28 ms·

Pop _OS to use it own desktop environment, written in Rust

182 points by tuananh 5y ago

devwastaken 5y ago
I will uninstall that environment and install gnome. If you want gnome to be better, then contribute to it. If you can't, detail why. Rust does not magically solve compatibility with the various daemons and make your UI function smoothly. We do not need Linux divide, we need Linux vision.
- jjcon 5y ago
  >If you want gnome to be better, then contribute to it. It doesn't work that way. The gnome maintainers have certain ideals that IMO are out of sync with most users and they are completely hostile to most PRs. I've seen tons of PRs denied with bizzare rationales and crucial functionality ripped out of gnome in their efforts to 'streamline'. This leads to everyone having a laundry list of extensions that break or stop being maintained and it just isn't ideal or user-friendly. Want to do something as simple as drag a file to your desktop? Oh you need a gnome extension for that etc etc. We need more DE choices.
- easton 5y ago
  I've been waiting for 10 years for someone to nut up and make GNOME something for humans to use instead of something for Linux admins. With Red Hat and Canonical both throwing weight behind it, you think that would happen, but nope. At this point I just want someone to build a desktop environment that makes people not have to think about the word "desktop environment", and nobody seems to actually give a crap about that goal. Except for Google, which is why the only Linux on the desktop product that's successful is Chrome OS.
  - esarbe 5y ago
    My whole extended family runs on vanilla Fedora. Even my two surviving grandparents use Gnome as their desktop. They are perfectly happy. The only problem that arises from time to time are some weird-ass Windows applications that refuse to run with even Wine. Gnome is a smooth desktop that's easy to grasp and gets out of your way and definitively not aimed at Linux admins. For those there's tmux.
    - jjcon 5y ago
      >My whole extended family runs on vanilla Fedora. Even my two surviving grandparents use Gnome as their desktop. And then everyone started clapping
      - esarbe 5y ago
        and dancing to the rhythm, the voices were chiming and the bodies - wet with sweat - moving in harmony as the beats filled the emptiness in their lonely hearts and for a moment - a fleeting moment - they felt the joy and freedom they all had been searching for so long. Oh, sorry. You got a point?
        jjcon 5y ago
        Its an idiom (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-whole-bus-clapped https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-whole-bus-clappe...) My point is that I can make stuff up too! If you need evidence that linux is just not ready for non-technical user prime time just take a look at the ltt video from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M
        esarbe 5y ago
        I certainly doubt that this is evidence that linux is not ready for non-technical user prime time. Why? Because that kind of shit also happens on Windows. With administrative access, you can always kill your machine. What Linux lacks and what Windows has more then enough is informal support services. You know, that person in the family that just knows their way around computers, that does computer stuff. (Almost) every elderly person above a certain age is lost when it comes to computers. Most people alive cannot be trusted to install an application - not on Windows, not on Linux and not even on OS X (well, maybe on OS X nowadays, because you cannot install unsigned software these days) because all that software might be compromised. Every time you let a software on to your system, you can potentially brick it. And then you need a solid understanding of what's going on. For most people, computers are black boxes whose internal state is a mystery that is far too complex to be explored. They have no interest in exploring these mysteries. They have work to do; forms to fill, letters to write. And these people need the aforementioned informal support they can turn to whenever they need to diverge from the well-trodden paths. It doesn't depend on the operating system, but on the surrounding support system. That's why I don't consider that video evidence that Linux isn't ready for prime time, just as I wouldn't consider a video of someone bricking their Windows as evidence that Windows isn't ready for prime time. These people just need someone they can ask for help. For my family - that me.
- syshum 5y ago
  >>If you want gnome to be better, then contribute to it. Really? because gnome is one of the most hostile communities to contributors there is. So not you can not just "contribute" to it. gnome devs are very very very opinionated, they are worse than Apple. it is gnome devs way, or it is wrong... yea no thanks
  - esarbe 5y ago
    Have you tried to contribute? I have in the past and never had any issues.
    - syshum 5y ago
      As long as your philosophy of what a desktop is matches exactly to what the core devs view gnome is, then I am sure your fine. But there are a reason by DE's like this new one, unity before it, and others that are either off shoots of gnome, or come from developers that are completely frustrated with the obtuse nature of the gnome team as was highlighted above, System76 ships a forked version of gnome with popos because none of their changes, their contributions, were not accepted by gnome. gnome is very opinionated about how users should use their desktops, how other software devs should write a application for gnome, and are unwilling to change in their positions even if the face wide scale community, user, or developer desire for the change. From my point of view gnome devs do not build gnome for the gnome community gnome devs build gnome for themselves, and if others use it ok, but they do not really care if they do
      - esarbe 5y ago
