Exploring GNOME-Based UIs For Mobile Linux Devices (liliputing.com) 38
"The GNOME desktop environment is one of the most popular user interfaces and suites of apps available for desktop Linux distributions," writes Liliputing.
"Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems." GNOME Shell for mobile provides a touch-friendly user interface optimized for smartphones and tablets. And while it looks a bit like Android or iOS at first glance, there are a few key differences. The GNOME team have outlined some of them in an article about recent updates to GNOME Shell on mobile.
Like other modern mobile user interfaces, you interact with GNOME shell using taps, swipes, and other gesture-based navigation. What's different is that Android has three different views for navigation: a home screen, app drawer, and multitasking view. iOS has two: home screen and multitasking. But GNOME Shell has a single screen that allows you to view and launch apps and switch between running apps using gestures. There's no need to wait for a new screen to load. In a nutshell, you can swipe up from the bottom of the any screen to view a list of installed apps, thumbnail images showing all currently running apps, and a search box. You can tap an app icon to launch a new app, enter a term in the search box to find an app, or swipe between running apps to switch which app runs in the foreground.
You can also keep swiping upward to shrink the multitasking thumbnails and provide more room for app icons. And you can flick thumbnail previews upward to remove an app from the multitasking section. Typing in the search box will bring up relevant results including apps and settings.
"One interesting new feature here is that notifications can be swiped away horizontally to close, and notification bubbles can be swiped up to hide them..." the developers point out. "While the current version is definitely still work in progress, it's quite usable overall, so we feel it would make sense to start having experimental GNOME OS Nightly images with it."
But Liliputing also notes that it's not the only GNOME-based UI for mobile devices. There's also Purism's Phosh UI — the default UI for the PureOS on its Librem 5 smartphone (and available for other mobile Linux distros including Debian).
And Purism recently bragged that its smartphone is now also "the first mobile computer with a truly convergent OS" — meaning it can run on multiple hardware platforms, with apps adapting to their hardware. The Librem 5 [smartphone] uses the same convergent PureOS as our Librem 14 laptop and Mini PCs, with the same adaptive applications that make the Librem 5 more than merely a phone, it's a mobile computer in your pocket that can shape shift into a laptop, tablet, desktop, or even a server.... Scale your Librem 5 up to be a full laptop by attaching the Nexdock. Because our core apps are adaptive, they are ready to run on whatever screen you have....
With phosh-mobile-settings installed, you can flip the nexdock around and use the big screen just like a tablet.... Don't have a laptop dock? The Librem 5 can also act like a desktop computer when connected to a screen, keyboard, and mouse using our USB-C dock. Using the beta phom virtual mouse app, you can turn your Librem 5 into a touchpad mouse while it's connected to the big screen.
With the Librem 5, you can keep your desktop computer in your pocket and connect to a bigger screen at home or at the office and use the same apps on the bigger screen without restarting....
With the Librem 5 phone, you're getting much more than smartphone to run mobile-only apps; you're getting a laptop, tablet, desktop, all running software that respects your privacy and freedom.
"Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems." GNOME Shell for mobile provides a touch-friendly user interface optimized for smartphones and tablets. And while it looks a bit like Android or iOS at first glance, there are a few key differences. The GNOME team have outlined some of them in an article about recent updates to GNOME Shell on mobile.
Like other modern mobile user interfaces, you interact with GNOME shell using taps, swipes, and other gesture-based navigation. What's different is that Android has three different views for navigation: a home screen, app drawer, and multitasking view. iOS has two: home screen and multitasking. But GNOME Shell has a single screen that allows you to view and launch apps and switch between running apps using gestures. There's no need to wait for a new screen to load. In a nutshell, you can swipe up from the bottom of the any screen to view a list of installed apps, thumbnail images showing all currently running apps, and a search box. You can tap an app icon to launch a new app, enter a term in the search box to find an app, or swipe between running apps to switch which app runs in the foreground.
You can also keep swiping upward to shrink the multitasking thumbnails and provide more room for app icons. And you can flick thumbnail previews upward to remove an app from the multitasking section. Typing in the search box will bring up relevant results including apps and settings.
"One interesting new feature here is that notifications can be swiped away horizontally to close, and notification bubbles can be swiped up to hide them..." the developers point out. "While the current version is definitely still work in progress, it's quite usable overall, so we feel it would make sense to start having experimental GNOME OS Nightly images with it."
