Long time Gnome user here: I like the general Gnome simplicity of use and workflow and got used to it, but I’m really tired of having to install extensions for very basic things, and of it messing all my extensions on each version upgrade, so I have to reinstall everything. I started experimenting with KDE, and looking forward to cosmic.
Yeah, KDE’s basically at the point you don’t need GNOME imo, it’s so customizable you can make it basically look/function the same as GNOME without having to put up with GNOME’s dumber decisions
Do you know how vim has distributions like lunarvim, lazvim, nvchad, etc.? Simply installing something like lazyvim can quickly and easily convert vim from a text editor to a full blown IDE.
I think Gnome needs something like this. A curated set of plugins that are easy to install and maintain compatibility with different versions of Gnome - something that would deal with the API churn in Gnome while maintaining a stable, usable desktop environment.
I don’t know if this is feasible, because I haven’t used Gnome since 2.x, but I think it would really help make it an actual full blown DE.
The problem is the Gnome team doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass about maintaining a stable api. I’ve never bothered with extensions because even the most basic stuff only works for one or two versions. The neovim team is pretty committed to backwards compatibility and following standards for interoperability like LSP these days, so it’s much easier for third parties to maintain a large set of extended functionality at this point. If they acted like the gnome team, your status bar plugin would break every other update.
I use several, but the ones that I consider to be basic functions are caffeine, tray icons, places status indicator, removable drive menu and extended volume indicator. That last one is a nice example of my frustration, because it can’t be installed on the current gnome version anymore, and having to open settings to switch my audio output is terrible. Every distro upgrade have been the same experience, and I lose some functionality
You forgot multi-monitor support. The extension broke for me a couple of years back and the author became AWOL. My workaround is to open the clock app on my secondary monitor when gaming in order to track time now that I can’t see the clock in the taskbar.
I’ve been daily driving the pre-alpha since January, it’s definitely got a bit of jank, but it’s in really good shape. The alpha should be pretty usable, and I think by the beta it should be pretty much good to go.
I’ve heard that the brand new Nvidia 555 drivers actually work with Wayland. I was ready to switch my gaming laptop to Linux but I may wait a few weeks for the driver to release out of beta. (Arch users shut up, lol.)
Maybe I’ll have to give it a shot! I’m on a 3070 Ti, and I’ve had issues in the past but I’ll have to figure it out eventually, since I’m trying to make the switch away from Windows :D
A month ago as of tomorrow I got fed up with Windows and googled “gaming Linux”, picked Garuda because it was near the top result and I like the FFXIV Garuda, was wiping my Windows drive within fifteen minutes of deciding I was done, and have been gaming with my 3080 since. Haven’t touched X11 because Garuda defaults to Wayland and I don’t even know the difference between them, and so far everything has just worked
When I first started on Linux with Fedora probably a little over 15 years ago, I used gnome just because it was different. At some point I played with Enlightenment, and now I use KDE. It was different when I was more interested in screwing around with my system. Now that I use it for work, I just need everything to be as reliable, persistent, and easy as possible. I haven’t used gnome in many years, but I hear these stories all the time and I just don’t want to deal with something that’ll wrench my workflow when I have other shit to do and no time to play diagnostics.
Long time Gnome user here: I like the general Gnome simplicity of use and workflow and got used to it, but I’m really tired of having to install extensions for very basic things, and of it messing all my extensions on each version upgrade, so I have to reinstall everything. I started experimenting with KDE, and looking forward to cosmic.
Yeah, KDE’s basically at the point you don’t need GNOME imo, it’s so customizable you can make it basically look/function the same as GNOME without having to put up with GNOME’s dumber decisions
Do you know how vim has distributions like lunarvim, lazvim, nvchad, etc.? Simply installing something like lazyvim can quickly and easily convert vim from a text editor to a full blown IDE.
I think Gnome needs something like this. A curated set of plugins that are easy to install and maintain compatibility with different versions of Gnome - something that would deal with the API churn in Gnome while maintaining a stable, usable desktop environment.
I don’t know if this is feasible, because I haven’t used Gnome since 2.x, but I think it would really help make it an actual full blown DE.
The problem is the Gnome team doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass about maintaining a stable api. I’ve never bothered with extensions because even the most basic stuff only works for one or two versions. The neovim team is pretty committed to backwards compatibility and following standards for interoperability like LSP these days, so it’s much easier for third parties to maintain a large set of extended functionality at this point. If they acted like the gnome team, your status bar plugin would break every other update.
Can I ask what extensions you are using in gnome?
I use several, but the ones that I consider to be basic functions are caffeine, tray icons, places status indicator, removable drive menu and extended volume indicator. That last one is a nice example of my frustration, because it can’t be installed on the current gnome version anymore, and having to open settings to switch my audio output is terrible. Every distro upgrade have been the same experience, and I lose some functionality
You forgot multi-monitor support. The extension broke for me a couple of years back and the author became AWOL. My workaround is to open the clock app on my secondary monitor when gaming in order to track time now that I can’t see the clock in the taskbar.
That’s interesting because of that list I’d only consider tray icons, the rest I would turn off
I only tried GNOME long enough to see how crap it is, and have been a happy KDE user for years.
I went the other way. I liked the simplicity, and thought what about MORE simplicity? I went to i3 and haven’t really looked back yet.
I tend to flip flop, I like some things in GNOME better, but the lack of customization always brings me back to KDE after a while (Plasma, whatever)
For me it’s KDE on desktop, GNOME on laptop.
This is the way. Although Plasma 6 is getting reaaaal close to going on my laptop too.
Why is that though? Is plasma battery sucker or so compared to gnome?
I just like how it works with trackpads more, and tend to do more things basically fullscreen anyway.
I could do the overview, grid mode, workspaces switching with touchpad in kde. How does that compare to gnome?
It’s close to alpha! I don’t think it’ll be in a good enough state for me (Nvidia GPU), but maybe someday.
I’ve been daily driving the pre-alpha since January, it’s definitely got a bit of jank, but it’s in really good shape. The alpha should be pretty usable, and I think by the beta it should be pretty much good to go.
Just as soon as Nvidia stops hating Wayland… 👉 👈 any day now…
I’ve heard that the brand new Nvidia 555 drivers actually work with Wayland. I was ready to switch my gaming laptop to Linux but I may wait a few weeks for the driver to release out of beta. (Arch users shut up, lol.)
their last gpu were working good, from nvddia unern opinions that i read
Maybe I’ll have to give it a shot! I’m on a 3070 Ti, and I’ve had issues in the past but I’ll have to figure it out eventually, since I’m trying to make the switch away from Windows :D
A month ago as of tomorrow I got fed up with Windows and googled “gaming Linux”, picked Garuda because it was near the top result and I like the FFXIV Garuda, was wiping my Windows drive within fifteen minutes of deciding I was done, and have been gaming with my 3080 since. Haven’t touched X11 because Garuda defaults to Wayland and I don’t even know the difference between them, and so far everything has just worked
When I first started on Linux with Fedora probably a little over 15 years ago, I used gnome just because it was different. At some point I played with Enlightenment, and now I use KDE. It was different when I was more interested in screwing around with my system. Now that I use it for work, I just need everything to be as reliable, persistent, and easy as possible. I haven’t used gnome in many years, but I hear these stories all the time and I just don’t want to deal with something that’ll wrench my workflow when I have other shit to do and no time to play diagnostics.
Yeah, Cosmic looks really nice. Their app store interface needs a bit of modernization work, but otherwise, it looks well polished.