4 ms·

Gnome is better macOS than macOS

68 points by gsky 11mo ago

biglyburrito 11mo ago
"I need to make a disclosure - I AM BIASED. I’ve been using GNOME for a lot of time, and a lot of things that feel logical to me may not feel logical at all to others. Especially for macOS users."
paulbgd 11mo ago
Totally agree. Lots of friends who game have been asking for advice on linux now that they don’t want to update to windows 10. I’ll show them both gnome and plasma, and they’ll usually try kde then switch to gnome because it’s so darn easy to use. It’s opinionated, the settings app is easy to navigate (with the downside being, tweaks/gsettings is needed), and simple stuff like shutting down/switching audio input/wifi/printers is all stuff they were able to figure out without my help. I do wish gnome would figure out some of the compatibility stuff with Wayland (quick windows on ghostty seem not to work because they won’t implement a specific protocol?) but out of every desktop rn, gnome really is one of the easiest to pick up
- Citizen_Lame 11mo ago
  Said no one ever. GNOME is barely a desktop at this point. You need buggy extensions just to restore basic functionality, which says everything. In many ways, GNOME has become the epitome of a FOSS misfire: opinionated to a fault, driven by a loud minority, and offering users less choice instead of more. Plasma, on the other hand, has made huge strides in usability, performance, and overall polish. It feels modern, extensible, and genuinely user focused. If anything is going to be the future of the mainstream Linux desktop, it’s Plasma.
  - unethical_ban 11mo ago
    I was a GNOME fan in the 00s, then I really liked Unity from Ubuntu, and now in the 2020s I have switched to KDE. KDE is super powerful but (as a technical person) easy to discover options. The basic sound/wifi/system stuff is really easy to access, the global search in the menu is wonderful. Best part about Unity was that you could hold down the meta button, and it would reveal the cheatsheet for all the other window manipulation shortcuts. BUT... the person above you did literally say they think GNOME is better and that's fine too.
  - paulbgd 11mo ago
    I like plasma as well, my main complaints with it rn are - configuring stuff like the task bar has always been buggy, the drag/drop frustratingly won't drop stuff in the right place, I've even had to completely log out to fix being locked in the editing mode earlier this year - settings app goes deep and it makes it harder to find simple stuff. one example for my friends is when they wanted to turn on gsync/freesync, the toggle for it on gnome is right inside of refresh rate like you'd expect - I hate to say this because I know it's gnome/gtk's fault, but apps on gnome look much more consistent for me than apps on plasma. gtk apps don't look good, qt apps don't look good, and plasma apps do look pretty good but they're in the minority. It has been a year since I've tried ricing KDE though, so I'd accept if this has gotten better I don't totally agree with the extensions thing, the only one I use is quake terminal so that I can have ghostty pop up (since gnome doesn't support the protocol needed for that to work natively) and I consider myself a pretty technical user. Even on plasma I like a lot of the gnome apps like nautilus for being opinionated/polished. it's been a struggle to get a good feeling environment on plasma without a lot of tinkering (which to its credit, is doable!) whereas gnome feels pretty good ootb
  - WD-42 11mo ago
    Most of the time I hear the “basic functionality” complaint about gnome it’s someone missing a start menu and taskbar. Which makes sense if you are a clicker stuck on the desktop paradigm introduced in the early 90s. Gnome is very keyboard centric. If you actually take the time to learn it without relying on your mouse for everything it’s actually extremely efficient.
    - Lapel2742 11mo ago
      > Gnome is very keyboard centric. ... and misses the fact that not every valid computer use is keyboard centric too. Sometimes I use my mouse and I do not want to switch to the keyboard and no, my life is not about being most productive and about saving 1/10th of a second if I use the keyboard only (which isn't even possible). I'm human after all and not a machine. I like my mouse. I paid a fortune for it. Edit: And it doesn't matter if this is the old way of the 90s and not modern. Being modern/new is no virtue in itself.
wrs 11mo ago
Hey MacOS switchers, welcome. Please know that closing the last window doesn’t quit the application. Quitting the application quits the application. That’s why the icon is still in the dock.
- ayaros 11mo ago
  That's literally the default behavior in macOS, with some exceptions.
  - MBCook 11mo ago
    In fact that’s how it always worked. Apps that don’t work that way, including Apple’s, are “wrong”.
    - yesb 11mo ago
      Both behaviors have been common/"correct" as long as I remember. Single window apps such as System Preferences, Disk Utility, etc. don't meaningfully exist without their window and as such they quit when the window closes. Multi-window apps e.g. web browsers, word processors have the "usual" macOS behavior where they can remain running without a window open.
      - wrs 11mo ago
