KDE Vs Gnome - Heavyweight Championship
from Tekkip20@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:29
https://lemmy.world/post/22342675

Ding Ding Ding

It comes down to this, the heavyweight desktop championship between two powers in the Linux world.

In the blue corner, we have the mighty KDE, KDE comes with a wealth of customization options and good features with every update. It serves a nice alternative to windows 10 or 11s desktop and itself as an OS.

KDE has got so good that even legendary distro, Fedora, wishes to use it in its dealings.

In the grey/black corner, we have GNOME, This is a heavy distro with some ram usage, but it strives to be a simple desktop for usage and has had some good features every new version it comes packaged in as well.

GNOME has had a long history much like KDE, But controversial changes from its older brother.

However… big name distros like Ubuntu have used it across millions of machines in different sectors.

What desktop do you favour and why? Explain your thoughts.

Round 2… GO!

Ding

#linux

threaded - newest

Heavybell@lemmy.world on 23 Nov 2024 09:45 next collapse

KDE, because it’s familiar yet customisable. Gnome is just too strange for me, and doesn’t seem to allow me to un-strange it.

Engywuck@lemm.ee on 23 Nov 2024 10:00 collapse

Same. GNOME is too “appleish” for me. KDE customization is amazing.

OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:47 next collapse

As GNOME gets ready to strike, KDE appears to start studdering… What is going on over there?? Is that the KDE baloo file indexer starting up? Oh no! A perfect connect as KDE falls to the ground!!

Oh what’s this - GNOME seems to be standing there idle. Did the boxing task get backgrounded? Heaven knows it’s impossible to find the running programs on GNOME. KDE and GNOME are both tabbed out of the boxing window!

Let’s take a look into the crowd… MacOS seems to have left the building to refresh it’s permissions, and Windows is still booting up the programs that all self updated post restart. XFCE is hanging out in the corner but is all out of sync due to poor refresh rates on X11. Hyperland seems to be bullying someone in the bleachers, but it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on there…

Ding ding ding

Looks like KDE is out! Baloo didn’t finish in time for KDE to get up. Let’s see what happens in round 2!

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:55 collapse

Hyperland seems to be bullying someone in the bleachers, but it’s hard to see exactly what’s going on there.

Report it is.

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:55 next collapse

You didn’t mention KDE’s lack of any adequate stability. That’s what makes it incomparable to GNOME. They serve completely different use cases.

OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:56 next collapse

You didn’t mention KDE’s lack of any adequate stability

What year is it

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:59 collapse

2024, mister/miss, and I’m talking about Plasma 6.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:58 collapse

KDE Plasma is wonderfully stable if you mean reliable, if you mean unchanging then yeah, it has quite a few changes.

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 10:00 next collapse

I meant reliability. It’s bad if you use ANY feature besides virtual desktops and app opening. In my understanding “stability” is stability of ALL features of the program, no matter how rarely they’re used.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 10:09 collapse

It really isn’t, at least in my experience. And I have an Nvidia card!

All software beyond a moderate complexity has bugs.

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 10:20 next collapse

It really isn’t, at least in my experience. And I have an Nvidia card!

Oh then it makes sense why you argued. However it’s important to keep in mind that experience can vary among users. For example, in my case Plasma was very unstable on an Intel iGPU.

All software beyond a moderate complexity has bugs.

Not an excuse tbh.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 11:27 next collapse

Not an excuse tbh.

The thing to do is participate in the beta programs and report any bugs you find, as your having so much instability you would be an ideal participant whereas me with my smooth running wouldn’t.

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 12:46 collapse

It’s not what I’m saying. KDE releases untested and buggy builds to stable. It makes it unstable software. If you’re a KDE fan, I understand, but don’t reject objective facts.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 13:15 collapse

What part of

All software beyond a moderate complexity has bugs.

didn’t you understand?

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 14:58 collapse

The part where it says that it makes it stable and also the part where it says that GNOME is unstable.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 15:07 collapse

gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues

KDE doesn’t seem to give you an overall view

Nilz@sopuli.xyz on 23 Nov 2024 11:52 collapse

You didn’t mention KDE’s lack of any adequate stability. That’s what makes it incomparable to Gnome.

