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Comment by throwaway5Am1k | Hacker News Reader

>enshittification

This is the 2nd time this word has been used to describe the Linux desktop in this thread, and it's disingenuous. FOSS doesn't do any of the things described with enshitification article: it doesn't sit between buyers and sellers and screw each of them in turn. That's not what's been happening. Maybe the software goes shit, but it is not "enshitification". At every turn there's been alternatives (GNOME3 -> Unity/Xfce, KDE4 -> Trinity, Pulseaudio -> Pulsewire, systemd -> upstart, Debian -> Devuian, etc)

Stop misusing the word, you're discrediting the good work of FOSS.

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I am not misusing the word. I don't know what their incentives are, but they are just progressively making things worse and more locked down in the name of "progress".

Bland, corporate, utterly inoffensive and lifeless "design"? Check. Trying to remove theming from users? Check. etc....

The only reason why they haven't succeeded like other OSes is because it's FOSS. But they really want to take away the user's choice, shift the Overton window, and pretend like things were always bad.

>I am not misusing the word

Yes you are, see:

>they are just progressively making things worse

That's things going "shit". That's been around for as long as software has been around (e.g. Borland). Enshitification is a very specific thing: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

To quote it:

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

>shift the Overton window

You're all over the place. This has nothing to do with enshitification.

It is enshittification because they are making the software worse in opposition to the users. They don't care that the users hate the changes, they still do it anyway, deliberately.

Have you considered that many users do like the changes, and you just aren't one of them?

I first used desktop Linux in 1996 and liked it well enough. I remember using GNOME 2 and Xfce around 2010ish and liking both of them well enough, too. And they're still around if I want to use them.

But honestly? I don't use them because I like modern GNOME better. I use it every day, everything just works, and I like it more than the alternatives.

> But honestly? I don't use them because I like modern GNOME better. I use it every day, everything just works, and I like it more than the alternatives

Same here, but with KDE - and I'm a former XFCE user, and before that I was a Gnome user...

None of us is the whole market !

Yes, I have, but fundamentally, using old stuff is usually quite hard. If I could revert to it, it would be great, but those are usually not too compatible with today's technology.

I use those despite their horrible UI, not because of their horrible UI.

I respect that, and I hope my question didn't seem like criticism.

I suppose we're fortunate that options like Xfce and MATE are around, but I can relate re: compatibility. Truthfully I'd be just as happy with MATE as with GNOME 3.x, but last time I tried I ran into issues with high DPI and mixed DPI and didn't want to invest time trying to get it all working to my satisfaction.

Thank you very much, and you are amazing! Personally, I am just happy KDE exists and they actually listen to users. There is not much out there in terms of desktop environments like this, sadly:)

Words have meaning.

You used a word that has a specific meaning to refer to something else, hence the miscommunication.

I disagree, use the word more to complain about GNOME and what they did to their UI. Even my 512GHz Windows XP Laptop runs more smoothly, and that without SSD.

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