But Liliputing also notes that it's not the only GNOME-based UI for mobile devices. There's also Purism's Phosh UI — the default UI for the PureOS on its Librem 5 smartphone (and available for other mobile Linux distros including Debian).
And Purism recently bragged that its smartphone is now also "the first mobile computer with a truly convergent OS" — meaning it can run on multiple hardware platforms, with apps adapting to their hardware. The Librem 5 [smartphone] uses the same convergent PureOS as our Librem 14 laptop and Mini PCs, with the same adaptive applications that make the Librem 5 more than merely a phone, it's a mobile computer in your pocket that can shape shift into a laptop, tablet, desktop, or even a server.... Scale your Librem 5 up to be a full laptop by attaching the Nexdock. Because our core apps are adaptive, they are ready to run on whatever screen you have....
With phosh-mobile-settings installed, you can flip the nexdock around and use the big screen just like a tablet.... Don't have a laptop dock? The Librem 5 can also act like a desktop computer when connected to a screen, keyboard, and mouse using our USB-C dock. Using the beta phom virtual mouse app, you can turn your Librem 5 into a touchpad mouse while it's connected to the big screen.
With the Librem 5, you can keep your desktop computer in your pocket and connect to a bigger screen at home or at the office and use the same apps on the bigger screen without restarting....
With the Librem 5 phone, you're getting much more than smartphone to run mobile-only apps; you're getting a laptop, tablet, desktop, all running software that respects your privacy and freedom.
RIP GPE (Score:3)
"Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems."
I used to have an iPaq running Familiar Linux with the GPE handheld version of GNOME... What happen?
Re: (Score:2)
It's finally the Year of Linux on the Phone-top!
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point, you can't trust that a handheld version of GNOME will continue to exist and be updated, because they already had one [gnome.org] (which worked nicely) and then abandoned it completely [wikipedia.org].
GNOME is just terrible, we should just let it die now rather than making new kinds of GNOME. What a waste of effort.
Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's where GNOME belongs; then please remove it from the desktop when you're done, where it doesn't.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Excellent! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why desktops are so hard to get right. The requirements seem to be fairly simple.
Launch apps and manage windows. Provide some common features like notifications and a place for apps running with no window to live.
The main difficulty these days is helping the user find the app they want. This is exacerbated by the fact that all descriptive names have been taken so now your web browser is called Arctic Sloth or something equally meaningless. The obvious solution is tags and a search engine
Re: (Score:2)
Minimize pain. (Score:1)
Most popular? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or just most 'included by default' in distributions that have a large audience?
Re: (Score:2)
Or just most 'included by default' in distributions that have a large audience?
Yes in the same way that Windows is the most popular desktop computer OS.
You know what GNOME is not suited for? (Score:3)
Yep, you've guessed it - desktop environments. At least not anymore, not since they introduced the mobile-like UI elements. One GUI to rule them all doesn't work. Have we learnt nothing from the Windows 8 disaster?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: You know what GNOME is not suited for? (Score:2)
Have you tried xfce? It is vastly superior once you know how to use it. Gnome is super sparse on features by comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
GNOME doesn't actually work that well on a touch-only device and it's clear that they don't even do regular testing on touch-only devices. I use it on a tablet (because it's the least awful touch-based DE I've found so far) and essential things like the onscreen keyboard are regularly broken for weeks to months at a time. The onscreen keyboard itself is a joke, with no useful keys like tab or the F-keys and no ability to customize without extensions. Vital components like the app menu unnecessarily truncate
Re: You know what GNOME is not suited for? (Score:2)
Mobile is where Gnome belongs now (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned Gnome gave up on making full-fledged desktop UIs a long time ago. They hate features that require thoughtful maintenance, which means rich features are out. And they hate vertical integration, which means powerful features (controlling new/interesting OS and hw capabilities) is also out. They also hate anything that is KDE-like (see their original mission statement, that's literally what their org is based on).
So I hate Gnome. Taadaa!
Re: (Score:2)
I second that. Gnome 3 and all releases after that are the worst thing that ever happened to the Linux community. Even after a decade of criticisme there still continue to impose an insanely wrong concept that nobody see as a so good idea that it wanted to copy. On the contrary this started a lot of projects against that wrong concept, notably XFCE that I recommend. Even if the default XFCE settings are ridiculous, it's very quick and easy to configure it like a normal powerful desktop.
