• [deleted]

  • Post #85

So, to my understanding Solus will ship vanilla GNOME on Gnome Edition ? I am interested in it. As a casual user, I like how Adwaita looks and its Icons looks carefully crafted.

    Will the upgrade to the alternative eco system go smooth or you recommend re-install?

      talbergor Well there is two ways of looking at the alternative ecosystem:

      1. Shipping non-GNOME applications instead of GNOME applications on ISOs out-of-the-box.
      2. An EFL-based Budgie with specific applications tailored to Budgie, primarily a dedicated control center.

      In the case of #1, this does not affect existing users. We do not make it a habit of changing people's defaults through packaging mechanisms (like package replacing), though sometimes it is necessary for the sustainability of that specific experience (for example, changing from Plata to Materia GTK Theme for Solus GNOME Edition). A re-install is overkill, as we are just talking about applications. The simple removal of an application and installation of the alternative is generally sufficient, and can be done at any point by the user, not just when we ship something in an ISO. Just as how you can choose between different browsers based on what you opt to install, uninstall, and simply use, the same could be said for the applications that would ship OOTB on the main Solus image and possibly Solus GNOME Edition.

      In the case of #2, this would be delivered as a normal update when the time comes. The budgie-desktop package would get updated and its control center / settings application would be installed by making it a runtime dependency of a branding package that is already on the system.

        Lucien_Lachance Video wasn't terrible though I do wish there was a broader list of sources rather than basically: 1) me as a single sentence from literally the entire blog post 2) elementary devs which are pro-libadwaita/libhandy 3) a developer literally paid to work on GNOME 4) someone that has historically been contracted to port various GNOME apps to libhandy. 5) Yaru developer, where Yaru is already based on Adwaita so it wouldn't be affected to begin with. No words from the Plasma folks on how this will actually hurt the work they've done for years on making GTK applications feel as good as possible under KDE. Nothing from other desktop vendors (Pop, MATE, XFCE, etc.)

          [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 😄