        > As long as your philosophy of what a desktop is matches exactly to what the core devs view gnome is, then I am sure your fine. Well, yes. They are the devs. It's their project and so they get to decide what goes in. That not different with any other project. > obtuse nature of the gnome team That has been often repeated, but has not been my experience. Yes, the Gnome developers, such as any good team - has a clear vision of what their product should be and a process they are following. Most of the time, there are excellent reasons for their decisions. Sometimes technical, sometimes pragmatic. In some cases it's just aesthetics. But that's not different from any other free/open source projects. There are dozens of projects that are forked and forked again because of aesthetic, technical, social or idealistic differences. > as was highlighted above, System76 ships a forked version of gnome with popos because none of their changes, their contributions, were not accepted by gnome. Well, that's .. good, I guess? I mean, that System76 have forked version of Gnome that confirms more to their vision of a desktop. That's the beauty of free/open software; no one is beholden to a single company calling the shots. > From my point of view gnome devs do not build gnome for the gnome community gnome devs build gnome for themselves, and if others use it ok, but they do not really care if they do I would argue that the Gnome developers very much are a part of the Gnome community. Yes, they build it for themselves, or for the companies paying them to build it. The primary commercial contributors to Gnome - companies like Endless, Redhat, Ubuntu, SuSE - are not single-mindedly interested in Gnome's market share. They have larger offerings, of which Gnome is only a part. They have nothing to gain from - say - Gentoo switching to Gnome (except maybe additional developers, but that's not a given). Why should
- nhumrich 5y ago
  They have tried to contribute to gnome. Non of their patches get accepted, pop_os currently ships with a fork of gnome. One of the reasons for this new DE, is because they have tried to contribute to gnome, and failed. And if they are going to have to maintain their own fork anyways, they might as well make their own thing.
nwah1 5y ago
Terrible business decision. Existing DEs have centuries of collective engineering hours poured into them. They work. They are free. There is no compelling reason to throw that all away. Likely a new system will be worse along every metric of concern for the foreseeable future.
- obiwan14 5y ago
  If other people had the same attitude, we'd all still be using Symbian or be writing programs in Fortran. The Cinnamon desktop was started long after GNOME and KDE, yet it's now much better than both.
- hsn915 5y ago
  This can be said about anything. For example, using Linux. Windows has centuries of engineering hours poured into it. It works and is reliable. There's no reason to throw it away and use Linux. If you think Linux is free, wait until you see how much you pay per year in salaries for people whose whole job is to manage this OS. Also, all existing DEs suck in some way or another. KDE is too bloated and slow. XFCE is too minimal. Gnome has countless bugs, and its performance is questionable.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  Totally agree. I have a system 76 laptop and I find it confusing that they will spend their development cycles this way. Their business model is rebadging hardware and ensuring it will run Linux well. Their value add is in working on proper hardware support for these devices in Linux and in replacing the proprietary Clevo BIOS. I'll gladly pay more for that! But Pop_OS in general (and now this DE) seem to be straying far afield. I will never use either. To the extent that these endeavors raise their unit prices, they risk pushing customers to directly buy a Clevo or another rebadge.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  It has been more than 10 years since Maverick Meerkat. About time to repeat the mistakes of the past.
  - 5y ago
YPPH 5y ago
Link to relevant comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qnvrou/will_pop_os_ever_do_an_officially_kde_flavor_or/hjji8hh/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qnvrou/will_pop_os_...
alexmcc81 5y ago
I wonder what toolkit they will use. I guess since they will be using Rust, it's easier to use bindings to GTK instead of Qt which is C++. KDE has so many useful libraries [1] that can be used to build trailored desktops, like LXQt. [1] https://develop.kde.org/products/frameworks/ https://develop.kde.org/products/frameworks/
longstation 5y ago
I think as long as it follows the freedesktop specification [1] and can work with existing apps and other DEs (for example, when you have two DEs installed, you don't want they fight each other), it's not a bad thing. [1]https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/
vorpalhex 5y ago
ElementaryOS did this with their Pantheon and it's the reason I moved from them to Pop_OS. Their apps were generally useless or broken, critical basic settings (fractional DPI, per monitor dpi, etc) were missing and weird bugs abound. I had to install the dconf editor just to get the damn screen readable on my XPS. Pop_OS at the moment is just about perfect since it's just a well tuned gnome theme basically. So far I've only hit one bug and one odd default setting.
- nrabulinski 5y ago
  It’s not a well-tuned GNOME theme, it’s a GNOME fork. System76 tried to contribute to GNOME for years but their patches didn’t get accepted so it’s understandable they don’t want to stay tied to it.
  - thevagrant 5y ago
    They should switch their efforts to KDE then. Gnome has long held back linux desktop
Croftengea 5y ago
What Linux desperately needs in order to gain at least some recognition on a desktop is less desktop environments, not more.
- jjcon 5y ago
  One that actually works well and a hundred half broken ones is better than just one hundred half broken ones.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  We don't need less DEs, we need one with a low learning curve that happens to be usable by power users too, and one that can serve as the face of the OS in public. There's nothing like that yet.
