The Linux Desktop Sucks

For over 13 years Wayland has been around as a secure replacement to X11. Wayland isolates windows from eachother so that no window can access another window, but X11 doesn't have this. Even today most desktop environments and window managers don't even support Wayland which means we have to use X11 and let our browser spy on our text editor, terminal emulator, password manager, and literally every other program with a window. The only desktops that support wayland are GNOME and KDE Plasma (also sway, which is a replacement for i3), both of which are bloated and slow. GNOME is the worst because it uses the cancerous client-side decorations (CSDs) by default and enforces these on all windows. CSDs suck because they add soykaf to titlebars like a search bar and other navigation, and the titlebars are massive. Seriously, the titlebars on programs that use client-side decorations is probably twice as large as programs that use server-side decorations. What really is like kicking dead whales down the beach is that more and more programs are switching to CSDs including Xfce and Zim. GNOME doesn't even support themes by default (you have to install extensions) and has integration with big tech Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. There are basically no settings to configure the desktop (no option to show seconds in the clock along with other things that basically every other desktop environment and window manager has). KDE Plasma is not much better. At least Qt allows for more theming and doesn't use the cancerous CSDs, but most graphical programs don't even use Qt, but the abomination known as GTK. I feel like at some point GTK, GNOME, and Wayland will become one, and when that happens, that'll be the end of virtually every single desktop environment that isn't GNOME. I want a traditional desktop like Windows 95/98/2000 with only server-side decorations, but this isn't even possible anymore without losing security because all the good DEs and window managers (LXDE, LXQt, Trinity, cwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, Openbox, and Windowmaker) don't even support wayland. Do people just not give a soykaf about their desktops anymore? Do they want GNOME to decide what their desktop looks like and how they use it?

Here's hoping that new 'Cosmic' desktop that'll eventually be programmed in rust goes well. Yeah, the Linux desktop isn't in a great place at the moment, Who knows, recent forays (e.g. system76 and Valve) might begin to improve the situation somewhat.

>>55169 >Do they want GNOME to decide what their desktop looks like and how they use it? Yes, actually. You need to understand that you are a tiny minority within a tiny minority. Even of the people who use Linux on the desktop -- which is not many -- even fewer of them actually engage in the sort of ricing that is allowed by the window managers you listed. Most don't even install a theme other than the one(s) their distribution/desktop environment provides. The fact of the matter is, normal people don't want settings. What it comes down to is that this is all YOUR opinion, and it's not an opinion that the majority of computer users hold themselves. In fact, I would be more willing to agree with the idea that "the Linux desktop is like kicking dead whales down the beach" because it allows for too MUCH customization. >Do people just not give a soykaf about their desktops anymore? You're implying they ever gave a soykaf about them. Do you think that people from the Windows 95/98/2000 era used those desktops because they liked them? They used them because that was what's available, and clearly that was a good design strategy, because even today people try to emulate it. Opinionization -- providing a unified front -- is absolutely essential in order to have a useful and integrated desktop. You are an edge case among edge cases. If you want a certain desktop experience, make it yourself.

>>55169 Why don’t you write a better one? It’s not that hard really. Write an waylaid compositor with wlroots; Pick good generic applications like terminal, file manager and calculator; Write a few applications of there isn’t a good generic option; Package it for distribution, or better yet, make it easily packageable. It doesn’t need to be in C. There are many suitable languages like: Scheme, Common Lisp, Nim, Crystal, Rust, Vala, Zig, Hare, etc.

>>55190 I have zero programming experience, but a desktop similar to IceWM, LXDE, or SerenityOS (should have been a linux desktop environment instead of a full operating system with no ISOs available) which enforces server-side decorations, supports Wayland, and is written in Rust (or another memory-safe language) would be amazing. LeftWM is written in Rust but it doesn't support Wayland (though it is planned), but I don't know of any good stacking WMs like IceWM with that classic windows feel.

>>55206 It's not that hard. Dew Devault the creator of Sway has tutorials and examples on how to it. Programming isn't hard either, just pick a language and read a tutorial. Nim is nice. There is also wayfire and taiwins that you can use as examples.

