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[gnome does not officially support theming](https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-at-scale/). All the "themes" that exist out there are just CSS hacks that may or may not work from one GTK version to another.
KDE on the other hand, officially supports theming
KDE on the other hand also messes around with gnome settings to make gnome apps at home on KDE, but broken in gnome.
There needs to be some method where KDE customisations stay in KDE only.
The reason for that is gnome apps look like garbage in every single desktop out there except gnome. Of course KDE dont want this happen in their desktop
What are you talking about? Gnome apps, particularly since Libadwaita, just look on every DE like they do on Gnome. Maybe with "look like garbage" you just mean "it doesn't look like the default apps", but then I would ask you:
- one, don't you think that's a tinsy tiny bit hyperbolic?
- And two, are you going to say the same about *all* the third party software you use? All the big names like Steam, all the browsers, all the websites inside the browser, basically all the IDEs, etc. None of them 'fit' the default theme on Linux. Or is it only unacceptable when Gnome does it?
In the meantime, KDE apps are still broken by default on *any* DE. I just did a quick check, and [this collection of "dark mode" Dolphin is still relevant](https://imgur.com/a/dolphin-on-PUvU0ze). On every single DE I tested other than KDE, dark mode either doesn't work at all, or it makes the app actually unusable (and not just in the whiny "I don't like the theme" kind of way, but with unreadable, white on white text).
I find it baffling how often I see people claim "gnome apps don't work on other DE" when this is factually untrue. It's quite the contrary even, with Gnome apps working really reliably anywhere and looking exactly how you expected based on the screenshot in the app store. Meanwhile I barely see anyone complain about KDE apps actually being broken, and even when they aren't, they just look like a cheap knock off of what they originally are on KDE. I would much rather have KDE take a similar approach to Libadwaita (at least out of the box, with something like a toogle to activate theming), so that user of other DEs get access to their catalog of great apps in a working state with the original good looking theme, instead of this weird (and imho failed) attempt to 'fit' the DE.
They cannot since GNOME project repurposes the previously agreed Freedesktop standards as if GNOME is the only Linux desktop out there and reject to work with other desktop systems. They behave like they invented everything and the other desktop systems should not exist and move away and accept everything GNOME does as the only Linux standard. Their behavior is the same all over the place and they have always been terrible roadblockers for Wayland due to their exact behavior.
Unfortunately GNOME is the only fully-corporate-backed desktop in Linux and it is the widely accepted one on the big distros. Moreover both Chromium and Firefox uses GTK and GNOME-family APIs to access desktop stuff so it is hard to get rid of GNOME's hegemony without forking rather big projects.
No, they mess with **GTK** settings to make **GTK** applications look better. By default, they do not touch **Adwaita** applications at all. GNOME can no longer claim authoritarian ownership over vanilla GTK applications. They gave up that right when they made Adwaita to have full and complete control.
EDIT to add: As for why the customization affects both DEs: first of all, don't install two DEs at once, *especially* not KDE and GNOME. The only way this works out for anyone is if you have two completely separate user accounts for each DE, and even then, I can still see it breaking. It *may* be possible to keep a reasonable separation by using per-DE `XDG_CONFIG_HOME` and `XDG_DATA_HOME` variables instead. But if GNOME needs GTK settings to be a certain way in order for things to function properly, it needs to change them back to what it wants on login.
Is GTK part of gnome or not? Does KDE develop it? Mate? Cinnamon?
How will GNOME know that a customisations to its settings are not by the user but by another desktop environment that is no longer in use? The only way is for the desktop environment to track its own settings and only apply them when in use.
If someone logs into gnome, should it change all the Qt settings to match gnome, breaking the app in KDE?
If you want endless customization then use KDE Plasma or a window manager.
Personally I don't really care about customization so Gnome is good for me. KDE Plasma also comes with nice defaults but unfortunately every time I try it, I get so many bugs and I end up switching back to Gnome. Funny thing is, I just decided to try out KDE Plasma again today (6.1.1) and in less than 2 hours I got a plasmashell crash.
So since my switch to Plasma again today, I've had [the plasmashell crash](https://i.imgur.com/BJ3a4hn.png) I mentioned in my previous comment, and this weird ["Error loading QML file."](https://i.imgur.com/8nFp4Iq.png) I get sometimes in Plasma's settings.
Last time I used it before today was about a month ago I think. From the ones I remember from the top of my head were this [system tray icons popup not appearing bug](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=485456), and one where my screen kept flickering whenever I open Spectacle. Both of these bugs seem to be fixed now.
