Linux Mint Wants To Revive GTK3 Apps!?!
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- čas přidán 10. 05. 2024
- Linux Mint started a bit of a frenzy when they decided to switch back to older versions of some important GTK applications and not just that but also fork them to create a new path forward for none GNOME GTK desktops.
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It would be good for everyone if Cinnamon, Mate and Xfce would share some core apps.
Could even be benificial so the focus can be put on the DE entirely.
Maybe but the current approach is to fork MATE apps and then ask them to stop supporting their own and use the forks. Its not a very healthy approach IMO especially as Mint is even more resource constrained than Gnome and maybe even MATE,
@@naheemsays5140Mate as of right now have very little resources since the main guy behind it doesn't work for Canonical anymore. It's possible they would be willing to share apps with other DEs.
@@frogmcribbit8778 the main guy behind Mate doesn't work for Canonical anymore, and they currently have very little resources. It's possible they would be willing to share some apps with other DEs.
Yes. Yes, it would
Mint team seems to always make good reasonable decisions that prioritize their users experience above all.
But also in a way that is healthy for the Linux ecosystem, fantastic team.
But but but but…. “Muh choices”
A great example is LMDE
Changing default color to blue from green was kinda meh
Mint is a bunch of boomers living in the past (Note : I am 50 yo myself …)
Clem is absolutely correct; he not only imparts a lesson to Gnome but also to the entire Linux community, emphasizing the necessary steps for the growth of the Linux system.
you sound like a trained language model
@@moussaadem7933Me when people write with a good lexicon.
@@moussaadem7933 You've talked to too many AIs.
agreed, looking at linux from the outside personally, looks like linux is hugely fragmented in software/app/UX
@@atemoc Certainly! chatting with large language models may affect ones judgement of discorse, it's important to recognize the effects of overusing a certain technology, your feedback highlights the importance of maintaining a healthy relationship with new technologies !
This shouldn’t be controversial tbh, I read this article myself and found it totally reasonable
What is the flag in your background?
Nvm its the non binary flag. Sorry
@@mememan9890 what country is that?
@@mememan9890 So OP is crazy. Good to know.
@@encycl07pedia- Crazy, maybe. But not an asshole, unlike you 🤷♂
As a Linux Mint Xfce user who loves being able to use my own custom theme, I absolutely support Linux Mint in this. I think Xfce is an excellent desktop environment which many people should consider who aren't already. It's light, themeable, and super customizable in ways GNOME cannot even compare.
Xfce is a workhorse and I love it!
as a openbox rofi lemonbar custom script aaaaaaa person myself, xfce good. written from xfce.
XFCE is dated, doesn't look good unless you slam a badly hacked together rendering engine. Even stock, it uses more RAM than Plasma. No Wayland support either, so you're stuck in the bronze age of Linux.
XFCE is the Win7 of desktop environments
@@spicynoodle7419 Windows 7 was the best Windows ever released, arguably the best OS ever released...
@@spicynoodle7419
"XFCE is dated"
It's still being actively worked on, even if it's not as quickly as other DEs.
"Doesn't look good"
I've made some really nice looking Xfce customizations, including making a very convincing macOS one, without a custom rendering engine. Besides, this is pretty subjective, I honestly prefer the more retro look of stock Xfce than KDE Plasma personally.
"Uses more RAM than Plasma"
I'm pretty sure it doesn't, at least for me, it's far lighter on system resources than Plasma.
"No Wayland support"
Wayland support is being actively worked on for Xfce.
"Win7 of desktop environments"
Well, people still use Windows 7 today for a reason. It's lighter than many modern operating systems, it keeps out of your way, and it lets you get your work done. I find all these traits very valuable in a desktop personally.
There's GTK, and then there's GNOME
GTK has become a defacto Gnome project. That is why they are reverting to GTK 3.
Cinnaman..
I stand with MINT, my distro of choice. A true DESKTOP operating system... not a tablet oriented mess like GNOME that wants to dumbify everything.
I tried Cinnamon, liked it, hated GTK apps that were total mess with split windows and two hamburger menus with random buttons on top. I do not hate hamburger menus alltogether if 95% of functionality can be on toolbar. But I do not like when all actions are hidden or not present: something like image viewer that has previous, next, zoom in, zoom out, zoom to fit. But can't display exif, maybe can't even change directory and exteme simplification like this.
IMO the "dumbification" of GNOME is what makes me like it very much. I want to get work done and not waste my braincells on complex and unintuitive UIs, like Mint's or KDE's.
i support the mint devs on this move!
