Trying Gnome 3 again in PureOS

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Geshmy
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Iscritto: 04/23/2015

A couple of nights ago, I decided to try PureOS. I saw it on fsf.org then checked out PureOS' web site and saw it came with Gnome 3 which I more or less gave up on when it came out. I would say my intuition told me it was time to try Gnome 3 again. It's still here and most of the big distros are behind it so no doubt it has improved.

It's really cool that fsf.org has now a 2nd distro offered that is easy to install and works well out of the box. Trisquel has been great and now I've experienced another choice.

I did find one serious issue. The native web browser (WEB) crashed me whenever I went to youtube. For a moment only, I heard youtube and then the desktop froze and I had to do a hard shutdown. So I used gnome shell and found chromium which looked a little too chummy with google but works fine. Then I went to mozilla and got firefox; I like the large selection of addons that you can get for it.

I've installed guix now so maybe now I can get Icecat. Might try to install Abrowser. Do you think I can? Abrowser has been a really stable workhorse.

I really enjoyed setting up PureOS. Hit the Super key once, type keepass and find keepassxc, select that and click on install and it installs. Hit back arrow and type in clam and see clamtk and click install again and so on. I added Gimp and Vlc and other things in this way. It was really fast to set up.

I also enjoy using the Super key to see all the windows I have open and can Tab through them to get the one I want on top.

So I have Trisquel 11 and PureOS 10 to choose from when I rev up my PC voyager. Muy fun ;)

andyprough
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Iscritto: 02/12/2015

My main problem with Gnome is the enormous amount of memory it uses compared to the smaller window managers that I'm used to. Other than that, it does have some nifty features.

Web is a horrifyingly bad browser in my experience. I have no idea why they continue to push it on users, knowing that it will routinely crash the entire system as in your case. If you want to use a WebKit browser, I found Luakit was much more stable and had better features like the ability to set up ad blocking and script blocking.

prospero
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Iscritto: 05/20/2022

> My main problem with Gnome is the enormous amount of memory it uses compared to the smaller window managers that I'm used to. Other than that, it does have some nifty features.

My main problem with a woolly mammoth is the enormous amount of fodder it uses compared to the smaller dwarf rabbits that I'm used to. Other than that, it does have some nifty features.

Geshmy
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Iscritto: 04/23/2015

Have you tried Gnome 3 lately. I read one guy's review and he claimed it had gotten a lot better in memory usage. I attached some specific info on mine right now. I think I have 8 Gb RAM here. I've never caught it using the swap file although maybe a program like Blender might do it.

If God had to make clothes for Adam and Eve to replace their unwoolly fig leaves, would he use dwarf rabbits or a woolly mammoth? But most woolly mammoths became fodder themselves along time ago excepting of course the ones found flash frozen (with buttercups in their mouths) in the tundra.

Screenshot from 2022-10-13 10-23-17.jpg
AllegatoDimensione
Gnome3MemoryUsage.txt 1.84 KB
prospero
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Iscritto: 05/20/2022

It is my firm belief that God prefers Lionhead dwarf rabbit hair. Otherwise it could never grow so silky.

Gnome 3 could arguably only have gotten better in memory usage, but I was only half joking about mammoths: I also used to like them a lot and even got so much used to sending the pointer to the top left corner of the screen that it took some time before I stopped doing it on Trisquel 7 (which shipped by default with Gnome panel).

NB: using swap without any graphical app running would be evil. Not sure about Blender, I have just started trying Godot and it uses a surprisingly low amount of RAM. Another game engine I am not going to name here has been reported to eat 4+ GiB for a similar task. As if being non-free was not insulting enough.

Geshmy
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Iscritto: 04/23/2015

Wow. Godot looks cool. Hope for your success.

Maybe we can make a game that starts with a massive woolly mammoth and a Lionhead dwarf rabbit going into a bar to imbibe, no doubt, in some buttercup ale. But the woolly mammoth gets stuck in the doorway. All the patrons pull their pickaxes, sledge hammers and crowbars from their pockets but are unable to free Mr Woolly. Nobody is going home except Lionhead the dwarf rabbit. He can scamper under that woolly belly. Will he hop off in search of new adventures, or stay to help his companion?

I see what this means: 'sending the pointer to the top left corner of the screen' and I'm trying to use the pointer less so it's cool that the super key does the same thing.

prospero
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Iscritto: 05/20/2022

> a massive woolly mammoth and a Lionhead dwarf rabbit going into a bar to imbibe...

...fell into a blender and became iconic.

woolly_rabbit.jpg
Avron

I am a translator!

Online
Iscritto: 08/18/2020

I just found I can run mate with fvwm (I was using fvwm with stalonetray before) and control the mate panel like a any window, which is very nice (can keep is to a small part of a screen and allow windows to overlap with it).

I'll try to see if I can do the same with Gnome 3. I tried Gnome 3 alone before and thought it was missing a decent window manager.

Capture du 2022-10-13 23-29-21.jpg
Geshmy
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Iscritto: 04/23/2015

Interesting, how do you do that?

Main problem in PureOS and Gnome 3 is it's Wayland and I haven't found a screen recorder that wants to work with Wayland.

PublicLewdness
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Iscritto: 03/15/2020

The first thing I do in Pure OS is install Mate. Never got used to Gnome or other DE's. I can stomach Cinnamon but barely.

iShareFreedom
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Iscritto: 12/20/2021

Maybe the second step in that distro is remove the Mozzilla Browser.

PublicLewdness
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Iscritto: 03/15/2020

"Maybe the second step in that distro is remove the Mozzilla Browser."

I guess it depends what it gets replaced with. Abrowser is superior no doubt. One thing Firefox has going for it is that it can be customized and you can strip away a lot of the garbage Mozilla throws into it. I am wary of other browsers such as Chromium due to just not trusting it. Ice Cat is pretty out of date (last stable release was 2019 from what I hear).

Avron

I am a translator!

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Iscritto: 08/18/2020

> Ice Cat is pretty out of date (last stable release was 2019 from what I hear).

It does not look so, see:
- https://www.parabola.nu/packages/?sort=&q=icecat
- https://guix.gnu.org/fr/packages/icecat-102.3.0-guix0-preview1/

EDIT: as far as I am aware, icecat has been constantly maintained but builds were not always available. Especially, the version in Parabola repository had not been updated for a while, before it was rebuilt in August/September.

I understand the reason is that building icecat is not easy and Parabola prioritized other things (note that Parabola is based on Arch, due to changes to Arch, there are regularly things breaking so then there is a question of priorities what to fix first). This is the downside of a rolling release.

andyprough
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Iscritto: 02/12/2015

But isn't Abrowser built using the Icecat build scripts/configuration? If you are on a Debian-based system, the simplest thing is to use Abrowser, which has the advantage of being kept up to date with Firefox's security patches. If you are on Parabola, the way to stay current is to use Iceweasel. Icecat would be the Firefox ESR version, and often falls out of date.

PublicLewdness
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Iscritto: 03/15/2020

"If you are on Parabola, the way to stay current is to use Iceweasel. Icecat would be the Firefox ESR version, and often falls out of date."

This is what has been messing me up. The similar names made me think it was all the same browser just with nicknames or had changed names at some point.