The GNOME team has released GNOME 50, the latest version of what is probably the most popular open source desktop environment. It brings fine-grained parental controls, and the groundwork for web filtering so that in future releases, parents and guardians can set content filters for children. Our own kids are still way too young to have access to computers and the internet, but I’m not sure I’ll ever resort to these kinds of tools when the time comes. I didn’t have any such controls imposed upon me as a child on the early internet, but then, you can’t really compare the ’90s internet to that of today.
The Orca screen reader received a lot of attention in GNOME 50, with a new preference window, both global and per-application settings, and much more. There’s also a brand new reduced motion setting, which will tame the animations in the user interface. Document annotation has been overhauled and modernised, and the file manager has been optimised across the board for better performance and lower memory usage.
Remote Desktop also saw a lot of work in GNOME 50. It’s now hardware-accelerated using VA-API and Vulkan, and thanks to HiDPI support, the session will properly adapt to the screen being used. Kerberos Authentication support has been added, and you can now use the remote webcam locally. There’s way more here, like improved support for variable-refresh rates and fractional scaling, HDR screen sharing, fixes for weird NVIDIA driver nonsense, and much, much more.
As always, GNOME 50 will find its way to your distribution soon enough.
Gnome always seemed a bit funny to me. I’ve found it attractive, but hard to get used to. Does anyone here daily drive it?
I dropped Gnome back during the libadwaita controversy (so around v42) and went to KDE. I still follow what’s going on but nah, I don’t see myself going back. And this is a Gnome user since the 2.x days that didn’t jump ship when 3.0 came out, so that’ll tell you something.
I really don’t think it’s the most popular DE anymore.
Linus Torvalds uses Gnome.
I recently started using Cosmic (because, I want window stacking due to my need to run a VM on a screen and a full screen browser), but, Gnome actually works really well, if you grab the right extensions, and is a lot cleaner (I’m tempted to return, as its definitely less buggy than Cosmic and powerful in other areas)
KDE is super powerful, but no Google Drive Integration (I need that) and the settings are a bit overengineered. As an example, how are newbies meant to know what “Kwin” is. If KDE reworked their settings to make it easier, I feel like it would have a huge impact
Correction: Linus Torvalds tolerates Gnome, it’s what comes standard with Fedora Workstation so he uses that.
But is that the case still?
Since he started using a Mac M1/M2, and Fedora Asahi defaults to KDE Plasma maybe he switched back?
(Asahi provdes Gnome now but at that time I believe it didn’t)
So.. Its an old post, but, I actually have switched back to Gnome.
I only really needed to stack 1 full screen window, and I’ve instead switched to use 2x Virtual desktops, and making every window show on visible screen, except the two I need (effectively stacking them)
Its a pity though that Gnome can’t set stacking to a specific screen only, and do per screen stacking (but, not a big deal, just takes me 5s longer in the morning)
I do, with some extensions but not the ones that give you “traditional” desktop patterns like dash to dock, i keep Shell mostly standard these days. I find that its perfectly fine once you are used to it and the design makes internally logical sense. Like there is no minimise button because there is no default panel to minimise too. I find libadwaita apps nice to use personally but I will admit its not all sunshine and rainbows. The minimalistic design can often go a bit far and some options arent there for not realy great reasons. The devs can be pretty prickly if they think youre arguing in bad faith (and plenty do so its not entirely unfounded) and a lot of the suggestions from outside the dev clique can get ignored or stuck in bug management hell. So in other words its truly a foss organisation.
Happy to discuss more in depth if people want
I’m an XFCE user myself as I feel that it just nails that classic Win95-style workflow for me.
If I can’t use XFCE, I usually go with MATE (with the Redmond layout), then Budgie or Cinnamon as backups.
KDE is last on my list, not because it’s bad, but because it feels heavy and over-engineered for what I personally want.
I never really clicked with GNOME 3+. I can see that it looks great, but the workflow just feels a bit unintuitive to me. The UX direction never quite made sense in my day-to-day use.
