Cross-posted from “It’s that time again” by @Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com in !linux_memes@programming.dev
I use a script for paprwm-like behaviour, and is signcantly hamstrung as well - cannot work with multiple screens. Karousel: https://store.kde.org/p/2045724
This is what got me to drop Gnome from my laptop. Karousel is excellent.
I will use niri wm primarily on most machines, but kde&karousel have some advantages on a notebook.
I used to be a Gnome fan. But I hate the direction they took from Gnome shell 4 onwards. Now I use KDE and I’m happy with it.
I don’t use gnome because I don’t think a desktop use interface should be designed for iPads
When I first used Linux I loved Gnome for the intuitiveness and simplicity but I did not like the same thing you were saying. I guess it makes a good desktop for tablets lol.
The thing is in theory I love gnome for that. In practice keep that shit away from me
I’ve got Gnome installed on a tablet PC. It’s not good there, either.
It’s that time again… Pile more and more dependencies on top of a desktop environment, get shocked when it breaks, and take out your rage on people explaining that it’s free dev work and you’re welcome to contribute.
Nah. As far as I am aware of, Gnome went “this is it by default, want more customisability - here is API, install or write your own extensions”. Which is fine with me. Then they break API without announcement in advance, and their response to community is along the lines of “fuck you, deal with it”. Which is not fine with me, and I am not using Gnome ever since discovering it
GNOME is great. Things break sometimes which is a Linux and a software thing. It’s free dev work to begin with.
Doesn’t mean being a dick is ok, even if a useful dick
I don’t know, I don’t choose my software based on the developer’s personal dispositions. I suspect I’d be unable to use any software if I did.
More or less this is my estimate too, but being developer myself has its consequences: some things I will never accept to the point of “I will rather code this myself than encourage this kind of attitude going on”
As far as I am aware of, Gnome went “this is it by default, want more customisability - here is API, install or write your own extensions”
Not even that is true. They do not provide an API (specifically decided not to due to “extension developer freedom”), but allow Extensions to monkey-patch code in. That’s why it becomes unstable due to Extensions instead of just the Extension (or at least the Extension process) crashing. Imagine every change in KDE being a KWin script, or Firefox still relying on monkey-patching instead of the extension API. It’s wild.
Meeting criticism of this absurd way of doing things in something as important as the graphical shell with “it’s FOSS so either contribute or shut up” mentality some people show here is just dumb.
Ouch. That’s some very unprofessional way of providing software, especially as important and widely used. Thank you for clarification
This is why I stopped using Gnome. After every update most of my extensions stopped working. Some took ages to get up to date or were abandoned. And there was no simple way to enable all extensions that the update disabled, having to manually enable them one by one. Maybe that has changed now? It’s been yearsnow… Not that I would go back anyway, tiling managers is where it’s at.
We all got choices, that’s what I like about Linux. KDE seems to run great for most people, for me it always seems to bug out and act super janky (the panel editor in particular would bug out and crash constantly, I could never get the damn thing to where I liked it). If it was more stable for me I’d probably use it, I love customizing my system. I’ve tried making it work a few times, never seems to click.
GNOME’s extensions may break on updates from time to time but my day to day experience with it is much nicer. While more rigid it’s a lot more polished and doesn’t crash out on me just using the interface. I like the layout of it. I’m glad KDE works for so many of you guys, but I’ll stick with GNOME until a better option comes around.
That said, if anyone has a better suggestion for a desktop environment I’m all ears.
I just don’t customise very much, either DE mentioned. I did initially when I was new to using Linux out of novelty, but I noticed stuff breaks the more I deviated from the norm after enough updates. Plus it’s such a timesink to begin with. I realised I just wanted to use the fucking computer, not tinker and fight it.
KDE on my office desktop. I like one of the themes CachyOS ships with so I left it at that.
GNOME on the living room PC hooked up to a TV. I think it works better there controlled by a wireless trackpad keyboard from the couch and for purely entertainment purposes. Stremio, web browsing, and gaming.
Cinnamon. After using Xfce and KDE Plasma for years, and having testing Gnome, Budgie, etc., Cinnamon feels like it took the best ingredients from all of them.
I’ll try it out in a VM when I have a bit, looks like something I could recommend to Windows 10 refugees
When’s the last time you tried Plasma? I felt the same way about it as you did until version 6. I’ve been driving it now since 6.2 and its at least as polished as Gnome but with WAY more features and almost infinite customization out of the box.
I tried version 6 last, the customization kept crashing the desktop, it didn’t like me messing with the panels at all. I just wanted a top bar and a dock.