dqpb 5y ago
I've had two System 76 laptops in the last 3 years. With the first one, I found PopOS! to be very glitchy, and battery life was less than 1 hour. About a year in the hardware failed. I then got a second newer System76 laptop and with that one the hardware failed within 6 months. Recently I bought a new Dell XPS, installed Ubuntu, and it works perfectly. I really wanted to like System76, but I've lost all faith in them and will never buy from them again.
- thevagrant 5y ago
  Opensuse Tumbleweed also works well on the XPS (in case you get bored of Ubuntu)
- reginold 5y ago
  Wow that sounds terrible! Were you able to get it fixed under the warranty? I'm new to Linux. I've been happy with my Lemur Pro laptop. System76 seems to have a solid reputation but things do happen. System76 warranty and support has been rock solid with all my questions.
bananamerica 5y ago
Fragmentation, that's what Linux need...
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Linux has dozens if not hundreds of desktop environments, one more is not going to break the camel's back.
  - bananamerica 5y ago
    Sure, I never said it would.
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      I think we are reading your original comment as “this will create fragmentation in the Linux ecosystem which will be bad,” but Linux is already extremely fragmented, and a new DE will probably not have any impact. (In other words, what’s the point of your original comment, then.) I’d say that fragmentation is a natural result of the flexibility possible with Linux. So it’s an unsolvable “problem” as long as the key benefit of Linux (flexibility and choice) still exists.
      - jatone 5y ago
        its really not as bad as people say. linux has same pretty reasonable standards that DEs all implement. most things you need for a DE run as daemons. the biggest pieces that cause problems are UI theming and application distribution. theming is less of an issue these days since applications just do their own thing anyways.
pjmlp 5y ago
Great, what desktop Linux needs, yet another DE, written in a language whose GUI ecosystem is miles behind something like SwiftUI, WPF, WinUI, Qt, Jetpack Compose, Flutter.
- nabakin 5y ago
  I'll be surprised if they aren't binding to a graphical framework in another language. Probably GTK or Qt
  - hsn915 5y ago
    Why the hell would they do that?
    - nabakin 5y ago
      Because creating an entire GUI framework is insanely hard? Because no Rust GUI framework is anywhere close to being good enough?
    - TingPing 5y ago
      Because its like 1 or 2 people and gtk-rs are mature decent bindings to a well-known and solid toolkit?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Probably, but then it will be just another binding and then is the question if anyone will bother to create Pop_OS specific apps.
    - tadfisher 5y ago
      As should be the case, I would hope. Toolkits shouldn't be desktop-specific.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Another example of Linux Desktop adoption failure, lack of cohesive development stack, which leads to Electron everywhere.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nbzso 5y ago
Actually there is a market for this in my view. Pop_OS has an useful Gnome implementation, I liked especially the option to switch from normal to tiled windows (and I hate childish UI/UX of Gnome). If they pull this off I am willing to pay for it. I hate the new direction of Mac OS UI. They have forgotten what made them beloved from UI/UX perspective and I have no interest anymore in "vertical integration" for ruling the world. So, if System76 invests in learning the best practices (and especially the old Apple HIG documentation) they can create the Real Linux Desktop revolution. Just focus on serious minimalism, accessibility and traditional interface paradigms without trying to be liked by the masses or following any "trend". As a designer I love their identity. They have the courage to create difference in a world filled with mediocrity, conformism and wishful "colorful" thinking.
- cgh 5y ago
  Just to add to this, System 76 have released a Gnome extension that gives Gnome a nice tiling implementation that I find quite productive. The usual distros have it packaged in their repos. More info: https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell After installing the package, you’ll need to log out and back in and enable it in Extensions.
- rsyring 5y ago
  > Just focus on serious minimalism, accessibility and traditional interface paradigms without trying to be liked by the masses or following any "trend". IMO, XFCE is pretty close to that. But I had to give it up for Cinnamon b/c I had lots of problems with multi-monitor support and different configurations (different monitors at work than at home). It was also buggy and the whole DE would crash sometimes when unplugging monitors. But in terms of a minimal, approachable, and accessible UX, I think they nailed it.
- esarbe 5y ago
  Gnome is an excellent desktop. It's focused on serious minimalism, accesiblity and on getting-the-heck-out-of-your-way when you are doing stuff. Lovin' it. I'm very happy they broke away from the 'traditional interface paradigms'. I always have to suppress a giggle when I see people using other desktop juggling their windows, playing "Window Manager" all the time. Gnome gets rid of that. Just use all app in full screen and never touch your mouse again.
pxc 5y ago
I remember how Unity fell apart back in the day. But while Canonical still felt they had the resources to back it, it was pretty good, imo. Maybe a few dedicated people can produce something good. From an end user perspective, I don't see any reason not to welcome this. If I don't like it, I can just keep using Plasma. Best of luck to System76 with this effort!
worldmerge 5y ago
