21 ms·

On the Gnome project and “my way or the highway”

67 points by rc00 4y ago

cbsmith 4y ago
"While the GNOME Project is without their faults" I'm pretty sure that should be "While the GNOME Project isn't without their faults".
- type0 4y ago
  "While the GNOME Project is without their faults" means if something goes wrong it's not GNOME's fault
  - cbsmith 4y ago
    I'd say, it means "they have no faults". It follows that anything that has gone wrong in the past would not be their fault, though I could imagine that they could still establish faults in the future.
mouse_ 4y ago
If I were on the controlled opposition task force at Microsoft, I would consider supporting Gnome our top priority.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Don't just support Gnome: add a couple of paid devs to the Gnome project to help out, but more importantly make it even more antagonistic towards users and other non-Gnome devs. Have your undercover devs become highly-placed "visionaries" in the Gnome project, insulting and belittling anyone who opposes their One True Vision for desktop Linux and throwing a wrench into any attempts to get along with anything in the Linux ecosystem that isn't part of the Gnome project.
  - mouse_ 4y ago
    Extra credit: call anyone who disagrees "entitled"
  - kaba0 4y ago
    There are better uses of tinfoil..
    - deafpolygon 4y ago
      Indeed, but I wouldn't put it past them. lol
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  The task force's original top priority was convincing the world that they don't exist, but they apparently gave up any pretence of that last year when they rewarded Lennart Poettering with a job at the company.
bitsavers 4y ago
Whoever wrote this managed to poorly express the design philosophy and also didn't mention that the fork of the earlier version exists. At first it wasn't even clear about what version of Gnome they were even talking about.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
cuteboy19 4y ago
> This type of behavior is consistent with numerous projects, including Firefox, the Linux kernel, KDE and many, many others. No, it's not. KDE will work with you to add any reasonable feature that most people would find useful, even at risk of introducing a few bugs here and there. (Gnome ends up having a similar amount of bugs anyway). You can very easily turn KDE into any other desktop you want, even gnome or windows. It provides one preferred oob experience however
- eointierney 4y ago
  KDE is _by far_ the most configurable desktop environment available, and it makes it easy. The control panel is amazingly consistent.
- pkulak 4y ago
  But that _is_ KDE's philosophy: let anyone turn it into exactly what they want.
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    So how can they be accused of my way or the highway? Even windows and macos give you more "ways" than gnome
    - taffer 4y ago
      If you ask them to remove things that confuse some users they won't do it because that would be against their philosophy. That is what 'my way or the highway' means.
      - cuteboy19 4y ago
        You can remove any option from any context menu or title bar, so I don't think that quite applies. If you say that having any particular default means "my way or the highway" then that term becomes meaningless, no?
nickcox 4y ago
> GNOME is the most used desktop environment I find that pretty hard to believe without a citation.
- christophilus 4y ago
  For Linux. And I think that’s pretty common knowledge.
  - reisse 4y ago
    For Linux, when you exclude Android and ChromeOS. So for desktop GNU/Linux. And even then I'm not sure now, because Steam Deck and Manjaro use KDE, and Linux Mint uses not-gnomish-fork-of-gnome.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      It's the default on Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, and RHEL to name a few.
      - reisse 4y ago
        I'd bet most CentOS and RHEL installations don't use any desktop environment at all. However, why argue if we can check the actual stats? [1] GNOME seems to be well ahead for now for desktop GNU/Linux. But the dip in the February, when the Steam Deck was released, is interesting. 1 - https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends#de https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends#de
        yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        > However, why argue if we can check the actual stats? Because nobody has actual stats. Your link is from one attempt to find some stats, but unless every major distro activates it by default (which they will probably never do on account of privacy issues), it's a tiny and biased sample.
      - lmedinas 4y ago
xedrac 4y ago
I used to complain a lot about Gnome and the big changes they made. I still don't love some of their decisions, but it has become simple to use for the masses, and I consider that a win for Desktop Linux adoption.
- Avshalom 4y ago
  >it has become simple to use for the masses Was it not before? is it actually now? have the masses noticed?
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    No. I use Linux on headless servers all the time, and even I don't mess with Linux DEs. The mere fact that there's more than one widely used is undesirable, and even a popular one like GNOME changed way too drastically (2 to 3). Last time I bothered with all this was GNOME 2 before 3 existed, which was ok at the time. The real Linux DE for the masses is ChromeOS, but people don't usually bucket it with the others. And that is Google's way or the highway.
    - lordgroff 4y ago
      This never made sense to me. Why is it bad there's several, especially at the current level of maturity, where both GNOME and KDE are perfectly viable options.
      - hot_gril 4y ago
        More moving parts when something goes wrong, which it will. You don't have to specify that you're using "macOS Ventura with the Glendale desktop environment and Hwy 101 window server" or something. Win2000 help might even be relevant in Win10 cause they prioritized familiarity. Even at my job where gurus are managing our workstations full-time, Linux users randomly had to all switch desktop environments cause of X dependency getting too old, and the new one partially broke compatibility with our remote desktop. It's not a perfectly layered cake. I also don't believe that people's use cases are really so different that there need to be so multiple widely-used Linux DEs. I'd get it if there were GNOME for almost everyone then other niche DEs for the rest. Again, so many people with a variety of use cases have managed ok with the basically unchanging Windows UI for decades.
traverseda 4y ago
>The GNOME Project has a vision that it wants to push and perfect. Their philosophy, simply put, is “stay out of my way”. Who's way are they trying to stay out of? Like why do I need a keyboard shortcut in order to type out a file path when I try to upload a file in Firefox? There's some imagined user Who's way they're trying to stay out of, and it's not my way, and it's not any of my family Who's computers I set up...
- NegativeLatency 4y ago
  Having to right click and select rename drives me nuts
  - marvinblum 4y ago
    F2
    - lost_tourist 4y ago
      same on windows.
    - NegativeLatency 4y ago
      Grew up using a mac
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Avshalom 4y ago
  It's also weird to claim the philosophy is "stay out of my way" when things like the application menu take over the entire screen, the basically abandoned notion of tablet/laptop/desktop gui convergence has left gnome fairly modal, which makes for a desktop that is frequently throwing itself at you.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  > Like why do I need a keyboard shortcut in order to type out a file path when I try to upload a file in Firefox? You don't? Just start typing a path (starting with / or ~ or .) and the path picker will switch to a path editor for you. Typing other characters will start a (recursive) search which is what I want to use most of the time myself. I'd also like them to let you double click the breadcrumbs to switch, but adding an extra action is not necessary in most cases.
nycticorax 4y ago
Gnome keeps making big changes that hurt users and app developers, at least in the short term. (Presumably in pursuit of the Gnome developers' vision.) If you do that often enough, users and app developers find themselves basically in a continual state of pain, always adapting to the latest change. But the Gnome developers either don't recognize this or don't care (or care more about other things), because they keep doing it. Thus: "My way or the highway". I got tired of it, and the relentless dumbing-down of everything, and switched to KDE (in the form of Kubuntu). It's nice! And the developers seem to understand that it mostly works OK, and they don't need to force a UI paradigm shift on you (and their third-party app developers) every few years.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lmedinas 4y ago
  I agree and the constant API changes over the last years on GTK+/Glib and GNOME libraries hurt users and developers.
  - tristan957 4y ago
    What do you mean constant API changes? GTK 3 existed for what, 10 years? GLib hasn't had an API break in how long?
