Do we need another desktop environment? There's already KDE Plasma, GNOME Shell, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon and the list goes on for a while. System76 at least seem to think another is needed, one they control.
The news tip comes courtesy of System76 engineer Michael Murphy, who mentioned on Reddit their plans for it to be "its own desktop" and that it won't be based on GNOME like their most recent attempt with Cosmic but instead "it is its own thing written in Rust".
It's not a whole lot to go on right now but interesting regardless, because System76 are one of the biggest vendors of Linux hardware and they're the maker of their own Pop!_OS distribution based on Ubuntu. So they already supply the hardware, the distribution and later the desktop too. This will put them in quite a unique position, since they will have even more room to fully tailor the experience for their customers.
Pictured - the current Cosmic desktop in Pop!_OS
Not a huge surprise either, considering if you follow the System76 crew closely, you might have seen some friction between System76 engineers and GNOME recently with things like theming and customization. Seems there's some deeper technical problems that lead to this decision though.
Part of the problem appears to be the extensions system in GNOME, which many users of GNOME will know how twitchy it can be and how extensions often break with new GNOME releases. Discussing this Murphy mentioned "What are you expecting us to do? We have a desktop environment that is a collection of GNOME Shell extensions which break every GNOME Shell release. Either we move towards maintaining tens of thousands of lines of monkey patches, or we do it the right way and make the next step a fully fledged desktop environment equal to GNOME Shell.".
Murphy continued explaining some of the reasoning behind the decision, in reply to a user asking about what they plan to do versus GNOME to which Murphy replied "Significantly better stability over GNOME Shell, with much less resource usage, and more configurable out of the box. Achieving a modern software architecture for the desktop in Rust.".
What do you think to this? Let us know in the comments.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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shit i cant believe i forgot to press send im my previous comment, i only sent it today >.>Check again. You already sent the same message two days ago. :)
thanks, lets pretend that never hapened...
1 Likes, Who?
Kuduzkehpan Nov 12, 2021
First things first Kde has everything that anykind of users wants. we just need to learn kde. İt has good development power behind itself. Kde has many dedicated programmers (which has passion and some of them has blogs about kde and related stuff)
KDE is
*Low resource hangry
*Customisation Monster
*Eye candy
*Decently Stable
*Speedy (compared to desktops while effects are fully working)
*Has alot of tools as smart device integration to browser extensions and so on.
Still i dont get why Linux ecosystem isn't just gather around Standarts. So many diversity so many efficiency loss resource loss about dozens of apps which does exactly same thing over other.
well and system76 is on the same train.
We need an organisation for Linux Standarts. And Unification.
Beyond these i will watch if that decision of pop_os become a nightmare or a dream.
its hard task and goodluck guys.
KDE is
*Low resource hangry
*Customisation Monster
*Eye candy
*Decently Stable
*Speedy (compared to desktops while effects are fully working)
*Has alot of tools as smart device integration to browser extensions and so on.
Still i dont get why Linux ecosystem isn't just gather around Standarts. So many diversity so many efficiency loss resource loss about dozens of apps which does exactly same thing over other.
well and system76 is on the same train.
We need an organisation for Linux Standarts. And Unification.
Beyond these i will watch if that decision of pop_os become a nightmare or a dream.
its hard task and goodluck guys.
0 Likes
Interesting. This goes beyond pretty much any other Linuxy company, right? Red Hat doesn't make hardware or a DE. KDE makes a Ubuntu spinoff OS but no hardware. Hm... 
Sounds cool if they have good management and stick to their values.
Sounds cool if they have good management and stick to their values.
0 Likes
thanks, lets pretend that never hapened...What do you mean? I didn't see anything. ;)
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Also, edit to query:
I want a slick, highly usable, modern DE, that preferably doesn't look like Windows. Gnome is the only decent contender at the moment, but it's not great.
Only contender? You're joking, right!? KDE is superb, XFCE was excellent last I tried. Budgie is slick as hell. Cinnamon? Mate? We're tripping over DE's that absolutely rock - functional, beautiful, varied desktops that only look as much like Windows as you actually want.
