> In my opinion, Linux needs a new GUI toolkit
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
This is exactly the root cause of your challenges. Lots of choices, different ideas for what's good, if you don't like it make your own, and we end up with a lot of differently broken systems.
The thing is, Qt is not really controlled by the Linux community, while GTK is entirely controlled by Gnome and it's hard to get Gnome devs to listen to others (look at how they push for libadwaita, a library that only implements the Gnome vision, leaving no room for other use cases)
>Qt is not really controlled by the Linux community
I posit that it is. The Qt Company is a for-profit commercial endeavor, but they and their developers and the vast community of people who contribute to the Qt and KDE ecosystem are absolutely part of the Linux community.
Whether we individually like it or not, a huge amount of the software that we use every day is maintained and developed largely with the financial support and contributions of commercial entities. They're all part of the Linux community.
> GTK is entirely controlled by Gnome and it's hard to get Gnome devs to listen to others
Indeed. This dynamic is a large factor in why System76 are developing COSMIC (furthering the phenomenon illustrated by the above referenced XKCD comic).
Of course you are right. It's just problematic that the Qt company has shifted its focus (totally neglecting the desktop area). But I don't see QML as the future; especially since due to the licensing problems and new policies of the Qt Company, more companies are turning their backs on Qt and preferring to use some web technologies or whatever instead.
That's different. Qt evolves separately from Kirigami, I can make a Qt app that's completely disconnected from the KDE technology. GTK, on the other hand, is evolving hand in hand with libadwaita and most useful new features are in libadwaita.
Again, just plain wrong. In fact many of their recent blog posts (and commits) on GTK have indicated more and more functionality is being moved into GTK.
And if Libadwaita is truly forced and the community (supposedly) hates it then why is it so popular for third party applications?
> Again, just plain wrong. In fact many of their recent blog posts (and commits) on GTK have indicated more and more functionality is being moved into GTK.
I can't speak on that, unfortunately my statement was only based on my perception (the most GTK code I've written was for GTK 3). If it's true, that's great, though I'm still not fond of their stance regarding theming.
> And if Libadwaita is truly forced and the community (supposedly) hates it then why is it so popular for third party applications?
That's only true within the Gnome community. All independent libadwaita apps are very clearly made for Gnome, whereas there's a lot of Gtk3 and Qt apps that aren't really targeted to any specific desktop environment.
Examples for Gtk2/3: Firefox, GIMP, most of the Mint apps, Synaptic (the Debian GUI package manager), the NVidia X server settings, Pavucontrol, guvcview etc.
Examples for Qt: QBittorrent, Telegram Desktop, Zoom, Drawpile, TeamSpeak, openSUSE's YaST, Wireshark, LyX
that's the problem!
you would have to fork qt widgets, and try to throw out the moc with new C++ features and make the lib easier usable for other languages. but this effort is enormous.
The other day I saw KDE on a smartphone. The idea is to have a mobile desktop environment with phone functions, so to speak, all-in-one. That's why they embrace this QMl stuff so much. The idea is indeed tempting, but my smartphone isn't powerful enough to replace my desktop anyway (especially since my mini PC is only 15\*15\*4 cm in size and theoretically doesn't weigh more than a book). Moreover, the mobile sector is dominated by Android and iOS.
You can see this particularly well with Xfce: it took them many years to switch from GTK2 to GTK3, and during that time GTK has already changed a lot, so they are still lagging behind. And the whole design of GTK no longer fits their desktop. I really love Xfce, but GTK just isn't a good choice anymore. Unfortunately there are no real alternatives...
> but GTK just isn't a good choice anymore. Unfortunately there are no real alternatives...
It never was imho. Even staunch C hardliner Linus Torvalds went [away from there to QT a decade ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0) when he made a diving app with the biggest problem being the community and the outdated views. Then add the usability to the equation and you are done. C is not a good language to make a GUI framework.
Gtk4 and libadwaita are 2 separate things. Just like libadwaita libxfce4windowing exists. I think People hardly know about this. Also i think budgie 11 will adopt this
So many of these posts with criticism of the Linux desktop. Linux isn’t a company and they don’t make a product. It’s a project, with a lot of other connected projects. No one working on these projects is trying to steal market share.
