I ended up switching to Gnome because KDE would always feel a bit jank to me. Something about it always feels slightly off, animations not working properly or being choppy like my desktop had an unstable framerate. Might just be it fighting with Nvidia, but I don’t have several hundred bucks lying around to upgrade my card and switch to AMD…
Kind of odd seeing the massive hate boner the community seems so have for Gnome, at least we have options for desktop environments at all.
My problem with Gnome is the foundation itself.
They act like they know best, and rarely listen to user feedback.
They act like Apple, and that is very bad.
Not only that, but they also act like they are the default and only desktop on Linux, and rarely if ever cooperate with other desktop groups to make things work smoothly.
They are dragged kicking and screaming into following standards, and were the biggest source of NACKs (effectively a “veto”) on the Wayland protocol and a huge reason why Wayland still isn’t complete after over a decade of design.
The gnome desktop is pretty, but it is not functional. You can make it functional by installing gobs of extensions, but those extensions don’t follow a cohesive workflow concept, and often break with updates. It’s like trying to mod Skyrim or Minecraft.
To contrast that, KDE:
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Explicitly listens to its users and has scheduled times for specifically taking in user feedback (within the scope of broad goals)
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Actively works to be interoperable with other environments
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Follows standards and pushes them forward
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Has all the functionality out of the box, and can be made pretty with extensions/assets (the inverse of Gnome).
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Functionality mostly doesnt break on updates unless it’s major (like switching to Wayland as the primary development target).
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I don’t say much about it because it’s stupid to argue, but I’ve used a LOT of different desktop interfaces over the past 45+ years (yeah, really!), and GNOME…well, GNOME sucks. When Gnome3 was first released we all had high hopes for it improving on Gnome2 (which for those of us on Unix systems was a huge improvement over CDE), and instead it was buggy, clunky, awkward, and an enormous resource hog. Oh yeah, and it was massively unconfigurable. AND it continued to not improve for many many years, until most people I know switched to KDE or one of the other environments (MATE, Cinnamon, and xfce were very popular).
Gnome 4x added a touchscreen paradigm, whether you had a touchscreen or not, and made the experience worse in the process.
If you like it, great! Use it and love it all you want! I’ll play with it once every year or so just to see if someone has finally designed something that doesn’t suck so badly, but for a functional desktop, no thanks.
I think the fact that most of the ‘fringe’ desktops are well-known in the community because of people trying to escape GNOME is pretty telling.
Gnome x.x added a <whatever they got excited about lately> paradigm, whether you need it or not, and made the experience worse in the process.
There. The last couple decades of GNOME development in a nutshell.
If you used Gnome back in the day you know there was a lot of that configurability built in. Then one day the developer decided to start taking it away. Slowly but surely all the ability to configure Gnome was removed. If you experienced this arc like I did you were left scratching your head.
Yes KDE was always more configurable, but removing what configurability Gnome did have made it less useful. For power users this is a big deal. It is like a company taking away all your features and thinking you are going to like it.
I think the gnome haters are just the loudest. I’ve had all of the same issues with KDE and gnome has just always worked for me. Sure it’s not as customizable, but it gets the job done without annoying issues.
You know how you start hallucinating in a sensory deprivation situation? I feel a lot of UX people just aren’t talking to users directly and thus we get whatever they hallucinate is a good design, disconnected from any actual user needs. Any user feedback only comes after they’ve made their mind up and is seen as the users being wrong, as the alternative is harder to deal with.
It’s free so I can’t really complain, but I can use KDE instead.
It’s funny because GNOME was the first OSS X11 desktop environment to get actual usability testing from corporate developers (Sun Microsystems).
I’m not sure if they still have a user interface design guideline document, though. They probably burned it when GNOME 3 development started. Haven’t checked. I’ve mostly used Xfce since then (and very recently KDE).
Don’t even try to say GNOME is a touch screen design. I’ve used it with a touchscreen, it’s just bad design. What bothers me the most is that is close to being good if not for a couple of stupid decisions like having no system tray.
