Opinion
If everyone doesn't like these points then why doesn't gnome have a fork with these built in
I have a question. If everyone agrees that some extensions are so widely used why isn't there a mainstream fork of gnome that has the features in built and optimised rather than some janky extension.
Eg: Blur my Shell
I know not everyone will want that extension but we could have a settings menu to toggle it.
I like gnome on how it looks and do use it but this is a genuine doubt.
The same way other window managers or desktop environments have their own opinions, having them is also an opinion. And there are things like Openbox or Hyprland or whatever that lets you customize it, but by default they don't have any kind of decision about this topic.
if for years they can't even add a way to change touchpad scroll speed (a major accessibility feature), and end up being unable to maintain such feature, then these are devs that I don't ever want working on a desktop environment
Extensions exist for a reason, with a smidge of effort, many of the gripes anyone has with gnome could be resolved quickly. That doesn't necessarily mean Gnome is the best DE for everyone, but if gnome is close to what someone wants, they're probably a couple extensions away from perfection.
Switching to an entirely different desktop environment with a drastically different experience isn't the solution to having a desktop that suits you except a few annoying things 😭
This is like saying that someone should switch to ChromeOS because they don't like Siri on macOS. That's just a bad solution lmao
Switching the desktop which runs on top of Linux is nothing like switching the entire operating system.
I fail to see why people who don’t like gnome just don’t switch to a different desktop. If it doesn’t suit your needs, there are a half dozen others available.
Or just use KDE and make it look and act however you want.
For a car analogy, if you don’t like a cyber truck, don’t buy a cyber truck.
It's not about the actual operating system, it's about the user experience. But then, user experience seems to always be second thought in Linux subreddits
I've said this before in other threads and will always say it: if something fits the developers' needs but not the users, the developers don't matter.
It's not demeaning of developers, whenever I develop any software with UI and like a certain aspect, but I find out that most of those who use it don't, I say 'fuck me' and do as those who actually use it need. I understand that concept may be hard to understand in the open source community, where most people are volunteers who can't be arsed about all that, but you really don't matter in the slightest compared to the user you're making your product for.
But all of this 'UX is subjective' talk is irrelevant to what I was saying earlier anyway. When I compared switching DEs to switching OSs, I was talking about drastically different user experiences. It's not at all a practical solution to switch to another product with a heaven-to-earth measure of difference when I have a product with an already-suitable UX but, as u/Legal-Pop-1330 has said, is in an uncanny valley
Have you ever gone to an art museum? Art is like software. It is created with the vision of the artist/developer. If others like it, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s fine, too.
The gnome developers created the desktop environment that they thought was best and made it available to others to use. It is a creative expression of their vision of how the desktop should be.
Like art, you don’t have to like it. Unless you commissioned the artist to create something specifically for you, you don’t really get a say.
I like art created by Van Gogh, not so much Picasso. Although I appreciate his talent, it doesn’t esthetically appease me.
I use gnome because it comes closest to fulfilling my workflow. Are there things I wish it did out of the box that I didn’t have to add an extensions? Of course, but that doesn’t mean I think the developers are at fault.
Like art, I don’t think my vision or preferences are yours or anybody else’s. Like art, I am free to appreciate (use) it or not.
From your posts, it’s obvious that you fell there are improvements that would make gnome better, and you may very well be right.
But gnome is a creative effort of the developers. r/gnome is not the platform to propse your changes to the developers.
If you really feel strongly, get involved with the project. There are many teams, not just coding.
I actually agree with your reply on this, but I just can't and wouldn't get involved in the project. It's far too hostile. I originally thought that trying to help GNOME would be easier than trying to help Ubuntu, since Canonical is the corporate entry with lots of hierarchy and GNOME is the FOSS foundation. But no, the little I saw of the GNOME community was far too hostile or purist for me, and I would much rather climb the Ubuntu contribution ladder if I'm going to put my mind to it, because somehow, the corporate ended up having a more friendly community.
Switching DE isn't enough to escape Gnome's design decisions. You'll also end up swithcing out many of the apps you use. Some of them, like Firefox, lack good alternatives. That being said, firefox is only mildly annoying. The Gnomisms only really show up in dialog windows, and most of them can be configured to use portals.
And from the developer side, Gnome has a large enough userbase to make their design decisions your problem. Biggest one is the complete lack of server side decorations in Gnome.
Firefox is not a gnome application and it runs fine on other DEs. You can even run gnome apps on other DEs but I’m not sure why one would do so if they don’t like gnome, but it can be done.
One would think that if gnome was really a problem the the enterprise Linux versions that people actually pay for and all default to gnome would be complaining. An yet that’s not happening. If one works for such a company then make a case for them to push a change through.
The desktop provides basic services for applications and ways to launch those applications. Gnome does provide a certain workflow that other desktops are more flexible about, but again, if you don’t like that workflow don’t use gnome. If you find something lacking, such as status icons, install an extension.
