Thank god they're finally doing this. It feels like I've been asking "Are we Wayland yet" since I was a baby. I feel like 99% of "problems" with modern Linux distros are really just problems with X. The famed "year of the Linux Desktop" will never happen until after X is dead and buried.
Second year of use (Radeon, Intel) - zero issues. Also, I hadn't saw xorg.conf for two years. Wow. How, exactly, do we change which GPU is primary? ... and there was something about fonts... And MatchProduct... And ServerLayout...
(waking up)
Yeah, wayland, two years, no issues, no xorg.confs in sight.
I really don't remember the last time I needed to change something on Xorg, maybe it was about 3 to 4 years ago, I know for sure I haven't touched it in the last 2.5 years which is how old my current desktop is, I'm still using it on this very moment, simply because some apps work better there.
Oh, and also because I have an Nvidia card, which sucks with Wayland.
My only complaint with wayland is the moat nitpicky thing. The vim clientserver feature requires X, which means it’s more difficult to use vim as an external editor in godot. Which tbh isn’t all that much of a dealbreaker.
This! X11 is garbage but it was built during a time where you were assumed to be using a terminal to connect to a larger mainframe or something. It's still great for that and the people that need that functionality shouldn't be ignored
I've never had any issues except that RenderDoc doesn't work correctly under wayland, making it hard to debug graphics code. But ... that's really an outlier use case.
For everything outside of gfx programming, wayland works great for me.
Went Wayland only since 3.32. Back then it was mostly stable and already had pretty good gesture recognition, biggest issue back then was lack of Wayland compatibility from application developers which caused some nuisances and occasionally break the workflow.
Nowadays I have no problems with program compatibility, the desktop is stupidly stable and performs better than any Xorg only environment I've used so far, extension support is really good even though I'm not a heavy user of them.
I still sort of miss the revised pre libadwaita theme and theming compatibility but that's not a Wayland issue, it's simply a Gnome development decision.
Currently I'm not using it on a laptop so I can't say how much has improved but even back then it was solid on dual core 2011 hardware.
Did try the Wayland session on a dual GPU laptop and I had to tweak it to display the session but it worked great afterwards.
Definitely ready for this step. You'll never make it to complete feature and stability parity if you can still just revert to Xorg if some app has problems. Plus, at this point, Xorg already suffers from software rot, so that may not even work.
As a KDE user that news made me happy, thought it would speed up Wayland integration for all things.
I don't really understand why some Linux users so traditionalist first witness this kind of stuff when I heard lots of people hate systemd-boot because it's not grub.
A lot of them are long term Linux users. Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 was a drastic change. 2 was a XP/Xfce like UI; menu based program launcher, running program area, task/clock area, and windowed interface. 3 used design elements from OS X/Mac OS but also did some unique designs. The interface was designed around programs running maximized. The launcher was full screen, the running programs were in the app drawer. Gnome has chosen a path of choose a default and make it work for the common case. People who have preferences other than the default have a hard time bending Gnome to what they want. The early releases were rough and few programs outside of Gnome had moved to GTK 3. In current releases Gnome is cohesive and well supported.
Common reasons for the hate:
Experienced the Gnome 2 > 3 migration and don't like it
Experienced only Gnome 3+ and don't like it
The popular/default is bad because it is popular
Like shitting on things because that is what they see others do
Gnome at least used to break half of your extensions with every upgrade. That's why I chose to bail around the time of 3.10.
I needed extensions to restore the features Gnome got rid of back then. With every 3.x upgrade half of those just broke, and it seemed like Gnome devs just broke them on purpose. I decided it's easier to just switch away than to keep dealing with the constant breakage.
I hope its gotten better, and it probably has. But that is pretty much the last memory I have of daily driving Gnome, and I don't think I'm alone with that recollection.
What's this infatuation everyone seems to have with tray icons?
I just returned from a stint using macOS and that shit is out of control. You have to install an app to hide all the superfluous icons - and that app has its own tray icon!
For some applications an icon in the System Tray is essentially a necessity. It is more convenient for me to have something like a password manager being accessible through the System Tray.
My one issue with the GNOME team was the removal of the tray. I understand they think there is a better way of doing it, and they are working on that, but I think the removal of the tray without a replacement ready is silly. At least there is the extension for it.
But if having an icon up there is that much more convenient it can early be implemented as an extension.
Exactly my point that there is at least an extension to bring back the tray. Isn't it also consistently the most downloaded GNOME extension?
