GNOME isn't fine. See, on switching keyboard layout it switches focus from current window while it writes some file to disk. Yes, it's not terrible on SSD, and I bet whoever invented this monstrosity has an SSD. But needing an SSD not to lose some of the letters you type just screams of insanity.

OTOH, yes, the rest of Ubuntu is fine, and to anyone fed up with Windows I gladly recommend anything else based on Ubuntu LTS. [LKX]Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Mint — they are all really fine.

> on switching keyboard layout it switches focus from current window while it writes some file to disk.

I don't use GNOME, but I've noticed switching keyboard layout in Fcitx being slow. This is especially annoying since I have four different layouts and switching back-and-forth requires cycling through all the others.

I wonder whether this is actually a problem at a deeper layer. (Possibly that layer was originally created for GNOME.) Do you happen to have a link to a bug tracker for this issue?

Huh? So? Surprisingly, Ubuntu MATE has bugs too, you can look here too see some of them: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mate

1) This bug is a major one for a big part of the world.

2) It belongs to the part of GNOME that exists solely because GNOME decided to reinvent keyboard input.

3) Google shows lots of people aware of the problem (bugreports, stackexchange, whatever) — of course it does, see (1) — but not only no solution, but also I couldn't find any workaround short of using another DE, although — see (2) — disabling the feature altogether would be a decent workaround.

Of course all programs have bugs. Do other free programs tend to have bugs of this lasting quality?

How often does a user switch their keyboard layout?

When writing in Russian, every time when they switch between typing prose and typing equations or code. So, maybe about a dozen times per sentence.

At first my jaw dropped on your comment, but then I thought, maybe we non-latin-writing people are just abusing a feature meant for something different? Do you use several layouts, but switch between them infrequently?

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if people assume that non-latin languages have all the characters you need to type in that language on a single layout. For English at least, you really only use a single layout.

In various non-european scenarios, possibly multiple times per sentence. For example, including the word "Microsoft" or "Linux" in the middle of non-latin script requires two keyboard layout switches, to latin and back.

I code on US keyboard, but i write mails and documentation for work on Slovenian keyboard.

It's not bad if you focus on one or the other. But when you combine the two, (talking about techical stuf, tickets, code reviews, ...) I often have to switch.

I'd say i switch on average few dozen times per hour.

I think you misunderstood : the problem is not the trash-talking, the problem is that all Linux DE are trashes and if people were only putting their effort on one it wouldn't be trash.

Everyone thinks that different part of it is trash, so you get 20 desktop. Its like in that xkcd where you creat ultimate desktop and end up with 21 desktops instead of original 20.

And why would Linux need Such desktop-to-end-all-other-desktops? It would be a trashy configure me only with mouse desktop. Let such users stay at Windows or Mac and allow power users to have their choice if 20 desktops with majority of them allowing at least a text configuration.