this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Gnome programs, and Gnome itself, is pretty great.
You don't have to shit on a project just because you don't use their stuff or like something else.
Gnome in general is undeniably made competently by competent and talented people. If it wasn't, it would break a lot more.
Those competent and talented people also managed to make extremely bad choices at every turn, and seem ideologically opposed to the idea of customization, resulting in an environment that is fundamentally painful to use unless you very specifically fit the box of what they expect users to be like.
It sort of feels like an Apple product, in that sense. Very well-made, but god forbid you don't want to do things exactly as they say you should
My feelings exactly, stated a lot better than I could have managed.
There's nothing wrong with not providing customization. There's a perfectly decent customizable DE in KDE, anyone that wants to tinker can use that.
I don't want to tinker. I want something to just work, and not have too many knobs. Gnome fills this need perfectly. Thus, you saying that they made bad choices at every turn seems rather idiotic.
Sure, but them stonewalling KDE for months with libadwaita theming preventing gnome apps from using the breeze theme properly on KDE is a bad decision - one that should never have happened. They eventually worked it out, but they shouldn't have first told the KDE devs to essentially pound sand, especially given KDE goes out of their way to make their apps use gnome's themes correctly no matter what, so your gnome system looks right when using KDE apps. The same courtesy should be expected from GNOME, at least to provide the scaffolding for that.
That is the kind of bad decisions I thought of when they brought it up. Or heck, why isn't dash to dock built into gnome at this point? Like a quarter of the gnome users (and yes, they checked their telemetry and found this to be true) were using it - that's obviously something that even if it goes against their design philosophy the DE should have built-in at this point. I think if you're not in the GNOME weeds, you won't see the kinds of boneheaded decisions they have made over the years.
Thanks, I was going to post a very similar rant.
The "just works" argument IS a valid one and they would have a point -- IF Gnome's defaults were in any way sensible. They aren't. The entire workflow is a nightmare. (I made the apple comparison -- Well, uhh... MacOS is also a walled garden that doesn't let you change shit, but at least it's got very decent defaults)
Gnome's file manager didn't let you type in FOLDER ADDRESSES until a few months ago, ffs. And sure you could, even then, use an alternative file manager.
.... But at that point you are fucking with the premise of "just works", because you will need to use non-default stuff.
You stay very subjective views as if they are facts. Then you go and add an obvious lie to the whole thing - you could’ve typed directory addresses for years, maybe even since the beginning.
At this point, your post should be taken with a ton of salt, if at all
You're the one lying. Gnome 46. That's when it was added.
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"Location entry on click" and "Detailed timestamps for files" listed proudly as "features" as if they aren't default on every file manager that doesn't treat its users like babies too dumb to use their computers.
CTRL-l to type the address has been a thing for years. It’s literally the same shortcut as every browser. What you highlighted made it easier for newcomers, which you supposedly aren’t.
But I guess you just saw this message and got triggered, having not even used the software.
see this wouldn't be a problem if every distro didn't insist on having gnome as the default and main DE
This is objectively false. Distros that care about choice and tinkering will allow you to select a DE during installation. See Arch Linux for example.
Except when I am forced to use a distro that only provides Gnome (looking at you RedHat).
Redhat doesn’t provide KDE rpms? That’s some dump shit
FFS, what is with this toxicity?
They aren't bad choices. They are choices that you don't like, but plenty of others do.
No it doesn't, because Gnome is completely customisable, and the devs encourage that through the extensions platform.
If you don't like Gnome, that's ok. You don't need to moan about it online and say it's shit. I don't like mushrooms. I don't moan about it, I don't say meals are bad for including them, and I don't tell people they're wrong for liking them.