System76 Reportedly Developing Their Own Rust-Written Desktop, Not Based On GNOME

[linner]

I have to admire the naivety of youth that allows them to bite off way more than they can chew. Sometimes they don't choke.

[Teggs]

The issue I've had with DEs outside of KDE/GNOME is that they aren't as comprehensive, nor as well supported by other projects. I have to dig for some third party utility to get a feature that the mega DEs support natively, or work through some DE specific conflict.

Fragmentation is a fair point. I hope they find they can use wlroots for Wayland, and I hope the same for Solus when they introduce Wayland to Budgie, to combat that very issue. Joshua Strobl at Solus also specifically listed a hope that Pop and Solus developers could cooperate in developing Rust-coded alternatives to GTK programs.

On the point of features that mega DEs support natively, that is exactly the issue here, and not for the first time. Gnome/GTK dropping support for themeing and desktop icons and other functionality is what led to these moves. I doubt it is the intention of Pop or certainly Solus devs to provide less functionality in their DEs... instead they have been irked that Gnome has been doing that itself for some years.

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This news knocks down two points used by Gnome supporters to justify their position. One, that the developers complaining were lazy/leeches and refused to solve the problems they listed... if they are willing to jettison GTK entirely, I believe that argument is dead. Second, that the decisions of the Gnome team were so right and just that although some complained, they still used it. Again no. People are taking extreme steps in this matter. All this said, if a user likes Gnome as it is and will be, I have no problem with that, and I wish them happiness of their experience. I hope it is a shared sentiment.

[Myownfriend]

Gnome/GTK dropping support for themeing

That's not happening.

https://stopthemingmy.app/

From what I can tell, the only thing that's changing is that GTK apps will have to opt-in to using a stylesheet that isn't the platform stylesheet instead of opting out by including a copy of the platform sylesheet.

They're just asking that distro providers don't change the system theme because it can break applications and the end user won't necessarily know what's to blame.

and desktop icons

That's easily added as an extension.

[furtadopires]

I'm really curious about which wayland compositor they will going to use on this project, I hope they use something like wlroots instead of a modified mutter

[mangeek]

I like GNOME, but I'd be happy with... Sway with a launcher panel.

[Danny3]

They should add a KDE Plasma flavor ans stop monkeying around.
Canonical is the one that is wasting resources investing in stuff that it's just abandoned later.

[CTown]

Fragmentation is a fair point. I hope they find they can use wlroots for Wayland, and I hope the same for Solus when they introduce Wayland to Budgie, to combat that very issue. Joshua Strobl at Solus also specifically listed a hope that Pop and Solus developers could cooperate in developing Rust-coded alternatives to GTK programs.

On the point of features that mega DEs support natively, that is exactly the issue here, and not for the first time. Gnome/GTK dropping support for themeing and desktop icons and other functionality is what led to these moves. I doubt it is the intention of Pop or certainly Solus devs to provide less functionality in their DEs... instead they have been irked that Gnome has been doing that itself for some years...

These smaller projects would work better if we had a non-tiling (meaning more conventional) window manager based on wlroots. It would give stability and familiarity. If it's as configurable as KWin, even a small DE can dictate how the window manager works just through scripts. If this compositor is desktop environment agnostic, it could be the defacto X.org replacement.

That's why I am personally rooting for KWinFT to mature.

edit: I suppose Mir could fill this role as well.

[TheOne]

These smaller projects would work better if we had a non-tiling (meaning more conventional) window manager based on wlroots. It would give stability and familiarity.

There already exists one that performs pretty much better than the others and has many nice eye candy features a la compiz mode. It is called Wayfire check it out!

[evasb]

yet another toolkit to add to the mess of toolkits on linux. one of the biggest complaints with windows at the moment is lack of UI consistency with all the different interfaces. linux is no different. i'm all for desktop environment choices but i wish they would all agree on a single, standard toolkit they all follow. if system76 is going to use their own toolkit it just add more of a mess.

GTK needs to split from GNOME, IMHO.

This fragmentation occur (Solus is thinking about using EFL and Solus something else) because GTK is controled by the GNOME Project. I think that except from KDE nobody should use anything else, but the fact GTK is part of the GNOME project brings more fragmentation than it would be needed.

My suggestion? GTK should to be a freedesktop.org project or an independent project. This way, GTK could be more inclusive and projects can have confidence to use and contribute with the toolkit.

[Vaporeon]

I wonder just how much do they intend to re-invent the wheel?

As many times as it takes until we get wheels that actually work. Seriously I think we need more NIH for the Linux desktop and we might have been better off is Mir were not rejected and its original goal abandoned. "Wayland is a protocol XDDD" has worked exactly as well as I would have expected. Many years have passed, there is only one implementation that is worth a damn (wlroots) and we are still clinging to X in practice. I wonder how many more bi-weekly "KDE has had more Wayland fixes" articles will be written before KDE is properly usable? And as for GNOME, where do I even start? Sway is not for everyone so we are in dire need of a real alternative.