I’ve recently installed the latest version for my fiance who is transitioning from Windows. Immediately there was a small problem with the app menu leaving graphical artifacts on the panel when the menu got closed (it was fixed by increasing the animation speed a bunch somehow?).
After a certain point I gave up and moved on, I can’t agree that it’s as polished as Gnome from my personal experience with the two. But as always, user experience may vary. My experience with KDE seems to be a minority which is good for everyone else lol
Hmm, well, “works on my computer” is never a helpful comment but I have a heavily modified panel that I moved to the top with no issues.
I’m using the built-in task manager widget rather than a dock. Maybe that’s why?
Mind me asking what distro? And Wayland or X11? Also, which dock?
I’m using Wayland and Fedora (Plasma 6.4) and also had a good experience with NixOS (6.3, also Wayland).
I’ve been using Nobara for a long time now, before that I was on Debian, before that Kubuntu. I’ve tried both Wayland and X11 on Nobara until they fully switched to Wayland, they both had issues.
I tried several variations on getting a dock to work, but even organizing the top bar or editing any of the panels at all was causing glitches and crashes. After a certain point I said fuck it and tried Gnome, my problems went away and it only took a few extensions to get it where I wanted. Been more stable since the switch so I haven’t been inclined to go back myself.
Hmm, oh well. As long as you found your happy place…
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy it works for you. Linux has something for everyone and that’s fantastic.
Once Gnome dispences grilled cheese sandwiches it’ll be my true happy place
Kinda same, but I would also always tinker with Plasma endlessly customising every little bit, installed applets and widgets to check if they’re better than what I’m currently using. It got tiresome, but I just couldn’t stop myself. After a while I installed Gnome and just embraced the simplicity.
The other week had a GNOME dev reply to a thread of mine on mastodon stating that the users desire to select a default terminal emulator was an “edge case” and it was beneath GNOME. then all the GNOME fanboys came out to his defense.
It’s an insufferable DE and community.
I checked your Mastodon timeline but I don’t see the post, only the one where you relate the story.
I deleted it because the GNOME users were getting annoying.
Such a GNOME thing to say
As insufferable as KDE users always shitting on gnome?
I’ve generally found gnome users just use it. New KDE releases don’t have gnome fanboys bashing it, etc.
But new GNOME releases? Directly the opposite.
Really wish people would just chill.
Yeah, there is way less hate and mockery towards KDE. Now let’s think why that might be
To me it speaks more of the users, less of the DE.
Either somehow every GNOME user is a saint and everyone else is just an asshole, or GNOME is laughably bad and every new release is also bad. It’s either of those two.
I find that Penis Stroker 2000 never has users bashing it when a new release comes out.
But every single new release of Scrotum Puncher 5000 that comes out, it’s getting criticized. I’m sick of it!!
At least for a time, many of the big distributions focused exclusively on Gnome, and for KDE users it was kind of frustrating as everything would be all wired up for Gnome, and either KDE wasn’t packaged at all and you had to go third party, or it was a clearly second class citizen where the packagers just didn’t bother to wire up equivalent features. You would look it up and see how KDE had the same capability implemented, but the packager just hadn’t included some dependency or configured something to manifest it.
Now I feel like the distributions take Plasma more seriously and so it’s easier to just ignore whatever Gnome is doing… Except for the occasional horrible UI presented by a Gnome app in your otherwise credible desktop. Since Gnome is both a DE and a UI framework, the UI framework gets to rear its head even if you largely ignore the DE.
Then of course you have the tiling window managers/compositors, but those projects tend to be less ambitious anyway, and what the audience wants is pretty much what they can get from packages, even if the packagers aren’t quite as invested to know what can be done.
New KDE releases don’t have gnome fanboys bashing it
There is a lot less hate for KDE… Because KDE doesn’t break the user experience every time it updates. Gnome is the Apple of the Linux world. The entire dev team embodies the Apple attitude of “we know better than you, and you’re wrong for wanting to use anything except the default settings.”
You’re essentially getting the “iPhone user seeing all of the hate from android users every time iOS updates” experience. Because every time a new iPhone feature comes out, all of the android users go “lmao iOS didn’t have that feature until now? Android had it three years ago. Apple fucking sucks.”
As insufferable as KDE users always shitting on gnome?
This 100%
I’ve generally found gnome users just use it
lol
I like how GNOME looks and functions for the most part, but I really wish the world provide more options instead of whatever design philosophy they think needs enforced.
