I ended up finding more reasons for GNOME 3 than I had before. To help my decision I would love to know your practical reasons why you wouldn't recommend using GNOME 3. So I want to get exposed to arguments that challenge my impression. This should enable me to find the best available solution for me. Further down I will start with the very few counterpoints I know of.
I wanted to prefer Xfce. But after finding out more about the great keyboard functionality GNOME 3 has by default I can't help but prefer it over Xfce. Especially the way multi file renaming is implemented in Nautilus impresses me a lot. It is incredibly easy to use and in my view much better than the Thunar interface (which actually had the feature earlier – if I am informed propperly).
I admit that using the factor 1000 instead of 1024 for file sizes is rather annoying. On the other hand it is a better fit for how retailers describe the capacity of hard disc drives nowadays – at least where I live. Mate feels very outdated to me and most other desktops leave me with the impression they are just kind of more or less altered versions of KDE or GNOME mostly with less functional tools. KDE was never my cup of tea because it feels much to messy.
The lags in GNOME I have been complaining about before might have been due to an outdated installation. (Soon I will see if 3.30 is really faster than 3.22.) The non-intrusive user interface of GNOME is just beautiful and still very efficient. (Using the super key with the arrow keys for example is a real pleasure and it is very responsive too. I might even start using different workspaces now since switching is so efficient with using the super key and page-up and page-down keys.) I am aware that I can enable Xfce rather easily to use personal key bindings which could often do very similar things. But when I am sitting in front of Xfce I so far was unable to be as fast and I still didn't find an easy way to show me an overview of the most important system configuration details like RAM, CPU, operating system version. (Do I really need to use the terminal for getting that?) The graphical disc management in GNOME feels exceptionally pleasant to me also.
Xfce isn't bad of course but it feels limited and cumbersome to me in many aspects and sitting in front of it I wonder what value it offers me that I wouldn't have with the even lighter LXDE or LXQt. Of course it is sometimes fun to tinker with panels and designs in order to get as close as possible to my optimal structure and design. But in the end I actually love how GNOME and its tools look and work. My only beef with it is its high footprint. I guess I need to check out optimisation tips more closely.
Why not to use GNOME 3:
- It (needlessly) eats RAM (In my experience it is not very usable with less than 8 GB RAM.)
- It breaks the traditional usability concept (It is keyboard or touch-driven but not optimised for heavy mouse usage)
- Many features are hidden from menus and can often be only accessed using keyboard shortcuts one just has to know.