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>I mean, what is that even meant to convey? I'm conveying that no party can actually restrict this, GNOME/KDE apps might look ugly and bad on the other desktop

>I mean, what is that even meant to convey? I'm conveying that no party can actually restrict this, GNOME/KDE apps might look ugly and bad on the other desktop but that's different from a business/legal restriction stopping you from running it or even trying to improve the ugliness. >Do you mean to say that one can always create hard forks of non-trivial packages like GTK or develop extensions for GNOME shell the change the way it works like the PopOS guys did? Well they don't have to make a hard fork, downstreams can just apply a few modifications here and there like Ubuntu currently does. I think Pop!_OS was trying to do too much with a small team and that was where they ran into trouble, I'd expect their progress to be even slower if they try to develop their own desktop. >Funny, because I use i3wm on an old NAS and KDE apps like Spectacle, Gwenview, and Dolphin work fine and use whatever theme and font I tell them to use That's true you can get them to work but they're not ideal. Your use case seems to be unusual, an old FAQ entry suggests that i3wm users prefer text-based file managers: https://faq.i3wm.org/question/92/what-is-recommended-file-manager-for-i3wm.1.html https://faq.i3wm.org/question/92/what-is-recommended-file-ma... I've also had KDE apps break quite badly with certain themes so I don't really know what you mean they work fine. In my experience KDE apps only work flawlessly when using Breeze, some themes like Kvantum make heavy modifications to the apps and so can cause pretty bad breakage. >Can't say the same for GTK4 GNOME apps. They're not built to be used outside GNOME because GNOME is now a "platform", which is just doublespeak for a walled garden. No, KDE and GNOME were both platforms for some time. What that means is they provide certain services and APIs for app developers that you can't get without using those APIs. There is little overlap between them, but that doesn't make them a walled garden. Historically I don't think KDE/GNOME developers have ever spent much time testing KDE/GNOME programs outside their respective desktops. You can try to get them to work in something else like i3wm but it's always been on users of those other window managers to figure out how to integrate it. Why would they bother making a KDE or GNOME app if they don't intend for it to be used with that desktop? You're confusing a walled garden with a simple case of developer intent. A walled garden would be if the app developers were forced to use these APIs, but they are not; it's actually the opposite of that, app developers can use whatever they want and that's why you're having trouble getting something to integrate with another environment. Not every API can integrate with all potential environments. >It's obvious to me as well — we don't care about GNOME extensions It's worth noting that blog is one developer's opinion. Tobias is also not a shell developer and does not make decisions for shell developers on what to do about extensions. He is of course free to give his opinion on extensions, as are you. >It's rather unfortunate that the extension system exists at all. No, I think it would be worse if there would be no extensions. Then you'd have no way to modify the shell. >People waste so much time and resources on making elaborate extensions under the impression that their extensions are somehow welcome but then they have to keep fixing them This is a misconception. Some more complex extensions that modify the shell in complex ways do need to be fixed every release. But a large number of extensions don't need anything more than some minor changes or some testing and a version bump. There is also some efforts to reduce the amount of work needed by extension developers, you can read about it here: https://blogs.gnome.org/sri/2020/09/16/the-gnome-extensions-rebooted-initiative/ https://blogs.gnome.org/sri/2020/09/16/the-gnome-extensions-...

ungamedplayer 5y ago
>which is just doublespeak for a walled garden. This is horse shit at best, social espionage at the other end. You are intentionally misusing this term. Your data and the source can be used in any way you as the user sees fit. It can be forked, it can be changed, your freedoms are enforced.
- _2paq 5y ago
  > It can be forked, it can be changed, your freedoms are enforced. Sure, let's pretend that every user is a programmer who knows what a hard fork is and, even if he is a programmer, he's willing to create hard forks of each and every GNOME software he uses to support features that worked before and don't work now. This has worked out great for PopOS and Budgie right? It's so much easier to just fall back on the open source argument and ignore the fact that it means nothing for the average user who doesn't know the first thing about C code or git to be able to make the changes he wants to.
  - shatteredgate 5y ago
    It's not clear what you're talking about because there isn't a reality where this does whatever you want without programmers working on it. Average users are always going to need help from them, regardless of whether it's upstream or a hard fork. That choice also doesn't seem to be relevant to Pop!_OS and Budgie because for them it was a choice between hard fork or start from scratch, which is primarily a technical choice which needs experienced programmers either way.
    - _2paq 5y ago
      > there isn't a reality where this does whatever you want I wish something called user choice and configuration options existed in this reality.
      - shatteredgate 5y ago
        There are multiple ways to get that though. One of them would be if a lot of hard forks existed, then you'd have a lot of options to choose from. Or those developers can contribute upstream and work on adding tons of options to the upstream project. My point is that there isn't a world where you just get the choice and options out of thin air without programmers, eventually someone has to program the options in somewhere or they just won't exist.

ungamedplayer 5y ago

>which is just doublespeak for a walled garden. This is horse shit at best, social espionage at the other end. You are intentionally misusing this term. Your data and the source can be used in any way you as the user sees fit. It can be forked, it can be changed, your freedoms are enforced.

_2paq 5y ago
> It can be forked, it can be changed, your freedoms are enforced. Sure, let's pretend that every user is a programmer who knows what a hard fork is and, even if he is a programmer, he's willing to create hard forks of each and every GNOME software he uses to support features that worked before and don't work now. This has worked out great for PopOS and Budgie right? It's so much easier to just fall back on the open source argument and ignore the fact that it means nothing for the average user who doesn't know the first thing about C code or git to be able to make the changes he wants to.
- shatteredgate 5y ago
  It's not clear what you're talking about because there isn't a reality where this does whatever you want without programmers working on it. Average users are always going to need help from them, regardless of whether it's upstream or a hard fork. That choice also doesn't seem to be relevant to Pop!_OS and Budgie because for them it was a choice between hard fork or start from scratch, which is primarily a technical choice which needs experienced programmers either way.
  - _2paq 5y ago
    > there isn't a reality where this does whatever you want I wish something called user choice and configuration options existed in this reality.
    - shatteredgate 5y ago
      There are multiple ways to get that though. One of them would be if a lot of hard forks existed, then you'd have a lot of options to choose from. Or those developers can contribute upstream and work on adding tons of options to the upstream project. My point is that there isn't a world where you just get the choice and options out of thin air without programmers, eventually someone has to program the options in somewhere or they just won't exist.