Linux Has Become Complicated And Limiting (GNOME, Wayland, etc)

I can't help but come to the conclusion that Linux and much of our software has become too complicated, too rigid and too limiting. When I switched to Linux on the desktop about 15 years ago, we had so much more in terms of customization options and flexibility. Now, things are different...
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[@cameronbosch1213]

I agree on GNOME, however, KDE Plasma I think still has those customization options for those who want or need those options. I love KDE Plasma 5.27 and can't wait for KDE Plasma 6!

[@iodreamify]

Right! If Gnome is going the "wrong" direction then you can be sure the kde folks will maintain an open mind. why not give their ecosystem the support if you value this kind of freedom by making more qt themes instead of gtk? Plasma 6 will maybe even add CSS as the engine for theming so it could be a whole renaissance for the desktop.

[@zparihar]

I'd stick with 5.27 for a while. It's the gold standard. 6.0 will need to mature for sometime.

[@markhathaway9456]

Et voilà. It's here in March 2024.😄

[@revgen11]

What I hear from devs is that x11 is very difficult to develop more modern features, such as hardware accelerated 4k60p video playback in web browsers. They say this kind of functionality is easier to implement in Wayland. For linux to catch on with regular consumers and beginners, they need to be able to complete simple tasks like go to youtube and play any video at any resolution without any fuss. First impressions do matter. Progress is not without complications.

[@nolan412]

Wayland needs a lot of old features.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@gius db Software is not a "fashion accessory" - it either works, or it does not work. If it does not work then you either fix it or find an alternative piece of software that does work. I am engineer, I live by the philosophy "if it ain't broke then don't fix it".

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

"What I hear from devs is that x11 is very difficult to develop more modern features" So you're not able to offer your own opinions, then? Just those of developers?

[@matyasmarkkovacs8336]

​@gius db C will never disappear, at least not in the near future.

[@errodememoria]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 How he would have an opinion about something he doesn't develop on? lol

[@mdintisar]

Gnome is not for Linux Customizers. It is for the users who want to get things done and not worry about the intricate parts of desktop customization. The majority of computer Users just want to do what they want to do with their operating system. They would use any office software and sometimes watch youtube videos or browse the internet. Some of them would-be creators who need some specific applications. But for most people changing the desktop background is the only thing that they need. A few of them would like to change the accent colour though. Theming is for people who are really into theming and have the time for it.

[@newnegusnetwork1787]

in short, gnome is for the people that have a life outside of computers, but don't want to deal with that michaelsoft binblows shit.

[@cryptidv]

@@newnegusnetwork1787 Exactly

[@trumpetpunk42]

Until the whole single-threaded thing crashes, as it frequently tends to

[@folksurvival]

@@newnegusnetwork1787 So are Cinnamon, MATE, Budgie, XFCE, LXQt, KDE Plasma etc

[@marcrenner1956]

I agree. I’ve been using various desktop Linux flavors for about 15 years now, and I enjoyed customizing themes and other aspects of each distro. But as I age I lost that desire to spend endless hours tweaking, and I just want a stable system to get things done. At 70+ I’m probably an old fuddy-duddy but good performance, stability, and predictability are now what I value in a desktop Linux. Currently I use Fedora workstation (Gnome) with a few UI tweaks, as my daily driver. As far as I am concerned it gets better with each release, and has stable versions of all the apps I need.

[@thelakeman2538]

Honestly I would take a neat polished experience by default over heavy customisation options, I have only been a linux user for the past like 2 years, started with kde, played around with a lot of the customisation options, same with cinnamon and xfce, never got into window managers, now I just stick with gnome. I didn't bother to change my distro's default wallpaper or icons for gnome for weeks, only got my favourite extensions installed, changed a few settings in tweaks and never looked back aside from occassionally changing the wallpaper. Though I still think that gnome devs should not be actively hostile towards the customisation side of their DE, and there is a lot of valid criticism that can be levelled against their application philosophy but I can always just replace that application with something else.

[@ArniesTech]

Most users (especially Enterprise clients) are just like that. And all FOSS projects gotta pay bills too. So they focus on what the majority wants.

[@louistournas120]

I think that customization is important. A PC is a personal thing. You are the king and it needs to look and work exactly like you want it. If a user requests a certain feature, the author of the software should not reject it. Don’t tell the user to fork the project. If you ask the user to write the code himself, then you need to guide him since who knows the code better than the author? That is one reason why I left Windows 2 y ago. Win 7 was excellent. With Win 8, it is ugly, I can’t change to the classic Win 95 style, everything looks white and black, I can’t update the OS when I want to. At the same time, iOS and Android became ugly but it is not as bad since these are just cellphones and I don’t care about them.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@louistournas120 The author of the software can do what they like - it's their software. In my experience, a lot of people are rude and obnoxious when communicating with developers anyway, they don't deserve to have their requests listened to.

[@louistournas120]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 Well, if someone is being rude when they ask a developer something, I’m not here to defend that. I once asked the developers of MangoHUD just to add the ability to control how RAM and VRAM is displayed. Right now, it only displays in the EIC format (KiB, MiB, etc). I asked for a feature. Let’s add the ability to choose between what is called JEDEC (divide by 1024, display as KB, MB, etc) and there is also metric and there is also EIC. This is something that is not complicated to do. I already have code that handles this. One person responded saying that it would reduce performance and the other responded that they are not going to add that and to fork the project if I want that. I then noticed that the project has been forked like 20 times by different users. I’m not even sure what each of those forks do since there is no readme.txt Anyway, I made a fork and uploaded to so banana urgef banana orge and added a readme.txt file and explanation on how to use it. When people ask me for a feature request on one of my projects, I quickly add it. Although I add a lot of code commenting, it is much easier for me to make changes. Why should I tell them “Hey, you want it, Fork the project”.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@louistournas120 I read your comment, it was interesting but ultimately it just told me that you have found your own solution to the problem anyway - i.e. fork the code and change it yourself. To me, that's just "thinking like an engineer" which is what I pride myself in doing, so I can't criticise anything you have said here.

[@cyberanalyst]

There's always a trade-off between usability and customizability. Gnome is going way off in the direction of a walled garden, while Plasma continues towards the other extreme with throwing everything with the kitchen sink at the user. At the same time, there are still plenty of WMs for those who want to tinker around and get stuff done. While I enjoyed the heyday of Linux customization, let's not get carried away. Linux today is infinitely more intuitive and easy to use and setup out of the box compared to the early 2000s, when WiFi drivers were completely hit or miss and no standard package installer like Flatpak existed.

[@haplozetetic9519]

How well do those WMs work under Wayland?, such as Openbos, Icewm, etc?

[@xKB616]

Compiz was one of the reasons I tried out Linux in the first place back in the day lol

[@hamobu]

Spinning cubes? Pft! Back in my day we had roaches that hid under windows, snow that fell on top of open windows, and pair of eyes in the corner that followed your mouse.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Was it a pet mouse or a wild one that you considered a pet and left crumbs out for?

[@yusefaslam9675]

xeyes? I still use it!