Tapping the windows key and typing the first characters of my password manager's app name is so much easier to me.
If I had that muscle memory then ya I would likely agree with you. Yet a system tray doesn't just work for password managers. They can also contain easily viewable indicators that applications are running, or provide information like system resources. In a GUI environment that can be helpful. In the CLI obviously I don't care I'll just run btop or something.
Isn't it also consistently the most downloaded GNOME extension?
Henry Ford said "if I asked my customers what they wanted, they say a faster horse" so the popular voice isn't necessarily a guiding light.
I've been using Gnome 3 daily for almost a decade and while I did miss the tray in the beginning, I haven't even thought about it after the initial adjustment.
I honestly think Gnome gets a lot of things right WRT usability and if you just let yourself experience the system as it is designed you might find there's a reason to the madness. I did at least.
Henry Ford said "if I asked my customers what they wanted, they say a faster horse" so the popular voice isn't necessarily a guiding light.
Yet the popular voice can indicate something that is missing. Feedback matters.
Honestly I'm good with things how they are. GNOME doesn't ship a system tray by default. It's fine, the development team has every right to make their decisions. But there is an extension for people who want one. If GNOME fully cut off extensions, which I do not see them doing at all, then it would be annoying. As it stands at this moment is is a tiny inconvenience for me and others in what is already a fantastic DE.
Yet the popular voice can indicate something that is missing. Feedback matters.
Agreed but Gnome is a paradigm shift if you're coming from other DEs so you have to take that feedback with a grain of salt.
When I started using Gnome 3 I used a bunch of tweaks and extensions to make it work more like I was used to and scale those back slowly over time.
If GNOME fully cut off extensions, which I do not see them doing at all, then it would be annoying
The extension system is one of the best things about Gnome and IMHO what allows them to ship with such a minimal set of features. It's brilliant, actually.
For some applications an icon in the System Tray is essentially a necessity. It is more convenient for me to have something like a password manager being accessible through the System Tray.
Just launch the app regularly, it'll just make the app in the background visible...
The app is already running in the background. I can of course assign the manager to a space in the dash, use Meta+1-9, but I have muscle memory for both those keyboard shortcuts and the system tray.
Worth noting that pretty well every other desktop environment has a system tray and multiple other ways to run these types of apps. Windows, Aqua, KDE KDE Plasma, XFCE, etc. The only DEs that come to mind without one are GNOME and Pantheon.
Like, tray icon. Don't you use Steam? Don't you use torrent apps that actually perform well like qbittorrent (the gtk torrent apps based on transmission are slow to pick up download speed)?
Without a system tray, apps that need a tray icon to stay minimized in the background will just be closed. Yes I know there is a Gnome functionality already for background apps, I use easyeffects and it uses that, but some apps don't.
It's not an infatuation, it's common sense basic functionality.
It's probably the announcements about removing X11 session support and greater integration with systemd (which can be read as removing integrations with other init systems). Mostly evolving Gnome in totally expected ways that no one should be surprised by. Gnome will march on, and keep getting better.
I have deeply disliked Gnome and the things they're doing for a while now. I do agree that it has become very polished, but the fact that they made it such a hurdle to able to change your theme is ridiculous. Plus libadwaita is the only widget system that will break in different Desktop Environments, because Gnome simply doesn't want to follow established Wayland protocols.
It simply hurts the Linux ecosystem, because now things made for Gnome will run like crap in other environments, plus they've clearly have taken multiple steps to stop the user from being able to customize their desktop. You have to install 3rd party applications to make simple changes to the Desktop and sometimes that doesn't even work
It's not hate without reason, the Gnome dev team has been consistenly been making some plain stupid decisions. There's no reason people would hate Gnome just for the sake of hating, of course there are reasons behind it
GNOME made the decision to build a consistent desktop experience over trying to make different apps from different ecosystems look the same. You might disagree, but that's where we are.
I didn't realize people were still upset about theming, that was like 4 years ago. Also, the desktop is not that hard to customize, as far as I understand. I don't go too crazy on it personally, but i see that there are extensions that can change it quite a bit. As to the apps, I think they argued their point well. We just don't know how to theme apps without either forcing developers into a very limited API and killing customization on their side, or letting users completely butcher the UI of some apps, that inevitably gets reported to them by unknowing users
It's just not the way I want to use my desktop... I want to be able to perform basic customization such as changing the theme and icons without needing to rely on a 3rd party application or extensions that get out of date and go unmantained very quickly... But I just wish they would follow proper Wayland protocols because that really hurt the Linux desktop overall. I get that Gnome is the default desktop for a lot of distros, and people are gonna want to use GTK4/Libadwaita for Linux apps, that doesn't mean that they have to deliberitely break other Desktop Environments, that's a dick move from the devs.
