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0 pointssmoldesu3y ago0 comments

> 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.

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.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

Crysstalis3y ago· 2 in thread

>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.

I am confused as to what you mean by "hermetic packaging" that doesn't also mean bundling the 1.6gb of dependencies into the program itself, either by static linking or some other similar means. Nix is also going to install the 1.6gb of dependencies if you don't already have them installed, like for example if you are a KDE user.

>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?

Font configuration issues in GTK aren't related to flatpak, that specifically would be a GTK or Pango bug. I don't think anyone said that flatpak (or any other package manager) is a solution to every bug in the packaged program and libraries that could ever possibly appear.

>I've had more problems dealing with Flatpak than I have with any other package manager

That's unfortunate, if you want to help out you should report those bugs in the individual packages and try to help fix them. There is no package manager that can do anything about bugs in the packages themselves. Ranting about it on HN is unlikely to result in any of them being fixed.

>why there still aren't thumbnails in GNOME's filepicker

It is because previously, GNOME did not have anything like the file portal, and without that any fix would result in a lot of code duplication while still being bad for other non-GNOME users of GTK. Someone is planning to work on using nautilus there: https://blogs.gnome.org/christopherdavis/2022/04/03/plans-fo...

>GNOME's developers will ignore me the same as everyone else who makes suggestions for them, so there's no point in filing issues

You can still report them and just exercise some patience, no developer has time to address every issue instantly.

>and many people on HN seem to agree that GNOME's leadership is on a power-high right now.

Now this one is just strange. What leadership? Power over who? The comment in the article here was made by one developer.

smoldesuOP3y ago

> Nix is also going to install the 1.6gb of dependencies if you don't already have them installed, like for example if you are a KDE user.

Correct. I prefer having those 1.6 gigabytes of dependencies handled with the rest of my system packages, rather than having them fragmented across separate package managers. I reckon most people would also prefer that, if given the choice.

> I don't think anyone said that flatpak (or any other package manager) is a solution to every bug in the packaged program and libraries that could ever possibly appear.

Flatpak is floated as the solution to this precise problem: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

In fact, the situation is worse than it seems: Flatpak was used to apply an esoteric GTK patch that prevented text from rendering correctly. Instead of fixing the internal issue with GTK's text rendering, their official suggestion is to just uninstall everything and use Flatpak so you can get their monkeypatches. We're coming up on a year of this issue still being unaddressed, and apparently their workaround doesn't even work anymore.

> That's unfortunate, if you want to help out you should report those bugs in the individual packages and try to help fix them

Frankly, I don't. I personally don't see Flatpak lasting very long, and I'd rather contribute to projects like the AUR or NixOS that have a longer legacy of stability and more reasonable responses to legitimate community concerns.

> It is because previously, GNOME did not have anything like the file portal, and without that any fix would result in a lot of code duplication while still being bad for other non-GNOME users of GTK.

The file portal is bullshit, and contributors like the one in the parent thread goes to show that they don't give a shit about people who don't use GNOME. Frankly, that reflects a lot of the attitude I've seen from their contributors over the years, so it makes sense.

> You can still report them and just exercise some patience, no developer has time to address every issue instantly.

I'm not waiting 23 years to put a tiny preview of a photo in my file manager. I moved to KDE as soon as libadwaita hit stable repos, I don't have the patience for GNOME to "get around to it" while working on projects like libadwaita, Wayland and Flatpak, technologies that almost nobody else in the community has a need for or cares about.

> What leadership? Power over who?

It's about patterns of behavior. GNOME's developers have been gaslighting community members and other projects for close to a decade now, to the point that I see their contribution as overall hostile to the Linux community (Linus Torvalds calling GNOME a "waste of CPU cycles" famously). Nothing they build unifies the community or takes pointers from their criticism anymore. When I try to imagine the Linux desktop without GNOME, I don't imagine catastrophe. I think everything would be fine, same as it has been for the 30-some years we used x11 without breaking basic functionality.

You're right on one account, though. Arguing about this with people online is a waste of time, I should have just left it at my opinion and walked away.

Crysstalis3y ago

>Correct. I prefer having those 1.6 gigabytes of dependencies handled with the rest of my system packages, rather than having them fragmented across separate package managers.

Well now this is different from what you said before. If you only use flatpak (or nix) for those packages, there is no fragmentation.

>I reckon most people would also prefer that, if given the choice.

I don't, I see a lot of people who have no problem with flatpak. Disk space is cheap these days.

>Flatpak is floated as the solution to this precise problem: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/3787

>Instead of fixing the internal issue with GTK's text rendering, their official suggestion is to just uninstall everything and use Flatpak so you can get their monkeypatches

No, not really. It is a workaround suggested by the reporter, specifically as a temporary means to avoid some regression. No developer is going to say that's a permanent solution.

>I personally don't see Flatpak lasting very long, and I'd rather contribute to projects like the AUR or NixOS that have a longer legacy of stability and more reasonable responses to legitimate community concerns.

That's fine, but just understand that this attitude from those who are in the position to help is the reason why known bugs go unfixed. AUR and NixOS also do not solve the problem, nor can they fix upstream concerns in the community, so you're still not helping much by expecting them to do everything.

>The file portal is bullshit

No, this is wrong. It enables the very thing you want to happen.

>and contributors like the one in the parent thread goes to show that they don't give a shit about people who don't use GNOME.

Actually, it shows the complete opposite. I really don't know how you can see anything else. The change was completely because it was causing bad breakage on KDE.

>I'm not waiting 23 years to put a tiny preview of a photo in my file manager.

That's not that bad in open source, honestly. If you really want to talk missing features, I have been waiting for even longer for KDE developers to make a viable alternative for programs like MS Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc :)

>I moved to KDE as soon as libadwaita hit stable repos

Switching desktops seems almost like a rite of passage for Linux users. There's nothing wrong with it. GNOME is not going to go out of their way to please users happy with KDE, just like KDE is not going to go out of their way to please users happy with GNOME. It is unreasonable to expect them to.

>GNOME's developers have been gaslighting community members and other projects for close to a decade now, to the point that I see their contribution as overall hostile to the Linux community (Linus Torvalds calling GNOME a "waste of CPU cycles" famously).

That is out of line in the current world. Torvalds has apparently changed his tune on that, he now uses Fedora: https://www.zdnet.com/article/look-whats-inside-linus-torval...

>Nothing they build unifies the community or takes pointers from their criticism anymore. When I try to imagine the Linux desktop without GNOME, I don't imagine catastrophe. I think everything would be fine, same as it has been for the 30-some years we used x11 without breaking basic functionality.

I am sure hardcore GNOME fans feel the same way about KDE. Actually I have heard both sides say as much, countless times over the last 20 years in fact.

>Arguing about this with people online is a waste of time, I should have just left it at my opinion and walked away.

It is not an argument unless you make it one. Remember, it takes two to tango.

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