I'm beginning to think this post is an implicit attempt to wage slave MATE...

https://github.com/labwc/labwc openbox for wayland

>>55169 CSD takes less vertical space than regular title bar + menu, less than title bar + big ass buttons, less than new Mozilla tabs and less than title bar in Foliate ebook reader. Regular titlebars make no sense when there's always a status bar on top of display, and windows are identifiable by their content already. Though they still could be smaller. Apparently Gnome devs are too pussy to copy Mac OS outright, Apple team is literally the only one in the world that knows how to do GUI design at this point. You need to install Gnome-Tweaks for [extra GUI settings] including themes (freetardism, hey-o). Additionally, there's Adwaita-based theme to shrink CSD bar: https://github.com/ManFridayy/NewAdwaita-slim I haven't even mentioned how you're supposed to install Gnome extensions "properly". Through a web browser and special addon.

the fact that X11 is insecure and cannot display two mutually untrusting GUIs is supposed to hint you to the fact that linux as a whole is obsolete unfixable garbage and you are meant to move onto a new OS and yes we knew this over 12 years ago

>>55456 >linux as a whole is obsolete unfixable garbage and you are meant to move onto a new OS This. Nobody should use Linux or desktops in general. Stick with iOS or GrapheneOS. >we knew this over 12 years ago Yet lots of newglitterboys still don't understand this. We should be telling them to stay away from Linux and stick to the mainstream operating systems.

>>55169 >I feel like at some point GTK, GNOME, and Wayland will become one Wayland's just a protocol, and wlroots has been keeping up. Hell, so has swc if you don't use nvidia.

>>55466 >Nobody should use Linux or desktops in general This. General computing was a mistake. Stick with mechanical calculators and graph paper.

>let our browser spy on our [...] password manager This isn't going to leak your passwords. >The only desktops that support wayland are GNOME and KDE Plasma (also sway, which is a replacement for i3) There are others. Even if you don't count other wlroots compositors of which there are many, weston exists. KWinFT also exists, which is in a weird spot. I'm not sure what's going on with that whole project really, or its relation to KDE in general. >CSD There's enough that's been said about this that I won't bother going into the debate. Currently the status is that there's a protocol to negotiate whether a program uses CSD or not. e.g. mpv will draw simple CSD on Gnome, but not on sway, since sway prefers SSD. As for xfce, there's libxfceui-nocsd available, which is what it sounds like, and ABI compatible. >GNOME It's well known gnome mainly care about their branding. I don't really care about gnome not being customisable, not everything has to be. The problem is when they start affecting things outside of their DE. As far as wayland goes they're not helpful to standardisation efforts, which you can read about in the various mailing list and gitlab arguments that go on. >KDE >Qt allows for more theming Not really, it's about the same kind of stuff you can do with gtk themes. >but most graphical programs don't even use Qt, but the abomination known as GTK What's specifically wrong with GTK that's not wrong with Qt? They seems to mostly have the same problems. >I feel like at some point GTK, GNOME, and Wayland will become one, and when that happens, that'll be the end of virtually every single desktop environment that isn't GNOME. That doesn't really make sense, or follow from anything you said above. >I want a traditional desktop like Windows 95/98/2000 with only server-side decorations Cinnamon, xfce, etc, are like this. >but this isn't even possible anymore without losing security Losing security compared to what? It's not like just being wayland makes a system more secure either, it just provides an architecture which *can* be secure, rather than one that can't be secured even if you tried. You still have to actually do it though. As for those window managers you listed, many have equivalents or replacement compositors. Hikari, wayfire, etc. It's not trivial to add wayland support to something that literally just uses a couple of X11 apis. The reason it makes sense for DEs is that they do a lot more than that. >Do people just not give a soykaf about their desktops anymore? Who's people? Anyway, you can get a feel for the state of wayland in terms of the decision process by yourself by reading discussion threads, keeping track of various projects, lurking the right IRC channels, etc. Generally, things move quite slowly, since there aren't hundreds of people working on it full time, and it requires a lot of collaboration from people and projects who want different things. It's also important to remember that very little is inherent about wayland.

