(If you know where I stole this from, I love you.)
Just use any Linux distro you like!
Stock Ubuntu with GNOME

I like gnome DE, I dislike the arrogance of the project team.
My straw was the login-to-exposé thing.
This made me laugh more than it should have. It perfectly captures how we all try to be neutral… until that one preference slips out. Classic moment.
I love GNOME but I found the default usage pattern aligned very well for laptops. And I don’t mind they only implement finalized Wayland protocols. But Wayland moves so slow!
I use KDE on in my normal desktop because I want VRR and HDR for gaming. I like KDE but its default theme still looks rough around the edges but has random bugs and kwin crashes when gaming and sometimes on resume.
Both have things I like and things I don’t like and I wish I could take the best from both.
I like Cosmic DE a lot because of this. It feels light, efficient, and smooth like KDE. But it feels coherent, consistent, and laptop friendly like Gnome.
… But Cosmic still feels a bit too incomplete for me to daily.
I prefer GNOME for the UX but I do appreciate KDE’s customization and settings. KDE seems more unstable though, I’ve had plenty of crashes from it vs GNOME
I do not know if this is a hardware thing but KDE has not been unstable for years.
I prefer the default gnome experience to the default kde experience.
I also prefer the styling of most gnome apps, and actively dislike kde apps styling.
Gnome is less customizable, but customizable enough for what I want.
I’m also biased, because I was using Ubuntu since it came out, up until a few years ago 🤷♂️
I’m a gnomer.
I tried gnome once at the start of my Linux adventures and I couldn’t figure out how to do most stuff as it seems really counter intuitive to me. I tried extensions to fix it and they just didn’t work or broke and trying to install the extensions was a problem for me too. Idk it’s just seems broken to me in a lot of ways
Then I tried another distro with basic life and it was easy and I didnt need to install anything extra because it was already all there.
Also why the fuck does gnome and Ubuntu have a app drawer take up the whole fucking screen. I’m on a computer not a tablet or phone. I just need a start menu like kde has. Its simple small and easily accessible when other apps are open
Gnome and KDE both suck but in opposite ways. Want to change a behavior in Gnome? Well you better hope there’s an extension for that? Want to change a behavior in KDE? Sure. Good luck finding the fucking setting for it though. XFCE and Cinnamon are where it’s at. We also give a pass to MATE.
I like Gnome’s apps, and I think I would install Gnome on any non-techie user’s computer.
But for myself ? I want all the options ! So I use KDE. Probably going to switch to a tiling WM, I’d like my whole desktop experience use
tmuxshortcuts, basically.Gnome is very competently made except it’s made for a different genre of person to me, and their attitude towards customisation is outright disdainful. You install an extension or mess around in tweaks and gnome looks at you like you just used the salad fork for seafood.
I think it’s made for people who like Macs or sth.
Wouldn’t be a problem(people can use whatever makes them happy) if the gnome Devs shit attitude didn’t trickle outwards and harm customizability in other environments.
Serious question. Why is there an expectation that your DE should be customizable? Isn’t the fact that you can choose one in the first place a customization?
Why is there an expectation that your DE should be customizable?
Why wouldn’t there be? It’s Linux. Everything should be customizable.
Because the point of Linux is I get to make it my own
If I wanted to use what the Devs tell me is the right setup and “just works”, I’d not own a computer at all. I’d just get an iPad, which has that appliance like “no options, just does what it’s made to do, works great under those constraints” thing going for it.
I hopped from a fully customized AwesomeWM install on Arch to Gnome on Debian and… there is something to be said about having your OS look & work cleanly out of the box.
Laughing in Sway
Right now I use kde customized to look almost exactly like gnome.
The beautiful thing, though, is if you want to, you can do that.
Now try to make Gnome look almost exactly like KDE. And then the real difference between them becomes obvious.
I want to downvote you out of fear, yet I want to upvote you for the audacity
This but for me it is KDE.
Yep, me too. But I really like KDE apps
What? No… that is wrong.
“How dare someone have a preference different than me”
Seriously though, I don’t get the gnome hate circle jerk. It isn’t for everyone but works well for some.
Oh this argument is just a meme and I’m here to enjoy that. But also KDE > Gnome, no question.
I personally think gnome is way better than plasma. However, I understand why people don’t like gnome.
Everyone has a right to be wrong.
Same. I’ve used Gnome, KDE and XFCE (and OS X and Windows) and Gnome is my clear favourite. Claiming that their decisions don’t make sense is clearly false if it works so well for so many.
It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows though. Gtk3 theming doesn’t match libadwaita and gnome still lacks status bar support.
Gnome apps also tend to be overly minimalistic in some cases.
It’s extremely important we voice our opinion on bad design so that their decisions don’t become mainstream or standard.
GNOME has been a dumpster fire since 3 and the developers only care about what will result in the least amount of work for them. They think they’re as good as Apple, where they can be the sole authority on how their DE is used, but then they make incredibly stupid decisions like dictating where users can put the dock. Their design team is nowhere near the level of Apple and they should stop pretending otherwise.
Don’t use gnome if you don’t like gnome. No one is forcing you to use it.
I like gnome and so do many other people.
Don’t use gnome if you don’t like gnome. No one is forcing you to use it.
But I also don’t want it to be the default DE on mainstream distros that could be frequently used by Linux newbies. I suspect a lot of the people out there who tried Linux and then hated it because it was weird and too hard to figure out … came to that conclusion because the first distro they had defaulted to Gnome and they thought all Linux was like Gnome.
That’s nice.
I will continue to voice my opposition to poorly designed products.
I started my Linux journey about 5 years ago on mint with the cinnamon DE. It’s not the fanciest but it got the job done, no real complaints.
Recently I made the change to debian without too much thought on the DE and I was presented with gnome. Took me about 5 minutes before I was looking up alternatives.
Now on KDE plasma, and out of the 3 I’ve tried it’s definitely my favourite.
Plasma has improved A LOT in the past year. Like a year ago I hated it. now? I daily drive it. I hate to use this phrase but everything just works.
I was kinda disappointed with the 6.6 release as I really just want dedicated virtual desktops per monitor but their compromise actually isn’t that bad. I just had to turn off animation for changing workspaces and it’s fine. Even tiling works A LOT better on Plasma than it used to and dare I saw kinda works better/is more smooth than Sway and the like and I’m not even using krohnkite. you can quickly toggle the splits for windows and even do vim style navigation between windows. you can even do vim navigation with windows that aren’t tiled.
Plus the stuff they have packaged in is just better than most alternatives out there. I love Konsole. it has everything I need. and Kate is also a fantastic IDE you can REALLY customize that is slept on by many people. Dolphin is great too. It’s nice having a DE that just has all the stuff you need right out of the box and you don’t really have to change any of the defaults.
Dolphin is surprisingly powerful. I was using a tool (SshPilot) to handle my remote connections and it had an option to browse a remote computer’s filesystem. I was curious what that would look like and it just used my local Dolphin windows and opened up my remote computer and easily browse the files there. I’m so used to using an external program like FileZilla for stuff like that.
Yeah I agree. GNOME 3 is hideous, completely unusable. I don’t know why they had to ruin the perfection of GNOME 2.
You have a right to that opinion but Gnome 4(0) was released a year and a half ago, and we’re on 49 now. Also, I think it’s beautiful and elegant.
GNOME was so great… Then GNOME 3 came out and it feels like it’s been designed by a person with severe brain damage.









