I'll second the notion - great break-down of Gnome. I knew it was bad, but not how bad. A burger menu and a 3-dots menu in one window. Ugh. Also, the menu-bar combined with the toolbar. WTF?
It's reminded me of the horror that is the Apple Music app (for macos).
- The window preview size in window switcher (alt tab) is so small that it is useless.
- Windows switcher only shows the title of the focused item instead of showing title of all the windows.
- Window switcher is not a grid view so when the number of windows increases it shows them in a single long list.
- This is weird one: Start steam close the window so that steam is running in background, try logout but don't actually click logout on the dialog that ask for confirmation and you will find that steam in background is quitting :)
- Libadwaita based apps that uses tabs have this weird thing where the focused tab is darker then the non-focused tabs which is completely opposite of any GUI toolkit (where the focused tab is lighter then the non-focused one)
- Notifications are shown at top and middle of screen. Not sure how that is aligned with Gnome philosophy of "getting out of your way"
It's a shame, really, that QT didn't have a GNU loved license more early. In a better timeline, we could have skipped GTK, Gnome, and have a unified desktop UI. Right now, Gnome is the darling of Red Hat and GNU, and we all lost for it.
Thing is - if QT was under the GPL and GTK died out years ago... QT would not have any competition. I do wonder if QT may not be as good as it is today.. or if bad decisions were made along the way. Would a new graphics environment be created as a result?
This is where the multiverse would be interesting. It is not Movies like Marvel... it is to see a universe with the above. Would QT be as good as we think?
I had used Gnome for years, even with extensions often breaking between releases. And then they decided to remove the ability to have files on the desktop. I can't remember what Ubuntu release that was, and while Canonical at least hacked up a partial fix so the icons would at least show up, but you couldn't drag and drop them to or from the file manager.
It was a basic feature I had used since my family got their very first computer in 1992, a Mac that ran System 7. Gnome just decided they didn't like the way I used a computer for twenty-five years. It actually kind of shocked me. Been using KDE ever since.
Gnome is the only out of the box desktop environment I like.
KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, and others drove me to hacking together something with i3 or bspwm. At that point, I hadn't tried modern Gnome myself due to what others said about it, and having last used Gnome 2. I ended up using it at work though, and I shortly converted all of my machines over. Its been great.
I am glad that Gnome doesn't fall in line with other desktop environments; I don't like the others. Gnome breaking old conventions and making something new is what makes it good. I don't like KDE, and I don't want Gnome to copy it.
I also dont get the issue with the top bar. It wastes a lot less space than the taskbars in other desktop envionments. I also do want the time and wifi status somewhere, and Id rather not have some notch.
I also only use Gnome on desktops/laptops, but I find the settings menus nice to navigate and aethetically pleasing.
The author mentions dragging to top as awkward for maximizing but thats what I use on other DEs as well. And if I want to see a window behind the current one, I bring that window to front, not minimise the front window. Gnome's hot-corner to window selection screen is a huge usability improvement over minimizing a bunch of windows to get to the one I want.
You can use right mouse to resize if preferred; its an available setting.
I only really use the file manager for moving around files or unpacking zips. Most stuff I'll do from shell or Emacs. I haven't missed any features from the file manager, and I wouldn't want something with more complexity for my usecase. If I wanted a more powerful file manager, I'd install one.
A lot of customization is available through extensions, though I've ended up preferring the stock experience plus an exension that adds a button to keep laptop from going to sleep.
Another huge reason I would not use KDE is that its difficult to declaratively configure. The DE should not depend on persisted state. This is trivial on Gnome because everything is configured with dconf, and my declarative system configuration (using NixOS) has all my changed dconf settings. I only persist data and minimal state between reboots, and Gnome needs nothing persisted for me to always boot into my clean, configured as I want, Gnome DE.
I understand frustrations with GNOME. Since GNOME 3/Shell (when was that released... 2011?) came out it was met with a lot of controversy. I remember people sticking with GNOME2. There was also a GNOME legacy or something... where you can use GNOME3 but kept a lot of the familiarities to GNOME2. I think Plasma/KDE was having its own share of issues at the time, but were different issue.
For me, I don't mind GNOME3 but I may not be using it to the level many do. I am in Emacs most of the time.
When GNOME3 was in the distros, I didn't mind it. I understood what they were trying to do, a balance of an environment that could be used for PCs, Tablets, Phones, etc. Back in 2012 I think the assumption, since the rise of smart phones, that our future would be the slow death of desktop/latop PCs. Today, that future does not seem close. Its not like desktops/laptops have been replaced with phones (or PDA) that you use to clock in/out and plug into your monitors to do work. While I think that future will happen, it wont be for some time.
Microsoft went this route with Windows 8 and it failed! They soon reverted back to their "typical" theme for Windows 10.
GNOME, on the other hand, seem to be all-in on this approach. I am sure it is getting "better" (I have not used the latest GNOME releases) I would not be surprised there is still a lot of gripes people have - and this read seems to be good evidence for it.
Maybe I am just a bit too optimistic to the GNOME team... or, maybe I just need to see doctor for my head injury. :-)
Many of the pain points mentioned in the article also have another and perhaps surprising dimension - accessibility. Think about people having to use Gnome with just one arm, for instance during rehabilitation period after severe accident. Boy, is the experience going to be atrocious! Those long travel times, increased click counts and general Gnome idiosyncrasies are going to add up quickly. Pure frustration. Keyboard shortcuts won't cut it either, obviously.
