“AI assistant” just seems like a euphemism for “increased tracking”.

What if it’s a friendly purple gorilla

To be fair - people don’t know what they want until they get it. In 2005 people would’ve asked for faster flip phones, not smartphones.

I don’t have much faith in current gen AI assistants actually being useful though, but the fact that no one has asked for it doesn’t necessarily mean much.

The one that got me with them was when they banned third party screenshot tools from using the default screenshotting hooks. They cited security concerns, which is valid as it stops malware from hijacking this, however rather than adding the ability to add to a user controlled allow list (or any other potential workaround) they just rejected working with anybody on fixing this issue. Instead it came off as a transparent attempt to push their own screenshotting tool.

I think the reason Gnome is good is the same thing that makes them insufferable. They believe there is a right way to do things, sometimes those are things you like, sometimes they aren’t.

Yup hard agree on this. Switched to gnome a little more than a year ago and not planning to switch back because the polish and stability is too good - but this is a major issue.

this the only thing keeping me from moving from windows

One thing I hate about the Linux desktop is the sheer lack of interest for supporting new hardware until it’s too late.

Before you jump at me: I know it’s not really anybody’s fault. The contributors didn’t switch to new hardware yet, and someone has to do the work.

But that does not excuse the passive aggressiveness. GNOME’s stance on fractional scaling was, for years, “never happening - fractional pixels don’t exist, so we do integer scaling only”. A few years later, hidpi displays are becoming the standard and all premium laptops ship with them. Very few of them work fine at 200% scaling. One thing the Framework Laptop 13 reviews mention when testing it on Linux is that there is no optimal screen scaling available, just too small or too big - and that you can enable experimental support for fractional scaling, but it’s a buggy mess and it’s an option not exposed to the user for very good reason. Only now that it’s too late and Linux is already buggy and annoying to use on modern laptops because of this we are beginning to see some interest in actually resolving the problem, including GNOME rushing to work on implementing support for it in GTK and Mutter, after years of bikeshedding. Somehow, things that are impossible and never happening suddenly become possible and happening when the writing that had been on the wall became true, and the hardware that a minority of users had been calling attention to for years is now common place and oups! That gives the Linux desktop some very bad exposure and first impressions.

Touch screens were another problem area. Initially the common stance was that nobody really uses these, convertible laptops suck anyway, etc. fast forward to now, more and more premium laptops offer touch screens, and stuff like 360 degrees hinges and convertibles that are actually decent are starting to surface. And, of course, everyone on Linux desktop wakes up and starts admitting that touch screen support is actually in a problematic state when it’s already too late, and (prospective) owners of these devices have to pick between a very buggy experience that feels like Alpha state on Linux, and just using Windows.

It goes on. HDR support? Color correction support? FreeSync support being spotty and completely missing in GNOME Wayland?

I’m a heavy Linux user. I will nuke my dual boot when my next laptop ships so I’m going all-in after all these years. But I also own a 4k FreeSync monitor, a MX Master 3 mouse ane my next laptop (Framework Laptop 16") will require fractional scaling and VRR support to use comfortably. Having tried all these things side by side on my dual boot, I am somewhat jealous of how well Windows seems to handle these things compared to Linux. All this “nice stuff” has either taken a lot of time since my purchase to work nicely, or still doesn’t work nicely at all. Ignoring contribution / manpower issues, this constant critical attitude towards new hardware and the unwillingness to try and properly support it is actively keeping us in the “Eternal 90% there” stage. We will not get out of it, because customer tech will keep evolving, and we will keep accepting new trends only when it’s too late, and we’re 7 years behind Microsoft in implementing support. It’s not a secret that where Windows still obliterates Linux is niche use cases like HDR and colour accurate work, and support for new customer hardware, that usually lags 5-7 years behind on Linux.

Yeah really looking forward to some innovation!

Gnome right now feels like they are polishing a door knob forever, getting all the icons and the views exactly right and clean. But not much innovation.

Tiling…GNOME…? 👀

Homie, they’re working on that… but, there are extensions :>

Really? I’ve been using three and four finger gestures on Plasma for a while now. Three fingers to change desktop and so on. Are you on an old version of Plasma?

Have you tried GNOME Wayland? Your System76 laptop should support Fedora Workstation. As long as the hardware in your System76 laptop is capable, it can so pinch to zoom and 2-3 fingers scrolling for workspace switching, revealing the overview, etc. 1:1 gestures like a MacBook, too.

I know the switch from KDE is daunting. I’ve done it too. But GNOME Wayland is simply above everything else right now

KDE has multifinger gestures on wayland but present windows is 4 fingers down and present workspaces 4 fingers up. 3 finger gestures are to slide around workspaces. For whatever reason there is no way to customize this.

As a Gnome user I approve of this comment, some more colors would be awesome, especially if they are standartized through xdg!

Kde has Activities where you can group apps in a similar way.

Isnt that possible under Linux Mint, or am I wrong?

Sway allows you to assign apps to workspaces.

I’m chatgpt

tbf more often than not displaylink just sucks, no matter the OS.

trackpads work fine on Wayland or wirh xinput2

You want open firmware, so this is not a DE problem.