I've really been disappointed with gnome on this, not only is it full of difficult to disable annoying notifications, they appear on top of and cover part of the screen. Yet at the same time it has little to no affordance for unobtrusive non-disruptive ones like a mail or chat tray icon that changes color when you have unread messages.
A lot has been said about enshittification, but free software desktop environments shouldn't have any profit motive to abuse their users in this way. I've wondered if it's a case of second-hand enshitiffication: commercial products like windows adopt abusive patterns because the user is the product, then free software cargo cults it because they think if the big players do it that it must have value/been user tested/etc.
Recently, you also have free software LARPing big companies by adding telemetry to FLOSS, because asking users for feedback (or reading the damn issue tracker) isn't professional enough anymore - everyone in the big leagues is Data Driven™.
Er, did I say issue tracker? That's quickly becoming a thing of the past - the newest trend seems to be, "we can't help you here, join our community Discord instead".
This really does make me worry about FLOSS applications. I am afraid I'll have to start treating it all with the default level of suspicion that Windows and Android apps get.
Can also happen due to hiring developers from those environments.
I worked for a company that tasked some developers who'd previously worked for a phone manufacturer to add a feature to disable location services. In review it was noticed that they implemented something that told the user it was disabled but still sent the location back but with a location disabled flag set. When the privacy concern was raised with the developer they responded that this is how its always done.
I think you’re right on the money- gnome is trying to make the desktop environment more familiar to new users so they’re implementing poor design choices that Microsoft, Apple, et al. have made.
> I've really been disappointed with gnome on this
I personally can't stand Gnome in a million different ways, but that you can't actually customize it sufficiently is really the core reason why I refuse to use it.
A lot has been said about enshittification, but free software desktop environments shouldn't have any profit motive to abuse their users in this way. I've wondered if it's a case of second-hand enshitiffication: commercial products like windows adopt abusive patterns because the user is the product, then free software cargo cults it because they think if the big players do it that it must have value/been user tested/etc.