Sound effects used to be common in the GNOME desktop. I think they were added because of Sun's involvement in improving the usability of the desktop. There is a

Sound effects used to be common in the GNOME desktop. I think they were added because of Sun's involvement in improving the usability of the desktop. There is a wealth of research that indicates that sound clues can improve usability. See f.e.: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/014492999119066 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/014492999119066 But the sound effect support was never complete so some buttons and icons in Nautilus (the file manager) would make sounds when pressed but not those in the window manager. I think that is why they were dropped. Because if some buttons make a click sound when clicked but not others then the experience becomes confusing. And making all Linux desktop apps comply with the same sound effect "theme" (or whatever) would be very difficult. KDE apps would undoubtedly use different sound effects than GNOME apps and so on. It's a feature I sorely miss though.