Top 5 reasons GNOME is awesome:

1. Distraction-free: we respect you and include personal digital wellbeing features

2. Accessibility: we work to make computing accessible to all

3. Design: we make a cohesive, modern experience that looks great

4. Free and Open Source: we preserve your freedoms

5. Privacy: your data is yours, and we respect that

If these resonate with you, consider supporting us today! We're aiming for 1,500 #FriendsOfGNOME by the end of the year.

donate.gnome.org

Zach Bennoui reshared this.

in reply to Thib

@thibaultamartin absolutely; the work that the design team and developers of libadwaita and GTK have been doing has been excellent not just for adapting to form factors like mobile, but for tiling and just having little windows open!

Bringing that consistency and adaptiveness to the platform has been a years-long effort from a bunch of really amazing contributors, and we’re proud that it’s paying off no matter where you use GNOME apps. ☺️

@Thib
in reply to GNOME

GNOME is design-driven, in the way that user experience comes first. While an opinionated approach may not suit everybody’s workflow, in my view it leads to better, more testable and more polished products.

Also the community. Started on Graphs as a humble side-project, and was positively surprised by the amount of help and feedback I got from GNOME community, including the always fantastic design team. There’s few processes where I learned more than when we joined #GNOMECircle.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)

GNOME reshared this.

in reply to Sjoerd Stendahl

Also, especially getting involved in development within the ecosystem, kinda was an incentive for me to join #FriendsOfGNOME.

The project has given me a lot with my own development work. So it makes sense to me to give something back, even if symbolically. In a sense it’s been life-changing as I don’t expect to have gotten in the line of work I’m in now if it weren’t for personal FOSS projects, where GNOME played a central role for me.

in reply to GNOME

Contrary to what many people think, I could adapt #GNOME48 to my particular needs and blogged about my customizations: karl-voit.at/Gnome-Setup/

gsettings is great to reproduce the setup on other machines. 👍

#GNOME shines on simple setups but seems to have some issues when the setup gets a bit more complex.

Furthermore, speed was an issue at my side: I was a heavy user of invoking the GNOME shell for starting applications and switch windows but unfortunately that was a bit of a drag to be honest.

Visually, the GNOME UI is great.

in reply to GNOME

My favourite things about @gnome are:

  • It stays out of my way.
  • Doesn't overwhelm me with a myriad of configuration knobs.
  • Doesn't get upset when I only use part of the platform (in my case, niri + mostly GNOME apps, but no GNOME Shell).
  • The few times I interacted with GNOME developers, they were very helpful.
  • I've been a GNOME user since the dawn of time. I experimented with WMs other than whatever was GNOME's default at the time, but as far as applications go, most I use were GNOME ever since I first started up X11. We seem to have evolved together, and GNOME's nicely following my taste (or shaping mine).
in reply to GNOME

I use Linux as my primary desktop OS since the days of Gnome 2 and tried a lot of different desktop environments.

I love that you make spirited designs decisions and strive for a clear user experience. While I did not like every single change right from the start, most are justified and you seem to follow a coherent vision.

There was a time when I customised a lot of things, but for the person who I am now, everything just feels in the right place with the current Gnome.

GNOME reshared this.

in reply to Henri Verymetaldev

@verymetalsite it’s there, just scroll down. :)

donate.gnome.org/#one-time

We, like most non-profits, strongly encourage recurring donations—even if much smaller!—because it helps the Foundation budget and plan. This post covers the idea in a bit more detail: blogs.gnome.org/steven/2025/06…

But we also understand that everyone’s circumstances and preferences are different, which is why there’s a one-time option down below as well. Do whatever makes sense for you, and we appreciate it either way!

in reply to Andreas

@andreasio this is one of the many reasons GNOME has moved to using Nautilus itself as the file chooser.

GTK apps using the native file chooser API will automatically use the system’s file chooser, which is Nautilus on GNOME, elementary Files on elementary OS, even the native Windows or macOS file picker on those platforms. It makes for a more consistent experience over all.

in reply to GNOME

As much as I love Gnome and want to see it continue to flourish, I had to leave it a few months ago. Every release sees things that are good and make it easier to use... while also removing or obfuscating things that are needed and require increasingly frustrating incantations and blood rituals to make work. It just smacks of opinion guided design against user requirements 😞