If you still had any doubts about GNOME 3 attitude towards integrating the desktop environment with mobile devices, then this should probably be the final evidence you’ve been looking for.
GNOME developer, Carlos Garnacho, has just recently exposed on his blog some of the works he was involved in during latest development cycle of 3.14 branch.
As you can see (by the image above) these works greatly revolves around bringing touch infrastructure, namely; gestures handling or multitouch features, to the notorious DE.
GNOME 3.x Is Geared Towards Mobile Platforms
GNOME 3.x and its innovative UI are certainly a source for a lot of controversy in the Linux world, whether it’s concerning features it has, or the ones it abandoned one cardinal design decision stands at the very root of it all.
Some like it, some don’t but the fact remains that GNOME 3.x releases are all designed with mobile compatibility in mind, being a [relatively] new platform on the rise, there’s little wonder for why GNOME aims at this goal.
However, dispute begins when compromises are made over the expense of desktop functionality, for instance – minimize button might have no use on a mobile (smartphone) device yet on the desktop it’s highly useful and a common standard.
In that sense it might be important to mention that as of current, which is over 3 years later after GNOME 3 was initially released that there’s still not a single mobile device which officially runs it.
And now a new question is popping up: if no mobile device is embracing GNOME does it still worth devoting time and effort for being touch-friendly?
A question I hope GNOME devs are at the least beginning to ponder about, in my opinion though, the answer is yes, but the mindset behind it should probably change.
When I say the mindset behind it, I refer to the common phrase and a guiding work line – “mobile is the future”, while there’s some truth to that sentence, it’s not entirely correct.
The way I see things it would probably be more accurate to say something like “mobile is part of the future” which should trigger a different mindset that doesn’t neglects other, well established, platforms all at once.
Anyways, whether this move on behalf of GNOME would make the environment attractive to the mobile world is yet remains to be seen, otherwise it would be a shame to see all the effort invested in it simply goes to waste, wouldn’t you think?
