[midoridensha]

>I think it being the de facto "standard" Linux desktop environment is really hurting the ecosystem.

I completely agree. I think it's a case of moneyed interests having taken over. Someone in another HN comment a while back implied that the big reason for Gnome and its philosophy is Red Hat's big corporate and especially government customers. Why so many casual Linux users have jumped on the Gnome bandwagon I don't understand. If you want something that gives you no choice and tells you how to use your computer and is "simple", then just buy a Mac.

[QUrprUd1nCeicw]

Please stop with the conspiracy theories. GNOME is still very much a volunteer project. And KDE also gets corporate contributions too which they're very grateful to receive.

GNOME isn't really against "choice" either, they just optimize for a different workflow.

[bruce511]

I'm thinking maybe there are two distinct groups of people. One group choose their OS and love to fiddle and fine tune its behaviour.

Another group have their OS chosen for them by their employer. They don't care about the OS, or software in general - they just want to get through the day.

Perhaps KDE is well suited to one group and Gnome to another?

[QUrprUd1nCeicw]

GNOME can be fiddled with, just not in the same way as KDE.

And KDE can simplified for installation on work computers, just not in the same way as GNOME.

Personally I use GNOME now because it fits my current workflow better, but in the past I had a different workflow and I used KDE more. I still have both of them installed so it's not difficult to switch.

[johnny22]

> Another group have their OS chosen for them by their employer. They don't care about the OS, or software in general - they just want to get through the day.

People like Linus Torvalds didn't get their OS chosen for them, but still chose kept Fedora's GNOME default.

[account42]

> default

Sounds like someone else did make the choice for Linus, even if it could have been overruled.

[raverbashing]

> they just optimize for a different workflow.

Usually of the people that just work with a giant terminal session with screen and that's it.

No, really, because having a terminal application where "Tab Next" doesn't wrap around just goes to show how worried they are about users outside that niche (and yes maybe they fixed this now, but come on)

[abrouwers]

You don't understand why some people might prefer a more precisely defined, simpler-by-default desktop? I can only speak for myself - I've been using linux full-time for ~20ish years, and gnome 3 is the one of the most solid, stable, elegant desktops I've used. I understand why some prefer KDE, but I spend most of my times in APPS, not configuring my desktop environment.

Also, what does "big corporate" customers even mean? At my corporate job, I get paid to do work (within applications), not spend time configuring settings in my DE. I'd be quite curious to hear how gnome specifically prevents you from doing your job.

Last thought, but "just buy a mac" is a rather silly argument; in fact, if gnome is being to mac, that's a pretty high compliment, IMO. If that's not your thing, that's fine, but it's also fine for others to want to use a simple, well-designed desktop.

[pxc]

> I understand why some prefer KDE, but I spend most of my times in APPS, not configuring my desktop environment.

When I first got into KDE, I was young and excited about all of the eye candy and downloadable widgets and stuff. I spent a TON of time tinkering with the desktop environment. But nowadays, I use KDE with something like 85% or 90% of all the options at their default settings. I think that's a really common way to use KDE: everyone has their 5% or 10% of customizations, and it's not much, but for everyone that 5% or 10% covers different options.

I feel that in that way, defaults are very important for KDE as well. They provide a center of gravity for the userbase, and their appropriateness determines how much work it is for everyone to maintain a usable setup.

Anyway, on KDE I have a handful of settings saved in my dotfiles or similar, and the rest I don't really spend time configuring anymore. So I totally understand GNOME users who take a similar approach but fall a little further on that spectrum where the settings are 98% or 99% at the defaults.

I don't know why (maybe it's my reliance on the CLI and the deep familiarity of GNU and Linux together), but for whatever reason, despite being a KDE guy, I strongly prefer GNOME to Windows or macOS. It feels thoughtfully designed, and limited, yes... but not too restrictive. I get the comparison, but macOS feels hamstrung and confining to me, including compared to a nice, current GNOME distro.

[danjac]

It depends on your needs and workflow. Personally I spend most of my time on my laptop in the terminal, browser, email and one or two other apps like Discord. I just want something that is simple and stays out of my way and I don't want to spend my time crafting the perfect desktop. Stock Fedora+Gnome with a couple extensions pretty much covers all my needs.

Other users have different expectations and needs and perhaps KDE suits them better, and maybe they are happy spending hours fine-tuning their desktop experience. All good and I'm happy we all get to have a choice.

[seba_dos1]

Sounds similar to my needs and workflow, and yet GNOME always feels to me like it requires me to spend hours fine-tuning it, finding extensions that make simple things possible and tweaks that aren't exposed anywhere by default to make it usable - while Plasma works fine out-of-box and I'm not worried about little things I do like to tweak in my desktop because I can be reasonably certain that I'll be able to quickly reconfigure things whenever I get annoyed by them.

However, I do like to use GNOME on my phone (with phosh as a shell). It fits there quite nicely and IMO feels better than Plasma.

[unethical_ban]

Maybe I like simple, intuitive keyboard shortcut driven environments and also like Linux.