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The fundamental problem with Gnome is that it presumes that "the masses" (however defined) will use a GNU/Linux desktop. They will not. Insofar as the masses us

The fundamental problem with Gnome is that it presumes that "the masses" (however defined) will use a GNU/Linux desktop. They will not. Insofar as the masses use Linux on the desktop it will be in the form of ChromeOS (or something like it). Instead of chasing Windows and MacOS's taillights, and infantilizing its desktop by continuing to remove features, Gnome should have continued with the Gnome 2 philosophy of focusing on power users, with an emphasis on stability and backwards compatibility. Instead, what we've ended up with is a Gnome desktop that has all of the customizability of MacOS, but with defaults that are nonsensical rather than (somewhat) thought out. And yes, I'm aware that I can change a lot of Gnome with Gnome Tweak Tool and various extensions. But the fact that I have to install a third party tool, a browser extension, and then some extensions off a random website to get the same functionality that other desktop environments (such as KDE, MacOS and Windows) include by default is an absolute indictment of Gnome's design philosophy. Instead of chasing after users who have never heard of Gnome, and barely know about Linux, Gnome should have focused on improving the experience existing users. They still can. A good start would be taking all the settings that Gnome Tweak Tool exposes and bringing them back into the main settings UI, so that I don't have swap between two settings applications, with no rhyme or reason dictating how settings are split between the two. Also, please give me the ability to hide the clock (like I can do in Windows 10) without having to install some random extension [1] to do so. [1]: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1110/hide-clock/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1110/hide-clock/

