Gnome devs have a clear vision of what Gnome is supposed to be:
simplistic, designed for touchpad and keyboard, not mousy-clicky, and staying out of your way.People install it, miss stuff they are used to from traditional desktops like Windows or Plasma, and bolt that back on using extensions from third parties.
They install those extensions from a different source than Gnome itself (Gnome from their distro repos, extensions from the website).And then they complain when those third party add-ons from a different source aren’t perfectly integrated or in sync after an update.
And blame the Gnome devs.
I don’t blame GNOME devs, I blame the straight up lies from GNOME enthusiasts that GNOME is customizable, because it is not.
Conclusion: the clear vision that Gnome devs have is obviously wrong.
I think their vision is solid. I just think there are gaps in following their vision. Wheres the “create new empty file”? Where’s the “open folder in terminal”? Why do I need to install bunch of bloatware to change more than 2 options?
I think their vision is solid. I just think there are gaps in following their vision. Wheres the “create new empty file”? Where’s the “open folder in terminal”? Why do I need to install bunch of bloatware to change more than 2 options?
On my Gnome Files, there is option to “Open in terminal” and create new files (from templates, which were set up by default on my distro). All by default without any extensions or anything.
Gnome is about deliberate lack of features. Blank windows with the few existing UI elements crammed into the top bar and a hamburger menu with nothing in it because Gnome and its associated software are not intended to be used for anything.
It’s a non-profit, open source project.
If you don’t like it, just ignore it.
It’s not a commercial project where market share is important.The only defense of Gnome: It’s not mandatory.
Except they also do GTK, which still manages to leak outside their 9 foot thick steel and concrete containment vessel.
i cant think of any valid reason gnome doesnt have official system tray icons
Gnome’s official stance on that matter:
https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2017/08/31/status-icons-and-gnome/tl/dr:
They’re an old spec from 2002
They’re too small to click for people with increased accessibility needs
They serve the needs of app publishers (making their app visible at all times), not those of the user
-> There are too many of them
-> They look badthank you for this it is interesting to know their rationale. but i still disagree with it, i think it makes life using the computer more comfortable, it is a good way of managing apps that usually operate unattended and everyone is used to it and expects or relies on this functionality.
everyone is used to it
Counterpoint: The main criticism of Gnome seems to be that it doesn’t match the design philosophy of Windows 95, which users are used to.
But at this point, an entire human generation later, and 14 years after the release of Gnome 3, I don’t think that’s a valid criticism anymore.
Ok but how do programs under Gnome display state? (temperature and stuff like that)
They don’t.
Programs only show themselves when you take an action (hit a key) or when it’s urgent (in a notification).
Otherwise they’re supposed to stay invisible.So in Gnome philosophy, your sensor would notify you when the temp goes critical and otherwise you’d have to open it manually.
They’re an old spec from 2002
They’re useful, “old” is no excuse. Mobile OS have something similiar. No, don’t create a new spec, you’re bad at that kind of thing.
They’re too small to click for people with increased accessibility needs
Make them bigger? I can do that on XFCE.
They serve the needs of app publishers (making their app visible at all times), not those of the user
There are too many of them
Again, they are useful to the user. Just give the user a way to control which to display or not.
They look bad
Your design team sucks
And that’s why i don’t like Gnome (and Gtk for that matter); they prioritize their skewed visions over everything else, including usability.
They’re useful, “old” is no excuse.
the above tl;dr forgot something massive: all current protocols are unsafe (e.g. need exporting the entirety of org.kde.* in dbus) and/or only work on X11
Insecure? It is run by the user, communicates only with things run by the user.
So things like sandboxing or even not running everything as root should exist.
Gnome devs have a clear vision of what Gnome is supposed to be: simplistic, designed for touchpad and keyboard, not mousy-clicky, and staying out of your way.
Nobody questioned this.
People install it, miss stuff they are used to from traditional desktops like Windows or Plasma, and bolt that back on using extensions from third parties.
Like the Extension feature intends it.
They install those extensions from a different source than Gnome itself (Gnome from their distro repos, extensions from the website).
Even those you can install from some distro repos can cause your whole Gnome DE to crash. However this isn’t even the main problem; the point is that it’s able to crash your DE at all. If they did it correctly only the bad extension would crash. If that doesn’t work for some reason, the whole extension layer/API may crashes without taking the DE with it. If something phenomenally bad happens your DE should crash but, as the absolute minimum, your open applications should still keep working so you can save things and restart things gracefully. What you just did is blame the extension devs again.
And then they complain when those third party add-ons from a different source aren’t perfectly integrated or in sync after an update.