[@totallynotvme]

I feel like a big reason why "mainstream" DEs are becoming less customisable is because the overall "mainstream" is going more towards simplicity and limitations, which is really sad because it goes against what made old Linux and in general old OSs fun and easy to use. And as the Linux user base expands, software seems to becoming more and more rigid, which is good for stability etc, but still sad.

[@skelebro9999]

It's like a double-edged sword.

[@ArniesTech]

The big projects gotta pay bills too. So they focus on what the enterprise clients want and demand.

[@vaisakhkm783]

​@@ArniesTech yep, that's the main reason

[@NeptuneSega]

Most people just change the wallpaper and icons on the desktop or dock. Wala! You're done customizing

[@swimfan6292]

'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.' Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[@sebastianbauer4768]

I think you are just getting old and are reminiscing about a time when you were younger, we all go through that. The thing is all these things still exist, nobody is forcing you to use wayland or gnome 3. There is mate, cinnamon, lxde, xfce etc. The thing is time moves on, back when I started it was normal and expected to compile your own kernel and write your x11 config files. But now we live in a different age, computers are expected to just work. Nobody has the time anymore to spent days getting their system just right and frankly, we have just gotten better at prioritising usability in our GUI systems. We do have highly customisable GUIs still, they are just no longer the default. That because people like you or me that cherished those are no longer the default. You used to get into Linux because you embraced the complexity, freedom and challenge it presented. Nowadays people get into Linux to get shit done. Finally, 90% of people’s daily use migrated to the web. We have entire office suites as webapps these days, not to mention the time people spent on Facebook, KZbin etc. Most people hardly need any applications besides their web browser any more.

[@StariusPrime]

I’ve only recently (in the last couple years) gotten interested in linux again, but I was first into it back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The biggest difference to me is how “polished” linux is now, but I did feel something was missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it till I watched this video. I think you’re absolutely right. I loved, and do miss, the “wild west” of window manager custom themes back then. It’s ease of use to create, share, and use was FUN and that’s all seemingly gone now. If I wanted my linux distro to look like Mac OS 8 or 9, I could do it. There are plenty of ways to make modern linux look like modern Mac OS, but to make it look retro with retro sensibilities? I don’t know how with the current distributions. We used to have the freedom to use linux how we wanted, and I feel like we’re losing that freedom. Sure, it has more freedom compared to other modern operating systems, but as much compared to it’s past versions? I’m not too sure about that.

[@s1nistr433]

True but I still prefer Linux the way it was now. Linux was a wild west 10 years ago, gaming was unthinkable and a lot of software was subpar to what you'd get in Windows. GNOME was just switching to version 3 and it was a nightmare, KDE 4 and early-5 were extremely buggy, there were driver issues and things being broken in the official repos. It was fun but not practical for any reason aside from coding. Nowadays we have a solid, free-r alternative to Windows for those that are willing to go out of their way to install it As for customization, just use Plasma where you can literally change anything, and get cool stuff like wobbly windows, magic lamp, icons, themes, layouts, panels, etc. If you can code, you can do almost anything with a tiling window manager, not to mention all the cool stuff you can do with neovim and emacs

[@laughingvampire7555]

Gnome was the most customizable of them all. A lot more than KDE is today, GTK2 had a theme that copied Java's Metal style of its Swing GUI library the GTK and Gnome looked Java-ish but fast. I liked it because I was obsessed with Java back then.

[@send2gl]

Many of us non programmers were puzzled when the amazing desktop effects available via compiz seemingly disappeared with gnome3. I now use KDE Plasma, which has many of the effects, but not sure if it uses a different method to compiz to get these effects. As for things getting complicated, same with cars and motorbikes, now so much is controlled by CPUs that repairs or tweaks are difficult, if not impossible. Wonder if cars from the 2020s will still be maintained by enthusiasts in the 2080s, will the CPUs be available to keep them going?

[@zparihar]

Unfortunately, even KDE dropped some of my favourite effects. The CUBE is gone!

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

I consider "amazing desktop effects" to be nothing more that a hideous waste of CPU cycles used by people who need peer approval from others looking over their shoulders at their computers - less about "productivity" and more about "fashion accessory".

[@send2gl]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 You could say the same about decorating one's home, dressing smartly, style of car, attractive garden etc. A vase of flowers in a room may not be necessary but certainly lifts one's spirits.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@send2gl No, you can't say that because putting out a nice vase of flowers doesn't "detract" from something else happening - unless you superglue the vase to the top of your manager's desk at the office such that it inhibits them from using the desk for their job. Simply a very poor analogy on your part that I am not going to indulge here - a better one would have been driving a car very hard and very fast such that it causes greater fuel consumption. i.e. doing one thing that is probably unnecessary that has a detrimental impact on something else. You're welcome, you can thank me later.

[@nyankers]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 flowers need to be watered. perfectly fine analogy.

[@DownunderPhx]

Customizable and stable usually don't go well together. Gnome and GTK are designed for enterprise environments that value stability over 'hacking'. Also, don't like GTK, go with KDE. Don't like Wayland, go with X11. Don't like systemd, go with openrc or runit. There are loads of options and variety in Linux, some say too much (not me). Fragmentation is one of the great criticisms coming over from Windows land. I get the video is a rant, but I don't think the situation is as bad as it's made out to be.

[@hermannpaschulke1583]

It's because people want an OS that actually works. I've used Arch, Void, etc. with tiling WMs in the past. But nowdays I run fedora with gnome which simply works and doesn't break randomly. I don't want to tinker around with the OS on my main laptop, I have multiple other laptops and SBCs for that. My main machine simply has to function when I need it.

[@jirivegner3711]

There is a reason why Mint is so popular. OS that doesn't get in the way, is stable and still allows users to easily install up to date apps via flatpack (or any other method in linux). How many people need or want more?

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

I build my OS so it actually works. Our end desires are entirely the same (I don't actually know of anyone that doesn't want a working OS on their computer, so not sure what point you're making here anyway) but the path I take to get there is different to yours - nothing more than that. I have many desktops, laptops and SBCs - I put Gentoo Linux on all them because it's flexible enough to let me do that. I like tinkering. If you don't want to tinker then good luck to you - but your successes on your computers will be no more or less than those on my computers doing it my way.

[@jirivegner3711]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 I should add "out of the box", the point would be clearer and more precise. Your path to the functional OS is up to you. If you choose to thinker with installs, good for you. It is good there are options for people who want or need them. Some people who start with this may improve software for everyone in the future, similarly how people who started with thinkering with electronic components created many modern tech. But I don't like the idea that to use linux you have to do X (use command line, build from source ...) or you are using it wrong. I don't think many people actually hold this view, but it is present in the Linux community. PS: After reading this, I just want to add, that I didn't mean this personally. Nuances and tones in short text are hard.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@jirivegner3711 " I should add "out of the box", the point would be clearer and more precise." You can add what you like but I can only comment on the original words that you write. "Your path to the functional OS is up to you." I wasn't aware I needed your permission to use Linux in the way that I choose to. "But I don't like the idea that to use linux you have to do X (use command line, build from source ...) or you are using it wrong." That's fine, but I never said that anyway - so now you're putting words into my mouth and then arguing against them. Do try to keep up and stay on topic because I am not repeating the same point over and over again - what I said was that if YOU feel that Linux is too rigid, then learn to use it properly. Nothing more than that, so answer that point, not what you want me to have said. "PS: After reading this, I just want to add, that I didn't mean this personally. Nuances and tones in short text are hard." I can't take anything personally from a complete stranger on the Internet that I've never met. The same should to others also be true of anything I write here.

