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Gnome Receives €1M from German Government
- Blackstrat 3y agoGovernment money? What strings are attached? I'm not familiar with the Sovereign Fund.
- vasdae 3y agoI understand that KDE is a clusterfuck, but giving the money to the American desktop environment instead of the European one is not really a good look.
- xcv123 3y ago> I understand that KDE is a clusterfuck Nah it's the most capable desktop on Linux these days.
- konart 3y agoOne statement does not necessarily contradicts another.
- xcv123 3y agoKDE is not even remotely a clusterfuck. It is stable and has been a reliable desktop for my job for years. KDE and Gnome are the two most popular desktop environments on Linux and both are stable and usable.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 3y agoHow do you define "clusterfuck"?
- xcv123 3y agoLook it up in the dictionary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clusterfuck https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clusterfuck
- moffkalast 3y agoGnome is surely more stable and reliable than KDE, but it's also as configurable as Planck's constant which makes it useless for power users imo.
- akho 3y agoWho are these “power users” of a DE?
- nottheengineer 3y agoThe ones that want a DE that works exactly how they like it. I quickly lose my focus from having to deal with even the most minor annoyances and KDE lets me change the little things very easily.
- grey_earthling 3y agoKDE letting me change little things is exactly what causes me to quickly lose my focus :) It's good that there are 2 distinct, competitive desktop environments, that each suit different people well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- HankB99 3y agoI guess I'm one. For some uses I want to be able to capture literally thousands of lines in a terminal session. I used to be able to do that with gnome-term. The "edit > select all" used to select the entire scrollback buffer. Now it just selects the visible portion. There is no option to change to the previous behavior. The value for providing that option is deemed not sufficient for the additional code complexity. Yes, I know there are other ways to do this (e.g. screen), but they require planning in advance and I don't always know when I want to do that. There have been other things that I used that have also been removed over the time that I used Gnome. I appreciate Gnome for the smooth experience they provide but have switched to KDE which better meets my needs and wants.
- serf 3y ago>Nah it's the most capable desktop on Linux these days. I still haven't used anything more 'just works' and 'capable' than xfce, what has KDE added in the past decade or so since I used it that made it 'most capable'?
- stock_toaster 3y agoDon’t you mean Klusterfuck? (though I quite enjoy kde myself)
- yk 3y agoThat's just clusterfuck but qt.
- moffkalast 3y agoNaming terminal "Konsole" will never stop being funny.
- sirtaj 3y agoIt's literally the translation of "console" to German.
- lupusreal 3y agoGNU and Gnome name things with G and nobody cares. KDE names things with K and people can't stop tittering about it. I really don't get it.
- doubled112 3y ago> GNU and Gnome name things with G Unless it is The GIMP. That seems to get people going every once in a while.
- Etheryte 3y agoOr, y'know, pick projects to sponsor on other traits, not country of origin? Why would they sponsor the European one if it doesn't fulfill their needs?
- fermigier 3y agoThat's only one part of the equation.
- w4rh4wk5 3y agoYou think KDE is a clusterfuck?! When was the last time you used GNOME? File Roller still doesn't support drag'n'drop in Wayland; issue now open for over 5 years. It pains me to see them throwing money at the wall instead of creating dedicated jobs, paying (German) engineers to fix bugs and develop long needed features. Given how low German wages are, they could pay around 10 engineers for a full year with that money.
- Hamuko 3y agoReading these Linux DE threads always makes me glad that the only desktop Linux I use is SteamOS.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoWhich SteamOS? The old Debian one fort he cancelled SteamBox, or the new Arch one for the Steam Deck?
- Hamuko 3y agoThe Arch one for the Steam Deck, which makes it really easy to forget that it's even Linux.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoOk, but that's just KDE, no? Do you use it in desktop mode?
- qwytw 3y agoI doubt that many people use the desktop mode on it to be fair.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xcv123 3y ago
- never_inline 3y agoOut of the loop. Why is KDE clusterfuck?
- tentacleuno 3y agoDidn't get this either. I love using KDE.