I agree with the Mint team, i only hope they have enough resources to fork gtk3 and eventually use something else or do whatever they want
Yeah, it's looking more and more like they'll have to fork GTK 3 when it becomes EoL.
I can't blame them for their decision. We're being railroaded to use their vision of a desktop even when we're not using it.
Mint have a good track record for doing right by the community, promoting openness, and avoiding drama.
Budgie 11 will not be using GTK.
When asked, Joshua Strobl stated, "No, absolutely no chance [of Budgie 11] being GTK or using any part of the GNOME stack."
The worst thing about the Linux development ecosystem is the fragmentation and duplication of effort. A basic framework + themes really seems like the best way forward.
Functionality really should be separate from the DE presentation to the user.
fragmentation is a good thing though. To a certain extent.
XApps are a very important effort towards standardization of Linux desktops! Good luck to the Mint team, the second best GTK desktop :)
Y'know, I think you are right. Gnome should be able to whatever they please, to hell with whatever everyone else is doing. That's fine.
But they should drop out of all standards bodies they are part of. If they have no interest in standards, they should get out of the way of everyone else trying to make an ecosystem.
This isn't what I and many other people are saying - ignore Gnome in the Wayland/freedesktop/whatever communities. They shouldn't even be there to ignore.
The problem is, Gnome does have an interest in standards. They just think their way should be the standard and the ecosystem should revolve around their standards and design choices.
They should be considered in the standards if they have value to add. Though, if they want to disrespect the standards and do their own thing that does bring up the question of why they themselves want to be part of a standard they ignore.
there is nothing wrong with freedesktop and honestly its only brought niceties that *improve* cross desktop compatibility like the portal api's
@@tauiin Gnome just refuses to implement standards they don't like, so they may as well stop trying to change the standards that other DEs follow.
GNOME is the biggest DE. Anyone complaining about GNOME without recognizing the popularity of GNOME and the power GNOME has because of it, is just yelling at clouds.
Nice initiative, I hope they can pool the developer time among all non-GNOME GTK desktops, and make something better for all users.
They can’t
The problem is that GTK's development is controlled by Matthias, who only cares about libadwaita's use cases. Forking it will also be more effort to maintain than starting from scratch.
@@mmstick heres hoping that cosmic causes a big shift in the desktop environment landscape. Honestly it feels like forking gtk is just wasted effort when together a new standard could be made under the premise that it will stay desktop neutral.
I don't think 10:30 is hyperbole, default gnome doesn't have a minimise button. You have to enable it in gnome-tweaks.
I still dont understand why.
@@DanTDMJacebecause there is no need of minimise in gnome workflow ... Does ur phone has minimise?
@@shriteendhamasker9499 But GNOME isn't mainly for phones. It's mainly for desktops. Heck, even KDE Plasma is better for convergence than GNOME with their (relatively) new tablet mode.
@shriteendhamasker9499 Yes
@@shriteendhamasker9499 I don't use my desktop computer the same way I use my phone. People tried to force the same UI onto both. I remember Windows 8 and Unity (Ubuntu Touch), which tried this and didn't do very well.
Linux Mint is actually doing god's work with XApps. Nobody besides GNOME is trying to have each end every desktop ship with their own set of software that does the exact same things. We're not trying to build any more walled gardens here
GNOME devs try to get their heads out of their own arses challenge: **literally won't happen, ever.**
Well, the entire premise of libadwaita is to split GNOME desktop-adjacent widgets from GTK into its own "extension", because GTK is meant to be a generic toolkit rather than a GNOME-only toolkit. Frankly, they've been doing everyone a favor by making GTK easier to maintain, which makes it easier for everyone to develop with GTK :p
They are racist too. Insulting old white men for no reason at all.
@marblexeno it's like the bare minimum a desktop environment can have for itself
@@BrimstoneSociety-js6po source for this? not because I doubt it, but because it would be funny if real
@@chlorobyte_projects I made a video about It on my Channel, but you can see the PR on brodie last video about the icon of gnome circle that got change, I made the video After seeing brodie last video
I commend Mint for their steadfast support for user freedom. Gnome has erected too many barriers to customization and it's time for people to say enough is enough.
I would say going back a step is not a bad thing. Back in the day Nautilus started removing important features so it got forked from an older version into what is now known as Nemo.
Nemo after that got improved with more features added and is a significantly better file explorer than Nautilus right now.