>>55475 no, linux was a mistake. stick to actual real programming languages and structured data types instead of hurr durr everything text where text is defined as something something ascii, latin-1 next week, utf8-the week after, unicode 12 the next day, and then unicode 14 and so on, together with the corresponding vulns that are created when you switch out the charset on unsuspecting programs

>>55169 I hate Gnome but I love GTK. GTK is everywhere and just works. There are billions of themes for it. I don't care what happens to the Gnome desktop, but someone needs to save GTK from the evil Gnome devs.

>>55478 Versions of unicode aren't different text encodings. None of wayland is a text based interface, it's not "unixy" in any way really. You could write a wayland server and client on any OS. The only Unix-ism I can think of that's part of the wire protocol is that strings are null terminated. Those things also don't matter for most desktop programs either. Just because something is installed on the same computer as some software you don't like, doesn't mean it's part of that OS philosophy. If cross platform things can exist, then the fact they're running on a particular platform isn't really meaningful. For one, linux has very little to do with unix. It has some posix APIs, but mostly these are just wrappers around what's actually useful to expose. Linux provides access to hardware, and only incedentally provides posix APIs. (io_uring isn't "unix", for example. In fact, not having something equivalent to io_uring was a common complaint about unix, but here we are, eventually) If you think of these APIs as a compatability layer, how does your judgement of the software change? The things which constitute inherent unix legacy are small and don't really matter much. If you think text-based pipelines are bad, you don't have to use them. You sound like you're just parroting something. I'm not sure what. >>55488 >someone needs to save GTK from the evil Gnome devs. Why? What are they doing to it?

>>55488 >I hate Gnome but I love GTK. GTK is everywhere and just works. There are billions of themes for it. I don't care what happens to the Gnome desktop, but someone needs to save GTK from the evil Gnome devs. GTK2, GTK3, and GNOME 2 were/are all good. GNOME 3 fuarrrking is like kicking dead whales down the beach and GNOME 40 is a fuarrrking joke, almost the same as GNOME 3 but looks like it was made for a fuarrrking tablet. >Here's hoping that new 'Cosmic' desktop that'll eventually be programmed in rust goes well cosmic will probably fail, GUI on rust is under developed badly. Unless they go all in on making a complete toolkit in rust, Cosmic will be nothing more than a bloated frankenstein of a mess C++ and rust combination

>>55169 OP, you should support MATE project, as it is being ported to Wayland for quite some time, and will fit your needs once port is complete.

>>55489 >You sound like you're just parroting something. I'm not sure what. no, YOU do. your post is too autistically incoherent for me to even bother to reply to. for instance getting caught up on the irrelevant fact that unicode versions aren't a different encoding

>>55503 How does that make it incoherent? I hardly think mentioning it was "getting caught up on it". You talking about "ascii -> latin1 -> utf-8 -> not_a_text_encoding" doesn't make sense, so I commented on it. This was half of your post.

>>55506 it makes sense you stupid fuarrrking w*gger if RTL wasnt there and then it is there in a next version, that changes the semantics of how text works on unsuspecting programs [spoiler]i realize RTL may have been in unicode from the start, but this should be a good enough example for someone who doesn't have aspergers syndrome[/spoler]

I am stuck on fedora 33, the updater broke so long ago i cant remember when. It was broken since forever really, but i have a feeling it got worse over time. That is not the only forever broken piece of software, the musicplayer regularly craps up for no reason, its not like there is any computer issue or anything, one might think such stuff would be stable by now in a company backed distro. These are pretty much stock gnome configurations from what i know.

>Wayland isolates windows from eachother so that no window can access another window wtf that's so retarded. >GNOME doesn't even support themes by default good.

> No themes Good. I fuarrrking hate tinkertrannies.

>>55169 What is the issue with CSD on Gnome? I agree that it looks bad on any other DE, but my impression is that it fits well enough into what the Gnome people are imagining (and arguably is better than a fat menu bar under a fat window border). All in all, this just proves that "the Linux Desktop" doesn't exist as something in itself, it is little more than coincidence that (graphical) software written on one distribution is reasonably usable on other distributions.

>>56768 Actual soykaftiest take in the thread right here. Sorry but graphical software SHOULD be compatible between DEs, and no, GNOME really has no need to reinvent the wheel just to set up notification daemons or whatever. I see through the lies of the foot and behind them I see an empire of dust. Dirt. That no one will ever care about.

