I use Gnome as my desktop environment for my private laptop. As a Linux user, at the moment I was distro-hopping, I also tried different desktop environments:
- started with KDE: as everything is customizable, this gives a lot of options and possibilities. But also a lot of possibilities to screw-up (or at least, make everything inconsistent). For my use-case I found it a bit too customizable.
- then Gnome: maybe a bit too minimalistic. As far as I know, they have really thought about the workflow. But as someone who uses multiple operating systems, I found the default gnome workflow too different from what I expect.
- Mate: didn’t like the Gnome 2 look, can imagine when you’re really used to that, you like it, but as I don’t have an intimate history with Gnome 2, I don’t care about that feel.
- Cinnamon: liked the defaults. But in the end didn’t go for it, but to be honest, don’t really know anymore why
In the end, I gave Gnome a second chance, and opted to go for as little customization as possible. The first time I installed it (and updated it), a lot of extensions broke, were not compatible with each other, and were basically just giving headaches. So, for the last two years, I’m using Gnome.
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