Hacker News Reader

Comment by LambdaComplex | Hacker News Reader

I like Linux because it gives me the freedom to make my system behave how I want. The GNOME devs seem to think that GNOME should only behave how they want. For example, last time I checked, GNOME required a third-party plugin just to move the clock from the center of the status bar to the side.

I'm not at all surprised to see that this mindset extends to GTK.

View on HN

> The GNOME devs seem to think that GNOME should only behave how they want.

For many years I followed this whole outrage but wasn't really sure whom to believe because I didn't have any stakes in the matter. Then the GNOME/GTK devs removed support for key themes[0,1] and I still have no idea why. The arguments they brought forward make absolutely no sense to me.

Now I get where people were coming from.

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/c22ff1/gtk_4_support...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35702303

Sun donated a bunch of UI guidelines to the GNOME project back in the really early days. Those guidelines basically boiled down to "You users are idiots, and power users don't matter, so get rid of as many options and force a single way of interacting with the software." The GNOME development philosophy just expanded on this.

Gnome shell is designed in a way so that users can configure basically everything using plugins. That way everything does not have to go through the Gnome Shell developers and much more specific and esoteric functionality can be added.

Writing Gnome Shell extensions is easy, they're just JS scripts...

If you really need to move your clock with a bunch of clicks, there's also KDE which is less opinionated...

Can you do that on Windows/mac?

Gnome devs not withstanding, you have access to the source to change it if you want or put up a PR?

Being able to make a small change is good when every thing is well defined small parts. You can change the part you want and then use everything else as per normal. If everything is so tightly integrated that you end up having to maintain a fork of a large project, it doesn't work out so well.

I don't know which is true for this particular case, but I'd hazard a guess that it is a much bigger task than it needs to be.

I have seen Gnome devs talk of removing features because people were using them the wrong way. Not that people weren't using the features at all, just not for the purpose for which they were written. Experiences like that make me think that pull requests wouldn't get you very far either.

You can look at the code of an extension that does the move, if you want an idea of what the level of effort is: https://github.com/kuvaus/moveclock

You can't put up a PR if the gate keepers reject your whole design approach

As a gatekeeper in an unrelated small project, I understand gatekeepers being selective. You have a vision, design standards, quality standards. Drive-by PRs that add "just this one thing I need" features is how your well-designed, cohesive project becomes a kitchen sink of shit.

> You have a vision, design standards, quality standards.

Unless, of course, all of those are shit, so a more design-competent person can drive by with an improvement, which will be rejected because it's too shiny

Well, yeah. They have their own design approach, if you don't take that into consideration, aren't you the one that in the wrong?

You're not, that depends entirely on the assessment of the relative approaches and whom you care more about, users or a subset of designers closest to the gates.

But that's beside the point, the point was the criticism of the "send a PR" even though that resolves nothing due to the mismatch.

2025, still cannot have taskbar on left or right side in Windows 11.

I can do that on GNOME and macOS. And yes, with 21:9 it is very nice. With a vertical monitor or a 3:2 (Surface), not so much.

You have to install an extension to do that on GNOME, likewise on Windows 11 you can use Explorer Patcher.

Both "monkey patch" the shell.

While I prefer tiling windows manager, GNOME’s approach is sensible. Restrain your features to a restricted default and allow users to extend it if they want to. The code is open and well organized as far as I can see. So it’s very easy to see where to extend from.

> just to move the clock from the center of the status bar to the side.

And I like linux because there are plenty of people who also do not care about this and want to just use their computer.

You can "just use" KDE too. The default are actually less insane than gnome, it's easier to use.

The idea that more functionality makes software less usable makes no sense to me. No, it's more usable.

Its like when people argue that iOS not allowing anything other than safari is a good thing.

Okay... how? Because if you like safari, nothing changes for you. You just keep using it. You wouldn't even be able to tell.

Similarly, if you like KDE you can just... use it. You don't actually have to change anything. There's no gun to your head. If you're the type of person who just takes software and uses it, then great - you don't need Gnome for that. KDE is actually better at that, IMO.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com