I switched to Fedora and Vanilla GNOME, here's how it went

hey guys this is nick and i have something to confess i have moved to fedora and gnome for a little bit more than a month now if you follow the channel you probably know that i used kde and i talked a lot about how i liked it what i liked about it how i customized it but it's all it's all gone now it's erased i replaced manjaro and kelly by fedora and vanilla no vanilla no no extensions so let's take a look at how that experience went and speaking of experience your experience on your servers running centos 8 might turn to a nightmare if you don't listen to today's sponsor's message thanks to techscare for sponsoring this video as you might know centos 8 will go end of life this december this means that your servers won't get any security patches anymore and will basically leave your work environment and all your data in a potentially vulnerable state now you could migrate to a centos compatible distro in a hurry but there's another solution if you need more time you can extend centos is live by four more years thanks to tuxcare extended lifecycle support for centos 8. this basically means that all your centos 8 devices will still get security patches for all recently discovered vulnerabilities so you can plan your transition and migration with a little bit more peace of mind now tax care has a calculator online to let you figure out the cost of running centos without support or you can click the link in the description below and see how talks care can get you a little bit more time to plan your migration securely okay so first why move from kd and manjaro to fedora and gnome well there is no fault of kde or mangero that made me leave my experience with this distro and this desktop was really good it managed to not crash and burn on me the desktop was customized to my needs and likes and i could install anything i wanted the main reason why i moved is that i have to use every desktop environment there is out there and change things up regularly it's the only way i can stay up to date on what's happening there how usable these desktops are and not get stuck in a specific way of doing things it's the only way i can stay as objective as possible about these desktops which are the main thing i talk about here so i had used gnome in the past but never as their developers intended i used an implementation of gnome specifically manger was implementation of glom with a dark with extensions with gnome tweaks i never used vanilla gnome for any extended periods of time apart from when i made my is gnome user friendly video so it was time to take a look at the experience and that's what i did so let's begin with the experience with vanilla gnome this gnome here didn't come with any extensions as a matter of fact it didn't even come with the extensions app installed so i got the basic layout with the activities view coming from my mac like layout on caddy with a global menu and a dock it took me a while to adapt a long while like at least 10 minutes seriously all it took to be proficient was rewiring my brain to use the top left as a hot corner instead of the top right on kde i already launched apps mostly by hitting the super key and typing their name and that works on grown without any issues either my dock was on auto hiding caddy so i had to move the mouse to the bottom of the screen to see my apps and on gnome i just press super and see my favorites it's just a matter of using a keyboard shortcut instead of flinging my mouse around it's pretty easy to get used to the workflow isn't that different and was easy to adapt the gnome top bar is virtually identical to what i used on kde with the clock in the middle and the system indicators on the right now i know that i sometimes defend the fact that app indicators aren't necessary for everyone but personally i really need them i use next cloud which doesn't integrate with nautilus to show the status of sync for specific items and i need to know if sync is working or not if there's an error i need to know about it and not discover it when i try to open an important file for discord steam and others i couldn't care less if they display something here i actually wish they didn't because it serves no purpose and it just looks bad but for next cloud i need that tray icon until something better integrated comes along so i added one extension the app indicators one well that's not true i also added a second extension letting me switch from dark theme to light theme depending on the time of day or manually it's called night theme switcher and it's cool okay fine it's not vanilla gnome anymore i lied i'm ready to accept my punishment now still on the top bar i don't get a global menu anymore but as i said in my moving to kde video the only reason i used it was because kd apps use menu bars and i don't like menu bars inside of my app windows on gnome my apps don't have menu bars and so a global menu isn't needed well until i stumble on an app that actually uses a menu bar like for example and in that case it sucks but in most cases it's not needed now in terms of workflow the workspaces i now use a lot more thanks to the easy access to the activities view on kde i tended to only use one workspace but two activities one for work and one for play on gnome i used two workspaces from my freelance job as a product owner one for email gitlab and specifications and another one with multiple browsers always open for testing i also use two workspaces for play and the channel one with a web browser for my more personal activities know that that came out wrong not this kind of personal activities get your mount out of the gutter it's for reading articles and watching youtube i also have another workspace with everything i need to edit videos resolve file managers and a web browser for grabbing a few images so basically i really like the simplicity of gnome and the default workflow suits me really well one key press and either clicking on the dock or typing the name of the file folder or app i want to use and i'm all set if i need to open multiple apps to set up a work environment i just double press the super key to get to the apps grid and i just drag my apps directly to the workspaces i want them to be in and i'm ready to go not everything is roses and rainbows though there are some issues first the default advaita look i know it's a bit of a personal taste but that light theme is really bland to me it's all really really gray and the rare blue accents don't make it a less glacial experience the icon theme is really nice in my opinion apart from files and folders these manila beige folders are really really not pretty and the file mime types like a lot of contrast on a white background these white non-delineated icons are really not legible and that's why i lied and i applied my extension night theme switcher to move to the dark version of advaita the dark inviter theme is much better it solves the contrast issue and it looks more interesting than the bland gray default it doesn't fix the sad beige folders but that's something i got used to pretty quickly app icons look crisp and colorful and i like how they make the upgrade look and feel now another issue is the lack of integration of nexcloud in dolphin on kde i could right-click and get a shareable link to any file synced with nexcloud in nautilus that doesn't exist and it makes me go to the web interface to do the same thing which is much more cumbersome i also find the system menu pretty lackluster especially for sound i can switch audio outputs elementary os and kde both allow that and i think it's a good feature to have or a bad feature not to have in gnome's case apart from that i got used to gnome in no time and i really enjoy how smooth and fast it feels i never encounter any delays any stutters everything is zippy and responsive and it's quite a pleasure to use now onto the default gnome apps now it's no secret that i prefer simple small apps that do one thing and do it well and that's precisely how gnome works so i'm pretty happy about the move to gnome apps now no shades on kde