To quote Alice Mikhaylenko:
To quote Frank Chimero: “People ignore design that ignores people.”
This is either mean:
- Gnome does a very good job or
- Why MATE stagnated, because supposedly MATE is “what people want”. Apparently not… or
- Critique to every r/unixporn post out there whom the uploader would think that they did better than everyone else in term of UX-ing.
Good points.
Sadly I am sort of “forced” to use Gnome because it is the only DE that allows me to easily switch between 60hz and 120hz, even on wayland.
Maybe plasma 6 will fix it, or maybe there is a different workaround for my problem. Legion laptops moment
2 Likes
They’ll come sooner than later. KDE is lucky to have Valve backing it. It will good for linux gamers in general.
I am personally excited for Valve to push improvement on upstream KDE.
This is more of a me issue than KDE.
The edid I have sort of creates 2 60hz profiles for the screen. One is the correct refresh rate that bugs my screen and the other is the false one.
It’s a VRR issue 100% and I hope kde fixes it so I can move to it.
The post on Gnome Discourse is already done!
1 Like
I think Emmanuele Bassi answer your critique correctly:
In practice, what you’re asking is:“I want volunteers to work on what I like, not on what they like”, and that has never worked in the history of the free and open source software movement.
If you want to influence GNOME, then I strongly encourage you to join the effort and start contributing to the project.
– E. Bassi
Daddy Bassi never miss.
2 Likes
While I too found that first sentence to be completely fair, I think that the second one is… well, bullshit.
GNOME is notorious for blocking contributions and especially ones that try to influence the project and express a change of direction…
Furthermore,
GNOME is not a top-down hierarchical structure with a management allocating resources and laying out timelines and goals. GNOME is a (somewhat loose) aggregation of volunteers working on a collection of free software projects.
I don’t think that it is a secret that many of those volunteers are being employed by players like RedHat to spend company time on the development of projects like GNOME or FreeDesktop.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying the fact that happens is wrong.
The fact they get paid for that work that benefits everyone is fantastic in general for FOSS developers!!
All I’m saying is that the there are definitely other factors that steer the project by influencing resources, setting goals and deadlines and the idea that someone can simply “actively contribute to steer the project in ways they see fit” is wildly false (with the exception of forking)…
I mean can you blame them?
GNOME literally receive grant from group that want them to create more accessibility features, and Felix Hacker informed us about it each week about how they literally work for that specific feature because of the grant.
His second point is not completely false. Of course one person can’t steer a direction of a project maintained and developed by 10 people. Especially 9 out of 10 of these people bankrolled by RedHat.
But it can happen. I mean if OP re-wrote the entire, say, gedit program into modern gtk4 with attention to details, properly designed, with decent accessibility features, they (as in the developer/maintainer and user) probably will listen to them.
But it is simple correct that we all need to try to contribute on projects, you may need to follow a learning curve on how to get into this, but simple try it first.
Same counts for this little project called EndeavourOS 
There is always the misconception that you have to know 20 programming languages and be a professor of extraterrestrial ores to be able to help.
There is always something that is helpful, even if it is just to inform you about a usage problem. What you should never forget is that these projects are done by people who are only paid very moderately or not at all, so we are happy about any help and even a little positive feedback can save the day and motivate us to keep going.
Some days we are ruff in the head may because our free time is eaten up by resolving issues …
In the end you will find something where you can help.
Just don’t be put off if a developer comes along a bit rough, the next day it can look completely different.
Or someone else will respond better to you.
Simple try to help if you like a project, keep on doing it … ask what you can do different, or how to do it at all… you will find friendly people everywhere willing to help and happy to get feedback.
5 Likes
No. That is why I thought it was important to state that I think investment in FOSS is fantastic!
I just thought it was an inaccurate description, regardless if it was intentional (/misleading) or unintentional.
This is a very unfortunate example 
There was a gedit maintainer that had issues with the team and at some point even requested for the project to be removed from GNOME (which I don’t find reasonable, I’m just stating that as an example of an individual highly invested in a project with very little power of steering it).
1 Like
That was entertaining reading.
Not sure who is this ghost account, is it Sebastien WIlmet himself? or somebody else?
In any case that is a good test of principle for GNOME developer.
Like somebody there said, you have the autonomy to stop working as maintainer or fork it. And as somebody in there stated, it’s not “his” project. 
I totally get where you are coming from but I still believe that one person can steer the project, but it’s improbable. The example you’ve given me is good, however it’s not really comparable to what I’ve given previously, the post was basically thought experiment.
ps.
also, of course daddy bassi clapped back:
GNOME applications—especially ones considered “core” applications—are not developed in a vacuum; they are not a personal fiefdom of the current maintainer. Maintainers are supposed to collaborate with other teams—release team, design team, accessibility team, localisation teams—and communicate this kind of changes in direction in advance, and possibly have a conversation about them. Everyone that isn’t you and doesn’t follow the gedit commit log closely was completely blindsided by your changes; additionally, you did not communicate with the release team before bumping dependencies outside the SDK.
I absolutely agree with that and made sure to say his stance wasn’t really reasonable in my opinion either (maybe if he was the original creator/owner of the project it would be? But I have no knowledge of the specifics).
My understanding of your example was that if someone ports X project from gtk3 to gtk4 while following the GNOME design guidelines and the general project philosophy and direction, then that work would be welcomed by the GNOME Team.
I don’t think anyone reasonable would argue with that, and I too completely agree with that sentiment.
My main point was around change/influence of GNOME’s direction which seemed to be what Bassi was talking about in his post (or maybe I misunderstood?).
Edit:
Oh I’m glad you brought that up! 
Now see my previous quoted point in context:
So, there are releases (scheduling/timelines), and there are goals (design team, localization, accessibility).
No, maybe I am the one who misunderstood lol.
Thanks for the explanations, though!
He can brag, since he knows nobody has the power, humanly or financially, to challenge them.
Such is the way of popular Free Software project. I say it’s better than nothing. GNOME is doing alright.