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 can live in GNOME and only use the defaults. It just takes time to adjust my workflow. What helps me with whatever I’m using or whatever I’m doing (in life), is to not focus on the things “missing” and just make the best of what I have (to work with).
Since two years I’m on KDE but not because I was fed up with GNOME. I just wanted to try something else. Pretty much using stock KDE only that I moved the taskbar to the top of the monitor.