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Linux devs will ignore a feature going obsolete and complain 10 years later when it's removed. It doesn't matter how long you give because they were never actually working on it in the mean time.
    - the_why_of_y 4y ago
      GLib 2.0 was released on 2002-03-08. There's not a whole lot you'd be using on the desktop that's maintained ABI for longer; mainly X11 libraries, glibc, NSS, zlib, libxml2 (latter one is also a GNOME project). (Anything using C++ would have a libstdc++.so.6 related ABI break at a later date.)
jchw 4y ago
I would be happy if they stop opposing server side decorations in Wayland. Weston and Mutter are probably going to wind up being basically the only two Wayland WMs that don't support it, making GNOME an unfortunate and avoidable edge case. I think the CSD initiative is fine if it's a choice. However, I can't choose to not use GNOME on behalf of my users. Libdecor is a bad and C-centric solution to the problem. I know Mutter is designed in such a way that makes this hard; that was a pretty big misstep in my opinion. Likewise for other things that GNOME Project pushes. Here is a great example. Wayland has a protocol for inhibiting idle called inhibit-idle. GTK won't use it. Instead, they want you to use a DBus interface from the enormous XDG Desktop Portals API. They refuse to have any kind of discussion about it. End of story. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2202 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2202 This pattern repeats for even silly things. Like the size of the mouse cursor on HiDPI screens? No problem bro, just use this bespoke DBus API. This is all assuming you want to use DBus. Why? Wayland is already the thing that you speak to talk to the display server. Why use another protocol for basic functions like this? If DBus is so great, why do we even need the Wayland protocols in the first place? (Dbus is not great.)
- tristan957 4y ago
  From your own link: > I don't think this belongs in the wayland protocol, but I'm not strongly opposed to using it as a fallback if not portal implementation is available. Seems like a PR would be acceptable given Matthias' comment.
  - jchw 4y ago
    That's only one part of the discussion. Now I don't want to throw undeserved shade, but I'm already running two MRs on top of upstream GTK to work around issues where "patches are welcome" and I haven't checked in a while, but I'm guessing they're no closer to merging than before (edit: wrong; one of them WAS merged, and the other I stopped running due to FTBFS, though it's still not merged.) I understand that bandwidth is limited, but saying "patches welcome" as a project that is notorious for throwing that out even when it's probably not going to be merged feels kind of scummy, because it basically enables doing one thing and saying another without need to justify or discuss it. It's obviously the GNOME developer's volitions if they don't want spend any cycles on it, but the message sent to the Wayland ecosystem is not great, and it's going to be a thing I think about when I hear "GNOME Project" for a very long time. (And frankly, soliciting patches for an issue then having the contributor sit for over a year rebasing without any substantial feedback is just kind of shitty.)
bee_rider 4y ago
I feel kinda bad for Gnome. I don’t use their main program, but I’m sure it’s fine for what it is (Desktop environments seem like a kind of over-complicated unnecessary idea). They seem to have, by sticking to their guns, become an absolute punching bag for the type of person who cares to complain about tedious UI issues. It strikes me that they provide a pretty major community service by distracting that group.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  the good thing is that the other 99% of us just use the DE that we like and don't treat it like a religion or personal attack.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I suppose that’s nice for people in that set of users. I suppose it is also a nice thought for the Gnome developers on the receiving end of the anger — at least there’s a large quiet population out there happily using their code. But it seems like a kind of abstract consolation.
jrm4 4y ago
Nope. I'm still going to go at them. The problem is simple: They used the open-source style goodwill generated by the old thing called GNOME, as it existed with Linux, to bootstrap their current popularity, and this is to me, dishonest. They used a different style and direction. Had they changed the name and/or been clear and upfront about the fact that "this new my-way-or-the-highway thing isn't the Gnome you're used to," then I could defend them. Call it something new and let MATE have the old name. But they're not interested in doing or even acknowledging that. Let the mud slinging continue.
- p_l 4y ago
  Honestly, they had jumped the shark back in GNOME 2 era, when the giant rewrite started being used as excuse to not bring back functionality from 1.x series. My Canary in the coal mine was, IIRC, discussion about presenting certain printer options to end user around 2.2 to 2.4 switch, and some options getting discarded from GUI and into regedit-style tinkering, because GNOME team considered them superfluous. From what I recall, the options were ones that I would occasionally use on Windows (and not just I, but also people who wouldn't be considered techies).
  - cbarrick 4y ago
    My canary was similar: the removal of the screensaver settings.
    - efaref 4y ago
      For me it was the flashing terminal cursor.
    - CoolCold 4y ago
      Not using GNOME myself - so now cannot tune Screensaver there or?
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    In hindsight, it was impulsive of me - but I left Linux as a whole because of what GNOME did. They broke everything, and disrupted my way of doing things. I /could/ have switched DE or WM, but out of frustration, I switched to macOS (Mac OSX at the time) and didn't look back for over a decade. I've only recently returned a few months ago and found KDE to be sufficient and stable enough for my uses (despite the few bugs I keep running into, but nothing breaking my usability too much).
yongjik 4y ago
> GNOME is designed to avoid overwhelming the user with information overload as much as possible, which is a really important topic for usability for the average computer user. Therefore, it does not follow the traditional desktop paradigm, where there is a taskbar, desktop icons, and others - everything is put away until the user needs them. It almost reads as sarcasm. Even if we skip over the fact that an "average Linux user" isn't exactly an "average computer user," have you met... an average computer user? Try telling them that there are no desktop icons because it will only confuse them.
- CoolCold 4y ago
  Could be they are targeting average computer user, not average Linux user. May be it's right strategy for their goals.
- tristan957 4y ago
  Yeah I don't understand this point either. I would like to even see where this is cited. If this was actually the case, GNOME would look like Cinnamon, Elementary, or KDE Plasma, which all have interfaces the average computer user is familiar with given the popularity of Windows and macOS. Seems like a misinterpretation by the author.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  In my experience, the “average” user has a billion* icons on their desktop. * rounded up to the nearest billion
- kaba0 4y ago
  Well, is the typical all-over-the-place windows desktop with 10 temporary folders, myDocFinalReallyFinal.docx, some no longer installed apps’ desktop icon and some installed apps no longer working desktop icon really useful? The only thing you have to know is the super key, or the top left corner. Then you will see your open windows and the available app list. There is plenty of bad things about gnome, but I think they do have a nice vision and they adhere to it well. On a laptop, to me Gnome is the most usable desktop environment out of any OS even.
- 4y ago
jcelerier 4y ago
> When it comes to “my way or the highway”, I noticed that users mainly reference GNOME, far more than any other project. There is one main reason I can think of. either this, or, bear with me for a second, maybe because GNOME unlike most big OSS projects has people going into issue tracker of other software and asking them to do things specifically for accomodating GNOME at the expense of other DEs (https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 for the most famous example - who the f* says this really: "I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I'm sorry that this is the case but it wasn't GNOME's fault that Ubuntu has started this fork. And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry. It is my hope that you are a GNOME app. Yes this kind of fragmentation is unfortunate. I'm not happy about it either. Anyway, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Wish you the best."). Only other project I've ever seen this with is Rust people spamming RIIR issues on gh. Or stuff like this insane thread: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217
- QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with that statement though. It's literally true. GNOME, Ubuntu and XFCE all have different APIs that conflict with each other. The situation is a bit better now that Ubuntu dropped Unity but that was a decision they had to make by themselves, GNOME couldn't do anything about it. What else do you expect them to do? Any time Ubuntu or XFCE decides to keep some API that breaks GNOME, or worse, decides to implement some new API, GNOME has to drop their own plans and maintain it forever? That doesn't make any sense no matter which way you look at it. You're shooting at some random GNOME dev for playing the role of messenger instead of addressing the root cause. I also see nothing wrong with the second thread. GNOME is under no obligation to implement features they don't want to implement. You're posting that to push a narrative while ignoring the other hundreds (thousands?) of bugs that get fixed without any fanfare and without the HN crowd throwing a multi-year long tantrum. It's quite frankly embarrassing to see these brought up continually as an attempt to criticize GNOME. You can do better than this for the Linux community.
  - traverseda 4y ago
kimixa 4y ago
If you don't like Gnome, and it doesn't cater to your requirements, there's plenty of other options that may. I don't really understand people who keep saying they wish gnome was much more like KDE, for example - there's already KDE existing in that space for users. And it's not like Gnome are paying distros to ship it as default - they ship it because the maintainers think it's a sane default. Petitioning the distro maintainers would likely be a much more direct path if you disagreed with that and want to change it.
- traverseda 4y ago
  Firefox's file picker moving from a generic gtk file picker that blends into any DE reasonably well to one that's very eccentric and gnome specific does kind of piss me off. They did implement a way for people to use non-gnome file pickers with gtk programs (like firefox), but then they made it a lot more difficult to actually use that feature outside of flatpak...
  - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
    It's not healthy to find yourself getting angry at decisions made by random open source projects. I really doubt anyone working on that has as strong opinions as you on what the file picker looks like, or they would have written one themselves by now. None of these projects owe anybody anything anyway, that's kind of the point of open sourcing things for free without any warranty.
    - traverseda 4y ago
      >None of these projects owe anybody anything anyway Do I owe them anything? Do I owe them silence, or to not complain, or to not tarnish their name? Clearly as human beings we both owe each-other something, there is a social contract at play here. I'm sure you've seen the infamous "you have to decide if you're a gnome app or an everybody else app", and clearly that developer thought other projects owed them something. But if you're just going to say "well gnome is immune from criticism because they're (paid) open source volunteers", well then what's the point of even talking to anyone? It's an amazing example of a thought-terminating cliche. Somehow when I'm bad mouthing gnome I owe the gnome project my silent support though. It is a mystery.
LastTrain 4y ago
The vision stinks. Usually the solution w/ open source is to roll up one’s sleeves and help out, but since help isn’t allowed (on that subject) people are going to complain loudly.
- abenga 4y ago
  I don't understand. They have said they want to make a desktop that has a certain set of properties X. They have repeatedly said that they will only make a desktop with a certain set of properties X, and any proposals to the contrary will be rejected. Yet people outside the project still persist in trying to make it into a desktop with some other properties Y. Continuing to tilt at that windmill seems irrational. FWIW, I love Gnome as is. I don't know how many people like me exist. The only thing I miss is the tree view in Nautilus, which is coming back in 44.
chris_wot 4y ago
lol - this is why Gnome doesn't have a volume slider: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728585 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728585
- abenga 4y ago
  Gnome has a volume slider, I'm not sure what this means.
  - chris_wot 4y ago
    Not for each app.
    - abenga 4y ago
      Yes it does. On Gnome 43 it has a slider in the system menu for each app playing sound. When is the last time you used Gnome?
      - chris_wot 4y ago
        I still have gnome 42, will update to Gnome 43 soon!
PixelForg 4y ago
The only reason I'm still using Gnome is because their UI is consistent plus it's easy to theme it as well(through Gradience), but I can't deny that I hate the CSD initiative. I'm eagerly waiting for the new Cosmic DE from PopOs!
- traverseda 4y ago
  They (some prominent members of the gnome community) are pretty vocal about not wanting you to be able to use themes. https://stopthemingmy.app/ https://stopthemingmy.app/ While they've walked it back and said they're fine with tinkering the mechanisms they propose would make it much harder for tinkering.
  - Ferret7446 4y ago
    My desire to theme my desktop has declined linearly with age (along with my general desire to spend time futzing around with things for no material gain). I suspect 99% of people follow the same path.
  - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
    Did you actually bother reading any of the arguments on that page? They don't want distros to use themes because themes always break apps. This is unavoidable. There's no practical way to make those kind of themes in a way that won't break apps eventually. Tinkering is completely different from a distro shipping broken apps by default, it's understood that's your responsibility when you break everything yourself by tinkering after-the-fact. If you wonder why they might also make it harder for this kind of tinkering, it's because tinkerers also don't like to use something that will just break everything else!
    - traverseda 4y ago
      Somehow kde manages to largely avoid that problem. It strikes me as trying to solve technical problems socially, almost as bad as trying to solve social problems technologically.
lakomen 4y ago
Gnome 2 was great. Gnome 3 was 10 steps back. And the arrogance of doing it their way just because they like to, not minding usefulness. So I just am not been using Gnome anymore. Cinnamon, which does what I want and need and doesn't get in my way. And if it does, an opened issue fixes that, quickly too. Gnome is like everything from freedesktop.org opinionated, arrogant and ignorant
- truemoose 4y ago
  Oh, the arrogance. How dare they make something the way they want it made, and then have the nerve to give it away for free? Some people, eh?
- kaba0 4y ago
  that’s like, your opinion. Which as we know the saying is like that part of our body :D
rektide 4y ago
> There is one main reason I can think of. GNOME is the most used desktop environment, therefore it is the most susceptible to gain demands and pressure from users and companies. Being the biggest isn't cause enough for this perception. GNOME, in the past decade, put itself in a remarkable position of prioritizing a perpetual-neophyte persona, who did not & didn't want to understand computers, and rebuilt the product around that persona. For a corporate desktop, where random people are handed GNOME & told they have to use 1 app or maybe 2 or 3 on a computer, this is perhaps reasonably well calibrated. Look at many who fund GNOME Project, and this vision makes sense. But GNOME is a Linux desktop environment, and they have Linux users, and it turns out this chosen persona GNOME Project fixated on doesn't only not line up very well, it actively rejects the premise of supporting the explorer, the tinkerer, the hobbyist, the learner. GNOME Project is quite literally the most visible open-source project on the planet, yet it has the most actively anti-open behavioralism & targeting of probably any open-source project. It's chosen a bounded mission, a narrow one, with incredibly bounded behaviors, and that runs counter to the open-source spirit of possibility & exploration. > If you dislike the GNOME Project’s philosophy, then the solution is to simply not use GNOME. In case you missed it the first time the author said it, the author comes back to re-confirm: GNOME is "my way or the highyway." GNOME is uniquely unflexible in almost all open source software in being so narrowly focused. Unlike most open source software, where adding features & options is usually acceptable in some form or another, given compromise, GNOME believes in their one and only one persona, in the overarching vision of an extremely limited capabilities user. I can think of no other project that makes anti-flexibility such a priority, except maybe suckless, and frankly their extreme conservatism & excess of attitude & loudless is quite a turn off as well. I've painted a pretty grim picture of what I think of GNOME Project, and I'm sorry to shove them under the bus like this because I think there are noble ideas mixed in with the totalitarianism. But I think their objectives are delusional & off-base, and need re-assessing dearly, not just because many users don't fit their model, but because their model of what a user is is actively bad & harmful & condescending & makes things worse. To give a nod to GNOME though, the author's other article on the GNOME libadwaita controversy[1] is fairly good in many ways, & talks through some of the pain & complexity & how difficult it is being such a highly visible project that other folks push-the-boundaries on. Freedom leads