screenshot no longer lets me copy before/without saving, nor choose where to save, if done via keyboard shortcut

Bug #1887240 reported by teo1978
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-screenshot (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I just upgraded from 16.04 to 18.04, and unsuprsisingly, in 1 minute of use I have already found out a backwards idiotic design decision in Gnome that degrades usability (but I bet they did it thinking it was an improvement).

I was used to using gnome-screenshot as follows:
- I use either the shift+PrintScreen shortcut to grab a rectangle, or (less frequently) just the PrintScreen key to capture the whole screen
- then the popup would show up where I could either copy the screenshot to the clipboard, to paste it into Gimp or Telegram, or any other application accepting image input (and often not save the screenshot at all); or choose a destination to save the screenshot to, which almost never was the default.

Now, after upgrading, I took (or wanted to take) a bunch of screenshots illustrating some of the pathetic bugs of the disastrous upgrade process, but to my surprise, even though I could hear the sound effect and see the visual effect of the screenshot being taken, no popup would show up. I thought gnome-screenshot was just broken and crashing like half of Ubuntu, and that none of the screenshot had been taken.

Later it occurred to me to look at the default destination directory ~/Pictures, and it turned out all the screenshots are silently saved there.

So now, if I take a screenshot using the keyboard shortcuts, I can neither:
- copy the screenshot to the clipboard and omit saving it; nor:
- choose to save it somewhere else other than the default.

To do that, I have to launch the application manually. I have a launcher icon, but still I need two clicks to do what I would normally do with a single keyboard shortcut.

I can unserstand that to some people, who just usually save their screenshots to the default location, this can be handy. But then it should be an option.

I can't find a Settings menu or button or anything where I can change this behavior to restore the old one. Actually I can't even find a way to change the default save destination, which is additionally ridiculous.

If such settings exist, they are undiscoverable.

Additionally, even if this was just a change in default behavior (and hence configurable), the fact that the change happened silently is an additional serious issue. Given that the behavior changed, the first time I took a screenshot (via keyboard shortcut) with the new version, it should have shown a message saying "The screenshot was saved to /path/to/saved/screenshot [Don't show again]". That's how you change the behavior of things. You don't do it silently leaving me to wonder whether the screenshot was saved at all.

Between the time I got the impressions screenshots were not working, and the time it occurred to me to look in the default directory and found out, I stopped taking screenshot.

As usual, the Gnome team puts no thought whatsoever into what they do. They just keep making the software worse.

I'm reporting this only to let you know, because as soon as I'm finished upgrading to the latest version just to give it a shot, I'm pretty sure I'll wipe out my hard disk and install OpenSUSE.

I'm sick of Ubuntu. By the way, the reason I waited 4 years before upgrading, is mainly (1) because a single regression (which again is actually a design decision by Gnome, but also failure on the side of Ubuntu to patch it) that renders Nautilus (a basic component) completely unusable, which is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164016. And to a lesser extent (2) the fact that EVERY SINGLE distribution upgrade until now had always led to bricking my computer (furtunately not this time, it's just the ugly unusable mess that Ubuntu 18.10 is). So I always postpone dist upgrades to when I have a few spare hours to waste fixing things and getting my computer back to work.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-screenshot 3.25.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-109.110-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-109-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.15
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Jul 11 18:56:58 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-11 (2464 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
SourcePackage: gnome-screenshot
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

Revision history for this message
teo1978 (teo8976) wrote :
Revision history for this message
teo1978 (teo8976) wrote :

Actually I see that half of the screenshots *were* lost (unless they were saved to some other random location that I have no way of knowing). So half of the time gnome-screenshot actually was not working (which could be partially expected during an upgrade while some of the system has been upgraded and some hasn't - but then I should have been shown a error message), and half of the time it was silently saving the screenshots to the default directory; and I couldn't even tell the difference. Unbelievable.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in gnome-screenshot (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
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