[@jirivegner3711]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 "I wasn't aware I needed your permission to use Linux in the way that I choose to." and "That's fine, but I never said that anyway - so now you're putting words into my mouth and then arguing against them." kind of clash with: "I can't take anything personally from a complete stranger on the Internet that I've never met." The OP argued reason why Linux today is more rigid (in the DT's sense) is, that for most people, OS should just work. I added that Linux Mint offers pretty much everything, most people needs. Not sure about keeping on topic, we are discussing in two threads and IMO we are both on topic in each of them.

[@OctaviusPelagius]

I think it's the other way around. Wayland and the recent move of Gnome and GTK to move the theming to libadwaita, are ways to make things simpler. The reason it seems that development in WMs and compositors in Xorg was easier is simply because people after decades got used to the Xorg limitations and baggage and Wayland is just pretty new. Eventually there will be common libs implementing common functionality for compositors to take advantage of just like they do on Xorg right now. Yes, Wayland leaves many aspects of functionality up to the compositors but it's simply baggage that doesn't need to be in a display server to begin with. Developers will eventually have more modularization, common libs to avoid reinventing the wheel. Things are changing rapidly but I understand some people getting desperate and wanting things now. As for libadwaita it's the same thing. The modularization it's just too recent to have all the ecosystem that was there back in the day of GTK2. The Gnome and GTK dev teams know that breaking APIs with every release was simply not sustainable and it's driving people away. This theming modularization aims, among other things, to isolate those changes and make them simply modular and as a direct result the custom themes have more flexibility and power.

[@leopard3131]

Spot on 100% agree. It is a catch 22 . People stubbornly hold on to Xorg because Wayland does not have the features slows the development of the desired features in Wayland.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@leopard3131 No, I "stubbornly" hold on to Xorg because it entirely the job I need a GUI in Linux to do - not all of us are self-entitled gamer-brats that want a few more FPS in "Cybersplatt 4044" on those new and expensive graphics cards that mummy and daddy bought them for Christmas.

[@leopard3131]

@Terry Daktyllus sounds stubborn to me. You have not mentioned that you even tried Wayland so how do you know it is not a drop in replacement? And if you do have a feature or bug what have you done to file a feature request, bug report, write code, or offer financial support to a Wayland developer? So you are stubbornly holding on to Xorg and insulting the suggestion you get over yourself and embrace the new.

[@bazoo513]

Wayland is more than a decade old - when _will_ it exit its infancy? And don't let me started on its focus on local display on a laptop or workstation, as opposed to network-centric X11.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@leopard3131 " sounds stubborn to me." Then it sounds stubborn to you. So what? "You have not mentioned that you even tried Wayland so how do you know it is not a drop in replacement?" I'm an engineer with an "if it works, don't fix it" mentality. I am not sat here being unhappy at my current Linux set up such that I am currently looking to make changes to it - usually just because some kid on Reddit posts a screenshot of their desktop that makes me a "jealous magpie". "And if you do have a feature or bug what have you done to file a feature request, bug report, write code, or offer financial support to a Wayland developer?" I have filed many bug reports on applications that I use since I started with Linux back in 1996. I haven't filed any on Wayland because I've found no bugs on Wayland because I've never used Wayland. Did I not make that clear in my original comment? "So you are stubbornly holding on to Xorg and insulting the suggestion you get over yourself and embrace the new." I am just exercising my right to post comments in a public place that I believe address the core point in the video which is that Linux has become too rigid, which is not my experience. Xorg just works for me, mainly because I am not a self-entitled gamer-brat hoping to get a few more FPS out of "Cybersplatt 4044" on the new graphics card that mummy and daddy got me for Christmas. If you take that as an insult then maybe you need to yourself avoid contact with the opinions of strangers on public Internet discussion forums. Maybe you need self-assertion therapy here? I can't help you on that, I fix computers, not brains.

[@jotix2570]

is the price of becoming mainstream, I'm an old guy and I remember the days of gnome2 & compiz, it was a lot of fun, but in the other hand not stable at all, now a day you install any distro with gnome and just works. And lets face it, linux is suported by trillion dollar companies (google, facebook, microsoft, and a long etc.), so, no surprise with the result.

[@swimfan6292]

It's the price of greed and times changing. People aren't assumed Good Faith anymore. It's assumed you're going to make dumb choices and the parental controls have all been hardened, without it being totally apparent or manageable...

[@maticz3923]

My problem with wayland is that it breaks stuff. Sure it's simpler but it doesn't handle some stuff. For example my conky windows show up together with other windows when pressing the super kwy in gnome while they are not supposed to. Some of this complexity is needed and wayland lacks it

[@ottowedel711]

Totally agree man... gtk2 was the best... the only one that I have found and use it for long time now which looks a little alike to those days is for me linuxmint xfce....

[@donaldwhite9291]

Hey DT … I’ve been tinkering with Linux since Red Hat 5 and I’ve finally taken your advice to ditch desktop environments and built my own based on a window manager and now you’ve gone and harshed my buzz! Lol Well, I’m not exactly tinkering with window managers, I’m actually exploring Wayland compositors. I get what you are saying about the complexity, but if it’s the old Compiz features that you are missing, look no further than Wayfire. Wayfire has the wobbly windows, the spinning cube and windows on fire; it’s all there! Actually, I doubt that you’ll find Wayfire is your bag of donuts, as it’s a stacking compositor first and foremost, with some tiling features. Anyway, everyone has a sour day here and there, but at least take some comfort in the knowledge that you’ve inspired old dogs like me to go off the reservation and do a little exploring and I’m having the time of my life!

[@dfs-comedy]

Stock Debian with the XFCE4 desktop is still pretty good, and XFCE has not changed much in a long time.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

XFCE is good, I've used it for years also. The problem is there are too many "software fashionistas" out there who see someone else's screenshot on Reddit and start getting jealous with their cravings for eye candy. I've heard people say "XFCE looks like a 1990's interface", for example. Who cares? If it works and makes you productive, what's the problem?

[@folksurvival]

@ziost XFCE and MATE.

[@tngaskell]

In Ubuntu 22.04 XFCE's window titlebar settings now *don't even effect the titlebar of the window titlebar settings dialog*! 🤮

[@rasix86]

I feel the complete opposite. With wlroots the fun came back into linux. For years the desktop was stalled an I had the feeling that everyone just cares about Android anymore. But now with wlroots it feels much more like the old days with new small tools emerging every couple of days and new compositors seeing the light of day.

[@Pocket-Calculator]

GNOME, Wayland and all their stuff are made by Red Hat employees. All they care about is their enterprise needs, not hobbyists or the community. Making stuff interdependent on each other and heavily restricted makes it easier for them to develop and debug. The flexibility and freedom is still there, you just gotta get away from their products.

