Whenever I try to use GNOME, there never seems to be a setting for the thing I want to do.
I convinced a friend to try Linux once, and she abandoned it because it didn’t have a setting that she needed for her work. Later, when I tried KDE, not only was the setting there, but it was the default.
It really sucks that desktop is the default for so many distros, because most users coming from Mac or Windows don’t even realize they can use a different desktop environment. So, if your only experience with Linux is GNOME, and you think “Linux sucks”, I can hardly blame you.
Yeah, KDE is just better in so many ways. When gnome launched kde was built on a not-fully-open-source library, but then they fully open sourced QT, and that was decades ago so now there is no excuse!
Yeah, I personally like it quite a lot, but I do find it confusing that so many distros ship it as a default.
It’s probably THE best linux user experience on a laptop with all the large buttons and gestures, but you have to be ready to adapt to the environment instead of the environment adapting to you.
And it’s a shame, because using it can be quite fun if you know what to expect and what not, but I think there is a significant lack of communication on what are the use cases it has been built for.
Also you have to like/not hate libadwaita, which I know is… controversial
My understanding is the KDE release schedule/development cycle keeps it from being a viable primary desktop environment for non-rolling release distros.
I get the feeling you’re not happy with Gnome, but not unhappy enough to ditch it.
Open Source window managers and desktop environments enough to choose from, preferred ones here are ctwm for low resources environments (RPi) and xfce4 for intel based laptops. There are loads of other options, I’m sure, but no experience with those. (KDE and Gnome are the reason my wife and I use xfce4)
Why XFCE for Intel specifically? I use XFCE regardless (currently on an AMD desktop).
I have Intel for my laptops and arm in the RPis. No AMD in use here. (My ancient AMD based servers refuse to boot)
I should have written Intel/AMD, ‘the big, power hungry, stuff’ or non-arm. ;) I don’t want to waste memory for a desktop environment on the RPis when a simple, '90s window manager does the trick as well for the vnc server.