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

https://ludditus.com/2021/05/30/is-there-any-future-for-the-gtk-based-desktop-environments/

After many explorations, hesitations and tribulations; and after having thought that an Arch derivative with KDE is the way; and after having later considered that more desktop stability would be advisable, and having a fling for Ubuntu MATE 21.04, a quick experiment showed me that Ubuntu MATE cannot be trusted, and that maybe I should...

This article was written in the sense of bashing gnome but yet some points seem to be valid. It explains the history of gtk 1 to 4 and the influence of gnome in gtk. I'm not saying gnome is bad here, instead I find this an interesting to read and I'm sharing it.

48 comments

YaBoyMax

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That KDE Plasma 5 is finally usable and stable, after having decided to stop pushing the ridiculous plasmoids on the user [...] is like having an old whore finally becoming a respectable woman.

Yeah, I stopped reading here.

Caboose12000

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what the actual fuck

crusty

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Wow that's pretty gross

Audacity9961

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Why on Earth are these nonsense blog rants constantly upvoted here?

It is essentially an unlettered rant that conflates the author's UI and toolkit preferences with an objective view.

It doesn't even provide a useful comparison to the evolution of QT to provide for a meaningful reference of its implied assertion that the evolution of GTK is too rapid for devs.

TheGrandNagus

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This article can pretty much be summed up as I don't like GTK or Gnome so I'm going to just present them being shit as a factual statement. I use Arch and KDE btw.

Gnome 3 released close to 13 years ago and was announced 16 years ago. At some point, people need to stop crying about the UX changes and get the fuck over it.

If you don't like it, use something else and stop being so entitled.

MonkderZweite

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Permanently Deleted

TheGrandNagus

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See the above. Stop being entitled. It's their project and most of the work is done by volunteers, for free.

If you find their product so detestable, don't use it.

You don't have a god-given right to have free volunteers make software in the exact way you want them to.

They are volunteers working on their own project, not slaves working on yours.

Honestly nowhere outside of Linux do I see so many people get so much for free and yet be so spiteful and entitled in return.

arthur

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Apple, Microsoft and Google, on the other hand, decides what is best for them, shove it down the users' throats and get users' money (and personal data) in return...

I think some criticism still valid though (but not the entitlement).

LeFantome

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Most of the GTK environments seem to be doing fine. Most of them seem headed to Wayland as well with the maturity of GTK in Wayland making that easier. Cinnamon will be ready for Wayland in a few months with both XFCE and MATE likely to have something out next year.

Incredibly, GIMP itself may finally get off GTK+ 2. They claim that GIMP 3 will launch in February. We will see how long it takes to get to GTK4. I think the transition will be easier. The jump from 2 to 3 was a big one.

COSMIC of course is going its own way with the Iced toolkit.

On the app side, GTK seems to still be a very popular option.

In terms of conclusions, I do not see mainstream resistance to new GTK versions. Some people balked at GNOME 3 but GNOME today seems more popular than ever. MATE faithfully kept the old GNOME experience but has migrated to newer GTK. It was not a rebellion against the toolkit.

bitwolf

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❤️ GTK and Gnome.

I swear the same people that complain about Gnome3+ also complain about Wayland.

Both projects put a lot of thought into their controversial decisions, they're attempting to learn from their mistakes.

There comes a point where you need to adapt to change. And both these projects have proven their changes are beneficial.

jeremias

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If I develop anything with a GUI I use GTK4. It has a bit of a learning curve to it but honestly I've come to like it.

I am currently creating a program for simulating networks and the drawing area is great for drawing the actual simulation because it basically allows you to have a cairo area as a widget so your possibilities there are basically unlimited and cairo is just a great drawing API.

Also gtk is basically the only modern GUI toolkit that can be used with C, which is great because it is pretty much the only language I know well enough to program a big application with. (But GObject still feels like black magic to me)

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted

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Not sure about the similarities here, but I actually love GTK when it comes to app design. It's one of the things I miss about Linux in Windows. (Yes, I'm a Windows user—not by choice, though.) About the only thing I hate about it is that for some reason a lot of GTK app designers think a simpler design should mean less functionality. Gimme my damn right-click context menus dammit! >_<

optimal

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There are right click menus in Fragments, I don't see why other apps don't have them.

linuxPIPEpower

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the person who wrote this post is so full of hate and contempt. I find myself quite disinterested in reading.

pipows

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I recently started exploring wayland and arch, installing a compositor (Hyprland) and module by module as a go. It's unnecessarily hard but I'm learning a lot from it.