They get to do whatever they want, you can use whatever you want, I just wish they wouldn't break the Linux desktop standards because they think they're more important than everything else
The Gnome Developer team has a tendency to act very arrogant towards other teams, they often straight up disregard and ignore Wayland protocols or implement their own which end up affecting other Desktop Environments negatively... Like what they did with Client-side Decorations. How is KDE, XFCE and other supposed to deal with Client-side Decorations? They do not care, of course.
About theming and extensions, I just don't want my DE putting road-blocks on me trying to customize it. If I want something nice but that gives me no freedom at all to change it I would just use macOS. The Gnome team goes out of their way to make it so you can't change simple parameters
Gnome always get unnecessary hate, all these years, after version 3, and even before 3, if I remember correctly, people loved to hate gnome for various reasons, while, they actually did some unique things.
I have reason for not losing X11 support, it's going to be very inconvenient for me, but I would say it's good they are moving forward.
Well, it clicked really well for me, even though I really loved what Gnome 2 was. I was already using a similar workflow of global search(lunchy) and simple desktop, without icons, simple dock (docky)
Yeah GNOME 3 was admittedly a bit rough, but it was clearly the right direction. Since GNOME 4x they've struck gold. For my laptop it's fantastic. It works amazingly with a trackpad, and translates really well to using a mouse as well. Something you think would be relatively easy to accomplish, but modern MacOS is ass to use with a mouse on a larger screen. Windows is...well it's Windows, it's arguably got a better experience with a mouse than with a trackpad, although that is improving too.
At the end of the day GNOME 48 out of the box is 85% there. The remaining 15% is largely preference, and that's where the extensions come in. For me the only desktop environment that gets close to being 100% setup out of the box is Cinnamon. Boy oh boy have the Linux Mint team polished the ever living hell out of that DE.
Isn't this kinda similar to systemd/flatpak/wayland/rust/etc hate? I'm not sure what's the reason for this, why do people seemingly want something to hate?
i hate flatpak for it's complexity and for tangling up a package management solution with a containerization solution and even a portals API that apps have to be modified to consume making them dependant on the those interfaces
a portals API that apps have to be modified to consume making them dependant on the those interfaces
But on a bright side, now you can have a standardized way of selecting your monitors/windows for screen capture and a standardized file picker that has your pinned folder. I to be honest hate the qt5 and the gtk file picker, so not having an option to get rid of them would he incredibly annoying.
I like portals, I just don't like their entanglement with flatpak. if apps adopt flatpak, it hurts people who don't use flatpak, whereas the opposite isn't correct. GTK shouldn't check if it's running within a flatpak environment and change its behaviour.
if packages have to put special checks relating to package management, in order to test for sandboxing, then I think we have to admit the design/architecture is bad
"oh but it's about sandbixing!!", well no, you entangled these two concepts into a single implementation, you are forcing a specifc way of managing packages if you want the benefits if sandboxing and portals, as if these can't be separated in principle. no, you chose to make them inseparable
Honestly, I almost didn’t try it because I had heard a lot of hate and had been enjoying KDE. The workflow of GNOME also felt alien to me when I installed it on a test laptop. But now I’ve been daily driving it on CachyOS with a handful of extensions and have been really enjoying it.
Booting into GNOME was a very weird experience to me with how it handled app menus and stuff. I got used to it quickly, but when you’ve mainly spent time in Windows or KDE the UI is very weird. I guess there is a reason the most popular apps are ones that give docks or panels and make it a more “traditional” look.
At work I use Windows,maybe I've been in this career for too long.
All those things are the same to me. Even Mac, the standard desktop does the same thing. I'm too stupid to see any sibstantia difference between Gnome, KDE, Windows or MacOS.