        Importantly, both behaviors are correct under the appropriate circumstances (which you described). It’s not random or discretionary.
  - nlkl 11mo ago
    I think the above post must refer to how it works in MacOS. In Gnome, the app quits when the last window is closed (by default at least). I guess this is a matter of taste, but personally I strongly dislike the way MacOS works here.
    - sparky4pro 11mo ago
hexbin010 11mo ago
I don't know why Gnome et al switched to imitating MacOS – adopting a dock (as a default), ditching an app window tray as on Windows, when the potential Windows-convert market is much larger than Mac. The Dock can be really jarring for Windows users - they are coming from an OS literally called windows, and the windows are hidden from view. It also eats vertical space with those huge icons, which is precious given the current popular screen dimensions. -- I agree MacOS has some glaring UX and functionality omissions and Finder is indeed garbage!
- amelius 11mo ago
  > I don't know why Gnome et al switched to imitating MacOS Car analogy. If the most popular brand puts a steering wheel in the front left, then it makes sense to do the same even if a joystick has better UX.
- commandar 11mo ago
  >It also eats vertical space with those huge icons, which is precious given the current popular screen dimensions. This is one Windows gets wrong too, in fairness. W11 killed the ability to move the taskbar to the left/right side of the screen. That's a real pain on ultrawide displays where you have absolutely miles of horizontal real estate and relatively limited vertical space. Fortunately, ExplorerPatcher exists and can restore the functionality. https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/ https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/
- Kwpolska 11mo ago
  Windows has had a taskbar for 30 years. And in the last 15 years, the default taskbar has pinned apps, large icons and no captions.
- t_mahmood 11mo ago
  To be honest, I do not like the dock either, but for different reasons. But, it doesn't waste any space at all. Because it's always hidden, unless you trigger the overview.
mycall 11mo ago
People don't use macOS for its window shell but for it's familiarity, ecosystem and underlying technology. There are plenty of windowing upgrades from third-party vendors that improve on it.
- m-hodges 11mo ago
  The number one thing keeping me on macOS is Universal Clipboard with my iPhone. I copy+paste URLs, 2FA codes, and images between devices all day long.
  - bigyabai 11mo ago
    This is my favorite feature of KDE Connect on Linux.
    - m-hodges 11mo ago
      KDE Connect can integrate seamlessly with iPhones?
      - bigyabai 11mo ago
        Presumably, with some fanangling. I use Android these days so I'm not sure how hard Apple makes it.
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        I don't know about "seamlessly", but yeah, it works.
nik736 11mo ago
What I am missing with Gnome is the global menu I have with macOS. It's just my preferred way of working. This is also what I liked about Unity. Gnome seems to follow the same direction as Windows. Additionally miller columns in Finder are just awesome and I don't have them with Nautilus. Those two things are honestly dealbreakers for me.
- amelius 11mo ago
  I like that Unity puts the global menu on the side. This makes more sense with all the wide-screens that we have nowadays. A huge oversight in MacOS, if you ask me.
  - rectang 11mo ago
    I agree that the side is better and would be a better default. For the record, the location of the MacOS Dock is configurable — I have mine on the right.
  - sparky4pro 11mo ago
    On macOS only the dock can be moved to the side. The application menu (left) and the statusbar menu (right) will always be on top of the screen. Which makes sense to me.
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    Global menu meant menu bar. Unity put the dock on the side. You can move the macOS dock to either side.
- al_borland 11mo ago
  I went looking for a file manager with miller column on Linux once. It seems to be an extremely rare feature. With how popular column view is in Finder, I don’t understand how it hasn’t made its way to other platforms as a commonplace feature.
  - dijit 11mo ago
    I had the exact same journey as you, I even very nearly install GNUStep because the file manager had miller columns. I even started to think that perhaps Apple has an active patent on it or something. (this happened with the Genie Lamp minimise effect on Compiz/Beryl- why it needed to have at minimum 3 "waves" before it minimised the window; though you could obviously patch it out). FWIW I found Ranger (TUI) and Pantheon (ElementaryOS) that supports it, if you're still looking.
dochtman 11mo ago
How is the HiDPI situation, and font rendering? Last time I tried it on my M1 Max with Asahi it still looked substantially worse.
- diath 11mo ago
  To quote one of the lead GTK/GNOME developers, "what makes you think font sharpness is a metric (of font rendering quality)"? It's absolute madness: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787.
al_borland 11mo ago
