Gnome might as well be proprietary with their shit attitude.
Pretty reasonable
Once in a while I check the installed packages for a possible dependency on GTK and when I find a program which has one, I look for an alternative to have one dependency less.
The last time I replaced simple-scan with skanlite and it is a much much better scanning program and with a more pleasant ui on top.
For some reason it is not yet on Flathub
Assuming you are using Mint, Skanlite can be found in the software manager.
I am not using Mint and it is also in the Fedora repos, but there is no reason for it to not be on Flathub. Maybe when I find the time I try to package it.
Honestly, for me, if it’s available from my OS’s repos and not horribly out of date, I use that one.
I’d rather have my app just work, not consume twice the resources and actually listen to my theme (inc the mouse, somehow)
On KDE Plasma theming and Cursors work with Flatpaks normally
bazzite defaults to the Breeze cursor
I changed it to the Breeze Light cursor
Flatpaks (so 90% of graphical stuff on bazzite) show me the Breeze (dark) cursor
I experienced the same on Debian KDE
It does not work fine on all KDE Plasmas, but it sure must be great for some KDE Plasma users out there that their cursor theme works in Flatpak
Still eats ludicrous amounts of resources and makes file management and sharing through the app a bitch, either way
The enshitification of Gnome continues until it be it’s own little isolated thing and previous gnome code will have to be forked to make progress that users actually want.
That will probably go for gnome apps eventually. The Mint guys might have to rewrite all the bloody apps to work with gnome 3…🤦
Didn’t that happen a long time ago which is how we got MATE?
I no longer follow developments in GTK based DEs much because nowadays KDE Plasma is so clearly the best choice for me, but it has long been my impression that GNOME just wants to be its own thing that doesn’t really care about anyone not using GNOME. This is probably because the main role of GNOME is to be the DE for installations commercially supported by Canonical, Red Hat, etc.
Enshitification != when a DE has some theming for its apps I don’t like.
“Enshitification” must be the most misused buzzword in the tech space right now. That or every algorithm being “AI” now.
No. It’s deliberately breaking backwards compatibility to force other projects that use that code to either look bland like Gnome or stop making their DE’s.
That’s bad for FLOSS and Linux users
No, it’s theming their own project to look however they want it to.
bland like Gnome
Gnome looks amazing. It’s objectively the most consistent and polished DE out there, and IMO the best looking one.
or stop making their DE’s.
Lmao is this what you think? There’s a secret cabal of Gnome developers who think that by making the Libadwaita theme and using it in their own Gnome apps, it will kill other DEs? Can you actually hear yourself?
That conspiracy theory doesn’t even make sense. Care to tell us your opinions on the moon landing? I imagine they’ll be quite funny.
Who said anything about a conspiracy? I’m just saying they may be acting selfishly and it couldn’t hurt to speak to other parties who they know use their code, to discuss how it will impact them.
You did. To quote your assertion:
It’s deliberately breaking backwards compatibility to force other projects that use that code to either look bland like Gnome or stop making their DE’s.
You’re asserting that the Gnome team is secretly working together (i.e. conspiring) with the explicit aim of enforcing DEs to look like Gnome (idk how they could force that but whatever), or to stop making their DEs altogether (similarly, I can’t see the logic there. Unless you believe that only Gnome devs are skilled enough to make Linux programs and other DEs just have to take what Gnome makes. But that’s an absurd suggestion).
It’s not a conspiracy. All I was saying is that by breaking backwards compatibility downstream either has to comply or find another way.
As another commentor has mentioned, gnome did actually inform downstream a good while back but downstream did not engage, so gnome obviously proceeded with their own project how they saw fit. Which is the right way of course.
Downstream should have tried to engage and perhaps found a good work around but sadly didn’t.
So they’ll have to work it out now by themselves.
How about when the theming is baked in and impossible to change?
Enshittification doesn’t have to be monetary. It’s about doing things that go against the interests of the user.
Unfortunately Gnome has taken to heart St. Exupery’s law (“perfection is not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away”) but have forgotten that it was coined in an era of mechanical devices and there’s more than one aspect to software. Applying it to functionality is very different from applying it to features and customization. The latter ends up making software feel bland and oppressive.
How about when the theming is baked in and impossible to change?
It’s not impossible to change, people alter it all the time. E.g. with Gradience. Either way, it still wouldn’t make it enshitification.
Enshitification != when an app from an open source project has a theme that’s harder to change.
Unfortunately Gnome has taken to heart St. Exupery’s law
Yawn. The usual “hur dur what’s Gnome removed this time???” line that doesn’t even make any sense. Go look at changelogs for Gnome updates and you’ll see that meme is bullshit. Stuff was removed in the Gnome 3 migration, what 13 or 14 years ago? It’s time to move on.