- qwertox 3y agoMaybe because it allows you to configure it so much, that you might actually break it. Gnome on the other hand is the Duplo among desktop environments, it drives me mad.
- ekianjo 3y agoEvery GNOME user calls KDE this
- konart 3y ago1. You can configure about anything (which may be a good thing) but all of this "configuration" looks and feels like Apollo 11 Command Module. 2. UI\UX is lacking. Too many controls all over the place or at least too sticking out. PS: "all over the place" is just the best phrase I can thing of in english to describe KDE. But most of all this is just about two different views on how a DE should look and feel like. KDE fans prefer this "I have all the inputs in one place even if I use 80% of them once a year" and "I can configure every pixel even though I won't do it ever". Gnome fans prefer "clean and simple (and opinionated)" and "this DE gives me 80% of what I can possibly want for 20% of effort".
- hiepph 3y ago> You can configure about anything (which may be a good thing) but all of this "configuration" looks and feels like Apollo 11 Command Module. I wish I could configure KDE "declaratively" with a configuration file, like what I do with i3.
- mseepgood 3y agoFor those who don't know the interior of the Apollo 11 command module: https://www.si.edu/sites/default/files/newsdesk/fact_sheets/commandmodule_interior.jpg https://www.si.edu/sites/default/files/newsdesk/fact_sheets/...
- Erratic6576 3y agoOn the meantime, school agencies in my country have given an undisclosed amount of money to Microsoft and Google. Each school uses at least one of them
- mseepgood 3y ago"American", "European"? Free / Open Source software like that does not have nationality, it's a collaborative effort of thousands of developers around the globe. It's irrelevant what nationality the initial founders once had.
- account42 3y agoGNOME Foundation is based in Orinda, California, United States KDE e.V. is based in Berlin, Germany Both have corporate and individiaul contributors from around the wold but these are not indentically distributed with Gnome being more popular in the US compared to the EU. Calling these two desktop environments "American" and "European" is of course not painting the full picture but it isn't entirely wrong either.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 0xDEF 3y ago>It's irrelevant what nationality the initial founders once had. That is not the point. Most big open source projects end up with an entire commercial ecosystem backing them. KDE has probably directly created many more jobs in Europe/Germany than GNOME. Such things should be taken into consideration when determining who deserves grants paid by EU/German tax payers.
- noAnswer 3y agoDid KDE even apply?!
- kaba0 3y agoThese are not football teams/US politics, it’s not us vs them. This idiotic attitude only harms the state of open-source.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 3y agoI personally care much less about open source than where my tax money goes.
- mardifoufs 3y agoPretty ironic that you resort to calling it "US politics" while calling out weird nationalism. You realize that recent European economic/tech policy has had a very nationalist direction. And that xenophobia and protectionism is much more common in Europe than the US?
- SomeoneFromCA 3y agoKDE has perfect fine grained fractional scaling. Gnome does not; it uses frame buffer scaling, which is terrible.
- akdor1154 3y agoSeriously, this is out? I thought it was still years away.. Brb jumping back on the distro hop express!
- SomeoneFromCA 3y agoWell with a caveat - perfect fractional scaling _only_ in Qt apps, not in GTK.
- factorialboy 3y agoKDE is amazing and your point is even more valid.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- darthrupert 3y agoMoney spent on any other DE besides Sway is frankly a complete waste.
- redder23 3y agoHow is KDE a clusterfuck? Last time I used it was with Open Suse Tumbleweed and there it was pretty buggy but that was expected from cutting edge versions. I played around with themes and there were bugs. I actually always went back and forth between KDE and Gnome/Unity. I like KDE better actually. But I use Material Shell (Gnome 3 extension) now that beats everything. KDE always offered more options and configuration and was never as dumbed down as Gnome. But obviously most users do not need that that is why they like Gnome better. KDE has cool things like KDE Connect that was ported to Gnome later. When I used stable versions it was always perfectly fine to use. Not at all a Clusterfuck. 2nd most popular DE for a reason.
- fermigier 3y agoWhy not KDE ?
- Pawka 3y agoMy guess - probably they have more work places in government which runs Gnome what makes sense to them invest into it.
