I have used XFCE, KDE, and GNOME and in my opinion, Gnome provides by far the best the best workflow for me. The UI is very keyboard-driven, which makes navigation very fast and intuitive. Also it doesn’t look like an outdated Windows version (like Plasma or XFCE) and I had way fewer bugs with it than with any other desktop.
I find it interesting how everyone always talks about the „Unix philosophy“ („software should do one thing and do it well“) but at the same time everyone likes Plasma for having hundreds of useless, buggy features.
Gnome has a core featureset and a robust extension-system if you need more. There is no bloatware in Gnome. And please don’t tell me something like „Gnome isn’t usable without a taskbar/dock“. It is, lots of people use it that way, not every desktop needs to be like macOS or Windows.
Of course it’s okay to like another desktop environment more, but I just don’t get why Gnome gets so much hate.
I don’t understand people calling GNOME keyboard-driven, it doesn’t even support keyboard shortcuts for more than 4 workspaces, and it doesn’t support tiling other than left and right.
I also feel like the plugin system is not great. The plugins break on every.single.update and you have to beg the maintainers to update them.
I agree about a dock/taskbar miss me with that :P
What frustrates me about GNOME is that it’s otherwise so well-polished and smooth but just refuses to be easily customizable.
That’s what I fucking hate about it, great extensions, couldn’t fucking settle on an API that doesn’t break every update. When will the gnome devs ever be content with themselves
there is no API, which is the problem. It’s just straight code injection. That’s why extensions can be so powerful. A stable API would compromise their freedom for sure
Okay then, I’m never gonna update gnome again I guess. The machine I use it on is for work, so I care about stability. Or should I have never chosen gnome in the first place?
I’m not sure that is a fair reaction. If your workflow relies heavily on many complex extensions that have a history of updating slow it is probably worth just… waiting a bit? You don’t HAVE to be on the bleeding edge of Gnome releases. With a fairly minimal extensions list I’ve not had problems updating to new releases for a long long time
That’s just the logical conclusion of continuing development. And even if the API stays the same, the shell might function differently, which could lead to extension bugs, therefore it is safer to break them all until the extension developer validates it for the new version.
You could of course force the internal stuff to be the same, but this would just stifle development and innovation.
In my opinion, if you can only use Gnome with extensions, you shouldn’t use it in the first place. Personally, I do have extensions, but they do so little that I don’t have a problem waiting a week or two until they update. Extensions don’t influence my workflow, they just are small quality of life adjustments (e.g. hiding the battery indicator when docked to my monitor and fully charged etc).
Gnome on Wayland shits on anything and everything for how well they’ve done touchpad gestures. Even MacOS. Definitely Windows as well as other Linux DEs.
I kinda had the opposite experience, switching from gnome to plasma for the more experimental features it supports on Wayland.
So far, plasma needs like a literal minute after logging in before any app can open.
That came with other weird issues, like alt-tabbing with a Fullscreen game being very finicky, sometimes refusing to alt-tab, and sometimes the taskbar breaks and stays frozen for most of the time, only unfreezing for a few seconds every minute or so.
I would sum up my experience as GNOME being more polished, working more consistently, while Plasma is perhaps better designed, more full-featured, including cases where GNOME is waiting on something to be implemented/standardized.
(Tiling) window managers like i3, dwm or sway open apps instantly. If not, then this is mostly because the app you want to open is bloated/ too complex.
Why would they open them faster? They do the exact same shit. It takes a long time because the OS has to load every file into memory, and especially the first time things line the whole gtk library is loaded is taking its time.
Its mostly the devs and the bad decisions they make around GNOME, for me i use a lot of apps that require Server Side Window Decorations (SSD) to be useful, specifically apps like Foot terminal (default gnome console or gnome terminal is not featureful enough and neither have sixel support, whereas foot terminal does have sixel) and gnome doesnt have any SSD on wayland, and GNOME also lacks customization features and doesnt have a standardized theming API and the GNOME devs consider themes to be “unsupported”. Unlike on KDE Plasma where themes have a standardized API through the toolkit (qt) and are officiall supported. Also GNOME in general lacks basic features that require extensions whereas on other desktops you have things like a systray as a default.
I agree regarding SSD, I do a lot of graphics development and having to deal with decorations on your own is really annoying. However, most windowing libraries support them nowadays. (GLFW has an open MR to include Libdecor)
The lack of customization has been a decision they made in favor of Libadwaita. Libadwaita is a GTK4 library that makes developing apps for Gnome way faster. The Gnome ecosystem has really evolved in the last two years thanks to Libadwaita, there are so many nicely designed and practical apps. This is the trade-off I am willing to make. For me, a uniform and consistent desktop is way more important than theming, especially when apps look amazing by default.
I don’t get what basic features are missing. I have been using Gnome for years now, I never felt the need for an additional feature.
A system tray is not a „basic feature“, as I said, not every desktop has to be a Windows clone. I have never felt the need for one, if I need an app, I just launch it. Why do I have to have a bunch of cluttered and ugly icons visible all the time? An app can run in the background without a system tray by the way.
running in the background isnt a system tray. every other desktop on the face of the earth has a system tray. It’s a basic espected feature and i use system tray functionality all the time.
I have used XFCE, KDE, and GNOME and in my opinion, Gnome provides by far the best the best workflow for me. The UI is very keyboard-driven, which makes navigation very fast and intuitive. Also it doesn’t look like an outdated Windows version (like Plasma or XFCE) and I had way fewer bugs with it than with any other desktop.
