Yes, I thrive in it.

I like it, even though I’m not sure if I would the GNOME official workflow (is that even a thing?). I usually don’t get close to having 10 applications open. I tend to work with about 1 to 3 workspaces with various applications based on my needs. Furthermore, I keep the windows non-maximized which helps me condense more information yone screen

Nope, not even a little bit. That’s why I use Cinnamon

Yes. I don’t use workspaces. Alt-Tab, and Alt-“above tab” is enough to me. And you can always super, first chars of the app name, enter.

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 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 don’t like it, I use plasma. Workspaces are great through, I just have my system. Terminal is space 2, browser space 3, communication space 4 and so on

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

Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.

Alt+Tab or Super+Tab is your friend. Surely you dont have 10 workspace for 10 windows. Also probably just dont isolate Alt+Tab for each workspace.

How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.

GNOME panel definitely takes significantly less space than KDE or Windows takbar. Also at least me, even on Windows I barely click taskbar icon to switch window, alt+tab is faster

But everything is each for their own. If vanilla GNOME doesnt work for you, just install extension or move to another DE. Cheers!

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

Yes, I like the default workflow. I always have particular applications on the same workspaces, and I close them as I need to. Sometimes I have multiple, usually a maximum of two on one workspace, because I can ALT+TAB through them. I like that the top bar is uncluttered. I don’t use the dock at all, but Activity Overview is sometimes useful. I can operate the desktop completely with my keyboard. It’s also very minimal without too many options, and it looks pretty. I find it very usable.

The only annoying thing was needing to manually create shortcuts inside of dconf for workspaces 5-10. I really don’t know why they force you to do that…

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.

Yes, I love it! Really it’s the MacOS-like “Expose” feature that I find to be essential.

I would advise against using workspaces though, I find those actually sort of go against the core idea of it IMO. There are a few things I’d really like added to it, but for the most-part when you get into it it’s great.

My main desktop I have 4 monitors (I know, but once you start a monitor habit it’s really hard to not push it to the limit - this is only the beginning!) It roughly breaks down into:

Primary work (usually a full-screen editor)

Terminals (different windows, some for the project, some monitoring)

Browsers - documentation, various services, my own code output

Communication - signal, discord, what’s app (ugh), etc.

The key, literally, is you just press the Super key and boom, you can see everything and if you want to interact with something it’s all available in just one click or a few of key presses away.

On my laptop with just one screen, I find it equally invaluable, and is actually where I started to use it the most - once again, just one press of Super and I can see all the applications I have open and quickly select one or launch something.

It’s replaced Alt + Tab for me - and I know they’ve made that better, and added Super + Tab, but none of them are as good as just pressing Super.

The things I’d really love added to it are:

• Better tiling (including quarter tiling). It’s a sad state of affairs when Windows has far better tiling than Gnome.
• Super then Search, I’d like it to filter the windows it’s showing and shrink/hide the others, along with a simple way to choose one using the keyboard.
• Rather than having an icon for each window, I also want the tooltip information to always be shown (e.g. vs code project) and for standard apps to expose better information for that (e.g. Gnome Terminal to expose its prompt/pwd) and/or have a specific mechanism by which apps could communicate.
• Adding Quicksilver-like functionality to the launcher/search would be amazing. e.g.
  • Super
  • Sp… (auto-populates Spotify)
  • Tab
  • P… (auto-populates Play/Pause)
  • Return
• Session restoration - it just doesn’t work at the moment for some reason. Some apps do, some don’t. Some go to their correct position/size, some don’t.

Yes, I do

I’m not really using “vanilla” GNOME since I have a number of extensions, but the only one that really modifies the workflow is Tray Icons: Reloaded.

That said, while it’s definitely not for everyone, I’m very comfortable with it. I like that everything feels “out of my way” unless I need it, and I find the Activities view to be easier for finding a minimized program at a glance than a taskbar.

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. 🤣

BTW there was a nice idea behind the only close button in early GNOME 3. Apps were intended to save the state on exit, so one doesn’t need to minimize windows, they can close it and reopen at any time and see the exact content of a window. But GNOME completely has failed to deliver that idea.

What makes things worse, there was no clear way to keep apps on the background when the main window is closed. It was seemed as antifeature. But that was a different world where weren’t so much of internet service applications running on the background 24h a day. Now there is a background portal but with quite minimal support in the DE.

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.

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.

I personally find Gnome works best on Laptops using the Touch pad with its Gesture controlls. But yeah there are things like the missing application tray that can be annoying which can only be added with extensions. Which is annoying again. So pure Gnome is the bare minimum and can work, but with extensions it can bekomm extremely good. In my opinion.

I recently disabled Dash to Panel, and installed Pop Shell. I'm loving it so far, using my Trackpad gestures from switching between workspaces. Granted, I don't really need more than 3 or 4 desktops (Browser, Terminal, Messaging...) and it's not quite vanilla as I have Pop Shell managing tiling for me (but still pretty close!). I also need to try it with my "docked" workflow, using an external monitor and keyboard shortcuts (as opposed to trackpad gestures).

Since I spend 90% of the time in a terminal window or development environment, I find GNOME works fine for my needs (Ubuntu). I generally just use whatever desktop environment comes with a distro. The days of me wanting to spend time tweaking the Linux environment are long gone. I just want it to function to support the actual work I am trying to accomplish.

I like GNOME better with extensions. My main reason for using it is Wayland.

Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in

I think a big part of the problem is Gnome’s limitation of a 1-dimensional workspace list. I don’t think I’d be able to use that many workspaces in a flat list, Gnome/Mac style, though I find a 4x2 grid of workspaces manageable. But of course I use a DE that has options. :)

and which hotkey you have each application set to.

I wonder if this is also part of the issue. If you’re arranging windows spatially across workspaces, it seems antithetical to use shortcuts to skip directly to one window or the other vs. moving through workspaces. Again, quickly navigating workspaces spatially is easy when your workspaces can be arranged into rows, and not just as a single long list.

Me on both desktop and PC, but I don’t think I’ve had 10 windows open at any one time tbh. Or that any particular DE would perform significantly better if you really needed to work with 10 windows simultaneously. That’s a problem I would fix with additional monitors.

I would also have windows snapped to half screens on the workspaces, so I really only need 5 workspaces. Considering I have a 3 monitor setup at home, I don’t think I’ll have too much of a problem since I can have 6 windows up at once.

I love gnome Click activities, go to the screen you want, click the program you want… so simple what you are on about man.

I tried using it multiple times over the years, including for multiple months on my laptop at one point, but couldn’t get myself to accept it. Even with extensions, I couldn’t accept many of the weird design decisions.

It always felt to me like the Gnome designers wanted to create a combination of Windows 8 Metro and Mac OS: The shittiest Windows UI ever combined with the ergonomics of Mac OS (which is foreign to Windows users) and the lack of customizability of Apple products. Hyper optimized for touch screens even though most Linux users are on a mouse&keyboard or laptop. Even the Steam Deck’s desktop mode is perfectly usuable despite KDE not being as optimized for touch as Gnome.

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 without trying to understand the vanilla workflow - I used to be one of them until I tried vanilla for about 3 months.

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.

I just started to like GNOME. It used to be terrible and I’m getting to that phase where I just want things to work. Vanilla GNOME is good enough. Only thing I really change is Dock from Dash, where dock shows up on hover and hides otherwise. My opinion is that should be default.