And again, still nothing to do with enshitification even if Gnome were trimming features out all the time, which they aren’t.
You people really need to learn what enshitification means instead of just latching onto the newest buzzword and applying it to everything. It’s like when companies call everything AI now lol
It’s not up to GNOME to do others work for them. If Mint wants a specific styling for their desktop, they should fork it (which they’re already doing) since everything is open source. It’s not like GNOME is gonna hunt them down for forking and creating a new product altogether lmfao. Cut the crap.
Gnome Foundation likes to think of themselves as the pioneer in DE’s and the default choice for Linux. Which was true for a long time. Cinnamon and Mate run Gnome, for example. I’m not sure about XFCE.
If you’re THE leading DE project at least try to accommodate those DE’s that depend on your code or meet with them to inform them well in advance and discuss the best options for those DE’s.
In other words, work together for the good of all users instead of doing your own little thing in the corner and leave the others to deal with the mess you made…
I think the topic of LibAdwaita was discussed plenty when shit hit the fan 2-3 years ago. Downstream developers can’t act all innocent and misinformed now when there was a huge drama between Budgie and GNOME upon LibAdwaita’s announcement.
GNOME developers repeatedly asked downstream developers to stop theming their apps which was generating endless bug reports for issues not caused by upstream code and none of them bothered to listen to them or work with them on a fix. Their choice of developing their own widget kit is a wise one because they’d otherwise still be wasting valuable developer time on fixing issues they should not be responsible for.
When one doesn’t take “no” for an answer, you’d have to forcibly make them stop. Just my two cents 🤷🏻♂️
No way I’m gonna scroll this 15min article to spot where that’s mentioned
TL;DR They want to push even more other desktop environments and distros to use XApps, because a lot of gnome’s ex-gtk3 apps now are half-broken and looks alien inside Mint and other distros like Xubuntu.
If an application doesn’t support Cinnamon we can’t ship with it in our Cinnamon edition. The same goes for MATE and Xfce.
[…]
We could do like Ubuntu 24.04. They provide a finished product with a high level of integration. The way they do that is by modifying libAdwaita to support their theme: Yaru. We could do the same with Mint-Y. It would make all GNOME applications look nice in Linux Mint, but we’d have to remove theme selection, since it would only work with Mint-Y. In the long term it wouldn’t solve the main issue either: These applications are designed for a desktop which is more and more different to ours by the day. It’s not just a question of themes or look. Today these apps are losing menubars, themes, tomorrow they might come with no minimize button or anything GNOME doesn’t use.
All I want is the ability to disable client side decorations without having to force xwayland with gtk3-classic
Can’t they theme gtk4/libadwaita without editing libadwaita? Like gradience do
I’ve made a bunch of libadwaita apps, because I like its UI/UX not because I want to break other Desktop Environment. That would mean even more fragmentation.
If they did you’d have one theme that works with Gnome and one that works with Mint. Both of which would be irrelevant to someone using GTK apps on, say, XFCE on Arch.
Aren’t mint themes gtk themes?
Libadwaita is only compatible with gnome and only works with gnome. Other DE’s can try to make it work in their DE, but the experience for them is hostile.
To put it mildly, gnome devs are being dicks about it as much as they can be, because they consider themselves the only “real” desktop environment to Linux.
If you want your apps to be cross platform, you can just use gtk3/gtk4 instead, or any other ui library. Even QT.
I use gnome ATM because I think paperwm is the best desktop experience on any OS, but the gnome DE devs are just assholes and they break my heart.
I use Gnome too and I don’t like their attitude against other DEs. Their attitude is becoming a real threat to Linux interoperability.
At least we got flatpaks.Libadwaita is only compatible with gnome and only works with gnome. Other DE’s can try to make it work in their DE, but the experience for them is hostile.
Not sure what you mean with “compatible”, as libadwaita apps are supposed to work on other DEs as well. It might not fit visually with them, but that’s not being incompatible.
Gnome can’t use the argument that “theming our apps is incompatible” and then at the same time not allow other DEs to manage window controls and the like to be compatible. Shit attitude and shit arguments.
They could just accept GTK 4. Anyway, they will need some GTK 4/libadwaita support as there are an increasing number of apps that use it.
Hello fellow citizen, I almost agree but libadwaita is inherently gnome’s thing, and libadwaita apps are usually closely built into the gnome desktop, so using it outside of gnome seems weird. Kinda like using Dolphin outside of KDE (tho that’s just because of qt). They want to be able to integrate their forks visually.
I don’t see libadadwaita as progress. Last week, simple-scan got an update and is stuck to a dark theme since then. To change it, i would have to install gnome-settings and klick a button there. Can’t do that via my usual keyboard-combo.
edit: edited Gnome’s ‘don’t theme our apps’ away since it’s beside the point.