I installed Debian + gnome today for the first time in years, I hate it even more now then I did back then.
If it had a taskbar it’d be a 10/10 for new users though
Obligatory mention that Linux Mint’s dev team have forked some GNOME apps into their own XApps* project. Part of the reason is so that those apps retain the user’s window manager’s look and feel rather than GNOME’s enforced interface design. That might even be the main reason, but they also throw in their own improvements to the apps where they feel they’re necessary.
They’ve not yet forked all GNOME-looking applications in Mint, and I’m not even sure they intend to, but it’s a noble effort.
* Yes, it really is called that. Like I’ve said before, they probably could have chosen a better name, but they chose it before Wayland was a real threat and before Twitter got lobotomised.
X referred to a display server since long before Twitter was born.
They’re commenting about how the name is bad and how that X is ruined in the public zeitgeist. Yes, X the display framework has been around for decades, but Random Joe 28507 still doesn’t know what that X is.
I never had too many issues with GNOME but didn’t install loads of extensions. Looking forward to seeing Cosmic grow and develop further, took a while but finally in beta
It’s your own fault you use GNOME
At this point, what did you expect to happen?
Bugs happen every gnome version change, it’s a given, now it’s autorotate not working, but it will be fixed. But extensions just need updating, normally they give an update right before the version launch.
But i never had seen the person on the second painel, gnome development works in this way, if you use a tablet on a bleeding edge distro, you are pratically on gnomes QA team hahahhaha
they don’t break due to bugs. They break because they are literally unsupported and ignored.
I was talking about gnome bugs, not that bugs affect extensions, my english is not the best.
About the extensions, idk if there are wildcards in the metadata.json, but I think it would solve this issue of updating and then extensions breaking, because I’ve seen that the only extensions that break put only specific versions, so you can add the current version on the file when you update or update the extension manually.
all of that describes a lack of extension support. “they just need to be updated” means “gnome devs don’t care about extensions, so shit that was working just fine now broke, and it’s up to the extension dev to find and fix bugs they didn’t introdkce”
But sure, you just need to update… and pin versions and shit
Yeah I very much like dislike the culture of Gnome… maybe I’ll try something else someday. KDE isn’t for me but Cosmic maybe.
Just use KDE Plasma
Tried it. You supposedly can customize it any way you want, but after struggling for like an hour trying to make it look clean, I wondered why I was trying to force that. The UI in KDE is not clean. It’s messy and has exposed many options I would never use. People love to hate on GNOME but I think they’re only doing that because they know it’s so popular. And it’s popular for a reason.
I have a seemingly yearly tradition where I manage to convince myself to try out KDE then am usually back on GNOME after a week. I genuinely don’t get the hate for GNOME. It looks clean, has great defaults (especially the keybinds) and mostly stays out of the way. I don’t hate KDE, it’s just not for me and that is okay.
I don’t like the defaults of any the common DEs, so I always end up customizing whatever I use. Last time I tried KDE Plasma I was still running into bugs too often. I’ve been using gnome which is generally more stable, but it has a lot less stuff on it so I end up Frankensteining everything.
It’s probably time for me to try Plasma again though.
Yeah, I’ve tried KDE a couple of times. If it was the only option I may be able to get used to it, but knowing there is a much cleaner option makes me dislike it actually. I also don’t get the GNOME hate, I agree with what you said about it.
The keybindings in Gnome never made sense to me. I’ve got decades worth of muscle memory moving windows around, minimizing them and such, and my experience with Gnome was it was made specifically to frustrate that workflow. The app drawer thing, first of all was always two clicks away not one, and wouldn’t automatically sort by category like most Linux app menus will.
I’m on KDE right now, I’d prefer to be on Mint Cinnamon, but it didn’t really play well with my monitor setup and Wayland wasn’t well implemented in Cinnamon yet, so I’m on Fedora KDE. KDE has a problem where, well…
The clock widget and the temperature widget. No matter what, I can’t get them to match each other. Something something different authors, they offer customization, but not in a way that can get them to match font sizes or spacings. The entire goddamn OS is like that. You can get it to do anything you want, but expect an 80 grit polish.
I don’t hate on gnome because people can use what they want but coming from windows the UX was so unintuitive i had to switch to a different session without a DE to get rid of gnome. I’m sure it’s learnable and then depending on your preferences pretty great.
I also don’t think plasma is messy though. To me there’s nothing worse than a system hiding options out of the assumption that I don’t need them (see also: windows over time, which is a big part of why I made the switch to linux in the first place).
