 A couple of months ago, I was challenged to do 30 days with GNOME and do a video about it. And it was an interesting idea, but I never found the time to do it, until now. So I received a new computer about two weeks ago, and I decided to try out GNOME. And for the last few weeks, I've kept GNOME as my primary desktop. And of course you might ask, but you're a KDE developer, you developed for KDE. How did you develop for KDE if you use GNOME? Truth be told, I also have a KDE install, but I only really only use it for developing KDE. And as soon as I finish, I'm like, okay, I'm done. I go back to GNOME and start using GNOME for everything else, which means that I've actually used GNOME for everything but working on KDE. And it was interesting. So I really liked the experience. I don't want to come here and say, no, it was terrible. Go to Plasma now. GNOME is really good, half of the people use it. And there are two things that I think particularly justify the use of GNOME, especially on a computer like this. First one being the support for the fingerprint reader. And I know KDE Plasma is getting this in 5.24, but it's still not as good as what GNOME does. So if you're on the login screen, but also at the startup, the, I don't know what's the name, SDDM, sorry for Plasma, GDM for GNOME. And you can just swipe your finger on the fingerprint reader and it works. SDDM, which is the Plasma one, if you get it wrong, maybe you touch it in the wrong way, you're actually stuck and you need to reboot a computer to do an example. So it's not as good. Also the trackpad gestures. Now I'm recording on X, because I haven't yet set up recording on Wayland, but in Wayland you can actually use touchpad gestures. So using three fingers, you can switch between workspaces like that, but also open up the overview. And it feels so nice. Like I'm so waiting for Plasma to implement this. It has four finger gestures, but it's not as good. Like the GNOME one is extremely good. I was extremely happy to use it. Also two things in general that I liked, many people say that GNOME is not customizable and you will go back to Plasma because Plasma is more because, well for sure Plasma is more customizable, but GNOME is not that bad either. And the idea of extensions, for me it worked really. There were just a couple that weren't supported for the latest version, but I just forced them to work and they did. So first one, you can see that I customized a couple of things. I added the blurred background because I love blur. I couldn't live without blur somewhere, so I put it on the background of the overview and it looks gorgeous, like super gorgeous. And then I changed the position and size of the things, but minor stuff. Still, having a couple of extensions I think really helps. By default it was the Ubuntu flavor. I just disabled those extensions and I'm fine. I don't need a dock if there's this. Another thing I liked is the general idea of using virtual desktops that magically appear and you just move windows through them. Well, it fits me. Like on Plasma I used three multiplied by three grid and it did the job for me. I never minimized windows on Plasma either, so I didn't feel like this was lacking in GNOME. I never used folders on my desktop on Plasma, so I didn't feel like GNOME was missing this. So it just worked for me. Like it is the kind of workflow that works for me, so I didn't have an issue except a couple of things. So first, I do not understand why if you go on a first desktop, let's see, and you press the files up, it brings you back to another virtual desktop, because if all the work you do is between virtual desktops, maybe you have, I don't know, six of them, and maybe you forget that you had an app open like five virtual desktops on the left and you just get back to that. I wish that there was an easier way to open an app instead of right click, new window each time. It's a bit slow. I don't know if there's a way. Sure, I could use a dock, but I mean, GNOME Vanilla should be able to do this in my opinion. That's my take. I also would like for some way other to rearrange the virtual desktops. Plasma has this as an example. You can just drag and drop them, which is cool, but at least some way to actually open fresh desktops on the left, because okay, I understand that you're making the older things through virtual desktops. That's what I did in Plasma too, but if I have five busy virtual desktops and I'm on the second and I need to do quickly a sub task, I need to switch four desktops on the right, do it, and then four desktops on the left. It's not that efficient on a three by three. It's a bit better. I don't know. Sometimes I feel a bit claustrophobic. Let's see. Except that it works nicely. So a couple of things that I miss from Plasma, because I do miss something. The instant tray, let's say it's just not as good. Like this instant tray of Katie Plasma is such a cool feature. As an example, every time I plug in my microphone, well, both on Linux and on Windows, my microphone thinks it's a speaker for some reason. So it switches to the microphone as a speaker. And as you can understand, it's not actually a speaker. So audio stops working. And on Plasma, I just go into audio and then click back on my actual speaker. On