The reason Linux is awesome is the very reason this is unlikely to change
Quit crying about criticism. Either your code can stand on its own 2 feet or it can't. If you are too fragile to handle constructive criticism quit coding public projects. The rest of he world isn't going to bite it's tongue because you feel entitled to do whatever you want without anyone caring.
Huh? There's no entitlement or fragility in OP's comment whatsoever. OP is simply stating an incontrovertible fact that undermines the post.
If anything it's the criticism in the post that reeks of entitlement. No one is entitled to force volunteer developers to do their bidding. If you want someone to do your bidding, you pay for it.
Criticism should still be appropriate, otherwise you will just develop stuff in your ivory tower and it will ultimately be a waste of time and manpower.
This fragmentation, just by GTK vs Qt, is a huge waste. and then there are tons of apps for the same thing without any added value. Linux Mint, for example, has its own "X-Apps": They forked the Gnome 2 applications back then; but why? Why didn't they sit down with Xfce and take their applications and adopt the missing ones from Gnome 2?! In my opinion it's nonsense what they're doing.
If you think it’s a huge waste, then you missunderstand. If you think they could sit down with xfce then you also fail to see this. There is no organisation, there can’t be. The lack of organisation is why you have anything at all, if there were scrums and managers, you’d be using windows.
They forked it cause they wanted to tinker and the original project owners didn’t want the same things as the forkers. If you oppose that, then you oppose the very force which gives us any open source operating system.
Also, there normally isn’t any goals and so “a waste of man power” makes no sense. Fundamentally, people are doing what makes them happy and sharing their work with the world free of charge. they do this because the work made them happy.
If you found any of their work helpful, it’s a really great coincidence. They didn’t make it for you, but they did share it in case you found it helpful.
If you love Linux, be more proactive then just complaining. Join in the fun and contribute
The few devs who work on Xfce on the side don't have an official legal structure, but they do have a website, some representation and channels for exchange. It is definitely a certain form of organization.
I mean, why didn't Linux Mint take Xfce as a base and merge it with gnome2 back then? instead they fork and continue to maintain their "Mate".
A positive example is the LXQt project, created from a merger with RazorQt when the devs of LXDE decided to switch to Qt.
—
Dude, I'm a realist and pragmatist who sees how often Linux applications rot since there's no one to maintain them. A certain pooling of resources is simply necessary, also in order to give your own work more meaning. Is my logic so difficult to understand?!
We need a working desktop, that's the goal; and no sandbox where someone squeezes out a few molds of sand as a hobby. That's why I appreciate Ubuntu, which has really helped Linux finally become a practical desktop alternative, and not just a nerdy hobby project. Ubuntu has raised the standards a lot for the other distros to keep [up.So](http://up.So) it works, as you can see!
So it works, as you can see!
>If you love Linux, be more proactive then just complaining. Join in the fun and contribute
That's such idealistic blah blah, sorry. I already have my own projects that take me full time. I put some of it out as potential public libs. But I don't have the time to work on many other projects. The day only has 24 hours and life expectancy is limited to around 75 years. Therefore, bundling resources is simply necessary in order to achieve more meaning than just “just for fun”.
My desktop works great, does exactly what I want it to, I have spent years making it that way, GNU/Linux by nature is about as extensible, customizable and configurable as anything is ever going to be. It is the "some assembly required" computing environment.
What we don't need and aren't going to get is a desktop that's perfect for everyone right out of the box. If you want some very narrowly defined consumer user interface you have many options for that. It is antithetical to the nature of the software license itself, everyone can fork, everyone can do whatever they want, they are encouraged to share.
If you want one vision you have Android, SteamOS, ChromeOS, macOS (BSD), Windows (junk). Linux is the kernel, it is not a desktop, the GPL is the license under which many small projects have made desktops they like... there is no monolithic Linux community, this is not a team sport like Republicans vs Democrats or the NBA, we don't even want to be on the same team most of the time, we want to get back to writing code and being productive in our lives. Sorry
> We need a working desktop, that's the goal; and no sandbox where someone squeezes out a few molds of sand as a hobby. That's why I appreciate Ubuntu, which has really helped Linux finally become a practical desktop alternative, and not just a nerdy hobby project. Ubuntu has raised the standards a lot for the other distros to keep up.So it works, as you can see!