It’s about your computer (well, everything graphically) crashing, not some small problems. Get your facts straight.
KDE has almost perfect fractional scaling, that was the real chadfeature for me.
somone needs to replace gnome with windows 11 in that meme lmao.
Edit: it has been done:
Truly excellent GNOME slander. Who made this?
ShoutingIsFun seems to be the artist
I have no idea. I saved it ages ago and just post it whenever GNOME is mentioned.
ShoutingIsFun seems to be the artist
You forgot to add that unlike GNOME, KDE does not depend on SystemD
That’s good?
Yes
Yes
Yes
KDE is objectively the better DE from a technical standpoint (in my objective opinion) but sometimes GNOME just feels right in the moment. I have both installed and switch between them all the time
I liked gnome for its minimalistic UI. I then realized i3 does that better :D
You don’t know what ‘objective’ means.
You don’t know what a joke is. Lmfao
Where is TempleOS when you need it, huh?
I have never understood how there was any competition.
KDE has always been a better DE than anything on any platform, while gnome has been one of the worst and it just keeps going downhill.
Unfortunately, GTK is much prettier than QT.
I disagree completely, GTK looks like they took windows 3.11 and covered all the widgets in dried shit.
This can sometimes come at the cost of intuitiveness however. As an example that just happened to me the other day, I was using Pinta which uses libadwaita and had opened an image to make some modifications to it.
All was going well until I wanted to save a new copy of it (and not override the original). The toolbar has all of these functions on it, open, save, undo/redo, etc… but not Save As.
Apparently there’s a tiny little overflow button on the far right side, click it and you get a whole bunch of functions - one of them being the holy “Save As” option I was looking for. I almost went down the route of making a copy of the image outside Pinta and then just overwriting the original.
Apparently the idea of making a copy of an image is blasphemy. Even Microsoft Word when they had first moved to the Ribbon UI made the save button have a little dropdown right under the save option to reveal Save As.
Don’t get me wrong, I love how some libadwaita apps look. Mission Center for example? Chef’s Kiss - but it’s a very simple application that all I need to do is open it to have a quick look at the very pretty looking graphs. Although the latest update seems to have gotten rid of being able to have the sidebar open persistently (now taking an extra click to change between performance graphs)… But I still need to double check to see if that’s intended vs being a bug before I judge that too harshly.
Ummm but gtk is pretty bad in ux for me. It has some weird way of contents in title bar. And you can’t click close button by clicking at top right corner of screen for fullscreen apps because its floating or rounded
It doesn’t matter if it’s prettier, when I need to spend twice the time to do some basic stuff because I need to move my mouse cursor half way through the fucking screen, at least in GNOME apps.
How is that toleratable is beyond me.
KDE gathered a lot of initial hate because the Qt widget library it relied on used to not be proper Free Software. (That was fixed about two decades ago, though.)
It’s hard to believe that KDE used to be considered one of the worst DEs around and now it’s like Gnome is getting worse while KDE is getting better and better.
What is happening to GNOME is truly one of the biggest fumbles in OSS. They could have just continued improving things, but instead choose the path of most resistance, refused to commit to any logical strategies for further improvement, and are now stuck in a loop of nothing getting done
I always try KDE and after a while all the quirks and odd behaviors make me go back to GNOME. GNOME may not be easily themeable but it is predictable
That’s the good part. There’s plenty of choice, and it’s easy to swap
Exactly. Its the best part of Linux. I like what Zorin did, they customized backend of GNOME to give you 4 choices of DE style.
Exactly this. It always surprises me when people get bent out of shape because there is an option that they don’t like. Even worse when someone makes a choice they don’t like. “Who the fuck cares. Let them do their thing. be grateful you have a choice.”
Can I ask what quirks/off behavior you see (genuinely asking)?
Sometimes its a slight hang of a dialog box, like delay. Sometimes its a dialog getting stuck on top of other dialogs and it becomes unresponsive. Like it is above all other apps on screen.
And hard to describe minor stuff that just feels a bit off. Where as when I go back to GNOME it is smooth like a fully finished environment.
Maybe most people don’t notice stuff like that, but I’m the type of guy that friends call when they want to buy a used car. 500ft and I’m like nope, bad bearing on right side, transmission shudder at start off, worn bushing in steering…and others are like it drives great
Yup!
Seems to be an organizational thing, at least some who try to work with- or are part of the Gnome Foundation mentioned this. Apparently KDE e.V. got a way more flexible structure with work groups, easier ways to propose changes etc. while Gnome gets awfully stuck with their panel/council structure (not sure which one is the right word in english).
