To distinguish two Firefox profiles that I run simultaneously, I use different themes on each. For Firefox this might actually be the best way.
For a file manager (I assume the Dolphin you're talking about is the file manager), the closest I remember seeing is a red toolbar on the unrelated Nemo file manager when it's run as root.
If Dolphin is per-user theme-able, then you could do what I do with Firefox. If it supports other kinds of plug-in, then maybe there's one that does what you want already.
To my knowledge, windowing systems can't override the title of an application's window, and even if they could, the application could change it back again at any time, creating a race condition, or a very ugly situation where the system picks and chooses which windows are allowed to modify their titles and which ones aren't.
Therefore, I think you'd have to write your own plug-in (if they're a thing and the API permits title modifications), modify Dolphin's source code yourself or submit a feature request to Dolphin's developers, cross your fingers and wait.
I have an X1 gen 9 and sleep-on-close worked just fine with Fedora for the time I used that distro (although it was KDE, not GNOME). Every other distro I tried worked as expected in that respect.
nomachine works well in my experience; it’s pretty straightforward to set up. And it offers nice performance. It’s free (as in beer), but it is proprietary software – they make their $$ selling enterprise features on their website.
It’s okay. On my desktop with an Intel card my headphones occasionally have an issue where they’ll stop actually playing sounds until I swap the codec in GNOME Settings. I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the headphones proper, because I don’t think I’ve had the issue with my earbuds or when using them on my laptop.
Speaking of my laptop, if I have WiFi turned on, the Bluetooth goes to shit. It sounds fine, but the audio will randomly cut out. I blame Realtek.
I remember under pulse I would have issues of programs like discord and my headset breaking the connection over the switch between A2DP and HFP or HSP or whatever the mic mode was. Havent had any issues since pipewire came along and supposedly took over handling that, but I havent used a Bluetooth device with a mic to test with since, so I’m just quoting hearsay that pipewire fixed that.
I essentially did the same. Used GNOME for almost 10 years, then got my first try of KDE last year and don’t plan on going back either. GNOME has some really good points, I wouldn’t have used it so long if it didn’t, but I can actually use an honest to goodness theme on my desktop and customize without having extensions break on every update. Also, the UI in GTK is just too big and chunky for me, it’s like every window is designed for tablets or something. I don’t need a title bar that’s practically an entire inch tall. If you like GNOME, awesome, I will likely never say GNOME is bad, but I’m a KDE guy now.
EDIT: apparently I need to specify that the “entire inch tall” comment is exaggeration, because internet. My point being that GNOME’s UI is too big for my tastes.
Yeeees, GTK looks awesome but I just cant see how apps like Plasma systemsessings, qBittorrent etc using Qt could work like that.
Gimp 3 alpha is pretty crazy, as GTK2 was very nice and usable, but already with GTK3 everything got huge, so now the buttons dont fit as well anymore.
Also I have to say GNOME would have some big issues for me.
I dont want a top panel on a laptop, as it makes me look down more
docks are weird as they waste screen space. Why not use a normal panel, everything there, at the bottom or side?
not seeing all my open apps is weird, also not being able to open or close from the panel is weird
I and I guess 99% of Desktop users dont need virtual Desktops. As they dont change the panel and more, I dont even use Workspaces on Plasma
thus, normal window decorations are necessary
hitboxes need to be in the upper corner and not some padded thing in the center. Every decoration failing this (looking at you Firefox & Thunderbird) just sucks
UIs need to be compact when needed. Not everyone is a child and settings are not that simple.
Gnome has some nice apps like Loupe that are actually more secure. And it probably is way more stable. But KDE apps are so great, at least for usability! Could not live without Dolphin for example
Gimp 3 alpha is pretty crazy, as GTK2 was very nice and usable, but already with GTK3 everything got huge, so now the buttons dont fit as well anymore.
not seeing all my open apps is weird, also not being able to open or close from the panel is weird
The extensions that enable this are so simple too. Its a real shame its not built into the settings out of the box, even if they want that to be the default. I wish they made extensions more discoverable too, since you kinda need to know they exist in order to go get them, and easier discoverability would help people solve tbose problems faster.
UIs need to be compact when needed. Not everyone is a child and settings are not that simple.
