GNOME 41 - The first step towards a GNOME Platform?

now wait a minute is gnome software good now hey guys this is nick and gnome 41 is now out or should be in a very short amount of time and while it doesn't change as many things as gnome 40 did there's still a lot of stuff to talk about especially if you consider that the steps gnome are taking are probably here to make sure that gnome is a platform and not just a desktop environment so stick around to the end to know my thoughts about this just like you should stick around for today's sponsor so lenode is a fantastic way to get your own linux server up and running it was rated the easiest cloud provider to use on g2 and it has been voted top infrastructure as a service provider by g2 and trust radius linode offers a ton of one-click deployable servers like owncas for example which lets you run your own twitch-like streaming service complete with video broadcast and chat or apache guacamole what's that you ask well guacamole is a fantastic way to get your own linux desktop in the cloud that you can access from anywhere you want and basically you can host that on linux and get to any other computer and get access to that linux desktop it's pretty amazing if you're more into gaming you can also deploy your own valheim or minecraft server in one click playnote has a ton of these one-click deployable apps i use linux to run my own next cloud server which i use to run this whole channel so i can't recommend them enough especially since you can now create your account easily using google or github and in the future if you don't have a credit card you'll be able to sign up using google pay as well so that's one less barrier to get started so if you want to get a free 100 credit to start your own linux server well head over to the link in the description below and click it okay so the first big new thing is the gnome software center gnome software it has been completely redesigned and it looks pretty good it's got a whole new look and interface and the home page has been vastly improved with big colorful headers for featured apps a list of categories with some nice artwork and some editors picks to showcase specific applications it definitely doesn't remind me of any other app store out there especially not the elementary os app center nothing in common here software is now more adaptive and it should look better when resized to small width the application detail pages also have received a lot of love there is a lot more info presented in a much more user-friendly way with big tiles you'll find the download size and a safety level determined by which permissions the app can access although a lot of apps that aren't flat pack will be showed as potentially unsafe since software can't know which permissions they require you will also get a tile to let you know on which devices the app will work well including desktop mobile or tablets and an age rating the version history is better laid out and you get some nice info about the app's license and open source thetas which is really nice finally you also get some links to the project's websites translations bug tracker help or even donations and the user reviews at the bottom oh and you also get a lot more space for these screenshots now is a great time for app developers to update those old screenshots that they made 10 years ago about their application and i think it's going to take a little bit of time before app pages really start to shine and showcase nice screenshots good metadata the developers are gonna have to take the time to do it but i think gnome software 41 is a step in the right direction users want to use apps on their systems and the software store is where you download them it needs to be nice it needs to look good it needs to be enticing and present the apps in a user-friendly way which gnome software 41 really does and i hope other software stores like discover or the elementor os app center can take a hint on these application details pages okay let's move on to the desktop side of things and the layout itself hasn't changed much since gnome 40. you still get the horizontal workspaces which i really like the dock on the bottom and the app grid you now get a lot more options to change how this layout works though as the work to port gnome tweaks settings into the main settings app continues you'll find a new multitasking settings panel with a bunch of options the first one is the ability to disable the hot corner for the activities view you can also disable the tiling of windows when moving them to a screen edge useful for multi-monitor setups when you just want to whip windows between displays workspaces can also be configured to be dynamic as in a new workspace is created each time the previous one has something in it or with a fixed number that you can define you also get to choose if your workspaces span all of your displays or are limited to your primary display with secondary monitors having their own unique workspace that's another welcome improvement for multi-monitor users finally you can decide to display apps from all workspaces when using alt plus tab or only count those from the current virtual desktop all these settings are really welcome although some might argue that these should have been there from the beginning since gnome 40. on laptops and devices with the battery you also get power profiles directly from the main system menu by default the system is unbalanced but you can manually go into a power saver mode that you can also trigger automatically when your battery gets low you can disable that behavior in the power settings if you don't like it now something that is interesting to note is that specific applications can request specific power profiles which means that for example a game can bypass the power saver setting to get access to the most cpu power the most ram and use as much power as it wants in terms of settings you will also get the ability to disable animations in the accessibility settings if you don't like stuff moving around in the mouse settings to test the parameters you've set you also get a new test panel with a graphical illustration that's really cute even though it doesn't bring any functional advantage at all you also get a cellular panel which i can demo because i don't have any device capable of running gnome and that has access to a sim