Happy Birthday GNOME! 25 years today
I like Gnome well enough. I keep trying to switch to KDE for the additional settings, many of which are useful, and what I understand to be more innovative core features, but its lack of consistency just feels janky. Gnome provides the most essential features, including a good amount of customization around focus and window switching, and Gnome apps are consistent in appearance and features, such as being able to select text in the UI.<p>The &#x27;problem&#x27; I have is that all these desktops are trying to recreate a 1990s era desktop. At least the Gnome people are professionals focused on a higher goal than a cool anime background, but I think the contingent of people who want a desktop experience with local media player, file manager, office suite and games is decreasing daily.<p>If they don&#x27;t want to be subsumed by tablet and ChromeOS options, focusing on goals like being a secure, networked operating system that an ordinary user would appreciate might be a good way forward. I think embracing rather than hiding the technical nature of the OS would be a good way to do this, but nothing like the disaster of forums today. For example, give every widget an ID and version, and create web based conversations around them that are embedded directly in the UI.