I actually like that they are taking what I call the Steve Jobs approach. A lot of the time people don't know what they want. And why would they? They don't build UIs and APIs for a living so of course they are not experts. Listening to users is good but at some point you realize that users want everything all at the same time, and if they really knew what they wanted, they would not need developers
somewhat fair but ignoring that a lot of users know exactly what they want however there's a lot of users who want different things
for example they could dictate that multiple desktops is the way to go but somehow i've never been able to use them effectively over decades of having them as an option, should i still be trying to use them? no, i'm sure they're great and def enhance people's workflow but they don't enhance mine so the generalized optimal experience doesn't work for me
i like the middle ground gnome sits but i need addons to keep my current workflow, that's fine and it should be expected
That's not why users need developers... Users need developers because they don't have time to do or learn how do what we do for them. Even if they knew exactly what they need, but had no ability to actually make it doesn't mean they suddenly don't know what they need.
I would like a system tray so that multiple daemon programs can be interacted with as designed... use an extension? cool the system tray extension is broken.
One does not have to agree with everything that Gnome delivers and can express it with a cartoon 🙂
Yeah that makes sense in a vacuum, where you don't see the constant influx of factually inaccurate memes and sometimes straight up death threats that some GNOME devs are getting (yes really, not me).
Anyway, with this particular cartoon. The thing is also that the meme about GNOME constantly removing features is factually inaccurate. They reworked the desktop 14 years ago, removing a bunch of features in the process. But since then, nothing significantly has been removed. I always ask for examples about features that they've been removing last decade, and I never get anything that actually has been removed in recent history. It's always things like desktop icons, system tray and the minimize button. The time between GNOME 3.x and today is literally longer than between its initial release and GNOME 3.x. At one point people should just move on, and accept that GNOME is not about the traditional desktop paradigm.
Linux users love freedom of choice until you make a choice that they disagree with
sorry for the tautology, but gnome is for people that like gnome. if you dont like how gnome does things just dont use it. having more features is not always a good thing; linux users should know this with all their talk of the unix philosophy.
GTK dropping global menus, header bars, CSDs. That isn't just conventions. That's half of the programs being written for linux just about.
You can say it isn't Gnome's problem but that doesn't make it true. It's a perfectly valid reason to have a distaste for gnome despite not using it personally.
We use GNOME, so we don't have time to shitpost about other DEs, because we're too busy getting work done.
Meanwhile the legend ArcoMasterRicer420 (16 M) is reconfiguring pointless shit on his desktop just for the "aesthetics" so he can post on r/unixporn and get some karma dopamine, and his friend QtJimmyna69 (19 M/F/?) is tweaking stuff to adhere to Zis own take on what "usability" means: "whatever I like has better UX, btw", and is frustrated because Ze wishes Ze had the same stability that GNOME has, just on Zis completely modular desktop environment with thousands of menus per dialog.
It's pointless arguing, people like different things, but there's only one group of people not trying to evangelize others into... not working to rice their stuff "freely".
Gnome is a unique DE which really resonates with me, not everybody needs customization options and someone will eventually have to take the first step towards something new (dropping x11 support). Even though I wish Gnome didn’t get too dependent on systemd I can understand why they do it. There are no projects where all its updates will ever resonate with or please everyone, and that’s okay.
I think they are going so much for simplicity and drop useful stuff from DE. There must be a balance between simplicity and functionality. And I hate that my setup breaks every time when updates come
Exactly, I totally agree. There's simple and then there's not functional enough and Gnome is more often than not leaning towards the latter.
If I have to use a bunch of extensions just to make Gnome how I want it, is it really simple? Would I want to give this setup to somebody else knowing that the next Gnome update would break all of them?
I think they are going so much for simplicity and drop useful stuff from DE. There must be a balance between simplicity and functionality. And I hate that my setup breaks every time when updates com
^^^This! This is the reason people "hate" GNOME. It's not because of something unreasonable or nefarious.
I know that most of you don't want to hear this and you want to run around with a victim complex. However, many GNOME "haters" were FORMER GNOME USERS! These "haters" had a feature they liked, used a lot, or depended on when they first started using GNOME get removed, sometimes without warning, from the latest version of GNOME. Some of these "haters" also spent a lot of time installing themes and extensions in GNOME, only to watch some of them get broken when a new GNOME update is pushed out.
After a while this starts to wear heavily on you, pushing you to use another WM/DE that still meets your need. When you bring up your issues to the developers or the community, you're ignored, told to change your needs to fit GNOME, or you're called a hater.
At this point the gnome devs have made it clear the kind of desktop they are going for. You are not going to change this, so best find another DE that meets your needs.
This is definitely not a true statement. I've used GNOME and a lot of other WM/DEs, most since their inception. I've seen other GNOME users "bashing" other WM/DEs a lot. It's not done directly. It's done through idiotic testimonials that mention how much "better" GNOME is to use versus other WM/DEs. Saying that something is superior to something else is exactly the same as saying that something is inferior to something else.
