Your Gnome hate comes in the forum 10 mins before you do Lol. more hate for Gnome than I have for KDE. They have no problems with Gnome its Ubuntu they have problems with the same as Mint no snap only Ubuntu wants snap. They just want to give users of their system better they can’t do that with Ubuntu as its old before its desktop is released who wants a outdated desktop seriously then have to put up with it for 2 years, they want to update the desktop to showcase popOS, 
Gnome hate is off topic 
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I like Gnome, but another alternative would be a positive, and System76 have done a very good job with PopOS so I’m optimistic.
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Depends on the context. For example, the question “Why make a DE to replace GNOME?” is entirely on topic here. But that means that the obvious answer to that question (“Because GNOME sucks.”) is entirely on topic, as well. In fact, that is, pretty much, the summary of the OP, can’t get any more on topic than that.
Discussing what is off topic, however, is always off topic. 
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The thread title is “alternative” 
i don’t think the gnome DE sucks (from a pragmatic user perspective), since it’s the best currently available wayland implementation. System 76 just doesn’t want to follow gnome devs vision, I get that, fair enough!
The use of extensions to patch things, that sucks!
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This is the world of FOSS. If a team has the tools, the knowledge, and time then why the hell not. More choices the better.
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Because none are perfect. Plasma is extremely close - it only needs calendar to center on taskbar. Cinnamon is very close - it needs khronkite or something similar. Gnome isn’t far - but it needs to stop using this terrible extension thing and have basic customization (an extension for hibernate?? Really??). MATE is actually fantastic and I almost don’t really have anything negative to say about it really. I forgot why I don’t like it anymore. Budgie is like a Gnome extension. Actually you have to install Gnome in entirety as a dependency. Lxqt feels incomplete. Lxde feels complete (if it were still 1997). Deepin breaks down more than a Fiat. And XFCE is perfect. Except I need setup xdottools with a delay to use the super key to open whisker menu. . . And as a kwybinder. . . And it’s just not as good as plasma. . .
Plasma imo is closest to being perfect. Runner up to Cinnamon. Slightly better implementation of kde connect and give me kronkite or zentile and I could go either way
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No you don’t
You are joking Gnome is the perfect desktop KDE is at the bottom of the list stuck at windows 7 
, Cinnamon is just an out dated gnome3 with a shell on top.
XFCE is nearly at win95 and below LXDE that was the poor mans Gnome2
Mate is a butched up Gnome2 and lost most of its features.
That brings us back to Gnome the only desktop that is not a clone of another desktop Its the official GNU desktop 
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And none will ever be.
I disagree completely about KDE. Maybe because I tested KDE 1.0 back in 1998 and find it to be a clone of the MS-Windows 95 ergonomics. Since then, every single version give the user by default a MS-Windows like interface.
Same for Cinnamon. Xfce by default? A MacOS look-alike with its “dock” on the bottom.
I used Mate during two years, and I left it because it was missing some important tools and was going nowhere in some points like weather API (which is crappy) for example.
Who uses Budgie outside of Solus? Not a lot of people I think.
Lxqt is still incomplete. Lxde? It’s a bad joke. Deepin? Just use it with its own distro, it won’t break.
If you like MS-Windows like environment, it is. I left MS-Windows back in
2006 and did not search for a poor copy.
The biggest problem here is that instead of trying to help - if possible - some solid project, developers are going to create another wheel… And waste resources in a project which will be dead within two or three years to be gentle.
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The whole point of free software is freedom, and this includes developers’ freedom to decide for themselves which free software project to support. Who are you to tell developers of free software, who are either volunteers, or paid by people voluntarily, how to spend their time their effort? It’s their time, and their effort.
How do you think innovation in free software happens? All of the current free software projects were started by someone being courageous and wise enough enough not to listen to the asinine self-proclaimed central planners of resource allocation, who told them that all resources must be directed towards existing behemoth projects, or otherwise they are wasted. If people listened to them, no new projects would ever start, because most projects are, in fact, unsuccessful. That’s just the nature of innovation, most innovations are absolute balls, but to conclude that staring a new project is a waste of resources is just asinine.
And even if it were a waste, which only time can tell, one is free to waste time watching youtube, or playing video games, or trying to troubleshoot GNOME extensions instead of using a normal DE… So why shouldn’t one be free to “waste” time contributing to a free software project of one’s own choice?
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It is almost like collaboration is a dirty word.
All those disgruntled with Gnome and gtk, combined with those uncertain and untrusting of future Qt licensing, should get together and develop an alternative framework that is both flexible and truly FOSS.
New DEs can then be developed on top of this.
Instead there are a thousand different development splinters that will never get finished and die a lonely, inevitable death.
The ironic thing is any of these new DEs see the light of day they will probably be distro specific by design and developers’ attitudes to other distros will most likely be Gnome-like in its inflexibility.
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It is. Some (or most?) free software developers are getteing a paranoid view of freedom. Which leds to endless and useless forks, wasted resources.
In France, there is a proverb: “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” which can be translated by: “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Developers do not think about end users whishes. They looks like a bunch of masturbating monkeys (like Linus Torvalds described OpenBSD developers about security) thinking only about writing code.
This leads to incomplete software, half-baked one sometimes and give a bad reputation to all free software world.
And which will look as half-baked for months or years because of missing components, like a native text editor for example. Yes, LXQt, I’m speaking of you.
The same process since 1983…
But Gnome is distribution neutral. You can run it on Gentoo, Archlinux, LFS, Debian, etc.
This is true free software but proposed by developers which have plans to follow. Not the half baked desktop environment going nowhere.