The system tray thing irks me to no end. Some apps still use one to control things and you have to use hacky plugins to get them to show. Other than that there’s a lot I do like about gnome. Plasma suits my needs more though. So much more you can do with it.
Yeah, at least with plasma I can change all the defaults I don’t like, but with gnome you have to hope there’s an extension that’s moderately up to date or make one of your own.
Yep. I don’t even want a proper system tray, just gimme a list with the apps that are still running with their windows closed. They can’t even do that.
Ive changed my entire work flow because of this. On my laptop I use paperWM for infinite horizontal scrolling/tiling and “vertical” workspaces for organizing windows. Instead of minimizing windows, I just switch workspaces. Windows that need to be next to each other are on the same workspace, anything else is treated like a full screen app. It’s a little weird, but for productivity with a TouchPad it’s been an absolute game changer. Ican have a workspace dedicated to programming, obe thats just documents, one for each of my courses, one thats discord and music players, etc.
For a normal mouse, it’s a kafkaesque nightmare.
Same workflow here but on KDE. I even have an extension that sends any maximized screen to its own desktop and deletes the desktop when it’s closed or no longer maximized.
What is it?
Macsimize6 or something like that
Just use dash to dock extension. But I agree the system tray not being there by default is a puzzling experience.
Gnome is amazing for laptops, the touchpad gestures are incredible, on PC it’s aight.
I absolutely love (slightly tweaked) gnome. Fight me if you want, I’m sick in bed and have time.
well if you’re sick in bed this will be an easy fight…
I elbow slam your face, your turn
You activated my trap card! My sickness was but a simple ruse to lure you into complacency! Your attack was weak, unfocused! I jump up, standing on my bed, your face is now easy prey for my unnaturally sharp knees. The structural rigidity of your nose is now forfeit!
Your attack was weak, unfocused!
Much like the Gnome user experience! :-D
“Fight me if you want, I’m sick in bed and have time.”
I’m also sick and in bed, and this is such an appealing offer of a sparring match, but alas, I’ve never used Gnome
this makes you the ideal candidate for an internet argument !
Well, use the time to try it, I guess.
Man, they already said that they’re sick. Have some mercy!
Fight, fight, fight!
Yeah, it’s almost usable but I suspect most people don’t wanna deal with broken extensions every new release. Last time my extensions broke, all I had to do to fix them was changing the target version in the manifest. Clearly, there weren’t enough changes to the DE to warrant breaking them and they were just broken on purpose.
Yeah, it usually takes a week for the official versions of the extensions I use to work again after a gnome version update. It’s easily worked around, usually, but that hard break every update sucks.
I just dislike the way KDE structures it’s menus more, and while I suspect that I could tweak KDE to be something I like using, I also suspect that that would be much more annoying to fix for the next mayor Update.
I sometimes think about swapping over to i3, but I haven’t yet had the leisure to give it a try.
Do you mean the application menu? Not trying to evangelize here, it’s just that I almost never see it because Krunner is so integrated with everything in KDE that it feels like the intended way to launch stuff so I find it weird that the application menu bothers you.
If you mean the menus on the applications themselves, fair enough, I guess. I also don’t understand why they’re still just a regular app menu (File, Edit, etc…) but crammed into a single button.
Yeah, the single menu button is my biggest issue with KDE apps, I wish there was a way to turn that off system-wide instead of having to do it for every app.
Oh, yeah, that also annoyed me. I actually meant the settings menu, though. I have set up KDE for friends/family a few times, and depending on screen size and scaling, even in conditions that shouldn’t be edge cases, there where sometimes scrollbars in both directions.
I also just, kinda don’t like the vibe, I guess? That’s extremely subjective, I know, just something I noticed every time I worked with KDE.
prepare…smack!
Its good for people who like the one very specific workflow they go for.
My main problem with it is they cause problems for like every other DE. GTKs insistence on only supporting CSD makes any GTK app integrate so much worse on anything else. (Vice versa having no fallback ssd, so apps are just broken on gnome if the toolkit doesn’t support CSD)
Or all the problems it’s caused with various Wayland protocols by refusing to compromise or saying nothing until it’s almost finalized then coming out against them.
