Hopefully this is just like the Ubuntu "switch" to avconv instead of ffmpeg. A stupid mistake quickly fixed in the next release. avconv and gnome-text-editor might be "cleaner" and mesh better with modern GNOME's copied Apple design principles but they can't do the same tasks easily so they're not real replacements.
Nothing GNOME has done since 2014 has improved gtk or their desktop environment (except for high dpi support). It's all been downhill.
Sometimes I feel a little bit for not giving Gnome 3 a fair chance, but I just never got into it. GNOME 2 was, to me, the peak of Unix desktop environments, and I was rather sad when the devs moved on to GNOME 3.
Then I discovered MATE and was very happy because a) it showed me I was not the only one to feel that way about GNOME 2 and 3 respectively, and b) I could retain the comfort of GNOME 2.
I couldn't really tell if GNOME 3 is good or not, because I have not spent enough time to figure it out. Maybe I will one day, but I'm perfectly happy with MATE, so unless something changes drastically, I'll stick with it for the foreseeable future.
The only thing in common to all of the desktop environments and platforms out there is that they have users like this for whom some old version was the "last good version".
I feel like GNOME 41 was the best GNOME for me, it looked great and was functional. But the GNOME 42 UI looks much worse imo and has replaced great stock apps with less functional alternatives, namely terminal -> console.
Gnome community means RH/IBM business essentially, they are not the same but came on the same cultural boat, as a result they try to build things to sell, buildings powerless users instead of encouraging learning end evolution. That's is.
Something good was and is done, in a rush of crappy design ideas just to make commercial product as some manager imaging them.
The main issue unfortunately is another: lacking of proper clean and effective desktop GUIs libs aside Qt/G[TD]k witch makes newcomers feeling old systems styles when they see "alternative" WMs/DEs
The new Text Editor is really nice! You all should give it a chance. Especially if you're using Builder as well. They share a lot of code, so it's pretty much Builder minus the IDE parts. (If you want the IDE parts, Builder is excellent and reasonably lightweight).
Nice features:
- Session saving is built in, and it even restores unsaved files, similar to VS Code or Sublime Text. This is great if you're jotting something down and don't expect to save it anywhere and then your battery dies. It also means you get the benefits of auto save, but without it actually changing the files until you tell it to.
- Automatic editor settings via editorconfig / modelines is built in. You don't need a plugin for it.
- It has noticeably better rendering performance. Which is not an especially practical concern most of the time, but it feels nice. It's noticeable if you scroll through a file with a device that supports pixel-perfect scrolling.
- It looks pretty. Notably:
- UI is styled according to the syntax highlighting.
- Dark mode! (The syntax highlighting changes accordingly).
- Special font for the mini map, which is very useful to see patterns and find a particular block of code.
There are several gedit things that aren't in Text Editor and probably won't be, like the side panel and bottom panel and assorted plugins for those, but these days I find if I want those, I'll be happier in Builder or VS Code anyway.
My favorite example of this is GitHub's "convert to draft" link on their PR page. Not only is it flat, it has no indication whatsoever* that it is a link.
* I guess it's possible screen readers can see it is a link
Yeah, it's pretty goofy, isn't it? They also want to replace gnome-terminal with gnome-console which has this same look and feel, but is considered "lighter" and "cleaner" than gnome-terminal despite there being no objective indication that either of these is true. I guess the Linux user base is now dominated by people who care very greatly whether their terminal is normal or reversed or transparent, and not very much at all about anything else.
Seriously. You would think smart people who write such software would understand the importance of naming things properly and uniquely. Imagine trying to google to troubleshoot any "Text Editor" issues. You will get a bunch of unrelated stuff.
I don't believe I have ever used Gedit for anything. Ever.
I'm an Emacs guy. I won't be using Text Editor, either. Ever. If it accidentally opens a file, that means I need to change "Open Files of This Type With..."
So all the gnashing of teeth and wailing seems a bit overwrought
Same here, and worst of all is that in the past I though Gnome was linux (when I started using linux, Ubuntu was practically the only thing available to me) and I hated it. I then discovered there are a whole world of different desktop environments, and linux with KDE is now my preferred OS. On my job they gave me an Ubuntu laptop, first thing I did was install KDE desktop on top (later I discovered I was not the only one to have done that).
It's sad because I know there are more people that rejected linux at first because of Gnome, so if you see someone that doesn't like linux, show them a few screenshots of non-gnome desktops first.
First thing I do on every Ubuntu install is change the default editor to vim. Used to use the Gnome editor a lot, but since the introduction of vscode I rarely fire it up. The old editor (which is still shipping with LTS) is probably the best of the Gnome apps. The devs' effort to replace it is deeply disappointing, but they've made it abundantly clear they don't care what any of us think.
> but they've made it abundantly clear they don't care what any of us think.
that's a pretty cynical take. there are definitely some individuals that work on gnome who don't care, but in general I get the sense that gnome does care. just considering it from a practical standpoint, what if they tried to do everything we asked for? there are millions of opinions that are all mutually exclusive, but even if you filtered those out it would still be utter chaos, probably each dev doing what they think is best (remember gnome is largely a volunteer org).
There are definitely things I wish gnome did differently, but I'm really glad to see the focus on making the developer experience better with different language bindings for gtk so one isn't stuck writing gui apps in C (or hacky python), and modernization of the toolkit, etc. I think that will help a lot because there will be a lot more choice.
