I've spent the last 10 years off and on from Linux. Had I used something other than GNOME, I believe my experience would have been better.
I've been on KDE for the last 3-4 years and things work so well I could never imagine going back to GNOME.
I have put my parents on Ubuntu (gnome) in 2013 to replace windows XP. My mother is 88 now. I think it is the perfect fit for her (dad is dead years ago).
I use ubuntu gnome because tweaking my computer is not where I want to spend my time. YOLO. Using a "mainstream" desktop that can be explained to "non specialist" has its benefits. I accept to suffer some annoyances and there is always a way to fix the most annoying ones by sacrificing time.
It was true but times change.
Microsoft chose to kill off Windows 10, which it once promised would be the last desktop Windows ever. Its replacement is bigger, slower, stuffed with adverts and upselling attempts, and has an artificial demand for TPM 2.
That's driven thousands of people to check out Linux, and if you don't know anything about Linux, then Ubuntu is the number one best-known distro. Many techies dislike Snap (to the extent of spreading lies like "it's not FOSS"), but it makes version upgrades safer, which matters more to non-techies.
(I say thousands so the pedants don't shout at me, but I suspect the reality is at least hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.)
Linux Mint is friendlier, yes, and so is Zorin OS, but both are based on Ubuntu.
Valve has sold millions of Steam Decks, which demonstrate that it's now possible to run premier new Windows games on Linux with performance at least as good as on Windows. All Linux users know their hardware runs faster and cooler with Linux than Windows anyway.
Chromebooks (which are as cheap as laptops get) outsold Macs (which are expensive) by revenue in 2017 in the USA and within 3 years in the rest of the world. ChromeOS is a desktop Linux, based on Gentoo. It has hundreds of millions of users who have never heard the word "Linux".
Companies with cloud-based IT are deploying ChromeOS Flex as a response to ransomware attach. (E.g. Nordic Choice hotels.)
Many of us see Ubuntu's characteristic desktop in shops, bars, travel stations and things regularly now. I hear its startup sound on trains. I have totally non-techie friends running Ubuntu at home. I've given Mint to lots of mildly technophobic friends and they get on just fine.
It's not over, but the year of Linux on the Desktop came about a decade ago, and the penguin taleban were too busy in-fighting to notice.
This has been a problem I’ve dealt with on nearly every single Snap I’ve installed. If you’re a file editor, you must let me edit my damn files!
I've run every single version of Ubuntu ever released. Work machines stay on LTSes, testbeds run interim versions.
After the 22.04 release, I carefully de-snapped my work laptop, using `deb-get` to install native packages of everything. Worked a treat, took less disk space, things started a tiny bit faster.
Then I enabled Ubuntu Pro and it force-reinstalled snapd. It's fair enough to have it as a dependency: it's a standard component. I was very annoyed, though.
But when I upgraded to 24.04, a lot of things broke. I had to spend ages re-enabling repositories, getting new keys, changing version strings in stuff under `/etc/apt/sources.list.d` and so on. It's a PITA.
So I have performed a volte face. I removed all my `deb-get` packages, and reinstalled the snap versions. All my comms and messaging apps, music and media players, and so on.
It's much easier. No extra repos. I experimentally took one laptop from 24.04 to 24.10 to 25.04 to 25.10 and yesterday to 26.04. All my apps stay in place. Nothing broke. No custom repos. No changes needed to any config file. It just works.
I've been using Linux for 30 years, starting on Slackware and moving to Red Hat and Caldera and SUSE via lots of others. But I'm old and grumpy and I want stuff to work without fiddling. I want low maintenance. Snap is low maintenance. My messaging apps can download stuff into my Downloads folder, open attachments from Documents, and so on.
I run native packages of my own browsers (Waterfox and Chrome) and AppImages of Panwriter and Logseq, and I have none of these difficulties.
Life is easier if you don't fight the OS and the vendor.
And Ubuntu is still easier and less hassle than Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, or any of the other big names.
Both Gnome and KDE support that. Actually Gnome a tad better as it gives you less knobs to turn an waste your time. Accept the defaults and if defaults are bad move somewhere else.
Because maybe not all people have the same preferences as you?
Distro: "The most used DE needs first class support, we should probably bend to it" → Distro: "We should probably make this DE the default since it's so widely used and supported" → User: "I choose the default" → Distro: "The most used DE…"
So yes, people have different preferences; but if your preference is GNOME today, it might not be GNOME tomorrow, and "I picked the default" isn't quite the neutral signal it looks like.
