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My top gtk3/gnome 30 wtfs: - the (all too well-known) file picker issue where when you type something it interprets it as file name filter rather than, you kn

My top gtk3/gnome 30 wtfs: - the (all too well-known) file picker issue where when you type something it interprets it as file name filter rather than, you know, the file name you want to save under - missing top menu (but a bar is still there wasting space for a ... clock wtf) - general window positioning; like, if you open an app, rather than just opening a window as new top window, gnome opens it behind others and pushes a notification "FF is ready" wtf - mainstream desktop apps not ported to dark mode, so those icons look even more puzzling I could go on, but I'm definitely leaving gnome/gtk apps behind. I've eyed KDE Plasma which could give me everything I ever wanted from a DE, but I was using Ubuntu/gnome because it was mainstream enough that everything just works OOTB. I'm also totally not looking forward to wayland, containerize-all-the-things such that basic file workflows stop working, and other attitudes, all the while the apps I'm using are exactly the same I've used 15 or 20 years ago, without new ones coming. I think I'm going back to Mac.

phkahler 4y ago
>> the (all too well-known) file picker issue where when you type something it interprets it as file name filter rather than, you know, the file name you want to save under That one drives me insane. >> general window positioning I want my applications to come up where they were when I last closed them. This used to be up to the app under X, and I'm fully on board with the Wayland idea that an application shouldn't know or be able to modify its window position. But that means putting things where they were is the DE/compositors responsibility now, and I fear they're going to fight that idea forever. I hope I'm wrong though.
- regularfry 4y ago
  > I'm fully on board with the Wayland idea that an application shouldn't know or be able to modify its window position Why? Genuine question - that sounds like an incredibly opinionated position for the display server to force up the stack, and I don't have a good intuition for why it should be necessary.
  - occamrazor 4y ago
    With multiple monitors, and multiple multi-monito configurations, window position becomes a complicated concept, full of pitfalls and corner cases. It is reasonable (although admittedly not the only possibility solution) to centralize the window position management in the wm.
    - einpoklum 4y ago
      Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. What does follow is that apps should have a library available which allows them to express their positioning desires while accounting for the complications and corner cases. Even if positioning were centralized, apps should still have been able to tell the WM "This is what I want to happen w.r.t. positioning, try to accommodate me".
      - occamrazor 4y ago
        I should have explained myself better. The old way of specifying a position (pixel coords in a plane) does not work well for complicated setups. Among the possible alternatives there is: 1. Assign responsibility to the wm (Wayland’s way) 2. Create a new way to specify position preference in a complicated world. That’s what you propose, IIUC. It’s possible but complicated, and Wayland had a lot of other problems to worry about, therefore I understand why they didn’t choose this way. 3.Leave the simple protocol in place, but let the wm override the application’s choice when necessary. I guess a lot of apps would not work properly in such a system.
      - bityard 4y ago
        Given the choice between the window manager making all of the positioning/size decisions and allowing the app to do it, I'll gladly pick the WM. In the opposite world, sure, most apps will behave sensibly but then occasionally you're going to run into that application where the author says, "hey, my app is so great, you're definitely going to want it full-screen all the time!" An exaggeration of course, but I have seen plenty of apps try to do "smart" things about window management on their own, and they always get it wrong. It's one of the reason's KDE WM allows you to to override and make permanent a surprising number of settings. (I also believe that websites should not be able to just do whatever the hell they want on my computer, but that battle seems to have been lost.)
- spicybright 4y ago
  With respect to the Wayland devs, as they've been fighting more than an uphill battle for a decade now, but that is so bone-headed. If their design philosophy is like this in general, no wonder no one is adopting it. It's just a worse X.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    It is the default used by every major distro now, so it is definitely adopted. Also, it has a very good design, solving real issues.
- mayama 4y ago
  I got used to type slash(/) which opens file input field when ever I'm pasting file.
ajvs 4y ago
> I could go on, but I'm definitely leaving gnome/gtk apps behind. I've eyed KDE Plasma which could give me everything I ever wanted from a DE, but I was using Ubuntu/gnome because it was mainstream enough that everything just works OOTB Kubuntu was my first distro and posts like these reconfirm my decision to stick with KDE.
- sundarurfriend 4y ago
  I wish it was mine too. I would have gone for Linux as my main OS lot earlier.
lowercased 4y ago
I started with desktop linux with KDE2, and KDE3 was... seemingly perfect. I watched some colleagues move to KDE4 when it came out and it felt like a ... mess. I tried it myself for a few days and it was too foreign. Never cared for gnome as a main desktop, although I do recognize gnome foundation did provide a lot of useful software over the years, some of which I used. Moved to mac for main desktop around 2008. I look back some times and KDE5/plasma/whatever might be worthwhile to check out again. Mac annoyances are piling up over the years, but I suspect it would be "the grass is greener" somewhere else, and I'd find a lot of the KDE annoyances which led to me leave may still be there.
- bityard 4y ago
  Same here. GNOME 2 was just about perfect.* KDE 3 was even better. Rock solid and lots of excellent, well-integrated functionality. Everything after those two have been a showcase of failed UX experiments. * (It's successor MATE has not aged gracefully, unfortunately.)
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Modern KDE is pretty good. Most importantly, it still lets you configure things to your own liking, instead of one-size-fits-all approach that GNOME espouses.
- bb010g 4y ago
  If you're a KDE 3 fan, https://trinitydesktop.org/ https://trinitydesktop.org/ is actively maintained.
squarefoot 4y ago
