Edit: Yep KDE is the most customizable full desktop environment. I gave Gnome a shot but like KDE A lot more with desktop effects and kwin scripts.
What makes Linux appealing to me is the extent of customizability, but I didn’t find many answers when looking up with desktop environment is them most customizable. Some say KDE is most customizable than say, Gnome, but doesn’t Gnome support CSS customization while KDE doesn’t?
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If infinite customization is what you’re after you shouldn’t use a DE. A WM like i3 och hyprland is much better suited for that
Yeah roll your own everything even greeter is the way forward if you want to customise.
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Probably Emacs. /j
Great operating system, that. Shame it lacks a text editor.
KDE if you want to just configure stuff. Gnome if you want to code or manually style stuff.
Doesn’t gnome change their APIs all the time between minor versions, so themes and plugins have to be constantly rewritten?
Yes, that too. I should have said want to code stuff…and continue to maintain it…
This. Or a window manager to code the whole thing.
I used to use gnome and I am heavily into customization. I gave up using gnome as they would constantly change things often for no real reason that whimsy, breaking previously working scripts, extensions and so on so I stopped using it. Its fine if you want to customize the basics like wall paper but I really wouldn’t bother for in-depth customization. Not because it isn’t possible, but because maintenance of it is a PITA.
KDE fs
Or roll your own via a compositor and various tools a la Hyprland
Yeah, I second this. You may want to look in to DEs/WMs like DWM ©, Xmonad (Haskell), and AwesomeWM (lua) that let you customize them through programming.
No desktop environment. Get a compositor, a runner/menu/app-grid, maybe a panel or dock, set some shortcuts, done desktop environment. It’s how most of wayland outside KDE/Gnome currently works.
I customised Xfce a lot, only with menu settings. I removed the window tabs from the status bar, the focused window title is written on the status bar. The window manager was removed for bspwm. The result is an optimized screen space while keeping the convenience of a DE.
xfce indeed.
Btw, every.single.one of those one-icon plugins, like battery-indicator or pulseaudio-plugin, should at least have a icon-size chooser in their settings. Always needs debugger and some custom CSS.
Gnome by default isn’t customizable, you have to install and turn extensions on, but its as simple as toggling on chrome addons, you goto the extension store and grab what you want, the store could be better usability wise, hate the ui, flathub is like the only usable ui for a store on linux, insane how its all stuck 20 years backwards. (tho I kinda like it lol)
I think gnome just feels good and is the most usable, but thats because I feel the constant need to tinker with plasma, while with gnome I just set my extensions on, tweak them a little maybe once if they have settings and don’t think about it again. It only takes a few to get gnome feeling personalized and it just works well. Plasma feels better swapping from windows, but gnome feels more like a different modern os on par with windows/mac but more minimalist.
I wish plasma was slightly less buggy, anytime I mess with a panel I have to clone a backup just in case it tweaks out and I need to delete it.
No added extensions, just default, id go with plasma, with extensions right now daily use Gnome (but without extensions its bland af, it really needs them and I wish it had more)
Hyprland is technically more customizable, id check out the preconfigs, its more annoying to customize but some of those preconfigs have a lot of different options to start off
They’re all exactly as customizable as you are willing to alter them.
I would say XFCE and Cinnamon; no two XFCE’s look alike and Cinnamon can easily be molded into something very different as well.
I see a lot of people recommending KDE and Gnome; I’ve found those surprisingly rigid, although there are more guides on how to “rice” KDE into the most non-KDE things so there’s that.
