4 ms·

I'm going to ask this in every thread. Have we (those who are not paid to work on this) "followed the money?" The glacial Wayland rollout to usability (it was

by jrm4 3y ago

I'm going to ask this in every thread. Have we (those who are not paid to work on this) "followed the money?" The glacial Wayland rollout to usability (it was AT LEAST a decade, don't try to fight me on this) is just so odd to me; to the point that I feel like it would be useful to examine the most powerful entities in this. It's just really hard for me not to at least consider: Was the push for Wayland in the hands of entities who perhaps didn't have a particularly strong interest in a classically useable desktop? As in, a combination of entities who really have no interest in a Linux desktop (Ubuntu, who lets be real, has caved to Microsoft) or entities that are trying to hard to be cool and in doing so broke stuff that just works? (Lookin' at you, gnome?)

benwaffle 3y ago
How exactly does GNOME make money by not building a "classically usable" desktop? What about Ubuntu?
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  They benefit from their purer FOSS licensing behind GTK (in contrast to their competition, Qt) and place in history. They're working on a doomed experiment, on the fumes of enchantment of Apple design and the false hope that, maybe someday, "regular people" will use Linux. On a tablet or something. It'll all be tablets -- nobody'll even have desktops anymore. The hardware will converge, if you will. There will be a Unity of interfaces.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    >maybe someday, "regular people" will use Linux. On a tablet or something. It'll all be tablets We already do, it's called Android.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Cargo culting, kinda. They're trying to "innovate like Apple," and of course, it's not very easy to do that.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    They definitely do that for all those sweet.. UnixPorn screenshots, or what exactly?
Dalewyn 3y ago
>Was the push for Wayland in the hands of entities who perhaps didn't have a particularly strong interest in a classically useable desktop? As in, a combination of entities who really have no interest in a Linux desktop You answered your own question. The Linux community's (read: most graybeards') love for Linux is inversely proportional to their love for a GUI. The terminal is still the One True Way(tm) of doing anything serious in Linux. Consider that among the hottest topics in Linux in the year 2023 is still the holy war between vi vs. emacs, nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century. The people in charge of Linux (be it literally or figuratively) do not give a damn about GUI, which includes desktops. Using a mouse is heresy, a touchscreen is sacrilege.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  I don't know. How did KDE, the best desktop in the world, come about? It's better than Windows's -- the DE of a multi-billion dollar OS with 98% planetary market share that's been iterated upon for like 30 years across uncountable dev hours. Dolphin vs. Explorer! Billions of dollars!!! Versus five Dutch guys, working for free!!!!!! Split views! Terminal integration! Dark mode BEFORE just a couple of years ago! File metadata under the filename! Tabs! TABS!!!!
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    > Dark mode BEFORE just a couple of years ago That tickled my sense, and I looked up. Windows added dark mode in 2017.
- jrm4 3y ago
  Right, but what I'm saying is going "half-greybeard" is a good idea; just makes something simple that works. The stupid thing that GNOME et al are doing is trying to outsexy Apple or some nonsense.
7e 3y ago
I don’t think you need a conspiracy theory to explain Wayland underperformance: free OSS labor doesn’t produce great things, when those great things require a lot of unsexy work. If you want to follow the money, recognize that there is no money in a Linux desktop, so no professional developers turning out professional product.
kaba0 3y ago
You have an ecosystem where most software is made for free by enthusiasts, and orders of magnitude less people may be paid a bit for some of the core parts. How do you expect the much bigger former group would work on your new thing? They wont, unless it starts spreading. And it can’t really spread unless it is being supported by all the community. That decade was mostly a build up — once it has the critical mass, improvements will be exponentially greater. Anyone saying that it is a drop because it already took a decade is just not familiar with how any of open source/bazaar projects work.

by jrm4 3y ago

benwaffle 3y ago

How exactly does GNOME make money by not building a "classically usable" desktop? What about Ubuntu?

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
They benefit from their purer FOSS licensing behind GTK (in contrast to their competition, Qt) and place in history. They're working on a doomed experiment, on the fumes of enchantment of Apple design and the false hope that, maybe someday, "regular people" will use Linux. On a tablet or something. It'll all be tablets -- nobody'll even have desktops anymore. The hardware will converge, if you will. There will be a Unity of interfaces.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >maybe someday, "regular people" will use Linux. On a tablet or something. It'll all be tablets We already do, it's called Android.
jrm4 3y ago
Cargo culting, kinda. They're trying to "innovate like Apple," and of course, it's not very easy to do that.
- kaba0 3y ago
  They definitely do that for all those sweet.. UnixPorn screenshots, or what exactly?

Dalewyn 3y ago

>Was the push for Wayland in the hands of entities who perhaps didn't have a particularly strong interest in a classically useable desktop? As in, a combination of entities who really have no interest in a Linux desktop You answered your own question. The Linux community's (read: most graybeards') love for Linux is inversely proportional to their love for a GUI. The terminal is still the One True Way(tm) of doing anything serious in Linux. Consider that among the hottest topics in Linux in the year 2023 is still the holy war between vi vs. emacs, nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century. The people in charge of Linux (be it literally or figuratively) do not give a damn about GUI, which includes desktops. Using a mouse is heresy, a touchscreen is sacrilege.

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
I don't know. How did KDE, the best desktop in the world, come about? It's better than Windows's -- the DE of a multi-billion dollar OS with 98% planetary market share that's been iterated upon for like 30 years across uncountable dev hours. Dolphin vs. Explorer! Billions of dollars!!! Versus five Dutch guys, working for free!!!!!! Split views! Terminal integration! Dark mode BEFORE just a couple of years ago! File metadata under the filename! Tabs! TABS!!!!
- lostmsu 3y ago
  > Dark mode BEFORE just a couple of years ago That tickled my sense, and I looked up. Windows added dark mode in 2017.
jrm4 3y ago
Right, but what I'm saying is going "half-greybeard" is a good idea; just makes something simple that works. The stupid thing that GNOME et al are doing is trying to outsexy Apple or some nonsense.

7e 3y ago

I don’t think you need a conspiracy theory to explain Wayland underperformance: free OSS labor doesn’t produce great things, when those great things require a lot of unsexy work. If you want to follow the money, recognize that there is no money in a Linux desktop, so no professional developers turning out professional product.

kaba0 3y ago

You have an ecosystem where most software is made for free by enthusiasts, and orders of magnitude less people may be paid a bit for some of the core parts. How do you expect the much bigger former group would work on your new thing? They wont, unless it starts spreading. And it can’t really spread unless it is being supported by all the community. That decade was mostly a build up — once it has the critical mass, improvements will be exponentially greater. Anyone saying that it is a drop because it already took a decade is just not familiar with how any of open source/bazaar projects work.