Like Valve explicitly calls out gnome as unsupported because they refused to implement DRM leasing for years.
I don’t dislike gnome because of the software itself, opinionated projects are good, even when I have different opinions. I dislike gnome because I think it’s a net negative to the Linux ecosystem as a whole.
Compiz, XFCE, and GNOME <40 (now Cinnamon and MATE) proved quality UI design 15+ years ago.
It is actually insulting to Linux desktop that the default DE on the top distros don’t even have minimize and expand buttons by default, and that any extra features require DE plugins.
GNOME 40+ is like Wayland. Years of development for practically no real user improvements. Every update shows off features DEs had over a decade ago.
GNOME 47’s first listed big change is accent colors. wtf??? What the f*** do you think we’ve been using GTK and Qt for???
At least with KDE, the ram usage is justified. GNOME eats system resources just to give you a shitty ChomeOS UI that feels just as cheap.
The moment XFCE ports to Wayland, I’ll happily swap Compiz for Wayfire and use my computer like a normal person.
They seem to be at war with the minimize and maximize buttons.
Really weird decision they make
Last time I’ve used minimize and maximize buttons was 20 years ago. And yet I think accessibility is more important than whatever the fuck designers that create clean dumb UIs think is important.
You can just toggle them back on
Except for this one Debian machine I have to maintain. They will still disappear on ever restart. They will still be turned on in tweaks and the only way to get them to appear is to switch them from right to left. Luckily I don’t have to use it much.
Tbf, you can maximize by double-clicking the titlebar or dragging the window to the top so the button is kind of redundant. You can also (un)minimize by clicking on the taskbar so the minimize button would too be kind of redundant if GNOME hadn’t gotten rid of the fucking task bar.
So the solution is I change my decades long habits. Sounds kinda like microsoft.
lol somebody woke up on the wrong side of bed. I’m just telling you the reasoning as to why it’s done because it’s a fun fact. I don’t care what you use. Chill.
Don’t push your emotional state onto me.
Did you just reply “no u”?
Its pretty standard thing to say to someone who thinks projects their emotional state onto someone else. Nothing about my statement suggested I ‘woke up on the wrong side of the bed’ It does however suggest you can’t take a rebuff and act childish about it.
Brother, what on Earth are you talking about? Rebuff to what? We’re not debating.
I gonna be absolutely honest,gnome is fantastic for laptops.
Why, did they add a “New Text Document” context menu option again?
Gnome users be like “Open in Terminal” > touch filename.txt
Can you not “just” add a “New Text Document.txt” template?
Why don’t they “just” add it for me so I don’t have to click it again to rename the file after it’s made?
Yes, everything (really, everything) just works, even on funky hardware like those tablet-pc things.
I use gnome too and I like it but that’s just not true. IME support (input of east Asian languages like Japanese) kind of sucks, especially as they only do ibus and not fcitx5.
Oh, I didn’t know about that. I luckily (for the purpose of using gnome and computers in general) only speak languages using the modern latin alphabet (and letters derived from it).
I used arch btw with latest gnome on amd c60 brazos apu laptop and laptop with i7 4700mq and gtx850m and laptop with Ryzen 5700u apu, so far gestures only worked on ryzen apu, on any other laptop without Ryzen features don’t work and no amount of tinkering makes it work
My laptop has an 8th gen i5 and so far everything works(except my pipewire beig constantly broken).
Agree,It looks really nice on Laptops
Lets not be deliberately obtuse, you’re clearly meant to be using it with your feet.
Just the left foot only
TIL Gnome devs have (left) foot fetishism
Tarantignome
Please don’t force touch design in me!
Please force touch design in me
GNOME is more keyboard-focused than KDE. It just also happens to have much better touch support.
Get this meme to /linuxsucks where it belongs.
In my experience, KDE Plasma is surprisingly actually better than Gnome for tablet use. You would think that Gnome’s more minimal and chunky UI would make it a better fit, but Plasma just has a lot more little usability QOL features.
