Gnome Extensions vs KDE Plasma Customization ...

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► Chapters:

00:00 - Gnome vs KDE Plasma
00:34 - Customization Settings
01:48 - How to install themes on Gnome
02:42 - Gnome Extensions vs KDE Plasma Customization
04:05 - Extending a baseline
05:02 - Is KDE Plasma better for customization?
06:13 - Why Gnome is difficult sometimes
07:33 - My thoughts ...
07:51 - Conclusion

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► Description Tags:

gnome vs kde, gnome vs kde plasma, gnome extensions, gnome extension manager, gnome customization, linux customization, kde plasma customization, how to customize gnome, how to customize kde plasma, is kde plasma better, is gnome better, gnome tweaks, michael horn

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#linux #opensource #tipsandtricks

[kevn-]

While I agree with a lot of your sentiments, history has shown that critiques and suggestions for improving gnome fall on deaf ears. The developers have shown endless examples of the fact that they don't care about supporting anything outside of their exact view of the gnome experience which they see as the only proper way of using it. User ideas don't matter to gnome devs. What matters to them is their own experience and they expect all other users to adapt to that and deal with it. There are ways that gnome developers could ensure that extensions work for the most part between gnome version updates without requiring the extension to be updated every time. Instead it feels as if extensions are the community's way of battling with devs to take some sort of control of their gnome experience outside of the limited gnome defaults and the gnome devs have no intention of doing anything to make that any easier for users and extension devs.

[nabara]

Out of the box I love gnome workflow but KDE can be tailored to my liking. Global menu for life!

[bettermasteryi]

Over the course of 10-15 years that I have known the Linux world, I could never use KDE more than a week. The DE as a whole for being so customizable feels like a modular setup. I personally really love the way Gnome looks and feel. It looks smoother and has menus that are easy to understand and it has never, at least for me, never broke after an update. Unlike KDE, which can break once you update it. Pointing at Arch based Distros using KDE, they will definitely need you to do extra steps before they work after an update. Again, this reminds me of the 2nd problem that I have with Linux community. Calling something hard for not working out of the box is not the solution - case and point being Arch. I guarantee you there will be someone who will be hurt that I had issue using Arch and I pointed it out. Apparently Arch users love self inflicted pain.

[CristobalWatsonHernandez]

Both have their advantages, I personally use Cinnamon as it works exactly how I want out of the box. The best DE and theme is the one that works for you.

[infinitivez]

What's weird is ever since 4.5, Gnome desktop has had the ability the create extensions, natively. I don't understand why they don't just include the ability in settings, short of the same few people who always yell about UI changes of any sorts. The UI documentation is abstracted and abused now, that it takes entire wikipedias to describe what an app should look like.

Honestly, it's refreshing to see Cosmic and KDE/Plasma come along and upend Gnome from its stale ole throne. They're too stuck on process, and have forgotten what progress is.

[yaroslav]

GNOME is my daily driver, and I appreciate its workflow. It's solid and consistent. The GNOME developers embrace a philosophy I really like: they avoid creating bloated software overloaded with functions that most users would rarely use. Instead, they offer a solid vanilla experience with the option to extend it through extensions.However, I am disappointed that these extensions and their support are not given enough attention. They aren't advertised and need to be installed separately, rather than being available by default. This is something I find hard to understand.

[UltraZelda]

GNOME is not even as customizable as KDE even with unofficial extensions. And even if it was, you can't really rely on unofficial extensions in the same way you can the official customizability of KDE. KDE is built to support customizability, GNOME is built to be used basically as they give it to you in a similar way to Windows and Mac; otherwise they would support such customization. Instead, the GNOME developers are actively *hostile* towards using their desktop in ways that *they* don't intend.

The upcoming Cosmic desktop seems to make the most sense for GNOME users who want to customize their desktop, as it is designed not only to function similarly to GNOME but also officially support a lot more customization.

[pepavasata]

For me, GNOME just makes things way easier. I don't really want THAT many changes and KDE is just WAY too complicated. Menus upon menus.

[gljames]

Was on Gnome, but now moving to Cosmic.