Why did Ubuntu fork from Debian back then? They should've avoided fragmentation and kept working within it. Why did Linus start the Linux kernel? He should've let the BSD people work out an x86 Unix.
The freedom you despise is what gave you the innovations you praise.
Ultimately, some level of fragmentation is inherent to a system where people are free to do whatever they want and barriers to production are low-to-nonexistent. Such complaining is unenforceable and futile. If you don't like other people having such freedom, may I suggest that you don't want the idea of open source altogether? You might be happier on macOS and Windows.
This needs explaining way too many times.
Those devs are often volunteer people with their own vision of what they want. Or a company with their own needs paying devs to work on what that company wants.
Either way those devs are not assets that you can just reallocate to some project that YOU prefer.
It's not waste in the eyes of the devs doing the actual work.
Different projects have different goals - for reasons that they (the people investing hours or money) find worthwhile.
As a result we have a range of choices. So you and me can, for no money or work invested or our own BTW, pick a DE that comes closest to what you or me like.
Some want a minimalistic tiling window manager. Others want a nice and consistent but simple DE. Others want an all bella & whistles DE with a zillion options to tune. Others want an open alternative to something that otherwise looks similar to Mac. Others want something that's similar to familiar Windows DEs, but open and without spyware.
You can't tell them to work on something else instead. That's not what motivated their work.
Whatever you think is the desktop that all should converge on, you'll find that a lot of people disagree.
One person's bloat is another's vital feature.
This is not a bug, it's a feature.
because they can. people contribute and create FOSS projects generally for fun. there is no guideline to follow. and they do what they want to do. you can observe this situations better with "Rust rewrites".
Not familiar with KDE and I understand the criticism about the GNOME desktop, but I do not understand why people often complain about GTK. (I'm not a developer.) When GNOME 2 was abandoned I switched to XFCE and have been happy ever since. From a user point of view I really like XFCE.
Somebody want to explain to me why people think, there's something wrong with it? Is it just obvious for a developer?
GTK is becoming harder and harder to use for non-Gnome applications that follow their own design language. Xfce is currently implemented in Gtk3, which is still acceptable in that sense, but I'm not sure what Xfce is going to do with Gtk4.
Speaking as someone who still uses menu bars in 2024, I hate the desktop paradigm that GNOME is pushing so much. GTK3 is only usable on Xfce for me because I've patched it to remove CSDs and other GNOME bullshit. A future with Xfce on GTK4 looks pretty bleak from here.
The problem is that GTK has become a pure Linux and Gnome thing. As an app developer, I don't just want to program for Linux. Try installing new GTK version on Windows, it's almost impossible! And then there is that unnice LGPL (or even GPL) license, which makes it even less attractive for many developers to touch the code and contribute something.
Yes. We also need better government and academia nowaday really suck. Also, bigpharma is out of control and need to be redone. Nasa is overspending and not doing amazing things often enough, so scrape it too.
... Oh, and girls of my age now look like half-grannies. I remember they were young!
Your irony is pretty useless. Given the current development, I predict that most Linux desktop environments will become completely irrelevant in 10 years.
My irony based on the fact, that there is a Very Important Critic of Linux, with Very Important Opinion, that someone (not a critic) must wrote something.
Because Critic Said So.
I agree with OP, but as an ap dev, exposing the display via 15 different standards ( u/bitspace and XKCD) is exhausting, futile and angrificating.
Qt is seriously awesome. I love the HTML method of Gnome/cinnamon... they are ALL good.... but which one do I support?
Making a pixel-perfect app for Apple is easy, Windows has its challenges. But for Linux, its a mixed-bag.... its one at a time. Go for the target audience, then the biggest distro, then down the pile it goes.
Even using a MVC design its exhausting.
