LWN: Comments on "Changing GNOME technical governance?"

What am i missing?

davidgerard — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 09:47:00 +0000

Are there measurements to this effect?

Gnome's origin as an alternative to Qt

farnz — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 16:04:53 +0000

This is all taking place in the 1996 to 1999 timeframe, with the fuss accelerating in 1998 with the release of KDE 1.0.

Qt was GPL'd about a year after GNOME's release.

Gnome's origin as an alternative to Qt

ndiddy — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 15:53:24 +0000

Qt on X11 was GPL'd back in 2000 (see https://web.archive.org/web/20010218054153/http://linuxpr... ), so there hasn't been a concern about the KDE project depending on a framework with a non-free license since that point. You're right that the other Qt platforms weren't GPL'd until Qt 4 in 2005.

We know how this ends

paulj — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 09:37:35 +0000

> rots until all value is extracted. Then, the governance structures move on to a different project.

Value extracted in multi-million salaries to a non-technical. non-contributing 'governance' class?

Cynical, tu? moi?

We know how this ends

himdel — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 23:18:29 +0000

We pretty much know how this ends, don't we? Maintainers get pushed into joining teams, then into working on unfamiliar projects. They slowly stop paying attention to their projects. The team knows about the problem in principle, but there are no $tracker issues for checking bugreports, updating dependencies, or playing with the project to find and fix bugs/annoyances. So, the non-shiny projects slowly end up without any maintenance, other that what's required by the central process. And then those projects aren't maintained, so it's prudent to remove them, who cares about users. Some clusters of projects will still work, but they're only propped up by fanatical team members religiously keeping their projects alive, who are burning out faster than before. The project ceases to be innovative, responsive, or interesting to any users not already committed to it, and rots until all value is extracted. Then, the governance structures move on to a different project.

Am I being too cynical here? :)

What am i missing?

ebassi — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 13:30:59 +0000

> I don’t think there is still a “supported” way to enable them back (extension, Tweaks).

The desktop icons extension used by Ubuntu is maintained and typically kept up to date even before the next stable release: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2087/desktop-icons...

What am i missing?

gdiscry — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 13:23:34 +0000

As far as I known, GNOME dropped desktop icons and using the desktop as a folder with GNOME 3, even in the GNOME Classic session. I don’t think there is still a “supported” way to enable them back (extension, Tweaks).

However, there is an animation (after ~1s) when I drag an icon over another, at least on GNOME 48.

What am i missing?

paulj — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 09:23:39 +0000

Retried, and you're right. Dropping does work. I can't drop them onto the main desktop though, which is really what my 9yo wanted I think. Also, when you grab an icon in the app view and move it around, when it moves over another icon there isn't any little animation (like the beginning of a folder expanding out?) to indicate that there is a possible action there.

Design by committee...

sramkrishna — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 19:55:46 +0000

Most of us don't like that much formality. But part of maturing the platform is to be able to have a good way to know how we make decisions. Being in this project for over 20+ years, I never know as a person who does community work what GNOME is going to release until it is in fact released. Neither do other people in GNOME. This makes it difficult for me to talk about GNOME during its development phase on various platforms.

What am i missing?

sramkrishna — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 19:13:11 +0000

It is no longer GNOME 3, since our releases are now GNOME 4x. Easier to just say GNOME since at this point there is nothing to compare it against given that GNOME 2 era ended in 2011.

What am i missing?

sramkrishna — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 19:11:46 +0000

The patterns are not that different from using a tablet or a phone. Of course, GNOME is very keyboard/mouse centric. But most folks should be able to use it. My reading of your post makes me believe that you sit in front of your computer and think in terms of the windows UX paradigm and have compartmentalized it specifically that way. I don't believe this is some kind of "too old" since I'm pretty sure I'm as grey beardy as the lot of you here and I've had no problems adjusting to GNOME from GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3.

A memory

da4089 — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 01:26:52 +0000

twm preprocesses its configuration with m4. As a popular window manager in the early years, this was a common thing for its descendants.

A memory

cyperpunks — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 17:35:28 +0000

Sorry, I confused AfterStep and AnotherLevel, the latter has m4 macros as configuration system (most likely by inspired by m4 as used in configuration of Sendmail).

What am i missing?

Wol — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 12:24:18 +0000

> Because with the base knowledge that most people have from their mobiles & tablets nowadays,

And this is where the whole thing falls flat on its face.

As I expressed above, I'm not in the "most people" category, and actually, neither are any of my close associates! I doubt there are many like me who just have absolutely no interest, but there are an awful lot who, thanks to age or illness, are simply incapable of adjusting to or using tablets and smartphones.

Most of my knowledge comes from being forced to do it for other people - life is getting harder and harder for the - certainly in my circle - ever growing number of people who just can't do it.

Cheers,
Wol

What am i missing?

knewt — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 11:47:17 +0000

I would say it's more than likely a "This is what most people are used to nowadays on their mobile/tablet, so we'll implement the same" decision.

Because with the base knowledge that most people have from their mobiles & tablets nowadays, people without historical computer experience will probably just think it works as they would expect. And those with historical experience (I would certainly put myself in this group) may be puzzled or annoyed at first, but I can certainly see the reasoning behind it, even if change is frustrating (noting I have not used GNOME in an incredibly long time)

What am i missing?

Wol — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 11:30:46 +0000

I wouldn't call that intuitive.

