GNOME 3.32 is the latest release of the most popular Linux Desktop Environment (Interface+Apps) that is used by Ubuntu, Fedora and many other Linux distributions as their default experience (with or without changes). GNOME 3.32 packs itself with new niceties such as a refreshed theme and icon set, many much-needed performance fixes, updated apps, etc.
However, GNOME continues to have key areas that stick out like a sore thumb in terms of intuitiveness or convenience. I have laid them down below with links to bug reports, please treat my feedback as constructive criticism of a project that I respect, but find confusing.
As a former heavy user of GNOME 2.x, I find GNOME 3 wholly unpleasant – unlike its predecessor, it seems to want to force a certain way of working on me that I just can’t wrap my head around. Add to that the numerous problems – many of which are highlighted in this article – and I just don’t see myself ever returning to the world of GNOME any time soon.
KDE all the way for me.
1: A desktop should do nothing. It’s a desktop. Why have the dock there permanently taking up space? Hit a key/go to hot corner, type what you want, an icon appears, click/hit enter. Application launched! That’s pretty much the function a desktop should have. You can add whatever applications to the Dash that you want, right click on the icon, select Add to Favorites. My Dash changes enough that having the numbered shortcuts seems pointless.
2. I’ll agree with to some extent. Seems you used to be able to click on wifi and the speaker icon to go directly to them. I think they wanted to give a reason to show off their fancy control panel, because people like control panels, right? (it was literally one of the things people whined that Linux was missing for a long time).
2.a Agreed, 2b. Pretty sure it has a percentage, maybe all the distros I’ve used just enable that by default? 2c. I see the reasons for doing this, but at the same time a lot of applications still minimize to the stupid system tray (Steam is the big one I use, and even worse some applications insist on not having the options for things available unless it’s from the system tray icon!) But as a desktop philosophy, I hate icons in the tray. Even worse when you have so many they get dropped into an ‘arrow’ list like Windows 10 does it.) I want my damned application closed when I close it, not minimized to a tiny icon. 2d. Not sure when they tweaked the suspend button… that one annoys me too.
3. Ha, it has literally been months since I bothered with the app drawer. I launch things the same way I do in Windows, hit key, type, press enter. Fastest way to find anything. Wish it worked by default in KDE.
4. Agreed, that’s annoying
5. Nautilus has a lot of plugins that should be more or less default for sure. I really like RabbitVCS for one.
6. It is kind of odd that Epiphany doesn’t have tabs (annoyed me the other day, but it’s still much faster at loading things that Adobe Reader is, and feels much lighter weight.)
7. I am pretty sure Eye of Gnome is on it’s way out. It’s kind of like Rhythmbox vs Gnome Music, Photos wasn’t quite ready last I used it, not sure how it is now. Same with Gnome Music. But I think eventually it’ll replace the other as default eventually.
8a. Sadly it’s becoming like Android in this regard. 8b. Pretty sure there is a way to just select a picture, or add it under Wallpapers. No need to use the ‘Pictures’ tab at all. 8c. I agree, I mean if they insist on having it separate from the control panel, it should just be called ‘Advanced settings’ though I think it should be a tab within the control panel. KDE should do something similar, since it’s settings has been historically pretty rotten and overly complex.
9. I’ll disagree here. The software center is still kind of ‘meh’ Like if I try to search for a lesser known package, it simply doesn’t find it, but it’s in Synaptic, or apt search, or .
Conclusion, Gnome doesn’t get in my way and I can do what I need to do to get done. Toss in a few extensions (I still don’t get why people like the Dash/Dock to be visible, I make it auto minimize on the Mac for more space) and away I go.
Please note though, I come from the Atari ST and Amiga days when we didn’t have fancy launchers, if we wanted to launch something, we had to dig into folders and hope they were organized enough to be able to find software. Being able to hit a button and type search is a godsend. ALSO, you can type in something on the activities menu and it’ll search the Software Center for the application so you can tell it to install it right there, that’s amazing!
3.
I hate frequent view changes and anything too “animaty” on my desktop. According to several online tests I score high on HSP characteristics, so that might have something to do with it. Although, personally, I don’t like the “special snowflake” vibe surrounding HSP narratives.
Gnome’s default behaviour of constantly flip-flopping to the overview and back makes my skin crawl.
A permanently visible dock with my most used launchers is static and gives me the calm I need. I can spare the screen real estate, because my ultra-wide monitor has plenty of that.
“3. Ha, it has literally been months since I bothered with the app drawer. I launch things the same way I do in Windows, hit key, type, press enter. Fastest way to find anything. Wish it worked by default in KDE.”
– Alt+Space will open krunner
– Windows key will open the menu where you can immediately can type the app you wanna launch
How about the default alt+tab behavior that switches apps? Completely breaks virtual desktop use. Sure it can list the windows, but no way knowing on what desktop they are and to which window of the application you are changing to, randomly taking you to what ever desktop it decides. Drives me nuts. Luckily you can switch the keyboard shortcut to window switcher and set static number of virtual desktops in tweaks. I know what window is on which desktop, leave me alone with this bullshit that its all about apps.
