[unknown]

What is said in the Video is very much correct, for most application developers it won't matter a lot

Except now you as an application developer have to make a choice to either support GNOME's way of doing things, their look, and their theming in order to make it look less foreign under GNOME or take advantage of the widgets only found in libadwaita that should have been GTK4 widgets from the start (or updates to existing widgets), or make it so your GTK4 application does not look foreign everywhere else, on every other desktop environment, and lose out on those widgets.

That. Does. Matter.

but I agree that a lot of themes are just recolors

Maybe you and I are looking at different themes, but a fair few themes are not just recolors. Yes, there are objectively similarities in variants based on some themes, however most of those aren't based on Adwaita and don't want to be from the start. For example, there are fundamental design changes between Material-design oriented themes such as Materia and Plata, more Arc inspired themes like Skeuos, macOS inspired themes, etc. whether that is margin / padding changes, window control redesigns, toggle button changes, etc. Those aren't just colors, so a recoloring API does not re-introduce those options, not to mention a recoloring API (which is a mix of application developers individually supporting recoloring, and some CSS variables) doesn't mean the theme developer is able to tailor the theme to the desktop environment.

but I don't think there are a lot of projects as Budgie which make that kind of use of Gnome Theming

The desktop environment isn't the thing that has to support it. Yes, desktop environments can make it easier by providing CSS classes for those theme developers, but there is no shortage of Cinnamon, MATE, Budgie, XFCE themes.

I think that's a risk Budgie did take basing upon Gnome

The GTK toolkit is a fundamental part of Budgie 10 and all releases before it. It is a fundamental part of Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE. It wasn't a risk that just Budgie took. It is a risk literally every single GTK-based desktop environment took.

it was basically a use of Gnome which wasn't intended by the developers

Well then that's one of the big problems, isn't it? That literally nobody got the memo, none of the desktop environments written in GTK (excluding elementary which basically hold hands with GNOME and are a proponent of this sort of locking down of control), that we suddenly shouldn't be using GTK as a basis for our desktop environments.

The argument time and time again by these libadwaita developers is that this enables GTK4 to be more generic. Except nobody wanted that to begin with. They just didn't want GNOME ripping out the carpet from underneath folks. Now everybody has to either choose to use libadwaita (which then forces adwaita) or build out their own widget libraries, which further fractures the use of graphical applications across multiple desktop environments. You have to implement your own recoloring & theming APIs because one of the lead GTK developers opted to just close their patch rather than fight with designers from GNOME and elementary. His words, not mine. You have to implement your own support for various new freedesktop standards, rather than that being part of the toolkit. You have to implement your own widgets for basic functionality that should have been in GTK4 now, like "Avatar" image, Carousels (fancy GtkStacks), "Flaps", all the programmatic preference window bits, and more.

5 days later

It's always good to see Solus grow and especially Budgie. I am a GNOME users and am very happy with the visual updates, while i don't understand the programming behind making the 2 work together I am aware of the rhetoric some have with GNOME all together. So if the Solus can advance and create I am all for it. Thank you all for all the hard work that has got us this far. Looking forward to the future efforts.

4 days later

So this was posted on the Pop OS subreddit today:

Basically, according to this, System 76 is apparently working on its own DE, written in Rust. No word on toolkit though.

Any possible synergy?

    fulmen good luck to the pop os team, and we also want to remind you of the upcoming development of Budgie on EFL and invite them to join

      fulmen Basically, according to this, System 76 is apparently working on its own DE, written in Rust. No word on toolkit though.

      I'm not seeing the rust part mentioned anywhere. I wonder if they could use the Orbital DE from Redox or if porting it to linux would be too difficult.

          synth-ruiner mmstick is a System76 employee and he mentioned it being in Rust here. Their launcher service is already written in Rust and they are gradually replacing their JavaScript-based services with Rust ones.

          fulmen Any possible synergy?

          I doubt they have any plans on switching away from GTK, so probably not.

                JoshStrobl Reaching out could still be interesting. They may share the same concerns as the Solus team.

                Also, both mmstick and jackpot51 (Michael Murphy and Jeremy Soller) have worked on OrbTK in the past so they may want to push it. I don't think it's ready for such large use yet (actually it probably isn't).

                That being said, developing a new ecosystem is not exactly easy. Doing it with them might help a bit.

                    fulmen Reaching out could still be interesting. They may share the same concerns as the Solus team.

                    Oh they definitely share some of the same concerns. That was already established an communicated in the past.

                      JoshStrobl Keep Solus Solus...running on a Thelio (System76) and nothing feels better than running with Solus. To say, follow your vision and ideas. Keep setting the bar at Solus level and others will follow 😄

                        h3o They don't seem to have a clear idea yet (note how he mentioned both mutter and kwin for example).

                        Even if the probability nothing comes of it is substantial, I would still reach out. Can't hurt.

                          We're using different technologies, different programming languages, different toolkits, and executing on a different vision of a desktop environment. There isn't much to really collaborate on. Let's not try to force things or have a bunch of comments trying to push for it, and keep things on topic. This thread has been getting a bit out of hand.

                          They're always welcome to use EFL. If they're not, then there isn't really any place for collaboration.

                          @JoshStrobl
                          just wondering, this 'non-curated' gnome version you speak of, does non-curated mean that it will include those apps that are depricated or held back because of libhandy/libadwaita etc? - i mean will we get the newest versions even if they contain these unwanted components? what about wayland?

                          ive been playing with manjaro gnome today, and even though its at gnome 40, the newer versions of gnome calendar, weather, geary, gnome-disks and so on + wayland makes the solus gnome edition start to look a bit second rate, aged and incomplete in comparison (no offence intended - you know i love solus)

                          and yes i know the reasons you're not including libhandy apps

                            Lucien_Lachance does non-curated mean that it will include those apps that are depricated or held back because of libhandy

                            We don't support libhandy.

                            Lucien_Lachance what about wayland?

                            No. Wayland is not production ready and I am not satisfied with its current state or any X11 fallbacks implemented.

                            It just means no theming changes will be made and no extensions will be shipped out-of-the-box. In other words, less "sane defaults" and more of GNOME's mess.

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                                  • Post #116
                                  • Edited

                                  JoshStrobl It just means no theming changes will be made and no extensions will be shipped out-of-the-box. In other words, less "sane defaults" and more of GNOME's mess.

                                  It's rare for distro to ship vanilla Gnome. It might sparks interest to people who want default Gnome Experience like in Fedora but afraid to use leading edge tech like Wayland or Pipewire.