If you do it by accident AND REALISE WHAT YOU'VE DONE, it's "oh that's interesting ..."

If you do it by accident and DON'T realise what you've done, it's "where the hell have my icons vanished!"

If it's done for you by Google with a new phone (as happened to me), it's "why have these apps disappeared from the default screen ???"

Cheers,
Wol

What am i missing?

gdiscry — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 09:32:09 +0000

Worst of all, once they figured out how to get to the screen with the endless pages of app icons: “Daddy, how do I organise them into folders?” - “Uh, I don’t think you can”.

I’ve just tried it, you drag and drop them. If you want to create a folder, you drop one on top of an other (which is a pattern I learned on Android).

What am i missing?

paulj — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 09:25:19 +0000

Recently got my 9yo on to a desktop - they wanted one. GNOME is not intuitive.

Worst of all, once they figured out how to get to the screen with the endless pages of app icons: "Daddy, how do I organise them into folders?" - "Uh, I don't think you can".

I've been trying to get them to try another DE. Mate or KDE.

What am i missing?

mjg59 — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 08:59:57 +0000

(Which is trivially provably false if you've ever spoken to anyone who's breastfed)

What am i missing?

Karellen — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 08:49:06 +0000

"The only intuitive interface is the nipple"

-- Bruce Ediger, 1995 (kinda)

Design by committee...

wtarreau — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 05:09:26 +0000

Whenever I read about setting up a committee in a project, I can't help but think about OpenSSL's numerous committees, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee which lists a number of other well-known failures caused by this famously ineffective approach which tries to please everyone individually to buy their votes instead of the group in general.

What am i missing?

jhe — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:19:22 +0000

Intuition is based on prior experiences, if you are a "clean slate", you don't have any. Only instincts. And those are not enough to use a input device in a meaningful way.

What am i missing?

Wol — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:18:43 +0000

> If you come from a clean slate, without being tainted by 30 year old design patterns, then GNOME 3 is intuitive.

If you come from a clean slate, then NOTHING is intuitive !!!

Youngsters find mobile phones intuitive because they play with them 24/7. Whenever I use a mobile for anything other than phone calls, it's an absolute nightmare of discovery and what the hell does this do and why has that happened, because I just don't use the damn thing from one week (month?) to the next, and the subtle changes that keep happening just get me utterly confused.

Stuff is only intuitive because you play with similar stuff and are used to it. I took to WordPerfect (DOS, WP5.1) because it very consciously mimicked the blank page of a typewriter. I found Word (and Writer) and still do, very UNintuitive, because they're not familiar to anything else in my experience (not least because I'm a words person, not a visual person).

Cheers,
Wol

Gnome's origin as an alternative to Qt

farnz — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 14:04:52 +0000

Not KDE per-se, but the underlying Qt framework.

KDE has always been Free Software (GPL, LGPL or MIT/BSD licenses), but it depends on Qt; up until Qt 4.0 (used by KDE 4.0), Qt was licensed under various non-free licenses that were probably GPL-incompatible if a distro shipped both KDE and Qt.

GNOME was one direction to addressing this; the KDE folk took a different route, leading first to the KDE Free Qt Foundation, guaranteeing that Qt would become properly Free if the owners of Qt stopped releasing versions for Free software use, and this in turn led to a GPL'd Qt version.

The other thing that was discussed at the time, but never happened, was someone independently reimplementing enough of Qt for KDE, allowing Qt to be swapped for this new implementation.

What am i missing?

daroc — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:06:35 +0000

I'm not sure I believe that. I don't use GNOME, but I don't believe there's any such thing as an "untainted" user. We're all shaped by our experiences. And if you find Super+Tab (from GNOME's list of keyboard shortcuts) an intuitive way to switch between windows in an application, that intuition has to have come from somewhere.

What am i missing?

GhePeU — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:01:48 +0000

Too bad none of those untainted people are going to get a PC now and install GNOME 3 on it.

What am i missing?

zdzichu — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:50:31 +0000

If you come from a clean slate, without being tainted by 30 year old design patterns, then GNOME 3 is intuitive.

Gnome's origin

rschroev — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:33:14 +0000

The way I remember it Gnome was intended as an alternative to KDE because of KDE's questionable licensing at the time.

A memory

remmy — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:17:58 +0000

I don't think it is AfterStep that ever had m4 configuration, and I also don't think Gnome was intended as AfterStep replacement specifically.

What am i missing?

jhe — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 12:05:42 +0000

When i was a kid in school, some committed parent offered a course to teach basic computer concepts. This was on Windows 95, so i learned about windows, the buttons in the window decorations, how to start applications using the start menu and basic file management. When i was a teen and got my first Ubuntu with Gnome 2, i was able to transfer the learned concepts with ease and grokking the UI was no big effort.

When i tried the recent GNOME, i felt lost because little of my acquired knowledge was transferable, and only few possible interactions are indicated by the UI. I compensated that by searching the Web on how, for example, switch between Windows of the same Application.

Is there something to current GNOME that Windows 95 was to GNOME 2? That i need to learn, that makes me grok it intuitively? What is the missing ingredient?

A memory

cyperpunks — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 11:19:48 +0000

If I try I can recall the excitement when GNOME was announced, replacing the legacy AfterStep dekstop, with its insane m4 configuration system. Looking back I have not used GNOME desktop a single workday, but I guess it was for something good any way.