[adndot]

i use gnome personally, mostly because window tiling managers have never worked on kde plasma before. installing the paperwm extension "just works" on gnome. however, i'm definitely gonna try COSMIC when it comes out, because it feels like gnome if it was more respectful of it's people

[captainfordo]

I like the default Gnome look so I don’t really care about customization. Only use a few extensions including ArcMenu and Blur my Shell.

[centy]

KDE for me. I barely customised my gnome install over a 2 year period because the few things I tried at first either didn't work at all or were bugged and it often never explained why, soured me on continuing. KDE I customise all the time because it's all there right from the off, I can see all the tweakable settings, and because it's all part of the same system I've barely had any issues other than some clunky menus.

[jirikral]

I don't know about others but I am hapilly running my 19 extensions on Fedora 40 with Gnome without problems. While Gnome might not be that much customizable when it comes to look & feel, the extensions provide a lot of customization when it comes to functionality. Maybe I am an idiot, but on KDE I was able to find only one applet (Thermal monitor I think it was called) that could show me temperature of different computer components in the status bar and unfortunately it didn't seem to work for me. In comparison in the Gnome extension store I was able to find at least 3 extensions that add this functionality and work out of the box.

[CathrineMacNiel]

the one thing that gnome/gtk has over kde/qt is that it doesn't need widget engines to get a customised look, you can just install a new application style. On KDEs side you are quite limited in that regard.

[RedSntDK]

I kind of respect how headstrong Gnome has always been. It's their way or the highway. It also means that it's practically idiot proof, since there's less things you can mess up.
Oh, and regarding that conclusion, Debian is definitely not rocking the boat with too many breaking updates, you got that part right. Downside is that I'm still on KDE 5.11 😭

[newoldbrain]

If you want to change Gnome appearance, you just switch to KDE

[alphaomega]

first of all when you want to be able to customize your desktop looks, or to download the customizations, you want to FIRST be able to SEE how it looks, right? you can do that in plasma. not in gnome. you can go to the gnome extension website, but even there the images are lacking. and some stuff can be INCOMPATIBLE to the installed gnome in your systems.
in plasma, all you can see available are the ones COMPATIBLE with your current plasma. saves you from any headaches or a waste download. and in plasma, your desktop look could look in so many ways. transparent etc. you dont get that in gnome. all gnome customizations are just variant of the BASIC. which is VERY LIMITED in look styles.
also, whats great about plasma isnt just the look customizations. there are some things that you could manage in plasma that you cant in gnome. like those installed SSL keys for certain regions access.
those installed SSL keys can make the people from the key's related regions to use the key to make a TUNNELED CONNECTIONS to your device. and you might not want to have any unknown tunneling from some region or some "companies".
in plasma, you could manage that. not in gnome. i think its a big plus.

also just to add, a bit of off topic, but linux and all its distros should find a way to prevent unwanted "tunneling" to github ip addresses done without CONSENT.

[salamanetwork]

KDE User since 2001, I love KDE even when it breaks things or everything 😂😂😂

[claytonpellow]

gnome with blur my shell, dash2dock animated, and arch linux update, extensions does the job great for me. i dont need all that extra stuff. i like seeing the dock on the screen and its just smooth. kde is cool but 90 percent of the global themes dont load or work, there is way too much going on, i dont want to spend 20 minutes making it feel nice and learning all the extra features its a bit complex. i used kde a while but still dont know all the features and i just like that lets go approach to gnome. budgie is also nice if you want that windows like appearance simplicity and less to deal with. just looks good and changing things on it is simple at least on endeavour os as they theme all the DEs nicely out of the box. if you want to spend hours learning the in and outs of a desktop environment and are really willing to learn all the background things kde is great and more customizable than most but for those that would like to just have a full system up and going in no time thats usable budgie and gnome are fine to me. xfce is nice on endeavour os with themes they made but on other linux distros xfce is kinda old and crappy out of the box and needs alot of customizing to look okay

[xdweed]

I understand the customization of GNOME with extensions, but I think it needs a few official extensions. For example, AppIndicator (system tray), Desktop Icons, Dash to Dock, Dash to Panel, ArcMenu, Tiling Assistant, Vitals are very basic extensions and we install them as 3rd party. The GNOME team also needs to make official extensions for such basic things.