I will never get used to Gnomes lack of native support for minimizing windows. I actually had to lookup how they expected users to manage windows, as it was not obvious to me. Apparently you’re supposed to move windows to another virtual desktop to get them out of the way. As someone who has never really clicked with virtual desktop, this doesn’t work for me. This feels like such a glaring omission of a convention that has been around for decades (even in past versions of Gnome). I was on a call with someone from Red Hat a few months ago when they were sharing their screen, and he threw the windows over to another desktop to get them out of the way, following the design. While he seemed to do it relatively quickly, it looked pretty awkward for something a person would be doing pretty often. It was routine to perform vs a single click to minimize in every other OS. I know minimization can be added with Tweaks, but it always felt a little hacky and buggy.
- joelthelion 11mo ago
  If open windows are bugging you, you can simply move to a new workspace, as you mention. There's a keyboard shortcut, so that's actually very easy to do. Gnome is very different from more common desktop environments, but if you accept to try and work with it the way it's designed, it can be productive and enjoyable.
  - jghn 11mo ago
    > you can simply move to a new workspace. Like the person to whom you're replying, I don't *want* another workspace, virtual desktop, or anything of the sort. Ever. So a system built around a model of "simply move to a new workspace" doesn't work for me. Period.
    - joelthelion 11mo ago
      Then Gnome isn't for you. It's an opiniated desktop, you have to accept its way of doing things.
      - kentonv 11mo ago
hyperhello 11mo ago
Reading that and looking at the pictures, it just seems like the parts he likes are the parts that slavishly copy the macOS style.
- paulbgd 11mo ago
  Reading it closely, that's a bit of an oversimplification. The article focuses pretty heavily on functionality over style, where doing the equivalent thing in macos is either silly or near impossible to achieve
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
joelthelion 11mo ago
I love Gnome! I understand it's not for everyone, but it certainly doesn't deserve all the hate it receives.
- jmclnx 11mo ago
  The only thing about Gnome3 I like is it does not give me eye strain like KDE 1 -- 5 does. I have yet to use KDE6. Granted with each release KDE is getting better with eye strain, but it still happens. With Gnome, no issues at all. With that said, I prefer KDE far more than Gnome due to its configurability. With v5 I can deal with the eye strain, hoping v6 is better. In the old days, with KDE v3, after 15 minutes my eyes were bleeding.
zb3 11mo ago
GNOME is underfunded - bugs are not fixed for years, PRs are not reviewed for months. It might look more shiny on the surface, but once you realize something doesn't work - you're on your own. See for example this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4051 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4051 Nobody is assigned to fix these.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- tristan957 11mo ago
  > Nobody is assigned to fix these. Who would be assigning people to the issues? People scratch their own itches or work on what their employer needs them to do.
  - zb3 11mo ago
    > work on what their employer needs them to do. That's precisely what I meant - there are no employees that are assigned by their employer to ensure GNOME works. That's why the comparison with macOS makes no sense.
- kasabali 11mo ago
  GNOME is by far the most funded Linux DE. If you think it's underfunded then other DEs are broke. If nobody is assigned to GNOME bugs it's because developers were more interested in redesigning some app or rewriting some APIs than fixing bugs. jwz explained it 25 years ago: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
bsnnkv 11mo ago
It's very sad that none of these Linux DEs expose APIs for customization in anything other than JavaScript - I would love to be able to build on Gnome or KDE with something equivalent to windows-rs or objc2
- tomComb 11mo ago
  js is the easiest language to handle safely and securely (due to its origins in the browser, of course), and can even be run fairly efficiently since it is now probably the most optimized language. And most importantly, is probably the most widely known language.
cosmin800 11mo ago
I never knew what happened to gnome that it got so bad, until I used a Mac and I realized that they just tried to copy it and miserably failed.
bradley_taunt 11mo ago
Off topic from the article, but please stop setting video elements to “auto play”. It makes browsing on mobile a miserable experience.
ethin 11mo ago
I can't stand Gnome. I don't like how they dumped the desktop or the app menu, or really most of their decisions lately. From what I've seen they're trying to cater to some amorphous "new user" instead of just creating a good desktop environment. What is this "new user"? Nobody knows! Well, other than the Gnome developers, I guess. The sad thing is that attempting to cater to "new users" is just... Entirely unnecessary: you can put someone who's never used Linux in their entire lives in front of an XFCE desktop environment and they'll most likely figure it out quite quickly with little help from you. I think that this similarly applies to Mate or KDE as well. My dislike with Gnome comes from the fact that I need extensions for what I would consider primitive things. Like an app menu instead of the dashboard/app launcher thing they have going. Or the fact that features like minimize are just... Gone. And when you complain, your just either told to do it some very counterintuitive way or to go get an extension. I would get an extension for something truly unique or something that extends the environment far beyond what anyone would expect, but an extension just to minimize a window? Nah, no thanks.
