7 ms·

A couple f years ago I installed linux on a machine to do some dev that wasn't supported in windows. My first time exposed to gnome. I have never used such a mi

A couple f years ago I installed linux on a machine to do some dev that wasn't supported in windows. My first time exposed to gnome. I have never used such a mis-designed clueless UI, and I could not believe the number of outright bugs I encountered. It was like it was designed by kids.

nomad41 4y ago
It's funny because that's my exact experience using Windows. Buggy and incredibly bad defaults, completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. macOS is bearable and I can be productive on it, but I think GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity. To each their own, I guess.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  > completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. Certainly not. I suspect you aren't familiar with win, it has a lot of these although MS seems determined to wreck them. I'm no MS shill, I wish they would DIAF, but I do find windows highly reliable and the UI was pretty good until they decided to fuck with it. By comparison I found gnome actively user hostile. Even small niceties that windows has are missing (eg one of very many, go up a folder in windows and the folder you were on will be the one selected, very handy). I would like to sit down with you and compare experiences, but ain't going to happen. Glad it works for you though.
- input_sh 4y ago
  > but I think GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity I'd agree if it weren't for the default keyboard shortcuts. Like every app in existence uses ctrl+tab to switch between tabs, but GNOME's apps (like Files and Terminal) use ctrl+pgdown.
  - cuu508 4y ago
    I use Alt+<number> to switch to n-th tab. It works in Files, Terminal, Sublime Text, Firefox, GIMP.
  - nebalee 4y ago
    Xfce (Thunar, Xfce Terminal, Mousepad) also uses CTRL-PGUP/DOWN to cycle tabs, as does MATE (Caja, MATE Terminal, Pluma uses CTRL-ALT-PGUP/DOWN). Neither uses CTRL-TAB for tabs but to cycle through buttons/icons on the GUI. As far as I can tell CTRL-TAB for tab cycling is not very wide spread. KDE uses it, but that supports CTRL-PGUP/DOWN as well. edit: And I'm not sure why CTRL-TAB even works in KDE because the default shortcuts to cycle through tabs are CTRL-PGUP/DOWN and CTRL-[/] (tested on KDE neon).
- emerongi 4y ago
  > GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity GNOME is quite decent in its current form and the most user-friendly desktop out there at the moment. People who hate on it just have some historical gripe with it, I feel like. Ideally I'd be using something like Sway, but I can't be bothered to spend time on making things work the way they need to. GNOME gives me everything out of the box and doesn't get in my way. KDE is much more customizable, but less friendly on the eyes. Windows is probably OK if you're used to Windows (I'm clearly not). I have to use macOS at work and it's just a worse version of GNOME - bad defaults, weird design choices, less features, minimal customizability.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    > People who hate on it just have some historical gripe with it, I feel like. You mean like I spent 2 months with it and just found a list of weirdness and outright bugs? Perhaps "historical gripe(s)" happen for a reason?
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Bugs? In software? Never! By all reasonable accounts GNOME is a well-run broadly-scoped project with a perfectly normal amount of bugs given it’s size.
    - yoyohello13 4y ago
      You said you tried it “a couple of years ago”. Sounds historical to me.
      - zasdffaa 4y ago
        Title of post: "Gnome Turns 25". So maybe and maybe not. I just ran into so much WTF I find it hard to imagine it's fixed now, plus some others here rather agree. It's enough to put me off anyway.
      - michaelmrose 4y ago
