6 ms·

My biggest gripe with gnome is how dependent each individual app is on installing the whole gnome-shell packages, want to use their email app without using gnom

by gryn 3y ago

My biggest gripe with gnome is how dependent each individual app is on installing the whole gnome-shell packages, want to use their email app without using gnome as a DE, well too bad Gmail/office and all other kind of providers won't work. Gnome feels very anti Unix philosophy.

tmccrary55 3y ago
Gnome has always been very wannabe Apple philosophy.
- bitwize 3y ago
  More like wannabe Windows philosophy, at least in the early days. Their founding document was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" and was all about how the Linux desktop should be architected like Windows, COM components and all.
ykonstant 3y ago
Isn't KDE similar in that regard? I don't really know, but when I installed a couple of KDE programs, pacman pulled a hundred KDE packages.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  I'd argue that is more a symptom of applying the UNIX philosophy, if anything. A lot of those "hundred KDE packages" are very tiny, highly modular libraries that do "one thing". And no, the apps don't depend on the shell. In fact it's often the distros asking us to go a bit more monolithic again to ease the packaging overhead.
- spookie 3y ago
  Those packages are separate because the system is modular. I assure you, it's more difficult for the team to do it like this, and in many ways it's a welcome feature. The package number might seem insane, but compare the aggregate size of them vs other DEs. It's still not a fair comparison, but it's arguably better than the number of packages. Either way, many package managers provide groups or patterns to make it easier for an end user to maintain their system. Pacman does have such a feature. Look, for example, do you prefer to be able to install SDDM just because you like the themeing capabilities, and be able to do so, with just the bare minimum packages; or, install GDM and having to pull the whole GNOME DE as a requirement?
vetinari 3y ago
Gnome has an component, Gnome Online Accounts. It's purpose is to provide and manage account information for applications that need it, so the user doesn't have to configure their email, calendar, whatever, in each application separately. With each application storing passwords in a who knows where, or each implementing their Gmail OAuth. So it is quite logical, that application that uses accounts will also need gnome-online-accounts. 'Do one thing and do it well` -- how is that anti Unix philosophy?
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > With each application storing passwords in a who knows where GNOME has a keyring system service for storing passwords, so it's not necessary to get the entire desktop shell to access the keyring.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    Keyring is another component, specifically for passwords. GOA is for storing account information: e.g. you configure your Gmail/nextcloud/whatever account once, and then all apps that need it can access it. So your Geary, Contacts and Calendar (separate applications) do not need each to implement account management and account specific auth flows -- not just passwords, OAuth is all the rage nowadays. And I, as the user, do not have to keep tokens in each app current. It is also not 'entire gnome shell`. Just the required components.
- gryn 3y ago
  sure but to setup gnome online accounts the official documented way you need gome-control-center, other ways to do seems to not have official documentation and have failed me. here the required dependency list for control center on arch: accountsservice bolt colord-gtk4 cups-pk-helper gcr gnome-bluetooth-3.0 gnome-color-manager gnome-desktop-4 gnome-online-accounts gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gsettings-desktop-schemas gsound gtk4 libadwaita libgnomekbd libgtop libgudev libibus libmalcontent libmm-glib libnma-gtk4 libpwquality smbclient sound-theme-freedesktop udisks2 upower while it may follow the letter of the philosophy is certainly doesn't feel like it's following the intent of it. the components form a sort of cyclic graph, where technically you can install any component but soon you'll find that you need all the others with no viable alternative component that will work reasonably well. using these component outside of the DE feel like being a second class citizen that will be kicked out at any update, and then you'll have to scavenge for information from unofficial sources and the source code for what has changed that broke your setup.
ho_schi 3y ago
Isn’t that a gripe about the individual applications? Applications which are part of GNOME itself probably try to remain small and integrate well into GNOME e.g. Nautilus and Evolution. Applications which aren’t part of GNOME like Gimp or Geeqie rely only Gtk. It just hurts if you want use a integrated GNOME-Application with a sole window-manager. That makes sense and we shouldn’t blame the developers for modularity and re-using.

