I can appreciate that people use their systems very differently, but this is something that gnomes designers did not care to acknowledge throughout that whole exchange; input directly from their end users, and that's bearing in mind they collect no telemetry.

I appreciate working in UX for a community driven project is no easy task, many of the people commenting in the thread linked above could be considered more advanced users with their own desktop shortcuts configured, and a one size fits all approach satisfying all is difficult to deliver. All they asked for was an option for this new behaviour.

The communication in that thread was so poor that matt miller got involved.