Why Gnome?

[Matthew Crews]

On 11/10/20 2:40 PM, Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> One of the points mentioned here was for the visually impaired. I happen to be the only totally blind active member here and I found that gnome (among some of the other GTK based DM’s) to be highly accessible.

Indeed, I was thinking of you when I wrote that. I'm not blind myself,
so I can only imagine the frustrations of using a computer when totally
blind. The Gnome and GTK developers spend a LOT of time worrying about
accessibility, and as a result everyone benefits. I've heard that QT
lacks in this department, which is a shame.


Ryan, expanding on a few of your points below.

On 11/10/20 6:54 PM, Ryan Petris via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> 2. Tight integration with systemd, logind, etc.
>
> 7. Proper integration with Plymouth

Gnome-Software-Center is really the only GUI-based app updater that
*properly* triggers reboots when doing updates. Any time a major system
library or kernel update is pushed, it will not apply that update until
you reboot, and then it will launch into a special startup mode to apply
the update, and reboot again. This is managed by systemd and plymouth.

I definitely would not trust other update mechanisms anymore because of
this. I've seen too many systems bork because an update was performed,
but did not prompt for an immediate reboot. Even Debian is guilty of this.

> 3. A good set of default applications.

To be fair, most of the major DEs have a good set of default
applications. Any differences at the DE level are minor, thankfully.
You're more likely to see major differences between distros.

As for Gnome specifically, I agree, their default apps are definitely
good enough to get the job done IMO.

> 5. Visual customization is minimal but IMO that's great for the
> majority of users. When needed, open the Tweaks application for a lot
> of additional settings. Yes, it's still not KDE-level, but IMO KDE has
> _way_ too many options.

I would also like to stress that the default Gnome visual settings are
usually good enough these days. I used to be in the KDE camp (more is
better), but at the end of the day, I personally value sane defaults
over extreme customization options.

Gnome could use a better dark mode out-of-the-box though.



> 8. Can automatically decrypt and mount encrypted external/detachable
> hard disks as well as ask for a password and save in the keyring.

I think most major DEs can do this though? It is pretty nice that my
encrypted external HD auto-mounts at boot though without having to
fiddle with fstab or crypttab.

> 9. Works very well with Wayland and is the default.

Indeed, Gnome is probably the flagship DE for Wayland. KDE Plasma is
almost there though.

-Matt
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