GNOME Shell Design Dreams

64 points by FedericoSchonborn

kn100

While I'm not currently using GS as I convinced myself there was functionality it didn't have that I needed (although I've long forgotten what functionality) I truly believe it's the most coherent desktop on earth right now. I'm excited to see it keep getting better. Every time I use it, it's like a breath of fresh air.

davidbalbert

GNOME is my desktop environment of choice on Linux. There's a lot to love, but there are two things I miss terribly from macOS:

The option to use Command (or Meta, Super, whatever) for all keyboard shortcuts. This reserves Control for control characters in the terminal. Having to remember that Copy is Ctrl-C in most places, but Ctrl-Shift-C in terminals makes me sad.
A global menu bar. Sadly, GNOME has gone the other way and gotten rid of menu bars entirely in favor of hamburger menus. This dumbs down apps – fewer features fit in hamburger menus – and makes existing features less discoverable. Ctrl-F might open a Find bar, but there's no menu item that lets you discover that.

Proxy icons in titlebars are a bonus third thing I'd love to have. Apple has unfortunately deemphasized those too, though there's an accessibility setting that you can toggle to show them all the time.

zmitchell

I switch between macOS and Linux almost daily, also switching between laptop keyboard and split ergo keyboard with a custom layout. The keyboard shortcuts being strewn about Ctrl chords makes my brain melt, and defeats most attempts at coming up with a coherent cross-platform layout for the custom keyboard.
- href
  
  I'm in a similar position. I prefer MacOS shortcuts, so on Linux I use keyd: https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd
  
  It would be nice if this was something Gnome could offer though.
- synthmeat
  
  I've remapped my split keyboard (UHKv2) to match MacBook layout, and customizations are mostly concentrated in the key cluster module, so I don't really have any muscle memory impedance by going to and fro. Recently, I gave a Gnome a try, and spent a while customizing the shortcuts but there's so many of them, and a lot of them are unique to apps (especially browsers) and I kinda ditched it, and just went headless. I would possibly have made Gnome my main desktop if there was a setting that would do "make all keys and shortcuts exactly like macOS".
kevincox

Re: "The option to use Command (or Meta, Super, whatever) for all keyboard shortcuts"

I've always thought that the input protocol should support "semantic" events rather than just raw keypresses. So for example if I type <Super>+v I think the app should receive an event with the "Paste" action (and the underlying keypress so that it can be used if needed). This would both promote consistency in shortcuts and allow users (or desktop environments) to change what the "paste" action is across all apps.
- matthiasportzel
  
  macOS allows for something like this. My terminology may be slightly wrong here: apps register actions with the OS to appear in the menu bar, with a name and a keyboard shortcut, then in System Settings you can define an override by specifying a given action name and a new keyboard shortcut. This applies to all apps or any that you choose.
  
  Does GNOME allow defining actions in the “menu bar” which could be used for this, or is that functionality left entirely to apps?
rvrb

in my opinion, notifications (and dynamically changing/resizing content) belong nowhere near a quick settings menu. combining them will require users to visually scan for the actions they build muscle memory around every time they open the panel.
- chinmay
  
  Yep. Phones do this because there's no space, but otherwise notifications belong with the calendar (both of them are like status/updates/news if you get what I mean)
  - rvrb
    
    I think they're their own thing. push versus pull. reading my calendar, weather, is an intentional pull action. notifications are interrupting push. quick settings are state change.
    
    of course, I am also quite radically against any application that isn't human to human communication using push notifications for literally anything, so I guess I am probably in the minority.
- kevinc
  
  I like the way Apple platforms have kept notification center and control center separate. A couple controls live alongside notifications on the iPhone lock screen, but they're immovable.
  - pushcx
    
    I have seen unending confusion from users that there are two unrelated modals that hide invisibly “above” the top of the phone. Not to mention the almost-but-not-quite identical notifications modal and lock screen.
    
    I understand how Ios ended up in this mess by inventing and iterating on core smartphone UI, but it’s a confusing mess that’s badly behind Android features like history and actions.
- hmry
  
  I switched to KDE because GNOME was missing a lot of important Wayland protocols (looking at you, server-side decorations...) which frequently broke programs I needed to use. But I miss it a lot. GNOME was probably my favorite desktop experience out of all the ones I've ever used (even better than macOS and Windows 7)
  - gnafuthegreat
    
    I have GNOME on my main laptop and KDE on my travel laptop, and I find myself missing one when I'm using the other. I'm glad we have both! I have found myself preferring KDE more and more, though...
- Fingel
  
  Very cool stuff. GNOME is still the most consistent and well designed desktop you can use on any platform right now.
  
  The mosaic stuff will be interesting. I really wish GNOME would go back to allowing you to bring your own window manager (yes, this used to be a thing many moons ago). Imagine niri with a full gnome session. Would be a dream - a pipe dream more likely. But good to see window management some love even though I’ve moved away from gnome shell personally.
- hugoarnal
  
  All of this is very exciting! Hopefully some of these features make it to the next releases
- henderson
  
  I've really come around on Gnome 3 over the past 3 years or so. It reminds me a lot of MacOS, but only in good ways. I'm very interested in the "mosaic" behavior described in this post, since automatic tiling is the one thing I miss from my bspwm days.
- dsr
  
  Concept not appearing in these dreams: "accessibility".
- Yogurt
  
  Transparent panel is an interesting idea. I'd personally rather the space be used and move app menu bars up there ala mac os, but some iteration is better than none.
- lvmbdv
  
  Coming back to GNOME after a few years of Mac OS, these design choices feel like I made the right choice :^)
- wucke13
  
  Dear GNOME team, could you maybe first fix the basics, like acknowledging that there can be more than one admin account [1]? There used to be many small papercuts, which I would like see with some more priority. I'm happily surprised to see that the cluster around the filepicker portal is slowly resolved at least [2].
  
  Its astonishing to me how "the default enterprise desktop" has had so many regressions against far smaller desktop environments with far fewer ressources, and I can't help but think that this is in part due too (my personal judgement) an overprioritization of aesthetics-bikeshedding.
  
  Anyhow, the new concepts look visually pleasing.
  
  [1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/work_items/2904
  [2] https://discourse.gnome.org/t/files-search-on-typing-should-be-disabled-in-case-of-save-action/26539/2
- lukasl
  
  I really appreciate the design work behind GNOME. I have been using it from the 1.x days and while the GNOME 3 translation was hard for me, I decided to embrace it and I couldn't have been happier since. I honestly don't know of a more ergonomic desktop environment. Whenever I need to use macOS, I'm surprised people put up with that.