Title: How I ended up liking GNOME | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 10 November 2021 | |
Tags: life unix gnome | |
Description: I switched to Gnome after a bad injury on a hand and Gnome | |
helped me a lot using the computer | |
# Introduction | |
Hi! This was a while without much activity on my blog, the reason is | |
that I stabbed through my right index with a knife by accident, the | |
injury was so bad I can barely use my right hand because I couldn't | |
move my index at all without pain. So I've been stuck with only my | |
left hand for a month now. Good news, it's finally getting better :) | |
Which leads me to the topic of this article, why I ended liking GNOME! | |
# Why I didn't use GNOME | |
I will first start about why I didn't use it before. I like to try | |
everything all the time, I like disruption, I like having an hostile | |
(desktop/shell/computer) environment to stay sharp and not being stuck | |
on ideas. | |
My current setup was using Fvwm or Stumpwm, mostly keyboard driven, | |
with many virtual desktop to spatially regroup different activities. | |
However, with an injured hand, I've been facing a big issue, most of my | |
key binding were for two hands and it seemed too weird for me to change | |
the bindings to work with one hand. | |
I tried to adapt using only one hand, but I got poor results and using | |
the cursor was not very efficient because stumpwm is hostile to cursor | |
and fvwm is not really great for this either. | |
# The road to GNOME | |
With only one hand to use my computer, I found the awesome program | |
ibus-typing-booster to help me typing by auto completing words (a bit | |
like on touchscreen phones), it worked out of the box with GNOME due to | |
the ibus integration working well. I used GNOME to debug the package | |
but ended liking it in my current condition. | |
How do I like it now, while I was pestling about it a few months ago as | |
I found it very confusing? Because it's easy to use and spared me | |
movements with my hands, absolutely. | |
* The activity menu is easy to browse, icons are big, dock is big. I've | |
been using a trackball with my left hand instead of the usual right | |
hand, aiming at a small task bar was super hard so I was happy to have | |
big icons everywhere, only when I wanted them | |
* I actually always liked the alt+tab for windows and alt+² (on my | |
keyboard the key up to TAB is ², must be ~ for qwerty keyboards) for | |
switching into same kind of window | |
* alt+tab actually display everything available (it's not per virtual | |
desktop) | |
* I can easily view windows or move them between virtual desktop when | |
pressing "super" key | |
This is certainly doing in MATE or Xfce too without much work, but it's | |
out of the box with GNOME. It's perfectly usable without knowing any | |
keyboard shortcut. | |
# Mixed feelings | |
I'm pretty sure I'll return to my previous environment once my | |
finger/hand because I have a better feeling with it and I find it more | |
usable. But I have to thanks the GNOME project to work on this desktop | |
environment that is easy to use and quite accessible. | |
It's important to put into perspective when dealing with desktop | |
environment. GNOME may not be the most performing and ergonomic | |
desktop, but it's accessible, easy to use and forgiving people who | |
doesn't want to learn tons of key bindings or can't do them. | |
# Conclusion | |
There is a very recurrent question I see on IRC or forums: what's the | |
best desktop environment/window manager? What are YOU using? I | |
stopped having a bold opinion about this topic, I simply reply there | |
are many desktop environments because they are many kind of people and | |
the person asking the question need to find the right one to suiting | |
them. | |
# Update (2021-11-11) | |
Using the xfdashboard program and assigning it to Super key allows to | |
mimic the GNOME "activity" view in your favorite window manager: | |
choosing windows, moving them between desktops, running applications. | |
I think this can easily turn any window manager into something more | |
accessible, or at least "GNOME like". |