7 ms·

Gnome developer calls Arch Wiki contributors “Clowns”

33 points by evasb 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago
The GNOME development lifecycle, illustrated for newcomers: 1. Mark all current issues as stale or wontfix when no new work is getting done 2. Partner with/create new software feature that is going to "finally fix the Linux desktop" 3. Expand codebase around new feature, leaving an abundance of cruft and dead code in their wake 4. (YOU ARE HERE) When everything inevitably breaks, they abandon the new feature and blame some perceived open-source boogieman 5. Development falters, funding cuts out, maintainers bail or something else happens that causes progress to return to a standstill (return to Step 1)
- dsp 4y ago
  “The Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers Model” https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
  - 22c 4y ago
    Links to jwz.org are not friendly to HN referrals.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      I wonder why this site doesn't just automatically add rel="noreferrer" to all links to that domain.
torstenvl 4y ago
It definitely seems like Gnome has developed a toxic anti-user culture lately. Calling wiki contributors "clowns" and Gnome users "the peanut gallery" is exactly the kind of behavior that will lead to being surrounded by nothing but sycophants. And that inevitably leads to ridiculous bugs and design failures, like not being able to set a desktop background color, or planning to remove support for X11, or not having preview thumbnails in a file picker.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  It makes me embarrassed to use Linux. People ask about simple features like supporting Nvidia hardware or letting us move the dock to the left or right, and I have to explain to them that the reason those features don't exist is because of "developer politics". I can't even recommend desktop Linux anymore knowing that this is the way the desktop is headed. If GNOME's desktop metaphor is just going to be whittled down to iPadOS-tier functionality, they shouldn't even bother calling themselves a desktop environment. Hell, they should have just separated from the Linux kernel when they decided to implement Wayland and saved everyone else the trouble of cleaning up their mess. Maybe that's a harsh way of looking at things, but it's not like they see the scenario as benevolent either.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > It makes me embarrassed to use Linux. All of Linux? Why? There's a bunch of competing desktop environments you can use instead.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      I do use other desktop environments, and making them feel like home feels futile when a significant portion of development effort is focused on building Titanic-like projects such as Wayland or Flatpak. That's mostly the same reason that I can't recommend it to other people, there's no way to tell everyday people all this stuff with a straight face. The year of the Linux Desktop feels like it's been postponed indefinitely while we shave a bunch of redundant yaks. GNOME wants everyone to live in a world where they have two package managers and download multiple gigabytes of redundant runtime dependencies that shouldn't need to exist in the first place. Our overall community focus should be towards delivering robust software that works with live USBs, natively-packaging and Flatpak. I fear that we're heading down a pretty horrible path where people will build fragile software that links against even more esoteric runtime requirements, creating software that's completely unusable unless it's running in digital life support (aka, Flatpak). I despise Windows, but even downloading 10x 100mb C++ redistributables is better than having 5x 1.5-2gb GNOME runtimes. Nobody deserves to live in a world where that's how their software is delivered, it's a travesty. Even Apple doesn't hate their users enough to do this, not on MacOS and not on iOS. They had the dignity to make actually stable APIs that software could target, so they don't have to live in this virtualized hellscape that we've built for ourselves. Everything GNOME tacks on to the desktop Linux experience makes it increasingly feel like that 4chan image macro of the GNU/car (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDEORUBWAAENKFC.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDEORUBWAAENKFC.jpg). At least, that's how it feels when you have to explain to someone that screenshare isn't working right now because you're "logged in to the wrong desktop session"...
pengaru 4y ago
Color me disappointed.
subjectsigma 4y ago
Inflammatory title. I'm a KDE guy through and through, however I think he is referring to a clown on the Arch wiki, not calling Arch wiki members clowns categorically. Still not very pleasant. EDIT: well, he did say clowns, plural. Meh. Assuming good faith and whatnot
phendrenad2 4y ago
TL;DR: There is a GNOME feature toggled by an environment variable, which tweaks how apps are rendered, sometimes making them better. This developer proposes effectively removing this (making it into a "debug flag", which seems to mean only those using debug builds can enable it), while linking to a page on Arch Wiki which details how to use this environment variable, and calling the Arch Wiki writers "clowns". The absolute disdain and hate the GNOME team has for anyone who uses their software in a way they didn't intend is staggering. Where does it come from? What's it like working on the GNOME team? Is it a cult where you're indoctrinated into believing that GNOME has the one true way and the rest of the Linux community are barbarian hordes? I really want to know.

