Linux

I try Gnome every year or so, and the first time I encounter the Save As dialog defaulting my text input to the goddamn Search box instead of the filename box, I shut it down and uninstall it. That just drives me around the bend.

Absolutely love it! I've donated hundreds of dollars to the Gnome foundation.

I like that practically all of the OS functionality is behind either super+seach or the quick settings menu. I love how powerful the overview is, and all hidden behind a single key press. I like that asking "Is X possible?" is immediately answerable, and 95% of the time it's right in the first place I think to look. I like the trackpad gestures and workspaces on my laptop where I don't have multiple large screens. I like that it has very little need for system tray icons which are clunky, inconsistent, and ugly. (Ex: Discord can only be quit from it's tray icon... -_-)

I'm not a DE power user apparently, but I'm certainly not the mythical "lowest common denominator" that Gnome supposedly caters to either. I do a lot of programming in C/asm/, and write plenty of code involving lots of esoteric math. I don't have much use for Python for instance, but I don't think it's "dumbed down" either. :p

KDE (and Windows to a similar extent) always has way too much "stuff" it wants to show you, 90% of it I'll never use. Every window toolbar is chock full of icons, and so many actions trigger popups, notifications, or dialogs that have little purpose. It's all terribly distracting and annoying. Still, I've donated hundreds of dollars to KDE foundation as well since it's an important part of the Linux ecosystem. I don't use it, but that doesn't mean I hate it, and I see no reason why it shouldn't flourish too. Open Source is not a competition.

I love GNOME more than any other DE. I like how it works very well with keyboard shortcuts. The only extensions I use are the weather and the tray icons.

Yes, I thrive in it.

I think GNOME being minimalist with extensions is a good thing, but I disagree with what GNOME considers basic functionality or not. Two things that stick out:

• an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn't considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME's hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.
• tray icons. GNOME treats background processes like bugs to be squashed. Let's just get real here for a second: sometimes you want programs to run in the background and sometimes you want to be able to see what they are doing in real time. I want my email clients to tell me when I get emails, I wan't my Nextcloud to tell me when there are sync issues, and I want Discord to tell me if I get DMs. This should be considered basic functionality.

I have ADD and GNOME is a life saver. I usually put one and only one window by workspace. It allows me to be focused to the max on the task I'm doing.

Also Libadwaita is so sexy.

Yes, I prefer Gnome to KDE by a long way, it's much nicer looking and easier to use, the trick is to use it the way it's intended, instead of trying to control it to work how you think it should

Default workflow with no extensions is never good for me, there are a handful that provide must have QoL improvements. Once you install those it is very nice. Love it and always miss it when I use Windows or OSX.

I prefer GNOME to KDE but while I understand that there's research and philosophy behind some of the decisions, I just can't get around some of the quirks. "Workflow" itself is fine, with tiling on top, you can get by. But those window decorations… So much space is taken by a completely useless, fat bar at the top of each window even though it's not really aimed at being touchscreen native.

Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.

Alt+Tab or Super+Tab is your friend. Surely you dont have 10 workspace for 10 windows. Also probably just dont isolate Alt+Tab for each workspace.

How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.

GNOME panel definitely takes significantly less space than KDE or Windows takbar. Also at least me, even on Windows I barely click taskbar icon to switch window, alt+tab is faster

But everything is each for their own. If vanilla GNOME doesnt work for you, just install extension or move to another DE. Cheers!

You can just switch to kde or xfce if you dont like gnome, thats what linux is all about. For one I cant really use anything not-gnome anymore, its workflow feels just so efficient and is equally good with a touchpad, keyboard and mouse. I usually get distracted really easily on kde and the likes but gnome just gets out of the way and lets me focus more on my work.

I've been testing KDE for several weeks now, XFCE before that but I'm back to Gnome. It just feels right. Everything is where I expect it to be. No searching in thousands of menus. What scares me about KDE is that there are tons of options and stuff that no one will ever need. Especially KMail I find just awful. So many options and you only find what you are looking for, after an extensive search via a search engine of your choice. This is totally frustrating. XFCE does a lot better here, but I miss the one or other pleasant animation when opening windows and the like. Gnome, on the other hand, isn't great either, but I feel most comfortable here.

Gnome does make it feel like I should have like 3 apps open and anything more is a mental burden. I personally really like the overview though! If I could get gnomes overview as my meta key in KDE it would be killer!

I can’t get used to vanilla GNOME. First things I always install are Dash to Panel, ArcMenu, Caffeine, AppIndicator support, and Pop Shell. It’s basically Cinnamon with a tiling/stacking toggle and without the need for a “restart if it crashes” setting.

The only change I make is rebinding mod+num keys to switch to a specific workspace instead of a specific application. It makes a lot more sense.

I tried it twice and hated it. Maybe it's because I'm in love with KDE but that's not the only reason.

I really like it, the constraints works for me to enforce more efficient habits. I would say I'm not a naturally efficient person, I recognise that and, essentially, benefit from having a workflow created for me. With KDE, it has the customisability out of the box to create your own workflow, but I couldn't personally design a good workflow.

But I'm not everyone, of course, and I would say GNOME is not necessarily for everybody.

Good that you gave it a fair shot. I feel like a lot of people just throw a lot of extinctions at it first without trying to understand the vanilla workflow - I used to be one of them until I tried vanilla for about 3 months.

