Who needs stable, feature-rich desktops anyway

- Truly excellent GNOME slander. Who made this?
  
  ShoutingIsFun seems to be the artist
  
  I have no idea. I saved it ages ago and just post it whenever GNOME is mentioned.
- somone needs to replace gnome with windows 11 in that meme lmao.
  Edit: it has been done:

It's hard to believe that KDE used to be considered one of the worst DEs around and now it's like Gnome is getting worse while KDE is getting better and better.
- What is happening to GNOME is truly one of the biggest fumbles in OSS. They could have just continued improving things, but instead choose the path of most resistance, refused to commit to any logical strategies for further improvement, and are now stuck in a loop of nothing getting done
  
  Seems to be an organizational thing, at least some who try to work with- or are part of the Gnome Foundation mentioned this. Apparently KDE e.V. got a way more flexible structure with work groups, easier ways to propose changes etc. while Gnome gets awfully stuck with their panel/council structure (not sure which one is the right word in english).
  When mentioning the problems with extensions (rather furiously since I just lost some work again and installed KDE) I was told both: Go on an create a PR, but also that "this was discussed and a panel decided against changing anything". Obviously no one will waste dozens, if not hundreds of hours of their time even just creating a Proof-of-Concept for sth. like an extension API if some authority already decided that nothing is supposed to be done about it.
  As long as your Gnome environment can't gracefully crash without taking absolutely everything with it (like with KDE or other DEs) there's no way in hell anyone should use Gnome on computers where actual work is being done, let alone something critical.
  
  I always try KDE and after a while all the quirks and odd behaviors make me go back to GNOME. GNOME may not be easily themeable but it is predictable
  
  At least we have MATE: fork of Gnome 2.
- I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of hate for KDE back in the day was because Qt started out with a non-Free Software license, not because it was bad in terms of quality.
  
  I personally hated KDE because it was a buggy, unstable mess for a long time.
  
  KDE Plasma 4 was also really buggy when it first launched
  
  Yep. the Qt wars were real. And one needed to be careful about reveling your KDE use because you would get flamed with hatred.
- Umm, KDE/Plasma shell is a fucking absolute disaster of a UX. It makes Windows look good. Gnome has major flaws in its software that make performance go to shit, but overall the architecture and design guidelines are superior and at least have a semblance of direction. Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
  
  Gnome is made by designers, kde is made by devs.
  
  I don't know... Friday I installed Linux on my dad's "new" Thinkpad T495.
  I tried to go with Gnome. It's supposed to be the user friendly one, right?
  First thing I want to do is change the charging limit of the battery to 80%. It's not impossible to replace the battery, but it would be nice to not blow it too fast.
  After 20m of trying and failing I switched to KDE, where the whole thing was 3 clicks.
  And even if I didn't know how to do it, the systemsettings window has a search function that will get you the right option in a split second.
  
  Just open the preferences/settings on KDE and you see nothing but pure chaos.
  It looks fine to me. Everything is categorized nicely and you know where to find something you look for. I am not sure about GNOME Settings, because I have never used GNOME more than 30 minutes (because of annoyingly shitty UX), but it's at least much better than what Windows does.
  
  Just came across this issue today. I need to install a font. The dir is not accessible through gnome Files. Actually, nothing but mmom ounted drives and my Home dir is. So if I to work in dirs outside my Home, I HAVE to use the terminal. Just to copy a font to a dir outside my Home.
  
  theregister reader detected. Maybe even one of the editors!
  
  Always fun that posts that shit on gnome get upvoted to the moon and ones that shit on KDE get downvoted to hell.

