cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/43631736
Gnome Slander Rules
this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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What's wrong with gnome?
Literally the only foundation that made Linux usable, stable, unified and customizable.
Yeah it is barebones and extensions can't really fully supercustomize it, but it does its job pretty well.
you're at the whims of devs that DO NOT take user feedback at all. so it's a very opinionated DE. If you're not using GNOME the way the devs intend you to use it, then you shouldn't be using it according to them. so it kinda goes against the grain of Linux as a whole which is all about a custom user experience. GNOME says no to that idea.
None of this would be bad if the devs also didn't think that they should be the default Linux desktop. It's one thing having a constrictive desktop environment that forces you into its way of doing things. I can see that actually being useful in a corporate setting. But to borderline-force that on everyone by way of defaultism, especially those who don't know better, is where it crosses a line.
I wouldn't blame GNOME for being the default environment. They're the default because GNOME is stable, and their apps have a coherent design language. It's a very approachable platform. Their app names are boring, but they're self-explanatory.
KDE on the other hand is still decently unstable. Last time I had KDE crash on me when doing nothing but opening the panel edit view was literally last week. The application UX is a bit all over the place, and a lot of them feel like they were "made by developers." The naming scheme is the olden cutesy KDE/Linux naming scheme, which is charming but feels pretty alien when you're new to it.
People actually use DE browsers these days? /gen
Konqueror was useful while it was still KHTML.
If the OS comes with that only, then sure I can see how someone might use it. This is hardly a common occurrence though.
Controversial choices made by devs against most userbase mostly in the name of semplicity at the cost of usability.
Lately they've updated Nautilus's "open with" menu, which was working fine, to libadwaita and now it lacks search, so I must scroll through a long list of apps. Or other stuff like that which breaks retro-compatibility like no one cares (why do I need extensions and a custom theme by a random dude to make gtk3 not look alien next to gtk4?). Poor extensions developers must convert their extensions every six months.
I'm still on it because I like its apps' UX and Plasma still feels unpolished. But I think that's just a matter of time, given how things are going on.
gnome dumbed itself down too far, it's turning into the win10 or 11 of linux--with features, basic features.. expected features and functions, now missing.. and the bland ui that makes it difficult to even see a damn window border without customizing tf out of it. i do not subscribe to their idea of one workspace per window or application. fk that.
the only thing that was keeping it on a few systems here was an extension. one not even made by them. i found an equivalent kwin script for plasma. starting switching stuff over the next day.
i won't go back. and i've found that gtk and libadwaita stuff actually looks better on kde, anyway. so no change in what i'm using, just what everything runs from.
i might still put gnome on for others, if all they're looking for is a dumbed-down, simple launcher for their browser--like an alternative to chromebook, but that's it.
Agreed. GNOME's simply too opinionated for my taste. Imagine not having something as simple as autostart app configuration in 2026. You need a (first-party?) app for that? For basic functionality? Disgusting.
What? How?
I mean , you could add its UX as a criticism too, but it's also the whole point of Gnome3 is to be ... whatever the fuck it is they are going for. OpenSource mac+? Plasma feels unpolished because its plain and unassuming, and you form it into what you want it to be.
Also it gets funky with multi monitors, so I have widgets getting scaled randomly on the 2d monitor, and have
kquitapp6 plasmashell && kstart plasmashellbound to an alias
The project is filled with "my way or the highway" types. They've generally held back Wayland development by not implementing a bunch of APIs everybody else wanted. GTK especially with libadwaita is very hostile to theming, leading to worse experiences on other desktops.
It literally isn't.
It's barebones AND heavyweight. People would except only one or another.
That's because Gnome knows best.
I really like using gnome DE. No software is perfect, and no user interface will suit everyone's user case though.
The gnome project however has some members that are quite opinionated to the point of being hostile to any criticism or even just opposing opinions.
Gnome is great.
Most Linux users can't deal with every single project not prioritizing customization. Gnome having a unique workflow (which is a great one) is unbearable for some reason.
I am not gonna place the full blame on the Linux community though. Gnome started out way more customizable, so maybe that suddenly getting pulled from underneath Gnome users so inconsiderately gave it a bad reputation.
Then they went and did absurd things with libadwaita to not only stop supporting customization, but actively interfere with people's choices of customizing Gnome and libadwaita apps so apps ~"are viewed and used as intended by their developers, and people don't accidentally break apps and complain to the devs" (i.e. Bullshit).
I really can't see how. It's popular and user friendly, but I can't seriously give it that much importance.
For me at least: It just serves to show that Linux UIs can be clean, consistent, and user friendly. Which might pull in funding from companies and governments looking for a good UI to mass deploy.
But if it didn't exist, Plasma would've eventually filled that vacuum.
WDYM Libadwaita is not customizable? Libadwaita is the most customizable UI lib I would say. You literally fan just change every part of any app through css and call it a day.
Unlike QT slop - literally fuck ton of inconsistency. And if you don't like classic Breeze - good luck. Because Kirigami makes it impossible to customize QT apps at all.
Ah yes, comparing shit to shit. Although there's basically no other choice anymore...
Anyways, I once tried removing the profile pictures in Dino. That's it. Sounds like a great idea, with the best of intentions. After poking around, found that GTK literally has devtools like a web browser, albeit a bit more annoying to use. Found that there's is a "hidden" checkbox, if I check that it hides all profile pictures. Great, I thought. Then tried CSS:
Gave up, found the relevant docs after going through a bunch of useless ones, and all of the rules fit on one page. None of them remove a fucking element. And that's because none of these are meant for the user (have you met the average Gn*me user?). And basically all of them have native counterparts anyway, so they are just an illusion of choice to the developers, too.
I haven't tried doing it in a while, but I remember it being very difficult to change themes beyond tint and colors, with lots of apps having custom colors not in the pallet used in the "gtk.css" file.
Just as you mentioned, GNOME is not very welcoming to deep customization. You either use it the dev-intended way, or you don't use it at all.
If you like the default GNOME way of doing things, it's alright. If you don't - no amount of extensions will help.
And it all would be fine if GNOME wouldn't be the default on quite a few distros, including, most importantly, Ubuntu. New users come from Windows, hear the old advice to just "go Ubuntu" and meet an absolutely horrible and unintuitive experience unlike everything they ever touched. This alone made Linux some bad rep.
Not to mention Gnome is monolithic, so any bug will immediately crash the whole desktop. Other than basically any other desktop compositor, window manager and desktop environment are tightly intertwined, so any extension (which still monkey-patch code directly into gnome-shell) can utterly break the whole thing to the point you don't have a graphical interface anymore.
Compared to KDE, Cinnamon and others (who can have their whole desktop crash without taking any applications with it as long as the window manager etc. and drivers remain unaffected, usually trying to restart the DE and spawn e.g. Dr Konqi) Gnome loves to be unstable because of this. If Gnome crashes it takes everything with a GUI with it.
Been using gnome for years, literally cannot remember a single time the entirety of gnome crashed.
I've used gnome tweaks for a long time as well.
Whereas everytime I've tried to use a custom KDE theme of some kind, some part of it is broken in some fun new extremely specific way that I did not know KDE could be broken in.
Barebones π€£ π€£
Not even a little. GTFO. Flux is barebones, LXDE and LXQT, maybe XFCE but gnome? π bloated DE for touchscreens