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Since GNOME 3 has launched almost 10 ago, the whole environment has been crashing down an endless downward spiral of shortsightedness and idiocy. Replacing what

Since GNOME 3 has launched almost 10 ago, the whole environment has been crashing down an endless downward spiral of shortsightedness and idiocy. Replacing what was probably one of the clearest and simplest UIs ever made for an iPad-like, user-hostile interface that threw away decades of well known, polished UX was a gigantic, unforgivable middle finger to their users. A clumsy, me-too shitfest of minimalism that never managed to achieve anything but complicating computing by removing things, all for the sake of an unrealistic ideal of simplicity that nobody ever asked for. GNOME 2 was _already_ simple, intuitive and clear. It was feature rich, but easy to understand and use. GNOME 3 removed everything, feature by feature, without realising that everything was simply becoming more complicated. Having to install at least 3 extensions in order to make a desktop environment behave the way it is supposed to is asinine, and it feels like they totally forgot who their target users are. Plus, GNOME has been deliberately hostile towards anything non-GNOME for so long now that I am surprised there aren't more people out there telling them to screw themselves. GTK+ has also been monopolised by them and it's become harder release after release to keep track to what they were doing to the point that some devs actually found rewriting everything using Qt a more productive way to spend their time.

kelnos 6y ago
I've been an Xfce user since 2004 (and was a core developer until 2009), and continue to use it to this day. My biggest worry is that, since the GNOME folks control GTK+, it will morph into something that non-GNOME projects (like Xfce) can't realistically use. Granted, Xfce has gone through a toolkit change before, but switching again would be too much of a burden. I feel like there was a sweet spot in the mid and late 00s when there were efforts to promote cross-desktop standards (the "XDG" in those environment variables means "cross-desktop group") that made it easier to write apps that would integrate well with any environment, regardless of what toolkit you were using. But at some point in the early 10s that degenerated into GNOME ramming "standards" down people's throats and going their own way without any attempt to work with the rest of the community. It's an interesting coincidence that systemd's rise (with similar standards-forcing and advocacy for tight coupling) was somewhat concurrent with GNOME's descent into community hostility.
- ohazi 6y ago
  > My biggest worry is that, since the GNOME folks control GTK+, it will morph into something that non-GNOME projects (like Xfce) can't realistically use. This is a valid concern: https://askubuntu.com/questions/477178/avoid-double-titlebar-in-gnome-apps-running-under-xfce https://askubuntu.com/questions/477178/avoid-double-titlebar... They've since added support for client-side decorations, but it arguably wasn't by choice. It definitely feels like a cat and mouse game now.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Speaking of window decorations, the arguments from GNOME developers on this issue are nuts. Do they really not understand why games etc need this, or that literally every other desktop environment (including Windows and macOS) provides an equivalent facility? https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217
    - jhasse 6y ago
      Both Windows and macOS only provide one API to create a window and could switch to CSD-only tomorrow without anyone noticing. In a way they already have since they work differently anyway (no server/client architecture). So they are a bad example as they went the toolkit-way, which GNOME also wants.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        I'm not even sure about Mac, but in Windows, there's no distinction, because there's no "client" and "server". But from developers' perspective, it's less about CSD vs SSD, and more about being able to say, "I just want standard window decorations, please and thank you", vs not being able to. Gnome devs' suggestion to just use Gtk3 for this is not really equivalent, because on both Windows and macOS, the library that offers the window creation API is core part of the OS - it's technically a dependency, yes, but it's the one that nobody actually cares about. On Linux, Gtk3 is a dependency that people do care about, because it's not guaranteed to be present, and requiring it often means doubling the sheer number of packages that an app like that might need. Gnome doesn't care, because they see themselves as a platform akin to Windows and Mac - so if you intend your app to run on Gnome, then you compile it for Gnome (and then assume that Gtk3 is always there). But, of course, this attitude amounts to saying that they don't really care about compatibility with apps for "just Linux". Which is exactly why they're getting so much pushback on this.
dependenttypes 6y ago
Not only they removed everything randomly (just a few things that I remember: terminal transparency/background, search on the local directory on nautilus, zoom on gnome shell) but it is still one of the most heavy DEs (the new KDE is surprisingly light) somehow when even my DWM has more features. Sadly I have only 8GB of ram and I want to run more programs than just the gnome shell (which takes as much memory as the average electron application). As for gtk, they still have not merged the patch for thumbnails in the open file dialog.