> - the (all too well-known) file picker issue where when you type something it interprets it as file name filter rather than, you know, the file name you want to save under I deeply hate this one, it always gets me when I'm saving in a hurry. And let's not forget about buttons on windows title bars. Someone please tell GTK developers that most of us aren't using tablets; computers with actual keyboards and mice are here to stay for a long time.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  That one drives me absolutely fucking batty. Nobody uses GNOME on the touch screens that the UI was clearly designed for, and moving the default requestor buttons out of the bottom right where literally every single GUI of any note throughout history puts them is a particularly galling bit of NIH snowflakery.
  - bogwog 4y ago
    Gnome is what you get when you combine the worst parts of Windows 8 with the worst parts of MacOS. Bad ideas + bad execution, but most major distros ship it by default for some inexplicable reason.
behnamoh 4y ago
> I think I'm going back to Mac. This is poor conclusion imo. KDE might better suite your needs. Plus, macOS comes with its own wtf's: https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c98fd9be4001 https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c...
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Yes I'm aware Mac OS isn't a panacea either (used MacBooks/PowerBooks and Mac mini on and off alongside Linux since 2003). But I had such a craptastic experience with PC hardware lately: on my 3rd Dell Latitude/Precision with battery and other hw defects ootb sent by customers for work within 8 months, and my 2019 Thinkpad has a stuck trackpad - miniscule as it is - due to completely unused mechanical parts (buttons, think point, and whatnot). Meanwhile, M1/2 MacBooks leave x86 notebooks in the dust performance-wise, and have left PC notebooks behind in terms of screen resolution for a long time now, also wrt trackpad and keyboard, and value retention, it's not funny
  - corrral 4y ago
    I like to say that Apple providing a much better experience than the competition has less to do with Apple being amazing and more with the competition being shockingly bad.
    - behnamoh 4y ago
      Word.
piyh 4y ago
I ran into not being able to open Nautilus as an admin without having to install some packages through apt. Why is Linux the only OS that doesn't allow me to edit or view a system file out of the box?
marcodiego 4y ago
> - general window positioning; like, if you open an app, rather than just opening a window as new top window, gnome opens it behind others and pushes a notification "FF is ready" wtf I like this behavior. It only happens for apps that take too long to start. When an app takes too long to start, it is usual for me to continue doing other things while it starts, when it starts, I don't want it stealing my focus. I think this feature works exactly as intended.
- bityard 4y ago
  You prefer a notification to steal your focus instead? :)
  - marcodiego 4y ago
    The notification does not steals my focus, it may call my attention, but it will not steal my focus. Focus stealing is when the app I'm using is switched to another without any action from me.
Phrodo_00 4y ago
> general window positioning This has worked as expected to me. It generally opens windows on top of the stack unless the app takes too long to start and you've interacted with the window on top. In that case I appreciate it doesn't change focus (I could be typing something for example).
bogwog 4y ago
> I've eyed KDE Plasma which could give me everything I ever wanted from a DE, but I was using Ubuntu/gnome because it was mainstream enough that everything just works OOTB I'm curious, what do you expect won't work under KDE?
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Nothing in particular; maybe third-party apps like MS Teams (ugh) I need for my customer projects (which also didn't work right on gnome for years, and had trouble when switching logins/customers), that kind of stuff. I considered kubuntu, but thought I was leaving Ubuntu mainstream for good anyway, so why not go to eg Slackware w/ KDE Plasma and say goodbye to systemd, snaps, and containerized browser behemoths that want to update themselves all the time anyway. Don't want that shit on my main machine period. I'll be keeping my old (Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and 20.04 LTS) notebooks around just in case, but customers keep sending me shite notebooks, and MacBooks are more than capable to run Docker crap anyway.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Getting rid of systemd is harder. But applications don't stop working because you switched a DE.
  - bb010g 4y ago
    What do you so heavily dislike about systemd? It's pretty useful.
pjmlp 4y ago
Mine is that they kind of abandoned Vala and then started using their own JavaScript engine for everything beyond bare bones Gtk+. The slowness and leaks of not having a V8 class implementation, has made me embrace XFCE for the surviving device I still run GNU/Linux natively on. And to think 22 years ago I was arguing for GNOME, advocating for Gtkmm versus Qt.
- the_why_of_y 4y ago
  "Their own JavaScript engine" is Mozilla SpiderMonkey 91. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/blob/master/doc/Home.md https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/blob/master/doc/Home.md It appears to be broadly competitive with V8. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16078/the-2020-browser-battle-surfing-with-speed/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16078/the-2020-browser-battle...
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Maybe it is competitive now, it hasn't always been like that. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/231 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/231 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/ https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... Just to give you a taste of the issues. When I complain about something, usually it is based on experience and knowledge. And if I wanted to have a desktop where JavaScript gets used everywhere I would buy a Chromebook instead.
    - the_why_of_y 4y ago
      My reading is that performance problems are caused by interactions between reference-counted GObjects and tracing GC, nothing to do with "not having a V8 class implementation". > https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 Now what can we learn here? Well, the most important lesson is that getting properties from GObjects seems to be very expensive and a major bottleneck [...] Also generally (and as expected), recursive processes like Clutters allocation machinery round tripping between C and JS land are a bad idea and should probably avoid JS land altogether > https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... This fix is strictly specific to GObjects wrapped by GJS

