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Well, if you ask the folk over at Red Hat, they agree. And they're doing it within their code, which is both working and simultaneously making the old-timers ve

Well, if you ask the folk over at Red Hat, they agree. And they're doing it within their code, which is both working and simultaneously making the old-timers very, very angry. They've been sponsoring GNOME, which has been pushing the simplified, mobile-friendly look for almost a decade now. They've also (I believe) been behind the scenes in GNOME's push to kill theming on the behalf of developers who hate their apps getting themed, which of course distributions hate because that hurts the ability to stand out. If GNOME looks the same on every distribution, your distribution sticks out less. Red Hat has also been behind sponsoring SystemD, which for better or worse brought every distribution kicking and screaming into a more consistent "low level" layout. Again though, this makes management across Linux systems somewhat easier, while making distribution-specific differences smaller. Red Hat has been behind Flatpak, which compartmentalizes applications and means that they can run on any distribution when built against a common runtime. For app developers and new people, this is great as a "Linux app" just runs on any "Linux" distribution, easy. For old-timers and technical folk (even on here)... again it's with kicking and screaming. And if you are a distribution author, every distribution now runs the same apps, so what's so special about your distro again? Red Hat has also been behind PulseAudio and PipeWire, which changed how audio worked on Linux... again with kicking and screaming. The point is, Red Hat keeps working on technology that, I would argue, makes Linux more consistent and approachable to newcomers, but massively changes how it works which angers old-timers and also happens to reduce diversity within distributions as to how things are done. This makes things easier for programmers, but erodes away the proliferation of distributions because the differences between them get smaller and smaller. Because, if Red Hat gets their way, consider: Every desktop that uses GNOME looks the same because there isn't as much theming. Every desktop runs the same apps using Flatpak. Every desktop has similar low-level internals with SystemD. If you are a distribution maker, not much left to stand out now, is there? Again, app developers love this, but if you are a distribution maker, Red Hat is trying to kill your edge.

