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Gnome Files: A detailed UI examination

cycomanic
17 replies
14h33m

It's worth mentioning that I agree that the modern design paradigm probably is friendly to beginner users in many ways. But at some point, people stop being beginners. People who use computers several hours per day, performing a wide variety of tasks in many different programs, should also be taken in to account when designing software. As such, my critique comes from the point of what's usually called a "power user". It's also worth considering that the more an interface hides, the less it offers by way of opportunities for a user to grow and learn.

After that I find it a bit rich to complain that one has to use a keyboard shortcut (even as others have said that's even incorrect), especially for a function that requires using the keyboard anyway.

I also find the arguments about no up button and the list view unconvincing. The list button was immediately obvious to me from the screenshot (and I don't use gnome or any filemanager) and I actually appreciate a window that does not put lost of buttons that present duplicate functionality everywhere (and it's harder to hit? What argument is that, by his own admission he's been using computers for 35 years, but can't use a mouse to hit a path?).

This really just reads like one of the typical rants where someone become somewhat proficient with some system, now considers themselves a "power user" and expects everything else to work exactly the same. The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C...

savolai
8 replies
11h34m

The basics: you are not your users. Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy for others. That is the entire basis of usability work. I cannot believe how resistant the tech community, like above, is to the very basics of human cognition.

It’s your comment that’s the rant. OP has actual data from decades of research they are applying.

Quoting myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41303387

kaba0
3 replies
10h8m

What data does he have? OP wrote a basic opinion-piece on what they dislike. It’s just as valuable as the parent commenter’s opinion, so we can only say that one user found some feature hard to find. There is no ultimate design, and striving for 100% of users knowing everything immediately is just unrealistic.

If we are at opinions, I really dislike this absolutely tone-deaf attacking of GNOME that is always happening under these threads. There is criticism, and there is blind hate. There is definitely places to improve, though, but the style of writing matters.

savolai
1 replies
5h33m

This should help you trace the argumentation to cited research that is certainly not ”tone deaf”:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

1. *Consistency and Standards* Claim: "The 'View Options' dropdown didn't contain view options, but rather sort options, and I didn't realize it was a split button with two completely different functions."

Violation: This breaks Consistency and Standards. The user expects consistent terminology and functionality, but the dropdown name doesn't match what it actually does, leading to confusion.

2. *Visibility of System Status* Claim: "Hidden scroll bars... hides information not only about what I can do with the GUI itself, but also about where I'm currently positioned."

Violation: Violates Visibility of System Status. Hidden scrollbars prevent the user from knowing their position in the list or file system, making it difficult to navigate.

3. *User Control and Freedom* Claim: "I miss a button for going one level up, to the parent directory. There are buttons for going back and forward in the navigation history, but that's not the same thing."

Violation: Violates User Control and Freedom. Not having an obvious way to go up a directory removes essential control, forcing users to rely on less intuitive navigation methods.

4. *Recognition Rather Than Recall* Claim: "It seems this editing mode can only be activated using a keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-L, which isn’t immediately apparent—or, to be frank, very logical."

Violation: Violates Recognition Rather than Recall. The user should not need to remember specific keyboard shortcuts to access common functionality. The UI should present these options visibly.

5. *Error Prevention* Claim: "Moving windows by clicking on icons that already have a specific function feels unintuitive and introduces an unnecessary risk of misclicking."

Violation: Violates Error Prevention. The user can easily move the window unintentionally when trying to interact with icons, which increases the chance of errors.

6. *Help and Documentation*

Claim: "Searching and then browsing the built-in help for 'list view' didn’t actually help me find out how to enable the list view."

Violation: Violates Help and Documentation. The help system fails to guide users to solutions for basic tasks, which defeats its purpose.

7. *Aesthetic and Minimalist Design* Claim: "Tooltips are either misleading, or comically uninformative and thus annoyingly distracting."

Violation: Violates Aesthetic and Minimalist Design. Tooltips should convey useful information without being intrusive. Redundant and irrelevant tooltips clutter the interface.

8. *Flexibility and Efficiency of Use*

Claim: "In Gnome Files, we’re instead given a handful of features scattered across the UI. Hidden features (accessible solely through keyboard shortcuts) can only be learned by browsing what is best described as a non-interactive menu."

Violation: Violates Flexibility and Efficiency of Use. Hidden shortcuts reduce the efficiency for experienced users and make the interface less discoverable.

9. *Match Between System and the Real World* Claim: "Menu names and their contents are confusing, with 'View Options' actually being sort options."

Violation: Violates Match Between System and the Real World. The system should use terminology and design elements that align with user expectations, but here the names contradict their function.

10. *Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors* Claim: "Context-clicking in the top part of the window gives spurious and unpredictable results."

Violation: Violates Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors. Inconsistent behavior in the context-click menus makes it difficult for users to understand or recover from unexpected results.

kaba0
0 replies
2h46m

Something like this would have been a better post than the linked one, but even this is not necessarily objective on each count - and design has a fundamentally subjective, human element based on our collective experience with every kind of interface, ever, which is affected by experience/culture, everything.

E.g. in your list: there is no “dropdown name”, it’s a misidentified element by the post writer. Add to it that he is not using standard configuration, which is just not how any “test” should be conducted. Like, you are not testing cars with flat tires either.

imtringued
0 replies
7h59m

I enjoy GNOME and would prefer a gtk4/libadwaita based UI for e.g. FreeCAD. I brought this up as a counter example to the frequent negativity in GNOME related discussions.

627467
2 replies
6h35m

One problem I see of "usability professionals" here and elsewhere is how arguments go little beyond:

1. "you are not the users" - certainly when talking about many apps like a file explorer any user is a user - not all users.

2. "Disheartened by tech community dismissal of basic human cognition" and "decades of research" without actually citing and ideally elaborating on research that many times is targetting very narrow scopes.

savolai
1 replies
5h38m

1. Users have plenty of individual characteristics. If even ordinarily capable user’s can’t deduce what button does what, forget people with disbilities. It’s obvious you need to usability test this stuff. Gnome has neglected their basic duties.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/

2. Human-Computer Interaction is a scientific field within Computer Science, and this is stuff from any 101 course. Do we really need to cite belief in gravity each time just because self-appointed ”developers” haven’t done the work of learning the basics?

Start here: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

627467
0 replies
4h10m

...and here is my missing point 3. "Citing Norman heuristics like gospel"

josephg
0 replies
10h51m

Thankyou. I’ve been using computers for 35 years (I grew up using xtree to navigate folders on DOS). It would never have occurred to me that both sides of that view options dropdown do different things. Perhaps it’s intuitive for others, but I’ve never seen that before in my life.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that I hate almost all novel interaction patterns in user interfaces. UI components and flows should stick as close to common patterns / system defaults as possible - and no, your app, whatever it is, is not an exception

hedora
1 replies
13h48m

I would have clicked the down arrow that’s attached to the list icon to get the list options.

It wouldn’t even occur to me that the icon could be a toggle (both because it is not rendered as one, and because I’d expect more than two view options).

kaba0
0 replies
10h6m

It does have a hover effect though. Design is always about discoverability. If you have seen something similar, you will try to apply that solution. If you haven’t, you try different stuff and see what happens.

edwintorok
1 replies
9h58m

How do you find out what that keyboard shortcut is? I only found out when reading a similar article as the OP many years ago that complained about the removal of the textbox.

Otherwise I never would've known it is possible to activate the path textbox with a keyboard shortcut.

A UI needs to be both easy to use and discoverable. If "power users" have trouble discovering where the features they need are, why do we think the rest of the UI is easy to use/discoverable for everyone else?

(Although TBH I rarely use UI, and normally just use the terminal, except when upgrading the firmware of my keyboard, in which case I use Jade's file manager).

stuaxo
0 replies
8h58m

I only know that shortcut because I use in the browser already.

continuational
1 replies
11h13m

The same people often complain that terminals break with "standard shortcuts" because they can't copy with ctrl-C...

It does break with standard shortcuts. And worse, there's absolutely no consistency between terminal applications on which shortcuts to use. It's a mess, and complaints are warrented.

senko
0 replies
9h55m

Ctrl-C sending a SIGINT to the program running in the terminal is the standard shortcut. Woe to the terminal arrogant enough to assume their precious copy/paste is more important.

Now, Super-C vs Ctrl-Shift-C (across the UI), we can argue about.

persnickety
0 replies
12h23m

You don't need a keyboard to use a text field. You could be pasting a path.

Or using some assistive technology like dictation. Or be using a phone where there's a way to type but no way to press ctrl (althouth the UI on a phone should be judged along other lines).

gavinsyancey
0 replies
8h47m

The list button was immediately obvious to me from the screenshot

It was immediately obvious to the author as well -- it was the first thing they clicked on! Or rather, they clicked in the little arrow next to it, that looked like it was part of the same button. When it brought up something entirely unrelated, they very reasonably assumed that it wasn't what they were looking for.

jiehong
16 replies
11h6m

This reminds me of not being able to right click in Files in list view for creating a new document or pasting something, because it only accepts a right click in an empty area. Yet, in list view, as soon as you have a few files and the window is full, you’re given no empty area to click in.

I saw some people have the same issue [0] in the past, and it’s not really been fixed either [1].