I really wish these things were built in settings. Thunderbird Supernova’s setting for this is a fantastic example of how much of a difference it makes. Yeah, it’s a bit spacious by default. But once you drop the spacing to medium or small based on your needs and dpi, it feels great. Opinionated design done well makes for great consistency and feel, but it also needs to have some room for adjustments without needing to install stuff.
Agree, if they had the flatpak extensionmanager installed by default that would be cool. But dash to panel is still much worse, way less tray icons fit there, the app menu may be inconsistent.
Also I have to say that the complete lack of .desktop entry modification makes distinguishing flatpaks from native apps, or creating entries with slightly changed parameters, appending arguments like “force X11” etc. very hard.
Nautilus may be solid but it lacks so many features and I still dont know how to deal with it. If you know how to add a real “delete” entry that would be great.
I also think the traditional decorations extension is gone? But I dont know.
Didnt know you could change the UI density, thats cool.
Gnome is great because of the large UI size. Like my 14" notebook has a roughly 2800x1600 screen resolution and it’s still pretty usable without any UI scaling. If the bars are an inch tall, you’re either using a huge TV or a screen from the garbage dump. Gnome really needs a modern system.
Sometime HSP just stopped working so now I have to do calls with my laptop built-in mic.
Also, some programs like Zoom just fail to use the right output device no matter what I choose in settings. I just have to make headphones the fallback device for anything to work.
But the most annoying thing is Linux somehow stealing the playback when my headphones are connected to multiple devices. Even when nothing plays on the computer but does play on the phone, there’s no audio. I have to disable/disconnect my computer to use headphones with phone when my computer is in range.
I’m in the opposite situation. I started on KDE but moved to GNOME. I sometimes think about moving back to KDE but I do love the design consistency of GNOME. KDE’s endless theming is great, but I only ever used the default them because I’d notice little inconsistencies otherwise. I’ll probably be on KDE Plasma 6 though, because I tend to jump ship to the shiny new thing that will solve all my problems.
I always use Breeze lol. Breeze cursor is a true gem. Icons not so much, the big ones are okay, the file icons are sometimes very okay and the small b/w ones are pretty horrible.
I love Adapta Qt theme, but only for the small icons.
I’ve also been a Gnome user for a while, but i am looking forward to plasma 6 as well. I highly doubt I’ll make any sort of switch, but I’ve never had a good time running plasma 5 so i would love to like kde more. Wayland by default is going to benefit gnome too since it’ll put more priority on bugs and lack of support that is still somewhat common among the less desktop-tied apps.
(My Plasma 5 woes have been on multiple devices, multiple times over multiple years, with and without basic customization. i was basically never able to go a day without some sort of major shell crash. I got way too familiar the the command sequence to restart the desktop ui)
I do find KDE to be a bit info dense and it doesn’t look like 6 is changing that aspect of things (at least by default), but it does look a bit less busy at least. I also never like basically anything about classic windows UI, layout, or task flows so KDE leaning into those just doesn’t work well for me. That said, while i like gnome being more minimal, i do wish it had a bit more capability to expose hidden/nested options more easily than requiring extension installs.
I’m similarly excited about cinnamon 6. A bit unfortunate (and understandable given its goals and usage share) it is still X11, but there’s a lot about it that demonstrates a solid middle ground between gnome and KDE.
I am usually on the pro-Wayland side but with GNOME and KDE the Wayland implementations are fairly independent. That means that your statement that KDE going “Wayland by default is going to benefit gnome too since it’ll put more priority on bugs” is watered down somewhat.
Fixing bugs in the KDE compositor / display server ( KWin ) will not necessarily address bugs or missing functionality in GNOME ( Mutter ). A lot of what they share is also shared with Xorg ( libinput, libdrm, KMS, Mesa ).
On the application side, apps lean heavily on the toolkit libraries. KDE apps are built with Qt and GNOME apps are built with GTK. Fixing Qt bugs may not improve the quality of GTK and vice versa.
Smaller projects will share more infrastructure. Many other environments are using Wlroots as a compositor library for example. Fixing bugs there will benefit them all but again is independent of KDE and GNOME.
Your point is still valid though. For one thing, the larger the Wayland user base, the greater the number of use cases the Wayland protocol itself will be adapted to address and the more testing and development everything in the Wayland ecosystem will get.
Over time, one benefit of multiple implementations will probably be code quality. Apps that run well in multiple environments are well implemented and the same is true of environments that provide the necessarily features to a large body of apps. In that way, more bugs will be found and fixed in all environments.
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