File picker meme

>This is your problem, and GNOME's too: GNOME doesn't own the Linux desktop.

I'm sorry I have no idea what you mean. This is not about the Linux desktop, this is about GNOME. If you don't want to support GNOME then there's no reason to discuss this, because it doesn't matter, you can keep going about your way and you don't have to care about them. Am I missing something here?

>The status quo on GNOME should not drive protocol standards that impact the entire Linux desktop ecosystem. Why should GNOME's fairly isolated status quo be the burden of every application or app toolkit developer?

They aren't, and they don't? I'm extremely confused as to what you're talking about here. This again is about what you would have to do to support GNOME. Not any other Linux desktop.

>The inverse is a burden on the compositor. There are far more apps and app developers, and even toolkits, than there will ever be Wayland compositors.

This doesn't matter because the issue here is how to make apps that aren't broken. Some things simply cannot be fixed in the compositor, they have to be fixed in the app, and this is one of them. I sympathize with your concern and I wish it wasn't the case, but sometimes app developers have to do some work that they don't want to do.

>Because you will get a vendored copy of libdecor. In a runtime like the Steam runtime, you might wind up attempting to load a version of libdecor linked against an incompatible libc if you try to use the system version. This is not a problem that would occur if a protocol were used instead.

That isn't how flatpak works at all. You don't use the system version, you only use the vendored version, and you do that specifically to avoid that linking problem you mentioned. Also libdecor does use the protocol so I have really no idea what you're talking about again here, sorry.

>libdecor also has the potential to create other problems.

Sure but the problems there would be exactly the same as they would be if you did it all in the server, so libdecor is not making it any worse. The only difference is that the code moved to the client.

>If GNOME cared about what experience was good for the user, they would have cared about the fact that the Wayland compositor they shipped into production runs many games with missing window borders because of their own initiatives and sway within the Wayland ecosystem.

Well I'm not sure if you saw this part in my previous part but those apps are broken according to the xdg-decoration spec. It has really nothing to do with GNOME at all. All Wayland apps need to provide fallback window borders if they want to work correctly in all situations, if they don't then that's a bug.

>The user experience in GNOME is genuinely worse due to this strange insistence on moving a problem from one location to another.

I don't see why that concerns you if you're not a GNOME user and you have no interest in supporting GNOME. GNOME can deal with their own problems, if that causes them to lose users then that's something only they have to care about, not you.

Continued...

>I understand that you use GNOME and are passionate about it, but your insistence on right and wrong answers is absolutely not what drives the Linux community.

So your statements here aren't correct. Please avoid accusing me of being a fanboy. If you really want to know my opinion, I'll use any desktop and I'm not passionate about any of them, GNOME is just one of them. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. But if you're asking questions about GNOME and GTK then I'll give you straight answers, they are also part of the "Linux community" and it doesn't help either of us to misrepresent them. There are certain facts about that which it is not helpful for us to disagree on, because they are just that: facts, not opinions.

>Then don't make them. Just do what every other desktop has done since 1992, give people the option to configure things the way they want

Well some users may have no need to configure that. And like I was saying with complex apps, it may be that you don't need to give users a really complicated way to configure every little detail. It may be that what they really want is just a way to swap between "presets" and that will be enough for everyone. You don't know until you actually do the design work and iterate. This of course is a more complex and nuanced topic than just saying "give us an option" or "give us a default" or something like that.

>If corner-cutting starts to affect power users, you need to go back to the drawing board and re-think things.

Well no, in my experience power users are just as likely to be trying to accomplish something specific like that. When you get down to it their usage patterns are not particularly different.

>Yeah, real motivation going on there. Of the 4 apps they mention needing CSD, only one got it. Is that really what 3 years of progress should look like for that kind of initiative?

I really don't know what their progress goals are but there are many other GNOME apps not listed there that use CSD, you should look at them if you're interested to fully understand the progress.

>GNOME is not Linux, and the issue is that the GNOME developers are making too many decisions on behalf of the end user.

