Why does GNOME have a bad reputation?

Jeremy Soller 🦀

Asked and answered in this thread.

Jordan Petridis (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] if you want your ssds so bad go invent a time machine and find a way to convince people to add them to the core wayland protocols. Otherwise quit harassing people about not implementing your optional pet peeve. Alternatively go and start a fork of wayland and leave us alone. Wayland is an opinionated protocol, and gnome is an opinionated desktop. If you don't like it tough luck.

Mastodon (mastodon.social)

Mike :nixos:

@soller that tracks... I'm still a gnome user for now, but have very interested eyes on cosmic as a replacement.

I still can't get into plasma for some reason

Tom

@soller I'm glad Brodie's there to fight the good fight. I can't deal with how awful gnome devs are.

rijnhard

@soller yuuup, the aggressiveness is real. Weather it is the cause of, or because of the greater communities attitude towards GNOME is up for debate. But speaking like that is the problem. And it's pervasive from GNOME members...

cameronbosch :endeavourOS:

@soller "...GNOME is an opinionated desktop."

And its foundation is running itself into the ground why? Oh right, because they can't seem to listen to other FOSS projects or even their users! Why has SSD been so damn difficult to just admit that this needs to be supported? Why can't we just have AppIndicators like every other DE plus Windows and macOS? Ehy does GNOME say "pLeAsE dOn'T tHeMe OuR aPpS" while breaking non GTK apps? This is so ridiculous and honestly... (1)

(hic/haec/hoc)

@soller I don't even use GNOME (I switched to MATE as soon as it became possible) and it feels like every time I upgrade to the newest LTS something else stops working and after spending an afternoon googling it I end up on a GTK, VTE or whatever bug report where a ton of users are reporting that a feature was (often on purpose) broken or removed and the GNOME developers are like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Brodie Robertson

@tripplehelix @soller It's a mistake I'm not planning to make again, I've realized that no progress is ever going to be made

Jeremy Soller 🦀

@BrodieOnLinux @tripplehelix Why'd they end up arguing over what the word standard means rather than take even a second to consider application developers who have been asking for server side decorations and aren't able to make changes to wayland protocol requirements?

Wayland has been forced on applications and needs to support their use cases! This is why COSMIC, like many other compositors, supports server side decorations.

Akseli :quake_verified: :kde:

@soller @BrodieOnLinux @tripplehelix with the barely 2% market share we do not have the option of saying "my way or highway" to app devs. Sometimes workarounds and fixes for super esoteric bugs is needed.

Even windows has fixed bugs that happen with specific games for example (in leaked old source codes etc).

I recently fixed a bug that happened because application used kde-open wrong, which ended up in a forever loop. So instead of going "buggy app" i made sure the kde-open cant get stuck in a loop like that, and instead we show the user "select an app to open this file with" dialog.

Technically the app was wrong. But this allowed us for better UX in the long run and avoid this situation in the first place.

edit: IMO in the end the only thing that matters is the user and their experience. Not even standards can win over user experience. (Okay there are nuances of course but I still stand by this in general)

Brodie Robertson

@aks @soller @tripplehelix With decades of Windows developers sort of doing whatever they want, exploiting holes in standards that were never fully defined, and then the even longer history of X11 allowing for some of the dumbest application designs known to man there's a lot of legacy baggage that you sort of just have to accept is how real world software works.

Akseli :quake_verified: :kde:

@BrodieOnLinux @soller @tripplehelix definitely, if one can avoid hacks its the best thing to do but in some rare cases theres nothing else you can do..

Jeremy Soller 🦀

@BrodieOnLinux @aks @tripplehelix We can get rid of the security holes but things like:

- icon themes
- desktop icons
- app indicators
- server side decorations

Are generally not security issues. Loading third party javascript straight into the compositor however...

Brodie Robertson

@aks @soller @tripplehelix A simple one that lead to a lot of discussion is "should applications be able to choose there own location or should that be the responsibility of the compositor". Sensibly it was thought that it should be the compositors job but there are a few CAD applications that require placing there own windows or at least something that can accommodate something similar.

I know for sure don't have all the answers and anyone claiming to probably isn't considering every case.

Sebastian :fox:

@soller @BrodieOnLinux @aks @tripplehelix I don't think removing desktop icons is a bad thing, window managers like Sway and i3 don't even use them.

There are alternative methods to support them

Sebastian :fox:

@soller Jordan's response was too impulsive, and I feel like saying that, but at the moment I see that there is a huge rift, even some comments are not exactly optimal here and elsewhere (Using nicknames and insults doesn't help at all, just saying)

There is a lack of maturity and professionalism in both parties.

Jeremy Soller 🦀

@NostalgicKitsune Please understand that the people in my thread are reacting to Jordan's response, which may have affected the tone they use.

Sebastian :fox:

@soller Understandable, but it doesn't help, at least I'm the one who doesn't appreciate this behavior, this in both parts

Jeremy Soller 🦀

@NostalgicKitsune Would anything ever help?

Jeremy Soller 🦀

@NostalgicKitsune @BrodieOnLinux @aks @tripplehelix I can get desktop icons by using cosmic-files, because sway has layer-shell support

Sebastian :fox:

@soller @BrodieOnLinux @aks @tripplehelix I understood it ha ha, having tried COSMIC (which imho seems very interesting)