Gnome devs : we broke the toilet extension. Your pokemons have nowhere to shit and piss.
Pokemon trainers : why the fuck is the toilet an extension. Shouldn’t it be part of the DE?
Gnome devs : we believe the toilet feature is unnecessary, so it wasn’t and will never be implemented.
Note : I’ve barely used gnome in my life so it’s based on memes I’ve seen about gnome.
The only thing you got wrong is that the toilet extension would be a third-party thing, and Gnome devs would actively insult anyone who dared be upset they broke it.
Long time Gnome user here: I like the general Gnome simplicity of use and workflow and got used to it, but I’m really tired of having to install extensions for very basic things, and of it messing all my extensions on each version upgrade, so I have to reinstall everything. I started experimenting with KDE, and looking forward to cosmic.
I tend to flip flop, I like some things in GNOME better, but the lack of customization always brings me back to KDE after a while (Plasma, whatever)
It’s close to alpha! I don’t think it’ll be in a good enough state for me (Nvidia GPU), but maybe someday.
I’ve been daily driving the pre-alpha since January, it’s definitely got a bit of jank, but it’s in really good shape. The alpha should be pretty usable, and I think by the beta it should be pretty much good to go.
When I first started on Linux with Fedora probably a little over 15 years ago, I used gnome just because it was different. At some point I played with Enlightenment, and now I use KDE. It was different when I was more interested in screwing around with my system. Now that I use it for work, I just need everything to be as reliable, persistent, and easy as possible. I haven’t used gnome in many years, but I hear these stories all the time and I just don’t want to deal with something that’ll wrench my workflow when I have other shit to do and no time to play diagnostics.
Do you know how vim has distributions like lunarvim, lazvim, nvchad, etc.? Simply installing something like lazyvim can quickly and easily convert vim from a text editor to a full blown IDE.
I think Gnome needs something like this. A curated set of plugins that are easy to install and maintain compatibility with different versions of Gnome - something that would deal with the API churn in Gnome while maintaining a stable, usable desktop environment.
I don’t know if this is feasible, because I haven’t used Gnome since 2.x, but I think it would really help make it an actual full blown DE.
The problem is the Gnome team doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass about maintaining a stable api. I’ve never bothered with extensions because even the most basic stuff only works for one or two versions. The neovim team is pretty committed to backwards compatibility and following standards for interoperability like LSP these days, so it’s much easier for third parties to maintain a large set of extended functionality at this point. If they acted like the gnome team, your status bar plugin would break every other update.
I use several, but the ones that I consider to be basic functions are caffeine, tray icons, places status indicator, removable drive menu and extended volume indicator. That last one is a nice example of my frustration, because it can’t be installed on the current gnome version anymore, and having to open settings to switch my audio output is terrible. Every distro upgrade have been the same experience, and I lose some functionality
It’s more like, there is one way to go to the toilet but it involves going into a small porcelain cup. They refuse to admit that’s not practical, or that it doesn’t work for everybody, or allow people to use anything else. You will use the little porcelain cup no matter how absurd it is and that’s it.
Wrong. If an extension for your need isn’t enough, you can very simply just use another DE. No one is entitled to random free custom development work
No one is entitled to random free custom development work.
Meaning gnome devs themselves are not entitled to the free custom development work of the third party extension devs, and therefore gnome is actively taking advantage of the third party developers(Third-party developers feel undervalued & exploited, potentially leading to burnout and abandonment of projects) while all round making it harder for them to maintain the extensions(GNOME’s decision not to provide a stable API for extensions makes it challenging for third-party developers to maintain their work across GNOME versions).
This is where KDE Community is different, they actively support, communicate, collaborate, etc. with 3rd party devs to build a strong relationship & a strong ecosystem.
In fact, Gnome devs are all around abrasive to the entire Linux ecosystem, including but not limited to the Wayland development team & the development teams of other desktop environments(GNOME’s design decisions, such as only supporting CSD & lobbying Wayland to mandate CSD & the controversy over the accent color protocol, have led to conflicts with the entire Linux ecosystem), their own user base(GNOME’s communication style is dismissive & unresponsive to community feedback), application developers(GNOME’s decisions sometimes force other projects to adapt or create workarounds, as seen with the server-side decoration controversy, further complicating development efforts), third party developers, and even amongst themselves(There are reports of conflicts even within the GNOME development team, suggesting internal tensions).
Note : I’ve barely used gnome in my life so it’s based on memes I’ve saw about gnome
and it shows
2 other responses I got confirmed that such thing happens and you say otherwise. Doesn’t Gnome breaks third party extensions that provides users basic functionality that should be in gnome in the first place but the devs don’t want to implement? Is the meme wrong?
Not that guy but phrases like “basic functionality” are just hard to pin down. What you need for your workflow and can’t live without is probably irrelevant fluff to a whole other class of folks.
I haven’t run into anything I need a third-party extension for yet, so I guess it works for some of us, although admittedly I do very few things on that machine so I could easily be missing something vital for most people.
Is the meme wrong?
Yes, it is.
basic functionality that should be in gnome in the first place
Who gets to decide what’s “basic” functionality? Each desktop’s team has their vision for what they want to implement. Something that might be basic to one person might not be in someone else’s vision or…
the devs don’t want to implement
…is being worked on but needs design. GNOME is design-oriented. It doesn’t matter how much you scream that something needs implementing if no one designs how that implementation will work and why it should be implemented in the first place. It’s not about “not wanting”, it’s about making sure that when something is implemented, that it’ll work well both now and in the future.
it’s based on memes
So you’re basing an opinion on the world’s dumbest, least accurate form of communication
I mean, dude got it pretty spot on, so can we really criticize the accuracy?
As I said, I briefly used gnome in the far past and just remember being weirded out by the design choices that felt very “Apple like” . So them pulling an “Apple” and doing the “we know better than the user” doesn’t feel out of place.
This comment implies that Microsoft design choices are better which is hilarious