[hellodanylo]

I would rephrase this concern as "dconf is not a stable API" rather than "you are not supposed to do this". It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want, but using unstable API comes with costs that should be understood.

[lmm]

> It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want

I don't think the Gnome devs share that view.

[bzzzt]

I suppose Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI. Building @hellodanylo 's dream workflow isn't the mission and doesn't scale anyway.

If you want a custom desktop workflow exactly to your specification build it yourself or pay someone to build it. Expecting people with different opinions to do it for you for free will certainly be a disappointment.

[thesuperbigfrog]

>> Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI.

This is largely the case:

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop...

As stated in https://lwn.net/Articles/600506/: "When a project is controlled by a single company, that company's needs will almost certainly win out over anything that the wider community may want to do."

[bzzzt]

On the other hand, when a project tries to please everybody it will undoubtedly regress into a mess of options, toggles, extra buttons, have an atrocious UX and only be usable for the 'in crowd'.

The few OSS tools I know to not have a terrible UX are tools built by a single author or a small team with a coherent vision. It's definitely a place where the bazaar model of software development doesn't seem to work as wonderful as with OS kernels or development tools.

[thesuperbigfrog]

I agree that there is a balance between customization and "cleanness" in design and implementation.

However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...

https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design...

https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo...

https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...

When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision":

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910

https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...

[bzzzt]

The Gnome 3 adversity is ancient history at this point and in my opinion very much a fabricated feud to drive up news article engagement. Publishing an article with a few open bugs or a disagreeing opinion doesn't say much about the quality of the software in general. I find the latest versions of Fedora with Gnome very usable, also in comparison with Windows/macOS. I don't have a need for very specific customisations and I think the Gnome people know it's but a tiny percentage of their users that use the very exotic features.

[JohnFen]

> If you want a custom desktop workflow exactly to your specification build it yourself or pay someone to build it.

Or use a DE that allows sufficient customization.

[Vinnl]

They do, as long as you do it without expecting them to bend over backwards to accommodate your specific snowflake setup.

[superkuh]

Ah yes... my snowflake setup where I expect to be able to paste file paths into Gtk file->open dialogs without it erroring out.

[Vinnl]

Bugs will always happen, of course, but let's not pretend that those are conscious decisions.

[superkuh]

Generally true. But this one 100% is, and it's been a concious decision since it was introduced by the removal of the gsetting org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser location-mode. This was done intentionally by Gtk dev mclassen and he has been downright hostile about not fixing it since then. Gtk/GNOME devs do not think being able to type/paste file paths in File->Open dialogs (gtkfilechooserwidget.c) should be allowed. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938

They didn't even acknowledge or leave the bug reports it caused until this month: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5872 despite it being introduced in 2014 and me reporting it 2 times every year since then. And there's about 0% chance of this bug being fixed despite them finally leaving the bug report there instead of closing it.

[Vinnl]

Hmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but AFAICS I am able to paste file paths into those dialogs? Steps to reproduce: copy a file path, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+V. So I guess I'm misunderstanding what behaviour you're referring to?

[JohnFen]

Yeah, that attitude is one of the things that leads me to avoid Gnome.

[endorphine]

Does it matter though?

[pizza234]

In the case of GNOME, absolutely.

GNOME devs are infamous for actively fighting users' desire for customization. They have a long history; here's[¹] an example from a couple of years ago (not sure how the situation described evolved); this [²] is an article that describes the wider point of view.

[¹] https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...

[²] https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...

[lmm]

Unless you're able to maintain a fork of the whole system by yourself, yes it does.