[0]: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1150025

[1]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/3445

Lukas_Skywalker
3 replies
11h1m

I often try to open a new Terminal window in my current folder like that. Which often is impossible for the same reason. So I navigate up, until I find a folder that is not full, open the Terminal there, and ‚cd‘ down to the folder i wanted…

cocoto
2 replies
9h47m

You can click on the three dot menu at the right of the path, there is an option to open a terminal. You can also switch to icon view and right-click between icons to open a terminal. You can also go to parent folder, right click the folder you were before and open it in a terminal. Many workarounds but I agree it’s not really good UI.

KETHERCORTEX
1 replies
6h5m

You can click on the three dot menu at the right of the path, there is an option to open a terminal.

I use Black Box as a terminal app, but Nautilus will open only default distro-provided terminal application with its menu.

NekkoDroid
0 replies
2h54m

Yea, there currently isn't exactly any way for selecting what application is considered a terminal other than hardcoding a list (which IIRC gnome-shell does). There is an open MR on xdg-specs[1] to address this, which seems to have stalled

[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-specs/-/merge_request...

Cockbrand
2 replies
6h58m

I find this debatable from a UI/UX perspective. I think that the designers made the right choice here, because a context menu should show actions which can be applied to the object I right clicked on. "New Document" isn't really some function of a file or folder icon. Even worse: when I right click on a folder, should the "New Document" menu item create a new doc in the current folder? Or in the one I clicked on?

It would be better to have these common tasks in a separate menu item in the icon bar where they are always available, in addition to the context menu when right clicking on empty space in a window.

imbnwa
0 replies
3h44m

Nah, no different from 'Create Row Below' or some such. Hunting for white space to click in order to act on the directory is like hunting for the borders in a spreadsheet or table to click in order to add a new row

dylan-m
0 replies
1h31m

It would be better to have these common tasks in a separate menu item in the icon bar where they are always available, in addition to the context menu when right clicking on empty space in a window.

In GNOME Files they are! It’s the folder menu - the one that’s connected to the location bar.

It isn’t the most beautifully discoverable of menus, but it works well, and it’s worth noting the menus have been rearranged a bit in 47.

gawa
1 replies
8h26m

I always had the same issue, even with the file explorer that I'm using currently (Thunar, XFCE's file browser). I never really looked for a solution, I kept changing the view (go from list view to to icons view) in order to find some empty space to right-click on.

Your comment and seeing that there are bug reports about it prompted me to think more than 5 seconds about this usability annoyance. I found a cool shortcut on Thunar: holding the control key + right click anywhere (including on a file) will bring up the right-click menu, from where I can create a new folder, paste, open in the terminal...

That's XFCE's Thunar solution to this problem. It was just not easily discoverable, but it's a good enough solution according to me, as I don't mind using the keyboard. Maybe it's the same on Gnome's File or Nautilus or other file explorers softwares, I don't know.

Edit: looking at it more closely, in Thunar the ctrl+right-click will show the "create new folder" option only if no file is selected. Otherwise it shows the contextual menu of the selection (hence the create new folder would not appear). So basically we have to unselect the files ... by clicking on an empty area (so back to square one) ... or we have to know about another keyboard shortcut (the "Escape" key) to clear the current selection before doing the ctrl+righ-click. Not ideal either.

rav
0 replies
5h34m

Can't you use ctrl-left click to deselect the selected file before using ctrl-right click to get the context menu?

edg5000
1 replies
4h26m

As cocoto pointed out in one of the child comments, you can click the three dots left of the search button, that one always works. I found out about it today.

modzu
0 replies
4h20m

almost on cue, i think they removed that functionality from the latest version

okasaki
0 replies
4h23m

There is actually a small gap between the list items where you can right click.

You can tell you're on the gap when no item is highlighted.

mixmastamyk
0 replies
1h8m

Common issue. In this situation I use the main menu/hotkeys instead. Ctrl-N, Ctrl-C etc.

luqtas
0 replies
8h50m

left side of the list has a small column with a blank space... sure it requires mouse movement if you are not close with your pointer

i would love the empty area right click menu despite if we clicked on a file, like Blender shows all options for Vertex/Edge/Faces (each right click menu arranged horizontally) if you have all of them selected on Select Mode when editing objects

keyringlight
0 replies
8h54m

I've noticed a similar thing on some web pages. For example BBC news where the link for a story is its whole tile/rectangle area, the obvious link text, any picture, and a large amount of white space. It's only relatively thin gaps between tiles that are inert background to click on.

I can see this making sense for a touch-first design and I can appreciate that focus for BBC news website, however focusing back on software like gnome it seems that similar aims crept in trying to make it serve multiple input methods at the same time and how you could have variations on the UI for touch or mouse (and you could also make assumptions about the screen and viewing setup and what's appropriate)

kaanyalova
0 replies
8h27m

There seems to be space to right click between the rows (although somewhat small space at the smallest list view), and left-right sides of the window.

There is an image showing the right clickable areas on the issue you linked

https://gitlab.gnome.org/-/project/1/uploads/50ac36ab40f9049...

IshKebab
13 replies
10h33m

I couldn't agree more. The Gnome devs have a very long track record of imposing universally hated UI/UX design on people.

I'd wonder why KDE isn't more popular, but I'm pretty sure the main reason is that the Gnome devs also have way better aesthetic taste than the KDE devs. Gnome simply looks much nicer in screenshots. They understand spacing.

That and KDE had it's own major UI/UX fuck up with Plasma.

criticalfault
11 replies
8h42m

That's not completely true. They are hated by some users, loved by some.

For example, in general, I really like what gnome does. Desktop use is not something that is useful outside starting other apps, so I like its simplicity and the fact that it gets out of the way.

Default apps could use maybe a bit more features, but I generally don't find too much wrong with e.g. files. The only confusing thing for me is which hamburger to click when I want to create a new directory. So instead of guessing, I just right click the file list. One positive example in gnome is when you try to access e.g. smb:// shares in files and try to open a movie from the share... It works with no issues. But, kde with gazillion features does not support that.

(Opinion) KDE is not more popular since it's buggy as hell. At least it was. But not only that, their visuals are a disaster. Believe what you will, but visual consistency and attention to detail is what gnome has. They are not perfect, so there are some issues as OP points out, but they are on a different level from kde. KDE looks like it was frankensteined, while gnome it looks like it was designed. Think just login process and sddm, how many time it blinks?

KDE is proud to enable tinkering, and this is good - there are people that like to do that. Thinking back, this was when I was teenager. Now that I'm older, I want things well thought out, designed well that dont get in my way so I can do my work and not think about desktop. And this is gnome.

What I hate about gnome is JavaScript and python focus for apps. And now, suddenly we need a stupid app for everything.

IshKebab
8 replies
8h19m

their visuals are a disaster. Believe what you will, but visual consistency and attention to detail is what gnome has. They are not perfect, so there are some issues as OP points out, but they are on a different level from kde. KDE looks like it was frankensteined, while gnome it looks like it was designed.

Yeah I totally agree with that. KDE has terrible aesthetics and great usability, Gnome has great aesthetics and terrible usability.

Random example: I've missed so many meetings because of Gnome's insane behaviour that touching a notification with your mouse even for one frame dismisses it. Combined with the grey-on-grey colour scheme that requires coding to change it's extremely easy to miss notifications.

I ended up hand editing the theme CSS to make notifications orange, and setting Google Calendar to give me a notification every minute 3 times before every meeting. Insane. I need to switch to KDE.

criticalfault
7 replies
7h16m

I would disagree that gnome has terrible usability. It has a very good one. Nobody's saying it is perfect, but I and many other people can use it without issues.

KDE has more features, so maybe *some* things are a bit easier. But everything else is way worse. Including lack of certain apps like a decent VM manager.

I feel sorry for kde, the community there is way friendlier and whatnot, but this Frankenstein approach is bad for serious use. Somebody defined a compromise like a solution which nobody is happy with and KDE feels exactly like that. People adjust how it looks and feels for that reason.

They feel overly bureaucratic and and embodiment of this https://xkcd.com/1172/

IshKebab
6 replies
6h9m

Gnome has a VM manager? I mean I feel like that's such a niche tool that doesn't need to be part of the desktop environment, unlike for example WiFi settings which Gnome provides a very very basic interface for but most of the options are hidden in some other random app that isn't installed by default (nm-connection-editor - took me a while to figure that out!).

(To be fair it's been so long since I used KDE I can't remember if its WiFi settings also has this issue.)

criticalfault
5 replies
5h47m

Yes, called gnome boxes.

https://apps.gnome.org/Boxes/

This was only an example. Boxes is no metric for anything, but having an app that works well in that Desktop is a good thing. There is nothing flike that or KDE. It's all for gnome. Point here being that KDE has a lack of apps.

If talking about more generic apps, gnome has better Multimedia Tools, Firefox uses gtk to better integrate with gnome... The only thing/app kde has better is krita. Or is there something I'm missing that gnome doesn't do better? (Excluding files from this comparison)

I'm just wondering who is then target audience for KDE? Only artists that use krita? Or teenagers that like to mod stuff?

Regarding wifi, given only 'standard' use, you connect to wifi and that's it. Gnome offers a password entry and done. For advanced users I don't see an issue - they can figure it out (gnome connection editor has quite some advanced options). And also, I didn't use KDE on a real machine for a while.

tmtvl
2 replies
4h12m

gnome has better Multimedia Tools

I dunno, I really like Cantata (which integrates perfectly with MPD, which has possibly the best music organisation) and Clementine, more than any other music player I've tried. For video I'm very fond of SMPlayer, which is a featureful frontend for MPV. Kdenlive is also really nice (although Davinci Resolve is better, to be fair).

