Rusty Piggo on Nostr: Meh, I think GNOME's minimalism is kind of a mixed bag the same way I think KDE's ...

Meh, I think GNOME's minimalism is kind of a mixed bag the same way I think KDE's excess is a mixed bag in the opposite direction-- although, to be fair, KDE has done an amazing job smoothing the experience out in recent years. I don't have a big issue relying on GNOME extensions for additional functionality, even for the particularly headass things that really out to be baked in (how is middle click to close not baked into the shell???). I think, for me, that's mostly down to liking GNOME's design decisions so the lack of options don't really bother me. I like the Overview paradigm, I detest taskbars and docks, I like CSDs, I like having a clean desktop, etc. So not having options to change those things baked in doesn't really bother me.

I dunno, I'd personally rather build up my experience to what I want than to try to navigate a complicated experience with a ton of bells and whistles, but I also wouldn't be using GNOME if I didn't like the foundation of it and had to do a lot of building to get where I wanted.

Which more broadly speaks to my overall opinions on desktop environments in Linux. If you don't really like the foundation of a DE, you probably just shouldn't use it instead of being salty about it. I understand the people who are stuck on a workstation they don't like (it's still dumb to me you can't really cleanly install multiple DE's without them colliding), but if you're free to pick whatever DE you want then why's it worth complaining about one you don't like and don't use?

But also I'm a hypocrite because I complain about KDE, but only because they host my mortal enemy: the dreaded menu bar