[@alaunaenpunto3690]

1:30 not everyone is a hacker though nor do they have a desire to become one. As has been stated many times, a lot of computer users just need their computer to work out of the box without them having to do anything. If you want linux to go mainstream, that means limiting user customizability. If you want to tinker, you go with something like arch or gentoo. For myself, I played around with customization so much at one point that I was spending more time modding my computer than using it and it was taking attention away from more important things. So I concluded that simplicity wasn't that bad and I didn't really need the customization.

[@raychrash5139]

This, i really dont get why linux folks try and shame people that dont care about customizability that much, obviously i am gonna install a good window manager and a good terminal emulator but thats it, i am fine with having the stock/default DE, theme, wallpapper etc. There are different flavors of linux for everybody out there, not everyone wants to tinker with their computer 24/7

[@alaunaenpunto3690]

@@raychrash5139 I'm glad I dabbled with tinkering, because it made me more knowledgeable about linux and now I'm not afraid to use the cli and I can write simple scripts. But im not a developer or a nerd, so that's really all I need to do. I'm finally back to a basic DE and content with what I'm given.

[@RandomizerVidz]

I use to absolutely hate gnome.. now I truly can't live without it. Most of the effects you mentioned are available via gnome extension. Gnome now is elegant, modern,simplified and so easy to customize

[@theonlyD]

Mostly true but some parts of it are utterly trash with no way to change things. Like the file picker which doesn't show recent paths and doesn't show a image preview.

[@matyasmarkkovacs8336]

Aggreed, except the last part. GNOME is definitely not easy to customise, at least not as much as KDE for example.

[@zsh7862]

@@matyasmarkkovacs8336 Gnome is too hard to customize. If default gnome doesn't suit you then you don't have to use it, or should. There is things like dash to dock and dash to panel but if those little extensions don't suit you then avoid gnome. I feel gnome is being used by alot of people who shouldn't and thus start hating on it. Don't take this as me being hostile to you.

[@HANHITSI]

I neeeeeeed window specific shortcuts on my mouse sidebuttons via evrouter. I think the "security" design of Wayland is just pointless, if your DISPLAY SERVER is saving you from getting pwned, you're fucked anyway :D and has that ever happened to anyone? I don't think so.

[@matyasmarkkovacs8336]

@@zsh7862 I don't hate GNOME at all. It's a good DE, but customising it is not as straightforward as KDE.

[@Amaqse]

Its funny that u mention that because sometimes when u watch Linux youtubers u get this uneasy impression that ALL THEY EVER DO is change a theme of something here, modify wallpaper there, play with window alignments and sizes for some tiling window manager, add hover effect somewhere else and then shut down and go to bed. Like u dont get any impression that these people do ANYTHING ELSE on their computers, quite contrary you get the impression that whatever monstrosity they have designed would be absolute painful fight to the death with the os if forced to complete any basic job assigment such as editing several hundred wedding photos, creating a printable album, product box, or designing a house or something. Since playing with your themes is not a job, thus its being unintentionally deprecated for the sake of recognisability, clarity, compatibility and transparency as these features will bring more marketshare. That doesnt just apply to linux, professionals on the windows side often work on the "classic" windows 98/NT looking theme just because its cleaner, its a third of a percent faster and uses less resources. Both mac os and windows show by example that theming while cute and all, is irrelevant to success. What i find personally amusing is that when WIndows or mac gets new release or a big service pack type upgrade, youtube reviewers test startup times, battery drain, overall stability, chromium compilation speed, huge bmw blender render speed, huge effect-heavy video editing project speed, io/ram/disk performance, maybe a Montecarlo spreadshit benchmark, play a few games compare fps etc etc. When linux youtubers grab new version of a distro. . . they go aaaaawwww look, new color icons. . . . oh me god look at these wallpapers. But have you seen wallpapers? these are some majestic wallpapers xD. Oh the ui have bugged and stopped working but at least it has the wallpapers. xD

[@thelinuxtube]

@DistroTube I 💯 agree. As I've aged ( like a fine wine), I've watched so much change. This is not just with Linux, with most things. They change things constantly wanting to be the first to create the next best thing, but by doing so, they ruin simplistic greatness !! Often times over compensating, and creating very heavy and cumbersome creations. All the while citing, advancement, and growth. Never asking, is it positive advancement or growth ?? Some great things have simply put been ruined by this !!

[@leopard3131]

As you age you become resistant to change. Just keep an open mind and try and learn new things. If you really want simpler times and technology join the Amish or use DOS. Do t be your own worse enemy.

[@marvinmokua]

DT, you're wrong, gnome still has a ton of customisation options including wobbly Windows and "bursting into flames"

[@Plasmawiz]

I personally think the withdrawing from a full customization paradigm is sadly a necessity once you reach a particular scale in terms of number users. You are right about software getting more complicated, but again that inevitably happens with scale. You have to factor in stuff like accessibility needs, and avoid the risk of massive amounts of tech debt, so shifting focus away from things like theming makes sense from a main-stream UX perspective. All boils down to the fact that Linux as a whole is transitioning out of its "hacker space" phase: the more people use it, the more needs have to be met and thus sacrifices need to be made. Very, very sad of course, but those are my two cents. The solution? Hack away, we can fix it ourselves :P

[@vorrnth8734]

No you can always separate Basic and advanced settings to satisfy both the casual and the power user.

[@MrGamelover23]

Developing a tool that works is infinitely more important than building a toy that you can tinker with. That doesn't mean that customization is bad, but if you have a choice of spending money and time and effort into stuff people actually use versus stuff that realistically speaking, nobody including you will care about in 5 months (since people like distrotube are always looking for the next cool distro) why would I as a developer choose to waste time to turn my software into a toy instead of something that just works? That's the reason why nobody is putting in the time and effort to make stuff that isn't important, because their time is precious, and you want them to waste it on stuff that objectively doesn't matter or isn't as important. What's going to be interesting is how the Cosmic desktop fares into this. A clean slate built with the idea of implementing modern features from the get-go might just be what we need to get something that is both modern and simple. I'm curious how complicated it will be compared to the likes of KDE or Gome. Depending on how it turns out, it might just be the thing you were missing in the last 15 years.

[@MrGamelover23]

@@hunterzone4846 I feel like a good video idea for this guy would be to look into the source code of the projects he's complaining about and see if he can figure out a reason why we can't have stuff that just works AND works as software Lego. Because clearly the problem is this guy just wants a LEGO set to play with rather than an actual finished product, and I don't see why they couldn't make stuff like Wayland or Gnome customizable as well as simple to use. I'm really curious about that myself, and if he could read between the lines of code, that would be compelling content.