applications but while they might be more powerful they are way too complex for my needs and they also don't look really good they look old with menu bars and tons of panels and they have far too many features for my use case so i moved from kmail to geary which was a fantastic transition just setting up an account is night and day in geary it took two minutes just the time of data entry in kmail i had to fumble through the enormous settings to even get my folders to show up gdom calendar is much simpler and nicer looking than k organizer although calendar with a k seems like a more than worthy replacement with its next cloud tasks integration the gnome software app blows discovery out of the water in the lux department and in the legibility of the information it displays it also handles updates better in my opinion with more detail and a nicer interface functionally it isn't doing anything discovery can do but it is doing it in a more user-friendly and elegant way the rest of my app roster is mainly made out of elementoryos apps which unfortunately don't look too good on gnome they don't use the elementor os icon theme or the elementoryos gtk theme which makes them look quite ugly and weird i don't know if there's a way to make them use the right theme but for now it's not the most pleasant experience the gnome apps themselves though i really like some people might find them too limiting and that's fine but i don't have super complex needs in my graphical apps and i prefer the simple look and feel combined with the features i need to the overload of tools and configurations i had to deal with on kde before i could turn an application into something i could actually use no it's a matter of taste and of use case but for mine at least i found the gnome experience way more coherent and looking a lot better with those header bars and that unified style now let's talk about my experience with fedora it's not a disro i liked particularly before i actually quite disliked every encounter i had with it when i was trying to make those gnome updates videos because dnf never worked properly and the installer was horrible well i can safely say my opinion has changed but not about the installer though it's still a horrible piece of software sure it does its job but in terms of user experience it's bad really bad the button placement is insane with confirm buttons in the top left corner of the screen something no other program does on any os the partition manager is hard to figure out in my opinion and isn't clear on what it's going to do and the general install experience isn't very user friendly at all compared to the elementary os installer or even the ubuntu one and you will see why i opted to install fedora and keep my slash home partition and that let me accomplish the transition in about one hour iso download time burning time plus install and configuration one hour try doing that on windows it was actually pretty amazingly fast sure there were a few issues like app icons being all blurry until i deleted the relevant config folder and my gdk theme being set to the one i applied on kde which made me install gnome tweaks to change it but in the end it was all pretty smooth from moving an entire home partition to another distro and desktop entirely now the dnf package manager i got used to but only because i very very rarely used it actually i think i only used it once to install my nvidia drivers i was expecting a bit of a fight with the distro as they don't include non-free drivers out of the box but adding the repo and installing the driver was three command lines and the reboot later it was all set super easy now i still wish that fedora added a checkbox at install that would download the nvidia driver and install it if you want them to without including it on the iso to keep it free of non-free software but in the end it wasn't hard to do now i also quite enjoyed the way fedora handles updates you install them from gnome software and while app updates apply automatically system updates will install at the next reboot yes just like windows and it's a good thing i much prefer this because it means that my system is stable even after doing updates i don't get apps not starting anymore because the library has been updated i don't get crashes that force me to reboot it's just nicer this way and since the updates take like a few seconds to apply they don't even slow boot down and now for the issues because there were some first fedora 35 comes with pipe wire for audio and while that system has a lot of promise it has issues especially x exp no especially especially there's no x in that i feel like i just said nuclear especially with apps using alsa i had no audio playback in audacity and davinci resolve had super stuttery audio that made it unusable after i looked it up online i managed to learn that i had to reroute ulsa audio to pulse audio which would then be picked up by pipe wire correctly so install the necessary package and everything worked after that talk about a layer cake of audio systems the main big unsolved issue though is bluetooth i could not get it to work right on fedora i use an mx master 3 and a bluetooth keyboard and these keep going to sleep even while in use and sometimes fail to reconnect i also had huge lag spikes when using the mouse i tried everything i could find online disabling bluetooth auto suspend in the kernel changing values in slash etc bluetooth main.conf disabling auto suspend in modprobe d disabling bluetooth ertm nothing worked i could eradicate the lag spikes but my mouse and keyboard after a random amount of time would just disconnect and no matter how hard i pressed them they would not reconnect at all i had to plug in another device disable bluetooth turn it back on again and then reconnect my peripherals not a workable solution suffice to say i didn't stick with that and i used solar and a unifying logitech receiver for the mouse and i moved back to my slimbook wired pseudo-mechanical keyboard this is something that didn't happen on the same hardware on elementor ios or manjaro it's the same intel wifi and bluetooth card plugged in through pcie which has drivers in the kernel and works out of the box perfectly on other districts just not on fedora so will i stick to fedora and gnome in that incarnation yes for a while i really like that experience that smooth gnome implementation and i got used to the meh advaita theme i don't love the look but it works fedora is fast it feels coherent it gets updates regularly and the latest versions of gnome it doesn't apply any customizations that would detract from the experience and i like their future oriented vision with the use of the latest linux tank as a matter of fact it seems like fedora 36 will make wayland the default even for users of the nvidia proprietary drivers so basically well and for everyone gnome is a great desktop for me because i got used to it in no time and it just flies through everything i need to do i never feel i need to fight it to do something now i might move my laptop from elementary os to fedora i'm not quite there yet but the thought has been planned now this video was made possible by slimbook and i know you guys already heard about slim book but for those who didn't they're based in valencia spain they make linux hardware laptops and desktops and basically i only use their stuff their laptop their desktop their keyboard it's great they have all keyboard layouts all price points and they ship worldwide so if you need a new linux device check the link in the description below and click it so thank you guys for watching the video i hope you enjoyed it if you did don't stay to like to subscribe to turn on notifications and if you didn't like it well you can dislike and you can tell me why in the comments if you want to help support what i do you can also join my patreon subscribers and my youtube members and you'll get access to a weekly patreon cast and the right to vote on the next topics i'll cover all the links are in the description thank you guys for watching and i'll see you in the next one bye [Music] you

