Gnome 40 – The anti-desktop desktop (opens in new tab)

I actually agree and disagree with the overall sentiment.

I agree because looking back (switched to macOS, used GNOME before), I think it's pretty unusable without customization. macOS really hits the sweet spot for me.

I disagree because the time I spent using it as a daily driver was actually rather productive, I recall being really efficient with it.

I'm not sure what to think of GNOME lately. In my opinion, it should seriously tone down the "desktop of the future" vibe because its users really don't want that. It's time to fold the failed "tablet UI" experiment and go for a more traditional desktop because I've yet to see a single touch device run GNOME in the wild.

GNOME: Experiment didn't work. Pack it up, go home and go back to your roots.

This is a terrible and shallow review, in my opinion. As I understand, GNOME, starting with 3, is very keyboard-driven. I've only mouse-clicked on the Activity at the top left corner no more than a few times after switching to the new design, and only because I was new at the time. After checking out the cheatsheet and playing around with it for a while, the whole workflow becomes way faster than any other Desktop environments I've used (Windows, macOS). The design change makes redundant many features that people are so used to that they are almost taken for granted. However, GNOME 3 and thereafter, proves that things could be done in a simpler and more efficient way. For a few examples, windows key to launch overview and type directly to search for the desired apps to launch; virtual desktop to reduce the need to show desktops/minimiz windows; and there is actually an extension called Extensions to manage all your GNOME extensions, etc. Many complaints the author has against GNOME are simply no issues at all to me and, I believe many experienced GNOME users as well, if he is only open-minded enough to adapt to new changes and habits. It is actually surprising to find someone still raising issues with some of the fundamental design changes so long after GNOME 3. I guess for some, old habits really die hard.