If they will do something similar with other Gnome apps then I am 100% with them.
it is like waking up 15 years ago that I keep saying the same thing.
And not only that, but if we want Linux to be taken seriously as a desktop OS, we need a poster child that people can use to "base" (or be compatible with) for their own distros, DEs etc.
Obviously this is not Gnome as the late years have shown.
5:10 I still stand with Greybird theme as XFCE user
I personally use and love GNOME, but Linux Mint team is totally reasonable here
They need to just fork GTK completly in my opinion. Because Gnome's changes to GTK might work for Gnome. But it doesn't always work very well on downstream GTK Desktops. XFCE and Cinnamon, LXDE, etc. were all built around GTK 2 design. GTK3+ and beyond has made a mess of things, along with Client-side decorations. Just fork GTK 2, update it to modern standards, and expand it just like Mint did with the original Xapps all those years ago. It's obvious Gnome doesn't care about anything but Gnome. So desktops that aren't gnome shouldn't have to depend on Gnome technologies. Fork GTK. I don't usually promote forking. But this is one of the few cases where i think forking is the right answer.
Same thing with XFree86 being forked as XOrg Server and OpenOfficeOrg forked as LibreOffice. Those needed to happen because of licensing issues in the case of XFree86, Oracle acquiring Sun in the case of OpenOffice, and GNOME sticking their fingers in their ears with GNOME 3 and onward.
This is why Mint continues to be the horse I bet on and what distro I give my money to. Fantastic work and active!
Just fork GTK3 and rename it to CDTK (Common Desktop Toolkit) that will be used to develop a common set of high quality apps that can work across DEs like Cinnamon, MATE, Budgie etc. to me too many duplication of efforts on development of certain common Apps (like basic Text Editor, Calculator, Image Viewer and so on) is kinda waste of time and talents.. I fully approve this! I would rather have high quality common apps with more talents fine tuning them and they will morph into aesthetics of the DE based on need.. like some DE (like Cutefish) can offer Global Menu (that's my preference as I am very much used to this from Mac) but it will not break the app.. other DE can offer Windows XP or 7 like aesthetics (like Cinnamon) and the app will adapt to it flawlessly... let's make this happen!!
The one thing in common with all of these is Gnome. Just let Gnome be its own little island, it really seems like they don't want to work with others. They want things they way they want them and that is fine. They just don't play well with others, and everyone else should just let them be. Seems like a whole bunch of unnecessary headaches for people trying to have some set of standards.
For gnome it's "my way, or highway"
@@rufiorogue "And the highway and got 💩!"
I welcome any move reducing dependencies on what the Gnome projects does from other projects.
love the new episode of bready reading articles so that i don't have to
Linux Mint is my longest used distro and Cinnamon is the DE that keeps me from switching back to windows. I support them, and I hope they will do well in their XApp project.
I'll accept anything at this point, except GTK4 or Electron.
I use Cinnamon on Arch and I am very happy with it. My only complaint is that Nemo (File Manager) is very slow (5x slower than Thunar, 2x slower than Nautilus).
Clem is doing a fantastic job. Cinnamon doesn't just help Mint. It helps everyone who just want to have a modern-traditional desktop.
Extreme solution: Port everything in QT where theming is still supported.
Joke aside (or maybe not), I get their point and I even support the idea of DE-agnostic applications and utilities (I am even using some), but eventually GTK3 will stop being supported, so what will they do for the XApps and the Cinnamon DE once GTK3 will die off for good? Unless there's a fork of it to continue to maintain this set of librairies on their own.
Qt is a pain with standalone window managers tho
They can pull in effort with XFCE and other DEs
Or maybe something else like the iced toolkit COSMIC is using, Qt has a lot of cruft and jank due to it's age
@@olnnnCOSMIC could be the replacement to modern GNOME we've been waiting for.
@@formbi Why? Qt requires a platform module for theming and desktop settings which also exists for Linux desktops that are neither KDE, LXQT, GTK or GNOME.
Clem is a genius. Or maybe I should say he has the ability to see nonsense and the energy and skills to bypass the nonsense. I've been using Mint since 2009 when Ubuntu went astray. Best decision of my life. So yeah, I believe strongly in Clem. If Clem decides to avoid using GTKs and Wayland I'm sure there are good reasons and I'll be happy.
I wish he chose to keep KDE around in Mint and move towards it rather than stick with GTK desktops only. At least Qt isn't controlled by one desktop (even if one is the main user of it).
And before somebody tries to spread misinformation, Qt has been FOSS now for almost 20 years.
