I wish folks critiquing GNOME would go after any app other than Nautilus. It's just not a great showcase of the best they have to offer. I would certainly hope no one judges the macOS desktop by Finder because the review probably wouldn't be favorable. If you're going to judge the design system Text Editor, Terminal, Videos, Epiphany, Music would all be better choices. I can't say I know anyone who likes GNOME who would recommend Nautilus anything but the most basic usage.
But surely interacting with files is a key component of what people expect from a DE? If a DE can't handle that well, a well-designed 'Videos' app offers small consolation.
I can only speak for myself, but it was a Nautilus regression that was the final straw that got me to move to KDE. (And years before that, the rapidly regressing Finder was a key factor in getting me to finally move from Mac to Linux.) Very happy with KDE, though.
I feel like when the Videos app is well designed and the file manager isn't, that says a lot about the priorities of the team behind the DE. In Apple's case, this is understandable from a business perspective - they have cloud services to sell, and would much rather you forgot all about files. In Gnome's case, I've always found it kind of baffling. Apple's design follows Apple's business imperatives, and Gnome's design... also follows Apple's business imperatives, for some reason. Monkey see, monkey do?
Because we're critiquing the design, can you make nice-to-use apps following the GNOME human interface guidelines or is it rotten to the core? Is Nautilus fixable while staying within the "GNOME way?" And the answer is yes, there's plenty of examples. Elementary even makes a nice file manager following them https://github.com/elementary/files.
I'm not going to defend Nautilus or pretend it's good, I just don't care. I haven't used it in years. I do use the other GNOME apps and the DE and they're really good. GNOME's disinterest in Nautilus I think stems from my disinterest in it, what full-time Linux user uses a file manager?
You do realize that you can use any kind of file manager from GNOME, right? It’s just a program, just as Dolphin, which you can easily install instead. Changing DE for that is just dumb, imo.
Defaults and first impressions matter though. As much as I think the matter of a personal computer you can make your own is worth fighting for, when a new user lands in the DE and doesn't have a great experience it's not a good solution to then say something along the lines of "go and explore N alternatives or dig through their configurations to find one that suits you" for each aspect of the DE they're going to be regularly interacting with. As much as they will be regularly means to an end of whatever task they do on their machine, it's a large up-front burden.
Nautilus is a fine file manager for browsing to your downloads and documents folder which I think is really all it cares to be. We're on HN so the user-stories are getting twisted.
I use GNOME as my daily driver and really like it— yeah some of their apps are shit, and some designs they made in the DE are questionable at best. But that's true of everything, any software beyond hello world will have annoyances. KDE is riddled with them like swiss cheese at a gun range which is why I think it's so funny people say they're happy with it as an alternative. You're clearly fine with bad design (KDE has some of the most famously terribly designed apps) and bugs. You just have strong opinions on what form the missteps take. And I get it KDE is a DE made for and by old-school Linux users.
> KDE is riddled with them like swiss cheese at a gun range which is why I think it's so funny people say they're happy with it as an alternative. You're clearly fine with bad design (KDE has some of the most famously terribly designed apps) and bugs.
Are you basing this off recent experiences, or impressions from 2004? I feel like this kind of criticism is precisely what people used to say around that era, but it has been many years since I last heard anyone say that about KDE. There's fair criticism one could have of KDE, but that in particular sounds like a very dated take.
If you're hearing people say that they're happy with KDE as an alternative to Gnome, and you don't know why, maybe rather than assuming a bunch of things about them, go check out KDE? You can always spin up the latest Kubuntu in qemu.
It's not that simple. Using your DE's file manager means that the file picker dialog in most programs will take your settings into account, have your personal sidebar shortcuts, etc. While it's true that a file manager is a program like any other, the overall integration of your file manager with the rest of the system does especially matter, because it affects some aspects of almost every other programs.
To further expand on this: GNOME's inane vision for "minimalism"—that is nothing but an insult to the concept itself—spreads to any system regardless of one's DE whenever GTK programs are involved due to GtkFileChooser. There are ways to prevent being unable to use basic features that have existed for decades in any functional file picker, such as using the GDK_DEBUG flag (formerly GTK_USE_PORTAL), however people suggesting this approach to the countless affected have been called "clowns" before.
> You do realize that you can use any kind of file manager from GNOME, right?
I respectfully point you to re-read my comment, particularly the phrase 'final straw'. Or do you really think I daily drive Linux while having somehow failed to appreciate the concept of installable software?
> Changing DE for that is just dumb, imo.
Pretty unkind and unconstructive thing to say, IMHO. I think I'll manage to sleep soundly tonight, despite my DE choices having failed to impress a stranger on the Internet.
Files: everybody use a file manager. Terminal: possibly everybody on HN use a terminal app. Videos and Music have much better alternatives, eg VLC. I maybe end up using them when double clicking on some files, but I'm unsure. I do use eog, the image viewer. Epiphany... is that the email client?
My main gripe with Nautilus is the UI to rename files. Instead of renaming in place like any other file manager I remember, they open a popup and rename in there