>>55169 >I want a traditional desktop like Windows 95/98/2000 with only server-side decorations, but this isn't even possible anymore without losing security because all the good DEs and window managers (LXDE, LXQt, Trinity, cwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, Openbox, and Windowmaker) don't even support wayland. I know how you feel. Try git build of Enlightenment: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Enlightenment#Manually

>>56775 Is enlightenment compatible with pipewire? I tried enlightenment a while ago in a VM and it felt really fancy and advanced compared to gnome and KDE, just the way everything felt polished and nice, thouhg it did feel old.

>>56776 >Is enlightenment compatible with pipewire? I don't know. You can try the usual method: dbus-launch --exit-with-session enlightenment_start or dbus-run-session enlightenment_start

>>56768 We do not need search bars in the fuarrrking title bar. CSD titlebars are massive, much larger than SSD title bars. https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic

>>55508 This has nothing to do with unix-style utilities that deal with text streams... this is about font rendering, which is nothing to do with the "text is a universal interface" thing

>>56771 > Sorry but graphical software SHOULD be compatible between DEs Agreed, I'd prefer that too, I just want to explain that from GNOME's perspective, using any program outside of GNOME is a "bug" not a "feature", and I do understand their reasoning (even if I disagree with it). GNOME is the graphical shell of an operating system, then fend for themselves and their plan. They value integration over compatibility with out-of-project use cases. >>56779 What does "need" mean here? In an ideal world, GNOME would have continued on developing GNOME 2, but they decided to redesign stuff and appear committed to the decisions they made back then. Most of the CSD/SSD decisions seem to fall back on to decisions like having a much too fat title bar, intending to support touch devices, etc. GNOME and GTK are higher-degree mistakes, if you ask me, but I guess the GNOME guys will claim they are just letting go of legacy stuff and working on creating something new.

>>55169 >>56779 fuarrrk CSDs I agree

>LXDE, LXQt, Trinity, cwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, Openbox, and Windowmaker don't even support wayland. Actually there is LWQt as an ongoing effort to make LXQt run on Wayland.

I'll never understand the "GNOME has fat titlebars" thing when the other major desktop has this monstrosity by default.

>>58430 >major how is it major if I even tend to forget it exist? I cannot even name any major distro using KDE as default desktop environment anymore

>>58430 This. I'm using Gnome 42 with absolutely default settings now. I don't feel inconvenient with default settings cause I know most key shortcuts. But I don't know why the titlebar should be thick like now even though I can make it slim then now through gtk configuration.

I almost forgot how old Ubuntu used to have Macintosh-style menus mere 4 years ago before they dropped Unity. Gnome-style buttons are not a big problem (I'm on acceptance stage already), look at what NewAdwaita-Slim >>55418 theme does to Nautilus, all buttons in place, compact in size, very neat (it still hides traditional menu somewhere up it's ass, but what do we have top side bar for, displaying clock in the middle?). It doesn't apply this style to all thick button-titlebars unfortunately and i have no idea how to fix this, are there any guides/manuals on Gnome theming?. Why should every application's title bar become thicker with each year? It makes little sense: modern touch screens are so accurate, you don't have to hunt down thumb-sized buttons anymore. Yet all I see is things getting bigger. How compact even Unity-stylized Ambiance theme looks compared to default Adwaita or Yaru, it's ridiculous, everything is taller and wider. New Firefox, what is that even, with gazillion tabs open you don't even see these playing/mute statuses at all. Remember circa 2009 Chrome, how thin it's tabs were, how all previous browsers had huge nav buttons and a dozen toolbars eating vertical space? There is even more ridiculous example, Foliate, an ebook reader, it's title bar is taller than new Firefox tabs which are taller than Ambiance button bars.

>>58430 >>58452 Thumbnails in the file picker are a big deal for me.