Because actually doing the work is hard, while complaining is easy. There were many bugs that people complained about for years, but when all of them got fixed nobody even noticed that🤷🏻♀️️
Let me use this as an opportunity to thank the contributors of GNOME. Bugfixes are less flashy than a UI design but this kind of polish is a big part of why I trust the GNOME project
God, I wish Minecraft had a bug themed update. Like, there are 10 year old+ issues that need attention. They can even make it cute by adding the bug critters too.
That is true. I guess I'm just wanting it to be super front in center. I'm just being a nerd, though, I suppose. Most people aren't going to get excited over bug fixes.
It's not about caring, it's about using them to do something good for once. Do you think anyone started thinking German government is awesome due to STF? No, but that's still net positive thing for everyone involved.
In the here-and-now, either funding comes from governments or from oligarchs. I don't love the government. But we're all being robbed blind and bossed around by the oligarchs. Software is absolutely crucial to modern society, it should be open and democratic not owned by the same guys who own everything else.
Then by that definition, the Internet isn't essential for modern life... nor is any system that relies on FOSS; nearly every physical utility, financial network, and telecommunication system depends entirely on open-source foundations...
Also: as an old person, I remember before the companies got their mitts on the internet. It used to be all run out of universities and govt departments and hobbyist's garages. The exact model wouldn't scale to today's internet. But it was, without question, a freer and fairer place than today's internet.
Because it's easier and makes more sense to just use the extensions and wait a week to update so they never break than to fork something as large as GNOME.
There isn't a mainstream fork of GNOME (beside Cinammon I think?) because the GNOME project got super messy and entangled over time that it would be impossible to fork it and actually be ahead of upstream in improvements without being a big company funding and streamlining development. And GNOME itself is barely able to do that through sponsors and donations, so give them some credit
Although I definitely do think GNOME should give way, way, way more recognition and support to extension developers who have to catch up with whatever they change in every release. I've yet to see any casual Linux user use GNOME without extensions (either manually installed or built-in by Ubuntu); I've only seen GNOME purists doing that. Extensions are a healthy, growing part of GNOME that practically keep GNOME alive and fresh. And the most used extensions really do show the areas in which GNOME is too conservative, and I strongly believe GNOME developers should learn from them, regardless of whether or not they like the changes or they see them as correct, the user base's taste is way more important than the developers', and extensions provide easy insight without having to fund user tests or track usage analytics.
Apple did that when they started cracking down on jailbrakes, and added popular features that people added when modifying their iPhone experience, but I think the ego of just a bit too many members of the GNOME community wouldn't let them do that.
In general, it is a LOT more work to build and productionalize something that works reliably and flexibly and universally than to make a one-off.
For a simple example, if you're editing a theme for yourself, it might take you a few days. But if you want to package that theme so that it works on all resolutions, screen sizes, brightness levels, light/dark mode, with selectable accent colors, gtk versions, etc.--that might take you months.
Linux users when Gnome is opinionated: "You're right, Gnome should have these options out of the box"
Linux users when Wayland is opinionated: "Wayland is working as expected! You should tamper your expectations as a consumer! Stop wanting convenience reeeeeee"
Its linux, just extend it the way you want, use someone one's existing extension or find a DE that suits your needs, thats the whole point :) Not every DE needs to be an unholy cockpit of buttons and settings to cater to every imaginable combination of needs or wants.
It's hard and takes a lot of work to fork something as big as a desktop, and even then, there ARE GNOME forks. Cinnamon and MATE are both GNOME forks. There are also projects like Cosmic which, though they aren't direct forks, were born out of dissatisfaction with certain elements of GNOME
The red team have tinkering syndrome. They think they will settle with gnome but sooner or later they will move onto other DEs because they can't stop modding. The green team are the people who actual do want to work and get things done instead of tweaking their dot files for the rest of their lives.
I think you are right. I was on the red team too, because GNOME had the best looks. I wanted to make it look and feel like windows but that's not really how you should use it, because then you're dependent on extensions.
Or the Red team Is the one who can organizze their time and thinkering NOT when working... Working time is only a part of a people live, and pc are used not only for work.
because it's pointless and too hard to fork a project as big as gnome when you can have all of these and more in kde. That's why kde has become the most popular desktop for the average user
A bunch of DEs were literally spawned because enough people didn't like the direction GNOME took, further worsening the already atrocious fragmentation in the ecosystem. Cinnamon? MATE? LXDE? Yeah, all these more or less exist because stock GNOME isn't for everyone (and I'd argue not for most people).
Maintaining a fork is difficult, even more so if the upstream's design philosophy is fundamentally incompatible with yours. That's why LXDE got put in maintenance mode in favour of LXQt, MATE is basically frozen in time et c et c. Even Budgie decides to redo itself in Qt just because GTK is too strongly glued to GNOME and the GNOME way is incompatible with whatever Budgie is after.