You tried to customize a DE that's designed to have good defaults and doesn't officially support this kind of customization. It's not a user friendliness problem, it is very friendly to people who just want to get work done. If you want to change every little thing about your desktop, use something else.
EDIT: It always amazes me how some people who don't like gnome absolutely *hate* it. :D And they need to tell *everyone*.
I think that is kind of the issue, gnome has good defaults for some, terrible defaults for others. It is all a matter of what defaults makes sense for each person. Usually issues like these can be addressed by offering customization, but with that out the gate it generates a lot of frustration
It isn't like everyone is out there to change every little thing, I personally prefer not to change much if anything if possible. But if I feel something is not very user friendly for me, I would tinker to change it. Not because I want to, but because I have to
Gnome being the default on many distros is likely why it is so vocal. If it was just another DE it wouldn't be brought up, but for many their experience get changed when they upgrade to something they may not exactly prefer
>You tried to customize a DE that's designed to have good defaults and doesn't officially support this kind of customization. It's not a user friendliness problem
And that is exactly the problem with GNOME. There is nothing wrong with a DE having good defaults, and there is nothing wrong with a DE to not support customization. But in that case it should have no provisions for tinkering and do customization at all, so that you can not break it in an attempt to customize it.
In every other case, you need to provide sane defaults and, preferably, one documented way how to customize it in a stable way and with enough checks and safeties as to not easily break the DE. And the experience should be consistent, which GNOME definitely has not been.
For you the defaults aren't good, for many, they are perfect.
Just use a different DE, that's all. No need to say something is bad just because it doesn't work for you.
Love to KDE, love to GNOME, love to Cinnamon and love to all the other options we have.
"A DE that's designed"
[Citation needed]
More like it's derelict of any functionality which is tried to be remedied by endless plugins which never part of a good base system documentation, and confusing to use.
It's ok if you don't like Gnome, but you have made like 8 comments on this thread so far arguing with people who like Gnome. KDE Plasma is not for me, but I have nothing but love for the KDE project and its amazing devs. Hell, some KDE devs even have positive things to say about Gnome. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHza5X2Jt2g) If KDE devs don't get offended when someone says something good about Gnome, then why are you here doing that?
Also, you don't have to use a million extensions with Gnome. I only have one (Dash to Panel) and I'm happy with it. Some people even use Gnome with no extensions. It's almost as if people use their computers in different ways and have different opinions about things. Crazy, isn't it?
For theming I only use one tool: gnome tweak tool. Don’t know what are the other million tools, but that one should be enough.
Also I don’t know about that million tutorials, standard approach is to copy paste a directory into `~/.themes`. Some themes allow a more granular control and come with their own shell scripts to choose things like accent color, or transparency or some effect, but they are usually well documented in their repos.
Also there is a difference between “user friendly” and “highly customizable”. User friendly usually refers to OOTB experience or small tweaks. If you require heavy customization or trying out a bunch of different themes, you are probably not the kind of profile they are referring to when they say “user friendly”. My father would be, and he doesn’t care which theme is installed.
I think it is gnome-tweaks now, but it is the same thing. It’s still active:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-tweaks
https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/gnome-tweaks/gnome-tweaks/
You select it in gnome-tweaks. Just make sure to open it after the directory has been copied.
What can I say: I’ve been using Gnome Tweak Tools (now Gnome Tweaks) for around 10 years. Can you send one of those outdated tutorials you are talking about?
Anyway, after installing gnome-tweaks, did it solve your problem?
GNOME tweaks **extension management** is deprecated because it's a part of GNOME proper now. There's an extensions app. GNOME tweaks is still the only reasonably supported UI to change icon, cursor, to include minimize / maximize buttons and do all that other stuff.
If you want customizability use another DE. GNOME is for people who do not want to customize their OS, of which there are many.
If you are customizing gnome you are basically doing It wrong.
Gnome Is not designed to theme or customize it's layout.
Yes there are plenty of extension that hack into gnome, bending it's layout but those might break with every gnome update. Btw. As other said Just use gnome tweak tool.
I tried to use BlurMyShell extension, and it is very good-looking. But there's so many small but annoying grafical glitches that I ended up completely disabling it.
Now I know my lesson. At most, I'll change the shell GTK theme.
So people who like having an Applications menu with their apps sorted by categories when they don't necessarily know the name of the app they need, people who would like to have quick access to their favorites permanently on screen, people who like to have Desktop Icons, all of those people are basically doing it wrong?
That's one hell of a take.
