Just switched over from gnome. Overall, I'm happy.

Gnome is configurable, but in a way that isn't really well integrated. It seems buggy to me, but I think it's because my preferences aren't standard.

For instance, I like having my dock on the left, and I like top bar stuff to be in the dock, so the dock is the only thing that can take up screen space, and I like the dock to disappear when I'm not using it.

Simple, right? Can't do it in the regular configuration. Can do part of it in tweaks, which is a separate configuration app, but then some of it requires extensions. So, that's 3 places to go to

What's it called when hiding complexity makes it more complex?

So, that gets me there, but then the dock fails to hide half the time on zoom calls. And when I unlock the screen, I can see the empty space where the top bar used to be for a quick flash before the full sized app window goes back to where I left it.

So far, I don't have those issues with KDE. I don't like the annoying and krappy branding with the launcher icon and more than half the apps having a K in the name, but you can change the launcher icon and use whatever apps you want.

KDE won me over for the simple fact that it's highly configurable, and that configuration is all driven out of one UI tool. Gnome drove me nuts with molding it into the shape I wanted.

I think the 'K-thing' was a big and helpful part of getting early volunteers onboard to build apps for KDE. They really seemed to enjoy rebuilding existing applications into a K-version.

So I guess you just have to live with it, but consider it a way to honor the original contributors who build all the K(DE)-versions of the common apps

I feel the exact same way about the dock. That's.one thing I like about Ubuntu, their dock just makes sense for me. It's on the left by default and always visible (which is how I like it). But of course you can have it auto-hide.

Fun fact about Linux "docks". The reason why they can't do the exact effect Apple uses to auto-scale their dock on mouseover is that Apple patented that particular effect.

> Can do part of it in tweaks, which is a separate configuration app, but then some of it requires extensions.

I'm not sure why you think requiring extensions is a bad idea. I have tried out at least 20 GNOME extensions (and kept maybe a third), and I appreciate the flexible underlying architecture to allow extensions to flourish. With extensions, the same GNOME can have Windows XP style taskbars or Mac-style docks or i3-style tiling or anything in between.

Certainly it would be a more refined experience if the core developers took care of every single possible customization users could want under the sun, but at some point it's more effective to outsource that to other developers. Either that or you end up with Apple-style highly uncustomizable experience designed by a UX designer, which is not what I want.

Extensions are a pragmatic choice.

I ran Linux for a time in the late aughts and came to prefer Gnome to KDE at the time because it just felt more polished. I switched to macOS for many years now, but recently started playing with Linux again on a Thinkpad I got a deal on. Modern Gnome feels unreasonably uncomfigurable without extra tooling, and even with it the options I want are difficult to make work correctly.

I want my window controls on the left, and I want global menu. This was pretty standard and reliable in Gnome ten-fifteen years ago but now both options barely work. What the heck happened. Both of these worked pretty flawlessly in Unity. I'm still pissed at Ubuntu for killing it.

I also don’t like the branding and icons tbh but it brings a lot consistency in terms of overall experience.

When you say switched from gnome, is it on the same os?