I’ve found GNOME a pleasure to use. From my experience many folks that use Linux like to tinker with their computers. Even those new to Linux see a world of possibilities. GNOME doesn’t really embrace this tinkerer philosophy. They have an opinion on what at desktop manager should be and they’re constantly working towards that vision.
When I introduce GNOME to new people I explain to them some the project goals, design elements and how it’s intended to be used. Then I tell them that GNOME is opinionated on how things should behave and look, and if you try to force GNOME to be something it’s not you’ll probably end up using poorly documented or unsupported third-party extensions that break things. Generally the advice is, GNOME is great, but not for everyone, take the time to learn the GNOME way of doing things and if you don’t like it you're better off switching to another desktop environment than trying to change GNOME.
- I ran gnome for about a decade. I really didn't like how a lot of bits and pieces of it worked so I went and found all of the plugins and religiously installed and updated them. Updates what happened, crab would break, I'd just have to deal.
  At some point I tried KDE. And it literally did everything that I was doing to gnome through plugins out of the box.
  I'm all about configurability but I'm also a pretty big fan of not having to fuck with it because it already does what I want out of the box.
- I have no problem with using Gnome. It stays out of my way and Things Just Work for the most part as 99% of what I do is in a browser or a terminal anyway.
- I hate Gnome because it doesn't give you taskbar boxes to show all the open windows. There is a extension for this but it's almost always out of date. How the fuck is anyone expected to get any work done like that? Pressing the "windows" key to show that tile view is a thing but I want to see what all is open without pressing a button first. It's fine for watching youtube or playing games. And the ui looks really cool if you're high off your ass, but that's it.
- Gnome extensions are nice since they can do lots of useful things. They can cause issues but if you need extensions to use gnome you probably should move to something like Cinnamon.
  If you can get used to the workflow it is very nice.
- If it's not for everyone it should not be the default for many distributions, and other DEs should be recommended for beginners then.
  I think the design philosophy of "you have to adapt to the software" is harmful. Software should adapt to you and disappear out of your way for common tasks. Something Gnome leadership fails to understand.
  
  I’ve been teaching Linux to a lot of high-school age kids this year. I picked Fedora Workstation for us to experiment with. It of course, uses GNOME. Like I mentioned in the above post I talked to them for 5-10 minutes about GNOME design and how it’s supposed to be used. One thing that surprised me is how much the younger generation found GNOME intuitive as soon as they learned to use the Super key. Many have spent more time on iOS than they have Windows. So some of the common pain points for us older folks, like not having a task bar, preferring each “App” to be full a screen and switching between them felt very natural for the kids. Very iOS like.
  You can of course have your different opinion on if this is good or bad or if GNOME shouldn’t be the default on most distro.
  Perhaps GNOME is a good default for distro because it’s similar to the interfaces young people are growing up with.
- You know that sounds an awful lot like how windows GUI behaves. I only recently started daily driving and the amount of gui elements you can change is mind blowing.
  
  Windows 11 copied some KDE and Gnome features but they did a half ass job so the desktop is just broken.
- I like gome but it needs extensions for basic runctionality and you need to use terminal for basic functionality. I have it visually basically unmodified, no dock to dash or desktop but damn i need to go extra mile to add right click new file and functional window tiling.
  
  I think you would be better off on a different desktop. The desktop works in a very specific way.

I agree with the general sentiment, though KDE’s apps do have some real performance issues.
Dolphin sometimes takes 2-5 seconds to open on my gaming PC, whereas Nautilus (Gnome Files) is usually done before I’ve even let go of the click.
Maybe that’s just preloading, but it makes a bloody enormous difference in everyday usage.
I prefer Plasma overall, though.
- Dolphin sometimes takes 2-5 seconds to open on my gaming PC, whereas Nautilus (Gnome Files) is usually done before I’ve even let go of the click.
  You might need to look into this more.
  It opens instantly on my gaming desktop, Microsoft Surface 7 Pro, and ASUS ROG Strix
  
  I just checked, it boots in .5 seconds on my Steam Deck. So yeah, there’s a problem somewhere 😅
- It is easy to go fast if you have no features.
- Hmm, Dolphin takes about 0.5 seconds on my laptop. Might be that worth debugging on your system, even if it is some bug that your specific system triggers.
- Do you have a lot of files it might try to preview? I remember encountering similar loading times in my photos folder because it ties to load previews for every file.
- Dolphin is the worst file manager, mostly because of how it doesn't give you a file copy window but also because it's just a shittier version of Nemo. Nemo is superior except that most of the time you can't drag and drop files from a zip folder window into Nemo but only if you're using KDE. Cinnamon is pretty much the only other DE I can stand and Nemo lets you drag and from from zip files all the time on Cinnamon but it's otherwise worse than KDE.
  
  I would love to give Nemo a try on my Surface running GNOME, but it unusable for touchscreen users
  https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/issues/3056

It’s wild what an impact organizational politics can have on a codebase
- Not wild to me. Code is written by people, people who engage in organizational politics. No "base" created by people, digital or otherwise, will be free of such influences.
- If you don't know:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

UX wise, GNOME is oversimplified and Plasma is overcomplicated.
- Gnome: We lock down everything since youre too wtupid to handle womputers Also gnome: "oh you want right click-create file? We can't think of a more streamlined solution than navigating to the folder you already have open in nautilus using terminal, making an empty file with a terminal text editor and googling the command to save and exit empty file. Intuitive is our MO"
  I love gnome workflow and simplicity but it is too locked down in nonsensical ways and it is too broken too often.
  
