GNOME releases version 44
GNOME is, of course, a widely-used desktop environment for Linux systems; on March 22, the project released GNOME 44, codenamed "Kuala Lumpur". This version features enhancements to the settings panels, quick settings, the files application, and an updated file chooser with a grid view, among others. The full list of changes can be seen in the release notes available on the GNOME website.
What's new?
GNOME added a grid view to its file chooser, which allows users
to pick files based on their thumbnails, as seen in the screen shot below. In
the release notes, the project acknowledged that the change was a long time
coming; it was "repeatedly requested
" by GNOME users over
the years.
There has been some dissatisfaction expressed with how long it took the project to implement a change it clearly knew users wanted; Hacker News user "dsego" said:
File chooser grid view (ie thumbnails) - that's nice, but I'm so jaded at this point to care anymore [...] I'm just too old to be excited by UI features that should've been here long ago and that were the standard in the software of the late 90s and early 2000s.
The latest version of GNOME Files, the desktop's file-management application, now has the ability to move tabs to new windows and drag items onto a tab. However, the most notable change was the return of the "expand folders in list view" option that had been lost during the application's conversion to GTK 4 in GNOME 43. The change was welcomed by Reddit user "pixol22" who compared the addition to macOS's "column view":
Personally I find that having access to multiple folder structures within a single view is extremely powerful. On macOS this type of functionality is well known as Column View, however I find that Column View doesn't work well because most mice cannot scroll horizontally. This seems to be the best of both worlds.
Settings
Version 44 includes an enhanced "quick settings" menu with several notable upgrades. The menu contains a set of commonly used system settings that are accessed easily from right side of the GNOME top bar. These settings are displayed as icons and allow users to check values and adjust the settings for things like volume, brightness, network connections, battery level, and others. For this release, textual descriptions have been added to each of the quick settings toggle buttons.
The Bluetooth quick-settings button now has a menu that displays connected devices and allows users to connect or disconnect them. This is convenient for users who frequently switch between Bluetooth devices. However, users will only be able to connect to devices they have previously paired with; they are not yet able to configure new devices from quick settings. Even with the improvements, Hacker News user "rcarmo" warned there were still problems:
Still lets you turn off Bluetooth with a single click, even when all you have is a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Seriously, I only use USB input devices on desktops to bootstrap the system, and then unplug them and tidy the system away. For a few times now I've clicked that button by mistake (it's there in GNOME 43, just without the ">") and promptly turned off Bluetooth and had to go fetch a USB mouse from storage, crawl under the desk, and plug it in to turn everything back on.
An additional improvement to quick settings allows it to list Flatpak applications that are running in the background, as depicted in the following screen shot.
This was one of the few new features GNOME introduced in this version, however Bobby Borisov at Linuxiac found it lacking:
GNOME Background Apps is a new feature that will debut in GNOME 44, representing the ability to stop desktop applications running in the background via Quick Settings.
In other words, you can't open the app by clicking on its name, which would imply system tray functionality. No, that would be too nice. So instead, you only have an "X" button that immediately terminates the app running in the background.
In the "sound settings" panel, the volume-level control for sound alerts has been moved into a separate window; since the main output and input levels for the system are accessed more frequently, the alert volume control was moved out of the top-level panel. It's now possible to disable sound alerts altogether; a window has also been added that allows users to choose from available sounds for the alert if they choose to enable it.
GNOME has also included "videos which demonstrate the different
available options
" below the "scroll direction" setting. The
videos are aimed at making it easier to understand how changing
the setting
between "Traditional" and "Natural" affect the behavior of the mouse and
touchpad. Furthermore, there are other improvements in the mouse and
touchpad settings, such as an option that allows adjusting the mouse
acceleration, which was previously only available in GNOME Tweaks.
This release includes several bug fixes. For example, one resolved the problem with a disappearing screencast button. According to the bug report on the GNOME GitLab repository, the screencast button used to disappear due to an issue that was caused by some Gstreamer multimedia plugins that would block until the display server was available. A check was moved into the D-Bus service, but that could cause the service to delay its initialization too long, which led GNOME to mistakenly believe that screencasting is not supported, and therefore hide the screencast button from the user interface.
These aren't the only improvements GNOME has made. Its release notes indicate a host of other minor enhancements and bug fixes, as well as the addition of ten new applications to GNOME Circle, which is a collection of third-party applications that are developed as part of the GNOME project. The new applications include the Zap sound-effects tool, Emblem avatar generator, Komikku manga reader, Chess Clock for in-person games, and the Lorem placeholder-text generator.
