This needing to be a third party extension (which if we're being honest, will probably be broken / abandoned eventually) seems like a damning indictment of Gnome.
Why? It is an emulation of a feature from other OS; why it should be indictment of Gnome? Gnome is perfectly usable without it. This widget is only for those, who are so used to windows-ism and cannot let it go.
Similarly, there is dash-to-dock extension, which emulates a feature from another popular OS. It is also indictment, that Gnome doesn't have macOS-like dock in the core? Is it an indictment of Windows shell, that is doesn't have such feature at all, neither in core nor in extension?
Feature parity matters, especially if adoption is a goal. I'm not sure Gnome cares about adoption, but since they're on the back foot, and if they're wanting to increase adoption, it'd be in their best interests to have feature parity so that supporting Gnome does not require extra code to support entirely different UX paradigms.
I personally love Linux, love Gnome, and, when I'm not paid, I only use these platforms. However, it is incredibly difficult to justify spending time on workarounds, and it is emotionally painful to see the Gnome team dig in their heels. I can't blame them for wanting to do things the way they see fit, they are a volunteer organization after all, but seeing them be actively averse to adoption is difficult.
Simplicity is feature on its own, you can't please everyone and you have other choices. Considering feature parity - I used small window managers in the past: Fvwm, Fluxbox, Pekwm... what made me eventually stick with Gnome was that It made things like Wifi, printing, mounting disk... seamless - on par with Windows. That is a lot more important for most users than customization, which can be overwhelming in environment like KDE (I haven't used it in years).
I agree, simplicity is cool. That is why I love to support platforms that are simple to support. Say, if you have a piece of software that has it’s main entrypoint be a status icon, it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult to support gnome, since different distros will ship with different versions of gnome, which support different versions of status icon plugins, which work differently and sometimes they dont even have the plugins in the repo. Suddenly a feature that just works turns into a 3 page ordeal in the user manual do deduce what plugin must they install where to make our app work.
If it works everywhere except Gnome, requiring a custom solution on Gnome alone, it's definitely Gnome's fault. Gnome people have this weird ego thing where they expect the world to conform to them, even developers who are only including Linux support as a courteous afterthought to users. Anything Gnome does in a unique way adds friction for these developers, to the detriment of all Linux users.
The Linux community has the weirdest gatekeeping. "We're not going to let you do that because it reminds us of proprietary software."
When the Start menu is nothing but advertisements and user data is forcibly uploaded to the cloud, Windows users will look up and shout "save us!" and the Linux community will look down and whisper "no".
Well, when windows users demand "windows, but gratis and without the annoyances", linux isn't it. You have to do some minor adjustment; just like you had to do with iPhone. It doesn't have task panel by default either.
Look at the issue from other way: if you want this feature, you have a virtually every other OS to choose from. Those, who specifically do not want this feature, do not have such a luxury. They can choose this environment.
It is hardly the primary reason for anyone to choose OS or environment. Most people are starting and getting used to other interfaces. Sometimes people are using multiple OSes at the same time. For all those people consistency matters, either for smoother learning curve or for productivity. Thus either Gnome remains a niche solution for a very small group of people or it expands market share by adopting UX patterns from mainstream.
This is really a non-factor, that has lim(0) impact on Gnome adoption.
Mac never emulated this windows feature and it never hurt its adoption. If anything, it helped, because it wasn't associated with annoyances that the new users were getting away from.
Btw, I'm also using windows/mac/(fedora,ubuntu,alma) at the same time. Bigger annoyance is changes between different versions of the same system (i.e. windows 10 -> windows 11) than difference between different systems.
> Sometimes people are using multiple OSes at the same time. For all those people consistency matters
I don't understand this statement. They are using multiple OS', are they really struggling to switch between MacOS and Windows that much? If they are, then Gnome is going to be the least of their problems.
Let me explain then: Linux has plenty of options for desktop environment. As a long time Windows user, I don’t care much about their features, I need a job to be done. I will not try to adapt (even if it is easy) or figure out why Gnome is better, I will choose something familiar and good enough. Gnome lost me before I even tried to use it. I don’t have such choice on Mac, so I‘m forced to use MacOS UI and adapt, and that’s not trivial thing for someone who knows their primary OS well. Difference in UI paradigms is visible and does hurt the performance.
