A new extension brings a working global menu bar to the GNOME desktop, even for some apps that don’t have menu bars at all. Orbit Global Menu is a new GNOME extension that gives the GNOME desktop a feature it was intentionally designed without, and one that some users miss very badly – this vulture being one of them. It adds a working global menu bar to the GNOME top panel. We suspect this is something that will cause strongly contrasting opinions among many GNOME users: some will by puzzled why anyone would bother, while others may think "at last!" and rush to try it. There have been other attempts to do this before, and the Reg FOSS desk has tried several of them, but we never found one that worked with the majority of applications. Our fondness for this UI feature was visible in the two-part series we wrote in September on how to customize Xfce and then in part two how to get the global menu working with more apps. The problem is getting worse over time, as in recent versions (since GNOME 40 and Gtk4), the GNOME human-interface guidelines encourage smartphone-style hamburger menus, replacing the traditional horizontal menu bar. It is tricky to add global menu bar support to apps that lack a menu bar, but Orbit’s developer "Unmade" found a rather labor-intensive solution. The menu bar applet contains maps of keyboard controls for 292 different apps, so it can show a menu all on its own and then send those apps simulated keystrokes to operate it. It’s not the programs’ full menu trees, just a subset of them, but it works. It’s also not the most elegant solution, but it is a solution and it works. We tried it on Ubuntu 26. 10 and every app in the full install worked to at least some extent. If you are willing and able to build and install a small additional connector, it lets the global-menu applet talk to lots more applications. The GNOME shell is unusual among open source desktop environments, to an extent that we have criticized before. GNOME Shell was designed with a distinctive look and feel of its own, unlike almost all other desktops. It has a minimalist, stripped-down layout that doesn’t look or work quite like anything else, and it’s intentionally not very customizable. To change how GNOME works means writing new Javascript code, then packaging it as an extension that users can install from the GNOME Extensions website. This requires both a browser extension and a "native host messaging" connector to be installed into the underlying OS – or a purpose-written app. By default, the desktop comes with neither. The end result is that GNOME lends a visual identity to the Linux desktop, one that is clear and distinct from either Windows or macOS. (Back in 2013, this vulture argued that when Microsoft threatened to sue multiple Linux vendors over infringing Windows UI patents, some 20 years ago, this UI fragmentation was just what the company wanted .) GNOME 2 was the Linux world’s default desktop. GNOME Shell was controversial in its early days, and lost pole position, but it has since won it back…