There’s a huge difference in hiding options and putting them into a menu that looks nice. KDE UI strikes me as busy and ugly. Crazy re: windows. It’s the busiest UI of all.
I get that. Personally, as someone who worked on a Mac and had a Windows PC at home, it probably would’ve been easier to use KDE, since I did need to learn a bit of gnome’s ui, but I just found it so much cleaner compared to KDE. Might try heavily customizing KDE again sometime, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. At least for now, I can get a nicer desktop for me by using GNOME with minimal extensions than I can with KDE. I don’t like the Windows 10 adjacent style, but of course, to each their own. Not to say I find GNOME perfect, the complete lack of usability of custom themes as of gtk3 (Gradience has never actually worked for me) is infuriating, but ultimately I prefer my GNOME setup over what I’ve tried out in plasma.
People love to hate on GNOME but I think they’re only doing that because they know it’s so popular
You sound like Honey Boo Boo.
My take is GNOME is Mac-inspired, and KDE is Windows-inspired. I never liked MacOS. Therefore, GNOME does not appeal to me. KDE feels familiar, so naturally I used it after switching from Windows.
This is what I concluded in the end…
I do at home, can’t choose at work (but we keep pushing the people in charge)
I heard of imposing operating systems (which I’m also against*), but never specific distros or DEs.
* at least for technical people who know what they’re doing and wont spam the IT support
If it is a larger company that defintly would make maintenance easier.
My company started enforcing Macs this year but as a special exception they’ll let us use Windows or Ubuntu. No other distro and the CTO must still authorize it.
The reason? Meet some vague security guidelines that the PR team wants us to be able to say we meet, by forcing us to run a spying agent to ensure our OS is up-to-date so I’m not vulnerable to leaking data I don’t even have access to. But the tool doesn’t support anything that updates frequently.
I had just built a brand new laptop for work and I refused to sully it with Ubuntu so I installed it on an old desktop and just been putting zero effort into fixing Ubuntu shit. Wifi often can’t handle meetings, none of my cameras worked ootb - also can’t go to the office anymore since I can’t carry the desktop there.
Still a year away from being able to request the company buys me a machine again (last time there were no conditions for it) - but I don’t intend to stay here until then.
I’ll bet you 20$ that when some information finally leaks it is 100% some fuck ass exec giving away company secrets to impress a potential side piece or some geriatric board member ass fuck clicking a “Hot Dingles near you” ad
Kubuntu FTW!!!
What distro do you use with it? So far I liked mint with cinnamon but looking to switch my main PC to Linux and ditch windows on October 23rd.
I use Arch, but you can’t go wrong with Plasma + Debian. Ubuntu has weird bugs which keeps me from recommending it. I wish Mint still had a Plasma edition. endeavouros is Arch with a user-friendly installer, so that’s an option as well. CachyOS is great too. Mint is good but Cinnamon doesn’t support HDR which keeps me from recommending it to anyone using an HDR display. Debian is probably best seeing as you are used to Mint.
With KDE, you can go with Fedora if you like something “closer” to mint experience. I use it with Endeavor OS and I’m very happy
I’ve been enjoying CachyOS myself lately.
I’m tempted to try it since I’d like to move away from fedora (kde), would you recommend it?
Does it require too much tinkering?
Does it breaks often with updates?A buddy of mine and I have been using it for a bit, he more than I. Haven’t noticed any major issues with it. Proton works well for gaming. Overall pretty solid. I’d say spin it up and give it a test drive.
Debian primarily, though I also have arch running on another box. But I basically only run Debian across the board. Almost all stable, with some Trixie and Sid for testing. I also won’t touch Gnome unless I’m forced to, so keep in mind I’m opinionated and hold grudges when you see my recommendations.
cinnamint is great. i think you may have already found what to put on the ‘main pc’.
if you’re at all interested in ‘atomic’ variants, kinoite is what is running a couple of kde desktops here.
EndeavourOS
☺️such a joy
I use SpiralLinux (basically Debian with some tweaks). I like it a lot! If you want to stay in the Debian/*buntu lineage, consider it.
no :3
I love how Ubuntu looks and feels
You mean GNOME? Ubuntu ships KDE too as Kubuntu.
I meant ubuntu’s customization of GNOME
You can customize it the same on any distro. Except Artix lol. Ubuntu has weird bugs that aren’t present it other distros that ship GNOME. I don’t really like GNOME’s current direction. Their devs seem to be comfortable with breaking things for both their users and users of of other desktops without a care.
Try mediawiki for a change. You’ll soon be happy about the few update troubles you had with gnome.