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 33,186

Keywords: linux, elementary os, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux 2021, linux tutorial, Fedora 35, GNOME desktop, fedora is, is fedora the best, fedora is the best, fedora is better than, fedora better than, fedora comparison, fedora vs, fedora vs manjaro, manjaro vs fedora, fedora manjaro comparison, fedora GNOME, gnome on fedora, using GNOME desktop, GNOME is better than, GNOME is worse than, GNOME comparison, GNOME vs KDE, KDE vs GNOME

Id: k9ixZ35P7ng

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/Vegetable-Lie2609]

Nick, you still haven’t experienced everything Fedora 35 has to offer if you haven’t run in on a laptop with Wayland. The 3-finger scrolling support is where GNOME 41 really shines!

[u/joojmachine]

Great video on TLE about the stock Fedora GNOME user experience.

here's a tl;dw for those who might want one:

Pros:

• Ease of use due to his custom Mac-like workflow on KDE;
• Simple and really useful implementation of workspaces;
• GNOME Software's way to deal with updates;
• Simplicity of the apps, with sane defaults instead of complicated tons of buttons on KDE;
• Lack of menubars for the use of hamburger menus;
• Easy to install NVIDIA drivers (and seemingly a much more stable DNF experience than he had in the past);

Cons:

• Lack of appindicators (in his case only for Nextcloud due to next point);
• Lack of Nextcloud integration with Nautilus;
• Lack of contrast in the default Adwaita light theme (Adwaita-dark was good tho);
• Lack of light/dark mode switching without GNOME Tweaks/extensions;
• elementaryOS apps look completely broken (unless you use Flathub flatpaks, have the same issue here);
• Anaconda installer is still not a good installer, with lots of UX and UI problems;
• Lack of an easy toggle in the install process to download and install the NVIDIA drivers;
• Lots of bluetooth issues;
• Pipewire issues, specially with ALSA (can confirm, I have the same problems);

[u/PaleontologistNo8485]

Ah, I've become a Fedora + Vanilla GNOME convert this year. I'd say give it a try on a laptop because it's a joy to use :)

Also I think GNOME 42/Fedora 36 will fix a lot of the issues you had with the theming as it will include a built in dark theme and an updated libadwaita

[u/SomeWaffleGuy]

Similar to my experiences with GNOME and Fedora, although there is a package for better Nextcloud integration (nextcloud-client-nautilus) not that I know if it adds a right-click menu option or not.

Edit: I just checked and it seems as though it does not sadly.

[u/[deleted]]

Why are the top few comments on this post the same as the top comments on Youtube? All Karma gathering or something?

[u/namelessfuck]

While there's no checkbox to install the Nvidia drivers, there is a checkbox to enable third party repositories, and afterwards you can install it using GNOME Software.

[u/toppledStein]

FYI nextcloud does integrate with nautilus

[u/ColdSkalpel]

Yeah, I had simmilar issues with installer recently, when I decided to try fedora 35 (coming from pop_os). I had some troubles with instaling the is with keeping my home folder intact - I set up other partitions to be wiped out, installer blocked me for some reason from proceeding. I distro hopped without problems before and that shocked me a bit. But that might be an issue with me not really knowing whats the difference between mount point, label and Name here. Still, no problems with that before.

Ultimatly I decided to wipe everything out, becaoue I wanted to see what btrfs is about ( when wiping out root partition before I could reformat it from ex4 - that led me to thinking that reseting everything would help). Even though my SSD was clean I couldn't chose btrfs for my file system i nthe installer, even though first screen asked me to chose a file system in general.

Wierd expierience with the installer to bre honest