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Haven't Clasen and several other devs on the issue tracker you and I linked above clearly has statements like "linking to libadwaita is an explicit decision to use the Adwaita theme" and "core GNOME applications linking to libadwaita will then thereby require that every distribution shipping GNOME is forced to consent to having Adwaita as the theme".

The only way a user's own custom theme will be used if a proposed opt-in flag is added to libadwaita (doesn't seem like it will be, recoloring API is being favored) and app developers use that flag.

Correct me if I'm wrong in this point and I'd be happy to go back and talk to the GTkeddit developer again but from what he independently tested, he seems to have reached the same result as I think.

What do you think will happen when developers who've built their apps using GTK3 start migrating their apps to GTK4? They'll most likely pick libadwaita like the developer of GTkeddit did. He wasn't aware about how libadwaita is going to enforce its own theme and was surprised when I told him about it.

Now, I know I'll never use his app because it's using libadwaita but what if apps like Firefox start using GTK4 with libadwaita? What do I do then? Switch to Chromium? It uses GTK as well. The so-called choice that open source offers is merely an illusion in some cases.

The choices that GNOME devs make end up hurting users like me who want nothing do with GNOME and who aren't even using GNOME.

It's genuinely sad to see that changing fonts is now considered a hack and unsupported behavior on Linux. I'm not into extreme customization or anything of that sort. I don't have any user themes installed besides Adwaita or any icon themes besides Breeze and Adwaita on my Linux desktop running the Sway window manager. But one of the things that I really like is not being forced to use ugly fonts like DejaVu or Segoe. It really is sad to know that soon, some apps on my system will not use the fonts I want them to.

You've asked me not to be cynical but these issues are what drive me to cynicism. I'm not a particular fan of using Linux but I still use it because I'm more uncomfortable with Windows and Mac. But if there's no difference between how they work and how my Linux desktop works, what's even the point? You can't expect users to maintain hard forks or patch and compile stuff.

Thanks for your time though.

Please don't dismiss my statements as baseless. The presence of an issue does not imply progress. Jeremy is asking for a theming API or a method to let apps use a different theme besides Adwaita.

> Jeremy: I'm curious if you think there is a best way to have GNOME core apps continue to use our own theme.

> Clasen: If you ask me, the answer is no. To the best of my understanding, linking to libadwaita is an explicit decision to use the Adwaita theme.

I don't think there's any confusion or baseless assumption on my end.

> You're getting this wrong -- GNOME is very much a community project

Doesn't look like a community project to me, not in the least. It's as much a community project as Android (AOSP) is.

> This is not about making someone conform to anyone's way, this is about distros working with app developers to provide the best possible experience for users.

And GNOME/GTK devs get to decide what's the best possible experience for the user — removing any customization possibilities for the sake of consistency. If anyone doesn't like that, they can piss off. This is pretty much what "making someone conform to someone's way" looks like.

I'm eagerly waiting for the day when it becomes impossible to make any sort of customisation at all in GNOME/GTK apps besides what the app developer intends. Now that user themes have been axed, I hope fonts, font size, and icons are axed as well and Adwaita, Cantarell (that's the default GNOME font right?), and GNOME Icons are enforced everywhere. It certainly won't be surprising for me if this happens and things seem to headed in this direction.

I'm sorry to see that Jeremy still hasn't figured out that GNOME/GTK isn't a community project and is still trying to engage with their devs about themes even though the recoloring API page clearly says that system themes won't be supported.

> for example KDE apps should run just fine inside GNOME, and vice versa

Yeah, I doubt that. Even if somehow it does look fine right now, I don't think it will soon.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3409

> I don't have any comments on the file chooser, anything we say is flogging a dead horse.

Yeah, I know. It's pointless to have discussions, especially when the project in question isn't a community project and follows the "look but don't touch" open source model of development.

One can't even change the fonts of GNOME out of the box without first installing Tweak Tool and even then, you can't change the font of GNOME Shell itself. If you dare customize the CSS to change it, you're implementing "hacks". I wouldn't be surprised if the ability to change fonts was removed from GNOME and GTK.

Not to mention that GNOME devs seem to think that volume control slider isn't required in their music app and GNOME file picker still doesn't have thumbnails. So yeah, basic features are missing.

https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbna...

Then again, it's probably a useless debate at this point since everything is subjective. I'm confident that one could come up with a desktop environment with windows turned upside down and inside out with colors changing randomly every second and many people would still like it and call it "polished" and "refined".

I don't know why lots of developers have chosen GNOME/GTK to build their own desktop environment (Cinnamon, Solus, PopOS etc) but at this point, it's pretty clear that GNOME/GTK developers don't care one bit about them. They want to control their apps and their ecosystem and don't want anyone telling them what to do. GNOME/GTK is heading toward Google's open source model of "look but don't touch". Anything that doesn't conform to their way is a "hack".

If Jeremy and others really want to control their own desktop environments and apps and themes, they should start searching for alternatives (Qt?) or build their own. It's a mistake to consider GNOME/GTK as a community project.

Some of them have too high contrast which makes me see after effects of text everywhere on the screen. Some of them have poor contrast and require users to ruin their eyes. But no, let's assume everyone on Earth is fine with a single light and a single dark theme.

If you're interested, here's a thread about the issue me and several other people have been facing.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=266358

The issue has been "fixed" for now by downgrading to the March 2021 release of Linux Firmware for most people. Of course, this isn't really a fix.