to "mis-use," what GNOME Project seemingly lives in mortal fear of. The article isn't perfect; I think their KDE examples are 98% horseshit justification (the first qt5ct example feels like strong support that themes work to me, not that they are bad, and most of the rest of the examples are of bad hardcoding that apps should fix, not systematic issues. And the net positive of not needing fractional scaling & being able to adjust your theme seems enormous.). But the support burden experienced by GNOME seems legitemate & real: flexibility has problems. Being an absolutist project that believes in yourself & picks a way & tells everyone else to hit the highway, we don't want to do it is indeed a powerful technique to maintain quality & reduce support burden. This all circles back to a topic I mention time and time again: the Cathedral and the Bazaar. The "Bazaar" model of software development is complex & hard & there's always unpolished things happening at the edge & sometimes pieces of it stop making sense. There's a alluring temptation to centralize, to pull in, to stop exploring, to obstruct users from going off the careful paths you've built for them, to marshal control. Many people in the world cry out that we must give up the Bazaar and instead build "Cathedrals." GNOME Project decided at some point to become Cathedral builders. And that means telling a lot of people to hit the highway. And alas, it often seems like a Cathedral built primarily corporate users, not actual living flesh & blood humans. Postscript: as with most do-we-or-don't-we software discussions, I highly recommend "Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus"[2] for more framing, that talks about stances of acceptance vs control. It's helpful to think of GNOME in this framing & it's helpful to think of your own & others around you's approach to code. Recommend. [1] https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2022/07/28/libadwaita-fixing-usability-problems-on-the-linux-desktop.html https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2022/07/28/libadwaita-fixi... [2] https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150 https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150
wereallterrrist 4y ago
> the solution is to simply not use GNOME. >But, currently, I prioritize ease of use and distraction-free, so I use GNOME. Wew, there we go!. At least it's being said plainly and openly at this point. GNOME is for GNOME OS, we have plenty of other choices in its absence. Sorry to authors of GTK apps caught in the middle! This line coming from the project that took what 10+ years to add thumbnails to the file picker? Do y'all not realize how this comes off? It's really something.
renewedrebecca 4y ago
The real problem with Gnome is that the user that they are targeting simply doesn't exist. People who need a user friendly environment probably don't need Linux in the first place.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I use Gnome and it's my preferred DE. I'm perfectly capable of ricing i3-gaps or whatever. But I have better things to be doing. Gnome just works which is more than I have experienced from any of the others. And yes I have tried XFCE, KDE Plasma, and i3.
- greatgib 4y ago
  I would still say that the targeted user does not exist but for the opposite reason. The mass basic non nerd lambda user wants clear explicit interface with buttons. Not secret keyboard shortcut interfaces and functions hidden in secret hamburger menus. In addition, the "tablet" interface with just a single window does not work well enough for most users, or everyone will only use a tablet and not a computer.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Or maybe your idea of their target group or of a “typical Linux user” is just wrong.
tssva 4y ago
1. Gnome has to keep things hidden and simple so it can be used by the masses. 2. Members of the masses (Windows & macOS users) switching to Linux annoyingly keep complaining that Gnome needs to change to make things less hidden and simple so they can use it. 3. These users need to be ignored so that Gnome can be used by the masses. Makes perfect sense.
bawolff 4y ago
> I would like to explain where this mindset comes from, why this is an aggravated claim, and what you can do if you are negatively affected by the GNOME Project’s decisions. > .... > SOLUTION: > If you dislike the GNOME Project’s philosophy, then the solution is to simply not use GNOME. lol, is this supposed to somehow convince me that gnome does not have this attitude or the claim is misleading? I don't even think "my way or the highway" is a bad philosophy in UI heavy software, but what is even the point in writing a response to this criticism if you are just going to end it with: my way or the highway (phrased differently)?
thayne 4y ago
Let me jump to the conclusion. I already don't use GNOME. My problem with their "my way or the highway" attitude is its impact on the broader linux ecosystem. A great example of this is client side decoration (CSD). Since gnome uses client side decoration, non gnome apps often don't have any window controls in gnome, and conversely gnome apps draw unwanted, redundant client side window decorations in environments with server side decorations (or in my case, no decorations). Another example is, from what I've seen gnome has had a lot more resistance to standardizing new wayland protocols from wlroots than KDE, because minimal compositors have a very different paradigm than gnome, and gnome isn't interested in supporting other paradigms.
rcarmo 4y ago
Having used GNOME 41-43 on a daily basis and having had to resort to extensions (and themes) to make it usable because I _need_ the UI affordances they keep hiding away, find the UX in Nautilus ludicrously bad and loathe the Adwaita theme, the one sentence that keeps popping up in my mind whenever I read (or write) about GNOME is: “GNOME continues the war against its own users.” That said, I will grant that its ecosystem and application suite is now good enough for me to not consider using Elementary any more, but I think that, in my case, is as much due to switching to Fedora as it is to GNOME. https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 (A year using Linux on the desktop)
deafpolygon 4y ago
> It is also why other desktop environments, like Plasma, still exist. They are designed to be user-centric and powerful. GNOME, on the other hand, is designed to be user-friendly. Since you brought up KDE. This is many reasons why I like KDE - they seem to value interoperability over exclusiveness. Also, leave the user in control. GNOME removes control from me. As seen in their HIG[0], "Provide sensible defaults but consider optional functionality and customization options that don't interfere with the primary task." From another comment: > maybe because GNOME unlike most big OSS projects has people going into issue tracker of other software and asking them to do things specifically for accomodating GNOME This is a pattern I dislike seeing. GNOME is fracturing the community by forcing their own way, or the highway. [0] https://develop.kde.org/hig/ https://develop.kde.org/hig/
- jmnicolas 4y ago
  On the other hand KDE isn't very pretty and is a bit unstable. But Dolphin is the only file manager that I can tolerate and last time I tried Gnome (43 on Fedora 37 beta) it couldn't handle switching of my second monitor (it made a mess of my virtual desktops). Honestly Gnome isn't bad, you just have to adapt your workflow: instead of putting apps to the foreground by clicking on them in the taskbar just use a virtual desktop for the different activities.
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    KDE looks good (the current version does, at least). It _is_ a bit stable, though. Dolpin is excellent as a file manager. Nautilus was terrible when they introduced it. It's still terrible. I don't like how GNOME handles multiple desktops. I can get very close to i3 with KDE, support for shortcuts and customization, and virtual desktops, but have a still full DE to go with it.
    - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
      >Dolpin is excellent as a file manager. Nautilus was terrible when they introduced it. It's still terrible. Like most GTK apps, Nautilus feels like a toy app. Dolphin feels like a better app than what you have in any other OS. Most of the best Linux apps seem like they're Qt, and that's because GTK is increasingly terrible to work with. The next runner up file manager to Dolphin, PCManFM, switched from GTK to Qt[0]: ``` Hong Jen Yee, developer of LXDE (the GTK version of which was dropped and all efforts focused on the Qt port), expressed disdain for version 3 of the GTK toolkit's radical API changes and increased memory usage, and ported PCMan File Manager (PCManFM) to Qt. PCManFM is being developed with a GTK and with a Qt backend at the same time. ``` 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism
brnt 4y ago
Why is it the default on nearly every distro is what I want to know.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Politics.
xalt7x 4y ago
> "The goal is for the user to be able to do their job without being distracted" Please, enlighten me how notifications position on the top center of the screen is supposed to help with concentration on some task? It'll rather distract and annoy me (as sometimes I accidentally misclick while switching browser tabs etc).