- tristan957 11mo ago
  I'm not a new Linux user, and I use GNOME. I've done stints on KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, and Budgie. I personally find GNOME to be the best experience. I'm just stating that GNOME also caters to people with a decade+ of Linux desktop experience.
- WD-42 11mo ago
  Do you really think a desktop needs to be stuck on the 30 year old start menu, task bar, desktop icons paradigm forever? It's fine if you want to stick to that, but the rest of us have found that using a mouse for everything isn't the most efficient way to work with our computer. I think in the case where you want GNOME to work more like windows 95 installing a few extensions is a completely reasonable ask. The fact that you can is still a plus.
  - ethin 11mo ago
    But I don't use the mouse, I use the keyboard primarily. And yes, evolution is fine when it's actually needed. But trying to get rid of Minimize and all that because workspaces exist? Going in the trajectory Gnome is doing feels like Gnome is making the same mistake Microsoft made with windows 8.
themgt 11mo ago
Feel like I've been reading Year of the Linux Desktop™'ers writing this stuff for the last 20 years. A bit of a backstory. I’ve been using GNUplusSlashLinux for more than fifteen years. Most of the time, I used GNOME, starting from GNOME2, moving to Unity maybe for two years, then GNOME Shell, then KDE Plasma 5 for another two years, and switched back to GNOME Shell again. I’m not mentioning some of my at most month-long endeavors to other DEs, like XFCE, or tiling WMs, because they never stuck with me. So I’ve been there for most releases of GNOME Shell, followed them closely, even used to run Ubuntu GNOME when GNOME Shell became a thing, until it became the default in Ubuntu once again. Though by that time, I had already moved from Ubuntu to a different distribution for a variety of reasons. I did, however, run Unity on my older PCs, as it was far less taxing on resources than early versions of GNOME3, but then it was discontinued, and long-awaited Unity 8 with Mir never became a thing. So, when I was fed up with GNOME being a resource hog, often crashing, and moving towards Wayland, which didn’t work as good as it was advertised, I decided to try KDE somewhere around 2018... My backstory: I've been using MacOS X for more than fifteen years. Most of the time, I used MacOS X. Actually, all of the time. The end.
iammattmurphy 11mo ago
> macOS This is the most counter-intuitive, user-unfriendly, confusing piece of software that I’ve used in my life. Insane hyperbole in my opinion. Most of his complaints are that of a power user, and because it’s missing something he liked from Gnome. Fair enough I guess, the stuff he talks about does sound nice. Later on in the article: > The macOS itself isn’t all that bad.
attendant3446 11mo ago
Personally, I'm in a KDE camp. GNOME was never my cup of tea. But I completely agree that the Linux DE surpassed Windows/Mac some time ago. While Windows enshitified and MacOS stagnated, Linux on desktop kept evolving. And even though I've used Windows and Mac for a long time before fully switching to Linux, I now can't go back.
isege 11mo ago
I've had this exact experience. I used gnome for just one week before getting a macbook and after 3+ years of MacOS I still its find multi desktop handling absurd and unintuitive. What makes this worse is that Apple's refusal to expose any public APIs to control workspace behavior so you can't even work around their shitty choices. Instead of iterating on existing functionality, they launch flashy additions like Stage Manager only to abandon them immediately.
wltr 11mo ago
Okay, I stopped reading when I understood he simply couldn’t change some settings in the system. Expected some deep analysis of the UX. Why would I?
Gualdrapo 11mo ago
After all this years I still think the Applications - Places - System "start menu" was the best way to present available stuff in a DE, in any DE, in any OS, ever. You didn't have to skim through so many submenus to locate something - the main categories were available at a glance. It was pure genius. I kind of get why they felt pressured to remove it but pretty much every other DE had a start-menu-like thing and they never did any change. It was just GNOME.
mvdtnz 11mo ago
> When you maximize a window, it is moved to its own, dedicated virtual desktop - and I like it. I know this author and I will never agree on what a good desktop behaves like. I have no opinion on Gnome but I love my Plasma desktop. However the latest release made it significantly more buggy, which is frustrating.
mieses 11mo ago
It's a great desktop if you don't need to print anything or use an extension for more than a year or so before API changes break the extension. Gnome works "out of the box" as long as you don't try to do anything that's not in the box. That whole expression needs to be changed to "it works in the box".