        This is disingenuous. The implication of the grandparent comment is not that the persons experience happened 2 years ago instead of right now its that its automatically invalid because of it. In context the word historical doesn't mean anything useful.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Windows has never had as many DE bugs as any Linux DE. And Gnome is far from a perfect desktop experience out of the box. Once you add a few plugins it’s pretty decent but out of the box. No. Just no. But the productivity of linux is so far superior to windows. The only reason I subject myself to windows is games and old .net framework projects.
  - ungamedplayer 4y ago
    > Windows has never had as many DE bugs as any Linux DE. Do you work at Microsoft and have access to the internal bug tracker?
- aidenn0 4y ago
  > completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. Is this really true now? If so, it's sad how far windows has fallen. It was very easy, almost pleasant to use Windows with no mouse, from 3.0 all the way through XP (which was the range of my regular windows use)
  - oblio 4y ago
    It's not true, it's a clueless comment.
- oblio 4y ago
  What have you tried and failed to do with a keyboard, as opposed to the other somewhat mainstream options (MacOS, Gnome, KDE)?
- silon42 4y ago
  I find the exact opposite. Windows (was, aka <= 7) reliable, with good keyboard support... MacOS is useless by default until you add Alt+Tab.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  > completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls Wait, what?
- amelius 4y ago
  Funniest moment in UX design was probably when Windows invented the lock-screen curtain (the screen that you have to drag up to unveil a password input box), and the Linux desktops copied that.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    But at least copied it such that any keypress will go to the input field, not get swallowed.
iasay 4y ago
Yep. I find it’s absolutely horrible since they went bananas post gnome 2. All the discoverability and consistency is gone. Honestly this is the biggest barrier to adoption of you ask me. I can’t hand a windows user or a Mac user a gnome desktop (or any of the other Linux options) and just leave them to it. I tend to recommend a mac these days for people. They just work.
- jraph 4y ago
  Cinnamon and KDE, and probably Mate, look quite similar to Windows, with the bottom panel having a "start up" menu at the left, the tasks, the status icons and the clock. The settings manager is arguably simpler than the numerous messy UIs on Windows. I don't think the UI is the issue. I even think some DEs are better than both Mac and Windows on most topics. I don't like Gnome but it is okay I think, especially on Ubuntu. The rough edges are the issue, and above all, the incompatibility with Office (you might have to interact with people using it) and with the various domain-specific proprietary programs. Windows also has - different - rough edges (and probably mac but I don't know it enough), but you'll find help online or from a nearby acquaintance. But if I had to set up a computer for a complete newbie, that would be Linux. In any case I would have to help them, but on Linux there are just less disturbances, less risks, easier for them, the UI is better structured, everything is more predictable and since I'll need to help, I'll have better time with Linux.
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
    My issues with a WM usually comes down to UI scaling. Modern laptops (and desktop monitors) with a 4K display render things too small at 1x scale, and too large at 2x scale. Windows and OS X solve this problem by allowing 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x scaling with no blurriness; it's not a simple linear resolution scale. Today on Linux I can only find this on Wayland, so I'm already restricted to certain WMs (like KDE, swaywm, Gnome), and even then it doesn't work right across all apps. And when this topic is brought up [1], it's met with "Well, let's argue about the definition of 'sharpness'." If I was a 4K display user trying Linux for the first time this would affect my perception of Linux on the desktop negatively. [1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

