I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it’s just not good.
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.
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.
Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?
I’d love to hear from people that use it and thrive in it.
I like it, even though I’m not sure if I would call it 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
Mhmm. It feels great while I’m up to 3 workspaces. It just gets sketch when you have, an IDE + browser + pdf reader for documentation + one or two communication apps + a drawing board + … you get the idea.
Yes. With many windows open but 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.
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.
I would advise against using workspaces […] My main desktop I have 4 monitors
Hahaha, figures. I mostly only use my laptop monitor, and absolutely depend on workspaces in everything I do. I rarely have more than four open, but I really like that it’s flexible.
For me the default Gnome workflow is fantastic. I feel like there are always two quick ways of doing anything I want, either with touch pad gestures or with the keyboard depending on situation. I get frustrated trying to use anything else.
I did start with it and use it on a laptop, honestly I think that’s where it shines the most - but I guess the more windows you open the less useful it becomes. I think if there was a way to do the expose-like “view all things at once” (Super key) that worked across all workspaces, I’d be all over them. But as there’s no easy way to live view everything on all workspaces, I just don’t use them.
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. Still, juggling 10 bloody windows is going to be annoying whether it’s GNOME or not.
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+TABthrough 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 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).
I like GNOME better with extensions. My main reason for using it is Wayland.
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. 🤣
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.
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.
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.
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 think it’s some kind of modern UX design philosophy; Remove everything except the most basic features to make it less confusing for computer illiterate users. Then label the rest of the features as “advanced” and either hide them behind some menus or in a separate program. Obviously that doesn’t mean that everybody who likes Gnome and similarly designed software is computer illiterate, but it’s difficult to make one glove that fits all. Kind of like those failed experiments to make a unified OS for desktops, tablets and phones…
When Gnome 3 was announced I thought it was cool that they tried something new, and I really wanted to like it. I’ve given it a couple of more chances over the years, to see if it has changed more to my liking, but after a few weeks of use I always replace it with something else… The way the UX is designed just reminds me too much of what I dislike about Windows. Having to use dconf editor to change settings feels just like being forced to use regedit.
Firefox also tried to go down this road IMO, but have reverted some of the worst changes and can be made almost to my liking with the help of extensions. Personally I like Vivaldi better but I think it’s important to keep Firefox alive so that Chromium/Blink doesn’t get complete monopoly.
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 first without trying to understand the vanilla workflow - I used to be one of them until I tried vanilla for about 3 months.
I feel like vanilla GNOME is intentionally a barbones common workflow, and that extensions are how you customize to fit your needs.
For example, I often switch between desktop speakers and headphones (where the dongle is always connected), and sometimes other audio devices. I installed the sound input/output chooser so I don’t have to go into Settings every time I need to switch inputs. It saves me multiple clicks. But I get that not everyone needs immediate access to change audio devices, so why clutter the UI?
I’ve used both vanilla GNOME and the post-Unity Ubuntu spin on it. In either case I’ve grown accustomed to the Activities screen, quickly accessing it pressing the Super key, and using it to switch windows and manage full screen apps on different monitors.
I feel that way about the default GNOME apps as well, they all provide the basic functionality that most users need, since specialist users would install specialist apps anyway.
One extension I won’t install is dash-to-dock or similar (I know some people like it and that’s fine), because being made to switch to the Activities view once you have too many windows to alt+tab between provides a useful psychological prompt to close unused windows or move stuff to other workspaces. That’s one of the things I most like about the GNOME workflow.
What, is there no system tray? What was wrong with the system tray??
I use Dash to Panel to show taskbar icons for running applications, with the topbar moved to a sidebar to save valuable vertical real estate: https://imgur.com/tc0IbuM.png
I use the Workspaces Indicator extension to keep track of which one I’m in, but I use workspaces to focus on specific tasks using groups of applications… not an individual workspace for each application. I normally only have one or two workspaces in use.
I disable the Activities button and Overview completely, with the Super key opening the Applications View directly.
I previously used Arc Menu to replace the Applications View, but dropped that when they added folders to the Application View. It’s still a bit clunky, but it’s usable now that is supports some minimal organization.