  Gnome has always been like this. They started on this trend at the very beginning.
  I dropped it when they released 1.0 or 1.1 as they had released another of idiotic changes that were half because "we know better" and because "fuck you, user peons". Never looked back as it's been managed the same way ever since.
  
  I was searching for this a few days ago and was stunned that you aren't able to just create an empty file in the gnome file manager.
  In the terminal you can use touch file.txt to create an empty file, but it should be possible to do this in the file manager.
  
  You can just put a blank file in the Templates directory then it shows up in the right click menu. At least it does that on PopOS
  
  Why asking for up arrow in Nautilus when you can always press alt+f8
  
  What’s the point in being able to create an empty file from the file manager? You pretty much never want to actually have an empty file.
  Open whatever program that can edit the document type you want (you would have it open later anyway to edit the document), make a new document, put something in it and save it. You have to do that anyway with any document type where an empty file isn’t valid data.
- Can you give an instance of plasma being overcomplicated?
  
  Launch System preferences, go to Internet and WiFi. Then you'll get a UI divided into three panels. The first one lists WiFi and networks, Firewall, Proxy and Other preferences; the second panel will list your connections, including Ethernet, WiFi 2.4 GHz, WiFi 5 GHz, WiFi 6GHz, Bluetooth, VPN and Loopback, your current connection will be auto selected; from the current selected connection you'll see in the third panel SSID, Mode, BSSID, Restrict devices, Cloned MAC, MTU and Visibility, and this is only one in 5 tabs of options.
  I'm sure I skipped some other components in the same windows, but you see my point?

xfce rules
- I went from GNOME on Ubuntu, to KDE on Manjaro, to XFCE on Manjaro, and finally i3 on Arch.
  GNOME was sluggish and not customisable.
  KDE had graphical glitches everywhere that made navigating interfaces annoying sometimes
  On XFCE, I actually didn't find that many issues. I just stopped using Manjaro and switched to i3 when doing so.
  
  i also tried i3 at some point, it was pretty cool, but i prefer more "standard"/"no tweaking" approach, so xfce wins on that one. i did install KDE ob my second (framework) laptop, but i kinda hate it lol. Never tried "Gnome"

I just realized that this desktop environment debate has slowed down a lot these last few years. I reckon it's about time we heat it back up. I'll get the popcorn!
- Sounds like something a goddamn GNOME user would say 😠
- Honestly as a newvomer to linux using both, they're both fine. Both have their annoyances and stupidity but both are better than windows.
- We'll have to see if System 76's Cosmic DE can stir up some tribalism again!
  
  I know the hyprland Dev had some stuff to say that caused a mild shit storm. Nothing lasting though.

as someone who's done gtk and qt development, what the fuck are you talking about?
- That these DEs are a bloat in modern Linux computers?
  GTK is fine by me. Qt on the other hand, is BIG. And now with Qt6 out, and some older apps aren't migrated to it yet, I have both Qt5 AND Qt6 installed on my computer. It's a shitshow.
- Oh that’s awesome! Did you use gObject I think it’s called? I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of object oriented C programming, but I’m not a developer and I never really got into it.
  
  gObject
  yah, tbh i kinda hated it at first but that was before I had to work on a cpp project.

Use whatever floats your boat
I use Gnome because it works for me
- I use Cinnamon but Gnome would be my second choice. I want to like Plasma, but every time I've used it there's some glaring bug. Last I checked (few months back) font scaling caused fonts to look like absolute garbage. I found the bug online, tried all the "fixes", no bueno.
  I'm not going without scaling on a 14" 1080p screen.
  Cinnamon and Gnome on the other hand: accessibility > large text. Easy. (Higher scaling factors can be found in font settings if needed).
  
  I think it only works if you're either an absolute KDE config file genius hacker or your distro's repository has actually good default configs and setup. Installing KDE on arch always works well for me but every time I've tried it on Ubuntu I just get an unusable mess. One time I had it such that I had to retype my password all the fucking time to "unlock the keychain" and then the stupid update window would ALWAYS show up during the worst possible time with impeccable timing.
  
  Same. I really wanted to like Plasma, it's really nice looking. But it just never works right for me. Most recently, my PC would crash every time I woke it from sleep. And my cursor wouldn't stay locked to one screen in-game. No issues at all with Cinnamon. Everything just worked out of the box. And there are plenty of themes and icons to dress it up a bit. I used Gnome 2 back in high school, so if I didn't use Cinnamon I think I'd probably go with MATE since it's a familiar feel.