Needed features
Even with all that version 44 brings, there is always more to be done, as with every other project out there. For example, there is Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support, which is a display technology that allows the monitor's refresh rate to synchronize with the output of the graphics card, resulting in smoother visuals and reduced tearing and stuttering in fast-paced games or videos. "JuggernautNew2111" voiced their disappointment at this during a Reddit discussion, saying:
I have a Freesync monitor and have been living without it because of this lack of support. There is an AUR [Arch User Repository] package that provides this feature, but personally I opted not to use it after seeing the dependency issues it caused during the 43 upgrade. Personally I prefer to wait until upstream GNOME implements it.
Unfortunately, due to the amount of work needed and its technical complexity, VRR support should not be expected any time soon, as pointed out by "Just_Maintenance":
I'm sorry but VRR is extremely unlikely to come to GNOME in the near future. There is a "90% there" merge request, but that last 10% is always the hardest part. And for such a fundamental change as "when to show frames", there needs to be a huge amount of testing and ensuring that it doesn't collide with anything.
Conclusion
GNOME 44 brings a variety of new features and improvements to the popular Linux desktop environment—as well as some important bug fixes. While this was not a blockbuster release, it addressed important pain points for users and brought more stability to the desktop. Looking forward, GNOME 45 is scheduled to release on September 20. Though specifics on what to expect for version 45 are hard to come by, users who are interested in its development can have a look at the official draft schedule released by GNOME.
| Index entries for this article | |
|---|---|
| GuestArticles | Moodley, Bradley |
Posted Apr 20, 2023 22:49 UTC (Thu)
by atnot (subscriber, #124910)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Apr 20, 2023 23:34 UTC (Thu)
by lucaswerkmeister (subscriber, #126654)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Apr 21, 2023 0:27 UTC (Fri)
by josh (subscriber, #17465)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 21, 2023 4:05 UTC (Fri)
by buck (subscriber, #55985)
[Link]
Posted Apr 22, 2023 2:14 UTC (Sat)
by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
[Link] (1 responses)
The author had poor control of the cumulative effect of so many negative quotes. In modern defamation-wary writing that's often a clue about the writer's unstatable opinion. Having done it once and seen the effect I'm sure the author will understand better when to use it.
Using usernames has a subtext -- this is one person whinging on the internet, or one person commenting without the authority of the project they are supporting. Following up with the person to ask their name, their role in the project, and some notion of their experience would add more weight to the quotes. It's LWN house style to use names, and it serves authors well.
The large number of quotes and the lack of their interpretation is probably because the people are guest authors, and inexperience makes them reluctant to have an authorial voice in their work. We'll likely see more of this writing, as modern schooling pushes authors into too-extensive sourcing of their material at the cost of space for interpretation. So let's be kind as people learn newsmagazine writing, a type of text distinct from the school essays, business reports or technical writing which is the experience of most of us.
Posted Apr 22, 2023 8:39 UTC (Sat)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
And in modern "balanced reporting" the result is often sub-par as well. Your description of the author implies he could easily fall into the balanced reporting trap too.
The linux raid writing guidelines (that I wrote) say "Use the first person" (third person, today's encouraged style, claims authoritativeness without responsilbility). "It's fine to state your opinion provided the reader knows it's your opinion" - as Einstein said, reality depends on the observer's viewpoint. Separate Truth from Fact. That events A and B happened are facts. That A happened before B or B before A are truths that depend on your viewpoint. LET THE READER DECIDE.
Cheers,
Posted Apr 21, 2023 5:11 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 24, 2023 0:52 UTC (Mon)
by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404)
[Link]
Maybe Brad is an anagram for Bard (of the LLM kind) .. :P
Posted Apr 21, 2023 11:43 UTC (Fri)
by hadess (subscriber, #24252)
[Link]
I didn't particularly enjoy it either, having worked on the backend for one of the features mentioned (the Bluetooth Quick Settings), and with the exact problem "rcarmo" mentions also having a design done, a bug assigned, and the backend code written. I would have expected the author of the article to mention that. The comment about Variable Refresh Rate support is also quite bizarre, coming from someone who probably doesn't have any deep knowledge of the subject matter, but making authoritative comments on the future of the feature.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 12:29 UTC (Fri)
by xecycle (subscriber, #140261)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Apr 21, 2023 13:32 UTC (Fri)
by jake (editor, #205)
[Link]
thanks,
jake
Posted Apr 21, 2023 15:51 UTC (Fri)
by atnot (subscriber, #124910)
[Link]
Yes, I think this is very true. Quotations can be great, but they do always bring their own style, structure and motives that can clash with the authors. This is probably especially true of internet forum commenters, who are generally more concerned with lobbying for someone to fix their favorite nits than high quality writing. I think reproducing those comments verbatim* is always going to risk the article becoming more corrosive than intended.
