Gnome is better macOS than macOS | Hacker News Reader

Gnome is better macOS than macOS

andreyor.st

68 pointsgsky124 comments

I will never get used to Gnomes lack of native support for minimizing windows. I actually had to lookup how they expected users to manage windows, as it was not obvious to me. Apparently you’re supposed to move windows to another virtual desktop to get them out of the way. As someone who has never really clicked with virtual desktop, this doesn’t work for me. This feels like such a glaring omission of a convention that has been around for decades (even in past versions of Gnome).

I was on a call with someone from Red Hat a few months ago when they were sharing their screen, and he threw the windows over to another desktop to get them out of the way, following the design. While he seemed to do it relatively quickly, it looked pretty awkward for something a person would be doing pretty often. It was routine to perform vs a single click to minimize in every other OS.

I know minimization can be added with Tweaks, but it always felt a little hacky and buggy.

If open windows are bugging you, you can simply move to a new workspace, as you mention. There's a keyboard shortcut, so that's actually very easy to do.

Gnome is very different from more common desktop environments, but if you accept to try and work with it the way it's designed, it can be productive and enjoyable.

> you can simply move to a new workspace.

Like the person to whom you're replying, I don't *want* another workspace, virtual desktop, or anything of the sort. Ever. So a system built around a model of "simply move to a new workspace" doesn't work for me. Period.

Then Gnome isn't for you. It's an opiniated desktop, you have to accept its way of doing things.

I don't use workspaces and I've been a happy gnome user for decades...

Well, is it logical, if you buy an EV, and then complain it does not sound like a sports car?

Doesn’t that bother you? Honest question, as it feels “conceptually dirty”.

There is something of “if the room is too messy don’t tidy it, just move to another room” in it that bothers me.

You have to think of it like "This desk is busy with some work, let's go to a free desk". So I can have a workspace with my Email and IM clients, one with my music player, another for my leisure browsing, and two each with an editor and a browser for the programming projects I have open.

I'm currently on i3 right now and I have 10 static workspaces (6 occupied):

1. Emacs frames (5 of them)

2. Browser

3. Terminal

4. Terminal (temp), but more often have calibre there, and other random gui tools.

6. Music player (cmus)

9. Password manager (keepass)

You can tidy it up, but mentally it's that there’s a room for activity X and a different room for activity Y. It’s about this mess over here is unrelated to this mess over here.

What's the difference between "minimize" and "hide"? "Hide" is readily available in the context menu of a window (right-click on its toolbar).

(Personally I rarely hide anything, I just have a messy stack of a zillion windows all the time... but I suppose that's not for everyone.)

Minimize affects a single window. I expect for "hide" to hide all windows associated with an application.

Which can simply be achieved by switching to another Workspace. The concept is not much different. Just slightly different presentation.

I know I'm being ridiculous, but I don't want all my windows over there. I want them here but invisible.

I like keeping work contexts in the same workspace. For example:

1) Email, videoconferencing, internet browsing 2) Coding and simulation 3) Writing

Well, you can simply use `Meta + H` to hide the window too.

Well... it doesn't. It just hides the one window.

(Which personally is what I want. I hate it when multiple windows are grouped together just because they happen to be instances of the same application. For me that has nothing to do with whether or not they are related to the same task!)

it’s just better "think different" than macos

> As someone who has never really clicked with virtual desktop, this doesn’t work for me. This feels like such a glaring omission of a convention that has been around for decades (even in past versions of Gnome).

As someone who uses Gnome simply because IMHO the alternatives like KDE are worse, I came to the conclusion that these people do not work on desktop computers. It feels like an interface designed for tablets and laptops you operate by some swipe gestures.

I'm a KDE User, by no means a power user. I would love to know what makes KDE Worse over GNOME, I come from Windows Land so its workflows tended to work best for me. but I can see from a MacOS User how GNOME might fit their habits better.

