43
submitted 3 months ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I mostly use KDE, but my experimentation and internet consensus point to Gnome being the most polished overall experience on a touchscreen. I'm mostly satisfied, except for the keyboard.

There's no number row. There's no second layer available by long-press. There's no setting to change either. There doesn't seem to be a great solution for using a third-party OSK like Onboard, especially on the lockscreen where convenient access to those special characters for those strong passwords we're surely all using might be of use.

The only option that works reliably seems to be a keyboard built as a Gnome extension. This falls pretty short of the feature set Onboard offers.

If I wanted minimalism to the point of hampering usability coupled with barriers to customizing my experience, I'd buy a fucking iPad... except those do have good thrid-party keyboard support. I don't understand what the Gnome team is thinking here.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] illusionist@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 months ago

Which distro do you use? Those maintainers are the ones who decide what settings and apps are default in the final distro. It sounds like there is a keyboard and it's just not yet the GNOME default.

Just like ubunru chooses to use a task bar which is not default in vanilla GNOME.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

This is Arch, and I think its Gnome install is pretty vanilla. The OSK is definitely Gnome's default.

[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 points 3 months ago

The OSK in Gnome is built into Gnome. Which sucks both because it makes it hard to switch to something better and it makes it impossible to use it outside of Gnome.

this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
43 points (100.0% liked)

Linux

57274 readers
297 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS