My way of doing things is probably built on top of having a not very great memory and focus issues, so its actually difficult for me to operate without visual knowledge of an app being open still. That is also one reason it took me so long to make the switch to linux in the first place, GUIs are just so much easier than memorizing commands for me. More of a pattern learner than memorizing words or commands.

That’s the beauty of open source software: you don’t have to! But tell me why would a newcomer want to have either ‘hello from 80s’ interface or a powerful indeed interface but with a gazillion of bells and switches? That’s where Gnome shines. I can recommend it to anyone who is new. A non-tech friend got it with no training at all. He just said it’s like a tablet. Which is not a bad thing, actually. It’s simple enough for a newcomer to learn quickly. But also powerful enough for someone with 20 years of Linux experience to use daily.

I may look like someone who don’t like them (and I actually do not like them), but when given a bit of a thought to it, I don’t mind anyone using anything. I just don’t like it when these are recommended to the newcomers. But since I don’t use them, I may be very wrong here, they could advance significantly since the last time I used them. Personally, however, I prefer simpler things like Sway on a low-powered machines. It works really well, the last two devices I tried it with were Windows tablets of 10+ years ago, and it works pretty well. I assume these two would also do well though.

From my experience KDE barely has extensions, it mostly has half baked themes. Gnome extensions are in a whole different league