Personally, I do use Gnome, but only because it has better immutable implementation at the moment (Fedora Silverblue > Fedora Kinoite because of bugs). But I'm rooting for COSMIC [1] and if it doesn't work out, any Wayland-enabled desktop environment will be better for me I guess, as long as it has a good immutable implementation.
I absolutely love this. It’s everything I’ve been telling people about GNOME with all of the screenshots and explanation in a single place, plus some new things I haven’t seen because I’ve been avoiding GNOME for so long.
19 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 54.0 ms ] threadIt is a shame I can't up vote it more than once.
It's reminded me of the horror that is the Apple Music app (for macos).
- The window preview size in window switcher (alt tab) is so small that it is useless.
- Windows switcher only shows the title of the focused item instead of showing title of all the windows.
- Window switcher is not a grid view so when the number of windows increases it shows them in a single long list.
- This is weird one: Start steam close the window so that steam is running in background, try logout but don't actually click logout on the dialog that ask for confirmation and you will find that steam in background is quitting :)
- Libadwaita based apps that uses tabs have this weird thing where the focused tab is darker then the non-focused tabs which is completely opposite of any GUI toolkit (where the focused tab is lighter then the non-focused one)
- Notifications are shown at top and middle of screen. Not sure how that is aligned with Gnome philosophy of "getting out of your way"
This is where the multiverse would be interesting. It is not Movies like Marvel... it is to see a universe with the above. Would QT be as good as we think?
It was a basic feature I had used since my family got their very first computer in 1992, a Mac that ran System 7. Gnome just decided they didn't like the way I used a computer for twenty-five years. It actually kind of shocked me. Been using KDE ever since.
KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, and others drove me to hacking together something with i3 or bspwm. At that point, I hadn't tried modern Gnome myself due to what others said about it, and having last used Gnome 2. I ended up using it at work though, and I shortly converted all of my machines over. Its been great.
I am glad that Gnome doesn't fall in line with other desktop environments; I don't like the others. Gnome breaking old conventions and making something new is what makes it good. I don't like KDE, and I don't want Gnome to copy it.
I also dont get the issue with the top bar. It wastes a lot less space than the taskbars in other desktop envionments. I also do want the time and wifi status somewhere, and Id rather not have some notch.
I also only use Gnome on desktops/laptops, but I find the settings menus nice to navigate and aethetically pleasing.
The author mentions dragging to top as awkward for maximizing but thats what I use on other DEs as well. And if I want to see a window behind the current one, I bring that window to front, not minimise the front window. Gnome's hot-corner to window selection screen is a huge usability improvement over minimizing a bunch of windows to get to the one I want.
You can use right mouse to resize if preferred; its an available setting.
I only really use the file manager for moving around files or unpacking zips. Most stuff I'll do from shell or Emacs. I haven't missed any features from the file manager, and I wouldn't want something with more complexity for my usecase. If I wanted a more powerful file manager, I'd install one.
A lot of customization is available through extensions, though I've ended up preferring the stock experience plus an exension that adds a button to keep laptop from going to sleep.
Another huge reason I would not use KDE is that its difficult to declaratively configure. The DE should not depend on persisted state. This is trivial on Gnome because everything is configured with dconf, and my declarative system configuration (using NixOS) has all my changed dconf settings. I only persist data and minimal state between reboots, and Gnome needs nothing persisted for me to always boot into my clean, configured as I want, Gnome DE.
Gnome also has a task bar which is even taller and wastes a huge amount of screen height.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...
I understand frustrations with GNOME. Since GNOME 3/Shell (when was that released... 2011?) came out it was met with a lot of controversy. I remember people sticking with GNOME2. There was also a GNOME legacy or something... where you can use GNOME3 but kept a lot of the familiarities to GNOME2. I think Plasma/KDE was having its own share of issues at the time, but were different issue.
For me, I don't mind GNOME3 but I may not be using it to the level many do. I am in Emacs most of the time.
When GNOME3 was in the distros, I didn't mind it. I understood what they were trying to do, a balance of an environment that could be used for PCs, Tablets, Phones, etc. Back in 2012 I think the assumption, since the rise of smart phones, that our future would be the slow death of desktop/latop PCs. Today, that future does not seem close. Its not like desktops/laptops have been replaced with phones (or PDA) that you use to clock in/out and plug into your monitors to do work. While I think that future will happen, it wont be for some time.
Microsoft went this route with Windows 8 and it failed! They soon reverted back to their "typical" theme for Windows 10.
GNOME, on the other hand, seem to be all-in on this approach. I am sure it is getting "better" (I have not used the latest GNOME releases) I would not be surprised there is still a lot of gripes people have - and this read seems to be good evidence for it.
Maybe I am just a bit too optimistic to the GNOME team... or, maybe I just need to see doctor for my head injury. :-)
Many of the pain points mentioned in the article also have another and perhaps surprising dimension - accessibility. Think about people having to use Gnome with just one arm, for instance during rehabilitation period after severe accident. Boy, is the experience going to be atrocious! Those long travel times, increased click counts and general Gnome idiosyncrasies are going to add up quickly. Pure frustration. Keyboard shortcuts won't cut it either, obviously.
Personally, I do use Gnome, but only because it has better immutable implementation at the moment (Fedora Silverblue > Fedora Kinoite because of bugs). But I'm rooting for COSMIC [1] and if it doesn't work out, any Wayland-enabled desktop environment will be better for me I guess, as long as it has a good immutable implementation.
[1] https://system76.com/cosmic
A huge “thank you” to the author!