GNOME's Need To Broaden Its Audience For Greater Impact & Funding

[timrichardson]

For funding, you have to follow the money. It's too bad the Amazon Linux desktop is Mate. I doubt there is much money in ordinary desktop users. I use gnome on a Fedora laptop and an Ubuntu desktop. I use it professionally and I donate each month to Gnome.

But open source is best funded from large corporates that use open source in their product stack. That's why I mentioned AWS ... That's a product using a Linux desktop environment to sell VMs.

Naturally this develops into a discussion Gnome vs desktop alternative X. But I think this is a red herring. Even if we all used Gnome, would it help their funding? The pie is not big enough to fight over. I don't think any Linux desktop environment is doing better than Gnome, except for whatever the Chinese Communist Party is funding to migrate away from Windows. Apart from that dodgy option, maybe gnome should persuade automotive, which does a lot of Wayland funding as far as I can tell

[andyprough]

Oh do they still create software? I've only known them as an anti-Stallman letter writing campaign in recent months. Maybe they should write more nasty letters and try to cancel more free software leaders - that's got to be good for fundraising donations from free software fans, I would think.

[Shiba]

I usually never post here but as someone who stopped being a FSF member i have to say that it is possible to support Free Software without donating to the FSF!!! Human Rights and the Rights of Women, of People with Down Syndrome do matter.

They sure do, like every other human being. The FSF is one of the few organizations I trust to look at everyone as equal without bias.

[skeevy420]

True, But this is linux, And every desktop/wm needs/requires some user intervention. Personally i find gnome the lesser evil with just using gnome-tweaks for HiDPi dark theme and center new windows, and It's, for me good to go. But i am saying this using gnome40, As it's just too easy to forget about the bad memory usage of 3x

Every OS and environment requires it to some extent. We don't need made up things like macOS-tweaks, plasma-tweaks, or mate-tweaks or real things like Windows Power Toys for simple things like a dark theme and accent colors. We don't have to go though a process to get there. They just are. GNOME needs more "just is" to be user friendly.

GNOME is like having the car stuck to Nookie. You get the one song. Depending on the setup you may or may not need to install the Firefox Program, but you will have to install the Firefox GNOME Extension, the Gnome-Tweaks plugin, and then you can finally set a new song (analog to a theme). Believe it or not, that list of what I think, and probably most all of us here think, is simple shit can actually be a daunting task to a new and inexperienced user.

Gnome-tweaks should be part of GNOME. That would be a good start. Dark mode shouldn't require internet access, a package manager, nor a random program with an extra plugin and a thing installed from said plugin.

[Sonadow]

I don't think any Linux desktop environment is doing better than Gnome, except for whatever the Chinese Communist Party is funding to migrate away from Windows.

Deepin and UKUI are way ahead of Gnome and Plasma in looks and presentation.

The only deal breaker here is that none of them have been ported to Wayland.

[Awesomeness]

Gnome need to make up their mind. With CSD they explicitly said that they don't want their applications be used on other desktops and operating systems in favor of a coherent Gnome experience. Now they want a broader audience again?

[gbcox]

Here is my experience with GNOME:

1. Install
2. The desktop is not intuitive
3. Get told that the good thing about GNOME is the many extensions where you can customize the desktop
to have it work more like the conventional desktop you are familiar with
4. Install the extensions, seems like alot of trouble, but whatever
5. Updates to GNOME occur
6. Extensions break
7. Get told that the extensions are not supported by GNOME, silly you
8. Rinse and repeat

In my experience with GNOME it has always been their way, they have always pushed less functionality and flexibility in their desktop. I much prefer KDE Plasma. It's not perfect, but at least the design allows you flexibility and you don't need to screw with searching for a bunch of unsupported extensions to customize it.

It appears to me that many distributions choose GNOME because of it's lack of customization and flexibility. They really don't care about the desktop, it just there as a necessary evil to support the server functions. The less functionality and flexibility, the easier it is for them to support. That is why most people who are desktop users don't care much for GNOME. It wasn't really created for them..

[Vistaus]

scottishduck In your opinion. The major distributors all went with GNOME.

They also went with X11, so that must mean X11 is not a nightmare, right?

[ALRBP]

The best thing GNOME can do for free software: join KDE !

[Cotyso]

The problem is that vanilla GNOME is a love it or leave it desktop environment. And before y'all go "but plugins, but plugins" how many of y'all go car shopping, find something close enough, and then get a new paint job (plugin), new interior fabric (plugin), and a new steering wheel (plugin) just because you don't care for them? Exactly.

Except plugins are free and work instantly, unlike car tweaks which cost money and a lot more time.

Also 3rd party plugins add a lot of flexibility. For instance i use an extension to control syncthing. Gnome developers couldn't add something like this, as it's a tweak for just one program.