@@cameronbosch1213 Yeah, KDE is great and also has a future.
Totally agree with Clem, Gnome has lost their minds.
I had figured that out about ten years ago. I tried the Ubuntu Gnome edition and found it unusable for my work flow. I finally landed on Mint after trying a few Ubuntu variants.
They should fork GTK+3 and add back deprecated features from GTK+2, that would be amazing
Mint team be like: what if Gnome was good?
@marblexeno I think he means "good" not as in "bad", but as in "not egotistical".
And that is not about doing their own thing, it is about trying to be on the standard boards while not willing to follow any themselves.
It's about time that projects started to pick the road when Gnome went "my way or the highway".
every desktop enviroment started this way
I'm a mint user and I have been watching this with interest. I want to try building some desktop apps, but I'm concerned about the constant march of windowing toolkit libraries forcing migrations from time to time. If we can end up with libraries with extremely long term support it would be amazing to use them even if they have some limitations.
18:52 Okay, what about mint gum? That aside I really like what the Mint team is doing because... they're actually doing something about a problem they find. And it benefits everyone!
I think its a great idea, we really need to separate gtk apps from gnome apps, this problem didn't exist until the gnome devs decided to introduce gnome 3, now gnome just does its own thing regardless of how it effects other gtk desktop environments and apps, now when you run any gtk desktop that isn't gnome you have to avoid gnome apps, otherwise you end up with out of place looking apps with massive titlebars that look like they've been designed for touch interfaces.
I want to know how to avoid Gnome apps. How can you tell them apart when you are looking to down load one.
@@felixcostyAnything using LibAdwaita.
@@felixcosty I got you. From my experience if an app looks flat and ugly theres a high chance its a libadwaita gnome app
"Applications will be native and *look native* "
GTK devs: _sweating_
Qt devs: _relax_
Qt apps don't look native either in standalone WMs
Libadwaita looks alien in everything except for GNOME. Thing is Qt just looks alien everywhere.
@@Sjoerd1993 sometimes it can pick up a GTK theme, sometimes not
@@formbi yeah I was mostly joking tbh. I’m actually maintainer of one of the GNOME Circle apps (Graphs), so I do actually like libadwaita. But if I were to target multiple DE’s, I’d develop in Qt.
Just to note, we do support KDE and other desktop environments. Any actual bugs in KDE will be taken as seriously as on GNOME. But design-wise, we develop it to integrate well in GNOME specifically.
@@Sjoerd1993 I meant Qt can sometimes pick up GTK themes btw
GTK3 allows vector screenshots. Also GTK4 apps have a few other small annoying cuts. So I'm pro using GTK3 stuff as well as libhandy instead of libadwaita.
libHandy = apps that works well on smartphones 📱.
libAdwaita = apps that follow gnome design stuff.
There're not opposite things
@@diogob003 Yeah. libadwaita is the GTK4 successor to libhandy which is also pretty pushed instead of libhandy in GNOME Builder; there is a bit of a hurdle when someone wants to continue using libhandy.
Imagine ignoring people so much they go complete Thanos and say, "Fine, I'll do it myself."
I think this is a great idea that probably should have happened a long time ago? Who's kidding, I can't judge them. I hadn't even thought of it until now beyond a "Why are all these desktop painfully trying to use Gnome apps?" and regardless of when they thought of it, they may only now have the time to do it.
Anyway, like I said this is a great idea. Not every DE should have to reinvent the terminal emulator, file manage, basic text editor, etc. Unless they just want to of course. Make the applications, make Flatpaks for them, everybody wins.
Oh, and you can't blame Gnome of the prevalence of hamburger menus. KDE has been slowly moving that way for years now. If there's one thing I don't like about their development direction, it's that. Hamburger menus are awful.
At least with many of the KDE apps, you can choose not to use hamburger menus (with Ark, Gwenview, Dolphin, and Konsole and others). Not so with almost all of the GTK / LibAdwaita Apps.
Funny thing about hamburger menus is the one environment where it made sense (mobile) has abandoned it in favor of stuff like swipe navigation and tab controls
@@cameronbosch1213 because libadwaita is an abstraction, you'd need to patch it to achieve similar results
@@cameronbosch1213 I was hoping that might be the case. I found the option with some digging through Dolphin's hamburger menu but haven't checked other apps.
@@excidium_ idk, tab control is better than hamburger menu.
8:07 I agree, and they have a point, because libAdwaita advertises itself as being "Building blocks for modern GNOME applications" (as seen from their docs page). Also, Adwaita itself is defined as a visual theme implementing GNOME's HIG.
