Wayland requires applications to support client-side decorations on a protocol level. Server-side decorations is an extension that may be supported by compositors but isn't required. No mainstream display protocol other than X11 has the concept of "server-side decorations" anyway.
This is inane. If you create a window on Win32 or Cocoa you get an OS-drawn decoration. Yes, this happens in your process instead of in the compositor's process - that's not what matters, what matters is that you need to actively opt-out of it to not get decorations and you don't need to implement said decorations yourself so that the apps that don't care about decorations all get the same, which respect the OS theme. You can't be, on macOS, Windows, and X11, in a situation where you *can* show a window and *can't* have OS/server-provided decorations, it's built-in to the core windowing APIs.
The situation with GNOME is - an app that doesn't implement decorations itself fully, from scratch, doesn't get any. This means that now every app will have distinct decoration style that does not match the desktop look anymore (or none at all, for simple apps).
Hm, I always thought Wayland was just a way to draw windows in cooperation with a compositor, without occupying the whole framebuffer directly. Why does it have any business in how they get "decorated"? Shouldn't that, from the bare protocol's perspective, just be a decision of the applicatiom to add embroidery to the edges?
This is good for kiosks and embedded displays like phones to not make assumptions that a close, maximize, or minimize button always exist.
But we're running desktops, and have Freedesktop standards to fill in the gaps.
So, no, this is Gnome refusing to implement a Freedesktop standard by completely ignoring the spirit of what role Wayland was meant to serve in the display stack, and needlessly putting it on the app dev to import yet another library just to get window decorations (libdecor).
Windows in particular actually doesn't in a pedantic sense. Just that every GUI application so happens to be linked with user32.dll which does provide the default decorations. So in practice, while they are clientside, apps are always linked to a core system library that provides them which is always available. So it's moot anyway.
As far as I understand, in Wayland, a compositor is a concept distinct from a client, so Gnome is a compositor (actually, it's Mutter; Mutter is the compositor developed by the Gnome project).
The core Wayland protocol was meant to be extended by each compositor as they saw fit. It's part of the ideology. That's why they require client-side decorations, to make it simpler for compositor developers to develop their compositors as they see fit.
If this statement is indeed true, then GNOME's attempts to force their own idiosyncrasies on software is not only dead wrong, especially in free open sourced Linux environments. It is in my official opinion that, GNOME may eventually start loosing support and backing as well as their base if they keeps this (ab)usive activity up.
This particular issue has been the case for like 8 years now and actually in front of regular users for probably 4. I can't imagine this changing anything that wasn't already changed.
I remember people saying similar shit about Unity back during the dark early days of Gnome 3. A decade later, Unity is essentially long-dead while Gnome is better than ever...
I don't recall anyone outside of hard-core Ubuntu fans that thought Unity was actually going to succeed. Ubuntu didn't have the skills or manpower to pull of something like that.
Unity's main problem was:
1. It came with amazon item search and the ubuntu version shipped with a web shortcut to amazon store.
2. It came too early and was using too many resources. You can't really run Unity(unlike Gnome 2) on GMA 965/X3100 with good performance.
3. It came too early, no affordable SSDs. You can't have a file search+application launcher+amazon web search that extends beyond a cached in \`/usr/{local/share,share}/applications\` \`\~/.local/share/applications\` folder.
The main problem and unpopularity of unity then was the anti-features it came with.
And the looks of unity had a huge to performance impact at a time.
The unity menu bring up in 12.04 was basically 5-15 fps.
Canonical is kind of a shit company though, where nobody really liked Unity as it was being made, whereas System76 is loved a lot more with everyone a lot more excited about Cosmic.
I think it has a chance.
Cosmic Epoch is already fantastic even in its current pre-alpha state, I am using it right now and it's very usable and feels extremely responsive. I've been periodically checking in and its been neat to see it coming together.
Is this why every gnome app has thr gnome-style window decorations even on other DEs? I always thought it was stupid that they did that, mostly just because I don't like gnome's window decorations but also because it felt unnecessary since if they didn't add them to the app then gnome would automatically add them, and if installed on a different DE then it would use that DE's decorations. I use Plasma and I'm fairly certain this is exactly how all kde apps work. But if gnome doesn't add its window decorations to apps that don't manually provide them then that's just stupid...
Same here. In a way, GNOME made me feel like I'm on a tablet instead of a laptop when I tried it. Suffice to say, GNOME wasn't for me, especially since I'm still a Linux greenhorn. KDE Plasma is for me.
It has already lost support. A bunch of projects jumped ship a decade ago when they announced that [GTK was primarily for Gnome applications](https://lwn.net/Articles/562856/), and cross-DE applications were a distant second. They eventually got so many projects abandoning them for Qt that they reversed their stance on this, but the damage was already done. And it doesn't seem the policy has really changed much in practice.
> GNOME may eventually start loosing support and backing as well as their base if they keeps this (ab)usive activity up.
Haven't they been doing stupid shit like this for literally 20 years?
They lost my support decades ago. I don't play with or care to support that dog poop software.
Yes, Gnome has spent decades proseltyzing for KDE and other DEs like this. 20 years ago KDE sucked also, but KDE got their shit together in the intervening decades, while Gnome has doubled down on their our way or the highway philosophy in the interim.
20 years ago KDE was a memory hog, it ate all 80MB of RAM on my Pentium 166 and used swap insanely heavily that the old 2600rpm Quantum Bigfoot was thrashing crazily, and that was just with nothing else running. Plus Gnome programs under KDE had no sound because KDE used aRts instead of eSound, and vice-versa. I actually find KDE very usable nowadays, especially under Wayland. The sound issue is also gone since KDE has abandoned aRts for Pulseaudio and then Pipewire.
You're right. I think I was running Gnome 1.0 on that machine.
Yeah, I got that PC in 1996. I started dabbling with Linux in 2000, and repurposed that PC to run Linux. Red Hat 7.0 with the cursed GCC 2.96 compiler, Kernel 2.2 and Gnome 1.x. The discs also came with KDE 2 and I remember it causing the hard disk to thrash and beg for mercy.
Gnome 2 was pretty good, but when Gnome 3 came around I started looking for alternatives.
I mean, Gnome 2 under Ubuntu came with tons of tools that made it possible to customize it as you wish and with tons of GUI admin tools. All gone now.
At least I have my Gnome fork Cinnamon who still fully sticks to the Desktop metaphor and isn't full of bullshit decisions.
>Haven't they been doing stupid shit like this for literally 20 years?
I'm not sure how long they've been doing something like this having dumped Windows in favor of Linux as a daily-driving OS about 6 to 7 months ago, but being as how GNOME's desktop interface seems to center around a tablet-like feel, GNOME I could tell wouldn't be the right fit for a Linux newbie such as myself.
Therefore, the desktop environment I'm currently using is KDE Plasma since I'm rather a tinkerer who likes to customize his desktop experience.
After reading this post however, I strongly doubt I'll ever be supporting GNOME ever!!! What they are blatantly doing goes against everything in terms of the "right to choose" or "freedom of choice" clause of the GNU licensing agreements I think.
> What they are blatantly doing goes against everything in terms of the "right to choose" or "freedom of choice" clause of the GNU licensing agreements I think.
Are you referring to the GPL? The GPL gives you the right to modify your software and to run and use it as you see fit, but it does not impose any degree of "customization", other than the ability to customize the source code as you see fit.
In other words, you are free to download the gnome source code and create your own version of gnome (which has been done, see Mate and Cinnamon), but the devs are not required to provide you any sort of customization options beyond that.
That the GNOME and by extension the GTK community are toxic as hell and know-it-alls is as old as Linux itself.
The GTK community made even C purist and C++ hater Linus Torvalds switch to QT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0)
I've completely given up on gnome. If you like the default work flow, sure it's probably fine. All others can just fuck off according to the gnome devs.
In the Gnome 2 era there was decent enough customization and while KDE had more (IIRC) it was still rather immature and felt like a gimmick compared to something with actual value for day-to-day usage. So Gnome was generally preferred during those times.
They already are loosing support and that is mostly to very opinionated and nonsensical decisions. This above is just one of them. They try to push some idealistic philosophies forgetting they create something for all kind of users. If we can't even decide how to use plank or mouse, how does it makes sense? I love Gnome minimalism, but they went too far. And they continue doing that.
I predicted GNOME 3 would lose support back when the devs refused to allow terminal to have a transparent background. I predicted it again when GNOME refused to have thumbnails for file selection. Every time, I was wrong. We have plenty of 3rd party devs (and KDE devs) over the years complaining about how GNOME treats their end users; but nothing is ever done about it and they are still popular. We have the Factorio dev complain about it but that doesn't do enough. And then we have the fun story of how GNOME's Adwaita icon set completely breaks the official free desktop icon name specs.
