The enlightened, then, know that the only purpose of ANY desktop environment is to start the correct program when I hit "super" and then type the first 3-4 characters of a program name. And to do that left/right screen split thing when you hit super+left/right.

I can't figure out how my workflow is that different from other linux users or if I'm just part of the silent majority. Literally all I ask of my DE is:

- the super+search thing i mentioned above - run the following programs fullscreen: terminator, intellij, pycharm, vscodium, firefox

And... that's just it. Oh wait, one more thing:

- make video, wifi, audio, multiple monitors etc just work

It's in service of that last one that I've been pretty happy with Gnome 3 the whole time it's been out. None of their shuffles or excisions have interrupted my workflow, so I don't mind it at all.

When I have multiple screens I run 95% of my applications in fullscreen mode. There is not much heavy lifting that a DE needs to do. Occasionally I use split windows.

Honestly, I think the latest version of gnome-screenshot that has been directly integrated into the DE is amazing.

I agree with the point you're making, however for some reason on Linux, desktop environments usually are far more extensive than that.

KDE, GNOME, etc. usually don't only consist of an app launcher, but a file browser, text editor, archive manager, browser, image viewer and who knows what else.

I never understood this tribalism, doesn't the spirit of open source mean that I'm free to choose the tools of my liking, may the best tool win, etc.?

This certainly the case on Windows, where people usually just replace tools to their liking.

Most distros usually strongly push the desktop environment's native apps for every niche.

> I never understood this tribalism, doesn't the spirit of open source mean that I'm free to choose the tools of my liking

In my experience the only tribalism is people (in this thread as well) hating on several projects for God knows what reason.