3 karma · joined July 16, 2022
Happy to correct myself but unless there's a supported way to change themes for libadwaita apps using GNOME tweak tool or something similar, this is just doublespeak.
For example, I wasn't able to change the theme of this app using GNOME Tweak Tool the last time I tried.
I don't get why you'd want to run KDE system settings outside KDE. The system settings app also has a lot of optional dependencies. I don't know which distro you're using but if any of those optional dependencies isn't installed, the system settings app misbehaves.
Typically, you'd run apps like Spectacle and Gwenview and Dolphin, standalone apps that serve a purpose, and from my experience, those have always worked on i3wm without issues.
This is an old NAS that I don't really use much.
It's true though, I've mostly stopped using GUI apps on my primary workstation except Firefox because of how messy the situation is with GUIs on Linux. GTK wants to enforce its decisions on me and KDE Qt apps don't work well on my Wayland window manager.
> I've also had KDE apps break quite badly with certain themes so I don't really know what you mean they work fine.
I meant to say that, unlike GNOME apps, they allow me to use my own themes and don't enforce their decisions and choices on me when I use their apps. I'm not using Android or iOS so I don't expect to be treated like an idiot.
> You can try to get them to work in something else like i3wm but it's always been on users of those other window managers to figure out how to integrate it.
It's not the uphill battle you're trying to project to make KDE apps work on non-KDE environment. Sure, some themes aren't built well but some are and all I have to do is install Kvantum+qt5ct to make the app look how I want it to. This isn't possible with GNOME and elementary apps because they chose to become their own isolated silos.
> It's worth noting that blog is one developer's opinion.
Is it? The opinions on that article are almost always shared by all the core GNOME developers I've seen commenting on issue trackers. Even the stopthemingmyapp guys resonate those opinions.
Doesn't sound like "one developer's opinion" to me.
> No, I think it would be worse if there would be no extensions.
Judging by the general disdain towards extensions by GNOME developers and many users, I doubt that's the case.
I mean, what is that even meant to convey? Do you mean to say that one can always create hard forks of non-trivial packages like GTK or develop extensions for GNOME shell the change the way it works like the PopOS guys did? We all know how well that turned out.
> I've also found that KDE apps don't really work well outside of KDE
Funny, because I use i3wm on an old NAS and KDE apps like Spectacle, Gwenview, and Dolphin work fine and use whatever theme and font I tell them to use and don't make decisions for me by assuming I'm incapable of making them. Can't say the same for GTK4 GNOME apps. They're not built to be used outside GNOME because GNOME is now a "platform", which is just doublespeak for a walled garden.
> the stance on extensions has always been pretty obvious to me.
It's obvious to me as well — we don't care about GNOME extensions[^1]. It's rather unfortunate that the extension system exists at all. People waste so much time and resources on making elaborate extensions like the Pop Shell or Dash to Dock under the impression that their extensions are somehow welcome but then they have to keep fixing them after every new GNOME release. What's even worse is that unsuspecting users use these extensions.
[^1]: https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2021/07/13/community-power-...
Some of them are linked by pxc post above mine.
There's also the issue that Qt apps can only be written in C++, a language that many don't want anything to do with. In comparison, GTK has bindings for a variety of languages including Rust.
It does but it's rather unfortunate that the only choice we have when it comes to DEs is either GNOME, which is built by a group of arrogant developers who think there is no downstream for GNOME and GTK, and KDE, which has technical issues that prevent widespread adoption.
https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso
There's no need for a distro like NixOS to do this. It only serves to lend weight to the arrogance displayed by GNOME.
I fail to see why GNOME, or any DE for that matter, is something that should be recommended by a distribution like NixOS.
They also engage in carefully crafted doublespeak when it comes to things like extensions and user choice regarding configuration.
Call it what you want but they certainly don't intend to play nice with anyone and have adopted the approach of "my way or the highway". Perhaps they're emboldened by all the corporate backing they have from Red Hat and SUSE. They also have the advantage of being the default DE on most distros. Hell, even distros like NixOS encourage users to use GNOME, which is absolutely insane when you think about it.
I'd be genuinely surprised if distributions like Fedora still use, or actively maintain, RPMs for any GUI software after a few years.
Yeah, I don't think it'll last in the foreseeable future judging by how these distros are jumping on the Flatpak/Snap bandwagon. For these distros, package management might as well be dead.
I expect a few distros, such as Alpine Linux and Arch Linux, to remain relatively free from the influence of Flatpak and that's what I'll continue to use on my personal machines.
I dislike Flatpak because it encourages package maintainer obsolescence. I heard a guy from OpenSUSE saying in a MicroOS presentation that why create, manage, and use RPMs when we can just use Flatpak. I also don't want to touch Flatpak anymore because people from GNOME are involved in it.
I personally dislike both projects though, when it comes personal desktops. Silverblue is heavily influenced by Flatpak and I don't expect RPMs for GUI applications to survive in Fedora. NixOS needs you to learn Nix which is a pretty steep learning curve and like you said, that knowledge probably won't translate anywhere else. You're probably better off investing your time learning things like shell/python scripting, Ansible, and Docker/podman.
Now, there's just a re-coloring API where I can't change the dark background if I don't like it and that's "real" theming.
That's not theming, that's just changing accent colors in the same theme. If I don't like dark background color, I can't change it. If I don't like the light background color, I can't change that either. All I can do is change accent colors.
