GNOME theming discussions are weird. A lot of people will peddle cargo culted bad (broken) approaches when asked about it, but honestly it’s not that complicated¹, just restrictive:

• Use gsettings [get|set] org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme [new value] to set the theme that GTK3 apps will load. Libadwaita apps will ignore this setting.

• Use gsettings [get|set] org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme [prefer-light|prefer-dark|default] to control whether Libadwaita apps (and GNOME shell) will display in dark mode. GTK3 apps will ignore this setting.

  • prefer-light makes everything light mode.
  • prefer-dark makes everything dark mode.
  • default makes apps light mode but the panel will stay dark.

• If you insist on theming Libadwaita apps, put the theme in ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css. You can also have add an @import directive there to import a theme. Note that this file is only loaded at startup, so using this feature means that GTK4 apps can no longer respond to the dark mode toggle.²

All of the applications that promise to help in theming GTK/GNOME (regardless of whether you’re talking about Tweaks, Refine, the theming settings of other DEs, Gradience, etc.) just flip some combination of these settings, mostly the first two.³

¹ It might seem complicated based on the length of this comment, but trust me that Qt is worse.

² The newest GTK version has media selectors, so if all of your applications are already updated to use the new GTK and your theme is updated to use media selectors then dark mode toggles should actually work now. Mine unfortunately haven’t.

³ A handful (mostly random scripts from GitHub, but also more reputable stuff like home-manager) will also try some wrong ways:

• Setting the GTK_THEME environment variable will prevent applications from loading the default Adwaita stylesheet completely, which will break all kinds of things.

• You can also put a theme at ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css, but this does nothing you can’t do with gsettings except preventing you from changing the theme without restarting all your apps.

I don’t know when I last saw my wallpaper xD

right or left edge for me, gotta maximize that vertical space

And autohide!

Agree 100%. My only hesitation with bazzite is fedora’s insistence that 32bit needs to go. Once that support ends, bazzite is on a death clock. Otherwise I’d say bazzite over cachy.

Personally I probably wouldn’t advise NixOS to someone new to Linux. I think it’s best to get familiar with how linux does things in a more conventional setup first. And then transition to a declarative setup. But it kinda depends on the person as well, and how willing they are to learn and how comfortable they are with writing such a config.

That said, I would be very curious how the switch straight from Windows to NixOS would be experienced by someone. So if you do so, feel free to post your experience on the NixOS community :)

I do agree with what @Decq@lemmy.world said. For most users is preferable to start of with a simpler distro. The biggest difference between other distros and NixOS is its declarative nature, and that its config files are written in the functional language Nix. This will most likely feel overwhelming, especially if your not accustomed to functional languages.

I think a better approach would be to go with the distro you mentioned, then when you gotten more used to the ins and out, perhaps have a look at installing Nix the package manager in Nobara (the same name as the language is confusion), or perhaps Home Manager. The later manage programs and config also declaratively, but only for users and not on a system level.

All in all, in most use cases NixOS and its declarative, immutable, reproducable and indestructive model is overkill. Its mostly only worth it if you have multiple computers that need to share config, systems that must work 100% of the time or if you’re a sucker for declarative approaches (like i am, i’ve also daily driven Linux for 18 years, and is a hobby programmer, so it was a lot easier to get into Nix/NixOS with that I think).

It’s a lowest common denominator kinda issue, methinks. Gnome is chasing it’s own tail trying to create a single UI that will please everyone, plus have it simple to use and both similar enough yet distinct enough to/from Windows/Mac experiences. It’s a noble enough goal - but honestly strikes me as well impossible.

KDE gives you a barely updated Win95 era desktop and then becomes a tinkerer’s paradise - whenever there was two or more options, they focused on making each available, but neither becomes the default.

Same experience, thought desktop on linux was behind because I started on Ubuntu with GNOME.

Luckily tried XFCE on someone’s Debian install and realized GNOME just kinda sucked.

Even GNOME 2 was a pretty standard DE, 3 and 40+ just took a weird nosedive where they enforced their idea of the perfect DE, despite it breaking a ton of rules about good UX and removing a bunch of former features.

While gnomes simplicity looks better for newcomers, it’s actually worse, I hated it, tried kde, loved it, later tried gnome again and swapped to it, had more appeal once I already was using linux and used to it. It’s not immediately obvious what extensions to use and where to get them or that they even are a thing you can do. You goto settings and get turned off by the lack of customizability you’ve been hearing about.

Same, I’m not a native English speaker, so I only know it used for the food. Never heard it in an offensive or racial context.

My guess is that it’s associated with Asia and as such used with an implied offensive meaning (maybe something along „you rice eater“)?