I’m just screwing around with the OS, but I have to say, I’m a bit perplexed.
I wanted to install GIMP and LibreOffice, so I clicked on the AppCenter only to find out it couldn’t find either of them. Which is bizzarre, because I can install both using apt just fine. As it turns out, the AppCenter only has 51 curated applications, completely ignoring the abundance of programs already available in the Ubuntu repositories, making the AppCenter a bit useless.
Then there’s the desktop. I’m not entirely sure why I’m not allowed to have icons on it. macOS has desktop icons. As does Windows. Hell, almost every OS with a GUI does. Apparently, there’s something called Elementary Tweaks which lets you enable them, but why would anyone have to jump through hoops to enable this basic functionality?
I guess I just don’t understand who this OS is meant for.
Don’t quote me but Gala is based on Mutter which back when had some janky desktop icon implementation using Natilus. It was removed because it was less ideal implementation.
eOS team is all about (at least outwardly) having features be well implemented and standardized - see their dark theme implementation for instance, they would rather invent a good implementation over implementing half-baked ones even if the halfbaked one might have more adoption.
I thing the Solus team with Budgie DE quite recently reintroduced desktop icons in a more sane implementation.
Like I said, don’t quote me on this, not that invested.