GNOME 47 'Denver' released with Accent Colours and various System Enhancements

I still dont know if their interface was meant for touchscreen or a mouse lol :p

Either make the top bar & its contents bigger or everything else smaller


Last edited by based on 20 September 2024 at 11:23 am UTC

Changing a single accent color barely counts as customization. It's so lazy and I think a lot of interface designers miss the entire point when they settle on colors and call it a day.

What happened to GTK2 themes? KDE at least retains it's legacy ricing functionality in some form or another, they're running circles around GNOME, and they'd be doing it harder if KDE theme creators had some more originality.

The interface is so clean yet I always feel dirty using it. Just not for me.

My best feature of GNOME 47 is the better support for big resolutions. You can now change the scale of the UI by 25% steps, it was 50% before which didn't work for me.

Otherwise works for me as always. But would like to try KDE 6 as well.

the scale of the UI by 25% steps

KDE does it in 6.25% increments for some time now.

It's good to have alternatives. Use whatever you like.
Gnome is not my cup of tea and hasn't been since Gnome 3 started going wrong quite a long time ago now. These days the people behind Gnome have declared war against its users and everyone who dares disagree with their direction. In bewilderment, we can only lament their intransigent attitude.

I have to use a few extensions to hammer some square pegs into round holes but the overall workflow of Gnome is something I can't get close enough to in other environments.

I still dont know if their interface was meant for touchscreen or a mouse lol :p

To me, keyboard. Gnome feels far better and faster than trying to point and click/poke everything.

I REALLY don't like gnome. It looks too much like something Apple would make. I'll be sticking with KDE for the far foreseeable future.

I like how GNOME and KDE are radicaly different. I'm leaning on GNOME interface but the point of Linux is having choices.

Seems like a lot of people dislike GNOME, but I love it. I like how you don't really "use" GNOME, as it just gets out of your way, while at the same time all the important settings like WiFi, power saving, etc. are right there when you need them.

Whenever I think about the description of the old GNOME window manager Metacity, it always makes me feel warm and cozy inside.

Boring window manager for the adult in you. Many window managers are like Marshmallow Froot Loops; Metacity is like Cheerios.

Yep, sign me up.

It is true that their UI paradigm is not quite 100% refined yet, but at least it is not another rehash of the same thing since Windows 3.1.

... To me, keyboard. Gnome feels far better and faster than trying to point and click/poke everything.

But you can do that with just about every DE out there, meanwhile, I never managed to figure out how to even navigate the weird menu system with keyboard only in GNOME. Or are you using the console to get things done?

... To me, keyboard. Gnome feels far better and faster than trying to point and click/poke everything.

But you can do that with just about every DE out there, meanwhile, I never managed to figure out how to even navigate the weird menu system with keyboard only in GNOME. Or are you using the console to get things done?

That was specifically about if Gnome was for mouse or touch, of course you can do that in other DEs. I just find the flow of Gnome feels better in general, esp if you like to heavily use the keyboard.

I have to use a few extensions to hammer some square pegs into round holes but the overall workflow of Gnome is something I can't get close enough to in other environments.

I still dont know if their interface was meant for touchscreen or a mouse lol :p

To me, keyboard. Gnome feels far better and faster than trying to point and click/poke everything.

What exactly is the GNOME workflow? From what I've seen it's basically what I've got going here in LXQt+awesome: workspaces dedicated to tasks, very keyboard focused, minimal distractions,... with the difference that I can have different workspaces on either of my monitors (so I can have my development workspace on my left monitor and my communications workspace on my right monitor) and switch them independently.

Although the GNOME keyboard shortcuts feel kinda insane to me: Alt+F2 to show a command runner? Why isn't that Mod4+F2? I need all my non-super shortcuts for editing tasks (e.g. Alt+F2 to put cursors on every instance matching a regular expression), so I don't understand when environments pollute the non-super keyboard shortcuts (for another example: Alt+Tab, which I use to complete variable names).

I have to use a few extensions to hammer some square pegs into round holes but the overall workflow of Gnome is something I can't get close enough to in other environments.

I still dont know if their interface was meant for touchscreen or a mouse lol :p

To me, keyboard. Gnome feels far better and faster than trying to point and click/poke everything.

What exactly is the GNOME workflow? From what I've seen it's basically what I've got going here in LXQt+awesome: workspaces dedicated to tasks, very keyboard focused, minimal distractions,...

Probably similar. I just like how most everything is in the overview and the defaults are mostly sane to my use. I've played with Awesome and other WMs but ultimately I'm too lazy to get them where I want them.

Although the GNOME keyboard shortcuts feel kinda insane to me: Alt+F2 to show a command runner? Why isn't that Mod4+F2? I need all my non-super shortcuts for editing tasks (e.g. Alt+F2 to put cursors on every instance matching a regular expression), so I don't understand when environments pollute the non-super keyboard shortcuts (for another example: Alt+Tab, which I use to complete variable names).

Is there something stopping those binds from being changed?

Probably similar. I just like how most everything is in the overview and the defaults are mostly sane to my use. I've played with Awesome and other WMs but ultimately I'm too lazy to get them where I want them.

I feel the same way, but assuming COSMIC gets all of the functionality I use in GNOME, it seems like a great alternative to switch to. Very batteries-included. I spent days setting up Sway and in the end I went back to GNOME because it has more features I need and I don't need to work for them.