When mentioning the problems with extensions (rather furiously since I just lost some work again and installed KDE) I was told both: Go on an create a PR, but also that “this was discussed and a panel decided against changing anything”. Obviously no one will waste dozens, if not hundreds of hours of their time even just creating a Proof-of-Concept for sth. like an extension API if some authority already decided that nothing is supposed to be done about it.
As long as your Gnome environment can’t gracefully crash without taking absolutely everything with it (like with KDE or other DEs) there’s no way in hell anyone should use Gnome on computers where actual work is being done, let alone something critical.
At least we have MATE: fork of Gnome 2.
Tried that last week.
God it feels so outdated.
Yes, it’s what I started on, but there are good reasons we don’t use it much anymore.Use Xfce if you want something traditional.
This.
I remember, when Unity first came out and Gnome was considering mockups for Gnome 3, so many people complaining and me thinking that, yeah, maybe these weren’t perfect but they so clearly contained improvements over Gnome 2.
It was an exciting time to be joining Linux because there seemed to be real desire to experiment with new work flows and UI ideas that improved the standard computing experience.
I feel like time’s kind of borne out my feelings, there.
Umm, KDE/Plasma shell is a fucking absolute disaster of a UX. It makes Windows look good. Gnome has major flaws in its software that make performance go to shit, but overall the architecture and design guidelines are superior and at least have a semblance of direction. Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
Just came across this issue today. I need to install a font. The dir is not accessible through gnome Files. Actually, nothing but mmom ounted drives and my Home dir is. So if I to work in dirs outside my Home, I HAVE to use the terminal. Just to copy a font to a dir outside my Home.
XDG
What?
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/fontconfig/fontconfig-user.html
Use a fucking search engine.
LoL you are pathetic dude. Why spreading hate? Clearly you never felt the delicate touch of a woman
Or just explain instead of bringing that language. Why even bother answering?Classic Linux nerd comment. You always just “search!”. You just dump a random short. How Then you expect to read through pages of documentation to install a font? Yes, yes you do because you are probably a Linux god who enjoys reading through technical stuff that makes NO SENSE to non-technical people.
Maybe just not come with advice if you are going to be a dick as soon as one asks a follow up question.
Doesn’t gnome have a GUI available to install fonts? Pretty sure you just open a font file and you get the option to install, same as on KDE actually.
Still annoying that you can’t access the folder. Though, if it does show mounted drives, surely it also shows your root drive? From where you should be able to navigate anywhere you have access to.
Yeah I found out but the first three guides I found all use the c/p to font dir. However, you are correct - gnome and kde both have GUI apps to view and install fonts. But wasn’t aware since the guides I found didn’t talk about these apps.
So, ignorance on my part 😬
Nah, I think it’s simply a design choice made for gnome files. Been playing around with other file explorers that checks my requirements. The joy of freedom.
LoL you are kidding 😂
Always fun that posts that shit on gnome get upvoted to the moon and ones that shit on KDE get downvoted to hell.
This should tell a lot about real user experience
Gnome is made by designers, kde is made by devs.
I don’t know… Friday I installed Linux on my dad’s “new” Thinkpad T495.
I tried to go with Gnome. It’s supposed to be the user friendly one, right?
First thing I want to do is change the charging limit of the battery to 80%. It’s not impossible to replace the battery, but it would be nice to not blow it too fast.
After 20m of trying and failing I switched to KDE, where the whole thing was 3 clicks.
And even if I didn’t know how to do it, the systemsettings window has a search function that will get you the right option in a split second.
Cool, a setting that’ll have zero practical real world effects.
Of course I love other people telling me what I am or am not supposed to want out of my tech. That’s why I exclusively use Apple products. Oh wait, I actually don’t.
…
And BTW, this is in fact a shitty joke, because even iPhones and Pixels and Teslas actually let you set a charging limit.
They all do, but grab an iPhone and let that shit work, count the cycles and battery life remaining after 180 cycles. Every single iPhone I encounter with that turned on gas excessive battery life decreases. Meanwhile my shit shows 100%. Wait til you find out I build the Telematics Control Unit and Battery Control systems for a large manufacturer.
a single setting like that being a dealbreaker for a whole DE
seems a bit like an overreactionIt is definitely an overreaction.
The rational part was that I have to mantain his installation anyway. I have a lot of experience with KDE, and having seen trouble with GNOME from the get go, I ran back to the safe choice.
His example is applicable to a lot of other things in gnome. Nautilus is laughable when you compare to dolphin
theregister reader detected. Maybe even one of the editors!
