dwick.org

Let me start with the conclusion: Gnome shell and Unity appear to be dumbed-down desktop interfaces aimed at the tablet carrying, smartphone loving, social-media crowd.

But I want a functional desktop. I want a panel with essential tools like clipboard management. Printer, wifi, sound and battery monitoring. A calendar. The ability to configure displays. I LOVE and have become reliant on virtual desktops. I use Linux for my primary work machine every day. EVERY DAY. And in my world, Gnome3 and Unity are pitiful implementations of the Linux desktop. Oh yeah, they are flashy and look nice. And yeah, they maybe can be configured to do much of what I want.

But that is not the point.

The point is, what we are being served up as the default Linux desktop experience is a complete travesty. At least to folks like me. Maybe not to the facebook only crowd that I suspect Canonical and the Gnome foundation are catering to.

I'm so tired of hearing every review rant on and on about how the desktop background looks so good; how the widgets and notifications are so beautiful, and show up in this corner or that corner of the desktop. I'm a big boy now, and can configure my own desktop thank you. When design trumps functionality, we are headed down the slope to irrelevance.

So sayonara Ubuntu. So long Gnome3. If I wanted such an interface I'd have bought a smartphone or Ipad.

It's back to KDE and XFCE for me.