this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Well, before wayland I always used fluxbox (eventually with picom compositor, which previously was compton). Then now on wayland I'm using sway with fuzzel, yambar and others.
I've always felt both gnome and kde, as well as most other DEs really bloated. Gnome used to be more stable on wayland, and as of Today with better support for nvidia AFAIK, but KDE is quickly catching up.
Not sure why the hate on gnome (and I guess on GTK as well). It doesn't offer all the customization by default, but you can get it through extensions while available. But on KDE one really needs to see a pletora of dependencies each time one adds a simple module or application. Both are improving gradually to become less intense on resources being KDE more advanced on that.
But hey, both are bloated compared to non full DE compositors such as sway or labwc. BTW I use sway with tabbed mode (not actually tiling) and some tweaks, and I prefer that over stacking compositors, but if wanting one labwc is pretty cool.
On X11 there's a huge amount of window managers plus compositors plus several other applications which altogether can give a similar sense to a DE but way less intense on resources, and for sure way less bloated. To me DEs are overrated to answer your title, but perhaps that's just me, :)
re the hate on gnome: extensions are unsupported and can and do break between versions, sometimes intentionasely. The gnome devs would realey really like it if you didn't use extensions and just admit they know best for you.
This is patently untrue. The GNOME developers even maintain their own repository with a bunch of extensions for people to use. Why would they do so if they didn't want anyone to use them?
Do extensions break on GNOME major version upgrades? Sometimes, yeah. Nobody is forced to upgrade if they don't want to, and it's not like you log into your desktop one day to be surprised with a broken system. There's even an upgrade assistant that will tell you prior to an upgrade if any extensions will break.
This pervasive loud minority of whiny complainers spreading nonsense about GNOME is annoying. It's free software; don't use it if you don't like it, that's fine. But don't spread lies about it, that's childish.