<story><title>Lobotomizing Gnome</title><url>https://eklitzke.org/lobotomizing-gnome</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brusch64</author><text>I have no experience with Mate, but the feature I miss the most in the traditional desktops is starting programs by hitting the super (Windows) key and typing the programs.&lt;p&gt;I know that you can use Alt+F2 for this, but using super is much more ingrained for me since I&amp;#x27;ve seen Windows Vista (I am using Linux at home and Windows systems at work)</text></item><item><author>probably_wrong</author><text>Long time Mate user here.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;problem&amp;quot; with Mate is that it just works. I interact with Windows and OSX daily, and I have yet to find a feature that makes me thing &amp;quot;I wish my desktop environment could do this&amp;quot;. Mate gets out of my way and lets me work.&lt;p&gt;In other words, it&amp;#x27;s boring. There&amp;#x27;s nothing new and shiny to be excited about, because it&amp;#x27;s as good as it gets. I left Gnome 3 because I was tired of visual effects getting on my way, but those visual effects were what attracted me to Gnome 3 to begin with. I think Mate lacks that &amp;quot;wow!&amp;quot; factor and, as grateful as I am for that, I think this might stop it from being more popular.</text></item><item><author>keyle</author><text>I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45&amp;#x27; in the middle of an extremely important moment)&lt;p&gt;Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2&amp;#x2F;3 extension?)&lt;p&gt;I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it&amp;#x27;s way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances.&lt;p&gt;Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years, since I last tried it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>genpfault</author><text>&amp;gt; I miss the most in the traditional desktops is starting programs by hitting the super (Windows) key and typing the programs.&lt;p&gt;Brisk Menu.  It binds to the Windows key by default and still somehow allows shortcuts like Win+R to work.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;solus-project&amp;#x2F;brisk-menu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;solus-project&amp;#x2F;brisk-menu&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Lobotomizing Gnome</title><url>https://eklitzke.org/lobotomizing-gnome</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>brusch64</author><text>I have no experience with Mate, but the feature I miss the most in the traditional desktops is starting programs by hitting the super (Windows) key and typing the programs.&lt;p&gt;I know that you can use Alt+F2 for this, but using super is much more ingrained for me since I&amp;#x27;ve seen Windows Vista (I am using Linux at home and Windows systems at work)</text></item><item><author>probably_wrong</author><text>Long time Mate user here.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;problem&amp;quot; with Mate is that it just works. I interact with Windows and OSX daily, and I have yet to find a feature that makes me thing &amp;quot;I wish my desktop environment could do this&amp;quot;. Mate gets out of my way and lets me work.&lt;p&gt;In other words, it&amp;#x27;s boring. There&amp;#x27;s nothing new and shiny to be excited about, because it&amp;#x27;s as good as it gets. I left Gnome 3 because I was tired of visual effects getting on my way, but those visual effects were what attracted me to Gnome 3 to begin with. I think Mate lacks that &amp;quot;wow!&amp;quot; factor and, as grateful as I am for that, I think this might stop it from being more popular.</text></item><item><author>keyle</author><text>I recently switched to Linux (from Windows 10 - forced upgrade took 45&amp;#x27; in the middle of an extremely important moment)&lt;p&gt;Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2&amp;#x2F;3 extension?)&lt;p&gt;I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it&amp;#x27;s way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances.&lt;p&gt;Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years, since I last tried it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>diffeomorphism</author><text>You can use &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;alols&amp;#x2F;xcape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;alols&amp;#x2F;xcape&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;hanschen&amp;#x2F;ksuperkey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;hanschen&amp;#x2F;ksuperkey&lt;/a&gt; for that.&lt;p&gt;The windows key is a modifier like shift, alt or ctrl and hence at first it seems like a really, really bad idea to use it a shortcut by itself. The above programs hence implement the same behind-the-scences workarounds other desktop environments and windows use: treat pressing and releasing win alone as special.&lt;p&gt;You can of course also use this for other keys, for example&lt;p&gt;caps alone-&amp;gt; Esc&lt;p&gt;caps+c -&amp;gt; ctrl+c&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I win+space instead of just win also is quite natural shortcut.</text></comment>