- qwertox 3y agoMy same thought. KDE could only cause issues if deployed on government machines, due to its configurability. Gnome gives you the minimum you need to get work done, less areas to troubleshoot.
- linmob 3y agoDoubt it. As a German, I am pretty sure most government PCs run Windows, a few cities and certain state ministries have dabbled with Linux, but that's just a small fraction. As far as I understand, GNOME being funded is all about doing a good job at applying for a grant with the Sovereign Tech Fund.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoGood question, I guess it's because Gnome is the default on most of the major Linux distros making it the one most people in control of money have actually heard about, so yeah...
- lars_francke 3y agoMaybe they did not apply.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoDoes the file picker support thumbnails yet?
- saturn_vk 3y agoDidn't they actually implement it recently, to everyone's surprise?
- JonAtkinson 3y agoYes. Since Gnome 44.
- everybodyknows 3y agoDoes it allow pasting in a path? The version current on Ubuntu 20.04 does not.
- Cloudef 3y agoOnly for few filetypes
- LeoPanthera 3y agoOne of the features they say they'll develop with the money is: "Encrypt user home directories individually" What does this have to do with Gnome, a desktop environment?
- NekkoDroid 3y agoI assume it has partially to do with integration with systemd-homed (which has support for it). Last time I tried it, it was kinda not working and when I recently checked online about it I found a few issues/MRs about it. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/accountsservice/accountsservice/-/issues/89 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/accountsservice/accountsservi... https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/4644 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/4644
- bongobingo1 3y agoWill it have to use government supplied keys?
- jdub 3y agoGNOME has driven plenty of important system level integration initiatives. Because that's what you have to do when building a user experience.
- redox99 3y agoI don't get the point of directory encryption. So much metadata (and entire data) leaks to other places. Just use full disk encryption?
- 3y ago
- poxwole 3y agoLove it. Gnome is my favourite DE and it sure helps that now they have funds to make it even better
- starlevel003 3y agoHopefully all that money goes into making the GTK file picker better
- NekkoDroid 3y agoI think I remember at some point reading that the end goal is to have file picker just be "a mode" in Nautilus instead of a separate thing Edit: found the discussion I think I saw https://discourse.gnome.org/t/nautilus-as-file-picker/11605 https://discourse.gnome.org/t/nautilus-as-file-picker/11605
- tentacleuno 3y agoI find it quite surprising that the top comment on "Gnome Receives €1M from German Government" is criticising the effort, saying they spent the money on the wrong thing. Ok, I'll say it. Thank you, German Government -- open-source needs funding, and organisations like yours helps to keep things going, making sure we get cool new features :)
- asddubs 3y agoFully agreed. The gnome paradigm is not for me, but it's good to see open source desktops receiving funding. a rising tide lifts all boats
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoGiving tax payer money to a non-profit that pays its executive 100k a year is questionable (you never see that kind of salary in germany), specially when the foundation's expenses keep growing while their revenue decreases, it is poorly managed
- myaccountonhn 3y agoIn Sweden a tech executive can def. earn 100K a year. I find it hard to imagine Germany being that different (salaries are generally higher there).
- asddubs 3y ago100k a year isn't that much for an executive
- lars_francke 3y agoThe Sovereign Tech Fund is awesome! We recently won funding as well (much smaller scale) https://stackable.tech/en/empowering-rust-projects/ https://stackable.tech/en/empowering-rust-projects/ This is definitely government spending I can get behind.