[@forsakensrb]

I've watched this video 2 times in a row, and I gotta ask... Am I the only one who feels like this video is just one big nothing burger? I feel like Derek is pulling himself down a melancholy hole about the thing he loves so much for no good reason. I wasn't around Linux back in the GTK2 days, and I don't like the direction GNOME is going to. The fact that Ubuntu has to do hacky things to achieve different accent colors is stupid and inexplicably restrictive, so is the fact that the GNOME shell theming is locked behind an extension. The GNOME team is definitely, for some reason, going towards the direction of making power users jump through extra, needless hoops to make their desktop their own. But did that stop the power users from doing what they want to do? Their decision is bad in my opinion, but the fact that it can be powered through if you want to power through is the only fact that annuls the depressing thought that "devs of Linux software have lost their pizzazz" way of thinking that DT propagates in this video. Let's be honest, there are tons and tons of themes, icons, shells and desktop effects out there. You just need to put in the time to find what you want, chances are, you will be able to make it work. The Wayland thing is kindda... Oldhead way of thinking. In my opinion, Wayland will be the reason why Linux will be 10x better in the future, but like every platform, it needs the time to mature. I don't agree that it isn't ready - it's just that it isn't ready for everything. GNOME, and even KDE at this point, is pretty much without issue (at least without issues exclusive to Wayland) on Wayland. I'm on X11 Qtile now so I can't speak for the past few months, but KDE has been fantastic for me on Wayland before that. The fact that Wayland is more complicated than Xorg should honestly be forgiven considering what it brings to the table in the long run, especially because the community will work out the kinks when the platform matures. Just give it time. I am in no way shape or form on the knowledge level of DT about Linux and I don't think I will ever be, but I really hope that I, and anybody else for that matter, don't fall into this way of thinking. Evolution is hard. Every time. But a lot of the time, it pays off, especially considering that we always have X11 to fall back on. Especially considering that we have passionate people that add customization options despite big projects' developers restricting customization. Especially considering that we have talented people working on projects that are available to everybody. Lighten up, the future is bright. We can only go up!

[@gnatinator]

Compiz is still really good, super stable and blazing fast. Just sucks that MATE / Compiz isn't seeing much development anymore. Gnome 40+ sucks in a lot of ways, especially the Javascript Extension System, super slow, but have very well polished RDP and Wireguard GUI's built in.

[@ltxr9973]

I agree, I miss that ~2005-2010 era of Linux a lot. Especially the old Arch Linux. The rc.conf was just so elegant. I like good file managers (commander style) a lot though.

[@Jagi125]

I disagree. Most of those tools are intended for beginners and it makes stuff easier, as you can switching to more "basic and extensible" components one at a time. Wayland is actually the way out of the "patches stuck on top of another patches", so it's moving toward being simpler again. And most importantly, how can you be in a bad mood after training? It's the best way to reset your mind. Well, unless you actually injure yourself, especially in a stupid maner. Than you could be pissed...

[@miahuh]

I love KDE for the customizations you can do, Gnome seems like it's trying to move towards a standard that ideally could streamline some outdated code ect, but there seems to be a dropping of some of the tinkering that people who like to mess around on all settings available.

[@fan_juggler]

As a foss developer, I must say that it's a big difference to make a software and make a software that is extremely customisable, especially that allows "hacking" into it, if I understand DT correctly. Like, if I need to make my software reading crazy configs like that of vim, where anything can bind to anything, it's a big headache. Not every piece of software can be made in this way. Sorry ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[@williamfoutz]

i think by 'hacking' he meant the original definition i.e. 'customizing'

[@marsdrums6298]

I'm a huge AwesomeWM fan and I remember back when I started using Linux full time about 5 years ago, Awesome was going to me included in Wayland. I'm hoping that's the case and I'm hoping they don't muck it up. I love the Awesome Window Manager the way it is. It's very slick, unlike anything Windows could do (which is why I switched to Linux in the first place because I was sick of Windows). I'm hoping for the best for Linux in the future but I think there's too much over-saturation with desktop environments and window managers, making it too much to choose from and it's daunting for new users to even conceive switching from Windows to Linux. I truly hope Linux makes it through all of this. It needs to stay around a lot longer! Being a psychiatrist, I wish I could prescribe you Prozac DT. :)

[@darksoul.0x7]

can you, to me?

[@karaloop9544]

Maybe all those people put on Prozac are part of the reason why we can"t have powerful interfaces anymore. They are happy with less anyway 😅

[@somethingsinlife5600]

Oh and it's all because of increased corporate influence. It's all about "Enterprise" and corporate stuff these days. The focus is on "Business" these days, the commoners can get stuffed!

[@isaacmills1200]

Well, on the topic of Wayland, you're right that everyone's forking eachother, it's just that everyone's forking wlroots, which power compositors like hyprland and wayfire (a compositor with cool desktop effects), there's even dwl with a small and hackable codebase

[@chrislinuxtutorials5283]

I really miss the old days of Linux. Can't forget the GNOME 2 desktop with the Compiz compositor and the ability to modify everything using dconf editor.

[@folksurvival]

You can still do that with MATE, Compiz and dconf.

[@chrislinuxtutorials5283]

@@folksurvival What do you think I am using right now?

[@leoleonvids]

Doesn't GNOME 2 use gconf?

[@chrislinuxtutorials5283]

@@leoleonvids You might be right, I can't remember.

[@folksurvival]

@@chrislinuxtutorials5283 I don't know what you're using right now but probably not what I suggested because you lamented about how you miss being able to use/do that and said it was the "old days" (meaning not current days).

[@Zeioth]

I think it can be a possitive thing that most environments have a common root (wlroots). As the project description says, it's 60.000 lines of code you are gonna be writing anyway. You STILL have the chance to write them yourself, but for the most part it is very beneficial to have an strong foundation that just work great. And wlroots do that.

[@swimfan6292]

It's become a testing ground for Microsoft i think. Among other entities. Call me crazy...

[@justanotherpxrson]

I do appreciate that you were able to get all of this off your chest and still not come off as truly angry or aggressive. I will say though, as someone who tends to probably lean a little more toward the normie crowd than I would usually like to admit, the fact that you don't need to hack everything with linux is nice. For example, my laptop that I don't rely on for daily use has zorin on it. I didn't have to mess around with a thing. It literally just works. I dual boot windows 10 and endeavour os i3 right now and have only been leaning towards windows because it still has me in a choke hold with my hardware and the software that I use.

[@iodreamify]

Agreed. Being able to hack on something isn't necessarily the best thing in the world when there are features that have been broken for decades because of Xorg's staleness or Compiz's bugginess. Now that we're getting a new base with the necessary maintainability to extend it in such ways we can actually use hardware like multi monitors with VRR we can think about re adding the customisability. Simply put, Linux's graphics stack is growing up.

[@MrGamelover23]

@@indiesigi7807 xorg was made decades before this kind of stuff actually existed now. How are you going to add variable refresh rate to a code base that's old enough to be your grandpa?

[@martin.1976]

I’ve been using FreeBSD with Xmonad and Emacs for quite a while now and really love it. This summer, I also ran OpenBSD on a different machine - and have just ordered a Radeon GPU for my main development machine, as I am going fully OpenBSD.

[@exnihilonihilfit6316]

Sorry but you really need to get a life.

[@chrisg6091]

The documentation of the BSD's puts Linux to *shame*, unless you want to *pay* Redhat (IBM) for access to their admittedly thorough info, including their *proprietary* tech.

[@HDR95]

The price of either Linux becomes more stable or becomes more mainstream or both I guess?

[@RadioTeal]

Hello DT, the lack of customization of Gnome is why I left that DE. It seems petty, but I ditched Gnome when I could no longer change the clock. So I agree, a lot less fun! Great Video.

[@GambiaTech]

what the heck? Wayland is harder and limiting than Xorg?

