GNOME's Need To Broaden Its Audience For Greater Impact & Funding

[SilverFox]

Gnome-tweaks should be part of GNOME. That would be a good start. Dark mode shouldn't require internet access, a package manager, nor a random program with an extra plugin and a thing installed from said plugin.

See where your coming from now, And you are right. Don't know why most distro's don't include it by default. It would be nice to have it integrated into the settings app.

[SilverFox]

The best thing GNOME can do for free software: join KDE !

Knomede, Could be catchy.

[Cotyso]

The problem is that vanilla GNOME is a love it or leave it desktop environment. And before y'all go "but plugins, but plugins" how many of y'all go car shopping, find something close enough, and then get a new paint job (plugin), new interior fabric (plugin), and a new steering wheel (plugin) just because you don't care for them? Exactly.

Except plugins are free and work instantly, unlike car tweaks which cost money and a lot more time.

Also 3rd party plugins add a lot of flexibility. For instance i use an extension to control syncthing. Gnome developers couldn't add something like this, as it's a tweak for just one program.

[tildearrow]

scottishduck In your opinion

with 31 people backing that opinion.

Only 3 back yours.

[leigh123linux]

bash2bash That makes no sense. Very few people use the alternative Fedora spins.

23% isn't a few https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends/tr...Dist/Fedora#de

[tildearrow]

Here is my experience with GNOME:

1. Install
2. The desktop is not intuitive
3. Get told that the good thing about GNOME is the many extensions where you can customize the desktop
to have it work more like the conventional desktop you are familiar with
4. Install the extensions, seems like alot of trouble, but whatever
5. Updates to GNOME occur
6. Extensions break
7. Get told that the extensions are not supported by GNOME, silly you
8. Rinse and repeat

In my experience with GNOME it has always been their way, they have always pushed less functionality and flexibility in their desktop. I much prefer KDE Plasma. It's not perfect, but at least the design allows you flexibility and you don't need to screw with searching for a bunch of unsupported extensions to customize it.

It appears to me that many distributions choose GNOME because of it's lack of customization and flexibility. They really don't care about the desktop, it just there as a necessary evil to support the server functions. The less functionality and flexibility, the easier it is for them to support. That is why most people who are desktop users don't care much for GNOME. It wasn't really created for them..

Here is my experience with KDE:

1. Install
2. The desktop seems to work
3. Be productive and work for a while (hours)
4. Something crashes
5. Report a bug only to find out it has been already reported
6. Repeat from 2

In my experience with KDE it sometimes feels like a minefield, where things fail/crash randomly. It feels like a complete and customizable desktop (a great concept), but frustration arrives in the form of instability. Not saying GNOME is bug-free because it is not (GNOME has a fatal flaw that sometimes prevents you from logging in from the lock screen, even with the correct password (and if you keep trying, you are locked out for 10 minutes!) and the only solution is to kill GDM, every systemd session and every D-Bus instance).

GNOME is more stable and works fine but absolutely requires extensions in order to be usable.

And regarding performance, neither is better. KDE has a lighter compositor and overall is faster but:
- Has a long story of insane stuttering (that only got fixed in Plasma 5.21)
- Sometimes it is slow, primarily blamed on Qt
- On the first run, the search bar takes too long to start on an HDD (5-10 seconds) and it eats your keyboard input while it is loading (so you can't type ahead) because it is a separate application unlike GNOME in where it is inside the shell
- The Qt/KDE file dialog is the slowest thing ever for huge directories (1000+ files) and doing anything (typing the file name and pressing OK) is near impossible because for some reason it WAITS until the file list has loaded. On the other hand the GTK file dialog does not animate the loading of a huge directory, but at least I can type the file name and press OK even before the list has loaded.

GNOME is slower but:
- Daniel van Vugt has been doing massive amounts of performance work
- You can escape it gracefully in the event of a GPU crash/reset (it happened once, and after restarting gnome-shell and starting up Orca I managed to log out)
- The compositor is fine now when compared to 2017, and it even is able to run on a Pi without problems
- Customization outside extensions barely is a thing
- Poor UX choices. Do I need to mention any more?

[ix900]

lolz at the gnome kde opinion battle.

