Obviously this is significant because this is the first release with Gnome 3 instead of Unity. I actually liked Unity a lot but also like Gnome 3, what are people's thoughts?
I've been running the Artful beta as my daily OS but was having some weird scaling issues with certain apps on my 4K displays. Chrome particularly looked "fuzzy". Decided to give Linux Mint Cinnamon a week back and so far couldn't be happier with it. I know Cinnamon is available on Ubuntu too, I'm surprised it's not more popular as a DE as it's very polished.
I agree with Cinnamon being polished and deserving much more attention than it currently gets - but what stops me from using it is the impossibility of arranging the virtual desktops (workspaces) vertically Gnome style and the refusal of the Cinnamon devs to implement that - I for one cannot get myself to horizontal workspaces, especially after using Gnome.
Some extensions did provide this in Cinnamon but the functionality appears half-baked and the extensions break after each Cinnamon release.
No proper hidpi support. Gnome3 doesn't support fractional scaling, so if you need smtg like 125% scaling, then you're out of luck. (Example: 4k 32" displays need this.)
People should know that Ubuntu-mate with mutiny layout is an alternative for some. Unlike 17.10, it keeps the global menus and HUD, but not the launcher (uses synapse instead).
I'd say that Ubuntu MATE (16.04) with the redmond layout and advanced menu enabled is the best alternative to Windows 7 I've yet seen in a Linux distro.
Gnome 3 seems quite fine, at least how it is in Fedora 27. It's rather pretty by default, and with Wayland, it handles things like multi-monitor DPI better than anything else I've seen. And not only in Linux side, but also versus Windows and Mac OS.
I've been a rabid tiling WM user several years before. I'm liking the other benefits enough that I'm willing to let that go. Gnome developers are working on some sort of tiling support, so we might be able to enjoy that as well in the future.
I've taken a real liking to Fedora. It actually made me switch from my custom Arch linux with i3 to almost default setup Fedora with Gnome. Worked flawlessly on my old Dell XPS 13 developers edition and my new one.
Sadly after the switch to Wayland my pen tablet doesn't get picked up by most applications I use daily including Chrome, Firefox, VSCode, Kritta, Blender, etc. It's a real shame as Gnome/Wayland handles switching the tablet between monitors and multimonitor setups really well! Running Gnome on Xorg also isn't an option, it tends to crash a lot now...
It's been crashing for me since the switch to wayland as a default. I don't mind really, this stuff needs to get adopted. I tend to use my keyboard way more than my tablet these days.
Fedora really is excellent, just a shame I couldn't get it to play ball with my XPS 15 (9560). The situation doesn't seem to have improved in 27, sadly. Anything Ubuntu-based seems to work fine, though.
I've been using GNOME Shell in preparation for this, and with almost the same customisations as the Ubuntu devs have done by default, it almost feels like the same experience. Perhaps even a bit smoother, given that most of the apps were actually made with this experience in mind.
