And one year later half of it breaks because of a Gnome update. Maybe you should have followed up the specific repo that warned that you needed to move to this new extension, or maybe it just went silent without explanation. Something like that.
And because Gnome still lets every extension monkey-patch code right into the shell your whole desktop may crashes in the middle of your work. Especially if the extension devs aren't monitoring changes in Gnome 24/7.
Happened to me 3 times before I moved to KDE. Which I very much dislike in comparison, but it's just way more stable. Couldn't go without extensions in Gnome either because of the very smooth-brained decision to replace the tray icons with their own backend, so any app not supporting their way of doing it either disappears into the void or has their tray icon submenu inaccessible.
Ugh. I love the UI/UX of Gnome, but in terms of stability and compatibility they screwed up phenomenally.
I feel like it would be easier for everyone that Gnome team made a more stable way for extensions to interact and change the system, but that goes against their philosophy and unified vision. Gnome seems to despice the extensions that so many of their users think are required for sensible use of Gnome desktop.
Despite being told they actively decided against such an API I of course was still hit with the "just build it yourself and make a PR" line. Yeah, sure, who doesn't want to waste dozens to hundred of hours for an already rejected concept?
That's the same people who brought us libadwaita, which is in fact so well known for developer freedom that Linux Mint saw it as a necessity to fork it into libadapta to reintroduce more freedom.
God I'm so annoyed by this. Gnome's organisational structure screws the whole desktop. At least that's something they're partially aware of…
Every GNOME install tutorial:
please install this 3rd party application to install even more 3rd party extensions, otherwise your default experience will be shit.
Meanwhile KDE:
here you go, everything you need is here. Want more? Want less? Just touch me and find out, I can make your dreams come true, baby.
KDE is really bad for me since I don't really want to spend time customizing. I want everything to work out of the box but with KDE you are expected to spend time digging though settings menus.
I use KDE with pretty much default settings. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I don't believe my wife has even ever tried to find þe KDE settings menu; she just uses it vanilla. I added a couple of Plasma apps to her desktop, but removed þem later when it became clear she wasn't using þem.
Plasma 6 JustWorks™
Plop down a theme and call it a day.
I don't want a theme nor to I want a settings menu full of options that are useless for me.
I get that some people want to customize everything. Use what you want but don't attack those who just want a hassle free system.
Woah how no attacks! I'm curious what you use for a "Set and forget" system. After 20 years I find customizing tedious and would like something that already looks nice and feels nice
"See that panel, you can customize it" ~ KDE
This is my experience but with GNOME. Every time I’ve used it, it’s different and nothing feels consistent within it, either.
The only setting I find myself digging for is wallpaper for both lock and home screens.
Why can't both be under Appearance????
This was a mild pain. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, then I realized that the browser extension and tool worked flawlessly in Firefox, but not Brave.
Im like the opposite of that lol :3 always looking for stuff I can remove from my desktop
I'm sure I'll get there, but it's all new to me right now, so the temptation to add a bunch of nonsense is real...
Absolutely do not checkout "conky" and under no circumstances search for "conky themes" in image search. A program for the utterly deranged
For me it was "what else don't I need on here?" from the start tbh :3 though I very much did not like the workflow of windows, so being able to nuke all the features that were similar that I found useless was like a sigh of relief since it was like getting rid of annoying clutter in a hoarder's house lol
Now I basically only have my panel/bar thing on the left of the main display with the time, app tray (cause some apps need it to shut down and stuff lol), wifi, settings/power off, kde connect, and the blue light filter.. though tbh im considering getting rid of the settings icon from there too
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I do love removing features from things lol :3.. like my browser which I disabled the top bar and tabs on
well, isn't that a sign that you have installed too much in the first place? :D
Ikr? Desktop enviroment bloat :3
I am currently in the midst of messing around with hyprland for peak minimalism, but honestly I prefer having a full DE, messing around with config files is kinda frustrating when I want to just do 1 little thing.. and oftentimes it's also hard to get the configs exactly how I want (probably gonna go to COSMIC when it comes out :3.. I tried the alpha and it's the best tiling experience out there imo, plus it has decent customization in terms of removing all the little icons I don't need for the most part :3.. though I'd like to be able to remove the window close button too since we already can do minimize/maximize :3.. and preferably remove the whole window top bar)
Your windows disappearing in a flame seems awesome...
I did install that one, and it's pretty fun. You can even change the color of the fire and the speed of the animation.
Also, the flames make your desktop go faster
The flames make real heat in your CPU
Technically true.
You got that backwards. It's the PC going faster that causes the flames.
It's called "Burn my Windows", it has many many many effects other than the flame and it also works on KDE!
this but KDE widgets
this but hyprland :3
I use either a tiling window manager, or KDE; I consider any floating window manager that's missing wobbly windows to be missing core functionality
For anyone that hasn't played with this yet
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/
There are so many options! I have it on the original fire one (with the animation sped up), but I'm considering switching to the DOOM inspired one.
I wish Xpenguins still worked. Who doesn't want penguins walking all over the desktop?
Good thing I have 3 monitors to spread my widgets around.
I have four outputs on my video card. It would be downright wasteful not to use them all.
With USB-C dock you can easily have 8 more...
You could put a real clock near your monitor
I mean, if you want radio, just run Pianobar with Pandora, you can drop it in a terminal and it works without even being part of the GUI!.
I want my bar to look windows-esque
plugin
I want my tray to format the time differently
plugin
I want to change how the active windows looks in the bar
plugin
OS update
two of your plugins broke
I want my tray to format the time differently
new plugin
I want to change how the active windows looks in the bar
new plugin
OS update
let's try KDE
OMG it's perfect out of the box.
hyfetch and needy streamer overload theme my beloved
linux mint applet
Top bar for real feels like it bloated, could do with a cleanup, but then it be like "well, this one should stay, and this one seems needed. This one's useful and needs an icon here."
Do I need the title to the currently playing media in there? Well… maybe not. BUT… I do need the accessibility icon. I have big text coz otherwise it small, and though it's not like I disable it ever… uhh… it… well, it's on, so… maybe it,,, should be there, okay? I don't know
Hint: :q!
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