tray or cellular data on the performance side of things there's also been some code cleanup on mutter the compositor slash window manager which should be faster and more responsive animations when moving from one workspace to another should now be more seamless and multi-touch gestures should now be easier to pull off input latency has also been improved which should be more noticeable on low refresh rates displays finally gnome 41 is the first version to differentiate gtk from lib advaita libervita is the successor to lib handy and it also includes all the visual elements of the gnome desktop and the advisor theme now it's also a first step to try and limit the theming capabilities of gnome but that's a topic for another day and that's a pretty complex issue now in terms of the default apps gnome calendar has received the ability to open dot ics files and import their content to any of the already existing calendars this means that you can finally set it up as your default calendar application clicking on an event also shows a new event popover nautilus the file manager now displays some information in the trash folder to let you know if your items will be deleted after a certain period of time a settings button will let you go and change that behavior it also now can compress archives into zip and password protected zip formats seriously i had not realized that it couldn't do that before that's completely insane there's also a brand new application for handling remote desktops called connections it can handle rdp and vnc and connect to windows mac or linux hosts gnome disks can now create encrypted partitions with lux 2 and get file system ownership on any partition although this could lead to some issues if you apply it recursively to all files and folders you know maps lost its facebook integration that lets you do facebook check-ins i don't think anyone ever used that one and it gained the ability to tell you if a restaurant does take away when the data is available gnome music gained a new giant play pass button in the control bar gnome web can now keep your pinned tabs between sessions and better supports dark mode on websites and gnome calculator has been redesigned with colored buttons for the equal sign and the clear button now some people would argue that gnome 40 completely changed how gnome worked and i disagree with that gnome 40 basically didn't change gnome's workflow at all and no 41 doesn't either it's a refinement update and its real major focus point is making sure that users can get applications in a better way and that these apps are showcased a lot better now it all goes towards the focus that gnome seems to have lately which is on application developers they are architecturing gdk and gnome with libervita in a certain way to make sure that app developers have a consistent platform that they can deliver their apps with without being bothered by issues and reports that have nothing to do with the app itself that software update is just a step in that direction just as is lib adviter they are trying to make sure that app developers feel safe coding for the gnome platform and that they won't waste time with user reports that are linked to the themes to the appearance of the app and so they can just focus on features and real bug fixes now the big graphical redesign of advaita isn't there yet it might be coming for gnome 42 but it serves the same purpose if you're going to try and enforce a platform a look and feel against which app developers can compile their applications basically apps will target advisor specifically and might not respect any other theme that you added if you have that one theme that you want to push you need to make sure that it looks as good as possible and current advice in my opinion isn't there but their new release might very well be now whether this approach and focus on app developers is the right one i can't tell i'm all for having a strong platform that developers can target and so they can be sure that their application will look the way they want will work the way they want and that the only bug reports and issues they get are linked to the app itself and not to the configuration that the user has on their desktop or laptop or device but at the same time the construction of this gnome platform seems to be coming at the expense of customization at least visual customization and theming and i'm not so sure that's a trade-off i would be willing to make or that users and distributions would be willing to make either and it might just lead to a mass exodus of users and distros not willing to bet on gnome as the default i'll have a dedicated video on this topic next month but in the meantime if you like gnome if you use gnome there is basically no reason to not upgrade to gnome 41 it's smoother it's faster apps are better there's more tweaks and options basically yeah click that update button if your distro offers it this video was made possible by slimbook and by now you probably all know about slimboard all i can say is i only use their desktops their laptops they ship devices with any keyboard layout pretty much worldwide and they have linux print installed on them i only use their stuff i left a link in the description below if you need a new linux device just click it so thank you guys for watching the video i hope you enjoyed if you did don't hesitate to like and subscribe and turn on notifications and if you didn't like it you can also dislike and tell me why in the comments if you want to help support this channel you can also join my patreon subscribers and youtube members you'll get access to a weekly patreon cast and the right to vote on the next topics i'll cover so thank you guys for watching and i'll see you in the next one bye [Music] foreign

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 94,600

Keywords: linux, elementary os, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux 2021, linux tutorial, GNOME 41, GNOME Software 41, GNOME 41 ubuntu, GNOME 41 Fedora, GNOME 41 Manjaro, GNOME 41 Arch, GNOME 41 SUSE, GNOME 41 release, GNOME 41 review, GNOME 41 update, GNOME 41 features, GNOME 41 shell, GNOME 41 libadwaita, GNOME software, GNOME software center, GNOME app store, GNOME redesign, Adwaita redesign, GNOME new look, GNOME button theme, GNOME theme

Id: qCeVAqj97DQ

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021