The way the GNOME Project has evolved over the years is just sad. The development ethos seems to be further and further away from the spirit of Free software.
The project does comply with the "letter of the law" when it comes to Free software. That is, the project does give the users their four essential freedoms of running the programs as they wish, freedom to study the programs, redistribute, and modify. But at least IMO this is necessary but not sufficient for "proper" Free software.
At least to me there is still stuff that is required for something to be Free software, even if you technically fulfill the definition. The "spirit of the law" of Free software to complement the "letter of the law". One of these is that you can act in the Free software ecosystem as a productive and good faith actor. In this case, the GNOME Project has decided to unilaterally break the FDO icon theme standard, and for what? Because they want to have the Adwaita icons as a "Private UI icon set for GNOME core apps"? This is not okay.
One must ask if this change truly helps empower the users in their use of the software and their computers.
Yes, and if they think the spec is bogus and obsolete, fine, either help to improve it or just provide no icon theme that pretends to follow it, then distros know they need to install another one for 3rdparty apps...
I feel a lot of sympathy for the GNOME developers. They are 15 years past the "let's build something cool!" stage and into the long, long grind of support and compatibility and being expected to work everywhere all the time. As an outsider, it looks like all the cool kids moved on a long time ago so it's basically just people too stubborn to quit working on it and a few paid devs trying to make something happen with pretty limited resources.
That said, as a developer I have basically had enough of GNOME, and I'm porting my personal projects to ImGUI. Does it integrate in the desktop? Not really. Is it pretty? No. It just is what it is (a library for GUI app development) and it doesn't try to be everything else that GNOME does.
I have no sympathy for them. They implement a spec and make a big song and dance about being open and standards friendly... and then when they don't implement the standard correctly they say they have implemented it correctly, argue about it and then when they are proven incorrect they just close the ticket, even though they could make small changes to fix the problem.
I as Kate maintainer can not understand their position in that bug. I see that one might forget about the implications of that rename, but now it got reported and the fix would be, at least the simple one, to just keep the old icons for these names.
That would have zero bad impact on 'modern GNOME apps'.
It sounds like an alternative where they just don't pretend they support the thing the don't support was proposed, and shot down because that means they won't show up in UI that only lists things that support the thing?
> I feel a lot of sympathy for the GNOME developers. They are 15 years past the "let's build something cool!" stage and into the long, long grind of support and compatibility and being expected to work everywhere all the time.
They don't have to do that, you know. In fact, it's a pretty common complaint that it's rather difficult for new contributors to get involved with them stonewalling issue discussions and merge requests.
Volunteering is voluntary. They don't deserve sympathy for actively inflicting that onto both themselves and everybody else.
:( given the KDE developers (and other devs) did spend a lot time to ensure the applications they create work not just in their personal favorite desktop environment, this is all rather unfortunate, as it is now like it is in a released distro...
Nobody should be surprised anymore when GNOME pulls some shady and technically questionable crap to try to make their "product" look better by actively breaking other people's work.
Yes, I just fail to see why one not went with some easy fix and then perhaps thinks about enhancing the spec. Errors can happen, I did break stuff in the past, too.
By my reading, this is a Fedora bug, not a Gnome bug. Adwaita is by deliberate upstream decision no longer an FDO compliant icon theme, but Fedora sets it as the default FDO compliant icon theme in their builds. Clearly someone dropped the ball in the communication between Gnome and Fedora.
If it is that way, there should be no theme index that states otherwise in the theme. As mentioned in the bug, that still is the case. Even if not the default on other distros, users will be able to pick it in desktop envs that honor the spec and trust that file.
We no longer do:
Git commit c8b8a4db63b575edf931c3d61aea1ed3d3d287f2 by Nate Graham.
Committed on 01/05/2024 at 21:50.
Pushed by ngraham into branch 'Plasma/6.0'.
kcms/icons: filter out GNOME's Adwaita and High Contrast icon themes
These are no longer FDO-compatible icon themes, and are apparently no
longer intended to be used for non-GNOME apps--going against what an
FDO icon theme is supposed to be used for.
As such, allowing the user to select these icon themes will just give
them an opportunity to break all their non-GNOME apps. Let's filter
these themes out to prevent that possibility.
We still need to figure out a solution for when our apps are run in
distros where Adwaita is used as the default icon theme, but that's a
separate topic.
