GNOME June 2024: C'mon you can do better

wolf , 6 days ago

Wait - Gnome user here (heavily modified and with multiple extensions) …

macOS window management and trying to using it via keyboard is a totally miserable experience (forced to use it at work :-/ ) … at the same time, Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags. I still happily prefer Gnome over macOS on my desktop for literally everything, macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings, setup cannot be properly automated, the ‘auto features’ totally suck and do everything I do not want them to do and macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Gnome sucks, but it sucks less for me than all other alternatives on the desktop at the moment…

My biggest reason to stick with Gnome are Wayland, Evolution/Online Accounts and that I can automatically configure Gnome to something usable with dconf/gsettings. I am not holding my breath that KDE ever gets their KMail story under control, stability as in zero crashes and being fully configurable via Ansible. The very moment this happens, I’ll happily jump ship. (Of course also waiting for Wayland support for Xfce :-P)

TCB13 OP , 6 days ago

Apple thinks their users are smart enough to use tags, while Gnome developers think the user are too dump to use tags

Isn’t this ironic? The DE with a user base that is way more tech savvy people thinks users can’t use tags.

macOS has no proper software management, all apps try to up-sell me on their shitty i-cloud offerings,

What are you talking about?? At least on macOS app icons are consistent not the crap they are on GNOME.

macOS (…) setup cannot be properly automated

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Apple makes automated setup even easier than it is on MS ecosystems, companies can literally buy a computer on the Apple Store and have it shipped to an employee with the companie’s profile pre-installed by Apple without even needing to touch or open the box. The employee get’s the computer, opens the box and just has to login with this corporate account.

You’ve Apple’s own MDM, Jamf, JumpCloud and so many others. Even Ansible can be used to configure, setup and automated macOS deployments.

macOS feels too slow for the hardware it runs on…

Well at least it doesn’t like a 5 second pointless fade animation after every single click like GNOME does, nor does it bundle web technologies for theming that make the DE be as slow as it can get when it comes to rendering a new window.

wolf , 6 days ago

I wish the thing about tags was ironic

Concerning the rest of your points: Icons are one of the few things I never had an issue with in Gnome. ;-)

Concerning automated setups, the only system I care fore is Linux and am forced to use macOS. For my use cases, I don’t care about the tooling/possibilities for companies to install crap on my machine (my company does that). Using Ansible to automate my setup for macOS is theoretically possible, but such a crappy experience compared to Linux, that I don’t bother. Not to mention no unified installation/update system on macOS and the shitty default apps like Finder, Window management etc. The solution which sucks the least for me is using macOS as dump VPN driver for my virtual Linux box, so I can get shit done.

… no need to argue about bad Gnome defaults, it is trivial to disable all animations and the shell is fast enough even on my netbook. :-)

TCB13 OP , 5 days ago

it is trivial to disable all animations

Yeah you can go into settings and toggle of a switch, however they don’t disable everything. ~

Whenever you go into Settings > Accessibility > Enable Animations and disable it one would expect that ALL animations would be disabled while in fact they aren’t. It should behave like Xfce that is, click on something and get the instant result, no delay, no very small animation / fade like GNOME still does.

Bottom line: that option in GNOME is misleading and doesn’t do what it advertises.

possiblylinux127 , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

Gnome is so much better than Mac OS

Also it is kind of insulting to call gnome a clone of something else. It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.

MonkderDritte , 5 days ago

It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.

There’s a lot of ideology at play here.

possiblylinux127 , 5 days ago

Yeah you are right. It just annoys me when people call it a cheap knock off.

Dariusmiles2123 , 6 days ago

I’ve only spent a few hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro which was still running Catalina (now Fedora) back in the days, and I didn’t think Gnome and MacOs were so similar.

To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.

But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.

I don’t have a lot of experience with other DE on Linux, but they lack the clean aesthetic of Gnome.

TCB13 OP , 5 days ago

To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.

Just because you aren’t used to the macOS workflow it doesn’t mean it is bad - that’s the same argument you GNOME fan boys do with Windows users ;)

But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.

Yes, it’s okay, and that was never an issue in this discussion. The issue is that they didn’t took enough inspiration on basic UX patterns.

Dariusmiles2123 , 5 days ago

Well what I meant is that if Gnome was taking so much inspiration from MacOs, being a Gnome user, I wouldn’t have felt lost on MacOS.

I also don’t mind Gnome taking what’s great from every other OS, as it’d clearly be stupid not to if an idea is great.

I also think that people should be more open minded about what others are enjoying. I prefer Linux, but I can also understand that some people just want to have the most compatible OS with everything, aka Windows. Or the best ecosystem, aka Apple.

It is not my choice, and I’m trying to convince people to switch to something else, but just badmouthing their choice when it has objectively some advantages isn’t gonna help.

ProgrammingSocks , 6 days ago

Who gives a shit. Use the desktop you like. Don’t post this /g/ tier bait.

orca , 5 days ago

These are pretty standard UI patterns.

TCB13 OP , 5 days ago

Your point being…?

Darkraisisi , 5 days ago

If it is standard design, it is not targeting iOS. That is his point.

AndrewZabar , 5 days ago

His point is that you have no point.

TCB13 OP , 5 days ago

My point is: if you want to copy / be inspired by others at least do it right.

AndrewZabar , 5 days ago

So, copying is making something identical. But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.

Ever hear of two things just being similar? We are talking about a UI - these things have always followed patterns that change as usage patterns change in the industry. I think you must be young and/or inexperienced because this kind of trend goes back to the ‘80s.

TCB13 OP , 5 days ago

But something that’s different would rationally be called not copying, whereas you categorize it as poor copying. Interesting.

I would categorize it as poor copying because the copy doesn’t conform to the design / UX patterns that were present on the “original” work.

sunzu , 5 days ago

Bro... There is but so many ways to effectively organize something basic like that jfc.

Best or standard practice, ever heard of the concept?

dayna , 6 hours ago

Looks nice to me. Basing design decisions on contrarianism is silly. If you don’t like it that’s alright. Disliking it because it looks like something else that also looks good is silly.