what’s great from every other OS, as it’d clearly be stupid not to if an idea is great.

I also think that people should be more open minded about what others are enjoying. I prefer Linux, but I can also understand that some people just want to have the most compatible OS with everything, aka Windows. Or the best ecosystem, aka Apple.

It is not my choice, and I’m trying to convince people to switch to something else, but just badmouthing their choice when it has objectively some advantages isn’t gonna help.

Sentau , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

Here’s the thing: Apple’s design you’ll find that they carefully included an extra margin between the “Don’t Save” and “Cancel” buttons. This avoid accidental clicks on the wrong button so that people don’t lose their work when they just want to click “Cancel”.

And gnome has those dialogs in a different colour to achieve easily noticable differentiation between the two options

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

The issue there isn’t only differentiation, that well done, the issue is that an user might miss click because both buttons are close to each other.

Sentau , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

That same logic could be applied for the save and discard button. Should there be a bigger gap between them lest somebody misclick and discard things instead of saving them¿? Atleast in the case where they accidentally click cancel instead of discard, they are not losing any data.

Hell if this really about data safety, discard/don’t save should be the isolated button because it is the only destructive option

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

According to the UX experts you don’t need the space between the save and discard buttons as long as the “save” is the first one. Missclick are more prone to happen from top to bottom than the other way around, so if the user wanted to hit “save” it’s more likely he will click above the button than it is to click “discard”. Same logic applied down there, when the using is looking to cancel it’s easier to missclick and hit the “discard” button than anything else.

Sentau , 3 days ago

Can you share any study for this. If this is true, it is fascinating and worth looking into in more depth

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

This is an application of Fitts’s law. I saw some paper referencing it to back that kind of margins on destructive actions but I don’t remember the title.

Sentau , 2 days ago

Well fitts law doesnt mention anything about asymmetrical spacing anywhere. Infact going by fitts law, the new gnome design is great because the hitboxes are pretty large

TCB13 OP , 2 days ago

That’s what the paper was about, the law also applies the in reverse, adding the space protects the user because it makes it harder to click on the hitbox.

MXX53 , 4 days ago

I started on gnome. I love it at first, but as time has gone on my experience with gnome had gotten worse and worse, and my KDE experience keeps getting better. It’s a real shame because I actually tend to prefer the gnome look at feel, but KDE has been so much more usable for me in recent years.

unknowing8343 , 3 days ago

It’s very easy to get a Gnome look and feel with Plasma nowadays.

I still don’t know why Gnome loves wasting 3 % of the screen on an empty black bar, tho.

secret300 , 3 days ago

Yeah ngl I don’t get using the entire space fore almost nothing. I use a few extensions to fill it up and make it more useful

MXX53 , 3 days ago

That is true. But I have an overall better experience getting KDE to look like gnome.

unknowing8343 , 3 days ago

That’s what I said.

MXX53 , 2 days ago

Lol that is what you said. My bad. Must have read it wrong. That’s on me.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

I’m kind of on the same boat you’re… however KDE tends to have issues with visual proportions and margins everywhere.

possiblylinux127 , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

Gnome is so much better than Mac OS

Also it is kind of insulting to call gnome a clone of something else. It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.

MonkderDritte , 3 days ago

It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.

There’s a lot of ideology at play here.

possiblylinux127 , 2 days ago

Yeah you are right. It just annoys me when people call it a cheap knock off.

orca , 3 days ago

These are pretty standard UI patterns.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

Your point being…?

Darkraisisi , 3 days ago

If it is standard design, it is not targeting iOS. That is his point.

AndrewZabar , 3 days ago

His point is that you have no point.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

My point is: if you want to copy / be inspired by others at least do it right.

AndrewZabar , 3 days ago

So, copying is making something identical. But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.

Ever hear of two things just being similar? We are talking about a UI - these things have always followed patterns that change as usage patterns change in the industry. I think you must be young and/or inexperienced because this kind of trend goes back to the ‘80s.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.

I would categorize it as poor copying because the copy doesn’t conform to the design / UX patterns that were present on the “original” work.

sunzu , 3 days ago

Bro... There is but so many ways to effectively organize something basic like that jfc.

