The Year of the Linux Desktop: Gnome
I may add some images to this later, but for now I wanna get it off my drafts doc. Tired of looking at it.
On several occasions during my brief stint with Gnome, I went to look up how to accomplish some seemingly basic task only to find threads going back six years saying things like “Gnome really needs a way to adjust touchpad scroll speed!” followed by threads from every subsequent year asking “How is there still no way to adjust touchpad scroll speed?!”
Every time I tried to look up a workaround I found someone posting “Use the environment as intended. If you want windows use windows!” only to be directed afterwards to the official Gnome extension repository which has workarounds for basically every odd decision in the environment. “As intended” huh? Okay.
A long-standing problem, ignored. An attempt at enforcing shame alongside a buffet of indulgences. These two experiences make up the core loop of my time with Gnome.
But that’s not all, and it’s not all bad. I think it’s got a very slick presentation, nice rounded corners, some lovely blurs (if you install an addon), and if you work around its refusal to acknowledge minimizing windows (“Just move them to another workspace”) or programs that like to run in the system tray (Discord, among many others), window management is totally fine. The Super key functionality of being both a window expose and launcher in one is great. I’m not really a workspace user, but moving between workspaces is clean and easy. I think I’d really like to try it on a laptop with sufficient power to run it well.
I do think that the top bar, which so very much wants to feel like a Mac, is poorly used. In pursuit of that prized “clean look” asthetic, its stock implementation is basically wasted space. On a Mac its functions are fully integrated, giving users a universal location for a program’s menus among other functions. Here in Gnome it’s little more than a clock and a system tray (but absolutely not a taskbar), it has none of the contextual action and power of the thing it’s mimicking. I don’t really believe much can be done about that, but I’m no linux dev. At least it’s a good spot to shove a lot of little “unintended” addons.