• Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Probably an unpopular opinion, but IMO Gnome has done immense harm to Linux for the past decade. Their disruptive change from Gnome 2 to Gnome shell was extremely harmful. Their going alone, with complete redesign incompatible with freedesktop.org that used to be a standard, ruining almost a decade of compatibility efforts, and compatibility between Gnome and other desktop environments.
    I understand that many people love Gnome today, but Gnome almost caused me to switch away from Linux because of all the problems they caused.

    It’s too bad really, because Gnome used to be a cornerstone of Linux desktop.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Yes, and I think it may also have helped KDE a lot, KDE is really great today IMO. For the classical Gnome 2 experience I prefer XFCE.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          KDE 3 to KDE 4 transition was very dramatic too. Sadly Trinity is not as good a fork as MATE is.

          KDE 3 was just an amazing desktop, but using it is not very practical. Relevant software using Qt3 - yeah, well, no.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            Yes that is true, but there was no similar breakage, everything KDE 3 and KDE 4 mixed well with other desktops, and mostly followed established standards for the Linux desktop.
            The KDE team never showed similar arrogance to the Gnome team either, and KDE didn’t remove beloved basic functionality because obscure “reasons” like Gnome did.
            Also KDE was not nearly as significant to the Linux environment as Gnome was.
            Finally that is whataboutism and not a valid argument to the debate that what Gnome did was extremely harmful to Linux as a whole.

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
              0·
              5 months ago

              It’s not whataboutism, it’s personal experience. I used Slackware mostly after switching, so no Gnome.

              About significance - you might be mixing up Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 transition with GTK2 to GTK3 transition.

              GTK3 I hated with passion, oh yes. I literally built GTK programs from source if the repo version was GTK3 and GTK2 was supported for some time period, later got too lazy to do that.

              Still, the inconvenience of needing a whole theme instead of one ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file .

    • dsemy@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      5 months ago

      This happened 13 years ago at this point, and with all that “immense harm” desktop Linux is more popular than ever.

      I don’t use Gnome, and it really wouldn’t matter much to me if the project ceased operations tomorrow (as long as stuff like GTK is still around), but remember that normal people like you and me work and that project, people who are passionate about making a free system to benefit everyone; and you’re calling their work “extremely harmful” when the worst thing they did was radically change the UX.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        5 months ago

        Yes Linux is more popular than ever, But when Gnome changed to Gnome Shell Linux marketshare clearly declined. That Linux has begun to rise again, is definitely not because of Gnome Shell but more despite of it.

        I absolutely love how developers can do their own thing on Linux, as they say scratch your own itch.
        Problem with Gnome was that the team was extremely arrogant, completely dismissed any criticism, and even rejected contributions that would remedy some of the problems. Gnome was a weird community project that didn’t give a shit about the community, and abandoned everything they used to stand for.
        I wouldn’t normally have a problem with that, except Gnome’s behavior was harmful to the Linux community as a whole IMO, they abandoned their own community, deprecating gnome 2 before gnome shell was ready. They made life for other desktop projects harder, if they wanted to create an environment that supported Gnome together with other desktop environments, and for other desktop environments that wanted to allow to run programs made for Gnome somewhat seamlessly, which was tradition at the time.
        How you cannot see that that is harmful and detrimental to Linux as a whole I don’t understand. Also remember Gnome had a vastly dominant presence on the Linux desktop, with about 80% user share of desktop environments. So what they decided to do, had immense influence on Linux as a whole.

        Edit:
        I just found that today Gnome is now only about 20% according to Arch packagestats. I can’t find good stats for marketshare between Linux desktops.

        • dsemy@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          I don’t get why this comment is so unpopular.

          • You made baseless claims:

          when Gnome changed to Gnome Shell Linux marketshare clearly declined. That Linux has begun to rise again, is definitely not because of Gnome Shell but more despite of it.

          I’m assuming you don’t actually have data on this or you’d share it.

          • You keep insulting Gnome developers. You say you love how developers can do their own thing and then call the Gnome team arrogant for doing just that, in the very next sentence. They don’t have to accept criticism, they don’t have to accept contributions (think about this logically, would you want your favorite project to accept any criticism and any contributions?).
          • You say they hurt the ability to run Gnome apps on other desktops with Gnome 3, but both from research and personal experience I can’t figure out what you mean (I use and have used Gnome 3 apps outside of Gnome), and you don’t give any examples (despite your comment being pretty long).
  • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    https://ramcq.net/2024/04/26/update-from-the-gnome-board/

    Update 2024-04-27: It was suggested in the Discourse thread that I clarify the interaction between the break-even budget and the 1M EUR committed by the STF project. This money is received in the form of a contract for services rather than a grant to the Foundation, and must be spent on the development areas agreed during the planning and application process. It’s included within this year’s budget (October 23 – September 24) and is all expected to be spent during this fiscal year, so it doesn’t have an impact on the Foundation’s reserves position. The Foundation retains a small % fee to support its costs in connection with the project, including the new requirement to have our accounts externally audited at the end of the financial year. We are putting this money towards recruitment of an administrative assistant to improve financial and other operational support for the Foundation and community, including the STF project and future development initiatives.

    (also posted to GNOME Discourse, please head there if you have any questions or comments)