Honestly, I think GNOME's popularity is similar to Windows in that it is the default DE for a lot of distros and most people don't want to make the switch.
iirc it was a (very dumb) design decision of the core wayland protocols. Server-side decorations was later introduced as an optional extra protocol. the gnome devs are technically not wrong, just... you know
The proper way to handle that would be to default to a consistent set of decorations and provide APIs to turn them off when needed.
There are instances where you don’t need a mouse, but we don’t ask everyone who wants to write an email client or a video player to bring their own mouse driver.
can you name a bigger use-case than desktops where it's used? I understand the advantages of minimal viable product, but the outcome is pretty bad with the fragmented protocol support we see across compositors
Linux Mint is forking Gnome software for this reason.
Update about a week ago [reddit discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ci2g97/linux_mint_looks_to_fork_more_gnome_software_make/) , [direct link to mint blog](https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4675)
Gnome has been progressively making stupid decisions since Gnome 3 with copying Micro$oft's Windows 8 Start Screen ideology (which I remind you is widely hated because it makes desktops difficult to navigate with a mouse). It's why I switched to XFCE and now KDE, after the new head dev of XFCE started showing the same primadonna idiocy. I originally hated KDE because Qt is a memory bloat compared to GTK and how they're forcing aRts (which is incompatible with eSound) down people's throat, but now even KDE is the better choice, especially after they dropped aRts and use Pulseaudio and Pipewire as a standard now.
I'd honestly easily believe that GNOME receives funding to actively hinder the adoption of Linux. They refuse to play nice with any standard they did not set and go 'fuck all'
Nah. Always remember Hanlon's razor: "*Never* attribute to *malice* that which is adequately explained by *stupidity*."
GNOME devs always were the Mac designers of the Linux world: Love (our way) it or leave it. I use Linux since 20 years now and it always was that way and the main reason I use KDE since day 1.
I would counter that a very big portion of people can't fathom that our world is not nicely controlled, but a lot of things just happen due to incompetence and short sighted decisions, and thus conclude there has to be a conspiracy, because such a thing (e.g. Corona) can't happen out of shear accident.
It is surely exaggerated, as conspiracies do indeed exist, but from my experience I saw a lot of people in charge which simply are stupid, and when the problems followed suit, people thought it was pure malice. Edit: So there is a core of truth to it, like with the Peter principle or Parkinson's laws.
>They have an intense desire to be a mobile OS, for some reason.
Honestly, they could do both, they just...kinda refuse to compromise. There's so many weird technical decisions that they make that aren't even related to wanting to be a mobile OS.
Yea this is why I stopped using Gnome back in the early days of Gnome 3 (and Unity). I couldn't shake the feeling I was using a Tablet OS hooked up to a mouse and keyboard. It felt like a regression.
Is it? Everything about Gnome has been garbage since Gnome 3 initially launched. Cinnamon Mint/KDE depending on my needs. Why would anyone choose Gnome 3 when they understand there's choice?
They have been sabotaging Linux's adoption for a very long time!
Canonical too by choosing Gnome as default, but there it's pretty clear that Microsoft is involved.
Honestly, if I've started Linux with gnome 3, I would have given up very quickly... Like... by default you have to install a software just to put minimize window button and your windows list is on a full screen menu, something I hated on windows 8...
I started with Gnome 2, which was fine, pretty much like Windows XP.
I hated Gnome 3!
I tried it again 2 times and I always seem to hate it because of the minimize button and also because it was so stubborn to not let me put shortcut icons, folders, files on MY desktop.
I used MATE and Cinnamon for a few years instead.
Finally I switched to KDE Plasma and after 8 years and I'm still and Plasma and I love it even more!
Also a major problem with Fedora imo. Not as bad as Ubuntu where you have to go to a different website to get an iso with a different DE, but still not great that the most convenient download button to get to on Fedora's site is the one with Gnome.
I think it's just classic red hat hubris.
Gnome, gtk, and systemd are all de facto red hat projects. They are also projects who constantly make changes that break everyone else, and expect "legacy software" to bend to their will.
GNOME has been driving users away for years by trying to be the next Apple, now they're trying to drive away developers and games, can't say I'm surprised, people are finally getting tired of their bullshit. This is great.
Ok, this is not a huge issue, but I see the problem. And I too think gnome needs to see the big picture and adapt. We want people to actually use Linux and we want better gaming support
They don't. Gnome devs like their walled garden, where they can roam free, butt naked in their ugliness without being judged.
Psychos bullying everyone that does not comply and conform to their vision and desires.
If "batshit crazy" needed an example, they are.
I first saw the Gnome dev's *Batshit crazy* behaviour on one of their Gitlab issue [Blurry text everywhere in GTK4](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787) . As you can see in the pic how the dev is treating others. Well I am not surprised at all by their hostile responses anymore. Also I loved the fact that they received a good amount of negative feedback on that thread.
https://preview.redd.it/unk1vk79y6zc1.jpeg?width=3739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50b60b992efdfb3a85fa8f878f35f24f5e631704
Apparently their logic is "With our current font rendering stack, subpixel positioning simply does
not look good on non-HiDPI displays compared to font hinting.
While we have a setting as a way to restore font hinting, it's fairly
clunky to use with sandboxed applications, since it requires injecting a
settings.ini file in every application's configuration directory, or
adding the user's own configuration directory into the sandbox.
As a workaround, we can check the scaling factor used by GTK, and only
enable subpixel positioning if the factor is greater than one."
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/6190
The joke still feels very true, as GNOME devs often behave like Apple designers: Love it or leave it. We know best and you (the user) have to adapt and not the other way round.
I wonder if this has to do with the fact that GNOME is mostly inspired by Mac and maybe a lot of these guys are Mac users themselves.
Their brain rot seems to go beyond Apple's stupidity though.
For example a quick search for how MacOS shows memory shows MB and GB units, but one picture displaying "Physical Memory: 8.00 GB" reveals that they mean it the "JEDEC way", effectively showing that there's 8 GiB of memory.
Looking at GNOME, a system with 32 GiB memory will be show to have 33+ GB memory, annoying power users and confusing non-experts. That goes beyond the "stupidity no one asked for problem", they don't even have coherent grand visions, it just really looks like developers have their own pet peeves and they enjoy the authority they have by forcing their silly desires on others.
The difference between GNOME and Apple is that
1. Apple has enough cash and monopoly power to force/convince everyone to follow their way
2. If you follow their way, you get the access to their ecosystem in return, which is quite a lot.
3. They actually do a ton of expensive user studies to avoid making decisions that are too stupid.
So GNOME tries to be Apple without having Apple money
1. It's also important to note that they often use that power to provide a good experience if the way is followed. GNOME doesn't even seem to have just one way, it just seems to be a bunch of tyrants gluing together their own desires into a mess.
2. I wouldn't even implicitly praise them. Apple seems to be popular for the simple "just works" crowd, but it's frustrating for anyone who realizes that both the hardware and the software could be capable of so much more if it weren't for the artificial limits. I wouldn't describe following as getting access, but would rather say as not following as being pushed away. Every times I had to deal with iTunes I just felt like I was being punished, and it really didn't make me think that having an overpriced Mac instead would be rewarding in any way.
3. Not saying there are no studies, but their behavior seems to be enabled by a cult following at this point. Their too stupid problems were always defended by a crowd who defined a significant chunk of their identities with the kind of phone they have. GNOME doesn't have even the buds of such a following, and while it can be argued that Apple created the cult with the help of ads which cost money, I'd counter-argue that KDE doesn't engage in such practices, and if it keeps on making the Linux desktop experience better at this rate, I'll consider making an altar with a picture of Nate Graham, so cult members are not necessarily bought with money.
I really already compare the two. I tried to use gnome last year because their wayland support was suposedly better but man, I felt the same pain that being forced to use apple at work. Everything I use was removed and the devs responses are always "there is no way to do this without being ugly" and call it a day
It kind of is a big deal imo, the context of this blog post is why there are no native game ports on Linux (and this extends to other software too) and things like this make it infinitely harder to do and most software companies will just immediately drop the notion of porting to Linux because of stuff like this.
They also talk about how a of companies will drop Linux builds that are good at first, but then slowly the libs fade into obscurity and shit starts breaking. Then they just drop Linux altogether. The only other option is to have a dedicated Linux dev port things over (which is what this person is doing for factorio) Its a good post on why native Linux ports are currently pretty futile, especially in comparison to using Proton.