68 points by gsky 11mo ago

"I need to make a disclosure - I AM BIASED. I’ve been using GNOME for a lot of time, and a lot of things that feel logical to me may not feel logical at all to others. Especially for macOS users."

paulbgd 11mo ago

Totally agree. Lots of friends who game have been asking for advice on linux now that they don’t want to update to windows 10. I’ll show them both gnome and plasma, and they’ll usually try kde then switch to gnome because it’s so darn easy to use. It’s opinionated, the settings app is easy to navigate (with the downside being, tweaks/gsettings is needed), and simple stuff like shutting down/switching audio input/wifi/printers is all stuff they were able to figure out without my help. I do wish gnome would figure out some of the compatibility stuff with Wayland (quick windows on ghostty seem not to work because they won’t implement a specific protocol?) but out of every desktop rn, gnome really is one of the easiest to pick up

Citizen_Lame 11mo ago
Said no one ever. GNOME is barely a desktop at this point. You need buggy extensions just to restore basic functionality, which says everything. In many ways, GNOME has become the epitome of a FOSS misfire: opinionated to a fault, driven by a loud minority, and offering users less choice instead of more. Plasma, on the other hand, has made huge strides in usability, performance, and overall polish. It feels modern, extensible, and genuinely user focused. If anything is going to be the future of the mainstream Linux desktop, it’s Plasma.
- unethical_ban 11mo ago
  I was a GNOME fan in the 00s, then I really liked Unity from Ubuntu, and now in the 2020s I have switched to KDE. KDE is super powerful but (as a technical person) easy to discover options. The basic sound/wifi/system stuff is really easy to access, the global search in the menu is wonderful. Best part about Unity was that you could hold down the meta button, and it would reveal the cheatsheet for all the other window manipulation shortcuts. BUT... the person above you did literally say they think GNOME is better and that's fine too.
- paulbgd 11mo ago
  I like plasma as well, my main complaints with it rn are - configuring stuff like the task bar has always been buggy, the drag/drop frustratingly won't drop stuff in the right place, I've even had to completely log out to fix being locked in the editing mode earlier this year - settings app goes deep and it makes it harder to find simple stuff. one example for my friends is when they wanted to turn on gsync/freesync, the toggle for it on gnome is right inside of refresh rate like you'd expect - I hate to say this because I know it's gnome/gtk's fault, but apps on gnome look much more consistent for me than apps on plasma. gtk apps don't look good, qt apps don't look good, and plasma apps do look pretty good but they're in the minority. It has been a year since I've tried ricing KDE though, so I'd accept if this has gotten better I don't totally agree with the extensions thing, the only one I use is quake terminal so that I can have ghostty pop up (since gnome doesn't support the protocol needed for that to work natively) and I consider myself a pretty technical user. Even on plasma I like a lot of the gnome apps like nautilus for being opinionated/polished. it's been a struggle to get a good feeling environment on plasma without a lot of tinkering (which to its credit, is doable!) whereas gnome feels pretty good ootb
- WD-42 11mo ago
  Most of the time I hear the “basic functionality” complaint about gnome it’s someone missing a start menu and taskbar. Which makes sense if you are a clicker stuck on the desktop paradigm introduced in the early 90s. Gnome is very keyboard centric. If you actually take the time to learn it without relying on your mouse for everything it’s actually extremely efficient.
  - Lapel2742 11mo ago
    > Gnome is very keyboard centric. ... and misses the fact that not every valid computer use is keyboard centric too. Sometimes I use my mouse and I do not want to switch to the keyboard and no, my life is not about being most productive and about saving 1/10th of a second if I use the keyboard only (which isn't even possible). I'm human after all and not a machine. I like my mouse. I paid a fortune for it. Edit: And it doesn't matter if this is the old way of the 90s and not modern. Being modern/new is no virtue in itself.

wrs 11mo ago

Hey MacOS switchers, welcome. Please know that closing the last window doesn’t quit the application. Quitting the application quits the application. That’s why the icon is still in the dock.