But then also:

However it’s important to keep in mind that experience can vary among users.

Oh the irony.

GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 12:45 collapse

It’s not irony. Floating defects and hardware-specific fixes exist.

astro_ray@piefed.social on 23 Nov 2024 11:38 collapse

It really isn't, at least in my experience

works in my machine is an opinion not an argument. Different people have different expectations and experiences.

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 11:45 collapse

Doesn’t work on my machine is an opinion not an argument. Different people have different expectations and experiences.

kusivittula@sopuli.xyz on 23 Nov 2024 15:53 next collapse

i know i’ll get downvoted but this was my experience last time i tried kde a few weeks ago (kubuntu and fedora kde):

  • cool animations but stuttery as hell

  • browser randomly consuming 10% of cpu, making everything else slow as if it was using 100% (tested: firefox, librewolf, floorp, brave)

  • programs refusing to install

  • programs refusing to open

  • editing the taskbar often resulted in all the items going on top of each other, i couldn’t move them until i rebooted. couldn’t find an option to reset the whole thing

  • i put cpu and gpu temps in the system monitor and it always borked after it had been closed a few minutes

  • kded5 or something like that constantly popped up wanting to create a new wallet. couldn’t figure out how to disable. guides pointed to a configuration file that didn’t exist on my system

idk if it’s an nvidia thing but none of these happen on other DEs

MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 16:10 collapse

My experience of anything Ubuntu based is that it is buggy as hell. I have no knowledge of Fedora.

kusivittula@sopuli.xyz on 23 Nov 2024 18:53 collapse

well yeah i tried ubuntu a couple years back and i remember having some issues with it too.

weird thing is that mint has never had any issues even though it’s based on ubuntu. not even nvidia related issues.

bunitor@lemmy.eco.br on 24 Nov 2024 03:46 collapse

sorry, i love plasma and i’d use it over gnome any day of the week, but there are still a ton of papercuts that make me feel uneasy about recommending it to anyone else. gnome is boring and it personally slows me down, but i feel safer setting up a corporate workstaion with gnome knowing the user won’t break something by accident

lancalot@discuss.online on 23 Nov 2024 09:57 next collapse

Initially, I was drawn to KDE Plasma for familiarity. Therefore, when installing Linux for the first time, I chose a distro with KDE Plasma. Which happened to be Fedora Kinoite 35, a very new distro at the time. It was clearly buggy and after fiddling with it for some time, I just had to rebase to Silverblue (and GNOME) for the lack of alternatives.

Thankfully, I actually happened to really like GNOME. This was on a laptop and GNOME’s touchpad gestures just felt very satisfying and intuitive; much better than anything else I had experienced before. Its (intended) workflow also made a lot of sense that way.

GNOME has really grown on me ever since. And while I’ve revisited KDE Plasma to see what I was supposedly missing out on, I simply stuck to GNOME as it felt cleaner and more elegant.

OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 09:57 next collapse

Linux desktop environments is the Trans rights of politics. Very easy to debate, everyone has an opinion, but not where the focus should be

Turns on reply notifications and sticks phone in butt

d4f0@lemmy.world on 23 Nov 2024 10:04 next collapse

I like both. I prefer KDE for keyboard and mouse use and GNOME for touchscreen use.

Libb@jlai.lu on 23 Nov 2024 10:16 next collapse

What desktop do you favour and why? Explain your thoughts.

Xfce & Cinnamon.

If I had to pick between KDE or Gnome, I would go KDE without any hesitation as I quite like it whereas I’m not really a fan of Gnome. Gnome UI is OK I guess, it’s just the way they want to decide for everything I am not a fan of (After 35+ years using Apple, I did not switch to let anyone else decide for me ;). If I don’t use KDE it’s mostly because it requires too much work to “tone it down” and make it behave like I want my DE to. Out of the box, there is too much features I have to turn off and configure, features that are also spread between too many (and not all of them… obvious) menus/settings. What’s great with KDE is that it’s at all possible to configure all that, it’s amazing. It’s just too much for me. Be it XFCE (on Debian on my desktop) or Cinnamon (on Mint on the laptop) I barely need to change anything to have them do what I wish.

