Linux Mint Looks To Fork More GNOME Software, Make XApp More Independent

[ssokolow]

Thats like complaining that KDE Discovery is based on KDE Libs on top of plain Qt and claiming it breaks other desktops because it heavily depends on Breeze to look correct.
Gnome apps are Gnome apps, KDE apps are KDE apps. They work on other desktops just fine, they just won't feel "native" and this is all about that.

The difference is that libadwaita actively disables theming and was developed by these people who disingenuously imply that interfaces like ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css are as API stable as Firefox's userChrome.css if users want to do their own customizing.

(As a user of Inkscape on KDE, I can personally attest to how API-unstable the CSS rules are that you need to override to get rid of the drop shadow around menus and how hard it is to find good documentation on how to figure out what the new selector you need is.)

[Vermilion]

This is GNOME-Scan and Atril side by side in Xubuntu 24.04 [...] So on the right you have Atril which looks like all the other apps in Xubuntu 24.04, and on the left you’ve got an app which has nothing to do here.

No shit, Clem. The Scan app looks out of place because that's an ugly desktop.

[ssokolow]

Right, that's why every single article on Phoronix that mentions GNOME has the same cabal of non-GNOME users who come out of the woodwork *every single time* to spew the same anti-GNOME vitriol. Yet, it is GNOME that's the problem. Sheesh.

I don't engage in the vitriol... but I do think it's illustrative that GTK+ 2.x was the toolkit you used if you wanted your applications to integrate with as many DEs as possible as seamlessly as possible, while, in the wake of GNOME 3 and GTK+ 3.x...

• ...MATE and Cinnamon forked off to preserve a more traditional GNOME desktop experience.
• ...The LXDE devs tried porting to GTK 3 and decided to make LXDE an LTS sort of thing and merge with Razor-Qt to make LXQt for the sequel. (And also wrote an LD_PRELOAD hack that LXDE-based Lubuntu ships with, named gtk3-nocsd.)
• ...Archlinux gained a gtk3-classic package (formerly gtk3-mushrooms) which carries a patchset for building a more GTK2-like GTK3 for non-GNOME desktops.
• ...System76 started developing COSMIC as an "OK, we'll GTFO" response to GNOME saying "ship stock GNOME or GTFO".
• ...and probably other things I can't remember off the top of my head.

That said, i'm not surprised. GNOME was founded on stubbornness and fragmentation. By the time they decided the early Qt license's non-libre nature was a deal-breaker for KDE, Xfce already existed as something they could have contributed to. (Yes, Xfce has been around longer than GNOME.)

...plus things like GnomeVFS (and various other knock-offs of things KDE got to first) exist because GNOME hated C++ so much that they rejected KDE's offers to write and maintain C bindings and client libraries for their C++ libraries and service daemons to reduce fragmentation. (Sorry I can't give links. That was long before I started bookmarking memorable blog posts and mailing list archives to refer back to later.)

[Daktyl198]

There are disagreements obviously. They don't use Adwaita for whatever reason. I don't know enough about Adwaita vs Xapp to know why Mint continues to use Xapp, but they must have their reasons.

The team is just overly ambitious and have their ideologies that they like to live by. They can't properly maintain Mate and Cinnamon as it is, and instead of moving to more shared libraries, they're choosing to double down and create an extremely cut-off ecosystem that nobody but them uses and maintains.

If they don't like using up to date Gnome libraries, why the hell are they still basing everything on Gnome? Rewriting all of Cinnamon to use an entirely different backend and shared library system (XFCE maybe?) would be less work than maintaining every single package and library required to make a DE function.

[Dukenukemx]

though I don't like Ubuntu , it is most popular Linux Distro as it is used by most people by default, for most People Linux == Ubuntu, even Fedora might have more users

I'm confused. Are you saying Ubuntu is the most popular or that Fedora has more users than Linux Mint?

[Malsabku]

My fear is that Cinnamon's technical debt is getting bigger and bigger by year. At some point they will have to switch to new technologies. GTK4 has much better performance than GTK3, and other nice extras like better fractional scaling and Wayland support. And yes, you can develop GTK4 apps completely without libadwaita.

Maybe Cinnamon will be able to automatically rewrite its apps from GTK3 to GTK4 using AI later. But currently it is stuck in the early 2010s. It's like BSD.

[Monsterovich]

My fear is that Cinnamon's technical debt is getting bigger and bigger by year. At some point they will have to switch to new technologies. GTK4 has much better performance than GTK3, and other nice extras like better fractional scaling and Wayland support.

GTK4 and GTK3 are both sh*t (GTK3 is much less sh*t). GTK2 has the best performance. The problem with fractional scaling is ridiculous. Even Qt 5 can do it.

[reba]

Right, that's why every single article on Phoronix that mentions GNOME has the same cabal of non-GNOME users who come out of the woodwork *every single time* to spew the same anti-GNOME vitriol. Yet, it is GNOME that's the problem. Sheesh.

I had a good laugh reading this:

https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e301032670c

[poncho524]

Man, I love Mint. They are so principled and logical.
I've been a happy Mint user since 2017.

[cutterjohn]

Ah, more fragmentation, just what the Linux desktop ecosystem needs to mature!

GNOME is total ass. It's their way or the highway and their ways is total ass FFS!