I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it’s just not good.
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 and which hotkey you have each application set to.
How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.
Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?
I’d love to hear from people that use it and thrive in it.
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.
Gnome 3.38 (vertical workspaces) was peak workflow. Primarily use super+tab to switch applications. Workspace overview is mainly for moving apps around or opening new apps. You should never need to whiz through the workspaces looking for an app. I never have more than 4 workspaces and usually only have 2. It would be nice if the top panel could be more useful or take up less space, but I must be able to see the time at a glance.
I personally slap pop-shell and flypie radial menu on it, and I really love it
Using vanilla gnome and comparing about empty task bar is a bit strange.
