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RSS Channel: Comments on: Linux Mint: non-GNOME GTK desktop environments need to work together in the face of libadwaita
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By: Magnusmaster
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439138">rahim123</a>. The problem is that QtGtkStyle needs to be rewritten from scratch to work with GTK3, and on top of that GTK4 removed the foreign drawing API so something like QtGtkStyle is not possible with GTK4. The GNOME devs said that consistent app theming is a bad idea so app theming is dead on Linux.

By: Geck
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439170">nmariusp</a>. Indeed this is another good example on why GNOME shouldn't be perceived as the one in power to say what the future of GNU/Linux on desktop should be. That is first they said it's an issue with KDE, then when they were educated that is not the case as instead it's due to GNOME not following established standards. Then another person got involved claiming well icon themes are basically a thing of the past anyway. Because GNOME decided so? GNOME you never got mandate for that and you never will have the power to kill icon themes or themes in general on GNU/Linux desktop. The only thing GNOME managed to do is to not follow the established standard and rather to impose a non standard solution creating an issue for everybody including GNOME. And what will they make now, libiconthemes, on where you will supposedly be able to change 5 icons in total? After congratulating themself on how smart they are? It's a FOSS project but GNOME is something currently in need of critique and to fight against. So people praising GNOME on how great the project is and on how good job they are doing. Get real. You've been punked. And compared to a few years back, where a hive of mindless bots was praising GNOME, that sentiment now shifted, GNOME managed to alienate even most of the die hard vocal supporters from the past. The general sentiment now is just go with KDE, until GNOME gets a reality check and sorts itself out. Likely a process that will take a couple of years.

By: nmariusp
adwaita-icon-theme (a-i-t) is a problem these days. It is the default icon theme e.g. in Fedora 40 Workstation and Fedora 40 XFCE Spin. a-i-t does not respect the standard https://specifications.freedesktop.org/icon-naming-spec/icon-naming-spec-latest.html because it does not contain 90% of the minimum must have icons. More details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJmSC4TLG0 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/adwaita-icon-theme/-/issues/288 https://cullmann.io/posts/kate-and-icons/

By: Geck
It's rather OK for GNOME to do its thing just the way they want to. Its just that by doing that they became a niche product and i don't know on how popular GNOME actually is. In my opinion most people would be perfectly OK if KDE would become default desktop environment for Ubuntu/Fedora and for GNOME to become a spin.

By: Adurbe
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439149">decuser</a>. I'm not that surprised Mint are spinning this out. They have painted themselves into a corner by relying on a framework that doesn't support their (forked) DE. And created a massive workload maintaining (forked) apps. They are hoping someone else steps in to pick up some of the slack. Taking a step back and considering Gnome and other app devs are underfunded, wouldn't the "better" solution, rather than forking and maintaining, to instead support the developers of the apps directly to make them support more theme options?

By: unix_joe
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439149">decuser</a>. There's an idea. In the spirit of making a consistent UI, I should just rise above all the Qt/GTK/Adwaita/Electron mess and install wine and all the good Windows apps. foobar2000, Notepad++, freecommander, k-meleon, irfanview. Windows 2000-esque design and none of the drama. sway, xterm, and mpv fill out the rest. Probably more consistent than anything else available now. What else do I need?

By: unix_joe
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439124">The123king</a>. I think what the mint team is doing is entirely appropriate. Regarding the comic strip, this is the equivalent to the owner of the 14th standard deciding it is not available for everybody anymore and moving in an entirely different direction, so people rally to replace the 14th standard to maintain status quo. This ability is almost entirely unique to the free software movement. Libadwaita is becoming its own thing for Gnome which has become its own thing, good for them, but it's leaving behind a lot of still useful apps that weren't sucked into the Gnome apparatus. I still use Abiword and Gnome commander and gnucash and gimp and a bunch of other stuff that depends on Gtk because 25 years ago that was a reasonable choice. I would like to be able to still use this software, not see it disappear because at some point in the future distributions decided that Gtk3 was unsafe to bundle any more. So here comes XApp. Mint team surprised me by making Cinnamon viable and it still exists after a decade. It did not turn into another Trinity Desktop Environment. So hopefullly XApp becomes something that still exists in a decade. If Xfce (doubtful) and MATE (maybe) decide to move to this toolkit, that would be wonderful. It would require a lot of work up front to port over, but then it would decouple the longevity of the software from the whims of the Gnome development team.

