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aNoob7000

Honest question - What does Cosmic have over Gnome desktop? I'm relatively new to Linux.

I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 and find it meets my computing needs.

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Paragraph 2 of the article describes why.

Supplemental reading: https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e...

I agree with some of the performance issues mentioned by the writer, but nothing mentioned stops me from doing my work.

I hope Cosmic helps improve the Linux desktop ecosystem.

If Cosmic creates a more cohesive Linux experience with fewer bugs then I'm glad they are doing it. Nothing stops me from doing my work but many bugs slow me down and otherwise ruin my experience.

It's worth mentioning that GNOME receives an enormous amount of hate but it's still the most widely used DE on Linux by a mile and the vast, vast, vast majority of people get along just fine.

> it's still the most widely used DE on Linux by a mile

How would we be able to tell that?

It's the default on Ubuntu and RHEL, which are the two most popular enterprise distros. Ubuntu is also the most popular consumer Linux distro.

> It's the default on Ubuntu and RHEL, which are the two most popular enterprise distros.

For servers; that's not super compelling.

> Ubuntu is also the most popular consumer Linux distro.

That's a much stronger argument, though I'd point out that Linux distros are disproportionally used by people given to customization, so the default may not be as important.

GNOME is very opinionated in its design, it's bound to draw ire. It's the more stable DE out of it and KDE, and the way they handle releases is more friendly to the enterprisey types.

Say what? Half the reason cosmic even became a project at all was the gnome releases constantly breaking plugins and extensions.

It seems reasonably stable and usually just works (except the files app), but only if you do absolutely nothing to it. Try to change anything and it becomes nightmarish.

Stable not in terms of extensions (they really need to get better at that), but in that if a feature doesn't make a version it gets pushed to the next one. A given version of GNOME is typically very stable in my experience, so long, as you said, you don't touch it. A server with a GUI it not likely something I am going to spend a lot of time mucking with the file manager. And I'm with you on the Files app, it is my least favorite part of GNOME. I typically use KDE, but in RHEL environments GNOME is the assumed DE.

Defaults have a great power, and Red-Hat sponsoring most of its development as well.

Wow, the first 3 sentences are scathing lol (in the supplemental reading)

Maybe I'm not a demanding user, but I have no major issues with Gnome. I also liked Unity. Willing to give Cosmic a try, as I use PopOS and like their approach.

Mostly I just want a desktop environment to find and launch apps, do some basic window management, and get out of the way. I got more important things to do than worry about tweaking things endlessly...

I upgraded to Ubuntu 23 a few weeks ago, in which GNOME decided to remove app menus requiring me to install a wonky extension to reclaim functionality. The top horizontal menu is still there taking up screen real estate, mind you, it’s just less useful.

These changes are annoying enough with each upgrade to make me consider switching DEs.

I tend to stick to LTS releases, but that certainly doesn't stop gnome's endless quest to remove everything!

Fine, if its suits you. Then again, if that is all you do, why use Gnome: XFCE or even LXDE will do all that fine and they are lighter than Gnome and change less.

I quite like XFCE, but I use KDE for a few reasons. It has tiling extensions and with a large monitor tiling works better for me.I like a lot of KDE applications (Dolphin and Kate in particular) and they integrate a bit better with KDE (widgets in panels, KRunner).

YMMV.

I don't care enough to install non default desktops. You are coming at it from the perspective of trying to find something that really works well for you, and that's fine.

I'm coming at it from the perspective of I really don't care, unless there is some show stopper that forces me to.

That post you linked was a crazy read, it just kept going and going. I've never really had issues with GNOME, but knowing so many users share the sentiment of it being a hostile developer environment makes me want to check out other options next time I install a Linux distro.

I am completely happy with GNOME. Sure, it needs a few add-ons to improve the UX around the dock and workspaces (most of which are pre-installed in PopOS), but I believe that customizability is a good thing. I'll most likely miss quite a few GNOME add-ons on COSMIC.

The tiling window manager is the most differentiating feature. Otherwise I find Gnome does all I need well enough.

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