8 ms·

The author seems to think that someone should tell all these volunteers to focus their efforts somewhere, and that the volunteers should listen. Fortunately th

The author seems to think that someone should tell all these volunteers to focus their efforts somewhere, and that the volunteers should listen. Fortunately there are proprietary desktops that receive substantial income from hardware sales and licensing fees. Unlike volunteer-led efforts, they have leaders paid to set direction and workers paid to implement that direction. One can use such a desktop and OS, or perhaps one can be grateful that these unpaid volunteers provide an alternative at no charge, no matter how uncoordinated the end product is.

Barrin92 2y ago
>The author seems to think that someone should tell all these volunteers to focus their efforts somewhere Gnome and KDE are in a pretty workable state because a lion's share of the support comes from Red Hat, Suse and Canonical (and to a lesser extent from Valve or QA people from other distributions like Arch), who are probably not going to fund another distro. In particular a lot of the core dev salaries come from those companies. It'd be on a shoestring budget and team which in the Linux world usually ends in disaster, in particular if you're talking about building an entire distro.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  > Gnome and KDE are in a pretty workable state because a lion's share of the support comes from Red Hat, Suse and Canonical I think's now Red Hat and Endless. Other than the odd patch, I don't think there's much from either Canonical or SUSE.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  It was my impression that code and money for Gnome primarily came from Red Hat, but also Canonical and Suse. I didn't think it was the case for KDE, and at least in their latest report they seem to be more Bernie Sanders in their income breakdown[0]. As for code contributions I don't know but I'd be pleased if a more knowledgeable reader could give us a clearer picture. [0] https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2023/#welcome-to-kdes-annual-report-2023 https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2023/#welcome-to-kdes-annual-r...
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    For a long time SuSE and Mandrake were the KDE distributions, and some of the money came from there. This was 20 years ago, dunno about nowadays.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      That's a fond memory. I still see (with my rose-tinted glasses) KDE 3.4 on SuSE 10 and as the best desktop environment I ever used. That was in 2006 which I can't imagine is anything close to twenty years ago. Example: https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/10e1447e-d287-49ca-9786-91b04403eab4/djwmfa-ec6452c3-1c66-4aeb-a4ae-a8181a67f405.jpg/v1/fill/w_1000,h_800,q_70,strp/screenie_by_cheftw_djwmfa-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzEwZTE0NDdlLWQyODctNDljYS05Nzg2LTkxYjA0NDAzZWFiNFwvZGp3bWZhLWVjNjQ1MmMzLTFjNjYtNGFlYi1hNGFlLWE4MTgxYTY3ZjQwNS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.G2WW3hEhQQ5uQCHF5EpdKAxvd_1f2wXsNF5zI503j0g https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/10...
pjmlp 2y ago
Which is what I have been doing since 2010 thereabouts. Got fed up with The Year of Desktop Linux, even though I am probably in the minority of HN readership that actually subscribed to Linux Journal during its whole lifetime, did a couple of Gtkmm articles for publications like The C/C++ Users Journal tool create awareness and such, still subscribe to LWN. Apple, Google and Microsoft take better care of what I consider a desktop experience without ideologies in the middle.

Barrin92 2y ago

>The author seems to think that someone should tell all these volunteers to focus their efforts somewhere Gnome and KDE are in a pretty workable state because a lion's share of the support comes from Red Hat, Suse and Canonical (and to a lesser extent from Valve or QA people from other distributions like Arch), who are probably not going to fund another distro. In particular a lot of the core dev salaries come from those companies. It'd be on a shoestring budget and team which in the Linux world usually ends in disaster, in particular if you're talking about building an entire distro.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
> Gnome and KDE are in a pretty workable state because a lion's share of the support comes from Red Hat, Suse and Canonical I think's now Red Hat and Endless. Other than the odd patch, I don't think there's much from either Canonical or SUSE.
Y_Y 2y ago
It was my impression that code and money for Gnome primarily came from Red Hat, but also Canonical and Suse. I didn't think it was the case for KDE, and at least in their latest report they seem to be more Bernie Sanders in their income breakdown[0]. As for code contributions I don't know but I'd be pleased if a more knowledgeable reader could give us a clearer picture. [0] https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2023/#welcome-to-kdes-annual-report-2023 https://ev.kde.org/reports/ev-2023/#welcome-to-kdes-annual-r...
- pjmlp 2y ago
  For a long time SuSE and Mandrake were the KDE distributions, and some of the money came from there. This was 20 years ago, dunno about nowadays.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    That's a fond memory. I still see (with my rose-tinted glasses) KDE 3.4 on SuSE 10 and as the best desktop environment I ever used. That was in 2006 which I can't imagine is anything close to twenty years ago. Example: https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/10e1447e-d287-49ca-9786-91b04403eab4/djwmfa-ec6452c3-1c66-4aeb-a4ae-a8181a67f405.jpg/v1/fill/w_1000,h_800,q_70,strp/screenie_by_cheftw_djwmfa-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzEwZTE0NDdlLWQyODctNDljYS05Nzg2LTkxYjA0NDAzZWFiNFwvZGp3bWZhLWVjNjQ1MmMzLTFjNjYtNGFlYi1hNGFlLWE4MTgxYTY3ZjQwNS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.G2WW3hEhQQ5uQCHF5EpdKAxvd_1f2wXsNF5zI503j0g https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/10...

pjmlp 2y ago

Which is what I have been doing since 2010 thereabouts. Got fed up with The Year of Desktop Linux, even though I am probably in the minority of HN readership that actually subscribed to Linux Journal during its whole lifetime, did a couple of Gtkmm articles for publications like The C/C++ Users Journal tool create awareness and such, still subscribe to LWN. Apple, Google and Microsoft take better care of what I consider a desktop experience without ideologies in the middle.