• Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        27·
        2 months ago

        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

    • Emi@ani.social
      10·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Tiempo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        20·
        2 months ago

        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

          • h3ll3rsh4nks@ani.social
            2·
            2 months ago

            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.

      • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • relativestranger@feddit.nlEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • EponymousBosh
        3·
        2 months ago

        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.

      • daggermoon@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        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.

          • daggermoon@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 months ago

            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.

  • rozodru@piefed.socialEnglish
    71·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      35·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        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.”

      • pool_spray_098@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        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!!

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        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.

    • eleijeep@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I checked your Mastodon timeline but I don’t see the post, only the one where you relate the story.

  • ampy@discuss.onlineEnglish
    53·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      16·
      2 months ago

      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.

        • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          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.

    • kernelle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      2 months ago

      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

  • ibot@feddit.org
    34·
    2 months ago

    I think Gnome is the most beautyful Desktop out there. But it’s UX drives me crazy. I tried it a few times but never could get used to it. I always needed extensions to customize it to my needs. But that’s also what I want to avoid because extensions might break in the future. Therefore, Gnome is simply not the right Desktop for me.

    But I’m happy for everyone who likes to use Gnome. The great thing about Linux: We have a choice!

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I remember seeing a very MacOS like demonstration of Gnome. Someone had themed a Gnome desktop with a kind of sunset in the forest kind of feel, and they were opening menus and launching Nautilus and such like that, and it looked absolutely amazing.

      I don’t know how anyone lives with it. I’ve got Fedora Gnome on a tablet that I use basically to have FreeCAD and power tool manual PDFs in my wood shop, and at some point I’m going to try something else. “Opinionated” is the gentle way to put it.

    • bigfondue@lemmy.world
      57·
      2 months ago

      That is sort of the thing with Gnome. If you like it it’s great, but if you don’t there is nothing you can do to really change it. Like I think it’s okay, but there are things I don’t like and it is just too much effort to try to adapt it to my preferences.

    • overload@sopuli.xyz
      14·
      2 months ago

      Good for you. I broke my GNOME Pop OS build, I assume because of extensions and pop not updating anything for 2 years. GNOME goes against the Linux philosophy of user customisation.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
      7·
      2 months ago

      I used it for a while, because KDE was so buggy. Gnome gives you no functionality and it’s still buggy, though.

      Once KDE improved I switched to it, though

      • eneff@discuss.tchncs.de
        7·
        2 months ago

        I’ve been running native Wayland exclusively for ages. I disabled XWayland by running gnome-shell with the --no-x11 flag.

        What makes you think I wasn’t?

        • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
          4·
          2 months ago

          There are bugs in Gnome 49 using xwayland like caps lock and other keys not working. But if you don’t use x11 at all (and therefore applications relying on it) you won’t encounter them.

  • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
    17·
    2 months ago

    GNOME is great but people recommending it to beginners need to make it clear that there is only minor customization, and that major customization / extensions will cause headaches.

    Plasma is highly customizable out of the box. It’s personal preference in the end of course.

    • somerandomperson@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      2 months ago

      Then, after that, you can introduce them to Hyprland which is EVEN MORE customizable, at the cost of learning the hyprlang and jsonc if you also want waybar.

          • banause@feddit.org
            1·
            2 months ago

            Yeah, probably true. It was a lighthearted joke, I do not know too much about sway or hyperland.

      • serendepity@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        And then they encounter the horrible mess that is the Hyprland discord and run back to KDE or GNOME. There’s hope with Cosmic yet.

  • Decq@lemmy.world
    16·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca
    12·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • BurgerBaron@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • humanamerican@lemmy.zip
      2·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 months ago

        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

        • humanamerican@lemmy.zip
          1·
          2 months ago

          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).

          • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca
            1·
            2 months ago

            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.

              • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca
                2·
                2 months ago

                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

    • arsCynic@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • DiabolicalBird@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 months ago

        I’ll try it out in a VM when I have a bit, looks like something I could recommend to Windows 10 refugees

    • Zanshi@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 months ago

      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.

