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Cake day: August 7th, 2024

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  • So, one thing that Windows 11 did that I think was half good was moving the taskbar stuff to the middle.

    I hated it at first (have to use it at work, and still some at home for specific things), but then I used Start11 for a little bit to try to get rid of the shitty start menu changes and noticed an option to keep the icons in the middle but move the start button itself back to the left. And honestly… I think that’s perfect. Puts the programs that are open front and center while keeping the start button in a fixed location next to a corner border so it’s easy to move the mouse to it without hardly even looking.

    Anyway, while I didn’t keep Start11 (I never do… Like the program but it’s always been buggy as hell going back at least as far as Start), I did make my Cinnamon, and later my KDE Plasma, taskbar look like that.

    Also moved the sys tray next to the start button instead of next to the clock, and with a couple other monitors on the clock side (CPU and memory usage), the taskbar on my system is pretty balanced.

    Maybe not as flashy or interesting as what you’re looking for, but it’s a layout I’ve really come to like

    (ETA: the centralizing of the taskbar in Windows I think was bad only because it made the one part that should be in a fixed and easy to hit location, the start button, move around based on how many programs are open… I think if they’d gone with centralized programs and left side start button, it would have been much better received overall… But, this is just my opinion so do with that what you will)







  • Went the other way, moved from Mint 22.3 to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. Rolling release with solid testing before updates are pushed, any breakage during testing and they don’t push that day’s update, and if something does slip through and break things, just boot into the pre-update snapshot and wait a day to try again with the next patches.

    Up to date packages with low hassle, so as long as I don’t need stable-as-in-never-changes, it’s great.

    Also, nice to have KDE 6 finally and to have KDE not be a forgotten afterthought (Cinnamon is nice but I always feel like I’m limited compared to KDE)




  • Favorite: KDE.

    Least Favorite: Gnome, but I’ve not tried a ton… It’s slick but way too opinionated for my tastes. I could change most of what bothers me about it with add-ons and mods, but KDE gives me the controls I want out of the box, and lets you do damned near anything you want before you even start installing mods (I don’t understand the person who thinks it’s too limited and Gnome is more flexible, but different priorities, I guess)

    First DE: KDE on XanderOS… To be fair, the name sounded cool to young me and I didn’t know much of anything about the different Linux distros yet. And I think Ubuntu either wasn’t around yet or hadn’t gotten well enough known for me to have spotted it initially

    Honorable Mention: Unity… Love it or hate it, Ubuntu was trying something actually interesting and I think it’s a shame they didn’t stick with it longer

    Current DE: KDE

    Potential Future DE: not sure, KDE does everything I want at this time, but I might give Cosmic a try, and/or a tiling WM, though I suspect I won’t care for it (I’ll give it a real shot to convince me, I just don’t see the appeal)

    Longest used DE: KDE

    Current distro: Mint with KDE shoehorned in, though will be OpenSuSE Tumbleweed in a couple hours (I love Mint but I’m tired of fighting with old packages and drivers, and suspect that might be the cause of graphics stack crashes that have plagued me… Also because I’m tired of waiting for KDE 6 for years now and it’ll be probably mid next year still before it’s available on Mint, and even then still only as an afterthought)