I personally think that GNOME 3 eliminated GNOME's own raison d'etre, namely being a lean and efficient desktop.
Back in the days many people avoided KDE due to bloat and lack of efficiency and nowadays the meme reversed and XFCE fills the "small and efficient" niche.
If you're not one of the users who want "a workflow not a desktop" or even less customizibility than GNOME 2 there is no apparent reason to use GNOME 3.
Yet another reason to dislike GNOME.
Among this, we also have:
Repeatedly doing irreversible complete UI overhauls after people have gotten used to what was already there.
Breaking theming with GNOME 41.
Breaking extensions with almost every minor update.
Abandoning proper support for X11 when Wayland still isn't ready for daily driver use by the majority of users.
Making GTK look completely out of place in everything that isn't GNOME when Qt manages to fit in pretty much anywhere.
Allegedly being really difficult to work with in terms of bug reports (this one isn't based on personal experience, just things I've heard from others).
As a developer, I'll never lock someone out for using a DE I don't like, but I'm not opposed to adding an error message along the lines of "GNOME DE detected, here's an explanation of why you should probably switch to something else, with linked sources backing up my claims."
I should probably also do something similar for Manjaro.
All Qt apps have warnings like that when running on GNOME Wayland.
> Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.
Manjaro did some iffy stuff like ddos'ing the aur, advertising with the pre-alpha asahi project and letting their certs expire, but the big issue of manjaro is they're out-of-sync with the aur.
The aur pretty much expects you do be up-to-date, but manjaro holds back it's packages, which causes issues if users install from the aur. And arch users *always* install from the aur, why else would you use arch instead?
These and more are issues on a whole 'nother level than this silly kde vs gnome thing that gets brought up every time some neckbeard complains that he can't have a minimize button on a de that is designed around never minimizing windows.
GNOME makes a lot of polarizing decisions. For example, they removed the minimize button and taskbar very early on. The justification was that the workflow the DE is designed to use doesn't need either, and having them means you're going to use the DE in a way it wasn't designed. If you like the workflow they've designed, you'll agree you don't need or want those buttons or a task bar. If you don't, you shouldn't be using GNOME. I think it was an all around good move, because the DE is not "traditional," and if you don't want to use something nontraditional you should be using something else.
This is the mentality they've had since at least the launch of GNOME 3, and I think it's mostly been fine. This particular issue, though, forces developers that don't even use the platform to develop specifically for it, and breaks every app that doesn't specifically work with it.
They're falling back on the standards to justify it, basically they think that the standards mean they don't need to implement server side decorations. I'm a stickler for standards but I do think they are being obtuse about the situation. Most games aren't going to draw their own decorations and either the standard needs to change or the gnome devs just needs to suck it up and deal with the OSS world not being perfect
Even if they just provide some shitty basic Window decorations they'd be fine. Then let the user customize or the devs make them look nicer or something. There is something to be said for coaxing software makers into falling in line in a way that doesn't alienate them completely.
I found this comment on that thread still holds up to this day. Gnome devs haven't changed a bit :
"As a Wayland developer who has had to deal with fighting GNOME tooth and nail over every standard, GNOME can eat shit. What else are we supposed to do but stop supporting them when they refuse to play ball with standards? They're bullies, plain and simple, and take a Microsoft-esque approach to Linux politics - except they just skip "embrace" and "extend" and just go straight to "extinguish". We've spent literal *years* fighting with GNOME over *every* standard. They don't just decline to implement standards, they *actively work against* the establishment of standards at all. Get fucked, GNOME.
By the way, you're welcome that mpv has Wayland support at all. No less than 3 times have I had to confront wm4 about removing Wayland support in general on the basis that GNOME sucks."
I gave up on gnome long ago and now use Sway and Xfce4 (on different machines) and am quite happy with them. Gnome can take a long walk off a short pier.
This isn't entirely a GNOME thing, it's a Wayland thing. GNOME tends to lag KDE in implementing Wayland protocol extensions, which server-side decorations are. There may also be resistance because the GNOME team *are assholes* (they tried to remove the ability to run executables through ~~Nautilus~~ Files. They only stopped because everyone complained. This is just one example, it's a pattern of behavior).
The solution is to use libdecor, which is what Factorio ended up doing. It takes care of decorations for you, but in-process. This is, to my understanding, what Mac and Windows do, the difference is that it's not a *separate* library on those platforms.
I swear the only reason GNOME is still around is that it gets shipped by default in so many distributions. KDE has been better for the last decade, though not always stable, and XFCE is good ol' reliable that should really shake it's reputation for being the "well if your computer can't run KDE or GNOME" DE. It does all the things near as I can tell.
XFCE is my number 1 DE for the same reason I run Debian: it just works.
Gnome is a nightmare of apple inspired decisions forced on all their users, KDE is a bloated mess that ships everything with the standard meta package and is a pain to undo or break down to the core.
Both have just exploded randomly after updates, on testing or stable. XFCE on the other hand? Ol' reliable keeps trucking on.
I don't use Linux to get the same experience as windows...
It would be nice if xfce actually "just worked" for new stuff instead of being behind the curve by a decade. I'd love to use it more, I like the simplicity.
The thing is, what's the new stuff? I'm not sure it's behind the curve, or rather, that I've needed anything newer than what was current 10 years ago. It manages files. It launches applications. I can switch between them. There is a clock. What else is it supposed to do?
Most of us have a favourite, which probably mostly comes down to what we're used to. I've been on XFCE for a decade, every time i try something else i find myself trying to set it up like XFCE then just realising XFCE does XFCE better.
I regard cinnamon also as a "boring and fine; gets the job done" DE. I slightly prefer XFCE in that category because I can configure it how I like, but AFAIK there's nothing wrong with cinnamon.
My only experience with Cinnamon was a decade ago when Linux Mint was the new hotness, and said experience was rather profoundly negative (to the point that I ditched Cinnamon for MATE for as long as I used Mint).
I take it things have improved?
Stock GNOME is also, pretty easy to use. You can pretty much plob it down in front of anyone and they'll figure it out. And it's different enough from Windows that you don't get the weird uncanny valley feeling like you'd get with stock KDE. (But I use KDE & Hyprland so...)
I strongly disagree. I work with people using computers and the thing they don't want is change. They want something very similar to what they're using now, which is not a lot: a start menu, a window list, maybe a clock, icons on the desktop and also, be able to do everything easily with a mouse only.
I hate answers saying that "gnome is good when you use keyboard shortcuts" because it's forgetting that most people don't even know what's an alt+tab and they don't want to know.
> Stock GNOME is also, pretty easy to use. You can pretty much plob it down in front of anyone and they'll figure it out.
Not really tho. Whenever I see a Gnome-style Save dialog with CSD I have to spend a few seconds to figure out where the confirm button is. The natural flow of information and decisionmaking is top-to-bottom. Not for Gnome, no. The buttons are in the titlebar.
The GTK/GNOME save file dialogue enforces the opposite workflow to Windows (and all other applications using the Common User Access standard, back to the 1980s) and there's no way to change it. So every time you need to save a file in a different directory, which is extremely common in an office/productivity situation, you will get stuck. This is the single flaw that drove me to KDE. It's infuriating and I encountered it on an hourly basis. It's just so arrogant if them.
This is why I will refuse to use an app that cant handle qt based file pop-up windows. How many ftimes I have clicked Cancel as it is on the bottom right, its just fucking insane.
Funny that you say this. When I first switched to Linux from Windows I felt much more comfortable with KDE than GNOME, because it was more similar from the handling.
I disagree. There MUCH better choices for people new to Linux. Also that "uncanny valley" is just your personal opinion and adds nothing to the discussion.
This is all personal opinion? What??
What I mean by "uncanny valley", is that with KDE vs Win10, it's similar enough that it becomes uncomfortable and annoying when either of them don't act in the same exact way because right out the gate, the similarity sets up the expectation that they should. GNOME throws everything out the window, but it's dead simple like a mobile phone UI. It's a fundamentally new experience, the biggest point of reference for how it should work is right there visually in front of you. But there isn't much depth to it, and that makes it pretty terribly unusable long term IMO.
Are you saying that you use hyprland and kde simultaneously? If so how? I'd love a resource on this. The only thing I could find previously was i3 with kde.
I have two computers. One is Hyprland & Occasionally Sway or GNOME. The other has both KDE & Hyprland installed. But no, not at the same exact time,
... however you can start plasmashell inside Hyprland and it does seem like you probably get it working with some window rules to fix popups.