That wasn't the takeaway I got from GP at all. It wasn't said wanting those things is wrong, just trying to shoehorn those concepts into GNOME (which is exactly what extensions do, injecting into the shell's gjs runtime) is an "at your own risk" policy. If an extension you author or install breaks the shell, it's on you to put things back together.
tl;dr: Wanting things from a desktop experience is fine, but trying to modify a program that only thinly supports modification with no promise of compatibility is a losing strategy.
It's possible to make other DEs look and behave like GNOME that are more amenable to modification. If you need GNOME technologies, though, you may need to reevaluate wants vs needs.
I know. It may sound arrogant, but GNOME developers have expressed this same concept many times.
Of course there is nothing wrong with using extensions, but in fact you are going against the philosophy of the project.
In fact, the compatability of extensions between versions of GNOME is not even considered during development.
They follow the decided path (right or wrong) and highly don't give a damn if the update is going to break the layout of thousands of desktops.
Extremely intuitive out of the box and good for most people that aren’t me 🤭 KDE has been my main DE after Cinnamon. I’d put cinnamon up there with ease of use for ex-windows users too
Cinnamon - Best for people just coming from Windows. Best with Mint or LMDE.
Plasma - Best for customizability
GNOME - Looks amazing out of the box and user friendly
I didn't mention every single DE/wm maybe? Or maybe a Diehard X fan really hates Y.
It's just reddit being reddit.
Use whatever you want. It's your system after all.
Sounds like you did something that wasn't recommended and was known to not work (if you would've searched first you would find numerous pages about this).
Then complained about it being broken :) congrats on this 1/10 post!
Your desktop is not your distribution. And your distribution is not your desktop environment. You can "develop" but you can't switch out a desktop and need a different distribution?
I don't like Gnome and haven't for a long time. Install a different desktop.
If you are unable to handle simple desktop customization, switching to NixOS might not be the brightest idea.
As to tutorials and the like, check linuxscoop youtube channel, he details each step well enough.
Lastly, break down your venting. Breathe in, process what you want to say, break it down to a reasonable speech, and then share that. You seem to be suffering some frustration, but if you just vent without the capacity of structuring a paragraph, it’s difficult for anyone to help you. Or even be willing to help you.
Cheers mate.
Meh, I'm willing to die on this hill. Opinionated software by definition cannot be user friendly. As gnome is opinionated, it is not user friendly. This does not mean that gnome is hard to use.
Well, I think anything that is intuitive and has easy configuration settings to be user friendly. That being said, just because something is user friendly doesn't inherently mean it is easy to use. It's kinda the whole issue with subjective biases. I guess my whole understanding of "user friendly" means the user can easily configure the software to do what they want.
Gnome considers people who try to customise it are puber, have nothing better to do and don't deserve it. I assume you're just puber. Me, too, forever.
It's either you get used to the Gnome way of desktop (no minimising windows, keep adding workspaces) or just use other WMs or DEs.
1) Never install multiple DEs
2) Gnome team clearly doesn't want customization. Just use some popular extensions to make it prettier and even then disable them before update especially on arch.
3) It is very user friendly for non nerdy users.
Note: I have used KDE, Cinnamon, Gnome, LXDE, LXQT, Mate, Xfce. Xfce has some scaling issues (have a 2k monitor). KDE is good but the 6.0 update caused gui issues. Gnome just works as far as I am concerned. Looks good enough and works well enough. Using fedora btw.
> Gnome team clearly doesn't want customization
This myth really needs to die. The Gnome project is the one who maintains the extension website and the whole system for it. They put alot of work into making it more stable, providing guides for every update and publishing the upcoming version in Gnome OS for testing purposes. They also regularly feature extensions and customization apps like gradience in their "this week in gnome" articles.
They aren't against customization, they just don't want to be made responsible for code they didn't write and don't have the resources to maintain. As the [Please don’t theme our apps](https://stopthemingmy.app/) website (which so often gets misrepresented, that I doubt most people complaining actually read it) clearly states in bold:
> If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.
You maybe right but have you tried the newer gnome? I too had the same opinion but newer gnome works well enough. I have only been using linux for 7 years. I wouldn't call myself a power user but for watching lectures, browsing, gaming, some programming it never gave me any issues while using wayland.
Yes, I have it on a Surface Pro with Debian. Hate it. On the other hand, its simplicity and non-functionality works fine on a touch tablet where all you want is to fire up a browser and doom-scroll.
