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GNOME

From postmarketOS Wiki
GNOME
GNOME activity page
GNOME activity page
Name GNOME
Graphics stack Mutter
Toolkit Clutter
In postmarketOS
Package postmarketos-ui-gnome
Status Available
systemd y
OpenRC y

GNOME (/ɡəˈnoʊm/) is a desktop environment that aims to be simple and easy to use. It is designed by the GNOME Project and is composed entirely of free and open-source software. The following variants are available in postmarketOS:

  • GNOME, the default, runs traditional GNOME Shell mosten used on the desktops or laptops.
  • GNOME Mobile are patchsets on top of the GNOME stack, that make GNOME suitable for mobile phones and touch devices.

During pmbootstrap init, you can choose either gnome (the stock GNOME shell) or gnome-mobile (with mobile patches).

GNOME Mobile (Experimental)

GNOME Mobile (Experimental)
GNOME Shell with mobile patches running on the OnePlus 6
GNOME Shell with mobile patches running on the OnePlus 6
Name GNOME Mobile (Experimental)
Graphics stack Mutter
Toolkit Clutter
In postmarketOS
Package postmarketos-ui-gnome-mobile
Status Available
systemd y
OpenRC y

GNOME is a fairly adaptive user interface, however GNOME is not very comfortable to use on a phone because of their lack of touchscreen gestures. Many developers (especially Jonas Dreßler) have been working on this and developed a prototype. The patches are very work-in-progress and not all of them are upstream yet, however it's being worked on.

postmarketOS with GNOME Mobile on the OnePlus 6

Troubleshooting

Scaling

The scaling is sometimes set to 200%, which will keep GNOME in Desktop mode (and not in Mobile mode). There are two ways to set the display scale:

  • Normal way: Change Settings > Display > Scale to 300%.
  • Command line: Since Gnome 48 you can use GNOME Display Controller to adjust display settings. Example: gdctl set -LpM DSI-1 -s 3
  • Hacky way: Open ~/.config/monitors.xml in editor and set scale to 3 then reboot or relogin
  • Hacky way 2: Remove ~/.config/monitors.xml, run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 3 then relogin.

On some devices or on newer versions of GNOME, there is no 300% scaling option in Settings.

Firefox issues under Wayland

On gnome-mobile, Firefox doesn't use Wayland for rendering. It causes some issues:

  • Scaling issue: Firefox runs in a low-resolution mode and looks ugly.
  • Input issue: Firefox doesn't trigger the GNOME OSK.

Solutions to these issues can be found here.

Bug reporting

This is under active development and has many known and unknown bugs. It is packaged here in order to be a development target. Please report the issues to postmarketOS before filing upstream, as at this early stage it is unknown whether potential bugs may be due to packaging or in the code upstream.

Extensions

Tips and tricks

postmarketOS with GNOME (without GNOME Mobile) on the Redmi 2

Auto unlock keyring with GDM

In case you're using the same password for the user at the display manager login and the keyring, you can avoid having to input your password twice for gnome-keyring by letting PAM auto-unlock it.

Create the following file /etc/pam.d/gdm-password: 

#%PAM-1.0
auth       include     base-auth
auth       optional    pam_gnome_keyring.so

account    include     base-account

password   include     base-password

session    include     base-session
session    optional    pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start

You'll probably have to recreate the keyring password, so let's move the old one: 

$ mv ~/.local/share/keyrings/login.keyring ~/.local/share/keyrings/login.keyring.bak

After rebooting or restarting GDM, login with your user. After that, a popup comes up where you'll need to input the same password for the default keyring. Tick the checkbox that states "Automatically unlock this key, whenever I'm logged in".

Toggle adaptive brightness

Given that GNOME 49 removed the auto brightness setting, we can use a gsetting command to toggle it on or off. 

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power ambient-enabled true

To make it easier, put the command in a script and toggle it with a shell argument: 

$ echo "gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power ambient-enabled $1" > adaptive.sh
$ chmod +x adaptive.sh
$ ./adaptive.sh true/false

As of now, the sensors are not detected upon reboot, so you need to restart the sensor hub: 

$ sudo systemctl restart iio-sensor-proxy

For gnome-shell to pick-up the sensors, you will also need to log off and back in from your user account.

Switch from PulseAudio to PipeWire

If you want to use an equalizer like easyeffects on your audio output, you will need to switch to PipeWire. Make sure all of its packages are installed: 

# apk add pipewire wireplumber pipewire-pulse

Now you only have to enable the service: 

$ systemctl --user enable pipewire pipewire-pulse wireplumber

And then reboot. This will fix the volume control from being hidden.

See also

External links

Retrieved from "https://wiki.postmarketos.org/index.php?title=GNOME&oldid=104419"