Discovering GNOME extensions may have been a mistake.

And one year later half of it breaks because of a Gnome update. Maybe you should have followed up the specific repo that warned that you needed to move to this new extension, or maybe it just went silent without explanation. Something like that.

And because Gnome still lets every extension monkey-patch code right into the shell your whole desktop may crashes in the middle of your work. Especially if the extension devs aren't monitoring changes in Gnome 24/7.
Happened to me 3 times before I moved to KDE. Which I very much dislike in comparison, but it's just way more stable. Couldn't go without extensions in Gnome either because of the very smooth-brained decision to replace the tray icons with their own backend, so any app not supporting their way of doing it either disappears into the void or has their tray icon submenu inaccessible.
Ugh. I love the UI/UX of Gnome, but in terms of stability and compatibility they screwed up phenomenally.
- I feel like it would be easier for everyone that Gnome team made a more stable way for extensions to interact and change the system, but that goes against their philosophy and unified vision. Gnome seems to despice the extensions that so many of their users think are required for sensible use of Gnome desktop.
That's why if you use a lot of extensions you don't run rolling release and don't update to your distros new version instantly
Edit: Because if you move fast, things are gonna break

Every GNOME install tutorial:

please install this 3rd party application to install even more 3rd party extensions, otherwise your default experience will be shit.

Meanwhile KDE:

here you go, everything you need is here. Want more? Want less? Just touch me and find out, I can make your dreams come true, baby.

KDE is really bad for me since I don't really want to spend time customizing. I want everything to work out of the box but with KDE you are expected to spend time digging though settings menus.
- I use KDE with pretty much default settings. ¯(ツ)/¯
- Plasma 6 JustWorks™
  Plop down a theme and call it a day.
- This is my experience but with GNOME. Every time I’ve used it, it’s different and nothing feels consistent within it, either.
- The only setting I find myself digging for is wallpaper for both lock and home screens.
  Why can't both be under Appearance????
- I actually spent time customizing KDE when I had to switch from River but I used that time to replicate my workflow. Did that once, so I think that's okay.
This was a mild pain. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, then I realized that the browser extension and tool worked flawlessly in Firefox, but not Brave.
- That's on you for using a Chromium based browser in the first place.
They could have literally absorbed a couple of the most used plugins into the desktop and i'd be on Gnome today.
nope, you need to go find those plugins and we're going to make breaking changes constantly.

Im like the opposite of that lol :3 always looking for stuff I can remove from my desktop

I'm sure I'll get there, but it's all new to me right now, so the temptation to add a bunch of nonsense is real...
- Absolutely do not checkout "conky" and under no circumstances search for "conky themes" in image search. A program for the utterly deranged
- For me it was "what else don't I need on here?" from the start tbh :3 though I very much did not like the workflow of windows, so being able to nuke all the features that were similar that I found useless was like a sigh of relief since it was like getting rid of annoying clutter in a hoarder's house lol
  Now I basically only have my panel/bar thing on the left of the main display with the time, app tray (cause some apps need it to shut down and stuff lol), wifi, settings/power off, kde connect, and the blue light filter.. though tbh im considering getting rid of the settings icon from there too
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- I do love removing features from things lol :3.. like my browser which I disabled the top bar and tabs on
Herbstluftwm or bspwm or i3.
Remove all the things.
I'm so close to removing X and using only a console, except
Jami has no terminal app
Inkscape
Gimp
No terminal web browser works for every site I need to visit
The Factory Must Grow
Edit in which Sxan discovers þat double-vertical-bars in piefed comments turns inline text into "spoiler" text. Fixed.
- Yeah there's just too much graphical stuff I need for me to go full CLI lol.. plus for a lot of stuff I prefer being able to just click a button and have it done rather than typing in a full command :3
  TWMs are fun tho :3.. I've tried a bunch including both i3 and bspwm lol
One day, after years of chipping away small, useless details, your interface will finally be a blank screen. Flawless.
- Almost there already tbh :3.. if I didn't need a clock or notifications, then I may have gone to just having my whole desktop be the wallpaper and nothing else lol
  Now if only I could disable all the UI I don't like in all the apps I need too lol
well, isn't that a sign that you have installed too much in the first place? :D
- Ikr? Desktop enviroment bloat :3
  I am currently in the midst of messing around with hyprland for peak minimalism, but honestly I prefer having a full DE, messing around with config files is kinda frustrating when I want to just do 1 little thing.. and oftentimes it's also hard to get the configs exactly how I want (probably gonna go to COSMIC when it comes out :3.. I tried the alpha and it's the best tiling experience out there imo, plus it has decent customization in terms of removing all the little icons I don't need for the most part :3.. though I'd like to be able to remove the window close button too since we already can do minimize/maximize :3.. and preferably remove the whole window top bar)