I mostly neutral on KDE vs Gnome thing, but after I got into theming my computer more I started to hate how Gnome handle its theming capability (confusing, messy, if I fix one thing something else break) while on KDE it has menus dedicated to colors scheme and general looks and feel
- Yeah DE is very much a personal flavor preference, which is kind of the point of OSS. I prefer KDE too but that’s because I was a windows kid forever and never liked the feel of Mac-style approach.
  
  I use Gnome with Dash to Panel snd WinTile extensions. I sometimes wonder if I just made it like KDE.

Both KDE and GNOME are good when you compare it to anything Windows have today.
I personally prefer KDE because of much customization support. I have it working with many keyboard shortcuts. I would miss the settings panel in hyperland.
GNOME is simple and elegant. Showing only what is needed. I can really understand people liking it. I like but just miss some small details like the keyboard shortcuts thing and focusing etc. How GNOME works is different mindset which O just have not learned. But GNOME looks good and have everything covered.
Xfc and lxd just need some more love from the developers. There are very few of them so I completely understand. Money issue.

No love for GNOME these days smh
- I mean can you really blame people? The developers have kind of gone out of their way to try and piss off literally everyone. And any attempt at criticism is called bullying and shut down
- GNOME has been going downhill since version 3. I used to be a diehard GNOME fan, but nowadays KDE is simply better in so many ways.
  
  Agree. I used to love GNOME, but after GNOME 3.0 everything went to the shitter.
  I simply migrated to KDE and I just like it.

KDE is objectively the better DE from a technical standpoint (in my objective opinion) but sometimes GNOME just feels right in the moment. I have both installed and switch between them all the time
- I liked gnome for its minimalistic UI. I then realized i3 does that better :D
- You don't know what 'objective' means.
  
  You don't know what a joke is. Lmfao

Eh, Gnome is fine. I like KDE, but I'd rather use my PC for the stuff I want to use it for rather than obsessively change some stuff so it looks better only to change it the next time I boot it again.
- I also rsther use my pc for the stuff I want to use it for, with Plasma you dont need to theme and rice it for the sake of it, you can just use it as is, which is what i do, and i find Plasma to be more usable out of the box than Gnome I hate when people think you must theme Plasma and customize it, you can use it as is
  
  You can, but for me there's just too much to fiddle, and I can't help tinkering with stuff.

Nah both Gnome and KDE are incredible and I say that as someone whos been using Linux since early 00s

KDE has almost perfect fractional scaling, that was the real chadfeature for me.

"i have painted myself as the chad and you as the virgin"

I have one PC on gnome and another on kde. I like them both for what they are. I lean towards gnome though. Looks nice, feels nice. I don't find myself needing more functionality than what is there. I tried mimicing gnome in kde, for fun. Didn't quite get there. I appreciate simplicity where possible.
- My issue with gnome isn't the software itself, it's the project refusing to coordinate with crosse desktop protocols and refusing to implement anything that doesn't 100% line up with their vision even if it makes the rest of the ecosystem worse.
  
  It’s called a blackbox and it’s considered a good API design.
- Same as you but I lean towards KDE since it doesn't break as often when programming things across sftp and also VR and HOTAS systems work better on it for some reason.
  Also cause right click -> open terminal in location and right click -> new file must be part of any desktop environment as a default.

Whenever I try KDE there are a many minor bugs that are super annoying. Last time it just switched main and secondary monitor so my main one was a weird mix of both. I really wanna like KDE but since I switched to Wayland it always feels like something weird is going on.
- iirc that was fixed in 5.27 or so, kde's been really smooth since for me
  
  5.27 is great, perfectly stable on wayland with amd
- Even in plasma 6?
- Do you have an nvidia GPU?
  
  No.
- You really need to be on Plasma 6 if you use Wayland.
- Exactly my experience too.

Maybe I’m biased because gnome is stock fedora but it runs so smoothly and I love how the windows button and search feature works out of the box. I know that can be setup in KDE though. I love how it feels unique unlike KDE and most other DE that just feel like bad windows. I love that it doesn’t have dumbass names like KDE adding k to everything. Also feel it just works.
Every time I’ve added KDE there’s also a bunch of stupid minor things that just down make sense. Why do so many applications lose the ability to use the right click menu like in jdownloader? Why do windowed games get pushed so vertical low? Why does search recommend things I clearly didn’t ask for? Moving windows with the arrow keys is icky and not smooth. Blowing them up with windows W like gnome’s windows key just looks bad. I want to love it but it just feels like a FOSS windows.
- Same here. I really tried using KDE as Fedora and Nobara were pushing for it with HDR, fractional scaling and variable refresh rates available. But there are so many useless options that seem to over-complicate everything.
  I always go back to Gnome especially now that the missing technologies were added with 47 and 48. I just need my 2 extensions (DashtoDock, Just Perfection) setup via Nix and Home-manager.
  also: Libadwaita > QT in terms of looks and usability.
  
  Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to check those out. Have you ever tried Hyperland?

I think both have their use cases. Gnome is absolutely fantastic, if you use it on a laptop with a touch screen (for university, school, etc), but on desktop I dont really like it that much. I like the simple design, but KDEs customisability is much better. However, their virtual desktops are kinda ass, but I dont really use them on my desktop PC anyways.
- I think KDE reworked virtual desktops with Plasma 6. I haven't use KDE in years but I saw a comment about it a while back.

As a Gentoo user, I can say that qtbase is probably the one piece of software that caused me the most failed emerges due to some conflict of python packages.
- Let me guess... apps which are written with Qt Python bindings?

I am really glad both exist. Gnome is awesome because of its simplicity and ease of use and KDE is really cool because it makes me feel like a superior human being

I have never understood how there was any competition.
KDE has always been a better DE than anything on any platform, while gnome has been one of the worst and it just keeps going downhill.
- KDE gathered a lot of initial hate because the Qt widget library it relied on used to not be proper Free Software. (That was fixed about two decades ago, though.)
- Unfortunately, GTK is much prettier than QT.
  
  This can sometimes come at the cost of intuitiveness however. As an example that just happened to me the other day, I was using Pinta which uses libadwaita and had opened an image to make some modifications to it.
  All was going well until I wanted to save a new copy of it (and not override the original). The toolbar has all of these functions on it, open, save, undo/redo, etc... but not Save As.
  Apparently there's a tiny little overflow button on the far right side, click it and you get a whole bunch of functions - one of them being the holy "Save As" option I was looking for. I almost went down the route of making a copy of the image outside Pinta and then just overwriting the original.
  Apparently the idea of making a copy of an image is blasphemy. Even Microsoft Word when they had first moved to the Ribbon UI made the save button have a little dropdown right under the save option to reveal Save As.
  Don't get me wrong, I love how some libadwaita apps look. Mission Center for example? Chef's Kiss - but it's a very simple application that all I need to do is open it to have a quick look at the very pretty looking graphs. Although the latest update seems to have gotten rid of being able to have the sidebar open persistently (now taking an extra click to change between performance graphs)... But I still need to double check to see if that's intended vs being a bug before I judge that too harshly.
  
  Ummm but gtk is pretty bad in ux for me. It has some weird way of contents in title bar. And you can't click close button by clicking at top right corner of screen for fullscreen apps because its floating or rounded
  
  I disagree completely, GTK looks like they took windows 3.11 and covered all the widgets in dried shit.
  
  It doesn't matter if it's prettier, when I need to spend twice the time to do some basic stuff because I need to move my mouse cursor half way through the fucking screen, at least in GNOME apps.
  How is that toleratable is beyond me.

Where is TempleOS when you need it, huh?

obligatory LXDE is actually also really good but you know what would make it 10000000000000000000000000000 times better? If there was a Windows 7-esque search bar on the start menu so you could search instead of painstakingly browse through all the stupid icons like its Windows 95.
I always post a comment like this in discussions about desktop environments in the off chance someone found a way to mod a search into LXDE's start menu.

You forgot to add that unlike GNOME, KDE does not depend on SystemD
- That's good?
  
  Yes
  
  Yes

I've tried KDE on both Debian and Fedora. Neither have allowed me to do what I want to do: add a secondary storage device to my steam library. Whenever I try to, it just pops up a separate Dolphin window that doesn't affect steam once a folder is selected (almost like it's a separate process and not a child process of Steam).
The flatpak works, but 1. Ew; 2. It runs steam on Xwayland; 3. Being a debian nerd, I want to be as much of a
<default package manager>
purist as possible to make life easier down the road
I'll switch once this is fixed, but I just gotta stick with Gnome until it is
- add a secondary storage device to my steam library.
  You mean have more than one steam library? That's a steam setting. Nothing to do with KDE. Gnome, Debian or Fedora.
  The flatpak works,
  Oh. There's your issue. Don't run steam as a flatpak, there might be sandboxing issues.
  EDIT: MF did you read the page you downloaded stuff from:
  Note: To add a game library on another drive, first you need to grant the app access to it:
  flatpak override --user --filesystem=/path/to/your/Steam/Library com.valvesoftware.Steam
  