phkahler 4y ago

>> the (all too well-known) file picker issue where when you type something it interprets it as file name filter rather than, you know, the file name you want to save under That one drives me insane. >> general window positioning I want my applications to come up where they were when I last closed them. This used to be up to the app under X, and I'm fully on board with the Wayland idea that an application shouldn't know or be able to modify its window position. But that means putting things where they were is the DE/compositors responsibility now, and I fear they're going to fight that idea forever. I hope I'm wrong though.

regularfry 4y ago
> I'm fully on board with the Wayland idea that an application shouldn't know or be able to modify its window position Why? Genuine question - that sounds like an incredibly opinionated position for the display server to force up the stack, and I don't have a good intuition for why it should be necessary.
- occamrazor 4y ago
  With multiple monitors, and multiple multi-monito configurations, window position becomes a complicated concept, full of pitfalls and corner cases. It is reasonable (although admittedly not the only possibility solution) to centralize the window position management in the wm.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise. What does follow is that apps should have a library available which allows them to express their positioning desires while accounting for the complications and corner cases. Even if positioning were centralized, apps should still have been able to tell the WM "This is what I want to happen w.r.t. positioning, try to accommodate me".
    - occamrazor 4y ago
      I should have explained myself better. The old way of specifying a position (pixel coords in a plane) does not work well for complicated setups. Among the possible alternatives there is: 1. Assign responsibility to the wm (Wayland’s way) 2. Create a new way to specify position preference in a complicated world. That’s what you propose, IIUC. It’s possible but complicated, and Wayland had a lot of other problems to worry about, therefore I understand why they didn’t choose this way. 3.Leave the simple protocol in place, but let the wm override the application’s choice when necessary. I guess a lot of apps would not work properly in such a system.
    - bityard 4y ago
      Given the choice between the window manager making all of the positioning/size decisions and allowing the app to do it, I'll gladly pick the WM. In the opposite world, sure, most apps will behave sensibly but then occasionally you're going to run into that application where the author says, "hey, my app is so great, you're definitely going to want it full-screen all the time!" An exaggeration of course, but I have seen plenty of apps try to do "smart" things about window management on their own, and they always get it wrong. It's one of the reason's KDE WM allows you to to override and make permanent a surprising number of settings. (I also believe that websites should not be able to just do whatever the hell they want on my computer, but that battle seems to have been lost.)
spicybright 4y ago
With respect to the Wayland devs, as they've been fighting more than an uphill battle for a decade now, but that is so bone-headed. If their design philosophy is like this in general, no wonder no one is adopting it. It's just a worse X.
- kaba0 4y ago
  It is the default used by every major distro now, so it is definitely adopted. Also, it has a very good design, solving real issues.
mayama 4y ago
I got used to type slash(/) which opens file input field when ever I'm pasting file.

