What’s wrong with gnome?
Literally the only foundation that made Linux usable, stable, unified and customizable.
Yeah it is barebones and extensions can’t really fully supercustomize it, but it does its job pretty well.
It’s barebones AND heavyweight. People would except only one or another.
That’s because Gnome knows best.
Controversial choices made by devs against most userbase mostly in the name of semplicity at the cost of usability.
Lately they’ve updated Nautilus’s “open with” menu, which was working fine, to libadwaita and now it lacks search, so I must scroll through a long list of apps. Or other stuff like that which breaks retro-compatibility like no one cares (why do I need extensions and a custom theme by a random dude to make gtk3 not look alien next to gtk4?). Poor extensions developers must convert their extensions every six months.
I’m still on it because I like its apps’ UX and Plasma still feels unpolished. But I think that’s just a matter of time, given how things are going on.
gnome dumbed itself down too far, it’s turning into the win10 or 11 of linux–with features, basic features… expected features and functions, now missing… and the bland ui that makes it difficult to even see a damn window border without customizing tf out of it. i do not subscribe to their idea of one workspace per window or application. fk that.
the only thing that was keeping it on a few systems here was an extension. one not even made by them. i found an equivalent kwin script for plasma. starting switching stuff over the next day.
i won’t go back. and i’ve found that gtk and libadwaita stuff actually looks better on kde, anyway. so no change in what i’m using, just what everything runs from.
i might still put gnome on for others, if all they’re looking for is a dumbed-down, simple launcher for their browser–like an alternative to chromebook, but that’s it.
Agreed. GNOME’s simply too opinionated for my taste. Imagine not having something as simple as autostart app configuration in 2026. You need a (first-party?) app for that? For basic functionality? Disgusting.
Valid criticisms
I’m still on it because I like its apps’ UX and Plasma still feels unpolished.
I mean , you could add its UX as a criticism too, but it’s also the whole point of Gnome3 is to be … whatever the fuck it is they are going for. OpenSource mac+? Plasma feels unpolished because its plain and unassuming, and you form it into what you want it to be.
Also it gets funky with multi monitors, so I have widgets getting scaled randomly on the 2d monitor, and have
kquitapp6 plasmashell && kstart plasmashellbound to an alias
It literally isn’t.
I really like using gnome DE. No software is perfect, and no user interface will suit everyone’s user case though.
The gnome project however has some members that are quite opinionated to the point of being hostile to any criticism or even just opposing opinions.
Gnome is great.
Most Linux users can’t deal with every single project not prioritizing customization. Gnome having a unique workflow (which is a great one) is unbearable for some reason.
I am not gonna place the full blame on the Linux community though. Gnome started out way more customizable, so maybe that suddenly getting pulled from underneath Gnome users so inconsiderately gave it a bad reputation.
Then they went and did absurd things with libadwaita to not only stop supporting customization, but actively interfere with people’s choices of customizing Gnome and libadwaita apps so apps ~“are viewed and used as intended by their developers, and people don’t accidentally break apps and complain to the devs” (i.e. Bullshit).
Literally the only foundation that made Linux usable, stable, unified and customizable.
I really can’t see how. It’s popular and user friendly, but I can’t seriously give it that much importance.
For me at least: It just serves to show that Linux UIs can be clean, consistent, and user friendly. Which might pull in funding from companies and governments looking for a good UI to mass deploy.
But if it didn’t exist, Plasma would’ve eventually filled that vacuum.
WDYM Libadwaita is not customizable? Libadwaita is the most customizable UI lib I would say. You literally fan just change every part of any app through css and call it a day.
Unlike QT slop - literally fuck ton of inconsistency. And if you don’t like classic Breeze - good luck. Because Kirigami makes it impossible to customize QT apps at all.
Ah yes, comparing shit to shit. Although there’s basically no other choice anymore…
Anyways, I once tried removing the profile pictures in Dino. That’s it. Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. After poking around, found that GTK literally has devtools like a web browser, albeit a bit more annoying to use. Found that there’s is a “hidden” checkbox, if I check that it hides all profile pictures. Great, I thought. Then tried CSS:
display: none !important; // nah, that would be too naive hidden: 1; // nope opacity: 0; // doesn't remove from layout width: 0px; // nopeGave up, found the relevant docs after going through a bunch of useless ones, and all of the rules fit on one page. None of them remove a fucking element. And that’s because none of these are meant for the user (have you met the average Gn*me user?). And basically all of them have native counterparts anyway, so they are just an illusion of choice to the developers, too.
WDYM Libadwaita is not customizable? Libadwaita is the most customizable UI lib I would say. You literally can just change every part of any app through css and call it a day.
