4 ms·

I tried Gnome 3 a few years ago, when it had already matured somewhat and was curious how it turned out to be. First impression was good, looked pretty and seem

I tried Gnome 3 a few years ago, when it had already matured somewhat and was curious how it turned out to be. First impression was good, looked pretty and seemed well-polished. However, I found the default font size too large for my taste. No problem, I thought, just head to the preferences and make them smaller. So I opened the prefs and searched and searched... and couldn't find it. At some point I thought I must be stupid for overlooking it and turned to google. Among the very first hits, google showed me a posting on google+, written by Linus Torvalds himself. In there he was ranting about exactly my problem: not being able to change the font size in Gnome 3. That was kind of a relief: at least I wasn't being too stupid to find it. In the end I found out that Gnome 3 indeed doesn't have that setting! To change it, you had to install a thing called Gnome Tweak Tool (IIRC). By default, this was seemingly deemed a too advanced feature for normal users. I then quickly decided that Gnome 3 wasn't for me. (Admittedly, I don't know if this has changed since then in newer version.) I'm all for usability and not providing a million settings (hello KDE), but changing the system font seems so very basic to me... I still can't fathom why they'd remove it.

askz 9y ago
I personally find that KDE has too many settings and it's a pain. BUT, I use KDE Neon for 6 months now and I like (maybe too much) the new look of it. Also they refined a lot the bottom status bar with NetworkManager etc, very simple, clean. I still use Gnome on my personal laptop, but at work I find KDE more usable.
- wvh 9y ago
  I don't think KDE has too many settings, but I do agree that the need to adapt to different form factors has made a lot of UI a lot cleaner and more concise. Mobile and tablet interfaces seem to have had a positive impact on cleaning up the desktop, while still providing means to change commonly needed settings.
72deluxe 9y ago
I wonder if this is due to copying (to some extent) MacOS? I didn't realise how similar everything was until I used MacOS for a few years and then went back to GNOME - the behaviour of Nautilus and missing configuration options for part of the system was very MacOS-like. That is, you can't change the default font size for anything on MacOS without installing TinkerTool or something like that. I stopped using GNOME after they decided that a toolbar was too distracting during the gedit rewrite, necessitating clicking a button first in order to see any useful buttons: https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2014/01/15/gedit-has-a-new-face/ https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2014/01/15/gedit-has-a-new-fac... It seemed to be simplifying for the sake of simplification, but that could have been just me.

askz 9y ago

I personally find that KDE has too many settings and it's a pain. BUT, I use KDE Neon for 6 months now and I like (maybe too much) the new look of it. Also they refined a lot the bottom status bar with NetworkManager etc, very simple, clean. I still use Gnome on my personal laptop, but at work I find KDE more usable.

wvh 9y ago
I don't think KDE has too many settings, but I do agree that the need to adapt to different form factors has made a lot of UI a lot cleaner and more concise. Mobile and tablet interfaces seem to have had a positive impact on cleaning up the desktop, while still providing means to change commonly needed settings.

72deluxe 9y ago

I wonder if this is due to copying (to some extent) MacOS? I didn't realise how similar everything was until I used MacOS for a few years and then went back to GNOME - the behaviour of Nautilus and missing configuration options for part of the system was very MacOS-like. That is, you can't change the default font size for anything on MacOS without installing TinkerTool or something like that. I stopped using GNOME after they decided that a toolbar was too distracting during the gedit rewrite, necessitating clicking a button first in order to see any useful buttons: https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2014/01/15/gedit-has-a-new-face/ https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2014/01/15/gedit-has-a-new-fac... It seemed to be simplifying for the sake of simplification, but that could have been just me.