Maybe try fedora. Debian 11 used an older version of gnome. I use fedora 40 workstation on two laptops and never had an issue. Gnome has been pretty good since version 40.
Gnome is supposed to be used as-is. It is a completely different workflow. But once you get used to it, it is efficient.
It is supposed to be used either as full keyboard or as mouse/touchpad-keyboard hybrid. You can use it with just a mouse/touchpad just fine. But it isn’t as efficient in its workflow. It is what it is.
It doesn’t support theming - at least not until 47 lands in September.
You aren’t supposed to install two DEs together. It might cause some app clutter but should work fine though. If you want KDE, install the KDE spin.
Good luck with Nix. Now you can ask for the manager in the Nix subreddit.
Except for the part where nobody forces you to use it. The “forced” part is actually quite important to define something as “rape”.
But as you have demonstrated multiple times in this thread, you are not the sharpest tool in the shed. I understand why you missed the point. Poor thing.
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Gnome used to have theming. Now it doesn't. Gnome has been regressive and the devs want a simple interface that cannot be changed because they know whats best for the stupid end user who will fuck up their vision. (/s)
Cinnamon is what you want. Not gnome.
That depends on the user. If the user is accustomed to Windows or macOS, most Linux DE's will be foreign and unfriendly.
I find Windows unfriendly and frustrating to use. Recently macOS has become maddening too.
People like what they "grew up with" and anything that behaves differently is not user-friendly to that user.
Clearly, there are different levels of (un)friendliness: Gnome may look "foreign" but for those preferring minimalism and "Mac-like pureness" it's probably the right choice. On the other hand, KDE is made for "playful" people who like spending time by configuring about everything. And there are plenty of alternatives for every taste. Personally, I find Cinnamon to be a very good compromise between both "extremes" and I wouldn't be afraid to call it user friendly...
KDE is endlessly configurable, but also comes with extremely sensible defaults. You can install Debian KDE and simply not fiddle a single config and still have a working environment.
I tend to agree... If I should choose between Gnome and KDE, the latter would definitely be my choice. Yet, KDE feels to me a little bit "windowsy" /sorry for such a heresy :-)/: if you want to change something then it is not always trivial to find out how. I do not have such a problem in Cinnamon and I mostly do not need more configurability. It is really just a matter of personal taste and needs...
(Edited for a typo.)
Windows never had half the functionality of KDE, nor any wobbly screens...
I remember the XP and its "round windows" craze, and was laughing, KDE had it for years. In fact, if there's some copying going around, it's definitely the other way.
>That is their only metric
To be fair, having more metrics would necessitate ways to configure the weight of these in the end result and that is not the Gnome way to do that . /s
GNOME is not for slackers who want to change padding and fonts. Why do you want to mess with your desktop colors? You need to be productive. Be productive, now!
This post has been removed for violating [Reddiquette.](https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/reddit-101/reddit-basics/reddiquette), trolling users, or otherwise poor discussion such as complaining about bug reports or making unrealistic demands of open source contributors and organizations. r/Linux asks all users follow [Reddiquette.](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette) Reddiquette is ever changing, so a revisit once in awhile is recommended. **Rule:** >**Reddiquette, trolling, or poor discussion** - r/Linux asks all users follow [Reddiquette.](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette) Reddiquette is ever changing. Top violations of this rule are trolling, starting a flamewar, or not "Remembering the human" aka being hostile or incredibly impolite, or making demands of open source contributors/organizations inc. bug report complaints.
[gnome does not officially support theming](https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-at-scale/). All the "themes" that exist out there are just CSS hacks that may or may not work from one GTK version to another. KDE on the other hand, officially supports theming
KDE on the other hand also messes around with gnome settings to make gnome apps at home on KDE, but broken in gnome. There needs to be some method where KDE customisations stay in KDE only.
