Linux

Kinda a tangent, but I've been using KDE plasma for a while and have really been enjoying it as a kinda in between of windows style desktop with some more gnome-like features (like workspaces, which tbh I've barely used). Of course both are super customizable, but it seems to me to maybe be a bit easier to customize Plasma? I'm not sure, I haven't used stock gnome as much.

@shapis I agree. I used Gnome for several years before switching to XFCE. Gnome feels like a great DE for people who do not do a lot of things on their computers. I normally have 5 or so workspaces and on each a dozen of apps open. Some apps are workspace-specific, some are available on all workspaces. You are right, multitasking when you do so much is a pain in Gnome. And I really really tried to like it.

Not to mention that you need a lot of extensions to make it useful.

Gnome does great in terms of animations and overall look, but not very practical and feels very non-customizable.

XFCE looks awful out of the box and the lack of animations is quite annoying. But you can make it look good - see our custom distro based on XFCE - TROMjaro. And if you give XFCE a try you will realize how sane it is. You can customize it a ton without being overwhelmed by thousands of options. You right click on panels and apps and you get sane options to move or tweak them.

As for workspaces I personally use them as "names" on the top bar and can switch between workspaces so fast, almost like tabs in a browser.

Not as fancy as Gnome, but boy this is really useful. And practical.

I've also added mouse gestures on my desktop via Easystroke so I can move windows on any workspace via these gestures. So easy.

So I'd say that Gnome looks fancy, and it is very cool for those who do not do a lot of work on their machines and have to switch between many work spaces and lots of apps. And I'd say XFCE is extremely underrated, perhaps because out of the box it looks terrible. Maybe try TROMjaro....see how it goes.

Gnome does make it feel like I should have like 3 apps open and anything more is a mental burden. I personally really like the overview though! If I could get gnomes overview as my meta key in KDE it would be killer!

The only change I make is rebinding mod+num keys to switch to a specific workspace instead of a specific application. It makes a lot more sense.

I prefer GNOME to KDE and I understand that there's research and philosophy behind some of the decisions, but I just can't get around some of the quirks. "Workflow" itself is fine, with tiling on top, you can get by. But those window decorations. So much space is taken by a completely useless, fat bar at the top of each window even though it's not really aimed at being touchscreen native.

I just started to like GNOME. It used to be terrible and I'm getting to that phase where I just want things to work. Vanilla GNOME is good enough. Only thing I really change is Dock from Dash, where dock shows up on hover and hides otherwise. My opinion is that should be default.

I tried using it multiple times over the years, including for multiple months on my laptop at one point, but couldn’t get myself to accept it. Even with extensions, I couldn’t accept many of the weird design decisions.

It always felt to me like the Gnome designers wanted to create a combination of Windows 8 Metro and Mac OS: The shittiest Windows UI ever combined with the ergonomics of Mac OS (which is foreign to Windows users) and the lack of customizability of Apple products. Hyper optimized for touch screens even though most Linux users are on a mouse&keyboard or laptop. Even the Steam Deck’s desktop mode is perfectly usuable despite KDE not being as optimized for touch as Gnome.

Yes, I like the default workflow. I always have particular applications on the same workspaces, and I close them as I need to. Sometimes I have multiple, usually a maximum of two on one workspace, because I can ALT+TAB through them. I like that the top bar is uncluttered. I don't use the dock at all, but Activity Overview is sometimes useful. I can operate the desktop completely with my keyboard. It's also very minimal without too many options, and it looks pretty. I find it very usable.

The only annoying thing was needing to manually create shortcuts inside of dconf for workspaces 5-10. I really don't know why they force you to do that...

I don't like it, I use plasma. Workspaces are great through, I just have my system. Terminal is space 2, browser space 3, communication space 4 and so on

If no one used it, it would be the first piece of perfect software ever written. It isn't. So, yes, people use it.

I recently disabled Dash to Panel, and installed Pop Shell. I'm loving it so far, using my Trackpad gestures from switching between workspaces. Granted, I don't really need more than 3 or 4 desktops (Browser, Terminal, Messaging...) and it's not quite vanilla as I have Pop Shell managing tiling for me (but still pretty close!). I also need to try it with my "docked" workflow, using an external monitor and keyboard shortcuts (as opposed to trackpad gestures).

I use many extensions, but I also like this "keep the vanilla simple" approach of Gnome. Instead of trying to support many different workflows, it does only one, and it does it well. Everything is much more polished, compared to other DEs, simply because there's less stuff. And support for extensions seems to be excellent, since there's so many of them and they often work very well.

