[Raxelgrande]

I have been using GNOME as my primary desktop environment since version 38. To be honest, it got bad when Libadwaita/GTK4 released.

I did a forum post on the EndeavourOS Linux forum talking about this, back in late 2023 and i reposted it on GNOME's forums, without any success. From what i know they didn't work on the feedback i gave. https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/constructive-gnome-a-bit-of-...

GNOME on GTK3 was a lot more stable and quite faster, specially for the desktop effects and the design of the overview was a lot easier on mouse users (now you have to scroll all around the screen to just do things).

The focus of this is GTK but i want to quickly mention that GNOME is hostile to developers making extensions.

Recently they updated something in the Javascript they use for developing extensions, breaking all of them, and providing a porting guide very close to the deadline of the next GNOME release, barely giving developers working on their free time, time to port things, or they would get a storm of users complaining to port the program (don't believe me? browse GNOME's extension store for 5 minutes).

The first and most damaging thing i faced as a user was a very nasty bug in GTK4 that made scrolling impossible (the bug is still alive today when using touchpads) https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2971 .

The most crazy thing is that this critical bug for UX was detected in mid 2020, yet 4 years later it's still present on GTK. GNOME decided to break people's computers by shipping this critical bug. To me this is enough reason to not use it as a UI library. Imagine not having working scrolling... Oh wait, it's still going!

But the bugs don't stop there! GTK4 has had trouble with drag and drop support, since Nautilus' (the file manager) port to GTK4, it completely broke DnD support of File Roller (the archive manager). Now that File Roller got updated to GTK4 the problem surely got fixed, right? NO! In fact, now File Roller broke DnD for every program!

You really have to be bad to ship very broken features to an increasingly bigger user base. Even KDE's recent port to QT6 had less bugs!

Another thing that annoys me is the lack of customization. Back in GTK3 days all you needed was a GTK theme, even GNOME's Libhandy could get themed without problems. It got to a point where developers did a nothingburger note on customization https://stopthemingmy.app/ . That didn't stop anyone.

Now you need to know what themes support GTK4 and what theming hack to run on it, and don't get me started on theming Flatpak...

GTK4 never got proper support for theming, making the unreliable hacking methods the only way to theme it, without modifying the program's source. Now it ships in production with Ubuntu 24.04 (they did the right call to avoid GTK4 in 22.04 by rolling back some programs). The closest thing to an "official" theming is the Gradience program https://gradienceteam.github.io/

It's specially bad and annoying, with barely any good themes that support Libadwaita, it got to the point i developed a small program to simplify theming of Linux, called Iris https://github.com/Raxelgrande/Iris .

The other and probably most important roadblock for GTK is that it still lacks support for mobile devices, making the big strength of adaptable design it has go to waste. Nobody is going to buy a Linux phone.

Overall, GTK and GNOME are very lackluster and im pretty sure that i will avoid that toolkit like the plague. All that Libadwaita does is to lock people into GNOME's design, even if you don't like it. Good luck running programs as good as Bottles and having it look integrated in your desktop. All because they just can't be bothered to at least add a theming API so everyone stops using hacky, problem ridden approaches.

[crashdancer]

The reason you aren't getting any feedback from GNOME developers is because this is a huge long rant without any real new information in it. The developers are already aware of what bugs are present and what features are missing. If it was easy to fix all the bugs and replace the extension system, they would have done it already. If you don't like GNOME's design then just don't use it, it's not possible to change the entire design of the whole system every time one person has a problem with it.

There won't be any official theming where they support changing application themes to whatever you want. That is and will always be a nasty hack -- the entire idea is flawed and conflicts with the idea of GNOME, which is to have a complete platform with a consistent look and behavior. It's impossible to have that and also have full theming capability at the same time, those two ideas are the opposite. IMO you should give up on that or you will be more disappointed in the future. At one time I too used to think it was possible but I gave it up when I realized it just isn't technically feasible.