So, to summarize I would say it’s my untamed laziness that dictates my choice of a DE :p

It’s also the reason why I do not use one of those tiling WM I know exist and I know, as a user spending my time with my fingers on the keyboard, I would love to use in place of the standard floating windows. Alas, having them correctly configured and running, and then having to relearn decades old habits, would require a time and an energy I have no desire to spend. So, I don’t. Still, I understand why some people like them so much ;)

edit: clarifications

N0x0n@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 11:03 collapse

XFCE team here !!! Though I was kinda surprised they didn’t enable XFwm (as stated by arch linux wiki) by default and had some strange issues with GTK apps (big black shadow arround apps). Took me some time to figure that out.

If I had to chose I would probably go for KDE. Gnome is great and it’s nice to have alternatives that are so different and also up to date ! However, I hate GNOME’s design choice. I hate my Mac and Gnome feels to similar to even bother with it.

AnEilifintChorcra@sopuli.xyz on 23 Nov 2024 10:19 next collapse

I’m pretty biased since I have been using KDE for a few years and only switched to Gnome this week to properly try it out so maybe I’ll change my mind but I doubt I will.

IMO KDE has better theming and is more uniform across a wider variety of apps. It has support for community themes out of the box and it feels like the components are modular so you can have a different colour title bar compared to the app window etc

  • Dolphin > Nautilus
  • Kate > Gedit
  • Konsole > Terminal

These are the 3 main default apps I use on both DEs. Dolphin has way more customisability and looks better but Nautilus has a fantastic multi-file rename with the option for find and replace built in.

For me, Kate is like the vlc of documents. It will open anything and everything whereas I’ve had a couple of “could not open” errors from gedit this week. I also prefer Kate to Vscode.

Konsole by default switches tabs with ctrl tab but Terminal doesn’t and thats basically my only issue with it.

Gnome seems to still require you to install a browser extension to use Shell Extensions.

KDE widgets are fantastic, I love having system monitors in a hidden panel at the top of my screen so I can really easily check system resource usage. I haven’t found anything similar on Gnome yet.

KDE Connect is such a brilliant app, it wouldn’t launch for me on Gnome but there is GSConnect for Gnome but its a 3rd party app

By default on KDE, if you shake your mouse the cursor gets bigger and there doesn’t seem to be a size limit which is so fun to do lol

Going from Plasma 5 to 6 was a nightmare for me but its probably because I was using EndeavourOS so the updates were sooner and more frequent.

Overall I think Gnome looks and feels a bit outdated and clunky and KDE looks and feels more modern with better integration across apps but that might just be QT vs GTK

I do plan on continuing to use Gnome for at least another 2 months to give it a fair try but I will almost always recommended KDE because I prefer the look and feel

FrameXX@discuss.tchncs.de on 25 Nov 2024 14:27 collapse

Gnome seems to still require you to install a browser extension to use Shell Extensions.

You can download the Extension Manager from Flathub. You don’t have to use a browser to install extensions at all.

KDE widgets are fantastic, I love having system monitors in a hidden panel at the top of my screen so I can really easily check system resource usage. I haven’t found anything similar on Gnome yet.

There are extensions for that in Gnome. I would mention “Vitals” or “Astra Monitor” if you want to go overkill.

Konsole by default switches tabs with ctrl tab but Terminal doesn’t and thats basically my only issue with it.

Default Gnome terminal is bad. Even Fedora which is a distro that ships almost every DE without any changes switched from the default Gnome terminal to Ptyxis. Ptyxis is probably still not enough for power users, but at least it has more settings including the ability edit keyboard shortcuts and looks better.

By default on KDE, if you shake your mouse the cursor gets bigger and there doesn’t seem to be a size limit which is so fun to do lol

There’s also an extension for that in Gnome although it probably does not have this funny “feature”.