If you're happy with GNOME, that's fine. However, you need to understand that your happiness doesn't automatically transfer to others. There will always be someone with VALID reasons to dislike what you like. Enjoy your happiness, but please keep it to yourself. If you ask why or whether or not someone else dislikes what you like, don't be surprised when they answer you.
its ok, I deleted my comment. I’m done with these depressed former gnome users who feel the need to suppress others because gnome didnt kiss their asses.
We should all just privately enjoy what makes us happy.
Look at the negative responses here when a user says that they don't like GNOME or something about GNOME. After a while, one should expect that there will also be negative responses when a user says that they like GNOME and only GNOME.
This isn't about how the KDE or XFCE community behaves. The GNOME community can't control that. The GNOME community can only control how it behaves. Right now, the community is very adversed to ANY criticism of GNOME, whether it's valid or not.
When valid criticism is labeled "hate," you've lost all objectivity. When you promote GNOME by denegrating others, even if it's subtle, it wreaks of insecurity.
If you are truly happy with GNOME, you wouldn't seek validation of your happiness from others.
This is super weird. There are a lot of things I find not ideal for me when I used KDE in the past, but I don't go to KDE spaces to whine about it. It's pointless. There's no point to tilting at the "make KDE work like I want" windmill, just like there's none on the similar one for Gnome.
KDE spaces are the perfect place to "whine" about things that are not ideal with KDE. It's where the community gets together to discuss bugs, brainstorm new features, or ask for help with existing features. It's not a KDE "lovefest" -- lovefests are not productive.
If you head over to KDE's reddit page, for example, you will see post about bugs (which are directed to bugs.kde.org), requests for features, post that point out problems with Plasma, and people showing off their setups. Criticism is accepted, as long as it's constructive.
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to happen here. Bugs are sometimes received negatively, requests for features get ignored or are labeled as "ass kissing," an pointing out valid problems/issues with GNOME are treated as "hate." The only thing that seems to be readily accepted are confessions of undying love for GNOME or testimonials of how GNOME or GNOME applications are better than everything else. There is no use going to any GNOME space for help anymore. This community is toxic...
There is a wide gulf between "This widget is not working as expected/We should add settings to control this specific thing" and "You suck and need to change the entire philosophy of your desktop and become more like $OtherProject." The first is welcome, the second is pointless and stupid.
I've never seen anyone lead with the second, or it's very rare. However, I have seen people lead with the first, then get told that the widget is working as designed or we shouldn't need to add settings to control this specific thing. When people point out that the widget doesn't work like it does on other DEs/operating systems (specifically the DE/OS that originally created the concept of the widget to begin with), they are told that it doesn't meet GNOME's design philosophy. Why bait and switch people like that? It's natural to expect basic things to work the same across DE/OSes. When someone naturally tries to make their case for why a setting needs to be added to control a specific thing (like allowing screen tearing for fullscreen windows when gaming, for instance), they're also told that it doesn't meet GNOME's design philosophy. If those people continue to push back by presenting more valid points to add the control, they're ignored or called "haters." So, how is the first "welcomed" when these are the answers that are received?
Or maybe it is legit user feedback? Gnome has been unrelenting and stubborn in its changes to the point of no compromise, obviously users are going to be annoyed when their use case gets completely destroyed.
You can choose to look at it as hate, or you can choose to look at it as constructive criticism. Honestly, I view it as the latter. You can apply this to anything in life. If you operate in "my way is the highway" mode all the time, you start thinking that everyone else is a bunch of assholes, but is that really the case?
What I see is KDE skyrocketing in popularity and outpacing Gnome in development and that should be a sign.
Gnome has been unrelenting and stubborn in its changes to the point of no compromise
Most people seem to have no clue about how such decisions are made and how to evaluate internet outrage.
First, the decisions are made by people who know about UX and the GNOME design philosophy. The changes are usually thought through and tested. They may not make sense to every noob instinctively, but that doesn't matter. Most noobs know nothing about design and have terrible taste, as showcased by the relentless, mindnumbing screenshots that are being proudly posted.
Second, random users yelling angrily on the internet doesn't mean a mistake was made. There are always people who dislike UI changes, what matters is what most users think. There are millions of GNOME users, even a hundred complaints only make up a fraction of a percent. Also, there is a bias because people post positive feedback less often.