Since Gnome 3, people have been voting with their feet and heading to Cinnamon.
confirmed. Cinnamon (or Mate) are making very slick and logical DE with sensible programs.
Only inside your personal bubble. Most Linux users use Ubuntu and with the default desktop.
Yep, and that’s less than 2% of the computer-using population. Storm in a teacup much? You have so many choices in desktops. You don’t like GNOME 3? Don’t use it. Problem solved. The other 98% of the world moves on.
@juzzlin, Is that genuine or just the default install in cases where the desktop might be installed but often not even being used like a Raspberry Pi?
Indeed. The few inherent user-unfriendlinesses in the design of Gnome 3, together with the fact that the latest Mate revisions, starting with Ubuntu Mate 18.04, broke things on several of my desktops and even made Mate too resource-heavy all of a sudden for two slower machines of mine, drove me to Linux Mint, with Cinnamon as desktop, except for the slower machines, which got xfce (which incidentally is much nicer than Xubuntu’s approach, too). And what shall I say – I’m very happy. Even happier than I used to be with Mate before Ubuntu 18.04.
I am totally with Thom on this, i do not like to have my hand forced.
And also gtk3 still looks like something made in the 80’s with all flat design (at most, some css) and the god damn thing breaks all themes every fricking release it seems.
Really the 80’s? Like the classic Mac? Windows 1.0? Amiga?
You’re computers were better than mine in the 80s I think… I was well chuffed with “colour” back then..
No matter how often I try KDE I’m always returning back to GNOME. The problems I’ve with KDE are simple:
1. It’s GUI is overloaded;
2. UI design is not stable both from application to application and in response to user actions, I’m not talking about crashes, I’m talking about how UI behaves, how it scales within window and how it is implemented from app to app.
3. KDE desktop in non-xdg compliant, I still can’t get completely how it handle mime types (Try to compare firefox behaviour with PDF files both on KDE and GNOME).
Some of UI problems might be related to my non-English locale, namely UI behavior on scaling.
In overall I like features of KDE standard apps even if I’d like to see KDE system installer, which would provided bare desktop with just dolphin, control panel and konsole, so I’d be able to install everything else I need myself.
1: Overloaded? Has too many features? kwin is multithreaded and in comparison with gnome-shell a good thing. Kwin can run on 3mb of ram, try ramming all of gnome-shell in that space. g’luck.
2: UI design is great, it allows you to customize just about everything, you might not like options, but other people do, For example: you can have a unity, gnome shell or windows look in kde with out any hassle just by tweaking the settings. And Crashes? WTF, what version are you using? Since the swap to qt5 there is no serious rendeing bugs (looking at gtk garbage like gnome this is a huge blessing) QT is fully HiDPI compliant, gtk is not. You can run any qt application that is supported on your phone or on your 4k screen or indeed any OS like windows, mac os, linux, BSD or haiku with native controls.
2.5 Firefox is clearly a gtk3 application gone awry, it looks shit on any linux system, install Falkon (qt) palemoon (gtk2) and surf as it should be done without the hassle and crap mozilla puts us through.
3. THAT IS A GOOD THING! and also neither is gnome, as it uses those com,* files for configuration. If you want full XDG compat, use XFCE4,
Why is Gnome awesome? It works, does not get broken on updates. Yeah I think I’d prefer KDE, but its a lot less stable and has a lot less manpower in qa.
It breaks with EVERY release unless you like the defaults.
Prior to KDE Neon, I used OpenSUSE because it was the major supported KDE distribution. KDE Neon is a much more integrated and stable implementation of the latest stable update KDE.
This is a classic DE argument, I like this in x and dislike y in the other.
Personally, I like the Windows 10 DE and as many times as I try to switch to Gnome, it feels “in the way” with a disproportionate amount of the screen taken up by Gnome instead of the Apps. KDE is quite nice, once i’ve tweaked the living daylights out of it, but keeps wanting to revert to its whiz-bang ways. I invariably end up on Xfce, which is perfect, until I change/install something and it all goes to pot.
I am not going to argue agains your personal preference, but you must be the first person i have ever heard of that thinks the Windows 10 UI is pleasant compared to windows 7 or linux.
It’s very interesting seeing how the bugs this guy made have a lot of upvotes and the developers saying “Won’t fix” have a lot of downvotes. I get that people like to jump on the bandwagon of “Gnome3 sucks” (which also doesn’t make it false), but that’s still very telling that there are basically no dissenting votes outside the project devs.
The hard reality is there are not a lot of great designers and developers working on Gnome and it shows. Some professionals, like those for Sun, who used to work on Gnome 2.x, moved away when they companies folded, some professionals, like those who worked for Red Hat, moved away for other companies or their own startups, some professionals retired (the Gnome project in already 20 years old).
You can see now coders who read an usability book and think themselves designers, kids who made an icon set and think themselves designers and such.
The main employer of Gnome developers is Red Hat, a company not interested at all in the desktop and a few small startups, with no much power. The community was split away a few times, old people are away or burned, aflux of new contributors can’t keep up, neither in quality, nor in quantity.