I miss Unity. It was leaps and bounds better than Gnome. Wish Canonical never killed it. Whatever System76 makes will be better than Gnome. System76's implementation of Gnome is the best I've used.
- dopu 5y ago
  Totally agree here. Having a functional menu bar on the level of Unity or macOS is an excellent design choice, imo. I've always felt like Gnome just wastes that space, causing everything to be crammed into an application's title bar in an inconsistent way or into a hamburger menu.
- nabakin 5y ago
  Unity, as I remember it, was insanely laggy and unperformant
fyzix 5y ago
They should just fork deepin and improve it. It's the best looking DE imo. Zorin is also good in terms of ease of use for newbies.
monocasa 5y ago
I don't have a great feeling about this. They put up the job posting for this last month, and since they're in CO, they have to post a salary range. $90k-$110k. Even in Denver, that's absurdly low. You'd expect $150k at the low end. Feels ripe for something half baked from a new grad who doesn't know better.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Assuming they are happy with fully remote work, $90-110k is an obscene amount for a developer role in parts of the EU.
- tomdell 5y ago
  Something tells me they can get away with paying a bit less and still attract experienced candidates who would like to work at a small company with a mission they believe in while working in their preferred language/framework.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    I mean, I'm a developer in Denver writing Rust and get paid $265k. $90k-$110k is what the body shops writing Java that won't ever work the way it's supposed to written by fresh bootcamp grads for a new insurance company every six months pay out here.
    - jerednel 5y ago
      You seem to be an exception? https://www.builtincolorado.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-engineer/denver https://www.builtincolorado.com/salaries/dev-engineer/softwa...
      - monocasa 5y ago
        Built in Colorado is sort of a front for the VCs here; I don't trust those numbers, knowing the salary of about 40 or so engineers out here in 20 different companies.
_game_of_life 5y ago
Oh man, I just did a thesis on using a memory safe language like Rust for the kernel. The consensus in research was that Rust is extremely promising for designing a next gen memory safe OS. Some data structures are troubling to implement (paging table, etc.) but the benefits are significant. This is just a DE but if it's a sign of more things to come potentially over the next decade I am very excited. Linux is always going to be fragmented, and other OS (ex. Android) are either already integrating some Rust or are strongly considering it (ex. Microsoft).
- panick21_ 5y ago
  The lead engineer of System76 is the guy doing RedoxOS and lots of firmware in Rust as well. I would not be surprised if this new DE will serve for both Linux and RedoxOS.
  - _game_of_life 5y ago
    Fork yeah, that's very exciting, thank you for the info. I'm not a Rustacean but these memory related CVEs need to stop. Any small steps toward a memory safe(r) OS is good news to me!
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  I too am quite exited about both this WM and general kernels in Rust. Exciting times.
bobajeff 5y ago
I say if they want to do it I welcome it. Yes, distro specific desktop environments can and do suck often. And this one might not be an exception. Worst case is the their distro starts sucking and you'll need to look for another one. But isn't that what we're all used to now?
rvz 5y ago
Yet another DE for Linux, which is another thing they desperately need to solve the fundamental fragmentation and inconsistent UI / UX in many Linux distros. Rust solves many things, but in this case, there is little that it solves other than being ‘Written in Rust™’ and will still interface with the same buggy C libraries used in other DEs. Unless it is all in Pure Rust, What is the point of this?
- canadaduane 5y ago
  I don't think fragmentation is something that can be solved, because it's a cultural value.
  - rvz 5y ago
    I see. That also explains why lots of software companies cannot define 'Linux support' and cannot support the latest version of 'every' Linux distro, 100% of the time. A fundamental issue in the Linux desktop ecosystem and a line has to be drawn which guarantees a complaining user on an exotic distro or a fork of another one. As for Windows, and Mac they are supported on the latest versions 100% of the time.
    - canadaduane 5y ago
      Yes, I think you're right. Another way to look at it, is through the "long now" lens--like, what software will survive maybe 100 or 1000 years from today? I think companies and closed-source software will die in that length of time, while open source will persist. That doesn't help us now though. Another observation: Linux does eventually settle on standards, but the "maturation timeline" is so much longer than Mac/Windows (10 years?) that nothing "cool" (from a commercial perspective) happens on desktop Linux. But it does eventually work out--like the systemd standard that has emerged in the past decade, or Wayland (probably still 2 years away), or pipewire audio (also probably a year away). Linux enables a complementary but different type of 'support': bleeding-edge homebrew experimentation (see the many raving custom keyboard fans and their software, for example), and wrap-everything products (such as Steam using Linux inside for their latest gaming console).
Shared404 5y ago
Wonder how much relation between this and Orbital from Redox [0]. [0] https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/
phendrenad2 5y ago
Do they know what they're getting into?
stjohnswarts 5y ago
oh no. this is the same mistake that Ubuntu made with unity. Their current additions to gnome are perfectly usable and stable, I don't understand why they would change.
cyrc 5y ago
Could you consider replicating the Mac Classic desktop, including, menubar across the top, spatial finder, quickdraw gx, colorsync From a fan of the Classic MacOS

