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Comment by ironmagma | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens when you have UI implementors who reject the last 20 years of UI progress.

I would say the opposite. If GNOME was a clone of OS X Panther it would be fine. Instead they've introduced a bunch of UI "innovations" that most people don't like.

I'm talking more about methodology. There are a lot of "forgot to set the dirty bit" type bugs in GNOME-based applications. UI moved on to declarative rendering ages ago, and GNOME never got the memo. When you are writing Flutter or React it's virtually impossible to make those mistakes.

It is not Gnome fault. It is more related to design of GTK API

Gnome can choose the tech. They can also build a reactive layer on top of gtk to eliminate a class of issues. Or adopt Grex https://refi64.dev/posts/introducing-grex.html Or...

If Gnome keeps rewriting apps and making mistakes, that's very much Gnome's fault.

GTK is a core gnome project. It's entirely gnome's fault.

It keeps getting worse with each version, and they drag a big part of the open source community with them, because so many apps depend on GTK. Especially important ones like Firefox and Chromium. It absolutely sucks when Gnome controls such a large chunk of the open-source ecosystem.

In fact, it was Gnome that dragged Debian into the systemd debacle. Lennart Poettering managed to convince the Gnome developers to introduce a hard dependency [1] on systemd.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31993161

100% agree - there is so much similarity between those projects. They will be defended to the hilt but you only start to see the tangled vines when you try to build something without them. If you try to pull them out all other software goes too in a big clump. Then their developers ‘own Linux’.

But then again, it is Gnome's fault to pick the wrong tool for the job.

Who maintains that again? :)

This opinion is reflected by many RHEL users, anecdotally.

Such as...?

Middle click to close a window

Cargo-cult enshittification, where they blindly follow the corporate UX design trends, which are usually dictated by the marketing department, and done to maximize revenue instead of making a usable and productive interface.

Such as following trendy fashionable fads such as low contrast text, excessive whitespace and overuse of animations. Also to make the entire interface a part of the brand identity. In my opinion, these concepts have no place in open source software.

Also: if you don't like the new interface they will say you have problems accepting change, despite it objectively being inferior to the old versions.

KDE has done a lot better than Gnome in this area, by the way.

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