  Buddy... Flatpak works, I know that. I do not want to use flatpak. It's that Steam from the distro's official repository, whether it's on Debian or Fedora, doesn't allow me to set up a library specifically on a different storage device than the OS' and specifically only on KDE.
- I have like five libraries, I went ahead and just tried to add another one to see if it was a regression and unfortunately I can't reproduce. Then again I've always been a KDE Arch user I don't know if that has anything to do with it maybe I just missed this bug
  
  I have the issue with debian also witj KDE, but I havent tried with Gnome, i did some searching and it seems to be a common issue among debian based distros

I wish KDE worked well on Touch screens. It seems to really fail at that. Don't tell me it's X11. X11 on Gnome doesn't think my touches are a mouse. KDE thinks it is though.
- KDE is putting the effort into Wayland. If you want the modern features you need Wayland.
- Steam deck is quite good with touch I find.
  
  It's okay. But it would be better if it didn't recognize touch as a mouse input. When I booted into Ubuntu once it worked flawlessly on the Desktop touch input working distinctly from mouse input. on KDE touches are mouse input which is annoying and uncomfortable.
- A bunch of their touchscreen implementation work is Wayland-only, because it would've been a lot of work to retrofit it on X11. It's well possible that the GNOME devs invested more time into X11.
- It works fine for me, and I use Wayland.

I install Fedora Workstation and change nothing. I'm pretty happy with GNOME in that case. KDE has been too fiddley for me the last few times I tried it. It's there a distro that has a default KDE setup that feels minimal and out of the way?
- arch probably
  
  Not Arch, it's 100% bog standard on Arch.
  Which is great and what most people want, but the parent poster wants something pre-configured to be minimalist.
- I have both versions of the workstation and KDE one is less broken, more functional and less annoying to use daily. I patiently await when the projects that require my current software packages end so I can wipe my home and go manjaro or something.
  
  ive had and heard of many bad experiences with manjaro, though they do a couple of cool things. i really wish you all the best on your manjaro endeavours, but would recommend (not from experience but rather what i have gathered) to use endeavourOS over manjaro. also that would fit your name nicely
- Garuda KDE-lite is what I've been using my and it's great

afaik KDE still doesn't have any tolerable way to tile windows on wayland
if i need to open a menu to set up zones you are doing it wrong. if i have to pick from premade layouts you are doing it wrong. pop shell on gnome would be perfect if it wasn't married to gnome and slowly rotting over time: i can pick up a window, drag it to where i want to put it in the binary tiling tree, and it goes there.
- unpopular opinion probably, but I like the configurable zones approach. it's probably because I'm used to fancyzones on my work pc and have gotten used to it.
  every time I try to become a cool kid and use i3 or some other tiling wm variant, I get frustrated and go right back to plasma
  
  I'm not a big fan of i3 either, pop shell and gnome are the best combination i've tried because i get the niceties of i3-style tiling but with good mouse-based defaults and I don't have to waste time configuring things that everyone needs on a daily basis
  
  My main issue with the zones is for some inexplicable reason one cannot save their template. You're stuck with the default ones, and -- at least in my case on Fedora -- the custom one you set up tends to reset on reboot (not always, which is also ?? unless somehow it gets affected by OS updates?).
- Rip bismuth. It worked almost perfectly in plasma5 and with rewrites in plasma6 it broke and the dev didn't want to rewrite it.
  
  i've tried bismuth and krohnkite, they're still the "grab bag of canned layouts" type of tiling extension, pop shell lets me build a binary tree with arbitrary splits and tabs like I could do in sway or hyprland and as far as I know the clunky built-in snap zone menu is the closest thing that's available for plasma
  
  It works perfectly again and is available in the kwin-scripts store under its old name krohnkite. IIRC it hadn't a btree layout before. Now it does. It's the best tiling solution for KDE. I tried most of them.
- I had to install software that allowed installing extentions and then try out all the extentions until I got a tiling window manager that was not crap on gnome. And then I had to make my own presets.

Meanwhile openbox: black screen

Plasma’s growing on my and I think it definitely works better on a laptop but I just wish it looked like a modern operating system. It feels like something from the 00s at best.
- It looks very similar to Windows 10. You think Windows 10 looks like something from 00's?
  
  The reverse actually, Windows 10+ looks like Plasma. They were "inspired" by it (copied it).
  OP, if you don't like the looks, Plasma has extensive theming support.
  
  How does it look like Windows 10? It looks like Windows 2000.