182 points by tuananh 5y ago

I will uninstall that environment and install gnome. If you want gnome to be better, then contribute to it. If you can't, detail why. Rust does not magically solve compatibility with the various daemons and make your UI function smoothly. We do not need Linux divide, we need Linux vision.

jjcon 5y ago
>If you want gnome to be better, then contribute to it. It doesn't work that way. The gnome maintainers have certain ideals that IMO are out of sync with most users and they are completely hostile to most PRs. I've seen tons of PRs denied with bizzare rationales and crucial functionality ripped out of gnome in their efforts to 'streamline'. This leads to everyone having a laundry list of extensions that break or stop being maintained and it just isn't ideal or user-friendly. Want to do something as simple as drag a file to your desktop? Oh you need a gnome extension for that etc etc. We need more DE choices.
easton 5y ago
I've been waiting for 10 years for someone to nut up and make GNOME something for humans to use instead of something for Linux admins. With Red Hat and Canonical both throwing weight behind it, you think that would happen, but nope. At this point I just want someone to build a desktop environment that makes people not have to think about the word "desktop environment", and nobody seems to actually give a crap about that goal. Except for Google, which is why the only Linux on the desktop product that's successful is Chrome OS.
- esarbe 5y ago
  My whole extended family runs on vanilla Fedora. Even my two surviving grandparents use Gnome as their desktop. They are perfectly happy. The only problem that arises from time to time are some weird-ass Windows applications that refuse to run with even Wine. Gnome is a smooth desktop that's easy to grasp and gets out of your way and definitively not aimed at Linux admins. For those there's tmux.
  - jjcon 5y ago
    >My whole extended family runs on vanilla Fedora. Even my two surviving grandparents use Gnome as their desktop. And then everyone started clapping
    - esarbe 5y ago
      and dancing to the rhythm, the voices were chiming and the bodies - wet with sweat - moving in harmony as the beats filled the emptiness in their lonely hearts and for a moment - a fleeting moment - they felt the joy and freedom they all had been searching for so long. Oh, sorry. You got a point?
      - jjcon 5y ago
        Its an idiom (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-whole-bus-clapped https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-whole-bus-clappe...) My point is that I can make stuff up too! If you need evidence that linux is just not ready for non-technical user prime time just take a look at the ltt video from yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M
        esarbe 5y ago
        I certainly doubt that this is evidence that linux is not ready for non-technical user prime time. Why? Because that kind of shit also happens on Windows. With administrative access, you can always kill your machine. What Linux lacks and what Windows has more then enough is informal support services. You know, that person in the family that just knows their way around computers, that does computer stuff. (Almost) every elderly person above a certain age is lost when it comes to computers. Most people alive cannot be trusted to install an application - not on Windows, not on Linux and not even on OS X (well, maybe on OS X nowadays, because you cannot install unsigned software these days) because all that software might be compromised. Every time you let a software on to your system, you can potentially brick it. And then you need a solid understanding of what's going on. For most people, computers are black boxes whose internal state is a mystery that is far too complex to be explored. They have no interest in exploring these mysteries. They have work to do; forms to fill, letters to write. And these people need the aforementioned informal support they can turn to whenever they need to diverge from the well-trodden paths. It doesn't depend on the operating system, but on the surrounding support system. That's why I don't consider that video evidence that Linux isn't ready for prime time, just as I wouldn't consider a video of someone bricking their Windows as evidence that Windows isn't ready for prime time. These people just need someone they can ask for help. For my family - that me.
syshum 5y ago
>>If you want gnome to be better, then contribute to it. Really? because gnome is one of the most hostile communities to contributors there is. So not you can not just "contribute" to it. gnome devs are very very very opinionated, they are worse than Apple. it is gnome devs way, or it is wrong... yea no thanks
- esarbe 5y ago
  Have you tried to contribute? I have in the past and never had any issues.
  - syshum 5y ago
    As long as your philosophy of what a desktop is matches exactly to what the core devs view gnome is, then I am sure your fine. But there are a reason by DE's like this new one, unity before it, and others that are either off shoots of gnome, or come from developers that are completely frustrated with the obtuse nature of the gnome team as was highlighted above, System76 ships a forked version of gnome with popos because none of their changes, their contributions, were not accepted by gnome. gnome is very opinionated about how users should use their desktops, how other software devs should write a application for gnome, and are unwilling to change in their positions even if the face wide scale community, user, or developer desire for the change. From my point of view gnome devs do not build gnome for the gnome community gnome devs build gnome for themselves, and if others use it ok, but they do not really care if they do
    - esarbe 5y ago
      > As long as your philosophy of what a desktop is matches exactly to what the core devs view gnome is, then I am sure your fine. Well, yes. They are the devs. It's their project and so they get to decide what goes in. That not different with any other project. > obtuse nature of the gnome team That has been often repeated, but has not been my experience. Yes, the Gnome developers, such as any good team - has a clear vision of what their product should be and a process they are following. Most of the time, there are excellent reasons for their decisions. Sometimes technical, sometimes pragmatic. In some cases it's just aesthetics. But that's not different from any other free/open source projects. There are dozens of projects that are forked and forked again because of aesthetic, technical, social or idealistic differences. > as was highlighted above, System76 ships a forked version of gnome with popos because none of their changes, their contributions, were not accepted by gnome. Well, that's .. good, I guess? I mean, that System76 have forked version of Gnome that confirms more to their vision of a desktop. That's the beauty of free/open software; no one is beholden to a single company calling the shots. > From my point of view gnome devs do not build gnome for the gnome community gnome devs build gnome for themselves, and if others use it ok, but they do not really care if they do I would argue that the Gnome developers very much are a part of the Gnome community. Yes, they build it for themselves, or for the companies paying them to build it. The primary commercial contributors to Gnome - companies like Endless, Redhat, Ubuntu, SuSE - are not single-mindedly interested in Gnome's market share. They have larger offerings, of which Gnome is only a part. They have nothing to gain from - say - Gentoo switching to Gnome (except maybe additional developers, but that's not a given). Why should
nhumrich 5y ago
They have tried to contribute to gnome. Non of their patches get accepted, pop_os currently ships with a fork of gnome. One of the reasons for this new DE, is because they have tried to contribute to gnome, and failed. And if they are going to have to maintain their own fork anyways, they might as well make their own thing.