Taywee 5y ago
As a side question, who is kicking and screaming about PipeWire? PulseAudio had contention because of compromises and sacrifices in various places, but PipeWire is really quite great for basically every use case, professional and casual alike, and effectively unifies the long PA/JACK split. I couldn't imagine anybody who has had to fight with Linux audio being anything less than ecstatic for PipeWire.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  It's bad wording on my part. PipeWire has been well-received, but that's partly because the kicking and screaming over PulseAudio (which PipeWire implements) already happened. Though if PipeWire had been introduced before PulseAudio occurred, it would have no doubt gone through the hate phase.
  - rvense 5y ago
    I don't use Pulseaudio, so I only know it from "I've heard..." and that's all been negative, that it doesn't work or is annoying. For Pipewire, I've only actually heard good things. Maybe I'm talking to a specific set of people, but I still might try it.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      PA mostly works, nowadays. It still spontaneously gets muted, once in a long while, but if I pop up enough different volume controls, I have always found a button to unmute it.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    > Though if PipeWire had been introduced before PulseAudio occurred, it would have no doubt gone through the hate phase. PulseAudio's hate phase was caused by it breaking everything. If PipeWire had been introduced and worked, out of the box, correctly, then I doubt that it would have been poorly received.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      The claim is that stuff was broken, and PA just exposed the bugs; and PW benefits from all the fixes done for PA. I have no way to evaluate the claim, and don't really care what the real story is. PA mostly works, now, and PW mostly works, now. But PW does have bugs, and is, inexplicably, coded in C, for which there can be no excuse at this late date. It could be switched over to build in C++ in probably under a day, and then begin to be modernized, anytime, as was done with Gcc and Gdb with unalloyed success. PW is written by the main guy from Gstreamer, which used to crash all the damn time back when PA went silent a lot. But he is older now and has lots of help.
padraic7a 5y ago
That's an intersting take. My only argument is with your assertion that "app developers love this". The 'stop theming my app' crowd is pretty small. The number of apps on Flatpak is pretty small compared to say Snap and tiny compared to 'traditional' package managers on distributions.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  I wouldn't call it just app theming. App developers in general love how there's now a "right way of doing things" now, but in particular, the future. You don't have to worry how each distro handles booting or services - it's SystemD. You won't have to worry how each distro handles audio with Jack, PulseAudio, or ALSA - it's PipeWire. You don't have to worry about the libraries the distro provides for your app - just use Flatpak. You don't have to worry where to host your app for every distro - just use Flathub. You don't have to worry what toolkit to use - just use GTK. You can use Qt if you really care, but GTK is clearly the "one true road" (if that analogy makes sense). And so on.
  - jdright 5y ago
    All that is true, except the last point about GTK. Most developers that want their apps running everywhere picks Qt. GTK is just dead in this game and any developer picking GTK is restraining theirselves to GNU/Linux. Don't use GTK
    - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
      The way I see it, using GTK reminds me of "native" Mac apps (like the ones written in Swift), but on Linux. GTK sure looks a hell of a lot better than Qt on a GNOME desktop: more modern, polished, and clean. So that's why I'd imagine some people choose GTK.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        Ironically GTK apps look better on a QT based desktop than vice versa because KDE/QT devs unlike GTK devs actually make an effort on that front. You can with minimal effort theme both similarly by installing a theme and icon theme that has versions for both gtk qt but your gnome desktop wont provide a built in gui to configure such, again their choice, their limitation not a limitation of QT. A given app QT app isn't going to pull in a particular theme because that would be the tail wagging the dog.
1_player 5y ago
As a long time Linux enthusiast, everything listed in your comment is a _fantastic_ idea. I applaud the effort and I can't see anything wrong with this direction. But I really do not understand those that complain about GNOME and Red Hat building a, quote, walled garden. So what? Give me the open source walled garden! Why does every Linux desktop have to accomodate all the whims of every user? Why does GNOME have to be compatible with your homegrown DE? Do you also expect emacs to ship features that are compatible with vim? I want a consistent experience, that is open source. I want a libre Apple experience. There should be nothing shameful in having a group of people pushing towards that goal.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  If we consider the canonical walled garden IOS its not the garden anyone disagrees with its the walls. Such construction always always serves the builders interests not the users. IOS is a walled garden insofar as being open to only Apple approved software so Apple can extract maximum revenue not to enhance the users experience. Comparatively Red Hat's garden is quite the opposite. For example flatpak in contrast to Snap allows one to run and use third party repos much like traditional package managers. Red Hat isn't a walled garden and its not clear that there would be anything virtuous about it if it were. It certainly wouldn't provide you with an Apple experience on Linux. Apple makes i think about 9 billion per quarter on Macs. Red Hat on the other hand makes 1.25B and virtually zero from the desktop. Caring about desktop experience and having a pile of money to pay people to work on it gets you an Apple experience not limiting user choice nor abandoning the idea of building an ecosystem of interchangeable parts. Let me turn your question on its head. > Why does GNOME have to be compatible with your homegrown DE? Why instead would one desktop environment be in any fashion incompatible with any other desktop environment? If standards it depends on need to evolve logically they ought to evolve in such a fashion as other applications can non trivially evolve with new and improved standards. > Do you also expect emacs to ship features that are compatible with vim? Actually yes. The most prominent example would be evil mode but there is also viper and several newer implementations of modal editing and features first dreamed up for vim.
  - 1_player 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Taywee 5y ago

As a side question, who is kicking and screaming about PipeWire? PulseAudio had contention because of compromises and sacrifices in various places, but PipeWire is really quite great for basically every use case, professional and casual alike, and effectively unifies the long PA/JACK split. I couldn't imagine anybody who has had to fight with Linux audio being anything less than ecstatic for PipeWire.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
It's bad wording on my part. PipeWire has been well-received, but that's partly because the kicking and screaming over PulseAudio (which PipeWire implements) already happened. Though if PipeWire had been introduced before PulseAudio occurred, it would have no doubt gone through the hate phase.
- rvense 5y ago
  I don't use Pulseaudio, so I only know it from "I've heard..." and that's all been negative, that it doesn't work or is annoying. For Pipewire, I've only actually heard good things. Maybe I'm talking to a specific set of people, but I still might try it.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    PA mostly works, nowadays. It still spontaneously gets muted, once in a long while, but if I pop up enough different volume controls, I have always found a button to unmute it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > Though if PipeWire had been introduced before PulseAudio occurred, it would have no doubt gone through the hate phase. PulseAudio's hate phase was caused by it breaking everything. If PipeWire had been introduced and worked, out of the box, correctly, then I doubt that it would have been poorly received.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    The claim is that stuff was broken, and PA just exposed the bugs; and PW benefits from all the fixes done for PA. I have no way to evaluate the claim, and don't really care what the real story is. PA mostly works, now, and PW mostly works, now. But PW does have bugs, and is, inexplicably, coded in C, for which there can be no excuse at this late date. It could be switched over to build in C++ in probably under a day, and then begin to be modernized, anytime, as was done with Gcc and Gdb with unalloyed success. PW is written by the main guy from Gstreamer, which used to crash all the damn time back when PA went silent a lot. But he is older now and has lots of help.