[Raxelgrande]

Thank you, i will completely ditch GNOME and warn everyone who uses or is interested in Linux about it. Feedback to developers is useful, even if it's on a ranty way, with good reason, those bugs are nasty. They should use the accessibility funds to fix them as some can be considered accessibility problems (the scrolling one).

It's also easy for the developers and contributors to answer well, or at least give some kind of answer (what happened in my GNOME forums post, im just a bit sad it didn't get better). Every time i have a question regarding the upcoming COSMIC or something Pop!_OS related, someone at System76 answers and it feels very welcoming.

Regarding theming, every big OS has AT LEAST accent color selection, all but GNOME.

Edit: I did provide information, you can find sources for nearly everything i talked about. My post on EndeavourOS' forums has more information.

[crashdancer]

>warn everyone who uses or is interested in Linux about it

See, I think now you are being too overly dramatic. It's not that bad, I haven't encountered the scrolling bug in a long time. And let's not pretend that Cosmic or KDE or XFCE (or anything else) has no bugs or missing features.

>Feedback to developers is useful, even if it's on a ranty way,

No it really isn't. You can rant to your friends but please don't rant at developers, it's never wanted. Would you like it if someone came into your workplace and ranted at you while you're trying to work?

>It's also easy for the developers and contributors to answer well, or at least give some kind of answer

Not if your first interaction with them is to post a several page long essay full of rants and demands. For any open source project (not just GNOME) I recommend to be nice and talk about one issue at a time. Start with simple and short bug reports or questions. At the end always ask "is there anything I can do to help?" If there is already a bug report then be patient and don't nag them asking when it's going to be done. Do everything you can to make it easy and enjoyable for them to respond to your question. Do not blame anyone for being slow. Doing all these things greatly increases the chances of getting a response. If there is still no response, see this page for what to do: https://boyter.org/posts/the-three-f-s-of-open-source/

>Regarding theming, every big OS has AT LEAST accent color selection

Currently that's being worked on.

>I did provide information, you can find sources for nearly everything i talked about. My post on EndeavourOS' forums has more information.

I looked, it's all old information for the developers. They know all those things already. These bugs have already been discussed many times, they know users are unhappy with them.

[fl0ki]

I'm not GP but:

> If you don't like GNOME's design then just don't use it,

I don't, but for many years GNOME has been in a position where it can't use this excuse any more.

GNOME is most people's first experience of a Linux desktop. These days, more people than ever are giving Linux a try, for various reasons not relevant to this discussion. Most of those people will use GNOME first because it's the default for many distros, and often recommended for its simplicity even when people do have a choice.

Now GNOME could take the feedback from users that give it, and start to earn the position it takes in the ecosystem. Instead GNOME has been infamous for many years of actively dismissing user issues. If you have an issue with GNOME and you search for it online, not only are you likely to find it's a known and often long-standing issue, you're likely to find it being either closed or ignored so you know there's no point even trying to file it again.

An experienced Linux desktop user might just shrug and move on to something else. A first-time Linux desktop user can be forgiven for thinking that if this is the experience they have with the most famously user-friendly DE, then the Linux desktop as a whole just isn't for them.

GNOME's attitude towards user issue reports is hurting the Linux desktop as a whole, especially early in the adoption pipeline where the leverage of damage is greatest.

> The developers are already aware of what bugs are present and what features are missing.

Of course the developers are aware what bugs are present, users have been filing them for years, they just don't get resolved. In some cases features already existed and were actively removed with no adequate workaround; and no, extensions as they currently exist are NOT an adequate workaround. I'm not saying it's easy to fix, I'm saying when the state of extensions is so infamously poor and even GNOME developers can often admit that, GNOME developers cannot then turn around and use extensions as an excuse to actively remove working features or dismiss requests for features now standard to every modern DE.

