I wanted to tell NetworkManager to do something specific (IIRC, use a specific DNS server rather than the one handed out by the DHCP server on my DSL gateway, but it's been a year or so) and couldn't. When I opened a ticket about it, it was closed WONTFIX with the notation that the idea behind it was zero-configuration and adding the ability to configure it to do this was therefore unacceptable.
Ok, that's true. NM's better than the awful GUI network config programs that came before it, and the alternative remains the same as before it existed (i.e. fire up a terminal and fix the shit by hand) but there's a lot of room for improvement. I'm with you--NM could use more custom-configuration options. It's fairly new, though, so hopefully someone will come along and fix it. If not, I fully expect it to be forked, sooner or later.
Only, that it's not. I've been able to set my own DNS server like FOR EVER in Gnome. Don't believe me? Right click Network Manager icon > Edit Connections > (Select connection to edit) > Edit > IPv4 Settings > Method: Automatic (DHCP) addresses only. Voila!
Though personally I much prefer the older gnome-system-tools network interface, being much simpler and easier to navigate, I find the latest Network Manager GUI needlessly complicated. And I hate how it abuses the tray area, clearly against the HIG, for something that should be an applet, but I have yet to see an OS that gets this right.
I want gnome-terminal not to eat my right-clicks. People have been asking for that for *years* and are constantly told that the Gnome developers know better than they do about what they need.
Huh? The only thing I can find about this via Google is that some people want right-click to mark end-of-selection rather than opening a menu. Is that what you're talking about?
Now that I think of it, this would certainly be a useful feature to have for some people. But in 10 years of using Linux, it has NEVER occurred to me that I might want to pass my right clicks to a terminal application. Then again, in what way does Gnome force anyone to use gnome-terminal? Following the same way of thinking Gnome should bundle Emacs instead of Gedit, or Octave instead of gcalctool.
I don't see why the basic utilities bundled with a DE shouldn't be, well, just a basic suite which can cover 99% of use cases. I, for one, am happy that my desktop offers me an easy to use terminal application which doesn't suffer from feature creep.
Now if we are talking about core desktop elements, like gnome-panel or Network Manager, it would be another thing entirely since you wouldn't expect even advanced users to switch them out. But installing their favorite tools, is exactly what you would expect from more demanding users, and while this is no excuse for not adding some simple features that would benefit everyone, it certainly means some obscure feature requests will sometimes not be implemented.
I agree though about setting different wallpapers on each workspace. This is the one single feature I have been missing since switching from KDE, back in the gnome 2.6 days.
