(If you know where I stole this from, I love you.)
Gnome and KDE both suck but in opposite ways. Want to change a behavior in Gnome? Well you better hope there’s an extension for that. Want to change a behavior in KDE? Sure. Good luck finding the fucking setting for it though. XFCE and Cinnamon are where it’s at. We also give a pass to MATE.
GNOME was so great… Then GNOME 3 came out and it feels like it’s been designed by a person with severe brain damage.
XFCE erryday.
Right now I use kde customized to look almost exactly like gnome.
I want to downvote you out of fear, yet I want to upvote you for the audacity
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.
I hopped from a fully customized AwesomeWM install on Arch to Gnome on Debian and… there is something to be said about having your OS look & work cleanly out of the box.
This but for me it is KDE.
What? No… that is wrong.
“How dare someone have a preference different than me”
Seriously though, I don’t get the gnome hate circle jerk. It isn’t for everyone but works well for some.
Same. I’ve used Gnome, KDE and XFCE (and OS X and Windows) and Gnome is my clear favourite. Claiming that their decisions don’t make sense is clearly false if it works so well for so many.
Oh this argument is just a meme and I’m here to enjoy that. But also KDE > Gnome, no question.
Gnome is the reason it took me so long to like Linux for daily driving, because it was the default DE on the distros I was trying. Thank goodness for Fedora+KDE Plasma. If someone else likes it, good for them - I like that they are using Linux.
It’s extremely important we voice our opinion on bad design so that their decisions don’t become mainstream or standard.
GNOME has been a dumpster fire since 3 and the developers only care about what will result in the least amount of work for them. They think they’re as good as Apple, where they can be the sole authority on how their DE is used, but then they make incredibly stupid decisions like dictating where users can put the dock. Their design team is nowhere near the level of Apple and they should stop pretending otherwise.
I don’t like it when people pronounce it with a hard G
I can only ever pronounce it is ‘Guh-nome’
I blame Linux Unplugged podcast tbh.
Which one’s the hard g? If that’s the one that sounds like j or “g as in giraffe”, then I’ve never heard anyone pronounce it like that. Jnome? Doesn’t really roll off the tongue very well.
like gif
Jnome
Criminal
I suspect that @TemplaerDude@sh.itjust.works really meant to say “with a non-silent ‘G’”.
The word is typically pronounced (“There are gnomes in the forest!”) with a silent ‘g’.
I think as a GNU project, Gnome is an exception. That might be a bit of a hypercorrection though.
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.
Yeah I agree. GNOME 3 is hideous, completely unusable. I don’t know why they had to ruin the perfection of GNOME 2.
You have a right to that opinion but Gnome 4(0) was released a year and a half ago, and we’re on 49 now. Also, I think it’s beautiful and elegant.
Plasma has improved A LOT in the past year. Like a year ago I hated it. now? I daily drive it. I hate to use this phrase but everything just works.
I was kinda disappointed with the 6.6 release as I really just want dedicated virtual desktops per monitor but their compromise actually isn’t that bad. I just had to turn off animation for changing workspaces and it’s fine. Even tiling works A LOT better on Plasma than it used to and dare I saw kinda works better/is more smooth than Sway and the like and I’m not even using krohnkite. you can quickly toggle the splits for windows and even do vim style navigation between windows. you can even do vim navigation with windows that aren’t tiled.
Plus the stuff they have packaged in is just better than most alternatives out there. I love Konsole. it has everything I need. and Kate is also a fantastic IDE you can REALLY customize that is slept on by many people. Dolphin is great too. It’s nice having a DE that just has all the stuff you need right out of the box and you don’t really have to change any of the defaults.
Dolphin is surprisingly powerful. I was using a tool (SshPilot) to handle my remote connections and it had an option to browse a remote computer’s filesystem. I was curious what that would look like and it just used my local Dolphin windows and opened up my remote computer and easily browse the files there. I’m so used to using an external program like FileZilla for stuff like that.
Kde is so ugly and buggy, requiring tons of setup n knowhow to fix. GNOME feels limiting and oversimplified, but honestly 9 out of 10 times its fine… even if its setting menu infuriates on the regular.