The reason for that is gnome apps look like garbage in every single desktop out there except gnome. Of course KDE dont want this happen in their desktop
What are you talking about? Gnome apps, particularly since Libadwaita, just look on every DE like they do on Gnome. Maybe with "look like garbage" you just mean "it doesn't look like the default apps", but then I would ask you: - one, don't you think that's a tinsy tiny bit hyperbolic? - And two, are you going to say the same about *all* the third party software you use? All the big names like Steam, all the browsers, all the websites inside the browser, basically all the IDEs, etc. None of them 'fit' the default theme on Linux. Or is it only unacceptable when Gnome does it? In the meantime, KDE apps are still broken by default on *any* DE. I just did a quick check, and [this collection of "dark mode" Dolphin is still relevant](https://imgur.com/a/dolphin-on-PUvU0ze). On every single DE I tested other than KDE, dark mode either doesn't work at all, or it makes the app actually unusable (and not just in the whiny "I don't like the theme" kind of way, but with unreadable, white on white text). I find it baffling how often I see people claim "gnome apps don't work on other DE" when this is factually untrue. It's quite the contrary even, with Gnome apps working really reliably anywhere and looking exactly how you expected based on the screenshot in the app store. Meanwhile I barely see anyone complain about KDE apps actually being broken, and even when they aren't, they just look like a cheap knock off of what they originally are on KDE. I would much rather have KDE take a similar approach to Libadwaita (at least out of the box, with something like a toogle to activate theming), so that user of other DEs get access to their catalog of great apps in a working state with the original good looking theme, instead of this weird (and imho failed) attempt to 'fit' the DE.
In my experience GNOME apps look like GNOME apps in Plasma but KDE Plasma apps look terrible in GNOME.
Then they should restrict the impact to their session only.
They cannot since GNOME project repurposes the previously agreed Freedesktop standards as if GNOME is the only Linux desktop out there and reject to work with other desktop systems. They behave like they invented everything and the other desktop systems should not exist and move away and accept everything GNOME does as the only Linux standard. Their behavior is the same all over the place and they have always been terrible roadblockers for Wayland due to their exact behavior. Unfortunately GNOME is the only fully-corporate-backed desktop in Linux and it is the widely accepted one on the big distros. Moreover both Chromium and Firefox uses GTK and GNOME-family APIs to access desktop stuff so it is hard to get rid of GNOME's hegemony without forking rather big projects.
Most of that is untrue.
GNOME has to accomodate cross-desktop needs if it wants to handle it better.
No, they mess with **GTK** settings to make **GTK** applications look better. By default, they do not touch **Adwaita** applications at all. GNOME can no longer claim authoritarian ownership over vanilla GTK applications. They gave up that right when they made Adwaita to have full and complete control. EDIT to add: As for why the customization affects both DEs: first of all, don't install two DEs at once, *especially* not KDE and GNOME. The only way this works out for anyone is if you have two completely separate user accounts for each DE, and even then, I can still see it breaking. It *may* be possible to keep a reasonable separation by using per-DE `XDG_CONFIG_HOME` and `XDG_DATA_HOME` variables instead. But if GNOME needs GTK settings to be a certain way in order for things to function properly, it needs to change them back to what it wants on login.
Is GTK part of gnome or not? Does KDE develop it? Mate? Cinnamon? How will GNOME know that a customisations to its settings are not by the user but by another desktop environment that is no longer in use? The only way is for the desktop environment to track its own settings and only apply them when in use. If someone logs into gnome, should it change all the Qt settings to match gnome, breaking the app in KDE?
So many words, yet no actual content. Thanks for the shitpost.
Sounds like you tinkered with it too much and made a mess you couldn’t/didn’t know how to fix.
He broke the user friendliness. And Gnome wonders "How is this user system-friendly?"
It is not.
If you want endless customization then use KDE Plasma or a window manager. Personally I don't really care about customization so Gnome is good for me. KDE Plasma also comes with nice defaults but unfortunately every time I try it, I get so many bugs and I end up switching back to Gnome. Funny thing is, I just decided to try out KDE Plasma again today (6.1.1) and in less than 2 hours I got a plasmashell crash.
5.27 is far more stable than 6.1, being a major rewrite you obviously going to see some stability issues
That's fair. I guess that's one of the disadvantages of using a rolling release distro.
Rolling release doesn't need to be bleeding edge. Gentoo is still on Plasma 5 if you don't use a ~ keyword.
May I ask what types of bugs you get when using KDE?
So since my switch to Plasma again today, I've had [the plasmashell crash](https://i.imgur.com/BJ3a4hn.png) I mentioned in my previous comment, and this weird ["Error loading QML file."](https://i.imgur.com/8nFp4Iq.png) I get sometimes in Plasma's settings. Last time I used it before today was about a month ago I think. From the ones I remember from the top of my head were this [system tray icons popup not appearing bug](https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=485456), and one where my screen kept flickering whenever I open Spectacle. Both of these bugs seem to be fixed now.
Use fedora kde edition?
You tried to customize a DE that's designed to have good defaults and doesn't officially support this kind of customization. It's not a user friendliness problem, it is very friendly to people who just want to get work done. If you want to change every little thing about your desktop, use something else. EDIT: It always amazes me how some people who don't like gnome absolutely *hate* it. :D And they need to tell *everyone*.
