Gnome2 was a good functional desktop, sure it was copying the 2000s with windows 98/2000 style, but it worked. Hell, even OpenStep is more functional than Gnome3 as a daily computer interface.
Gnome3 targeted a weird mix of incompatible devices, like a windows 8 interface, and kinda failed as a design given the devices it optimized for never took over the market. There's not that many tablets running Gnome or touchscreen laptops anymore.
It's almost like Android took the design team by complete surprise, while they tried to make desktops a tablet experience, but failed at doing both.
I'm not sure about that. Convertible laptops are quite popular as a product category, and GNOME 3 works great on those. Besides, MATE and Xfce are still around if you prefer a traditional desktop interface.
I used to run Hyperland but was tired of constantly tweaking it... so this is good and easy enough.
I hear good things about COSMIC as well. But I'm too busy being productive at the moment to mess up my well working NixOS/Vanilla-Gnome based laptop :)
Fast forward to 2024 I get a Linux tablet with gnome installed (phosh) and guess what? Not a single gnome video player exists that works well with the touchscreen, and many of the apps only work by keyboard!!
We lost so much in the transition, and they didn’t even bother to nail the supposed new use case. Gnome in itself is a complete failure, so far at least. Cinnamon and Mate are decent but suffer from GTK deterioration. Phosh seems to work well enough.
I like kde these days and have it on a machine, but every time I open the context menu on konsole I get upset because there are a hundred options in there. I want a simple menu.
I had to install an extra app to control startup applications.
Fractional scaling and several displays was wonky, made screen recording impossible. My 60fps display has a stuttery mouse pointer.
Hiding keyboard layouts like Swedish Sami or svdvorak didn't make things better.
Copy and paste not working cross screens (wtf?). Drag and drop not working if you switch windows using alt+tab. Context menus locking focus from the whole desktop: open the nautilus file transfer dialogue and suddenly I couldn't click anywhere else than in nautilus. Having it open and trying to interact with another app just wouldn't work.
At the end had accidentally tried KDE in a VM and realized I wouldn't tolerate a hammer behaving badly. I went back to opensuse the same day.