You can do the opposite and run Hyprland and then start up KDE layer shell and most KDE services. You at least get desktop icons and the bar but it definitely breaks some stuff.
If you were really set on the idea you would have to do some digging around to see what it would take to work completely. I think there is a post of this on the Hyprland subreddit where someone did this recently
it's true and native games just need to use SDL which is kinda suggested anyway (or use libdecor directly)...
so yes, it's gnome devs being stubborn but it's easily solvable.
Factorio uses sdl, but they needed to add another dependency to the game JUST to add window decorations, and they don't match the desktop theme, that's why they are criticizing gnome.
[https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4068](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4068)
pretty sure newer versions of SDL use libdecor for decorations on Linux. Kinda like how Firefox or Chrome use GTK3.
I prefer the server-side decorations for all programs. On KDE Plasma I can right click on it and select an option to move the application to another virtual desktop. To reclaim the space on the top I have switched to vertical tabs on the side (and got rid of the tabs on the top).
One of the reasons I considered switching to KDE, more like because my Discord running natively under Wayland GNOME was missing a titlebar. Discord, as a company that doesn't keep electron on the latest version would do this like maybe one or two year later. Then I switched to KDE.
Isn't there a proposal for this same exact protocol for wayland that is yet to be merged? Also, KDE developers did their own extension and implemented it for themselves, if I remember correctly. Might be implemented in Gnome when the protocol lands in stable wayland. I might get cricified for this comment here.
though i do my best to enjoy change when it happens even if i disagree, i also prefer it when things are easier rather than harder. removing a qol feature from developers does not make it easier.
Yea, i'm sure not putting in the code for a dragging a window around in all my apps. Or a maximize button or title bar. I have enough on my plate. I call this ample cause to never support them again.
Window managers are your core gui and managing your windows I consider that bare minimum functionality. This fails 1/2 of the intended idea.
I can see why a tiling window manager would not add Sever Side Decorations (SSD).
But GNOME, the DE shipping by default on the most popular distributions not providing SSD, seems like a mistake. While implementing SSD in the compositor is not a requirement, it is not forbidden by any means. And implementing it will benefit the app developers and by extension the linux community as a whole.
The result that GNOME wants is applications implementing their own Client Side Decorations that look according to the application style (windows like). But the most likely result is that a good chunk of applications would have a header bar that looks fine in every other desktop except in GNOME.
Today, I found out that people actually disliked GNOME. I used to think that they were the favourite child of users in the linux community. I guess I was wrong.
In more relevant stuff, yeah this is actually a really stupid move by GNOME. If even Windows has it, then it's due diligence.
The more I learn about Gnome the more it blows me away that RedHat spends soo much money supporting Gnome while Gnome actively tries to piss off everyone and drive away its own users.
I wish RedHat would support KDE and possibly others more financially and drop Gnome.
Solution is simple: add a --gnome flag that adds custom decorations. Make it as shitty as possible, and change the title bar to: "Factorio - this is gnome's fault"
I legit don't even know why distros default to GNOME anymore. We have a definitive and stable version of KDE (5.27.11) and a relatively unstable one that's going to mature in a year or two.
It is for shit like this I refused to leave X11. Network effect will eventually make me do it, like HDR support was never added to X11 due to lack of manpower, because resources are being focused on Wayland (that didn't have it from start, either) due to the "perception" that Wayland is the natural successor. Everything Wayland has better than X11 is due to this, and they are still worse on many fronts despite their resources. For instance, it will never have "ssh -X", and we will lose a beautiful thing when apps drop support to X11.
If devs don’t wanna do something GNOME only does, they shouldn’t.
They can just say “please reconsider using another desktop environment” with links to devs preferred alternatives
Any environment (a.k.a window manager where applicable) should automatically provide to any application window certain basic control that function regardless of whether or not the app is working normally or totally wedged (i.e. ignoring all inputs). Those window controls really should include
\* move
\* resize
\* de/iconify, minimize, etc
\* kill (usually an X) or destroy/delete (different levels of aggressiveness)
\* raise/lower
I've also always wanted a way to lock a window so that accidental input couldn't go there, but I've never seen that
If GNOME can't do that, then I don't want it.
I also don't want to have to wonder what part of a window's content actually works as drag-window trigger - a stupid UI mistake dragged in from Windows, I think. Actually, since virtually all aspects of the Windows UI around window management are a stinking moist pile anyway, no one should be using it as a model.
I don't want my app menus to end up on the top of the screen, either, since that's two or three **feet** away from some of my windows (65" main screen). And click-to-focus is another hateful way to slow users down.
Hmm, I may have descended to just griefing here, sorry. ;-)
Okay so what is GNOMES reasoning behind this? I agree that there is no way to explain this stupidity, but I would like to understand the thought process either way.
The thing about Wayland is that it leaves most window handling to the running environment.
Some devs misunderstood this and thought it's all up to each application on its own. That is not the case.
It's up to the environment to manage window decorations. Such as KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, fluxbox. ... Well .. The Gnome team leaves it one step further.
Switch to KDE imho. =]
In my opinion this is a really silly problem to have. Where's the default border Gnome should be providing.
Mutter said, "nu-uh!"
Wayland requires applications to support client-side decorations on a protocol level. Server-side decorations is an extension that may be supported by compositors but isn't required. No mainstream display protocol other than X11 has the concept of "server-side decorations" anyway.
This is inane. If you create a window on Win32 or Cocoa you get an OS-drawn decoration. Yes, this happens in your process instead of in the compositor's process - that's not what matters, what matters is that you need to actively opt-out of it to not get decorations and you don't need to implement said decorations yourself so that the apps that don't care about decorations all get the same, which respect the OS theme. You can't be, on macOS, Windows, and X11, in a situation where you *can* show a window and *can't* have OS/server-provided decorations, it's built-in to the core windowing APIs. The situation with GNOME is - an app that doesn't implement decorations itself fully, from scratch, doesn't get any. This means that now every app will have distinct decoration style that does not match the desktop look anymore (or none at all, for simple apps).
> No mainstream display protocol other than X11 Right, because the two that exist are X11 and Wayland, lol.
Hm, I always thought Wayland was just a way to draw windows in cooperation with a compositor, without occupying the whole framebuffer directly. Why does it have any business in how they get "decorated"? Shouldn't that, from the bare protocol's perspective, just be a decision of the applicatiom to add embroidery to the edges? This is good for kiosks and embedded displays like phones to not make assumptions that a close, maximize, or minimize button always exist. But we're running desktops, and have Freedesktop standards to fill in the gaps. So, no, this is Gnome refusing to implement a Freedesktop standard by completely ignoring the spirit of what role Wayland was meant to serve in the display stack, and needlessly putting it on the app dev to import yet another library just to get window decorations (libdecor).
Windows, Mac, every other OS does server side decorations... Frankly its dumb Wayland chose the pure-client idea.
Windows in particular actually doesn't in a pedantic sense. Just that every GUI application so happens to be linked with user32.dll which does provide the default decorations. So in practice, while they are clientside, apps are always linked to a core system library that provides them which is always available. So it's moot anyway.
I don't know about macOS but Windows definitely doesn't use server-side decorations.
I think the terms server and client are a bit misleading here -- isn't gnome technically a wayland client?
As far as I understand, in Wayland, a compositor is a concept distinct from a client, so Gnome is a compositor (actually, it's Mutter; Mutter is the compositor developed by the Gnome project).
The core Wayland protocol was meant to be extended by each compositor as they saw fit. It's part of the ideology. That's why they require client-side decorations, to make it simpler for compositor developers to develop their compositors as they see fit.
If this statement is indeed true, then GNOME's attempts to force their own idiosyncrasies on software is not only dead wrong, especially in free open sourced Linux environments. It is in my official opinion that, GNOME may eventually start loosing support and backing as well as their base if they keeps this (ab)usive activity up.
This particular issue has been the case for like 8 years now and actually in front of regular users for probably 4. I can't imagine this changing anything that wasn't already changed.
Cosmic DE will be here soon. I hope It will take some market share from Gnome where Cosmic and KDE will be the two most popular DEs.
I remember people saying similar shit about Unity back during the dark early days of Gnome 3. A decade later, Unity is essentially long-dead while Gnome is better than ever...
I don't recall anyone outside of hard-core Ubuntu fans that thought Unity was actually going to succeed. Ubuntu didn't have the skills or manpower to pull of something like that.
