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.
<rant> The funniest thing about it is the reason why they won’t create an extension API: developer freedom. Because some extensions would stop working with an API, according to them. (Which is a damn weak reason, nothing prevents them from keeping the unstable patch path open and let users decide if they want to install potentially dangerous extensions or just those marked as “safe”, i.e. API-only).
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. </rant>
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…
That’s why if you use a lot of extensions you don’t run rolling release and don’t update to your distros new version instantly
Edit: Because if you move fast, things are gonna break
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.
“See that panel, you can customize it” ~ KDE
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
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???
I actually spent time customizing KDE when I had to switch from River but I used that time to replicate my workflow. Did that once, so I think that’s okay.
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.
That’s on you for using a Chromium based browser in the first place.
They could have literally absorbed a couple of the most used plugins into the desktop and i’d be on Gnome today.
nope, you need to go find those plugins and we’re going to make breaking changes constantly.
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!
Cool. You can just add it on the systemsettings.
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
Wobbly windows turned down to a barely perceptible level is a really nice experience that doesn’t feel like a gimmick
this but KDE widgets
this but hyprland :3
I wish Xpenguins still worked. Who doesn’t want penguins walking all over the desktop?
fuuuucckkk I wish we had more websites designed like this again, this was so much better than the gigantic amount of padding, animations and other random ass elements just for a website that’s bland as fuck that we have today.
This penguin maze is hilarious.
fwiw I use wayneko which works on Wayland and draws an animated cat that follows your cursor along the bottom of the screen. Not as chaotic as Xpenguins but it’s cute!
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.
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
linux mint applet
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.
I know lots of people love KDE. I haven’t tried it yet. I just googled the difference when I was researching distros and chose GNOME because it looked more Mac-like, which is my preference.
You can have a dock/top taskbar and spotlight-type search easily in KDE. The benefit of KDE is that you don’t need third party, unmaintained extensions that break with every second update. Gnome Extensions are critical for even a mac-like experience on Gnome, and you will hate them one day when your programs start randomly crashing.
If Mac’s your bread, gnome is your butter.
Of course, these days, if Windows 11 is your bread, maybe gnome is your butter.
I’m one of those crumudgeons that’s forever frozen at Windows 95.
I can play radio from my desktop?
This is the one I saw. It’s Internet radio though.
Yes, many radio stations have online livestreams, so you can play radio from any device that can connect to the Internet and has an audio output. You can even play radio from your browser, there is a Firefox extension called Worldwide Radio.
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!.
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
Displaying the title of the currently playing media sounds useful!
hyfetch and needy streamer overload theme my beloved
