15 ms·

Just what Linux needs, more fragmentation.

by resuresu 4y ago

lucsky 4y ago
They call it "choice" I think /s
- pxc 4y ago
  This but unironically. Use a different operating system if you want your vendor to tie you up and tell you what to do. Buy a pretty toaster if you want a slick appliance— not a computer. I'm sick of this complaint, which boils down to this: desktop Linux (taken collectively) isn't very much like a product for consumers by a vendor who wants to suck you into their ecosystem. Guess what? That's *what's good* about the Linux desktop. If you want a no-choice monoculture whose design better supports a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware, you've got options already. If you want to be a consumer instead of a participant in a community and a tradition, go buy something.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    Exactly this. I don't know why some people seem to want a "one true desktop" monoculture. The whole reason I use Linux is because I get to make choices that make sense for me.
    - pxc 4y ago
      In fairness I think I do know what they want, which is better support from third-party (and especially proprietary) software vendors. A Linux workstation can be painfully close to perfectly usable for a lot of professionals who have various personal reasons to prefer it to Windows or macOS— reasons you and I would likely emphatically agree with, no less! There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. I get it. I've contended with integrating disparate GUI frameworks on my system. I appreciate what Apple's virtual monopoly on app frameworks for macOS allows them to do in terms of accessibility and integrations and UI changes, in rapid, uniform ways. But you can't impose uniformity on the Linux desktop without draining the oasis, without killing what makes it a breath of fresh air in the first place.
      - robinsonb5 4y ago
        I don't think it's even the UI that's the problem. The problem is this: > ./GuitarPro ./GuitarPro: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I bought this program several years ago while using a Mint 13 system - it won't run on Mint 20. Maybe I could set up a Docker, or copy the correct version of the libraries, or whatever - maybe it could be coaxed into working, maybe not - but while end users are likely to encounter this kind of roadblock Linux is just a non-starter as a platform for commercial software.
        nibbleshifter 4y ago
        Openssl specifically not providing a stable ABI is the bane of my fucking life. Many other libraries are similar. See: glibc... At least the kernel promises not to break user space. I guess because user space keeps fucking itself.
      - pmontra 4y ago
        > There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. If Adobe builds Photoshop for Red Hat and make it run only on Red Hat, people wanting to use Photoshop will install Red Hat. The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu.
        pxc 4y ago
        > The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu. This is basically how Steam still works, pending the release of SteamOS 3.0, and it hasn't been a problem for other distros. They can sub in their own libs and repackage the thing or use an Ubuntu chroot. This is what Snap and Flatpak are for though, and I think they'll handle it well, going forward.
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I actually agree with you, but I think that's not what people complain about. I think people mostly complain about a lack of cohesion that Windows/macOS have. But then again, their design language has recently started to be less cohesive too (or more precisely, mix of older and newer design systems are apparent). Like, it's generally difficult to get something working/looking nicely and consistently on Linux. A somewhat exception to this rule is GNOME, but even then there's issues with KDE/Qt app theming sometimes. Like, until 2021 (I think) I lived with a broken looking inkscape and Krita (used it as a hobby) because I gave up trying to figure out how to fix the theming, since none of the fixes suggested online worked. Then one day after some random update it started working So, there's a lot of space for improvement and better cross compatibility between these "subsystems" Granted, though, it's getting better. But I assume not at a pace an average user can perceive. So, i thinking that's where people get frustrated.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      The Windows ecosystem has never had a coherent design. I fondly remember the Windows 7 days where we had Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and Zune Media Player each with a completely different design style despite coming from the same company. Similarly, Outlook vs Windows Live Mail vs etc or Word Perfect vs Word. And these are just comparing similar Microsoft products.
      - spoiler 4y ago
        Ok I guess I've had a bit of a different perception back then, since thinking back I think you're rights. I guess the thing I was thinking of being cohesive were stuff like context menus, or integrating better with the window manager (or whatever it's called on Windows) than they do on Linux (since you had to integrate with the only existing one, not choose one). My earlier complaint about Krita/Inkscape is that most "labels" rendered in a colour and labels that was almost indistinguishable from the background, so I was largely working with shortcuts, or from memory and sometimes squinting to see what I'm clicking lol. It was an issue with all non-gnome apps, but I mostly used those two.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I'll buy/build a Linux desktop when we get quality hardware and software options (where "good hardware" means more than "fast CPU! big memory!"), but for now Mac is a pretty good experience. You can't hack around the source code for proprietary programs (I've pretty much never wanted to do this on any desktop system), but you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software.