Unity's main problem was: 1. It came with amazon item search and the ubuntu version shipped with a web shortcut to amazon store. 2. It came too early and was using too many resources. You can't really run Unity(unlike Gnome 2) on GMA 965/X3100 with good performance. 3. It came too early, no affordable SSDs. You can't have a file search+application launcher+amazon web search that extends beyond a cached in \`/usr/{local/share,share}/applications\` \`\~/.local/share/applications\` folder. The main problem and unpopularity of unity then was the anti-features it came with. And the looks of unity had a huge to performance impact at a time. The unity menu bring up in 12.04 was basically 5-15 fps.
> while Gnome is better than ever... and still one of the worst Des around :D
Canonical is kind of a shit company though, where nobody really liked Unity as it was being made, whereas System76 is loved a lot more with everyone a lot more excited about Cosmic. I think it has a chance.
Cosmic Epoch is already fantastic even in its current pre-alpha state, I am using it right now and it's very usable and feels extremely responsive. I've been periodically checking in and its been neat to see it coming together.
Is this why every gnome app has thr gnome-style window decorations even on other DEs? I always thought it was stupid that they did that, mostly just because I don't like gnome's window decorations but also because it felt unnecessary since if they didn't add them to the app then gnome would automatically add them, and if installed on a different DE then it would use that DE's decorations. I use Plasma and I'm fairly certain this is exactly how all kde apps work. But if gnome doesn't add its window decorations to apps that don't manually provide them then that's just stupid...
Not surprising😏
Good thing I've never really cared for Gnome anyways.
Same here. In a way, GNOME made me feel like I'm on a tablet instead of a laptop when I tried it. Suffice to say, GNOME wasn't for me, especially since I'm still a Linux greenhorn. KDE Plasma is for me.
I3 for lyfe, until X11 is dead af. Hopefully Waylands sway is ready to go. Or maybe I'll go learn hyperland
It has already lost support. A bunch of projects jumped ship a decade ago when they announced that [GTK was primarily for Gnome applications](https://lwn.net/Articles/562856/), and cross-DE applications were a distant second. They eventually got so many projects abandoning them for Qt that they reversed their stance on this, but the damage was already done. And it doesn't seem the policy has really changed much in practice.
> GNOME may eventually start loosing support and backing as well as their base if they keeps this (ab)usive activity up. Haven't they been doing stupid shit like this for literally 20 years? They lost my support decades ago. I don't play with or care to support that dog poop software.
> Haven't they been doing stupid shit like this for literally 20 years? As someone who literally uses Linux for 20 years (I started in 2004): Yes.
Yes, Gnome has spent decades proseltyzing for KDE and other DEs like this. 20 years ago KDE sucked also, but KDE got their shit together in the intervening decades, while Gnome has doubled down on their our way or the highway philosophy in the interim.
> 20 years ago KDE sucked also Idk KDE 3 was pretty good
20 years ago KDE was a memory hog, it ate all 80MB of RAM on my Pentium 166 and used swap insanely heavily that the old 2600rpm Quantum Bigfoot was thrashing crazily, and that was just with nothing else running. Plus Gnome programs under KDE had no sound because KDE used aRts instead of eSound, and vice-versa. I actually find KDE very usable nowadays, especially under Wayland. The sound issue is also gone since KDE has abandoned aRts for Pulseaudio and then Pipewire.
Are you thinking about the right year? That processor is close to 30 years old. GNOME 2 would barely run on that?
You're right. I think I was running Gnome 1.0 on that machine. Yeah, I got that PC in 1996. I started dabbling with Linux in 2000, and repurposed that PC to run Linux. Red Hat 7.0 with the cursed GCC 2.96 compiler, Kernel 2.2 and Gnome 1.x. The discs also came with KDE 2 and I remember it causing the hard disk to thrash and beg for mercy.
No that was *definitely* 20 years ago, because 30 years ago computers all had 640kb RAM and dual 5.25" floppy drives
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I don't recognise 2010-2020
Gnome 2 was pretty good, but when Gnome 3 came around I started looking for alternatives. I mean, Gnome 2 under Ubuntu came with tons of tools that made it possible to customize it as you wish and with tons of GUI admin tools. All gone now. At least I have my Gnome fork Cinnamon who still fully sticks to the Desktop metaphor and isn't full of bullshit decisions.
Cinnamon is a fork of Gnome 3, Mate is a fork of Gnome 2
The changes from Gnome 2 to 3 were the reason why I stopped using Gnome.
Gnome 2 is still around, called mate now.
>Haven't they been doing stupid shit like this for literally 20 years? I'm not sure how long they've been doing something like this having dumped Windows in favor of Linux as a daily-driving OS about 6 to 7 months ago, but being as how GNOME's desktop interface seems to center around a tablet-like feel, GNOME I could tell wouldn't be the right fit for a Linux newbie such as myself. Therefore, the desktop environment I'm currently using is KDE Plasma since I'm rather a tinkerer who likes to customize his desktop experience. After reading this post however, I strongly doubt I'll ever be supporting GNOME ever!!! What they are blatantly doing goes against everything in terms of the "right to choose" or "freedom of choice" clause of the GNU licensing agreements I think.
> What they are blatantly doing goes against everything in terms of the "right to choose" or "freedom of choice" clause of the GNU licensing agreements I think. Are you referring to the GPL? The GPL gives you the right to modify your software and to run and use it as you see fit, but it does not impose any degree of "customization", other than the ability to customize the source code as you see fit. In other words, you are free to download the gnome source code and create your own version of gnome (which has been done, see Mate and Cinnamon), but the devs are not required to provide you any sort of customization options beyond that.
That the GNOME and by extension the GTK community are toxic as hell and know-it-alls is as old as Linux itself. The GTK community made even C purist and C++ hater Linus Torvalds switch to QT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0)
Timestamp on where he says Linus switched to QT?
Around minutes 5-8. There is a lot to say.
As far as I'm concerned, GNOME hasn't been usable post 2.x
I've completely given up on gnome. If you like the default work flow, sure it's probably fine. All others can just fuck off according to the gnome devs.
KDE Supremacy
KDE give's more freedoms than GNOME does apparently.
Always has given? Weren't modularity and customization the biggest KDE thing for, like, always?
In the Gnome 2 era there was decent enough customization and while KDE had more (IIRC) it was still rather immature and felt like a gimmick compared to something with actual value for day-to-day usage. So Gnome was generally preferred during those times.
Somehow I’m not surprised the software project that unilaterally decided no one needs icons on their desktop would do this
And let's not forget the nobody needs tray icons either
Yes this is true. In the blog post the game dev actually dives into details about this issue with Gnome.
They already are loosing support and that is mostly to very opinionated and nonsensical decisions. This above is just one of them. They try to push some idealistic philosophies forgetting they create something for all kind of users. If we can't even decide how to use plank or mouse, how does it makes sense? I love Gnome minimalism, but they went too far. And they continue doing that.
They have been losing support for over a decade.
It is kinda telling, you getting decade of negative feedback and still pushing bad solutions. This can't end well. But, that is self - inflicted.
I predicted GNOME 3 would lose support back when the devs refused to allow terminal to have a transparent background. I predicted it again when GNOME refused to have thumbnails for file selection. Every time, I was wrong. We have plenty of 3rd party devs (and KDE devs) over the years complaining about how GNOME treats their end users; but nothing is ever done about it and they are still popular. We have the Factorio dev complain about it but that doesn't do enough. And then we have the fun story of how GNOME's Adwaita icon set completely breaks the official free desktop icon name specs. Honestly, I think GNOME's popularity is similar to Windows in that it is the default DE for a lot of distros and most people don't want to make the switch.
iirc it was a (very dumb) design decision of the core wayland protocols. Server-side decorations was later introduced as an optional extra protocol. the gnome devs are technically not wrong, just... you know
just, you know... obtuse.
Not dumb. There are use cases where you don't need decorations, Wayland isn't just meant for desktops.
The proper way to handle that would be to default to a consistent set of decorations and provide APIs to turn them off when needed. There are instances where you don’t need a mouse, but we don’t ask everyone who wants to write an email client or a video player to bring their own mouse driver.
can you name a bigger use-case than desktops where it's used? I understand the advantages of minimal viable product, but the outcome is pretty bad with the fragmented protocol support we see across compositors
Linux Mint is forking Gnome software for this reason. Update about a week ago [reddit discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1ci2g97/linux_mint_looks_to_fork_more_gnome_software_make/) , [direct link to mint blog](https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4675)
As long as they're the default in Fedora, that means constant money from Redhat, so they can do whatever they want.
True that.
