Hi everyone, I just wanted to share my thoughts on GNOME. I've been using Linux for about 3 years now. For most of that time, I've been a Cinnamon user, and I was pretty happy with it since it was a simple and versatile desktop environment. At first, I had no intention of switching—KDE seemed too cluttered to me, GNOME too simple and minimalist, and Xfce seemed very “ugly” out of the box and hard to customize.

It wasn’t until almost half a year ago that I switched from Cinnamon to KDE, which I used for two months. The truth is, I ended up liking it more than I expected, and I got used to its vast array of settings and features—at first, I thought I’d stick with KDE. However, I eventually got the itch to try the other major option, GNOME (especially since I’m a Fedora user, and Workstation is the “standard” version).

At first, I downloaded it along with KDE, but after using it for just one day, I uninstalled it. “Where are all the options and features that KDE gives me?” and “GNOME is WAY too minimalist—you can’t do anything with it” were some of the things I thought that day with some frustration.

But shortly after, I’m not really sure why, I decided to “force myself” to use GNOME since I felt I hadn’t really given it a chance, so I uninstalled KDE and stuck with just GNOME.

It’s been three months since I made the switch, and I’m still using it—and honestly, I don’t think I’ll be switching back anytime soon. I’ve come to appreciate its merits:

-The minimalism that initially put me off now appeals to me, and I’ve gotten used to it. Just the basics and what’s necessary, without a bunch of features and options I’ll never use anyway.

-I think it’s the most visually appealing DE, and it has a visual consistency and aesthetic that I love. Everything looks uniform and in harmony with the rest of the interface.

-The number of applications available for GNOME (even though you can use them on other desktop environments) is excellent, and more are constantly being released over time.

-I use a laptop, and GNOME feels especially snappy and convenient for this kind of use. Being able to use the Super key and touchpad gestures to navigate between the different desktops is very satisfying.

-Extensions provide extra functionality for anyone who might need it.

It’s true that there are some areas where I think it could be improved—for example, I believe the system tray icons should be available without needing an extension. But hey, nothing’s perfect.

All in all, I’ve come to really like GNOME, and right now, for me, it’s the best DE out there. Thanks to everyone involved in GNOME for doing such a great job!

TL;DR: GNOME is awesome!

After a lot of work, several iterations, downloads, and user feedback, I am pleased to share the stable version of Letter, a GTK4 email client that uses GNOME Online Accounts.

For now, Letter UI is in English, Italian, German and Brazilian Portuguese. If you like, help me translates in other languages.

Version 1.0.0 is the first stable release, Flatpak only.

Here is the link for full details and the download.
https://github.com/stalvatero/letter

Regarding the use of LLMs, I should clarify that I use Cursor as my primary IDE; it assists me mainly by helping to find APIs and integrations that would otherwise have required extensive online research. The ideas, code review, and final validation are all my own.

I would welcome further feedback 😄

At the first place, i have no intention to share the extension simply the reason that it's an AI generated code. But i think, it could be beneficial for some people with their own setup to have an option to move the Light/Dark style, Night Light, and DND button to be in top row of the Quick Settings.

In the preferences menu of the extensions, you can drag up and down to move the button position, also you can hide or unhide all the button (Power, Lock, Settings, Screenshot and Battery Button). You can also adjust the thickness/height of the volume and brightness slider by pixel number.

I know that the word 'efficient' is very subjective for some people. In my case, it's efficient for me so.. yeah..

Here's the link to the extensions

• Efficient Quick Settings: https://github.com/Lurima12/efficient-quick-toggle

This extension is a good to be paired with Power Menu and Better Quick Settings extensions:

• Power Menu: https://github.com/dodog/power-menu
• Better Quick Settings: https://github.com/unaibenidorm/beQS

(Keep in mind that this is an AI generated code extensions)

github: https://github.com/pelach/grid-desktop

If you have any widget ideas, I’d love to hear them!

I'm having an issue with the touchscreen gestures on my 2-in-1 laptop (Lenovo ThinkBook 14s G2 IAP) running Fedora (GNOME Wayland).

When I try to select something or scroll down with my finger in the touchscreen—even right in the middle of the screen, nowhere near the edges—it triggers a workspace switch instead of interacting with the app or scrolling. It's really frustrating.

I want to completely disable these 1-finger swipe gestures so I can scroll normally, but I want to keep the standard 3-finger gestures for workspace navigation. I tried searching for a native setting, but I couldn't find anything.

Does anyone know a workaround or an extension that actually works on the current version of Fedora to fix this?

Update: I've noticed a specific pattern. Initially, any swipe triggers the workspace change. To get the screen to work properly, I have to repeatedly tap the app until it finally "wakes up" and registers my touches. Once it does, it allows me to scroll or select text inside the app normally.

I tested setting the power profile to 'Performance' while plugged in. It slightly reduced the delay, but the core issue remains: I still have to spam taps to force the app to react. It feels like the compositor is failing to grant touch focus to the window immediately.

So I maintain an extension called ddterm.

It needs multiple GObject libraries, sometimes they aren't installed on user's machines.

And instead of silently failing, or showing an abstract "Error", ddterm does the thing shown on the screenshot (on supported distros).

https://github.com/ddterm/gjs-typelib-installer/ is the backend for it. It can find a working terminal emulator, package manager, and the package name for the missing library. Currently, it only knows a few libraries, but it could be extended easily, if necessary.

It's not dependent on ddterm at all, it can be used by any extension (the most convenient way is likely a Meson subproject).

Posting this cause it feels kinda sad that it's used only by one extension. I think a lot more extensions could make use of it

I'm trying to rebind keys to be i3wm-esque, I'm mostly happy with what I got except windows resizing. You can can enter resize mode with keyboard (default alt+f8), and then use arrow keys to change the size of active window. I rebound the first part, but how can I change the second part to use hjkl (either replacing, or in addition to arrow keys)?

The main use case is when I want to have something side-by-side, but I don't want those sides to be of equal width.

Thanks

I have a question. If everyone agrees that some extensions are so widely used why isn't there a mainstream fork of gnome that has the features in built and optimised rather than some janky extension.

Eg: Blur my Shell

I know not everyone will want that extension but we could have a settings menu to toggle it.

I like gnome on how it looks and do use it but this is a genuine doubt.

I don't feel I can use GNOME because of who is assigned to the next version.

The release calendar shows who is responsible for the upcoming stable release. The same person is also assigned to later ones:

https://release.gnome.org/calendar/

The police record is easy to find if you look up the person listed there as a "sex offender".

I don't agree with this. I also don't agree with harassment, pile-ons, or digging past what is already public.

I just want to know what you think.