I love it. I have used it for very long time with and without extensions. I love the overview in particular, pressing meta and having everything presented to you is fantastic. I used it by mostly running maximized windows, then each time I wanted to switch to another program I pressed meta and clicked on the app I wanted. I used workspaces to keep separate groups of programs for each workflow separate too.

If I used extensions it was small things like Appindicators and small cosmetics like blur my shell.

Now, I don’t think GNOME scales very well if you use tens of windows at once, you would need to use too many workspaces, which are slow to navigate, and/or have tiny windows in the overview, which are hard to click because their position is unpredictable unlike traditional taskbars, where the programs are always visible and never move on their own.

My workflow never involved too many windows, so I never had problems with it.

Something else I wish would change is that the top bar should go away or actually do something other than show the time. I would say either just take it away entirely and only show it in the overview. Or turn the clock into a notch. Or just make it a half-traditional taskbar, with the clock and options moved to the right and the left side showing as many programs as they fit in thin bars.

I fell in love with Gnome 3 when it first came out and havent looked back. I dont miss a taskbar because I just use the keyboard shortcuts to move between workspaces and alt+tab to switch programs. Gnome seems to be more efficient the less you use the mouse which is my preferred M.O. anyways.

I find the GNOME workflow very intuitive and have grown really accustomed to it over the years. It’s minimal and gets out of the way, while at the same time everything I need is accessible on one keypress through the activities overview.

I don’t feel at home on any other desktop environment. Even on Ubuntu I revert everything to stock GNOME.

Yes, I thrive in it.

You can just switch to kde or xfce if you dont like gnome, thats what linux is all about. For one I cant really use anything not-gnome anymore, its workflow feels just so efficient and is equally good with a touchpad, keyboard and mouse. I usually get distracted really easily on kde and the likes but gnome just gets out of the way and lets me focus more on my work.

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.

Alt+Tab or Super+Tab is your friend. Surely you dont have 10 workspace for 10 windows. Also probably just dont isolate Alt+Tab for each workspace.

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.

GNOME panel definitely takes significantly less space than KDE or Windows takbar. Also at least me, even on Windows I barely click taskbar icon to switch window, alt+tab is faster

But everything is each for their own. If vanilla GNOME doesnt work for you, just install extension or move to another DE. Cheers!

Yes, I prefer Gnome to KDE by a long way, it’s much nicer looking and easier to use, the trick is to use it the way it’s intended, instead of trying to control it to work how you think it should

I think GNOME being minimalist with extensions is a good thing, but I disagree with what GNOME considers basic functionality or not. Two things that stick out:

• an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn’t considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME’s hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.
• tray icons. GNOME treats background processes like bugs to be squashed. Let’s just get real here for a second: sometimes you want programs to run in the background and sometimes you want to be able to see what they are doing in real time. I want my email clients to tell me when I get emails, I wan’t my Nextcloud to tell me when there are sync issues, and I want Discord to tell me if I get DMs. This should be considered basic functionality.

I use GNOME (under Fedora) on a laptop that sits at my right hand side, so I use it with only one hand. Using three-finger swipe to change workspaces is awesome - I usually use a workspace for each app, or sometimes two apps share a workspace, but I don’t worry about which one they are on, it’s so easy I just swipe until I find the one I want.

I use an extension to auto-reveal the dock when I go to the bottom of the screen. The default behavior of going to the top left of the screen, only to traverse all the way down to the dock at the bottom (or the right for workspaces), just seems really inefficient, especially on a touchpad.

I had it all tricked out with other extensions but they keep breaking with new GNOME releases, so I’ve mostly given up on that.

I like it, even though I’m not sure if I would call it the GNOME official workflow (is that even a thing?). I usually don’t get close to having 10 applications open. I tend to work with about 1 to 3 workspaces with various applications based on my needs. Furthermore, I keep the windows non-maximized which helps me condense more information yone screen

I switch between apps from overview or by typing in search, or by sliding between workspaces. It is more convenient to me than classic desktops with a taskbar and minimized windows.

Yes I love Gnome workflow. Actually so much that if I am forced to use KDE for example, it feels really archaic and slow to use.

I love GNOME more than any other DE. I like how it works very well with keyboard shortcuts. The only extensions I use are the weather and the tray icons.

I have ADD and GNOME is a life saver. I usually put one and only one window by workspace. It allows me to be focused to the max on the task I’m doing.

Also Libadwaita is so sexy.

I love the gnome workflow. Coming from MacOS it’s more familiar to me than a windows layout, but still so much better than macOSs defaults. I usually have 3-4 workspaces open, with a specific “environment” in a single or a few workspaces. E.g a browser window with email, todos, calendar etc and other “personal things” in one, maybe one for a certain project I’m working on, another for a work project, etc. This way I’m always focusing on one thing at a time but can quickly context switch and have my laptop “switch with me”. I also make heavy use of alt-tab and Ctrl-tab for window switching. Together with fewer windows per workspace, this makes it super fast to navigate without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. If I forget where things are, a glance at the overview is enough.

It should be noted that I don’t use a mouse and if I love touchpad gestures, so gnome is perfect for me. Even using a keyboard only and the very occasional touchpad is very comfortable on gnome. At least compared to macOS and windows.