this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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I was a teen at the time, so I turned on every possible Compiz effect to the maximum and felt very smug when several years later windows introduced slightly transparent window decorations that tanked system performance.
Yeah... the glass effect was kinda cool, I really liked it. But it's got nothing on the stuff Compiz could do. I wasn't into Linux in that thing's heyday but I really wish you could still get some of those effects. I've seen videos and there was cool shit in there.
My favourite fun graphical effect I've seen on a modern Linux DE, though, has gotta be the KDE scaling cursor thing. What can I say, I still find cursor effects stupidly funny after all these years. (I remember a browser game I used to play as a child, that had a loading screen gimmick with a little monster that'd chase and eat your cursor, complete with the most delightful chomp noise. I kinda want one of those as a little desktop panel.) Yes, I do realize that I'm a very childish adult at times, especially while using a computer.
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Gnome extensions has the cube of desktops, the wobbly windows, and even the burn on close available
But then, I'd have to use GNOME. Which I guess isn't necessarily a bad DE, but I don't think I want it.
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I've tried most DEs at this point but I keep coming back to GNOME. I think the only major one I haven't tried is Cinnamon, because its core "selling" point is looking like the bad OS and that is entirely unappealing to me, and because it didn't exist yet in my peak distrohopping era.
That's really funny, because Cinnamon is the only one I have used... and I'm starting to get pretty sick of it. I'm not entirely opposed to a DE that looks similar to Windows, especially older versions of it that actually worked (relatively speaking, of course), but I don't think that's really what I actually want/care about.
Well, you know what they say about distrohopping. Usually, you don't really want a new distro, you just want a new DE.
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Try GNOME
I see so many posts of people who "got GNOMEd" by accident, and now one of the crazy (affectionate) Linux nerds on Hexbear dot net is telling me to do it on purpose... lol.
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Get GNOME'd, nerd
Okay, that one's good and I totally walked right into it.
You really like GNOME, huh?
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About a month ago, I distrohopped because the distro I was using (PopOS) stopped using a customized GNOME and started using their own (buggy, unfinished) COSMIC DE. Now I'm using Fedora GNOME.
I like that it's fast and smooth and stable and looks nice with no effort, and is very customizable through extensions. And I like that it makes absolutely no effort to resemble The Bad OS in any way.
See, you make it sound very good, but then lots of other people talking about it say it's a nightmare to use and you need to find and install extensions for the smallest tweaks, so I'm hesitant to try it. Although "no effort to resemble The Bad OS" is a good selling point.
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They think it's a nightmare to use because they want it to resemble The Bad OS.
Finding and installing extensions consists of going to https://extensions.gnome.org/ searching for what you want, then clicking once to install and once to confirm. No account required, just as easy as using your package manager.
The extensions I have installed right now are:
AppIndicator and KstatusNotifierItem Support which lets programs put a little indicator that they're running in the background in the top right statusbar
Dash to Dock which makes the launcher dock thing show up when I mouse over the bottom of the screen instead of just showing up when I hit the Super key (what we Linux nerds call the key with the windows flag)
-GSConnect which is the GNOME version of KDE Connect, it lets me get phone notifications on my desktop and text from my desktop, and use my phone as a wireless mouse and keyboard, and transfer files between the two
Compiz windows effect which gives me the classic Compiz wobbly windows effect
Desktop cube which gives me the classic Compiz desktop cube effect
The last two of which I found and installed because of this here conversation.
See, that sounds simple and kinda neat, but it feels like there's gotta be a reason people hate it beyond just "it doesn't look like Winblows". If that's really the only reason people hate it, then there are a lot of idiots out there spouting nonsense takes about DEs.
(Also, UI elements that only appear when moused over or the right keybind is pressed remind me of Windows 8 and I hate the concept with a burning passion.)
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Just fuckin' try it
I saw something about DEs in general that said it's kinda complex to install a new one that your distro didn't already have by default, and I'm not sure I want to do anything complicated just to try something that might be cool...
You said it's so easy on Mint that people do it accidentally. You also said that you were getting sick of Cinnamon.
You also are still here
a week later, so I kinda feel like you want to be convinced.
It's true that the best, most reliable and trouble free way to switch DE is to distrohop.
By the way, Dash to Dock's autohide behavior is of course user configurable, I just personally prefer to have it out of the way most of the time.