The only thing/app kde has better is krita.

Really? You're saying Gedit is better than Kate? I don't know about that, friend. Gedit was severely lacking in features last time I tried it. What's the GNOME equivalent to Umbrello anyway? What about the GNOME equivalent to Lokalize? There's just a bunch of KDE apps which I don't know if GNOME has an equivalent to (the opposite is also true, but I'm just challenging your statement).

(Excluding files from this comparison)

Okay, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

criticalfault
1 replies
3h1m

In another comment I also remembered kdenlive. Not even sure what gnome has since I don't edit video.

Gedit (or now gnome-text) is more equivalent of kwrite. Gnome doesn't have an equivalent to kate, me thinks.

Umbrello: https://github.com/gaphor/gaphor

I use smplayer on windows, this is a good app. Does it run on Wayland? And does it have hardware acceleration for decoding? I had issues on Wayland (gnome) with it.

Cantata is abandoned.

Files I excluded because dolphin is better functionally. It wasn't excluded because I want to skew results in my favor, but because there is no discussion. One exception: in dolphin you cannot open files directly from smb:// shares

kuschku
0 replies
30m

One exception: in dolphin you cannot open files directly from smb:// shares

??? Of course you can.

Your comments sound like you installed KDE ontop of a distro that uses gnome by default, missing half the packages.

KIO exposes pretty much every possible protocol (including smb, dav, ftp/sftp/ssh, etc) to every KDE app, including Dolphin, Kate, Gwenview, Krita, Okular, etc.

If you're trying to open SMB files in Gnome apps, ofc, that's not gonna work.

0x_rs
1 replies
5h15m

I'm just wondering who is then target audience for KDE? Only artists that use krita? Or teenagers that like to mod stuff?

What a spiteful thing to say, it's very difficult for me to believe you are asking this genuinely. Firstly, KDE has no such "lack of apps". The majority of GNOME applications are far inferior to DE-independent "apps", so much so one may wonder why effort is even being spent into developing such flawed and barely functioning toys. Ah, well, at least Books isn't maintained anymore because it was barely usable. KDE's audience is far broader, because it does not force you to follow a vague and poorly implemented design vision that is actively hostile to the user, has usable defaults and can be trivially customized to actually reflect a minimal design approach also. It is not surprising it's being shipped quite successful with every Steam Deck, for example.

criticalfault
0 replies
3h28m

The question was a bit assholish, because rant. Fair to call me on it.

Yes, I am aware that KDE audience is broader. Just remembered an additional good product from KDE: kdenlive.

Let me try to put it in a better way: most of the time I have seen Linux in the wild (let's say companies) was Ubuntu/gnome. Even tv shows. And I don't remember ever seeing kde (LiMux aside since it is dead now). I have read that it is sometimes used in some specific industries like chemistry for legacy reasons/apps. Not sure how the automotive industry fits here, but I know they for example use qt, not sure if this extends to kde.

Based on what I have seen and read (which is not all Industries of course), KDE has a significantly smaller user base.

In a non-professional setting, I have exclusively seen gnome.

Not sure how steamdeck fits here, depends on what valve took. Last I read was a compositor. Di they actually use whole desktop with plasmoids?

Can you give an example of de-independent apps that are superior? To be clear: when talking about fitting into a desktop and talking about gnome vs KDE, it comes down mostly to the toolkit. Some examples like vlc could be considered de-independent though even though they use qt

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate KDE project. Far from it. But what they do and what I think they should do differs.

What I completely disagree with is that UX of gnome is wrong. It is opinionated and a lot of us like this 'opinion'. Many people using Ubuntu don't change a thing. Does this fit usable defaults? If things are well thought out, why do I need to tinker with the desktop to launch firefox, office, copy files or consume multimedia? Because in the end - this is what it is about, productivity.

I don't get this hostility statement. They follow a vision - their vision. They offer it for free. And people are upset because they do not work on the vision of that (minor) group?

p4bl0
1 replies
6h34m

KDE is not more popular since it's buggy as hell. At least it was. But not only that, their visuals are a disaster

Could you give concrete examples of that? I've been using KDE daily for years and I really don't see what you're talking about for either of these two points (bugs and disaster visuals).

criticalfault
0 replies
6h2m

Disaster visuals are icons in e.g. dolphin, sidebar and toolbar, but in different ways.

Sidebar are only lines and I find that the overly simplistic shapes do not represent ideas well. Example: go back icon. Similar problems exist for toolbar icons. At some point I cannot conclude if the shape is a graphics glitch or an icon. These are the icons with some shape bottom right.

Another example is sidebar consistency: recently I noticed there are 3 distinct looks in sidebars in KDE. The most modern one (kirigami I guess) looks almost the same as gnome (I think system settings have it in the last version), so here they are improving.

Another example: their logo and Startup Animation.

Buggy things: setup with 2 monitors, then 4k monitors, a bunch of this didn't work well, I opened several bugs for these things. I moved to gnome which didn't have these problems, so I'm not sure how this is behaving now.

Changing something about plasmoids / taskbar used to crash my session, but don't remember wether I opened a bug for this. I like having it at the top, so moving it up would even be a problem. After the crash, it would be fine for a long time. Also generally reordering plasmoids on the taskbar itself would be buggy.

As I said - this is how it used to be. Did not use it as a main desktop for a while, I would try to see what is new in a VM, but always got shocked how bad the design is. They are trying to improve it, but for something to make sense, radical changes are needed. For example, there were some really nice proposals for logo change for plasma 6 and nobody jumped on it. Like any other bureaucratic organization they decided not to do anything.

tuna74
0 replies
10h1m

I really like the Gnome UX, so it can't be "universally hated". I'm gonna assume most devs and users like it as well (otherwise they would use and/or develop something else).

nextos
11 replies
18h29m

I don't use Gnome since the days of version 2, which was really nice and friendly. But I was impressed by how well the latest iteration works in a tablet.

That's a great advantage, because it's the same UI as a desktop. Plus, they have made sure all core applications work well using a touch UI.

uniq7
4 replies
18h12m

From the article's summary:

Some common features are only accessible - and discoverable - through keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts listing is non-interactive, modal, and incurs a substantial mental context switch.
horsawlarway
1 replies
15h31m

He's just wrong though. Clicking anywhere on the bar immediately turns on the edit for me (and has for years).

So either debian is turning on some odd defaults (maybe? It's been a long time since I used debian with a DE).

Or... (and this is my guess) he mucked around running commands he didn't understand trying to fix his "solid color desktop" issue and broke it himeself. I'm very suspicious of the lack of anti-aliasing in his screenshots as well.

Kbelicius
0 replies
12h20m

Clicking anywhere on the bar immediately turns on the edit for me (and has for years).

Either you aren't using gnome files or you somehow enabled that feature yourself because click to edit was released earlier this year.

EDIT: Click to edit mentioned as a new feature of gnome version released this year: https://release.gnome.org/46/

nextos
0 replies
17h37m

That's something natural, touch interfaces need to be simpler. I didn't miss any normal functionality without access to a keyboard.

mananaysiempre
0 replies
16h41m

This part was about the location bar, I believe. For what it’s worth, on my machine (with Files 46.2) clicking on the name of the current directory or on empty space to the right of it in the location bar does turn it into a text box. (I always use Ctrl-L in practice so I had to actually go and check. It might be that clicking did not work in earlier versions?..)

dxroshan
2 replies
10h38m

Yes! Gnome 2 was great. I miss those days. The whole Gnome is a disappointment now. The GTK-4 doesn't even have the traditional menu and menubar widgets. I don't know what the Gimp people and the Inkscape people are going to do.

marginalia_nu
0 replies
8h50m

Mate is a nice option if you want Gnome 2 but don't want to live in the past. It's very pleasant.

szszrk
1 replies
14h25m

It's funny to hear that now.

Most people I knew back then used Linux on desktop. When Gnome 3 started to be a thing, I don't recall anyone that even had access to a touchscreen device.

And suddenly you had to use touch gestures with mouse, your plugins were gone, menu items were almost gone, you lost possibility to have ANY way to display status. They did all-in on notifications instead. So if you got new mail there was a brief notification and puff... Any indication of pending tasks were gone. No plugin with animation, no tray icon that changed color. No way of telling that your jabber client has something new.

I clearly recall how weird it was to forget to reply because for a second you were focused on writing in another window.

Who could, did migrate to anything else before any workarounds to those issues popped up (like unofficial tray, MATE).

It felt so out of touch back then. The only time I felt that confused were later on windows server when they decided in some editions to cut almost all UI and you had to do that swipe gesture from edge of the screen to show app list. Good luck on multimonitor setup, with a mouse, on RDP connection.

tuna74
0 replies
10h5m

"And suddenly you had to use touch gestures with mouse, .."

I have used Gnome 3 since it was available in Fedora and I have never used any mouse touch gestures.

michaelmrose
0 replies
16h41m

Nobody uses tablet laptops in tablet mode because generally speaking it sucks. Using a touch screen to type sucks and sucks so much worse than your phone because its bigger and more awkward.

Holding it in tablet mode is garbage because of size and weight. As soon as you have it propped up you might as well use the keyboard. It joins using a stylus for a phone and touch screen all in ones in the list of neat but completely useless features.

comex
11 replies
17h31m

Decent critique, but it mixes together two things: the design language, and UI papercuts showing a lack of attention to detail.

