Elementary OS 7

I noticed in one of your comments in this thread that you are looking for new ideas for UI. As other commenters have said, you might be interested in tiling window managers like i3 [0] or sway [1]. They really are a gem for productivity and sometimes for the eye [2].

However, I love the concept of a scrollable window manager like PaperWM [3]. When I had a smaller screen (24" 16:9) I complained a lot about the unused space on my screen. With PaperWM I was finally happy with its dimensions, because I could have a huge IDE on the left and a small part of terminal on the right. This way I could see if something was being printed to the terminal, while my editor took up 80% of the screen.

[0]: https://i3wm.org/

[1]: https://swaywm.org/

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

[3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

Speaking for myself here:

- No AppIndicators in default spec

- All UI is scaled to work for touch interfaces

- Default windowing support amounts to split-screen

- App "icon" style launcher, even using the same sliding-widget model people loathe on iPad

- Quick-settings menu pane in the top corner, almost identical to the iOS/iPad one in GNOME 40

I could go on, but I think it's safe to say that GNOME (especially GNOME 40) is derivative of iPad UI design. Other visual cues (dock, lockscreen, stylesheet, calendar, etc.) are pretty plainly inspired by the Mac UI.

That is maybe a facet of the change, but there's more to it.

It's also a certain attention to detail with regard to things like use of whitespace, the layout and flow of widgets, the types of widgets used, and user experience in general. These things have become increasingly phoned-in, with little thought applied; just dump it all into a grid and apply copious padding and you're done. Things that don't fit get removed or buried in dialog tunnels and there is no effort to make anything clear to the user.

There have been flat designs in the past that don't suffer these issues, like the earlier designs of Mac OS (System 1.0-7.5), which worked fine on 1-bit and grayscale displays but had a lot of thought and research put into their user experience.

This all got thrown out in the transition to flat design. Not only was skeumorphism discarded, but so was care for UI/UX in general. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater.

Elementary OS is the pinnacle of a nice-looking OS with questionable technical decisions under-the-hood. The biggest one? No upgrades. You literally can't go from 5 to 6, or 6 to 7, without a full reinstall. There's not a terminal command for the adventurous either.

That, to me, is extremely nasty. You have to take everything out of your computer, and put it back, every year to get the latest features and make sure you are secure? That's so bad, it feels like false marketing to call it "Elementary OS." You might as well download a random customized Windows ISO from the internet and disable Windows Update forever. At least Microsoft Edge would still get updates for years but Elementary OS's browser won't for very long. Unless, of course, you enjoy taking personal responsibility for updating every PC of those non-technical folks you recommend it to or install it for. I'd happily install it for quite a few relatives who would otherwise use Chromebooks, but that's a big showstopper.

I can read about how they've improved the Music app or made the App Center better for developers all day, but they have this massive hole in the ship that makes it fundamentally unsuitable for the intended purpose and they still haven't fixed it after 7 versions. Elementary users don't find pleasure in reinstalling their OS on weekends.

Note that I'm talking about the stock experience (no extensions or even gnome-tweak-tool).

- Top bar which acts as a status bar rather than a global menubar

- Somewhat modal UX that works best with keeping 1-3 windows on screen at all times

- No way to minimize windows

- Inclination towards gestures over keystrokes

- Simplified mobile-esque app UIs that eschew menubars entirely in favor of hamburger menus

- Greatly reduced levels of configurability relative to other DEs

- Heavily padded widgets that seem better suited to touch than KB+M

- Use of touch-inspired designs like switches over checkboxes

- No traditional desktop

…among others.

Don't get me wrong, it's very polished which is what leads me to use it, but it's not really a traditional desktop environment.