Cinnamon and Mate are very Windows centric, and Mate is basically a revamp of Metacity and Gnome 2 which I'm very happy to leave behind. XFCE is archaic but good on older computers. Budgie is better, but apart from Solus there isn't a distro that centres around it (I have used Solus and it's great but not polished enough). I am looking at KDE right now as the only alternative, but it's always had too much bling and too many settings, leading to rapid breakage. But I am going to try it again. There are very good reasons why PopOs and Ubuntu come with Gnome by default.
Last edited by drmoth on 14 November 2021 at 9:05 am UTC
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XFCE is archaic but good on older computers.Bah humbug! Xfce is excellent on any computer. :P
But seriously. No DE fits everyone's tastes and preferences, and that's pretty much all it comes down to. Pretending like there's one workflow to rule them all is just foolish. I never could get used to either KDE or Gnome, but I won't even bother analysing the reasons.
I mean, arguing about design is a fun and entertaining pastime for the whole community, but in the end, I love the fact that we've got choice. People can scream about "fragmentation" or whatever as much as they want, but I think they're not thinking it through.
If gaining market share means Linux should be more like the competition and less like Linux, meaning something like an open source Windows or Mac clone, we'd lose what allowed Linux to conquer the world everywhere outside of the Desktop. But fortunately there's nobody with the authority to make this happen anyway. Gotta love FOSS.
Last edited by tuubi on 14 November 2021 at 11:02 am UTC
0 Likes
I am looking at KDE right now as the only alternative, but it's always had too much bling and too many settings, leading to rapid breakage.
There's that weird assertion again - changing options somehow "breaks" your system. What on EARTH are you doing to break your DE??? I've been using Linux daily since 2004 and tinkered with nearly every DE out there and with the exception of some early ccsm plug-ins, I've NEVER managed to break a DE by playing about with its options. Unless you count actively trying to break it. I guess you could do some really funky things with fonts? External themes, maybe? Languages?
How do you break a DE. Goddam.
1 Likes, Who?
I am looking at KDE right now as the only alternative, but it's always had too much bling and too many settings, leading to rapid breakage.
There's that weird assertion again - changing options somehow "breaks" your system. What on EARTH are you doing to break your DE??? I've been using Linux daily since 2004 and tinkered with nearly every DE out there and with the exception of some early ccsm plug-ins, I've NEVER managed to break a DE by playing about with its options. Unless you count actively trying to break it. I guess you could do some really funky things with fonts? External themes, maybe? Languages?
How do you break a DE. Goddam.
Do I really have to spell it out for you? This is from a 2 sec google search
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=122881
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/broken-plasma-theme/66755
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/p2nlf5/broken_theme_or_something_else/
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=244988
Gnome breaks as well. Of course I'm talking about VISUAL breakage, not necessarily functional breakage, although that can happen too, especially with Gnome extensions.
I'm looking forward to trying KDE, my past experiences weren't great but that was a long time ago.
0 Likes
XFCE is archaic but good on older computers.Bah humbug! Xfce is excellent on any computer. :P
But seriously. No DE fits everyone's tastes and preferences, and that's pretty much all it comes down to. Pretending like there's one workflow to rule them all is just foolish. I never could get used to either KDE or Gnome, but I won't even bother analysing the reasons.
I mean, arguing about design is a fun and entertaining pastime for the whole community, but in the end, I love the fact that we've got choice. People can scream about "fragmentation" or whatever as much as they want, but I think they're not thinking it through.
If gaining market share means Linux should be more like the competition and less like Linux, meaning something like an open source Windows or Mac clone, we'd lose what allowed Linux to conquer the world everywhere outside of the Desktop. But fortunately there's nobody with the authority to make this happen anyway. Gotta love FOSS.