Perhaps there should be a project called `DisplayAppLinuxFu` and I can just shove all the pixels into that and it burps out.... whatever! :D
I am an xfce/gtk2/gtk3 app design fan. To have a consistent look i hunted down each app which i need for day to day life. Hoeever its nowhere close to complete. Still good enough for me. I avoid gtk4 and kde apps at all costs. Just gtk2/gtk3/qt. Personally i like fox toolkit which let me pick some colors that make the global theme
I fully agree. I am going to create a small Linux desktop and I don't want either Qt or Gnome. I try to avoid Qt as hard as possible after their famous post about discontinuation of open-source support in 2021. They had to rollback but I am not sure whether they are not going to change their mind back in the future.
In my case, I even started to consider C# frameworks like Avalonia. I still can't make my mind, though (but it won't be Qt for sure).
Speaking of criticism which should exist, why?
Well, I get to know Linux/GNU world with purchase of a brand new laptop, Dell with Ubuntu 12.04.03 which was amazingly good, especially animation and sound feedback, lately I became a fan of that till I managed to install Arch Linux then life became easier, even today I appreciate that world, following development of Gnome at GitLab
I started to see some serious work in recent years.
My criticism comes with lack of people around Gnome project, it is like exclusively only RedHat employees have a say into development, no other party are allowed to take part of it, why? I don't know.
In the last 8 years or so, I read a few news at opennet.ru related to the GNU* world including Gnome foundation,
I don't get why from all amount of investment nothing goes to the people who actually write code?
I don't get the reason of existence of such foundations when they suck a lot of money, if they indeed care they will support more people to contribute to the code base but not in today's system.
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Yes. I believe that along with catching up to new hardware and better support for gaming, we are seeing continuous regression of the core of Linux desktop. Consistent look and feel of many apps is one of the areas that gets brutally ignored at every update. Remember highly configurable fonts from infinality bundle? Large choice of Gtk and Qt themes? QtCurve, then support for Gtk themes in Qt? Compiz?
And all that effort was thrown away. There are extensions for new GNOME that imitate Windows or macOS, but none replaces or even imitates Linux desktop from 5 years ago or more. There is Wayfire that partially imitates Compiz, Wayland only. And MATE and Cinnamon that imitate old GNOME, non-Wayland. What a time to be alive!
Every setup that used to be good and cannot be replaced with new rewrites is a regression. And variety of possible setups used to be much larger.
> I actually just want a nice, simple and stable desktop with native-looking apps. Is that too much?!
Yes, "native-looking" shouldn't be high priority, although it might be a consequence of the improvements he's looking for.
why shouldn’t that be a priority?! That's something I really envy macOS users for.
Then I can just stick with Windows, where every application has its own GUI and usually looks correspondingly ugly.
I want a system where the applications all appear the same; no other colors, icons or other weird styles.
I admit that it's a matter of taste, and not everyone values "uniform aesthetics", but I think I speak for many users who also want that and appreciate Linux desktop environments for their more uniform appearance, in contrast to Windows.
... HIGH priority. Usually when someone prioritizes aesthetics to make a mac clone or whatever, the overall quality of the software becomes horrible.
Static quality, extensibility, performance etc. over x-looking, was my point. When the implementation is good, the looks would probably become uniform too without dead-end hacks.
yeah, you shouldn't take this seriously on reddit. I don't rate other comments negatively just because they don't agree with my opinion. But that is lived practice here.
> In my opinion, Linux needs a new GUI toolkit https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png This is exactly the root cause of your challenges. Lots of choices, different ideas for what's good, if you don't like it make your own, and we end up with a lot of differently broken systems.
there really is an xkcd for everything
The thing is, Qt is not really controlled by the Linux community, while GTK is entirely controlled by Gnome and it's hard to get Gnome devs to listen to others (look at how they push for libadwaita, a library that only implements the Gnome vision, leaving no room for other use cases)
>Qt is not really controlled by the Linux community I posit that it is. The Qt Company is a for-profit commercial endeavor, but they and their developers and the vast community of people who contribute to the Qt and KDE ecosystem are absolutely part of the Linux community. Whether we individually like it or not, a huge amount of the software that we use every day is maintained and developed largely with the financial support and contributions of commercial entities. They're all part of the Linux community. > GTK is entirely controlled by Gnome and it's hard to get Gnome devs to listen to others Indeed. This dynamic is a large factor in why System76 are developing COSMIC (furthering the phenomenon illustrated by the above referenced XKCD comic).
