System76 Adding XWayland Support & Other Improvements To Its COSMIC DE

[Artim]

If thats the truth then the situation is far worse, they are actually failing at their goals.

In any case this is besides the point, System76's main target is standard desktop users. Those users had issues with the usability/UI with Gnome which is why System76 has tweaked Gnome so much, Gnome doesn't want that so System76 is making their own desktop.

You get casualty wrong. The problems exist because the Cosmic GNOME is a horrible Frankenstein monster out of a terrible software shop and mostly bad extensions. Switch to gnome-vanilla and you already got only half as many problems. Added to that is their obvious lack in quality management. Their main priority seems to be being the first ones putting out a new kernel release or some other component, not unproblematic Updates.

[mdedetrich]

Gnome is not user friendly for many. A lot of choices they do is kinda questionable, and recent changes (like compiler flags on Fedora) show that they care way more about developers activly debugging entire system (in companies like Facebook) instead of average user that will only lose performance from that. Red Hat primary product RHEL is server oriented linux, IBM isn't user oriented company, Canonical when it is kinda user oriented, but i would like to see more alternatives in user oriented.

Exactly, someone clearly has no clue where the $$$$ are coming in. Redhat gets almost all of its money from server, desktop is an afterthought for them which is why they are happy with a somewhat usable desktop that minimizes their developers time.

On the other had, almost all of System76's money is directly correlated to their desktop end users. If end users complain about some usability issue, System76 takes this seriously because it hits their bottom line. Redhat couldn't care, at best it would create some ticket with lowest priority where maybe some day a dev on a bored Friday afternoon will look at it, or endlessly argue on the internet trying to justify why no change is needed like what they are doing with explicit sync changes in the graphics stack.

[Artim]

Exactly, someone clearly has no clue where the $$$$ are coming in. Redhat gets almost all of its money from server, desktop is an afterthought for them which is why they are happy with a somewhat usable desktop that minimizes their developers time.

On the other had, almost all of System76's money is directly correlated to their desktop end users. If end users complain about some usability issue, System76 takes this seriously because it hits their bottom line. Redhat couldn't care, at best it would create some ticket with lowest priority where maybe some day a dev on a bored Friday afternoon will look at it, or endlessly argue on the internet trying to justify why no change is needed like what they are doing with explicit sync changes in the graphics stack.

Sure, that must be the reason why GNOME is the default in so many distributions and runs so much better than anything S76 has ever created...

[sarmad]

the issue is that there is no good solution for S76 for a DE, and as a company, who actually wants to sell products, half assing it like all the other environments isn't cutting it. all the other DEs have issues, cosmic will have issues too, no doubt. but S76 is no longer just a hardware company, they sell a product, and there is nothing that fits what their definition of a good OOB experience

Does it fit their definition of good OOB experience that connecting an external screen is problematic because the HDMI port is hooked to the dGPU rather than the iGPU? Or does it fit their good OOB experience that the fan continuously goes on and off when the CPU load is constant? Or does it fit their good OOB experience that the keyboard flexes more than kids' toys?

[ssokolow]

My condolences, it must be really painful to you to be at this site unless by a lucky coincidence its ui toolkit strictly matches your system theme.

Nahh. Firefox fits in on my KDE desktop pretty well... ironic given that it's less "native" than the GTK apps I've more or less completely kicked out of my desktop as GNOME-isms slowly leak their way into GTK apps that don't want to be GNOME apps.

(For example, I still need to survey alternatives to Deluge-GTK for my torrent client, since GTK's drop-shadow CSDs result in a giant black border on context menus when I toggle off compositing without restarting the app, and it's much harder than it should be to find the right ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css incantation to banish them... the old "Only end users should theme my app... ignore the fact that end users are likely to lack the knowledge to do so and give up.")

Seriously though, there's a difference between a website and a desktop application... especially when I avoid web-tech apps for bloat-reduction reasons. (CSD is the biggest problem I have with GNOME. I don't want to fight for something as simple as window frames to be consistent and reliably functional in an environment where compositing comes and goes, and for titlebars to have my KWin button customizations and the full set of KWin context menu entries.)

I did recently write a userstyle for Wikipedia, though, to crunch away all that gratuitous whitespace in their new theme.

[ssokolow]

I think we have different use cases but I definitely agree with KDE's issue tracker. I really wish OS projects would move either to Github or to Gitlab already

I don't spend enough time on Gitlab to know what features it has, but Github's issue tracker is too simplistic for their use-cases. That's why both KDE and Mozilla use Bugzilla. Of the trackers that support features that advanced, it's the best of a bunch of bad options.

I suspect that's why KDE runs both a Gitlab instance at invent.kde.org AND a Bugzilla at bugs.kde.org and embeds a link in the Gitlab sidebar which allows you to jump direct to the Bugzilla entries for the project you're on.

[mdedetrich]

Sure, that must be the reason why GNOME is the default in so many distributions

Yeah for the distributions you cherry pick

and runs so much better than anything S76 has ever created...

Cool opinion bro

I don't spend enough time on Gitlab to know what features it has, but Github's issue tracker is too simplistic for their use-cases. That's why both KDE and Mozilla use Bugzilla. Of the trackers that support features that advanced, it's the best of a bunch of bad options.

That might have been true of github in the past but they vastly improved this. Its still simple in design but its more capable then it used to be (I use it all the time for work).

[ssokolow]

That might have been true of github in the past but they vastly improved this. Its still simple in design but its more capable then it used to be (I use it all the time for work).

It's certainly grown a lot of new features (I host my stuff on Github), but I still see the KDE crew using Bugzilla features it lacks. (Does GitHub even have a proper needsinfo feature yet? I haven't seen anything that lets me pull up a list of pending info requests.)

[Khrundel]

Nahh. Firefox fits in on my KDE desktop pretty well...

You mean CSD frame of firefox somehow fits KDE? Well, that's great. But window's frame is something you usually ignore, what about site's internal controls? You know, for last 10 years every site comes with it's own GUI toolkit. Do they all fit?

ironic given that it's less "native" than the GTK apps I've more or less completely kicked out of my desktop as GNOME-isms slowly leak their way into GTK apps that don't want to be GNOME apps.

There is nothing ironic when someone inventing excuses for his hatred. What is ironic is inability to see how inconsistent is your demand for consistency.

Seriously though, there's a difference between a website and a desktop application...

No, there is no any difference. Especially with linux. There is a smooth range between website, single page application, electron app, and a set of different toolkits, none of which can be called "system".

I did recently write a userstyle for Wikipedia,

There are plenty of hobbies. Someone builds a fortress for dwarfs.

to crunch away all that gratuitous whitespace in their new theme.

That is not the same. Removing some whitespaces doesn't prove any urgency to have consistent themes. I mean even after you've crumpled their new theme you haven't got something you can call "my custom look".

[Quackdoc]

Does it fit their definition of good OOB experience that connecting an external screen is problematic because the HDMI port is hooked to the dGPU rather than the iGPU?

this is one of the problems they aim to solve, both gnome and KDE have lack luster handling for multi-gpu, though at least KDE is slightly better. both are pretty bad.

Or does it fit their good OOB experience that the fan continuously goes on and off when the CPU load is constant? Or does it fit their good OOB experience that the keyboard flexes more than kids' toys?

can't say I have seen either complaints about s76 personally so I won't comment on these. the first sounds like a standard bad fan curve.