ajvs 4y ago

> I could go on, but I'm definitely leaving gnome/gtk apps behind. I've eyed KDE Plasma which could give me everything I ever wanted from a DE, but I was using Ubuntu/gnome because it was mainstream enough that everything just works OOTB Kubuntu was my first distro and posts like these reconfirm my decision to stick with KDE.

sundarurfriend 4y ago
I wish it was mine too. I would have gone for Linux as my main OS lot earlier.

lowercased 4y ago

I started with desktop linux with KDE2, and KDE3 was... seemingly perfect. I watched some colleagues move to KDE4 when it came out and it felt like a ... mess. I tried it myself for a few days and it was too foreign. Never cared for gnome as a main desktop, although I do recognize gnome foundation did provide a lot of useful software over the years, some of which I used. Moved to mac for main desktop around 2008. I look back some times and KDE5/plasma/whatever might be worthwhile to check out again. Mac annoyances are piling up over the years, but I suspect it would be "the grass is greener" somewhere else, and I'd find a lot of the KDE annoyances which led to me leave may still be there.

bityard 4y ago
Same here. GNOME 2 was just about perfect.* KDE 3 was even better. Rock solid and lots of excellent, well-integrated functionality. Everything after those two have been a showcase of failed UX experiments. * (It's successor MATE has not aged gracefully, unfortunately.)
- int_19h 4y ago
  Modern KDE is pretty good. Most importantly, it still lets you configure things to your own liking, instead of one-size-fits-all approach that GNOME espouses.
bb010g 4y ago
If you're a KDE 3 fan, https://trinitydesktop.org/ https://trinitydesktop.org/ is actively maintained.

squarefoot 4y ago

> - the (all too well-known) file picker issue where when you type something it interprets it as file name filter rather than, you know, the file name you want to save under I deeply hate this one, it always gets me when I'm saving in a hurry. And let's not forget about buttons on windows title bars. Someone please tell GTK developers that most of us aren't using tablets; computers with actual keyboards and mice are here to stay for a long time.

Karunamon 4y ago
That one drives me absolutely fucking batty. Nobody uses GNOME on the touch screens that the UI was clearly designed for, and moving the default requestor buttons out of the bottom right where literally every single GUI of any note throughout history puts them is a particularly galling bit of NIH snowflakery.
- bogwog 4y ago
  Gnome is what you get when you combine the worst parts of Windows 8 with the worst parts of MacOS. Bad ideas + bad execution, but most major distros ship it by default for some inexplicable reason.

behnamoh 4y ago

> I think I'm going back to Mac. This is poor conclusion imo. KDE might better suite your needs. Plus, macOS comes with its own wtf's: https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c98fd9be4001 https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c...