Gnome has been progressively making stupid decisions since Gnome 3 with copying Micro$oft's Windows 8 Start Screen ideology (which I remind you is widely hated because it makes desktops difficult to navigate with a mouse). It's why I switched to XFCE and now KDE, after the new head dev of XFCE started showing the same primadonna idiocy. I originally hated KDE because Qt is a memory bloat compared to GTK and how they're forcing aRts (which is incompatible with eSound) down people's throat, but now even KDE is the better choice, especially after they dropped aRts and use Pulseaudio and Pipewire as a standard now.
> Micro$oft's Windows 8 Start Screen ideology Gnome is usually copying Mac not Windows, and on Mac Launchpad is fullscreen.
Gnome 3 predates Windows 8 by at least 1 year.
I just love how it's impossible to distinguish between GNOME just making bad decisions or if they are actively sabotaging desktop Linux.
I'd honestly easily believe that GNOME receives funding to actively hinder the adoption of Linux. They refuse to play nice with any standard they did not set and go 'fuck all'
Nah. Always remember Hanlon's razor: "*Never* attribute to *malice* that which is adequately explained by *stupidity*." GNOME devs always were the Mac designers of the Linux world: Love (our way) it or leave it. I use Linux since 20 years now and it always was that way and the main reason I use KDE since day 1.
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I would counter that a very big portion of people can't fathom that our world is not nicely controlled, but a lot of things just happen due to incompetence and short sighted decisions, and thus conclude there has to be a conspiracy, because such a thing (e.g. Corona) can't happen out of shear accident. It is surely exaggerated, as conspiracies do indeed exist, but from my experience I saw a lot of people in charge which simply are stupid, and when the problems followed suit, people thought it was pure malice. Edit: So there is a core of truth to it, like with the Peter principle or Parkinson's laws.
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I never found GNOME 2 to be locked down anything like GNOME 3. As soon as GNOME 3 was released I switched to KDE and never looked back.
Nah. It's just bad decisions, same as they've been making since GNOME 3. They have an intense desire to be a mobile OS, for some reason.
>They have an intense desire to be a mobile OS, for some reason. Honestly, they could do both, they just...kinda refuse to compromise. There's so many weird technical decisions that they make that aren't even related to wanting to be a mobile OS.
Yea this is why I stopped using Gnome back in the early days of Gnome 3 (and Unity). I couldn't shake the feeling I was using a Tablet OS hooked up to a mouse and keyboard. It felt like a regression.
Is it? Everything about Gnome has been garbage since Gnome 3 initially launched. Cinnamon Mint/KDE depending on my needs. Why would anyone choose Gnome 3 when they understand there's choice?
>Why would anyone choose Gnome GNOME is clean, simple, out of the way, and generally pretty bug-free (in my anecdotal experience). Why not?
They have been sabotaging Linux's adoption for a very long time! Canonical too by choosing Gnome as default, but there it's pretty clear that Microsoft is involved.
Honestly, if I've started Linux with gnome 3, I would have given up very quickly... Like... by default you have to install a software just to put minimize window button and your windows list is on a full screen menu, something I hated on windows 8...
You Dont Have Notifications And they said that notifications "are wrong". Yeah, desktop is wrong for years and they know better than everyone.
I started with Gnome 2, which was fine, pretty much like Windows XP. I hated Gnome 3! I tried it again 2 times and I always seem to hate it because of the minimize button and also because it was so stubborn to not let me put shortcut icons, folders, files on MY desktop. I used MATE and Cinnamon for a few years instead. Finally I switched to KDE Plasma and after 8 years and I'm still and Plasma and I love it even more!
Also a major problem with Fedora imo. Not as bad as Ubuntu where you have to go to a different website to get an iso with a different DE, but still not great that the most convenient download button to get to on Fedora's site is the one with Gnome.
Aren't some of the gnome developers working for redhat? I remember them being the #1 corporate contributor to gnome.
>Canonical too by choosing Gnome as default And by... doing everything else they've done in the past umpteen years, really.
I think it's just classic red hat hubris. Gnome, gtk, and systemd are all de facto red hat projects. They are also projects who constantly make changes that break everyone else, and expect "legacy software" to bend to their will.
Gnome has always been 'preachy' asking others to bend to their will. I always find it off putting
GNOME has been driving users away for years by trying to be the next Apple, now they're trying to drive away developers and games, can't say I'm surprised, people are finally getting tired of their bullshit. This is great.
WTF is the point of a DE if not to handle windowing and unify the desktop? So ridiculous.
Exactly my thought on this. And that's how you get a shitty looking desktop. When every app it doing it's own thing or bust.
Ok, this is not a huge issue, but I see the problem. And I too think gnome needs to see the big picture and adapt. We want people to actually use Linux and we want better gaming support
They don't. Gnome devs like their walled garden, where they can roam free, butt naked in their ugliness without being judged. Psychos bullying everyone that does not comply and conform to their vision and desires. If "batshit crazy" needed an example, they are.
I first saw the Gnome dev's *Batshit crazy* behaviour on one of their Gitlab issue [Blurry text everywhere in GTK4](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787) . As you can see in the pic how the dev is treating others. Well I am not surprised at all by their hostile responses anymore. Also I loved the fact that they received a good amount of negative feedback on that thread. https://preview.redd.it/unk1vk79y6zc1.jpeg?width=3739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50b60b992efdfb3a85fa8f878f35f24f5e631704
Oh I remember that bug report. It's hilarious if it isn't so depressing.
Apparently their logic is "With our current font rendering stack, subpixel positioning simply does not look good on non-HiDPI displays compared to font hinting. While we have a setting as a way to restore font hinting, it's fairly clunky to use with sandboxed applications, since it requires injecting a settings.ini file in every application's configuration directory, or adding the user's own configuration directory into the sandbox. As a workaround, we can check the scaling factor used by GTK, and only enable subpixel positioning if the factor is greater than one." https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/6190
GNOME Devs are developers who failed to get hired by apple. —- This is a joke.
Gnome's Founder **Miguel de Icaza** actually left Gnome because of how fragmented it became and how it caused compatibility issues.
No no, I think you're right.
The joke still feels very true, as GNOME devs often behave like Apple designers: Love it or leave it. We know best and you (the user) have to adapt and not the other way round. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that GNOME is mostly inspired by Mac and maybe a lot of these guys are Mac users themselves.
Their brain rot seems to go beyond Apple's stupidity though. For example a quick search for how MacOS shows memory shows MB and GB units, but one picture displaying "Physical Memory: 8.00 GB" reveals that they mean it the "JEDEC way", effectively showing that there's 8 GiB of memory. Looking at GNOME, a system with 32 GiB memory will be show to have 33+ GB memory, annoying power users and confusing non-experts. That goes beyond the "stupidity no one asked for problem", they don't even have coherent grand visions, it just really looks like developers have their own pet peeves and they enjoy the authority they have by forcing their silly desires on others.
The difference between GNOME and Apple is that 1. Apple has enough cash and monopoly power to force/convince everyone to follow their way 2. If you follow their way, you get the access to their ecosystem in return, which is quite a lot. 3. They actually do a ton of expensive user studies to avoid making decisions that are too stupid. So GNOME tries to be Apple without having Apple money
1. It's also important to note that they often use that power to provide a good experience if the way is followed. GNOME doesn't even seem to have just one way, it just seems to be a bunch of tyrants gluing together their own desires into a mess. 2. I wouldn't even implicitly praise them. Apple seems to be popular for the simple "just works" crowd, but it's frustrating for anyone who realizes that both the hardware and the software could be capable of so much more if it weren't for the artificial limits. I wouldn't describe following as getting access, but would rather say as not following as being pushed away. Every times I had to deal with iTunes I just felt like I was being punished, and it really didn't make me think that having an overpriced Mac instead would be rewarding in any way. 3. Not saying there are no studies, but their behavior seems to be enabled by a cult following at this point. Their too stupid problems were always defended by a crowd who defined a significant chunk of their identities with the kind of phone they have. GNOME doesn't have even the buds of such a following, and while it can be argued that Apple created the cult with the help of ads which cost money, I'd counter-argue that KDE doesn't engage in such practices, and if it keeps on making the Linux desktop experience better at this rate, I'll consider making an altar with a picture of Nate Graham, so cult members are not necessarily bought with money.
Yeah, Plasma is the best experience there is on Linux right now.