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
    10·
    2 months ago

    Dunno, I saw GNOME 3 run like molasses on my PC, went “ok, this might be lost cause”, went with LXDE and then XFCE, and now I’m like “if it’s a beefy proper PC I’ll go with KDEPlasma and if it’s, like, very obsolete system I’ll, dunno, go with XFCE”.

    GNOME is just opinionated. I get it, it was kinda vaguely modeled after Mac OS, which is kinda an opinionated desktop environment, but the thing is, it’s even more opinionated than Mac OS ever was. The thing about (early!) Mac OS X was “hey, we have this slick desktop environment but also some power user features you might want to use. But we’re not forcing you to!” (Kinda like GNOME 2!) …GNOME has been kinda sweeping those under the rug, in my opinion.

  • eleijeep@piefed.socialEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    It really is a shame that they force you to update to the new version. If only there was some way to continue using the existing Gnome version until the extensions have been updated by their authors.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 months ago

      If you want to update your software broadly, it’s a pain in the ass if you need to try to hold gnome and only gnome back.

      And many of those extensions get abandoned after the authors get tired of the treadmill of having to redo stuff they already did.

      • eleijeep@piefed.socialEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        Yes the volunteer software authors should work to the beat of the drum of the baying and braying users who insist on using cutting edge software before its wider ecosystem has adapted to its novelties. A very good point.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          5·
          2 months ago

          No, either gnome should actually support a lot of these things people are such with extensions for it or at least provide some semblance of compatibility if they are so insistent that extensions are the only way to get some of these customizations.

          It’s just odd to simultaneously praise extensions as the way for users to get what they want while undermining them every release.

        • MadhuGururajan@programming.devEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Wrong on all counts. the voluntary software authors actually go out of their way to spite users, extension developers and sysadmins by constantly trying to redefine what is a standard UX.

      • Arcka@midwest.socialEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Shouldn’t that only apply if the other software depends on the new functionality in the updated gnome?

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          So if I want various things in fedora 42, but I have to refrain because my favorite extension hasn’t been ported from fedora 41. I didn’t use gnome largely because I got tired of keeping up with the extension mess.

          Not all of us are trying to micromanage every little piece of software independentlly.

          • Arcka@midwest.socialEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Pinning the version of one package doesn’t constitute “micromanage every little piece of software independentlly”.

            No need to get hyperbolic.

            If you’re not willing to take even a small action to customize your system, then you should just take what you get and don’t throw a fit.

            • jj4211@lemmy.world
              2·
              2 months ago

              Or I just pick a solution that lets me customize as I like and supports it in a way I can feel confident about taking updates without worry. So Plasma desktop it is

              Gnome is not gods gift to desktop users that I feel I must accommodate, it’s a competent implementation that is just too set in their ways .

              • Arcka@midwest.socialEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                👍 I agree with that and personally use Plasma currently, though have mained gnome in the past.

    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
      3·
      2 months ago

      Most package managers allow pinning software versions, you could look into that for your distro. Might come in handy in other use cases too.

  • eta@feddit.orgEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    I use Gnome with extensions and are quite happy. But it’s true. the worst part is when they break after a new version comes out.

    Fun Fact: You can just add the new version number to some file (can’t remember which) for each extension and many of them work just fine. It’s from a list of version numbers where they decide whether an extension can be run on a given Gnome Version. And new versions are not automatically added to that list.

      • eta@feddit.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I just had a look and I think I edited “metadata.json” for every extension in “$HOME/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/”. I got it from this tutorial.

        Yeah I once waited but I think it took multiple months for each maintainer to update. I don’t blame them tho. They update their projects when they can. I just wish it would not necessarily break since it apparently doesn’t really need to be broken.

        • dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          2·
          2 months ago

          It depends. Sometimes there are major changes, which would need changes. But most of the time, yes, it’s not necessary.

  • USSMojave@startrek.websiteEnglish
    6·
    2 months ago

    Running 14 extensions on Gnome, literally never have had an issue, even through major version upgrades with Fedora. KDE and Qt are gutter garbage trash, fight me

    Edit: wait I actually got downvoted lol your boos mean nothing