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What's New In GNOME 3.18
prisoninmate writes: In this release, GNOME improves the general user experience for users and new developers alike. GNOME 3.18 adds a feature called "Automatic Brightness," which, when enabled, it will make use of your laptop's light sensor to dim or increase the screen's brightness depending on the surrounding lighting. GNOME 3.18 also improves the touch screen experience, especially when selecting and modifying text, implements a new view in the Nautilus (Files) sidebar, which collects all the remote and internal locations in a single place.
Despite all the negative buzz against GNOME 3, latest releases are, in my opinion, very good (and I hated GNOME 3 with a passion when it came up).
Also, they're putting efforts on style consistency and usability which is very welcome.
I was a former Gnome user and I ditched it, but to be honest, new users seem to like Gnome 3, for the obvious reason that touch interfaces are more familiar to them. They are more used to "slide to unlock" behaviours and such, big icons for rapid identification.
Sometimes it's worthy to make a little of self-criticism and realize that many of us aren't from this era of interfaces. I recognize that I hardly use a computer in the same way the average person uses it, I often rely on the terminal, I tend to remember programs by name rather than icon, and my workflow is probably way different than those born in the "apps" era.
It's Gnome for me? not anymore. Should it be? no, why should I force developers to do things as I like.
Gnome 3 is a good thing to have, because it enables free software to reach people that otherwise wouldn't be interested. Luckily for us, there are a plethora of options if you are fond of the old interface, and they seem to keep getting better and better (MATE, Xfce , KDE).
GNOME works great on a desktop. There are also lots of extensions that add stuff like task bars, app launchers etc.