Im old and i dont having 100 hrs to rice shit anymore
KDE is way less buggy than it used to be. I still prefer gnome but I don’t mind KDE from s stability perspective.
Kde is so ugly and buggy, requiring tons of setup n knowhow to fix.
Surely you confuse Plasma and Gnome. To get a sane setup on Gnome, you need to install Refine to enable the minimize button and then install Gnome Extension Manager and enable Dash to Panel or Dash to Dock.
That’s an insane amount of setup work for someone who doesn’t know about those things.
People always rave about dash to panel/dock and I just… don’t get it?
Genuinely though, what is the purpose of the taskbar except to potentially you with notifications and take up valuable screen estate?
If I need to switch apps, I’m either opening the overview/mission control, switching workspaces, or the app is already on the screen for multitasking purposes.
Even on macOS I set the dock to autohide, and near exclusively just use swipe gestures, keyboard shortcuts, or spotlight.
But alas, maybe it’s just one of those things that just not for me.
…if you want
For the max/min buttons you can just turn them on in gnome tweaks
For the max/min buttons you can just turn them on in gnome tweaks
Ah yes, using a different non-standard tool makes so much of a difference.
I’m pretty sure you can live without the minimize button. I’ve used Gnome for 3 years and I’ve never felt the need to minimize a window. Even now after I switched to KDE Plasma a few days ago, I still don’t minimize windows.
I’m pretty sure you can live without the minimize button.
I’m volunteering in a repair café where older people bring their Windows 10 computers and seek help migrating to Linux because their PC told them that Win11 isn’t compatible.
I make recommendations based on each person, trying to realize what they wish for first if they have an idea what they want. A few months ago there was an >70y/o man. Let’s be realistic here, at this age it might well be the last PC he ever owns. So I set him up with Alma Linux (extra long support cycle) and made its Gnome desktop as Windows-like as possible. He’s not getting pressured into unfamiliar UX metaphors and no way I’m pushing software from EPEL or anything that onto him. I enabled Flathub and temporarily installed aforementioned tools to make the necessary tweaks, then uninstalled these tools again, and installed a few of Gnome’s games, Celluloid, and Chrome off Flathub.
For the rest of the day he ate cookies and drank coffee and seemed pretty happy with that setup. We invited him to come back, should he have any further questions. Haven’t seen him again.
Going to Refine instead of the age old Gnome Tweaks is an interesting way to tell how long someone has been familiar with Gnome.
That being said if you use Gnome how they want you to, you don’t need those extensions.
That way isn’t for everyone as it’s very different from what many used to but when you do get used to it those extensions will feel unnecessary
What is the last KDE you tried? Plasma is SO good, right out of the box.
I like gnome too. Its simple and works. The only extension I use is a weather widget. People who need a million extensions are going against the grain of the design.
The only bug I ever see is Dolphin having a delayed startuo, and I have a bunch of file shares mounted which NFS might be causing delays. KDE is awesome, and it’s Tumbleweed so not even stable KDE.
That being said I put my family on Cinnamon.
Cinnamon is pretty solid. I can’t wait for Wayland support.
It sounds like it has experimental support as of six months ago.
https://itsfoss.gitlab.io/post/cinnamon-60-release-debuts-experimental-wayland-support/
Cinnamon 6.0: A Bold Leap Forward with Experimental Wayland Support
Last update – 2025-08-12
I haven’t run into any bugs but also I’m not the most intensive user so maybe I just don’t run into them.
I liked Gnome back when Ubuntu was brown.
The Gnome 2 days 👍
After Gnome shit the bed with Gnome 3 and beyond, MATE continued everything great about 2 and continues its legacy.
I genuinely hope history remembers the GNOME desktop as “it was good, and then they started making some really stupid decisions!”
Why would they ruin their very good software with so many stupid decisions?
Yeah mate, it was the best
My main issue when I was using GNOME is that it needed a run ton of extensions to be truly useful, and most broke after a new release.
I’m using KDE basically out of the box, nothing bothers me enough to try to fix it.
Yes, GNOME 3+ is completely unusable. It looks like it’s been designed for a tablet.
Plus, I can’t stand client side window decorations.
I’m using KDE basically out of the box, nothing bothers me enough to try to fix it.
