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A new wave of Linux applications

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#531

Post by bstar77 »

doublepg23 wrote: post #276
bstar77 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the exact opposite experience. When I started using Linux the UI was a crutch, but as I learned, the command-line became much more compelling because it was substantially more powerful- it's infinitely easier to add features via flags and params than it is to integrate in a GUI. I pretty much live in the command-line now and I've never been more productive. All of my calendar/doc/notes needs are in the cloud…

First time I’ve heard “BTRFS” and “reliability” together.

I didn't say it outright, but I was comparing to NTFS. EXT4 is also extremely reliable, albeit with the backup features of BTRFS.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#532

Post by bstar77 »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #292
doublepg23 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I’ve heard “BTRFS” and “reliability” together.

btrfs has come a long, long way. At this point the only major remaining problem is the parity raid implementation, so most people just run it on top of mdraid. btrfs native striped and mirrored raid are stable at this point. In my subjective experience, I've been using it for the last 6 years and have not had a fault thus far.

I've been running it on my primary nvme drive for the past year and have had no issues and performance has been surprisingly good. Raid for a high-end nvme drive is a bit out of my budget.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#533

Post by smoldesu »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #311
goodpoint wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "don't theme my app" movement is really harmful to the application ecosystem. Especially true for users with partial visual impairments, but also for other users that want to have a consistent style on their desktops or phones.

Gnome has a high contrast mode and UI font size options. What do custom themes add for accessibility?

The high-contrast mode does not accommodate for all people with colorblindness. I knew a number of people in Libera who were appalled when they updated to GNOME 40 and could no longer theme the shell to be actually visible.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#534

Post by audidude »

zozbot234 wrote: post #495
audidude wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you meant "GNOME" Builder rather than GtkBuilder (the template loader for GTK), I'm the author of it and can help figure out what is going wrong on your system wrt not compiling anything. Just file an issue on gitlab and I'll take a look. Usually when we come across bugs like this it's related to distro packaging as we have no hand in that and the Flatpak packages I maintain generally do-as-advertised.

Is GNOME Builder intended to be usable as a general-purpose IDE, beyond just developing GNOME applications? It seems like with a bit of work it could be a very nice alternative to the usual picks.

There are really only a few of us that make Builder, mostly just in our free time. So that means we have to be very focused with our time and choose to focus on making it easier to write GNOME software.

That said, the whole thing is an open ended plugin architecture and we are very liberal about accepting all sorts of things. Many people do use it successfully outside it’s intended scope.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#535

Post by smoldesu »

chrismorgan wrote: post #494
_2paq wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the advent of libadwaita, GTK really is GNOME toolkit. Most advocates are really deceptive when they talk about this and say GTK4 is agnostic to platforms but I haven't come across a single non-trivial GTK4 app that isn't based on libadwaita. Even LibreOffice is becoming a libadwaita app. The GUI ecosystem on Linux is mostly dead. I'm trying to switch to CLI and TUI apps for all of my tasks. If they don't exist,…

I don’t think libadwaita is a problem in the direction you’re saying at all—it’s a comparatively slim layer mostly of additional components that should generally not be all that difficult to make optional if you desire. And you can easily use GTK without it if you want. Rather, I think the problem is that libadwaita hasn’t gone far enough . The advertised theory is that GTK is agnostic, and libadwaita gets you GNOME…

The issue (as I see it) is that libadwaita is GNOME's bartering chip. For years they've been anal-retentive about custom theming, be it their infinite diatribes about how XDG only needs to respect 2 themes, the "Don't Theme My App" disaster or their ongoing attempts to put custom stylesheets further and further away from the user's control. GTK4, libadwaita and Flatpak are their leverage here. Each of these systems, when taken separately, make it difficult to theme your app (though still technically possible). When incorporated though, it becomes outright unreasonable to theme things. This is wholly their fault, and this notion that "they didn't know what they were doing!" makes me roll my eyes. They know exactly what they did, and their behavior has been insanely harmful to the rest of the community.