I'm Window manager user, I'm prefer the way GTK apps look so I like the XApps
Right on Clem! Give the Gnomies a lesson in humility.
I don't see that happen. There's a few people in the community whose heads are so far up their own backside that they're just incapable of acknowledging that anyone else might have a worthwhile competing idea how to do anything. Dan Bernstein, Richard Stallman, Theo de Raadt, Lennart Pottering, and the whole damned Gnome core development team. Anything contrary to their views is never going to be relevant.
What Clem is trying to do with this is encourage people to cooperate rather than just doing their own thing silently. The Mint devs are as guilty of this as anyone. But people don't have to be stuck in familiar patterns, so this could be a good thing.
@@knghtbrd wait, what did Theo de Raadt do that's so controversial as to deserve being put in the same basket as Gnome devs?
@@knghtbrd where is Stallman wrong?
@@stefanalecu9532 Theo is very well known for his arrogant, a-hole type of personality (the Wikipedia page gives a bit of overview). Heck, there's even doas "insults" which is compiled from him.
If Linux has as little as 4% of the market share in general, the non-plasma-gnome users must take like 20% of those. So, they don't have enough to make Gnome ashamed unfortunately
the problem with GTK is newer versions break compatibility , and overall im not a fan of so many toolkits - GIMP is going to be on version 3 of GTK i.e. GIMP 3.0 , but there is GTK5 in the works - everything is just so staggered; and the biggest issue i have with linux as a whole is so many different toolkits and versions being used , you may as well forget about a uniform look.
Major version are when API breakages are expected. Minor versions only expand functionality, without breaking backward compatibility. That's just how software works
@@softwarelivre2389 fair enough, but also my issue now is having versions 5 and 6 of QT, versions 2 3 and 4 of GTK ... and again it doesn't help that some app devs use only a specific toolkit , at least with vlc it CAN use the toolkit of your choice , like QT5 or 6 (5 if you are still in KDE5) , but again the point stands , that is also not the case with some apps , and the whole thing is a mess imo.
The problem is not just that they "look different", as an Arch with cinnamon user, since lasts updates, File-roller's drag-and-drop is no longer usable so I installed Engrampa and Marker (Gnome markdown editor) no longer renders the markdown (I'll need still to find a good replacement).
Tbf we have to thank gnome here, not only libadwaita pushed the number of available gnome apps but the push for keeping yourself safe from Gnome gave us even larger ecosystems with each rebel. Be it Gnome 3, GTK4, or whatever the future brings.
Negative or positive, the forks somehow enlarged the ecosystem each time 😂
Agreed, but unfortunately, for every MATE out there, there's a Unity.
Wait, never mind, there's a community fork of Unity! Would be nice if more than 3 distros packaged it tough.
@@SupaKoopaTroopa64 btw they are working on a new DE re-writing Unity from pretty much the scratch
Maybe it's because I grew up through the Windows 95 to eXPerience (CZcams auto deleted my comment once when I didn't spell it out) so themes not matching on all apps never bothered me because user interface design was all over the place during that decade and change?
Honestly, I want linux apps to integrate well in every DE. However, each DE has their own goals and direction they want to go, so I'm not sure better integration will happen.
This is a goal for COSMIC applications.
@@mmstick oh okay
As a KDE plasma user with a global menu gnome apps not using the file menu sticks out like a sore thumb
Cannot there be like a singular backend that does the logic and different UI frontends for different desktops that communicate over dbus what the user wants to do? A super cool extension to that in the future could also be that remote desktop applications could just forward the dbus calls and let remote system perform the calculations. I think that would be pretty cool. Edit: seems it's already in progress by opendesktop called DBusRemote
Their could be it’s just more work and requires more collaboration
04:56 "Atril Document Viewer" looks better for me because it's less white
I love mint's stance on this article. If nothing else, giving users more options is just better. increasing the ability for apps to generically integrate with the environment they're in is just better. Let's see how this goes from here! hopefully with a fork of GTK (maybe named the "hopefully universal toolkit") that basically lets apps work with both GTK and QT and maybe any other toolkit/environment that might be out there.
I'm also not a big fan of mint (the flavor). Linux Mint, on the other hand, helped me ditch Windows, so good on them for taking matters into their own hands where necessary. (I don't use Mint anymore, but it is still a go-to recommendation of mine to others).
I love Mint but I hope they don't spread themselves too thin.