nwah1 5y ago

Terrible business decision. Existing DEs have centuries of collective engineering hours poured into them. They work. They are free. There is no compelling reason to throw that all away. Likely a new system will be worse along every metric of concern for the foreseeable future.

obiwan14 5y ago
If other people had the same attitude, we'd all still be using Symbian or be writing programs in Fortran. The Cinnamon desktop was started long after GNOME and KDE, yet it's now much better than both.
hsn915 5y ago
This can be said about anything. For example, using Linux. Windows has centuries of engineering hours poured into it. It works and is reliable. There's no reason to throw it away and use Linux. If you think Linux is free, wait until you see how much you pay per year in salaries for people whose whole job is to manage this OS. Also, all existing DEs suck in some way or another. KDE is too bloated and slow. XFCE is too minimal. Gnome has countless bugs, and its performance is questionable.
JeremyNT 5y ago
Totally agree. I have a system 76 laptop and I find it confusing that they will spend their development cycles this way. Their business model is rebadging hardware and ensuring it will run Linux well. Their value add is in working on proper hardware support for these devices in Linux and in replacing the proprietary Clevo BIOS. I'll gladly pay more for that! But Pop_OS in general (and now this DE) seem to be straying far afield. I will never use either. To the extent that these endeavors raise their unit prices, they risk pushing customers to directly buy a Clevo or another rebadge.
e3bc54b2 5y ago
It has been more than 10 years since Maverick Meerkat. About time to repeat the mistakes of the past.
- 5y ago

YPPH 5y ago

Link to relevant comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qnvrou/will_pop_os_ever_do_an_officially_kde_flavor_or/hjji8hh/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qnvrou/will_pop_os_...

alexmcc81 5y ago

I wonder what toolkit they will use. I guess since they will be using Rust, it's easier to use bindings to GTK instead of Qt which is C++. KDE has so many useful libraries [1] that can be used to build trailored desktops, like LXQt. [1] https://develop.kde.org/products/frameworks/ https://develop.kde.org/products/frameworks/

longstation 5y ago

I think as long as it follows the freedesktop specification [1] and can work with existing apps and other DEs (for example, when you have two DEs installed, you don't want they fight each other), it's not a bad thing. [1]https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/

vorpalhex 5y ago

ElementaryOS did this with their Pantheon and it's the reason I moved from them to Pop_OS. Their apps were generally useless or broken, critical basic settings (fractional DPI, per monitor dpi, etc) were missing and weird bugs abound. I had to install the dconf editor just to get the damn screen readable on my XPS. Pop_OS at the moment is just about perfect since it's just a well tuned gnome theme basically. So far I've only hit one bug and one odd default setting.

nrabulinski 5y ago
It’s not a well-tuned GNOME theme, it’s a GNOME fork. System76 tried to contribute to GNOME for years but their patches didn’t get accepted so it’s understandable they don’t want to stay tied to it.
- thevagrant 5y ago
  They should switch their efforts to KDE then. Gnome has long held back linux desktop

Croftengea 5y ago

What Linux desperately needs in order to gain at least some recognition on a desktop is less desktop environments, not more.

jjcon 5y ago
One that actually works well and a hundred half broken ones is better than just one hundred half broken ones.
selfhoster11 5y ago
We don't need less DEs, we need one with a low learning curve that happens to be usable by power users too, and one that can serve as the face of the OS in public. There's nothing like that yet.

dqpb 5y ago

I've had two System 76 laptops in the last 3 years. With the first one, I found PopOS! to be very glitchy, and battery life was less than 1 hour. About a year in the hardware failed. I then got a second newer System76 laptop and with that one the hardware failed within 6 months. Recently I bought a new Dell XPS, installed Ubuntu, and it works perfectly. I really wanted to like System76, but I've lost all faith in them and will never buy from them again.

thevagrant 5y ago
Opensuse Tumbleweed also works well on the XPS (in case you get bored of Ubuntu)
reginold 5y ago
Wow that sounds terrible! Were you able to get it fixed under the warranty? I'm new to Linux. I've been happy with my Lemur Pro laptop. System76 seems to have a solid reputation but things do happen. System76 warranty and support has been rock solid with all my questions.

bananamerica 5y ago

Fragmentation, that's what Linux need...

