linuxmemes

I don't love GNOME, but if you use it....whatever. Linux is all about choice and lack of lock-in.

If you want to compile CDE from the 1990s and use it as your DE.....you do you honey boo boo.

I'll give KDE a try again when they provide a way to track all of my settings via dotfiles. I tinker with shit a lot and I need the ability to track it all with a VCS. I've always kept KDE as a backup but its accrued so much config junk over a decade that its actually a pretty janky experience, and I'm not comfortable just nuking all my dotfules.

I used KDE for a long time trying to do things that just worked in Gnome. I finally switched and don't seem to be hunting for anything KDE did

I like Plasma.

I know, real brave take

These two statements do not contradict themselves.

I tried to use linux on a tablet, I've tried GNOME multiple times since it is apparently the best for touchscreen-only devices. This was hell.

As much as I'd love to be able to like that thing I just can't.

Zero customisability, everything has to be changed through extensions, but the extension manager isn't even part of GNOME's core and has to be installed separately.

The settings page is severely lacking so I had to configure everything in .conf files or through CLI directly.

And the whole thing is as stable as a one-legged chair on top of a unbalanced washing machine.

KDE extension crashing : "oupsie a part of your desktop crashed and restarted as fast as possible, hope you didn't notice"

GNOME extension crashing : "go fuck yourself, I burned your whole session to the ground, log back in and pray you weren't doing anything worth saving"

In the end I customized KDE to look and behave like GNOME, this way around was surprisingly easier than just making GNOME bearable.

Oh and to the taskbar haters out there : my first computer was running windows 95 so you'll be taking my taskbar from my cold dead hands, only KDE let me fulfill my dream of putting taskbars absolutely everywhere (even got two perpendicular ones on my bottom monitor)

I like MATE. It's Gnome with the bugs ironed out. It's very nice.

In principal, Gnome is the archetype that we all seek in a desktop.

They're all fine. You get used to one or another and that's what you want. They all have issues and they all have boons. More often or not, it came down to either what your distro defaulted to, or whatever had that one feature you needed when you first installed (factional scaling) and you just stuck there

Just use any Linux distro you like!

Stock Ubuntu with GNOME

All the JavaScript in gnome make it super icky to me as an ex-webdev, and unusable on hardware that is otherwise perfectly fine with other DEs. From high resource usage, memory leaks, and breaking extensions, I have a hard time believing that their userbase is anyone other than mobile native younger folk who are good at consuming via the iPad launcher paradigm. Just my humble opinion, nothing more.

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.

It deserves all the criticism.
And it is by far my favorite DE.

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.