GNOME was started by a guy who thought Microsoft was peak software design. Its founding document is called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" where not sucking basically means being more like Windows. Make of that what you will.

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youngNed a day ago | parent | next [-]

That's OK. That was a different time, that was an effort to attract people, for whom, windows was their baseline. Bringing people in like that was not a wrong decision, many people first experience of non windows was gnome, many of those stuck around.

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type0 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> GNOME was started by a guy who thought Microsoft was peak software design

It was then, now it's about trying to outapple MacOS in braindead minimalism

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prmoustache 12 hours ago | parent [-]

How is gnome minimalistic compared to say, a default conf of fvwm, dwm, i3, sway, weston? It has all the things most people need: access to wifi/bluetooth/launcher/a file manager, apps for nearly everything, etc.

Yes it is opinionated and there are stuff you can only configure using gconf or extensions if the default conf is not your preference but minimalistic it isn't.

Anyway I don't really understand the Gnome bashing when there are KDE and at least 6 or 7 other complete desktops availables for the users + millions of windows managers and wayland compositors for those that want a more personalized experience. The fact it is proposed as a default desktop by many distros who aren't forced to choose it is a testament at how sane its defaults are.

It is not like the situation in the windows and macOS where the desktop is almost impossible to customize without breaking stuff[1]

[1] I tried litestep on windows decades ago, it was mostly usable but it only changed the shell, windows were still managed the same terrible way as in vanilla windows.

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exe34 8 hours ago | parent [-]

It's minimalist in the sense that they have decided what you should be allowed to have as a user, and any extensions you rely on to bring back functionality that has been considered basic for 30 years will break with every version.

other environments can start as minimalist, but once you have set them up in the way you want, those features will rarely go away. usually that would be considered a bug/regression, not a feature.

	▲	prmoustache 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In my experience unless you upgrade on the exact date of the new Gnome release most of those extensions get updated within a month or 2 of the release. Additionally if non breakage and stability is a must for you the long term support distros such as debian, ubuntu LTS or an rhel derivative such as Almalinux are available. While obtaining and using newer software was annoying on long term support distros in the past, tools such as flatpak, toolbox and distrobox have made it super easy now so you can run a super stable system+desktop basis that doesn't change in 10 years alongside bleeding edge apps.