ayaros 11mo ago
That's literally the default behavior in macOS, with some exceptions.
- MBCook 11mo ago
  In fact that’s how it always worked. Apps that don’t work that way, including Apple’s, are “wrong”.
  - yesb 11mo ago
    Both behaviors have been common/"correct" as long as I remember. Single window apps such as System Preferences, Disk Utility, etc. don't meaningfully exist without their window and as such they quit when the window closes. Multi-window apps e.g. web browsers, word processors have the "usual" macOS behavior where they can remain running without a window open.
    - wrs 11mo ago
      Importantly, both behaviors are correct under the appropriate circumstances (which you described). It’s not random or discretionary.
- nlkl 11mo ago
  I think the above post must refer to how it works in MacOS. In Gnome, the app quits when the last window is closed (by default at least). I guess this is a matter of taste, but personally I strongly dislike the way MacOS works here.
  - sparky4pro 11mo ago

hexbin010 11mo ago

I don't know why Gnome et al switched to imitating MacOS – adopting a dock (as a default), ditching an app window tray as on Windows, when the potential Windows-convert market is much larger than Mac. The Dock can be really jarring for Windows users - they are coming from an OS literally called windows, and the windows are hidden from view. It also eats vertical space with those huge icons, which is precious given the current popular screen dimensions. -- I agree MacOS has some glaring UX and functionality omissions and Finder is indeed garbage!

amelius 11mo ago
> I don't know why Gnome et al switched to imitating MacOS Car analogy. If the most popular brand puts a steering wheel in the front left, then it makes sense to do the same even if a joystick has better UX.
commandar 11mo ago
>It also eats vertical space with those huge icons, which is precious given the current popular screen dimensions. This is one Windows gets wrong too, in fairness. W11 killed the ability to move the taskbar to the left/right side of the screen. That's a real pain on ultrawide displays where you have absolutely miles of horizontal real estate and relatively limited vertical space. Fortunately, ExplorerPatcher exists and can restore the functionality. https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/ https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/
Kwpolska 11mo ago
Windows has had a taskbar for 30 years. And in the last 15 years, the default taskbar has pinned apps, large icons and no captions.
t_mahmood 11mo ago
To be honest, I do not like the dock either, but for different reasons. But, it doesn't waste any space at all. Because it's always hidden, unless you trigger the overview.

mycall 11mo ago

People don't use macOS for its window shell but for it's familiarity, ecosystem and underlying technology. There are plenty of windowing upgrades from third-party vendors that improve on it.

m-hodges 11mo ago
The number one thing keeping me on macOS is Universal Clipboard with my iPhone. I copy+paste URLs, 2FA codes, and images between devices all day long.
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  This is my favorite feature of KDE Connect on Linux.
  - m-hodges 11mo ago
    KDE Connect can integrate seamlessly with iPhones?
    - bigyabai 11mo ago
      Presumably, with some fanangling. I use Android these days so I'm not sure how hard Apple makes it.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      I don't know about "seamlessly", but yeah, it works.

nik736 11mo ago

What I am missing with Gnome is the global menu I have with macOS. It's just my preferred way of working. This is also what I liked about Unity. Gnome seems to follow the same direction as Windows. Additionally miller columns in Finder are just awesome and I don't have them with Nautilus. Those two things are honestly dealbreakers for me.

amelius 11mo ago
I like that Unity puts the global menu on the side. This makes more sense with all the wide-screens that we have nowadays. A huge oversight in MacOS, if you ask me.
- rectang 11mo ago
  I agree that the side is better and would be a better default. For the record, the location of the MacOS Dock is configurable — I have mine on the right.
- sparky4pro 11mo ago
  On macOS only the dock can be moved to the side. The application menu (left) and the statusbar menu (right) will always be on top of the screen. Which makes sense to me.
- pseudalopex 11mo ago
  Global menu meant menu bar. Unity put the dock on the side. You can move the macOS dock to either side.
al_borland 11mo ago
I went looking for a file manager with miller column on Linux once. It seems to be an extremely rare feature. With how popular column view is in Finder, I don’t understand how it hasn’t made its way to other platforms as a commonplace feature.
- dijit 11mo ago
  I had the exact same journey as you, I even very nearly install GNUStep because the file manager had miller columns. I even started to think that perhaps Apple has an active patent on it or something. (this happened with the Genie Lamp minimise effect on Compiz/Beryl- why it needed to have at minimum 3 "waves" before it minimised the window; though you could obviously patch it out). FWIW I found Ranger (TUI) and Pantheon (ElementaryOS) that supports it, if you're still looking.

dochtman 11mo ago

How is the HiDPI situation, and font rendering? Last time I tried it on my M1 Max with Asahi it still looked substantially worse.

diath 11mo ago
To quote one of the lead GTK/GNOME developers, "what makes you think font sharpness is a metric (of font rendering quality)"? It's absolute madness: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787.

