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To add another opinion. I love gnome 3, Its by far the nicest DE I have used on linux and what I would recommend to anyone to start with. I have used XFCE/Mate/

To add another opinion. I love gnome 3, Its by far the nicest DE I have used on linux and what I would recommend to anyone to start with. I have used XFCE/Mate/Plasma/Unity and none of them worked as well. Its usually not even so much the design (although xfce does look very dated) but that they seem to have such little development resources that many parts of the DE are lagging software wise 5 to 10 years behind what they should. XFCE is still in the process of upgrading to GTK3 when GTK4 is already out and they still have made no progress on migrating to wayland so its not a usable DE for a modern desktop experience. Gnome just works and it just works very well. After using xcfe for a year I would go to report multiple bugs only to find they have already been reported years ago while on gnome I have only opened feature requests.

stingraycharles 6y ago
You’re being downvoted but I don’t see a clear reason for it. The parent gave their opinion, you give your opinion, it’s all a fair discussion. I suspect you’re getting downvoted just because people don’t agree with you.
- emmelaich 6y ago
  HN says disagreement is sufficient for voting down. I don't like it and never do it myself however. While I'm here, another vote for Gnome3. Love it.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Probably because of things like this: XFCE is still in the process of upgrading to GTK3 when GTK4 is already out and they still have made no progress on migrating to wayland so its not a usable DE for a modern desktop experience. What's wrong with GTK3? And "modern desktop experience" just reads like meaningless marketing fluff.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    There is nothing wrong with GTK3. Clearly we have been using it for a long time just fine. I mention it because gtk3 came out in 2011. Which means it took the xfce team 9 years to perform a migration which still isn't complete yet. Now I don't want to shit on the work of the xfce team because they work on this on their free time and provide us alternative options and ask nothing in return, but its a data point showing why one would preference Gnome over XFCE. The Gnome team has a lot of resources behind it to just get things done and push new technology out faster than the rest.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      The problem is that to get the new features you have to accept a new way of working. One that is worse than the classic MacOS or Windows 2000 was. Another reason many folks are in no hurry.
bigbubba 6y ago
Why does a user care that XFCE is on an old version of GTK? I can see why that would frustrate developers, but I don't see how that surfaces to users as a usability issue.
- canofbars 6y ago
  GTK2 fails in a lot of ways. The main one that bothers me is when I open a GTK2 app, it picks the DPI scale of one of my monitors so when I drag it over, instead of resizing to the new dpi scale, it will either become massive or tiny.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Ah that makes sense. I've never tried it on mismatched screens.
    - justwalt 6y ago
      Unfortunately, I don’t know of any DE that does this well at this point.
      - canofbars 6y ago
        Gnome with wayland supports it but every time you start an xwayland app you notice issues. Native wayland/gtk3 apps have been flawless for me. Things just snap to the new scale when you drag them across.
        hollerith 6y ago
        Is Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge or Firefox available as a native Wayland app that just snaps to the new scale when you drag it across?
        djsavvy 6y ago
        I’m pretty sure Firefox has native wayland support, which can be enabled with an environment variable. Take a look at [1] for more. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wayland_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wa...
jvzr 6y ago
FWIW I adore Gnome 3 too. I very recently switched to Linux from Windows 10 on my gaming PC (my last experience with Linux was with Mandrake a couple decades ago...), and of course I had to try every DE under the Sun. None quite works perfectly (for me) like Gnome 3 does. But that's the beauty of it: there's a choice for everyone!
zamalek 6y ago
> I have used XFCE/Mate/Plasma/Unity I've also used a couple of DEs. Unity aside, GNOME is bold enough to stick out and do something different. The GTK human interface guidelines result in apps that are something different (also usable!) and the activities view is a genuinely awesome approach to alt+tab. KDE is just windows and a bunch of panels. It's expertly put together, but there's really nothing more to it than that. Rainmeter can do much the same that it can on Windows.
- hda2 6y ago
  I don't understand how this can be argued to be a point in gnome's favor. Gnome's HIG is only followed by the 5 or 6 core apps that ship with it. The rest of my apps do their own thing (yes, even gtk-based ones). From my personal perspective as someone who uses both KDE and Gnome daily, both are just windows and a bunch of panels. What gives KDE an edge is that it doesn't try to force its weird conventions on me.
- still_grokking 6y ago
  > KDE is just windows and a bunch of panels. Only in the default config... To be nice to Windows expats. > It's expertly put together, but there's really nothing more to it than that. It's ultimately configurable! So it can be anything you want. (Plasma can "simulate" any DE with the right config). Additionally modern KDE/Plasma is more lightweight than "anything GTK". (This may sound strange to the older people but things changed over the last years).
  - type0 6y ago
    Compared to GNOME it is indeed a lightweight and also incredibly powerful system.
dralley 6y ago
I also like GNOME, but only with a couple of extensions installed. It totally blows my mind that the way Dash to Dock works is not the default behavior.
- willtim 6y ago
  Are they perhaps scared of patents? The whole UI tries hard to be not like Windows or Mac OS, for IMHO little user benefit. I have tried to use Gnome in the past, seeking an easier life, but the multiscreen support was just not good enough. I use i3 instead.
  - GrayShade 6y ago
    No, they just think the current UI is better, and they're doubling down on that. E.g. in the next version, the app/workspace picker will be shown after login, and not the desktop.
  - curt15 6y ago
    At least for the dash to dock behavior, the Gnome designers opted against a permanent dock to minimise "distractions" and allow one to "focus on the task at hand". This language pervades much of the literature explaining Gnome's design. See for example https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-introduction.html.en https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-introdu...
    - dralley 6y ago
      Which is nonsense, because the default behavior is not a permanent dock, it is a hidden dock that appears on mouseover. And it is tuned perfectly IMO, it never comes up by accident and always comes up when I intended to do so. I agree with the rationale about not having a visible dock, the extra space and lack of distraction is great. But Dash to Dock doesn't harm that goal whatsoever IMO.
scoot_718 6y ago
Gnome 3 was when they started taking over keybinds from common software on linux, so you had to hunt down the 3 or 4 places where they were configured to unbind them back for the user. Gnome just works? Gnome just breaks other things.
wirrbel 6y ago
I just miss Menu bars. Which is why I use Mac OS now (thrown back to using Linux now for a few months until my new MacBook arrives). I used gnome since gnome 1.x and it apps like evince were totally cool and now they are just confusing and hard to use. Want to print something? Hamburger menu and find the Print Symbol. Want to open a recently opened file? No submenu under „files“, you need to open a new window to find a selection. So much stuff one needs to learn ...
- clort 6y ago
  This is exactly my experience of Evince earlier this year when I attempted to upgrade. Some of the menus are on the left and some are on the right and why oh why does it not do what it used to do > So much stuff one needs to learn ... like installing Atril instead which works as I want it to. https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril
- ficklepickle 6y ago
  Sing it, sister! I have used File/Edit/View menus since Win 3.11, please don't change that paradigm. I will not suffer the hamburger menu on desktop.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  By far the best part of Mac OS to me is that Cmd-, opens Settings/Preferences on every single app. On Linux you have to dig to find these things and then have to remember a different keybinding for every app, if there is one
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> To add another opinion. I love gnome 3, Its by far the nicest DE I have used on linux and what I would recommend to anyone to start with. I have used XFCE/Mate/Plasma/Unity and none of them worked as well. Sure, XFCE doesn't work as well as Gnome 2. But you can't use Gnome 2 anymore. XFCE is way better than Gnome 3! (At least, as of the time Gnome put out version 3.) And yeah, this indicates a very serious problem on the part of Gnome.
- jhasse 6y ago
  You can use GNOME 2. It's called MATE.