Your windows disappearing in a flame seems awesome...

I did install that one, and it's pretty fun. You can even change the color of the fire and the speed of the animation.
- Also, the flames make your desktop go faster
It's called "Burn my Windows", it has many many many effects other than the flame and it also works on KDE!
- Cool. You can just add it on the systemsettings.

I use either a tiling window manager, or KDE; I consider any floating window manager that's missing wobbly windows to be missing core functionality

Wobbly windows turned down to a barely perceptible level is a really nice experience that doesn't feel like a gimmick

I wish Xpenguins still worked. Who doesn't want penguins walking all over the desktop?

fuuuucckkk I wish we had more websites designed like this again, this was so much better than the gigantic amount of padding, animations and other random ass elements just for a website that's bland as fuck that we have today.
This penguin maze is hilarious.
fwiw I use wayneko which works on Wayland and draws an animated cat that follows your cursor along the bottom of the screen. Not as chaotic as Xpenguins but it's cute!

this but KDE widgets

this but hyprland :3

For anyone that hasn't played with this yet

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4679/burn-my-windows/

There are so many options! I have it on the original fire one (with the animation sped up), but I'm considering switching to the DOOM inspired one.

You could put a real clock near your monitor

Good thing I have 3 monitors to spread my widgets around.

I have four outputs on my video card. It would be downright wasteful not to use them all.
- With USB-C dock you can easily have 8 more...

I want my bar to look windows-esque

plugin

I want my tray to format the time differently

plugin

I want to change how the active windows looks in the bar

plugin

OS update

two of your plugins broke

I want my tray to format the time differently

new plugin

I want to change how the active windows looks in the bar

new plugin

OS update

let's try KDE

OMG it's perfect out of the box.

I know lots of people love KDE. I haven't tried it yet. I just googled the difference when I was researching distros and chose GNOME because it looked more Mac-like, which is my preference.
- You can have a dock/top taskbar and spotlight-type search easily in KDE. The benefit of KDE is that you don't need third party, unmaintained extensions that break with every second update. Gnome Extensions are critical for even a mac-like experience on Gnome, and you will hate them one day when your programs start randomly crashing.
- If Mac's your bread, gnome is your butter.
  Of course, these days, if Windows 11 is your bread, maybe gnome is your butter.
  I'm one of those crumudgeons that's forever frozen at Windows 95.

linux mint applet

I can play radio from my desktop?

This is the one I saw. It's Internet radio though.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/836/internet-radio/

I mean, if you want radio, just run Pianobar with Pandora, you can drop it in a terminal and it works without even being part of the GUI!.

Top bar for real feels like it bloated, could do with a cleanup, but then it be like "well, this one should stay, and this one seems needed. This one's useful and needs an icon here."

Do I need the title to the currently playing media in there? Well… maybe not. BUT… I do need the accessibility icon. I have big text coz otherwise it small, and though it's not like I disable it ever… uhh… it… well, it's on, so… maybe it,,, should be there, okay? I don't know

Displaying the title of the currently playing media sounds useful!

hyfetch and needy streamer overload theme my beloved