You might be better off going with Cinnamon, since it’s so much more configurable. IIRC, it should be able to do all those things.
Or Plasma 5 (shameless plug)
Never realised this was an ongoing issue. You know it’s bad when Linus causes a scene. It might be in my best interest to find an environment that is more open to destruction by the user. I’ve been looking at Lumina. Seems to have plenty of graphical configuration tools. Not sure how open it is to further tweaking though.
I currently run plasma 5. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to tinker and wants a good solid foundation.
Linus caused a scene 11 years ago. I still don’t prefer Gnome due to it’s layout and it’s design philosophy.
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XFCE and MATE are also more user-configurable than Gnome. The default menu icon – there’s no “Activities” – can be changed as well as panel (aka taskbar) color. Config files can be editited but most things are exposed via the settings GUI and/or a right click.
The panel and dock look of Gnome can be achieved in XFCE and MATE by adding the Plank menu. This is Elementary’s approach. “plank --preferences” pops up its configuration GUI.
Seconded. I’m currently on Gnome myself, but if you want customizability and a lightweight Environment, nothing beats Plasma.
If you depend on a ton of GTK Applications, you could look into XFCE. That’s my second choice after Plasma for customizability. Don’t get put off by it’s initial looks. It can be made to look really sleak and modern.
Thanks. I’ll have to give Plasma a try.
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Late reply, I know, but let us know your experience
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It’s been great. Think I like plasma 5. It was a bit of a pain initially since it was designed for QT applications rather than GTK. And my experience with the Discover package manager was horrendous. The ability to install themes was pretty cool. I still haven’t done anything too custom but the configuration files are easy enough to find. Currently testing out a Ghost in the Shell theme. Later I might try making my own mouse cursor.
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Looks sick!
And curious what you meant by “bit of a pain initially since it was designed for QT applications rather than GTK”? In my experience, Plasma handles GTK better than GNOME handles Qt (by default, unless you install Kvantum)?
It was provably user error and lack of understanding on my part. I was trying to use the Discover package manager to install Steam after installing RPM fusion free and nonfree repositories. Because the installation failed I falsely assumed it was because the Steam client used the GTK toolkit. Turns out the client uses neither and it was provably an issue with Discover.
I have all my usual applications up and running though I had to find alternate means to install them. An example is with the GNOME package manager I could usually install Android Studio directly. This time I had to install from the web and initiate the build with an included bash script.
What about the Snap or Flatpak version? I never tried the Flatpak, but Snap is fine, IMO.