Don't get me wrong, KDE is a great desktop. There is nothing I can point out especially. I do not like the feel of KDE. It's just my opinion, not law.

It’s the Klutter. Apps with unnecessary taskbars, buttons and menus all over the place. Inconsistent ui. Not exactly great on screen real estate. I think they are making progress but the difference between kde /qt and gnome/gtk is still jarring.

For me, I tend to run Linux on lower powered systems and KDE was always very slow. Maybe it’s gotten better, I gave up on it and haven’t tried it in probably 10 years, but it just felt much more resource intensive than every other option.

I never minimize windows. They are almost always full screen or split screen (unless I'm quickly grabbing a file in a Nautilus/Finder/Explorer window), and I just hide windows if I really need to. The same is true for macOS.

Forget what I do in Windows, been a couple years since I daily drove it.

I wonder if that's because I've used macOS and Gnome more than Windows for the last decade -- because its confusing as hell to cmd/alt-tab back to an app or click it in the dock and for its window to not appear because you minimized it rather than hiding it. When that happens, it usually takes 30 seconds until I realize the app is hiding in the task bar or dock.

I agree. GNOME 2 was simple and beautiful. Then it became completely unusable.

It looks like it's been designed by someone who never has to use a computer.

> completely unusable

You forgot „for me“

IMHO the Gnome team should bake in Dash to Dock and Desktop Icons NG into the core package. To me they are essential to get a proper functioning desktop in Gnome and it blows my mind that they are just 3rd party extensions when really it should be 1st party support.

Ubuntu already does this with their build.

What advantages do they bring in so that they need to be baked in? Like a good comparison between what you do with them and how problematic do you think the idiomatic interaction is.

Was never a fan of Desktop icons, nor dash or dock. I use none. And I feel they just adds clutter. Only reason I have the top panel visible, because I need to see the time. Heh.

I don’t understand desktop icons. Why spend the time finding the thing, moving your hand to the mouse and clicking when you can just hit super, type the first 2 or 3 characters, done.

Because some times you are doing stuff that is more mouse centric and it is more comfortable to continue using the mouse.

Tray icons shouls be supported by default too but won't.

Have you tried Cinnamon? I've been happily using it for years, Cinnamon is pretty much GNOME before GNOME started getting bastardized. GNOME these days is pretty much two devs having very strong opinions about how the DE should serve them with no regards to usability or other users; I wouldn't hope that it will improve in the future.

After years with i3 on Linux, then macOS, then Gnome for a few months, and back to i3 again, that will be a decade since I've minimized any windows. I'm either closing a window if I don't need it anymore or move it somewhere else.

I know habits and workflows can be difficult to adjust. But an alternate paradigm can be as useful as the one you're used to.

I've used GNOME for years, and I'm not a heavy workspace user. I don't remember the last time I wanted a minimize action. If you really do want it, you can use GNOME Tweaks or Refine, which is the modern equivalent. Someone is working on an XDG Desktop Portal setting as well for the window actions.

I use macOS at work, and I've used Windows in the past. I still never use a minimize option. Maybe I'm weird, but I've never understood the use for it.

You don't move windows that you do not need right now to other workspace. You move to a new workspace with the window you are working on. Which is more logical, and workspace are cheap, and quick to navigate to.

There are even extensions, that opens new windows to a new workspace automatically.

But of course, I have few complaints about how multi-monitor workspace are handled in Gnome, I prefer how i3 handles workspace.

IDK about anyone else's experience but workspaces are not cheap on seemingly any system. Gnome on Linux, MacOS, Windows, all seem to have unacceptable performance degradation the more workspaces you open. I assume that this is because some frame buffer is being kept alive in all cases, but for the love of God, why?

Well, I'll do a small experiment, working on my Surface Pro 3 (Yes, you read that right) which I am using as a Thin client to my desktop.

Just opened 14 workspace on it. Opened up terminals, text editor, disk usage tool on all the workspace.

gnome-shell is sitting on 154mb, and Firefox is 1.7GB. And I am not seeing any unacceptable performance degradation at all.