here, I need to go into settings and then search for audio, audio, and then it's actually sound, not audio. And then output device and the select speaker, Tiger Lake. And okay, I can do this, but every time. And I know it's a bug of the microphone, but I mean, there are other use cases to actually be able to select. And by the way, I saw today a mock-up of this PopOS desktop that PopOS system 76 wants to do. And there's actually a way to select the output device. So that's cool. But in general, okay, things that should work work. But I wish that there was something a bit more on the compact system tray representation. But I can live with this. It's not that big of an issue. Another example, I'm watching a film on MPV. And MPV, for some magical reasons, doesn't actually block the screen timeout. On Plasma, I just went to the brightness applet and clicked on override and do not, you know, turn off the screen automatically. On GNOME, I need to go into settings again, settings. And then I also need to go into what's power. And then I need to click on automatic brightness, as you can see it's off. And then blank screen, I need to put it as never. And then automatic suspend, I need to turn on, off this and this. Okay, I could do all of that. But every time I need to watch a video on MPV, really. And, you know, those are very minor issues. So these were my impressions of the last two weeks. It's actually 14 days with GNOME, not 30, but I'll get to it. And my impressions are really positive. I think that both GNOME and Plasma are incredible products and I'm super happy using either, really. Of course, my personal preference is a bit with Plasma, for a bit of the reasons that I've stated, even though GNOME has also some very strong points. However, what about now? Am I going to keep this nice desktop, which is GNOME? And the answer is actually yes. I'm going to stick with GNOME for a bit more, I don't know, one, two months, I can tell. But I think that I'm not ready to go back to Plasma and lose the touchpad gestures and a good fingerprint reader. Now, if the fingerprint reader gets improved and there is some work on that direction and the situation with touchpad gestures improved and there is actually no one actually working on this right now, but maybe I could give it a shot or maybe somebody else. Well, I'll be happy to switch back, but for now, this situation is fine. And it's a bit weird to develop for KDE and then not actually use KDE because when I develop stuff and then I actually use it as my mainly driver, I actually notice some bugs that I accidentally created in my own code. With using GNOME, I won't notice them. However, I like having a very stable main desktop and then when I need to do development, I switch to the unstable too. Although I gotta say I had some bugs here, too, some crashes. Happens in GNOME too. So, what else? Overall, good experience, I liked it. I'm gonna stick with GNOME, which is why this video is called KDE Developer Switches to GNOME because right now I am switching for not for developing, I'm still gonna develop for KDE Plasma, don't worry. But I know as my mainly driver, I'm gonna kick GNOME for a bit and then maybe probably switch back to Plasma in a month or two. But I was really happy. And what else to say? I think that this extension with the blurring is awesome, this spot. I love being able to rearrange everything this view with all of the application and never used it. And by the way, okay, this is important. Don't click away from the video, this is important. I was thinking, this part of GNOME is so useless for me, I wanted to give it a shot to try write an extensions, an extension singular that actually messes up with it a little bit and actually makes it more useful for me. So, I was thinking, okay, this is my role of virtual desktops. What if in here, instead of showing all of the applications, I could actually see options to switch to other rows of virtual desktops. So, you have rows, but you have more than one. That would improve my workflow so much and I would love to do it. I gave a look to extensions and my impression is that it's somewhat feasible, somewhat to some extent, but I have zero skill whatsoever in doing GNOME extensions. So, if you know somebody that knows how to do extensions and would be like super happy to work with me explaining to me like how something like that would be implemented practically, then I would be really happy to learn something about this GNOME thingy. So, that was it. I hope that you're not like, angry with me because I switched to GNOME for the last weeks and the coming weeks as well, but I think it is a good idea in general once in a while to go around mess with stuff and see if other people are doing things better than Plasma. I think really that the main things GNOME is doing better is its overview. KD is also developing a new overview, but it's not developing the overview in the way that I would personally want to and I actually did more cuffs, but a long story short, I don't think they will be implemented or maybe they will. Can't tell right now, but till then, till then I'm happy with this. Okay, you're not seeing, sorry, but I'm happy with this GNOME thingy. In the future, yeah, I will get back to Plasma, but for now.