I totally agree with you. I'm not advocating for one true DE, I'm just personally not happy with what's out there, which is why I'm looking forward to seeing what System76 produces. I love the diversity of DE's, although I wish there were less bugs in general, which is a result of fragmentation. As Linux grows its user base, that may prove to be less of a problem though. In the short term, I'm going to give KDE a spin.
0 Likes
Do I really have to spell it out for you?
Yes? Because I've never experienced any breakage?
You listed four issues from your 2 minute search, three of which are unofficial theme issues and one appears to be a broken Manjaro install. Maybe KDE has some quality issues on the "Get New Themes" site, but I have about 20 themes installed and as I say... never experienced an issue. As for Manjaro, I had lots of issues with it, but KDE ran flawlessly, so presumably that near-two year old bug you referenced has been addressed.
I'm trying to decipher the weird language people employ when they have (often misplaced) preconceptions about things. It's frustrating to hear generalised, unconstructive feedback on anything ("it's clunky", "it's bloated", "it breaks") - but it's even more frustrating if/when you discover it's entirely unjustified.
As for Gnome, btw, I've never had it "break" either (visually or otherwise). The only problem I have with Gnome is that extensions frequently refuse to install. That's not "breakage" in my book, just a maintenance issue (and sometimes a dependency issue). It could use more polish, for sure.
0 Likes
I think I will be more interested in what Solus devs can make out of using efl for Budgie in future than Cosmic being yet another GTK+ Desktop. I have no issues with GTK, but I think there are plenty goot GTK desktops to choose from for my preferences already.
I'd use Budgie, but since it seems to inherit the input issues of gnome (having a mouse like naga having a second keyboard input makes it freeze noticable using the mouse-keys) makes it impossible to play on anything on top of the gnome stack for me. So I use KDE for now, but I am looking forward to leave it behind one day. They move fast, but tend to break stuff I reall use (as USB connections to Android devices).
Rust is a good choice, and GUI toolkit written in Rust with a desktop to it would be interesting. But creating a toolkit like Qt, GTK or EFL takes years, in comparison a desktop shell is a lot less work.
I'd use Budgie, but since it seems to inherit the input issues of gnome (having a mouse like naga having a second keyboard input makes it freeze noticable using the mouse-keys) makes it impossible to play on anything on top of the gnome stack for me. So I use KDE for now, but I am looking forward to leave it behind one day. They move fast, but tend to break stuff I reall use (as USB connections to Android devices).
Rust is a good choice, and GUI toolkit written in Rust with a desktop to it would be interesting. But creating a toolkit like Qt, GTK or EFL takes years, in comparison a desktop shell is a lot less work.
0 Likes
Mountain Man Dec 12, 2021
I want a slick, highly usable, modern DE, that preferably doesn't look like Windows. Gnome is the only decent contender at the moment, but it's not great. Canonical's Unity, once the bugs were fixed, was actually really good. We need something like this again.KDE says hi.
0 Likes
Mountain Man Dec 12, 2021
Agreed. I've never had a desktop environment just suddenly break on me for no reason. I've been using KDE for over a decade, and it has always just worked.Do I really have to spell it out for you?
Yes? Because I've never experienced any breakage?
You listed four issues from your 2 minute search, three of which are unofficial theme issues and one appears to be a broken Manjaro install. Maybe KDE has some quality issues on the "Get New Themes" site, but I have about 20 themes installed and as I say... never experienced an issue. As for Manjaro, I had lots of issues with it, but KDE ran flawlessly, so presumably that near-two year old bug you referenced has been addressed.
I'm trying to decipher the weird language people employ when they have (often misplaced) preconceptions about things. It's frustrating to hear generalised, unconstructive feedback on anything ("it's clunky", "it's bloated", "it breaks") - but it's even more frustrating if/when you discover it's entirely unjustified.
As for Gnome, btw, I've never had it "break" either (visually or otherwise). The only problem I have with Gnome is that extensions frequently refuse to install. That's not "breakage" in my book, just a maintenance issue (and sometimes a dependency issue). It could use more polish, for sure.
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