67 points by rc00 4y ago

"While the GNOME Project is without their faults" I'm pretty sure that should be "While the GNOME Project isn't without their faults".

type0 4y ago
"While the GNOME Project is without their faults" means if something goes wrong it's not GNOME's fault
- cbsmith 4y ago
  I'd say, it means "they have no faults". It follows that anything that has gone wrong in the past would not be their fault, though I could imagine that they could still establish faults in the future.

mouse_ 4y ago

If I were on the controlled opposition task force at Microsoft, I would consider supporting Gnome our top priority.

midoridensha 4y ago
Don't just support Gnome: add a couple of paid devs to the Gnome project to help out, but more importantly make it even more antagonistic towards users and other non-Gnome devs. Have your undercover devs become highly-placed "visionaries" in the Gnome project, insulting and belittling anyone who opposes their One True Vision for desktop Linux and throwing a wrench into any attempts to get along with anything in the Linux ecosystem that isn't part of the Gnome project.
- mouse_ 4y ago
  Extra credit: call anyone who disagrees "entitled"
- kaba0 4y ago
  There are better uses of tinfoil..
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    Indeed, but I wouldn't put it past them. lol
dane-pgp 4y ago
The task force's original top priority was convincing the world that they don't exist, but they apparently gave up any pretence of that last year when they rewarded Lennart Poettering with a job at the company.

bitsavers 4y ago

Whoever wrote this managed to poorly express the design philosophy and also didn't mention that the fork of the earlier version exists. At first it wasn't even clear about what version of Gnome they were even talking about.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

cuteboy19 4y ago

> This type of behavior is consistent with numerous projects, including Firefox, the Linux kernel, KDE and many, many others. No, it's not. KDE will work with you to add any reasonable feature that most people would find useful, even at risk of introducing a few bugs here and there. (Gnome ends up having a similar amount of bugs anyway). You can very easily turn KDE into any other desktop you want, even gnome or windows. It provides one preferred oob experience however

eointierney 4y ago
KDE is _by far_ the most configurable desktop environment available, and it makes it easy. The control panel is amazingly consistent.
pkulak 4y ago
But that _is_ KDE's philosophy: let anyone turn it into exactly what they want.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  So how can they be accused of my way or the highway? Even windows and macos give you more "ways" than gnome
  - taffer 4y ago
    If you ask them to remove things that confuse some users they won't do it because that would be against their philosophy. That is what 'my way or the highway' means.
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      You can remove any option from any context menu or title bar, so I don't think that quite applies. If you say that having any particular default means "my way or the highway" then that term becomes meaningless, no?

nickcox 4y ago

> GNOME is the most used desktop environment I find that pretty hard to believe without a citation.

christophilus 4y ago
For Linux. And I think that’s pretty common knowledge.
- reisse 4y ago
  For Linux, when you exclude Android and ChromeOS. So for desktop GNU/Linux. And even then I'm not sure now, because Steam Deck and Manjaro use KDE, and Linux Mint uses not-gnomish-fork-of-gnome.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    It's the default on Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, and RHEL to name a few.
    - reisse 4y ago
      I'd bet most CentOS and RHEL installations don't use any desktop environment at all. However, why argue if we can check the actual stats? [1] GNOME seems to be well ahead for now for desktop GNU/Linux. But the dip in the February, when the Steam Deck was released, is interesting. 1 - https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends#de https://github.com/linuxhw/Trends#de
      - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
        > However, why argue if we can check the actual stats? Because nobody has actual stats. Your link is from one attempt to find some stats, but unless every major distro activates it by default (which they will probably never do on account of privacy issues), it's a tiny and biased sample.
    - lmedinas 4y ago

xedrac 4y ago

I used to complain a lot about Gnome and the big changes they made. I still don't love some of their decisions, but it has become simple to use for the masses, and I consider that a win for Desktop Linux adoption.

Avshalom 4y ago
>it has become simple to use for the masses Was it not before? is it actually now? have the masses noticed?
- hot_gril 4y ago
  No. I use Linux on headless servers all the time, and even I don't mess with Linux DEs. The mere fact that there's more than one widely used is undesirable, and even a popular one like GNOME changed way too drastically (2 to 3). Last time I bothered with all this was GNOME 2 before 3 existed, which was ok at the time. The real Linux DE for the masses is ChromeOS, but people don't usually bucket it with the others. And that is Google's way or the highway.
  - lordgroff 4y ago
    This never made sense to me. Why is it bad there's several, especially at the current level of maturity, where both GNOME and KDE are perfectly viable options.
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      More moving parts when something goes wrong, which it will. You don't have to specify that you're using "macOS Ventura with the Glendale desktop environment and Hwy 101 window server" or something. Win2000 help might even be relevant in Win10 cause they prioritized familiarity. Even at my job where gurus are managing our workstations full-time, Linux users randomly had to all switch desktop environments cause of X dependency getting too old, and the new one partially broke compatibility with our remote desktop. It's not a perfectly layered cake. I also don't believe that people's use cases are really so different that there need to be so multiple widely-used Linux DEs. I'd get it if there were GNOME for almost everyone then other niche DEs for the rest. Again, so many people with a variety of use cases have managed ok with the basically unchanging Windows UI for decades.

traverseda 4y ago

>The GNOME Project has a vision that it wants to push and perfect. Their philosophy, simply put, is “stay out of my way”. Who's way are they trying to stay out of? Like why do I need a keyboard shortcut in order to type out a file path when I try to upload a file in Firefox? There's some imagined user Who's way they're trying to stay out of, and it's not my way, and it's not any of my family Who's computers I set up...

NegativeLatency 4y ago
Having to right click and select rename drives me nuts
- marvinblum 4y ago
  F2
  - lost_tourist 4y ago
    same on windows.
  - NegativeLatency 4y ago
    Grew up using a mac
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Avshalom 4y ago
It's also weird to claim the philosophy is "stay out of my way" when things like the application menu take over the entire screen, the basically abandoned notion of tablet/laptop/desktop gui convergence has left gnome fairly modal, which makes for a desktop that is frequently throwing itself at you.
jeroenhd 4y ago
> Like why do I need a keyboard shortcut in order to type out a file path when I try to upload a file in Firefox? You don't? Just start typing a path (starting with / or ~ or .) and the path picker will switch to a path editor for you. Typing other characters will start a (recursive) search which is what I want to use most of the time myself. I'd also like them to let you double click the breadcrumbs to switch, but adding an extra action is not necessary in most cases.

nycticorax 4y ago

Gnome keeps making big changes that hurt users and app developers, at least in the short term. (Presumably in pursuit of the Gnome developers' vision.) If you do that often enough, users and app developers find themselves basically in a continual state of pain, always adapting to the latest change. But the Gnome developers either don't recognize this or don't care (or care more about other things), because they keep doing it. Thus: "My way or the highway". I got tired of it, and the relentless dumbing-down of everything, and switched to KDE (in the form of Kubuntu). It's nice! And the developers seem to understand that it mostly works OK, and they don't need to force a UI paradigm shift on you (and their third-party app developers) every few years.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lmedinas 4y ago
I agree and the constant API changes over the last years on GTK+/Glib and GNOME libraries hurt users and developers.
- tristan957 4y ago
  What do you mean constant API changes? GTK 3 existed for what, 10 years? GLib hasn't had an API break in how long?
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Linux devs will ignore a feature going obsolete and complain 10 years later when it's removed. It doesn't matter how long you give because they were never actually working on it in the mean time.
  - the_why_of_y 4y ago
    GLib 2.0 was released on 2002-03-08. There's not a whole lot you'd be using on the desktop that's maintained ABI for longer; mainly X11 libraries, glibc, NSS, zlib, libxml2 (latter one is also a GNOME project). (Anything using C++ would have a libstdc++.so.6 related ABI break at a later date.)

