I know Gnome is the default on popular distros: Fedora, Ubuntu, Rhel, Pop OS (it’s Cosmic Desktop yes but it is still based on Gnome)…etc. But Gnome just doesnt work for me. I would pick XFCE - stable and no BS.
Before Manjaro and their cetificate shenanigan, I used to use their XFCE version. At the time, it was marketed as the “Flagship Manjaro version”. I went 4 years without any problems and I did tinker a lot, just couldnt get their XFCE to break.
After a tough Arch or Gentoo installs, I just want to put XFCE on and call it a day.
What about you guys?
GNOME is a lightly upgraded MacOS interface. Every time I’ve had to use a Mac has pissed me off so GNOME gives me war flashbacks.
Not necessarily the DE’s fault but ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Gives me more Windows 8 flashbacks than Mac.
An interface that works well on touchscreens, but feels clunky on mouse and keyboard and the general theming of it looks more phone like than a desktop PC. Gnome itself being harder to theme doesn’t help with that.
That being said I’d pick Gnome over all else for touch devices. I threw it on an old Surface 3 and it worked better than the original Win8 interface.
I agree it looks kind of like a phone. But, and take this with a big grain of salt because I didn’t use Gnome for very long at all, I thought it was really nice to navigate. I ended up using the mouse much less than I do now with Cinnamon.
Ok.
But, in Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, all three of which I work in regularly, I open up a terminal and type stuff in it, open up applications in windows and work in them, and copy and paste between them.
Really, any DE can handle this stuff. Not sure what all the fuss is about otherwise. But it’s all good.