Gregory's Server
it's really awful seeing how badly GNOME really fucked itself up in the transition to GNOME 3
deciding that the desktop environment that people have been using for years is just not a good design anymore and that it needs to be completely revamped is a baffling decision to me. i understand wanting to modernize, but completely changing everything about your desktop is really just a shitty choice to make
although, perhaps i'd be less hostile towards it if the default modern GNOME experience wasn't a complete joke. there are some absolutely baffling omissions, like no window list, only being able to maximize by double clicking on a window header or by dragging it to the top of the screen, not being able to minimize windows without accessing a right click menu, being over reliant on what's essentially the windows 8 start screen's distant cousin, among other issues. lots of important settings like *turning on the maximize/minimize buttons* aren't in the GNOME settings app, requiring a secondary GNOME tweaks app to change. people joke about windows having two settings programs, but GNOME does as well, and it's just as annoying to deal with.
most of the issues i have can be solved with extensions, but using them causes a whole bunch of other issues. locking basic functionality like having an applications menu and having a dock or panel behind extensions is completely asinine. extensions are handled through the GNOME extensions app, which basically just ends up being a third settings app. i really don't see why a separate app needed to be made in the first place, it was originally part of GNOME tweaks and i don't really see the problem there. apparently a lot of changes made to GNOME were to make it easier for new users to figure out, but installing extensions to add functionality they'd expect is going to be much more confusing for a new user than just having it available. this is made even worse by the fact that lots of extensions don't even work on certain GNOME versions, so you need to hunt for a version that works with your GNOME version. it's really unintuitive and annoying.
there's also GNOME classic, which is meant to be more GNOME 2 like, having two panels at the top and bottom of the screen. i don't understand why they haven't bothered to just remove this, because it feels completely pointless. you're not able to edit the panels at all, so if you want to do something like get rid of the workspace viewer, you're out of luck. in comparison, MATE is also made to look like GNOME 2, but its panels allow for much more customization. also, all of the applications are still using GTK4 and look modern, so it's really not even a very "classic" experience.
overall, GNOME doesn't know who it's trying to appeal to. it claims it's meant to be intuitive and user friendly, and yet it has very confusing design choices which will frustrate new users. it's baffling that people actively choose to use it. i typically criticize ubuntu for a lot of things, but at least canonical was smart enough to actually install a bunch of extensions by default in order to make it actually feasible for daily use. it's absolutely bizarre to me that someone would actively choose to use GNOME when much better options exist.
deciding that the desktop environment that people have been using for years is just not a good design anymore and that it needs to be completely revamped is a baffling decision to me. i understand wanting to modernize, but completely changing everything about your desktop is really just a shitty choice to make
although, perhaps i'd be less hostile towards it if the default modern GNOME experience wasn't a complete joke. there are some absolutely baffling omissions, like no window list, only being able to maximize by double clicking on a window header or by dragging it to the top of the screen, not being able to minimize windows without accessing a right click menu, being over reliant on what's essentially the windows 8 start screen's distant cousin, among other issues. lots of important settings like *turning on the maximize/minimize buttons* aren't in the GNOME settings app, requiring a secondary GNOME tweaks app to change. people joke about windows having two settings programs, but GNOME does as well, and it's just as annoying to deal with.
most of the issues i have can be solved with extensions, but using them causes a whole bunch of other issues. locking basic functionality like having an applications menu and having a dock or panel behind extensions is completely asinine. extensions are handled through the GNOME extensions app, which basically just ends up being a third settings app. i really don't see why a separate app needed to be made in the first place, it was originally part of GNOME tweaks and i don't really see the problem there. apparently a lot of changes made to GNOME were to make it easier for new users to figure out, but installing extensions to add functionality they'd expect is going to be much more confusing for a new user than just having it available. this is made even worse by the fact that lots of extensions don't even work on certain GNOME versions, so you need to hunt for a version that works with your GNOME version. it's really unintuitive and annoying.
there's also GNOME classic, which is meant to be more GNOME 2 like, having two panels at the top and bottom of the screen. i don't understand why they haven't bothered to just remove this, because it feels completely pointless. you're not able to edit the panels at all, so if you want to do something like get rid of the workspace viewer, you're out of luck. in comparison, MATE is also made to look like GNOME 2, but its panels allow for much more customization. also, all of the applications are still using GTK4 and look modern, so it's really not even a very "classic" experience.
overall, GNOME doesn't know who it's trying to appeal to. it claims it's meant to be intuitive and user friendly, and yet it has very confusing design choices which will frustrate new users. it's baffling that people actively choose to use it. i typically criticize ubuntu for a lot of things, but at least canonical was smart enough to actually install a bunch of extensions by default in order to make it actually feasible for daily use. it's absolutely bizarre to me that someone would actively choose to use GNOME when much better options exist.