#FreeSoftware, #LogicielLibre, #Linux, #Gnome

When it comes to Linux, the desktop environment is a big deal. A desktop environment makes up the graphical user interface (GUI) along with a set of applications that you get on your Linux distribution.

Choosing a good desktop environment can help you improve productivity, workflow, ease of use, and the overall experience. And, among the best desktop environments, KDE and GNOME are particularly popular.

Most mainstream distros offer a choice of different desktop environments to pick from (whether officially or from communities).

See https://itsfoss.com/kde-vs-gnome/

#technology #linux #gnome #kde

It turns out a college student frustrated by the limited customization options available on the latest Ubuntu Linux releases, and inspired by the settings offered by Linux hardware vendor System76 in their Ubuntu-based Pop!_OS Linux distribution, created an alternate version of the Ubuntu/GNOME settings app with new features.

He managed to modify GNOME Control Center and add in a new panel called Personalize, which includes four new pages that allow you to take full control over your Ubuntu Desktop. These include General, Appearance, Dock, and Multitasking.

See https://9to5linux.com/what-if-you-could-fully-customize-your-ubuntu-desktop-experience

#technology #opensource #linux #ubuntu #gnome

The GNOME team has announced that with GNOME Shell 42 that will release in 2022, things are going to get better for mouse input which is a nice win for gamers.

Starting with a brief background they said "Traditionally, GNOME Shell has been compressing pointer motion events so its handling is synchronized to the monitor refresh rate, this means applications would typically see approximately 60 events per second (or 144 if you follow the trends).". Not a shortcut the team say, as it was needed to know where to send you input, something apparently expensive on resources and so " it made sense to do with the lowest frequency possible".

Many applications want it different like drawing apps using a brush and "velocity/direction/acceleration calculations" plus games "that render more often than the frame rate (e.g. games with vsync off)".

What's different now then? Well, input events are now sent at the actual device rate which has a huge amount of variation between cheap devices, laptop touchpads, tablets and high-end gaming mice. The result for gamers, they say, should result in "less janky" input.

Something that took a long time to fully implement, which the GNOME team said was due to inputs ending up getting queued up if an application is not reading events in time. Eventually the queue would run out of space and the compositor would shut things down. The fix added works around this but they say it's still temporary with a better solution being proposed for Wayland.

For gamers, artists and anyone else who wants seriously precise inputs - this is a nice win for those using Wayland. It should result in lower input latency, and we don't have to tell you why that's great. Looks like 2022 is going to be good for Linux gamers using GNOME and Wayland.

See more in their blog post .

Another 6 months of development later and GNOME 41 is out with plenty of enhancements for GNOME desktop fans.

"The most notable changes this in release include an improved Software app, new multitasking settings, and enhanced power management features. With these changes, GNOME is smarter, more flexible, and offers a richer and more engaging experience than ever before." - GNOME Team

You will find new selectable power modes between Balanced (the default), Performance and Power Save which can be easily changed using the System Status menu. Meanwhile GNOME Software went through a small overhaul and they say almost every part of it has been improved. Performance is another key point and focus, with many efficiency improvements making it in so it will all feel more responsive (on Wayland). There's also improvements for multitouch, GTK 4 has a new OpenGL renderer which "provides faster rendering and reduced power consumption" and the window manager Mutter got cleaned up for "long-term maintainability and efficiency"

Watch video on YouTube.com

The new Multitasking settings panel sounds pretty good too, allowing you to fine-tune your experience so you can do things like disabling the Activities overlay hot-corner, you can disable Active Screen Edges (where you drag a window to a side to resize it) and more like being able to show workspaces on all displays instead of just the primary.

Some of the other improvements including:

• The ability to create encrypted .zip archives in Files (these require a password to be opened).
• A new Calendar feature that allows importing events from .ics files.
• Improved support for dark mode in Web, along with faster pinch to zoom (on heavy websites), and better handling of unresponsive websites.
• Better window resizing in Calculator: enlarging the window will now reveal additional controls, and the window will also shrink down to fit on mobile displays.

Check out the full release notes .

GNOME continue building up their ecosystem and their marketing game too with the launch of a new " Apps for GNOME " website to help people get involved and discover more.

Worth reminding people that GNOME is much more than just a desktop environment. The GNOME project covers a lot from toolkits for building applications, the desktop environment, window manager, low-level system stuff and much more. There's also the GNOME Foundation, which has an aim to get GNOME stuff out there into the world and support the whole thing.

Apps for GNOME is designed to show off their "Core Apps", which are those usually pre-installed with Linux distributions using GNOME and are created directly by the GNOME team. There's also the "Circle Apps" which is basically a showcase of applications built with GNOME tech and then there's the "Development Apps" for people who want to get involved directly by making their own applications.

Apps featured in this curated overview are all built with the GNOME philosophy in mind. They are easy to understand and simple to use, feature a consistent and polished design and provide a noticeable attention to details. Naturally, they are free software and have committed to being part of a welcoming and friendly community . These apps will perfectly integrate with your GNOME Desktop . — apps.gnome.org

Writing in the announcement blog post developer Sophie Herold goes over the main points of the website which include a focus on getting people involved, internationalization to lower barriers, up to date information for each application provided by metadata (the same data used by GNOME Software and Flathub) and to also feature applications you won't find on the likes of Flathub (like Files). They're hoping to continue extending the website to cover more in future.

Značky: #nvidia, #Linux, #gnome, #manjaro