Hello, GNOMErs! As some of you may be aware, I’m working on porting our beloved GNOME Control Center to match the latest mockups. Not alone, however; we’re a Team.

The Porting Team

We’re short on human resources here, but we’re doing our best to make the new Control Center for 3.22 release. Meet the Team:

Bastien Nocera (the maintainer), an amazing long-term contributor who is doing a quite huge work on porting it to Network Manager 1.2, and reviewing all the patches that goes in. Thanks to his reviews, the code quality is always top-notch.

(the maintainer), an amazing long-term contributor who is doing a quite huge work on porting it to Network Manager 1.2, and reviewing all the patches that goes in. Thanks to his reviews, the code quality is always top-notch. Felipe Borges , who ported the Mouse & Touchpad and now is working on porting the Printer and the Users panels. He’s the leading force of porting the panels, and an awsome guy.

, who ported the Mouse & Touchpad and now is working on porting the Printer and the Users panels. He’s the leading force of porting the panels, and an awsome guy. Georges Basile (I), who’s working on the new Shell with a sidelist and will port some panels as well.

Feel free to contact any one of us and get in-depth details abot The Plan.

The Plan

We’ve been attending secret meetings (in plain open #gnome-hackers room :P) and we came up with a plan on how we’ll work on moving things forward. Here are the outlines:

A new non-installed binary gnome-control-center-alt will be introduced. The panels that must be ported are: Online Accounts, Networks, Sound, Users, Printers, Details and Keyboard. We’ll port as much panels as we can, obviously prioritizing the panels above. As we port the panels, we test them both with the current icon grid and the new sidelist. The old icon grid will be removed and this binary will be the official Control Center after all the required panels are ported. Everyone will be happy 🙂

The reason we’re doing it this way is safety. We’re absolutely not releasing a half-backed feature in such an important component. Worst case scenario, we’ll release the current GNOME Control Center with properly tested ported panels.

The Benefits

The work on these features have a real, concrete impact. This is not coming out of nowhere. Out of my head, some of the benefits we gain are:

The Control Center will be able to work on really small screens AND big screens, out of the box. This would probably won’t affect the current regular GNOME user, but there are millions out there who can only afford a Tube TV with 720×480 resolution (and yes, my employer Endless opened my eyes to this reality).

out there who can only afford a Tube TV with 720×480 resolution (and yes, my employer Endless opened my eyes to this reality). Much improved interaction. Thanks Allan for working on that.

Easier to find panels.

Much more GNOMEish.

Excited? Read below.

How To Be Part of It

There are plenty of ways to contribute with this monumental task. Don’t like coding? You can test, update the documentation and spread the word. Every single contribution is absolutely appreciated.

Some relevant links:

Shell’s Relayout patches : https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=766922

: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=766922 NetworkManager 1.2 patches : https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765910

: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765910 New Printers panel : https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/log/?h=wip/feborges/new-printers-panel

: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/log/?h=wip/feborges/new-printers-panel New Users panel: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/log/?h=wip/feborges/new-users-panel

These patches need testing, love and work. Are you new to GNOME? No problem, there is a page crafted for you: Newcomers. Feel free to ping us to get some directions, join the #newcomers IRC room and, as always, you’re very welcomed to be part of this community!

Acknowledgments

This work wouldn’t be possible without the support of my employer Endless, and also Red Hat for allowing Bastien and Felipe to work on that.