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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

>Configuration With dconf

If you do this just know that the Gtk devs consider most gsettings to be private and any end user changes made with dconf might just disappear one day and never come back. Or they might be left in but just not respected by gtk so that setting them does nothing. As a GNOME user on the latest Gtk4 you're not supposed to be customizing your desktop like in the article. It is not supported even if you can (for now) technically do it. Support issues related to removal/ignoring of gsettings will be told this and closed.

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I would rephrase this concern as "dconf is not a stable API" rather than "you are not supposed to do this". It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want, but using unstable API comes with costs that should be understood.

> It's my computer, I am supposed to do whatever I want

I don't think the Gnome devs share that view.

Does it matter though?

Unless you're able to maintain a fork of the whole system by yourself, yes it does.

In the case of GNOME, absolutely.

GNOME devs are infamous for actively fighting users' desire for customization. They have a long history; here's[¹] an example from a couple of years ago (not sure how the situation described evolved); this [²] is an article that describes the wider point of view.

[¹] https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...

[²] https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...

I suppose Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI. Building @hellodanylo 's dream workflow isn't the mission and doesn't scale anyway.

If you want a custom desktop workflow exactly to your specification build it yourself or pay someone to build it. Expecting people with different opinions to do it for you for free will certainly be a disappointment.

>> Gnome is aimed at the Red Hat enterprise customer base. Those computers are no private systems, they are company hardware. What matters for company hardware is standardization: easy to roll out, easy to train users, which means a standardized, simple GUI.

This is largely the case:

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/gnome-desktop...

As stated in https://lwn.net/Articles/600506/: "When a project is controlled by a single company, that company's needs will almost certainly win out over anything that the wider community may want to do."

On the other hand, when a project tries to please everybody it will undoubtedly regress into a mess of options, toggles, extra buttons, have an atrocious UX and only be usable for the 'in crowd'.

The few OSS tools I know to not have a terrible UX are tools built by a single author or a small team with a coherent vision. It's definitely a place where the bazaar model of software development doesn't seem to work as wonderful as with OS kernels or development tools.

I agree that there is a balance between customization and "cleanness" in design and implementation.

However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...

https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design...

https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo...

https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...

When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision":

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910

https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...

The Gnome 3 adversity is ancient history at this point and in my opinion very much a fabricated feud to drive up news article engagement. Publishing an article with a few open bugs or a disagreeing opinion doesn't say much about the quality of the software in general. I find the latest versions of Fedora with Gnome very usable, also in comparison with Windows/macOS. I don't have a need for very specific customisations and I think the Gnome people know it's but a tiny percentage of their users that use the very exotic features.

> If you want a custom desktop workflow exactly to your specification build it yourself or pay someone to build it.

Or use a DE that allows sufficient customization.

They do, as long as you do it without expecting them to bend over backwards to accommodate your specific snowflake setup.

Ah yes... my snowflake setup where I expect to be able to paste file paths into Gtk file->open dialogs without it erroring out.

Bugs will always happen, of course, but let's not pretend that those are conscious decisions.

Generally true. But this one 100% is, and it's been a concious decision since it was introduced by the removal of the gsetting org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser location-mode. This was done intentionally by Gtk dev mclassen and he has been downright hostile about not fixing it since then. Gtk/GNOME devs do not think being able to type/paste file paths in File->Open dialogs (gtkfilechooserwidget.c) should be allowed. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/938

They didn't even acknowledge or leave the bug reports it caused until this month: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5872 despite it being introduced in 2014 and me reporting it 2 times every year since then. And there's about 0% chance of this bug being fixed despite them finally leaving the bug report there instead of closing it.

Hmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but AFAICS I am able to paste file paths into those dialogs? Steps to reproduce: copy a file path, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+V. So I guess I'm misunderstanding what behaviour you're referring to?

Yeah, that attitude is one of the things that leads me to avoid Gnome.

Additionally noting that some of the dconf keys in the article have already been depreciated in the meantime. e.g. `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme` is to be replaced with `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme`

(though even worse, some apps specifically look for the former, so you need to set the latter through the settings app, then the former through dconf anyways, for full dark theme through all apps!)

e.g. `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/gtk-theme` is to be replaced with `/org/gnome/desktop/interface/color-scheme`

That's an ominous sign of things to come --- no more themes, all you get is (some) colours to choose from. It already happened to Windows.

Theming is not a thing anymore since Gnome 3 anyways. I really regret the amount of themes you had available for Gnome in the past...

So do the developers, it seems. (I think you mean "miss"?)

Yes indeed, I always had my favorite theme from gnome-look.org

For real - no more theming Gnome?

I haven't used it for a few years, but custom themes and styles is one of the key features for a customisable desktop environment and was half the fun from using something like Gnome or KDE now that Windows makes it hard and macOS makes it impossible.

Googling shows that as recently as 2022 there are articles on using themes. Is this a very recent change?

Partially, the other reason as far as I can tell is that the method of dark/light detection was based on the theme chosen, so if you wanted to mix light and dark themes (e.g. dark terminal, light otherwise), the app had to guess which theme to load. Instead now I think its a singular theme with subsections (and additionally, a 3 state theme selection, default, prefer-light, and prefer-dark. default suggesting that apps choose what is best for them).

For tens of years now, theming has been a prohibitively difficult thing to get into regardless: I'd rather try making a cohesive theme for windows than try with GTK.

For Windows theming, the Microsoft acknowledged WindowBlinds 11 and Curtains are both working options.

https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/

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