I find it interesting how everyone always talks about the „Unix philosophy“ („software should do one thing and do it well“) but at the same time everyone likes Plasma for having hundreds of useless, buggy features.
Gnome has a core featureset and a robust extension-system if you need more. There is no bloatware in Gnome. And please don’t tell me something like „Gnome isn’t usable without a taskbar/dock“. It is, lots of people use it that way, not every desktop needs to be like macOS or Windows.
Of course it’s okay to like another desktop environment more, but I just don’t get why Gnome gets so much hate.
I’ve used GNOME for a year now.
I don’t understand people calling GNOME keyboard-driven, it doesn’t even support keyboard shortcuts for more than 4 workspaces, and it doesn’t support tiling other than left and right.
I also feel like the plugin system is not great. The plugins break on every.single.update and you have to beg the maintainers to update them.
I agree about a dock/taskbar miss me with that :P
What frustrates me about GNOME is that it’s otherwise so well-polished and smooth but just refuses to be easily customizable.
That’s what I fucking hate about it, great extensions, couldn’t fucking settle on an API that doesn’t break every update. When will the gnome devs ever be content with themselves
there is no API, which is the problem. It’s just straight code injection. That’s why extensions can be so powerful. A stable API would compromise their freedom for sure
Okay then, I’m never gonna update gnome again I guess. The machine I use it on is for work, so I care about stability. Or should I have never chosen gnome in the first place?
I’m not sure that is a fair reaction. If your workflow relies heavily on many complex extensions that have a history of updating slow it is probably worth just… waiting a bit? You don’t HAVE to be on the bleeding edge of Gnome releases. With a fairly minimal extensions list I’ve not had problems updating to new releases for a long long time
That’s just the logical conclusion of continuing development. And even if the API stays the same, the shell might function differently, which could lead to extension bugs, therefore it is safer to break them all until the extension developer validates it for the new version.
You could of course force the internal stuff to be the same, but this would just stifle development and innovation.
In my opinion, if you can only use Gnome with extensions, you shouldn’t use it in the first place. Personally, I do have extensions, but they do so little that I don’t have a problem waiting a week or two until they update. Extensions don’t influence my workflow, they just are small quality of life adjustments (e.g. hiding the battery indicator when docked to my monitor and fully charged etc).
shortcuts for >4 workspaces work fine, they’re just not in the default settings app https://superuser.com/a/1732752
nah i think gnome is great for touchpad navigation
Gnome on Wayland shits on anything and everything for how well they’ve done touchpad gestures. Even MacOS. Definitely Windows as well as other Linux DEs.
Why is there noticeable delay tho when you open apps like Nautilus or Settings? Not even the terminal opens instantly
I kinda had the opposite experience, switching from gnome to plasma for the more experimental features it supports on Wayland.
So far, plasma needs like a literal minute after logging in before any app can open.
That came with other weird issues, like alt-tabbing with a Fullscreen game being very finicky, sometimes refusing to alt-tab, and sometimes the taskbar breaks and stays frozen for most of the time, only unfreezing for a few seconds every minute or so.
I would sum up my experience as GNOME being more polished, working more consistently, while Plasma is perhaps better designed, more full-featured, including cases where GNOME is waiting on something to be implemented/standardized.
Is there any desktop OS that open apps instantly? Because I have never seen any, my phone definitely beats any of them.
(Tiling) window managers like i3, dwm or sway open apps instantly. If not, then this is mostly because the app you want to open is bloated/ too complex.
Why would they open them faster? They do the exact same shit. It takes a long time because the OS has to load every file into memory, and especially the first time things line the whole gtk library is loaded is taking its time.
That’s just my experience
Its mostly the devs and the bad decisions they make around GNOME, for me i use a lot of apps that require Server Side Window Decorations (SSD) to be useful, specifically apps like Foot terminal (default gnome console or gnome terminal is not featureful enough and neither have sixel support, whereas foot terminal does have sixel) and gnome doesnt have any SSD on wayland, and GNOME also lacks customization features and doesnt have a standardized theming API and the GNOME devs consider themes to be “unsupported”. Unlike on KDE Plasma where themes have a standardized API through the toolkit (qt) and are officiall supported. Also GNOME in general lacks basic features that require extensions whereas on other desktops you have things like a systray as a default.
I agree regarding SSD, I do a lot of graphics development and having to deal with decorations on your own is really annoying. However, most windowing libraries support them nowadays. (GLFW has an open MR to include Libdecor)
The lack of customization has been a decision they made in favor of Libadwaita. Libadwaita is a GTK4 library that makes developing apps for Gnome way faster. The Gnome ecosystem has really evolved in the last two years thanks to Libadwaita, there are so many nicely designed and practical apps. This is the trade-off I am willing to make. For me, a uniform and consistent desktop is way more important than theming, especially when apps look amazing by default.
I don’t get what basic features are missing. I have been using Gnome for years now, I never felt the need for an additional feature. A system tray is not a „basic feature“, as I said, not every desktop has to be a Windows clone. I have never felt the need for one, if I need an app, I just launch it. Why do I have to have a bunch of cluttered and ugly icons visible all the time? An app can run in the background without a system tray by the way.
running in the background isnt a system tray. every other desktop on the face of the earth has a system tray. It’s a basic espected feature and i use system tray functionality all the time.