What is it?
The same sentence one of “The Register” writers uses to shit on KDE.
Gotcha, thanks!
Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
It looks fine to me. Everything is categorized nicely and you know where to find something you look for. I am not sure about GNOME Settings, because I have never used GNOME more than 30 minutes (because of annoyingly shitty UX), but it’s at least much better than what Windows does.
I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of hate for KDE back in the day was because Qt started out with a non-Free Software license, not because it was bad in terms of quality.
I personally hated KDE because it was a buggy, unstable mess for a long time.
Are you referring to the fact that a lot of distributions shipped KDE 4 pre release code?
KDE Plasma 4 was also really buggy when it first launched
Yep, that’s what brought me over to XFCE for several years. Back at KDE again, though
That was it for me. I was actually a KDE user way back in the KDE 2 and 3 days. I found KDE 4 unusable. KDE 5 never won me over. But I have been using Plasma 6 on Wayland and am perfectly happy with it.
Yep. the Qt wars were real. And one needed to be careful about reveling your KDE use because you would get flamed with hatred.
xfce rules
I went from GNOME on Ubuntu, to KDE on Manjaro, to XFCE on Manjaro, and finally i3 on Arch.
GNOME was sluggish and not customisable.
KDE had graphical glitches everywhere that made navigating interfaces annoying sometimesOn XFCE, I actually didn’t find that many issues. I just stopped using Manjaro and switched to i3 when doing so.
i also tried i3 at some point, it was pretty cool, but i prefer more “standard”/“no tweaking” approach, so xfce wins on that one. i did install KDE ob my second (framework) laptop, but i kinda hate it lol. Never tried “Gnome”
UX wise, GNOME is oversimplified and Plasma is overcomplicated.
Can you give an instance of plasma being overcomplicated?
Launch System preferences, go to Internet and WiFi. Then you’ll get a UI divided into three panels. The first one lists WiFi and networks, Firewall, Proxy and Other preferences; the second panel will list your connections, including Ethernet, WiFi 2.4 GHz, WiFi 5 GHz, WiFi 6GHz, Bluetooth, VPN and Loopback, your current connection will be auto selected; from the current selected connection you’ll see in the third panel SSID, Mode, BSSID, Restrict devices, Cloned MAC, MTU and Visibility, and this is only one in 5 tabs of options.
I’m sure I skipped some other components in the same windows, but you see my point?
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I don’t agree that this is overcomplicated, how would you improve it? The simple settings are in the middle and the advanced settings are also easily accessible
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if you wanted something simple and not the advanced network settings wouldn’t you just use the panel applet anyway?
We don’t agree, but I still think it is. I just described the first window that found overcomplicated, of course there may be options of UX which may have different arrangements. In any case, in my opinion, even the system applet is overcomplicated (for a system applet).
In this window, for example, what’s the use of the first panel if you wanted to edit something in some WiFi connection? I’d replace the whole first panel with a “back” button and let the window breathe.
If you want it simple you can resize the window, make it smaller horizontally.
Exactly. Overcomplicated.
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Gnome: We lock down everything since youre too wtupid to handle womputers Also gnome: “oh you want right click-create file? We can’t think of a more streamlined solution than navigating to the folder you already have open in nautilus using terminal, making an empty file with a terminal text editor and googling the command to save and exit empty file. Intuitive is our MO”
I love gnome workflow and simplicity but it is too locked down in nonsensical ways and it is too broken too often.
Gnome has always been like this. They started on this trend at the very beginning.
I dropped it when they released 1.0 or 1.1 as they had released another of idiotic changes that were half because “we know better” and because “fuck you, user peons”. Never looked back as it’s been managed the same way ever since.You can just put a blank file in the Templates directory then it shows up in the right click menu. At least it does that on PopOS
Yes that is what you have to do. It is ridiculous that this is what you have to do.
Or, and now hear me out, you could add a New > File/Directory to the context menu.
I was searching for this a few days ago and was stunned that you aren’t able to just create an empty file in the gnome file manager.
In the terminal you can use
touch file.txtto create an empty file, but it should be possible to do this in the file manager.Oh i know i can painstakingly navigate to the correct folder with ls and cd, then google what that one command I never use is and then use man to stop the whole process and read how to use it.
It’s nice to have that option for those who want to have fun with it, but it is a joke this is the intended option in gnome of all places.
That’s because they want to be user friendly for non tech people 🤦🏻
What is user friendly about right click-new file replaced with terminal?
Absolutely nothing! I was sarcastic, in fact I agree with you.
