This has been an unfortunate misunderstanding from almost the very beginning and it’s been tough to distinguish from what the plans of Gnome devs were to what the users would end up with in the future. It’s a lot to say honestly and a lot of it has been said on various Gnome dev blog posts and other sources I can’t remember, which I don’t even have bookmarked (oops!), but I know Nick from The Linux Experiment did a well put together video on the topic a few months ago that explains most (not all) of what exactly is happening. Check that video out here if you like, it’s worth a watch if your a Gnome user:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdx_MwcMtnM (from Oct 2021)
He did a follow up video a few months later using Fedora and showing a bit more detail that is also worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQrIf3Rkjjs (from March 2022)
With that said, Gnome 42 is out, GTK4 is out, libadwaita is out, and ~95% of my Gnome apps are still on GTK2/GTK3. So is it fair to say I hate Gnome 42 for only 5% of something? The Gnome apps that are GTK4/libadwaita now are just a few core apps like Calculator, Clocks, Disk Analyzer, Gnome Contacts, Gnome Software, and just a few others. The rest still need work to be ported, tested, and updated and that work will be ongoing for a while.
We might see a few apps get ported to GTK4 and released in this cycle, but most of that work will otherwise be pushed to Gnome 43. Which is also the release planned for the re-coloring API, so “theme’ish” abilities will be possible. It’s possible even now to theme GTK4 apps on Gnome now, there’s at least 2 methods I’m aware of, though they are unsupported and one of them is really only meant for developer testing.
In all honesty, 6 months ago I thought this Gnome theme fiasco thing would break me and have my bags packing elsewhere. But I knew the change wasn’t going to be instant or immediate. Having been using Gnome throughout this time, it’s really just one of those things that gets blown out of proportion.
Here’s an analogy for this scenario: I look at this whole thing like a speed bump, not a road block. Now no one likes speed bumps, but they are there to help maintain safety for all. In that regard, Gnomes move is to help the developers and make things easier for them. Do I want devs to be happy working on Gnome/GTK? Of course. And for many devs these changes, while it’s like going over a speed bump, are only inconvenient for a brief moment before you’re back up to speed.
Hopefully you find some solace in that last statement, I know I do. And one thing I forgot to mention, much like Fedora being on the edge of using new technology before others (pipewire, wayland, etc), Gnome too is always progressing forward with a clear vision of theirs; consistent releases, consistently using new technologies packages and implementing the latest builds from upstream to give a streamlined experience for developers as well as users.
Other than the bugs that I’ve encountered and have mentioned previously ( here ), I would say the Gnome release if anything, annoyed me on the first day. Then a few things were fixed and/or a solution was found, so the annoyance quickly subsided. I still have two or three ongoing bugs, none are deal-breakers thankfully, but I’m hoping it gets resolved by the end of this month with Gnome 42.1 and then I won’t have to worry about anything except for the conundrum of if I want to stay on Ext4 or try out Btrfs 