[gbcox]

Here is my experience with KDE:

In my experience with KDE it sometimes feels like a minefield, where things fail/crash randomly. It feels like a complete and customizable desktop (a great concept), but frustration arrives in the form of instability. Not saying GNOME is bug-free because it is not (GNOME has a fatal flaw that sometimes prevents you from logging in from the lock screen, even with the correct password (and if you keep trying, you are locked out for 10 minutes!) and the only solution is to kill GDM, every systemd session and every D-Bus instance).

GNOME is more stable and works fine but absolutely requires extensions in order to be usable.

Everyone's mileage will vary of course, depending on their workflow. Myself, I'm using Plasma on F34 Wayland, and while I occasionally encounter a bug, it's nothing that I haven't been able to workaround until it is fixed - and I've been using KDE for at least 15 years. The difference of course is whether or not you prefer using something that has been designed with less functionality, that requires unsupported extensions which often break (GNOME) or something that has been designed as a complete integrated solution (KDE). All software has bugs, nothing is perfect. As far as performance and animations, I haven't noticed any such problems and I have plenty of data. If you have a machine that is experiencing problems, you can easily tweak the settings to turn off animations, etc. to improve performance. KDE allows you much more flexibility, with GNOME, it's pretty much one size fits all.

[AHOY]

Here is my experience with KDE:

1. Install
2. The desktop seems to work
3. Be productive and work for a while (hours)
4. Something crashes
5. Report a bug only to find out it has been already reported
6. Repeat from 2

In my experience with KDE it sometimes feels like a minefield, where things fail/crash randomly. It feels like a complete and customizable desktop (a great concept), but frustration arrives in the form of instability. Not saying GNOME is bug-free because it is not (GNOME has a fatal flaw that sometimes prevents you from logging in from the lock screen, even with the correct password (and if you keep trying, you are locked out for 10 minutes!) and the only solution is to kill GDM, every systemd session and every D-Bus instance).

GNOME is more stable and works fine but absolutely requires extensions in order to be usable.

And regarding performance, neither is better. KDE has a lighter compositor and overall is faster but:
- Has a long story of insane stuttering (that only got fixed in Plasma 5.21)
- Sometimes it is slow, primarily blamed on Qt
- On the first run, the search bar takes too long to start on an HDD (5-10 seconds) and it eats your keyboard input while it is loading (so you can't type ahead) because it is a separate application unlike GNOME in where it is inside the shell
- The Qt/KDE file dialog is the slowest thing ever for huge directories (1000+ files) and doing anything (typing the file name and pressing OK) is near impossible because for some reason it WAITS until the file list has loaded. On the other hand the GTK file dialog does not animate the loading of a huge directory, but at least I can type the file name and press OK even before the list has loaded.

GNOME is slower but:
- Daniel van Vugt has been doing massive amounts of performance work
- You can escape it gracefully in the event of a GPU crash/reset (it happened once, and after restarting gnome-shell and starting up Orca I managed to log out)
- The compositor is fine now when compared to 2017, and it even is able to run on a Pi without problems
- Customization outside extensions barely is a thing
- Poor UX choices. Do I need to mention any more?

I agree in parts. KDE is stable enough for me, and the best DE by miles. And the applications feel like they are made for people who do real work with their computers. They don't always have the best UX but they are slowly making everything better. Dolphin is not without flaws but it's the best non CLI file manager in the world.

I always go with the ballistic option. I use the same config files since the first KDE 5 release but I simply disable everything that can create issues. The core of my experience is a bottom panel with the bare minimum and my own custom application launcher to make sure the experience never changes (guess my bet paid off). No widgets, no baloo, no krunner (I use rofi), no activities (the bugs oh lord), only a few virtual desktops (never had any issues). I'll change to Wayland in a couple of years after the bubuntu crowd eat all the bugs.

I do the same with Windows and the same thing when I was using XFCE/GNOME 2. You could say I use the DE as a WM without having to glue together 20+ utilities. GNOME 3 doesn't work since it requires cement and brick from the start (and after every update) and the issues I had were all in the core experience. My points is threat your DE as a hostile entity and you might be happier.

[ALRBP]

skeevy420 Themes, extensions and other kind of differentiation don’t belong in core upstream modules. What you are looking for is a distribution.

A dark mode is not just a theme, it is an essential feature! Yes, it's often implemented as a theme, if a theming system is present anyway, but it is not just that. There are many dark themes, and choosing between them is not an essential feature, but providing at least one is essential. Since I started using a dark theme, I just can't stand light themes anymore! They make my eyes bleed! I can live without my beautiful dark-violet theme (Mirage on KDE) but not without a dark mode at all!