As a matter of fact, I think the Linux desktop might just be permanently split as a result of their actions now. It's a more extreme version of the old GTK2 vs GTK3 argument, but this time the divide is more extreme. Wayland is borderline unusable on anything but GNOME. GTK4 refuses to integrate with any desktop but GNOME. libadwaita is dividing the development of applications to "GNOME app" and "not GNOME app". Flatpak is a broken olive branch that is in a comical state of neglect (and only integrates well with GNOME anyways).

This segregation has to stop, or it will kill the Linux community along with it. In their attempts to make Linux competitive with Windows and MacOS, the GNOME maintainers have completely quit listening to their users and sabotaged everything that people genuinely liked about Linux.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#536

Post by smoldesu »

kuon wrote: post #110

I love that some work is going into UI design, but there are a few things I really dislike in gnome apps. For example using a hamburger menu instead of a regular menu or icons instead of text for buttons.

Don't worry, you can theme it to be exactly how you prefe- oh wait

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#537

Post by smoldesu »

_2paq wrote: post #471
grey_earthling wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> libadwaita is in a "functional" release state, but still lacks support for custom stylesheets, Libadwaita is an implementation of GNOME's design, analogous to libgranite in elementary OS. This includes the visual design. GNOME only has one style, Adwaita (which means “the only one”!). If you don't want to use GNOME's design, you don't want to use libadwaita. > basic desktop integration on non-GNOME desktops Libadwa…

> Libadwaita is the library you use when you're targetting GNOME. > If you want to target something other than GNOME, you don't want to use libadwaita. Does GTK4 provide any viable model of development if one doesn't want to target GNOME or elementary? I, for one, haven't seen a non-trivial GTK4 app that doesn't use libadwaita or libgranite and the more I discuss this online, the more I suspect that this is intended…

As someone with firsthand experience in this field: it's not worth your time. Getting GTK4 to work in other desktops is a shitshow in the first place (it has horrible rendering issues on x11/Plasma configs), but all of the good stuff like gtk::Builder and connect-closures have been removed, making imperative development an enormous pain in the ass. If you still manage to make an app despite that mess, you'll be left with horrible font rendering issues that can only be fixed with a very specific Flatpak configuration (hope you didn't want to run your own app natively!) and by the time you've got it all figured out you'll probably be looking into Qt.

Please, just use GTK2 or GTK3 if you're planning on making non-GNOME apps. GTK4 is simply not finished yet.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#538

Post by jamesgeck0 »

_2paq wrote: post #467
jamesgeck0 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnome has a high contrast mode and UI font size options. What do custom themes add for accessibility?

Is that high contrast mode, their dark mode colors, and their font choice supposed to work for everyone?

...Changing the default fonts is definitely supported.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#539

Post by theteapot »

berkes wrote: post #475
theteapot wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a core workflow in this context?

I presume things like making screenshots, browsing files, looking up contacts, maintaining a calendar, reading and sending emails, calculating some quick numbers, making backups and so on. Stuff that, regardless of your niche, is needed. Whether you are a programmer or a plumber, you'll be doing many of these tasks on a daily basis.

Oh OK. Nit picking, but more like "core functions" then right? Put two or more together and it's a workflow.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#540

Post by SanchoPanda »

rland wrote: post #64
floren wrote: post #36

These applications look really pretty and all, but for my selfish purposes, I just really want real goddamn scrollbars back. I use a mouse that doesn't have a scroll wheel, but for the life of me I've been unable to figure out how to make applications like Firefox just give me a real scroll bar on the side of the window that's thick enough to grab without fiddly pixel-hunting.

I found a solution for Firfox on Ubuntu MATE: 1. go to about:config 2. find widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 3. Change to some pixel value (I have mine set at 26). voila! I do not understand why the default is so thin. Really bucks the trend of every UI element being touch-screen large nowadays!

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
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