by gryn 3y ago

tmccrary55 3y ago

Gnome has always been very wannabe Apple philosophy.

bitwize 3y ago
More like wannabe Windows philosophy, at least in the early days. Their founding document was called "Let's Make Unix Not Suck" and was all about how the Linux desktop should be architected like Windows, COM components and all.

ykonstant 3y ago

Isn't KDE similar in that regard? I don't really know, but when I installed a couple of KDE programs, pacman pulled a hundred KDE packages.

sho_hn 3y ago
I'd argue that is more a symptom of applying the UNIX philosophy, if anything. A lot of those "hundred KDE packages" are very tiny, highly modular libraries that do "one thing". And no, the apps don't depend on the shell. In fact it's often the distros asking us to go a bit more monolithic again to ease the packaging overhead.
spookie 3y ago
Those packages are separate because the system is modular. I assure you, it's more difficult for the team to do it like this, and in many ways it's a welcome feature. The package number might seem insane, but compare the aggregate size of them vs other DEs. It's still not a fair comparison, but it's arguably better than the number of packages. Either way, many package managers provide groups or patterns to make it easier for an end user to maintain their system. Pacman does have such a feature. Look, for example, do you prefer to be able to install SDDM just because you like the themeing capabilities, and be able to do so, with just the bare minimum packages; or, install GDM and having to pull the whole GNOME DE as a requirement?

vetinari 3y ago

Gnome has an component, Gnome Online Accounts. It's purpose is to provide and manage account information for applications that need it, so the user doesn't have to configure their email, calendar, whatever, in each application separately. With each application storing passwords in a who knows where, or each implementing their Gmail OAuth. So it is quite logical, that application that uses accounts will also need gnome-online-accounts. 'Do one thing and do it well` -- how is that anti Unix philosophy?

jcranmer 3y ago
> With each application storing passwords in a who knows where GNOME has a keyring system service for storing passwords, so it's not necessary to get the entire desktop shell to access the keyring.
- vetinari 3y ago
  Keyring is another component, specifically for passwords. GOA is for storing account information: e.g. you configure your Gmail/nextcloud/whatever account once, and then all apps that need it can access it. So your Geary, Contacts and Calendar (separate applications) do not need each to implement account management and account specific auth flows -- not just passwords, OAuth is all the rage nowadays. And I, as the user, do not have to keep tokens in each app current. It is also not 'entire gnome shell`. Just the required components.
gryn 3y ago
sure but to setup gnome online accounts the official documented way you need gome-control-center, other ways to do seems to not have official documentation and have failed me. here the required dependency list for control center on arch: accountsservice bolt colord-gtk4 cups-pk-helper gcr gnome-bluetooth-3.0 gnome-color-manager gnome-desktop-4 gnome-online-accounts gnome-settings-daemon gnome-shell gsettings-desktop-schemas gsound gtk4 libadwaita libgnomekbd libgtop libgudev libibus libmalcontent libmm-glib libnma-gtk4 libpwquality smbclient sound-theme-freedesktop udisks2 upower while it may follow the letter of the philosophy is certainly doesn't feel like it's following the intent of it. the components form a sort of cyclic graph, where technically you can install any component but soon you'll find that you need all the others with no viable alternative component that will work reasonably well. using these component outside of the DE feel like being a second class citizen that will be kicked out at any update, and then you'll have to scavenge for information from unofficial sources and the source code for what has changed that broke your setup.

ho_schi 3y ago

Isn’t that a gripe about the individual applications? Applications which are part of GNOME itself probably try to remain small and integrate well into GNOME e.g. Nautilus and Evolution. Applications which aren’t part of GNOME like Gimp or Geeqie rely only Gtk. It just hurts if you want use a integrated GNOME-Application with a sole window-manager. That makes sense and we shouldn’t blame the developers for modularity and re-using.