Every time I've tried using modern GNOME it's like pulling teeth. I hate it. I think it has actual usability issues. Not disparaging anyone who likes it, it just really doesn't suit me.

GNOME classic shell was ok, but when I installed KDE Plasma it was like coming home. Everything made sense and everything was where it needed to be. More or less.

In the end I'm just glad Linux has a variety of DEs to choose from. Even if you choose GNOME, you weirdo.

I can live in GNOME and only use the defaults. It just takes time to adjust my workflow. What helps me with whatever I'm using or whatever I'm doing (in life), is to not focus on the things "missing" and just make the best of what I have (to work with).

Since two years I'm on KDE but not because I was fed up with GNOME. I just wanted to try something else. Pretty much using stock KDE only that I moved the taskbar to the top of the monitor.

Kinda a tangent, but I've been using KDE plasma for a while and have really been enjoying it as a kinda in between of windows style desktop with some more gnome-like features (like workspaces, which tbh I've barely used). Of course both are super customizable, but it seems to me to maybe be a bit easier to customize Plasma? I'm not sure, I haven't used stock gnome as much.

why not try a different desktop-environment/window-manager; there's many to chose from and most will let you customize them as far as you want.

I grew up using Macs and so coming to Linux from that perspective, I like it. It has a similar feel to the Mac desktop environment.

I may take the plunge to a window manager at some point, but for now it works for me.

Using vanilla gnome and comparing about empty task bar is a bit strange.

GNOME is the reason I use KDE.

I really really tried it, but it feels like the whole default GNOME suite has never been used by powerusers at all.
Nemo (is it Nemo?) is especially bad. Once you have to deal with several thousand files in a folder (e.g. drive recovery) it totally breaks apart.

@shapis I agree. I used Gnome for several years before switching to XFCE. Gnome feels like a great DE for people who do not do a lot of things on their computers. I normally have 5 or so workspaces and on each a dozen of apps open. Some apps are workspace-specific, some are available on all workspaces. You are right, multitasking when you do so much is a pain in Gnome. And I really really tried to like it.

Not to mention that you need a lot of extensions to make it useful.

Gnome does great in terms of animations and overall look, but not very practical and feels very non-customizable.

XFCE looks awful out of the box and the lack of animations is quite annoying. But you can make it look good - see our custom distro based on XFCE - TROMjaro. And if you give XFCE a try you will realize how sane it is. You can customize it a ton without being overwhelmed by thousands of options. You right click on panels and apps and you get sane options to move or tweak them.

As for workspaces I personally use them as "names" on the top bar and can switch between workspaces so fast, almost like tabs in a browser.

Not as fancy as Gnome, but boy this is really useful. And practical.

I've also added mouse gestures on my desktop via Easystroke so I can move windows on any workspace via these gestures. So easy.

So I'd say that Gnome looks fancy, and it is very cool for those who do not do a lot of work on their machines and have to switch between many work spaces and lots of apps. And I'd say XFCE is extremely underrated, perhaps because out of the box it looks terrible. Maybe try TROMjaro....see how it goes.

Gnome, 2screens, 3 workspaces.

Heavy user of Dock number shortcuts, as well as keyboard swap workspace shortcuts and window resize/splits.

Discipline is good for workspace organisation, I know which "space" contains which groups of applications.

I use GNOME (under Fedora) on a laptop that sits at my right hand side, so I use it with only one hand. Using three-finger swipe to change workspaces is awesome - I usually use a workspace for each app, or sometimes two apps share a workspace, but I don't worry about which one they are on, it's so easy I just swipe until I find the one I want.

I use an extension to auto-reveal the dock when I go to the bottom of the screen. The default behavior of going to the top left of the screen, only to traverse all the way down to the dock at the bottom (or the right for workspaces), just seems really inefficient, especially on a touchpad.

I had it all tricked out with other extensions but they keep breaking with new GNOME releases, so I've mostly given up on that.

I do, except I always enable minimize and maximize because it seems foolish to me to have those disabled by default. It's really smooth and whenever I have too many windows open, the overview makes it easy to find what I'm looking for. Initially I was against hiding the dock in the overview but I decided to give it a try one day and I actually ended up enjoying it not being visible.

What's funny is that I actually end up using the overview instead of alt-tab most of the time because it's faster for my workflow, and the default window switcher for apps with different windows open is BAD.

I've gotten so used to the workflow that I find myself dragging my mouse to the top left corner of the screen on Windows lol and painfully wait the extra second it takes to open the Windows overview when swiping up with three fingers on a trackpad.

I tried using it multiple times over the years, including for multiple months on my laptop at one point, but couldn’t get myself to accept it. Even with extensions, I couldn’t accept many of the weird design decisions.

It always felt to me like the Gnome designers wanted to create a combination of Windows 8 Metro and Mac OS: The shittiest Windows UI ever combined with the ergonomics of Mac OS (which is foreign to Windows users) and the lack of customizability of Apple products. Hyper optimized for touch screens even though most Linux users are on a mouse&keyboard or laptop. Even the Steam Deck’s desktop mode is perfectly usuable despite KDE not being as optimized for touch as Gnome.

I personally slap pop-shell and flypie radial menu on it, and I really love it