al_borland 11mo ago

I will never get used to Gnomes lack of native support for minimizing windows. I actually had to lookup how they expected users to manage windows, as it was not obvious to me. Apparently you’re supposed to move windows to another virtual desktop to get them out of the way. As someone who has never really clicked with virtual desktop, this doesn’t work for me. This feels like such a glaring omission of a convention that has been around for decades (even in past versions of Gnome). I was on a call with someone from Red Hat a few months ago when they were sharing their screen, and he threw the windows over to another desktop to get them out of the way, following the design. While he seemed to do it relatively quickly, it looked pretty awkward for something a person would be doing pretty often. It was routine to perform vs a single click to minimize in every other OS. I know minimization can be added with Tweaks, but it always felt a little hacky and buggy.

joelthelion 11mo ago
If open windows are bugging you, you can simply move to a new workspace, as you mention. There's a keyboard shortcut, so that's actually very easy to do. Gnome is very different from more common desktop environments, but if you accept to try and work with it the way it's designed, it can be productive and enjoyable.
- jghn 11mo ago
  > you can simply move to a new workspace. Like the person to whom you're replying, I don't *want* another workspace, virtual desktop, or anything of the sort. Ever. So a system built around a model of "simply move to a new workspace" doesn't work for me. Period.
  - joelthelion 11mo ago
    Then Gnome isn't for you. It's an opiniated desktop, you have to accept its way of doing things.
    - kentonv 11mo ago

hyperhello 11mo ago

Reading that and looking at the pictures, it just seems like the parts he likes are the parts that slavishly copy the macOS style.

paulbgd 11mo ago
Reading it closely, that's a bit of an oversimplification. The article focuses pretty heavily on functionality over style, where doing the equivalent thing in macos is either silly or near impossible to achieve
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joelthelion 11mo ago

I love Gnome! I understand it's not for everyone, but it certainly doesn't deserve all the hate it receives.

jmclnx 11mo ago
The only thing about Gnome3 I like is it does not give me eye strain like KDE 1 -- 5 does. I have yet to use KDE6. Granted with each release KDE is getting better with eye strain, but it still happens. With Gnome, no issues at all. With that said, I prefer KDE far more than Gnome due to its configurability. With v5 I can deal with the eye strain, hoping v6 is better. In the old days, with KDE v3, after 15 minutes my eyes were bleeding.

zb3 11mo ago

GNOME is underfunded - bugs are not fixed for years, PRs are not reviewed for months. It might look more shiny on the surface, but once you realize something doesn't work - you're on your own. See for example this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4051 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4051 Nobody is assigned to fix these.

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tristan957 11mo ago
> Nobody is assigned to fix these. Who would be assigning people to the issues? People scratch their own itches or work on what their employer needs them to do.
- zb3 11mo ago
  > work on what their employer needs them to do. That's precisely what I meant - there are no employees that are assigned by their employer to ensure GNOME works. That's why the comparison with macOS makes no sense.
kasabali 11mo ago
GNOME is by far the most funded Linux DE. If you think it's underfunded then other DEs are broke. If nobody is assigned to GNOME bugs it's because developers were more interested in redesigning some app or rewriting some APIs than fixing bugs. jwz explained it 25 years ago: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

bsnnkv 11mo ago

It's very sad that none of these Linux DEs expose APIs for customization in anything other than JavaScript - I would love to be able to build on Gnome or KDE with something equivalent to windows-rs or objc2

tomComb 11mo ago
js is the easiest language to handle safely and securely (due to its origins in the browser, of course), and can even be run fairly efficiently since it is now probably the most optimized language. And most importantly, is probably the most widely known language.

cosmin800 11mo ago

I never knew what happened to gnome that it got so bad, until I used a Mac and I realized that they just tried to copy it and miserably failed.

bradley_taunt 11mo ago

Off topic from the article, but please stop setting video elements to “auto play”. It makes browsing on mobile a miserable experience.

ethin 11mo ago

I can't stand Gnome. I don't like how they dumped the desktop or the app menu, or really most of their decisions lately. From what I've seen they're trying to cater to some amorphous "new user" instead of just creating a good desktop environment. What is this "new user"? Nobody knows! Well, other than the Gnome developers, I guess. The sad thing is that attempting to cater to "new users" is just... Entirely unnecessary: you can put someone who's never used Linux in their entire lives in front of an XFCE desktop environment and they'll most likely figure it out quite quickly with little help from you. I think that this similarly applies to Mate or KDE as well. My dislike with Gnome comes from the fact that I need extensions for what I would consider primitive things. Like an app menu instead of the dashboard/app launcher thing they have going. Or the fact that features like minimize are just... Gone. And when you complain, your just either told to do it some very counterintuitive way or to go get an extension. I would get an extension for something truly unique or something that extends the environment far beyond what anyone would expect, but an extension just to minimize a window? Nah, no thanks.