Best or standard practice, ever heard of the concept?

wolf , 3 days ago

Wait - Gnome user here (heavily modified and with multiple extensions) …

macOS window management and trying to using it via keyboard is a totally miserable experience (forced to use it at work :-/ ) … at the same time, Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags. I still happily prefer Gnome over macOS on my desktop for literally everything, macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings, setup cannot be properly automated, the ‘auto features’ totally suck and do everything I do not want them to do and macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Gnome sucks, but it sucks less for me than all other alternatives on the desktop at the moment…

My biggest reason to stick with Gnome are Wayland, Evolution/Online Accounts and that I can automatically configure Gnome to something usable with dconf/gsettings. I am not holding my breath that KDE ever gets their KMail story under control, stability as in zero crashes and being fully configurable via Ansible. The very moment this happens, I’ll happily jump ship. (Of course also waiting for Wayland support for Xfce :-P)

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags

Isn’t this ironic? The DE with a user base that is way more tech savvy people thinks users can’t use tags.

macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings,

What are you talking about?? At least on macOS app icons are consistent not the crap they are on GNOME.

macOS (…) setup cannot be properly automated

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Apple makes automated setup even easier than it is on MS ecosystems, companies can literally buy a computer on the Apple Store and have it shipped to an employee with the companie’s profile pre-installed by Apple without even needing to touch or open the box. The employee get’s the computer, opens the box and just has to login with this corporate account.

You’ve Apple’s own MDM, Jamf, JumpCloud and so many others. Even Ansible can be used to configure, setup and automated macOS deployments.

macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Well at least it doesn’t like a 5 second pointless fade animation after every single click like GNOME does, nor does it bundle web technologies for theming that make the DE be as slow as it can get when it comes to rendering a new window.

wolf , 3 days ago

I wish the thing about tags was ironic

Concerning the rest of your points: Icons are one of the few things I never had an issue with in Gnome. ;-)

Concerning automated setups, the only system I care fore is Linux and am forced to use macOS. For my use cases, I don’t care about the tooling/possibilities for companies to install crap on my machine (my company does that). Using Ansible to automate my setup for macOS is theoretically possible, but such a crappy experience compared to Linux, that I don’t bother. Not to mention no unified installation/update system on macOS and the shitty default apps like Finder, Window management etc. The solution which sucks the least for me is using macOS as dump VPN driver for my virtual Linux box, so I can get shit done.

… no need to argue about bad Gnome defaults, it is trivial to disable all animations and the shell is fast enough even on my netbook. :-)

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

it is trivial to disable all animations

Yeah you can go into settings and toggle of a switch, however they don’t disable everything. ~

Whenever you go into Settings > Accessibility > Enable Animations and disable it one would expect that ALL animations would be disabled while in fact they aren’t. It should behave like Xfce that is, click on something and get the instant result, no delay, no very small animation / fade like GNOME still does.

Bottom line: that option in GNOME is misleading and doesn’t do what it advertises.

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

Both designs are good imo. Adding the extra space for the “cancel” button could cause a copyright claim so I think that’s a viable reason why it’s absent in GNOME. And I don’t see anything wrong in copying Apple design. They can do what they want and the new design is very nice in terms of ease of understanding and accessibility potentials. GNOME’s workflow is similar to Apple’s so why not copy some more things for better consistency?

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

Both designs are good imo. Adding the extra space for the “cancel” button could cause a copyright claim

What ahaha since when a modal is copyrighted? I don’t buy it, this is simply poor design by the GNOME team.

GNOME’s workflow is similar to Apple’s so why not copy some more things for better consistency?

Exactly my point, but they should learn how to properly copy things. Or at least think about them, Apple didn’t add the margin for no reason.

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

I get it that you hate this design and its obvious strong inspiration by Apple but accusing GNOME team in being lazy is too much. They created the most popular and one of the most stable DEs on Linux and their own workflow that’s similar to Apple’s but still is unique. Also when I saw that new design, I was amazed. To me it looks really great. It’s going to be a good update with accent color support (I won’t fight about it ok?) for sure. It’s just a matter of preference. Both designs are good enough technically imo.

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

I get it that you hate this design

I don’t hate it, it looks better than what was there before, no doubts there, but at the same time they could’ve just made it better.

All the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add margins, accents and shades. Any design undergraduate should be aware of this, however the GNOME team totally missed it.

It’s going to be a good update with accent color support (I won’t fight about it ok?)