    - pxc 4y ago
      > Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I realize I come off as extreme here, but that's really how I feel. I think that's an obviously fair way to describe the Microsoft Store and the Google Play Store. (Idk about iOS' App Store because I don't use iOS.) I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. (Windows suffers from that latter problem, too, though it's not as egregious as macOS.) > you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software. The core software is pretty much what we're talking about here: DEs and/or bundled apps. > for now Mac is a pretty good experience I understand that many people like it and I think their reasons for liking it are mostly good. But for me, using macOS is genuinely miserable, not just a little off. And I think the kind of app ecosystem that Mac people really love, of thoughfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee... is just not that great. To an extent that Mac lovers rarely admit or don't understand, a huge proportion of those apps exist only to compensate for Apple's own oversights, which wouldn't matter so much in an open ecosystem. The rest just aren't worth the cost of a closed ecosystem, in my opinion.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
  - lucsky 4y ago
    Dude. Chill. That was just a mild joke. Who hurt you?
    - pxc 4y ago
      No anger towards you personally, just venting about what has apparently become a pet peeve for me :) (I actually liked your joke— even upvoted it before I wrote my rant lol. Sometimes you just gotta let it out!)
      - lucsky 4y ago
        Understood. I love venting too :D
Longhanks 4y ago
With friends likr Gnome, you don’t need enemies anymore. If gnome were to collaborate with others, there would much less necessity for forks (such as in the GTK2 days). But instead, the close any feature request minimally differing their pristine idea of what a desktop should look like, shut down any other discussion about the topic, and god forbid if you mention you want customization like themes or, gasp, tray icons. Sure, this may come off polemic, but I very much think that gnome is largely to blame for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Redhat. They've made some power-plays (including with Gnome) and have been successful at it. Ubuntu tried to do the same more than once, but fell so hard on their face every time that it can be hard to tell that they were trying to do the same thing.
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  Meh. No, gnome is not. XFCE was there before gnome 3 and is still here today. Same for all other popular desktop environments.
  - LinAGKar 4y ago
    Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie were not.
    - johnchristopher 4y ago
      Gnome 3 can't be responsible for Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie adding 3 fragments to the desktop environment space instead of those 3 adding 1 by merging each other. Gnome 3 brushed people the wrong way but blaming it for fragmentation when those 3 went away to do their 3 different things doesn't make sense. Come on, MATE and Cinnamon ? To be consistent Cinnamon shouldn't exist and only MATE would make the cut if Gnome 3 is the problem. Numbers I can find speak for themselves though: https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm There's no fragmentation, only KDE and Gnome.
Darmody 4y ago
I don't actually see the fragmentation here. You can move from Gnome Shell to this without having to change the software you use.
- runjake 4y ago
  I think they are referring to the human resources part of the fragmentation issue: capable people working on yet another desktop environment. The, perhaps unrealistic and naive, thinking behind this is that if these capable people combined their efforts into one desktop environment, we'd have one great Linux desktop environment, instead of several okay desktop environments.
  - Darmody 4y ago
    Well, they are not starting everything from the scratch. And as you say, you can't have people with different ideas working on the same project. Cosmic exists because Gnome devs have their own roadmap that many people dislike.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    That assumes they would even in theory work together, or would have a design choice they can all agree on.
    - runjake 4y ago
      Yep, thus "unrealistic and naive."
Finnucane 4y ago
Is there a right amount of fragmentation? Or is monolithic control like Windows and MacOS better? Part of the promise of open source software is that it can be adapted and extended. Part of the promise of Linux is that the kernel and the DE are not completely dependent on each other. So it can hardly be surprising when people take these promises at face value and make things with them.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I'm fine with trying new things. In particular, I'm curious as to whether people have tried to build a desktop environment around webkit or similar--basically using the web stack instead of traditional GUI toolkits? Is there some obvious reason this is a bad idea (yeah, I know working in JS is unpleasant, but we have alternatives these days and frankly all of the native GUI toolkits for Linux are pretty unpleasant as well). EDIT: I know ChromeOS exists, but that's a lot more than a desktop environment (can't even run a compiler natively for all intents and purposes iirc).