Dealing with maintaining Cinnamon and Mate already seems like quite a big maintenance burden (when rebasing stuff from upstream).
Did a bit of python programming in gtk3+ ... Nothing spectacular mind you, just a silly little philips hue app for my own use. I would say, it's probably the toughest gui code I ever wrote anything in (not that I'm particularly experienced, but still) but the result of it was really beautiful and functional. I cannot fault the linux mint devs for enjoying gtk3, considering how functional it is. The modules and such, very very cool stuff.
I use linux mint. I'll probably keep using linux mint very far into the future, and as such I have complete faith in the linux mint team, and whatever they choose to do. Their particular approach to how an operating system should look and work, fits very well with how I see things myself.
I think LibAdweita is beautiful but I understand needing apps that work with themes that the user wants.
Linux mint and clem is correct here.
The correct move here is splitting app function into libraries that people can write libadwaita/qt/xapp frontends for
They could just recompile the programs in ther LibMint and be good to go, but no, let's use deprecated software instead.
@@softwarelivre2389 that wouldn't solve the underlying issue of not being able to easily theme LibAdweita apps.
it's not a solution.
Exactly, this isn't about saying GNOME can't do what they want but instead building a platform that supports the needs of GTK users who aren't GNOME
@@softwarelivre2389 You literally missed the entire point of the video and my comment.
Linux mint doesn't plan on using deprecated software, they plan on updating deprecated software to a point where it's as good as the modern versions while also having good theming for everyone and not just gnome and/or themselves.
I'm a big fan of GNOME, it's my preferred DE and I really like its design, but I think this is a really excellent idea on Mint's part honestly. GNOME really is focusing more and more on their specific look, feel, UI/UX design language, etc, and that is diverging more and more from more classic desktops like Mint and XFCE and MATE, so it just makes a ton of sense for them to fork GNOME's work and maintain their own applications, since their interests and GNOME's just don't really align (and haven't since GNOME 3 at least). And it makes even more sense for them to band together to do that, to pool resources and support each other. Why keep relying on an upstream whose design and interests just don't align with yours at all, and becoming increasingly frustrated and resentful because of the conflict, instead of working on making something that'll work for you and others like you, right? Trying to use something as an upstream that doesn't want to *be* an upstream is only going to cause pain, and the whole point of OSS IMO is to make it so that nobody has to depend on an upstream and try to beg or bully it into doing what you need it to do, if they won't do what you want you can just pack your bags and walk away and bring everyone who agrees with you. Like, I don't want to play down the work involved at all, this will be an epic effort on their part, but long term it just makes more sense to do the latter. Honestly I really commend Mint for taking the lead here!
What I'm saying is, this doesn't need to be some petty, small, mean spirited "oh boy that'll sure teach them a lesson", it can just be a sensible parting of ways between adults because interests no longer align, and a forward-thinking next move.
I can't stand Gnome. I use Xfce and have for a decade. I recently moved into a new computer from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed. I had so spend a bit of time de-Gnomifying my default apps. So, I'm happy with this approach, of creating de-gnomified apps. I'm hoping they get other non-gnome desktops onboard to create a good set of standard apps available. If they have to branch back to GTK3 versions, so be it.I don't really have a problem with the way the apps I have look, even if some of them are a bit old schoolish looking, as long as they match my theming and do their jobs.
I would like to know how the looping accidents happen during the editing process
After using XFCE for around 10 years, I've learned that the ability to customize everything and be "normal", "usable", and "traditional", is exactly what I don't want from a desktop environment. - I'm in love with GNOME and how it does everything. I miss some things, yeah, but I don't even care if they don't add them as soon as it doesn't compromise my workflow (I see you, stupid Alt + Left to get back).
I'm kinda hoping Cosmic smashes it out of the park, having an entirely new toolkit written solely for the modern Linux stack seems like its a really good idea coming at the best possible time (right on the transition between X & Wayland). Cosmic has the luxury of being able to toss 30 years of old and outdated crap out the window and start building things that work really well on Wayland and assuming they don't take the Gnome route and once the inevitable libcosmic comes around, it would give these smaller distros a chance to rebase and start building something they can all use together.
yeah if Cosmic meets the hype, it would definitely be cool. although idk if you could convince the smaller desktops to rebase, we dont know how flexible libcosmic would be to fit what those desktops are looking for in their aesthetics. Also you have to factor in things like some devs arent going to want to completely toss out the work they already made on their own apps to just completely rebase on libcosmic.