Does anyone know where I can get this for Ubuntu 18? Sadly Ubuntu 20 crashes with my setup and I’m forced to use version 18. I can’t find it in the Snap store or Software Center. Is it strictly a version 20 app?
Can you run Flatpak on Ubuntu 18? I've been using the nightly version of the new text editor on Arch Linux via Flatpak for months. I even filed a bug and it was fixed in one day!
[+] [-] superkuh|3 years ago|reply
Nothing GNOME has done since 2014 has improved gtk or their desktop environment (except for high dpi support). It's all been downhill.
[+] [-] krylon|3 years ago|reply
Then I discovered MATE and was very happy because a) it showed me I was not the only one to feel that way about GNOME 2 and 3 respectively, and b) I could retain the comfort of GNOME 2.
I couldn't really tell if GNOME 3 is good or not, because I have not spent enough time to figure it out. Maybe I will one day, but I'm perfectly happy with MATE, so unless something changes drastically, I'll stick with it for the foreseeable future.
[+] [-] xoac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madjam002|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkfx|3 years ago|reply
Something good was and is done, in a rush of crappy design ideas just to make commercial product as some manager imaging them.
The main issue unfortunately is another: lacking of proper clean and effective desktop GUIs libs aside Qt/G[TD]k witch makes newcomers feeling old systems styles when they see "alternative" WMs/DEs
[+] [-] LoveGracePeace|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kwonkicker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thawaya3113|3 years ago|reply
And it’s still easy for medium/advanced users to sub in their preferred applications instead of the defaults.
That’s how it should be. Easy defaults for beginners and non experts and easy ways for expert users to sub in their preferred options.
[+] [-] dylan-m|3 years ago|reply
Nice features:
- Session saving is built in, and it even restores unsaved files, similar to VS Code or Sublime Text. This is great if you're jotting something down and don't expect to save it anywhere and then your battery dies. It also means you get the benefits of auto save, but without it actually changing the files until you tell it to.
- Automatic editor settings via editorconfig / modelines is built in. You don't need a plugin for it.
- It has noticeably better rendering performance. Which is not an especially practical concern most of the time, but it feels nice. It's noticeable if you scroll through a file with a device that supports pixel-perfect scrolling.
- It looks pretty. Notably:
- UI is styled according to the syntax highlighting.
- Dark mode! (The syntax highlighting changes accordingly).
- Special font for the mini map, which is very useful to see patterns and find a particular block of code.
There are several gedit things that aren't in Text Editor and probably won't be, like the side panel and bottom panel and assorted plugins for those, but these days I find if I want those, I'll be happier in Builder or VS Code anyway.
[+] [-] agluszak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heretogetout|3 years ago|reply
* I guess it's possible screen readers can see it is a link
[+] [-] tobz1000|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Avshalom|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffbee|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barneygale|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monster_group|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ByteJockey|3 years ago|reply
They're shorter, but when they were released (70s for all of them), there was a 6 character limit on a lot of systems for command names.
Or do you mean why is there a space in the name? That would be annoying for launching from the terminal, I can see that.
[+] [-] joseph8th|3 years ago|reply
I don't believe I have ever used Gedit for anything. Ever.
I'm an Emacs guy. I won't be using Text Editor, either. Ever. If it accidentally opens a file, that means I need to change "Open Files of This Type With..."
So all the gnashing of teeth and wailing seems a bit overwrought
[+] [-] 0des|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrianguloY|3 years ago|reply
It's sad because I know there are more people that rejected linux at first because of Gnome, so if you see someone that doesn't like linux, show them a few screenshots of non-gnome desktops first.
[+] [-] 11235813213455|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncphil|3 years ago|reply
First thing I do on every Ubuntu install is change the default editor to vim. Used to use the Gnome editor a lot, but since the introduction of vscode I rarely fire it up. The old editor (which is still shipping with LTS) is probably the best of the Gnome apps. The devs' effort to replace it is deeply disappointing, but they've made it abundantly clear they don't care what any of us think.
[+] [-] xoac|3 years ago|reply
1. You rarely use the default text editor
2. You are very ("Nooooooo!") dismayed by the default text editor change
3. The old editor is one of the best Gnome apps, however you don't indicate whether you've tried to use the new one and what are its deficiencies
4. Just the fact that they are replacing Gedit however, is deeply disappointing
5. Obviously the devs don't care what "we" (you) think
Nice.
[+] [-] freedomben|3 years ago|reply
that's a pretty cynical take. there are definitely some individuals that work on gnome who don't care, but in general I get the sense that gnome does care. just considering it from a practical standpoint, what if they tried to do everything we asked for? there are millions of opinions that are all mutually exclusive, but even if you filtered those out it would still be utter chaos, probably each dev doing what they think is best (remember gnome is largely a volunteer org).
There are definitely things I wish gnome did differently, but I'm really glad to see the focus on making the developer experience better with different language bindings for gtk so one isn't stuck writing gui apps in C (or hacky python), and modernization of the toolkit, etc. I think that will help a lot because there will be a lot more choice.
[+] [-] JCWasmx86|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] night-rider|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aorth|3 years ago|reply
https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.gnome.TextEditor
[+] [-] ufo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freedomben|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slim|3 years ago|reply