5 ms·

I've been using Gnome for years and it's basically the best kept secret among desktop environments. Simple, unobtrusive, and continuously improving without many

I've been using Gnome for years and it's basically the best kept secret among desktop environments. Simple, unobtrusive, and continuously improving without many sudden changes that force one to relearn how to use it. I've tried tiling window managers but they just eat up time configuring to my liking. Compared with Windows and MacOS, I'm delighted with how easy it is to configure and use Gnome right out of the box. The UI is consistent and these guidelines are refreshingly concise.

kevinherron 5y ago
> and continuously improving without many sudden changes that force one to relearn how to use it. LOL. Have we used the same GNOME? Their evolution is nothing but removing features and maximizing useless padding.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  I'd have to agree. GNOME is notorious for this. We used to joke on slashdot over a decade ago about how one day GNOME would just have a single giant "do stuff" button.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    I remember that. And I also remember people commenting that an UI with a single button that does exactly what is expected would be a supreme UI.
    - kylebyproxy 5y ago
      Obligatory The Onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
- Spivak 5y ago
  What features are you missing? Because I've had to tweak some dconf settings over the years but I've never found myself wanting something I could do before but is now impossible.
- reedlaw 5y ago
  I'm speaking primarily of GNOME 3 and above. I didn't use earlier versions much.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Gnome 2 was the last usable Gnome version. And for KDE was KDE 3.
zozbot234 5y ago
Gnome is great for its touch-native support, but on most desktops and laptops where touch just isn't a thing I find Xfce to be more intuitive, and also lighter on system resources.
- Phrodo_00 5y ago
  Gnome (specially gnome-shell) is also very keyboard centric (not as much as tiling WMs obviously), which works really well for normal laptops.
chunkyks 5y ago
No sudden changes? Gnome3 was a pox and broke literally everything. The entire family of touch friendly interfaces on non touch systems can fall into a black hole, and the world would be better for it.
- jeppesen-io 5y ago
  > The entire family of touch friendly interfaces on non touch systems can fall into a black hole, and the world would be better for it. There's really no reason for this inflammatory response and starting a flame war Obviously, others disagree with you. The world would not be better if everyone conformed to your view of what a UI should be
- riquito 5y ago
  > No sudden changes? Gnome3 was a pox and broke literally everything. And it was released 10 years ago... perhaps it's time to move on from old grudges
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    It was never fixed though...
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    I hear people complaining about gnome3 the same way I heard people complaining about kde4. Then I get happy when I reason that these events occurred more than a decade ago.
  - chunkyks 5y ago
    Parent comment was about Gnome3 stability and lack of change. I dispute that premise.
    - jeddy3 5y ago
      You dispute a comment about Gnome3 stability with a counter-example about how it "broke" Gnome2?
  - 5y ago
jeppesen-io 5y ago
It would seem not many here agree with you, but I do. Gnome 38/40 has been a pleasurable daily work env for me
- harrygeez 5y ago
  I'm pleasantly surprised seeing how great Gnome looks and runs on my colleague's System76. If I ever decided to quit MacBooks I would definitely like to try using it full time.
zoomablemind 5y ago
> ...Simple, unobtrusive, and continuously improving without many sudden changes that force one to relearn how to use it. In all those past decades of Desktop Env evolution, one thing I learned to appreciate is no need to be aware of the actual kind of Environment. Ideal DE should just be transparent to user, just as the underlying OS. We interact with tools, the environment just lets us find them and helps us organize our stuff. I get aware of the DE when it somehow gets in my way. For example, I remember from Ubuntu 18 in Gnome Terminal context menu two entries shared the same hot-key (_Preferences and _Paste in this order). Or in File manager, there was no direct way to enter full path. Or in Save As dialog the file name would loose its highlight after switching back from selecting the destination folder. Sure, other DEs have their share of annoyance, but generally I think that transparency will be upon us... soon.
nsm 5y ago
I highly recommend Regolith Linux (which can also just be installed as a package on Ubuntu). It offers a nicely setup i3 tiling WM, without having to do any configuration, and things like external displays, bluetooth and so on working out of the box, since it relies on various pieces of GNOME to do that.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
I recently switched from KDE to GNOME and I was pleasantly surprised to see the finesse of it. I realized that my misconceptions about GNOME was due to poor integrations in the distros which had it by default. Installing vanilla GNOME over Arch gave me a new outlook of it, Other comments about it's padding and non-Linux like UI approach might be valid but I'm sure that will enable someone from macOS feel at home as I've used that for a decade as well.
biryani_chicken 5y ago
How do you configure Gnome to show thumbnails in the filepicker? I've never been able to do that.
- reedlaw 5y ago
  Click on the Show grid/list toggle icon on the top right. When showing icons in a grid I see thumbnails.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    In which version does this grid/list togge icon exist? It's not in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (which we use at work at the moment).
    - ricktdotorg 5y ago
      In my Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, i see the grid/list toggle icon in the top right just to the left of the minimize/maximize/close icons on the top bar of the File browser window. Once you click that, you can adjust the size of the thumbnail(s) by CTRL-scrolling or CTRL-+/-
      - kzrdude 5y ago
        That must be a different window - the file browser. The open file dialog doesn't have close buttons, so you're not looking at that. I believe the main discussion here is about the open file dialog, the "file picker".
- marcodiego 5y ago
  The file picker shows thumbnails by default.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    The file picker I see uses a list with thumbnails, but since it's a list the pictures are tiny for each file, not very usable.
brnt 5y ago
How is Gnome a secret, when it's the default DE on nearly every distro? KDE gets that title from me.
- reedlaw 5y ago
  Compared to Windows and MacOS it's a secret. I don't consider Ubuntu's desktop environment as pure GNOME, otherwise why would https://ubuntugnome.org/ https://ubuntugnome.org/ exist?
  - brnt 5y ago
    That project looks pretty dead.