- rrgok 4y ago
  That's a great question about using web tech to build a DE. I've been wondering the same for sometime. Someone should shed some light on this.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Eeems 4y ago
  So Gnome?
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Gnome just embeds a JavaScript runtime (and probably not a particularly good one) as an embedded scripting language. It's not using a web engine (which would handle styling, layout, accessibility, etc in addition to running JS). https://gjs.guide/ https://gjs.guide/
- dvdkon 4y ago
  I think Deepin's DE used to be based on HTML years back, but they switched to Qt.
rrgok 4y ago
On one hand, it is great to have different options. On the other, think about the amount of effort wasted away. Sometime I wonder what can they pull off if KDE team, Gnome team, XFCE team and now Cosmic team got together.
- godshatter 4y ago
  People want different things. The extra work added on different desktop environments is work that neither Microsoft or Apple is doing, and I think that's a good thing. If you want an environment for the average Joe, use desktop A. If you want a techy "fiddle all the knobs" one than use desktop B. If you want a minimalist one, use Desktop C, etc. MS doesn't make three or more versions of their OS suited for different populations, you get what they want to give you. Same for Apple. Diversity is a strength of Linux. I don't think Pepsi worries about fragmentation with their various flavors of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and whatever other hundreds of brands they own. Sure, diversity can be a problem if there aren't enough developers to go around but I'd rather have more options than fewer.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  There is no one-size-fits-all solution here because there isn't a single entity controlling the development and access of Linux desktop environments. Pretty sure if all of those teams got together to somehow deliver a solution, neither the devs or the users will be happy with the result.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    The team working on a single desktop wouldn't necessarily be much bigger anyway.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Same with billions of programming languages, frameworks. Do you guys complain because there is more than 1 game studio? You'd rather have one movie/serie and a handful of actors director so all movies and series are made by the same team in order to not waste ressources? A single house architecture plan so that everyone live in the very same house with no customisation possible?
winrid 4y ago
This is long overdue. The Linux desktop needs a lot of polishing and i feel like we've hit a wall with productivity considering the gnome file picker has had the same issues with thumbnails since i was in highschool with Ubuntu 6.10. If Rust helps us actually improve and change things, then fine.
- krolden 4y ago
  Try kde
  - winrid 4y ago
    I'm on KDE right now (KDE Neon). Basic stuff like, installing Chrome still uses the GTK file picker, is an issue. Loading screen goes to wrong monitor and oriented wrong. Plugging in monitor sometimes makes both go black requiring hard reboot (I think I fixed this with a kernel flag...). Just overall polish. Although I do like Neon as a distro so far.
    - Vogtinator 4y ago
      All of that works here on Tumbleweed... Chrome is actually one of the browsers that had KDE file picker integration early on. Initially it called kdialog, now it uses xdg-desktop-portal.
      - winrid 4y ago
        Yeah I think it might be a system wide config issue causing Chrome to use the wrong picker. But anyway I should really give an RPM based distro a go at some point.
- criddell 4y ago
  It needs more than just polishing. It would great to see the community come to agreement on a modern permissions model so that you can do things like grant access to your camera/microphone/calendar/location/photos/etc... for ever, just this time, or never. I know it's being worked on and there are some competing systems, but it would be great for there to be a single API.
krolden 4y ago
Ummm, a vibrant ecosystem of desktop environments/window managers is one of the best things about Linux.
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  Except for the fact virtually all have serious usability issues, bugs, and general problems. The community spreads its efforts thin into a thousand projects rather than making one amazing one.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Windows and Mac also have usability issues and they are driven by two companies that don't allow break ups of their DEs. I don't think that a FOSS community will ever converge on an amazing DE without part of it breaking apart and starting a new one, for the sake of building something even more amazing or failing on the way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
ssnistfajen 4y ago
The back-end stuff doesn't really change, so more DE options is not going to be the end of the world.