padraic7a 5y ago

That's an intersting take. My only argument is with your assertion that "app developers love this". The 'stop theming my app' crowd is pretty small. The number of apps on Flatpak is pretty small compared to say Snap and tiny compared to 'traditional' package managers on distributions.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
I wouldn't call it just app theming. App developers in general love how there's now a "right way of doing things" now, but in particular, the future. You don't have to worry how each distro handles booting or services - it's SystemD. You won't have to worry how each distro handles audio with Jack, PulseAudio, or ALSA - it's PipeWire. You don't have to worry about the libraries the distro provides for your app - just use Flatpak. You don't have to worry where to host your app for every distro - just use Flathub. You don't have to worry what toolkit to use - just use GTK. You can use Qt if you really care, but GTK is clearly the "one true road" (if that analogy makes sense). And so on.
- jdright 5y ago
  All that is true, except the last point about GTK. Most developers that want their apps running everywhere picks Qt. GTK is just dead in this game and any developer picking GTK is restraining theirselves to GNU/Linux. Don't use GTK
  - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
    The way I see it, using GTK reminds me of "native" Mac apps (like the ones written in Swift), but on Linux. GTK sure looks a hell of a lot better than Qt on a GNOME desktop: more modern, polished, and clean. So that's why I'd imagine some people choose GTK.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      Ironically GTK apps look better on a QT based desktop than vice versa because KDE/QT devs unlike GTK devs actually make an effort on that front. You can with minimal effort theme both similarly by installing a theme and icon theme that has versions for both gtk qt but your gnome desktop wont provide a built in gui to configure such, again their choice, their limitation not a limitation of QT. A given app QT app isn't going to pull in a particular theme because that would be the tail wagging the dog.

1_player 5y ago

As a long time Linux enthusiast, everything listed in your comment is a _fantastic_ idea. I applaud the effort and I can't see anything wrong with this direction. But I really do not understand those that complain about GNOME and Red Hat building a, quote, walled garden. So what? Give me the open source walled garden! Why does every Linux desktop have to accomodate all the whims of every user? Why does GNOME have to be compatible with your homegrown DE? Do you also expect emacs to ship features that are compatible with vim? I want a consistent experience, that is open source. I want a libre Apple experience. There should be nothing shameful in having a group of people pushing towards that goal.

michaelmrose 5y ago
If we consider the canonical walled garden IOS its not the garden anyone disagrees with its the walls. Such construction always always serves the builders interests not the users. IOS is a walled garden insofar as being open to only Apple approved software so Apple can extract maximum revenue not to enhance the users experience. Comparatively Red Hat's garden is quite the opposite. For example flatpak in contrast to Snap allows one to run and use third party repos much like traditional package managers. Red Hat isn't a walled garden and its not clear that there would be anything virtuous about it if it were. It certainly wouldn't provide you with an Apple experience on Linux. Apple makes i think about 9 billion per quarter on Macs. Red Hat on the other hand makes 1.25B and virtually zero from the desktop. Caring about desktop experience and having a pile of money to pay people to work on it gets you an Apple experience not limiting user choice nor abandoning the idea of building an ecosystem of interchangeable parts. Let me turn your question on its head. > Why does GNOME have to be compatible with your homegrown DE? Why instead would one desktop environment be in any fashion incompatible with any other desktop environment? If standards it depends on need to evolve logically they ought to evolve in such a fashion as other applications can non trivially evolve with new and improved standards. > Do you also expect emacs to ship features that are compatible with vim? Actually yes. The most prominent example would be evil mode but there is also viper and several newer implementations of modal editing and features first dreamed up for vim.
- 1_player 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]