stingraycharles 6y ago

You’re being downvoted but I don’t see a clear reason for it. The parent gave their opinion, you give your opinion, it’s all a fair discussion. I suspect you’re getting downvoted just because people don’t agree with you.

emmelaich 6y ago
HN says disagreement is sufficient for voting down. I don't like it and never do it myself however. While I'm here, another vote for Gnome3. Love it.
userbinator 6y ago
Probably because of things like this: XFCE is still in the process of upgrading to GTK3 when GTK4 is already out and they still have made no progress on migrating to wayland so its not a usable DE for a modern desktop experience. What's wrong with GTK3? And "modern desktop experience" just reads like meaningless marketing fluff.
- canofbars 6y ago
  There is nothing wrong with GTK3. Clearly we have been using it for a long time just fine. I mention it because gtk3 came out in 2011. Which means it took the xfce team 9 years to perform a migration which still isn't complete yet. Now I don't want to shit on the work of the xfce team because they work on this on their free time and provide us alternative options and ask nothing in return, but its a data point showing why one would preference Gnome over XFCE. The Gnome team has a lot of resources behind it to just get things done and push new technology out faster than the rest.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    The problem is that to get the new features you have to accept a new way of working. One that is worse than the classic MacOS or Windows 2000 was. Another reason many folks are in no hurry.

bigbubba 6y ago

Why does a user care that XFCE is on an old version of GTK? I can see why that would frustrate developers, but I don't see how that surfaces to users as a usability issue.

canofbars 6y ago
GTK2 fails in a lot of ways. The main one that bothers me is when I open a GTK2 app, it picks the DPI scale of one of my monitors so when I drag it over, instead of resizing to the new dpi scale, it will either become massive or tiny.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Ah that makes sense. I've never tried it on mismatched screens.
  - justwalt 6y ago
    Unfortunately, I don’t know of any DE that does this well at this point.
    - canofbars 6y ago
      Gnome with wayland supports it but every time you start an xwayland app you notice issues. Native wayland/gtk3 apps have been flawless for me. Things just snap to the new scale when you drag them across.
      - hollerith 6y ago
        Is Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge or Firefox available as a native Wayland app that just snaps to the new scale when you drag it across?
        djsavvy 6y ago
        I’m pretty sure Firefox has native wayland support, which can be enabled with an environment variable. Take a look at [1] for more. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wayland_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/c8itj2/enabling_wa...