The entire GTK and GNOME ecosystem is heading towards Android like customization and theming, which is basically non-existent at this point.
umm, what?
Of course, you could use it in KDE or MATE or anywhere else but it would look completely alien with different themes and, potentially, different fonts and icons. You can't set your own theme without resorting to hacks.
If someone has come across a GTK4 app which isn't restricted to a specific desktop environment, let me know. Meanwhile, I won't use any GTK4 apps in existence.
Do you really believe that's reasonable? That I should stop using my favorite monospace fonts just because a terminal emulator doesn't let me disable italic variants of that font when other terminal emulators like Alacritty and foot do?
I don't think that's reasonable and so I stopped using Kitty. And no, I'm not gonna resort to fontconfig hacks or manually delete the italic otf/ttf files. I'd rather use a terminal that gives me choice rather than imposes it.
No problem. I know maintaining forks isn't an ideal thing to do and support should ideally land upstream.
> I believe it's unfair that Linux users have fewer options than us Windows users, due to some people thinking sixel is "uncool".
I think the README page of termite pretty much sums up why getting involved in VTE, or any GNOME project for that matter, is a bad decision.
https://github.com/thestinger/termite/blob/master/README.rst...
I'm just a random spectator but perhaps your efforts might've been better spent on an independent terminal project (like Alacritty, for example) rather than trying to get features merged upstream in a GNOME project.
> However, the situation seems to be changing: check the discussion in: https://github.com/csdvrx/sixel-tmux/pull/1 and you'll see there may be some light at the end of the tunnel!
Yeah, I read the entire conversation and if sixel support lands in tmux upstream, it would indeed be good news.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/253#note_1049040
EDIT: Yup, as suspected, the author doesn't intend to keep his fork updated with upstream and I don't blame him for that. This essentially makes this fork a proof of concept, nothing more. Unless it gets merged in tmux itself, people might as well forget that this fork exists.
I have a few things that I can't stand and I have no problem ditching something that doesn't offer me what I want. For example, I ditched Kitty because it doesn't let me disable italic variants of monospace fonts. In a hypothetical scenario, if tmux/screen didn't exist and Kitty was the one terminal which had these features, I would be frustrated as well if the dev didn't budge from his position of not letting users disable italic fonts. Fortunately, tmux exists and Alacritty lets me disable italics.
It's pretty naive and immature to get married to the tools you're using. Unfortunately, you see this a lot in the FOSS world.
Here's another explanation why VTE based terminals are best avoided.
https://github.com/thestinger/termite
Here's a complete list.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications#VTE-ba...
He also tried getting sixel support in tmux but was rejected again. All he did was make a hard fork to get the feature that he wanted. That's it. The end. There are some things that Windows does better and some things that Linux does better. Generalizing your anecdotal experience and implying that one is entirely "better" than the other is what fundamentalism and fanaticism looks like.
In terms of customization and configuration, I'd say foot falls between Alacritty and Kitty with Kitty being the most customizable and configurable while Alacritty being the least.
One of the things I really like about Alacritty and foot is that they don't enforce italic and bold monospace variants while Kitty does. I despise italic variants of monospace fonts. Most monospace fonts don't even have proper italic variants. They're just slanted.
I tried using foot a few days ago but went back to Alacritty because of this issue.
https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot/issues/628
I think I might move back to foot though because it felt a bit faster (lesser latency) and for some reason, text on Alacritty is sometimes blurry for me.
In hindsight, I was perhaps being reactive and might've acted irrationally but I still believe that I should try to stay away from anything related to GNOME or GTK, if possible, simply because I don't trust GNOME/GTK developers to keep their "every preference has a cost" philosophy limited to GNOME itself. Like this, for example.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787
If I'm being polite, pretty interesting comments from Clasen. Subpixel Positioning might make sense on HiDPI displays but most people still don't have them.
Yes, that philosophy makes sense in some kind of apps but it isn't one should follow universally, in my opinion.
Another simple example is GNOME Screenshot and Spectacle. Spectacle, in my opinion, is perhaps the best screenshot tool on Linux because it offers sensible and basic annotation tools. This is what Android does using its Markup tool on Android and Windows with its Snipping Tool. I suspect Mac has a similar offering. If I want to share a screenshot with some personal information redacted, there's no way to do that using GNOME Screenshot. Yes, I know I can find another app for doing that but that's not the point. It's the "every preference has a cost" philosophy in play again which makes some things dumbed down and deprived of sensible features when they shouldn't be.
I am by no means a KDE "fan" though. I ended up uninstalling KDE fairly quickly when I tried it a few months ago.
I also stand by my statement of "GNOME not really being a community project" after reading the blog posts by Tobias. There is little room for disagreement besides what the "GNOME way" says and little care for downstream.
Thanks for your time though. I appreciate how you've been patiently replying to my comments. Most people I talk to in FOSS communities generally aren't even receptive to discussions when its about disagreement. Everything is either the user's fault or his hardware is faulty.
https://files.catbox.moe/p5f920.png
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/issues/259#note_...
I was mistaken to think this quote came from a GNOME dev but then again, a GNOME dev (Benjamin Otte) does seems to have agreed with this so I guess it's all the same.
> So realistically there is little reason for alarm.
I hope you're right and that my fears are a misunderstanding. I have basically started removing any software that has anything to do with GNOME, including Flatpak and Flatseal, which I was happily using until now, because there's no telling what kind of control will be taken away from me. Again, I hope I'm wrong and this is all a misunderstanding on my end as you're saying.