JimBlackwood 4y ago
What can GNOME do to still chase after power users? I genuinely don’t see what it has to add to powerusers. There’s great window managers and CLI/TUI tools, is there anything GNOME could offer for non-beginners that’s not already done better?
- ndiddy 4y ago
  Unless KDE has significantly changed in the last few months, GNOME is the only DE that supports multiple monitors with different DPIs.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    I've run into this problem. I consider Gnome to be completely unusable, so I'll suffer with some kind of workaround, any workaround, rather than use Gnome.
  - ColonelPhantom 4y ago
    Were you using KDE on X11? On Wayland, I can change my scaling setting per-display.
- quanticle 4y ago
  You genuinely don't see what Gnome has to offer power users because the Gnome developers removed all the configuration and customization options that would have been helpful for power users. Gnome 2 was just as customizable as KDE. Then with Gnome 3 they removed almost every option. Now, with a combination of Gnome 42, Gnome Tweak Tool and the aforementioned extensions, some (not all, some) of those customization options are back. Only, now, instead of having all customization options built-in and available from the beginning you have to understand that you have to install Gnome Tweak Tool in order to, for example, remap Caps Lock to Ctrl. That's something that MacOS offers out of the box. That's something that KDE offers out of the box. Gnome used to offer it out of the box too, but they deliberately removed the option. Really, that's what gets me. It's not as if the world moved on and Gnome just didn't keep up. No. Gnome 2 was actually better than Gnome 3. The Gnome devs removed features for what, as far as I can tell, were purely aesthetic reasons. Put another way, whenever we see Microsoft or Apple dumbing down their operating systems, do we not criticize them for unnecessarily making life more difficult for their users? Why should we give Gnome a free pass for doing exactly the same thing?
saurik 4y ago
As far as I can tell, Gnome is way LESS customizable than macOS. macOS actually has a ton of customizability, even before you dig into hidden options, and then it also has a ton of hidden options you can modify in configuration files to alter its behavior. The Gnome people seem to seriously just go around removing options because deleting working code used by actual humans makes them feel more powerful: they think they know better than sometimes decades of prior design or tons of existing projects (including Linux itself at times). They think of themselves as Apple, sure: but they have neither the true vertical control of everything Apple does to pull off Apple's most "courageous" battles nor the distribution bottlenecks Apple can wield when they are being their most evil.
- QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
  >The Gnome people seem to seriously just go around removing options because deleting working code used by actual humans makes them feel more powerful They do it because open source projects don't have infinite resources to maintain infinite options forever. You can complain about it all you want, but 25 years of history shows that just because something was being used by humans doesn't mean that volunteers are going to magically show up to maintain that option for eternity. I'm sure if you've been working in this field for a while then you've deleted some unfortunate code in your day job and had to convince users to do things a better way. So why single out GNOME for this?
  - quanticle 4y ago
    And yet, KDE, XFCE, even Gnome forks like MATE and Cinnamon manage to handle having loads more customization options than Gnome, despite having equivalent or inferior time and financial resources. I have very little patience for the, "It's open source and maintained by volunteers," argument when other projects which are equally open source and maintained by fewer volunteers somehow manage to deliver more functionality.
    - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
      All of those alternatives are notorious for having a release schedule slower than molasses, or for having outdated tech, or for having a lot of bugs. That's the price you pay, nothing is for free in this world. You mentioned they had more functionality in some ways but you neglected to mention why that is. Also it's funny that you think GNOME has any spare time or financial resources. Every GNOME developer I've ever talked to has been overloaded with low-paying or non-paying work, same as any open source developer. The rest of your comment is dangerously close to toxic entitlement. You don't get to say you have no patience. Or rather, you can say it, but it's completely meaningless for you to do so unless you were trying to antagonize some volunteers. Avoid that line of thinking. These are all volunteers who can spend their time as they want.
xedrac 4y ago
You can be certain "the masses" won't use it if it isn't simple. You seem to want everyone to give up on the idea that Linux Desktop could become mainstream. The Gnome project wants to pursue that goal, and so does Valve apparently. I see nothing wrong with that, given that there are many options to fill every other kind of users' needs/wants.
- quanticle 4y ago
  Valve doesn't want the Linux desktop to become mainstream. They want a viable Linux gaming ecosystem. That's a different task than ensuring that Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for the millions of HP/Dell/Lenovo laptops that people buy each year. As for what's wrong with Gnome pursuing "the masses", I'd have far less animosity towards Gnome if they pursued the masses without actively spitting on their existing users. However, they seem incapable of doing that.
kaba0 4y ago
This assumes that current Gnome is somehow bad for power users. I do consider myself a power user and I really like Gnome, even after having tried a fair share of WMs starting from.. well probably all of the ones one might now, ranging from tiling ones (dwm, i3/sway, but even obscure ones like musca wm, which I really liked (it is a tiling wm that will place programs into a predetermined frame, instead of dynamically re-layouting the screen) to more traditional desktops. After a point I came to the realization that you likely won’t tile 10 windows on a screen, having split views and many virtual desktops is more than enough. And especially on a laptop 3 finger swipes to switch between desktops is unbeatably good.

JimBlackwood 4y ago

What can GNOME do to still chase after power users? I genuinely don’t see what it has to add to powerusers. There’s great window managers and CLI/TUI tools, is there anything GNOME could offer for non-beginners that’s not already done better?

ndiddy 4y ago
Unless KDE has significantly changed in the last few months, GNOME is the only DE that supports multiple monitors with different DPIs.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  I've run into this problem. I consider Gnome to be completely unusable, so I'll suffer with some kind of workaround, any workaround, rather than use Gnome.
- ColonelPhantom 4y ago
  Were you using KDE on X11? On Wayland, I can change my scaling setting per-display.
quanticle 4y ago
You genuinely don't see what Gnome has to offer power users because the Gnome developers removed all the configuration and customization options that would have been helpful for power users. Gnome 2 was just as customizable as KDE. Then with Gnome 3 they removed almost every option. Now, with a combination of Gnome 42, Gnome Tweak Tool and the aforementioned extensions, some (not all, some) of those customization options are back. Only, now, instead of having all customization options built-in and available from the beginning you have to understand that you have to install Gnome Tweak Tool in order to, for example, remap Caps Lock to Ctrl. That's something that MacOS offers out of the box. That's something that KDE offers out of the box. Gnome used to offer it out of the box too, but they deliberately removed the option. Really, that's what gets me. It's not as if the world moved on and Gnome just didn't keep up. No. Gnome 2 was actually better than Gnome 3. The Gnome devs removed features for what, as far as I can tell, were purely aesthetic reasons. Put another way, whenever we see Microsoft or Apple dumbing down their operating systems, do we not criticize them for unnecessarily making life more difficult for their users? Why should we give Gnome a free pass for doing exactly the same thing?