KDE : Plasma is the sleekest desktop we’ve come up with yet!
Just put the taskbar where I want it and shut up.
So today I made a VM of Debian that has all the DE’s as a matter of experiment to try them all out back to back to get an idea of what each one feels like. And right out of the gate gnome feels, a bit too abstract? You don’t get the sense that one screen is the default homescreen over another.
It looks nice but it feels weirdly organised. (Which I’m sure I could get used too, but you know preferences)
I use GNOME on my laptop because it’s really nice for touch devices. It has a learning curve, I have to add extensions to do things I expect an OS to do and I’m still not sure what I’m doing, but it’s nice.
on my normal desktop I use the flavor of the day DE, gnome is only used on my 40 inch touchscreen, because its the only one I could imagine being good on a touchscreen
It deserves all the criticism.
And it is by far my favorite DE.As a GNOME user since forever, I find it fascinating how much time KDE users spend thinking about GNOME. They seem so obsessed with customization, yet seem incapable of understanding that people could have preferences different from their own.
Maybe if gnome’s choices didn’t impact the part of the ecosystem that do not rely on gnome in any way, people would be less disgruntled about gnome. For example, the refusal of gnome devs to support server side decorations, forces app devs to implement client side decorations even when they design apps that don’t make use of the features enabled by client side decorations.
I don’t care if people use gnome, people should be free to use what they prefer. I do care if the mere fact that gnome exists complicates app development because gnome devs seem incapable of understanding that people could have preferences different from their own.
As both a Cinnamon and KDE user, you can tell you’re using an app made for Gnome because it either outright doesn’t do anything, or it does the barest least nuanced most stereotypical version of that thing. Oh great, another empty fuckpuke window that doesn’t respect the system theme with an empty hamburger menu and one button in the very top-left that says “Do Something”.
I don’t know of a package manager with a GTK filter.
I don’t know of a package manager with a GTK filter.
This I could agree with, but the problem here is a lacking feature in package managers, not the fact that apps that you don’t personally enjoy using exist.
I don’t particularly enjoy using KDE apps, but thankfully the K-centric naming convention make them really easy to avoid.
yet seem incapable of understanding that people could have preferences different from their own.
Perfect description of Gnome developers.
And that’s why they’re so out of touch.
Oh yes, I forgot about that time they tracked down and kidnapped KDE contributors never to be heard of again, depriving the poor FOSS community from their freedom of choice.
So apps look the way they are made?
When I use KDE apps in GNOME they also look like KDE apps. Obviously - that’s the way they are made. If I want something else than what someone else created I will use something else, not complain about how they didn’t create it the way I personally prefer.
We don’t, except for when gnome is installed by default.
Exactly, or when they forced their tools as “standard” forcing KDE to adapt.
Been using GNOME since ~ 3.8/3.10 (so i guess a while now) and out of the box it mostly just works for me. I have maybe 3-4 extensions none of which I desperately rely on (although TopIcons is clutch) and I agree with most design choices. I’ve thought about switching some times but I think all I would do is try to replicate my GNOME workflow elswhere so why bother?
The criticisms I’ve heard:
- You can’t customize it!
- Hey, extensions don’t count, because sometimes they break between major version upgrades!
- The developers are mean! They didn’t even take my suggestions!
- The design philosophy is bad! It doesn’t even want to be windows!
I have been using versions of GNOME for about 5 years now and I have always been able to customize my DE to a very high degree. Out of every random extension I’ve tried, probably 80% work, and that is even counting unmaintained ones that haven’t seen an update in years. And out of those extensions I chose to keep using, I’ve only have an occasional stability issue. I think I’ve actually experienced that once since 2021 when I switched to Linux as a daily driver.
Maybe I’m just asocial but I don’t expect to reach out to my software devs and influence them at all. Unless I reported a bug and they were a dick about it, I’d probably never complain about the devs. And lastly I think the design philosophy is excellent. Maximizing screen real estate while being quite flexible, rejecting everything shitty about windows and incorporating everything good about macOS.