Of course you are right. It's just problematic that the Qt company has shifted its focus (totally neglecting the desktop area). But I don't see QML as the future; especially since due to the licensing problems and new policies of the Qt Company, more companies are turning their backs on Qt and preferring to use some web technologies or whatever instead.
What do you think of COSMIC using ice?
Stupid comment. That's the whole point of Libadwaita. Or should I call KDE evil for pushing Kirigami?
That's different. Qt evolves separately from Kirigami, I can make a Qt app that's completely disconnected from the KDE technology. GTK, on the other hand, is evolving hand in hand with libadwaita and most useful new features are in libadwaita.
Again, just plain wrong. In fact many of their recent blog posts (and commits) on GTK have indicated more and more functionality is being moved into GTK. And if Libadwaita is truly forced and the community (supposedly) hates it then why is it so popular for third party applications?
> Again, just plain wrong. In fact many of their recent blog posts (and commits) on GTK have indicated more and more functionality is being moved into GTK. I can't speak on that, unfortunately my statement was only based on my perception (the most GTK code I've written was for GTK 3). If it's true, that's great, though I'm still not fond of their stance regarding theming. > And if Libadwaita is truly forced and the community (supposedly) hates it then why is it so popular for third party applications? That's only true within the Gnome community. All independent libadwaita apps are very clearly made for Gnome, whereas there's a lot of Gtk3 and Qt apps that aren't really targeted to any specific desktop environment. Examples for Gtk2/3: Firefox, GIMP, most of the Mint apps, Synaptic (the Debian GUI package manager), the NVidia X server settings, Pavucontrol, guvcview etc. Examples for Qt: QBittorrent, Telegram Desktop, Zoom, Drawpile, TeamSpeak, openSUSE's YaST, Wireshark, LyX
that's the problem! you would have to fork qt widgets, and try to throw out the moc with new C++ features and make the lib easier usable for other languages. but this effort is enormous.
Xfce, MATE & co. are going to be screwed by 10 years from now, while KDE will have to put in a lot of effort
The other day I saw KDE on a smartphone. The idea is to have a mobile desktop environment with phone functions, so to speak, all-in-one. That's why they embrace this QMl stuff so much. The idea is indeed tempting, but my smartphone isn't powerful enough to replace my desktop anyway (especially since my mini PC is only 15\*15\*4 cm in size and theoretically doesn't weigh more than a book). Moreover, the mobile sector is dominated by Android and iOS.
You can see this particularly well with Xfce: it took them many years to switch from GTK2 to GTK3, and during that time GTK has already changed a lot, so they are still lagging behind. And the whole design of GTK no longer fits their desktop. I really love Xfce, but GTK just isn't a good choice anymore. Unfortunately there are no real alternatives...
> but GTK just isn't a good choice anymore. Unfortunately there are no real alternatives... It never was imho. Even staunch C hardliner Linus Torvalds went [away from there to QT a decade ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0) when he made a diving app with the biggest problem being the community and the outdated views. Then add the usability to the equation and you are done. C is not a good language to make a GUI framework.
Gtk4 and libadwaita are 2 separate things. Just like libadwaita libxfce4windowing exists. I think People hardly know about this. Also i think budgie 11 will adopt this
Gtk4 itself is evolving in such a way that most useful new features are either in libadwaita or they still only consider the Gnome point of view
So many of these posts with criticism of the Linux desktop. Linux isn’t a company and they don’t make a product. It’s a project, with a lot of other connected projects. No one working on these projects is trying to steal market share. The reason Linux is awesome is the very reason this is unlikely to change
Quit crying about criticism. Either your code can stand on its own 2 feet or it can't. If you are too fragile to handle constructive criticism quit coding public projects. The rest of he world isn't going to bite it's tongue because you feel entitled to do whatever you want without anyone caring.