Put them in same workspace, memory usage seemed to increase slight to 168mb but no unacceptable lag.

I put all the window back on individual workspaces again, now memory usage went down to 163mb

I'm paying attention, and I have respect for the experiment, but something is wrong somewhere. Conceptually I love workspaces, having tried innumerable forms of spatial window management, and I have tried them across multiple OS's and I always run into this problem eventually where the system lags switching between them (despite apparently low resource usage across the board). For some ungodly reason despite the effort and money involved, OSX is the worst at it. Somewhere greater than 5 workspaces, each managing a fairly small amount of work, it lags like crazy on a powerful machine (M2, 64GB RAM). Gnome will just hang until the workspace has "finished" switching. Windows will switch quickly but will flash every app white until it reloads whatever context it needs to show me the right pixels. I know that workspaces exist somewhere in no man's land between "normal people" (what's a workspace?) and "power users" (who have thirty context-specific keyboard shortcuts for their desktop layout) but it's insane how badly they (anecdotally) perform across platforms. Not that your experiment isn't valuable, I certainly appreciate literally any amount of effort going into this problem, but I do wonder if I'm doing something specific to trigger the problems I'm seeing.

maybe you’re doing something different from everyone else or your expectations are too high, but three finger swiping to move between spaces on macOS should feel smooth and buttery. There's a 200 millisecond lag after you switch spaces and when your input gets rendered (it starts accepting input in the new space as soon as you switch) that, if you're staring at that and focusing on that, watching it like a hawk, exists, but if you can get over that, Spaces/virtual desktops is a useful feature. The whole screen needing to rerender shouldn't be happening. What apps (or more likely, your IT department) are you running?

Workspace being froze or causing issue, is just the symptom of the actual problem. It's not the workspace are the problem. So, maybe you should investigate the underlying issue.

Which version of Gnome are you using? Older version of Gnome had an issue with workspace switch, which has been fixed over a year ago.

You do realize, Surface Pro 3 is a 10 year old laptop, which only have 4GB of RAM, and iGPU, and I have opened up 14 workspace, with multiple applications. And, obviously it had some lag, but it never became unusable.

My workflow is never so organized and segmented that windows all group neatly together in workspaces together. This is why workspaces/virtual desktops never worked for me.

I can assure you, It's not about organization, not for me at least.

I just can't stand too many windows open in a single workspace, I get anxious, and close window, and then I close an important window and get lost.

With workspace, I don't have to close any window, go to another workspace, and keep working. If I remember something, on some other window/app, I can just move it to the current workspace.

So, now come to the point with too many window, traversing them become a huge pain. So, for that, I use `rofi` with window list option, so, I can just fuzzy search and jump to any window.

Switching by search is absolutely must if you are working in workspace and have too many windows.

I try to keep my projects in separate workspaces, and terminals related to the project in secondary monitors, and IDE on the primary, that's all organization I have

I currently have to use macOS for work and despite it supporting minimizing windows (which Gnome does not) I almost never use it. Part of the reason is how minimized windows are unintuitive on macOS but part of the reason is also that if I don't currently need a window I will likely just put the one I need on top of it, or move to the desktop where the one I need it.

I can't stand Gnome. I don't like how they dumped the desktop or the app menu, or really most of their decisions lately. From what I've seen they're trying to cater to some amorphous "new user" instead of just creating a good desktop environment. What is this "new user"? Nobody knows! Well, other than the Gnome developers, I guess. The sad thing is that attempting to cater to "new users" is just... Entirely unnecessary: you can put someone who's never used Linux in their entire lives in front of an XFCE desktop environment and they'll most likely figure it out quite quickly with little help from you. I think that this similarly applies to Mate or KDE as well.