>>56779 To build it on Debian: #!/bin/bash # Creates a binary package of gtk3-classic for Debian/Devuan. # See: https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic # # This works by taking a copy of the original libgtk-3-0 package, modifying # it with our patches, and packaging it for end users. # # Thanks to N0rbert (from Ubuntu MATE team) for the help! # Modified by the Concerned Citizen to support Debian/Devuan. # Successfully built on Devuan Ceres. # # How to use: # 1. Make sure your "/etc/apt/sources.list" file contains the following: # "deb-src https://deb.debian.org/debian buster main" for Debian 10 Buster, or # "deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres main" for Devuan Ceres. # Edit according to your distro. # 2. Update apt cache: "sudo apt update" # 3. Clone gtk3-classic repo: "git clone https://github.com/lah7/gtk3-classic.git" # 4. Place this script into the "scripts" directory in the # cloned repo and run this script instead of "create-ubuntu-package.sh" # 5. If this script runs successfully, you should see some .deb files in the # root directory of the cloned repo. Install them: "sudo apt install ./*.deb" # 6. If needed, hold GTK3-related packages: # "sudo apt-mark hold <GTK3-related package name here> # In Synaptic, select them and check the "Package > Lock Version" checkbox # Work from the root of this repository cd .. # If source was already unpacked/uploaded, clean folder gtkdir=$(ls -d gtk+3.0*/ 2>/dev/null) if [ $? == 0 ]; then echo "Deleting unpacked source..." rm -r gtk+3.0*/ *.changes *.build* *.upload echo "Existing unpacked source deleted." fi # Ensure the necessary tools and dependencies are installed sudo apt install -y ubuntu-dev-tools devscripts # Lintian checks are too slow on my laptop, so i removed it -The Concerned Citizen sudo apt remove -y --purge lintian sudo apt build-dep -y libgtk-3-0 # Download source files set -e apt source libgtk-3-0 GTKVERSION="$(ls -d gtk*/)" GTKVERSION=${GTKVERSION/\//} GTKVERSION=${GTKVERSION/gtk+3.0-/} cd gtk+3.0-$GTKVERSION quilt pop -a # Copy our patches and make our series priority cp -v ../*.patch debian/patches mv debian/patches/series debian/patches/series.old cp ../series debian/patches/series cat debian/patches/series.old >> debian/patches/series rm debian/patches/series.old # Remove incompatible patches introduced by original package function skip_patch() { sed -i "s/^$1/#$1/g" debian/patches/series } skip_patch "message-dialog-restore-traditional-look-on-unity.patch" skip_patch "unity-border-radius.patch" # Refresh each patch in sequence to avoid "fuzzy" diffs that would fail later export QUILT_PATCHES="debian/patches" for patch in $(quilt series | cat) do quilt push quilt refresh done quilt pop -a unset QUILT_PATCHES # Prevent checks from being run grep "export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS = nocheck" debian/rules || sed -i "s/^export VERBOSE=1/export VERBOSE=1\nexport DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS = nocheck/" debian/rules # Build binary package debuild -sd -nc -uc -us -b

OP needs to chill. No one is stealing your passwords through X11. Just don't use unauthenticated/unencrypted X forwarding and don't allow your X server to listen on your network interface (both of which are non-standard now, especially the latter which is generally insane) and you'll be *fine*. Wayland has been around for 13 years - so why the fuarrrk hasn't it taken off? Really says something about the project team and the state of display servers implementing Wayland that X11, after nearly 40 years, is still king, no? If it's so important to you, as you said you can use Sway, which by all accounts works fine. If the software you use doesn't support Wayland, it's probably free and open source so if you want to be a twat about it then go build it yourself. Neither GNOME nor KDE are slow, and 'bloat' is shorthand for 'I'm an opinionated pedant whose computer is his personality'. Also yes, I use GNOME at work because I truly don't give a fuarrrk what my desktop looks like, I just want it to get out of my way and let me work. Themes don't matter, desktop wallpaper doesn't matter, customisation doesn't matter - just do your work and go home, which is what it's for, and it does a fantastic job at that, better than any non-free OS could and also in a way which I prefer to KDE (though I use KDE at home).

>>58464 >No one is stealing your passwords through X11 You don't know that.

>>55169 >Openbox doesn't even support wayland. B-But there is a stacking Wayland compositor, called labwc: https://github.com/labwc/labwc And if you use i3 or i3-gaps, you could very easily switch to Sway.

if you're so worried about X11's security just use Xenocara