jchw 4y ago

I would be happy if they stop opposing server side decorations in Wayland. Weston and Mutter are probably going to wind up being basically the only two Wayland WMs that don't support it, making GNOME an unfortunate and avoidable edge case. I think the CSD initiative is fine if it's a choice. However, I can't choose to not use GNOME on behalf of my users. Libdecor is a bad and C-centric solution to the problem. I know Mutter is designed in such a way that makes this hard; that was a pretty big misstep in my opinion. Likewise for other things that GNOME Project pushes. Here is a great example. Wayland has a protocol for inhibiting idle called inhibit-idle. GTK won't use it. Instead, they want you to use a DBus interface from the enormous XDG Desktop Portals API. They refuse to have any kind of discussion about it. End of story. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2202 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2202 This pattern repeats for even silly things. Like the size of the mouse cursor on HiDPI screens? No problem bro, just use this bespoke DBus API. This is all assuming you want to use DBus. Why? Wayland is already the thing that you speak to talk to the display server. Why use another protocol for basic functions like this? If DBus is so great, why do we even need the Wayland protocols in the first place? (Dbus is not great.)

tristan957 4y ago
From your own link: > I don't think this belongs in the wayland protocol, but I'm not strongly opposed to using it as a fallback if not portal implementation is available. Seems like a PR would be acceptable given Matthias' comment.
- jchw 4y ago
  That's only one part of the discussion. Now I don't want to throw undeserved shade, but I'm already running two MRs on top of upstream GTK to work around issues where "patches are welcome" and I haven't checked in a while, but I'm guessing they're no closer to merging than before (edit: wrong; one of them WAS merged, and the other I stopped running due to FTBFS, though it's still not merged.) I understand that bandwidth is limited, but saying "patches welcome" as a project that is notorious for throwing that out even when it's probably not going to be merged feels kind of scummy, because it basically enables doing one thing and saying another without need to justify or discuss it. It's obviously the GNOME developer's volitions if they don't want spend any cycles on it, but the message sent to the Wayland ecosystem is not great, and it's going to be a thing I think about when I hear "GNOME Project" for a very long time. (And frankly, soliciting patches for an issue then having the contributor sit for over a year rebasing without any substantial feedback is just kind of shitty.)

bee_rider 4y ago

I feel kinda bad for Gnome. I don’t use their main program, but I’m sure it’s fine for what it is (Desktop environments seem like a kind of over-complicated unnecessary idea). They seem to have, by sticking to their guns, become an absolute punching bag for the type of person who cares to complain about tedious UI issues. It strikes me that they provide a pretty major community service by distracting that group.

lost_tourist 4y ago
the good thing is that the other 99% of us just use the DE that we like and don't treat it like a religion or personal attack.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I suppose that’s nice for people in that set of users. I suppose it is also a nice thought for the Gnome developers on the receiving end of the anger — at least there’s a large quiet population out there happily using their code. But it seems like a kind of abstract consolation.

jrm4 4y ago

Nope. I'm still going to go at them. The problem is simple: They used the open-source style goodwill generated by the old thing called GNOME, as it existed with Linux, to bootstrap their current popularity, and this is to me, dishonest. They used a different style and direction. Had they changed the name and/or been clear and upfront about the fact that "this new my-way-or-the-highway thing isn't the Gnome you're used to," then I could defend them. Call it something new and let MATE have the old name. But they're not interested in doing or even acknowledging that. Let the mud slinging continue.

p_l 4y ago
Honestly, they had jumped the shark back in GNOME 2 era, when the giant rewrite started being used as excuse to not bring back functionality from 1.x series. My Canary in the coal mine was, IIRC, discussion about presenting certain printer options to end user around 2.2 to 2.4 switch, and some options getting discarded from GUI and into regedit-style tinkering, because GNOME team considered them superfluous. From what I recall, the options were ones that I would occasionally use on Windows (and not just I, but also people who wouldn't be considered techies).
- cbarrick 4y ago
  My canary was similar: the removal of the screensaver settings.
  - efaref 4y ago
    For me it was the flashing terminal cursor.
  - CoolCold 4y ago
    Not using GNOME myself - so now cannot tune Screensaver there or?
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  In hindsight, it was impulsive of me - but I left Linux as a whole because of what GNOME did. They broke everything, and disrupted my way of doing things. I /could/ have switched DE or WM, but out of frustration, I switched to macOS (Mac OSX at the time) and didn't look back for over a decade. I've only recently returned a few months ago and found KDE to be sufficient and stable enough for my uses (despite the few bugs I keep running into, but nothing breaking my usability too much).

yongjik 4y ago

> GNOME is designed to avoid overwhelming the user with information overload as much as possible, which is a really important topic for usability for the average computer user. Therefore, it does not follow the traditional desktop paradigm, where there is a taskbar, desktop icons, and others - everything is put away until the user needs them. It almost reads as sarcasm. Even if we skip over the fact that an "average Linux user" isn't exactly an "average computer user," have you met... an average computer user? Try telling them that there are no desktop icons because it will only confuse them.

CoolCold 4y ago
Could be they are targeting average computer user, not average Linux user. May be it's right strategy for their goals.
tristan957 4y ago
Yeah I don't understand this point either. I would like to even see where this is cited. If this was actually the case, GNOME would look like Cinnamon, Elementary, or KDE Plasma, which all have interfaces the average computer user is familiar with given the popularity of Windows and macOS. Seems like a misinterpretation by the author.
doctor_eval 4y ago
In my experience, the “average” user has a billion* icons on their desktop. * rounded up to the nearest billion
kaba0 4y ago
Well, is the typical all-over-the-place windows desktop with 10 temporary folders, myDocFinalReallyFinal.docx, some no longer installed apps’ desktop icon and some installed apps no longer working desktop icon really useful? The only thing you have to know is the super key, or the top left corner. Then you will see your open windows and the available app list. There is plenty of bad things about gnome, but I think they do have a nice vision and they adhere to it well. On a laptop, to me Gnome is the most usable desktop environment out of any OS even.
4y ago

jcelerier 4y ago

> When it comes to “my way or the highway”, I noticed that users mainly reference GNOME, far more than any other project. There is one main reason I can think of. either this, or, bear with me for a second, maybe because GNOME unlike most big OSS projects has people going into issue tracker of other software and asking them to do things specifically for accomodating GNOME at the expense of other DEs (https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 for the most famous example - who the f* says this really: "I guess you have to decide if you are a GNOME app, an Ubuntu app, or an XFCE app unfortunately. I'm sorry that this is the case but it wasn't GNOME's fault that Ubuntu has started this fork. And I have no idea what XFCE is or does sorry. It is my hope that you are a GNOME app. Yes this kind of fragmentation is unfortunate. I'm not happy about it either. Anyway, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Wish you the best."). Only other project I've ever seen this with is Rust people spamming RIIR issues on gh. Or stuff like this insane thread: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217

QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with that statement though. It's literally true. GNOME, Ubuntu and XFCE all have different APIs that conflict with each other. The situation is a bit better now that Ubuntu dropped Unity but that was a decision they had to make by themselves, GNOME couldn't do anything about it. What else do you expect them to do? Any time Ubuntu or XFCE decides to keep some API that breaks GNOME, or worse, decides to implement some new API, GNOME has to drop their own plans and maintain it forever? That doesn't make any sense no matter which way you look at it. You're shooting at some random GNOME dev for playing the role of messenger instead of addressing the root cause. I also see nothing wrong with the second thread. GNOME is under no obligation to implement features they don't want to implement. You're posting that to push a narrative while ignoring the other hundreds (thousands?) of bugs that get fixed without any fanfare and without the HN crowd throwing a multi-year long tantrum. It's quite frankly embarrassing to see these brought up continually as an attempt to criticize GNOME. You can do better than this for the Linux community.
- traverseda 4y ago

kimixa 4y ago

If you don't like Gnome, and it doesn't cater to your requirements, there's plenty of other options that may. I don't really understand people who keep saying they wish gnome was much more like KDE, for example - there's already KDE existing in that space for users. And it's not like Gnome are paying distros to ship it as default - they ship it because the maintainers think it's a sane default. Petitioning the distro maintainers would likely be a much more direct path if you disagreed with that and want to change it.

traverseda 4y ago
Firefox's file picker moving from a generic gtk file picker that blends into any DE reasonably well to one that's very eccentric and gnome specific does kind of piss me off. They did implement a way for people to use non-gnome file pickers with gtk programs (like firefox), but then they made it a lot more difficult to actually use that feature outside of flatpak...
- QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
  It's not healthy to find yourself getting angry at decisions made by random open source projects. I really doubt anyone working on that has as strong opinions as you on what the file picker looks like, or they would have written one themselves by now. None of these projects owe anybody anything anyway, that's kind of the point of open sourcing things for free without any warranty.
  - traverseda 4y ago
    >None of these projects owe anybody anything anyway Do I owe them anything? Do I owe them silence, or to not complain, or to not tarnish their name? Clearly as human beings we both owe each-other something, there is a social contract at play here. I'm sure you've seen the infamous "you have to decide if you're a gnome app or an everybody else app", and clearly that developer thought other projects owed them something. But if you're just going to say "well gnome is immune from criticism because they're (paid) open source volunteers", well then what's the point of even talking to anyone? It's an amazing example of a thought-terminating cliche. Somehow when I'm bad mouthing gnome I owe the gnome project my silent support though. It is a mystery.

LastTrain 4y ago

The vision stinks. Usually the solution w/ open source is to roll up one’s sleeves and help out, but since help isn’t allowed (on that subject) people are going to complain loudly.

abenga 4y ago
I don't understand. They have said they want to make a desktop that has a certain set of properties X. They have repeatedly said that they will only make a desktop with a certain set of properties X, and any proposals to the contrary will be rejected. Yet people outside the project still persist in trying to make it into a desktop with some other properties Y. Continuing to tilt at that windmill seems irrational. FWIW, I love Gnome as is. I don't know how many people like me exist. The only thing I miss is the tree view in Nautilus, which is coming back in 44.

chris_wot 4y ago

lol - this is why Gnome doesn't have a volume slider: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728585 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728585

abenga 4y ago
Gnome has a volume slider, I'm not sure what this means.
- chris_wot 4y ago
  Not for each app.
  - abenga 4y ago
    Yes it does. On Gnome 43 it has a slider in the system menu for each app playing sound. When is the last time you used Gnome?
    - chris_wot 4y ago
      I still have gnome 42, will update to Gnome 43 soon!

PixelForg 4y ago

The only reason I'm still using Gnome is because their UI is consistent plus it's easy to theme it as well(through Gradience), but I can't deny that I hate the CSD initiative. I'm eagerly waiting for the new Cosmic DE from PopOs!

traverseda 4y ago
They (some prominent members of the gnome community) are pretty vocal about not wanting you to be able to use themes. https://stopthemingmy.app/ https://stopthemingmy.app/ While they've walked it back and said they're fine with tinkering the mechanisms they propose would make it much harder for tinkering.
- Ferret7446 4y ago
  My desire to theme my desktop has declined linearly with age (along with my general desire to spend time futzing around with things for no material gain). I suspect 99% of people follow the same path.
- QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
  Did you actually bother reading any of the arguments on that page? They don't want distros to use themes because themes always break apps. This is unavoidable. There's no practical way to make those kind of themes in a way that won't break apps eventually. Tinkering is completely different from a distro shipping broken apps by default, it's understood that's your responsibility when you break everything yourself by tinkering after-the-fact. If you wonder why they might also make it harder for this kind of tinkering, it's because tinkerers also don't like to use something that will just break everything else!
  - traverseda 4y ago
    Somehow kde manages to largely avoid that problem. It strikes me as trying to solve technical problems socially, almost as bad as trying to solve social problems technologically.

lakomen 4y ago

Gnome 2 was great. Gnome 3 was 10 steps back. And the arrogance of doing it their way just because they like to, not minding usefulness. So I just am not been using Gnome anymore. Cinnamon, which does what I want and need and doesn't get in my way. And if it does, an opened issue fixes that, quickly too. Gnome is like everything from freedesktop.org opinionated, arrogant and ignorant

truemoose 4y ago
Oh, the arrogance. How dare they make something the way they want it made, and then have the nerve to give it away for free? Some people, eh?
kaba0 4y ago
that’s like, your opinion. Which as we know the saying is like that part of our body :D

rektide 4y ago

> There is one main reason I can think of. GNOME is the most used desktop environment, therefore it is the most susceptible to gain demands and pressure from users and companies. Being the biggest isn't cause enough for this perception. GNOME, in the past decade, put itself in a remarkable position of prioritizing a perpetual-neophyte persona, who did not & didn't want to understand computers, and rebuilt the product around that persona. For a corporate desktop, where random people are handed GNOME & told they have to use 1 app or maybe 2 or 3 on a computer, this is perhaps reasonably well calibrated. Look at many who fund GNOME Project, and this vision makes sense. But GNOME is a Linux desktop environment, and they have Linux users, and it turns out this chosen persona GNOME Project fixated on doesn't only not line up very well, it actively rejects the premise of supporting the explorer, the tinkerer, the hobbyist, the learner. GNOME Project is quite literally the most visible open-source project on the planet, yet it has the most actively anti-open behavioralism & targeting of probably any open-source project. It's chosen a bounded mission, a narrow one, with incredibly bounded behaviors, and that runs counter to the open-source spirit of possibility & exploration. > If you dislike the GNOME Project’s philosophy, then the solution is to simply not use GNOME. In case you missed it the first time the author said it, the author comes back to re-confirm: GNOME is "my way or the highyway." GNOME is uniquely unflexible in almost all open source software in being so narrowly focused. Unlike most open source software, where adding features & options is usually acceptable in some form or another, given compromise, GNOME believes in their one and only one persona, in the overarching vision of an extremely limited capabilities user. I can think of no other project that makes anti-flexibility such a priority, except maybe suckless, and frankly their extreme conservatism & excess of attitude & loudless is quite a turn off as well. I've painted a pretty grim picture of what I think of GNOME Project, and I'm sorry to shove them under the bus like this because I think there are noble ideas mixed in with the totalitarianism. But I think their objectives are delusional & off-base, and need re-assessing dearly, not just because many users don't fit their model, but because their model of what a user is is actively bad & harmful & condescending & makes things worse. To give a nod to GNOME though, the author's other article on the GNOME libadwaita controversy[1] is fairly good in many ways, & talks through some of the pain & complexity & how difficult it is being such a highly visible project that other folks push-the-boundaries on. Freedom leads to "mis-use," what GNOME Project seemingly lives in mortal fear of. The article isn't perfect; I think their KDE examples are 98% horseshit justification (the first qt5ct example feels like strong support that themes work to me, not that they are bad, and most of the rest of the examples are of bad hardcoding that apps should fix, not systematic issues. And the net positive of not needing fractional scaling & being able to adjust your theme seems enormous.). But the support burden experienced by GNOME seems legitemate & real: flexibility has problems. Being an absolutist project that believes in yourself & picks a way & tells everyone else to hit the highway, we don't want to do it is indeed a powerful technique to maintain quality & reduce support burden. This all circles back to a topic I mention time and time again: the Cathedral and the Bazaar. The "Bazaar" model of software development is complex & hard & there's always unpolished things happening at the edge & sometimes pieces of it stop making sense. There's a alluring temptation to centralize, to pull in, to stop exploring, to obstruct users from going off the careful paths you've built for them, to marshal control. Many people in the world cry out that we must give up the Bazaar and instead build "Cathedrals." GNOME Project decided at some point to become Cathedral builders. And that means telling a lot of people to hit the highway. And alas, it often seems like a Cathedral built primarily corporate users, not actual living flesh & blood humans. Postscript: as with most do-we-or-don't-we software discussions, I highly recommend "Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus"[2] for more framing, that talks about stances of acceptance vs control. It's helpful to think of GNOME in this framing & it's helpful to think of your own & others around you's approach to code. Recommend. [1] https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2022/07/28/libadwaita-fixing-usability-problems-on-the-linux-desktop.html https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2022/07/28/libadwaita-fixi... [2] https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150 https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150