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Wayland is being pushed by a few self-entitled gamers that want a few more FPS in "Cybersplatt 4044" on those nice and expensive graphics cards that mummy and daddy got them for Christmas. Xorg just works - who cares if the code is "unreadable" if it compiles and runs properly?

[@donmills2647]

Limiting because it is lacking standards that are necessary for a range of things that are necessary for management/tool/ utility types of things to work in a compositor independent way which also then leads to more limitations at the command line/script level depending on the compositor and the range of stuff that works with it or you have to make the scripts more complex to deal with the differences. LXQT issue #10 has been an ongoing topic in the LXQT github from 2014 to present about what is working or not working, where are the standards lacking, have things progressed enough to make it worthwhile to supply multiple configurations to account for the differences in different compositors or groups of compositors, etc....

[@GambiaTech]

@@donmills2647 its not limiting, its just done through config files.

[@donmills2647]

@@GambiaTech It's not just config files. What is necessary for the panel to work/look as expected and do the tray applets on the panel show and work as expected, and do the notifications show up and work as expected without the panel application having to do different things for different compositors. Is there a randr type way to change screen resolution and other screen related settings on the fly that works in a compositor independent way. Is there a compositor independent way to find and change the size and location of a window or specify that an application should be started with it's window in a specific location and size. If you are using a compositor that started life as a window manager you can expect X11 applications should work reasonably well, if the compositor started life as a Wayland compositor they might not.

[@GambiaTech]

@@donmills2647 A compositor, kinda good that many Wayland wms' have a compositor.. wlr-randr is there. Have you heard of XWayland & Sway? The reason why Wayland is being adopted is because it is being maintained properly, like no screen tearing.

[@roracle]

Not trying to be rude, but you sound like an elitist. "I use the terminal to do XYZ" good for you, so do many of us. But the thing you're missing is that in order to get more users, you can't offer 40+ year old terminal design. People expect a GUI. Regarding Gnome: because Redhat is a professional company that wants professional usage, the Gnome desktop appears to be "make it usable first and foremost". Usable doesn't mean "theming", it means "provide a platform, specifically one that lets users get their work done; theming can come later." Look at Windows: can't theme that like you used to, either. KDE is something people who know KDE want to use, but it's a terrible desktop for granny. Power users of Windows might even feel lost in KDE, but it's better than not having it. I think your focus is out of touch with most people.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

"elitist" - a word created by self-entitled and lazy millennials who simultaneously cannot be bothered to put in time and effort to learn new things themselves and are also jealous of those "experts" and knowledgeable people who have put in the time and effort and take pride in their abilities. It's a "cancellation" word to make "knowledge" and "experience" in others a bad thing and bring such people down to their whiny levels. Sonny, we all came into this world knowing nothing, none of us know everything and even we "elitists" are still learning too - the only difference between you and I is that I cherish my mentors when I learn from my mentors, and I keep my mouth shut and listen to what they tell me. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

[@roracle]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 you have two ears and one mouth as well. I know what I'm talking about and I've been using Linux a hell of a lot longer than most KZbinrs, including this one I'm commenting on. Don't be a jerk. I know how to help people, and "use the terminal" isn't the way to go. Kindly see yourself out of my comments.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@roracle I started using Linux back in 1996, UNIX about 6 years before then. Gentoo Linux has been my primary OS since 2003. For the past 21 years, my day job has been provisioning, administering, supporting and hardening Red Hat Linux servers - I was one of the first people in the UK to get Red Hat Certified back in 2001. For the past 15 of those years I have been in a cyber-security role getting such servers past security standards into customer environments, including government and military ones. If you REALLY want to "compare d*ck sizes" over Linux knowledge, I suspect on that basis mine is bigger - but that's immaterial to a discussion about having respect for people you might learn from. "Don't be a jerk." I don't take instructions or orders from strangers on the Internet, sonny. As far as I am concerned, using words like "elitist" comes from the same position of anger and jealousy as when a toddler tells its mother it hates her because she won't buy it a toy it wants. If your parents never said the word "no" to you enough when you were growing up, then take it up with them. Run along now, sonny, mind how you go and have respect for expertise - in my younger years, we never used silly words like "elitist" or "gatekeeper". Discussion closed.

[@roracle]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 no, calling someone an elitist means they're not paying attention to the common user. Sorry you didn't gather that from the rest of my comment. Maybe if i had typed it in a terminal it would have made sense.

[@ingen6351]

Let the gnomes be gnomes. Customization still exists in more DIY environments, however i very much agree that it is too hard and mainly too time consuming to customize your desktop exactly how you want it. When you have put hours in it you still have only customized the most basic of things and need to put many more to make it your own.

[@haplozetetic9519]

For the correct set-up, config files can be moved from one install to another with ease, and usually no issues.

[@gameworld8262]

Finally someone spoke about that issue 🙂

[@cowingtonpost6837]

My problem with wayland is that no window manager fits my workflow. I use awesomewm and heavily use the layouts, being able to maximize a window without it hiding the bar, resizing and moving tiled windows with the mouse and minimizing and maximizing windows. I think that wayland will improve but I don't think it is ready for most window manager users yet.

[@marcheijerman1512]

I'm using openbox for years, never any issues

[@gnuemacs1166]

Wayland is destroying everything

[@jakelong1418]

What are you talking about? Every complaint you had in this video is moot. You can still do all the same creative stuff with Linux.

[@mathisbuilder]

Skill issue, just use Hyprland

[@deckard5pegasus673]

wayland is the new systemd. Linux is going down the wrong road. BTW .. who 'basically' owns the linux foundation? ... a hint: embrace, extend, extinguish..

[@samhsmith]

I hear your cry. I've been working on a new OS + hardware combo to bring back that user control and simplicity. Hopefully I'll be able to send you something to review before the end of the year.

[@dislikebutton1718]

The question is, what’s the distro that closest resembles those older distros.

[@samuelarredondo8032]

I started using Linux back in 1998. I remember the excitement that I had for it. Nowadays, even though I still love using Linux, most of the excitement comes from the release of the latest version of KDE and it is because of the customization possibilities of said desktop. I've tried using Gnome but I get so frustrated that so much is locked down and is not customizable. Just my two cents.

[@ggkim6553]

Nobody will take away your dmenu, xmonad, and so on. Keep using them happily. There are plenty of simple and customizable tools out there. Complex softwares are complex for reasons. If you don't like them, take your time and try to improve them, or don't use them. I think it's that simple.

[@martin.1976]

Well, it is not quite THAT easy, unfortunately. Biggest problem is that the basic look and feel - and especially fonts and font sizes - of GTK apps is getting increasingly more entangled with the D-Bus based gnome-settings / gnome session system - where the apps themselves do not even have any option to configure those. A good example for that is VirtualBox. If you're using a minimalist desktop on a huge monitor, like I do, then by default VirtualBox's UI will be almost unreadably small because GTK's default font size is really tiny. And you have to mess with gnome-settings to do anything about it. Back in the old days, there was a distinction between "GTK Apps" and "GNOME Apps" - only the latter were only configurable via the gnome settings.

[@jimmyking92]

I'm personally tired of certain users that will always preach about tiling windows managers and certain distros that usually go with them (like Arch), like it's a necessary match while in reality is not. I never really understood the craze around TWMs. XFCE suits my current needs, it's simple, light and can be customised.