If you are wanting something familiar to Windows, a start button and task bar will be the least of your issues.
There is no desire to cater to Windows users because they move the target, "Oh you might have made this to be like Windows like we asked, but actually this is also not like Windows so I'll never use it anyway."
If you want the "feature" of not having this feature, you can disable it in most other DEs (certainly the Linux ones at least.). Gnome isn't doing anything clever by not having this widget as a first party option for users.
This kind of complaint about GNOME is pretty common. I'm actually kind of surprised GNOME is the default for so many high profile distros despite the controversial UX.
That said, I personally find vanilla GNOME pretty easy to use. It only took me a day or so to get used to not having things like a taskbar. If you use the hot corner (which is also hated), you can switch to any open app with one mouse click just like with a taskbar.
So either I'm an alien, or people are more adaptable than they give themselves credit for, and will go impressive lengths to not adapt (e.g. making a taskbar for a desktop that's perfectly usable without one).
I don't think UX is controversial, if you look at it from the perspective of average person. I was annoyed time to time by changes in Gnome UI. But I would not say I find KDE, XFce, Windows 11, Mac... more productive. I switched my old man from Windows to Gnome and had zero complains (which is rare). Having Gnome default makes sense as switching will not be a problem for advanced users. I personally don't have reason to switch.
>I'm actually kind of surprised GNOME is the default for so many high profile distros despite the controversial UX.
I've never understood this, and it sometimes seems like a conspiracy. It's a very controversial DE and has gotten a lot of negative reactions for many years now, and it was so bad that different devs made not 1, but 2 forks of it: MATE and Cinnamon, in addition to all the other competing DEs out there (KDE, LXDE, Xfce, etc.). But for some odd reason, all the highest-profile distros push Gnome. If they wanted to get more converts from Windows, or pitch themselves as an OS for office use that Windows users could easily switch to, you'd think they'd push KDE as the first choice, because it's the most similar.
Yeah, that's another thing I don't understand: why? If they want it to be like a traditional desktop, why not just use KDE? Instead, they're trying to shoehorn unwanted (by the Gnome devs) features into Gnome and taking on a huge maintenance burden.
I don’t think it is. Gnome is usable without this behavior that, as it states in the repo description, is mostly an attempt to replicate the behavior of windows or KDE. This can be good for some users, but Gnomes goal is not to replicate other DEs, but to create a good user experience.
The default gnome dock behaves differently, but is (mostly) usable without this extension, just via different patterns. If you expect to have a desktop that consistently behaves like KdE, you’re probably better off switching to KDE (which is funny given some LDE users rice their desktops to almost look like gnome).
The gnome API has been quite the moving target through the 40s versions. The community around these plugins are surprisingly resilient. Glad it’s calmed down a bit and great extensions like these have weathered the changes. I really enjoy gnome and all the plugins.
People easily install these without being concerned about security or privacy. I am actually more curios if these are audited at all or the risk is solely on users?
I use GNOME only in throwaway VM, but even there - only the extensions available in official repository are used.
> crying about the direction for 13 years, but still want to use it.
Part it is the frustation of seeing it come so close to being a viable replacement for Windows back in the mid-2000s, only to jump the shark and become something we wouldn't use ourselves, let alone recommend to a would-be Windows refugee. (To be clear, I'm not saying it's unusable now - but I was shocked by just how slow and unresponsive the first version of Gnome 3 was.)
Unfortunately Gnome doesn't exist in a vacuum, and decisions made there do impact the rest of us - thanks to Gtk it's getting harder and harder to avoid the ingress of hamburger menus into desktop-oriented software - even developer / technical focussed stuff like a text editor VCD waveform viewer.
Some of us are forced to use it because Red Hat removed support for KDE.
Being forced to switch from KDE to Gnome was a very painful transition. Having the Dash to Panel and Dash to Dock extensions was the only thing that made it palatable.
Vanilla Gnome may be fine as a streamlined tablet OS for casual web browsing but it is not suitable to doing real desktop work.
A proper taskbar. Needing to install a third party extension to achieve the type of taskbar that has been expected from desktop OSes for the past 20 years is lunacy. I was fortunate to be able to get my IT dept to allow third party extensions when we moved to RHEL 8, but I'm sure most in the corporate world aren't so fortunate.