It’s funny that you mention that because…

In macOS, you can specify an accent color to customize the appearance of your app’s buttons, selection highlighting, and sidebar glyphs. The system applies your accent color when the current value in General > Accent color preferences is multicolor. support.apple.com/en-mt/guide/mac-help/…/mac

I’m totally okay with “being inspired” (cloning) macOS, it should be viewed as good thing because Apple does spend a lot in UX research however lets make thing properly.

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

I don’t hate it, it looks better than what was there before, no doubts there, but at the same time they could’ve just made it better.

How? Improving something like this is hard. Do you have any proposals?

All the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add margins, accents and shades. Any design undergraduate should be aware of this, however the GNOME team totally missed it.

I’m afraid to tell you that in 2024 nobody cares about that. “Shape following feeling” in MD is the best example I can think of. Now aesthetics is preferred to make people buy (or use for free in this case) the product. People are not tech savvy. They want good looks and GNOME nailed it imo. It’s stunning. They even got me but I do care about aesthetics unfortunately. I’m a spoilt mass consumer. Eject me if you will.

accent color

Accent color taboo. Let’s not talk about accent color.

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

How? Improving something like this is hard. Do you have any proposals?

I’ve submitted a fair share of UX in-depth analysis with examples and links to literature on the GNOME team blog and they tend to ignore / comment dismissingly and then remove my comments after a few weeks.

Accent color taboo. Let’s not talk about accent color.

Ahahaha

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

Judging from your post and replies, you look very aggressive, rude and demanding so no wonder the devs deleted your comments.

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

In-depth analysis ≠ random ramblings on lemmy.

bitfucker , 4 days ago

To be fair, he could also just be fed up after a long time being ignored for what he thinks is quite an important design decision.

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

May be but some of this user’s post history is a bit questionable.

Shareni , 4 days ago

the most popular

Citation very much needed

one of the most stable DEs on Linux

Hardly, but I’m guessing you’re thinking of reliability instead. Not really surprising when it’s so stripped down that vanilla GNOME is pretty much unusable. When you extend it, in order to get a proper DE, that goes right out the window.

That fact makes it especially funny that vanilla GNOME is by far the fattest DE around. How it manages to use up more resources than KDE is beyond me.

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

Citation very much needed

Ubuntu, RHEL and Fedora use it as the default and they are very big distros. Idk if it’s enough but that’s what I know.

Hardly, but I’m guessing you’re thinking of reliability instead.

Idk. KDE was unstable for me and it always has bugs after major releases. They should test things better.

Not really surprising when it’s so stripped down that vanilla GNOME is pretty much unusable.

Personal opinion.

That fact makes it especially funny that vanilla GNOME is by far the fattest DE around.

Deepin.

How it manages to use up more resources than KDE is beyond me.

You have a point here. Qt is better in terms of efficiency afaik and performance is extremely important for an OS component. But hey at least it’s getting better over time.

Shareni , 4 days ago

Ubuntu, RHEL and Fedora use it as the default and they are very big distros. Idk if it’s enough but that’s what I know.

I mean, that’s pretty irrelevant. If you were for example at least comparing the downloads of fedora Vs spins, that would be a beginning of something.

Idk. KDE was unstable for me and it always has bugs after major releases. They should test things better.

1. In case it wasn’t obvious: stability is not reliability
2. So does GNOME, especially when you have a lot of extensions
3. KDE is pretty crap in both regards

Personal opinion.

Is that why every distro comes with vanilla GNOME? Oh wait…

But hey at least it’s getting better over time.

Meanwhile over the years KDE got lighter than GNOME while constantly piling on features.

GolfNovemberUniform , 4 days ago

This is turning into a meaningless argument now. I don’t want to continue.

MrAlagos , 4 days ago

How it manages to use up more resources than KDE is beyond me.

It can happen when you have to develop all your technology on your own instead of relying on the work of a hundred-million dollar company that does the heavy lifting for you.

possiblylinux127 , 3 days ago

We shouldn’t design desktops to avoid copyright claims. Desktops should just create original designs that make sense for the goals of the desktop. We don’t need to make changes based on Windows 11 or Mac OS. They aren’t separate entirely and irrelevant.

GolfNovemberUniform , 3 days ago

Do you mean that any copying is bad or any copying is ok as long as it helps achieve the goals?

possiblylinux127 , 3 days ago

When you copy the outcome is almost always going to be worse than the original. Do your own thing and be the person or project you want to be. You don’t need to care outside of the project.

