I made this post because I really like the design of GNOME, and although i’d like customizability, it is mostly enough for my everyday needs. But I want to understand why people may choose other desktop environments…or why you would/would’nt use GNOME.
I like GNOME but there’s something so frustrating about how much it’s lacking out of the box. It feels like you have to fish out a lot of extensions to make it comfortable to use, and these extensions often break each update. Not having native support for a taskbar to quickly show/minimize the apps you have open… Just why?
Luckily a lot of distros do add those features out of the box like Zorin/Nobara, but otherwise I’d just go for Plasma. A lot of Gnome feels like it’s copying Mac for the sake of copying Mac which I don’t like very much, but maybe I’m biased because I mostly use and got comfortable with Windows-style UI. People compared it to Windows 8 and I totally agree, the way they want you to use Gnome feels more like it’s made for tablets than desktops.
Gnome is pretty good otherwise, it’s just their team makes weird decisions and never seem to change their stance.
copying Mac
I don’t get this. I like macOS’ UI. It’s really not like GNOME at all. I very much dislike GNOME
I ran Pop! OS for about a day which uses Gnome (don’t know which version) and while I liked bits of it I really disliked the file browser and image viewer. The file browser makes it difficult to browse folders outside of my home folder, there are no image previews and there’s a needlessly large gap between folders and files wasting visual space. The image viewer is not great, it can’t open the images made by my Nikon DSLR and quite a few times the image viewer would load the image at full resolution putting the title bar off the top of the monitor.
I like Gnome Shell. It’s polished and extensible. Libadwaita and the header bars are nice as well. I generally prefer nautilus to dolphin, even if I hate having to ctrl-l to edit the path.
I use KDE however because Mutter is still dogshit slow, especially in wayland. My work PC has a R5 3600, RX 570, and 48GB ram and it struggles to maintain 60fps across 3 1080p monitors. KWin runs significantly better, so I use KDE and just configure it like I would Gnome.
I remember my first time installing Ubuntu as a teenager and the fact that the desktop environment was Gnome made me hate it. At that age and time I wanted something familiar and Windows-like. Since then, 13 years ago, I always hated Gnome (and Ubuntu) and I don’t feel like that is going to change any time soon.
The new SteamOS opened my eyes to KDE Plasma and now I am running Garuda on my main desktop. Eventually I plan to switch to Arch and “make my own distro” or just use SteamOS once it gets official desktop release.
gnome 4 is fine. i come from macs and chromebooks, so a minimalist desktop with an app dock is familiar. KDE, XFDE, etc are too windows-y for me.
I like a lot of pre-customised versions of GNOME like with Ubuntu or Pop!_OS but (and I’m currently using this on Fedora) the default “out of the box” GNOME experience is a bit rough and unfriendly. Sure I’ve got it customised now with some fancy top panel stuff but its still clear I just shoehorned in a bunch of GNOME extensions - and I’m still yet to find a tray that is 1) still supported and 2) to my liking.
I like the overall design of the Gnome Shell (top panel) and the workflow with different workspace. I like it so much that I actually copied it in KDE. What I don’t like is the look and feel of GTK apps. They’re often so limited or the advanced options aren’t clear at the first look.
Ir was my first desktop I encountered when introduced to GNU/Linux and it is actually what made me delay my switch to GNU/Linux since I disliked it so much. back then I did not know there are more desktop options so Iit made me think the whole GNU/Linux is not interesting to me. It was not until a few years later until I was told there are other options and I was shown KDE desktop (not called Plasma yet back then) that I fell in love with GNU/Linux.
Why I did not like GNOME was that it was too limited and limiting and unconfigurable. And I would say nowadays it has gotten even worse while KDE Plasma has improved a lot. I think GNU/Linux would have a lot more success at capturing the desktop OS market if KDE Plasma would be the major and default desktop in all those enterprise distributions. It is just so much better and so flexible you can even turn it to mimic any other desktop or even better customize it to fit your wery own best way of workflow and using computers.
What I hate is CSD… using it with CSD is sad for #xfce user :'(
Coming from Windows, gnome was the desktop that taught me how to use and appreciate multiple workspaces. I’m now entirely sold on KDE, but there’s something to be said about the gnome workflow.
I like the aesthetic, Gnome applications are very pretty. But I really don’t like the workflow, it’s not objectively bad but I already have my own and I refuse to change it. The desktop should adapt to my choices, not the other way around. I know you can change how Gnome behaves with extensions but I believe that kinda defeats the whole point, and I’ve heard they often break.
I prefer Xfce; it’s simple but not too minimalistic, it’s customazible but not so much to give you choice paralysis, and it just lets you run things however you want without getting in the way.
The only reasons i stopped using gnome is the lack of system tray and the window switching workflow when using a mouse.
I use GNOME 43 on Debian 12. I sincerely enjoy it. The workspaces are intuitive, it looks and feels sexy, and it has a pretty great set of extensions. While I really appreciate other projects like KDE and XFCE, I think GNOME is probably the most mature DE I’ve used.
That said, I do have a few gripes. For starters, it’s pretty annoying that I have to use tweaks to access settings that should absolutely be included in the regular settings page. It’s also pretty dumb that I have to install an extension to be able to quarter tile. There are so e other small issues I have, but none more than I would have with any other desktop experience, and overall I adore what the devs have put together.
I like GNOME because I don’t want customizability.
OK, I like a bit of customizability, but I’m not a designer and trying to make things look consistent and nice is a pain. I once spent days making an icon theme work in Xfce (the freedesktop standards for naming icons are not followed by anyone… (meaning both Xfce and icon themes))
I use GNOME as is and accept it and everything is swell.
Also I use a laptop and I’m addicted the three-finger swipe window preview…
I love customisation and used to customize KDE, but one I saw the new gnome it was pretty much exactly how I was trying to make kde look anyway
I was going for Pantheon-like before and then realised that’s basically just GNOME with some extra bits
Also yes three finger swipe is essential for me on a laptop now every DE should have it
I admire their uncompromising stance on feature creep and polish of the core functionality.
I’m a simple man, all I need 95% of the time is keyboard shortcuts to switch between maximized browser and a maximized terminal emulator.
Compare and contrast KDE, where you have three infinitely configurable screen zoom plugins, and I’ve never seen 3/3 working.