wereallterrrist 4y ago

> the solution is to simply not use GNOME. >But, currently, I prioritize ease of use and distraction-free, so I use GNOME. Wew, there we go!. At least it's being said plainly and openly at this point. GNOME is for GNOME OS, we have plenty of other choices in its absence. Sorry to authors of GTK apps caught in the middle! This line coming from the project that took what 10+ years to add thumbnails to the file picker? Do y'all not realize how this comes off? It's really something.

renewedrebecca 4y ago

The real problem with Gnome is that the user that they are targeting simply doesn't exist. People who need a user friendly environment probably don't need Linux in the first place.

Gigachad 4y ago
I use Gnome and it's my preferred DE. I'm perfectly capable of ricing i3-gaps or whatever. But I have better things to be doing. Gnome just works which is more than I have experienced from any of the others. And yes I have tried XFCE, KDE Plasma, and i3.
greatgib 4y ago
I would still say that the targeted user does not exist but for the opposite reason. The mass basic non nerd lambda user wants clear explicit interface with buttons. Not secret keyboard shortcut interfaces and functions hidden in secret hamburger menus. In addition, the "tablet" interface with just a single window does not work well enough for most users, or everyone will only use a tablet and not a computer.
kaba0 4y ago
Or maybe your idea of their target group or of a “typical Linux user” is just wrong.

tssva 4y ago

1. Gnome has to keep things hidden and simple so it can be used by the masses. 2. Members of the masses (Windows & macOS users) switching to Linux annoyingly keep complaining that Gnome needs to change to make things less hidden and simple so they can use it. 3. These users need to be ignored so that Gnome can be used by the masses. Makes perfect sense.

bawolff 4y ago

> I would like to explain where this mindset comes from, why this is an aggravated claim, and what you can do if you are negatively affected by the GNOME Project’s decisions. > .... > SOLUTION: > If you dislike the GNOME Project’s philosophy, then the solution is to simply not use GNOME. lol, is this supposed to somehow convince me that gnome does not have this attitude or the claim is misleading? I don't even think "my way or the highway" is a bad philosophy in UI heavy software, but what is even the point in writing a response to this criticism if you are just going to end it with: my way or the highway (phrased differently)?

thayne 4y ago

Let me jump to the conclusion. I already don't use GNOME. My problem with their "my way or the highway" attitude is its impact on the broader linux ecosystem. A great example of this is client side decoration (CSD). Since gnome uses client side decoration, non gnome apps often don't have any window controls in gnome, and conversely gnome apps draw unwanted, redundant client side window decorations in environments with server side decorations (or in my case, no decorations). Another example is, from what I've seen gnome has had a lot more resistance to standardizing new wayland protocols from wlroots than KDE, because minimal compositors have a very different paradigm than gnome, and gnome isn't interested in supporting other paradigms.

rcarmo 4y ago

Having used GNOME 41-43 on a daily basis and having had to resort to extensions (and themes) to make it usable because I _need_ the UI affordances they keep hiding away, find the UX in Nautilus ludicrously bad and loathe the Adwaita theme, the one sentence that keeps popping up in my mind whenever I read (or write) about GNOME is: “GNOME continues the war against its own users.” That said, I will grant that its ecosystem and application suite is now good enough for me to not consider using Elementary any more, but I think that, in my case, is as much due to switching to Fedora as it is to GNOME. https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/22/1300 (A year using Linux on the desktop)

deafpolygon 4y ago

> It is also why other desktop environments, like Plasma, still exist. They are designed to be user-centric and powerful. GNOME, on the other hand, is designed to be user-friendly. Since you brought up KDE. This is many reasons why I like KDE - they seem to value interoperability over exclusiveness. Also, leave the user in control. GNOME removes control from me. As seen in their HIG[0], "Provide sensible defaults but consider optional functionality and customization options that don't interfere with the primary task." From another comment: > maybe because GNOME unlike most big OSS projects has people going into issue tracker of other software and asking them to do things specifically for accomodating GNOME This is a pattern I dislike seeing. GNOME is fracturing the community by forcing their own way, or the highway. [0] https://develop.kde.org/hig/ https://develop.kde.org/hig/

jmnicolas 4y ago
On the other hand KDE isn't very pretty and is a bit unstable. But Dolphin is the only file manager that I can tolerate and last time I tried Gnome (43 on Fedora 37 beta) it couldn't handle switching of my second monitor (it made a mess of my virtual desktops). Honestly Gnome isn't bad, you just have to adapt your workflow: instead of putting apps to the foreground by clicking on them in the taskbar just use a virtual desktop for the different activities.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  KDE looks good (the current version does, at least). It _is_ a bit stable, though. Dolpin is excellent as a file manager. Nautilus was terrible when they introduced it. It's still terrible. I don't like how GNOME handles multiple desktops. I can get very close to i3 with KDE, support for shortcuts and customization, and virtual desktops, but have a still full DE to go with it.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    >Dolpin is excellent as a file manager. Nautilus was terrible when they introduced it. It's still terrible. Like most GTK apps, Nautilus feels like a toy app. Dolphin feels like a better app than what you have in any other OS. Most of the best Linux apps seem like they're Qt, and that's because GTK is increasingly terrible to work with. The next runner up file manager to Dolphin, PCManFM, switched from GTK to Qt[0]: ``` Hong Jen Yee, developer of LXDE (the GTK version of which was dropped and all efforts focused on the Qt port), expressed disdain for version 3 of the GTK toolkit's radical API changes and increased memory usage, and ported PCMan File Manager (PCManFM) to Qt. PCManFM is being developed with a GTK and with a Qt backend at the same time. ``` 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism

brnt 4y ago

Why is it the default on nearly every distro is what I want to know.

timbit42 4y ago
Politics.

xalt7x 4y ago

> "The goal is for the user to be able to do their job without being distracted" Please, enlighten me how notifications position on the top center of the screen is supposed to help with concentration on some task? It'll rather distract and annoy me (as sometimes I accidentally misclick while switching browser tabs etc).