Since GNOME is the default Ubuntu DE, they have a certain responsibily to listen to the users/devs and leave the system open (to an extent). But their direction is the opposite:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210901171117/https://twitter.c...
They've been doing massive reduction in functionalities, really insane like limiting copy/past of terminals just to the current screen (which hurts any sysadmin), generally without any way to enable them back.
I haven't heard of any other OSS organization trying so hard to limit freedom of their users/devs, and this is an explicit goal - they don't want to weaken their brand.
GNOME is nothing short of the Oracle of open source.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of people disparaging free open source software that they've never contributed anything to, either money or code.
I wish Ubuntu would just give up with GNOME and switch to something more sensible.
But seriously why would they disabled the middle mouse copy paste buffer by default? Anyways, gnome tweaks to the rescue I guess
edit: grammar, also Cinnamon fixes these issues thankfully.
(I use Super+side mouse buttons to move between workspaces, I hate the keyboard-centric workflow when one hand is always on the mouse)
It doesn't. X was the only place I know of where that was a thing.
Because of scrolling on Thinkpad keyboards (using the middle click), I had to turn that feature of every time, especially while working on longer documents I would otherwise accidentally paste stuff at random places.
(It's not just macOS.)
From where I sit I have 5 Thinkpads set up within reach, and I have a few more in other rooms. They are by far my preferred laptop.
Most run Ubuntu as their default OS, most have the trackpad disabled because I usually use the trackpoint for everything, and on all of them I use middle-click to paste extensively.
The accidental pasting definitely kept happening to me, likely due to my bad habit of highlighting sections while to focus on them.
But hey! At least they are only flipping defaults, not removing the feature outright, like they did type-ahead search. [Insert angry rant here]
About your first point, however, keep in mind that "middle click insert" has been the default behavior in X since the 1980s, long before Windows or current generation MacOS's were around. To me, this is such a basic functionality, I would compare it something as fundamental as CTRL-X/C/V for cut/copy/paste on Windows.
As someone that habitually highlights what they are reading it was generally beyond useless for me. It was actively making me mad when I accidenatally pasted some non-sense because I just highlighted a paragraph before and accidentally inserted it into something.
Or in anything that's not X?
Speaking personally for me only, I don't think it's a great thing. The <however many> clipboards on Linux is... not really a great thing. I for one never know which of the buffers contain what. And this is compounded by the fact that selection may or may not overwrite what's in one of the buffers, and middle click may or may not paste whatever was in that buffer. Additionally compounded by how inconsistent the behavior is across apps.
I, for one, use the different clipboards concurrently all the time, with "highlight & middle-click" probably being the one I use most often. It's the most convenient for me most of the time:
- only two interactions (one drag & one click)
- completely mouse-based (no keyboard interaction necessary)
- hence only requires one hand (look, ma!)
Bo! Let's fight! And both get banned from HN :)
As for the negative Gnome feedback (not from you but others) I do like Gnome, it's just enough window manager for me, I like the defaults and I like the touchpad gestures etc. Generally looks and works well for all I do. I always feel swamped by KDE.
Nowadays it is quite easy https://github.com/AntonFriberg/dotfiles/blob/master/modules...
Note that the way this works is that after you activate your home manager generation it outputs a script path that you need to run manually as root which installs a Systemd service which ensures that the drivers are linked correctly.
They did it on purpose for some reason. If I were you I'd give Plasma a try.
I've been using the Kubuntu 26.04 prereleases for a few weeks. No surprises from KDE, but Wayland has broken a few things. Autotype in Keepass does not work, keynav and even the Wayland keynav forks don't work, and Wayland does not support priority keyboard layouts for switching between two specific layouts.
I still mostly use Xorg though, I only have wayland on a tablet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Plasma
https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
Is this, like, a “GNU/Linux controversy” thing?
It's really only calling it "KDE" in isolation that is a bit off. On the GNOME side, such a reference makes sense because the desktop environment is named GNOME and it's run by the GNOME Project/GNOME Foundation. I.e. a bit reversed which word in the order refers to the org's vs DE's name.
Most of the time people will probably figure it out at the end of the day via context either way though.
Good. It shouldn't be on by default. It's surprising behavior, too easy to fat-finger, and too disruptive when it accidentally triggers.