33 points by evasb 4y ago

The GNOME development lifecycle, illustrated for newcomers: 1. Mark all current issues as stale or wontfix when no new work is getting done 2. Partner with/create new software feature that is going to "finally fix the Linux desktop" 3. Expand codebase around new feature, leaving an abundance of cruft and dead code in their wake 4. (YOU ARE HERE) When everything inevitably breaks, they abandon the new feature and blame some perceived open-source boogieman 5. Development falters, funding cuts out, maintainers bail or something else happens that causes progress to return to a standstill (return to Step 1)

dsp 4y ago
“The Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers Model” https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
- 22c 4y ago
  Links to jwz.org are not friendly to HN referrals.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    I wonder why this site doesn't just automatically add rel="noreferrer" to all links to that domain.

torstenvl 4y ago

It definitely seems like Gnome has developed a toxic anti-user culture lately. Calling wiki contributors "clowns" and Gnome users "the peanut gallery" is exactly the kind of behavior that will lead to being surrounded by nothing but sycophants. And that inevitably leads to ridiculous bugs and design failures, like not being able to set a desktop background color, or planning to remove support for X11, or not having preview thumbnails in a file picker.

smoldesu 4y ago
It makes me embarrassed to use Linux. People ask about simple features like supporting Nvidia hardware or letting us move the dock to the left or right, and I have to explain to them that the reason those features don't exist is because of "developer politics". I can't even recommend desktop Linux anymore knowing that this is the way the desktop is headed. If GNOME's desktop metaphor is just going to be whittled down to iPadOS-tier functionality, they shouldn't even bother calling themselves a desktop environment. Hell, they should have just separated from the Linux kernel when they decided to implement Wayland and saved everyone else the trouble of cleaning up their mess. Maybe that's a harsh way of looking at things, but it's not like they see the scenario as benevolent either.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > It makes me embarrassed to use Linux. All of Linux? Why? There's a bunch of competing desktop environments you can use instead.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I do use other desktop environments, and making them feel like home feels futile when a significant portion of development effort is focused on building Titanic-like projects such as Wayland or Flatpak. That's mostly the same reason that I can't recommend it to other people, there's no way to tell everyday people all this stuff with a straight face. The year of the Linux Desktop feels like it's been postponed indefinitely while we shave a bunch of redundant yaks. GNOME wants everyone to live in a world where they have two package managers and download multiple gigabytes of redundant runtime dependencies that shouldn't need to exist in the first place. Our overall community focus should be towards delivering robust software that works with live USBs, natively-packaging and Flatpak. I fear that we're heading down a pretty horrible path where people will build fragile software that links against even more esoteric runtime requirements, creating software that's completely unusable unless it's running in digital life support (aka, Flatpak). I despise Windows, but even downloading 10x 100mb C++ redistributables is better than having 5x 1.5-2gb GNOME runtimes. Nobody deserves to live in a world where that's how their software is delivered, it's a travesty. Even Apple doesn't hate their users enough to do this, not on MacOS and not on iOS. They had the dignity to make actually stable APIs that software could target, so they don't have to live in this virtualized hellscape that we've built for ourselves. Everything GNOME tacks on to the desktop Linux experience makes it increasingly feel like that 4chan image macro of the GNU/car (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDEORUBWAAENKFC.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDEORUBWAAENKFC.jpg). At least, that's how it feels when you have to explain to someone that screenshare isn't working right now because you're "logged in to the wrong desktop session"...

pengaru 4y ago

Color me disappointed.

subjectsigma 4y ago

Inflammatory title. I'm a KDE guy through and through, however I think he is referring to a clown on the Arch wiki, not calling Arch wiki members clowns categorically. Still not very pleasant. EDIT: well, he did say clowns, plural. Meh. Assuming good faith and whatnot

phendrenad2 4y ago

TL;DR: There is a GNOME feature toggled by an environment variable, which tweaks how apps are rendered, sometimes making them better. This developer proposes effectively removing this (making it into a "debug flag", which seems to mean only those using debug builds can enable it), while linking to a page on Arch Wiki which details how to use this environment variable, and calling the Arch Wiki writers "clowns". The absolute disdain and hate the GNOME team has for anyone who uses their software in a way they didn't intend is staggering. Where does it come from? What's it like working on the GNOME team? Is it a cult where you're indoctrinated into believing that GNOME has the one true way and the rest of the Linux community are barbarian hordes? I really want to know.