[bstar77]

For someone that only runs 3 programs (terminal, emacs and firefox) gnome is a terrible choice. In fact, a desktop environment is a terrible choice.

> I want good text rendering and windows and buttons with rounded corners

You don't need gnome or KDE for this. I run a primarily terminal oriented desktop, but my GTK apps still look great. I still run picom and could easily do rounded corners if I wanted.

My point is that there are much better options than gnome if you want a beautiful minimal setup especially if you get into tilers.

[iudqnolq]

I only want a handful of "apps" with windows I open. But I also want a little wifi thing in the corner I can click on. I want a spotify thingy in the topbar with the current song title and a pause button. When I hit the volume up button on my keyboard I want a little thingy to pop up to graphically display how the level is changing. And so on ad infinitum. Oh an I also don't want to configure the custom optimimal indicator for each case.

I tried a few stripped down options but it turned out a full GNOME environment that I barely use works best.

[bstar77]

This is all trivially easy to setup in any environment.

[iudqnolq]

It's all solvable, but it isn't trivial (for me). Every little thing requires a bunch of googling, evaluating, and setup. For example, I'd have to decide what kind of network picker I prefer, which isn't a choice I ever want to have to make: https://www.reddit.com/r/swaywm/comments/ck66cz/question_how...

[accelbred]

Gnome is great for this usecase. I only use emacs and libewolf, and gnome is the best desktop experience I've had.

I used i3/bspwm/etc for years before, and was convinced it was better until I had to use Gnome at work for a bit. Now I use Gnome everywhere.

The UI polish is nice. Stuff like wifi and bluetooth just work well without having to dig into wpa_supplicant or w/e. I can plug in external monitors and easily rearrange displays.

Sure you can set all this up in a bespoke custom environment, but you have to set it all up, and predict future needs. Its nice not having to dig into or install something whenever I realize I need to do something I didn't account for. I use my PC for getting stuff done, not to get on the top of r/unixporn.

[bstar77]

I could not (respectfully) disagree more. It's true that you can get a (seemingly) working system out of the gate, but that's rarely where I experience issues with Gnome or KDE. My issues usually happen after errant updates.

To address all of the issues you are listing, I just use NixOS and call it a day. I have snapshot support, I can change channels on a whim, swap out kernels on a whim and rebuild everything on a whim. If I want to nuke everything, I can have a new system up and running in under an hour because I just build on my meticulously configured configuration.nix and various flakes.

My point is that I don't want my DE to dictate how my system works. I mainly use CLI tools and configs, but also use Gnome and XFCE tools for select things. In the past 2 years I've never had a build issue and I run on bleeding edge versions.

You stating that you use your PC to get work done (and not r/unixporn notoriety) insinuates that those that don't agree with you are obsessed with superficial things. I can just as easily say you lack the knowledge of how your computer works so you lash out to mask your ignorance. Remember, this isn't Reddit, some of us here know what we are talking about.

[accelbred]

I also use NixOS. It does not solve the problems I am mentioning. It also does solve issues due to updates, so not sure what you mean there. Changing system configuration is the easy part. Finding out which program fits your needs is the hard part.

The problems I've had on i3/bspwm/etc before are like the following:

- Client asks me to share my screen on projector. Since I'd never configured an external monitor on my laptop as I never thought I would need it, it of course did not work with just plugging in HDMI. Did not have time to go figure out how to create a desktop on another monitor with i3.

- I need to connect to a wifi network that has a weird config that needs weird config with wpa_supplicant though cli/config. Though NetworkManager just works.

- I'm sent an image which doesn't render right in feh, so I have to find another image viewer.

- I'm navigating a PDF that uses a feature I don't know the zathura command for.

- After laptop shuts down without notice, realize dunst hasn't been showing my low battery notifications for some time.

These are all common problems with a custom minimal setup, that are solved by using a full DE, such as Gnome or KDE.

> My point is that I don't want my DE to dictate how my system works...

Thats fine. Thats not everybody though.

> You stating that you use your PC to get work done (and not r/unixporn notoriety) insinuates that those that don't agree with you are obsessed with superficial things

I apologize for the wording if it came across as offensive. I intended to convey that not everyone cares about a "beautiful minimal setup". Sure, if you do, more power to you. Though these setups are not the path of least resistance for people who do not care about being minimal. For people who do not want to tinker with their DE, I would not recommend such setups, and would recommend Gnome. Back when I had more time, I loved tinkering with my DE, but I have limited time now and I'd rather tinker with implementing Lisp interpreters than with my DE.

[nvy]

I'd be interested in reading a writeup on this subject; I've always enjoyed running linux without a DE but the awful text rendering makes it a sub-par experience. I have one of the lcdfans modded thinkpads running Fedora and awesomewm in lieu of gnome shell.

But I still have most of gnome involved because something in there somewhere makes things look "nice" and if you just do a barebones install of X/wayland plus your WM of choice, things tend to look awful, and frankly I haven't got time nor energy to figure out what the magic sauce is.

[creshal]

It used to be that you have to fiddle with a lot of fontconfig settings to get decent rendering results, but they've been shipping mostly sane defaults for quite a while now.

Hinting for some reason still has to be enabled manually, but very lightweight tools like `lxappearance` make that a single click, if you don't want to touch XML by hand.

For the past 15 years, my desktop has been

• openbox (also handles keyboard shortcuts etc., can be configured visually with obconf, which can also handle font settings iirc)

• picom (for compositing; before, the tools it was forked from)

• dunst (for notifications)

• arandr (for configuring external displays)

• flameshot (for screenshotting)

• Random LXDE bits as necessary (lxpanel at the absolute minimum, lxsession when I need to deal with polkit things, lxappearance sometimes)

It doesn't do much in terms of system configuration etc., but I didn't find I need much anyway these days. Printers etc. I no longer use, and most system settings can be configured with systemd's localectl/timedatectl once and left alone.

[nvy]

>lxappearance

My understanding is that lxappearance is for GTK stuff only; is there a similar tool for Qt-based stuff?

[creshal]

I set QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qgnomeplatform in my xinitrc and don't care further, seems to work fine.

[bstar77]

This is my DE free terminal-centric setup:

https://imgur.com/a/8mAoT2u

It took me about 3 weeks to figure everything out. You ideally need to use a distro where you can build from scratch (Arch/NixOS/Void/etc) if you want to truly be minimal. If you are OK using NixOS I can give you my configuration.nix.

[kelvinjps]

I have the same problem

[jitl]

Some people don’t want to mess around with Linux to that degree. The OP said he wanted a seamless base system; he can always “fall back” to vanilla gnome if the customizations break somehow. With a custom desktop environment I always kept Gnome installed anyways “just in case”.

[bstar77]

That's fine, but you will gain that time back after the initial setup is done. Pretty soon you will be fighting the system rather than it working for you.

The point where Gnome tends to go to shit is when installing the new major/minor update.

[pjmlp]

I guess twm would do then.

[bstar77]

Openbox is a good floating wm if tilers aren't for you.