My dislike with Gnome comes from the fact that I need extensions for what I would consider primitive things. Like an app menu instead of the dashboard/app launcher thing they have going. Or the fact that features like minimize are just... Gone. And when you complain, your just either told to do it some very counterintuitive way or to go get an extension. I would get an extension for something truly unique or something that extends the environment far beyond what anyone would expect, but an extension just to minimize a window? Nah, no thanks.

I'm not a new Linux user, and I use GNOME. I've done stints on KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, and Budgie.

I personally find GNOME to be the best experience. I'm just stating that GNOME also caters to people with a decade+ of Linux desktop experience.

Do you really think a desktop needs to be stuck on the 30 year old start menu, task bar, desktop icons paradigm forever? It's fine if you want to stick to that, but the rest of us have found that using a mouse for everything isn't the most efficient way to work with our computer.

I think in the case where you want GNOME to work more like windows 95 installing a few extensions is a completely reasonable ask. The fact that you can is still a plus.

But I don't use the mouse, I use the keyboard primarily. And yes, evolution is fine when it's actually needed. But trying to get rid of Minimize and all that because workspaces exist? Going in the trajectory Gnome is doing feels like Gnome is making the same mistake Microsoft made with windows 8.

You have never tried to teach kids, smartphone-natives, to use a desktop, have you? The "new user" demographic has shifted from "been taught how to use windows" to "has maybe used an ipad".

The classic start menu/task bar approach just isn't as approachable as you think.

> I can't stand Gnome. [...] Nah, no thanks.

Good thing there are many other Linux desktop environments to choose: you already mentioned XFCE, Mate and KDE!

I personally like Gnome, I'm happy with out-of-the-box experience (zero extensions), and I'm glad they don't try to be everything to everyone.

> macOS

This is the most counter-intuitive, user-unfriendly, confusing piece of software that I’ve used in my life.

Insane hyperbole in my opinion. Most of his complaints are that of a power user, and because it’s missing something he liked from Gnome. Fair enough I guess, the stuff he talks about does sound nice.

Later on in the article:

> The macOS itself isn’t all that bad.

I don't know why Gnome et al switched to imitating MacOS – adopting a dock (as a default), ditching an app window tray as on Windows, when the potential Windows-convert market is much larger than Mac.

The Dock can be really jarring for Windows users - they are coming from an OS literally called windows, and the windows are hidden from view.

It also eats vertical space with those huge icons, which is precious given the current popular screen dimensions.

I agree MacOS has some glaring UX and functionality omissions and Finder is indeed garbage!

> I don't know why Gnome et al switched to imitating MacOS

Car analogy. If the most popular brand puts a steering wheel in the front left, then it makes sense to do the same even if a joystick has better UX.

>It also eats vertical space with those huge icons, which is precious given the current popular screen dimensions.

This is one Windows gets wrong too, in fairness.

W11 killed the ability to move the taskbar to the left/right side of the screen. That's a real pain on ultrawide displays where you have absolutely miles of horizontal real estate and relatively limited vertical space.

Fortunately, ExplorerPatcher exists and can restore the functionality.

https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/

Windows has had a taskbar for 30 years. And in the last 15 years, the default taskbar has pinned apps, large icons and no captions.

To be honest, I do not like the dock either, but for different reasons.

But, it doesn't waste any space at all. Because it's always hidden, unless you trigger the overview.

What I am missing with Gnome is the global menu I have with macOS. It's just my preferred way of working. This is also what I liked about Unity. Gnome seems to follow the same direction as Windows.

Additionally miller columns in Finder are just awesome and I don't have them with Nautilus. Those two things are honestly dealbreakers for me.

I like that Unity puts the global menu on the side. This makes more sense with all the wide-screens that we have nowadays. A huge oversight in MacOS, if you ask me.

I agree that the side is better and would be a better default. For the record, the location of the MacOS Dock is configurable — I have mine on the right.

On macOS only the dock can be moved to the side. The application menu (left) and the statusbar menu (right) will always be on top of the screen. Which makes sense to me.

Global menu meant menu bar. Unity put the dock on the side. You can move the macOS dock to either side.