This seems like a really good idea. I hope the XFCE/Mate/Cinnamon crew start working together more.
I ran into this problem immediately when using Mint XFCE as a first (second) time Linux user. I saw that XFCE is a window manager, so I started looking up themes for it (I miss earlier versions of Windows maintaining legacy themes, and I was a Window Blinds user at one point in time). I thought things had gone a little screwy when I opened an app that did not support the Xfce theme I had applied. It didn't take long for me to figure out that these are GTK apps
libadwaita might as well be called libgnome-theme
I mean Adwaita _is_ the GNOME theme, so the name does make sense.
libgnomeui
libgnomefw (FW for framework not firmware)
If going to all this effort to maintain an ancient GTK version, why not pull a Cosmic and ditch it altogether? Iced is looking pretty promising by now, especially with all the support its getting from System76, and QT is also a great choice with a lot of support and history behind it.
Mostly the migration path. System76 has to develop every single app from a ground up. Just look at how GIMP struggled to just move from GTK2 to GTK3. You'd basically have to restart all your UI/UX work from scratch.
ditching gtk and everyone pulling their resources together onto Iced or libcosmic would be crazy. likely a pipedream tho.
Please don't mind my n00b question: are there core differences between the MATE apps and the XApps, I mean, at the philosophical level? I can hardly see differences between Pluma and Xed, for example. In my Linux Mint Cinnamon, I can install MATE apps as I please.
I'm curious to know why are they duplicating their efforts, when (from my point of view) they could just contribute features to the MATE apps, and bring them into both Linux Mint MATE and Linux Mint Cinnamon.
That's actually a good idea. But I would say Clem isn't perfect. I think he should have worked more with the KDE developers because Qt, as imperfect as it is, is better than GTK 4 imo.
Honestly, I like this direction a lot. I hope to see a lot collaboration with this moving forward.
Isn't this the hole point of Cinnamon existence.
This is great. Im glad that there's a stronger push from desktops now to push away from GNOME. I wish nothing but the best for these projects.
I only wish that GNOME didnt go to the dark side, its upsetting that they have such little respect for downstream projects and their users.
Well, the entire premise of libadwaita is to split the GNOME desktop-adjacent widgets from GTK, to make GTK an actual desktop- and OS- agnostic toolkit, rather than a "toolkit with GNOME desktop-adjacent widgets". If anything, there's more respect to downstream projects, because GTK4 is more desktop-agnostic than ever.
@@TheEvilSkellyUnfortunately they did that by moving almost all of GTK4’s styling controls over the libadwaita.
@@Knirin "styling controls"?
Muffin's SSD support should be a pull request on Mutter
I've always liked the way GTK apps looked over their Qt counterparts. Before Hyprland I was a long time XFCE user who always preferred the slimmer GTK-only apps over their GNOME dipped cousins. As long as I don't have to see Xwayland in my process list it is a good thing.
Imho, if elementary/pantheon folks can create platform library for their desktop on top of gtk4, then I think it's also possible to create something like LibXApp platform library, which will include widgets like menubar and window, that will try to use csd.
I actually helped test a Patheon app that can also masquerade as a LibAdwaita app. It is possible.
I use GNOME don't like many decisions that they make, BUT the environment built is stable, so I keep using it...
I'm gonna go 🌶️ for a second: if your DE doesn't have it's own dedicated calculator, calendar, music, video, settings, file manager, archiver and terminal apps, then _what are you doing?_
Yes, I believe in the idea of an independent XApps project and that it should be easier to make cross-distro apps feel at home on any DE, but if you're implementing your own theming and application feel, then *having a library of basic, reference apps* is *essential* for developers to be able to develop for your platform.
Hmm correct me if I'm wrong wouldn't just port app to use GTK4 without libadwaita enough? As far as I know, we can still theme GTK4 (and even libadwaita with some efforts)
I want some kind of standardisation of graphical interfaces, which different DEs can choose to either adopt or not adopt so interoperability becomes more straightforward
I like the idea of consistency on Linux desktops. I use KDE mainly because of a good selection of apps that do mostly everything and the cohesion between the apps and the environment. As for the consistency of window decorations, I just wish that when I choose a dark theme, at least that could be consistent (and is with a bit of config hunting). I'm beginning to realise that the interface ecosystem actually needs more diversification, although the ideas that Xerox came up with are fundamental, I would tend to wonder if the we could find other basic fundaments of user interaction. It's actually amazing to me what Neovim can do interface wise, given the limits of the terminal text basis it has. Don't get me wrong the paradigm of windows, widgets and rendering panes is awesome. It also has it's limitations too.
