Gnome Is My Home... For A While

Gnome and I haven’t always had the best experience together, I’ve tried many a time but I’m a very tweaky person (I love to tweak my setups which is why I have a love for window managers such as i3, BSPWM and Sway which are among my favourites). I have so many times used Gnome with so many extensions and tweaks that it didn’t seem like Gnome anymore. It’s had some significant changes since then so I thought I’d have another go at it. I am after all having a Wayland era.

I am giving Vanilla Gnome a try for once and am thoroughly enjoying it. The touchpad gestures, the aesthetic, the bar/panel, the workspace system, the app launcher. It’s been an interesting experience, coming to it from a tiling window manager.

Pros

There are quite a few things that I have been really enjoying since switching to Gnome. The first of these is Gtk Theming. This sounds like a weird one, and it probably is, but the Gtk theme is globally set and if I select dark in Settings, all Gtk apps use dark. KDE is similar but there are so many different parts to a KDE theme (Global Theme, Panel theme, Desktop layout, Icons, Wallpaper, Cursor, Window Decorations) which can get confusing. Gnome’s themes are a lot simpler and without all the options, I have found that I actually got more done without having to preconfigure my setup.

The touchpad gestures are another thing that I have been enjoying, allowing me to switch between workspaces and open activities with relative ease. The keyboard shortcuts to do the same are also just as useful.

Cons

There are a couple, but the big one for me is there is not an easy way to add a colour theme, I know that that was something I put in Pros but it is also a Con. It would be nice to have a Nord desktop. It’s not too big a deal but it would be nice.

Another is it would be nice to have a few more appearance settings, such as size of icons on the dash, panel location )top, bottom, sides). This 100% won’t happen but it would be nice.

Conclusion

I know that this will upset a handful of Gnome elitists, but oh well. I am definetly enjoying my time on Gnome, my issues are purely personal preferences. If the pronounciation of Gnome is upsetting you, let me know on the Fediverse (link down below).

Note

I will update tomorrow with a screenshot of my setup.