kevinherron 5y ago

> and continuously improving without many sudden changes that force one to relearn how to use it. LOL. Have we used the same GNOME? Their evolution is nothing but removing features and maximizing useless padding.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
I'd have to agree. GNOME is notorious for this. We used to joke on slashdot over a decade ago about how one day GNOME would just have a single giant "do stuff" button.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  I remember that. And I also remember people commenting that an UI with a single button that does exactly what is expected would be a supreme UI.
  - kylebyproxy 5y ago
    Obligatory The Onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
Spivak 5y ago
What features are you missing? Because I've had to tweak some dconf settings over the years but I've never found myself wanting something I could do before but is now impossible.
reedlaw 5y ago
I'm speaking primarily of GNOME 3 and above. I didn't use earlier versions much.
- hulitu 5y ago
  Gnome 2 was the last usable Gnome version. And for KDE was KDE 3.

zozbot234 5y ago

Gnome is great for its touch-native support, but on most desktops and laptops where touch just isn't a thing I find Xfce to be more intuitive, and also lighter on system resources.

Phrodo_00 5y ago
Gnome (specially gnome-shell) is also very keyboard centric (not as much as tiling WMs obviously), which works really well for normal laptops.

chunkyks 5y ago

No sudden changes? Gnome3 was a pox and broke literally everything. The entire family of touch friendly interfaces on non touch systems can fall into a black hole, and the world would be better for it.

jeppesen-io 5y ago
> The entire family of touch friendly interfaces on non touch systems can fall into a black hole, and the world would be better for it. There's really no reason for this inflammatory response and starting a flame war Obviously, others disagree with you. The world would not be better if everyone conformed to your view of what a UI should be
riquito 5y ago
> No sudden changes? Gnome3 was a pox and broke literally everything. And it was released 10 years ago... perhaps it's time to move on from old grudges
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  It was never fixed though...
- marcodiego 5y ago
  I hear people complaining about gnome3 the same way I heard people complaining about kde4. Then I get happy when I reason that these events occurred more than a decade ago.
- chunkyks 5y ago
  Parent comment was about Gnome3 stability and lack of change. I dispute that premise.
  - jeddy3 5y ago
    You dispute a comment about Gnome3 stability with a counter-example about how it "broke" Gnome2?
- 5y ago

jeppesen-io 5y ago

It would seem not many here agree with you, but I do. Gnome 38/40 has been a pleasurable daily work env for me

harrygeez 5y ago
I'm pleasantly surprised seeing how great Gnome looks and runs on my colleague's System76. If I ever decided to quit MacBooks I would definitely like to try using it full time.

zoomablemind 5y ago

> ...Simple, unobtrusive, and continuously improving without many sudden changes that force one to relearn how to use it. In all those past decades of Desktop Env evolution, one thing I learned to appreciate is no need to be aware of the actual kind of Environment. Ideal DE should just be transparent to user, just as the underlying OS. We interact with tools, the environment just lets us find them and helps us organize our stuff. I get aware of the DE when it somehow gets in my way. For example, I remember from Ubuntu 18 in Gnome Terminal context menu two entries shared the same hot-key (_Preferences and _Paste in this order). Or in File manager, there was no direct way to enter full path. Or in Save As dialog the file name would loose its highlight after switching back from selecting the destination folder. Sure, other DEs have their share of annoyance, but generally I think that transparency will be upon us... soon.

nsm 5y ago

I highly recommend Regolith Linux (which can also just be installed as a package on Ubuntu). It offers a nicely setup i3 tiling WM, without having to do any configuration, and things like external displays, bluetooth and so on working out of the box, since it relies on various pieces of GNOME to do that.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

I recently switched from KDE to GNOME and I was pleasantly surprised to see the finesse of it. I realized that my misconceptions about GNOME was due to poor integrations in the distros which had it by default. Installing vanilla GNOME over Arch gave me a new outlook of it, Other comments about it's padding and non-Linux like UI approach might be valid but I'm sure that will enable someone from macOS feel at home as I've used that for a decade as well.

biryani_chicken 5y ago

How do you configure Gnome to show thumbnails in the filepicker? I've never been able to do that.

reedlaw 5y ago
Click on the Show grid/list toggle icon on the top right. When showing icons in a grid I see thumbnails.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  In which version does this grid/list togge icon exist? It's not in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (which we use at work at the moment).
  - ricktdotorg 5y ago
    In my Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, i see the grid/list toggle icon in the top right just to the left of the minimize/maximize/close icons on the top bar of the File browser window. Once you click that, you can adjust the size of the thumbnail(s) by CTRL-scrolling or CTRL-+/-
    - kzrdude 5y ago
      That must be a different window - the file browser. The open file dialog doesn't have close buttons, so you're not looking at that. I believe the main discussion here is about the open file dialog, the "file picker".
marcodiego 5y ago
The file picker shows thumbnails by default.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  The file picker I see uses a list with thumbnails, but since it's a list the pictures are tiny for each file, not very usable.

brnt 5y ago

How is Gnome a secret, when it's the default DE on nearly every distro? KDE gets that title from me.

reedlaw 5y ago
Compared to Windows and MacOS it's a secret. I don't consider Ubuntu's desktop environment as pure GNOME, otherwise why would https://ubuntugnome.org/ https://ubuntugnome.org/ exist?
- brnt 5y ago
  That project looks pretty dead.