- pantaloony 6y ago
  > gnome shell (which takes as much memory as the average electron application). I don't know a ton about it but I assume gnome-shell is where all the JS (which I gather is a huge thing in Gnome now) runs, judging from how crashy and resource-gobbling it is. > the new KDE is surprisingly light I had a strong aversion to KDE because I never liked how it made non-K* apps feel out-of-place, and I prefer almost none of the K* apps to other (largely GTK) alternatives, plus it used to be (talking many years ago) far heavier both in feel/performance and compile time than Gnome, but yeah, that's what I've switched to, and it performs far better. "Foreign" apps no longer feel as out-of-place as they used to and with some tweaking I don't hate the appearance. What they've done to Gnome is so bizarre. I even kinda like the look & feel but damn, it's way too big a pig to be always-on on my machine.
  - qalmakka 6y ago
    KDE went from being a resource hog (~2009) to working somewhat fine on the Raspberry Pi 4 and on old machines. Meanwhile, GNOME Shell lags on my somewhat high end computer and the solution everyone told me was to "disable animations". GNOME 2 with Beryl and the cheap "burning windows" effects actually felt more polished and ran smoother than the burning heap of rubbish GNOME 3 has become, honestly.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      KDE 4 on opensuse back in 2011 felt lighter than xp for me at least (It worked fine on a laptop with sis graphics, intel Pentium M, and 1.5GB ram). It was around the time that gnome 3 was released I think and when I tried it I immediately was greeted with an error message about lacking graphics acceleration.
brnt 6y ago
I am so curious what changed in the Gnome team between 2 and 3. The DE's seem diametrically opposed in philosophy, functionality and ergonomics. Was there a coup? Did the whole Gnome 2 team just stop and was the project taken over by some sort of other group?
- ac29 6y ago
  iPhone was released ~3 years before GNOME 3.0, and iPad a year or so before. Some people in computing thought our touchscreen future was both wonderful and inevitable, and it guided the design of GNOME 3 (touch friendly, focused on a single app at a time).
blibble 6y ago
I can barely figure out how to use the GTK+3 open dialog - why is "recent items" first? - why are the folders down the side random paths? - why is there no place to enter a path? - why does it do a recursive search when I type in the window? how to make an open dialog was pretty much perfected by MS 20 years ago
- drran 6y ago
  > - why is "recent items" first? 1. It saves tons of time. > - why are the folders down the side random paths? 2. Same as 1. > why is there no place to enter a path? 3. Because of 1, 2, and 4. Use ^L, when you need it. > - why does it do a recursive search when I type in the window? 4. Same as 1.
  - _tulpa 6y ago
    > 3. Because of 1, 2, and 4. Use ^L, when you need it. > 4. Same as 1. > ... saves tons of time No. It really fucking doesn't. How is it ever supposed to be faster to try and figure out which search result for 'index.html' is the file in the somewhat-cluttered folder I just fucking navigated to for the express purpose of opening index.html, so that I don't end up selecting another file named 'index.html' from one of the subfolders? Just jump to the goddamn file in the current folder as I type, it's so much faster, and it's what everyone who has ever used the type-while-in-a-file-dialog feature expects to happen anyway. Also how have people not figured out that file search on your local computer kinda really sucks? The stuff you want to search for probably doesn't have a unique/meaningful file name. Folders namespace non-unique file names, and the full path then has some semantic meaning. And since humans are pretty good at semantics, we seem to be pretty good at navigating the semantic hierarchy of where we put stuff. Recursive search makes you read some inevitably tiny and low-contrast text to get the meaning back. Useful if you're truly lost but absolutely 100% not useful as the global default. Also also, what the hell do we do with years (decades?) of muscle-memory? Pretty much everyone else still uses the old behavior too so if you're cross-platform (or use only some stuff that is GTK3) that muscle memory isn't going away. Also also also, why the shitting fuck was #3 not the new default behavior (or why isn't the old default the new default for that matter). Why isn't this only-sometimes-useful recursive search bullshit hidden behind some non-intuitive undiscoverable hotkey?
as1mov 6y ago
This mirrors my experience. I had been using Ubuntu MATE for a few years without any issues, 30-40 days of uptime with no hiccups. Switched to Fedora to just try it out and it's really iffy. GNOME shell hogs memory and CPU for god knows what reason, I have a mid range Intel CPU + 32GB of RAM and it still lags heavily after the system has been up for more than 5-6 hours. I am stuck with this until my current gig is finished, will be moving back to MATE as soon as possible.
- szatkus 6y ago
  It's quite a challenge to find a GPU that could run GNOME smoothly. I remember that few years ago there was a flag that magically fixed the issue (at least on Intel iGPU), but they removed in one update. Then I switched to KDE and turned out that it wasn't the integrated graphics that was bad, but GNOME. I wonder what's wrong. There are only like a few simple animations in GNOME. C'mon, I could run Compiz smoothly on some old GeForce FX with more flashy effects enabled.

