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Desktop distributions exist because users like and will pay for complete experiences and the effort to make yet another Ubuntu derivative lie virtually entirely

Desktop distributions exist because users like and will pay for complete experiences and the effort to make yet another Ubuntu derivative lie virtually entirely in the parts that you choose to develop not in packing it up into Elementary. It also means you can update your software on your own schedule with modifications where necessary instead of being sandbagged into working around someone else's limitations on their schedule. Furthermore the general desktop for everyone space and the server space are literally the only ones on planet earth that have enough Linux users for a reasonably sized community. > Two major desktops are already a bit much for such a narrow market. Basically there needs to be at least one environment that isn't crap. Gnome - Has a weirdly bad way of handling multiple monitors - Requires twice as many steps to perform common operations via its graphical interface - Relies on hot corners which are both possible to trigger by accident and hard to organically discover. It also makes a lot less sense with multiple monitors. - Spent the first 8 years of gnome 3 constantly leaking memory until it fell over if you left it on too long. This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. - Deprecates features that people use without replacement. See tray icons for a literal decade - Has repeatedly has major figures in its development promote the idea of removing themeing and extensions in favor of a vanilla gnome experience. An experience that is notably lackluster. - Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. - Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session - Lacks basic features in its file manager I could go on. The basic problem is confusing an ecosystem of compatible software for a company with labor resources that can be allocated to different tasks that is somehow needlessly wasted on developing two different desktops. Eliminate KDE and you don't get a stronger gnome you get a weaker one because someone passionate about KDE doesn't magically become a gnome developer because they aren't reallocated by their manager to work on a similar project you just lose incidental contributions to mutually useful parts of the open source ecosystem and less cross fertilization of ideas.

throwaway82652 5y ago
Some of your comments are valid and I agree with them, but some of them are a lot of nonsense. >This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. No, this is not even close to what happened. There was never any weird mismatch, the refcounting is very similar in both of them. The bug was that the garbage collector wasn't running correctly. Please read the (now 4 years old) blog post: https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/ https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... >Deprecates features that people use without replacement. I would like to know about these desktops that are still under active development and have never removed or deprecated features. I've never seen one. I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find people complaining that Windows 11 doesn't support 8-bit color displays at 640x480. >See tray icons for a literal decade This never happened, there has been several extensions for tray icons for the entire decade. The real problem here is that all the APIs for tray icons are broken and nobody bothered to implement one correctly. >Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. This has nothing to do with javascript or addons. In general code that isn't being developed has a high probability it will stop working at some point. And this presents a false choice too. I've heard this statement so many times but nobody has ever proposed what a real addons API should look like. AFAIK there are no desktop platforms or mobile platforms anywhere with an addons API that does everything that can be done with GNOME extensions. The closest I've ever seen are things like addon widgets for Android and KDE which aren't even close to being the same thing. >Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session That's not really important anywhere, the apps themselves are supposed to implement session management to insure against any system crash. If I were you I would avoid commenting on these things again unless you have a proposal to make, they cheapen the rest of your comments. It's honestly tiring to keep seeing these long lists of random grievances where the ultimate suggestion is "just throw it away and start over while somehow avoiding all these issues in a way that is not explained". Do you really think having yet another choice is going to make a difference?
- 5y ago

throwaway82652 5y ago

Some of your comments are valid and I agree with them, but some of them are a lot of nonsense. >This was caused by a weird mismatch between its javascript desktop and its compiled code that was too hard to fix so they decided to just constantly run the garbage collector and marveled at how not horrible this performed in actuality. No, this is not even close to what happened. There was never any weird mismatch, the refcounting is very similar in both of them. The bug was that the garbage collector wasn't running correctly. Please read the (now 4 years old) blog post: https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/ https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... >Deprecates features that people use without replacement. I would like to know about these desktops that are still under active development and have never removed or deprecated features. I've never seen one. I'm sure if you look hard enough you can find people complaining that Windows 11 doesn't support 8-bit color displays at 640x480. >See tray icons for a literal decade This never happened, there has been several extensions for tray icons for the entire decade. The real problem here is that all the APIs for tray icons are broken and nobody bothered to implement one correctly. >Has no addon API forcing addons to monkey patch the javascript desktop ensuring such efforts can trivially fail on any version update and addons that aren't actively developed will stop working. This has nothing to do with javascript or addons. In general code that isn't being developed has a high probability it will stop working at some point. And this presents a false choice too. I've heard this statement so many times but nobody has ever proposed what a real addons API should look like. AFAIK there are no desktop platforms or mobile platforms anywhere with an addons API that does everything that can be done with GNOME extensions. The closest I've ever seen are things like addon widgets for Android and KDE which aren't even close to being the same thing. >Worse if they crash they especially under Wayland take down the entire session That's not really important anywhere, the apps themselves are supposed to implement session management to insure against any system crash. If I were you I would avoid commenting on these things again unless you have a proposal to make, they cheapen the rest of your comments. It's honestly tiring to keep seeing these long lists of random grievances where the ultimate suggestion is "just throw it away and start over while somehow avoiding all these issues in a way that is not explained". Do you really think having yet another choice is going to make a difference?

5y ago