Consider the current macOS Finder:

https://a.qoid.us/20240907-finder.png

Finder's design is extremely similar to GNOME Files! And so the inherent downsides of the design language are present in Finder too, such as it being harder to drag windows around or click to activate windows.

But macOS does avoid most of the UI papercuts the author points out. It's not perfect, but let's go through the list.

- View Options: Finder has a similar-looking icon that does the same thing. But in Finder, the little arrows on the right of an icon are always part of the same button as the icon itself. Finder doesn't use split buttons in the way the author complains about.

- Help: The macOS User Guide explains all the icons and what they do. But you don't actually need to go that far, because macOS has a feature where if you click Help and start typing, it will show menu items (from any menu) that match what you typed. In this case, if you start typing "list", it will show the "as List" menu item, which achieves what the author wants. (I guess I should point out that macOS does have a menu bar at the top of the screen, and all the actions you can take by clicking icons can also be taken through the menu bar.)

- Tooltips: Finder doesn't have tooltips for the locations on the left pane, only for the icons in the toolbar. Even there they take a while to appear.

- Navigation: I'd ding Finder here because there is no location bar at all (only an 'open by path' dialog that's kind of buried). Even going to the parent directory is not exposed in a particularly obvious way. Still, at least Finder doesn't have something that looks editable but isn't.

- Scrolling: macOS has hidden scrollbars by default, but they stay at the right of the window. They don't jump to the left like the author is complaining about.

hedora
3 replies
14h12m

The current version of Finder is a massive regression from what it used to be.

If you don’t believe me, fire up https://macos9.app on a machine with a mouse, and try organizing / browsing some files.

tveyben
1 replies
9h23m

Oh - the Good old MacOS days (pree y2k) - agree the Finder from MacOS 9 was really pleasant to use.

These days I’m in love with Total Commander (yes I mainly use Win+WSL2), but I know of several TC style File Managers are available for the Macintosh)

And i do know that TC was cloned/inspirere from ’mc’ (to give credit…!)

ishigoemon
0 replies
1h56m

And 'mc' was a clone of Norton Commander! I don't know if it had precursors, but I'd be interested if anyone does.

danbreuer
0 replies
10h4m

The finder in what you linked was nigh-unusable for me. My impressions:

- Where is the ability to easily split/tab for side-by-side directory comparison?

- Every directory is opened in a new window, which makes everything even more jarring

- (Do I just not know how to operate the window manager?)

- Is the not grid-aligned icon position saved? This seems like a long-term usability nightmare.

- How can I create something other than a directory?

- Where is the location bar?

Then again, I'm not familiar with old OR new macOS, so I might have a similar first experience with the new finder.

What I found nice is the UI/UX consistency. Modern systems don't really have that anymore, with all the accumulated partial UI overhauls and different UI libraries.

flohofwoe
2 replies
10h38m

The macOS/OSX Finder really isn't an example of good UX. It always felt like a half-assed and unloved port from NeXTStep which then was quickly abandondend.

In general, Apple has lost its UI mojo in the last decade or so, macOS shouldn't be used anymore as an example of a good desktop UI.

bni
1 replies
8h34m

So what should be?

jorvi
0 replies
8h17m

OS X Snow Leopard (10.6).

Apple also has a thick Human Interface Guidelines document from.. ‘97 or ‘03, I can’t remember. But it’s great.

Funnily enough, if you use it as a yardstick to measure the current macOS by, macOS is full of violations of that HIG.

Pulling back to the article: I wonder what desktop the writer uses, because KDE is absolutely chock full with idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies. Especially because KDE application development is much less top-down than Gnome, so each applications feels completely different which leads to having to “learn” each application separately. Absolutely horrible UX.

stuaxo
0 replies
9h1m

While I agree with the authors critique, I find Macs finder a lot worse to use.

nitinreddy88
0 replies
14h42m

And macOS finder has one of the pathetic designs in similar to Apple simplicity but its supposed to be used for other way. Taking inspiration from that design is shooting yourself and half baking it is like making sure you screw in both ways

eptcyka
0 replies
7h43m

Current on nixos stable bersion of Files allows double tapping on the bar to edit the path manually - absolutely lovely.

LeoPanthera
0 replies
16h43m

Finder does have a location bar, which it calls a “path bar”, but it’s off by default. There’s a menu item to turn it on.

n3storm
9 replies
11h19m

Maybe the arrogance is the worst feature of GNOME approach. They make this studies and constantly repeat how focused are they on usability that when an individual finds it not usable (not in that words) it's double frustating cause is like GNOME saying: "our average users are happy so you must to be handicaped"

jampekka
4 replies
7h59m

No shame in needing a special UI if you're handicapped.

LtWorf
1 replies
6h54m

They claim to be very accessible though.

0rzech
0 replies
4h12m

Yes, that's what they claim. But then imagine someone having to use Gnome with just one functional arm for some time. It's going to be a horrible experience due to long mouse travel distances, options buried in hamburger menus or missing from the UI interface completely and keyboard-focused UI in general. Not to mention the eye-straining app switching mechanism in the form of activities overview.

rollcat
0 replies
5h26m

No shame in needing accommodations even if you're not handicapped.

Accessibility is about making the UI usable for everyone - that happens to include handicapped people (who often do require specific accommodations, such as reduced animations, TTS, zoom, color filters...), but that also includes power users (who e.g. need to do some specific task often enough, that they might benefit from the UI being scriptable), people who sometimes need to use a computer late at night (automatic dark mode), people who need to stay focused on a specific set of tasks (do not disturb with per-app notification filtering that syncs across devices), etc etc etc.

It's this "oh it's for the handicapped" mindset that makes UIs unusable for everyone.

n3storm
0 replies
7h19m

I totally agree, but if I proudly state my website is AA and you are blind and cannot navigate and read content, wouldn't it feel double embarrasing that if just another site with no AA stamp?

stuaxo
1 replies
8h56m

It's a shame SUN isn't still around, they did actually usability studies on GNOME, it would be great if one of the distros would step up here.

tuna74
0 replies
10h7m

Yeah, if you want a make a point you can just invent/hallucinate what other people (like Gnome devs devs) say.

4bpp
0 replies
6h38m

In my experience the prototypical response is closer to an assertive "this was not made for you, you are part of a tiny minority of users who always have been catered to anyway" - if you were actually "handicapped", making the UI work for you would be a higher priority on political grounds.

In fact, it is sometimes entertaining to imagine that somewhere in the depths of the GNOME cult compound, they keep a single individual, who is legally blind, physically incapable of using a keyboard, simultaneously belongs to all demographic groups that are traditionally underrepresented among computer users, and has in fact never used a computer themselves but was shown a few things on an iPhone by their Gen Alpha great grandnephew. All these factors combine to turn this person (affectionately referred to as Mother Gnome by those in the know) into a utility monster of UI design, so that it becomes an absolute moral imperative to design things to appeal to them, at whatever expense it takes.

gertlex
8 replies
16h33m

Was happy to read this, as I've often imagined doing this myself (i.e. thoroughly hashing out commentary on a bunch of nits in a GUI that annoy me and I'm convinced should be better).

I agree that ctrl+L is a weird shortcut in a vacuum, but it's one I've known for 15 years, originally from using browsers. And it always makes me happy that Windows and Gnome (and Nautilus, which isn't the gnome default but is still present) all share it, which is nice for old/power-users.

(but actually, on re-read, the complaint may not be with the shortcut at all, and purely with the "no other way")

There's something in the room (I think it's an elephant), but not mentioned in the post, which is that the current Gnome UI is very Windows 11-like, while screwing up a lot of the details (hover-text, location bar being clickable).

(After using Gnome with 14.04 and 20.04, I had stability issues in 22.04 and am now happily on XFCE; long-term stability ftw)

PeakKS
5 replies
14h59m

The writer is just using an old version, you can just click the bar to enter edit mode.

ddtaylor
4 replies
14h13m

For context "old" here is within the last 6 months.

kaanyalova
3 replies
9h9m

The Gnome version that the writer uses is Gnome 43 which was released 2 years ago.

donatzsky
2 replies
8h58m

And for how long has it had this "broken" behaviour for? When Microsoft introduced a similar path bar in Explorer (in Vista or 7, don't remember), it had the double functionality right from the beginning. The fact that Gnome Files didn't is frankly baffling.

kaanyalova
0 replies
8h46m

I don't think it was "broken", it was just a dumb design choice. But I don't know why people like to whine about an issue that was already fixed either.

asmor
1 replies
8h41m

Nautilus and "Files" are the same.

gertlex
0 replies
4h20m

I might have made this mistake via confusion from my more recent use of XFCE then. (I've never bothered trying to change my file manager; let alone learn the name, except that I needed to launch nautilus from command line, years ago and so have /that/ name learned)

Spivak
8 replies
14h49m

I wish folks critiquing GNOME would go after any app other than Nautilus. It's just not a great showcase of the best they have to offer. I would certainly hope no one judges the macOS desktop by Finder because the review probably wouldn't be favorable. If you're going to judge the design system Text Editor, Terminal, Videos, Epiphany, Music would all be better choices. I can't say I know anyone who likes GNOME who would recommend Nautilus anything but the most basic usage.

troad
6 replies
11h53m

But surely interacting with files is a key component of what people expect from a DE? If a DE can't handle that well, a well-designed 'Videos' app offers small consolation.