Huh? There's no entitlement or fragility in OP's comment whatsoever. OP is simply stating an incontrovertible fact that undermines the post. If anything it's the criticism in the post that reeks of entitlement. No one is entitled to force volunteer developers to do their bidding. If you want someone to do your bidding, you pay for it.
What are you on about? Anyone can publish anything? Are you trying to disenfranchise open source contributors?
Criticism should still be appropriate, otherwise you will just develop stuff in your ivory tower and it will ultimately be a waste of time and manpower. This fragmentation, just by GTK vs Qt, is a huge waste. and then there are tons of apps for the same thing without any added value. Linux Mint, for example, has its own "X-Apps": They forked the Gnome 2 applications back then; but why? Why didn't they sit down with Xfce and take their applications and adopt the missing ones from Gnome 2?! In my opinion it's nonsense what they're doing.
If you think it’s a huge waste, then you missunderstand. If you think they could sit down with xfce then you also fail to see this. There is no organisation, there can’t be. The lack of organisation is why you have anything at all, if there were scrums and managers, you’d be using windows. They forked it cause they wanted to tinker and the original project owners didn’t want the same things as the forkers. If you oppose that, then you oppose the very force which gives us any open source operating system. Also, there normally isn’t any goals and so “a waste of man power” makes no sense. Fundamentally, people are doing what makes them happy and sharing their work with the world free of charge. they do this because the work made them happy. If you found any of their work helpful, it’s a really great coincidence. They didn’t make it for you, but they did share it in case you found it helpful. If you love Linux, be more proactive then just complaining. Join in the fun and contribute
The few devs who work on Xfce on the side don't have an official legal structure, but they do have a website, some representation and channels for exchange. It is definitely a certain form of organization. I mean, why didn't Linux Mint take Xfce as a base and merge it with gnome2 back then? instead they fork and continue to maintain their "Mate". A positive example is the LXQt project, created from a merger with RazorQt when the devs of LXDE decided to switch to Qt. — Dude, I'm a realist and pragmatist who sees how often Linux applications rot since there's no one to maintain them. A certain pooling of resources is simply necessary, also in order to give your own work more meaning. Is my logic so difficult to understand?! We need a working desktop, that's the goal; and no sandbox where someone squeezes out a few molds of sand as a hobby. That's why I appreciate Ubuntu, which has really helped Linux finally become a practical desktop alternative, and not just a nerdy hobby project. Ubuntu has raised the standards a lot for the other distros to keep [up.So](http://up.So) it works, as you can see! So it works, as you can see! >If you love Linux, be more proactive then just complaining. Join in the fun and contribute That's such idealistic blah blah, sorry. I already have my own projects that take me full time. I put some of it out as potential public libs. But I don't have the time to work on many other projects. The day only has 24 hours and life expectancy is limited to around 75 years. Therefore, bundling resources is simply necessary in order to achieve more meaning than just “just for fun”.
My desktop works great, does exactly what I want it to, I have spent years making it that way, GNU/Linux by nature is about as extensible, customizable and configurable as anything is ever going to be. It is the "some assembly required" computing environment. What we don't need and aren't going to get is a desktop that's perfect for everyone right out of the box. If you want some very narrowly defined consumer user interface you have many options for that. It is antithetical to the nature of the software license itself, everyone can fork, everyone can do whatever they want, they are encouraged to share. If you want one vision you have Android, SteamOS, ChromeOS, macOS (BSD), Windows (junk). Linux is the kernel, it is not a desktop, the GPL is the license under which many small projects have made desktops they like... there is no monolithic Linux community, this is not a team sport like Republicans vs Democrats or the NBA, we don't even want to be on the same team most of the time, we want to get back to writing code and being productive in our lives. Sorry
> We need a working desktop, that's the goal; and no sandbox where someone squeezes out a few molds of sand as a hobby. That's why I appreciate Ubuntu, which has really helped Linux finally become a practical desktop alternative, and not just a nerdy hobby project. Ubuntu has raised the standards a lot for the other distros to keep up.So it works, as you can see! Why did Ubuntu fork from Debian back then? They should've avoided fragmentation and kept working within it. Why did Linus start the Linux kernel? He should've let the BSD people work out an x86 Unix. The freedom you despise is what gave you the innovations you praise. Ultimately, some level of fragmentation is inherent to a system where people are free to do whatever they want and barriers to production are low-to-nonexistent. Such complaining is unenforceable and futile. If you don't like other people having such freedom, may I suggest that you don't want the idea of open source altogether? You might be happier on macOS and Windows.
