re: linux hot take
@cephie No worries, I understand; that's also why I mentioned that there *are* people who genuinely need customizability; because this isn't a reason to drop customizability entirely either.
It's more criticizing a pattern I've seen in Linux-land where a lot of usability issues are explained away by saying "well, you have options!" as if that justifies it, and I feel that this is at least in part a feedback loop - where the "ensuring customizability" often comes at the cost of being *able* to make things work well.
(This is all entirely separated from what GNOME is doing, which IMO has very little to do with usability, and a lot with Branding(tm). If GNOME actually cared about usability, they wouldn't be hard-coding poor UI font choices, for example. So please don't let that affect your view of 'usability' in general)
re: linux hot take
@cephie In the end, the 'perfect' environment is going to be a balance between usability and customizability; and most importantly, it matters *where* the customizability is.
GNOME's approach of "just strip everything down even when customizability would be trivial to support" is not that balance, but "always make everything customizable at any cost" also isn't.
And I just don't see *any* desktop environments in the Linux space doing very well at striking this balance; it's always one way or the other. Leaving very little real-world choice despite the apparent landscape of options.