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>Configuration With dconf If you do this just know that the Gtk devs consider most gsettings to be private and any end user changes made with dconf might just

>Configuration With dconf If you do this just know that the Gtk devs consider most gsettings to be private and any end user changes made with dconf might just disappear one day and never come back. Or they might be left in but just not respected by gtk so that setting them does nothing. As a GNOME user on the latest Gtk4 you're not supposed to be customizing your desktop like in the article. It is not supported even if you can (for now) technically do it. Support issues related to removal/ignoring of gsettings will be told this and closed.

hellodanylo 3y ago
I would rephrase this concern as "dconf is not a stable API" rather than "you are not supposed to do this". It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want, but using unstable API comes with costs that should be understood.
- lmm 3y ago
  > It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want I don't think the Gnome devs share that view.
  - endorphine 3y ago
    Does it matter though?
    - lmm 3y ago
      Unless you're able to maintain a fork of the whole system by yourself, yes it does.
    - pizza234 3y ago
      In the case of GNOME, absolutely. GNOME devs are infamous for actively fighting users' desire for customization. They have a long history; here's[¹] an example from a couple of years ago (not sure how the situation described evolved); this [²] is an article that describes the wider point of view. [¹] https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming-wider-community-not-happy https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming... [²] https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    I suppose Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI. Building @hellodanylo 's dream workflow isn't the mission and doesn't scale anyway. If you want a custom desktop workflow exactly to your specification build it yourself or pay someone to build it. Expecting people with different opinions to do it for you for free will certainly be a disappointment.
    - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
      >> Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI. This is largely the case: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop-project https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop... As stated in https://lwn.net/Articles/600506/ https://lwn.net/Articles/600506/: "When a project is controlled by a single company, that company's needs will almost certainly win out over anything that the wider community may want to do."
      - bzzzt 3y ago
        On the other hand, when a project tries to please everybody it will undoubtedly regress into a mess of options, toggles, extra buttons, have an atrocious UX and only be usable for the 'in crowd'. The few OSS tools I know to not have a terrible UX are tools built by a single author or a small team with a coherent vision. It's definitely a place where the bazaar model of software development doesn't seem to work as wonderful as with OS kernels or development tools.
        thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
        I agree that there is a balance between customization and "cleanness" in design and implementation. However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4-to-be-a-total-user-experience-design-failure/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4... https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-7d96c3287f7 https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design_is_antipattern/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design... https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Moves_against_Themes https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo... https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming-wider-community-not-happy/ https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming... When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/ https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/ https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision": https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910 https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworld.com/article/208708/canonical_ubuntu_splits_from_gnome_over_design_issues.html https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...
  - Vinnl 3y ago
    They do, as long as you do it without expecting them to bend over backwards to accommodate your specific snowflake setup.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      Ah yes... my snowflake setup where I expect to be able to paste file paths into Gtk file->open dialogs without it erroring out.
      - Vinnl 3y ago
        Bugs will always happen, of course, but let's not pretend that those are conscious decisions.
        superkuh 3y ago
        Generally true. But this one 100% is, and it's been a concious decision since it was introduced by the removal of the gsetting org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser location-mode. This was done intentionally by Gtk dev mclassen and he has been downright hostile about not fixing it since then. Gtk/GNOME devs do not think being able to type/paste file paths in File->Open dialogs (gtkfilechooserwidget.c) should be allowed. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938 They didn't even acknowledge or leave the bug reports it caused until this month: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5872 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5872 despite it being introduced in 2014 and me reporting it 2 times every year since then. And there's about 0% chance of this bug being fixed despite them finally leaving the bug report there instead of closing it.
        Vinnl 3y ago
        Hmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but AFAICS I am able to paste file paths into those dialogs? Steps to reproduce: copy a file path, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+V. So I guess I'm misunderstanding what behaviour you're referring to?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yeah, that attitude is one of the things that leads me to avoid Gnome.
its-summertime 3y ago
Additionally noting that some of the dconf keys in the article have already been depreciated in the meantime. e.g. `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme` is to be replaced with `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme` (though even worse, some apps specifically look for the former, so you need to set the latter through the settings app, then the former through dconf anyways, for full dark theme through all apps!)
- userbinator 3y ago
  e.g. `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme` is to be replaced with `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme` That's an ominous sign of things to come --- no more themes, all you get is (some) colours to choose from. It already happened to Windows.
  - realusername 3y ago
    Theming is not a thing anymore since Gnome 3 anyways. I really regret the amount of themes you had available for Gnome in the past...
    - FeepingCreature 3y ago
      So do the developers, it seems. (I think you mean "miss"?)
      - realusername 3y ago
        Yes indeed, I always had my favorite theme from gnome-look.org
    - vintagedave 3y ago
      For real - no more theming Gnome? I haven't used it for a few years, but custom themes and styles is one of the key features for a customisable desktop environment and was half the fun from using something like Gnome or KDE now that Windows makes it hard and macOS makes it impossible. Googling shows that as recently as 2022 there are articles on using themes. Is this a very recent change?

