If you are looking for a “normal” desktop, there’s KDE, Cinnamon and Xfce.
Don’t try to turn Gnome into something it wasn’t designed to be.
Gnome is great for a keyboard-and-touchpad-driven workflow on notebooks. You can install one or two extensions to tweak it a bit, preferably through your distros package manager (which solves the issue of extensions breaking after a Gnome update).
But if you find yourself collecting a list of them, or want a more traditional UI, choose a different DE.
You can easily get away with more than one or two. I typically run between eight and ten and have rarely had any issues surrounding updates.
It’s really just as simple as waiting a week or two after a new Gnome version drops before you update. By then, the vast majority of the more popular extensions will have already fixed any compatibility issues or, if not, there’s a very good chance that an outdated extension can be replaced by a newer alternative.
Don’t try to turn Gnome into something it wasn’t designed to be.
Don’t tell me what to do. We all have our own preferences, that’s the beauty of Linux.
Personally, I have tried many different desktop environments with various customizations. I still think that GNOME + Extensions is the most beautiful and productive desktop experience for me.
Even despite the obvious flaws of GNOME, I still find it easier to customize and configure to my personal preferences than other desktop environments.
I think the point they were making was that Gnome is made for a touchpad / keyboard driven approach, so complaining that it’s not something else or that it requires multiple extensions is pointless.
If you use 15 extensions to get your perfect desktop and don’t say a word, no-ones going to care, just don’t complain when it breaks.
If only KDE was as seamless as GNOME on my Optimus laptop… I’ve tried gaming on Wayland (I need wayland for games) on KDE and performance was awful. On GNOME Wayland it’s as good as Windows
This comment reads like you’ve never actually tried Gnome with proper extensions (like arc menu and dash-to-panel), because those aren’t even comparable in quality. I mean that when comparing to KDE as well.
I want to love XFCE, but whisker-menu doesn’t support opening it on meta key release, which is baffling to me. Also the lack of night mode, which redshift is just throwing a random program into the mix. Which if you don’t mind that, then you wouldn’t have a problem with Gnome extensions in the first place.
It’s not, it’s a rock solid, slow moving desktop that emulates a familiar experience for every Windows user and dose so awesome, my dad couldn’t use KDE or Gnome and XFCE is great too but far closer to that ancient description and harder to use than Cinnamon for most normal people, it’s simply perfect for people like my Dad even compared to Windows!
I just don’t get the vendetta GNOME has against background processes. GNOME devs just don’t use email clients, cloud sync applications, chat clients…? GNOME treats my Nextcloud sync app (which I NEED to be running at all times) as if it was malware or something.
Context for not-Gnome users? How does a desktop care about anything not desktop?
If you minimize a window, it goes into a list of “Background Apps” in the charms menu where the only option you have is to close it. There’s no native systems tray.
there’s a tray, it’s just in the activities tab. press the super key (or click activities in the top left) to bring up the activities view, then the tray is at the bottom
Yeah, if you need to install extensions to make GNOME usable, GNOME is not for you. Seriously, there are other options. I can’t stand using GNOME, but they have a vision they are sticking to and I can respect that.
Cinnamon is probably the best DE to give that old GNOME feel. At least in my opinion.
Gnome also has their own GNOME Classic for people yearning for the old GNOME experience. Cinnamon is probably better though.
I have used XFCE, KDE, and GNOME and in my opinion, Gnome provides by far the best the best workflow for me. The UI is very keyboard-driven, which makes navigation very fast and intuitive. Also it doesn’t look like an outdated Windows version (like Plasma or XFCE) and I had way fewer bugs with it than with any other desktop.
I find it interesting how everyone always talks about the „Unix philosophy“ („software should do one thing and do it well“) but at the same time everyone likes Plasma for having hundreds of useless, buggy features.
Gnome has a core featureset and a robust extension-system if you need more. There is no bloatware in Gnome. And please don’t tell me something like „Gnome isn’t usable without a taskbar/dock“. It is, lots of people use it that way, not every desktop needs to be like macOS or Windows.
Of course it’s okay to like another desktop environment more, but I just don’t get why Gnome gets so much hate.
I’ve used GNOME for a year now.
I don’t understand people calling GNOME keyboard-driven, it doesn’t even support keyboard shortcuts for more than 4 workspaces, and it doesn’t support tiling other than left and right.
I also feel like the plugin system is not great. The plugins break on every.single.update and you have to beg the maintainers to update them.
I agree about a dock/taskbar miss me with that :P
What frustrates me about GNOME is that it’s otherwise so well-polished and smooth but just refuses to be easily customizable.
Gnome is definitely keyboard driven, this is my workflow: Use Super + type name to launch apps, then tile them left and right with Super + Left and Super + Right. Two apps are enough for a workspace, if you need more, move to a new workspace using Super + Alt + Right. Gnome automatically creates new workspaces as you go, so you always have enough space. Swap between apps using Super + Tab. Almost like a tiling window manager, right?
The plugin system is indeed very good, extensions can do pretty much everything. They break on an update because it makes sense: The author designed the extension for a specific version of Gnome, and it can’t be guaranteed that it still works as intended on a newer version. You surely don’t want an outdated extension to really mess up your desktop when it hasn’t been properly updated. This is the safe way.
