# GNOME Shell 10 Hacker News commenters recommended GNOME Shell and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended for a smooth, consistent desktop that mostly just works, with coherent window management. Critics most often raise security concerns about extensions running unsandboxed. ## Why people recommend it - Consistent, pleasant, low-effort daily use (2 comments): "modern Gnome is genuinely pleasant in that I spend almost zero time thinking about it, and shit just works." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004812)) "easily the most consistent and pleasant desktop app experience around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45779327)) - Smooth performance on tested hardware (2 comments): "I am not seeing any unacceptable performance degradation at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46026143)) "GNOME Shell mobile is quite smooth on it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47033322)) - Acceptable, does its job (2 comments): "Yet somehow I am OK with gnome shell." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46476305)) "it’s doing a fine job there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48339838)) ## What people warn about - Extensions run unsandboxed, security risk (3 comments): "which allow you to essentially execute arbitrary code in the shell's main process" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49969949)) "literally runs code from the Internet unsandboxed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47701517)) "extension updates without a way to disable this" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47701195)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [KDE Plasma](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kde-plasma.md): 650 recommend - [GNOME](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnome.md): 340 recommend - [Xfce](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xfce.md): 183 recommend - [COSMIC desktop](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cosmic-desktop-environment.md): 75 recommend - [Cinnamon desktop environment](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cinnamon.md): 57 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "GNOME Shell", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnome-shell/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).