tannhaeuser 4y ago
Yes I'm aware Mac OS isn't a panacea either (used MacBooks/PowerBooks and Mac mini on and off alongside Linux since 2003). But I had such a craptastic experience with PC hardware lately: on my 3rd Dell Latitude/Precision with battery and other hw defects ootb sent by customers for work within 8 months, and my 2019 Thinkpad has a stuck trackpad - miniscule as it is - due to completely unused mechanical parts (buttons, think point, and whatnot). Meanwhile, M1/2 MacBooks leave x86 notebooks in the dust performance-wise, and have left PC notebooks behind in terms of screen resolution for a long time now, also wrt trackpad and keyboard, and value retention, it's not funny
- corrral 4y ago
  I like to say that Apple providing a much better experience than the competition has less to do with Apple being amazing and more with the competition being shockingly bad.
  - behnamoh 4y ago
    Word.

piyh 4y ago

I ran into not being able to open Nautilus as an admin without having to install some packages through apt. Why is Linux the only OS that doesn't allow me to edit or view a system file out of the box?

marcodiego 4y ago

> - general window positioning; like, if you open an app, rather than just opening a window as new top window, gnome opens it behind others and pushes a notification "FF is ready" wtf I like this behavior. It only happens for apps that take too long to start. When an app takes too long to start, it is usual for me to continue doing other things while it starts, when it starts, I don't want it stealing my focus. I think this feature works exactly as intended.

bityard 4y ago
You prefer a notification to steal your focus instead? :)
- marcodiego 4y ago
  The notification does not steals my focus, it may call my attention, but it will not steal my focus. Focus stealing is when the app I'm using is switched to another without any action from me.

Phrodo_00 4y ago

> general window positioning This has worked as expected to me. It generally opens windows on top of the stack unless the app takes too long to start and you've interacted with the window on top. In that case I appreciate it doesn't change focus (I could be typing something for example).

bogwog 4y ago

> I've eyed KDE Plasma which could give me everything I ever wanted from a DE, but I was using Ubuntu/gnome because it was mainstream enough that everything just works OOTB I'm curious, what do you expect won't work under KDE?

tannhaeuser 4y ago
Nothing in particular; maybe third-party apps like MS Teams (ugh) I need for my customer projects (which also didn't work right on gnome for years, and had trouble when switching logins/customers), that kind of stuff. I considered kubuntu, but thought I was leaving Ubuntu mainstream for good anyway, so why not go to eg Slackware w/ KDE Plasma and say goodbye to systemd, snaps, and containerized browser behemoths that want to update themselves all the time anyway. Don't want that shit on my main machine period. I'll be keeping my old (Ubuntu 16.04 ESM and 20.04 LTS) notebooks around just in case, but customers keep sending me shite notebooks, and MacBooks are more than capable to run Docker crap anyway.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Getting rid of systemd is harder. But applications don't stop working because you switched a DE.
- bb010g 4y ago
  What do you so heavily dislike about systemd? It's pretty useful.

pjmlp 4y ago

Mine is that they kind of abandoned Vala and then started using their own JavaScript engine for everything beyond bare bones Gtk+. The slowness and leaks of not having a V8 class implementation, has made me embrace XFCE for the surviving device I still run GNU/Linux natively on. And to think 22 years ago I was arguing for GNOME, advocating for Gtkmm versus Qt.

the_why_of_y 4y ago
"Their own JavaScript engine" is Mozilla SpiderMonkey 91. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/blob/master/doc/Home.md https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/blob/master/doc/Home.md It appears to be broadly competitive with V8. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16078/the-2020-browser-battle-surfing-with-speed/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16078/the-2020-browser-battle...
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Maybe it is competitive now, it hasn't always been like that. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/231 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/231 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-memory-leak/ https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... Just to give you a taste of the issues. When I complain about something, usually it is based on experience and knowledge. And if I wanted to have a desktop where JavaScript gets used everywhere I would buy a Chromebook instead.
  - the_why_of_y 4y ago
    My reading is that performance problems are caused by interactions between reference-counted GObjects and tracing GC, nothing to do with "not having a V8 class implementation". > https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gjs/-/issues/361 Now what can we learn here? Well, the most important lesson is that getting properties from GObjects seems to be very expensive and a major bottleneck [...] Also generally (and as expected), recursive processes like Clutters allocation machinery round tripping between C and JS land are a bad idea and should probably avoid JS land altogether > https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem https://feaneron.com/2018/04/20/the-infamous-gnome-shell-mem... This fix is strictly specific to GObjects wrapped by GJS