* as opposed to something like "[the panel was redesigned], however users who find it too easy to accidentally deactivate bluetooth while using a bluetooth mouse will have to wait a little longer [link to comment]" that paraphrases the lobbying into a more compact factual statement about the release?
Posted Apr 27, 2023 14:25 UTC (Thu)
by sam.thursfield (subscriber, #94496)
[Link]
Posted Apr 20, 2023 23:36 UTC (Thu)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (15 responses)
KDE fails just as hard on this front: I heard from a friend the other day who discovered it had defaulted to 30Hz with no warning.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 0:27 UTC (Fri)
by koh (subscriber, #101482)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Apr 21, 2023 0:55 UTC (Fri)
by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
[Link] (5 responses)
A system tray notification that some hardware settings are possibly suboptimal is a conceivable solution, right?
Posted Apr 21, 2023 7:34 UTC (Fri)
by koh (subscriber, #101482)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Apr 21, 2023 7:41 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (3 responses)
But with today's screens, the refresh rate doesn't make a difference to the image shown. It just updates more slowly -- but there are lots of things that could cause that. If you're reading an LWN article on your screen it makes no difference whether the refresh rate is 240Hz or 10Hz. "Smooth scrolling" wouldn't be as smooth at the lower refresh, but that hardly matters, unless you are trying to read the text at the same time it scrolls. (Personally I prefer to turn off smooth scrolling anyway.)
If you're using a remote desktop connection (and sadly, in modern times, remote graphical terminals send pixels over the wire, rather than the higher-level drawing commands we used to have with X11) then you'll also see a latency imposed on any update. Again, it's annoying, but I can't consider it a health hazard.
For a while I used a screen with a refresh rate of only 13Hz. (It was an IBM T221, which required up to four DVI connections to drive at its top refresh rate of 41Hz. My laptop had only a single DVI output.) Again, I wouldn't play games on it, but for running Emacs fullscreen and occasional web browsing it was fine.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 8:52 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (2 responses)
Probably not a problem for you if you do keyboard-only, but I like my input options.
Given that the hardware supports 60 Hz just fine, dropping into 30 Hz without recourse is quite infuriating in 2023, on 2020 hardware.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 10:37 UTC (Fri)
by epa (subscriber, #39769)
[Link] (1 responses)
Anyway, I agree that a lower refresh rate is annoying and may be unusable for some applications (like gaming, or editing video), but I would not call it dangerous to health.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 11:14 UTC (Fri)
by koh (subscriber, #101482)
[Link]
Many thanks, I was already afraid that the absurdity of the hyperbole in flussence's initial post would go unnoticed.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 12:13 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link]
Posted Apr 21, 2023 16:29 UTC (Fri)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 22, 2023 9:09 UTC (Sat)
by jak90 (subscriber, #123821)
[Link]
Posted Apr 21, 2023 11:28 UTC (Fri)
by jem (subscriber, #24231)
[Link] (4 responses)
Is this on a laptop's internal display, or an external display? The whole chain from the GPU to the display must support 60 Hz. 4k/60Hz requires a cable built for that. Cheap docking stations typically do not support 4k/60Hz, even in the year 2023.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 11:44 UTC (Fri)
by jafd (subscriber, #129642)
[Link] (1 responses)
Now with Wayland being almost mainstreamable (zoom is funky but essential for many, synergy is quite essential for the few including me), the responsibility for the whole graphics stack working is smeared in a thin layer between the kernel, mesa, compositor, and should you have any problems, you're bound to be on a wild goose chase while component maintainers keep punting you around. Just like with the font rendering stack (is it freetype? is it graphite? is it harfbuzz? is it pango? maybe fribidi? is it the toolkit? is it DNS? I now keep forgetting what is what and why, and all the problems seem to keep happening in between), I wouldn't mind a measure of consolidation and someone actually owning the things.