Same here
I use Gnome, and did get used to it. I also use macos (work imposed laptop,) and it’s kind of similar in some ways. I actually like the “expose” view, from pressing the windows key – that’s the main thing to get used to. That and virtual desktops, which I use constantly. The main issue I’d imagine folks have with it, is if you are using a mouse, it’s weird to use those features. But they are so natural with a trackpad.
Also, I find KDE to be so intolerably ugly, and there’s no real way to fix it – it is just so ugly. For me, libadwaita – it’s fine. I even like it. I don’t need or even desire hyper customization (there’s enough here though – I use this cool purple fade out thingy on the windows – LOVE that) – I just need it to work, and not stab me in the eye with ugliness.
Yeah, KDE is ugly for some reason. I don’t know what it is, as it not ugly-ugly. Is a different thing. Is like it looks “dead” graphically.
IMO KDE and Qt never truly moved on from the Frutiger Aero early 2000s era, so it looks a bit off, in an uncanny valley way from a modern design perspective.
Yes. Some of our workstations run ubuntu, it is pretty straightforward and works just fine, specially if using macos as well.
I’ve been using Fedora (defaults to a Gnome Shell) at work and in my personal life on all my devices for maybe 4 years-ish.
I use few extensions (4).
I absolutely love the uncluttered look of apps made specifically for Gnome ([Trimmer](https://flathub.org/kw/apps/org.gnome.gitlab.YaLTeR.VideoTrimmer) , [blanket](https://flathub.org/kw/apps/com.rafaelmardojai.Blanket), [ear tag](https://flathub.org/kw/apps/app.drey.EarTag)). That uncluttered feeling follows in most of the UI imo (default to having 0 icon on your desktop, no menu bars…)
On KDE and Windows I constantly miss the “hot corner” feature and the ability to move and resize windows by holding the meta key and left or middle-button clicking with the mouse, it feels much more logical than having a dedicated tiny area of your window for that.
Sure it sacrifices some features and customization but I prefer this approach: the GUI is for the sleek simple stuff that doesn’t get in your way, when you want the really customized and powerfull stuff you go to a terminal.
EDIT: I don’t see GUI options to edit links and apparently it’s not taking markdown formatting, I’ll live with my boomer-ass mistake lol.
It might be my use case, but 99.9% of the time, all of my apps are fully maximized. So I don’t have a problem with resizing or moving windows by holding the meta key etc.
I use Gnome on both my laptops. I use it with 4-5 extensions; none of them change the default Gnome workflow, as I’m quite at ease with the standard Gnome Shell.
I’ve been using Gnome since about 2015 on Debian Testing, until Bookworm came out. I’ve been tracking the stable branch since then on my main laptop.
On my other laptop, a 2 in 1, I run Fedora Workstation with the same extensions.
I use the keyboard shortcuts a lot and I’m used to the gestures (both on the touchpad and on the touch screen of the 2 in 1). I don’t miss the traditional desktop workflow and I like the clean look I have on a Gnome desktop.
In the past I used to use a lot of extensions to change the desktop experience, but after gnome 40 came out, I tried to stick with the default; after some days of adjustment, it felt fine.
I don’t know how everyone feels. There’s all these various interfaces. Gnome feels a bit like tablet or big phone to me. I happen to like the Mint Mate and Cinnamon interfaces. But then sometimes, “I wish I could tile all this stuff right here, right now!”
Wake me up when they manage to develop server-side decorations, type-ahead find in Nautilus, and a taskbar or dock to be able to switch between open windows without Alt+Tabbing.
So Endless, which stated mission is to empower kids to use computers, is pushing software to prevent them from using computers. I guess they would start a cooking school using only Play-Doh & foam utensils.
As Jonathan Haidt points out, we over protect our kids and under protect them online. The internet of 2026, is not the same place it was in 1996, or 2006. I wouldn’t give my kids unfiltered internet until they were at least 18, if I could do it over.
Whilst I appreciate this item is about GNOME, I do feel someone has to speak up for KDE here. I know KDE can be customised seemingly endlessly, but 9 times out of ten I find it’s just fine the way it comes. IMHO GNOME2 was just dandy (and yes, for that reason I do like MATE).