nomad41 4y ago

It's funny because that's my exact experience using Windows. Buggy and incredibly bad defaults, completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. macOS is bearable and I can be productive on it, but I think GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity. To each their own, I guess.

zasdffaa 4y ago
> completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. Certainly not. I suspect you aren't familiar with win, it has a lot of these although MS seems determined to wreck them. I'm no MS shill, I wish they would DIAF, but I do find windows highly reliable and the UI was pretty good until they decided to fuck with it. By comparison I found gnome actively user hostile. Even small niceties that windows has are missing (eg one of very many, go up a folder in windows and the folder you were on will be the one selected, very handy). I would like to sit down with you and compare experiences, but ain't going to happen. Glad it works for you though.
input_sh 4y ago
> but I think GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity I'd agree if it weren't for the default keyboard shortcuts. Like every app in existence uses ctrl+tab to switch between tabs, but GNOME's apps (like Files and Terminal) use ctrl+pgdown.
- cuu508 4y ago
  I use Alt+<number> to switch to n-th tab. It works in Files, Terminal, Sublime Text, Firefox, GIMP.
- nebalee 4y ago
  Xfce (Thunar, Xfce Terminal, Mousepad) also uses CTRL-PGUP/DOWN to cycle tabs, as does MATE (Caja, MATE Terminal, Pluma uses CTRL-ALT-PGUP/DOWN). Neither uses CTRL-TAB for tabs but to cycle through buttons/icons on the GUI. As far as I can tell CTRL-TAB for tab cycling is not very wide spread. KDE uses it, but that supports CTRL-PGUP/DOWN as well. edit: And I'm not sure why CTRL-TAB even works in KDE because the default shortcuts to cycle through tabs are CTRL-PGUP/DOWN and CTRL-[/] (tested on KDE neon).
emerongi 4y ago
> GNOME is the perfect desktop for productivity GNOME is quite decent in its current form and the most user-friendly desktop out there at the moment. People who hate on it just have some historical gripe with it, I feel like. Ideally I'd be using something like Sway, but I can't be bothered to spend time on making things work the way they need to. GNOME gives me everything out of the box and doesn't get in my way. KDE is much more customizable, but less friendly on the eyes. Windows is probably OK if you're used to Windows (I'm clearly not). I have to use macOS at work and it's just a worse version of GNOME - bad defaults, weird design choices, less features, minimal customizability.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  > People who hate on it just have some historical gripe with it, I feel like. You mean like I spent 2 months with it and just found a list of weirdness and outright bugs? Perhaps "historical gripe(s)" happen for a reason?
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Bugs? In software? Never! By all reasonable accounts GNOME is a well-run broadly-scoped project with a perfectly normal amount of bugs given it’s size.
  - yoyohello13 4y ago
    You said you tried it “a couple of years ago”. Sounds historical to me.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      Title of post: "Gnome Turns 25". So maybe and maybe not. I just ran into so much WTF I find it hard to imagine it's fixed now, plus some others here rather agree. It's enough to put me off anyway.
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      This is disingenuous. The implication of the grandparent comment is not that the persons experience happened 2 years ago instead of right now its that its automatically invalid because of it. In context the word historical doesn't mean anything useful.
philliphaydon 4y ago
Windows has never had as many DE bugs as any Linux DE. And Gnome is far from a perfect desktop experience out of the box. Once you add a few plugins it’s pretty decent but out of the box. No. Just no. But the productivity of linux is so far superior to windows. The only reason I subject myself to windows is games and old .net framework projects.
- ungamedplayer 4y ago
  > Windows has never had as many DE bugs as any Linux DE. Do you work at Microsoft and have access to the internal bug tracker?
aidenn0 4y ago
> completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls. Is this really true now? If so, it's sad how far windows has fallen. It was very easy, almost pleasant to use Windows with no mouse, from 3.0 all the way through XP (which was the range of my regular windows use)
- oblio 4y ago
  It's not true, it's a clueless comment.
oblio 4y ago
What have you tried and failed to do with a keyboard, as opposed to the other somewhat mainstream options (MacOS, Gnome, KDE)?
silon42 4y ago
I find the exact opposite. Windows (was, aka <= 7) reliable, with good keyboard support... MacOS is useless by default until you add Alt+Tab.
secondcoming 4y ago
> completely mouse driven with insufficient keyboard controls Wait, what?
amelius 4y ago
Funniest moment in UX design was probably when Windows invented the lock-screen curtain (the screen that you have to drag up to unveil a password input box), and the Linux desktops copied that.
- kaba0 4y ago
  But at least copied it such that any keypress will go to the input field, not get swallowed.

iasay 4y ago

Yep. I find it’s absolutely horrible since they went bananas post gnome 2. All the discoverability and consistency is gone. Honestly this is the biggest barrier to adoption of you ask me. I can’t hand a windows user or a Mac user a gnome desktop (or any of the other Linux options) and just leave them to it. I tend to recommend a mac these days for people. They just work.

jraph 4y ago
Cinnamon and KDE, and probably Mate, look quite similar to Windows, with the bottom panel having a "start up" menu at the left, the tasks, the status icons and the clock. The settings manager is arguably simpler than the numerous messy UIs on Windows. I don't think the UI is the issue. I even think some DEs are better than both Mac and Windows on most topics. I don't like Gnome but it is okay I think, especially on Ubuntu. The rough edges are the issue, and above all, the incompatibility with Office (you might have to interact with people using it) and with the various domain-specific proprietary programs. Windows also has - different - rough edges (and probably mac but I don't know it enough), but you'll find help online or from a nearby acquaintance. But if I had to set up a computer for a complete newbie, that would be Linux. In any case I would have to help them, but on Linux there are just less disturbances, less risks, easier for them, the UI is better structured, everything is more predictable and since I'll need to help, I'll have better time with Linux.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  My issues with a WM usually comes down to UI scaling. Modern laptops (and desktop monitors) with a 4K display render things too small at 1x scale, and too large at 2x scale. Windows and OS X solve this problem by allowing 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x scaling with no blurriness; it's not a simple linear resolution scale. Today on Linux I can only find this on Wayland, so I'm already restricted to certain WMs (like KDE, swaywm, Gnome), and even then it doesn't work right across all apps. And when this topic is brought up [1], it's met with "Well, let's argue about the definition of 'sharpness'." If I was a 4K display user trying Linux for the first time this would affect my perception of Linux on the desktop negatively. [1] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787