Distribution-friendly tactics in the desktop wars
lwn.net
lwn.net
While I would agree that every new GNOME release since 3.0 has been better than the last, the "not caring about anything outside of GNOME" part is very concerning to me. I have the impression that GNOME 2.X was a "big tent" consisting of both core GNOME applications and GTK applications that used their infrastructure, but that GNOME 3 is all about "GNOME apps" which often are less stable or have less features than their predecessors.
As a non-enterprise user, it has been disappointing to see GNOME invest more resources into immature apps like GNOME Music, GNOME Photos, and GNOME Web instead of trying to ensure that standard Linux applications without GNOME branding (like Rhythmbox or Banshee, Shotwell, or Chromium) are first-class citizens in their desktop environment.
I hope I'm wrong, but what does Gnome bring to the table that makes it better than anything else? Why would I want to use it over Gnome 2.x? Genuine question - hopefully I don't get downvoted too much...
That's why Gnome 2 has been forked 4 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)) and is still actively maintained and used.
GTK+ 3.0 with all the things it brings with it nowadays, eg. wayland support, opengl rendering, css-based themes...
Poetteringification: it's to GNOME's advantage (in some people's opinion as expressed by their actions) if the GNOME apps are better than the non-GNOME apps, so they're quite happy to break the non-GNOME apps because they're NIH.
The whole thing thus turn into a echo chamber involving Fedora, Gnome and Freedesktop (with Red Hat looming in the background).
Meaning that if you want your distro to be Gnome and Freedesktop compatible, you effectively have to turn it into a Fedora clone.