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Once again, freedom is used to justify useless and wasting resources forks. Remember GoneMe back in 2004? Or the dozens of “systemd-free distributions” which 75% of them dead?
How useful it was!
The good old logorrhea about innovation. What works is backed by a structure, not a bunch of pizza eaters belching their coke in front of a screen half in the dark.
Today is November 9th, 2021. Not November 9th, 2001. There is no need for a new desktop. There is a need for better finished softwares.
Developers think they are the master of our world. It is false.
They are the new skilled workers at the orders of the companies or foundations that run the projects that WORK and are usable: Gnome, KDE, Firefox, LibreOffice.
So, please, calm down. Developers have to listen to users whishes. Without users, developers are coding masturbating monkeys going nowhere.
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So what? Who cares about some guy on the internet and his wishes?
No, I’m pretty sure they are free to tell their end users to fsck off. This happens all the time.
What you are advocating is slavery. Most of the developers work on free software projects because they feel like doing it – they believe in the project or they consider contributing to it fun, or someone pays them to do it (in which case, it is his wishes that are considered)… Whatever their motives are, they certainly do not do it because of some imaginary obligation towards end users, or even more comically, towards judgemental non-users who think that what they do is a waste of time and effort, unless it is fulfilment of their wishes.
If the end user wants his wishes heard and acknowledged, he can either contribute to the project by writing code himself, or he can hire a more competent developer to do that job.
Or he can ask for a full refund.
Take Inkscape for example. Users wanted to have multi-page PDF support on Inkscape for about a decade now. Everyone and their mother whined about it, but developers simply didn’t feel like implementing it. Finally, a resourceful man named Martin Owens decided that he will implement it, but only if he is paid. This had two results: the next big release of Inkscape will probably support multi-page PDFs, and people who whine about their wishes but do not feel like contributing are finally silenced.
Well, you can always use windoze or mac. Plenty of structure there. Personally, I really like eating pizza in darkness.
Yes there is. There, my opinion on this is at least as valuable as yours (but in reality, probably more).
But who cares about anyone’s opinion on this? If someone feels like their time and effort is best spent making a new DE, there is nothing you can do about it, except whine.
Also, I’m pretty sure that back in 2001, there were also people saying “iT’S tEh CuRrEnT yEAr”. In the current year, that still doesn’t work as an argument…
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This a bit of a “déjà vu” moment.
Some time ago I posted about a new Arch-based distro CyberOS.
In the same vein, it was judged to be unnecessary, superfluous, contributing to more fragmentation, waste of time and resources etc…
And to top it all off, it was prophesied to be death within six months!
I can’t find my way back to that thread now. If I rember correctly, it was closed due to some “heated” debate among the members of the community and eventually unlisted.
However I found the video that I posted back then.
It was published exactly six months ago 
I re-visited the CyberOS website. The project seems to be still around and kicking 
So much for that prophecy
But I see the time-frame has changed this time
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Such prophecies are worthless. There is never a shortage of naysayers, and unfortunately, they tend to be right. More than 99% of all new projects fail. That’s just how things are, most ideas are stupid and they fail. And most good ideas happen under bad circumstances, and also fail.
However, what is even more stupid is to listen to naysayers and to give up before even starting. Every successful project was also once a new project with uncertain future, with naysayers like vultures on every tree.
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Exactly! I remember that similar argument was put forward back then as well. Vehemently rejected by the compelling argument that “It is as simple as that!” 
A company that does not listen to its customer feedback is dead. It’s the same for software.
Without a minimum of listening and customer feedback, software dies for lack of users.
So, they are the best example of idiots with power in their hands.
No. Just real freedom. The one which finishes when other people ones begin.
The good old rotten argument that was already rotten in 2001.
Successful free software are not powered by pizza eaters but by foundation or enterprise. Facts are stubborn (Lenin).
Once again, facts are stubborn. Where are professional quality software that can say “shut up” to Photoshop? InDesign? Nowhere.
Because of the adolescent and immature mentality of a part of the developers of the free world.
You’re blocked in 2001, technically speaking. Or is it because you think end user are completely dumb?
I think that Richard Stallman said “it would be a pity if free software only frees the sofware”. We are there. Tons of - sometimes half baked - software but no users.
What’s the point here?
A decade? Wow… What a victory for free software world!
It is not because you have a driving license that you can fix your car. It is the same thing here.
Another classic and rotten argument.
- Gnome is backed by Red Hat
- LibreOffice? Document Foundation
- Mozilla Firefox? Mozilla Foundation
- Chromium? Google
- KDE? KDE ev, some kind of german like foundation
Do I have to continue?
If reality means end users = dumb people.
Let’s them WASTE resources for a project that will be dead within 2 years.
I was using linux in 2001. There were the same kind of rotten argument as the one you put it.
Developers are not the gods of our digital area. There are pawns in the hand of big corporations. After all, github is now a MS service. Cups - until it was needly forked for once - was an Apple service.
So, just open your eyes on facts.
Actually I think many projects start not out of altruism but out of pure personal interest: someone hates a piece of software or lacks any software for what he needs and decides he makes his own. He is a nice guy and shares the thing with the world but in the end he just needs his own need taken care of. I had to create some Windows Phone apps (back in the day when Windows Phone was a thing) for my own needs and even an Android app for this very reason. Yes, I uploaded them on their respective stores, but my goal was not of taking over a certain share of a market. Yes, it felt nice that people are using those apps, and I was glad they are useful, also I had some requests for changes, but I only obliged because they made sense to me.
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Sure, but that is not in contradiction with anything I have said.
This is also the case for Cosmic. PopOS devs hate how the GNOME Project does not listen to its users so they decided to make their own DE. With blackjack and hookers 
Good for them, I say!
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