jvzr 6y ago

FWIW I adore Gnome 3 too. I very recently switched to Linux from Windows 10 on my gaming PC (my last experience with Linux was with Mandrake a couple decades ago...), and of course I had to try every DE under the Sun. None quite works perfectly (for me) like Gnome 3 does. But that's the beauty of it: there's a choice for everyone!

zamalek 6y ago

> I have used XFCE/Mate/Plasma/Unity I've also used a couple of DEs. Unity aside, GNOME is bold enough to stick out and do something different. The GTK human interface guidelines result in apps that are something different (also usable!) and the activities view is a genuinely awesome approach to alt+tab. KDE is just windows and a bunch of panels. It's expertly put together, but there's really nothing more to it than that. Rainmeter can do much the same that it can on Windows.

hda2 6y ago
I don't understand how this can be argued to be a point in gnome's favor. Gnome's HIG is only followed by the 5 or 6 core apps that ship with it. The rest of my apps do their own thing (yes, even gtk-based ones). From my personal perspective as someone who uses both KDE and Gnome daily, both are just windows and a bunch of panels. What gives KDE an edge is that it doesn't try to force its weird conventions on me.
still_grokking 6y ago
> KDE is just windows and a bunch of panels. Only in the default config... To be nice to Windows expats. > It's expertly put together, but there's really nothing more to it than that. It's ultimately configurable! So it can be anything you want. (Plasma can "simulate" any DE with the right config). Additionally modern KDE/Plasma is more lightweight than "anything GTK". (This may sound strange to the older people but things changed over the last years).
- type0 6y ago
  Compared to GNOME it is indeed a lightweight and also incredibly powerful system.

dralley 6y ago

I also like GNOME, but only with a couple of extensions installed. It totally blows my mind that the way Dash to Dock works is not the default behavior.

willtim 6y ago
Are they perhaps scared of patents? The whole UI tries hard to be not like Windows or Mac OS, for IMHO little user benefit. I have tried to use Gnome in the past, seeking an easier life, but the multiscreen support was just not good enough. I use i3 instead.
- GrayShade 6y ago
  No, they just think the current UI is better, and they're doubling down on that. E.g. in the next version, the app/workspace picker will be shown after login, and not the desktop.
- curt15 6y ago
  At least for the dash to dock behavior, the Gnome designers opted against a permanent dock to minimise "distractions" and allow one to "focus on the task at hand". This language pervades much of the literature explaining Gnome's design. See for example https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-introduction.html.en https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-introdu...
  - dralley 6y ago
    Which is nonsense, because the default behavior is not a permanent dock, it is a hidden dock that appears on mouseover. And it is tuned perfectly IMO, it never comes up by accident and always comes up when I intended to do so. I agree with the rationale about not having a visible dock, the extra space and lack of distraction is great. But Dash to Dock doesn't harm that goal whatsoever IMO.

scoot_718 6y ago

Gnome 3 was when they started taking over keybinds from common software on linux, so you had to hunt down the 3 or 4 places where they were configured to unbind them back for the user. Gnome just works? Gnome just breaks other things.

wirrbel 6y ago

I just miss Menu bars. Which is why I use Mac OS now (thrown back to using Linux now for a few months until my new MacBook arrives). I used gnome since gnome 1.x and it apps like evince were totally cool and now they are just confusing and hard to use. Want to print something? Hamburger menu and find the Print Symbol. Want to open a recently opened file? No submenu under „files“, you need to open a new window to find a selection. So much stuff one needs to learn ...

clort 6y ago
This is exactly my experience of Evince earlier this year when I attempted to upgrade. Some of the menus are on the left and some are on the right and why oh why does it not do what it used to do > So much stuff one needs to learn ... like installing Atril instead which works as I want it to. https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril
ficklepickle 6y ago
Sing it, sister! I have used File/Edit/View menus since Win 3.11, please don't change that paradigm. I will not suffer the hamburger menu on desktop.
skrtskrt 6y ago
By far the best part of Mac OS to me is that Cmd-, opens Settings/Preferences on every single app. On Linux you have to dig to find these things and then have to remember a different keybinding for every app, if there is one

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> To add another opinion. I love gnome 3, Its by far the nicest DE I have used on linux and what I would recommend to anyone to start with. I have used XFCE/Mate/Plasma/Unity and none of them worked as well. Sure, XFCE doesn't work as well as Gnome 2. But you can't use Gnome 2 anymore. XFCE is way better than Gnome 3! (At least, as of the time Gnome put out version 3.) And yeah, this indicates a very serious problem on the part of Gnome.

jhasse 6y ago
You can use GNOME 2. It's called MATE.