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#1 2020-12-20 20:28:36

FreddyMaster
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Registered: 2020-12-20
Posts: 3

Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

I was looking for the equivalent to gnomes extensions which makes it easy to customize your desktop environment.  If so how do I implement these.

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#2 2020-12-20 20:39:54

V1del
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Registered: 2012-10-16
Posts: 21,425

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

This depends on the relevant environment you are intending to use, what do you intend to use here? KDE has Plasmoids for its shell, general WMs you probably use standalone panels or the like.

You need to be more specific here, what do you actually intend to use and which kind of functionality of GNOME extensions do you seek to replicate how and why?

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#3 2020-12-20 20:54:56

FreddyMaster
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Registered: 2020-12-20
Posts: 3

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

V1del wrote:

This depends on the relevant environment you are intending to use, what do you intend to use here? KDE has Plasmoids for its shell, general WMs you probably use standalone panels or the like.

You need to be more specific here, what do you actually intend to use and which kind of functionality of GNOME extensions do you seek to replicate how and why?

Thanks for the reply.  I like the simplicity of gnome extensions and plan on using a window manager but I am having trouble deciding which one.  I was looking at Xfwm.

Last edited by FreddyMaster (2020-12-20 23:20:50)

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#4 2020-12-20 21:40:02

WorMzy
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From: Scotland
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Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

Gnome Extensions exist because the vanilla product is so badly designed and unintuitive, third-party code is required to make it usable. Other DEs don't suffer from these shortcomings so they don't have the need for an equivalent.


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#5 2020-12-20 23:19:36

FreddyMaster
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Registered: 2020-12-20
Posts: 3

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

WorMzy wrote:

Gnome Extensions exist because the vanilla product is so badly designed and unintuitive, third-party code is required to make it usable. Other DEs don't suffer from these shortcomings so they don't have the need for an equivalent.

What desktop environment or WM would you suggest for customization.

Last edited by FreddyMaster (2020-12-20 23:20:27)

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#6 2020-12-20 23:28:22

WorMzy
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From: Scotland
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Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

I suggest you try what is available and decide for yourself.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … vironments


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Mobo: MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX // Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @4.9GHz // GFX: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT // RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair DDR4 (@ 3000MHz) // Storage: 1x 3TB HDD, 6x 1TB SSD, 2x 120GB SSD, 1x 275GB M2 SSD

Making lemonade from lemons since 2015.

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#7 2020-12-21 23:02:54

OaaH
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Registered: 2016-11-24
Posts: 21

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

From my not so great experience:

If you want something that looks fine, works good and and have good configurability - XFCE it is somewhere between DE and WM, and it has good defaults so you will not suffer from bad experience through the learning curve. Once in awhile I moved from it to find something more customizable but always returned to it eventually.

If you want large community support for plugins, I guess that KDE is comparable to GNOME (I think that it has less extensions but they are more reliable than gnome's) - but I personally never worked with KDE.

You can go even more barebone to WMs - they all share some common features:
* looks ugly out of the box
* highly configurable by scripts
* extremely light weight
* comes with no programs at all, no system tray (usually), no file manager, no nothing.

OpenBox have large community and you can get tons of configuration files online - I personally never liked the XML format of it's configuration files.
FluxBox is a nice option, I liked it better than openbox in general (and it even comes with a panel!), but I think that he got smaller community.

A really extreme option is FVWM , which is quite programmable and able to do almost anything. You can do all kinds of magic in it's configuration scripts, and you can also program it in different languages. On the other hand, it is really a pain in the neck to understand it and make it pretty. I had a lot of fun with it for a weak or so before I got frustrated and came back to XFCE.
Anyway, this is just my humble experience with linux environments smile

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#8 2020-12-21 23:33:57

2ManyDogs
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Registered: 2012-01-15
Posts: 4,645

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

OaaH wrote:

You can go even more barebone to WMs - they all share some common features:
* looks ugly out of the box
* highly configurable by scripts
* extremely light weight
* comes with no programs at all, no system tray (usually), no file manager, no nothing.

A bit of an over-generalization there. "Ugly" is a matter of opinion. Some window managers have runtime config files (not scripts), some can be configured at compile time (not scripts) and some cannot be configured at all without modifying source code. Some are lightweight, some are not.


How to post. A sincere effort to use modest and proper language and grammar is a sign of respect toward the community.

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#9 2020-12-21 23:49:27

OaaH
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Registered: 2016-11-24
Posts: 21

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

2ManyDogs wrote:

A bit of an over-generalization there. "Ugly" is a matter of opinion. Some window managers have runtime config files (not scripts), some can be configured at compile time (not scripts) and some cannot be configured at all without modifying source code. Some are lightweight, some are not.

You are of course right. But this was a shallow review, and if your starting point is Gnome I think I can assume some taste about what's ugly or not=)
About the configurability I shouldn't use the word scripts, but the general trend is that WMs are usually configurable in some kind of code code level.

last, those were just my thoughts to the nice guy asking for suggestions. You can see that by WMs I was talking about the *Box family mainly. You was right to mention the world of WMs is richer than what I wrote, I just not tested it smile

BTW, example to a not lightweight WM? why should I use resource heavy window manager?

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#10 2020-12-24 22:00:10

rasat
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From: Finland, working in Romania
Registered: 2002-12-27
Posts: 2,293
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Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

FreddyMaster wrote:

I was looking for the equivalent to gnomes extensions which makes it easy to customize your desktop environment.  If so how do I implement these.

A few years ago I choose Gnome because of the extensions that make it multifunctional. An environment that provides a good workflow that keeps things out of sight but easily accessible. But at the cost of memory usage.

Is there an alternative? Yes, FVWM. Many of the popular window managers in use today are related to FVWM.... Afterstep, Xfce, Enlightenment, Metisse, and many more. No uglier than Xfce and others when you delete ~/.config/gtk-3.0/. smile The difference, with FVWM most Gnome extensions, can be created. If available, that would be great. But, one has to code them on your own. Please, take a look.....
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=261902


Markku

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#11 2021-01-01 13:41:47

rasat
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From: Finland, working in Romania
Registered: 2002-12-27
Posts: 2,293
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Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

OaaH wrote:

A really extreme option is FVWM , which is quite programmable and able to do almost anything. You can do all kinds of magic in it's configuration scripts.....

As a sample of configs that one can make with the help of FVWM forum and examples that are available. As I mentioned in another thread, working on an experiment, today I finished the configs that go well along the workflow and aimed for efficiency.

fvwm-myExt-1jan2021-thumb.png

Last edited by rasat (2021-01-01 13:48:44)


Markku

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#12 2021-01-01 15:00:24

VoDo
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From: Europe
Registered: 2020-06-04
Posts: 122

Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

KDE is customizable by mouse very well so XFCE4, I prefer i3wm what is configurable thru .configs, the good thing is there are choices I was Gnome guy for a long time then I found i3wm and was wondering why I waited so long.


Archi3

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#13 2021-02-25 09:35:02

rasat
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From: Finland, working in Romania
Registered: 2002-12-27
Posts: 2,293
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Re: Equivalent to Gnome Extensions for other desktop environments and WMs

This screenshot illustrates the current collection of FVWM configs.  If you are new to FVWM and wondering what it is all about. FVWM is a Window Manager (WM). What sets it apart from other WMs, it is also a Virtual window Manager (VM). Among the powerful fvwm features is the virtual desktop, which allows you to place windows on an area much larger than the actual size of the visible display.

mx-fvwm3-097-help-thumb.png

Last edited by rasat (2021-02-25 09:40:27)


Markku

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