Linux

I think GNOME being minimalist with extensions is a good thing, but I disagree with what GNOME considers basic functionality or not. Two things that stick out:

• an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn't considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME's hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.
• tray icons. GNOME treats background processes like bugs to be squashed. Let's just get real here for a second: sometimes you want programs to run in the background and sometimes you want to be able to see what they are doing in real time. I want my email clients to tell me when I get emails, I wan't my Nextcloud to tell me when there are sync issues, and I want Discord to tell me if I get DMs. This should be considered basic functionality.

Every time I've tried using modern GNOME it's like pulling teeth. I hate it. I think it has actual usability issues. Not disparaging anyone who likes it, it just really doesn't suit me.

GNOME classic shell was ok, but when I installed KDE Plasma it was like coming home. Everything made sense and everything was where it needed to be. More or less.

In the end I'm just glad Linux has a variety of DEs to choose from. Even if you choose GNOME, you weirdo.

Yes, I thrive in it.

I tried it twice and hated it. Maybe it's because I'm in love with KDE but that's not the only reason.

Yes, I prefer Gnome to KDE by a long way, it's much nicer looking and easier to use, the trick is to use it the way it's intended, instead of trying to control it to work how you think it should

Absolutely love it! I've donated hundreds of dollars to the Gnome foundation.

I like that practically all of the OS functionality is behind either super+seach or the quick settings menu. I love how powerful the overview is, and all hidden behind a single key press. I like that asking "Is X possible?" is immediately answerable, and 95% of the time it's right in the first place I think to look. I like the trackpad gestures and workspaces on my laptop where I don't have multiple large screens. I like that it has very little need for system tray icons which are clunky, inconsistent, and ugly. (Ex: Discord can only be quit from it's tray icon... -_-)

I'm not a DE power user apparently, but I'm certainly not the mythical "lowest common denominator" that Gnome supposedly caters to either. I do a lot of programming in C/asm/, and write plenty of code involving lots of esoteric math. I don't have much use for Python for instance, but I don't think it's "dumbed down" either. :p

KDE (and Windows to a similar extent) always has way too much "stuff" it wants to show you, 90% of it I'll never use. Every window toolbar is chock full of icons, and so many actions trigger popups, notifications, or dialogs that have little purpose. It's all terribly distracting and annoying. Still, I've donated hundreds of dollars to KDE foundation as well since it's an important part of the Linux ecosystem. I don't use it, but that doesn't mean I hate it, and I see no reason why it shouldn't flourish too. Open Source is not a competition.

You can just switch to kde or xfce if you dont like gnome, thats what linux is all about. For one I cant really use anything not-gnome anymore, its workflow feels just so efficient and is equally good with a touchpad, keyboard and mouse. I usually get distracted really easily on kde and the likes but gnome just gets out of the way and lets me focus more on my work.

GNOME is the reason I use KDE.

I really really tried it, but it feels like the whole default GNOME suite has never been used by powerusers at all.
Nemo (is it Nemo?) is especially bad. Once you have to deal with several thousand files in a folder (e.g. drive recovery) it totally breaks apart.

I've been testing KDE for several weeks now, XFCE before that but I'm back to Gnome. It just feels right. Everything is where I expect it to be. No searching in thousands of menus. What scares me about KDE is that there are tons of options and stuff that no one will ever need. Especially KMail I find just awful. So many options and you only find what you are looking for, after an extensive search via a search engine of your choice. This is totally frustrating. XFCE does a lot better here, but I miss the one or other pleasant animation when opening windows and the like. Gnome, on the other hand, isn't great either, but I feel most comfortable here.

I love GNOME more than any other DE. I like how it works very well with keyboard shortcuts. The only extensions I use are the weather and the tray icons.

I try Gnome every year or so, and the first time I encounter the Save As dialog defaulting my text input to the goddamn Search box instead of the filename box, I shut it down and uninstall it. That just drives me around the bend.

I have ADD and GNOME is a life saver. I usually put one and only one window by workspace. It allows me to be focused to the max on the task I'm doing.

Also Libadwaita is so sexy.

I switch between apps from overview or by typing in search, or by sliding between workspaces. It is more convenient to me than classic desktops with a taskbar and minimized windows.

I can’t get used to vanilla GNOME. First things I always install are Dash to Panel, ArcMenu, Caffeine, AppIndicator support, and Pop Shell. It’s basically Cinnamon with a tiling/stacking toggle and without the need for a “restart if it crashes” setting.

I love Gnome. But I have a pretty simple workflow where I don't use many applications. Generally I have a browser and terminal open and that's it.

I do all my window management inside of Tmux, which is effectively my actual window manager.

I've tried KDE in the past but I've never liked how it feels like a stepping stone for the Windows interface -- not a huge fan of pullout menus. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost twenty years so I don't have any love for that UX.

I used to use a lot of simple/tiling window managers when I was younger and more patient, Gnome feels similar to those in how it has very few bells and whistles to get in your way.

If only maintaining extensions was easier, it feels like every major release breaks every extension for something stupid like renaming a constant. The Gnome team seems to put very little consideration into making the JS extension API stable.

Vanilla GNOME without extensions is very challenging to use IMHO. It lacks serious Quality of Life features (well, it doesn't lack them, they've been purposefully removed).

It's so frustratingly close to being excellent, clean desktop - but then it takes some really strange decisions with basic usability (like panel, taskbar, windows without controls etc).

Luckily those are easy to fix with couple of extensions.

