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.

  • OldFartPhil@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    A qualified yes. I love the overview, which is, IMO, the most elegant way to launch applications and manage workspaces of any OS or DE. I also love the general look and fluidity of the environment and how it gets out out of your way when you don’t need it. But I preferred the pre-GNOME 40 vertical workflow to the new horizontal workflow.

    There are also three must-have extensions that make GNOME usable for me:

    • AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support. GNOME can wish away tray icons if they want to, but the tray hasn’t gone away and is still necessary for some applications.
    • DashToDock. Makes app switching more accessible and adds right-click to close.
    • Gnome 4x UI Improvements. Increases the size of the workspace thumbnails so you can actually see what’s in them (like it was before GNOME 40).