this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Gnome I think is the best hope for mainstream adoption if that ever actually happens
Shows off a lot of the advantages of Linux desktop without needing to spend hours configuring it for it to look nice and work great
Maybe I'm missing some of the nuances between KDE and Gnome, but I've enjoyed the out of box experience with KDE far more than Gnome. That said, perhaps I've simply timed my switchover to Plasma such that I missed its teething pains. I say this as someone who used pretty much exclusively Gnome over the years.
What would you say sets Gnome apart?
The launcher is quite nice to use, fast and search oriented (I never used any of the start menu on windows besides the search bar anyway so the fact it's the main focus is nice)
Virtual desktops (only on Wayland) are very well implemented and feel very smooth, three finger swipe works a charm, with the forge extension it tiles servicably as well
Also just one of the nicest looking DEs imo. I have since switched to hyprland because I wanted first class tiling support but I have my system UI looking very similar to gnome's, using mostly gnome's applications
Having used gnome on Ubuntu a couple years ago I have to say it has come miles recently (also Ubuntu's gnome in my opinion is not as good as vanilla gnome) - it feels very clean and intuitive out of the box
The launcher is a fair point. Though for me at least, not having the spotlight-esque search hasn't been a problem. Appearance is an odd one, since the best part of Both Gnome and KDE is the wonderful flexibility in visual customizability. At the end of the day, I suppose I'd happily use either. Right now, I think Plasma's big features for me has to be window snapping and, once 6.0 releases, hopefully HDR support.
I don't think gnome is particularly customizable visually, you can change theme and use extensions if you really want to buy their main focus is making one really good UI and I've gotta respect that
At least in my opinion gnome looks far better than KDE out of the box, KDE just looks like windows to me
Gnome has fairly good window snapping as well I think and stuff like pop shell and forge for tiling
I feel for that the default Linux DE will need to have an UI closer to Windows, due to user familiarity with the traditional desktop metaphor. Maybe Cinnamon or even KDE are more suited in that respect. Neither need hours of configuring either. Personally, Cinnamon with Wayland support would be perfect for me (and I suspect a whole lot of Windows migrants as well).
Gnome is nice of course in it's own minimalist way for many,but the workflow is very different from other OSes and I think many find it too minimalist requiring extensions to improve usability therefore. However, there isn't a stable mechanism for extensions causing breakages between versions, which can be very irritating. I don't know if that's now changed now though, because I have been reading about a major change in the extension mechanism in Gnome 45.
I think that's what makes it great for newcomers though. If you show them something pretending to be windows they'll think why not just use windows, if you show them something better they might be more impressed
Coming from Windows gnome was pretty intuitive for me, it's got much of the same workflow still even if buttons are in different places
Gnome 3 is made to be like osx. Osx is popular in usa.
I think several DEs could see mainstream adoption.
If the team that works on Cinnamon got a little bit more manpower and were able to implement larger changes such as adopting Wayland, I think they'd have a chance. Wouldn't hurt to make the default theme a bit nicer too. I think the main thorn in Cinnamon's side is the development pace and the fact that it would probably be viewed by the average person on the street as a weird Windows clone.
Plasma's largest obstacle to mainstream adoption is bugs and instability, but in fairness it has improved a lot over the past couple of years. Seriously, compare 5.27 to any Plasma 4 release or any Plasma 5 release before like 5.16 - it's night and day. Kwin still crashes and takes all your programs down with it, though. That's a showstopper, but will be fixed in Plasma 6.
Speaking of Plasma 6, the fact they keep pushing it back probably means they want it stable from the beginning. KDE are doing a good job putting the "KDE is buggy" statement to bed.
I guess I agree that Gnome as it stands is the most appropriate for widespread adoption. It's extremely polished and beautiful, it has comparatively decent accessibility features, it's extremely stable despite being a frequently updating distro, it has amazing gesture support (better than MacOS even, imo), it's decent in terms of touch support, the GTK4/Libadwaita app ecosystem is healthy, etc. but it's not completely without issues.
Unfortunately this is all academic though until big laptop OEMs start actively pushing for Linux on their devices.
Counterpoint: I don't think any Linux DE will ever see mainstream adoption.
It has nothing to do with how good they are. It's not related to software support either. They could support every piece of software ever made; Linux supports 90% of games for Windows and emulators for dozens of other platforms and it still hasn't attracted more than like 2% of gamers.
It's related to what OP said: to gain mass adoption you need to put up with a lot of bullshit. It takes a company with some financial gain to do that, and paid developers. Volunteer contributors will eventually say "screw this" or go mental like Torvalds.
