> looked to the GNOME project to see how people feel about removing low-use features

I like it and its the main reason I use gnome. Gnome does everything I need and is pretty close to my ideal use case. There are a few minor things I don't like but they are easy to deal with. The DE is very stable and nice looking and is typically first on new tech like Wayland. I assume a large chunk of this speed and stability comes from not being bogged down with 1000 options and alternative workflows.

At work we have to support so many obscure workflows and options and its a constant source of bugs when you forgot there is a toggle that changes the way things work and your new change doesn't support that. Or that a feature has 5 alternative workflows making your change 5x harder so its not worth starting at all.

Agreed. I used to be really into customization and I get that there's a certain pride and sense of accomplishment and sense of ownership that goes with it.

But there's also a certain zen to just declaring bankruptcy on configuration and tweakery. Gnome used to bother me (and Ubuntu did too) but I've learned to just let go. If I can't figure out how to change something in a few seconds, it's probably not worth the effort because in a few years or months I'll be under configuration debt.

Tangentially, as an example, I switched to this launcher on Android called Niagara. The developer refuses to make categories/folders to group apps. And it made me so angry at first. But he also made it really easy to rename things and the launcher's key feature is that selecting things alphabetically is nearly instant. The problem was that I could never remember what things were called. Like... what's the name of that god damn app that opens my garage door? And I'd hunt for it all over and curse the fact that I couldn't put things in a quick folder. And then I realized I could just... rename the app "Garage Door". Who needs categories. Ok prefix games with "Game - " etc. All the dumb apps my kids schools require are prefixed with the kid's name.

Now, that does still sound like putting effort into configuration. But it's just one feature and the payoff is not having to even think about things ever again. And there's no configuration debt because it didn't take as much effort in the first place as you'd think. If I don't find something quickly, then it needs to be renamed.

Well that rambled a bit, but the point is that just because I know a complex way to do things (an elaborate folder structure of apps in the old launcher that I used to have to constantly reconfigure and fuss about because even then it was difficult to find things), maybe there are better ways to do things. Like Niagra's method to scroll through all the apps fast as hell and now I never think about how to organize icons.

So sure Firefox was one way decades ago. Chrome is different and does things differently than Firefox does. If people are willing to declare bankruptcy and switch to Chrome, why not be willing to declare bankruptcy to the same features and allow Firefox to evolve?

... does Chrome even have an equivalent of this compact view? In the big picture, shaving a few pixels in a browser theme seems like the wrong reason to choose a web browser. Too much bikeshedding.

Lucky you. You're probably the average user GNOME was designed for. Unfortunately for GNOME, most users aren't average.

Gnome works almost the same as macOS, which I'd say is for the average user. I have a bunch of minor complaints like the lack of a minimize button but I find ignoring these issues is more palatable than using a less polished DE that doesn't contain defaults that are almost exactly what I want anyway.

Just FYI, minimise is both in the window menu (alt-space or the top left) and can be configured to have a button or be triggered by an action like double click or middle click in GNOME tweaks.

How are you determining who most users are? Is this based on anything beyond anecdotal evidence?

It's unfortunate that they are trimming the low-use, killer features that enthusiasts love. But I suspect they have limited developer resources, and given their declining market share, it makes sense that they would focus their efforts.

Unless a group of independently wealthy developers want to take up the mantle of maintaining the enthusiasts features, we should anticipate more cuts.

Except they recently renewed a cool $400M a year [0] Google search deal.

[0] https://tidbits.com/2020/08/17/mozillas-renewed-deal-with-go...

You underestimate the ability of Mozilla's leadership team to piss away money.

Or you know, a browser is not a trivial app, especially with the feature churn of the modern web, that has to be kept up-to-date.

Which makes it seem not quite genius that they add as much feature churn again in their own app.