System76's Pop!_OS COSMIC Desktop To Make Use Of Iced Rust Toolkit Rather Than GTK

[mirmirmir]

They take rust meme too far. They decided to use experimental toolkit just because it's rust. Same goes with their compositor. Really makes me think how can they sustain the whole project.

[Tuxee]

I really wish and cross my fingers that System76 will not disappoint and will help us get rid of Gnome in particular.
A massive amount of people are waiting for that moment

No there is not a "massive amount of people waiting". That's just an observation in your bubble.

[Quackdoc]

They take rust meme too far. They decided to use experimental toolkit just because it's rust. Same goes with their compositor. Really makes me think how can they sustain the whole project.

probably because they are the only ones that are working towards making a product worth selling, decided to put way the toys that we all are stuck with now and do something actually productive.

[skeevy420]

Linux is just too fragmented to be successful. There are already too many toolkits and even the ones that are available have no concept of backward compatibility. I read about Gnome team rewriting their gtk+3 apps to support gtk+4.

It has nothing to do with toolkits and backward compatibility; both of those have solutions. It's simply the distribution fragmentation and variety of things offered.

This is where I start to ramble on.

Where Windows and Apple give one target that changes every decade or so and offers ways to run old stuff with minimal effort on upgrades, Linux gives 20 targets every year and each of them uses different solutions for most things. Boot loaders, kernel versions, desktops, init systems, file system layouts, and more.

I'm doing my damnedest to migrate the majority of my desktop programs to AppImage or, preferably, Flatpak. What I'm doing is setting it up so that any non-KDE application is from a non-distribution package manager since I build the Plasma desktop and entire KDE application suite from source. Basically, all my system needs are the dependencies to run kdesrc-build from start to finish (a lot) and the stuff to run Flats and AppImages. I really don't need a whole lot since the entire KDE application suite has a lot of things I use. Most of my Flats are just web browses and gaming software.

What I'm describing is going to be the way forward. The distribution will develop their host OS with whatever stuff they want and they'll have support for an App Thingy like Snaps or Flats installed by default and have a system setup so that you shouldn't have to touch something like apt or pacman outside of containerized environments like Toolbox. There's a reason both RHEL and SUSE are pushing the CoreOS model and that reason is that Flats, AppImages, Snaps, "etc" offer to Linux what Microsoft offers for Windows and Apple offers for macOS -- something stable for a long period of time that should work for everyone. I really hope that "etc" doesn't become the XKCD competing standard joke where we end up back where we started with 20 targets each year versus the one with Apple and the one with Microsoft.

The biggest problem with Flats and Snaps are that they don't even consider kernel and driver needs like AMDGPU-Pro or OpenZFS. They only really go so far as services and applications. Ideally, they need to be paired with something like Ubuntu's HWE if they're on an LTS distribution.

Apologies for the rambling.

[DMJC]

It is a smart move from System 76.

At this point, there is no way GTK/libadaita/Gnome devs will ever understand what a user-oriented approach is. Unity was created because Canonical's vision (and all their suggestions to make a desktop for the user) was rejected arrogantly by the usual bunkered geeks of Gnome.

Are you high? Unity winning the hearts and minds of users? LOL!!! Hell no. Not even close. Gnome 2.0 was the only GTK based desktop that a clear majority liked/used. As soon as Gnome 3.0 and Canonical moved away from the classical Gnome 2.0/Start Menu paradigm, the users abandoned it and forked gnome to make Mate / Cinnamon (a ton moved to XFCE4 until Mate / Cinnamon got up) etc. The biggest leap backwards Linux ever made as a desktop platform was in adopting a tablet PC interface. It crippled the desktops for years as no one knew what to make or how to make it. How to make it effective/integrated (not to mention support multi-monitor like anyone who cared about productivity was using it). And the worst thing of all: How to make it without screwing up the workflow of users who had happily adopted/worked with Gnome 2.0 for years.

[jrch2k8]

I wish them luck BUT i'm not sure they can juggle 2 unstable projects at the same time unless system76 is hiring a big developing team or this is a long term project specially since iced seem to have reached the barely usable state quite damn recently and it miss a damn lot of stuff still unless that roadmap and todo are not being updated.

[skeevy420]

Are you high? Unity winning the hearts and minds of users? LOL!!! Hell no. Not even close. Gnome 2.0 was the only GTK based desktop that a clear majority liked/used. As soon as Gnome 3.0 and Canonical moved away from the classical Gnome 2.0/Start Menu paradigm, the users abandoned it and forked gnome to make Mate / Cinnamon (a ton moved to XFCE4 until Mate / Cinnamon got up) etc. The biggest leap backwards Linux ever made as a desktop platform was in adopting a tablet PC interface. It crippled the desktops for years as no one knew what to make or how to make it. How to make it effective/integrated (not to mention support multi-monitor like anyone who cared about productivity was using it). And the worst thing of all: How to make it without screwing up the workflow of users who had happily adopted/worked with Gnome 2.0 for years.

You just described how I ended up on KDE Plasma. GNOME 2.0 is what converted me to Linux. GNOME 3.0 sent me on a spiritual journey.

[mirmirmir]

probably because they are the only ones that are working towards making a product worth selling, decided to put way the toys that we all are stuck with now and do something actually productive.

Cry about it. I know who you are 💀💀

[Mateus Felipe]

Are you high? Unity winning the hearts and minds of users? LOL!!! Hell no. Not even close. Gnome 2.0 was the only GTK based desktop that a clear majority liked/used. As soon as Gnome 3.0 and Canonical moved away from the classical Gnome 2.0/Start Menu paradigm, the users abandoned it and forked gnome to make Mate / Cinnamon (a ton moved to XFCE4 until Mate / Cinnamon got up) etc. The biggest leap backwards Linux ever made as a desktop platform was in adopting a tablet PC interface. It crippled the desktops for years as no one knew what to make or how to make it. How to make it effective/integrated (not to mention support multi-monitor like anyone who cared about productivity was using it). And the worst thing of all: How to make it without screwing up the workflow of users who had happily adopted/worked with Gnome 2.0 for years.

The only thing I ever liked in Ubuntu was Unity. It was the only DE that I liked better than GNOME.

When I started using Linux, back in 2012, GNOME 3 had been released recently. I started with Arch and had to choose between the available DEs. GNOME has been since the only one which is polished enough for me to use.

[zexelon]

The only thing I ever liked in Ubuntu was Unity. It was the only DE that I liked better than GNOME.

When I started using Linux, back in 2012, GNOME 3 had been released recently. I started with Arch and had to choose between the available DEs. GNOME has been since the only one which is polished enough for me to use.

Did you try KDE? I just switched to KDE Neon distro I am very pleasantly surprised. For the last few years its been Pop_OS with KDE as the first thing installed. I use Pop_OS as the base for their driver support and non-religious GNU/GPL stance on drivers. I have tried Gnome on and off again over the last couple of years but just could not use it as productively as I could KDE. Just last week gave KDE Neon a spin as a result and I must say its been really impressive!

I am very curious to see what S76 does with their own DE as I think out of all the Gnome setups, theirs was by far the best and only one worth running if you had to use Gnome.