I went looking for a file manager with miller column on Linux once. It seems to be an extremely rare feature. With how popular column view is in Finder, I don’t understand how it hasn’t made its way to other platforms as a commonplace feature.

I had the exact same journey as you, I even very nearly install GNUStep because the file manager had miller columns.

I even started to think that perhaps Apple has an active patent on it or something.

(this happened with the Genie Lamp minimise effect on Compiz/Beryl- why it needed to have at minimum 3 "waves" before it minimised the window; though you could obviously patch it out).

FWIW I found Ranger (TUI) and Pantheon (ElementaryOS) that supports it, if you're still looking.

This one has it: https://github.com/elementary/files

If you are okay with terminal based one's, Yazi: [https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi/] is pretty nice.

Yes, I would love that in Nautilus, but I'm not very depended on GUI for managing files, so not a big deal for me.

KDE's Dolphin file manager has miller columns. It won't blend in on Gnome, but it will work just fine.

I would much prefer if MacOS got rid of the global menu. I've contemplated it for literally decades, and my opinion has only gotten stronger.

1. Sometimes a program has no open windows. Understanding when its menu shows up in the menu bar is confusing at best. Explaining to another user "oh, you are in [such and such program already] even though there's nothing there -- click File then Open" is silly.

2. Sometimes a program has two or more open windows. Sure, File/New makes sense in this context, but anything that acts on the current window is not visually linked to the window and is thus confusing.

3. With the advent of multiple monitors, global menus are even worse. Which monitor should they live on? Always primary? Both? There is no right answer.

4. Old-fashioned title bars tell me which window belongs to which program. Global menus try, but only if I'm sure which window's menu is currently displayed, and it does not let me identify a non-selected window without interrupting myself to select it.

5. Opening a menu that's part of a non-current window takes one click. With global menus, it's two clicks.

6. One might imagine that they conserve screen real estate, which is maybe slightly true in our brave new world of notched viewports, but it's barely true and is avoidable. And Apple doesn't seem to care about efficient use of screen real estate anyway.

100% agree. Will never understand the love for the global menu bar, it makes no sense.

I mean, it does take less space (compared to having one per window)

Only if you have two or more windows vertically stacked, which isn’t what you’re likely to be doing when you want to maximize vertical space.

but if they're stacked horizontally, buttons don't fit

You don't have to like it, but the global menu bar is at the top of the screen which means you just fling the mouse to the top and then go left or right, instead of having to get to the right vertical.

True. This could be nicely solved by placing a non-global window all the way at the top of the window, so that you can still fling the cursor to the top of the screen if the window is maximized or otherwise along the top edge of the screen.

In Gnome, the top bar stays in the Primary monitor only, and worse, even the app switcher always displays on Primary monitor, NO MATTER which monitor you are in! Which is absolutely infuriating. I can't imagine how messy the Global menu could be in a multi monitor setup. Why would one want that pain!

I had a longer reply but turfed it, but the global menu is based around muscle memory for eye and mouse locations. My personal experience sounds nothing like yours so I suspect we navigate very differently such that it impacts you far more than me.

I’m a heavy keyboard user so rotating apps and windows in apps means I always know where I am and don’t even notice the costs you’re talking about.

Personally, I think the trade offs for more window space is worth it versus window positioned app menu bars. If you really are trying to maximally optimize menu bar navigation you go with the menu bar as a context menu wherever your cursor is, or a key command to prompt searching for the menu option you want to use.

As for 3, the way you'd solve this while retaining the 'global' menubar style is by treating screens more individual and having a screen unique menubar. Introduce screen focus, and have the screen focus follow where the cursor is. Further you could make it so that when a screen regains cursor focus it also refocuses the last window on that screen. The menu bar would then serve the purpose of visually indicating and emphasizing which app on which screen has latent focus even when the screen lacks focus itself. (Which now saying it honestly might have been an original MacOS consideration before losing focus caused window dimming)

I quite dislike the global menu of macOS. It means that you need to switch windows to see the menu for the window, which can result in a lot of tedious mouse movement.

