8 ms·

It’s just the way, innit? People love to (rightly) bump their chest and say Linux is great for how customisable and open it is, but then go bananas the moment o

It’s just the way, innit? People love to (rightly) bump their chest and say Linux is great for how customisable and open it is, but then go bananas the moment one software decides to do something different. “Openness, customisation and freedom of choice are great—unless you are offering a software that doesn’t behave exactly like we want it to, then it should not exist as option for anyone, ever.”

yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago
Yeah, no. Let me fix that: Openness, customisation and freedom of choice are great—unless you are offering a software that absolutely refuses to allow customization and freedom of choice, and actively attempts to impose its limitations on the rest of the ecosystem[0], in which case you will get pushback. [0] My favorite example is https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685#no1 https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685#no1
- ragnese 11mo ago
  There are multiple angles. As the stewards of GTK, they should, IMO, try to keep it flexible and customizable to whatever extent is manageable and reasonable. This post is about Mutter, which is a window manager, which should have very little to do with the app "ecosystem". They can, and should, do whatever the hell they want with Mutter, GNOME Shell, Nautilus/Files, etc. Even in the link you posted, they're talking about GNOME, not GTK.
  - marginalia_nu 11mo ago
    When I complain about Gnome driving away users with hostility, it's mainly their GTK stewardship I talk of. That, and things like primarily designing the interface for a touch screen, despite PC touch screens not really taking off. Very out of touch.
    - xethos 11mo ago
      > things like primarily designing the interface for a touch screen, despite PC touch screens not really taking off. That was actually an absolute godsend using the Pinephone, and IMO laid the groundwork for the Librem 5 (and modern Linux-on-Mobile interfaces) to take root. I do not believe PostmarketOS would be doing as well as it is if they didn't have apps that play nicely with touch. You don't use it, and you don't appreciate it, and that's fine. I'd say it most defintitely has a place though, without even touching on the chicken-and-egg bit about touchscreen / mobile Linux not taking off vs Gnome pushing for touchscreen / adaptability before it goes mainstream
      - marginalia_nu 11mo ago
        I really don't understand why we need to absolutely ruin desktop UIs in order to have mobile interfaces. For web UIs it may be argued as a necessary evil as designing multiple front-ends is expensive and reactive UIs can theoretically be made to exist and shown in small demos to be decent, but when designing desktop applications?
        xethos 11mo ago
        Having a framework that can be adaptable, like GTK, allows for padded, but IMO reasonably-sized touch targets. Designing an adaptive desktop app means the effort is only spent once, but can kickstart the virtuous cycle of "Mobile Linux is less trash than it used to be" -> More users are willing to use Mobile Linux -> More effort is spent making it less trash. Though if you insist on click-targets that are exclusively for the mouse, I've found most KDE apps less mobile-optimized. The elderly and mobile users can appreciate larger touch-targets, and you can avoid GTK, which seems like a perfect compromise
    - ragnese 11mo ago
      Point taken on GTK, and I can't really disagree since I haven't even poked at writing a GTK GUI in many years. But, you still couldn't resist complaining about the UI implementations, which sounds more like complaints about GNOME apps and GNOME Shell. Who cares if you think that GNOME Shell looks like it accommodates touch screens? Firefox, for example, uses GTK and doesn't seem to look like a touch screen UI to me as I'm typing into this text box.
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    Would you like to read what an Xfce developer said about GTK stewardship?[1][2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568184 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568042
    - ragnese 11mo ago
      I read them, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, or why it's directed at my comment. I mean that genuinely. This Xfce dev says that GTK4 is less capable than GTK3, and they feel that GTK5 will continue in that direction. They also acknowledge certain things in the first comment: > [0] Full disclosure: I'm an Xfce developer, and have been disappointed with the direction GTK has been taking for some time. I don't begrudge them their prerogative to do what they need/want to achieve their own goals with the toolkit they've built and maintain. But it really is making life more difficult for me. > > [1] Part of the argument is that Wayland doesn't natively support things like cross-process embedding, so a cross-platform toolkit shouldn't have these types of widgets (the classic problem of only being able to support the lowest common denominator). But a) you can absolutely build something like that for Wayland (something I've been working on, though it requires tens of thousands of lines of code to do), and b) with other changes, it's incredibly difficult and possibly impossible to even implement the XEMBED protocol on GTK4, for people who do only care about X11. If the GNOME guys took out stuff from GTK4 or 5 for bad reasons, then I don't like that, either. Which is basically exactly what I said. However, it sounds like some of these changes would be hard to do and maintain well, such as cross-process embedding. Perhaps the GNOME devs made a decision to focus their surely limited resources toward things they think will be long-lasting. And, perhaps, by their estimation, trying to support Wayland and X11 by adding (and maintaining) tens of thousands of lines of code would be a big burden--especially if they believe that X11 is not going to be super-relevant in the near future. I don't agree with that estimation, and I assume that it'll be a very long time before X11 isn't necessary anymore, but so be it. All that said, it still has nothing to do with Mutter, which is why I replied to the comment that I did. Because GTK, and Mutter, and GNOME Shell, and GNOME apps, and non-GNOME GTK apps, are all different things, and this post was about Mutter.