AnEilifintChorcra@sopuli.xyz on 25 Nov 2024 18:54 collapse

Thank you! I’ve been hesitant to install a whole bunch of extensions but vitals and astra monitor look great, I’m going to try them out this week and see which I prefer.

I’ve been avoiding flathub, it just doesn’t seem like my cup of tea but I may have to reconsider and take a proper look at it because it sounds better than a browser extension ngl

I was just so surprised that a terminal that supports tabs doesn’t have generic tab switching, at least I know I’m not crazy now for not enjoying Gnome terminal lol

I promise the giant cursor is a useful feature even though so many people have thought it was a weird bug lol I constantly do it when I’m trying to figure out how to word an email and on the very rare occasion where I can’t find my cursor it has actually been helful!

eugenia@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 11:03 next collapse

I use Mint with Cinnamon with the Cinnamenu menu (instead of the default ugly one). I’m able to make Mint to start up at 700 MB of RAM. On my fast desktop I have Debian Testing with Gnome 47, that one starts at 1.5 GB of RAM. I’m thinking of using Mint there too.

Ephera@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 12:01 next collapse

My standard position is that GNOME is good, if you want to just use an existing workflow, whereas KDE is good, if you’re looking to create your own workflow or you’re fine with a mediocre, familiar (Windows-like) workflow.

But unfortunately, GNOME is really disappointing in some ways. Every so often, we have someone at work accidentally using it, because it’s the default, and they always run into the same nonsense, like not being able to type a file path into the file manager, or not being able to give a name to the file they’re trying to save. These are pretty bad problems that normal users are quick to encounter. It’s a mystery to me, why these can’t be fixed, but ultimately I just tell people to install KDE and they’ve all been happy about it.

Karmmah@lemmy.world on 23 Nov 2024 12:14 next collapse

I only have experience with Gnome out of the two but I haven’t had the urge to switch yet. I like the look of it (I like that it looks different to Windows), the simplicity and the customisation with extensions (only a few and small ones, I recently started using OpenBar for some customization but I could do without). I keep my system rather minimal and I am not looking to put a lot of time into theming or customization.

I also tried Cosmic and I like the tiling aspect of it, but I also don’t feel the need to switch. Maybe once it is released and I can figure out how to install it on Aeon.

curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 23 Nov 2024 12:46 next collapse

KDE.

I won’t use gnome (I’ve mentioned elsewhere), and unsurprisingly I just dont like it either. The design choices are restrictive, the environment is oversimplified - its just not for me.

Ive used lots of DEs over the years, even fvwm95 (the original, its neat that some folks have updated it though), and at this point if its a desktop its getting KDE.

Shareni@programming.dev on 23 Nov 2024 13:26 next collapse

KDE no doubt. GNOME is a minimalist that depends on extensions to provide basic functionality, while also being a giant fatass. KDE works from the install, provides a sensible workflow, and has better tools.

But I’d only use KDE on a rolling release or a 6 month release schedule distro. Their approach to development really doesn’t suit stable ones.

chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz on 24 Nov 2024 04:21 collapse

Their approach to development really doesn’t suit stable ones.

I’m relatively new to Linux as my full time desktop OS and I’m loving KDE. I’m curious what you mean by this, though.

Shareni@programming.dev on 24 Nov 2024 07:48 collapse

They have frequent releases that introduce features and bugs, and then they squash them every week.

A stable distro like Debian will only update KDE once every ~2 years. If the version they use is full of bugs, you’re stuck with it.

On the other hand you’ve got a DE like xfce that gets a release every few years, and the Devs make sure it’s as reliable as possible to fit that stable release schedule.

VinesNFluff@pawb.social on 23 Nov 2024 14:40 next collapse

Plasma all the way bby

whaleross@lemmy.world on 23 Nov 2024 14:50 next collapse

GNOME is pretty but KDE works.

“Works” as in does what I expect from a desktop without deciding over my head that I should rethink my forty years of accumulated desktop experience without any discernible benefit to it.