But what I absolutely love is the menu search. I would love to see GNOME (well GTK I guess) add menu search. Also bring back the ability to bind hotkeys by typing while hovering a menu item while you are at it!

it’s less tedious after you realize you can just fling the mouse to the top, you don’t have to hit a specific vertical to get there.

Hey MacOS switchers, welcome. Please know that closing the last window doesn’t quit the application. Quitting the application quits the application. That’s why the icon is still in the dock.

That's literally the default behavior in macOS, with some exceptions.

In fact that’s how it always worked. Apps that don’t work that way, including Apple’s, are “wrong”.

Both behaviors have been common/"correct" as long as I remember. Single window apps such as System Preferences, Disk Utility, etc. don't meaningfully exist without their window and as such they quit when the window closes. Multi-window apps e.g. web browsers, word processors have the "usual" macOS behavior where they can remain running without a window open.

Importantly, both behaviors are correct under the appropriate circumstances (which you described). It’s not random or discretionary.

I think the above post must refer to how it works in MacOS. In Gnome, the app quits when the last window is closed (by default at least).

I guess this is a matter of taste, but personally I strongly dislike the way MacOS works here.

This is not a macOS issue, it’s an app developer issue. If the app developer likes the behavior that the app still runs after closing the last app window, this is how the app will act. Some newer Apple apps close the application when the window is closed.

So then why is it so common on MacOS?

because that’s how it used to be on older versions of OSX and older Macs. There’s a lot of inertia because launching a program to read files off a disk and load them into memory was more costly timewise in those days so e.g. having Photoshop open and loaded even if you didn’t have a picture open you didn’t want to have to wait for the program to open unless you really were done with photo editing.

This is the appropriate behavior if and only if the app has only one “main” window (e.g., System Preferences).

If I remember correctly, in old UNIX desktop environments apps still ran after closing the last app window.

Oh... :/ I guess when I read that I interpreted it as being directed towards people switching from macOS to Gnome. I haven't booted into a system running Gnome in a while...

To switch the app/window closing behavior… there is an API for that.

To those who didn’t read the post, I’m reacting to the author’s complaints about how the MacOS dock works, which aren’t actually about how the dock works. (“Hey MacOS switchers [from Windows or GNOME]”)

Feel like I've been reading Year of the Linux Desktop™'ers writing this stuff for the last 20 years.

A bit of a backstory. I’ve been using GNUplusSlashLinux for more than fifteen years. Most of the time, I used GNOME, starting from GNOME2, moving to Unity maybe for two years, then GNOME Shell, then KDE Plasma 5 for another two years, and switched back to GNOME Shell again. I’m not mentioning some of my at most month-long endeavors to other DEs, like XFCE, or tiling WMs, because they never stuck with me. So I’ve been there for most releases of GNOME Shell, followed them closely, even used to run Ubuntu GNOME when GNOME Shell became a thing, until it became the default in Ubuntu once again. Though by that time, I had already moved from Ubuntu to a different distribution for a variety of reasons.

I did, however, run Unity on my older PCs, as it was far less taxing on resources than early versions of GNOME3, but then it was discontinued, and long-awaited Unity 8 with Mir never became a thing. So, when I was fed up with GNOME being a resource hog, often crashing, and moving towards Wayland, which didn’t work as good as it was advertised, I decided to try KDE somewhere around 2018...

My backstory: I've been using MacOS X for more than fifteen years. Most of the time, I used MacOS X. Actually, all of the time. The end.

I love Gnome! I understand it's not for everyone, but it certainly doesn't deserve all the hate it receives.

The only thing about Gnome3 I like is it does not give me eye strain like KDE 1 -- 5 does. I have yet to use KDE6. Granted with each release KDE is getting better with eye strain, but it still happens.