- jchw 3y agoI'm overall happy about this. (I went to post the GNOME foundation post about it, but it was already dead in new when I looked.) It's good to see support for open source projects and developers. That said, unfortunately, I echo the statements from others: I think they really ought to have picked KDE. I think KDE better embodies the spirit of the Linux desktop and open source, even for all of its flaws, of which there are many. I'm sure GNOME has a lot of avid fans and users, and having used Phosh I'm legitimately impressed at how good GTK4 and libadw have gotten for mobile. That said, I still feel like it makes a pretty bad productivity desktop, and there's a reason why every alternative GNOME or GTK-based desktop from System76 Cosmic to Budgie to XFCE is either ditching or ignoring Mutter: GNOME's fumbling of the Wayland bag has been painful for the whole ecosystem. I hate to complain about anything that is literally free, but it has become a genuine depressing drain. We could've just had pragmatic SSD support in Mutter, but instead all we have is libdecor, an option that is not ideal (especially for apps not written in C) and seems like it's perpetually not ready. Sometimes it feels like your actual best option for getting window borders in GNOME might be sub-surfacing yourself into a GTK4 window. And it's even more frustrating, because some of the developers are great. I am a huge fan of libinput in general. I was looking forward, then, to checking out libei, a library (in theory) that lets you emulate input, e.g. to inject events. A library like libei could be great, because there's already a lot of Wayland compositors (most Wayland compositors) that support input injection today, so making it into a C library seems smart. Unfortunately, libei doesn't support them. Apparently, it is not "waylandy" (??????) to put input injection protocols in Wayland, and libei is only designed to support its own homegrown RPC solution which is a slightly modified version of the Wayland protocol instead. The way libei is supposed to work is that you use it, and it connects over a socket to the eis server, which speaks the ei protocol. How do you know which eis server to connect to? From the libei side, there's no prescription here. But it's OK. Mutter doesn't expose an eis server directly. Apparently, you need to go through XDG Desktop Portals to use libei on Mutter. Because this is insanely convoluted, the foresight was had to develop liboeffis, a library that does XDG Desktop Portal interactions for you so you can get a socket to the eis server without having to care about all of that dbus crap. I tried compiling a version of GNOME that had eis support (at the time NixOS didn't have GNOME 45+, I don't know if it currently does) and I was either unsuccessful at that, or unsuccessful at getting libei to work. No matter how hard I tried, nothing really seemed to work right. Meanwhile, on wlroots compositors, you can just use the Wayland socket itself: https://wayland.app/protocols/virtual-keyboard-unstable-v1 https://wayland.app/protocols/virtual-keyboard-unstable-v1 https://wayland.app/protocols/wlr-virtual-pointer-unstable-v1 https://wayland.app/protocols/wlr-virtual-pointer-unstable-v... This, of course, makes a lot of sense when you consider that the input events you're injecting will... you know... go over the Wayland socket. It's a perfect way to speak to the correct compositor, since I already am speaking to the correct compositor. Why introduce another socket? Meanwhile, while lacking this rather basic feature, libei allows for backends that do things like use uinput, which to me makes no sense. The big difference between libei and something like uinput is that I'm injecting events on the compositor side. It's like the difference between telling the compositor to move the mouse to 4, 4 and generating USB HID motion events to do the same. Almost every other platform has a serviceable API here, and it's useful for accessibility, automation and testing, and probably more. Unfortunately the story today with Wayland is pretty mediocre and even more unfortunately the direction it seems to be going doesn't look like it will improve unless you're willing to only support wlroots. This sucks because I want to work on cool Linux desktop software, but in practice I'm so bummed out by the time I scale through the mess of a stack that has developed in the desktop side that I basically lose interest. And to be clear, I'm not saying the wlroots ecosystem is perfect. Like I don't think there's a good way to make a virtual graphics tablet device yet in wlroots, which would be quite useful for a project that I wanted to work on (trying to get support for Windows WMPOINTER_* events in Wine; making Winetests for this would probably ideally involve virtual input, but lacking even basic support for what XTEST does, it's hard to imagine making these tests work in Wine any time soon, and compositor-specific protocols are a no-go afaik.) It'd be nice to have something like autohotkey for Linux, too. But I think by the time a developer has gone through the realizations that I have, they are probably too drained to even think about working on it. (Despite all of this, I really am still glad for it, and I believe some day all of this crap will get sorted out. I guess a part of me types out these huge rants just to vent, but another part of me hopes someone who has influence to fix things will read them and realize the situation sucks. Wishful thinking.)
- h4x0rr 3y agoCouldn't they have sponsored KDE at least
- ratsmack 3y agoKDE receives a lot of money from commercial interests, Gnome not so much.