GolfNovemberUniform , 3 days ago

This. But 99% of the internet will hate your project for absolutely anything they don’t like in it and it will kill the project because distros won’t want to use it.

ProgrammingSocks , 3 days ago

Who gives a shit. Use the desktop you like. Don’t post this /g/ tier bait.

tigerjerusalem , 4 days ago

Funny enough, I find Gnome to be more consistent and better thought than macOS… But that’s just me.

electro1 , 4 days ago

Not just you :)

warmaster , 4 days ago

Indeed, I freaking love GNOME’s UX/UI. But I switched to KDE for Wayland gaming.

ProgrammingSocks , 3 days ago

I’m using Gnome and VRR on Wayland with no issues. AMD 7800XT.

GravitySpoiled , 3 days ago

It is better :)

ShittyBeatlesFCPres , 4 days ago

My only problem with both designs in your images is the colors. It’s a pretty standard part of UI design (in real life and on computers) that “red means cancel” and “green means continue.” Apple using blue is no big deal and I’m 90% sure they just use a user chosen “highlight color.” (Maybe Gnome as well?) But cancel or delete or similar things should probably be red or another color that signals “Stop.”

I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors. Red means danger. Light blue means info. Green means yes or success. Yellow means warning. Other buttons are a darker blue — basically the highlight color. (Not saying they chose the best version of those colors. Just that the general idea is consistency and what users most naturally expect.)

muhyb , 4 days ago

It’s just an accent colour and can be changed.

sedot , 3 days ago

Where can i change easily accent colors in Gnome without using extensions?

NekkoDroid , 3 days ago

Accent colors are coming with GNOME 47.

sedot , 3 days ago

Yup, i know, its just not possible atm. But thank you anyway :)

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

I’ve always thought Bootstrap, the web design library, has a good set of base colors

Yes it does. Those guys did a really good job.

d_k_bo , 3 days ago

The “Save” button uses the accent color which is blue by default. With configurable accent colors coming to GNOME 47 and GTK/Libadwaita, you can choose a red accent color.

See the original description of the screenshot:

It’s now using standard button styles, fixing the long-standing issue where suggested and destructive buttons would look the same when using red accent color

vhstape , 3 days ago

I think that a lot of the recent GNOME design choices are merely because they’re trying to improve usability on mobile devices. It also just so happens that Apple is trying to make the macOS desktop closer to iOS to encourage people to move from Windows. They have similar goals, which leads to similar design choices. And all design is derivative, anyway. Who cares.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

You aren’t wrong, but that has nothing to do with he issue at hand. They should copy each other if a solution is good, and that’s the issue here, GNOME forgot to copy a good UX practice that Apple actually took the time to implement.

KrapKake , 4 days ago

As someone who tried out MacOS in a VM out of curiosity I don’t find gnome to be like MacOS at all in overall functionality. I think to most people it just looks like Mac because top bar, dock and some design choices. Really though gnome is much more like Android. MacOS felt extremely clunky to use vs gnome’s fluid workspace and app switching.

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

it just looks like Mac because top bar, dock and some design choices

Top bar, dock, system settings, activities (somewhat e mix between Apple’s mission control and launchpad), now the modal buttons, accent colors… and so many other things.

MacOS felt extremely clunky to use vs gnome’s fluid workspace and app switching.

Maybe you were running it without proper GPU acceleration and without a keyboard with actual macOS shortcuts on the function keys? Virtualizing macOS is hard and it will give you a very poor experience.

Obviously macOS has it’s defects but at least you aren’t risking losing your work due to a misclick nor you are restricted from having desktop icons like you’re on GNOME :)

MrAlagos , 4 days ago

dock

Not a permanent dock. Docks predate Apple any way.

activities (somewhat e mix between Apple’s mission control and launchpad

GNOME 3 was officially launched a few months after OS X Lion, but combined these things into one first.

XTL , 3 days ago

NeXT is probably the pretty direct ancestor of osx dock. Only Apple turned it from good to bad by moving it to the bottom, where there is no space. And that only got worse as screens became wider, but not taller. And they made it overlap and obscure content and bounce around if you got near it making it extra obnoxious and hard to use.

Other docks existed even before, of course.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

Not a permanent dock. Docks predate Apple any way.