With Gnome, no issues at all. With that said, I prefer KDE far more than Gnome due to its configurability. With v5 I can deal with the eye strain, hoping v6 is better. In the old days, with KDE v3, after 15 minutes my eyes were bleeding.

Totally agree. Lots of friends who game have been asking for advice on linux now that they don’t want to update to windows 10. I’ll show them both gnome and plasma, and they’ll usually try kde then switch to gnome because it’s so darn easy to use.

It’s opinionated, the settings app is easy to navigate (with the downside being, tweaks/gsettings is needed), and simple stuff like shutting down/switching audio input/wifi/printers is all stuff they were able to figure out without my help. I do wish gnome would figure out some of the compatibility stuff with Wayland (quick windows on ghostty seem not to work because they won’t implement a specific protocol?) but out of every desktop rn, gnome really is one of the easiest to pick up

Said no one ever. GNOME is barely a desktop at this point. You need buggy extensions just to restore basic functionality, which says everything. In many ways, GNOME has become the epitome of a FOSS misfire: opinionated to a fault, driven by a loud minority, and offering users less choice instead of more.

Plasma, on the other hand, has made huge strides in usability, performance, and overall polish. It feels modern, extensible, and genuinely user focused. If anything is going to be the future of the mainstream Linux desktop, it’s Plasma.

I was a GNOME fan in the 00s, then I really liked Unity from Ubuntu, and now in the 2020s I have switched to KDE. KDE is super powerful but (as a technical person) easy to discover options. The basic sound/wifi/system stuff is really easy to access, the global search in the menu is wonderful.

Best part about Unity was that you could hold down the meta button, and it would reveal the cheatsheet for all the other window manipulation shortcuts.

BUT... the person above you did literally say they think GNOME is better and that's fine too.

I like plasma as well, my main complaints with it rn are

- configuring stuff like the task bar has always been buggy, the drag/drop frustratingly won't drop stuff in the right place, I've even had to completely log out to fix being locked in the editing mode earlier this year

- settings app goes deep and it makes it harder to find simple stuff. one example for my friends is when they wanted to turn on gsync/freesync, the toggle for it on gnome is right inside of refresh rate like you'd expect

- I hate to say this because I know it's gnome/gtk's fault, but apps on gnome look much more consistent for me than apps on plasma. gtk apps don't look good, qt apps don't look good, and plasma apps do look pretty good but they're in the minority. It has been a year since I've tried ricing KDE though, so I'd accept if this has gotten better

I don't totally agree with the extensions thing, the only one I use is quake terminal so that I can have ghostty pop up (since gnome doesn't support the protocol needed for that to work natively) and I consider myself a pretty technical user. Even on plasma I like a lot of the gnome apps like nautilus for being opinionated/polished. it's been a struggle to get a good feeling environment on plasma without a lot of tinkering (which to its credit, is doable!) whereas gnome feels pretty good ootb

Most of the time I hear the “basic functionality” complaint about gnome it’s someone missing a start menu and taskbar. Which makes sense if you are a clicker stuck on the desktop paradigm introduced in the early 90s.

Gnome is very keyboard centric. If you actually take the time to learn it without relying on your mouse for everything it’s actually extremely efficient.

> Gnome is very keyboard centric.

... and misses the fact that not every valid computer use is keyboard centric too.

Sometimes I use my mouse and I do not want to switch to the keyboard and no, my life is not about being most productive and about saving 1/10th of a second if I use the keyboard only (which isn't even possible). I'm human after all and not a machine. I like my mouse. I paid a fortune for it.

Edit:

And it doesn't matter if this is the old way of the 90s and not modern. Being modern/new is no virtue in itself.

People don't use macOS for its window shell but for it's familiarity, ecosystem and underlying technology. There are plenty of windowing upgrades from third-party vendors that improve on it.

The number one thing keeping me on macOS is Universal Clipboard with my iPhone. I copy+paste URLs, 2FA codes, and images between devices all day long.