By: decuser
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439147">kbd</a>. Windows?

By: kbd
How about a comic where every application is using it's own framework and theme engine, each window has a radically different set of colors and now, even window boarder behavior (some have buttons on the right, some on the left, some not at all? That's where software development is heading. On the bottom right, you see the memory usage, and it's at 32GB while running the web browser, a calculator, a text editor, a photo editor, and a music player.

By: asupcb
Could Mint create a *libcinn as a replacement for libadwaita? Is libadwaita replaceable in GTK4? Would doing so require soft or hard forks of all GTK software or the kind of patch mess that Ubuntu had with Unity?

By: rahim123
There's another major theming issue at an even lower level that's not getting talked about. Up through Qt5 all Qt apps running in a GTK-based desktop could be made to imitate the GTK2 version of the current user's GTK theme by setting an environment variable: QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=gtk2 Normal users shouldn't be required to know or think about whether their apps use GTK or Qt, so my distro sets that variable by default, and everything used to just work with all GTK and Qt apps following the user's selected theme, and no special software or manual user overrides. But now most Qt apps are moving to Qt6, and Qt6 doesn't obey the QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE variable, instead using an awful fallback Fusion widget set with the wrong accent colors. At wiki.archlinux.org/title/Uniform_look_for_Qt_and_GTK_applications you can see the awful convoluted mess that is app theming under Linux, which has regressed in a major way in recent years thanks to the likes of libadwaita and Qt6. Unfortunately I'm not optimistic that Linux Mint's initiative will be able to change that.

By: decuser
Meh... children, work it out. Mint's great, as are most Deb-based distros that don't use Gnome. I don't mind the occasional gnome app creeping in... but I usually shake my head in wonder and go looking for a non-gnome alternative after a few attempts to use them and wondering why folks like watered down interfaces. But to each their own. I can't personally stand Gnome apps, but I know others who love them... anything's better than the UI disaster of Windows. As for comments about Linux and mainstream... FUD, and silly FUD. There are many reasons for Windows' dominance in the consumer market, least of which is its UI and most of which has to do with corporate power exercised at all levels of the supply chain.

By: Andreas Reichel
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439133">kurkosdr</a>. I don't see a contradiction here. A Gnome or KDE desktop appears to be very consistent compared to any Windows at least. Even Gnome and KDE apps mixed can still achieve consistency, even when it takes some effort. I do use XFCE with Gnome Applications and 2 QT applications and see it here in front of me. There is no spat, especially not any intentional one. Although there are a few discussions how to position when Gnome's direction can't be followed anymore. Sounds like a healthy eco system to me.

By: Andreas Reichel
In reply to <a href="https://www.osnews.com/story/139512/linux-mint-non-gnome-gtk-desktop-environments-need-to-work-together-in-the-face-of-libadwaita/#comment-10439124">The123king</a>. Gnome is not working against anyone, but is focusing on itself only. And this is their right to do, they are mostly volunteers working spare time after all. I am an XFCE user and I feel like XFCE understands the above well.

By: kurkosdr
Gotta love how Thom a couple of posts ago was saying that Desktop Linux was a "a desktop-first, consistent interface": https://www.osnews.com/story/136366/the-mac-sure-is-starting-to-look-like-the-iphone/ Newsflash: The spat between KDE and GTK (and now between KDE, GTK, and libadwaita) is much worse than any inconsistency you'd encounter on MacOS and Windows, because it's intentional.

By: Andreas Reichel
> If they don’t, there won’t be an Xfce in a few years. What’s the point in developing Xfce if you’re at the mercy of whatever choices GNOME makes? Another questionable statement. All the gnome software is open under a very free license. If you don't like libAdwaita you have 2 choices: 1) avoid any dependency to it and avoid any components using it 2) fork libAdwaita and rewrite the parts you don't like (e.g. the theming part) I do not like libAdwaita at all but at the same time I see no responsibility on the Gnome's side to care what other projects want or need -- although it would be nice when they listened to suggestions of course.