I just realized that this desktop environment debate has slowed down a lot these last few years. I reckon it's about time we heat it back up. I'll get the popcorn!
We'll have to see if System 76's Cosmic DE can stir up some tribalism again!
I’ve found GNOME a pleasure to use. From my experience many folks that use Linux like to tinker with their computers. Even those new to Linux see a world of possibilities. GNOME doesn’t really embrace this tinkerer philosophy. They have an opinion on what at desktop manager should be and they’re constantly working towards that vision.
When I introduce GNOME to new people I explain to them some the project goals, design elements and how it’s intended to be used. Then I tell them that GNOME is opinionated on how things should behave and look, and if you try to force GNOME to be something it’s not you’ll probably end up using poorly documented or unsupported third-party extensions that break things. Generally the advice is, GNOME is great, but not for everyone, take the time to learn the GNOME way of doing things and if you don’t like it you're better off switching to another desktop environment than trying to change GNOME.
I hate Gnome because it doesn't give you taskbar boxes to show all the open windows. There is a extension for this but it's almost always out of date. How the fuck is anyone expected to get any work done like that? Pressing the "windows" key to show that tile view is a thing but I want to see what all is open without pressing a button first. It's fine for watching youtube or playing games. And the ui looks really cool if you're high off your ass, but that's it.
As a Gentoo user, I can say that qtbase is probably the one piece of software that caused me the most failed emerges due to some conflict of python packages.
obligatory LXDE is actually also really good but you know what would make it 10000000000000000000000000000 times better? If there was a Windows 7-esque search bar on the start menu so you could search instead of painstakingly browse through all the stupid icons like its Windows 95.
I always post a comment like this in discussions about desktop environments in the off chance someone found a way to mod a search into LXDE's start menu.
xfce rules
I went from GNOME on Ubuntu, to KDE on Manjaro, to XFCE on Manjaro, and finally i3 on Arch.
GNOME was sluggish and not customisable.
KDE had graphical glitches everywhere that made navigating interfaces annoying sometimes
On XFCE, I actually didn't find that many issues. I just stopped using Manjaro and switched to i3 when doing so.
afaik KDE still doesn't have any tolerable way to tile windows on wayland
if i need to open a menu to set up zones you are doing it wrong. if i have to pick from premade layouts you are doing it wrong. pop shell on gnome would be perfect if it wasn't married to gnome and slowly rotting over time: i can pick up a window, drag it to where i want to put it in the binary tiling tree, and it goes there.
unpopular opinion probably, but I like the configurable zones approach. it's probably because I'm used to fancyzones on my work pc and have gotten used to it.
every time I try to become a cool kid and use i3 or some other tiling wm variant, I get frustrated and go right back to plasma
Eh, Gnome is fine. I like KDE, but I'd rather use my PC for the stuff I want to use it for rather than obsessively change some stuff so it looks better only to change it the next time I boot it again.
I think both have their use cases. Gnome is absolutely fantastic, if you use it on a laptop with a touch screen (for university, school, etc), but on desktop I dont really like it that much. I like the simple design, but KDEs customisability is much better. However, their virtual desktops are kinda ass, but I dont really use them on my desktop PC anyways.
Hint: :q!
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