And regarding customization? Funny story: when I started with Linux and I wasn’t really into the meta yet, I started with KDE, but I switched to Gnome (GNOME 3.xx and GTK3) because I found it EASIER to customize. Gnome themes always looked way better than they looked on KDE and they were never bugged (e.g. missing contrast, wrong iconography). Also “extensions” were way less bugged than KDEs equivalent features. I only later found out that people preferred KDE because of its customization. However, I do agree that with Libadwaite, they really put an end to Gnome theming, but all in all, I think it’s better because of app uniformity and an easier app development process (you can really see the Gnome app ecosystem flourish). Also, Adwaita looks pretty amazing nowadays, I don’t really feel the urge to theme my desktop.
Heh, this is literally my workflow. I’ve been using gnome3 since release, and gnome2 before that.
They need to make the Audio switcher and gTile extensions part of “core” gnome, and then it would be perfect.
What’s the keyboard shortcut for switching to workspace 5? There isn’t one. And you can’t configure one either. That just blows my mind
That’s what I fucking hate about it, great extensions, couldn’t fucking settle on an API that doesn’t break every update. When will the gnome devs ever be content with themselves
there is no API, which is the problem. It’s just straight code injection. That’s why extensions can be so powerful. A stable API would compromise their freedom for sure
That’s just the logical conclusion of continuing development. And even if the API stays the same, the shell might function differently, which could lead to extension bugs, therefore it is safer to break them all until the extension developer validates it for the new version.
You could of course force the internal stuff to be the same, but this would just stifle development and innovation.
In my opinion, if you can only use Gnome with extensions, you shouldn’t use it in the first place. Personally, I do have extensions, but they do so little that I don’t have a problem waiting a week or two until they update. Extensions don’t influence my workflow, they just are small quality of life adjustments (e.g. hiding the battery indicator when docked to my monitor and fully charged etc).
shortcuts for >4 workspaces work fine, they’re just not in the default settings app https://superuser.com/a/1732752
Gnome has a core featureset and a robust extension-system if you need more. There is no bloatware in Gnome.
Why is there noticeable delay tho when you open apps like Nautilus or Settings? Not even the terminal opens instantly
I don’t really know what you mean, I don’t have a delay when opening apps, at least not a noticable one. However, do keep in mind that Gnome isn’t really meant for slower hardware.
Running Manjaro Gnome on a thinkpad from 2020. This is the ootb experience for me
I kinda had the opposite experience, switching from gnome to plasma for the more experimental features it supports on Wayland.
So far, plasma needs like a literal minute after logging in before any app can open.
That came with other weird issues, like alt-tabbing with a Fullscreen game being very finicky, sometimes refusing to alt-tab, and sometimes the taskbar breaks and stays frozen for most of the time, only unfreezing for a few seconds every minute or so.
I would sum up my experience as GNOME being more polished, working more consistently, while Plasma is perhaps better designed, more full-featured, including cases where GNOME is waiting on something to be implemented/standardized.
Is there any desktop OS that open apps instantly? Because I have never seen any, my phone definitely beats any of them.
(Tiling) window managers like i3, dwm or sway open apps instantly. If not, then this is mostly because the app you want to open is bloated/ too complex.
Its mostly the devs and the bad decisions they make around GNOME, for me i use a lot of apps that require Server Side Window Decorations (SSD) to be useful, specifically apps like Foot terminal (default gnome console or gnome terminal is not featureful enough and neither have sixel support, whereas foot terminal does have sixel) and gnome doesnt have any SSD on wayland, and GNOME also lacks customization features and doesnt have a standardized theming API and the GNOME devs consider themes to be “unsupported”. Unlike on KDE Plasma where themes have a standardized API through the toolkit (qt) and are officiall supported. Also GNOME in general lacks basic features that require extensions whereas on other desktops you have things like a systray as a default.
I agree regarding SSD, I do a lot of graphics development and having to deal with decorations on your own is really annoying. However, most windowing libraries support them nowadays. (GLFW has an open MR to include Libdecor)
The lack of customization has been a decision they made in favor of Libadwaita. Libadwaita is a GTK4 library that makes developing apps for Gnome way faster. The Gnome ecosystem has really evolved in the last two years thanks to Libadwaita, there are so many nicely designed and practical apps. This is the trade-off I am willing to make. For me, a uniform and consistent desktop is way more important than theming, especially when apps look amazing by default.
I don’t get what basic features are missing. I have been using Gnome for years now, I never felt the need for an additional feature. A system tray is not a „basic feature“, as I said, not every desktop has to be a Windows clone. I have never felt the need for one, if I need an app, I just launch it. Why do I have to have a bunch of cluttered and ugly icons visible all the time? An app can run in the background without a system tray by the way.
Exactly! Just integrate the bloody notification tray /running apps extension.
It’s nice … sadly a bit to impractical for me for day to day use, or i am just to old now. +1
I get why that thing isn’t implemented because it’s really ugly and most of the icons there serve literally no purpose but they need a proper replacment because some apps simply need it!
If they didn’t serve a purpose, people wouldn’t constantly ask for them back.