saurik 4y ago

As far as I can tell, Gnome is way LESS customizable than macOS. macOS actually has a ton of customizability, even before you dig into hidden options, and then it also has a ton of hidden options you can modify in configuration files to alter its behavior. The Gnome people seem to seriously just go around removing options because deleting working code used by actual humans makes them feel more powerful: they think they know better than sometimes decades of prior design or tons of existing projects (including Linux itself at times). They think of themselves as Apple, sure: but they have neither the true vertical control of everything Apple does to pull off Apple's most "courageous" battles nor the distribution bottlenecks Apple can wield when they are being their most evil.

QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
>The Gnome people seem to seriously just go around removing options because deleting working code used by actual humans makes them feel more powerful They do it because open source projects don't have infinite resources to maintain infinite options forever. You can complain about it all you want, but 25 years of history shows that just because something was being used by humans doesn't mean that volunteers are going to magically show up to maintain that option for eternity. I'm sure if you've been working in this field for a while then you've deleted some unfortunate code in your day job and had to convince users to do things a better way. So why single out GNOME for this?
- quanticle 4y ago
  And yet, KDE, XFCE, even Gnome forks like MATE and Cinnamon manage to handle having loads more customization options than Gnome, despite having equivalent or inferior time and financial resources. I have very little patience for the, "It's open source and maintained by volunteers," argument when other projects which are equally open source and maintained by fewer volunteers somehow manage to deliver more functionality.
  - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
    All of those alternatives are notorious for having a release schedule slower than molasses, or for having outdated tech, or for having a lot of bugs. That's the price you pay, nothing is for free in this world. You mentioned they had more functionality in some ways but you neglected to mention why that is. Also it's funny that you think GNOME has any spare time or financial resources. Every GNOME developer I've ever talked to has been overloaded with low-paying or non-paying work, same as any open source developer. The rest of your comment is dangerously close to toxic entitlement. You don't get to say you have no patience. Or rather, you can say it, but it's completely meaningless for you to do so unless you were trying to antagonize some volunteers. Avoid that line of thinking. These are all volunteers who can spend their time as they want.

xedrac 4y ago

You can be certain "the masses" won't use it if it isn't simple. You seem to want everyone to give up on the idea that Linux Desktop could become mainstream. The Gnome project wants to pursue that goal, and so does Valve apparently. I see nothing wrong with that, given that there are many options to fill every other kind of users' needs/wants.

quanticle 4y ago
Valve doesn't want the Linux desktop to become mainstream. They want a viable Linux gaming ecosystem. That's a different task than ensuring that Linux is a viable alternative to Windows for the millions of HP/Dell/Lenovo laptops that people buy each year. As for what's wrong with Gnome pursuing "the masses", I'd have far less animosity towards Gnome if they pursued the masses without actively spitting on their existing users. However, they seem incapable of doing that.

kaba0 4y ago

This assumes that current Gnome is somehow bad for power users. I do consider myself a power user and I really like Gnome, even after having tried a fair share of WMs starting from.. well probably all of the ones one might now, ranging from tiling ones (dwm, i3/sway, but even obscure ones like musca wm, which I really liked (it is a tiling wm that will place programs into a predetermined frame, instead of dynamically re-layouting the screen) to more traditional desktops. After a point I came to the realization that you likely won’t tile 10 windows on a screen, having split views and many virtual desktops is more than enough. And especially on a laptop 3 finger swipes to switch between desktops is unbeatably good.