BUG: 486409
FIXED-IN: 6.0.5
(cherry picked from commit 813d22ff80ede0c7c08e4563621e3778459426f0)
It seems to me (https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/adwaita-icon-theme/-/issues/2... who BTW seems to be a GNOME/Fedora dev from Redhat) that Adwaita is GNOME's default icon theme. Either way, I'm not sure why Adwaita decided they weren't going to be an standard-compliant icon theme anymore but were going to continue being used as a standard-compliant icon theme...
My POV is it's a GNOME issue. If GNOME doesn't want to comply with the FDO icon standard, they shouldn't include metadata that allows Adwaita to be registered as an icon theme.
GNOME devs are only paid to care about GNOME. It's been this way since 2014 when they started breaking Gtk3 applications by removing gsettings the community used but they did not.
I can even see why they want that change, but even just keeping the old icons as compat would have been good enough, I just miss the issue why on doesn't do that directly after the issue is pointed out.
Wow, those RedHat guys in the gitlab tickets and commit descriptions related to this are insufferable. Is this what happens when you get paid for open source work?
I was struggling to find the word that was appropriate, but you nailed it with insufferable. I can't imagine responding with such disdain for developers and users to a sincere request.
Unrelated, but does anyone know how to get rid of the shitty monochrome icons that semi-recent (Debian stable) KDE uses by default (even for popular non-KDE applications) and restore the actual ones shipped with the applications (and of course, make the rest clear)?
I spent some time in systemsettings5 changing theme options but the only breakage I managed to (partially) fix was the titlebar.
I think you mean 'Breeze'. I think to have other icons, you just need no select a different icon theme, if you installed one, but please not Adwaita :)
I'm using this post to air some grievances I have with GNOME.
I've been using it for a daily driver for the past few months and it's come a really long way the past 15 or so years, but they don't seem to have a cohesive vision as to what they're trying to do.
What's with the topbar? Why have the window title button in it at all? It's not like there's a menu to select different windows, and when you click on the window's button, it shows items that are better done somewhere else. It's like some useless appendage. I already know which window has focus, it's the one on top of all the other windows...
Why hide the window's menubar behind a button that doesn't even have a consistent location, like users expect from the "close window" button? Looking at you Nautil- sorry, "Files".
Their CSD titlebars don't work well with Firefox or Chromium, the main piece of software most users are likely to use. Everybody knows that its stupid, but nobody wants to be the one to change they do things, so users are left with tiny chiclets of grabable area in the upper corners of the windows. Completely idiotic.
Why can't I change the time/date format to something sensible in the topbar? Why can't I just move (or remove) the damn thing anyway?
Why all the emphasis on touch in the UI design, but I still can't select text without a mouse? Touch screen laptops have been around for a while now.
It does a good job of exposing functionality, but it feels very confused, overall. And I'm a little upset that the first taste of Linux most people will get is going to be with GNOME. It's had tons of work put into it but it still feels half baked, not for lack of trying, but just a poorly thought out recipe, if you will.
This is why I’m sad we at the LibreOffice project decided to embrace Gtk. We ported hundreds of dialogs to Glade and GNOME decided to fuck us over by deprecating it.
I do remember something about Michael Meeks calling Qt something like legacy or deprecated when asked about the option to port LibreOffice (or was it OOo at the time) to Qt. The irony.
sham1|1 year ago
The project does comply with the "letter of the law" when it comes to Free software. That is, the project does give the users their four essential freedoms of running the programs as they wish, freedom to study the programs, redistribute, and modify. But at least IMO this is necessary but not sufficient for "proper" Free software.
At least to me there is still stuff that is required for something to be Free software, even if you technically fulfill the definition. The "spirit of the law" of Free software to complement the "letter of the law". One of these is that you can act in the Free software ecosystem as a productive and good faith actor. In this case, the GNOME Project has decided to unilaterally break the FDO icon theme standard, and for what? Because they want to have the Adwaita icons as a "Private UI icon set for GNOME core apps"? This is not okay.
One must ask if this change truly helps empower the users in their use of the software and their computers.
cullmann|1 year ago
bgribble|1 year ago
That said, as a developer I have basically had enough of GNOME, and I'm porting my personal projects to ImGUI. Does it integrate in the desktop? Not really. Is it pretty? No. It just is what it is (a library for GUI app development) and it doesn't try to be everything else that GNOME does.
chris_wot|1 year ago
They are just arrogant.
cullmann|1 year ago
mook|1 year ago
… And they also control the UI in question?