I love Gnome. But I have a pretty simple workflow where I don't use many applications. Generally I have a browser and terminal open and that's it.

I do all my window management inside of Tmux, which is effectively my actual window manager.

I've tried KDE in the past but I've never liked how it feels like a stepping stone for the Windows interface -- not a huge fan of pullout menus. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost twenty years so I don't have any love for that UX.

I used to use a lot of simple/tiling window managers when I was younger and more patient, Gnome feels similar to those in how it has very few bells and whistles to get in your way.

If only maintaining extensions was easier, it feels like every major release breaks every extension for something stupid like renaming a constant. The Gnome team seems to put very little consideration into making the JS extension API stable.

You are not alone. Many love its 'restrained' workflow, and DEs are subjective. It sounds like you are ready to move to KDE. KDE has a 'Overview' that mimics Gnome's, so best of both worlds and the taskbar in KDE is actually functional. Don't waste anymore time, make the switch to day. Operators are standing by. 🤣

I grew up using Macs and so coming to Linux from that perspective, I like it. It has a similar feel to the Mac desktop environment.

I may take the plunge to a window manager at some point, but for now it works for me.

Using vanilla gnome and comparing about empty task bar is a bit strange.

I like it quite a lot on my projector / media pc, but I wouldn't daily it over sway with custom hotkeys. Cosmic is definitely turning my head tho..

Gnome, 2screens, 3 workspaces.

Heavy user of Dock number shortcuts, as well as keyboard swap workspace shortcuts and window resize/splits.

Discipline is good for workspace organisation, I know which "space" contains which groups of applications.

I personally slap pop-shell and flypie radial menu on it, and I really love it

As someone else already mentioned, using it with a trackpad (for example the Apple Magic Trackpad) is great.

• https://lemmy.world/comment/843554
• https://lemmy.world/comment/626513
• https://lemmy.world/comment/623221
• https://lemmy.world/comment/599202
• https://lemmy.world/comment/571496
• https://lemmy.world/comment/574017
• https://lemmy.world/comment/269076

I hate vanilla gnome but love it once I've tweaked it. I definitely have to arrange workspaces how I like them though. 2 side by side terminals on wkspc1. 2 side by side file browsers on wkspc 2. However many browser windows on 3. Whatever main program I'm using on 4 and maybe PDFs on 5. Gnome makes it a breeze to fly around the workspaces on a laptop.

Me on both desktop and PC, but I don't think I've had 10 windows open at any one time tbh. Or that any particular DE would perform significantly better if you really needed to work with 10 windows simultaneously. That's a problem I would fix with additional monitors.

I would also have windows snapped to half screens on the workspaces, so I really only need 5 workspaces. Considering I have a 3 monitor setup at home, I don't think I'll have too much of a problem since I can have 6 windows up at once. Still, juggling 10 bloody windows is going to be annoying whether it's GNOME or not.

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

I think a big part of the problem is Gnome's limitation of a 1-dimensional workspace list. I don't think I'd be able to use that many workspaces in a flat list, Gnome/Mac style, though I find a 4x2 grid of workspaces manageable. But of course I use a DE that has options. :)

and which hotkey you have each application set to.

I wonder if this is also part of the issue. If you're arranging windows spatially across workspaces, it seems antithetical to use shortcuts to skip directly to one window or the other vs. moving through workspaces. Again, quickly navigating workspaces spatially is easy when your workspaces can be arranged into rows, and not just as a single long list.

I do. I guess it depends on your workflow though. Gnome tries to get out of the way and is quite minimal. I'm that way too, like to keep my desk uncluttered for example. I couldn't even imagine a task that requires me to have 10 programs open, but if I had to, I guess I would try to group them on workspaces and try to limit the amount. Would be far easier for me to remember that way.

I've tried other DE's and window managers, but they all feel like taking a huge step backwards to me. You should however try to find something that suits you the best, maybe KDE?

BTW there was a nice idea behind the only close button in early GNOME 3. Apps were intended to save the state on exit, so one doesn't need to minimize windows, they can close it and reopen at any time and see the exact content of a window. But GNOME completely has failed to deliver that idea.

What makes things worse, there was no clear way to keep apps on the background when the main window is closed. It was seemed as antifeature. But that was a different world where weren't so much of internet service applications running on the background 24h a day. Now there is a background portal but with quite minimal support in the DE.

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.