I haven’t tried doing it in a while, but I remember it being very difficult to change themes beyond tint and colors, with lots of apps having custom colors not in the pallet used in the “gtk.css” file.
Barebones 🤣 🤣
Not even a little. GTFO. Flux is barebones, LXDE and LXQT, maybe XFCE but gnome? 😂 bloated DE for touchscreens
Just as you mentioned, GNOME is not very welcoming to deep customization. You either use it the dev-intended way, or you don’t use it at all.
If you like the default GNOME way of doing things, it’s alright. If you don’t - no amount of extensions will help.
And it all would be fine if GNOME wouldn’t be the default on quite a few distros, including, most importantly, Ubuntu. New users come from Windows, hear the old advice to just “go Ubuntu” and meet an absolutely horrible and unintuitive experience unlike everything they ever touched. This alone made Linux some bad rep.
If you like the default GNOME way of doing things, it’s alright. If you don’t - no amount of extensions will help.
Not to mention Gnome is monolithic, so any bug will immediately crash the whole desktop. Other than basically any other desktop compositor, window manager and desktop environment are tightly intertwined, so any extension (which still monkey-patch code directly into gnome-shell) can utterly break the whole thing to the point you don’t have a graphical interface anymore.
Compared to KDE, Cinnamon and others (who can have their whole desktop crash without taking any applications with it as long as the window manager etc. and drivers remain unaffected, usually trying to restart the DE and spawn e.g. Dr Konqi) Gnome loves to be unstable because of this. If Gnome crashes it takes everything with a GUI with it.
Been using gnome for years, literally cannot remember a single time the entirety of gnome crashed.
I’ve used gnome tweaks for a long time as well.
Whereas everytime I’ve tried to use a custom KDE theme of some kind, some part of it is broken in some fun new extremely specific way that I did not know KDE could be broken in.
you’re at the whims of devs that DO NOT take user feedback at all. so it’s a very opinionated DE. If you’re not using GNOME the way the devs intend you to use it, then you shouldn’t be using it according to them. so it kinda goes against the grain of Linux as a whole which is all about a custom user experience. GNOME says no to that idea.
None of this would be bad if the devs also didn’t think that they should be the default Linux desktop. It’s one thing having a constrictive desktop environment that forces you into its way of doing things. I can see that actually being useful in a corporate setting. But to borderline-force that on everyone by way of defaultism, especially those who don’t know better, is where it crosses a line.
I wouldn’t blame GNOME for being the default environment. They’re the default because GNOME is stable, and their apps have a coherent design language. It’s a very approachable platform. Their app names are boring, but they’re self-explanatory.
- Calendar
- Calculator
- Files
- Image Viewer
- Web
KDE on the other hand is still decently unstable. Last time I had KDE crash on me when doing nothing but opening the panel edit view was literally last week. The application UX is a bit all over the place, and a lot of them feel like they were “made by developers.” The naming scheme is the olden cutesy KDE/Linux naming scheme, which is charming but feels pretty alien when you’re new to it.
- Merkuro
- KCalc
- Dolphin
- Gwenview
- Konqueror
People actually use DE browsers these days? /gen
Konqueror was useful while it was still KHTML.
It crashed when you were editing a panel? I literally don’t remember the last time KDE crashed on me, and I’m even on an NVIDIA GPU.
That has literally always been the default KDE experience for me. I find KDE to be a constantly buggy unstable mess. I’m glad it seems to work for everyone else, but it clearly doesn’t like me and the feeling is mutual now.
Which version did you test last? 4 was horribly bad, 5 got a little better, but i feel like with 6 they got it under control now. At least on openSuse.
Yeah. It’s done it across installs. I installed KDE on my desktop last week because GNOME had some fucked idea of clipboard handling causing a software I use to crash if I try to copy/paste in it.
My desktop runs Tumbleweed, my personal laptop runs Arch, and my work laptop runs NixOS. Desktop ran an NVidia card up until end of April since I got fucking sick of NVidia and their shitty drivers, it’s now an AMD card.
The laptops both run Intel.
Modern KDE is stabler than things were back in KDE4, for sure, but it’s hardly stable or snappy.
The project is filled with “my way or the highway” types. They’ve generally held back Wayland development by not implementing a bunch of APIs everybody else wanted. GTK especially with libadwaita is very hostile to theming, leading to worse experiences on other desktops.
Hey, at least it doesn’t run windows.
Things can always be worse
Lack of desktop shortcuts by default: pretty much why I always switch to cinnamon.
That said, it’s not inherently bad, it’s just not inherently good.
I would rather use nothing than gnome
tmux > gnome
Gnome behaves consistently. I want to love kde and have used it since the 3. Days but kwin seems to hate every build I’ve ever done.
Oh, you didn’t want to be disoriented by all the apps flying apart in every direction when ever you wanted to use the task bar? Oh you wanted a system tray not hidden behind a menu?