hellodanylo 3y ago

I would rephrase this concern as "dconf is not a stable API" rather than "you are not supposed to do this". It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want, but using unstable API comes with costs that should be understood.

lmm 3y ago
> It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want I don't think the Gnome devs share that view.
- endorphine 3y ago
  Does it matter though?
  - lmm 3y ago
    Unless you're able to maintain a fork of the whole system by yourself, yes it does.
  - pizza234 3y ago
    In the case of GNOME, absolutely. GNOME devs are infamous for actively fighting users' desire for customization. They have a long history; here's[¹] an example from a couple of years ago (not sure how the situation described evolved); this [²] is an article that describes the wider point of view. [¹] https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming-wider-community-not-happy https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming... [²] https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...
- bzzzt 3y ago
  I suppose Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI. Building @hellodanylo 's dream workflow isn't the mission and doesn't scale anyway. If you want a custom desktop workflow exactly to your specification build it yourself or pay someone to build it. Expecting people with different opinions to do it for you for free will certainly be a disappointment.
  - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
    >> Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI. This is largely the case: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop-project https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop... As stated in https://lwn.net/Articles/600506/ https://lwn.net/Articles/600506/: "When a project is controlled by a single company, that company's needs will almost certainly win out over anything that the wider community may want to do."
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      On the other hand, when a project tries to please everybody it will undoubtedly regress into a mess of options, toggles, extra buttons, have an atrocious UX and only be usable for the 'in crowd'. The few OSS tools I know to not have a terrible UX are tools built by a single author or a small team with a coherent vision. It's definitely a place where the bazaar model of software development doesn't seem to work as wonderful as with OS kernels or development tools.
      - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
        I agree that there is a balance between customization and "cleanness" in design and implementation. However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4-to-be-a-total-user-experience-design-failure/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4... https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-7d96c3287f7 https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design_is_antipattern/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design... https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Moves_against_Themes https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo... https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming-wider-community-not-happy/ https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming... When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/ https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/ https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision": https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910 https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworld.com/article/208708/canonical_ubuntu_splits_from_gnome_over_design_issues.html https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...
- Vinnl 3y ago
  They do, as long as you do it without expecting them to bend over backwards to accommodate your specific snowflake setup.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Ah yes... my snowflake setup where I expect to be able to paste file paths into Gtk file->open dialogs without it erroring out.
    - Vinnl 3y ago
      Bugs will always happen, of course, but let's not pretend that those are conscious decisions.
      - superkuh 3y ago
        Generally true. But this one 100% is, and it's been a concious decision since it was introduced by the removal of the gsetting org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser location-mode. This was done intentionally by Gtk dev mclassen and he has been downright hostile about not fixing it since then. Gtk/GNOME devs do not think being able to type/paste file paths in File->Open dialogs (gtkfilechooserwidget.c) should be allowed. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938 They didn't even acknowledge or leave the bug reports it caused until this month: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5872 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5872 despite it being introduced in 2014 and me reporting it 2 times every year since then. And there's about 0% chance of this bug being fixed despite them finally leaving the bug report there instead of closing it.
        Vinnl 3y ago
        Hmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but AFAICS I am able to paste file paths into those dialogs? Steps to reproduce: copy a file path, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+V. So I guess I'm misunderstanding what behaviour you're referring to?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Yeah, that attitude is one of the things that leads me to avoid Gnome.

its-summertime 3y ago

Additionally noting that some of the dconf keys in the article have already been depreciated in the meantime. e.g. `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme` is to be replaced with `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme` (though even worse, some apps specifically look for the former, so you need to set the latter through the settings app, then the former through dconf anyways, for full dark theme through all apps!)

userbinator 3y ago
e.g. `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme` is to be replaced with `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme` That's an ominous sign of things to come --- no more themes, all you get is (some) colours to choose from. It already happened to Windows.
- realusername 3y ago
  Theming is not a thing anymore since Gnome 3 anyways. I really regret the amount of themes you had available for Gnome in the past...
  - FeepingCreature 3y ago
    So do the developers, it seems. (I think you mean "miss"?)
    - realusername 3y ago
      Yes indeed, I always had my favorite theme from gnome-look.org
  - vintagedave 3y ago
    For real - no more theming Gnome? I haven't used it for a few years, but custom themes and styles is one of the key features for a customisable desktop environment and was half the fun from using something like Gnome or KDE now that Windows makes it hard and macOS makes it impossible. Googling shows that as recently as 2022 there are articles on using themes. Is this a very recent change?