Sorry, my faith in techkind was low as I had someone legit claim im bad with computers for installing linux as all the windows stuff can be disabled with a single tick in control panel. Furthermore only tech distant people use regedit or cti.
Why asking for up arrow in Nautilus when you can always press alt+f8
LoL and old nautilus already had it. I just installed Nemo, nautilus is pathetic
What’s the point in being able to create an empty file from the file manager? You pretty much never want to actually have an empty file.
Open whatever program that can edit the document type you want (you would have it open later anyway to edit the document), make a new document, put something in it and save it. You have to do that anyway with any document type where an empty file isn’t valid data.
- making a readme
- making notes
- making task lists
- prewriting messeges for proof reading
- writing down passwords, keys or hashes and hiding them
- writing down links -archiving general information -not writing anything in the file and using the filename to make notes or organize -making todos -making text files you intend to fill out later as you get more info
All done conveniently by right click and double click in the folder you’re in already. No need to open another program, rummage through the menus to find “save as” or “export as” then navigate to the same location you are already in AGAIN.
Ive used txt files in windows constantly and I do not program. My archidect gf uses them constantly as well. It is very useful in a myriad of ways. Its a post it note since the other solutions for making notes, task in specific folders do not exist or suck.
For all of those you need to open an editor anyway.
Open your editor, start typing, press ctrl+s, drag the folder from the file manager to the save dialog to navigate there.
If anything, there should be a “Create new document with…” menu entry with a submenu that lets you select an editor, and when you save, the save dialog has the correct folder open. Anything, but have the editor create the document because it knows best what data to write when you do save.
A menu entry to create new empty file is a bad solution to this. It’s not general enough, and people don’t actually want an empty file as you just demonstrated with your list.
None of those are solutions and make a widely used feature more annoying to use.
Well duh, I just came up with it on the fly instead of actually spending time thinking about what the right design would be for this. I don’t know why you expect otherwise.
I expect right click-new file.
Nah both Gnome and KDE are incredible and I say that as someone whos been using Linux since early 00s
I just realized that this desktop environment debate has slowed down a lot these last few years. I reckon it’s about time we heat it back up. I’ll get the popcorn!
Sounds like something a goddamn GNOME user would say 😠
KDE Plasma user I am
We’ll have to see if System 76’s Cosmic DE can stir up some tribalism again!
I know the hyprland Dev had some stuff to say that caused a mild shit storm. Nothing lasting though.
Are they still people giving a thing about that guys opinion? Hey is hating everything and evwrybody by no good reasons but pure gas lighting hatred
Honestly as a newvomer to linux using both, they’re both fine. Both have their annoyances and stupidity but both are better than windows.
Gnome was the main obstacle in Wayland adoption, by not implementing “server-side decorations”.
Tue problem was not gnome at all. The problem was that Wayland was missing a ton of basic functionality until recently.
The main obstacle in Wayland adoption was Wayland not being usable for years.
Maybe I’m biased because gnome is stock fedora but it runs so smoothly and I love how the windows button and search feature works out of the box. I know that can be setup in KDE though. I love how it feels unique unlike KDE and most other DE that just feel like bad windows. I love that it doesn’t have dumbass names like KDE adding k to everything. Also feel it just works.
Every time I’ve added KDE there’s also a bunch of stupid minor things that just down make sense. Why do so many applications lose the ability to use the right click menu like in jdownloader? Why do windowed games get pushed so vertical low? Why does search recommend things I clearly didn’t ask for? Moving windows with the arrow keys is icky and not smooth. Blowing them up with windows W like gnome’s windows key just looks bad. I want to love it but it just feels like a FOSS windows.
Same here. I really tried using KDE as Fedora and Nobara were pushing for it with HDR, fractional scaling and variable refresh rates available. But there are so many useless options that seem to over-complicate everything.
I always go back to Gnome especially now that the missing technologies were added with 47 and 48. I just need my 2 extensions (DashtoDock, Just Perfection) setup via Nix and Home-manager.
also: Libadwaita > QT in terms of looks and usability.
Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to check those out. Have you ever tried Hyperland?
Whenever I try KDE there are a many minor bugs that are super annoying. Last time it just switched main and secondary monitor so my main one was a weird mix of both. I really wanna like KDE but since I switched to Wayland it always feels like something weird is going on.
Even in plasma 6?
Exactly my experience too.
iirc that was fixed in 5.27 or so, kde’s been really smooth since for me
5.27 is great, perfectly stable on wayland with amd
Do you have an nvidia GPU?
No.
You really need to be on Plasma 6 if you use Wayland.