- account42 3y agoWhat. > The GNOME Foundation works to further the goal of the GNOME project: to create a computing platform for use by the general public that is composed entirely of free software. It was founded on 5 March 2001 by Compaq, Eazel, Helix Code, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and VA Linux Systems. Also here is Red Had boasting about how much they pay for Gnome https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop-project https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop...
- xvilka 3y agoI wish there was more funding also to healthcare FOSS applications - both provider and user level ones. Even most DICOM viewer programs struggle to support all format quirks and many are outdated or abandoned.
- hashtag-til 3y agoTo all crying wolf, saying this should have been donated to KDE or somewhere else, I suggest you go and set the example: Go and donate to some projects you use; Contribute patches; Incentive your employer to donate. I'm not a Gnome user these days, but where I can, I donate to the projects I use. This attitude from German government is great and sets a great example for us all.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aorth 3y agoFantastic! Public money, public code. Even if you don't like or use GNOME desktop, there is also the entire GNOME application and GTK ecosystem and that is used very widely.
- langsoul-com 3y agoWonder if they'd also invest in Linux.
- solarkraft 3y agoI make fun of Gnome for stubborn decisions as much as the next person, but one thing they are really, really good at is organization. People like to question the usefulness of some positions at the Gnome Foundation - well, here's an example of what they do! The money probably didn't come from nowhere. I'm also proud of my government for doing this - It's probably one of the coolest projects they do and some of the best allocated spending. Just think what all this high-quality software would cost us as a society if it was sold or rented to us.
- ponorin 3y agoLet's all recall that the gnome project started out as an alternative to KDE using then-proprietary Qt library. Whether you like GNOME or not is not important. In fact, you should be MORE HAPPY that gnome gets money if you think it sucks. Open source needs competition too. Monopoly hurts everyone.
- sunshine-o 3y agoI was surprised to discover recently that most of the big open source projects are now linked to those non profits poping up in the space in recent years. Organisations like Digital Public Goods Alliance [1] or Conservancy [2] (The Sovereign Tech Fund is different beast it seems because it is actually the German state behind) So most of those non profits look the same, are all lead by some professional–managerial class newcomer who have no real link to computer science. They are not really here to inspire people or recruit contributors, they are people in charge of keeping the money flowing, governance, compliance, etc. My guess is this new architecture of the open source software ecosystem is an elegant way for tech (IBM, Google, etc.) to keep funding & control over key projects they rely on. While fiscally optimizing the whole thing & getting public money from the EU and others. This is just my intuition, if someone could confirm... What am I complaining about? Those are not free, grassroot projects & organisations anymore. The day you will desperately need free software because the Orwellian architecture of the EU chatcontrol and cyber resilience act will be operational those non profits will most probably take the knee and comply. - [1] https://digitalpublicgoods.net/ https://digitalpublicgoods.net/ - [2] https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/
- ForHackernews 3y agoThis comment seems like it's written from an angle of libertarian distrust of government. Honestly, I think I trust the EU bureaucrats to have the interests of their citizens at heart much more than I trust Google or Amazon to serve the interests of their users. Maybe the EU will eventually sell us out in the name of saving-the-children, but at least they don't have selling us out as their raison d'être. It's true this is no longer the small hobbyist/tinker dream of the free software activists, but is that vision even possible in today's world? If you want to offer regular users the choice of libre software in near-parity with commercial offerings, you need a lot of money, a lot of developers, and big organizations. As far as I can see, that's just an objective truth.
- sunshine-o 3y ago> If you want to offer regular users the choice of libre software in near-parity with commercial offerings, you need a lot of money, a lot of developers, and big organizations. As far as I can see, that's just an objective truth. How is this an objective truth? Also why is it that what was possible yesterday is not possible today? The GNU project was started in the early 80s when even in the western world only a very small minority had access to a computer. Since then we put computers in the hand of almost everyone but now we can't write serious free software without a big corporation/government & money? This is what happened in the early 00s, corporations like IBM understood they wouldn't be able to compete with free software now that we have the internet & everyone will have access to computers. So they captured the open source projects & even Microsoft understood 15 years later that they had to do it too. And now they have been successful in convincing you that no serious software can written without them and you consider that an "objective truth". And on top of that the EU & others are telling you can't have serious & safe software without complying to their regulations... Just look at the BSDs, they have been able to keep up with Linux (I mean they are in the same ballpark in term of security, features & performance) with a fraction of the money.
