All of Linux? Why? There's a bunch of competing desktop environments you can use instead.
I despise Windows, but even downloading 10x 100mb C++ redistributables is better than having 5x 1.5-2gb GNOME runtimes. Nobody deserves to live in a world where that's how their software is delivered, it's a travesty. Even Apple doesn't hate their users enough to do this, not on MacOS and not on iOS. They had the dignity to make actually stable APIs that software could target, so they don't have to live in this virtualized hellscape that we've built for ourselves. Everything GNOME tacks on to the desktop Linux experience makes it increasingly feel like that 4chan image macro of the GNU/car (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDEORUBWAAENKFC.jpg). At least, that's how it feels when you have to explain to someone that screenshare isn't working right now because you're "logged in to the wrong desktop session"...
This is an unfounded fear, you have placed the cart before the horse. It was much worse in the past without things like flatpak and docker. Old programs would still have the esoteric runtime requirements, except they would just break when the distro decided to stop supporting them.
As for the rest of your comment, it's not compelling to use 4chan trolling to make your case.
Not really. "In the past" we could write hermetic packaging for our software so it doesn't break, but GNOME decided not to do that (despite the fact that Hurd and Nix both provide sane jumping-off points). They chose instead to create a world where we coddle our developers with a 1.6gb thick runtime that is apparently required to run a 4mb program. That is insane, and I'm not walking it back. There are real solutions to system breakage, and history has dictated that thick runtimes literally never work out well!
I don't really care though. I haven't had software break on APT or Nix in over 5 years of usage. Last night I boot up a Flatpak and it turns out they still haven't fixed the horrible font rendering issues in GTK4. If you still have problems with your software when you're running it with multiple gigabytes of explicit dependencies actively loaded on my system, what are we even doing here? I've had more problems dealing with Flatpak than I have with any other package manager, and I've only ever tried 3 or 4 programs with the damn thing. I can't imagine how useless a system like Silverblue would feel... Thankfully though, much like Wayland, there's no real motivation to switch to Flatpak besides a couple GNOME apps, which I'm pretty sure most people don't really want anyways (a clock app that's more than 1000mb to download? it's more likely than you might think!)
> As for the rest of your comment, it's not compelling to use 4chan trolling to make your case.
That's fine, I've known that ever since I wondered why there still aren't thumbnails in GNOME's filepicker (whaddya know, looks like stopping people from using their native filepicker is the parent article today). GNOME's developers will ignore me the same as everyone else who makes suggestions for them, so there's no point in filing issues (especially since I don't use their DE anyways).
I don't really care about the emotional appeals of my argument here. This is a well-documented shortcoming, and many people on HN seem to agree that GNOME's leadership is on a power-high right now.
There is fvwm, vtwm even lxde, you know.