Most people commenting are software developers too, we understand the pain of having to maintain a large project that has years of tech debt. Developers have every reason to be eager to purge old code and reluctant to add new code. But when user experience is on the line, especially in the one DE that most often forms a new user's first Linux experience, you have to actually listen to user feedback and make some tough calls that favor users. At the very least you can't blame the users for reporting the experience the users had, especially when GNOME has already made sure that filing issues constructively is a waste of time so venting on HN is all that's left.

In this HN thread you've told people to stop complaining or use something else or volunteer their own time to help GNOME fix its own mess. How many of those things would you say to a brand new Linux user who tried GNOME in earnest and filed a well-meaning bug trying to participate in the community constructively without being a developer? Never mind, from this thread and many GNOME issues and forum threads online, I already know exactly how the GNOME project and its advocates treat such reports and such users.

[crashdancer]

>GNOME is most people's first experience of a Linux desktop.

Perhaps that's proof that it isn't as bad as the vocal minority says it is? And if it was really that bad, wouldn't that be the distros' fault for continuing to ship something they know is bad? I don't think you can spin this in any way that makes it GNOME's fault, they didn't force any distros to make it the default.

>If you have an issue with GNOME and you search for it online, not only are you likely to find it's a known and often long-standing issue, you're likely to find it being either closed or ignored so you know there's no point even trying to file it again.

At that point the correct course of action is to fix it yourself or fork it. This is the same as any other open source project. I've had plenty of other open projects close or ignore my issues too, welcome to the club. I don't understand how you can be a developer yourself and still hold GNOME to this unrealistically high standard.

>GNOME developers cannot then turn around and use extensions as an excuse to actively remove working features or dismiss requests for features now standard to every modern DE.

Yes they can? It's their project, they can remove features or dismiss requests for any reason they feel like. You can also do the same in your projects.

>But when user experience is on the line, you have to actually listen to user feedback and make some tough calls that favor users.

No you don't? How many posts have we seen on HN about startups cancelling projects or shutting down because of management or money problems? Nobody likes to make those decisions, it makes the users very angry, but companies have to make them all the time because they have no choice. I know people like to fantasize about open source being different but it really isn't different. If the company employing the maintainers can't figure out how to profit from a feature then it most likely will get ignored or removed after a while. The Linux desktop is also notorious for being a pit of money that nobody can figure out how to profit from hence why a lot of user feedback is just noise. Look at Ubuntu Unity, that was beloved by its users and still it got abandoned because it wasn't profitable. I always found it weird that GNOME has this reputation for making radical changes when I find them to be quite conservative in some areas and reluctant to make changes that would result in the project totally dying off like that.

>At the very least you can't blame the users for reporting the experience the users had, especially when GNOME has already made sure that filing issues constructively is a waste of time so venting on HN is all that's left.

No, this is wrong. I'll say it again, you have the options to fix it yourself or fork the project. Venting is not the only option left and in fact venting is a completely useless option. I've seen so much venting about this on internet forums over the years, it's all the same comments about the same issues and none of it has changed anything in meaningful ways. The bugs that actually do get fixed were because somebody put in the work with the other maintainers and got it done, at no point were they ever helped by somebody ranting at them about how GNOME is bad.

>How many of those things would you say to a brand new Linux user who tried GNOME in earnest and filed a well-meaning bug trying to participate in the community constructively without being a developer?

I wouldn't, I only say these things on HN because the audience here is hackers. All the time I tell new Linux users to use Cinnamon or KDE because those are a bit more familiar to Windows users.

It's actually extremely disappointing to see developers on this forum repeating the same conspiratorial comments and unrealistic demands that you see elsewhere. Just so you know, at one time I made many of the same comments as you. I hated GNOME and refused to use it. Complainers have been saying the same things for decades now every time a new version of GNOME comes out. I was one of them. But still GNOME has lots of users that actually like it and swear by it. So what's going on here? Maybe it could be that the developers who hear feedback from a large sample of representative users on a daily basis might have a different perspective than everyone else? Maybe consider that your view is biased by only reading bugs that you noticed aren't fixed over long periods and are therefore difficult or unrewarding to fix? I know my view certainly was biased when I said those things.