Wind back to GTK2, that team had standards. Also, GTK2 is significantly faster than GTK3.
Gnome's gonna do what Gnome's gonna do. But I'm too old to change my way of working, even if it is better, which is why Cinnamon suits me fine, and Xfce looks like a reasonable alternative. Obviously, the Mint team is doing the right thing: they're opening up the possibility for other people to collaborate (Xfce, at least, is pretty widely used) and not telling anyone what they ought to do, and seem to be prepared to give up control, and all the other ways of doing stuff that make Mint very comfortable.
I use gnome on mint, will this affect me at all once mint 22 drops?
Mint getting some street cred
I agree with it. In the way gnome is going, it make things work more like a closed source code company and no one can change its path.
I decided to abandon using cinnamon desktop in my custom debian. Many gtk apps do not work. I is a pain in the you know what to work with. I am going back to mate which works. Not as fancy but works. Just my two cents.
Great linux content 🙂
Why does everything on android look more or less native now with material you? How did they figure it out but linux cant?
two words, thanks gnome (ironic)
An incredible example of a fork that went back to a significantly older version and took a different direction than the base project, is Better than Adventure.
This Minecraft mod goes all the way back to Beta 1.7.3, released in 2011, when it was still a fully indie game.
To then continue to update and improve this ancient basis, of which the new (1.7.)7.1 release has become separate enough to be considered it's own thing.
At this point it's also polished up to the point of holding up well to current standards, which the base project and even earlier releases did not in my opinion.
I like Mint (Cinnamon), but it's mostly Cinnamon. I've switched my main box to Bookworm, but it is themed like LMDE. Mint sometimes struggles with hardware configuration (ie. raid and bluetooth) but my son's gaming machine is on Mint and my laptop is LMDE. I miss Mint apps on my Bookworm system (but will probably just link LMDE's repo shortly), but I was having boot issues with weird hardware not working on Mint.
I love mint but then I have a lot of fond childhood memories associated with the flavour - mum's mint sauce with roast homekill lamb chops on the farm, chocolate birthday cakes with mint icing etc. Might be a small part of why I used that distro for so many years
I stopped paying attention to gnome when they went to the chaos of mobile device menus.
I dropped off after gnome 2
getting qt apps (most emulators) to look on gnome is pain
even with adwaita-qt, there is no settings app to set it in afaik
u need to put it in some weird file
then some apps might decide that they don't feel like launching
flatpak comes and breaks even more stuff because why not
and noone complains about that (i do now :3)
Well, that's one of the reasons developers wrote the "don't theme my apps" memo.
@@softwarelivre2389 But this has nothing to do with the whole "Don't theme my apps" thing. Luk did not mention once distribution-given themes (the "not theming my apps things" was not originally a message to the average user, but to the people who distribute the applications).
Even then, desktops like KDE Plasma go out of their way to make GTK and QT program work and look as nicely together as possible, whilst GNOME completely ignores everything that is not made for it (for the most part), and packaging systems like Flatpak on top of that makes it even more of a pain to deal with, so I fully understand Luk's points.
@@softwarelivre2389And yet they broke Qt apps with their Adwaita "icon pack".
I agree with clem and the Mint team. As stated many times in the comments to your videos, I'm a long time Mint + Mate user, and I don't want to change that. I want to see my distro and my environment maintained and updated going forward, without that breaking everything.
I could just never update anything.
Yeah, I could, but that's not really an answer. I could also install NT4 and use that, but then I'd have a browser that won't work with gmail or youtube or facebook or discord or b-pay or ... You can't participate in the world of today with a 20 year old browser. Apart from being a massive security own-goal, nothing works.
gnu's not unix image manipulation program toolkit 3
Ever since Gnome took away the menus that first appeared in the very first and just about all subsequent GUI's like the one on my Macintosh Lisa, I have hated Gnome, even more so because of the way they treated people who didn't approve of it (And why should they). Sadly the effect was so hard core, many of my neighbors gardens are no longer safe from me, and seeing a garden Gnome has me go ballistic! 🤬☠☠☠🤬
I used to use Ubuntu and Open Box and some tools but by the time I was done theming , it looked like Cinnamon's Desktop, so I moved to Mint because they wrote Cinnamon.
They basically want to fix their situation instead of moving to Qt like the others. As someone using Emacs which needs GTK for Wayland I appreciate their effort. Maybe they can also make GTK less limited on Wayland.