The thing that surprised me the most is the amount of components and projects that are GTK based. I always thought that GTK was a Gnome thing, but it's very much alive outside it as well.

cypherpunks

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chat screenshot of 3 messages: "I ain't reading all that.", "I'm happy for u tho.", and "Or sorry that happened."

(seriously, tldr. also, wat, GTK is better than ever and has a bright future.)

optimal

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GNOME isn't based around GTK, it uses a fork of Clutter that now lives inside of Mutter.

erwan

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The article is very long and going in all directions, can I get a tldr of the point the author is trying to make?

TheGrandNagus

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GTK and Gnome makes me upset, something something KDE used to be a whore but is now an honest woman (????), I use KDE and Arch, btw

flying_sheep

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No, as you observed, it goes in all directions and doesn't have a real point that can be summarized. This is not a recommendation to read it.

mvirts

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If you love gtk2 so much why don't you marry it?

:P I love developing with Qt but Ill take gnome over KDE most days.

loutr

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I've been using GNOME for like a decade, and recently switched to hyprland, but KDE 6 looks really promising, looking forward to trying it out.

skullgiver

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[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

ProgrammingSocks

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Clickbait title, no thanks. GTK is alive and doing very well, considering all the major distributions use GNOME or a fork of it.

KDE has major Windows syndrome. No amount of polishing that turd will make me ignore the fundamental user unfriendliness that is nested text drop-downs.

meteokr

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No amount of polishing that turd will make me ignore the fundamental user unfriendliness that is nested text drop-downs.

Can you give me an example of this? From my perspective, using something like Kate, the extremely user friendly experience of discovery is vastly better than something like vi. In Kate, I appreciate the discoverability of having a list of options. I recently learned it can interact with LSP's because of the menus. I don't use it for that all that much, but it was cool to even know it could do that. Maybe vi is bad comparison, but off the top of my head GTK apps just have the hamburger menu, that then opens up the list of text menu options. Seems like its just hiding the option menus by nesting them in an additional layer of a button.

For the record, I haven't used a windows computer as anything more than an appliance in over a decade, so maybe the influence is lost on me.

Audacity9961

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Who on Earth is upvoting this garbage?

It's just an unlettered rant which assumes that all preferences must be the same as the author, and regurgitates tired memes.

TCB13

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"I’m not saying gnome is bad here"... but it lacks basic DE features, pushed useless crap like the activity view to people and slow animations that can't be completely turned off. To top things they try to reinvent the desktop experience every 2 or 3 years and end up making things worse (like when they decided to remove the desktop icons).

All for a "design and usability view" that doesn't amount to anything productive.

Vincent

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they try to reinvent the desktop experience every 2 or 3 years

GNOME 3 was released 12 years ago, and hasn't changed that much (unless you consider horizontal virtual workspaces are a major paradigm shift somehow).

Just use something else if you don't like it; no one's "pushing" anything on to you. Clearly, other people do like it.

TCB13

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horizontal virtual workspaces are a major paradigm shift somehow

Yes. I also consider the removal of desktop icons, the default change to going into the activity view and whatnot important shifts and attempts at reinventing things.

Vincent

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Well, then I'd highly suggest you just use Xfce and not worry about GNOME so much. Xfce hasn't changed much in years.

the_q

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Permanently Deleted

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted

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Also, what kind of monster has desktop icons or files in 2023?

Most people.

the_q

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Permanently Deleted

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted

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Do not misunderstand me. I don't generally use a lot of desktop icons. For the most part, the fewer icons are on my desktop the better, but I do have a few.

But back when Ubuntu briefly got rid of them, it sucked because occasionally I do want some icons on my desktop.

In short: if you don't wanna use any, you don't have to; just gimme the damn option.

Also, I never said I dislike Gnome.

patatahooligan

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just gimme the damn option.

That's what they did initially. Unfortunately, keeping around an antiquated optional feature that no developer wants to work on isn't free. It ends up being a hurdle for improving other stuff and at the same time it doesn't work as well as the user would expect. There is more context here if you're interested.

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted

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Antiquated? Hardly. Lots of people still use desktop icons.

(Unless you're referring to Gnome users; maybe it's different with that subset. I'm more referring to computer users in general.)

Also, that is interesting! I'll read it sometime! Thanks!

patatahooligan

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Clarification: In my previous comment I meant that the implementation was antiquated, which is why it was causing many problems.

Although I do think that desktop icons in general are outdated because they're designed around a desktop metaphor that is itself outdated. Our use of computers has changed vastly over time and the original metaphors are irrelevant to today's newcomers. Yet most desktop environments are still replicating the same 30 year old ideas. It's because we're used to them (which I understand is a valid reason), not because they are necessarily the most pleasant or the most efficient.

the_q

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Permanently Deleted

TCB13

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You left off the part about this being just your opinion and a lot of people like gnome.

