I made this post because I really like the design of GNOME, and although i’d like customizability, it is mostly enough for my everyday needs. But I want to understand why people may choose other desktop environments…or why you would/would’nt use GNOME.
Ir was my first desktop I encountered when introduced to GNU/Linux and it is actually what made me delay my switch to GNU/Linux since I disliked it so much. back then I did not know there are more desktop options so Iit made me think the whole GNU/Linux is not interesting to me. It was not until a few years later until I was told there are other options and I was shown KDE desktop (not called Plasma yet back then) that I fell in love with GNU/Linux.
Why I did not like GNOME was that it was too limited and limiting and unconfigurable. And I would say nowadays it has gotten even worse while KDE Plasma has improved a lot. I think GNU/Linux would have a lot more success at capturing the desktop OS market if KDE Plasma would be the major and default desktop in all those enterprise distributions. It is just so much better and so flexible you can even turn it to mimic any other desktop or even better customize it to fit your wery own best way of workflow and using computers.
I remember my first time installing Ubuntu as a teenager and the fact that the desktop environment was Gnome made me hate it. At that age and time I wanted something familiar and Windows-like. Since then, 13 years ago, I always hated Gnome (and Ubuntu) and I don’t feel like that is going to change any time soon.
The new SteamOS opened my eyes to KDE Plasma and now I am running Garuda on my main desktop. Eventually I plan to switch to Arch and “make my own distro” or just use SteamOS once it gets official desktop release.
I use GNOME 43 on Debian 12. I sincerely enjoy it. The workspaces are intuitive, it looks and feels sexy, and it has a pretty great set of extensions. While I really appreciate other projects like KDE and XFCE, I think GNOME is probably the most mature DE I’ve used.
That said, I do have a few gripes. For starters, it’s pretty annoying that I have to use tweaks to access settings that should absolutely be included in the regular settings page. It’s also pretty dumb that I have to install an extension to be able to quarter tile. There are so e other small issues I have, but none more than I would have with any other desktop experience, and overall I adore what the devs have put together.
Using it because it’s the least buggy DE i’ve tried so far. With a few extensions the workflow isn’t too bad either.
I love the design of the applications in general tho, in the sense that they do one thing and one thing only and there aren’t a billion options trying to cover every use case without doing any of them well.
I like the overall design of the Gnome Shell (top panel) and the workflow with different workspace. I like it so much that I actually copied it in KDE. What I don’t like is the look and feel of GTK apps. They’re often so limited or the advanced options aren’t clear at the first look.