Intralexical|1 year ago
They don't have to do that, you know. In fact, it's a pretty common complaint that it's rather difficult for new contributors to get involved with them stonewalling issue discussions and merge requests.
Volunteering is voluntary. They don't deserve sympathy for actively inflicting that onto both themselves and everybody else.
cweiske2|1 year ago
They are not. I can't count how often the gnome shell extensions broke with each new minor version.
cullmann|1 year ago
Intralexical|1 year ago
2012 — https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...
2021 — https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/building-an-alternative-...
2023 — https://felipec.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/one-decade-later-gn...
2023 — https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e...
Nobody should be surprised anymore when GNOME pulls some shady and technically questionable crap to try to make their "product" look better by actively breaking other people's work.
gr4vityWall|1 year ago
cullmann|1 year ago
tetromino_|1 year ago
cullmann|1 year ago
We no longer do:
Git commit c8b8a4db63b575edf931c3d61aea1ed3d3d287f2 by Nate Graham. Committed on 01/05/2024 at 21:50. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'Plasma/6.0'.
kcms/icons: filter out GNOME's Adwaita and High Contrast icon themes
These are no longer FDO-compatible icon themes, and are apparently no longer intended to be used for non-GNOME apps--going against what an FDO icon theme is supposed to be used for.
I've contacted the GNOME folks about it, and unfortunately they've made it clear that the situation is intended; see https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/adwaita-icon-theme/-/issues/2...
As such, allowing the user to select these icon themes will just give them an opportunity to break all their non-GNOME apps. Let's filter these themes out to prevent that possibility.
We still need to figure out a solution for when our apps are run in distros where Adwaita is used as the default icon theme, but that's a separate topic.
BUG: 486409 FIXED-IN: 6.0.5 (cherry picked from commit 813d22ff80ede0c7c08e4563621e3778459426f0)
M +12 -0 kcms/icons/iconsmodel.cpp
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/commit/c8b8...
Repulsion9513|1 year ago
ndiddy|1 year ago
superkuh|1 year ago
cullmann|1 year ago
meibo|1 year ago
LightFog|1 year ago
pigbearpig|1 year ago
seba_dos1|1 year ago
o11c|1 year ago
I spent some time in systemsettings5 changing theme options but the only breakage I managed to (partially) fix was the titlebar.
cullmann|1 year ago
shmerl|1 year ago
cullmann|1 year ago
juped|1 year ago
miniupuchaty|1 year ago
They were too defensive, in the end it seems they came around but there was no need for this counter-blaming.
complaintdept|1 year ago
I've been using it for a daily driver for the past few months and it's come a really long way the past 15 or so years, but they don't seem to have a cohesive vision as to what they're trying to do.
What's with the topbar? Why have the window title button in it at all? It's not like there's a menu to select different windows, and when you click on the window's button, it shows items that are better done somewhere else. It's like some useless appendage. I already know which window has focus, it's the one on top of all the other windows...
Why hide the window's menubar behind a button that doesn't even have a consistent location, like users expect from the "close window" button? Looking at you Nautil- sorry, "Files".
Their CSD titlebars don't work well with Firefox or Chromium, the main piece of software most users are likely to use. Everybody knows that its stupid, but nobody wants to be the one to change they do things, so users are left with tiny chiclets of grabable area in the upper corners of the windows. Completely idiotic.
Why can't I change the time/date format to something sensible in the topbar? Why can't I just move (or remove) the damn thing anyway?
Why all the emphasis on touch in the UI design, but I still can't select text without a mouse? Touch screen laptops have been around for a while now.
It does a good job of exposing functionality, but it feels very confused, overall. And I'm a little upset that the first taste of Linux most people will get is going to be with GNOME. It's had tons of work put into it but it still feels half baked, not for lack of trying, but just a poorly thought out recipe, if you will.
Repulsion9513|1 year ago
There a bit of settings in dconf-editor under org.gnome.desktop.interface.clock-* ... good luck.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
kingspact|1 year ago
cullmann|1 year ago
fito|1 year ago
ahartmetz|1 year ago
butz|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]