I use GNOME (under Fedora) on a laptop that sits at my right hand side, so I use it with only one hand. Using three-finger swipe to change workspaces is awesome - I usually use a workspace for each app, or sometimes two apps share a workspace, but I don't worry about which one they are on, it's so easy I just swipe until I find the one I want.

I use an extension to auto-reveal the dock when I go to the bottom of the screen. The default behavior of going to the top left of the screen, only to traverse all the way down to the dock at the bottom (or the right for workspaces), just seems really inefficient, especially on a touchpad.

I had it all tricked out with other extensions but they keep breaking with new GNOME releases, so I've mostly given up on that.

I prefer GNOME to KDE but while I understand that there's research and philosophy behind some of the decisions, I just can't get around some of the quirks. "Workflow" itself is fine, with tiling on top, you can get by. But those window decorations… So much space is taken by a completely useless, fat bar at the top of each window even though it's not really aimed at being touchscreen native.

I find it a lot better on a laptop for focused workflows, but I don't like it on desktop.

You are not alone. Many love its 'restrained' workflow, and DEs are subjective. It sounds like you are ready to move to KDE. KDE has a 'Overview' that mimics Gnome's, so best of both worlds and the taskbar in KDE is actually functional. Don't waste anymore time, make the switch to day. Operators are standing by. 🤣

I fell in love with Gnome 3 when it first came out and havent looked back. I dont miss a taskbar because I just use the keyboard shortcuts to move between workspaces and alt+tab to switch programs. Gnome seems to be more efficient the less you use the mouse which is my preferred M.O. anyways.

It feels great on my laptop with gestures. On desktop, not so much. Feels like it's designed to have one full screen application up at a time. Removal of tray icons is just stupid, and they should just give up on their push against them. Which their quest against tray icons is actually worse then just unstandardized tray icons themselves. Still, it's definitely the most polished DE out there, so that's why I tend to stick with it and run dash-to-panel. The overview mode is actually better then I realize now that I got used to it. Even pressing the mouse against the top left corner starts to feel nice.

Fricken hate it!

I love it. I have used it for very long time with and without extensions. I love the overview in particular, pressing meta and having everything presented to you is fantastic. I used it by mostly running maximized windows, then each time I wanted to switch to another program I pressed meta and clicked on the app I wanted. I used workspaces to keep separate groups of programs for each workflow separate too.

If I used extensions it was small things like Appindicators and small cosmetics like blur my shell.

Now, I don't think GNOME scales very well if you use tens of windows at once, you would need to use too many workspaces, which are slow to navigate, and/or have tiny windows in the overview, which are hard to click because their position is unpredictable unlike traditional taskbars, where the programs are always visible and never move on their own.

My workflow never involved too many windows, so I never had problems with it.

Something else I wish would change is that the top bar should go away or actually do something other than show the time. I would say either just take it away entirely and only show it in the overview. Or turn the clock into a notch. Or just make it a half-traditional taskbar, with the clock and options moved to the right and the left side showing as many programs as they fit in thin bars.

I can live in GNOME and only use the defaults. It just takes time to adjust my workflow. What helps me with whatever I'm using or whatever I'm doing (in life), is to not focus on the things "missing" and just make the best of what I have (to work with).

Since two years I'm on KDE but not because I was fed up with GNOME. I just wanted to try something else. Pretty much using stock KDE only that I moved the taskbar to the top of the monitor.

Nope, not even a little bit. That's why I use Cinnamon. On the workspace front, though, I do use those heavily. It helps to have dedicated workspaces. On my home setup I have a sidedesk for Obsidian and PDF reading; a hobby bench for tinkering with linux, my network, and coding; a main for webrowsing and general info gathering; one for gaming (steam and lutris live there); and one for communications like discord, signal, matrix, etc.

I love the gnome workflow. Coming from MacOS it's more familiar to me than a windows layout, but still so much better than macOSs defaults. I usually have 3-4 workspaces open, with a specific "environment" in a single or a few workspaces. E.g a browser window with email, todos, calendar etc and other "personal things" in one, maybe one for a certain project I'm working on, another for a work project, etc. This way I'm always focusing on one thing at a time but can quickly context switch and have my laptop "switch with me". I also make heavy use of alt-tab and Ctrl-tab for window switching. Together with fewer windows per workspace, this makes it super fast to navigate without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. If I forget where things are, a glance at the overview is enough.

It should be noted that I don't use a mouse and if I love touchpad gestures, so gnome is perfect for me. Even using a keyboard only and the very occasional touchpad is very comfortable on gnome. At least compared to macOS and windows.

I use Gnome and I love it, but I have never used workspaces. Okay that's not entirely true, I tried about 10 years ago and I found that it actually slowed me down instead of speeding me up. I'm content with a single desktop and multiple monitors.

Yes, I do

GNOME - Dash to Dock = 🗑️

I really like it, the constraints works for me to enforce more efficient habits. I would say I'm not a naturally efficient person, I recognise that and, essentially, benefit from having a workflow created for me. With KDE, it has the customisability out of the box to create your own workflow, but I couldn't personally design a good workflow.

But I'm not everyone, of course, and I would say GNOME is not necessarily for everybody.

Good that you gave it a fair shot. I feel like a lot of people just throw a lot of extinctions at it first without trying to understand the vanilla workflow - I used to be one of them until I tried vanilla for about 3 months.

Kinda a tangent, but I've been using KDE plasma for a while and have really been enjoying it as a kinda in between of windows style desktop with some more gnome-like features (like workspaces, which tbh I've barely used). Of course both are super customizable, but it seems to me to maybe be a bit easier to customize Plasma? I'm not sure, I haven't used stock gnome as much.