I can only speak for myself, but it was a Nautilus regression that was the final straw that got me to move to KDE. (And years before that, the rapidly regressing Finder was a key factor in getting me to finally move from Mac to Linux.) Very happy with KDE, though.

I feel like when the Videos app is well designed and the file manager isn't, that says a lot about the priorities of the team behind the DE. In Apple's case, this is understandable from a business perspective - they have cloud services to sell, and would much rather you forgot all about files. In Gnome's case, I've always found it kind of baffling. Apple's design follows Apple's business imperatives, and Gnome's design... also follows Apple's business imperatives, for some reason. Monkey see, monkey do?

kaba0
4 replies
10h17m

You do realize that you can use any kind of file manager from GNOME, right? It’s just a program, just as Dolphin, which you can easily install instead. Changing DE for that is just dumb, imo.

p4bl0
1 replies
6h18m

It's not that simple. Using your DE's file manager means that the file picker dialog in most programs will take your settings into account, have your personal sidebar shortcuts, etc. While it's true that a file manager is a program like any other, the overall integration of your file manager with the rest of the system does especially matter, because it affects some aspects of almost every other programs.

0x_rs
0 replies
5h39m

To further expand on this: GNOME's inane vision for "minimalism"—that is nothing but an insult to the concept itself—spreads to any system regardless of one's DE whenever GTK programs are involved due to GtkFileChooser. There are ways to prevent being unable to use basic features that have existed for decades in any functional file picker, such as using the GDK_DEBUG flag (formerly GTK_USE_PORTAL), however people suggesting this approach to the countless affected have been called "clowns" before.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/4829

keyringlight
1 replies
8h40m

Defaults and first impressions matter though. As much as I think the matter of a personal computer you can make your own is worth fighting for, when a new user lands in the DE and doesn't have a great experience it's not a good solution to then say something along the lines of "go and explore N alternatives or dig through their configurations to find one that suits you" for each aspect of the DE they're going to be regularly interacting with. As much as they will be regularly means to an end of whatever task they do on their machine, it's a large up-front burden.

Spivak
0 replies
4h37m

Nautilus is a fine file manager for browsing to your downloads and documents folder which I think is really all it cares to be. We're on HN so the user-stories are getting twisted.

I use GNOME as my daily driver and really like it— yeah some of their apps are shit, and some designs they made in the DE are questionable at best. But that's true of everything, any software beyond hello world will have annoyances. KDE is riddled with them like swiss cheese at a gun range which is why I think it's so funny people say they're happy with it as an alternative. You're clearly fine with bad design (KDE has some of the most famously terribly designed apps) and bugs. You just have strong opinions on what form the missteps take. And I get it KDE is a DE made for and by old-school Linux users.

Spivak
0 replies
5h4m

Because we're critiquing the design, can you make nice-to-use apps following the GNOME human interface guidelines or is it rotten to the core? Is Nautilus fixable while staying within the "GNOME way?" And the answer is yes, there's plenty of examples. Elementary even makes a nice file manager following them https://github.com/elementary/files.

I'm not going to defend Nautilus or pretend it's good, I just don't care. I haven't used it in years. I do use the other GNOME apps and the DE and they're really good. GNOME's disinterest in Nautilus I think stems from my disinterest in it, what full-time Linux user uses a file manager?

pmontra
0 replies
4h14m

Files: everybody use a file manager. Terminal: possibly everybody on HN use a terminal app. Videos and Music have much better alternatives, eg VLC. I maybe end up using them when double clicking on some files, but I'm unsure. I do use eog, the image viewer. Epiphany... is that the email client?

My main gripe with Nautilus is the UI to rename files. Instead of renaming in place like any other file manager I remember, they open a popup and rename in there

lol768
7 replies
18h42m

These complaints aren't invalid, but I do wonder how many users actually get tripped up on these things. If you want a list view, clicking on the icon that looks like a list isn't a crazy thing to do. I agree the dropdown behaviour is a bit strange.

Equally, it's accepted that a bunch of today's Gnome apps have title bars with controls inside them. I don't think it's that jarring that if you don't click on a control accurately and then start dragging the mouse, you're going to move the window.

gibbetsandcrows
3 replies
13h15m

The worst part about controls inside the titlebar is things like Firefox and Chromium which implement their own decorations and window design with the tabs ending up in 95% of your draggable titlebar area, so you often end up moving the tab instead of moving the window. I'm not sure who will blink first with the lousy design situation, but the users are paying the price. (Honestly browsers just need to change this...Gnome is most people's default and they've shown themselves to be pretty damned stubborn)

exe34
1 replies
12h17m

i gave up entirely and went with xmonad. normally window placement is automatic and predictable, but if I really want to resize something, it's Super+Right Drag.

okasaki
0 replies
9h0m

This works in GNOME too, it's Super + left mouse.

Super + right mouse anywhere in the window presents a window management menu, including resize/move options

derkades
0 replies
12h39m

In Firefox, you can choose whether to use the system titlebar it its own "merged" titlebar. I expected Chrime has a similar setting.

Gualdrapo
1 replies
18h24m

The sort of mental process the author related to find that list view was pretty much the same I went through, so at least there's two people. But, as they said and the author quoted, "Our software is built to be usable by everyone. We care deeply about user experience."

Though there are already TONS of critiques to GNOME (hell, even I have written some stuff about them here) and so much has been said about it that saying something else seems like a waste of time in my humble opinion. Its devs won't change their mind because they have a laser-sharp vision of what they want to achieve. Its users won't change their mind because they like it and feel at home using it. We the people that don't (or no longer) like it won't change our minds either because it can feel really strange, confusing and even limiting.

It's been more than 10 years since they went to that route but they will do little to nothing about that because, as the author correctly asserted, "it's also a project that's very vocal - opinionated, as the saying goes - about how to do things." So either you like the GNOME way of doing things or you just can go somewhere else. Which, again, it's a bit contradictory taking in account their "Our software is built to be usable by everyone" motto.

righthand
0 replies
18h6m

I think one day it will be a sword they fall on as fewer people become interested in working with such aggressive position, the developers will look elsewhere instead of wait for GNOME to implement something or be reasonable.

tuna74
0 replies
10h10m

Yeah, especially as the two different buttons get highlighted separately and has different tooltips as you hover over them.

quaintdev
6 replies
12h52m

Windows Explorer >> Gnome >>> Mac finder

What the hell they were thinking while building finder?

sunaookami
3 replies
8h34m

Finder is way better than Windows Explorer. Explorer suffers from a myriad of bugs like constantly re-caching thumbnails, lag when opening folders (since Windows 11) and TWO context menus. No bulk rename, search is way too slow and annoying. Also, can't delete words from the file name with CTRL + Backspace, it inserts some hidden character instead. Also the whole OS hangs while an external hard drive spins up, which doesn't happen on macOS.

quaintdev
2 replies
5h22m

Finder does not have option to move a file. Nor you can resize the window.

sbuk
0 replies
3h15m

Yes it does. You can use the mouse, or shortcuts cmd-c, followed by cmd-option-v. And what on earth do you mean “Nor you can resize the window.” Nonsense. You’ve clearly never been within 6 feet of a Mac!

roryokane
0 replies
2h40m

Neither is true.

In Finder you could always drag and drop a file to move it. (In certain cases I forget the details of, holding Command is necessary to move instead of copy, as indicated by the cursor.)

Since about 8 years ago, you can also move a file via the keyboard by selecting the file, hitting Command-C to Copy, navigating to the new folder, and hitting Option-Command-V to Move the pasted file. This doesn’t match Windows’s Cut/Paste workflow, but I think Copy makes more sense as a first step. For consistency with Cut elsewhere, one would expect Cut to delete the file until it is pasted, but on Windows it doesn’t.

Finder windows are resizeable in the same way as all other macOS windows. In older versions you had to drag the drag handle in the bottom right. For a while now, you can drag on any window border, when the cursor turns into a double arrow. You can also click or Option-click the green window button to make the window full-screen or zoom it to show all contents.

tuna74
0 replies
10h3m

I like Gnome and I totally agree!

dxroshan
0 replies
10h39m

LXQt's PCManFM is a pretty good file manager. I have been using it for couple of months now.

jrm4
5 replies
16h35m

Glad to see someone go deep on this in a way that I've felt while using it but was unable to fully articulate why it's so bad.

Again, I'll keep saying it, I'm not the biggest Apple fan in the world, but however many Gnome devs in a trenchcoat will never equal a Steve Jobs and it's weird, borderline pathetic, for them to keep trying -- when all they end up doing is changing things for the sake of changing them.

webkike
4 replies
15h48m

I have actually had more problems with the Mac OS finder then I have the gnome one, and all of my problems stem from answering the question “how do I go up a directory from where I am?” Never bothered to figure out the actual right way. Might be easy. But hard to figure out

inferiorhuman
1 replies
14h10m

  But hard to figure out
Have you tried the keyboard shortcut listed next to the Go -> Enclosing Folder menu item?

webkike
0 replies
13h47m

Wow… this sucks

horsawlarway
0 replies
15h27m

I'm with you. Modern macOS is... just not good for the basics right now. I have to use it for work, and I genuinely like Gnome more most of the time (files/settings/gestures/workspaces - all better on gnome).

