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GNOME's extension problem is worse than you think, and it's why I switched to KDE
Quoting: GNOME's extension problem is worse than you think, and it's why I switched to KDE —
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I've used GNOME for years, both before and after the retirement of the wonderful Unity on Ubuntu. It's a solid desktop environment (DE), offering an almost macOS-style experience on Linux. It's often recommended as the DE for those moving from macOS and Windows, and is frequently promoted on distro homepages. It's also incredibly streamlined, sometimes too much so, often requiring users to install GNOME extensions. Some are great, but others may feel fragile and only provide the illusion of customization. It's why I've hopped between other DEs and eventually settled with KDE. Fluid logo GNOME is excellent for beginners It's arguably the most beginner-friendly DE around
There's a reason why Ubuntu's primary release is based around GNOME and why Canonical returned to the DE after it shut down the in-house Unity development. It's incredibly user-friendly. Think Apple's onboarding process and how everything is designed to stay out of the way, unless you absolutely need to interact with a specific element of the desktop experience. Some would argue macOS is a little too restrictive, which is precisely how Apple designed and maintains the OS. GNOME is a little similar in that regard. The DE is configured in such a way that it almost discourages you from customizing it.
That's not to say there's a giant pop-up window with an alert on it not to customize GNOME, else risk damaging the underlying Linux system, but it doesn't really provide many options out of the box. Take GNOME Tweaks, for instance. It is not an extension, but it says a lot about GNOME’s defaults that so many users install a separate tool just to expose settings they expect to find built in. This app alone lets you quickly customize the appearance of windows, titlebars, fonts, input devices, and even startup applications. It's actually really neat, and one I always installed.