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".