Just what Linux needs, more fragmentation.

lucsky 4y ago

They call it "choice" I think /s

pxc 4y ago
This but unironically. Use a different operating system if you want your vendor to tie you up and tell you what to do. Buy a pretty toaster if you want a slick appliance— not a computer. I'm sick of this complaint, which boils down to this: desktop Linux (taken collectively) isn't very much like a product for consumers by a vendor who wants to suck you into their ecosystem. Guess what? That's *what's good* about the Linux desktop. If you want a no-choice monoculture whose design better supports a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware, you've got options already. If you want to be a consumer instead of a participant in a community and a tradition, go buy something.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  Exactly this. I don't know why some people seem to want a "one true desktop" monoculture. The whole reason I use Linux is because I get to make choices that make sense for me.
  - pxc 4y ago
    In fairness I think I do know what they want, which is better support from third-party (and especially proprietary) software vendors. A Linux workstation can be painfully close to perfectly usable for a lot of professionals who have various personal reasons to prefer it to Windows or macOS— reasons you and I would likely emphatically agree with, no less! There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. I get it. I've contended with integrating disparate GUI frameworks on my system. I appreciate what Apple's virtual monopoly on app frameworks for macOS allows them to do in terms of accessibility and integrations and UI changes, in rapid, uniform ways. But you can't impose uniformity on the Linux desktop without draining the oasis, without killing what makes it a breath of fresh air in the first place.
    - robinsonb5 4y ago
      I don't think it's even the UI that's the problem. The problem is this: > ./GuitarPro ./GuitarPro: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I bought this program several years ago while using a Mint 13 system - it won't run on Mint 20. Maybe I could set up a Docker, or copy the correct version of the libraries, or whatever - maybe it could be coaxed into working, maybe not - but while end users are likely to encounter this kind of roadblock Linux is just a non-starter as a platform for commercial software.
      - nibbleshifter 4y ago
        Openssl specifically not providing a stable ABI is the bane of my fucking life. Many other libraries are similar. See: glibc... At least the kernel promises not to break user space. I guess because user space keeps fucking itself.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      > There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. If Adobe builds Photoshop for Red Hat and make it run only on Red Hat, people wanting to use Photoshop will install Red Hat. The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu.
      - pxc 4y ago
        > The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu. This is basically how Steam still works, pending the release of SteamOS 3.0, and it hasn't been a problem for other distros. They can sub in their own libs and repackage the thing or use an Ubuntu chroot. This is what Snap and Flatpak are for though, and I think they'll handle it well, going forward.
- spoiler 4y ago
  I actually agree with you, but I think that's not what people complain about. I think people mostly complain about a lack of cohesion that Windows/macOS have. But then again, their design language has recently started to be less cohesive too (or more precisely, mix of older and newer design systems are apparent). Like, it's generally difficult to get something working/looking nicely and consistently on Linux. A somewhat exception to this rule is GNOME, but even then there's issues with KDE/Qt app theming sometimes. Like, until 2021 (I think) I lived with a broken looking inkscape and Krita (used it as a hobby) because I gave up trying to figure out how to fix the theming, since none of the fixes suggested online worked. Then one day after some random update it started working So, there's a lot of space for improvement and better cross compatibility between these "subsystems" Granted, though, it's getting better. But I assume not at a pace an average user can perceive. So, i thinking that's where people get frustrated.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    The Windows ecosystem has never had a coherent design. I fondly remember the Windows 7 days where we had Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and Zune Media Player each with a completely different design style despite coming from the same company. Similarly, Outlook vs Windows Live Mail vs etc or Word Perfect vs Word. And these are just comparing similar Microsoft products.
    - spoiler 4y ago
      Ok I guess I've had a bit of a different perception back then, since thinking back I think you're rights. I guess the thing I was thinking of being cohesive were stuff like context menus, or integrating better with the window manager (or whatever it's called on Windows) than they do on Linux (since you had to integrate with the only existing one, not choose one). My earlier complaint about Krita/Inkscape is that most "labels" rendered in a colour and labels that was almost indistinguishable from the background, so I was largely working with shortcuts, or from memory and sometimes squinting to see what I'm clicking lol. It was an issue with all non-gnome apps, but I mostly used those two.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I'll buy/build a Linux desktop when we get quality hardware and software options (where "good hardware" means more than "fast CPU! big memory!"), but for now Mac is a pretty good experience. You can't hack around the source code for proprietary programs (I've pretty much never wanted to do this on any desktop system), but you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software.
  - pxc 4y ago
    > Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I realize I come off as extreme here, but that's really how I feel. I think that's an obviously fair way to describe the Microsoft Store and the Google Play Store. (Idk about iOS' App Store because I don't use iOS.) I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. (Windows suffers from that latter problem, too, though it's not as egregious as macOS.) > you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software. The core software is pretty much what we're talking about here: DEs and/or bundled apps. > for now Mac is a pretty good experience I understand that many people like it and I think their reasons for liking it are mostly good. But for me, using macOS is genuinely miserable, not just a little off. And I think the kind of app ecosystem that Mac people really love, of thoughfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee... is just not that great. To an extent that Mac lovers rarely admit or don't understand, a huge proportion of those apps exist only to compensate for Apple's own oversights, which wouldn't matter so much in an open ecosystem. The rest just aren't worth the cost of a closed ecosystem, in my opinion.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
- lucsky 4y ago
  Dude. Chill. That was just a mild joke. Who hurt you?
  - pxc 4y ago
    No anger towards you personally, just venting about what has apparently become a pet peeve for me :) (I actually liked your joke— even upvoted it before I wrote my rant lol. Sometimes you just gotta let it out!)
    - lucsky 4y ago
      Understood. I love venting too :D

