To their credit, though, Apple does at least think twice before pushing changes most of the time. Gnome's latest effort, with the client-side decorations, is maddening. Now every Gnome application has a thick titlebar that's also a toolbar, and every other application doesn't. They supposedly did that in order to save screen space - which could have just as well been done by reducing the thickness of that mammoth title bar Adwaita uses - but the effect seems to me to have been exactly opposite. Surely someone must have seen that the result is inconsistent on any system that runs a single application not included with Gnome -- say, for instance, Firefox! Or Chrome! Or Emacs! Or Thunderbird! Whatever.
I certainly understand that Gnome developers have a vision for their UI, but the uncommunicative way in which they impose it is pretty unpopular among users (like myself) who moved away from Windows or Mac OS a long, long time ago because they wanted more control over their operating system (well, that and no BSODs, which was a common occurrence at the time when I left Windows behind. Did you know Mac users didn't even have preemptive multitasking then? God I feel like a dinosaur now. Get off my lawn.)
The position of the window resizing buttons is entirely irrelevant when using keyboards shortcuts to control window layout is just much better.
> The position of the window resizing buttons is entirely irrelevant when using keyboards shortcuts to control window layout is just much better.
It's much better when you have your hands on the keyboard. When I have a hand on the mouse already, having to rely on the keyboard is annoying for the same reason why having to rely on the mouse is annoying when you have your hands on the keyboard.
If you really want to see where Gnome is going, please do check out Fedora 22. That really is the showcase for cutting edge Gnome (unfortunately, its not Ubuntu/Debian)
[1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ [2] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/937/laine/
[1] http://bahoom.com/hyperswitch
[2] http://superuser.com/questions/548146/change-command-tab-to-...
It is one of those It-Just-Works experiences.
Of course I've seen https://extensions.gnome.org/ , Gnome is almost unusable without it. But Gnome extensions aren't supported by the core development team. They can (and do!) break from one release to another.
The barrier for "customizing things" is pretty high, too. E.g. if I want to change my window decorations in KDE, I download a new set of decorations and change it. If I want to change my window decorations in Gnome, I have to install gnome-tweak-tool and that-program-that-removes-the-bloody-client-decorations-crap and now most (but not) all of my apps are going to use the decorations I want. With some glitches. That's not ok.
> If you really want to see where Gnome is going, please do check out Fedora 22. That really is the showcase for cutting edge Gnome (unfortunately, its not Ubuntu/Debian)
I don't need to check out Fedora 22, I can already compile Gnome from their public repos. The showcase for cutting edge Gnome isn't too impressive; it can be boiled down to "we really like tablets and you're going to like them too because two releases from now all our applications are going to look like they're running on a tablet."