https://cassidyjames.com/blog/freedesktop-accent-colors-gnome-proposal/
Enabling user expression while considering the needs of distros and app developers
!linux
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I've been using GNOME with a touchscreen folding laptop and it's been pretty comfy. I honestly like GNOME's implementation of optimizing the UI for touch input more than Windows 10's half assed approach. I tried Windows 11 but don't have much experience with it to comment on that.
But I wouldn't say that making an OS UI is a solved problem. Microsoft for example with it's billions of dollars of R&D routinely messes up as you mentioned, still can't get rid of old holdovers from Windows 7 and just generally degrading it's UX with every new version.
GNOME surely has a lot more common with MacOS but I wouldn't say that's bad thing. Apple is the industry leader in seamless UX design after all. For it being a cheap knock-off, I let everyone to decide that but it is quite literally free. Doesn't get much cheaper than that 😅
I've been famoboying a lot for GNOME in this thread but I really think there is a lot of room for improvements. I guess I'm just more optimistic about the project, especially after the last couple of releases.
Don't take me the wrong way, I also use and prefer GNOME to KDE and others but I'm using a ton of tweaks like the desktop icons, arch menu and dash to panel. If I ignore the usual lag that comes with having your DE themes written in CSS things mostly work out. As I said the sad thing about 3rd party tweaks is that their integration with the rest of the system isn't always the best.
I simply don't get all the fuzz they do about trying not to be a copy of Windows/macOS when those systems have good solutions. Why not simply copy all features 1:1 and save the effort of doing UI research / trying out thing?