[@tech-bore8839]

Linux not being "fun & fresh" sounds like a personal problem. I really don't understand the theming issue, other than you're bored and looking for things to nit pick. Seems like an obsession with fashion over function, which is ridiculous.

[@itsabhiyan]

whatever you may say, technology doesn't grow without complications. everything needs growth, and linux too. if you like the old gnome, then go ahead, use mate. you can still use gtk2, and its theme, but people ARE ACTIVELY LOOKING FORWARD TO NEW THINGS. so it's not linux fault, nor is it of the people, it is just the nature of change.

[@JacobMoen]

You are usually right, but here you are completely wrong! There's no better time to be using Linux than right now. Linux in 2008? A primitive mess. Now we have a whole smorgasbord of options. Don't fancy Gnome? Then don't use it. I am sorry that you feel this way, though! Take Emacs, for instance. I am using Doom-Emacs for creative writing. Emacs have been really leaping forward during the last couple of years. For me, Linux is better than it ever was, in this moment. Complexity? Yes, of course. But also Simplicity! XMonad, NNN, LazyGit, Wezterm, Neovim, Doom-Emacs, ... the list goes on. Life's good! :)

[@stevensawolkin3873]

I know we don't get along and don't like one another, but dude. Dude. Leaving the gym and the treadmill puts one in a BAD mood? Ever even heard of endorphins? Holy socks!

[@benhays6488]

To be completely honest, I've used tiling window managers for daily driving Linux and it worked well, but when I tried Gnome and really learned the workflow I never wanted to go back. Why would I want infinite customization when the default configuration works and looks perfectly

[@cherubin7th]

Making something average user friendly is very difficult and so designers fall into the overly complexity trap like Microsoft. I wish we could just make basic stuff that just works instead of Ubuntu regularly silently breaking itself a little bit with each update.

[@TActually]

I don't have nearly the experience or knowledge of Linux that you have, but I feel you. I think the complication of Linux, also, is an unfortunate side effect of it's evolution. Once upon a time, Windows was actually simple and good. Windows 3.11 for Work Groups will forever live in my heart😅! With complication comes restriction and the more restricted versions of linux are necessary for adoption. There will always be those who will tinker and those who will not. Those who will not, should still have a viable Linux experience, and I think that is the segment that is getting the most attention today. I'll sacrifice a bit to see my normie friends using a version of Linux. 🤷🏾‍♂

[@chrisg6091]

Unix failed because of vendor fragmentation. Linux was fun but kneck beards correctly identified areas of technical improvement that needed addressing. As with Unix, Linux ecosystem could not even agree on & stick to a standardised file system layout. Disparate linux projects spawned to address the areas of technical short comings but none became a standard. Tired of waiting & facing growing enterprise challenges, Redhst (IBM) took matters into their own hands and started replacing large chunks of our beloved user land with big complicated things that mostly benefited Redhat (IBM) *enterprise* customers. My other bug bear with Linux is persistently lousy documentation. Not up to date, often incomplete. Take a look at the FreeBSD docs and be amazed ...

[@themadoneplays7842]

Yeah, GTK is utter crap these days, especially gnome devs killing off theming. Thankfully, KDE offers more customization options.

[@RedBearAK]

Don’t worry, ChatGPT 6 will be able to write a Linux distro, display server and desktop environment for you, from scratch, and all you’ll have to say to it is “blah blah blah”. Literally. 😂😂😂

[@user-vn9ld2ce1s]

I would argue that most of what you describe is a *good* thing. In software, just as everywhere else, it's about tradeoffs. You can either have very hackable, very customizable software (like x11), or a very robust software, like wayland (it's not incomplete, besides a few things - i've been using wayland gnome for a few years now, and it's fine). Linux came from an environment where only the pros used it, so no one really cared it was hard to set up properly, but lately more novice people are coming to linux, to it makes sense to make our "ecosystem" more beginner friendly, stable, and robust, at the cost of the hackability and customizability.

[@NikiDorian]

Sounds like nostalgia speaking. Go use ubuntu from 2008 as a daily driver for a week and tell me if you find that an acceptable experience for 2023 and onwards. I think sacrificing the compiz effects for _real_ multi monitor support and GPU acceleration is a good trade off ... and for those for whom it is not they can continue using X. That's the beauty of open source.

[@Gargoyle33]

I think your title is very broad, but you mostly complain about the current state of Gnome which is just one DE out of 100s. I think Gnome is trying to make something that just works for the average user and is comfortable and I think they are succeeding in attracting new Linux users. The wonderful thing about OSS is that you don't have to stick with something you don't like. Always an alternative, but i think Gnome is the best entry point for a new user.

[@hamobu]

Switch to freedos

[@Tyler-Kearney]

Give hyprland a try. It’s a full Wayland window manager. It’ll show what a Wayland wm looks like. It seems pretty popular.

[@GarryGri]

Thing is, if Linux is to get bigger most people won't want to fiddle around with it as much as the past user base. Also as the big Linux apps get larger, more complicated, 'better' they intrinsically get harder to modify with more restrictions as people want something that works and they 'know' without tinkering around, apps start 'falling towards the middle ground' like all systems start to do. Sounds like you want something other than mainstream 'progress,' which fosters usability for most people.

[@silentgameplays]

Thanks for the video DT! To summarize all you have described Systemd+Wayland+GNOME are made by RHEL and designed to be as monolithic as possible, same as Canonical is forcing snaps on its users. If you as a user want to have some sort of freedom to customize then just stick to community supported distros like Debian, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Slackware and even Linux Mint.

[@MrGamelover23]

Open source developers make tools to suit their needs. If you want to make it into something completely different, build your own damn project. Seriously, that's the problem, you don't want to be a user, you want to be a developer. You want to be a tinkerer, and that's fine, but what's holding Linux back is that it's made for nerds like you instead of regular users like me. I don't know why these things get more complicated the more user friendly they are, because ironically that sounds the opposite of developer friendly, but you don't want a Linux system that someone else made, you just want to make it yourself. So get Linux from scratch and be happy? Most open source projects were made to fit the needs of the developer, clearly the problem is that you don't care what the developer wanted, you want to make it what you wanted, so why don't you just make your own tools? That would clearly make you a lot happier. You're not interested in being a user, you want to be a developer, which is fine, develop to your heart's content!

[@ppaliwal89]

I don't necessarily see a point of this video. The story that you are trying to pitch has been the case for everything in life; its a complicated world we live in. So Linux was a toy back in the day for you where you could do millions of themes, billions of colors, have wiggly effects, half of the video was about this; would have loved to know the actual workflow changes that happened along the years and how it impacted you in terms of efficiency, productivity, security, etc. As of now the points are like, hey I can't change color now, its so complicated

[@monad5]

never understood why gtk3 apps have so much higher ram usage then gtk2 apps for providing the same functionality. xfce really blew up

[@kebman]

Can't you just install an older desktop? Or go back in history, and revive it for the current day?

[@manankataria]

Customisability is nice but consistency is also important , I like Gnome because it is consistent if you stick with gtk apps . And honestly those gnome2 screenshots you showed I have still seen that sort of thing exist on latest gnome.

