Re: Fedora proposing to remove X11 Gnome

On 2025-04-28, RonB <ronb02NOSPAM@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2025-04-28, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:

On 2025-04-28 03:42, RonB wrote:

On 2025-04-27, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:

On 4/27/25 02:45, RonB wrote:

On 2025-04-26, CrudeSausage <crude@sausa.ge> wrote:

On 4/25/25 23:00, RonB wrote:

On 2025-04-26, Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:

On 2025-04-25, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 12:06:53 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
>

I understand the problems with X11, and supporting legacy, but you can't
just throw out decades of work and break it because its hard.

>
Somebody has to come along and offer to do the work. If nobody does, then
yes, the existing developers are quite justified in saying “that’s not
worth it, let’s just drop it”.

>
>
But they ARE doing work.  They're creating new stuff that lack some
degree of compatibility with the old.  This is the problem, devs work on
what the want to work on, not what people need.
>
In no one was willing to work on free software, that would make sense,
but people are working on reinventing the wheel again and again.  We
also had Mir.  TWO projects. Duplication.

>
Kind of like Ubuntu trying to force Unity on everyone because "they knew
better." Or Gnome making huge changes in Gnome 3 because they knew better
than the user what the *should* want. That's basically why Linux Mint took
off. Mate and Cinnamon were what a LOT of users wanted, not Gnome 3 or
Unity.

>
In the end, a lot of people ended up liking Gnome 3's way of doing
things, and it is at the core of a few desktop environments. As for
Unity and Mir, I liked the interface of Unity enough to seek it out in
Ubuntu's iteration of Gnome, and Mir was a step in the right direction.
Had Wayland not already have been in development, I doubt people would
have had such a negative opinion of Canonical's decision to move away
from X11.

>
Not me. Never liked either Unity or Gnome 3. I also don't like that
customization of Gnome 3 was always an afterthought, with add-ons that broke
with each release. Gnome developers seemed to have had a "take it or leave
it," mindset. It's gotten a bit better over time but, still, when you ask
about moving the top bar to the bottom, and ask why Gnome 3 doesn't a
provide a method to do that, you get snarky responses claiming this the top
position is "somehow" superior. I don't like it there, it feels
"claustrophobic" to me. I always moved the Gnome 2 bar to the bottom. Add-ins
are supposed to fix this, but usually they only work for such and such
version and are often abandoned.

>
You're right about the extensions. I abandoned the idea of using them
when I noticed that they ceased to function the moment the version of
Gnome increased.
>

As for X11 vs Wayland, not quite sure how that fits in the Gnome 3 and Unity
vs Gnome 2 debate.

>
It's not the same debate but a similar one. People hated on Mir simply
because Canonical introduced it. The company is apparently not allowed
to introduce its own technology if the community already developed
something similar. For example, Snap is hated even though it came out
before Flatpak did and is an improvement on AppImage. I'm not a fan of
Snap myself (I prefer Flatpak because of the software library and how it
updates), but I can't say that it's bad.

 
I think the reason that people don't like Snaps is because Canonical made
the Snap servers proprietary, under their control. It goes against the whole
point of Linux, that it be open source. And I don't agree that Snaps are
better than AppImages. I prefer AppImages over both Snaps and Flatpaks.

>
AppImages benefit from the fact that they can run on any distribution
with a minimum of modification, but they aren't sandboxed. For that
reason alone, Flatpak and Snap are both superior to AppImage where
security is prioritized. If I could only have one, I'd definitely go
with Flatpak though, not only because of its software selection and
security benefits but because they perform as well as native packages
(in my experience). Updating them is also an absolute breeze compared to
Snap.

>
There is a lot of talk about sandboxing. Am I weird for not giving rat's
patootie about it? In nineteen years I've never had any security issues with
Linux.
>
In my experience I've had better luck with AppImages than Flatpaks or Snaps.
But I think it all depends on how well they're made.
>

Its the security mania that those in Software are into.  If you could
potentially imagine an attack, you must protect against it.  You know,
potentially, someone could do a random drive by, shoot randomly out of
the car, and shoot you in your home.  You MUST get bullet proof glass
windows! I imagined a potential attack, now we must change everything to
protect you.  You are stupid for having regular glass!

I'm quite security conscious, and I don't care about this level of
sandboxing either.  I've been using Linux for even longer (damn!) and
never had issues either.  Maybe if I was a spy, taking my laptop int a
hostile area, where state actors would literally kill me for the
information I have, yes, perhaps it would be wise.  But most people?

You need to worry about dodgy patches (CrowdStrike), disgruntled workers
(most data leaks), losing your laptop, Russians, your USB key falling
out of your pocket, your hard drive dying, or just attaching the wrong
file to an email.