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Linux has dozens if not hundreds of desktop environments, one more is not going to break the camel's back.
- bananamerica 5y ago
  Sure, I never said it would.
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    I think we are reading your original comment as “this will create fragmentation in the Linux ecosystem which will be bad,” but Linux is already extremely fragmented, and a new DE will probably not have any impact. (In other words, what’s the point of your original comment, then.) I’d say that fragmentation is a natural result of the flexibility possible with Linux. So it’s an unsolvable “problem” as long as the key benefit of Linux (flexibility and choice) still exists.
    - jatone 5y ago
      its really not as bad as people say. linux has same pretty reasonable standards that DEs all implement. most things you need for a DE run as daemons. the biggest pieces that cause problems are UI theming and application distribution. theming is less of an issue these days since applications just do their own thing anyways.

pjmlp 5y ago

Great, what desktop Linux needs, yet another DE, written in a language whose GUI ecosystem is miles behind something like SwiftUI, WPF, WinUI, Qt, Jetpack Compose, Flutter.

nabakin 5y ago
I'll be surprised if they aren't binding to a graphical framework in another language. Probably GTK or Qt
- hsn915 5y ago
  Why the hell would they do that?
  - nabakin 5y ago
    Because creating an entire GUI framework is insanely hard? Because no Rust GUI framework is anywhere close to being good enough?
  - TingPing 5y ago
    Because its like 1 or 2 people and gtk-rs are mature decent bindings to a well-known and solid toolkit?
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Probably, but then it will be just another binding and then is the question if anyone will bother to create Pop_OS specific apps.
  - tadfisher 5y ago
    As should be the case, I would hope. Toolkits shouldn't be desktop-specific.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Another example of Linux Desktop adoption failure, lack of cohesive development stack, which leads to Electron everywhere.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nbzso 5y ago

Actually there is a market for this in my view. Pop_OS has an useful Gnome implementation, I liked especially the option to switch from normal to tiled windows (and I hate childish UI/UX of Gnome). If they pull this off I am willing to pay for it. I hate the new direction of Mac OS UI. They have forgotten what made them beloved from UI/UX perspective and I have no interest anymore in "vertical integration" for ruling the world. So, if System76 invests in learning the best practices (and especially the old Apple HIG documentation) they can create the Real Linux Desktop revolution. Just focus on serious minimalism, accessibility and traditional interface paradigms without trying to be liked by the masses or following any "trend". As a designer I love their identity. They have the courage to create difference in a world filled with mediocrity, conformism and wishful "colorful" thinking.

cgh 5y ago
Just to add to this, System 76 have released a Gnome extension that gives Gnome a nice tiling implementation that I find quite productive. The usual distros have it packaged in their repos. More info: https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell After installing the package, you’ll need to log out and back in and enable it in Extensions.
rsyring 5y ago
> Just focus on serious minimalism, accessibility and traditional interface paradigms without trying to be liked by the masses or following any "trend". IMO, XFCE is pretty close to that. But I had to give it up for Cinnamon b/c I had lots of problems with multi-monitor support and different configurations (different monitors at work than at home). It was also buggy and the whole DE would crash sometimes when unplugging monitors. But in terms of a minimal, approachable, and accessible UX, I think they nailed it.
esarbe 5y ago
Gnome is an excellent desktop. It's focused on serious minimalism, accesiblity and on getting-the-heck-out-of-your-way when you are doing stuff. Lovin' it. I'm very happy they broke away from the 'traditional interface paradigms'. I always have to suppress a giggle when I see people using other desktop juggling their windows, playing "Window Manager" all the time. Gnome gets rid of that. Just use all app in full screen and never touch your mouse again.

pxc 5y ago

I remember how Unity fell apart back in the day. But while Canonical still felt they had the resources to back it, it was pretty good, imo. Maybe a few dedicated people can produce something good. From an end user perspective, I don't see any reason not to welcome this. If I don't like it, I can just keep using Plasma. Best of luck to System76 with this effort!

worldmerge 5y ago

I miss Unity. It was leaps and bounds better than Gnome. Wish Canonical never killed it. Whatever System76 makes will be better than Gnome. System76's implementation of Gnome is the best I've used.