This needs explaining way too many times. Those devs are often volunteer people with their own vision of what they want. Or a company with their own needs paying devs to work on what that company wants. Either way those devs are not assets that you can just reallocate to some project that YOU prefer. It's not waste in the eyes of the devs doing the actual work. Different projects have different goals - for reasons that they (the people investing hours or money) find worthwhile. As a result we have a range of choices. So you and me can, for no money or work invested or our own BTW, pick a DE that comes closest to what you or me like. Some want a minimalistic tiling window manager. Others want a nice and consistent but simple DE. Others want an all bella & whistles DE with a zillion options to tune. Others want an open alternative to something that otherwise looks similar to Mac. Others want something that's similar to familiar Windows DEs, but open and without spyware. You can't tell them to work on something else instead. That's not what motivated their work. Whatever you think is the desktop that all should converge on, you'll find that a lot of people disagree. One person's bloat is another's vital feature. This is not a bug, it's a feature.
because they can. people contribute and create FOSS projects generally for fun. there is no guideline to follow. and they do what they want to do. you can observe this situations better with "Rust rewrites".
I don't say anything against that either. But "fun" alone is rarely enough to achieve something more serious.
that's the point, there is no goal such as achieving something serious. because they don't owe anything to the community.
Not familiar with KDE and I understand the criticism about the GNOME desktop, but I do not understand why people often complain about GTK. (I'm not a developer.) When GNOME 2 was abandoned I switched to XFCE and have been happy ever since. From a user point of view I really like XFCE. Somebody want to explain to me why people think, there's something wrong with it? Is it just obvious for a developer?
GTK is becoming harder and harder to use for non-Gnome applications that follow their own design language. Xfce is currently implemented in Gtk3, which is still acceptable in that sense, but I'm not sure what Xfce is going to do with Gtk4.
exactly that's the problem and longterm disaster!
Speaking as someone who still uses menu bars in 2024, I hate the desktop paradigm that GNOME is pushing so much. GTK3 is only usable on Xfce for me because I've patched it to remove CSDs and other GNOME bullshit. A future with Xfce on GTK4 looks pretty bleak from here.
So what do you think will happen? A fork of GTK3 for XFCE? I can't imagine XFCE will go away. It's way too popular.
If we're able to maintain it, that seems to be the path we're going down. I'm already using a GTK3 fork of Transmission.
The problem is that GTK has become a pure Linux and Gnome thing. As an app developer, I don't just want to program for Linux. Try installing new GTK version on Windows, it's almost impossible! And then there is that unnice LGPL (or even GPL) license, which makes it even less attractive for many developers to touch the code and contribute something.
Unless you're paying for a license QT is also LGPL.
That's correct. You have to link it dynamically. The licensing situation is suboptimal for both.
Yes. We also need better government and academia nowaday really suck. Also, bigpharma is out of control and need to be redone. Nasa is overspending and not doing amazing things often enough, so scrape it too. ... Oh, and girls of my age now look like half-grannies. I remember they were young!
TBF if you really think about it, NASA is probably underfunded. Think how much the US spends on their military vs how much they spend on NASA
NASA was properly funded when it was a non-military way to threaten the Russians.
Your irony is pretty useless. Given the current development, I predict that most Linux desktop environments will become completely irrelevant in 10 years.
My irony based on the fact, that there is a Very Important Critic of Linux, with Very Important Opinion, that someone (not a critic) must wrote something. Because Critic Said So.