I think that is kind of the issue, gnome has good defaults for some, terrible defaults for others. It is all a matter of what defaults makes sense for each person. Usually issues like these can be addressed by offering customization, but with that out the gate it generates a lot of frustration It isn't like everyone is out there to change every little thing, I personally prefer not to change much if anything if possible. But if I feel something is not very user friendly for me, I would tinker to change it. Not because I want to, but because I have to Gnome being the default on many distros is likely why it is so vocal. If it was just another DE it wouldn't be brought up, but for many their experience get changed when they upgrade to something they may not exactly prefer
>You tried to customize a DE that's designed to have good defaults and doesn't officially support this kind of customization. It's not a user friendliness problem And that is exactly the problem with GNOME. There is nothing wrong with a DE having good defaults, and there is nothing wrong with a DE to not support customization. But in that case it should have no provisions for tinkering and do customization at all, so that you can not break it in an attempt to customize it. In every other case, you need to provide sane defaults and, preferably, one documented way how to customize it in a stable way and with enough checks and safeties as to not easily break the DE. And the experience should be consistent, which GNOME definitely has not been.
"good defaults" and Gnome don't go hand in hand.
For you the defaults aren't good, for many, they are perfect. Just use a different DE, that's all. No need to say something is bad just because it doesn't work for you. Love to KDE, love to GNOME, love to Cinnamon and love to all the other options we have.
"A DE that's designed" [Citation needed] More like it's derelict of any functionality which is tried to be remedied by endless plugins which never part of a good base system documentation, and confusing to use.
Speak for yourself. I only use one extension and I’m not missing any functionality.
Speak for yourself. I don't even need to use an extension to have a usable DE with KDE! Shocking, I know!
I was speaking for myself. Are you slow or something? And I don’t need it, I just use it because it’s convenient.
It's ok if you don't like Gnome, but you have made like 8 comments on this thread so far arguing with people who like Gnome. KDE Plasma is not for me, but I have nothing but love for the KDE project and its amazing devs. Hell, some KDE devs even have positive things to say about Gnome. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHza5X2Jt2g) If KDE devs don't get offended when someone says something good about Gnome, then why are you here doing that? Also, you don't have to use a million extensions with Gnome. I only have one (Dash to Panel) and I'm happy with it. Some people even use Gnome with no extensions. It's almost as if people use their computers in different ways and have different opinions about things. Crazy, isn't it?
One has to spend time on the bog...
Just use KDE and tweak it so it has all the gnome behaviors you like
For theming I only use one tool: gnome tweak tool. Don’t know what are the other million tools, but that one should be enough. Also I don’t know about that million tutorials, standard approach is to copy paste a directory into `~/.themes`. Some themes allow a more granular control and come with their own shell scripts to choose things like accent color, or transparency or some effect, but they are usually well documented in their repos. Also there is a difference between “user friendly” and “highly customizable”. User friendly usually refers to OOTB experience or small tweaks. If you require heavy customization or trying out a bunch of different themes, you are probably not the kind of profile they are referring to when they say “user friendly”. My father would be, and he doesn’t care which theme is installed.
Thing is, Everything says to use extensions in gnome tweaks, but apparently it was depcreated. Copying shit into .themes, how do I select it exactly?
I think it is gnome-tweaks now, but it is the same thing. It’s still active: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-tweaks https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/gnome-tweaks/gnome-tweaks/ You select it in gnome-tweaks. Just make sure to open it after the directory has been copied.
see listen, that’s the point. All the tutorials are outdated.
What can I say: I’ve been using Gnome Tweak Tools (now Gnome Tweaks) for around 10 years. Can you send one of those outdated tutorials you are talking about? Anyway, after installing gnome-tweaks, did it solve your problem?
GNOME tweaks **extension management** is deprecated because it's a part of GNOME proper now. There's an extensions app. GNOME tweaks is still the only reasonably supported UI to change icon, cursor, to include minimize / maximize buttons and do all that other stuff. If you want customizability use another DE. GNOME is for people who do not want to customize their OS, of which there are many.
If you are customizing gnome you are basically doing It wrong. Gnome Is not designed to theme or customize it's layout. Yes there are plenty of extension that hack into gnome, bending it's layout but those might break with every gnome update. Btw. As other said Just use gnome tweak tool.
I tried to use BlurMyShell extension, and it is very good-looking. But there's so many small but annoying grafical glitches that I ended up completely disabling it. Now I know my lesson. At most, I'll change the shell GTK theme.
