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Gnome devs are taking a stance for the direction they want to lead Gnome to, with libadwaita and it's wrong on almost every way regarding what brought all of us to Linux in the first place (theming and the ability to tinker in your system and customize it to your needs). They are attempting step by step to close Gnome down for anyone who wants to theme it, add extension etc... and their close-minded vision of "if you don't like it contribute, oh thanks for the suggestion but we don't want that" is starting to make people really angry.
Joshua Strobl of Solus and Budgie DE has written a long blog post in which he explains why Budgie will no longer use Gnome bits in the future as the direction it's taking is a huge issue for developers and users. It's a very interesting read and it totally converges with what I've been saying all along. I'm very happy Budgie will distance itself from Gnome in the future and it has a bright future thanks to that, while Gnome will see people move away due to not listening to anyone but themselves, and being a bigger obstacle every new release to user-friendliness.
https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/...ive-ecosystem/
A few extracts:
"What used to be a community welcoming diverse ideas, focused on providing an equitable ecosystem for many members of the Linux community, has gradually turned into an isolated silo of thought that pays little mind to the concerns raised by its users."
"On social media, it has not been any better, with some GNOME developers dismissing concerns by just claiming that nobody from System76 ever engaged with GNOME on the matter, which is materially false, and made remarks that these developers “instead prefer to rant on twitter”."
"While I certainly recognize that the opinions, words, or actions of some of these developers may not reflect the entirely of GNOME, the regularity of this behavior from GNOME contributors clearly speaks to a cultural problem inside of GNOME. They aren’t just being anti-user at this point (actively making it more difficult to curate their own Linux experience), but anti-developer as well. Rather than listening to the concerns of entire operating systems and many of their own users on the negative impact of GNOME’s decisions, they have doubled down. This sort of behavior is destructive to the work so many of us, GNOME developers included, have done to try to ensure Linux is a viable desktop computing platform. It alienates folks and further perpetuates the view in the Linux community that GNOME does not listen and is hard to work with."
"If you are a desktop Linux user and want to have a consistent experience across all your apps, good luck with that once GNOME apps start adopting libadwaita and GTK5 becomes a thing. If you are building a desktop Linux application at this point and you want to provide flexibility for your users or allow operating systems to ship your app, with users being happy with how well it integrates with the rest of their Linux experience, using GTK4 and beyond is going to be shooting yourself in the foot."
"Given the current state of GTK4, the possible future of GTK5, and the likely fragmentation in user experience that is to come, the obvious question is: Do we still build Budgie and Solus software with GTK4 and beyond?
It would not be in the best interest for Solus to invest in a future version of Budgie that leverages relevant software (GTK as an example) developed by GNOME. In fact, it would not be in the best interest for Solus to invest at all in developing any software leveraging GTK4 and beyond. It would put us in an undesired position of being progressively negatively impacted by conscious decisions by GNOME, not to mention implying to others that we support the direction GNOME is taking their software stack, when that reality couldn’t be further from the truth."
"For the Solus GNOME Edition, I am no longer confident that I can continue to provide the necessary curated experience that many of our users expect from a Solus edition. In lieu of dropping the edition entirely, alienating people that want to use Solus while also happening to prefer GNOME Shell, we will cease shipping a curated GNOME Edition in the next Solus release, giving it a clear “non-curated” designation and demoting it to a separate section of our Downloads page."
Joshua Strobl of Solus and Budgie DE has written a long blog post in which he explains why Budgie will no longer use Gnome bits in the future as the direction it's taking is a huge issue for developers and users. It's a very interesting read and it totally converges with what I've been saying all along. I'm very happy Budgie will distance itself from Gnome in the future and it has a bright future thanks to that, while Gnome will see people move away due to not listening to anyone but themselves, and being a bigger obstacle every new release to user-friendliness.
https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/...ive-ecosystem/
A few extracts:
"What used to be a community welcoming diverse ideas, focused on providing an equitable ecosystem for many members of the Linux community, has gradually turned into an isolated silo of thought that pays little mind to the concerns raised by its users."
"On social media, it has not been any better, with some GNOME developers dismissing concerns by just claiming that nobody from System76 ever engaged with GNOME on the matter, which is materially false, and made remarks that these developers “instead prefer to rant on twitter”."
"While I certainly recognize that the opinions, words, or actions of some of these developers may not reflect the entirely of GNOME, the regularity of this behavior from GNOME contributors clearly speaks to a cultural problem inside of GNOME. They aren’t just being anti-user at this point (actively making it more difficult to curate their own Linux experience), but anti-developer as well. Rather than listening to the concerns of entire operating systems and many of their own users on the negative impact of GNOME’s decisions, they have doubled down. This sort of behavior is destructive to the work so many of us, GNOME developers included, have done to try to ensure Linux is a viable desktop computing platform. It alienates folks and further perpetuates the view in the Linux community that GNOME does not listen and is hard to work with."
"If you are a desktop Linux user and want to have a consistent experience across all your apps, good luck with that once GNOME apps start adopting libadwaita and GTK5 becomes a thing. If you are building a desktop Linux application at this point and you want to provide flexibility for your users or allow operating systems to ship your app, with users being happy with how well it integrates with the rest of their Linux experience, using GTK4 and beyond is going to be shooting yourself in the foot."
"Given the current state of GTK4, the possible future of GTK5, and the likely fragmentation in user experience that is to come, the obvious question is: Do we still build Budgie and Solus software with GTK4 and beyond?
It would not be in the best interest for Solus to invest in a future version of Budgie that leverages relevant software (GTK as an example) developed by GNOME. In fact, it would not be in the best interest for Solus to invest at all in developing any software leveraging GTK4 and beyond. It would put us in an undesired position of being progressively negatively impacted by conscious decisions by GNOME, not to mention implying to others that we support the direction GNOME is taking their software stack, when that reality couldn’t be further from the truth."
"For the Solus GNOME Edition, I am no longer confident that I can continue to provide the necessary curated experience that many of our users expect from a Solus edition. In lieu of dropping the edition entirely, alienating people that want to use Solus while also happening to prefer GNOME Shell, we will cease shipping a curated GNOME Edition in the next Solus release, giving it a clear “non-curated” designation and demoting it to a separate section of our Downloads page."
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