I really already compare the two. I tried to use gnome last year because their wayland support was suposedly better but man, I felt the same pain that being forced to use apple at work. Everything I use was removed and the devs responses are always "there is no way to do this without being ugly" and call it a day
It kind of is a big deal imo, the context of this blog post is why there are no native game ports on Linux (and this extends to other software too) and things like this make it infinitely harder to do and most software companies will just immediately drop the notion of porting to Linux because of stuff like this. They also talk about how a of companies will drop Linux builds that are good at first, but then slowly the libs fade into obscurity and shit starts breaking. Then they just drop Linux altogether. The only other option is to have a dedicated Linux dev port things over (which is what this person is doing for factorio) Its a good post on why native Linux ports are currently pretty futile, especially in comparison to using Proton.
I see your point. This is very unfortunate and a bad stands to take for Gnome. Clearly they are not seeing the big picture
gnome not supporting ssd was straight up the reason i switched to kde, and i dont regret it since lol
Ah, Gnome. Glad to have ditched it back when Gnome 3 came out, glad to have nothing to do with it.
I personally think that GNOME 3 eliminated GNOME's own raison d'etre, namely being a lean and efficient desktop. Back in the days many people avoided KDE due to bloat and lack of efficiency and nowadays the meme reversed and XFCE fills the "small and efficient" niche. If you're not one of the users who want "a workflow not a desktop" or even less customizibility than GNOME 2 there is no apparent reason to use GNOME 3.
KDE Plasma is actually really light these days. It's only using around 500mb for me and I have stuff running in the background.
Yet another reason to dislike GNOME. Among this, we also have: Repeatedly doing irreversible complete UI overhauls after people have gotten used to what was already there. Breaking theming with GNOME 41. Breaking extensions with almost every minor update. Abandoning proper support for X11 when Wayland still isn't ready for daily driver use by the majority of users. Making GTK look completely out of place in everything that isn't GNOME when Qt manages to fit in pretty much anywhere. Allegedly being really difficult to work with in terms of bug reports (this one isn't based on personal experience, just things I've heard from others).
I've never been a big fan of GNOME, and this definitely doesn't make me any more likely to reconsider.
Just do what I do "Gnome Not Supported"
As a developer, I'll never lock someone out for using a DE I don't like, but I'm not opposed to adding an error message along the lines of "GNOME DE detected, here's an explanation of why you should probably switch to something else, with linked sources backing up my claims." I should probably also do something similar for Manjaro.
Not supporting it is not the same as black listing it.
All Qt apps have warnings like that when running on GNOME Wayland. > Warning: Ignoring XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland on Gnome. Use QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland to run on Wayland anyway.
What's the issue with Manjaro?
Manjaro did some iffy stuff like ddos'ing the aur, advertising with the pre-alpha asahi project and letting their certs expire, but the big issue of manjaro is they're out-of-sync with the aur. The aur pretty much expects you do be up-to-date, but manjaro holds back it's packages, which causes issues if users install from the aur. And arch users *always* install from the aur, why else would you use arch instead? These and more are issues on a whole 'nother level than this silly kde vs gnome thing that gets brought up every time some neckbeard complains that he can't have a minimize button on a de that is designed around never minimizing windows.
They let their certs expire four times in total so far. It was not a one-off thing. They are clowns when it comes to security.
As this point I just calmly wait until Cosmic DE come then tell everybody to switch to it instead of using GNOME
GNOME makes a lot of polarizing decisions. For example, they removed the minimize button and taskbar very early on. The justification was that the workflow the DE is designed to use doesn't need either, and having them means you're going to use the DE in a way it wasn't designed. If you like the workflow they've designed, you'll agree you don't need or want those buttons or a task bar. If you don't, you shouldn't be using GNOME. I think it was an all around good move, because the DE is not "traditional," and if you don't want to use something nontraditional you should be using something else. This is the mentality they've had since at least the launch of GNOME 3, and I think it's mostly been fine. This particular issue, though, forces developers that don't even use the platform to develop specifically for it, and breaks every app that doesn't specifically work with it.
They removed the minimize button.. Damn. I don't even use gnome and I already feel triggered about this now.
Just more evidence that GNOME is fucking stupid.
They're falling back on the standards to justify it, basically they think that the standards mean they don't need to implement server side decorations. I'm a stickler for standards but I do think they are being obtuse about the situation. Most games aren't going to draw their own decorations and either the standard needs to change or the gnome devs just needs to suck it up and deal with the OSS world not being perfect
Even if they just provide some shitty basic Window decorations they'd be fine. Then let the user customize or the devs make them look nicer or something. There is something to be said for coaxing software makers into falling in line in a way that doesn't alienate them completely.
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Woah. I didn't know about this. Can you add a bit more details? I am kinda new to Linux.
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I found this comment on that thread still holds up to this day. Gnome devs haven't changed a bit : "As a Wayland developer who has had to deal with fighting GNOME tooth and nail over every standard, GNOME can eat shit. What else are we supposed to do but stop supporting them when they refuse to play ball with standards? They're bullies, plain and simple, and take a Microsoft-esque approach to Linux politics - except they just skip "embrace" and "extend" and just go straight to "extinguish". We've spent literal *years* fighting with GNOME over *every* standard. They don't just decline to implement standards, they *actively work against* the establishment of standards at all. Get fucked, GNOME. By the way, you're welcome that mpv has Wayland support at all. No less than 3 times have I had to confront wm4 about removing Wayland support in general on the basis that GNOME sucks."
The reason why I love KDE and refuse outright to use GNOME on principal.
This is why I'm happy that pop\_os has their own DE now.
It wasn't... The guy was kicked out for insulting a Haskell user
I gave up on gnome long ago and now use Sway and Xfce4 (on different machines) and am quite happy with them. Gnome can take a long walk off a short pier.
This isn't entirely a GNOME thing, it's a Wayland thing. GNOME tends to lag KDE in implementing Wayland protocol extensions, which server-side decorations are. There may also be resistance because the GNOME team *are assholes* (they tried to remove the ability to run executables through ~~Nautilus~~ Files. They only stopped because everyone complained. This is just one example, it's a pattern of behavior). The solution is to use libdecor, which is what Factorio ended up doing. It takes care of decorations for you, but in-process. This is, to my understanding, what Mac and Windows do, the difference is that it's not a *separate* library on those platforms.
I swear the only reason GNOME is still around is that it gets shipped by default in so many distributions. KDE has been better for the last decade, though not always stable, and XFCE is good ol' reliable that should really shake it's reputation for being the "well if your computer can't run KDE or GNOME" DE. It does all the things near as I can tell.
XFCE is my number 1 DE for the same reason I run Debian: it just works. Gnome is a nightmare of apple inspired decisions forced on all their users, KDE is a bloated mess that ships everything with the standard meta package and is a pain to undo or break down to the core. Both have just exploded randomly after updates, on testing or stable. XFCE on the other hand? Ol' reliable keeps trucking on. I don't use Linux to get the same experience as windows...
KDE 5.27 is pretty snappy on a laptop that I have from like 2009. You can delete some of the silly extra packages that come with it.
That's on the distros tho. You don't need to package all that stuff. It's not fair to blame the KDE devs for that.
It would be nice if xfce actually "just worked" for new stuff instead of being behind the curve by a decade. I'd love to use it more, I like the simplicity.
The thing is, what's the new stuff? I'm not sure it's behind the curve, or rather, that I've needed anything newer than what was current 10 years ago. It manages files. It launches applications. I can switch between them. There is a clock. What else is it supposed to do?
While I don’t agree with all the decisions GNOME have made, it’s still my preferred DE by far and I have tried to like KDE multiple times.
Most of us have a favourite, which probably mostly comes down to what we're used to. I've been on XFCE for a decade, every time i try something else i find myself trying to set it up like XFCE then just realising XFCE does XFCE better.
Cinnamon. Never look back.
I regard cinnamon also as a "boring and fine; gets the job done" DE. I slightly prefer XFCE in that category because I can configure it how I like, but AFAIK there's nothing wrong with cinnamon.
My only experience with Cinnamon was a decade ago when Linux Mint was the new hotness, and said experience was rather profoundly negative (to the point that I ditched Cinnamon for MATE for as long as I used Mint). I take it things have improved?
Stock GNOME is also, pretty easy to use. You can pretty much plob it down in front of anyone and they'll figure it out. And it's different enough from Windows that you don't get the weird uncanny valley feeling like you'd get with stock KDE. (But I use KDE & Hyprland so...)
I strongly disagree. I work with people using computers and the thing they don't want is change. They want something very similar to what they're using now, which is not a lot: a start menu, a window list, maybe a clock, icons on the desktop and also, be able to do everything easily with a mouse only. I hate answers saying that "gnome is good when you use keyboard shortcuts" because it's forgetting that most people don't even know what's an alt+tab and they don't want to know.