Mac is doing what Windows is doing "The user is stupid and must not be allowed to understand what the computer is doing - we will guess what they want instead and show them that". Basic nav in finder is painful by default (100% agree about not being able to consistently move up).

grokys
0 replies
9h45m

It's also impossible for a new user of macOS to show hidden files without an online search. Iirc it's a non documented (in the UI) keyboard shortcut. Very discoverable.

butz
5 replies
12h0m

Oh GNOME, hiding "Power off" option under additional submenu, that user wouldn't accidentally click it, and then putting "Format" right next to "Safely remove drive" in Files.

rollcat
2 replies
5h50m

Meanwhile macOS: hold "opt" to shutdown/restart without confirmation: 2 clicks, instant action; vs GNOME's 4 clicks and janky animations.

Meanwhile both: cramming so many controls into title bars there's nowhere left to click to move the window.

I recently spent a week with OS X 10.5 on a G4, I think it was peak desktop.

tristan957
1 replies
4h48m

You can click and drag anywhere on the header bar. Did you not test this before making your comment? It seems like a lot of people are misinformed.

rollcat
0 replies
3h0m

Well not on Mac, and I don't have anything with GNOME at hand. But that's besides the point: 1. it's not obvious (no other random part of the window can be used in the same way), 2. it's too many things in too little space (cognitive load, applies to Mac as well), 3. you have to be mindful about accidentally clicking instead of dragging (most non-Apple trackpads are simply bad), 4. it's ambiguous what's gonna happen for any UI element that could respond to drags (address bar, seekbar, etc).

I have similar problems telling which parts of the window can be used to drag them around on a Mac. There's a secret feature that allows you to hold Cmd+Ctrl to drag the window by clicking (almost) anywhere, but every release of macOS breaks it for yet another app.

    defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool true

tveyben
1 replies
9h17m

Same kind of thing exists on Windows - for eg USB mass storage devices, ‘Eject’ and ‘Format’ are listes next to each other in the menu… One is harmless - the other potentially destructive

ivanjermakov
0 replies
8h57m

My favorite UX is when on Windows you mount a drive of unknown partition type (e.g. ext4) there is a popup suggesting to format it with "confirm" selected by default.

rtpg
4 replies
14h36m

Always a reminder for people who are frustrated with the state of Gnome... I've found KDE to be _very good_ for people who want to see options up and center. In a way KDE is definitely more Windows-like and Gnome more Mac-like in its approaches, and you can see this very directly with the screenshotter tools packed into the various environments.

Definitely worth it for people frustrated at Gnome's cleanliness-to-a-fault.

(Full disclosure: I donate to both and apprecaite them both existing)

flohofwoe
2 replies
10h46m

Definitely worth it for people frustrated at Gnome's cleanliness-to-a-fault.

For me it's not that. I don't mind white space, and I don't mind flat design. It's simply that Gnome is too 'chaotic'. If Gnome would simply copy macOS instead of trying to invent their own UI paradigms it would mostly be fine (not that macOS is perfect though, it has been regressing massively too in the last decade, and some things never were great - most notably the OSX Finder).

But yeah, on my Linux laptop I switched to KDE a couple of months ago and it's great. Also much snappier than Gnome.

timlatim
1 replies
7h20m

It's simply that Gnome is too 'chaotic'.

Just to offer a different point of view, I see it as the opposite. I like a lot of things the KDE community is doing and I think it's particularly good at power user oriented apps like Krita and Kdenlive, which may be the best open-source tools in their respective areas and which don't really fit in the modern Gnome framework. As a desktop environment, however, I feel KDE is too visually chaotic to be usable. This post [1] illustrates some problems, but the lack of design cohesion permeates KDE and cannot be fixed without a long concerted effort. I imagine it's never been a priority because most users can shrug these inconsistencies off as something inconsequential, but for me (and I don't believe I'm alone in this) they're instantly noticeable and distracting eyesores.

Gnome has its own problems, but it is very visually consistent and clean, especially as of late when most of the standard apps are moved to GTK4/libadwaita. The GP's comparison of KDE being closer in spirit to Windows while Gnome to Mac is spot on IMO.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/tffr4l/some_kde_plasma...

kuschku
0 replies
47m

You and the previous poster are talking about different things.

Gnome has consistent UI. Every app looks the same.

KDE has consistent UX. Every app works the same.

If users can learn a paradigm once and apply it everywhere, your paradigm can be more complicated as the payoff is also larger.

But if every app is different, users won't spend any amount of time to learn how it works. Every possible option needs to be obvious immediately.

drtgh
0 replies
7h39m

The key is that KDE offers such easy and flexible customization by default. In my case with the taskbar like Windows7 with non-grouped open programs and so on. One just have to right-click on the taskbar, set, and done, because the options are available, those configuration options exist, they cared about making it easy to use and to get.

In the same way, I think Dolphin v24 should be seen as a starting point for the minimal features and easy customization included by default that a file browser needs.

Definitely worth it for people frustrated at Gnome's cleanliness-to-a-fault.

I think the problem looks more like Gnome is trying to target only tactile pads with very basic needs? not desktop users with keyboards and mouse.

This is very unfortunate, with capital letters, because if Gnome had preserved the features instead of cropping and going the pads-only route, they would have avoided the obvious result, a split in resources and developers (Mate and Homologous continuations of Gnome v2), which even ended up with two kinds of distros under Gnome. A division in resources (disaster/catastrophe).

horsawlarway
4 replies
15h43m

In no particular order, running arch with gnome and trying to reproduce the author's complaints:

- List view and view options buttons, while combined, have a visually distinct hover state, highlighting each half of the button on hover, and making it very obvious (at least to me, as a 35 year old power user) that they are different. (you can see this in his screenshots). Perhaps the author has visual issues and contrast is an issue? If so - agreed, perhaps my largest complaint with gnome is that contrast is low by default in the light view.

- Author complains that the recent and starred sections in the left nav have tooltips that are duplicative. No argument... except... he conveniently leaves out that for the vast majority of the default items (Downloads, Documents, Home, Music, Videos, etc) it shows the exact system path of that shortcut.

Compared to the shenannigans that MSFT is playing with things like onedrive - it's delightful that the system paths are displayed there. I am never confused by where a shortcut actually lives. The only duplicative items are items that don't have a path (they are internal groupings in files, like recent)

- I simply cannot reproduce not being able to get the path bar in edit state by clicking. I'm on a different distro - so maybe this is a debian thing? Single click or tap on the path display always opens the text editor for me. No shortcuts required.

- Shortcuts lists the keyboard shortcut for shortcuts for me in the dropdown menu. I have honestly never cared to check for it before, so maybe this is a valid complaint about an older version still in debian?

- He's completely right: Search in the files shortcuts menu sucks. It misses a lot of keywords that it shouldn't.

- For the scrollbar... come on man, at least try the thing that is easy. Yes - the scrollbar visually enlarges when you mouse over it, and yes - this leaves your mouse visually pointing at some new padding. That padding works for scrolling just fine (seriously - just complete the action you were intending, it works...) So he is very incorrect with this "meaning that my mouse pointer is now pointing at... nothing. Thanks, Gnomebama." It's pointing at the scrollbar and it works just fine.

Better yet - don't ever click and drag the scrollbar to scroll. It's... not the done thing with the new kids these days. Use your fingers (gestures) or use the mousewheel. The scrollbar is a visual marker for progress and for quick jumps. I am also on team "Show me the scrollbars all the time!" but I understand the goal of returning real estate on limited viewports.

---

I have a TON of complaints about gnome, but these just feel... forced. Made worse by the fact the author admits he's run a bunch of customization in the console to fix his "solid color desktop" stuff first (I'm suspicious of whether he broke his own path bar... I use it all the time, and I don't ever remember it not just being a click away to edit, even 5+ years back).

This is the kind of thing I appreciate that the Gnome team mostly ignores.

troupo
1 replies
13h0m

List view and view options buttons, while combined,

That's it. You could've stopped here. They are combined. It's a button with a dropdown indicator. The user expects this to be a single control for a single set of features. Not two distinct controls for completely unrelated functionality that you have to pixel-hunt for

pxmpxm
0 replies
4h15m

that you have to pixel-hunt for

Fitts law? Never heard of it, but I didn't go law school.

Kwpolska
0 replies
10h21m

- List view and view options buttons, while combined, have a visually distinct hover state, highlighting each half of the button on hover, and making it very obvious (at least to me, as a 35 year old power user) that they are different. (you can see this in his screenshots). Perhaps the author has visual issues and contrast is an issue? If so - agreed, perhaps my largest complaint with gnome is that contrast is low by default in the light view.

I would expect more than just two view options, and I would expect the down arrow to reveal all options. If you click on the arrow first, you might be confused if there are no view options there.

- Author complains that the recent and starred sections in the left nav have tooltips that are duplicative. No argument... except... he conveniently leaves out that for the vast majority of the default items (Downloads, Documents, Home, Music, Videos, etc) it shows the exact system path of that shortcut.

The author does mention this: "Granted, some of these tooltips show a full path, but honestly - if I've added something to this bar, I probably know what it is and where it's located."

Compared to the shenannigans that MSFT is playing with things like onedrive - it's delightful that the system paths are displayed there. I am never confused by where a shortcut actually lives. The only duplicative items are items that don't have a path (they are internal groupings in files, like recent)

What shenanigans? OneDrive lives in ~/OneDrive on Windows, "~/OneDrive - Company" if using the business version. If your desktop is in OneDrive, you will learn its path once and remember it.