Longhanks 4y ago

With friends likr Gnome, you don’t need enemies anymore. If gnome were to collaborate with others, there would much less necessity for forks (such as in the GTK2 days). But instead, the close any feature request minimally differing their pristine idea of what a desktop should look like, shut down any other discussion about the topic, and god forbid if you mention you want customization like themes or, gasp, tray icons. Sure, this may come off polemic, but I very much think that gnome is largely to blame for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Redhat. They've made some power-plays (including with Gnome) and have been successful at it. Ubuntu tried to do the same more than once, but fell so hard on their face every time that it can be hard to tell that they were trying to do the same thing.
johnchristopher 4y ago
Meh. No, gnome is not. XFCE was there before gnome 3 and is still here today. Same for all other popular desktop environments.
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie were not.
  - johnchristopher 4y ago
    Gnome 3 can't be responsible for Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie adding 3 fragments to the desktop environment space instead of those 3 adding 1 by merging each other. Gnome 3 brushed people the wrong way but blaming it for fragmentation when those 3 went away to do their 3 different things doesn't make sense. Come on, MATE and Cinnamon ? To be consistent Cinnamon shouldn't exist and only MATE would make the cut if Gnome 3 is the problem. Numbers I can find speak for themselves though: https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm There's no fragmentation, only KDE and Gnome.

Darmody 4y ago

I don't actually see the fragmentation here. You can move from Gnome Shell to this without having to change the software you use.

runjake 4y ago
I think they are referring to the human resources part of the fragmentation issue: capable people working on yet another desktop environment. The, perhaps unrealistic and naive, thinking behind this is that if these capable people combined their efforts into one desktop environment, we'd have one great Linux desktop environment, instead of several okay desktop environments.
- Darmody 4y ago
  Well, they are not starting everything from the scratch. And as you say, you can't have people with different ideas working on the same project. Cosmic exists because Gnome devs have their own roadmap that many people dislike.
- kaba0 4y ago
  That assumes they would even in theory work together, or would have a design choice they can all agree on.
  - runjake 4y ago
    Yep, thus "unrealistic and naive."