This has been my experience as well. Fedora KDE is easier and more intuitive than Fedora GNOME on my Surface Go 2.
Did something change on the keyboard front? I love KDE but I can only use it comfortably on my Steam Deck with a horrible combination of Steam’s keyboard, Onboard and Maliit and all of them suck in their own little ways.
Not everyone is the same
GNOME is more keyboard-focused “in the way the devs thought it’s good”. If users want to change the way, they gonna use tweaks, dconf editor or
gsettingsand navigate a jungle of key-value pairs like Windows RegistryYeah, this meme is a complete whiff, just seems edgy/hipster-y while ignoring the fact that nobody really cares because GNOME is a great DE.
Horrible meme but it sparked some interesting discussion.
How is KDE less keyboard-focused? I spent like ten minutes setting up kwin shortcuts and now have the same level of keyboard-only interaction as with any WM.
Well, I guess because you don’t need to do the ten minutes of setup.
Oh, I get it! I just have to reprogram my brain to the GNOME way instead of the much more efficient way that I actually want!
Use a tiling wm. GNOME is for people who want a sane, human-friendly default.
Both KDE and Gnome have a comparable set of default keyboard shortcuts.
The difference is if you are in KDE, you have easier ability to adjust to what you want with a lot more available shortcut actions, while in Gnome you generally are expected to live with the choices of the devs.
GNOME doesn’t have nearly enough keyboard shortcuts for me as a keyboard focused user. IMHO, keyboard use is all about customizability, which GNOME is not.
You can set keyboard shortcuts by the main navigation is designed to be done via mouse gestures.
GNOME is more keyboard-focused than KDE.
This is not really a true statement then, and it’s what was being replied to.
Lmao that community is hilarious - it’s all the most blatantly biased low-brow cheap shots about Linux I’ve ever seen and is just being spammed by 1-2 haters all the time 🤣
Slightly off-topic, but this annoyed me during the Win 8.1/10 start screen era as well. Just because an interface is touch-friendlier doesn’t mean it can’t also be an improvement for keyboard/mouse users as well.
Then they ditched all that and made it a worse experience for everyone in Win 11, so un turn I ditched their mess and fully switched over.
Classic shell has been installed on all of my windows machines as part of my “make windows usable” loadout since i was basically forced to upgrade* from w7 to w10
And it can be even more keyboard focused with Pop Shell over the top. That adds tiling and window focus by shortcut, similar to i3-wm.
How do you even open the “Application” view on a touch device?
Oh! A Gnome hate thread!
I’m in!
FUCKING GNOME>!!!111!!!ELEVEN
In a land where desktops can be ripped out and replace with ease - what’s the point in arguing? GNOME isn’t my thing but I’m glad it’s an option.
Can you swap out desktop environments in Linux like launchers on android?
Yeah pretty much. Or have multiple installed and pick which to use when you log in
Wait what?! Install several, pick upon login?! Had no idea, that’s awesome.
Depends on your login flow. There is a session manager which normally boots up and let’s you choose. But you can also configure it to auto login and send you to the Lockscreen of your window manager.
You can also mix login manager, window manager with desktop background managers, wallet managers etc…, in practice you can build your own desktop experience
I know the answer is “just build it” but man I want to be able to have adm<username login under something like nemo and a terminal window only. But then have username login under full Mint Cinnamon. Would be quite dope. Just don’t feel like making it happen at the moment. I’ll have to reconfigure permissions to revoke from my standard user.
Edit: oops you can comment out text in Lemmy? Editedit: I did it. Too me 15 minutes -.-
It will be goofy as the config files will still stick around between desktops.
I would runs desktop in a container or VM.
Yes
Yes
Mainly because gnome is harder to ignore than a lot of other opinionated DEs.
It’s been the default target for fedora and red hat, and like other choices rh makes, it propagates throughout the broader ecosystem.
Even if you ignore them, they dictate how Linux desktops are broadly allowed to work by largely asserting authority over FreeDesktop and by extension Wayland.
