Gnome extension with a tiling function

Conclusions

Profound modifications to essential components such as the desktop environment should always be viewed with a fair dollop of caution. With Material Shell, however, you do not have to worry about your system's health. The extension can be disabled again with a single click, and it's not difficult to remove it completely (see the "Uninstalling" box). Material Shell rewards users for showing enough courage to try something new with a very efficient workflow. Especially on systems with very small or very large screens it is useful for windows to organize themselves automatically and find free space.

Uninstalling

Material Shell does not change anything in terms of the Gnome Shell's program base; it simply adds new JavaScript code as an extension. If you want to return to the normal Gnome Shell, you simply have to disable the extension in the Extensions app (you can delete it completely if necessary). To undo all adjustments, you also need to log out of the desktop and log back in again.

Material Shell's appearance is also very organized. The release of Gnome 3.38 also saw Material Shell updated; there were no problems during the upgrade. On the project website, the developers explain to the user in great detail how Material Shell works, and a demo video gives undecided users a taste of the functions. All in all, this is a very successful performance.

Infos

  1. Xerox Alto demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H79_kKzmFs
  2. "Regolith and i3: Timely Tiling," by Christoph Langner and Joe Casad, Linux Magazine, issue 231, February 2020, pp. 18-23
  3. Material Shell: https://material-shell.com
  4. Gnome Shell Extensions: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3357/material-shell
  5. Gnome Shell Integration for Chrome: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShellIntegrationForChrome/Installation
  6. Gnome Shell Integration for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gnome-shell-integration
  7. The Gnome Extensions Rebooted initiative: https://blogs.gnome.org/sri/2020/09/16/the-gnome-extensions-rebooted-initiative

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