kelnos 6y ago

I've been an Xfce user since 2004 (and was a core developer until 2009), and continue to use it to this day. My biggest worry is that, since the GNOME folks control GTK+, it will morph into something that non-GNOME projects (like Xfce) can't realistically use. Granted, Xfce has gone through a toolkit change before, but switching again would be too much of a burden. I feel like there was a sweet spot in the mid and late 00s when there were efforts to promote cross-desktop standards (the "XDG" in those environment variables means "cross-desktop group") that made it easier to write apps that would integrate well with any environment, regardless of what toolkit you were using. But at some point in the early 10s that degenerated into GNOME ramming "standards" down people's throats and going their own way without any attempt to work with the rest of the community. It's an interesting coincidence that systemd's rise (with similar standards-forcing and advocacy for tight coupling) was somewhat concurrent with GNOME's descent into community hostility.

ohazi 6y ago
> My biggest worry is that, since the GNOME folks control GTK+, it will morph into something that non-GNOME projects (like Xfce) can't realistically use. This is a valid concern: https://askubuntu.com/questions/477178/avoid-double-titlebar-in-gnome-apps-running-under-xfce https://askubuntu.com/questions/477178/avoid-double-titlebar... They've since added support for client-side decorations, but it arguably wasn't by choice. It definitely feels like a cat and mouse game now.
- int_19h 6y ago
  Speaking of window decorations, the arguments from GNOME developers on this issue are nuts. Do they really not understand why games etc need this, or that literally every other desktop environment (including Windows and macOS) provides an equivalent facility? https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217
  - jhasse 6y ago
    Both Windows and macOS only provide one API to create a window and could switch to CSD-only tomorrow without anyone noticing. In a way they already have since they work differently anyway (no server/client architecture). So they are a bad example as they went the toolkit-way, which GNOME also wants.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      I'm not even sure about Mac, but in Windows, there's no distinction, because there's no "client" and "server". But from developers' perspective, it's less about CSD vs SSD, and more about being able to say, "I just want standard window decorations, please and thank you", vs not being able to. Gnome devs' suggestion to just use Gtk3 for this is not really equivalent, because on both Windows and macOS, the library that offers the window creation API is core part of the OS - it's technically a dependency, yes, but it's the one that nobody actually cares about. On Linux, Gtk3 is a dependency that people do care about, because it's not guaranteed to be present, and requiring it often means doubling the sheer number of packages that an app like that might need. Gnome doesn't care, because they see themselves as a platform akin to Windows and Mac - so if you intend your app to run on Gnome, then you compile it for Gnome (and then assume that Gtk3 is always there). But, of course, this attitude amounts to saying that they don't really care about compatibility with apps for "just Linux". Which is exactly why they're getting so much pushback on this.

dependenttypes 6y ago

Not only they removed everything randomly (just a few things that I remember: terminal transparency/background, search on the local directory on nautilus, zoom on gnome shell) but it is still one of the most heavy DEs (the new KDE is surprisingly light) somehow when even my DWM has more features. Sadly I have only 8GB of ram and I want to run more programs than just the gnome shell (which takes as much memory as the average electron application). As for gtk, they still have not merged the patch for thumbnails in the open file dialog.

