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.

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.

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.

I bet it's lightweight as fuck, tho...

I mean I don't dislike it.

I love Plasma. It's fast, it's stable, it's beautiful, it's real simple and I intuitive, it's easily customizable via GUI, it's packed with great features (that stay completely out of your way if you don't need them). Even the KDE apps are awesome across the board.

It's all down to preference, yadda yadda, but I honestly don't understand why someone would use something like Cinnamon, XFCE or, god forbid, GN*ME instead of KDE Plasma.

That being said, just use what you wanna use.

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 want to downvote you out of fear, yet I want to upvote you for the audacity

Because the "G" has gone silent for too long and will not take it anymore.

Because that’s how people speaking Old English would have pronounced it. And we all know how particular 10th century Saxons are about their Linux desktop.

Gnome's devs are insular and don't listen to suggestions from outsiders. That sounds like Svirfneblin to me!

What is the last KDE you tried? Plasma is SO good, right out of the box.

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.

KDE is way less buggy than it used to be. I still prefer gnome but I don't mind KDE from s stability perspective.