Hi there,

i have been a KDE user for many years. Sadly, one by one, the apps i was used to loved stopped working.
Today i realized i still run KDE Plasma, but i'm not using any of its apps any more, so i'm thinking on switching to Gnome, since Plasma itself has some annoying bugs.

Anyway, i have been looking at the actual Gnome3 and i do not like its interface. Is there a way to have the latest gnome with the classing "start" button, app menu, task bar, tray bar, etc…?

Probably Mate desktop is what you're looking for as an integrated solution.
Maybe you could do it yourself with themes.

It looks nice, but i would like to switch to GNOME because it is mainstream and is a stable and mature project.

If i have to fall in yet another buggy niche DE, i can stick to KDE

Your choice. I predominantly use gnome3 in Fedora, my better half uses Mate on Mint. No discernible difference in stability/usability.

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MATE buggy and niche. Sigh. Have you been locked away in a cave for the last ten years?

The large number of users who use this stable, solid, intuitive, Gtk3+-based desktop environment will carry on benefiting from the talents of its developers.

Good luck on finding a DE that is both GNOME and not-GNOME at the same time. I would suggest Cinnamon, but you would no doubt call that buggy and niche as well.

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Mate` has been around for years and is anything but buggy and unstable. Mate` is a fork of Gnome 2 actually, before Gnome became the buggy, unstable mess it is today. If I had to use a DE, I would pick between 2: Mate` or Xfce4 because both of them just work and have never presented me with any issues. That's my personal experience though.

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I have never used Mate and i didn't mean to hurt anyone's sensibility; anyway, if you are saying it is "as stable as xfce", that's not stable enough for me: i've been using xfce4 for some months and had to switch back to KDE because Thunar had lots of problems and lacked basic features.

I do not dual boot on Linux once in a while just to have some fun: it is my main and only OS, i use it every day for many hours, so, from my point of view, stable means stable for real. To somebody using a DE once in a while, any DE looks stable enough indeed.

I agree thunar is lacking features compared to Dolphin - dolphin is simply the most feature filled file manager I have ever used, with the exception of xfe, but that's a dual pane and probably not to most people's liking.

If you think thunar is lacking in features, you will be very disappointed with nautilus. The gnome devs have succeeded in neutering the file manager so badly it is nearly just a viewer for files and doesn't do much else.

I have had (personally) stability issues with gnome and also performance issues. People use it for sure, but since the new UI 10+ years ago, I have never liked it. Again, that's a personal choice though.

I have used Linux as my desktop for nearly 20 years, until about a year ago so I understand where you are coming from. I would be using KDE now, but I also find it buggy and I can't stand having my computer give me issues - drives me nuts.

No sensibilities hurt. I personally just think that you don't have a realistic view about desktop environments.

I use Mint MATE on my production machine and have done so for several years, and that includes web development, software development, editing (books, research papers etc.), and the running of Windows virtual machines. You are not the only one who works for a living and uses Linux full-time in that pursuit.

So from an initial stance of writing off desktop environments without even trying them, you're now writing off advice on using them due to the fact that you think people offering these opinions, not me but in general, use desktop environments only "from time to time". You do realise that you are posting on a Linux forum and receiving advice from folk who are solidly experienced in using Linux as their daily driver?

If you don't mind me saying so, you're missing out on a whole lot of the world, and will have your decision-making adversely affected, by having such pre-conceived non-tested "defensive" opinions.

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So, you pretend to know me, interesting.

I did not open a thread asking on advice for which desktop environment is best, because i well know how such threads are going to end up. I asked advice on how to adapt Gnome 3 to my needs, if possible.

You went OT, and now you are complaining about my attitude: i'm just trying to get the best out of a bad answer, that's not pre-conceived, you just proven to be a bad advisor

Gnome 3 can work for you, but as I mentioned, the file manager is very rudimentary. You may end up installed another file manager and using that instead.

Or maybe just use gnome as is and see how you like it - you may find it works just fine. Coming from KDE, that may not be the case though, because IMHO, KDE has a richer feature set than gnome.

Look into addons for gnome if you wish to change the UI a bit - there are ones that give it a "gnome 2" feel. Just be advised that some of the addons can cause stability issues, plus many of them are tied to a specific gnome version, or at least advertised to only work on a particular version.

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I have used MATE off and on for quite a while and find it quite stable.

If you really like how KDE used to be, and like maturity, you should give TDE a looksee.

I’m just a newbie* using Linux on a desktop...to the point where I jump back to Windows when there’s a time crunch.
That said: my desktop ‘puter is running CentOS 7 — I abandoned KDE and installed cinnamon. I’m happy with that.

*I have been administering web servers since 1999 using the CLI via ssh.

Yes, you can change a whole number of things on the default desktop. Go to https://extensions.gnome.org/ and look at / install some of the many extensions available. Once installed, they usually take effect immediately.

Then there is, of course, gnome-tweak-tool which helps you get your desktop the way you like it.

I much prefer nemo as my default file manager. YMMV.

Please give these things a try.

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