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Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

ludditus.com

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Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#11

Post by ogogmad »

new_user_final wrote: post #8

>That KDE Plasma 5 is finally usable and stable, after having decided to stop pushing the ridiculous plasmoids on the user (were they liking the Windows Desktop Gadgets, or they were simply idiots?), is like having an old whore finally becoming a respectable woman. It’s hard to forget the developers’ idiotic decisions, though. I don’t like to be Microsoft’s guinea pig, why should I be KDE’s? This attitude describes w…

The analogy involving whores becoming respectable women is kind of messed up. I'm not sure if I'm going to trigger the anti-political correctness crowd by saying something that's politically incorrect for the anti-political correctness crowd.

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#12

Post by ggm »

Feels like 80/20 class problem. 80% working, same effort to close 80% of the remaining 20% and recurse enough times you wind up burned out. Now add rewrites and factionalism and dissent.

They don't love and nurture each other and they don't love their users either.

I used to care. As a user I can't buy into it any more.

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#13

Post by smegsicle »

kelnos wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #2

So much fighting over how best to draw the UI that will launch various instances of the Chrome engine. Want to know why everything is written in Electron or as a web app? Because literally every desktop platform over the last decade has decided to play design and engineering games instead of just make a really solid stable base to write apps on top of.

I don't think that's really the reason for Electron's popularity. While GTK and Qt are cross-platform, my (limited, to be fair) experience with building for multiple platforms was that it was a huge pain in the ass, and Windows and macOS platform integration often felt clunky and out of place. The big draw for Electron is that we have way way way more web developers out there these days than native-code desktop UI de…

a big part of why browser engines are so unwieldy is the implied compatibility with every website ever, right?

but the "way way more web developers" you mention are not, at least in the context of electron apps, interested in that feature except tangentially..

so while everyone knows a full web-ready browser engine is impractical to design from scratch, maybe a simplified engine that supports a conservative subset of best-practices web-style design is in order?

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#14

Post by hamoid »

ogogmad wrote: post #11
new_user_final wrote: post #8

>That KDE Plasma 5 is finally usable and stable, after having decided to stop pushing the ridiculous plasmoids on the user (were they liking the Windows Desktop Gadgets, or they were simply idiots?), is like having an old whore finally becoming a respectable woman. It’s hard to forget the developers’ idiotic decisions, though. I don’t like to be Microsoft’s guinea pig, why should I be KDE’s? This attitude describes w…

The analogy involving whores becoming respectable women is kind of messed up. I'm not sure if I'm going to trigger the anti-political correctness crowd by saying something that's politically incorrect for the anti-political correctness crowd.

That's where I stopped reading.

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#15

Post by bayesian_horse »

kelnos wrote: post #6
com2kid wrote: post #2

So much fighting over how best to draw the UI that will launch various instances of the Chrome engine. Want to know why everything is written in Electron or as a web app? Because literally every desktop platform over the last decade has decided to play design and engineering games instead of just make a really solid stable base to write apps on top of.

I don't think that's really the reason for Electron's popularity. While GTK and Qt are cross-platform, my (limited, to be fair) experience with building for multiple platforms was that it was a huge pain in the ass, and Windows and macOS platform integration often felt clunky and out of place. The big draw for Electron is that we have way way way more web developers out there these days than native-code desktop UI de…

It's way easier to develop and customize a user interface with the building blocks found in a browser, rather than doing the same with Gtk or QT. To the extent that those have gotten easier, they are emulating html+js+css.

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#17

Post by smegsicle »

ogogmad wrote: post #9

I'm using KDE5 at the moment, and it's essentially problem-free. It's got more features than I know what to do with, but this somehow doesn't detract from it but rather enhances it. KDE5 never seems to be the default choice of desktop environment for distros like Manjaro, but you're unlikely to go wrong picking it as your default option, if you're given that option.

isn't slackware sticking with them for the default environment?

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#19

Post by linguae »

Given non-GNOME developers' frustration with increasingly GNOME-centric releases of GTK, and given some of the licensing issues surrounding Qt (such as the one-year delay for FOSS releases of the toolkit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25748335), I believe the time is ripe for a BSD-licensed GUI toolkit for X11 and Wayland that uses server-side decorations and tries to be as unopinionated as possible in order to allow for different visions of the desktop instead of imposing a particular vision through the toolkit. In fact, starting such a project is something I've been considering for a long time.

If only had GNUstep (http://www.gnustep.org/) been the toolkit for the Linux desktop instead of the Qt vs GTK/GNOME wars; this would have saved a lot of drama regarding toolkits. Back in the mid-2000's it appeared that the matter was settled during the KDE 3 and GNOME 2 days; a lot of people seemed to be happy with these desktops, and those who preferred non-GNOME Gtk desktops and applications had plenty of options. However, ever since GNOME 3 the GNOME developers have been able to mold GTK to its vision at the expense of other GTK users who didn't share GNOME's vision. Qt is less opinionated, but its stewardship is up to the whims of whatever company that owns it. GNUstep is free from these issues, but it never received mass adoption.

Come to think about it, maybe instead of a new toolkit, maybe we should look into GNUstep some more and consider investing our developer resources into building a GNUstep desktop ecosystem. But I'm curious about what other people are thinking.

Re: Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments?

#20

Post by throwmeariver1 »

new_user_final wrote: post #8

>That KDE Plasma 5 is finally usable and stable, after having decided to stop pushing the ridiculous plasmoids on the user (were they liking the Windows Desktop Gadgets, or they were simply idiots?), is like having an old whore finally becoming a respectable woman. It’s hard to forget the developers’ idiotic decisions, though. I don’t like to be Microsoft’s guinea pig, why should I be KDE’s? This attitude describes w…

It’s OSS you are no one’s guinea pig. If you don’t want to participate you don’t have to use it if the ones who participate want to try other things switch and don’t complain like a old male whore on the sidelines.
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