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The GNOME desktop environment levels up in a big way with the GNOME 3.36 "Gresik" release with some massive improvements all over and it's looking awesome.

Another six months of development went into this release and it includes many improvements, performance enhancements, and new features. One such improvement I'm quite happy to see is for NVIDIA users: if you have NVIDIA with Optimus, GNOME now includes an option to launch something with your dedicated GPU which is incredibly handy too.

Some other highlights:

  • A dedicated GNOME Extensions application
  • A 'Do Not Disturb' mode
  • The Lock and Login screens have been merged to flow better
  • GNOME Shell itself had plenty of improvements like App Folders in the Overview being able to be renamed.
  • System dialogues that take a password have a little eye icon, to reveal your entered text for accessibility
  • Initial Setup assistant now lets you adjust some parental controls
  • Plus loads more!

One thing Linux has needed for a while is some good advertisement and it has been happening more recently. With that in mind, the GNOME team worked with Chris Rogers of Freehive to produce a really well done video covering the release:

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How to get it? Well, that depends on your choice of Linux Distribution. Now it's out, they can all work to package it up for their next releases (Ubuntu and others) or into their next set of rolling updates (Arch/Manjaro).

Full release notes for GNOME 3.36 can be found here.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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wvstolzing Mar 12, 2020
How does the 'do not disturb' mode work though? I presume it uninstalls GNOME altogether?
lqe5433 Mar 12, 2020
If you have Intel with AMD dGPU then how do you select your AMD gpu?
Samsai Mar 12, 2020
Quoting: lqe5433If you have Intel with AMD dGPU then how do you select your AMD gpu?
Seems to work the same way as with Nvidia. You just need to have the switcheroo-control service running and then you can right-click an application from Activities and click "Launch with Dedicated Graphics". All it seemingly does is set the DRI_PRIME environment variable.
Creak Mar 12, 2020
As a GNOME user for *a lot* of years now, I'm very happy to see these improvements! GNOME is really getting better and better. YMMV, but from what I've seen, most of the time, people disliking GNOME tries to use it with the same Windows paradigms in mind (all the apps must be visible on the desktop in a taskbar, using the mouse a lot, prefer a menu of apps instead of using the global search).

At some point in my career, I had to use OSX and, though I hate Apple for a lot of things, their UX is very often on point. And this is especially true for Spotlight: one shortcut to pop it (Cmd+Space) and search EVERYTHING from here. As you get used to it, you could almost don't care where you put your files (I can't though.. it disturbs my OCDs ;)).

GNOME simplifies that even more: hit the Win key, and start searching. Apps are sorted by most recently used, so if you hit <Win> then "f", you'll get firefox. It's become such a habit that I don't even wait for the animations to finish, it take literally less than half a second to launch an app, how awesome is that?


Last edited by Creak on 31 March 2020 at 12:22 pm UTC
tmtvl Mar 12, 2020
And so GNOME is ever inching closer to feature parity with KDE. Maybe they'll get there sometime this side of 5-digit years.
kalin Mar 12, 2020
basically nothing
slaapliedje Mar 12, 2020
For what it's worth, the 'Launch with dedicated graphics card' has been there for years, you just had to set up the bumblebee or primus or whatever the hell it has been called in the past.
I think it just works more out of the box now due to nvidia have more 'native' support for it with their PRIME stuff.
slaapliedje Mar 12, 2020
Quoting: tmtvlAnd so GNOME is ever inching closer to feature parity with KDE. Maybe they'll get there sometime this side of 5-digit years.
God, I hope not. KDE's interface needs some serious streamlining.
Too bad we don't have something more in the middle, instead we have KDE with an overabundance of options, and Gnome that stripped them all out and then started adding them back in.
KDE still hasn't fixed their email client either so it can properly work with Office365/Exchange.
const Mar 12, 2020
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: tmtvlAnd so GNOME is ever inching closer to feature parity with KDE. Maybe they'll get there sometime this side of 5-digit years.
God, I hope not. KDE's interface needs some serious streamlining.
Too bad we don't have something more in the middle, instead we have KDE with an overabundance of options, and Gnome that stripped them all out and then started adding them back in.
KDE still hasn't fixed their email client either so it can properly work with Office365/Exchange.

And this is a gnome release, so the real question is: Which features did they remove? :D

Personally, I use gnome just for the gnome shell. The window overlay when pressing the "super" button has become second nature for me. Gnomes productivity applications on the other side are just not made for me. So I frankenstein my system with Thunar, Firefox and quite a lot of other applications that are :)
My main wish for Gnome would be to remove Evolution from their dependencies and replace it with interfaces, so one can plug in the calendar/mail of choice.

Haven't tried KDE for years. The problem with KDE for me has always been that the options/application preferences were never where I expected them to be .
Options I want to switch regularly were usually in a separate wizard dialogue while basic personal taste preferences that I only need to adjust once were accessible directly in the toolbar. Also, there are lots of GTK applications I couldn't find adequate alternatives for and using KDE with 90% GTK applications is kind of meh.


Last edited by const on 12 March 2020 at 3:41 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Mar 12, 2020
Quoting: CreakAs a GNOME user for *a lot* of years now, I'm very happy to see these improvements! GNOME is really getting better and better. YMMV, but from what I've seen, most of the time, people disliking GNOME tries to use it with the same Windows paradigms in mind (all the apps must be visible on the desktop in a taskbar, using the mouse a lot, prefer a menu of apps instead of using the global search).

At some point in my career, I had to use OSX and, though I hate Apple for a lot of things, their UX is very often on point. And this is especially true for Spotlight: one shortcut to pop it (Cmd+Space) and search EVERYTHING from here. As you get used to it, you could almost don't care where you put your files (I can't though.. it disturbs my OCDs ;)).

GNOME simplifies that even more: hit then Win key, and start searching. Apps are sorted by most recently used, so if you hit <Win> then "f", you'll get firefox. It's become such a habit that I don't even wait for the animations to finish, it take literally less than half a second to launch an app, how awesome is that?
The search stuff is fine for things whose name you remember. But, the stuff whose name I remember I mostly don't start from the menu, I start from a launcher--either a launcher I stuck on a taskbar or a launcher I leave sitting on the screen somewhere (In my case, perennial applications like browser and word processing go on taskbar, games, whose launcher I will be stuffing in a folder after I finish playing them, go on the screen). Point is, I'm used to launchers, which let me start my habitual stuff with one click. Search can't match that speed and simplicity. So I dropped Gnome 3 when it first came along because it didn't at the time support that kind of thing, and this was apparently deliberate UI policy so I didn't expect them to come along soon. Maybe they have 'em now, I dunno.

But for the other use case, things I only use now and then, I often don't remember exactly what they are, so I want a menu that will let me browse categories and look at titles and say "Yeah, that looks like it might do what I want." Search can't do that for me either. So for both of my major use cases, search is not a good way to access applications. For habitual applications it's slightly slower, and for non-habitual applications it just doesn't work. Other people's mileage may vary. Early Gnome 3 -- and I did try it for a while, before I heard about Mint, Cinnamon and Mate -- also was annoying in that I found myself accidentally activating those hotspot things all the time. I think that's probably long gone, but hey--I like Mate, so I don't really have a motivation to find out.

In general, I get the impression that Gnome 3 isn't bad if you install a whole bunch of tweaks designed to completely counteract the designers' UI intentions . . . but again, I like Mate without doing that, so.
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