argos VS caja

Good observation.

Turning off extensions is where OP lost me. In the last year, the single biggest quality of life improvement for me has been discovering the Argos[0] extension, which basically lets you put whatever text/menus you want in the top bar by writing scripts that print to stdout. To save space, I hid the dock (I use [1] as a replacement alt-tab), so the top bar is the only piece of screen that isn't OS chrome.

On my top bar right now I have the time in four time zones (including the ever-important UTC to save a mental calculation when logging at logs), the name of the current Wifi access point, and some VPN details gleaned using a combination of ip r, ping, nc, and curl. Another extension shows free RAM. I look at them dozens of times a day.

[0] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1176/argos/

[1] https://gist.github.com/cbd32/cbec9a32b32bd9e93b0d2696c71b5f...

I’ve heard this called “the defaults lifestyle” on the Software Defined Talk podcast. I’m forever locked out of nirvana because I have an iPhone but not a Mac, but that’s fine.

Occasionally plugins are worth the expense though. I finally discovered Argos[0] and I’m using it to show time in UTC and a couple other time zones. Super handy.

But if I try some new software and find that I have to tweak it a bunch to make it usable, that means the devs have different aesthetics and I should probably try something else.

[0] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1176/argos/

I'm really surprised no one mentioned Argos

Currently, Argos extension (not developed since 3.32) holding the records for more than 13.8M downloads following by Dash to Dock extension with 6.2M downloads.

This is what I was referring to.

If you want, you could make the extension yourself via Argos https://github.com/p-e-w/argos using https://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/ or using one of these https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/38867/is-it-possible-to-retrieve-the-active-window-process-title-in-gnome/122870

Hey Recently I found this widget named Kargos that shows terminal command output as a widget it uses Gnome's argos and BitBar (Mac) This gives a very nice opportunity to make your own custom widget.

Argos

There is Argos. However, maintenance is unclear since the original developer steps down.

I don't know if you are DE shopping, but I've been very happy for the past few years with the MATE Desktop Environment, which "...is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems."

https://mate-desktop.org/

Among a great number of things I really like, I will mention that Caja, the MATE version of GNOME 2's Nautilus file manager, still can still be switched to spatial mode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager

Generally speaking, I too really liked GNOME 2.32 and its predecessors, and, as far as I'm concerned, MATE is as it describes itself.

I agree that there is a balance between customization and "cleanness" in design and implementation.

However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...

https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design...

https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo...

https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...

When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision":

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910

https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...

MATE

Mate https://mate-desktop.org/ would be decent for GTK apps. https://www.gtk.org

Arch devs endorsing MATE 😮

> Is there a WM out there that can do the basic quality-of-life functions of today's DEs? I'd love a simple, opinionated WM that takes the features we know are useful today (workspaces, expo mode, sensible file manager layouts, system trays) and gives them a color-adjustable window theme inspired by 90's aesthetics, with minimal compositing that can run fast on hardware as minimal as a prototype RISC-V board. Or really, what we need is a truly minimal DE. Something that doesn't care about GTK or Qt or Kvantum, and stays lean.

Mate desktop environment in my opinion comes closest to the simplicity of the Windows 95/GNOME 2 environments of the old: https://mate-desktop.org/.

Not sure how hardware-frugal it is since maintaining it under GTK 2 was not feasible and it's now developed against GTK 3 (with still maintaining the look and feel of GNOME 2).

Some people deliberately put mate on their PCs.

I have been using MATE for a couple of years now on an Intel Mac mini and it works... mostly. Things I am not a fan of: 1) Snap packages. For anyone that chimes in about how wonderful they are I have yet to see any evidence of that and, please, do show me how you launch OpenShot Video Editor because, well, it doesn't. 2) X-Windows. I'm sorry, but this should be brain-dead simple as running xhost+ on the device you want to receive the X application on, ssh to the other machine with -Y -C flags so you don't have to set the display variable (and you get compression) and then launch the application and it appears on the desktop session you are using. I've been doing this with UNIX machines since the first week I used one in 1992 or so (only I used telnet and set my display instead of using ssh but that's not the point). Anyway, it should work but almost never does without a mind-numbing around my crap to deal with. I keep a Raspberry Pi 4 running just for this purpose oh and ... 3) VNC. Should work. Does not without a lot of tinkering. Also 4) I recall that I had to take some extra steps so that users on the same MATE box could not see the contents of one another's home directories but this was a while back. The fact that it was ever set to allow users on the same system to view the contents of each other's home directories was and is insane.