yjftsjthsd-h 11mo ago

Yeah, no. Let me fix that: Openness, customisation and freedom of choice are great—unless you are offering a software that absolutely refuses to allow customization and freedom of choice, and actively attempts to impose its limitations on the rest of the ecosystem[0], in which case you will get pushback. [0] My favorite example is https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685#no1 https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685#no1

ragnese 11mo ago
There are multiple angles. As the stewards of GTK, they should, IMO, try to keep it flexible and customizable to whatever extent is manageable and reasonable. This post is about Mutter, which is a window manager, which should have very little to do with the app "ecosystem". They can, and should, do whatever the hell they want with Mutter, GNOME Shell, Nautilus/Files, etc. Even in the link you posted, they're talking about GNOME, not GTK.
- marginalia_nu 11mo ago
  When I complain about Gnome driving away users with hostility, it's mainly their GTK stewardship I talk of. That, and things like primarily designing the interface for a touch screen, despite PC touch screens not really taking off. Very out of touch.
  - xethos 11mo ago
    > things like primarily designing the interface for a touch screen, despite PC touch screens not really taking off. That was actually an absolute godsend using the Pinephone, and IMO laid the groundwork for the Librem 5 (and modern Linux-on-Mobile interfaces) to take root. I do not believe PostmarketOS would be doing as well as it is if they didn't have apps that play nicely with touch. You don't use it, and you don't appreciate it, and that's fine. I'd say it most defintitely has a place though, without even touching on the chicken-and-egg bit about touchscreen / mobile Linux not taking off vs Gnome pushing for touchscreen / adaptability before it goes mainstream
    - marginalia_nu 11mo ago
      I really don't understand why we need to absolutely ruin desktop UIs in order to have mobile interfaces. For web UIs it may be argued as a necessary evil as designing multiple front-ends is expensive and reactive UIs can theoretically be made to exist and shown in small demos to be decent, but when designing desktop applications?
      - xethos 11mo ago
        Having a framework that can be adaptable, like GTK, allows for padded, but IMO reasonably-sized touch targets. Designing an adaptive desktop app means the effort is only spent once, but can kickstart the virtuous cycle of "Mobile Linux is less trash than it used to be" -> More users are willing to use Mobile Linux -> More effort is spent making it less trash. Though if you insist on click-targets that are exclusively for the mouse, I've found most KDE apps less mobile-optimized. The elderly and mobile users can appreciate larger touch-targets, and you can avoid GTK, which seems like a perfect compromise
  - ragnese 11mo ago
    Point taken on GTK, and I can't really disagree since I haven't even poked at writing a GTK GUI in many years. But, you still couldn't resist complaining about the UI implementations, which sounds more like complaints about GNOME apps and GNOME Shell. Who cares if you think that GNOME Shell looks like it accommodates touch screens? Firefox, for example, uses GTK and doesn't seem to look like a touch screen UI to me as I'm typing into this text box.
- pseudalopex 11mo ago
  Would you like to read what an Xfce developer said about GTK stewardship?[1][2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568184 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40568042
  - ragnese 11mo ago
    I read them, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, or why it's directed at my comment. I mean that genuinely. This Xfce dev says that GTK4 is less capable than GTK3, and they feel that GTK5 will continue in that direction. They also acknowledge certain things in the first comment: > [0] Full disclosure: I'm an Xfce developer, and have been disappointed with the direction GTK has been taking for some time. I don't begrudge them their prerogative to do what they need/want to achieve their own goals with the toolkit they've built and maintain. But it really is making life more difficult for me. > > [1] Part of the argument is that Wayland doesn't natively support things like cross-process embedding, so a cross-platform toolkit shouldn't have these types of widgets (the classic problem of only being able to support the lowest common denominator). But a) you can absolutely build something like that for Wayland (something I've been working on, though it requires tens of thousands of lines of code to do), and b) with other changes, it's incredibly difficult and possibly impossible to even implement the XEMBED protocol on GTK4, for people who do only care about X11. If the GNOME guys took out stuff from GTK4 or 5 for bad reasons, then I don't like that, either. Which is basically exactly what I said. However, it sounds like some of these changes would be hard to do and maintain well, such as cross-process embedding. Perhaps the GNOME devs made a decision to focus their surely limited resources toward things they think will be long-lasting. And, perhaps, by their estimation, trying to support Wayland and X11 by adding (and maintaining) tens of thousands of lines of code would be a big burden--especially if they believe that X11 is not going to be super-relevant in the near future. I don't agree with that estimation, and I assume that it'll be a very long time before X11 isn't necessary anymore, but so be it. All that said, it still has nothing to do with Mutter, which is why I replied to the comment that I did. Because GTK, and Mutter, and GNOME Shell, and GNOME apps, and non-GNOME GTK apps, are all different things, and this post was about Mutter.