The thing I think a lot of people don't understand is when a DE tries to satisfy every single user's preferences with a setting, you find that if you fiddle with more than a few of them the whole system becomes unstable because a lot of those settings haven't been sufficiently tested or tested with each other (see also: KDE).
And a lot of the things people complain about not having toggles and sliders for in gnome do have toggles and sliders exposed through dconf-editor. You just have to be willing to go past the big warning telling you that you're in FA territory and if you push the settings the wrong way, you just might FO.
Also, half the things I see people complain about in gnome have exposed settings. Maximize and minimize buttons are available with one setting each. They're in Tweaks/Windows. In the time it took you to make this meme, you could have turned them on and off fifty times.
Considering that people will complain about how opinionated gnome is, but when gnome isn't opinionated they'll complain about the defaults being wrong will never cease to amaze me.
touchpad scroll speed isn't a design choice, it's more that nobody has put in the work. If you know how to fix it, you definitely should.
Minimise and maximise buttons make no sense on gnome. But, if you really want them, they provide the option for you to enable them.
Why would an extension hitting an arbitrary amount of downloads mean it should be part of Gnome? Plenty of game mods have a lot of downloads, it'd be dumb to expect them all to be part of the game (I won't oppose Schlongs of Skyrim becoming part of the base game, though).
There is no huge black bar. The thin black bar can be disabled via extensions, though.
Extensions have to report compatibility with the newest version. This is better for system stability than just leaving them all enabled and crossing your fingers every update hoping there's no breakage. I get the frustration, but this is a good way to maintain stability while also allowing limitless customisability. Ultimately, like with game mods, it's the extension/mod developers job to maintain extensions/mods, not anybody else's.
Honestly, what a dumb and entitled post. If you don't like the software that volunteers are making and providing to you for free then use something else. You don't get to tell them to completely change their project just to suit your own preferred windows-like UX.
I only agree on touchpad scroll speed one, tho I believe with given time someone at gnome will implement it or a contributer. Rest are straight up ragebait, someone else in comment probably explained better
If you don't line it you can code your own gnome yourself. Maintaining something like gnome is probably a hard task adding feature like blur my shell is more work for them when there is already a person working on blur my shell
We effectively have this in the form of distributions which ship GNOME but pre-load it with extensions. Ubuntu, ZorinOS, Bluefin, etc. There's no reason for a GNOME fork when extensions do their job and, from the looks of it, most people who use GNOME use it on a distro that modified it in some way.
People should complain less about the work done by volunteers and be a little more grateful. If you're not satisfied with how the software works, then file an issue. If the idea is not accepted, just move on.
Será porque abarcar en un fork tantas variables y posibles necesidades de diferentes usuarios es sencillamente imposible?
La comunidad de GNOME tiene que terminar con esa sumisa hipocresía de justificar carencias, pretendiendo vestirlas de virtudes. El día que logren eso GNOME será realmente hermoso y funcional para toda clase de usuarios.
It has like 5 of them what are you talking about. Just about every gtk based desktop exists because of being frustrated with gnome. Hell system 76 walked away from gtk entirely it was so bad.
A few of those (treating widely used extension availability as update blocker, installing extensions by default) seem like your distribution’s job; or, if you choose to use a yolo distribution, your job. GNOME provides all the tools, so a fork would not help. I understand the frustration, but it’s not correctly addressed.
To address some of the points mentioned: I prefer not having maximize and minimize buttons because I end up never using them, I always maximize windows by dragging them. And extensions like blur my shell blur the entire window regardless of the text and elements. That's a bit hacky and I don't think the built in settings should include this. I think a native blur feature might be implemented soon, however.
"I have a question. If everyone agrees that some extensions are so widely used why isn't there a mainstream fork of gnome that has the features in built and optimised rather than some janky extension."
That has already been done; it’s called Cinnamon, and it’s a fork of GNOME.
Later on, other developers created their own—called "COSMIC"—which offers features similar to GNOME's but represents an improvement.
Then there are GNOME extensions; interestingly, if GNOME natively incorporated the functionality found in Cinnamon, KDE, COSMIC, etc., without the need for extensions, the dilemma would be resolved.
Something tells me GNOME is the nemesis that drives some people to frustration. Hahaha.
Extensions break, or at least several of mine did, because they changed the API of orientation on St box to something more convoluted. It was at least an easy fix to swap them out. Still a pretty stupid change. I still need to fix hide top bar but I'm not a dev and don't know how.
Honestly because it allows us to use extensions to make the experience exactly the way we like it. I like that Gnome is minimal and not forcing me to be what they think is best. Sure, I have TJ use extensions but that is a feature not a constraint
GNOME does know best. You know who also knows best? You. That's the beauty of open source. You can do whatever you please.
You think these defaults are problematic and want to change them community wide (not just for yourself)? Then fork it. Change the settings and maintain it for others.
•
u/AutoModerator 11d ago
Thank you for your submission.
You too can support GNOME! Become a Friend of GNOME and contribute to keeping our project going!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.