- butz 3y agoHoping that with all this money and accessibility initiative buttons in Adwaita will start looking like buttons again.
- npn 3y agoGood for them, hope this will help them hire some one with more motivation
- spandextwins 3y agoI just read kde is getting hdr support. What about gnome?
- flexagoon 3y agoGnome is currently helping to design a standard HDR protocol for Wayland, they definitely won't add HDR support into the DE unless there is a standardized protocol for it (which is a good thing IMO)
- 29athrowaway 3y agoThey should have given it to the XFCE folks.
- MaximilianEmel 3y agoAgreed :( It's a much better choice if they want to fund a "standard" desktop environment.
- devinprater 3y agoAwesome! If they spend some of it on accessibility, the year of the Linux desktop may be near for blind people like me. Windows has gotten so bad that if you have File Explorer open to the Home section, NVDA just says "pane" instead of reading out the home section. That's along with other papercuts and rough edges on the OS. But oh no, Windows 11 was made <s>from the ground up to be accessible!</s>. And I think we've already seen the Safari not responding thing for Macs. Linux already has a good foundation. BRLTTY works with just about any Braille display, cups can print both text, and even images, to Braille printers, and Emacspeak has existed since the late 90's. Even on Windows, the best and most useful addons for a screen reader are on NVDA, the open source one. Imagine what we can do when we control the whole stack? A true audio desktop, with audible animations. No need to spend $1099 for the most high quality screen reader and OS. being able to put Linux on the [Optima laptop](https://www.orbitresearch.com/product/optima/ https://www.orbitresearch.com/product/optima/) upcoming laptop, and have everything open, from the metal to the GUI. Just a dream of mine, and I'm not a developer so can't do much to bring it to life, but it definitely would be nice, and the desktop environment is about the biggest thing that can be made better in order to fulfil this. I'm telling y'all, we're ready for something better than Windows and Mac. Note that I'm just one person, and don't speak for every blind person and definitely don't speak for every disabled person. There are blind people and especially partially sighted people that love Windows and Apple and Android.
- Le_Dook 3y agoThere was post made in recent weeks on the Gnome Accessibility blog about the work they'll doing over the next year. Sounds like it's being spearheaded by someone quite capable, with a strong vision: https://blogs.gnome.org/a11y/2023/10/27/a-new-accessibility-architecture-for-modern-free-desktops/ https://blogs.gnome.org/a11y/2023/10/27/a-new-accessibility-...
- devinprater 3y agoOh yes, I can't wait to see what comes of that.
- squigz 3y ago
- avidphantasm 3y agoLove to see it. I know a part of the US government has been funding improvements to GDAL and QGIS. I feel like the bang for the buck in the long term could be far better than paying rent to the likes of Esri and MS.
- asylteltine 3y agoI grew up on Gnome 2 and I actually like gnome 3 a lot. Good choice. Kde is slower and buggier.
- baz00 3y agoSo do we get fractional scaling that works and Gnome 2 back for that money?
- karmakaze 3y agoI'm surprised that Germany wouldn't prefer KDE.
- PokemonNoGo 3y agoI'm not sure preference is behind a grant like this I think many other factors come into the decision. But why would they prefer one over the other? Sorry didn't get your comment at all.
- karmakaze 3y agoKDE was started by someone at a german university and would presumably have sensibilities suiting a german take on UX, whereas Gnome is a very simple mainstream one.
- okasaki 3y agoPerhaps they can finally add a window list to the top panel?
- dingi 3y agoWhat an awesome contribution from German government. Thank you! Unsurprisingly, there is a lot whiners here. Linux desktop scene is full of those circle jerks. Can't we just relax for a bit and be thankful for the fact that one of prominent Linux desktops got a nice little funding. No sir, complaining, and whining are the way of life around here.
- Cloudef 3y agoMaybe we finally get working thumbnails