Is there any future for the GTK-based Desktop Environments? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by skeletal88 » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:14 AM UTC

lapser wrote: post #27

bayesian_horse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know about Qt but at least GTK's docs are terribly bad. Even more so when you want to develop using a language that isn't C.

Qt docs are excellent, one of the best I have used. They have high level overviews, examples and everything you ever want

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

#52

Post by fnord123 » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

denismi wrote: post #46

Yep, Nautilus is "unusable" without the compact view. Idiotic hyperbole like this is where I stop reading. How can I take anything beyond that seriously?

Septembrians don't know what to take seriously. These kinds of strong opinions feel useful for people new to the scene so they can certainly influence a lot of people.

Hopefully they can see comments like 'gtk+3 wasn't even backwards compatible with gtk+2' for what they are. (i.e. no shit, hence the major version change).

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

#53

Post by skeletal88 » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:18 AM UTC

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.

Qt has stayed the same and KDE has been excellent, this is a probleem with GTK and Gnome based desktops

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

#54

Post by urn_piqoq » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:21 AM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #34

onphonenow wrote: post #10

Fast windows 95 would have been fine. Instead the devs lost their minds w design craziness. VS Code and chrome pycharm etc means it’s not a huge deal - they are all x platform

Not for people who are not mentally stuck in the 90s. I am very glad things have processed and have left the ugliness and usabilitly problems of Windows 95 in the past.

I'm in the opposite camp. I recall great monolithic software for media production from the 90's and think our modern web-centric view is "dumbed-down".

There's a time and place for minimalism, but the term "power user" also has a meaning: your accumulated user-base that didn't leave.

Windows post-Vista has forced me and countless others into never bothering again. The fact of a 90's MCSE certification means nothing when I blankly gaze at the visage of a "modern" Windows UI that tells me nothing of import. M$ basically told all their power users to go away.

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

#55

Post by jart » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:22 AM UTC

syntheweave wrote: post #38

There's something missing from the analysis, which I believe is quite important: There are only a few applications complex enough to push these toolkits to their limits, and that's not a case of "developers craving such a toolkit and not getting it". Most of the things people were going to write native for in the past have been absorbed into the browser; and many new applications are written with a more ground-up con…

Apple doesn't change. Chrome doesn't change. They both look exactly the same as when they were introduced. What makes platforms strong is stability and consistency. Linux desktop projects are more likely to get funded the more disruptive they are and the more likely it is they'll alienate supporters and cause drama. Like gnome's big shift circa 2014 to tablet first interfaces. If we consider that Linux desktop users are the smartest and most technically advanced computer users in the world, then it's quite a slap in the face to force them to use a gimmicky gui intended for toys as their workstation. The most advanced computer users deserve the most advanced desktop. Sadly that's not the world we live in. Hopefully someday we can liberate the technical class from this orwellian treatment of continual destruction of identity.

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

#56

Post by esjeon » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

legulere wrote: post #29

linguae wrote: post #19

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 or…

> uses server-side decorations and tries to be as unopinionated as possible You are contradicting yourself. Some people think decorations should be server-side others think client-side. So it seems what is better is an opinion.

Actaully, it’s not really about doing it server-side or client-side. It’s about how to make client render on windows border. CSD is obviously simpler, but that’s when you do bitmap…

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

#57

Post by sph » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

nix23 wrote: post #50

sph wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using the wrong isolating container ;) There's only one that is quite slow at startup, the other isn't.

Just imagine you need a container for the calculator.....

Just imagine getting pwned by malware bundled in a calculator...

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

#58

Post by Narann » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:36 AM UTC

hvdijk wrote: post #35

mavu wrote: post #24

The tone of that article makes sure that I stop reading after 2 paragraphs.

I did not last even two paragraphs: I clicked through on "Ubuntu MATE cannot be trusted" and found something better summarised as "I tried getting away with calling people idiots on Ubuntu MATE forums in a bizarre social experiment and cannot deal with them not putting up with that."

Same, it's disturbing:

* OP: "If a distro with 60k packages cannot accommodate one or three extra packages for an official flavor, then someone is an idiot, and that idiot is not me."

* Moderator came and ask to not talk like this.

* OP: "Censorship, simply because I used the word “idiot” without naming anyone in particular!", and OP continue.

* Moderator close the tread.

* OP: "Then the little Stalin closed my thread".

This is not serious. OP doesn't named anyone but hide himself with a general attack to package maintainer (maybe this maintainer is alone). Hiding its attitude behind word meaning is something my 9 years old son is starting to do and I try to explain him its not a valid excuse.

OP should revise it's social expectations.

It's hard enough to keep big open source projects on rails without having childish attitude like this.

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

#59

Post by jonathonf » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:38 AM UTC

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.

> KDE5 never seems to be the default choice of desktop environment

Apart from KDE Neon, and Garuda, and...

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

#60

Post by imtringued » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:40 AM UTC

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 once installed Linux with Gnome 3 on a USB stick and used that as my primary operating system for six months. My number one application was a web browser. I don't think I ever bothered installing anything other than code editors, language runtimes/compilers and steam. Gnome works just fine.

The only annoyance was the breakage that Wayland introduced in 2016. Suddenly you couldn't screen capture the whole screen anymore. It's kinda the same issue as switching from python 2 to 3 but the difference here is that it is a major upgrade that is worth the effort. The reasons why python 3 isn't backwards compatible are incredibly petty for the most part. However, firefox has received Wayland support for screensharing and some people developed a plugin for OBS. Wayland works just fine now too.