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I tried out GNOME 40 today.

I had already read about it online, with quite a few articles suggesting that it was going into the wrong direction UI-wise. One common complaint was that it seemed more touch-oriented and less efficient to use with a mouse.

After trying it out, I am pleasantly surprised. I find I am quite happy with the gesture-based input paradigm that GNOME 40 is built around. In particular, navigating between the activity overview and the main desktop has become significantly quicker for me.

Perhaps my fondness of the MacBook’s way of treating its trackpad as a first-class input device has rubbed off on me and I am now attuned to it. What is surprising, however, is that notwithstanding the substantial amount of time I have spent in macOS, I seem to prefer GNOME’s implemention over the Mac’s. It feels, to me, even more efficient and to the point.

Even with popular support for the CSU dwindling, it still seems unlikely for the left to capture a significant number of direct mandates (first-vote seats assigned by first-past-the-post voting) in Bavaria due to vote splitting between the three left-leaning parties (the Left Party, the Social Democrats, and the Greens).

If I were responsible for any of the three parties’ Bavarian election strategies, I would propose to the other two to hold a joint primary election in each voting district. This would likely improve the odds for both the Social Democrats and the Greens while not really changing them for the Left Party (while still giving them the benefit of hurting the other end of the political spectrum plus the opportunity to build alliances within their own).