Artopal@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 15:16 next collapse

Changed to Cinnamon (Linux Mint) after GNOME 3 and Ubuntu’s Unity went bonkers, then changed to KDE Plasma some years ago.

I think KDE is constantly working to improve the desktop paradigm. GNOME tried to change the paradigm… I didn’t like what I saw. I’m too old to learn new tricks.

hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz on 23 Nov 2024 15:29 next collapse

kde without a doubt. I tried so many times to get into gnome,even using fedora and always failed after a couple of days and went back to plasma.

I just accepted it in the end and stopped even caring that gnome exists. Competition is good though and I do hope gnome keeps going.

kusivittula@sopuli.xyz on 23 Nov 2024 15:31 next collapse

personally i find gnome to be kinda weird to use and kde has been so completely crippled with bugs and performance issues every time i have given it a shot (may be a skill issue on my end), that i still have to vote for gnome.

cinnamon ftw.

helmet91@lemmy.world on 23 Nov 2024 15:37 next collapse

I’ve used KDE for more than a decade, and then about 1.5 years ago I decided to give Gnome a try. A few months ago I wanted to see KDE again, but I quickly switched back to Gnome.

KDE:

  • Feature-rich desktop with feature-rich tools by default. Everything is so advanced and customizable, I really miss this.
  • Lately I’ve encountered many annoying bugs (this was the main reason why I tried Gnome in the first place). Crashing while trying to unlock the screen, fractional scaling issues, and random crashes here and there (although these are rare). And I would love to dive into it and fix them, but there are so many other stuffs I wanna do, I don’t have the capacity for this.
  • Setting color profiles for monitors is not trivial.
  • There are many annoying UX issues that are really negligible, but if they worked well, my experience would’ve been much smoother. Here’s an example: start to type your password on the lock screen, while the monitor is sleeping. On most OS and also on KDE, the first interaction must be to wake up the screen, and then you can type your password. On Gnome, just start typing and hit enter. The screen might wake up halfway while you’re typing, but it still does what you’d expect. These kind of small things make my experience so much smoother and so much more comfortable.

Gnome:

  • It just works. Flawlessly and smoothly, to my surprise. Sure, it’s easy to accomplish when it’s so minimalistic, that almost nothing is in there. But whatever there is, at least it works.
  • Fractional scaling is a pain in the ass here too, but in a different way. It’s still an experimental feature though, so we could say this feature doesn’t even exist, which is a huge disadvantage.
  • Feature-rich software can be installed afterwards. So it’s not really bothering me that the pre-installed tools are too minimalistic.
  • Setting color profiles for monitors is very straightforward, but there’s way to improve here too.

To sum up, my preference is less bugs over more features, so I pick Gnome.

jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip on 23 Nov 2024 17:40 next collapse

KDE - Its got people behind it who actually give a flying fuck about their end users.

Mwa@lemm.ee on 23 Nov 2024 17:50 next collapse

I see Gnome typically using 1.6gb of ram (8-4gb ram vm/real system)
Kde without any effects about the same with effects on about 2gb

bunitor@lemmy.eco.br on 23 Nov 2024 18:43 next collapse

i still prefer plasma over gnome, but my sorta controversial opinion on the matter is that gnome 3 was way better than gnome 2. gnome 2 was boring, ugly, using it felt like a chore and frankly not much simpler than kde at the time. gnome 3 tried to create something new and unique and i have huge respect of them for that. it was also much, much more pleasant to use than its predecessor. but it still isn’t better than plasma. the only time in my opinion that gnome was a preferable option to kde was during the early kde 4 dark ages, which was a necessary transition, but it was terrible regardless

tl;dr gnome >=3 still isn’t better than plasma, but it was a step in the right direction bc gnome 2 was way worse

jjlinux@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 18:58 next collapse

Yeah, KDE’s customization is overwhelming in my opinion. I like my OS like I like my boss: “support me, get out of my way, and let me do my work”. Gnome does exactly that.

koncertejo@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 20:52 next collapse

Damn this thread really makes me feel like a minority, but I prefer GNOME! It comes useful out of the box, sane defaults, easy to extend without ripping out the soul of how it functions. Best of all it has a new and interesting direction for the desktop UI rather than just copying Windows. It has some original ideas that really serve it well.

phoh@lemmy.ml on 23 Nov 2024 22:37 collapse

there are dozens of us. dozens.

PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 24 Nov 2024 05:42 collapse

half a dozen of you, tops. ;)

lengau@midwest.social on 23 Nov 2024 23:28 next collapse

The first desktop that I used on Linux was GNOME, probably either 2.0 or 2.2. It was a bit clunky, but it was fine. I distro hopped for a while and discovered Mandrake 9 and thought the desktop was great. This was when I discovered desktop environments. I hopped over to Fedora Core when it was first released and was unhappy with the desktop again.

So I started desktop hopping on Fedora. I tried XFCE, Fluxbox, Openbox, and several others. They were cool, and the KDE experience on Fedora Core 1 was not great. At some point I switched to Gentoo and used the KDE experience there. When Ubuntu came around, I found that while the install experience was good, the desktop was kinda clunky. I ended up sticking with Gentoo. When Kubuntu 5.04 came out, though, I switched over. And I’ve been using some combination of Kubuntu and KDE Neon ever since.

If GNOME had been my only option, I probably would have gone back to Windows. Initially because I found it clunky (and tbh kinda ugly), but more recently because every time I’ve used GNOME in the last decade or so, it feels like it’s lost features I used heavily. Meanwhile KDE has taken a different approach to configurability of trying to cut down configuration options by figuring out what a better option that everyone can agree on looks like. It’s still very configurable, but it has nowhere near as many knobs as it had in the KDE 3.5 days. You know what, though? I cannot think of a single lost configuration option in Plasma that I miss.

So I am strongly in the KDE Korner between these two, and much more weakly favour KDE Plasma vs. other desktops.

secret300@lemmy.sdf.org on 23 Nov 2024 23:47 next collapse

I love gnome’s design a lot and I want to use it so badly but for whatever reason it crashes on my PC if I game. Entire DE just closes and I’m back to the login screen. I thought it was just some weird Nvidia bug but same thing happenes on my AMD card.

The issue is the vram will fill up from gaming and both cards I have only have 4GB of VRAM.

However KDE doesn’t crash once the VRAM fills up. I don’t understand why or how the DE is affecting VRAM management but on KDE it’ll start using my ram and that’ll fill up a good bit. Game will slow down to a crawl but hey at least it doesn’t crash.

fatur0000new@lemmy.ml on 24 Nov 2024 04:40 next collapse

I prefer Cinnamon and Budgie

bitwolf@sh.itjust.works on 24 Nov 2024 05:20 next collapse

I prefer Gnome on laptops. It had the best setup for laptops.

I prefer Plasma on desktop. It has better support for modern gaming features.

icogniito@lemmy.zip on 24 Nov 2024 08:45 next collapse

I think gnome used to be fantastic but sadly lost their edge over time. I love plasma but it is still a bit too unstable for my liking.

Personally use Hyprland nowadays and I think I’ll never go back to using a DE anyways

shapis@lemmy.ml on 24 Nov 2024 10:00 next collapse

Love gnome with dash to panel. Zero complaints.

superkret@feddit.org on 25 Nov 2024 15:21 collapse

My favorite is a really minimal Gnome on Debian:

  • Launch Debian Expert Installer
  • Deselect all software packs except "Standard Sytem Utilities"
  • Install and reboot
  • Install cups, flatpak, fonts-recommended, gdm3 (this pulls in the barest minimum of Gnome), gnome-console, nautilus, network-manager-gnome
  • Uninstall gnome-browser-connector, gnome-shell-extension-prefs, im-config, yelp (which were pulled in as recommendations)
  • Remove configured network interface from /etc/network/interfaces and reboot

This gives me a Gnome shell with no visible GUI apps in the menu, except for the settings, terminal, file manager and network manager.
Now I fill up my hard drive with FlatPaks ;)

I prefer Gnome cause it has fewer options, the overview works really well on a notebook with touchpad, and I like that it is more unique.