[@manankataria]

I actually like libadvaita for this same reason. Consistency is important and I have seen libadvaita theming looking really good.

[@DityoManob]

not those sexy animation. btw i like gnome as well.

[@FABESTAH]

He actually talked about the difficulty of customizing a desktop and the way software on Linux is designed nowadays, not that customization and hacking isn't possible at all anymore.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Define "consistency"? I use a lot of TUI-based applications and consistency for me is being able to use, say, vim shortcut keys in similar ways across applications. To do that requires a lot of customisation of dotfiles. In other words, customisation and consistency are not entirely separate things.

[@FABESTAH]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 You're absolutely right and this example also carries over to practically 95% of other professional workflows that require heavy PC use 👍

[@PJ-om2wq]

I am wondering whether LXQT has the potential to be the "simple" DE that you miss since GTK2 ?

[@benloud8740]

Couldnt agree more. I feel like Gnome developers are out of touch with what their users want. They think they will go mainstream if they dumb it all down and strip out all advanced features to make things as basic as possible. No one wants that.

[@MrGamelover23]

Open source software and user-friendly usually don't go together very well. Sure, stuff made by teams can be user friendly, but anything made by one guy is usually going to be complete and total ass to use because they only made it usable for them, not for normal people.

[@shauryakalia3296]

Gnome and red hat have been pushing linux into a direction of less customisability and variability, which i personally prefer to believe is due to less developmental effort involved in the same. Mutter's design (such as inability to change WM/compositor for gnome shell), libadvaita, repeated rants on theming, axing of features and even flatpaks have been symptom of the same. But I am happy as long as projects like KDE are alive, which seem to still cater to the tinkerer's/hacker's spirit which was common across linux

[@karabaja4]

For me DE/WM standardization is the same as systemd standardization. Getting huge, complicated, hard to understand (from a code perspective) pieces of software to work together, which they often don't. And this whole time this valid criticism of systemd has been mocked as "mob mentality".

[@somethingsinlife5600]

"Small modular tools".....System(The Big D) has entered the chat!

[@d.wyndal]

I hate to say this, but it seems that your whole reason for being on KZbin is to generate income based on you finding things to complain about. Perhaps you should reflect on that.

[@patjustpat8178]

Old man yells at cloud alert. "things gettin too complicated, back'n'my day it all was simple!"

[@Amos_Huclkeberry]

They should've just maintained Gtk2. I hate Gtk3/4/5...

[@titadelagarza]

All I wanted was a theme that is neither dark nor white, but gray. I don't like dark themes but now light themes are so white it bothers me. And it's impossible to find a theme it and make it work properly.

[@InnerTranquility]

Good points! One of the reasons i left windows for good, was that they (Microsoft), more and more are locking the theme of windows. The fact that we had more themes in 95 says everything. It's no longer YOUR desktop, it's their desktop kind of thing. I don't like that at all. Not to mention all the facking spying... What i loved when i switched over to Linux was the fact i could pick and choose file managers, desktop env, window manager...etc. I am using JWM and i love that there is ONE configuration file, and you can go ham with it if you want!

[@alexandruc.5128]

The current state of Linux distros is what has convinced me to give freeBSD a try as a daily driver os

[@m.m3633]

Actually the X server was worse than systemd in "being the kitchen sink" department, it has apis to do the same things you use a gui toolkit to do and even sound interfaces etc Yes it was easier to build an window manager for x because you could rely upon many of the x functionalities but at the cost of having a gigantic piece of software (x server) that no one is going to utilize it to it's fullest potential because there are just better alternatives designed specifically to do those minor things Implementing a wayland compositor is harder but it reduces bloat and attack surface and makes things faster and better in general if it's done right, and it can be super flexible and customizable as well But I agree that generally new technologies specially the new isolated package formats (flatpaks, snaps) are ruining flexibility and swiftness of the system for a little extra convenient of lazy developers and some dummy users.

[@Verticen_]

DT is right. As an Ubuntu Gnome 18.04 end-user, I've been on a version-freeze of gnome3 for 3+ years b/c it would break my gnome extensions most every time I updated it. 4:46 I actually still use 'desktop effects' (like compiz) on my manjaro machine and the support is still pretty good - I like using wobbly move windows. Linux is still _way_ more customizable than Winblows. I think that part of the problem is that the Linux project is being intentionally indirectly sabotaged by Google,Microsoft, and other proprietary-software-loving NGO bastards. Keeping Linux unnecessarily over-complicated helps sell more M$ Windows 11.

[@tumescent]

Not everyone is out to get you and your distro, just calm down

[@somethingsinlife5600]

It's not just you...The decline has been there since Unity.

[@Spirrwell]

From a developer's standpoint, I can understand cutting down on a lot of the flexibility in order to focus on making the software that you want. It's less of a maintenance burden to have to worry about. The GNOME project is just hostile though. I think that for a better out of the box end-user experience, the directions in where the Linux desktop is going makes sense. I want a cohesive experience, and not a mess I have to fiddle with and ultimately make messier. Wayfire does have those cool desktop effects though. But Wayland isn't quite ready, and Wayfire really isn't a full fledged desktop environment. You're gonna spend time in the config files for sure.

[@cassyettetape]

Wayfire isn’t meant to be a fully fledged desktop, as far as I’m aware it’s supposed to be more like a wayland-ified compiz, something to toss onto different desktop environments.

[@Spirrwell]

@@cassyettetape That's the thing. The only distro that I know that has even a remotely usable Wayfire spin is Garuda, and it feels like it's bodged together. I have seen something called the Graphite Desktop which seemed to be building on top of Wayfire. But the code for that has been archived in a git repo. I really wish they continued that work. It is nearly exactly what I want. Wayfire is just so butter smooth and cool. But I haven't seen much effort to build on top of it other than that. There was one other Qt based desktop that I think is using Wayfire, but I can't remember.

[@cassyettetape]

@@Spirrwell I'm sure it'll get better with time, maybe when more full wayland desktops other than KDE or Gnome exist. As of right I think wayfires biggest issue is trying to be something akin to ye ole' compiz without having desktops that actually need it. Maybe when Mate, XFCE and the like are ported it'll be wayfires time to shine?

[@DashieTM]

- Theming of gtk There is Gradience, super simple gtk3 and gtk4 theming, but yeah sure, that is too hard. - Wayland is not ready This is simply wrong. The wast majority of people can absolutely use it already. - Wayland is too complicated to make compositors for It is just as easy, the only thing you swap is the display server, instead of using Xorg, you use something like wlroots (library instead of binary). How the compositor itself works is still 100% up to you. From qtile to waymonad to sway and hyprland. There ARE already so many to choose from. Don't take this the wrong way, but sometimes you are bit out of touch. Either way, I don't just want to be an ass, so here is something to try: Waymonad since you like xmonad, and hyprland, you want customization? Yeah hyprland has it.

The problem is GNOME. The project actively discourages people from doing theming saying that it is literally a bad practice. The GNOME project refused all across GTK3 to even make a dark mode because it went against basic, garbage vanilla Adwaita. I still use KDE on X11 and happily so

[@anon_y_mousse]

So do I.

[@Cowboy-Trucking61]

XeroLinux KDE has FIRE when closing and opening windows. I love it.