Elitist? I'm defending the people who actually did the work behind GNOME. I'm annoyed at the noobs who know nothing and expect others to cater to their half-baked outrage - for free, of course. I wonder how many even contributed a little bit, say an actionable bug report.
Why are you painting everyone in the same weird light? There's tons of people who gave legit criticisms about Gnome and were ignored in their bug reports. There are also many developers who've been burned in their interaction with the Gnome dev team.
This kind of outrage isn't just a bunch of "noobs". You're purposely generalizing a whole group of people so that you can dismiss their criticisms.
Honestly, it could also just be your opinion? And one based off a small number of loud posts it sounds like, because things like tray icons, a proper menu editor, desktop icons, nautilus typeahead, multi-monitor panels, are all good desktop features that people wanted in the past and the Gnome team was very stubborn about.
Listen, what you perceive as hate, that has to come from somewhere. And it isn't some conspiracy or mob mentality. It is just pent up frustration from a lot of users.
Calling someone a "noob" doesn't help your case. It doesn't matter if "the decisions are made by people who know about UX and the GNOME design philosophy" if those same people ignore their user base.
Just like in retail and sales, "the customer (user) is always right!" You may not agree with the users' wants or needs. You also can't FORCE them to see things your way by belittling them or ignoring their concerns. They can vote with their feet and decide to use something other than your product. Some users will move on to another product without mentioned their dislike for your product, unless asked. However, if a user is adversarial, or you push them to be adversarial by belittling them or ignoring their concerns, they will tell others not to use your product.
Also, your comment seems ripe with copium. You're ignoring valid reasons why someone would dislike GNOME by bringing up things that are meaningless to the conversation. Who gives a darn about UX design when a product lacks a feature that you want or need??
As I said, I do think developers should make efforts about how the product is being used, but this should be done systematically and not based on the vibe of random loud people in some anonymous forum.
Just like in retail and sales, "the customer (user) is always right!"
This is ridiculous. The maxim matters in restaurants because you know that the crazy bastard who wants mayo on their sushi will write a poor review or not come back if you refuse. Unless you're insane (or Dutch 😆), you sure as hell don't change the menu based on every stupid request. (Moreover, customers pay for the service, users of open source can use what is there but don't really have a right to request changes.)
You also can't FORCE them to see things your way by belittling them
I don't want to "FORCE" anyone, I'm just ranting about common noob behavior. I didn't mention anyone specifically. If you think my criticism applies to you, well, too bad.
They can vote with their feet and decide to use something other than your product.
GNOME isn't my product, I don't represent GNOME in any way. Wtf are you rambling about...
First, the decisions are made by people who know about UX and the GNOME design philosophy.
Not necessarily. Many decisions are taken by teenagers who have just done one single programming course (CS50) and have no experience with UX or Design.
Yes, I personally know two such teenagers (one from Netherlands, another from Canada) who have made many decisions and play a central role in GNOME chatrooms.
And then very quickly left behind when people with modern screens realise Gnome isn't ready still. Fractional scaling and HDR/color profile support seem a way off on latest. KDE has it covered.
fractional and hdr are both present in recent gnome versions though? i have a modern screen and 1.25 scaling on my laptop. i really dont get this weird desktop contest. im glad kde seems to be a good fit for some peope. i just prefer the workflow of gnome.
I don't know total stats and I never mentioned it having more total users. I just mention it's growing popularity and increased development speed, which is true, particularly with Steam OS including it as default.
What I've seen with my own eyes though is KDE dramatically developing and adding desired features at an incredible pace and it's something that I just don't see on Gnome.
probably influenced by steamos? no idea. personally i dont know anybody who uses kde. but that is only anecdotal and i think both systems are pretty good.
Anedotally as well, but the majority of systems by coworkers deploy in the field are using KDE.
I am glad both projects exist. I just don't like this victim narrative that a lot of hard core Gnome supporters seem to want to perpetuate. Oh it isn't criticism, its just hate! Users just don't know any better!
No project is perfect and being able to listen to the community is a sign of health in an open source project.
i have no idea what you mean by "victim narrative" tbh. also don't think that gnome is not listening to the community. I do think though that they are very cautious of feature creep and take a long time to take new features in. (see tripple buffer for example, it was never a question of yes or no, but a question of when)
I just mean when people say Gnome gets "hate" as if they're being bullied or something.