Finnucane 4y ago

Is there a right amount of fragmentation? Or is monolithic control like Windows and MacOS better? Part of the promise of open source software is that it can be adapted and extended. Part of the promise of Linux is that the kernel and the DE are not completely dependent on each other. So it can hardly be surprising when people take these promises at face value and make things with them.

throwaway894345 4y ago

I'm fine with trying new things. In particular, I'm curious as to whether people have tried to build a desktop environment around webkit or similar--basically using the web stack instead of traditional GUI toolkits? Is there some obvious reason this is a bad idea (yeah, I know working in JS is unpleasant, but we have alternatives these days and frankly all of the native GUI toolkits for Linux are pretty unpleasant as well). EDIT: I know ChromeOS exists, but that's a lot more than a desktop environment (can't even run a compiler natively for all intents and purposes iirc).

rrgok 4y ago
That's a great question about using web tech to build a DE. I've been wondering the same for sometime. Someone should shed some light on this.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Eeems 4y ago
So Gnome?
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Gnome just embeds a JavaScript runtime (and probably not a particularly good one) as an embedded scripting language. It's not using a web engine (which would handle styling, layout, accessibility, etc in addition to running JS). https://gjs.guide/ https://gjs.guide/
dvdkon 4y ago
I think Deepin's DE used to be based on HTML years back, but they switched to Qt.

rrgok 4y ago

On one hand, it is great to have different options. On the other, think about the amount of effort wasted away. Sometime I wonder what can they pull off if KDE team, Gnome team, XFCE team and now Cosmic team got together.

godshatter 4y ago
People want different things. The extra work added on different desktop environments is work that neither Microsoft or Apple is doing, and I think that's a good thing. If you want an environment for the average Joe, use desktop A. If you want a techy "fiddle all the knobs" one than use desktop B. If you want a minimalist one, use Desktop C, etc. MS doesn't make three or more versions of their OS suited for different populations, you get what they want to give you. Same for Apple. Diversity is a strength of Linux. I don't think Pepsi worries about fragmentation with their various flavors of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and whatever other hundreds of brands they own. Sure, diversity can be a problem if there aren't enough developers to go around but I'd rather have more options than fewer.
ssnistfajen 4y ago
There is no one-size-fits-all solution here because there isn't a single entity controlling the development and access of Linux desktop environments. Pretty sure if all of those teams got together to somehow deliver a solution, neither the devs or the users will be happy with the result.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  The team working on a single desktop wouldn't necessarily be much bigger anyway.
prmoustache 4y ago
Same with billions of programming languages, frameworks. Do you guys complain because there is more than 1 game studio? You'd rather have one movie/serie and a handful of actors director so all movies and series are made by the same team in order to not waste ressources? A single house architecture plan so that everyone live in the very same house with no customisation possible?

winrid 4y ago

This is long overdue. The Linux desktop needs a lot of polishing and i feel like we've hit a wall with productivity considering the gnome file picker has had the same issues with thumbnails since i was in highschool with Ubuntu 6.10. If Rust helps us actually improve and change things, then fine.

krolden 4y ago
Try kde
- winrid 4y ago
  I'm on KDE right now (KDE Neon). Basic stuff like, installing Chrome still uses the GTK file picker, is an issue. Loading screen goes to wrong monitor and oriented wrong. Plugging in monitor sometimes makes both go black requiring hard reboot (I think I fixed this with a kernel flag...). Just overall polish. Although I do like Neon as a distro so far.
  - Vogtinator 4y ago
    All of that works here on Tumbleweed... Chrome is actually one of the browsers that had KDE file picker integration early on. Initially it called kdialog, now it uses xdg-desktop-portal.
    - winrid 4y ago
      Yeah I think it might be a system wide config issue causing Chrome to use the wrong picker. But anyway I should really give an RPM based distro a go at some point.
criddell 4y ago
It needs more than just polishing. It would great to see the community come to agreement on a modern permissions model so that you can do things like grant access to your camera/microphone/calendar/location/photos/etc... for ever, just this time, or never. I know it's being worked on and there are some competing systems, but it would be great for there to be a single API.

krolden 4y ago

Ummm, a vibrant ecosystem of desktop environments/window managers is one of the best things about Linux.

BizarreByte 4y ago
Except for the fact virtually all have serious usability issues, bugs, and general problems. The community spreads its efforts thin into a thousand projects rather than making one amazing one.
- pmontra 4y ago
  Windows and Mac also have usability issues and they are driven by two companies that don't allow break ups of their DEs. I don't think that a FOSS community will ever converge on an amazing DE without part of it breaking apart and starting a new one, for the sake of building something even more amazing or failing on the way.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

ssnistfajen 4y ago

The back-end stuff doesn't really change, so more DE options is not going to be the end of the world.