Do you know why there's KDE, XFCE and others? Because there's also a lot of people who dislike GNOME.

I don't dislike GNOME, I just know for a fact that most of what they do is trying to "reinvent the wheel" every three years.

Moxvallix

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Umm well akshually 🤓👆: KDE doesn’t exist because people don’t like GNOME lol. GNOME was made because KDE uses QT, which used to be proprietary.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History

SpaceCadet

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Yeah I remember those early days. KDE had a 1.0 version out in the late 90s, which was perfectly usable as a standalone desktop environment, while at the same time Gnome was little more than a panel with a foot. Early Gnome was an unholy mess and remained so until the late 2.x versions in the mid 2000s. Like how many window managers and file managers did they go through? I believe they even had Enlightenment as the default window manager for a while, and then there was that weird Ximian desktop phase.

TCB13

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Hold your horses, when I said "exist because" I was implying any particular time frame, I was just saying that if GNOME was really that superior everything else would've already died out without users / developers.

Moxvallix

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Do you know why there’s KDE, XFCE and others? Because there’s also a lot of people who dislike GNOME.

If we are getting pedantic here, the above quote is clearly implying that alternatives exist and are actively developed because people dislike GNOME. Your statement does not take in to account the possibility that people just like the other alternatives, and may still like GNOME as well, or feel indifference towards it.

No one is claiming that GNOME has the superior desktop experience. Rather, GNOME has a more opinionated experience, that suits some people, and not others. For some people, it will be superior. For others, they will prefer KDE, XFCE etc.

TheGrandNagus

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No, they don't exist because of Gnome lol.

Source on it reinventing the wheel every 2-3 years?

Gnome 3 was well over a decade ago. It's worked the same way ever since.

TheGrandNagus

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Gnome is extremely productive, the workflow is amazing, much better than the Win95 workflow that everyone else uses, IMO.

Don't really see how it's changing every 2-3 years. Gnome 3 was well over a decade ago and not much has changed since. I don't see why you felt the need to lie about that?

TCB13

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Yes because constant flashy animations that get between you and the task is the definition of "extremely productive". The same goes for themes made with CSS and other web technologies and their absolute top notch performance. "Extremely productivity" is clicking a button and getting the window/panel/icon or whatever in front of you before your brain can even register the event, not a 2 second fade in followed by another equally excruciating fade-out animation.

TheGrandNagus

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What are these extremely flashy animations you speak of? I think you're just making stuff up. I've never seen any of these long animations. I click on an app icon and it opens immediately. I click close and it closes immediately.

Gnome is extremely productive. It's a big part of why most Linux workstations use it. It's stable, keyboard-focused, gets out of my way, and has the best workspaces/virtual desktop implementation I've come across. I use it for my work. Getting my work done the Windows way is so cumbersome in comparison.

You gonna provide a source on your "completely reinventing the wheel every 2-3 years" claim, or will your next comment contain another new lie?

TCB13

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Use XFCE for a day and then come back here and talk about performance. Not that I like XFCE's crude approach to thing but it is indeed fast and BS free.

TheGrandNagus

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Everything opens up immediately. My PCs perform well. I dunno where you got the weird animations lie from.

I've used XFCE plenty. XFCE would hinder my productivity massively, so nah I'm going to pass on that.

Still nothing on the "gnome massively reinvents the wheel every 2-3 years" thing? Not surprised, considering it was BS.

TCB13

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Still nothing on the “gnome massively reinvents the wheel every 2-3 years” thing? Not surprised, considering it was BS.

Removing desktop icons, forcing the activities view as default at some point etc. do you need more examples?

TheGrandNagus

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So your proof of Gnome "reinventing the wheel every 2-3 years" is them removing desktop icons (good riddance btw), idk, 7 years ago or something? And activities view (amazing for productivity and I wish others would catch up to Gnome here) well over a decade ago?

Yes. I will need examples. Because those aren't examples of what you said - show me how using Gnome is night and day different to 2-3 years ago, and show me how using it then was night and day different to 4-6 years ago.

DangerousInternet

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Conclusion was instersting as hell. I thought I would die laughing. Okey I really do not understand why people want to use old shit. Like old Debian, old XFCE, old GTK, old X, old EVERYTHING! And it does not even matter, actually you may and can use anything, stop updating, stop complaining, etc.

EqMinMax

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I guess it's because some people like consistency and not rapid changes. X may be because of NoVideo users.