Posted May 2, 2023 19:03 UTC (Tue)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
Dell monitors, at least (if not docking stations - never used a Dell dock), have a nasty habit of defaulting to DP 1.1 support only, unless you specifically configure them to support DP 1.2 - and you cannot do 4k60 in DP 1.1, as you have 14.54 bits per pixel, but the lowest DP 1.1 permits is YCbCr 4:2:2 at 16 bits per pixel (and DSC is not permitted on DP 1.1).
Posted May 1, 2023 18:43 UTC (Mon)
by bartoc (guest, #124262)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 2, 2023 19:10 UTC (Tue)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link]
This is also a common issue with cheap and nasty docking stations, which only support DP 1.1.
In theory, if you had a bad cable, you might have DP 1.2 (hence YCbCr 4:2:0) or DP 1.4 available (hence DSC), but still be limited to 8.64 Gbit/s (HBR, 4 lanes or HBR2, 2 lanes), rather than the 17.28 Gbit/s (HBR2, 4 lanes) that DP 1.2 permits, but that's not hugely likely; you're more likely to have a bad cable that can only do 5.184 Gbit/s (RBR, 4 lanes), at which point you're limited to 8 bits per pixel at 4k60, and thus even YCbCr 4:2:0 (12 bits per pixel) won't work - only DSC will, and even then only if both ends can do DisplayPort 1.4. If you're really unlucky, you only have 1 working lane, and can do 4.32 Gbit/s (HBR2, 1 lane), and need both 4k 30 and YCbCr 4:2:0 to get a 4k picture (because you only have 7.27 bits/pixel at 4k60).
In contrast, 4k30 is possible even on the really bad cable using either YCbCr 4:2:2 or DSC. It's also possible on a good cable doing DP1.1 limits because a device in the chain is DP 1.1 only (by design or configuration). Thus, falling back to 4k30 is a good choice if your setup doesn't do 4k60 RGB 8:8:8 - the only time you could do 4k60 with fewer bits per pixel is if you've lost 1 or 2 lanes in the cable, or if you've got a cable that's good enough to handle HBR but not HBR2 (which is exceptionally rare). For the other cases (DP1.1 device in the chain, RBR only, 3 lanes faulty of the 4 in the cable), you need 4k30 anyway - and since the only way you could do 4k60 with bad cabling, as opposed to a bad device, is when you have a faulty cable that no longer meets specs, it's probably better to fall back to 4k30 than to try and handle the edge case of a DP 1.4 or later display and video card with a cable that has lost 3 lanes due to a fault, or a cable that's on the edge of electrical stability, and can't quite handle HBR2, but can handle HBR.
Posted Apr 21, 2023 7:34 UTC (Fri)
by evad (subscriber, #60553)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Apr 21, 2023 8:50 UTC (Fri)
by Fowl (subscriber, #65667)
[Link]
Posted Apr 25, 2023 14:13 UTC (Tue)
by passthejoe (guest, #156034)
[Link]
Image preview for uploads should be table stakes in a GUI desktop, and I'm glad that is stated here.
It looks like Bluetooth is getting better. I'm not on GNOME 44, so I can't test it, but can you toggle individual Bluetooth devices from the Quick Settings menu? If so, that's a nice improvement.
Looking at the bigger picture, I think we all complain because we are users of this software. If we didn't rely on it, we wouldn't know what's lacking in our individual workflows. I get a lot of work done in GNOME, I think it looks great and performs very well, and I appreciate all that goes into it.
I would like to see a response from the GNOME project -- that would complete the article for me.
Posted Apr 27, 2023 14:31 UTC (Thu)
by sam.thursfield (subscriber, #94496)
[Link]
Perhaps they'd be happier if given with some background on why the feature took a long time to implement. https://blog.gtk.org/2022/12/15/a-grid-for-the-file-chooser/ gives an insight - the new data model widgets in GTK4 allow implementing this with way less code than would have been needed with older versions of GTK. Something to be happy about in my opinion.
Posted May 1, 2023 18:49 UTC (Mon)
by bartoc (guest, #124262)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 30, 2023 7:33 UTC (Tue)
by daenzer (subscriber, #7050)
[Link]
Posted May 4, 2023 8:11 UTC (Thu)
by highvoltage (subscriber, #57465)
[Link]
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
Wol
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44
GNOME releases version 44