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Add to SafariWhen comparing GNOME vs Wayfire, the Slant community recommends GNOME for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop environments?” GNOME is ranked 5th while Wayfire is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose GNOME is:
Every aspect of GNOME has been crafted to fit together as a harmonious whole, so that it offers a consistent and integrated experience.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Clean UI
Every aspect of GNOME has been crafted to fit together as a harmonious whole, so that it offers a consistent and integrated experience.
Pro Online account management
GNOME integrates with your online accounts, so that all your data can be accessed from the same place.
Pro Wayland support
Gnome is the first desktop environment that uses Wayland as default instead of X server. X server is only optional currently.
Pro Keyboard friendly
It's (mostly) usable without touching a mouse, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard.
Shortcuts can be defined in the gnome setting.
There are even more shortcuts available when using the gesetting or dconf tool, e.g. switch to desktop 5 to 9.
Pro Highly stable
Gnome isn't obviously devoid of flaws, but it's pretty stable - especially in comparison with the KDE Plasma Desktop, which can literally fall apart after installing upgrades (and show a considerable number of error messages) or for whatever reasons - after turning on the computer you can end up without (Plasma) desktop altogether, which is quite unproductive. It is also noteworthy that many other major desktop environments are based on Gnome, and among these are: Cinnamon, Pantheon and (now dead) Unity.
Pro Great for high dpi displays
Adjustable scaling factor makes it great for high-resolution laptops and far away TVs.
Pro It just works
You don't ever "need" tweaks. Unless your device is too outdated, it just works out of the box. Touchscreen, 4k TV, anything just works.
Pro Simple and easy to use
GNOME has been designed to make it simple and easy to use. Press a button to view your open windows, launch applications or check if you have new messages.
Pro Powerful search
A powerful search feature lets you access all your work from one place.
Pro Touchscreen friendly
It works well with any touchscreen-enabled system, including newer laptops, even to the point of including a well-designed on-screen keyboard.
Pro Does not get in the way
GNOME lets you do the things you want without getting in the way. It won't bother you or badger you with demands, and it has been designed to help you comfortably deal with notifications.
Pro Very productive
With a clean layout and well-thought keyboard shortcuts, Gnome is simply the best for people looking to be productive with their computer.
Pro Easy theming
Changing the look (and feel) of Gnome Shell is easy, shell theme, icon, windows and graphical elements (gtk) individually for each user.
Mostly it's installing some packages or unpacking some archive to a themes folder and using selecting the new theme in e.g. gnome-tweak-tool.
There are a lot of really good themes on DeviantArt.
Pro Gnome-Tweak-Tool is great
Gnome may seem bland out of the box but, the Gnome-Tweak-Tool is awesome.
The Gnome-Tweak-Tool allows for easy desktop tweaks and other control functionality, and that these features can be activated with just a click.
Pro Adheres to standards
Allowing for interoperability and shared technology for X Window System desktops.
Pro Highly customisable
Gnome Extensions offers an easy way to extend the built-in functionality.
Pro Beautiful interface
Very, very beautiful interface.
Pro Great task manager
The GNOME Task Manager is great, showing all open processes with every needed detail. For each process you can see the amount of memory and processing power that it's using, along with the process priority.
Pro Graphic apps 'feel smoother' on gnome than on KDE plasma
Graphics apps 'feel smoother' on gnome than on KDE plasma. Example: Gimp and inkscape, probably because they are developed in gtk+.
Pro Integrates with most Google Services
You can use your calendar, drive, contacts and most of Google services with Online Account option. You can show your Google Calendar events on the Gnome's default calendar app, Nautilus (Default file manager of GNOME) almost fully integrated with Google Drive and even you can read your PDF's with Evince (the default built-in PDF reader in GNOME).
Pro Effective default workflow
Gnome is not very tweakable but its defaults are sane enough that you it is very usable out of the box. Especially if you like a keyboard driven workflow and an uncluttered interface. The lack of options and features makes it a distraction free and clean UI to focus on what matters.
Pro Great for minimalists
It may only do several things, but it's very good at each one of those things. You won't get lost in customization menus, and you certainly won't have an stability issues as long as your hardware is made within the last 10 years.
Pro High resolution screens, multi monitor, content creation
If you depend on high resolution screens, multi monitor, or content creation programs you want Gnome.
Pro All the major players in the Linux ecosystem have finally collated on Gnome
Red Hat default = Gnome
Fedora default = Gnome
Debian default = Gnome
Ubuntu default = Gnome
Opensuse default = Gnome
This doesn't mean the others go away, it just means there is a colossal community and industry backing behind Gnome.
The point whether or not it being technically the best option is now off table and irrelevant. It is now the de facto standard. Like it or not.
Pro Hamburger Menus
If you use a Mouse you fell like a second class user.
Pro Tons of extensions at extensions.gnome.org
You can add infinite customizations with extensions
Pro Original idea
It's not another desktop experience based on "windows experience" . It's original. The creativity of developers is great.
Pro Extensive
Can be customized by lots of add-ons and themes for gnome-shell.
Pro Reall the only original and complete Desktop Environment
The Gnome-Shell paradigm is wildly different from Windows, and isn't all that much like OSX either - it's a different workflow that, if it appeals to you, is a dream to use. Every other DE is either like Windows, like OSX, or like OpenBox.
Pro Now lighter than xfce
Gnome by default is slow. But after some tweaks, gnome becomes lightweight and also much faster than xfce. It is also more user-friendly.
Pro Plugin approach
The usage of a plugin system allows for a lot of customisability.