COSMIC is not (yet) as pretty as GNOME, but much better for multi-monitor setups and general productivity. GNOME is shocking when you have multiple monitors. Even KDE handles it better, and it's still not great.

I REALLY don't like gnome. It looks too much like something Apple would make.

GNOME takes the good decisions from macOS and cuts out the bad ones.

- You can edit the file path in Nautilus, you can't in Finder
- Window buttons in the top right, not the top left, but you can choose!
- Has real, reliable window tiling! The basic stuff is enough for 90% of people. (macOS finally got basic buggy tiling after 41 years this week)
- Combines Mission Control, Launchpad, and Spotlight into a single key and manages to make it less confusing.
- Has a keyboard shortcut you can map for moving windows to specific workspaces.
- Let's you choose between App tabbing and Window tabbing. You can have both if you want! macOS only lets you page through your open Apps when you hit Command+Tab, and you need to hit Command+~ to page through open windows of the _current_ application, not all windows.
- GNOME has a real Maximise button that doesn't break the usefulness of workspaces. Need I say more?
- GNOME actually hides the dock completely unless you access the Activity Overview so you don't accidentally hover over it. Much improvement for productivity.
- With GNOME 47, Nautilus supports 1-click open when you're uploading files to Firefox for example! Ah, efficiency, finally. Finder only supports double-click open all the time :(
- Nautilus also supports adding bookmarks for SSH virtual filesystem shortcuts. Super handy for locally streaming from one computer to another. If you haven't gotten it already, my point is that Finder sucks. It's awful, horrible, no-good software. I used to be able to say "at least it has tabs!" but now Windows File Explorer has tabs so that's not an advantage anymore.
- The UI is prettier and easier to understand than macOS, without nearly as many hidden options. Did you know Finder doesn't even have a context menu option for "Moving" a file? That's right, you need to copy the file, and move it by hitting Command+Ctrl+V! Or how about the Display settings where you need to hold down a key on your keyboard to expose hidden options?! macOS is full of hidden options like this that are just bad design. GNOME hides some stuff, like extra keyboard shortcuts for workspaces (arrgh!), but the list is much smaller.
- The Info menu in Finder sucks. It's a jumbled mess of far too much text and too small! The Properties menu is very legible in Nautilus. Once again, Finder sucks.

Yeah, GNOME doesn't have a system tray, and that sucks, but I love everything else about it. And I also love Nautilus, which got much love and attention in GNOME 47. Definitely my favourite part of this update next to accent colours and XWayland native scaling.

I also like KDE and COSMIC. I'm not picky :)

Although the GNOME keyboard shortcuts feel kinda insane to me: Alt+F2 to show a command runner? Why isn't that Mod4+F2? I need all my non-super shortcuts for editing tasks (e.g. Alt+F2 to put cursors on every instance matching a regular expression), so I don't understand when environments pollute the non-super keyboard shortcuts (for another example: Alt+Tab, which I use to complete variable names).

Is there something stopping those binds from being changed?

Unfortunately, yes (at least, last time I gave GNOME a run): I opened the system settings and went into the keyboard shortcuts settings and changed everything that made no sense, but after that when I was working I still found various key combinations that GNOME intercepted (I believe... Ctrl+F7, which lets me edit the most recently recorded keyboard macro, and maybe other things? I must admit I didn't really keep track of it all), and I couldn't find the shortcuts defined in the keyboard shortcuts system settings. I even tried installing the tweak tool, but it doesn't seem to have a section for keyboard shortcuts, so I just decided to call it quits.

GNOME takes the good decisions from macOS and cuts out the bad ones.

Last time I had to use OSX (I believe it was Yosemite?) I couldn't find out how to display hidden files in Finder and when I looked it up online the advice was to run a particular command on the CLI, and my reaction was 'dang, that's the joke people always make about us GNU/Linux users'.

To me there seems to be just a fundamental misunderstanding from the gnome team about the dimension of ... a screen. You know. The thing you use this software on. I have NEVER understood it. I simply can never use it because of this.

Every single screen on earth is a horizontally wide screen. So gnome puts a gigantic bar across the entire top of the wide screen, which is like 95% unused empty space. For what reason? And then puts ANOTHER horizontal bar across the bottom with apps on it with HUMONGOUSLY GIGANTIC icons for .... reasons?

So they squish the usable space vertically FAR more than it needs to be. And without using hacks / extensions you can't configure it to a single panel on the left or right or top or bottom (but I admit I haven't used it in a long time so not sure if recent updates have changed it).

"we finally killed and replaced mutter"

oh no, didn't happen.

Last time I had to use OSX (I believe it was Yosemite?) I couldn't find out how to display hidden files in Finder and when I looked it up online the advice was to run a particular command on the CLI, and my reaction was 'dang, that's the joke people always make about us GNU/Linux users'.

I think nowadays it must be Command+H, but to even get the file path to display in Finder you need to head to the command line. It's surprising how similar the experience can be to Linux for certain tasks. Finder is absolutely the worst UI in macOS.

In many ways, I find macOS a lot more unintuitive than Linux interfaces :)

But macOS did have accent colours a few years before GNOME, so there is that...

Wow... The best DE released a new version.

But I sincerely hope that Cosmic have success to finally have option to another decent Wayland DE