Gnome devs have a clear vision of what Gnome is supposed to be:
simplistic, designed for touchpad and keyboard, not mousy-clicky, and staying out of your way.
People install it, miss stuff they are used to from traditional desktops like Windows or Plasma, and bolt that back on using extensions from third parties.
They install those extensions from a different source than Gnome itself (Gnome from their distro repos, extensions from the website).
And then they complain when those third party add-ons from a different source aren't perfectly integrated or in sync after an update.
And blame the Gnome devs.
- Gnome devs have a clear vision of what Gnome is supposed to be: simplistic, designed for touchpad and keyboard, not mousy-clicky, and staying out of your way.
  Nobody questioned this.
  People install it, miss stuff they are used to from traditional desktops like Windows or Plasma, and bolt that back on using extensions from third parties.
  Like the Extension feature intends it.
  They install those extensions from a different source than Gnome itself (Gnome from their distro repos, extensions from the website).
  Even those you can install from some distro repos can cause your whole Gnome DE to crash. However this isn't even the main problem; the point is that it's able to crash your DE at all. If they did it correctly only the bad extension would crash. If that doesn't work for some reason, the whole extension layer/API may crashes without taking the DE with it. If something phenomenally bad happens your DE should crash but, as the absolute minimum, your open applications should still keep working so you can save things and restart things gracefully. What you just did is blame the extension devs again.
  And then they complain when those third party add-ons from a different source aren’t perfectly integrated or in sync after an update.
  It's about your computer (well, everything graphically) crashing, not some small problems. Get your facts straight.
- i cant think of any valid reason gnome doesnt have official system tray icons
  
  Gnome's official stance on that matter:
  https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2017/08/31/status-icons-and-gnome/
  tl/dr:
  They're an old spec from 2002
  They're too small to click for people with increased accessibility needs
  They serve the needs of app publishers (making their app visible at all times), not those of the user
  -> There are too many of them
  -> They look bad
- I don't blame GNOME devs, I blame the straight up lies from GNOME enthusiasts that GNOME is customizable, because it is not.
- Conclusion: the clear vision that Gnome devs have is obviously wrong.
  
  It's a non-profit, open source project.
  If you don't like it, just ignore it.
  It's not a commercial project where market share is important.
  
  I think their vision is solid. I just think there are gaps in following their vision. Wheres the "create new empty file"? Where's the "open folder in terminal"? Why do I need to install bunch of bloatware to change more than 2 options?

lol if

Gnome was the main obstacle in Wayland adoption, by not implementing "server-side decorations".
- The main obstacle in Wayland adoption was Wayland not being usable for years.
- Tue problem was not gnome at all. The problem was that Wayland was missing a ton of basic functionality until recently.

I like a BeOS style vertical taskbar with window names. Neither of them do it well.
- I guess there's always Haiku?

~~Gnome is better than KDE~~ wow what a typo. KDE is better than Gnome. With that being said, the dolphin file manager sucks ASS. The Nemo file manager is superior, except depending on which way the wind was blowing while you installed your distro, you have a 50/50 chance of being able to drag and drop the contents of zip folders into Nemo when running KDE. Dolphin always works when you do this on KDE but that's Dolphin's only positive aspect. The ui and button placement is worse, there's no file copy progress bar window and the file transfer notification it does have is awful.
Cinnamon works with Nemo and zip file drag-dropping works all the time, but then you're using a 10% shittier DE just to be able to drag and drop. Cinnamon doesn't fully support wayland yet and its beta wayland support is terrible and slow so it's a pretty bad one to be using right now.
I wish there was a fix. I would suck dick for fix to the "you can't drag and drop the contents of zip files into Nemo on KDE except for if you got randomly lucky when installing the distro in the beginning" bug.

