Peter Eisenmann: Fellowship Report October 2026 (Lothlórien)
GNOME developer Peter Eisenmann has fixed a long-standing file sorting issue in Nautilus that was causing files and folders to appear interleaved instead of folders first on fresh installations.
GNOME developer Peter Eisenmann has resolved a persistent file sorting issue in Nautilus that was causing files and folders to appear interleaved on fresh installations. The problem stemmed from Nautilus attempting to migrate legacy GTK3 settings on new setups, despite the default behavior being changed five years ago to sort folders before files.
After installing GNOME OS on his machine, Eisenmann noticed the unexpected sorting behavior and identified the cause as the migration of outdated GTK3 settings. By dropping this migration, fresh setups will now correctly display folders before files by default.
UI Improvements
Eisenmann also made significant progress on UI improvements for Nautilus. He worked with Christian Hergert on implementing sections in GtkGridView, which will allow for better separation of folders and files in the interface. The feature is currently being refined before other maintainers can review it.
Addressing a specific UI issue, the developer fixed scaling problems with the AdwComboRow component in the preferences dialog when tested with languages using longer words than English. After feedback from Philipp Sauberzweig, the component now uses the new AdwActionRow:body property for better scaling.
I also had a call with GNOME designer Tobias Bernard for a live test session of the new app chooser and we adjusted the mockup to the constraints we are working with (and then some). I am optimistic that it will be finalized by next month
Dialog Sizing Solution
In libadwaita, Eisenmann tackled dialog sizing issues. While AdwDialog:follows-content-size property exists to make dialogs scale with their content, he found that complex nested widgets often resulted in dialogs that appeared too small even when space was available.
His solution implements a workaround that ensures dialogs allocate at least their content-width and content-height, even when follows-content-size is set. The dialog will still resize appropriately if the content grows beyond these dimensions.
Additional Contributions
Beyond these major fixes, Eisenmann made numerous other contributions to the GNOME ecosystem. He expanded Nautilus' CI with Blueprint and meson formatting, assured property dialogs are sized correctly, and suggested new keyboard shortcuts for search and renaming functions.
The developer also fixed selection issues when deleting the last item, worked with Khalid Abu Shawarib on thumbnail scaling in the nightly version, and addressed various CI pipeline failures. In Sushi, he fixed graphical inconsistencies in icons and ensured error messages are only offered when available.
Looking ahead, Eisenmann continues to work on improving GNOME's user experience while maintaining the project's sustainability through community support. His contributions highlight the ongoing refinement of one of the most popular desktop environments in the Linux ecosystem.
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