Every problem I’ve had is so far outweighed by the positives that it’s not remotely close. It makes sense to me that it’s so popular. KDE on the other hand… I am glad it exists but I wish it were better. I feel like it literally wants to be windows. People say it is SO customizable and I was convinced to give the latest version a chance recently. It does not feel like finished software to me, tbh. Before I could really give it a shot I needed to customize the UI to be more minimalist. I found the UI to do that quickly. Within five minutes I had crashed the desktop several times, and I felt unable to achieve what I wanted at all. The drag and drop UI for the taskbar area wasn’t stable in my experience. It kept crashing AND wouldn’t do what I wanted.
What criticism of GNOME is so well deserved? I just don’t see any criticism of it that I feel is deserved. Meanwhile KDE seems janky to me and to this day I haven’t once seen anyone hate on it. You’d think it was basically perfect.
KDE on the other hand… I am glad it exists but I wish it were better. I feel like it literally wants to be windows.
KDE’s approach was ‘Windows, but with even more dialogs and crammed lists’ for at least twenty years. And it also felt clunky way back then. People on Lemmy keep saying that Plasma is good now, but I read the complaints and it’s like nothing changed.
I’m happy I’m not the only one to experience KDE like that. I’ve had far better experiences with XFCE than with KDE, but I keep going back to GNOME because of the user experience. I’m happy people enjoy KDE though, so I don’t generally feel a strong need to trash it online. But my god can the user base be insufferable at times.
Yeah, a part of me wants to vent my frustration with kde since I truly wanted it to be good, but it wasn’t, ime.
Now for some reason I just had an idea. It would be pretty awesome if there could be a desktop layout standard configuration format such that on any DE that supports it, you could just load up a config file and get a very similar UI on any DE. I know, it’s a pipe dream but it would be cool.
Edit: and yes I know, GNOME haters. GNOME devs would be the first to reject this idea.
When saying it deserves “all” the criticism, I might have been hyperbolic
I agree with most of what you said.The keep it simple philosophy I agree with, but there are a few UI decisions, a few missing features I couldn’t wrap my head around. They tend to be rectified in the end because it’s common sense, but it takes a very long time and it can be frustrating. I’m sorry my memory is shit so I only remember the sentiment and don’t have specifics. I do have one recent example, I needed to change a very simple shortcut. The system doesn’t allow it and it feels arbitrary.
Extensions are really great. Some are absolute gems, and they tend to work perfectly. But the fact some are almost mandatory to have sane default is an issue. Especially when you have multiple devices. I don’t think most people want a useless popup telling you the program has launched (or the window is activated, what is it again?), popup which once clicked won’t even open said program. The extensions graveyard is hard to see though. I had recently a good one that wouldn’t be ported to latest gnome, killing my linux tablet workflow. and can anyone tell me what the app menu with icons in seemingly random order is for?
I’ve used KDE for 4 years and mostly liked it, but I had tons of issues, and very few with Gnome.
KDE users I know your experience might be different but I’m telling you how it went for me. Gnome, while imperfect in this regard, has been much better. I tried Plasma 6 when it came out and it was pretty much the same for me, but I will give it another try at one point.You seem to have a really balanced point of view and that’s good. I wanted to like KDE but on the other hand it reads as windows 2000 to my eyes and it bothers me. I did like some things about the interface but overall it felt too busy for me. I hadn’t tried it in years until the recent plasma update and people raving about it and its customizability convinced me to give it another shot. One of the first things I did was try to customize the top bar and task bar to be cleaner. It crashed several times very quickly. That’s a really bad first impression. The bugs I experienced immediately were as many as I’d seen in years of GNOME experience.
In a perfect world though, yes, GNOME would be more customizable, particularly the overview mode. I do not like it at all. On the other hand, it’s not so bad I wouldn’t just live with it if I didn’t have other options. I do though. To launch any app not common enough to put on my dock, I use ulauncher. It’s not the best but it usually works well as an alfred-style launcher app.
I hated macs until OSX and since then I’ve hated windows more. Just mentioning because I’m sure someone will read what I’ve written and think I’m a Mac guy. Which was true for a bit but I’ve grown to dislike macs a lot as well. Their OS is still better than windows though!
I find gnome easier to customize, something always messes up with kde for me when setting up my ui, gnome also lets you use your computer and watch videos while customizing, kde plasma takes over your screen and you cant see your windows.