Yes I agree that GNOME is not Linux. But GNOME developers are making decisions on behalf of GNOME users. That's what they're supposed to do, those are the end users they support. I don't understand what your issue here is. If you don't use any GNOME software then their decisions won't affect you.

>I do take issue when I can't use a desktop environment because my preference for handling packages is apparently verboten

Which preference is this? Can you elaborate?

>and now they've decided to remove features that I liked. It's a regression on the level of dropping the Unity desktop, but even more user-hostile.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I hope you can understand that every project cannot support infinite features. If it's desired to add a new feature then sometimes an older feature that has some overlap with it will have to be removed. That's just the unfortunate reality, nobody is trying to be hostile to you. And it's not really feasible to ask software developers to stop adding new features, if they did this then everything would stagnate.

>And even still, I have a hard time calling GNOME in it's current state much of a platform. It exhibits constant crashing issues on my Haswell devices which means I can't use it on half my devices, and it only truly functions on one or two distros.

Can you please report these bugs? I've never experienced this. If those are legitimate bugs then I'm sure someone will want to have them fixed. It could possibly be a driver issue that is not strictly related to GNOME.

>Not to go "us vs them", but KDE has no problem maintaining a stable, usable desktop even across major releases. I'm utterly dumbfounded by how the current maintainers of GNOME feel so self-righteous in their redesign, especially considering the state of their recent releases.

Please understand that not every project has the resources to test with every hardware combination, it may just be that you hit some unusual and unfortunate combination of hardware and software that blows up. It's just lucky for you that KDE doesn't hit that.

I'm not discussing this any further, and I'm rather put-off from contributing to any GNOME projects if all the developers are going to feel this self-righteous. In any case, it seems like you've made it clear that neither GNOME nor Flatpak are right for me, so I'll quit wasting both of our time.

>In my opinion, that article is pretty insubstantial and is mostly just responding to the same 4chan trolling mentioned in this wiki. It's just not a productive line of discussion and doesn't make any sense in the actual context of how open source works.

How on Earth is it "trolling"? Seriously, I want you to explain to me how that article is bad-faith in any way. Yes, it's written in a absurd, ironic way -- that's because the situation it's describing is absurd. When such a massive, obvious usability flaw has gone unfixed for so long, people have the perfect right to joke about it and make fun of GNOME. Sorry if you think that's unfair trolling -- it isn't.

And lol at the goalpost moving

>gnome is underfunded

>okay, how much money to fix the file chooser

>oh well uhh that's now how it works and you couldn't afford it anyway

Sorry, I don't mean the article is trolling or bad-faith. What I mean is that the author seems to have been trolled and the article is only responding to that trolling. That's just my guess after seeing this 4chan wiki and after seeing some very hostile statements made about this over the years. The discourse is being driven by trolls. The questions asked here aren't "bad" per se but if there had been any communication with the real developers at all then I wouldn't expect anyone to ask these questions, they don't make any sense in context. It seems to me the only reason they're being asked is because trolls spread misinformation about the project. Please try to avoid falling into the same trap, I'm noticing that you're doing it and it's not helpful. Don't let the trolls win.

I'll go a step further and say: I don't think your assessment is correct. There isn't anything absurd about an open source project missing a popular feature, it's a completely normal situation. Most open source projects are underfunded and understaffed and seem to have a giant "wishlist" of unimplemented features. Also, please avoid making hostile jokes or mocking people, that's more of that cruelty-focused 4chan-style discourse that is against the rules here. It's not an interesting discussion. When you drift into that unproductive stuff that's just being cruel to other people, I would say that absolutely is unfair trolling, so please don't do that. A more productive discussion might be something like: we discuss ways to fund the project, we discuss ways to get bugs fixed, we discuss technical advancements that could help speed things along. Does that make sense? I'm happy to discuss that stuff with you further.

>And lol at the goalpost moving

This again is what I mean, please don't dismiss my comments like this, it's really hostile. I gave you an answer for what it costs, and I also explained why that's not really a good question to ask. If you want me to clarify something then just ask, I could also suggest some better questions to ask if you really do want to help open source developers.