Re: Mobile is where Gnome belongs now (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, thank for the complement. To me it's evident that the Debian decision to includes xfce as an alternative to Gnome 3 was a powerful boot for the project.
Re: Mobile is where Gnome belongs now (Score:2)
Gnome hates you too! And all of us!
I thought Gnome was already aimed at mobile device (Score:3)
I thought Gnome3 was already aimed at mobile devices, it sure isn't aimed at desktop computers. Gnome2 was a decent systems. So much so that I currently use Mate. I found Gnome3 to be essentially unusable. (It wasn't totally unusable, as I was able to use it to install KDE, but decided I preferred Mate.)
Re: (Score:1)
I thought Gnome3 was already aimed at mobile devices, it sure isn't aimed at desktop computers.
Yes, it's aimed at mobile devices rather than desktops. It still sucks on mobile devices.
Unity/Gnome 3 Trash Ruined the Linux Desktop (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Wouldn't it be easier just to switch to a different desktop with a rational/responsive development team?
Re: Unity/Gnome 3 Trash Ruined the Linux Desktop (Score:2)
Yeah, it's actually easy enough that most sensible people did just this.
Unfortunately, you're not going to have much luck voting out the leadership of the project given how much they're bankrolled by Big Linux. Look up who funds the GNOME developers. This is childish thinking, anyway, the stuff of rubes. "Just vote the bastards out!" Imagine being unable to grasp the interlocking complexities of the world.
What makes far less sense is why so many distributions bothered bending over backwards to accommodate t
Standard geek commenting strategy (Score:2, Interesting)
2. Say that that app, desktop, distro is the worst &/or not fit for purpose.
3. If the most standard app, desktop, distro that most people use changes, change comments accordingly, adding that things are definitely getting worse.
4. Sardonically declare that the current year is the year of the Linux desktop.
5. Feel smug.
This sounds like a terrible mistake. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Can you be more specific? Glib is a fantastic library. Parts of it should be in the C standard library such as data structures like hash tables, lists, and so forth. And the event loop is very useful also and powerful, even without any GUI toolkit. I've used glib in non-GUI applications with great success. I've heard much criticism of GTK3 and 4, and much criticism of the various Gnome libraries. But never glib. This is a first. Have you used glib and know what it is about?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not the OP, but I've used glib and dislike it. It's trying too hard to do C++ in C, and it ends up a convoluted mess. It's the same story as every library that attempts to add object-oriented programming to C. Sometimes you really do need to fix the language, not the library.
Re: (Score:2)
They wanted an object oriented language with introspection and said "Let's re-invent C++ badly, they write a library so shitty and convoluted to use that we tell people not to ever use it directly and to use a wrapper."
When the base it that terrible you know you've done it wrong.
I'm sure glib has some nice features, all of which were better implemented in C++ 20 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
But the fact that it is written in plain C means it's highly portable and can easily interface with and be used from other languages. Until recently C++ wasn't even compatible with other C++ compilers. And wrapping C++ code in other languages like Python is difficult and usually involves writing an additional wrapping layers. It's amazing the Python interface to Qt works as well as it does--I have encountered some obscure problems when Python and C++ have different semantics and timing for reference count
Re: (Score:2)
But the fact that it is written in plain C means it's highly portable and can easily interface with and be used from other languages. Until recently C++ wasn't even compatible with other C++ compilers.
The trouble is, trade issues with incompatible C++ runtimes being linked to by modules loaded into the same process to issues with incompatible glib versions being linked to by modules loaded into the same process.
The thing is, since C++11 (a decade ago), we've come up with better ways to deal with C++ ABI versions. As long as you don't pass things that depend on the standard library ABI across module boundaries, you can have modules built against different versions of the C++ runtime library and different
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds similar to the problems with MSVCRT version mixing as well. Definitely an issue on Windows. Certainly mixing glib versions is likely going to lead to problems, although I've found glib to be quite stable ABI-wise across minor versions.
Can't say I've ever encountered the issue on Linux. I'm sure if you grabbed random Qt plugins off the net you could have issues there as well with different expectations of Qt library versions so just picking C++ and a C++ toolkit isn't going to solve that problem n
GNOME? Sign me up (Score:2)
Can it have emacs and run on systemd too?