This is my favorite feature of KDE Connect on Linux.

KDE Connect can integrate seamlessly with iPhones?

Presumably, with some fanangling. I use Android these days so I'm not sure how hard Apple makes it.

I don't know about "seamlessly", but yeah, it works.

After all this years I still think the Applications - Places - System "start menu" was the best way to present available stuff in a DE, in any DE, in any OS, ever. You didn't have to skim through so many submenus to locate something - the main categories were available at a glance. It was pure genius.

I kind of get why they felt pressured to remove it but pretty much every other DE had a start-menu-like thing and they never did any change. It was just GNOME.

I've had this exact experience. I used gnome for just one week before getting a macbook and after 3+ years of MacOS I still its find multi desktop handling absurd and unintuitive.

What makes this worse is that Apple's refusal to expose any public APIs to control workspace behavior so you can't even work around their shitty choices.

Instead of iterating on existing functionality, they launch flashy additions like Stage Manager only to abandon them immediately.

GNOME is underfunded - bugs are not fixed for years, PRs are not reviewed for months. It might look more shiny on the surface, but once you realize something doesn't work - you're on your own.

See for example this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4051

Nobody is assigned to fix these.

> Nobody is assigned to fix these.

Who would be assigning people to the issues? People scratch their own itches or work on what their employer needs them to do.

> work on what their employer needs them to do.

That's precisely what I meant - there are no employees that are assigned by their employer to ensure GNOME works. That's why the comparison with macOS makes no sense.

GNOME is by far the most funded Linux DE. If you think it's underfunded then other DEs are broke.

If nobody is assigned to GNOME bugs it's because developers were more interested in redesigning some app or rewriting some APIs than fixing bugs.

jwz explained it 25 years ago: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

I never knew what happened to gnome that it got so bad, until I used a Mac and I realized that they just tried to copy it and miserably failed.

It's a great desktop if you don't need to print anything or use an extension for more than a year or so before API changes break the extension. Gnome works "out of the box" as long as you don't try to do anything that's not in the box. That whole expression needs to be changed to "it works in the box".

Off topic from the article, but please stop setting video elements to “auto play”. It makes browsing on mobile a miserable experience.

Reading that and looking at the pictures, it just seems like the parts he likes are the parts that slavishly copy the macOS style.

Reading it closely, that's a bit of an oversimplification. The article focuses pretty heavily on functionality over style, where doing the equivalent thing in macos is either silly or near impossible to achieve

How is the HiDPI situation, and font rendering? Last time I tried it on my M1 Max with Asahi it still looked substantially worse.

To quote one of the lead GTK/GNOME developers, "what makes you think font sharpness is a metric (of font rendering quality)"? It's absolute madness: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787.

> When you maximize a window, it is moved to its own, dedicated virtual desktop - and I like it.

I know this author and I will never agree on what a good desktop behaves like.

I have no opinion on Gnome but I love my Plasma desktop. However the latest release made it significantly more buggy, which is frustrating.

It's very sad that none of these Linux DEs expose APIs for customization in anything other than JavaScript - I would love to be able to build on Gnome or KDE with something equivalent to windows-rs or objc2

js is the easiest language to handle safely and securely (due to its origins in the browser, of course), and can even be run fairly efficiently since it is now probably the most optimized language. And most importantly, is probably the most widely known language.

"I need to make a disclosure - I AM BIASED. I’ve been using GNOME for a lot of time, and a lot of things that feel logical to me may not feel logical at all to others. Especially for macOS users."

Personally, I'm in a KDE camp. GNOME was never my cup of tea. But I completely agree that the Linux DE surpassed Windows/Mac some time ago. While Windows enshitified and MacOS stagnated, Linux on desktop kept evolving. And even though I've used Windows and Mac for a long time before fully switching to Linux, I now can't go back.

Okay, I stopped reading when I understood he simply couldn’t change some settings in the system. Expected some deep analysis of the UX. Why would I?

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