this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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No it isn't, you can't say that when it lacks desktop icons. Look I'm happy and thankful for their efforts but Linux is all about customization, if they don't want desktop icons cause it goes against their view they can still have a checkbox to enable them. They had this in the past and then removed it.
I think there is a disconnect in what you call a feature and what is a design decision. GNOME consciously deviated from the "desktop" paradigm. I'm not saying that's a good thing or everyone has to like it but this is what they did. I'm not trying to nitpick here but I think it's important to see what is actually happening here, desktop icons are not being worked on not because they hate the users and are lazy in implementing things but because there is no traditional desktop. The overall GNOME UI is not made along this line of implementation, instead it has the activities view. Again, I'm not saying you have to like this and maybe it's a dumb way to make a UI, idk, but criticizing it for not having desktop icons is like criticizing MacOS for not having a start menu. It's just not made that way.
I think quite a big problem with KDE that they are also trying to break away from is making the UI resemble too much of Windows. New users then will expect things to behave exactly like Windows when it just can't. That doesn't mean that there are missing features necesserally but that things are implemented differently and the uninitiated user should know that from a first glance.
Overall I get the sentiment. GNOME is different and needs getting used to and does not fit all workflows out of the box. It has missing features that I wish would be implemented but overall I like the direction they took. It's new, different and after a couple of weeks of adjusting I really gotten to like it. I don't really miss desktop icons because I haven't used them in Windows anyway, I personally like to launch my programs from the start menu/app launcher.
GNOME always has looked like a cheap copy of macOS. Until version 3.28 they had the desktop icons and later on they also decided to hide the "dash" under the "activities" menu. I call this "a feature" because it was effectively something that existed and was removed.
Well they don't need, Microsoft itself seems to be more than happy to obliterate the start menu and so on on... Windows 8, now Windows 11... you know that old saying Microsoft does a good version of windows and always makes a very bad one right after.
The think with the desktop as Microsoft and Apple are doing it is that it people are familiar with them, they've years of UI/UX research of development and they're the most effective way of designing a desktop. What GNOME is pushing for here, as you said, is some kind of half hassled DE that takes a few ideas from crippled mobile OSes that ironically have some kind of desktop icons (iOS and Android home screens). Unfortunately for them GNOME has close to zero expression in the mobile market and even if it did the rest of their UI isn't designed to be workable on a touch screen.
I've been using GNOME with a touchscreen folding laptop and it's been pretty comfy. I honestly like GNOME's implementation of optimizing the UI for touch input more than Windows 10's half assed approach. I tried Windows 11 but don't have much experience with it to comment on that.
But I wouldn't say that making an OS UI is a solved problem. Microsoft for example with it's billions of dollars of R&D routinely messes up as you mentioned, still can't get rid of old holdovers from Windows 7 and just generally degrading it's UX with every new version.
GNOME surely has a lot more common with MacOS but I wouldn't say that's bad thing. Apple is the industry leader in seamless UX design after all. For it being a cheap knock-off, I let everyone to decide that but it is quite literally free. Doesn't get much cheaper than that 😅
I've been famoboying a lot for GNOME in this thread but I really think there is a lot of room for improvements. I guess I'm just more optimistic about the project, especially after the last couple of releases.
Don't take me the wrong way, I also use and prefer GNOME to KDE and others but I'm using a ton of tweaks like the desktop icons, arch menu and dash to panel. If I ignore the usual lag that comes with having your DE themes written in CSS things mostly work out. As I said the sad thing about 3rd party tweaks is that their integration with the rest of the system isn't always the best.
I simply don't get all the fuzz they do about trying not to be a copy of Windows/macOS when those systems have good solutions. Why not simply copy all features 1:1 and save the effort of doing UI research / trying out thing?