I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it’s just not good.
Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.
How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.
Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?
I’d love to hear from people that use it and thrive in it.
Kinda a tangent, but I’ve been using KDE plasma for a while and have really been enjoying it as a kinda in between of windows style desktop with some more gnome-like features (like workspaces, which tbh I’ve barely used). Of course both are super customizable, but it seems to me to maybe be a bit easier to customize Plasma? I’m not sure, I haven’t used stock gnome as much.
Not sure what would make GNOME easier to customize over KDE, I mean I guess it’s easier to make extensions? But that also relies on someone making it in the first place. It really depends on what kind of customisability you’re referring to, I suppose.