I didn’t like how I had to install a bunch of community plugins to get basic desktop functionality
This seems to be the main gripe with Gnome. I disagree.
This “basic desktop functionality” people are missing in Gnome is usually the standard desktop metaphor. You can hack it back into Gnome with extensions, but that’s not what Gnome is going for.
If you want to have lots of icons on screen that show info and can be clicked on for more info or actions, just use KDE.
Gnome works much better on laptops with a touchpad and no mouse. It’s philosophy is that you only ever really do one thing at a time, so it’s designed to show you the program you’re currently working in and nothing else, until you need something else.
My only gripe with it is that the top bar is actually useless, so I use 1 extension to hide it.
This seems to be the main gripe with Gnome. I disagree.
This “basic desktop functionality” people are missing in Gnome is usually the standard desktop metaphor. You can hack it back into Gnome with extensions, but that’s not what Gnome is going for.
If you want to have lots of icons on screen that show info and can be clicked on for more info or actions, just use KDE.
Gnome works much better on laptops with a touchpad and no mouse. It’s philosophy is that you only ever really do one thing at a time, so it’s designed to show you the program you’re currently working in and nothing else, until you need something else.
My only gripe with it is that the top bar is actually useless, so I use 1 extension to hide it.