DdB,
"What DE to replace GNOME with?" - 'which GUI is your personal preference' is my favourite topic. Back in the 'old days, I used to study GUIs and write GUI applications to help simplify user experiences. If you like Gnome, would Cinnamon be a good GUI for you? I grew up with text based menus from the DOS era. Hence I disliked the Windows 3.x, Windows 8, Windows 11, and Gnome icon based menus. On mobile phones and tablets icons makes sense to me, but not on laptops and desktops where I use a mouse. Because I like to use text based menus, I very much like XFCE ! Mate is also nice. I use XFCE as I can easily modify the layout and themes to my choices. Not something I could do in Gnome. Recently I also started using KDE. It looks very nice and modern looking. It also has lots of options or other ways to do things which may make it overly complex?. I would recommend KDE to anyone moving from Windows to Linux. Cinnamon I mentioned, looks very attractive, at least it does to me. Like Gnome, it hides complexity, providing a more simpler experience for users. Some will like this others may not. The great thing about Linux is we have choice. If you like Gnome, you use Gnome, if you don't like Gnome, you can use XFCE, if you do not like XFCE, you could choose KDE or one of the other GUIs. I am very thankful to all the people who work on Linux and provide us with choices. One suggestion, install Cinnamon, Mate, and XFCE (as they all use the light display manager), then create three accounts, c_user, m_user, and x_user, then at different times, log into an account after selecting the GUI and try using each of these GUIs, see what you like and what you do not like about each of these. I use different the accounts so any settings I make do not affect the other GUIs, this may not be necessary, but I liked the idea, particularly if you have a file server of any kind (like a NAS) on which you can store any files you want to access from all three accounts. This is not for your primary, long term computer, but just as a trial for two to several months. Worked well for me. I hope my review helps you, but ultimately the decision is yours and what you like, do not be swayed by other people's opinions unless their opinions turn out to be yours too. Most of my friends use Gnome or KDE and are happy with their choice, but I like XFCE and will stay with it for now. XFCE is simple, fast, effective, not resource hungry, and easy to change themes and layout. I use MenuLibre to add or change menu items, though there may be a better program to do this with? When I install XFCE, I also like installing Cinnamon, so I don't have to individually install other programs that I like to use which come with Mate, Cinnamon and Gnome. There is also the whole Xorg (X11), and Wayland thing to think about. Wayland may be the future, but right now, I believe Xorg is the present. The programs I use and like work well as X11 programs. While others will disagree but my experience has been X11 programs (e.g. Chromium screen sharing, and OBS studio) work better than Wayland versions. Wayland has to sort out several shortcomings before I will be happy to use it. Sadly I think all this gets a bit messy and complex, and will turn off new Linux users. George. On Friday, 31-05-2024 at 20:57 DdB wrote: Hello, while being on old-old-stable still (buster) and preparing for an upgrade to bookworm, i noticed, that GNOME once again lost compatibility to my preferred extensions, giving me a hard choice to either go on with my outdated system as long as possible, or find a replacement and change my ways of working. What i did like with GNOME was the ease of use for a handicapped person (like me). But i disliked the overwhelming intrusion into the os, that suppresses many choices and freedom. But as i am still feeling like a noob, i would like to collect some suggestions and comments from you guys: Eventually there is an alternative to the so called "quick-toggler-extension", that i used/exploited to generate a kind of personal menu, easily configured in one go with a json config file, an alternative on another desktop? And the other miss is the "Windows-corner-preview-extension", that is no longer maintained or functional, that i was using all over the place for many different use cases and purposes. That one also suffers from changes inside GNOME, that basically kill volunteers work (repeatedly!) Now is the time to plan ahead for years to come and i don't know, what i should do. DdB