Oh, well you can just use a plug in … just pray we don’t update and break all the plug ins anytime soon.
Coming from MacOS into Linux and landing on Debian/Gnome encouraged me into the world of keyboard-driven navigation.
I got into customising keybindings and moved to a split programmable mech keyboard not too long after. Three years ago I made the switch to Sway and now on Niri (all transitions switched off) on my laptop. My desktop workstation still is on Gnome and I switch between the two machines (with full keyboard-driven navigation) seamlessly.
Yes, some extensions do break on updates but I use extensions very minimally and they get patched relatively quickly. For the experience Gnome provides, I dont mind the couple of days that “blur my shell” is broken. The DE remains stable and the keyboard-driven workflow is fast.
Now that I daily drive a WM (on my laptop) I am thankful I started on Gnome upon landing in Linux. It still remains the best keyboard-driven DE out of the box for Linux first-timers. Perhaps Cosmic will be the other DE in a few years.
I hope Gnome sticks to its phislosphy as it truly provides something unique, stable and a great entry point into the world of keyboard-driven workflows out of the box.
I don’t really see how GNOME is any more keyboard focused than, say, KDE. If anything, other DEs give you much more freedom for a keyboard workflow.
I think their point was that MacOS -> GNOME was a another transition than a diffetent desktop environment would have been, which led to them naturally discovering more keyboard-oriented workflows. Not that GNOME is any more keyboard oriented than other DEs.
I took sort of the opposite route. Lifelong windows user. Tried Linux out several times from like 08-12/13. Moved to Linux full time, and landed on Fedora, and absolutely loved it because of Gnome. It was different enough from Windows that it felt like a fresh start. Have been daily driving it since then.
Two weeks ago I got my first ever apple device because I wanted something genuine reliable for school that didn’t have any weird hiccups, and I just could not stomach the idea of going back to windows. It’s similar enough to gnome that I am adjusting pretty well. Still have fedora on my desktop and backup laptop, though
Ew, Gnome.
I’m guy who actually likes and uses gnome as my daily driver.
It’s for people who want to spend less time complaining about desktop environments and more time actually doing stuff.
Hilarious, thank you
So that’s why they went “you liked vertical desktops? now you will like horizontal layout. Don’t thank us”
Agreed, the workflow is good for me.
Agreed. It’s prettier then KDE. More same fonts, those are all over the place in KDE. Differentt fonts and different sizes… no thanks.
Gnome is perfect for me.
i see no lies
Cough cough server side decorations in wayland being sabotaged cough cough
as somebody who used gnome, its cool but only if its installed on good hardware. my potato pc was so slow under gnome, so i just installed lxqt on it lol
When Gnome 3 first came out, it was comically unusable, but now a lot of the big issues have been fixed and I find it only mildly idiosyncratic. I like the KDE user experience more but I also think KDE is much buggier. I switched to gnome last year after getting tired of dealing with my desktop freezing/crashing and it’s been pretty smooth sailing. My main complaints are:
- Switching applications instead of windows on alt-tab (has any computer user ever wanted this?)
- Modal dialogues have window decorations that inexplicably move the parent window when dragged
- Typing in Files starts searching instead of navigating to a file/directory with the typed name
- Opening an archive extracts it automatically instead of looking inside
The default gnome applications are also quite inferior to their KDE counterparts (Dolphin is leagues ahead of Files, Kate is much better than Gnome’s text editor). But I guess you could install dolphin on gnome if you really wanted, so I won’t hold that against the DE itself.
When did you last try out KDE? Plasma 6 improved UX a lot. And based on the current roadmap, it’ll keep improving faster than Gnome
Every day from 2021-2025. The UX is already great I just found it very unstable and buggy
Points 2 and 4 drive me nuts. For 2 in particular there must be some rationale, but the amount of times I’ve needed to see something behind the dialog, to have to cancel after having navigated the filesystem… Just bonkers.
iirc (gnome) tweaks has a toggle for separating dialogs from parents.
That sounds like it should be controlled by a modifier key. Like click and drag just moves the current window while ctrl+drag moves the parent window as well and shift+drag moves all windows owned by that same program. Right click to cancel the whole move operation from the start of the click, then allow dynamically switching modes mid-drag.
Uhhhhh anyone know… …the artist’s… name? Cuz cute.
Yep, it’s shoutingisfun. They have really good pools.
Love this, thank you hahaha
Reverse image search got me a reddit post crediting @shoutingisfun but don’t quote me on that
Thank you! That’s it, good stuff.
I like Gnome
Fight me
Nah, we’re good
keeps enjoying KDE
I like KDE too
We can be frens
Frens 'tis!
Now kitss!
Here here
