I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it’s just not good.
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.
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.
Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?
I’d love to hear from people that use it and 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.
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.
GNOME does have a launcher, which works just like the launcher on Mac and Android. You can even select whether to see all your apps or only the most-used ones. I do agree that a taskbar/dock with intelligent auto-hide is a must, though (at least for my usability). That’s also not to say that some folks would rather have a Windows style launcher, and there are several DEs that provide that.
It’s not really the same design philosophy as iOS and Android since those actually have the equivalent of desktop icons, which function like a taskbar app launcher. So even they have a way of launching apps without a secondary menu.
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.
Gnome has one. You tap the super key for the dock, then again for the full app list. I see thiscoomplaint all the time, and it confuses me every time.
“I don’t like the default app launcher” or “I’d prefer an always visible dock” fine, but Gnome doesn’t have one? What?
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 both agree and disagree with this. Gnome is trying to make a unified system for this sort of thing, and that’s admirable, but until it works, we kinda need a notification tray.
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.
What I don’t understand about Gnome is how are you supposed to handle some task. I’m thinking about moving stuff around between directories. I sometimes need to have 3 or more separate folders open at the same time and quarter tiling and split view in Dolphin is a godsend. Gnome has neither split view in Nautilus nor quarter tiling.
Yes, I know there are ways around that like Pop-shell and other extensions, but I am specifically curious about the default Gnome workflow. In my opinion Gnome tends to skew too much towards form over function.I do use snapping for some things like my IDE, and use the side by side once in a while, but generally don’t use snapping. I have used the Pop Shell on my work computer where I tend to have a lot of terminals and little windows open on my big 4k monitor, though 90% of the time I leave it off. Generally speaking I just use small free floating windows and use alt-tab or Gnome’s overview to find a hidden window. I dunno when snapping entered the scene, but the first time I used it was maybe a decade ago. It’s nice, but decades of computers before that have trained me to mostly not care I guess. You can do tabs in Nautilus and drag files to the destination tab. I do that a lot I guess.
Its pretty simple you can open 3 different nautilus windows or open 3 tabs in nautilus. Not really very different then dolphin’s function but I found myself never using that function in dolphin anyway. I have a good example for a many window workflow that I do sometimes which is when I tag my music. Usually I have a web browser on one workspace or the music tagger split in half with the web browser and then I have separate work spaces with nautilus open in 2 windows with some tabs. I do all that alongside a game playing in the background casually and maybe a picture-in-picture window alongside that also open watching a video. I only have one monitor.
Good on you for donating to kde and gnome! In case you don’t know, there is an option in discord settings to quit whenever the window is closed.
I did not know that… Thanks! I looked through all the settings at some point, but mussed have missed it.
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
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.
Yes, I thrive in it.
I’ve always compared it to a window manager, but with a mouse focus instead of the keyboard. It feels very natural to me.
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I personally slap pop-shell and flypie radial menu on it, and I really love it
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.
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I love the gnome workflow. Coming from MacOS it’s more familiar to me than a windows layout, but still so much better than macOSs defaults. I usually have 3-4 workspaces open, with a specific “environment” in a single or a few workspaces. E.g a browser window with email, todos, calendar etc and other “personal things” in one, maybe one for a certain project I’m working on, another for a work project, etc. This way I’m always focusing on one thing at a time but can quickly context switch and have my laptop “switch with me”. I also make heavy use of alt-tab and Ctrl-tab for window switching. Together with fewer windows per workspace, this makes it super fast to navigate without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. If I forget where things are, a glance at the overview is enough.
It should be noted that I don’t use a mouse and if I love touchpad gestures, so gnome is perfect for me. Even using a keyboard only and the very occasional touchpad is very comfortable on gnome. At least compared to macOS and windows.
Gnome 3.38 (vertical workspaces) was peak workflow. Primarily use super+tab to switch applications. Workspace overview is mainly for moving apps around or opening new apps. You should never need to whiz through the workspaces looking for an app. I never have more than 4 workspaces and usually only have 2. It would be nice if the top panel could be more useful or take up less space, but I must be able to see the time at a glance.
I find the GNOME workflow very intuitive and have grown really accustomed to it over the years. It’s minimal and gets out of the way, while at the same time everything I need is accessible on one keypress through the activities overview.
I don’t feel at home on any other desktop environment. Even on Ubuntu I revert everything to stock GNOME.
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 fell in love with Gnome 3 when it first came out and havent looked back. I dont miss a taskbar because I just use the keyboard shortcuts to move between workspaces and alt+tab to switch programs. Gnome seems to be more efficient the less you use the mouse which is my preferred M.O. anyways.