One of these is that they absolutely hate the concept of server side decorations, as a result even as they begrudgingly allowed it as a Wayland protocol, they insisted that it must not be mandatory and they are allowed to ignore it. This means applications that do not care about their decorations otherwise now must care about their decorations. As a user, the consequence is that any GTK application you might use is likely to just pop out as a gnome looking window among a bunch of otherwise consistent windows.
I avoid all of the modern gnome apps now as a result of this.
Even Windows allows the equivalent of server side decorations…
My main complaint with how Gnome does stuff is in environments where it is the only option (e.g. RHEL).
Which then is no longer an issue with GNOME but rather RHEL. But again, it’s not like we can’t figure out a way to install whatever in Hanna Montana’s dreams is allowed. 🤙
Gnome does some questionable things, and some are just personal preference, but there is at least one thing that they do that makes zero sense regardless of how you use your system…
The AppIndicator extension SHOULD be default. There is no reason for it to be an extension other than pure stubbornness. There are applications that literally require it in order to function at all.
Default the cursor to the Search field on a Save dialog is possibly the absolute fucking stupidest thing ever.
I love GNOME and everytime I tried an other DE I came back to GNOME. But the cursor in the search field is annoying and incomprehensible…
I’ll be honest, I could probably use Gnome if I had to, with a few addons. But when I try it, the second I get to that dialog and it does that, I just shut it down and install something else. To me, it just epitomizes the contempt the developers have for the users, that it continues to exist after this long.
I’m triggered. Why would you even mention that.
That you need an extension to disable the overview at startup still boggles my mind and the arrogance of the developers in the thread that started it didn’t lessen my antipathy for Gnome at all.
Why wouldn’t you want the overview at startup?
Because there is nothing to overwiew yet, obviously.
It provides easy access to search. I understand now though why you wouldn’t want it to open automatically (if you have startup programs you want to see instead).
actually, i just want to click one of my pinned panel favorites, but yeah, no need for search basically.
In my case because I have my PC connected to the TV and Steam starting automatically in big screen mode. But according to the devs I’m doing it wrong and should get used to it because it’s the better experience when I can go and grab my keyboard to start typing the name of the program I want to start.
Because you already set firefox to autostart
I think the lack of a system tray in gnome is a case of perfect of being the enemy of good.
There’s a new Wayland protocol that probably will land in the next gnome release. The new protocol is supported by KDE and other desktops as well.
The reason that it was removed is because it is extremely hacky and bad. There have been talks within the project to just reads support since the extension got so many downloads but the new API is better anyway
Their solution to a problem is to pretend like it doesn’t exist simply because it will go away in the future? It’s a reason, but it isn’t a good one.
I won’t disagree with you there. They should’ve had a replacement before deprecating it. In there defense there was a alternative being developed but it ended up stalling over disagreements between KDE and gnome. The whole thing is a dumpster fire honestly. I’m glad they are cleaning it up. KDE and Gnome want the same thing for the most part they just kept getting into pointless bickering.
Would you mind providing a link or the name of the new protocol?
ext-tray-v1https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/355There’s no reason to expect GNOME to implement it, and I’m surprised they haven’t NACKed it.
It literally was developed by gnome. The merge request is coming from a gnome developer.
You don’t have to like gnome but it is silly to try to gate keep over it.
“I understand that some compositors have no interest in allowing clients to show arbitrary content in tray areas. GNOME, for example, doesn’t even have a tray area and it is my understanding that they believe that even the current SNI protocols allow clients too much freedom. Such compositors should not implement this protocol.”
–the page you’re referencing, by the creator of the protocol
Which I find to be a weird stance.
Gnome also believes that a window must have control over its own titlebar to draw it as it sees fit while simultaneously declaring it must not have control over a tray icon.
Also funny that Gnome seems to have objected to KDE proposal and wrote their own even though they seem to say point blank that while they are dictating how all the other DEs will do it, they themselves will be ignoring it. Why get in the business of a protocol you don’t even want to implement in the first place…