tristan957 11mo ago
I'm not a new Linux user, and I use GNOME. I've done stints on KDE, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce, and Budgie. I personally find GNOME to be the best experience. I'm just stating that GNOME also caters to people with a decade+ of Linux desktop experience.
WD-42 11mo ago
Do you really think a desktop needs to be stuck on the 30 year old start menu, task bar, desktop icons paradigm forever? It's fine if you want to stick to that, but the rest of us have found that using a mouse for everything isn't the most efficient way to work with our computer. I think in the case where you want GNOME to work more like windows 95 installing a few extensions is a completely reasonable ask. The fact that you can is still a plus.
- ethin 11mo ago
  But I don't use the mouse, I use the keyboard primarily. And yes, evolution is fine when it's actually needed. But trying to get rid of Minimize and all that because workspaces exist? Going in the trajectory Gnome is doing feels like Gnome is making the same mistake Microsoft made with windows 8.

themgt 11mo ago

Feel like I've been reading Year of the Linux Desktop™'ers writing this stuff for the last 20 years. A bit of a backstory. I’ve been using GNUplusSlashLinux for more than fifteen years. Most of the time, I used GNOME, starting from GNOME2, moving to Unity maybe for two years, then GNOME Shell, then KDE Plasma 5 for another two years, and switched back to GNOME Shell again. I’m not mentioning some of my at most month-long endeavors to other DEs, like XFCE, or tiling WMs, because they never stuck with me. So I’ve been there for most releases of GNOME Shell, followed them closely, even used to run Ubuntu GNOME when GNOME Shell became a thing, until it became the default in Ubuntu once again. Though by that time, I had already moved from Ubuntu to a different distribution for a variety of reasons. I did, however, run Unity on my older PCs, as it was far less taxing on resources than early versions of GNOME3, but then it was discontinued, and long-awaited Unity 8 with Mir never became a thing. So, when I was fed up with GNOME being a resource hog, often crashing, and moving towards Wayland, which didn’t work as good as it was advertised, I decided to try KDE somewhere around 2018... My backstory: I've been using MacOS X for more than fifteen years. Most of the time, I used MacOS X. Actually, all of the time. The end.

iammattmurphy 11mo ago

> macOS This is the most counter-intuitive, user-unfriendly, confusing piece of software that I’ve used in my life. Insane hyperbole in my opinion. Most of his complaints are that of a power user, and because it’s missing something he liked from Gnome. Fair enough I guess, the stuff he talks about does sound nice. Later on in the article: > The macOS itself isn’t all that bad.

attendant3446 11mo ago

Personally, I'm in a KDE camp. GNOME was never my cup of tea. But I completely agree that the Linux DE surpassed Windows/Mac some time ago. While Windows enshitified and MacOS stagnated, Linux on desktop kept evolving. And even though I've used Windows and Mac for a long time before fully switching to Linux, I now can't go back.

isege 11mo ago

I've had this exact experience. I used gnome for just one week before getting a macbook and after 3+ years of MacOS I still its find multi desktop handling absurd and unintuitive. What makes this worse is that Apple's refusal to expose any public APIs to control workspace behavior so you can't even work around their shitty choices. Instead of iterating on existing functionality, they launch flashy additions like Stage Manager only to abandon them immediately.

wltr 11mo ago

Okay, I stopped reading when I understood he simply couldn’t change some settings in the system. Expected some deep analysis of the UX. Why would I?

Gualdrapo 11mo ago

After all this years I still think the Applications - Places - System "start menu" was the best way to present available stuff in a DE, in any DE, in any OS, ever. You didn't have to skim through so many submenus to locate something - the main categories were available at a glance. It was pure genius. I kind of get why they felt pressured to remove it but pretty much every other DE had a start-menu-like thing and they never did any change. It was just GNOME.

mvdtnz 11mo ago

> When you maximize a window, it is moved to its own, dedicated virtual desktop - and I like it. I know this author and I will never agree on what a good desktop behaves like. I have no opinion on Gnome but I love my Plasma desktop. However the latest release made it significantly more buggy, which is frustrating.

mieses 11mo ago

It's a great desktop if you don't need to print anything or use an extension for more than a year or so before API changes break the extension. Gnome works "out of the box" as long as you don't try to do anything that's not in the box. That whole expression needs to be changed to "it works in the box".