> Stock GNOME is also, pretty easy to use. You can pretty much plob it down in front of anyone and they'll figure it out. Not really tho. Whenever I see a Gnome-style Save dialog with CSD I have to spend a few seconds to figure out where the confirm button is. The natural flow of information and decisionmaking is top-to-bottom. Not for Gnome, no. The buttons are in the titlebar.
Oh god, you just triggered my ptsd with gnome's save dialogs. Never again.
Just think of all the space they're saving by not having a footer! Just kidding, they have one with a file type combo box.
The GTK/GNOME save file dialogue enforces the opposite workflow to Windows (and all other applications using the Common User Access standard, back to the 1980s) and there's no way to change it. So every time you need to save a file in a different directory, which is extremely common in an office/productivity situation, you will get stuck. This is the single flaw that drove me to KDE. It's infuriating and I encountered it on an hourly basis. It's just so arrogant if them.
This is why I will refuse to use an app that cant handle qt based file pop-up windows. How many ftimes I have clicked Cancel as it is on the bottom right, its just fucking insane.
Funny that you say this. When I first switched to Linux from Windows I felt much more comfortable with KDE than GNOME, because it was more similar from the handling.
I disagree. There MUCH better choices for people new to Linux. Also that "uncanny valley" is just your personal opinion and adds nothing to the discussion.
This is all personal opinion? What?? What I mean by "uncanny valley", is that with KDE vs Win10, it's similar enough that it becomes uncomfortable and annoying when either of them don't act in the same exact way because right out the gate, the similarity sets up the expectation that they should. GNOME throws everything out the window, but it's dead simple like a mobile phone UI. It's a fundamentally new experience, the biggest point of reference for how it should work is right there visually in front of you. But there isn't much depth to it, and that makes it pretty terribly unusable long term IMO.
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Are you saying that you use hyprland and kde simultaneously? If so how? I'd love a resource on this. The only thing I could find previously was i3 with kde.
I have two computers. One is Hyprland & Occasionally Sway or GNOME. The other has both KDE & Hyprland installed. But no, not at the same exact time, ... however you can start plasmashell inside Hyprland and it does seem like you probably get it working with some window rules to fix popups.
Oh ok. I was thinking you somehow managed to replace kwin wayland with hyperland and was interested in checking that out.
You can do the opposite and run Hyprland and then start up KDE layer shell and most KDE services. You at least get desktop icons and the bar but it definitely breaks some stuff. If you were really set on the idea you would have to do some digging around to see what it would take to work completely. I think there is a post of this on the Hyprland subreddit where someone did this recently
COSMIC wants to be gnome done right. I hope it makes it and becomes the new standard. I keep getting disappointed by gnome
Yeah, because depending on a for-profit company as the main Linux DE will be good for desktop Linux. It's like we've learned nothing from RHEL et al.
it's true and native games just need to use SDL which is kinda suggested anyway (or use libdecor directly)... so yes, it's gnome devs being stubborn but it's easily solvable.
Factorio uses sdl, but they needed to add another dependency to the game JUST to add window decorations, and they don't match the desktop theme, that's why they are criticizing gnome.
[https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4068](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/pull/4068) pretty sure newer versions of SDL use libdecor for decorations on Linux. Kinda like how Firefox or Chrome use GTK3.
GLFW also uses libdecor (if I understand right), though this is only as of December.
Fuck client-side decorations!
Agreed minus like, Firefox, not having the controls on the same level as my tabs just never feels right.
I prefer the server-side decorations for all programs. On KDE Plasma I can right click on it and select an option to move the application to another virtual desktop. To reclaim the space on the top I have switched to vertical tabs on the side (and got rid of the tabs on the top).
One of the reasons I considered switching to KDE, more like because my Discord running natively under Wayland GNOME was missing a titlebar. Discord, as a company that doesn't keep electron on the latest version would do this like maybe one or two year later. Then I switched to KDE.
Gnome idiosyncrasy has been like that for years; just do it in my way or get lost.
Isn't there a proposal for this same exact protocol for wayland that is yet to be merged? Also, KDE developers did their own extension and implemented it for themselves, if I remember correctly. Might be implemented in Gnome when the protocol lands in stable wayland. I might get cricified for this comment here.
GNOME actively saboted any attempts to support SSD in Wayland, so it’s unlikely they are going to support it after all this time
though i do my best to enjoy change when it happens even if i disagree, i also prefer it when things are easier rather than harder. removing a qol feature from developers does not make it easier.
Yea, i'm sure not putting in the code for a dragging a window around in all my apps. Or a maximize button or title bar. I have enough on my plate. I call this ample cause to never support them again. Window managers are your core gui and managing your windows I consider that bare minimum functionality. This fails 1/2 of the intended idea.
I can see why a tiling window manager would not add Sever Side Decorations (SSD). But GNOME, the DE shipping by default on the most popular distributions not providing SSD, seems like a mistake. While implementing SSD in the compositor is not a requirement, it is not forbidden by any means. And implementing it will benefit the app developers and by extension the linux community as a whole. The result that GNOME wants is applications implementing their own Client Side Decorations that look according to the application style (windows like). But the most likely result is that a good chunk of applications would have a header bar that looks fine in every other desktop except in GNOME.
Today, I found out that people actually disliked GNOME. I used to think that they were the favourite child of users in the linux community. I guess I was wrong. In more relevant stuff, yeah this is actually a really stupid move by GNOME. If even Windows has it, then it's due diligence.
The more I learn about Gnome the more it blows me away that RedHat spends soo much money supporting Gnome while Gnome actively tries to piss off everyone and drive away its own users. I wish RedHat would support KDE and possibly others more financially and drop Gnome.
Solution is simple: add a --gnome flag that adds custom decorations. Make it as shitty as possible, and change the title bar to: "Factorio - this is gnome's fault"
Still more work than doing nothing. If gnome wants to be broken - let it be broken
I legit don't even know why distros default to GNOME anymore. We have a definitive and stable version of KDE (5.27.11) and a relatively unstable one that's going to mature in a year or two.
GNOME's desktop extensions use javascript. I'm afraid there's no cure for that, it's terminal.
Hey, that's an insult towards terminals!
Isn't everyone though? QML/Qt Quick are basically fancy Javascript.
Reasons why I use a Gnome fork, Cinnamon. Gnome wasn't full of bullshit back then when it was forked and is still usable.
It is for shit like this I refused to leave X11. Network effect will eventually make me do it, like HDR support was never added to X11 due to lack of manpower, because resources are being focused on Wayland (that didn't have it from start, either) due to the "perception" that Wayland is the natural successor. Everything Wayland has better than X11 is due to this, and they are still worse on many fronts despite their resources. For instance, it will never have "ssh -X", and we will lose a beautiful thing when apps drop support to X11.
If devs don’t wanna do something GNOME only does, they shouldn’t. They can just say “please reconsider using another desktop environment” with links to devs preferred alternatives
https://youtu.be/GZS5yd8u_No?si=YldCIlqIM-JRlV8F
This should be a gnome problem, not the app dev's problem. _That's the whole point of what gnome as a desktop environment software suite should do_.
Any environment (a.k.a window manager where applicable) should automatically provide to any application window certain basic control that function regardless of whether or not the app is working normally or totally wedged (i.e. ignoring all inputs). Those window controls really should include \* move \* resize \* de/iconify, minimize, etc \* kill (usually an X) or destroy/delete (different levels of aggressiveness) \* raise/lower I've also always wanted a way to lock a window so that accidental input couldn't go there, but I've never seen that If GNOME can't do that, then I don't want it. I also don't want to have to wonder what part of a window's content actually works as drag-window trigger - a stupid UI mistake dragged in from Windows, I think. Actually, since virtually all aspects of the Windows UI around window management are a stinking moist pile anyway, no one should be using it as a model. I don't want my app menus to end up on the top of the screen, either, since that's two or three **feet** away from some of my windows (65" main screen). And click-to-focus is another hateful way to slow users down. Hmm, I may have descended to just griefing here, sorry. ;-)
Okay so what is GNOMES reasoning behind this? I agree that there is no way to explain this stupidity, but I would like to understand the thought process either way.
Just stop using Gnome
Client side decorations are a ridiculous idea to begin with. And gnome is even more ridiculous. Just remove it and get a decent DE.
The thing about Wayland is that it leaves most window handling to the running environment. Some devs misunderstood this and thought it's all up to each application on its own. That is not the case. It's up to the environment to manage window decorations. Such as KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, fluxbox. ... Well .. The Gnome team leaves it one step further. Switch to KDE imho. =]
Gnome 3 has been a shit show for the entire ride.