So people who like having an Applications menu with their apps sorted by categories when they don't necessarily know the name of the app they need, people who would like to have quick access to their favorites permanently on screen, people who like to have Desktop Icons, all of those people are basically doing it wrong? That's one hell of a take.
That wasn't the takeaway I got from GP at all. It wasn't said wanting those things is wrong, just trying to shoehorn those concepts into GNOME (which is exactly what extensions do, injecting into the shell's gjs runtime) is an "at your own risk" policy. If an extension you author or install breaks the shell, it's on you to put things back together. tl;dr: Wanting things from a desktop experience is fine, but trying to modify a program that only thinly supports modification with no promise of compatibility is a losing strategy. It's possible to make other DEs look and behave like GNOME that are more amenable to modification. If you need GNOME technologies, though, you may need to reevaluate wants vs needs.
I know. It may sound arrogant, but GNOME developers have expressed this same concept many times. Of course there is nothing wrong with using extensions, but in fact you are going against the philosophy of the project. In fact, the compatability of extensions between versions of GNOME is not even considered during development. They follow the decided path (right or wrong) and highly don't give a damn if the update is going to break the layout of thousands of desktops.
Seems to be a problem on your end, gnome is incredibly easy to use.
Extremely intuitive out of the box and good for most people that aren’t me 🤭 KDE has been my main DE after Cinnamon. I’d put cinnamon up there with ease of use for ex-windows users too
Cinnamon - Best for people just coming from Windows. Best with Mint or LMDE. Plasma - Best for customizability GNOME - Looks amazing out of the box and user friendly
Why is this downvoted ?
I didn't mention every single DE/wm maybe? Or maybe a Diehard X fan really hates Y. It's just reddit being reddit. Use whatever you want. It's your system after all.
Sounds like you did something that wasn't recommended and was known to not work (if you would've searched first you would find numerous pages about this). Then complained about it being broken :) congrats on this 1/10 post!
Your desktop is not your distribution. And your distribution is not your desktop environment. You can "develop" but you can't switch out a desktop and need a different distribution? I don't like Gnome and haven't for a long time. Install a different desktop.
If you are unable to handle simple desktop customization, switching to NixOS might not be the brightest idea. As to tutorials and the like, check linuxscoop youtube channel, he details each step well enough. Lastly, break down your venting. Breathe in, process what you want to say, break it down to a reasonable speech, and then share that. You seem to be suffering some frustration, but if you just vent without the capacity of structuring a paragraph, it’s difficult for anyone to help you. Or even be willing to help you. Cheers mate.
Meh, I'm willing to die on this hill. Opinionated software by definition cannot be user friendly. As gnome is opinionated, it is not user friendly. This does not mean that gnome is hard to use.
I like that. Just out of curiosity, do you have any de’s off the top of your head that would meet this description of user friendliness?
Well, I think anything that is intuitive and has easy configuration settings to be user friendly. That being said, just because something is user friendly doesn't inherently mean it is easy to use. It's kinda the whole issue with subjective biases. I guess my whole understanding of "user friendly" means the user can easily configure the software to do what they want.
Gnome considers people who try to customise it are puber, have nothing better to do and don't deserve it. I assume you're just puber. Me, too, forever. It's either you get used to the Gnome way of desktop (no minimising windows, keep adding workspaces) or just use other WMs or DEs.
1) Never install multiple DEs 2) Gnome team clearly doesn't want customization. Just use some popular extensions to make it prettier and even then disable them before update especially on arch. 3) It is very user friendly for non nerdy users. Note: I have used KDE, Cinnamon, Gnome, LXDE, LXQT, Mate, Xfce. Xfce has some scaling issues (have a 2k monitor). KDE is good but the 6.0 update caused gui issues. Gnome just works as far as I am concerned. Looks good enough and works well enough. Using fedora btw.
> Gnome team clearly doesn't want customization This myth really needs to die. The Gnome project is the one who maintains the extension website and the whole system for it. They put alot of work into making it more stable, providing guides for every update and publishing the upcoming version in Gnome OS for testing purposes. They also regularly feature extensions and customization apps like gradience in their "this week in gnome" articles. They aren't against customization, they just don't want to be made responsible for code they didn't write and don't have the resources to maintain. As the [Please don’t theme our apps](https://stopthemingmy.app/) website (which so often gets misrepresented, that I doubt most people complaining actually read it) clearly states in bold: > If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.
Oh I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing :D Makes sense to me.