Honestly I can't imagine why anyone would use either of these when there are lightweight DEs like XFCE and Cinnamon that are not only easier on the system resources, but also more stable, customizeable, user-friendly and more pleasant to look at. I stopped taking gnome seriously ever since they came up with GTK3. They had a chance to fix it with GTK4 but instead they somehow made it even worse (as if client-side decorations wasn't bad enough, now theyre doing clientside shadows? Seriously!?!?). KDE is allegedly better because it gives the user more options, but anyone who's actually used it will tell you that it suffers from the same kind of bloat and braindead design decisions as gnome.
- From the top of my head I can think of a few reasons:
  Better feature support (HDR, better fractional scaling etc)
  Better integration (specifically Gnome)
  More complete graphical settings
  Quicker adoption rate
  Wayland support (X11 is pretty much dead at this point)
  Aside from RAM (of which most machines do have plenty by now) there isn't really too much overhead these days. In fact battery usage on Gnome and KDE with Wayland is usually better than with X11.
- Gonna talk from KDE positions here. GNOME, too, has its place, but I recognize it's not for everybody.
  More pleasant to look at
  Certainly not for the average person. For a normie user, KDE looks way way nicer, and it's certainly way more modern than either XFCE or Cinnamon. Sure, the latter can be made into something modernishly enough, but the customization options are way more limited here. Either way, out of the box, KDE is much more preferable to most.
  User-friendly
  Can hardly find anything that is more user-friendly than KDE. Everything you can possibly think of is available graphically, the interface is extremely sleek and ergonomic, and you can change anything at all to your liking. Which leads us to...
  Customizable
  Why would anyone say XFCE or Cinnamon are more cutomizable is beyond my comprehension. XFCE can be somewhat reasonably customized, but the anount of technical knowledge required to do anything more than resizing bars is beyond the scope of normal users. Cinnamon is outright rigid, and its customization options are extremely poor by any means. KDE is easily customizable and can be turned into anything through a what-you-see-is-what-you-get graphical editor that requires 0 technical knowledge. Still, if you really want to go the old school way because you're used to it, want something not offered, or can't imagine yourself descending into the GUI designed for plebs, you can do it too. KDE is king when it comes to this aspect.
  Stable
  As far as XFCE goes, this does hold quite some weight. It has a mature codebase, allowing it to have plenty of things figured out. For mission-critical systems, it might be preferable. Same can't be said for Cinnamon, but either way, every popular DE is stable enough for home use without much worry - including KDE.
  In any case, having used all four, I stopped exactly at KDE and GNOME - the former being perfect for casual multitasking and entertainment, the latter being nice for focused work.
  
  KDE annoys me because the menus are extremely busy with tons of options that are totally useless to me. I want a simple experience with minimal distractions. KDE is not that.
- To each their own though? I can't imagine why anyone would want something other than i3 (or similar), because almost by definition the DE is not the program I fired up my computer to interact with, and i3 "gets out of the way better" than most others in my experience.
  But...that's just my use case. It's a horrible UX for most people, just happens to work well for me.
  
  Honestly I just use a TTY since graphics are bloat
- None of those support Wayland as of writing this so that's a no for me. Also Cinnamon uses about the same resources as gnome as it is gnome based.
- KDE is allegedly better because it gives the user more options, but anyone who's actually used it will tell you that it suffers from the same kind of bloat and braindead design decisions as gnome.
  I've used KDE on and off for the past 20 years or so. These days I use KDE on my work laptop and Cinnamon on my personal one. Personally I think they both do their job just fine, but apparently I'm in the wrong.
  
  You are not wrong.
  However, at this moment in history, there is another consideration.
  Today, Cinnamon means X11 and KDE means Wayland. Xorg is becoming a second class citizen in KDE. Cinnamon is not there yet on Wayland.
  In two years, you can be back to using either one as you prefer (on Wayland).
- KDE is allegedly better because it gives the user more options, but anyone who's actually used it will tell you that it suffers from the same kind of bloat and braindead design decisions as gnome.
  I have used it & can't tell you this. What am I doing wrong?
- My preferred DE is XFCE. However, over the past few months, I have moved most of my work to a new distro and made the jump to Wayland. Both of these have landed me on KDE.
  KDE has by far the most complete, and therefore painless, Wayland support.
  KDE has been great to use honestly. I mostly do not think about it which is what I want in a DE these days. The configurations I need are there when I need them and not in the way when I don’t. KDE uses more memory than XFCE but not nearly as much as Firefox or Chrome.
  I dislike modern GNOME but KDE has been great and, at this point, I feel like it is the best option on Wayland.
- I wanna go back to XFCE when support for Wayland is okay.

I dont understand why so many people are saying KDE is so much better than GNOME.
\ GNOME is by far my favorite DE
\ When leaving windows, i didnt want my computer to be almost the same, with a couple extra settings and different icons. GNOME does something different, and something i like
- GNOME 2 was different and easy to customize
  GNOME is still in their KDE 4.x days where it needs time to mature.
  KDE 3 was loved, KDE 4 made a ton of breaking changes, and was reviled. KDE 5/6 are now butter smooth and fixed all the issues from the 3 -> 4 transition
  GNOME 4/5 will probably come back into the loved category if they start stabilizing the extension system some more
  
  There is no GNOME 5. They are up to GNOME 48 now.
- From a UI/UX point of view Gnome is excellent (very subjective of course, it's a matter of taste - obviously this sparks endless discussions). There are very good arguments to be made about the organisations behind it and the tech that powers those DEs.
- I like GNOME but I think there’s essential functionality missing from it. Fortunately the extensions fill the gap.
- WindowMaker had that going for me. Sadly it was abandoned long ago.
  
  https://github.com/phkaeser/wlmaker