Pro Nice blur feature
The blur plugin makes this compositor look nice.
Pro Fastest compositor with earth.google.com/web
Pro Optional tiling
Wayfire has a basic tiling extension built in, and more advanced third party plugins like this one are available.
Cons
Con Longtime support is hard since every few years GNOME changes its own standards
Everytime something is complete GNOME breaks itself:
Icon naming changes almost every 3 years : once gtk icons were named stock_edit then gtk-edit then edit-edit and currently edit-edit-symbolic
- App icons change also every few years currently they get renamed to an android like scheme eg: org.gnome.Photos.svg instead of gnome-photos.svg however this breaks all common standards esp. since filenames on linux are case sensitive.
GNOMEShell extension also break on almost every release.
Currently Gtk3 has been stabilized however they are already working on GTK4 and 5 so in the worst case your desktop will need to run and support 4 GTK-toolkits at the same time.
Con Slow
GNOME desktop environment is kinda slow on some Linux distributions.
Con Full screen start menu
This may be fine if your screen is really small, but on modern fullHD desktop it looks ugly and distracting. In addition to very ineffective display of items on screen - much more could be placed on one screen if there were less empty space around and between icons.
Con Extensions can break whole Gnome desktop
Gnome extensions have a lot of freedom to customize the desktop, and it means that extensions can break your desktop leaving you unable to use your computer. Also extensions can significantly slow down whole desktop.
Con You can't put icons on the desktop
You have to enable the ability to add icons and files onto the desktop with Tweaks that you have to install.
Con Continuous customization and extension issues
They need to sort out their continuous customization and extension issues, which are why many people still prefer KDE or other Desktop environments.
Con Poor 'drag and drop into application' capability
Difficult to drag and drop a file into an open application.
Con You can't put icons on the desktop
Con Some settings are not where the user would expect it
E.g. it is not possible to change the keyboard auto-repeat delay or rate from the usual All Setting > Keyboard like, for example, in Unity.
Many settings are considered "tweaks" and require installing a separate utility to adjust.
Further still, some settings are buried in a dconf database.
Con Made for touchscreens
It's very uncomfortable to use with a mouse and a keyboard.
Con Some GUI controls are much larger than on other desktops
This is wasting screen space on non-HiDPI monitors.
Con Default alt-tab behaviour is cute but extremely annoying for fast keyboard users
Con Native Gnome dock isn't scalable
The native Gnome dock isn't scalable, which means if you want to change its size you have to download a customized theme for the shell and hope it has the appearance you want. Honestly again just like the icon issue it wastes way too much of the screen on high resolution monitors.
Con Tightly coupled to its window manager
If you're looking to run an alternative window manager, like XMonad, you're pretty much out of luck.
Con Not truly tunable
Customization is very limited.
Con Removes more features than it adds
Con Extension system is weakly integrated into the environment
Backward compatibility is not guaranteed and extensions seems like second class citizens in the GNOME environment.
Con Terrible UX
It's like on macOS, you get stuck at every corner....
Con Rather insane method of wallpaper slideshows
Most DEs and WMs allow the user to simply point to a directory, and use pictures from there. Gnome 3 requires the rather asinine idea of building an XML file to accomplish the same thing.
Con No support for fractional scaling
Unlike Qt, GTK has no support for it.
Con Depends too much on extensions to customize basic settings
Con Depends on systemd
Some people don't like systemd but it is part of most modern distros anyway.
Con Has several dead userspace features that are supplemented by community supported extensions
Has several dead projects that are supplemented by community supported extensions. Unfortunately, the gnome updates often break these extensions. Example: GSConnect.
Con Heavy-weight, PC unfriendly desktop
Heavy-weight on disk space, on package number, on dependencies, on CPU resources, on RAM, on GPU, with a style better tailored to mobiles.
Con Sacrifices usability for one style
There's one style (adwaita) and that's the one supported style.
Con Bloated and energy-intensive
Con Icon scalability and sorting
The icons in the "apps view" area don't have any additional sizes, the current ones are much too large to be effective for the screen space they use. Also, there is no native way to sort them in Gnome, only a very limited extension. Which means you're pretty much always better off using the search bar if you can.
Con Deprecated
Is replaced by Gnome 40.
Con Out of Date
Gnome 3 is out of date now that Gnome 40 exists. It's still great, but the new version's switch to GTK4 and improved (IMHO) UX make 3 feel obsolete.
Con Shell-Style ≠ Widget-Style
The GNOME-shell is unable to use the current GTK style for its interface thus making it hard to get a consistent user interface.
Con Inconsistent desktop
As of GNOME3, some applications have ClientSideDecorations while other use normal Titlebars, this also affects usablity since both Decorations do different things if you left, right, or double click it. Same goes for Menubars. Some Apps follow the GlobalMenu in the GNOMEShell while others don't.
Con Non-intuitive use paradigm
It doesn't feature an always-on dock and fixed amount of usable desktops, doesn't support tray icons for background programs. The main interaction with running programs bases on clicking and dragging (to a desktop) preview thumbnails.
Con Less configurable compared to x11 counterparts
The borders and title bars are less customizable. Outside colour change nothing else is possible. Plugin approach is a plus but as of now, no known plugin is available to change the appearance of window decoration. Firedecor is a good option but seems deprecated as it doesn't match the current Wayfire version.
Con Dependency issues
Hard to match builds with correct wlroots version. Building is difficult because wlroots version is either greater or lesser than the required version.
Con Plugins require working wayfire to build but with each update, the plugin becomes incompatible and unbuildable
The case with firedecor.
Con Cut/paste not reliable
Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But most of the time not.