dopu 5y ago
Totally agree here. Having a functional menu bar on the level of Unity or macOS is an excellent design choice, imo. I've always felt like Gnome just wastes that space, causing everything to be crammed into an application's title bar in an inconsistent way or into a hamburger menu.
nabakin 5y ago
Unity, as I remember it, was insanely laggy and unperformant

fyzix 5y ago

They should just fork deepin and improve it. It's the best looking DE imo. Zorin is also good in terms of ease of use for newbies.

monocasa 5y ago

I don't have a great feeling about this. They put up the job posting for this last month, and since they're in CO, they have to post a salary range. $90k-$110k. Even in Denver, that's absurdly low. You'd expect $150k at the low end. Feels ripe for something half baked from a new grad who doesn't know better.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Assuming they are happy with fully remote work, $90-110k is an obscene amount for a developer role in parts of the EU.
tomdell 5y ago
Something tells me they can get away with paying a bit less and still attract experienced candidates who would like to work at a small company with a mission they believe in while working in their preferred language/framework.
- monocasa 5y ago
  I mean, I'm a developer in Denver writing Rust and get paid $265k. $90k-$110k is what the body shops writing Java that won't ever work the way it's supposed to written by fresh bootcamp grads for a new insurance company every six months pay out here.
  - jerednel 5y ago
    You seem to be an exception? https://www.builtincolorado.com/salaries/dev-engineer/software-engineer/denver https://www.builtincolorado.com/salaries/dev-engineer/softwa...
    - monocasa 5y ago
      Built in Colorado is sort of a front for the VCs here; I don't trust those numbers, knowing the salary of about 40 or so engineers out here in 20 different companies.

_game_of_life 5y ago

Oh man, I just did a thesis on using a memory safe language like Rust for the kernel. The consensus in research was that Rust is extremely promising for designing a next gen memory safe OS. Some data structures are troubling to implement (paging table, etc.) but the benefits are significant. This is just a DE but if it's a sign of more things to come potentially over the next decade I am very excited. Linux is always going to be fragmented, and other OS (ex. Android) are either already integrating some Rust or are strongly considering it (ex. Microsoft).

panick21_ 5y ago
The lead engineer of System76 is the guy doing RedoxOS and lots of firmware in Rust as well. I would not be surprised if this new DE will serve for both Linux and RedoxOS.
- _game_of_life 5y ago
  Fork yeah, that's very exciting, thank you for the info. I'm not a Rustacean but these memory related CVEs need to stop. Any small steps toward a memory safe(r) OS is good news to me!
steveklabnik 5y ago
I too am quite exited about both this WM and general kernels in Rust. Exciting times.

bobajeff 5y ago

I say if they want to do it I welcome it. Yes, distro specific desktop environments can and do suck often. And this one might not be an exception. Worst case is the their distro starts sucking and you'll need to look for another one. But isn't that what we're all used to now?

rvz 5y ago

Yet another DE for Linux, which is another thing they desperately need to solve the fundamental fragmentation and inconsistent UI / UX in many Linux distros. Rust solves many things, but in this case, there is little that it solves other than being ‘Written in Rust™’ and will still interface with the same buggy C libraries used in other DEs. Unless it is all in Pure Rust, What is the point of this?

canadaduane 5y ago
I don't think fragmentation is something that can be solved, because it's a cultural value.
- rvz 5y ago
  I see. That also explains why lots of software companies cannot define 'Linux support' and cannot support the latest version of 'every' Linux distro, 100% of the time. A fundamental issue in the Linux desktop ecosystem and a line has to be drawn which guarantees a complaining user on an exotic distro or a fork of another one. As for Windows, and Mac they are supported on the latest versions 100% of the time.
  - canadaduane 5y ago
    Yes, I think you're right. Another way to look at it, is through the "long now" lens--like, what software will survive maybe 100 or 1000 years from today? I think companies and closed-source software will die in that length of time, while open source will persist. That doesn't help us now though. Another observation: Linux does eventually settle on standards, but the "maturation timeline" is so much longer than Mac/Windows (10 years?) that nothing "cool" (from a commercial perspective) happens on desktop Linux. But it does eventually work out--like the systemd standard that has emerged in the past decade, or Wayland (probably still 2 years away), or pipewire audio (also probably a year away). Linux enables a complementary but different type of 'support': bleeding-edge homebrew experimentation (see the many raving custom keyboard fans and their software, for example), and wrap-everything products (such as Steam using Linux inside for their latest gaming console).

Shared404 5y ago

Wonder how much relation between this and Orbital from Redox [0]. [0] https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/

phendrenad2 5y ago

Do they know what they're getting into?

stjohnswarts 5y ago

oh no. this is the same mistake that Ubuntu made with unity. Their current additions to gnome are perfectly usable and stable, I don't understand why they would change.

cyrc 5y ago

Could you consider replicating the Mac Classic desktop, including, menubar across the top, spatial finder, quickdraw gx, colorsync From a fan of the Classic MacOS