4 ms·

KDE has solved the problem for me by providing 2-D workspace as a core feature, and not relegating it to the slums of "you want it, write your own d*mn extensio

by tytso 5y ago

KDE has solved the problem for me by providing 2-D workspace as a core feature, and not relegating it to the slums of "you want it, write your own d*mn extension". GNOME has chosen not to do this. And so, GNOME is not for me, because I consider a 2-D workspace a "must have" feature. And so I will choose KDE over GNOME, because as a user (and I'm not interested in becoming a Desktop developer, sorry; I'm also not a web browser developer, or word processor or spreadshet developer, either. We can't be developers for everything), KDE meets my needs as a user. GNOME does not. My main complaint with GNOME is that their answer for "you don't support feature X" is not, "yeah, sorry, we have an opinioned design, and go f*ck off", but rather, "Stop complaining, we have an extension for that". And so they don't understand that unstable extensions is not an answer to a user complaint that a feature doesn't exist. If they don't want to support a feature, that's fine. But don't try to use the lame excuse, "there's an extension for that", since they don't want to admit that they are asking users to rely on something that will randomly break. If someone wants to use ZFS, I'll tell them that this is not supported by Linux. If you really want ZFS, use Illumos or FreeBSD. If you use Linux with ZFS, and it breaks, that's not my problem, and I'll be first to disclaim that Linux support ZFS. Because it really doesn't. There may be 3rd party developers who are trying to make that work, but I would never recommend to a user that they use Linux/ZFS, since if they need newer hardware support which is in a kernel not supported by Linux/ZFS, or their distribution has updated their default kernel to a version that doesn't support Linux/ZFS, they shouldn't come complaining to the Linux kernel community. Unfortunately GNOME is trying to have things both ways.

zxzax 5y ago
That's great, I support you using KDE. But the fact is, if you really wanted that feature in core Gnome, someone would have to advocate for it, implement it, and then get that feature upstreamed, and then someone will have to maintain it upstream, indefinitely. An alternative to that would be for someone to write the extension, and then maintain it by tracking upstream, indefinitely; both are about the same amount of work. So it's not clear to me why you're complaining about having to write your own extensions -- this is just how open source works. You have to do the same thing in KDE if you decide you want to add some new non-default functionality that doesn't exist there too. It's not any different because it's a desktop and not a kernel, or a web browser, or a spreadsheet, or whatever. I'm happy that you could use KDE and that it works for you, but from my perspective Gnome is not doing anything weird or strange that KDE is not doing, other than having a different default design of what workspaces are supposed to be.
- tytso 5y ago
  My only real complaint is advocates like you who try to claim that an extension is a valid solution to a feature request. Because it really isn't. People spend a lot of time customizing their environment to meet their needs. And they often don't have a choice not to update some package like a GNOME Shell. The problem is that there are huge numbers of dependencies, and if you hold back on updating GNOME Shell, you can't update a potentially huge number of other packages, and you risk your desktop or laptop installation becoming unstable. So the "just a few clicks and you can install an extension" is really a very weak, naive argument. One might even say, one made in bad faith. I don't tell people to use out-of-tree kernel modules either, because that's not really a solution for exactly the same reason. Instead, I tell them, yeah that sucks, I suggest that you not buy Nvidia hardware. :-)
  - zxzax 5y ago
    Please don't assume bad faith. Extensions can be a solution to some problems, but they're obviously not perfect -- I'm not saying they are. >The problem is that there are huge numbers of dependencies, and if you hold back on updating GNOME Shell, you can't update a potentially huge number of other packages, and you risk your desktop or laptop installation becoming unstable. So just to be clear, that same problem propagates to upstream, which is exactly why the extensions break. If they wanted the extensions to not break so much, the alternatives there that upstream has would be: - Hold up the release so that everyone gets a chance to update their extensions. This causes sweeping problems because now everything else is delayed if an extension developer is slow, and this may not even help if the extension developer has truly vanished, because then nobody will be around to update the extension. Gnome switched to time-based releases a long time ago to get away from those problems. - Merge the extension upstream. There are a large number of extensions, and some of them conflict with each other, so this is sadly not feasible to do with every extension that everyone wants, and some people will still be unhappy because their extension was not popular enough to get merged. - Limit the extension API to a small group of stable functions. This will reduce the total number of extensions, and people will still be unhappy because some things will not be part of this API (e.g. it's unlikely you'd get the full lower-level workspaces API that allows you to implement something like 2d workspaces). - Don't allow extensions at all. Now if you want to change the shell's behavior, you have to do a hard fork. So yeah, I agree extensions are sometimes not a valid solution to a feature request, but the problem is that every other solution is even worse, at least for Gnome anyway. >I suggest that you not buy Nvidia hardware. If you want to play this game, I could suggest that you just not use 2d workspaces. But I won't -- I think you deserve to use that feature if you want it. And if I did buy nvidia hardware, I would use nouveau :)