The Dock comes from NeXTSTEP, the operating system Steve Jobs left Apple to develop back in 1986… GNOME was announced in 1997 so I don’t get your argument.

GravitySpoiled , 3 days ago

I’ve never lost anything because I misclicked. Ctrl+s is your friend.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

See the problem there, regular users don’t Ctrl+s, they point and click.

KrapKake , 3 days ago

No I did not have GPU accel. I’m curious what you are referring to losing work due to a misclick? Personally I don’t use desktop icons. I’m a previous i3 user so I am used to using my computer with a non traditional interface.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

I’m curious what you are referring to losing work due to a misclick?

If you place “Discard” and “Cancel” next to each other, without a margin in between, is easier a user looking to click on “Cancel” to click on “Discard” and lose a document. This is more common than people think and that’s why Apple added the margin there and also why any good UX manual tells you to add a margin for destructive operations like that one.

kenkenken , 4 days ago

At least it is not a cheap copy of Windows.

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

Ahaha fair enough. * screams in KDE *

ShittyBeatlesFCPres , 4 days ago

I don’t use KDE as my daily driver but it’s on my SteamDeck and I haven’t once been trying to change a setting or something and encountered a window that looks like Windows XP because no one at a whole multi-trillion dollar company could be bothered to update it. It’s way better than Windows 11.

Ephera , 4 days ago

Excuse me, Windows is the cheap copy of KDE.

possiblylinux127 , 3 days ago

No you got it all wrong KDE is just a Windows 11 copycat. Microsoft is full of original ideas.

ssm , 4 days ago

If you’re going to give GNOME shit, at least let it before how much they destroy portability of GTK, enabling cancer like Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

Client Side Decorations, and ignoring their community when it comes to things like desktop icons.

Well I’ve complained about those a couple of time… but people always say that it’s their vision.

possiblylinux127 , 3 days ago

They made GTK4 portable thanks to the gnome design being moved to Libadwaita.

Chef6652 , 4 days ago

I hope they continue learning lessons from other OSes.

I’m feeling like you are wrong about them outright copying. Some good things can be taken from macOS and Windows. But a lot of bad things too, which is why they are thinking it through.

Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it… Apple doesn’t own modals or modal design.

Here there are not 20 ways of putting 3 buttons in a modal. They just happen to choose a way that will also work on mobile I guess.

Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.

I don’t like everything Gnome has been doing, especially with the lack of customization or the status bar. But Gnome has been my go to for 7+ years and I like where it is going. Extensions are pretty fly too 👌

TCB13 OP , 4 days ago

Please do not reduce the community effort to “cloning macOS”. It’s insulting to the people working on it…

Well, it’s insulting for people to lose their work because someone did a lousy UX job. :)

Cloning macOS should not be views as something “bad” because for what’s worth we all know Apple spends a LOT in usability research (they’re not as good as they used to be, but still better than the rest).

Kudos for noticing this extra space which could enhance these kind of modals though.

That’s the thing, I’ve basic design / UX training and all the literature on action buttons with dangerous effects tells you to add a margin. Any design undergraduate should also be able to notice that life saver as well… however the GNOME team totally missed it.

This isn’t the first time them failing at basic UX and they don’t like when people try to suggest improvements nor when they later on criticize them.

KindaABigDyl , 4 days ago

Having used OS X, there is no way they’ve done usability testing. Doing basically everything is hard on OS X

gianni , 3 days ago

This is an insane take based on absolutely nothing.

GravitySpoiled , 3 days ago

Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple. And microsoft also does a couple of things better than apple. Apple isn’t perfect and microsoft isn’t all bad

TCB13 OP , 3 days ago

Just because you like apple doens’t mean that apple does a perfect job and GNOME should copy it. GNOME does a lot of thing better than apple.

Yes, so let’s copy Apple and keep the few things GNOME does well.

Routhinator , 4 days ago

Sometimes when you get UI experts and users and engineers in the same room they iterate to similar outcomes because its the logical conclusion. Apples design in this case isn’t ground breaking or even original.

If multiple species of jumping spider can independently evolve the ability to see red from different branches of their family tree, multiple dev teams can come to the same conclusion about what is more comfortable for reaching with consideration for left and right handed people on various types of screens.

The problem is so scoped these days, its fairly logical for UIs to come to the same outcome.