> The alternative seems to be a kind of milquetoast design-by-committee that satisfies the majority of people but also perpetually plays catch up to proprietary

> The alternative seems to be a kind of milquetoast design-by-committee that satisfies the majority of people but also perpetually plays catch up to proprietary products by recreating their features without ever breaking new ground. How is this not a description of gnome? I specifically argue this is my previous comment. In contrast to say plasma/xfce/lxqt which are mostly an idealized windows xp in terms of concepts, ie a frozen target, not playing catch-up. > I did not interpret "radical" in the prior comment to have either a positive or negative connotation. Neither do i. :) > It merely implies that some of GNOME's decisions are polarizing and a drastic departure from norms, [..] > I think it's great that a few open source projects are willing to be more radical and experimental [..] This is not true, they are following quite closely the most recent trends in design. Specifically mobile platforms and quite apple-like: round squares, low-contrast thin-outlines, switch-style toggles, dock and launchpad-style app selector, simple window decoration, hamburgers, ... And this is a well-known choice, which has a history, motivations, requisites, etc. And surprise! the critics made at gnome are kind of the same (with a lower intensity) that are maid at apple or at mobile walled gardens: being dumbed-down, hiding OS concepts, discouraging any customization. I'm really not very angry at gnome. It's fine to do this design style. I don't use it but not because of the look, in fact i like some apps they do. They just need to understand better how and why the thing they are inspired by has been maid and pay attention the the stuff that they should not reproduce, either because it doesn't make any sense in their case or because it's bad for the users.