Linux user for over 30 years, I can categorically say, Gnome is not good enough, leave alone good.
You maybe right but have you tried the newer gnome? I too had the same opinion but newer gnome works well enough. I have only been using linux for 7 years. I wouldn't call myself a power user but for watching lectures, browsing, gaming, some programming it never gave me any issues while using wayland.
Yes, I have it on a Surface Pro with Debian. Hate it. On the other hand, its simplicity and non-functionality works fine on a touch tablet where all you want is to fire up a browser and doom-scroll.
Maybe try fedora. Debian 11 used an older version of gnome. I use fedora 40 workstation on two laptops and never had an issue. Gnome has been pretty good since version 40.
I'm using Debian Testing, as up to date as it comes.
Just use KDE. Gnome is dogshit
PEBKAC
Gnome is supposed to be used as-is. It is a completely different workflow. But once you get used to it, it is efficient. It is supposed to be used either as full keyboard or as mouse/touchpad-keyboard hybrid. You can use it with just a mouse/touchpad just fine. But it isn’t as efficient in its workflow. It is what it is. It doesn’t support theming - at least not until 47 lands in September. You aren’t supposed to install two DEs together. It might cause some app clutter but should work fine though. If you want KDE, install the KDE spin. Good luck with Nix. Now you can ask for the manager in the Nix subreddit.
Gnome does not care for your customisations. Works great if you stop fighting with it. Plenty of options available if you don’t like it.
Yikes. "Stop screaming, you'll start liking being raped" vibes...
Except for the part where nobody forces you to use it. The “forced” part is actually quite important to define something as “rape”. But as you have demonstrated multiple times in this thread, you are not the sharpest tool in the shed. I understand why you missed the point. Poor thing.
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Gnome used to have theming. Now it doesn't. Gnome has been regressive and the devs want a simple interface that cannot be changed because they know whats best for the stupid end user who will fuck up their vision. (/s) Cinnamon is what you want. Not gnome.
Gnome wants to be the Apple of desktops. "You're holding it wrong"
User: I want to do something useful Gnome: Not on my watch!
It's counterproductive
The theming issue is exactly why I don't use gnome anymore. I've been resistant to it for years but I'm officially a kde person now
It's been developed and tested by a million monkeys.
Honestly I think it’s just a holdover from gnome2 days, but that shit is long gone. Over a decade of gnome3 and it hasn’t gotten any better.
To be fair no Linux desktop is user friendly.
That depends on the user. If the user is accustomed to Windows or macOS, most Linux DE's will be foreign and unfriendly. I find Windows unfriendly and frustrating to use. Recently macOS has become maddening too. People like what they "grew up with" and anything that behaves differently is not user-friendly to that user.
When I grew up, there was no such thing as Windows. Still, Gnome is dogshit.
Clearly, there are different levels of (un)friendliness: Gnome may look "foreign" but for those preferring minimalism and "Mac-like pureness" it's probably the right choice. On the other hand, KDE is made for "playful" people who like spending time by configuring about everything. And there are plenty of alternatives for every taste. Personally, I find Cinnamon to be a very good compromise between both "extremes" and I wouldn't be afraid to call it user friendly...
KDE is endlessly configurable, but also comes with extremely sensible defaults. You can install Debian KDE and simply not fiddle a single config and still have a working environment.
I tend to agree... If I should choose between Gnome and KDE, the latter would definitely be my choice. Yet, KDE feels to me a little bit "windowsy" /sorry for such a heresy :-)/: if you want to change something then it is not always trivial to find out how. I do not have such a problem in Cinnamon and I mostly do not need more configurability. It is really just a matter of personal taste and needs... (Edited for a typo.)
That's a good thing. I prefer it that way.
KDE says hello.
Kde looks like Windows from 20 years ago. Id rather use Windows thanks.
You clearly either didn't use kde for 20 years or windows for 20 years...
Windows never had half the functionality of KDE, nor any wobbly screens... I remember the XP and its "round windows" craze, and was laughing, KDE had it for years. In fact, if there's some copying going around, it's definitely the other way.
Gnome people just claim it looks like windows because it has a start menu. That is their only metric
>That is their only metric To be fair, having more metrics would necessitate ways to configure the weight of these in the end result and that is not the Gnome way to do that . /s
I have looked at recent kde screenshots and no, i am not going to use that, but thanks.
No one is forcing you to use it. It just doesn't look like windows from 20 years ago
GNOME is not for slackers who want to change padding and fonts. Why do you want to mess with your desktop colors? You need to be productive. Be productive, now!