I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it’s just not good.
Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.
How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.
Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?
I’d love to hear from people that use it and thrive in it.
I think it’s some kind of modern UX design philosophy; Remove everything except the most basic features to make it less confusing for computer illiterate users. Then label the rest of the features as “advanced” and either hide them behind some menus or in a separate program. Obviously that doesn’t mean that everybody who likes Gnome and similarly designed software is computer illiterate, but it’s difficult to make one glove that fits all. Kind of like those failed experiments to make a unified OS for desktops, tablets and phones…
When Gnome 3 was announced I thought it was cool that they tried something new, and I really wanted to like it. I’ve given it a couple of more chances over the years, to see if it has changed more to my liking, but after a few weeks of use I always replace it with something else… The way the UX is designed just reminds me too much of what I dislike about Windows. Having to use dconf editor to change settings feels just like being forced to use regedit.
Firefox also tried to go down this road IMO, but have reverted some of the worst changes and can be made almost to my liking with the help of extensions. Personally I like Vivaldi better but I think it’s important to keep Firefox alive so that Chromium/Blink doesn’t get complete monopoly.