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The anti-minimalist backlash is the bigger story behind Oxygen’s revival
(filipfila.wordpress.com)
this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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I think there's one more big angle to modern design minimalism. It gets out of the way.
Every day, we are bombarded with millions of design elements. If they would all scream, show themselves, try to be special, many would get overwhelmed, overloaded, overburdened. The classic design screams individuality, impression, emotion. The minimalist one is there for the function without distraction, like a quiet servant - there when you need it, out of sight elsewhere. It's a design philosophy of an age when everything is at your fingertips.
With that said, and with my strong preference to modern, minimalist designs, I appreciate the effort others put into making their computing experience truly reflect their workflow and intention.
overall i enjoy what you said, but ...
"like a quiet servant - there when you need it, out of sight elsewhere"
this doesnt at all reflect my experience with oversimplified things like gnome or libadwaita. things specifically are not there when i need them. thats the whole problem.
edit - formatting
This is also exactly my problem with minimalist systems. That, and things being hardcoded in a way I don't like and not having any reasonable recourse to change it.
I feel like the problem of GNOME is not minimalism - it's lack of proper customization. It's a minimal setup that works for GNOME devs, but not you.
Personally, I enjoy using Adwaita apps under KDE. Adwaita works great with the "one app - one purpose" philosophy, while KDE allows you to make global arrangements the way you like, so that everything you need is at your fingertips, and everything you don't is out of the way. You can customize KDE to look in a way that compliments Adwaita, and it looks and works very well.