- For the scrollbar... come on man, at least try the thing that is easy. Yes - the scrollbar visually enlarges when you mouse over it, and yes - this leaves your mouse visually pointing at some new padding. That padding works for scrolling just fine (seriously - just complete the action you were intending, it works...) So he is very incorrect with this "meaning that my mouse pointer is now pointing at... nothing. Thanks, Gnomebama." It's pointing at the scrollbar and it works just fine.

It is not at all obvious that the scrollbar can be manipulated when the mouse is on its right. This UI is entirely non-obvious and strange. Why not just make the scrollbar stay in place? Why does it have to move? What purpose does it have?

Kbelicius
0 replies
12h11m

I simply cannot reproduce not being able to get the path bar in edit state by clicking. I'm on a different distro - so maybe this is a debian thing?

This feature on came out this year with Gnome 46.

hedora
4 replies
13h50m

Have they fixed the save dialog box yet?

If I type <ctrl>-s filename <enter>, then I expect the current file to be saved with filename (perhaps with an extension appended).

The gtk-2 behavior was to start searching the list of files/directories when you type filename, then select whatever is highlighted when you press enter.

Anyway, I’m not going to install gnome to find out.

It’s not surprising the file browser is as bad as described in the article. After all, jwz’s cadt (cascade of attention deficit teenagers) model of software engineering was meant to explain the behavior of the gnome project.

tuna74
2 replies
10h11m

"Have they fixed the save dialog box yet? .... Anyway, I’m not going to install gnome to find out."

Then why do you care?

uniq7
0 replies
5h39m

He is asking because if they fixed it then he may consider installing it again?

frankvdwaal
0 replies
4h2m

If being interested in something was contingent on whether or not you're planning on using it, this would be one dead website.

kaanyalova
0 replies
9h13m

It still seems to search for files/directories when entering the file name but it doesn't select the first file, it saves with the filename you entered. So it was fixed.

cetu86
4 replies
11h50m

I get it that gnome is nowadays an experimental desktop environment, that tries a lot of new approaches. I just don't understand why many distributions use it as their default DE.

wao0uuno
2 replies
11h36m

Because it’s the only modern Linux DE that looks good and doesn’t break constantly.

pona-a
0 replies
10h34m

KDE? Cinnamon? MATE? LXQt?

When I was in the GNOME bubble, I too thought GNOME was the be-all and end-all of Linux DE usability, with everyone else being savages slapping together UIs without so much as a style guide. Perhaps at some point this may have been partially true.

Today, all major DEs are fine. Plasma did not crash once since 2019 for me and I think its UX is quite nice, in the case of Dolphin in particular visibly better than GNOME's. At the same time, GNOME had routine issues with extensions, semi-frequent crashes, and odd non-compliant bits like refusing to use tray icons, breaking apps that depend on them, and the last time I checked, scaling was a mess.

I do think the GNOME/libadwaita ecosystem is a fantastic achievement and agree with many of their ideas, but it would be dishonest to say all other DEs are inferior and don't deserve any consideration as a default.

mhitza
0 replies
10h34m

Define looks good, and doesn't break constantly.

pxmpxm
0 replies
4h17m

I am fairly sure the people behind Gnome don't actually really know what they're doing when it comes to HID and Ux.

Gnome terminal for example will offset the right click contextual menu with a new line of bin/hex/oct representation of a number that you happen to have selected. By default, no it can't be disabled. Good luck with the muscle memory to hit the contextual menu items now that everything is shifted down.

arnaudsm
4 replies
7h42m

Gnome isn't perfect, but is the closest thing to Apple's minimalistic mindset, and surpasses MacOS imo. And it's customizable!

If you're a power-user that likes having many toolbars, don't use gnome, there are other amazing DEs made for you

The main strength of the Linux desktop is its diversity

pshirshov
1 replies
7h35m

Try to compare Mac UI of Lion times with modern one.

Modern one is an unorganised mess full of artifacts.

arnaudsm
0 replies
7h20m

I agree. Nothing is worse than a minimalistic UI with a pile of unstructured afterthoughts.

Just like trees, you can date an app by counting how many toolbars it has

That's what happens when 20 PMs overrule each other and fight for exposure instead of caring for UX

ginko
1 replies
7h33m

If you're a power-user that likes having many toolbars, don't use gnome, there are other amazing DEs made for you

The problem is that Gnome has infected GTK to the point that it's really hard to avoid all their (imo) poor design choices (like lack of menu bars, hidden scrollbars, dialog dismiss buttons on top right) if you're using a GTK based DE like XFCE.

tristan957
0 replies
4h45m

GTK has a menubar widget. GtkDialog is deprecated. Just use a GtkWindow and design it how you feel.

userbinator
3 replies
8h24m

I don't get the obsession with "clean" UIs, nor how hiding everything and replacing it with tons of whitespace and nondescript icons can be "calming". It's sterile and unwelcoming like an empty house or unused workshop.

jampekka
1 replies
8h1m

Clean and well thought out UI is like clean and well thought out plumbing. Just works, doesn't need fiddling and stays out of the way.

KETHERCORTEX
0 replies
6h50m

It isn't about GNOME apps. Their UI actually stands in the way and require fiddling.

In GNOME Clocks:

- You cannot set the name for a timer when creating iy. You need to set the time and start it first, then either pause and reset it or wait for completion. And only then the text field for timer's name appear.

- Timer sound is just a single bell that's easy to miss when you are busy with something like cooking. No repeats, no additional dialogs or highlights. Just a single notification and timer resets.

Nautilus (Files):

- Does not focus a file/folder for keyboard navigation after entering a folder using keyboard navigation (arrow keys and Enter). Maybe I'm missing something,but that's my experience with resorting to mouse or pressing Tab.

- "Open in Terminal" opens folders only in GNOME's default terminal. There's no way in GNOME Settings to set the default application for terminal either.

GNOME Weather:

- The width of hourly weather graph/chart is limited. Even if you have a big monitor and will maximize it, you will have to scroll horizontally to see the further than ~10 hours.

abenga
0 replies
7h53m

If you like dense UIs with lots of options, you're better served using KDE or friends. I love that a less cluttered option exists, I don't understand why all DEs should behave the same.

manmal
3 replies
11h34m

As someone totally out of the loop, what’s the status of font rendering in Gnome? The screenshots don’t look any better than 20 years ago, a jarring difference to what I‘m used to from macOS.

wongogue
0 replies
9h55m

It depends on the distribution.

toberoni
0 replies
11h20m

I use Gnome on multiple PCs and my first thought was they use a bitmap font or a 720p screen because everything looks off. The screenshots are not representative of how Gnome's font rendering looks like with a font like Inter & HiDPI.

0x_rs
0 replies
6h54m

You might even find it to have regressed after pango 1.44 released, but human eyesight is not a metric contemplated by its developers.

jampekka
3 replies
8h59m

Just to make clear to the Gnome developers: you've created by far the best desktop DE there is. I hope you don't get discouraged by the constant whining of a minority clamoring for some clunky ad-hoc 90's interfaces whose suckiness is just glossed over with nostalgia and incapability to learn new and more poweful ways of using computers.

asmor
2 replies
8h50m

I like the GNOME experience, but to say that it's a more powerful way to use computers is just plain wrong. The only reason I use KDE instead is the inability (or additional hoops) to configure GNOME. That starts at fractional scaling and ends with something as trivial as setting different time to suspend on battery or switching to suspend-then-hibernate.

It probably is enough for the vast majority of computer users. But the ones that aren't likely to run Linux to begin with.

jampekka
1 replies
8h7m

If you want to configure Gnome, learn to read and write text files and use dconf/gsettings. And possibly write Gnome shell extensions.

Gnome though usually just works and has well thought out defaults, so you're usually just hampering yourself with changing them. For navigating the desktop and windows I rarely have to touch the keyboard, and it works so well I don't even have the need for a secondary or larger display.

KDE et all OTOH have tend to have poorly thought out defaults leading to inconsistent mess of an inteface littered with random configuration options. A big reason for this is likely the user community who like to be "power users" by clicking buttons and refusing to learn text configuration, let alone extensions. And the DE devs then give in to the users demanding a configuration option to select a specific cat picture as the menubar background.

asmor
0 replies
6h33m

You could've at least checked if the examples I listed are configurable via the mechanisms listed. Aside from fractional scaling (which was my example for "hoops"), they're not. You can replace suspend with suspend-then-hibernate by linking over the suspend systemd unit. But that's most definitely not a GNOME option and prevents you from suspending.

Not to mention the numerous settings that have appeared and disappeared over the years in GNOME, not just from the graphical configuration, but also from code.

I don't understand why you want an easy to use DE with intuitiveness and then are okay with hiding configuration away somewhere between the Arch Wiki and the GNOME source code.

But hey, I'm glad it works for you. Doesn't for me though, even though I wish it did!

skriticos2
2 replies
5h47m

As a GNOME user, I kinda understand what they want to achieve, but they are seriously short on resources, so there is really little substance to all the rosy aspirations. They are also very oppinionated, which then turns away a lot of liberal developers that just want to scratch their own itches.

As for file manager usability, I grew up with Norton commander and pretty much gave up on ever seeing power user addressed file manager. It's fine for simple office type stuff that I bother few times a month on my Linux system but that's basically it.

When I have any more elaborate needs I fall back to plain old terminal with something like git or maybe even midnight commander, because that's what's getting the job done.

What I find really sad is, that they have like a million bindings to every programming language there is (including one that they made up) and I have no idea how they want to maintain that codebase. The basic API still looks somewhat antiquated and disjointed, but now it's in JavaScript and Vala. So even the more OCD type developers that would accept the design language constraints are frustrated that it looks so sad under the hood.

