A difference between Windows and Linux desktops is that WinUsers depend on Microsoft’s choices. They can’t do differently. On the other hand in Linux, Desktops depend on the users’ choices. There are many quality options for us like Gnome, Unity, Cinnamon, KDE, elementaryOS, and more, and swapping desktops isn’t a problem at all ;)

However the two most popular desktops Gnome and Ubuntu/Unity, sometimes get stubborn and they don’t follow the common sense. What’s common sense you ask? Their users opinion of course!

Application Menus

Both GNOME and Ubuntu re-visited their number one issue, both on their 7th iteration, ~3 years after their initial release.

Application Menus. Application Menus primary invented to save vertical space, but they introduced more issues than they solved, as they were being hard to find or too far from their parent window.

Both desktops have now found a good solution!

How GNOME Does It

GNOME (3.12) needs Tweak-Tool to embed the application menus on application window, which isn’t part of the default GNOME, so this is not officially supported.

Tweak Tool displays Menu twice, that’s bug

This will only work on CSD Apps, but that’s fine since all GNOME (but not all GTK) Apps should use CSDs. GNOME also don’t care about consistency with the no-GNOME apps, which in my opinion is okay.

How Ubuntu Does It

Ubuntu (14.04) does it much better than GNOME. First they officially support that from within Ubuntu Settings, and secondly they maintain consistency with all applications. This feature may also become default on their next releases.

Notice that menus are hidden and are only revealed onHover. You can see that on the following figure.

Cursor is hover on the focused FF Window

What if there’s not enough horizontal space?

The area where the menus are displayed, is still drag-able, so you can move windows normally.

I strongly recommend to read the awesome Treviño’s Blog Post!

Many thanks to both Desktops for that!