There's no company that can do this. They tried and failed, because Microsoft. Apple and Google had to create their own platforms from scratch to get away from it.
What! I missed Linus going crazy¿? When did this happen¿? Do you have any videos¿?
ChromeOS is Linux, and it has pretty decent penetration.
And I know what you're going to say: "But ChromeOS isn't proper Linux". But it's a desktop OS based on Gentoo, built on the Linux kernel and, GNU coreutils and bash (although not GCC, as far as anyone can tell). It certainly has all the hallmarks of being GNU/Linux (or something very close to it).
The fact that it doesn't really resemble any "mainstream" Linux distro is kind of the point. It's a locked down corporate product with a minimalist front-end locked into a bunch of commercial web services, and that's exactly the kind of device that sells volumes.
Mainstream Linux is a tough sell. It was a tough sell 15 years ago when PCs were still the king of personal computing. In the post-smartphone, post-iPad world which we're in now, we have to accept that that's never going to be the device your grandma uses to check her email.
Plenty of Linux distros aren't just volunteer-based, and are instead made and supported by for-profit companies. Red Hat/Fedora is made by the big blue, IBM themselves; it doesn't get much bigger than that. Ubuntu, SUSE, Manjaro, all for-profit commercial outfits. None of these are failures, it's just that their products aren't targeting the market for cheap commercial laptops. You can buy Ubuntu preloaded on a laptop from Dell or Lenovo, but they're targeting IT professionals and data scientists and people who work with Linux servers. Or they're targeting fleet deployments of 100s of devices in municipal organisations. There's a good market there, it's just a different market.
100% agreed. I'm only talking about what I think is the most likely in some fantasy land where manufacturers start pushing various distros/DEs.
In reality it wouldn't happen unless a behemoth or a coalition of hardware OEMs put significant money into making it happen.
But that file picker though
What's wrong with it? I'm currently using nautilus as my file browser on hyprland and it's more than servicably
I don't really use a file browser that much anyway so I might not be the best person to comment though. Tend to find it quicker and easier to move files around from a terminal then any file browser for everything except choosing a file for something
Tbh there’s been a known issue for like 10+ years where the file picker doesn’t allow for gallery/thumbnail viewing, or really any kind of file list viewing options aside from the absolute basic file list. So like if you’re someone who is uploading images to a website, hope ya named the files in a very specific way cause wooooh. XD
Above anything else, that was the primary reason I switched to KDE Plasma.
https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme
Apparently this did actually get fixed somewhat recently but my distro doesn’t seem to have the fix yet so 🤷
If that's the only reason for switching couldn't you just install kde's file browser on gnome though? Or any file browser for that matter I don't think it forces you into Nautilus
I tried that but flatpack apps kept using the Gnome file picker anyway, there were some flags for some of them to change it but having to do that for each app felt like too much of a pain ^^;
I think you might just need to set your xdg default no?
They absolutely do not. Their UX is based on actual usability studies, rather than just copying the Win95 UX paradigm.
You should look it up, it's actually quite interesting.The attention to detail and the thought process of pretty much every UI element is pretty crazy.
Gnome is amazing so long as you're not trying to use it like Windows. It's not Windows. It's not trying to be.
If you want to use Linux with a Windows UX, then use Plasma or Cinnamon.
Personally I find it quite refreshing to have a different choice, and IMO it's worked out better. Even when I use Plasma, I now get rid of the taskbar/panel, use the activities view, etc. change it to the Gnome workflow, in effect.
It's childish to call a UX bad just because you personally like things to work like Windows.
If you're just going to make up blatant lies then I'm not even going to engage with you. Nobody ever said that, or anything like it. Nor is the statement before that true, either.
Oh no, a bar. At the top. That's not how Windows does it! I don't like it!
I don't want a tiny slim bar that gives me the Activities button, workspace indicator, workspace switcher, date, time, calendar drop down, notifications, media control, volume control, battery level, quick settings, etc. what I really need is this bar, that I've already said is "blocking my view" to be 3x thicker and constantly show me what I have open, despite me already knowing they're open, because I opened them, and they're right in front of me.
Look, if you prefer the Win95 UX paradigm, good for you. Have a gold star ⭐. Lots of people do, it's what people are used to. There's nothing wrong with using it.
But guess what? Not everyone wants the Win95 UX. To me, it seems archaic, clunky, the workflow is bad, it wastes space, it looks bad, and constantly makes me fight the DE whenever I have to use it.
Pretty sure he was just making fun of the guy complaining about the top bar