At the time of the 2->3 GNOME transition, I agreed it needed some overhaul and started looking dated (the default&vanilla GNOME install, that is). But there were many decisions they took I could not understand:
- The applications-places-system menu. As said in other post the other day, it was so clever to have all the stuff in your computer categorized in those three categories. You knew at first sight, even if you've never ever used GNOME2 before, where to send your mouse when reaching something, it wasn't a guess game like in Mac or that cram-everything-in-one-button like the Windows start menu - not to talk about the 'moving around your mouse through the whole screen to launch an app' like GNOME3/4 itself.
- Clearlooks was the pinnacle of theming in Linux. Easily readable/scanneable and beautiful by default, 'themeable' up to the tiniest detail with a readable CSS-like syntax (I'm fuzzy on the details but seem to recall it wasn't a feature exclusive of Clearlooks). I concede Adwaita inherited visual inspiration from Clearlooks, but now with GNOME4 they decided to ditch it altogether. For some reason.
- Technological aspects aside which I won't talk about because you people know much more than me on that, but restricting the user to customize their GNOME install was an double-edge sword they seem didn't thought much through. GNOME2 had an almost perfect balance between simplicity and customization capabilities; whereas with GNOME3 upwards it is up to devs decide many things (and it seems those decisions are based much on their criteria rather than their users...). That brought the unfortunate consequence of frustrating users with every unexpected change with releases, something didn't happened with GNOME2 (or maybe even before than that).
Needing an untrusted user plugin to do basic things like display application tabs on the GNOME bar makes the entire project a nonstarter.
I really appreciate team GNOME's commitment to wayland, but outside of that, they have released a completely unfinished product which pales in comparison to the feature set of its previous incarnation.
- The applications-places-system menu. As said in other post the other day, it was so clever to have all the stuff in your computer categorized in those three categories. You knew at first sight, even if you've never ever used GNOME2 before, where to send your mouse when reaching something, it wasn't a guess game like in Mac or that cram-everything-in-one-button like the Windows start menu - not to talk about the 'moving around your mouse through the whole screen to launch an app' like GNOME3/4 itself.
- Clearlooks was the pinnacle of theming in Linux. Easily readable/scanneable and beautiful by default, 'themeable' up to the tiniest detail with a readable CSS-like syntax (I'm fuzzy on the details but seem to recall it wasn't a feature exclusive of Clearlooks). I concede Adwaita inherited visual inspiration from Clearlooks, but now with GNOME4 they decided to ditch it altogether. For some reason.
- Technological aspects aside which I won't talk about because you people know much more than me on that, but restricting the user to customize their GNOME install was an double-edge sword they seem didn't thought much through. GNOME2 had an almost perfect balance between simplicity and customization capabilities; whereas with GNOME3 upwards it is up to devs decide many things (and it seems those decisions are based much on their criteria rather than their users...). That brought the unfortunate consequence of frustrating users with every unexpected change with releases, something didn't happened with GNOME2 (or maybe even before than that).