by tytso 5y ago

zxzax 5y ago

That's great, I support you using KDE. But the fact is, if you really wanted that feature in core Gnome, someone would have to advocate for it, implement it, and then get that feature upstreamed, and then someone will have to maintain it upstream, indefinitely. An alternative to that would be for someone to write the extension, and then maintain it by tracking upstream, indefinitely; both are about the same amount of work. So it's not clear to me why you're complaining about having to write your own extensions -- this is just how open source works. You have to do the same thing in KDE if you decide you want to add some new non-default functionality that doesn't exist there too. It's not any different because it's a desktop and not a kernel, or a web browser, or a spreadsheet, or whatever. I'm happy that you could use KDE and that it works for you, but from my perspective Gnome is not doing anything weird or strange that KDE is not doing, other than having a different default design of what workspaces are supposed to be.

tytso 5y ago
My only real complaint is advocates like you who try to claim that an extension is a valid solution to a feature request. Because it really isn't. People spend a lot of time customizing their environment to meet their needs. And they often don't have a choice not to update some package like a GNOME Shell. The problem is that there are huge numbers of dependencies, and if you hold back on updating GNOME Shell, you can't update a potentially huge number of other packages, and you risk your desktop or laptop installation becoming unstable. So the "just a few clicks and you can install an extension" is really a very weak, naive argument. One might even say, one made in bad faith. I don't tell people to use out-of-tree kernel modules either, because that's not really a solution for exactly the same reason. Instead, I tell them, yeah that sucks, I suggest that you not buy Nvidia hardware. :-)
- zxzax 5y ago
  Please don't assume bad faith. Extensions can be a solution to some problems, but they're obviously not perfect -- I'm not saying they are. >The problem is that there are huge numbers of dependencies, and if you hold back on updating GNOME Shell, you can't update a potentially huge number of other packages, and you risk your desktop or laptop installation becoming unstable. So just to be clear, that same problem propagates to upstream, which is exactly why the extensions break. If they wanted the extensions to not break so much, the alternatives there that upstream has would be: - Hold up the release so that everyone gets a chance to update their extensions. This causes sweeping problems because now everything else is delayed if an extension developer is slow, and this may not even help if the extension developer has truly vanished, because then nobody will be around to update the extension. Gnome switched to time-based releases a long time ago to get away from those problems. - Merge the extension upstream. There are a large number of extensions, and some of them conflict with each other, so this is sadly not feasible to do with every extension that everyone wants, and some people will still be unhappy because their extension was not popular enough to get merged. - Limit the extension API to a small group of stable functions. This will reduce the total number of extensions, and people will still be unhappy because some things will not be part of this API (e.g. it's unlikely you'd get the full lower-level workspaces API that allows you to implement something like 2d workspaces). - Don't allow extensions at all. Now if you want to change the shell's behavior, you have to do a hard fork. So yeah, I agree extensions are sometimes not a valid solution to a feature request, but the problem is that every other solution is even worse, at least for Gnome anyway. >I suggest that you not buy Nvidia hardware. If you want to play this game, I could suggest that you just not use 2d workspaces. But I won't -- I think you deserve to use that feature if you want it. And if I did buy nvidia hardware, I would use nouveau :)