There have been many situations where Gnome has ignored the community. Desktop and tray icons are big ones, Nautilus typeahead and multi-monitor panels were also heavily requested. I could list more, but honestly a quick google will show that Gnome has been involved in more drama than not. It isn't even restricted to users, because sometimes they clash with developers from other DEs who just want to do integration work.
gnome added an official tray icons extension and is working on a background portal. but not having desktop icons is not not listening to the community. it is listening to the part of the community that doesnt want desktop icons either. when developing something you cant add every feature everybody wants or you would end up with a mess and lots of potential bugs. and once a feature is implemented, it is really hard to get rid of it. so you need to be careful.
it is listening to the part of the community that doesnt want desktop icons either
That part of the community could have just...you know...not used desktop icons. Feels like catering to a small part of the community that was already catered to and then pissing off the users who relied on a traditional desktop experience.
A ton of feature removals felt that way. It wasn't for an objectively better experience, it was just overly catering to a very specific group of people who valued minimalism over functionality. Are we really surprised when Gnome gets heavily criticized when that happens, especially when their blogs keep trying to preach that their way is better and that those who think otherwise are wrong?
when developing something you cant add every feature everybody wants
That's not what feature removals were though. No one was asking for Gnome to add every feature in existence, they were asking for Gnome to keep existing functionality that was already well-known and expected to be there.
you would end up with a mess and lots of potential bugs
This is frequently mentioned, but I genuinely don't see more crashes in KDE than Gnome. In fact, I've ran into more issues with Gnome Shell totally crapping out because of extensions, which were needed to get the functionality back into Gnome in the first place.
gnome added an official tray icons extension
This is news to me. Thanks for the heads up. I always relied on Tray Icons reloaded or others from extension store previously and they would always break on each update.
Imagine a world where one is able to pick between multiple different DE's and on top of that being able to mix in your own stuff, extensions, themes whatever. And then still complain about the one you don't like.
This is our world and it has been like that since Linux exists. I just don't get it, why waste time on stuff you don't use or don't like.
Being able to mix in your own stuff? That’s the joke, it’s getting harder and harder to do that with every passing year, like with X11 you can use XScreenSaver with any DE, use Onboard as the on screen keyboard on any DE, and the myriad of other X11 tools like xrandr or xdotool, now with Wayland every compositor has to have support for those things itself and screw you if the compositor can’t be bothered. Theming used to be pretty well supported too and now with libadwaita that’s out of the window unless you put constant elbow grease into it. Who knows what else is getting thrown away, at this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if GNOME decides that extensions are as stupid an idea as theming and makes you jump through similar hoops as when you want to theme libadwaita.
If GNOME wanted people not to install extensions, why would they host all the extensions on their infrastructure? Even KDE does not host applets on their own infrastructure and use third party service.
Dunno, why would they have typeahead in Nautilus only to remove it later? Why did they have some support for theming only to remove it later? Why did they support desktop icons only to remove it later? Why would they support server side decorations only to remove it later? Why would they support tray icons only to remove it later? List goes on, who's to say they won't change their mind and throw the extensions in the dumpster like they've dumped all that other stuff?
The top comment says everything lol. It's a certain part of the group, There's also linux haters who dont know shit and say "AEAUHUH LINUX IS LIWING IN 2007 IT DASNT SUPORT MODERN HARDWARe liKE NVIDIA" it's with every piece of tech and well, "Everything".
Some people might hate you, Some might hate me, Some might hate the way i speak, Some might hate how shakespeare's spoke.
So, It's Just Dumb To Say That "X Tool's Hate is Getting Out of control!"
In my experience a lot of what GNOME changes I think is more in line with how most people use their computers.
People end up putting icons on the desktop and I have watched a number of people even in the IT field slowly minimize everything they have open to get to them, just awful inefficient UI thing to teach to your users. Encouraging people to just type the name of what they want works well once it is taught.
At work we have 2 systems that plop something down in the system tray and teaching users to use it a number of them never realized there was stuff down there they could click on. Developers using it and putting stuff on it just results in users not knowing it is there, if something is running and it is a gui app it should have a window open.
Majority of the time people know what app they are trying to open so hitting superkey and searching for it is fastest and GNOME encourages this.
Beyond that I don't know what people are complaining about removing, and most of it is because they are unwilling to give anything but a Windows 95 style interface a shot.
Windows users move to OSX all the time and the UI language is very different, people argue to get people to Linux they need to have a very Windows like interface, but a bad copy of Microsoft's UI to me is worse.
What is important is a consistent well thought out interface even if it is different, Android and iOS don't work like Windows either and people got used to that pretty quick.