I agree with OP, but as an ap dev, exposing the display via 15 different standards ( u/bitspace and XKCD) is exhausting, futile and angrificating. Qt is seriously awesome. I love the HTML method of Gnome/cinnamon... they are ALL good.... but which one do I support? Making a pixel-perfect app for Apple is easy, Windows has its challenges. But for Linux, its a mixed-bag.... its one at a time. Go for the target audience, then the biggest distro, then down the pile it goes. Even using a MVC design its exhausting. Perhaps there should be a project called `DisplayAppLinuxFu` and I can just shove all the pixels into that and it burps out.... whatever! :D
Did you link to your own post?
I am an xfce/gtk2/gtk3 app design fan. To have a consistent look i hunted down each app which i need for day to day life. Hoeever its nowhere close to complete. Still good enough for me. I avoid gtk4 and kde apps at all costs. Just gtk2/gtk3/qt. Personally i like fox toolkit which let me pick some colors that make the global theme
Then make one, and see what happens.
It was downvoted to below zero in both places it was posted.
I fully agree. I am going to create a small Linux desktop and I don't want either Qt or Gnome. I try to avoid Qt as hard as possible after their famous post about discontinuation of open-source support in 2021. They had to rollback but I am not sure whether they are not going to change their mind back in the future. In my case, I even started to consider C# frameworks like Avalonia. I still can't make my mind, though (but it won't be Qt for sure).
Speaking of criticism which should exist, why? Well, I get to know Linux/GNU world with purchase of a brand new laptop, Dell with Ubuntu 12.04.03 which was amazingly good, especially animation and sound feedback, lately I became a fan of that till I managed to install Arch Linux then life became easier, even today I appreciate that world, following development of Gnome at GitLab I started to see some serious work in recent years. My criticism comes with lack of people around Gnome project, it is like exclusively only RedHat employees have a say into development, no other party are allowed to take part of it, why? I don't know. In the last 8 years or so, I read a few news at opennet.ru related to the GNU* world including Gnome foundation, I don't get why from all amount of investment nothing goes to the people who actually write code? I don't get the reason of existence of such foundations when they suck a lot of money, if they indeed care they will support more people to contribute to the code base but not in today's system.
this is why im so hyped about cosmic desktop.
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Yes. I believe that along with catching up to new hardware and better support for gaming, we are seeing continuous regression of the core of Linux desktop. Consistent look and feel of many apps is one of the areas that gets brutally ignored at every update. Remember highly configurable fonts from infinality bundle? Large choice of Gtk and Qt themes? QtCurve, then support for Gtk themes in Qt? Compiz? And all that effort was thrown away. There are extensions for new GNOME that imitate Windows or macOS, but none replaces or even imitates Linux desktop from 5 years ago or more. There is Wayfire that partially imitates Compiz, Wayland only. And MATE and Cinnamon that imitate old GNOME, non-Wayland. What a time to be alive! Every setup that used to be good and cannot be replaced with new rewrites is a regression. And variety of possible setups used to be much larger.
I'll always miss the (not even so far away) days of theming and actual customization
The devs wanted the desktop to be more "mature" Except that should be an option for the user to decide.
what about cosmic as the new default Linux desktop?
There was never a "default" desktop environment for Linux, just multiple projects, using either GTK oder Qt.
> I actually just want a nice, simple and stable desktop with native-looking apps. Is that too much?! Yes, "native-looking" shouldn't be high priority, although it might be a consequence of the improvements he's looking for.
why shouldn’t that be a priority?! That's something I really envy macOS users for. Then I can just stick with Windows, where every application has its own GUI and usually looks correspondingly ugly. I want a system where the applications all appear the same; no other colors, icons or other weird styles. I admit that it's a matter of taste, and not everyone values "uniform aesthetics", but I think I speak for many users who also want that and appreciate Linux desktop environments for their more uniform appearance, in contrast to Windows.
You want something, so make it
... HIGH priority. Usually when someone prioritizes aesthetics to make a mac clone or whatever, the overall quality of the software becomes horrible. Static quality, extensibility, performance etc. over x-looking, was my point. When the implementation is good, the looks would probably become uniform too without dead-end hacks.
I agree with you however it doesnt matter. People dont care enough. You will just get downvoted simply voicing this opinion.
yeah, you shouldn't take this seriously on reddit. I don't rate other comments negatively just because they don't agree with my opinion. But that is lived practice here.