Gnome 3.8 tweaks

Gnome 3.8 brings a number of nice new changes such as support for Owncloud storage, a redesigned application launching view, enhanced search, new privacy settings, a new classic mode, improved animation rendering, a new Clocks application, heavily updated settings and many of updates to GNOME applications.

You can find out more about the many other improvements GNOME 3.8 in release notes. Gnome 3.8 broke few things on my system. Here is my experience so far under ArchLinux.

Gnome Shell Extensions

Manual update required for most extensions

If you go under Gnome Tweaks and look at the Gnome Shell Extensions you will notice that most of them have been disabled. For most of them this is a normal behavior because you need to manually updated them to support Gnome 3.8. Click on Get more extensions or go directly to https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ then click on Installed extensions and on each of the little green gear sitting next to the Outdated label. You will have to restart Gnome Shell by typing Alt+F2 then r.

That being done, I still had two applets that couldn’t be updated:

Sensors

This applets allows you to monitor CPU temperature. To make it work under 3.8 you just need to force its version number. # gedit $~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/temperature@xtranophilist/metadata.json And add “3.8” just bellow “3.6”,

CPU Freq

This applet allows you to monitor the current CPU frequency and also to change the governor in use. To make it work you need to go through the following steps:

1. Install new dependency # sudo pacman -S gnome-applets

2. Force version # gedit ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/cpufreq@nodefourtytwo.net/metadata.json And add “3.8” just bellow “3.6”,

3. Restart Gnome-Shell

Please note that it is still not possible to change the governor via the applet (as mentioned in the wiki due to systemd and policykit interactions.

New Gnome-Extra applications

Gnome-extra meta-package brings new applications that have to be installed manually if you have upgraded over 3.6:

• accerciser: interactive Python accessibility explorer for the GNOME desktop (don’t know if this is of any use for the regular user)
• gnome-clocks: new world clock and timer application that has a shortcut under the top clock menu.
• gnome-devel-docs: Developer documentation for GNOME
• gnome-getting-started-docs: Help a new user get started in GNOME
• gnome-weather: Access current weather conditions and forecasts. To use it, type in weather when searching for an application.
• rygel: UPnP AV MediaServer and MediaRenderer that allows you to easily share audio, video and pictures, and control of media player on your home network.

You can add them by either: # sudo pacman -S accerciser gnome-clocks gnome-devel-docs gnome-getting-started-docs gnome-weather rygel or by re-installing the whole gnome-extra meta-package. # sudo pacman -S gnome-extra

New menu options

Please note that Gnome 3.8 brings in some new menu options under parameters: Confidentiality and Sharing and also more options under Power management.