But I mean, I get it. Building a consistent desktop environment with a clean design language is hard and especially expensive. I'm impressed by what GNOME actually manages to get done with the few resources that they have. Is it anywhere close to being consistent and complete. I don't think so.

But than again, I mostly just use the desktop environment to open Chrome and the terminal, so for me it's perfectly fine.

mixmastamyk
0 replies
1m

[delayed]

bobajeff
0 replies
4h12m

What I find really sad is, that they have like a million bindings to every programming language there is (including one that they made up) and I have no idea how they want to maintain that codebase.

I believe that's to do with gobject introspection (see *). From what I understand they mostly generate bindings through gir files. It's actually really cool what they've pulled off with it.

* https://viruta.org/the-magic-of-gobject-introspection.html

ruuda
2 replies
7h4m

I switched to Nemo after I got tired of Nautilus moving all the buttons for no particular reason every Gnome release, but a few versions ago they had a pattern that was genuinely good: a dropdown next to the current directory in the navigation bar, with everything you can do in the current directory (paste, create directory, open terminal, etc.). This was really neat, traditionally you have to access those by right-clicking some whitespace in the list/grid view, but in the list view there is only a narrow band of empty space to right-click, usually you accidentally click a file. So this was a genuine innovation in UI design. Unfortunately they since removed it again.

modzu
0 replies
4h12m

^^ this is bonkers that its gone

dylan-m
0 replies
38m

This was really neat, traditionally you have to access those by right-clicking some whitespace in the list/grid view, but in the list view there is only a narrow band of empty space to right-click, usually you accidentally click a file. So this was a genuine innovation in UI design. Unfortunately they since removed it again.

Wait, no? It hasn’t. I’m looking at a fresh build from the main branch right now. The menu doesn’t have Paste in it in this version, which might be what you’re referring to, but I don’t think it was ever there. (Alas, copy and paste UIs are sad). But otherwise it is very much there. And arguably better because the other big menu has moved somewhere else :) If you’re finding it’s completely gone, um, what distro are you using so I can quietly judge them?

horsawlarway
2 replies
15h17m

I want to add - outside of the technical discussion here.

read in the voice of jeff foxworthy --- You might be a boomer if...

you unironically think "thanks gnomebama" is a good thing to make a pun out of in a ui discussion

the chef's kiss is the complaint is incorrect.

rossant
1 replies
10h7m

As a non American person I'm unfamiliar with this expression, what does it mean and where does it come from?

fracus
2 replies
12h10m

One thing I can't stand with Ubuntu is the panel position at the top. 90% of users will be browsing the web. If I'm on reddit for example, I will literally have at minimum 3 browser bars (tabs, toolbar, reddit enhancement suite) but also the panel. Consider we read top to bottom, the panel shouldn't be at top since it is almost never being used or read. It should default to the bottom but at the very least you should have the option to move it where you want without having to install a 3rd party extension.

worble
0 replies
11h23m

As consider that because monitors are typically 16:9 there is so much extra horizontal space compared to vertical. Personally on KDE I have my app panel on the right then hide browser tabs with some css and have Tree Style Tabs on the right as well. It frees up so much of the limited vertical space, it's refreshing.

peheje
0 replies
11h35m

I 100% agree. It's weird. I Use 'Dash to Panel's GNOME extension, and to me that should be the default. From there I really like how GNOME merges the app bar with maxize minimize close with the title etc. At least most applications.

yoavm
1 replies
8h41m

this is anecdotal, but I just asked three non-techie friends who never seen GNOME before to change my Nautilus app to list view. Neither of them needed more than 5 seconds to do it.

mixmastamyk
0 replies
6m

Non-disabled folks can hit all toolbar buttons sequentially in under five seconds. The point are the hieroglyphics and misleading clues.

washadjeffmad
1 replies
2h52m

I think a salient point is the reduction in hackability in modern open source interfaces, driven by reductive centralized developer-centric consolidation.

There's no right design ontology. Each user's need is unique, and the utter abandonment of principle over the past decade (I use GNOME 3 as the turning point) has been deleterious to the ethos that once defined Linux as the platform for those who prize ownership of their systems above closed, committee-design decision making over creating user-first interfaces.

I've returned to the BSDs in part because of it. My main system is, of course, Linux at its core, but I don't feel close to it like I did when I'd have a half dozen WMs and DEs installed, the sessions easily switchable by TTY for whatever workflow that required them.

GNOME 3 is a triumph of bureaucracy over stakeholders, developed antagonistically to the historical consideration of its users. It's a core product that satisfies no one completely, and can't, which I'm sure makes the lives of its developers easier as their stance on shutting down any dialog with users over the years has reinforced.

washadjeffmad
0 replies
9m

Perhaps someone could share how else the diversity of features of 2.32 vs 3 is a non-explanation after more than a decade, despite a pluritude of bug reports and feature requests for functionality that hasn't been replaced?

This isn't reddit. It's safe to express yourself here.

superkuh
1 replies
17h24m

The worst part of GNOME, files included, is the gtkfilechooserwidget.c, in both gtk3 and gtk4, having a bug which errors out and pops up if you paste a file path into a file->open dialog. Gtk devs say the filechooser code is so spaghetti no one wants to work on it to make filename-entry location-mode work by default again. And I agree, I tried for a year on and off to patch it myself in gtk 3.22 and 3.24 and I could only ever fix it for the first launch of File->Open for a given process. Subsequent Opens would error out again.

GNOME UI, and now Gtk since 2014, is not written with people who use the keyboard in mind. That's it's biggest UI weakness.

jdiff
0 replies
16h59m

File Chooser gripes, I get. It's one of many pain points of GNOME, and one that's haunted GNOME for ages.

But GNOME is highly (primarily even) keyboard-driven. The meme since 3.0 is that it's built for touch first, but nobody who's said that has ever used GNOME on a touch device, it is a nightmare. GNOME's primary controls are through keyboard shortcuts or the occasional broad mouse gesture that has a faster keyboard alternative.

3np
1 replies
17h28m

As someone who can't cope with Gnome Files, I've been pleased with worker as desktop file manager recently.

http://www.boomerangsworld.de/cms/worker/

https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/worker

Still on the lookout for a reasonable FileChooserDialog replacement... Easily the worst part of GTK and a great candidate for its own dedicated article (hint hint :)). Supposedly it takes some LD_PRELOAD fudging to override it and while there is the linked previous work from KDE I'm not aware of anything else at this point. Anyone know of any recentish attempts? Would it be a good idea with a "libgtkfilepicker" which provides a more accessible API for implementations to interface with?

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/743931/can-i-someho...

kuschku
0 replies
38m

It used to be relatively easy to override the filechooser by forcing portal mode, but Gnome actually disabled that because people aren't supposed to use it.

(See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/4829 and related discussions)

But while they did remove that option, they didn't implement an option to do it properly. So now even though I use KDE, Firefox drops me in the shitty Gnome filechooser which is entirely useless.

(Luckily firefox ended up making that an option on their side instead: widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker)

w4rh4wk5
0 replies
7h30m

Do Alt+ shortcuts still not work for navigating the hamburger (and other) menus? Or did they finally fix that across GTK applications?

I stopped using most GNOME application due to this decline in accessibility features.

thastings
0 replies
1h28m

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet, I must add COSMIC here, as most comparisons seem to occur between GNOME and KDE. I've used the former for years, but slowly realized that needing to use various extensions to achieve a usable desktop is just plain wrong. Then I switched to KDE Plasma for a year or two, and it also felt off a bit, partly due to the overwhelming number of options with often odd defaults. Fonts were awesome though, and so was Dolphin compared to Nautilus. Finally, the week the alpha was released, I installed the COSMIC version of Pop, and never looked back. Why? Because it has the correct amount of desktop-related settings for me (and hopefully many others as well). These settings are: - dock or panel or both? - place them anywhere - populate them however you want

In this sense, GNOME is too strict and inflexible. Plasma, on the other hand, lets me create the look I'm used to without adding extensions, but also feels "wobbly." This wobbliness comes from the overwhelming amount of tickboxes, radio buttons and whatelse almost calling for interaction to change stuff. COSMIC fixed my problems of the duopoly and feels stable enough for daily use even in its alpha state.

mixmastamyk
0 replies
1h24m

I don’t like most of what gnome did to its UI over the years, as I use titlebars, scrollbars, and menus heavily.

But I consoled myself with the idea that at least it was done to make it more friendly for touch devices—that I didn’t happen need at the time on my PCs.

Guess what? Fast forward a decade. Just got a new linux tablet and come to find out gnome is often shitty and unusable there too. Menus tiny, often keyboard only interfaces! Phosh is decent but none of the video players have a UI in the ballpark of Netflix/Android. All the touch targets are TINY, no tap in the center to play/pause, no tap on sides to skip either. Often have state bugs where the UI won’t hide after an interaction. Won’t stay full screen. Making things round is not enough to make them touch friendly.

So much was lost and we didn’t even get a good touch interface out of the bargain! And their broken interfaces have infected mate, xfce, cinnamon as well.

NayamAmarshe
0 replies
8h37m

Nautilus is a very barebones file manager. I really love Dolphin compared to it, it can be made simple or complicated depending on your needs.

MrDresden
0 replies
11h36m

A personal annoyance with Gnome Files is that every time a file is deleted it shows an annoying toast over the tabs notifying you about the files being deleted.