Comment by easytiger
4 years ago
Suspect one of the impetuses behind such stagnation is that in reality not that many Linux users use GUIs to do file stuff as so many of us live in the command line.
4 years ago
Suspect one of the impetuses behind such stagnation is that in reality not that many Linux users use GUIs to do file stuff as so many of us live in the command line.
>> Suspect one of the impetuses behind such stagnation is that in reality not that many Linux users use GUIs to do file stuff as so many of us live in the command line.
GTK is a GUI toolkit. It is literally made for building GUI applications. The Gnome developers are building a graphical DE. Your reasoning doesn't seem to sensible to me.
It makes sense to me. Developers work on a project (and most definitely open source developers) because they feel some friction with a system. Maybe it’s a task they want to automate, or a bug in some software they need to use. But either way — there must be some pain point that is causing them friction. This is what causes some program/feature to be written or updated or fixed.
If those developers have a perfectly good work around, then there is no pain point for them. It doesn’t matter if it is a pain point for their GUI-exclusive users. If they don’t feel the pain, it won’t be prioritized.[*]
This isn’t a criticism of Gnome per se, but rather a reality of time management. There is only so much time to go around, which means features and bugs get triaged. If none of the developers feel like this is enough of a pain to get into the quagmire that is the GtkFileChooser (?) widget, then it will not be touched.
[*] That is, of course unless they are being paid to do the work. If you are volunteering, then you get to choose what work to do. If you’re getting paid, the suddenly not working on the file chooser could become a pain point for the developer (as they might not get paid). Which is the major advantage commercial OSes have over their open source competition.
GNOME devs want the users to use drag and drop instead of the file pciker, in their mind file picker is outdated and should be removed, in their mind having thumbnails there is duplicating having thumbnails in the File manager.
I am joking but I think they considered removing tabs because you should use multiple windows and ENJOY the cool Window manager their designed to switch between windows.
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the impetuses are shrouded in mystery, what with the metaphorical GTK+, and the whatever it is the gnomers are doing over there. a graphical DE it is not, but it has "graphics".
sigh
it could be so awesome if a non-schizo designer got involved. it's frustrating really. so much potential, such thick window bars.
it is so stupid.
I recall heavily using gnome 2?/KDE 2? (indeed I had to test things on them for work) Circa 2005 and indeed when Sun heavily invested in gnome to make the "java desktop" on Solaris to add accessibility etc so they could win institutional contracts. Was perfectly on the way to being great.
Then the great childish "let's rewrite everything from scratch" for both Linux DEs happened. It was a decade? before KDE was remotely viable again.
The gnome/gtk Devs focusing on zero configuration options possibly the most rubbish redesign I've ever seen.
KDE/Plasma only became viable to me in the last 24 months. Felt like a POC
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My point is that due to lack of users it doesn't get better. I've modified gnome in the past to meet my requirements
Gtk3 filechooser worked fine until 2014. Distros with gtk3 released before this have a gtk3 lib that handles pasting file paths in the file chooser and the gsettings still work. My last desktop with functional Gtk3 is Ubuntu 14.04 on Extended Service Mantainance (ESM) support. But it'll age out of support fairly soon.