Linux Mint Looks To Fork More GNOME Software, Make XApp More Independent

[reba]

No wonder. GNOME is acting like divisive bullies for many years. They're actively harming Linux' reputation and its ecosystem, technically and personally.
I just hope they are gone very soon.

[Noitatsidem]

I interpreted it as the exact opposite, GNOME designed the apps to exclusively use libAdwaita which while great for GNOME, it breaks on other desktops. Instead Mint are looking at an independent XApp that can be made in collaboration with other desktops so they too don't have to go and duplicate the work on comparable app on their desktops.

Maybe Michael can clarify which of us understood his words...

libadwaita doesn't break on other desktops, it just doesn't "fit in"
In a world filled with electron apps, who cares.

[QwertyChouskie]

Why fork things like file-roller when Mate already has forked these things with (AFAICT) the exact same goals in mind? Seems like there's a lot of overlap between the XApps project and Mate's apps. Probably better to avoid re-inventing the wheel and rather share these apps between Cinnamon and Mate.

[Dukenukemx]

Linux Mint shouldn't be looking to fork anything. They're already extremely understaffed and underfunded. They can barely keep above water with updates to the software they already have (which are forks of Gnome already). Why in the hell would they go out of their way to fork more stuff, spreading themselves too thin?

There are disagreements obviously. They don't use Adwaita for whatever reason. I don't know enough about Adwaita vs Xapp to know why Mint continues to use Xapp, but they must have their reasons.

[evasb]

Yup. They should collaborate with MATE and use the same forked apps.

I don't see this as fragmentation, the problem is if they have the capacity to maintain these apps for themselves.

[DMJC]

Excellent, finally some leadership. I don't like the direction GNOME's been going in and we've been needing someone to stand up and point the way forward. I'll be contributing code. GTK3 and Wayland are the right way forward. We just need a plan for maintaining/extending GTK3 into the future. I don't have a problem with efforts like Pipewire. You can change the backend, but stop messing with the frontend. The GUI layouts shouldn't be changing all the time. The classic UI from GNOME2 works better than the Windows UI. About time people stopped trying to break it.

[mathletic]

The calculator? Really, there you want to show how special your desktop is?

[logical]

It actually is. If GNOME wants to go out of their way to not play ball with The Others then The Others can go play ball elsewhere with people who behave in a respectable manner. It really doesn't help that the GNOME Organization lets their immature developers get away with calling people stupid incel virgins. The GNOME Organization has become more toxic than the Phoronix Forums. It's no surprise that so many have been walking away from GNOME as of late.

Right, that's why every single article on Phoronix that mentions GNOME has the same cabal of non-GNOME users who come out of the woodwork *every single time* to spew the same anti-GNOME vitriol. Yet, it is GNOME that's the problem. Sheesh.

[luno]

It is what gives open source power. If fragmentation was so bad then why aren't we on proprietary software? Linux Mint is the most popular Linux distro for a reason. The reason Cinnamon exists was because Gnome sucked. People didn't like what the Gnome team was doing so forks happen for a reason. Now KDE is probably better but that's relatively recent. Even switching to Wayland is questionable. These things have gotten better, but it's easy to see why the Linux Mint team does what it does. Do you want a good desktop experience or suffer with performance issues and bugs to very slightly push KDE and Wayland forward faster? Personally, I'd like to see a KDE Plasma Linux Mint because the Linux Mint people know how to make it usable.

though I don't like Ubuntu , it is most popular Linux Distro as it is used by most people by default, for most People Linux == Ubuntu, even Fedora might have more users

[Panix]

GNOME fragmentation is good! It shows them GNOME Project is an overvalued crap

I thought they became MATE and Cinnamon?!? The fragmentation just means less ppl working on more projects - imho - and is ultimately not good (probably) - imho.