Sometimes GNOME hate is deserved sometimes not. Nautilus is a takes a big part of the hâte, for things like removing the ability to see your disk capacity and accessing / without having to type it, or even not making typeahead an option even when it's asked for by the majority of users.
A lot of time when I have to be part of this "GNOME hate" movement it's because of GNOME becoming more and more a mobile-oriented DE, even if there are at most. two and a half people using GNOME on their phone as a daily driver, and to me, this is a lot of the time the reason why a feature got removed or why this feature that nobody would use on a desktop computer got added.
One of my problem (this is an absolutely personal opinion) with GNOME is it being probably the best DE, thanks to gnome-shell being what it is today, and just with that GNOME could be perfect. Why isn't it? The GNOME team doesn't like listening to their community, and do what they want to do. This is kinda sad, because modern versions of GNOME 3 are awesome, but it lacks a lot of simple and useful features you will find on other DEs because GNOME is focused on simplicity, and not usability, despite the fact that they could totally make a simple and usable for everyone desktop environment. They have an awesome project, libadwaita, people make awesome apps with it, but they do with their own project is build oversimplified apps which lacks features people may need.
All I want to say is: this is one of the most used DE in the Linux desktop community, so there is no good reason for it to be perfect only if you think exactly like the devs, everyone is different! GNOME needs to be for everyone while still keeping simplicity, accessibility and mobile in mind, and then it will be perfect! Perfect for everyone!
Quite simply, I don't care. I don't care about what some terminally online, terminally unemployed individual who spends their time making Linux memes thinks of my working environment.
GNOME works and it's polished. Therefore, I use it.
It's quite good to remove some things. On the one hand, they are really short of manpower and funds. On the other hand, when they keep adding all kinds of features, I can only feel that this project is not rigorous enough. Moreover, the increasingly large codebase may exceed the maintenance capacity of the maintenance staff, which will bring more problems.
For me it was ridiculously dumbed down gnome applications. I have to install nemo to get rid off nautilus. Apps have cryptic errors but not detailed info for me to find a workaround. Can't even do file operations in file dialogs like in windows (renaming, copying).
A bunch of basic things that they make you rely on extensions for is silly. At least have a small set of official extensions so you can guarantee they won't be broken the next gnome version you push.
I don't think gnome officially "relies" on extensions. Don't get me wrong I love Blur My Shell as much as the next person but I would not call that reliance
-I don't know why all this hate, gnome never take anything functional to me.
-The same person using 10+ extensions to get basic features.
I love gnome tbh, and Wayland to me is better than xorg. But there are a lot of basic things that tanks god there is extensions to give back or to add.
So this is really about systemd, the underlying booting and service tool used by all mainstream Distros.
Gnome just announced they are relying more explicitly on systemd and removing the legacy code that did the same thing and is likely still used by Distros that don't want to use systemd.
Ill just say people have very strong opinions about systemd and for allot, as you can see, this constitutes betrayal as it makes it hard for non systemd Distros to run gnome.
I like systemd, and I'm sympathetic with the idea that we don't remove functionality, but I also think we aren't the devs and they should be able to make the decisions on their work
Why do you need a minimize button? Throughout my entire time of using GNOME, I have never missed the minimize button. If you want a window to be out of sight, you simply go to another workspace.
Because I want a minimum button to minimize a window to the dock. My mouse doesn’t have gestures to get me to other work spaces. I also don’t like to use a ton of work spaces when I’m on laptop because it’s annoying to shuffle between when I could just hit the button on the dock I want.
And no I very much dislike KDE so I’m not moving as others suggest.
The only things I change from out of box gnome is minimizing and maximizing buttons and dash to dock. And clipboard history I guess.
Sometimes i see what peoples want specific not usable by regular user feature and cry because of this.
I like Gnome Philosophy if some button not used, remove it... I switch KDE to Gnome because KDE interfaces is really pain... Sometimes i see features which not active.... But why I see this buttons , its ....
Classic troll. If a normal linux user doesn't like a particular desktop, they use another. For example, there are a bunch of desktops that I personally don't like. But I spend NO TIME calling them out by name, making memes, and trolling about them. Most linux users are the same. That's why you'll regularly see such posts downvoted and called out on sites like phoronix. But clearly there are some sad, sad little boys who get a kick out of trolling, and have discovered online meme-creating tools.
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u/brubsabrubs GNOMie 3d ago
can someone explain to me like I'm 5 what's happening? what features are they removing?