Spent lots of time with Gnome 2.

In Dec 2024 I got hooked in Hyprland on Arch and have a cool rice for it. But I’ve tried KDE on desktop now with Parrot OS since Plasma is popular. Still need to find some cool dot files or rice it myself.

I’ve noticed SwayFX getting lots of love lately. I might use that as an option with Plasma but am afraid of conflicts. I’m excited about it since Linux has now officially replaced windows on my gaming rig, which is the very last MS computer left in my house.

  • Veraxis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    5 days ago

    KDE. I don’t even do much to customize it. I think it looks pretty good out of the box.

    • comrade_twisty@feddit.orgEnglish
      9·
      5 days ago

      The only thing I customize is to turn off the floating panel, I just can’t stand the small gap on the bottom and the sides. It just looks off to me.

      • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        5 days ago

        I’d like to compliment on it changing that when you open a full screen app. Yet, these tiny pixels look so little difference that it looks very much off to me indeed. And I’d prefer to have no dock at all. So I use Sway for myself. It’s that I interact with KDE sometimes.

  • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
    12·
    5 days ago

    KDE Plasma. It’s the most feature rich “just works” DE there is. GNOME doesn’t even have fucking maximize and minimize buttons by default without adding them via GNOME Tweaks.

    I used to be a Cinnamon/Linux Mint lover, but their slow implementation of Wayland, Window Scaling, and certain other annoyances like their split NetworkManager GUI between GNOME’s UI and the native NetworkManager UI made me switch.

  • Frosty@pawb.socialEnglish
    13·
    5 days ago

    KDE Plasma all the way, on the desktop, the laptops and the two set top boxes.

    • ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      2·
      16 hours ago

      Used it for years back in 2012-2014. Was writing my Master’s thesis in LaTeX. Simple and absolutely no issues. It certainly wasn’t eye candy back then though.

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
    19·
    5 days ago

    Niri + Noctalia shell. I find the scrolling tiles to be excellent for my workflow, and the desktop shell feels nice and polished. Plus, Niri supports the Wayland zwlr_layer_shell, which means I can finally use Wallpaper Engine; there’s even a Noctalia plugin for it.

    Niri has been great for gaming and streaming, so be sure to check it out if you haven’t.

    I would be hesitant to use anything but KWin with Plasma. They were designed together as a set (like Mutter and Gnome), and I suspect replacing the WM would be no small task.

    • ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      1·
      16 hours ago

      So Hyprland with Plasma would be no bueno? Honestly, if I can get my dots right, tile some windows, and get the hotkeys set up similarly, it might be just as good.

    • wltr@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      5 days ago

      Do you mind elaborating on that Wallpaper Engine thing and also Natalia shell. What are they? I’m familiar with Niri, but never used it myself. (Not sure I like scrolling logic, I use barebones Sway.)

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        2·
        5 hours ago

        Noctalia is a fork of Quickshell, and it provides a bar, dock, background handling, plugins store, and easy settings menus to adjust everything. It feels nice and polished, and it’s got a lot of “nice to haves” covered. It also works with Sway! The scrolling logic is a Niri thing, so no need to worry about that.

        Wallpaper Engine is a tool hosted through Steam that allows people to have animated desktops, sometimes ones that have sound and even interactivity. The problem is that it’s 100% built to work with Windows only. Because it’s changing something on your system and not just drawing things on screen like a game, there’s really no way for Proton or Wine to help.

        And that’s what Linux Wallpaper Engine is for! It can take the wallpaper resources and apply them to window managers that support the zwlr_layer_shell protocol, which allows a z-positioning order for the background for Wayland clients. Noctalia has a plugin that makes that integration much easier to manage, so it feels like it’s part of the system rather than a hacky workaround.

      • Calfpupa [she/her]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Noctalia is a Quickshell fork that’s preconfigured. It’s pretty solid, lightweight, and with the most Niri integration I’ve seen. Comes default in the Cachyos Niri config.

  • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    Cinnamon. Desktop UI peaked in the Gnome 2/Windows XP era and anything after that is bloat for the sake of bloat.

    Might try kde plasma though, if I can make it behave the same.

    • ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      1·
      16 hours ago

      I loved Gnome 2. Used it way after Gnome 3 came out for work. I’m not sure something like Hyprland is bloat though. Some of this is really minimalist unless you add a ton of stuff.

    • sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      3 days ago

      I would almost agree to this response. But there is one single Extension that I think is crucial: Appindicator. Without this things like Nextcloud or Synology Drive cannot be used propperly.

      I was leaning to also include copyous. But it is not absolutely mandatory.

  • ClipperDefiance@piefed.socialEnglish
    13·
    5 days ago

    I use KDE. I like how easy it is to customize pretty much everything. Like, if I want everything to be green, I can make everything green and no one can stop me.