A Week with GNOME - Day 1 - by maggie

Challenge introduction

Hi!

In my undying boredom, I have decided that I will try to run (mostly) vanilla GNOME as my main desktop environment, then document my thoughts and issues as a Plasma user

Why do this?

I wanted to see how the vanilla GNOME experience was like compared to how it was when I last used it, and document the primary issues that made me switch to KDE in the first place, back in 2020

What are the challenge rules?

1. Only use GNOME (obviously)
2. Avoid using extensions that will significantly change the system functionality
3. Attempt to use apps made primarily for GNOME

Day 1

Prepared for what's to come, I have taken a snapshot of my current install and then installed Fedora Workstation and ran all of the necessary updates.

Apps used:

• Apostrophe (Used for writing this Markdown file)
• Geary (Call me old fashioned, but there's just something great about a mail client)
• Errands (To-do list. I chose it because I thought it fit in with GNOME)

Tweaks made

Only things I have done as of now are:

• Adding a minimize button
• Appindicators

Regarding the second point, while I admire the GNOME developer team's resilience regarding ridding the world of app indicators, I just need my app indicators (Steam, Vesktop)

Thoughts

At first, doing things the GNOME way was a little bit jarring, and it still is now, though I hope these feelings will eventually stop. The UI, while simple, feels fresh compared to the tons of options that Plasma gives. Even then, I can't help to wonder if I'll be missing any features

The MD editor I have been using is shockingly simple, but it is more than enough for what I need it for (notes, blog posts), but time will tell what happens next...

The Bad™

My primary (and so far only) gripe has been the screenshot tool. While it primarily does what I want it to (freezing my screen after I open region select), I very much so dislike the lack of simple annotations while/after taking a screenshot, or even being able to choose the location where the screenshot will save to (like in Spectacle, which pulls this off perfectly)

That's it from me for today! I hope that this project will be an interesting read to you.

Have fun, meow on!