pantaloony 6y ago
> gnome shell (which takes as much memory as the average electron application). I don't know a ton about it but I assume gnome-shell is where all the JS (which I gather is a huge thing in Gnome now) runs, judging from how crashy and resource-gobbling it is. > the new KDE is surprisingly light I had a strong aversion to KDE because I never liked how it made non-K* apps feel out-of-place, and I prefer almost none of the K* apps to other (largely GTK) alternatives, plus it used to be (talking many years ago) far heavier both in feel/performance and compile time than Gnome, but yeah, that's what I've switched to, and it performs far better. "Foreign" apps no longer feel as out-of-place as they used to and with some tweaking I don't hate the appearance. What they've done to Gnome is so bizarre. I even kinda like the look & feel but damn, it's way too big a pig to be always-on on my machine.
- qalmakka 6y ago
  KDE went from being a resource hog (~2009) to working somewhat fine on the Raspberry Pi 4 and on old machines. Meanwhile, GNOME Shell lags on my somewhat high end computer and the solution everyone told me was to "disable animations". GNOME 2 with Beryl and the cheap "burning windows" effects actually felt more polished and ran smoother than the burning heap of rubbish GNOME 3 has become, honestly.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    KDE 4 on opensuse back in 2011 felt lighter than xp for me at least (It worked fine on a laptop with sis graphics, intel Pentium M, and 1.5GB ram). It was around the time that gnome 3 was released I think and when I tried it I immediately was greeted with an error message about lacking graphics acceleration.

brnt 6y ago

I am so curious what changed in the Gnome team between 2 and 3. The DE's seem diametrically opposed in philosophy, functionality and ergonomics. Was there a coup? Did the whole Gnome 2 team just stop and was the project taken over by some sort of other group?

ac29 6y ago
iPhone was released ~3 years before GNOME 3.0, and iPad a year or so before. Some people in computing thought our touchscreen future was both wonderful and inevitable, and it guided the design of GNOME 3 (touch friendly, focused on a single app at a time).

blibble 6y ago

I can barely figure out how to use the GTK+3 open dialog - why is "recent items" first? - why are the folders down the side random paths? - why is there no place to enter a path? - why does it do a recursive search when I type in the window? how to make an open dialog was pretty much perfected by MS 20 years ago

drran 6y ago
> - why is "recent items" first? 1. It saves tons of time. > - why are the folders down the side random paths? 2. Same as 1. > why is there no place to enter a path? 3. Because of 1, 2, and 4. Use ^L, when you need it. > - why does it do a recursive search when I type in the window? 4. Same as 1.
- _tulpa 6y ago
  > 3. Because of 1, 2, and 4. Use ^L, when you need it. > 4. Same as 1. > ... saves tons of time No. It really fucking doesn't. How is it ever supposed to be faster to try and figure out which search result for 'index.html' is the file in the somewhat-cluttered folder I just fucking navigated to for the express purpose of opening index.html, so that I don't end up selecting another file named 'index.html' from one of the subfolders? Just jump to the goddamn file in the current folder as I type, it's so much faster, and it's what everyone who has ever used the type-while-in-a-file-dialog feature expects to happen anyway. Also how have people not figured out that file search on your local computer kinda really sucks? The stuff you want to search for probably doesn't have a unique/meaningful file name. Folders namespace non-unique file names, and the full path then has some semantic meaning. And since humans are pretty good at semantics, we seem to be pretty good at navigating the semantic hierarchy of where we put stuff. Recursive search makes you read some inevitably tiny and low-contrast text to get the meaning back. Useful if you're truly lost but absolutely 100% not useful as the global default. Also also, what the hell do we do with years (decades?) of muscle-memory? Pretty much everyone else still uses the old behavior too so if you're cross-platform (or use only some stuff that is GTK3) that muscle memory isn't going away. Also also also, why the shitting fuck was #3 not the new default behavior (or why isn't the old default the new default for that matter). Why isn't this only-sometimes-useful recursive search bullshit hidden behind some non-intuitive undiscoverable hotkey?

as1mov 6y ago

This mirrors my experience. I had been using Ubuntu MATE for a few years without any issues, 30-40 days of uptime with no hiccups. Switched to Fedora to just try it out and it's really iffy. GNOME shell hogs memory and CPU for god knows what reason, I have a mid range Intel CPU + 32GB of RAM and it still lags heavily after the system has been up for more than 5-6 hours. I am stuck with this until my current gig is finished, will be moving back to MATE as soon as possible.

szatkus 6y ago
It's quite a challenge to find a GPU that could run GNOME smoothly. I remember that few years ago there was a flag that magically fixed the issue (at least on Intel iGPU), but they removed in one update. Then I switched to KDE and turned out that it wasn't the integrated graphics that was bad, but GNOME. I wonder what's wrong. There are only like a few simple animations in GNOME. C'mon, I could run Compiz smoothly on some old GeForce FX with more flashy effects enabled.