Gnome 42 - nice one, but upgrade was not as painless as before

[pshem (Przemek)]

First of all - congrats on the release. So far I like it - even considering a bit of pain points, some “as usual” (for example no fully working dock extension), some new (like the on screen keyboard behaving differently). Overall it feel snappier and more modern.

But there’s one downside though - I’ve always praised how painless upgrading Gnome is. With some other DE’s I’ve been getting nervous after upgrade - it was not uncommon that I had to wipe all the configs to make it work. With Gnome it was always rock solid.

This time it wasn’t. I guess it might have to do with switch to GTK4 and more moving things this time around. Also at least I got to desktop where i could do some things. But there were / are issues.

First of all - my Google accounts stopped working. To make matters worse clicking on items in online accounts did nothing. The “fix” was a weird one - had to log out, change session type (for example from Wayland to Xorg), log in , delete accounts (as after this accounts still didn’t work and I couldn’t reverify them), again switch sessions, re-add accounts.

Another one - clicking “sharing” in settings crashed settings app (segfault) right away. And as Gnome-settings remembered the last visited tab it meant I was not able to open settings any more. Had to open dconf and clean appropriate key. For the time being I’m avoiding sharing tab .

I’ve also noticed that from time to time highlight on hover over item in top bar stays on even after cursor is no longer there.

One super annoying thing was that initially tiling (snapping to sides / top) didn’t work. Moving windows to appropriate areas did nothing. I created a fresh user account and it worked there. So in the end I’ve deleted the config file and started from setting my desktop from the ground up.

So yeah, not really the smoothest ride this time (and mind as soon as I noticed issues I got rid of extensions, so they’re unlikely to be the cause). Those are the top things that come to my head. And I know I’ve been not alone - not only I had the same problems on my 2 pc-s, I’ve chatted with some folks over at Discord and we were helping each other to fix those.
Not big complains - but I hope this will help you in nailing those annoying buggers down .

[fmuellner (Florian Müllner)]

@pshem

I’ve also noticed that from time to time highlight on hover over item in top bar stays on even after cursor is no longer there.

That one was fixed and will be part of the 42.1 update.

[jtojnar (Jan Tojnar)]

@pshem

First of all - my Google accounts stopped working.

Same here, maybe some API key changed.

@pshem

To make matters worse clicking on items in online accounts did nothing.

Yeah, that was super annoying, I would recommend getting your distro to cherry-pick the fix, until 42.1 is available. (Then you would only need to re-log-in as usual.)

@pshem

Another one - clicking “sharing” in settings crashed settings app (segfault) right away.

Do not see that one on Xorg. But I have seen issues like that many times in the last cycle. I wonder if g-c-c could be made to detect crashes and reset the last-panel setting when it happens.

@pshem

I’ve also noticed that from time to time highlight on hover over item in top bar stays on even after cursor is no longer there.

Yeah, have seen that too. And if I click on any menu in the top bar and then on “Activities”, and then after dismissing activities (e.g. by selecting a window), when I move mouse over any menu button, it will open the menu again without clicking. (Maybe that is intentional? Though I find it weird.)

@pshem

One super annoying thing was that initially tiling (snapping to sides / top) didn’t work.

Have not seen that one.

On top of those you mention, there is also the very cursed issue that clicking a close button on the Activities view will make Shell crash. Fortunately, with Xorg session, the Shell will restart most of the time.

[pshem (Przemek)]

mind that a couple of issues I’ve encountered, including the one with tiling broken happen only on upgraded accounts, where there were some leftovers from previous versions (didn’t happen on new accounts). That’s why I can clearly see how those could have slipped through the cracks.

[pshem (Przemek)]

one more I’ve noticed - sometimes the “Save” option in file save menu is greyed out. I have all required permissions. Sometimes cancelling and trying out again helps, sometimes changing the name. This happens only if I need to navigate to some different folder.
And it is a tricky one - I can’t find reproducible way to get into this issue. For the past couple of days I encountered it like 5 times or so. Enough to notice it, but not enough to get more info.