Red Hat has been slowly becoming more like Microsoft used to be.
I have to use RHEL at work and since RHEL 8 the desktop experience is just painful:
GNOME 3 is the only desktop offered. Our IT team hates third-party repos, so EPEL and any chance at an alternative are right out.
I tried to use GNOME 3, but I really do not understand what the designers were thinking and how they intend for it to work.
How do I minimize a window that I do not want in the foreground? There are no buttons that seem to do this without using tweaks or extensions.
When using two or more monitors, why does only one monitor switch to a different virtual desktop while the other does not?
Trying to use GNOME 3 is frustrating and I would rather use pratically anything else (Windows, MacOS, KDE, CDE, Xfce, WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, etc.) because at least they would follow some of the last 40 years of desktop environment conventions that GNOME 3 seems to have completely discarded.
Red Hat are like Microsoft because their enterprise distro offers only one desktop? Alright. I guess macOS is Microsoft as well under that definition.
Without discussing the merits of GNOME vs others, is your company prepared to pay twice for the RHEL license if they provide official support for both GNOME and KDE? Supporting more environments doesn't come for free.
>> Red Hat are like Microsoft because their enterprise distro offers only one desktop? Alright. I guess macOS is Microsoft as well under that definition.
No, Red Hat is like Microsoft because they made the same mistakes with GNOME 3 that Microsoft made with Windows 8--they gave designers free reign to do whatever they wanted and did not listen to user feedback.
>> Without discussing the merits of GNOME vs others, is your company prepared to pay twice for the RHEL license if they provide official support for both GNOME and KDE? Supporting more environments doesn't come for free.
Probably not, but given the choice I would select KDE over GNOME 3 simply because it offers a more customizable user experience that does not require "tweaks" and "extensions" to get the desktop setup that some users want.
What's next? Removing Emacs and Vim and only offering GNOME Text Editor? Supporting more text editors doesn't come for free.
Make sure an allocation of your frustration is pointed at this.
Gnome tweaks should be a default package. Is it not in an accessible repo for RHEL?
I just switched from Pop OS to Fedora 36 on my laptop and am getting the hang of pure GNOME 3 quickly. Other than Guale not working for some reason, Vivaldi and terminal and python run just fine. Hotkeys are abundant.
>> Make sure an allocation of your frustration is pointed at this.
Agreed, but I have little control over IT policies. Third-party repos are strictly prohibited unless there is a compelling reason and they are blessed by IT.
>> Gnome tweaks should be a default package. Is it not in an accessible repo for RHEL?
Tweaks help, but it is still terrible compared to the customizations that GNOME 2 offered "in the box".
>> Don't windows in GNOME have a minimize button by default? And then you use the overview to bring the window back if you want? Am I missing something?
No. By default there are no maximize and minimize buttons. They were explicitly removed:
I stopped actively using GNOME long before 3.x was an idea. Xfce has remained consistent, performant, and beautiful. GNOME has become a victim of mismanagement, trends, and monoculture.
Remember that Ubuntu spurned GNOME for a long time because they had their own monoculture issues.
I have to use RHEL at work and since RHEL 8 the desktop experience is just painful:
GNOME 3 is the only desktop offered. Our IT team hates third-party repos, so EPEL and any chance at an alternative are right out.
I tried to use GNOME 3, but I really do not understand what the designers were thinking and how they intend for it to work.
How do I minimize a window that I do not want in the foreground? There are no buttons that seem to do this without using tweaks or extensions.
When using two or more monitors, why does only one monitor switch to a different virtual desktop while the other does not?
Trying to use GNOME 3 is frustrating and I would rather use pratically anything else (Windows, MacOS, KDE, CDE, Xfce, WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, etc.) because at least they would follow some of the last 40 years of desktop environment conventions that GNOME 3 seems to have completely discarded.