Felipe Contreras, a Git contributor, writes opinionated posts on Git, GNOME, Linux compatibility and software maintenance.
Commenters cite his Linux way article on not breaking userspace as a great post, and link his Git writing.
> If you're willing to fiddle around, there are a few good themes that don't waste so much space.
The point of this "first impressions" exercise was to explore the happy path.
> It's not just Gnome that does that. There's an entire generation of designers that's cargo-culting mobile designs at the moment. Breeze, KDE's default theme, is equally space-wasting.
I would agree with that sentiment, though I didn't want to get into that flame war today. I think a lot of other people have already written extensively on this subject and I don't feel I can contribute anything new. Here are some relevant articles...
Several of these are about CSDs, which I think are a big point of contention with respect to the design philosophy of GTK/Gnome 3.X. This list does not include much about the KDE/Qt side, which I'm less familiar with.
I would certainly like to expand the side of this list on the "Pro Gnome" side in the interest of a more fair and balanced debate.
Pro Gnome 3.x:
Client-Side Decorations Initiative - https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/CSD
Restyling apps at scale - https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/10/15/restyling-apps-at-scale/
Introducing the CSD Initiative - https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2018/01/26/csd-initiative/
Against Gnome 3.x:
Why do we keep building rotten foundations? - https://davmac.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/why-do-we-keep-building-rotten-foundations/
GNOME (et al): Rotting In Threes -…
N9 was very close to launch when Elop came, so that went ahead, but the rest of the development got cancelled immediately to focus on Windows phone: N9 would've otherwise been the first in a series of devices to slowly take over from Symbian.
Until Elop canceled everything Symbian was still selling - declining sales, but still millions of units. So while the situation was bad slowly phasing out Symbian for taking all the money you could make with that, while hoping N9 software stack sticks sounded like a more sensible approach than "cancel everything, go for Windows". Elop did respond to criticism from Developers (including a mail I've sent him with colleagues), but had made up his mind.
This blog post is a byproduct of that discussion, and was referenced by Felipe in internal mailing lists back then:
https://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/meego-scales-because-linux-scales/
I have no idea how successfull it'd have been in the end - the UI was great, parts of the softwarestack were problematic (though we've been doing quite well with parts of that at Jolla later on). The planned hardware for the future models was less than ideal, though.
It's going back a few years now but the gnome 3 debacle is a reasonable example of not respecting users https://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/ . I think in subsequent years the devs have been worn down and the community solved the missing features in other ways, but some people have long memories. gnome 3 is the primary reason Ubuntu got its own desktop system, it was that divisive.
The Steam Deck is uniquely positioned to allow people to do potentially hazardous things like install software from unknown sources, and that is because it's primarily a gaming device. People aren't doing banking and work stuff on it, so what is the damage if it gets rooted? Valve could have easily screwed it up by building a walled garden anyways, just to satisfy corporate greed in the name of "maximizing ROI". Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all have their walled gardens for gaming. The fact Valve hasn't (yet) is refreshing.
GNOME as a project has consistently made itself clear on how it feels about the rest of the desktop Linux ecosystem existing, or working well with it:
2012 — https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/
2021 — https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/building-an-alternative-ecosystem/
2023 — https://felipec.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/one-decade-later-gnome-still-sucks/
2023 — https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e301032670c
Nobody should be surprised anymore when GNOME pulls some shady and technically questionable crap to try to make their "product" look better by actively breaking other people's work.
Another example is what happened when Linux moved to 3.0; some programs expected a 2.x version, or even 2.6.x, these programs were clearly buggy, as they should check that the version is greater than 2.x, however, the bugs were already there, and people didn’t want to recompile their binaries, and they might not even be able to do that. It would be stupid for Linux to report 2.6.x, when in fact it’s 3.x, but that’s exactly what they did. They added an option so the kernel would report a 2.6.x version, so the users would have the option to keep running these old buggy binaries. Link here.
From: https://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/the-linux-way/
>Read "As I Remember London", and put on your reading comprehension hat.
Ironic. Your linked article wouldn't exist if the author had put on their reading comprehension hat.
>If you need help, try this article:
If you need help, try this article:
https://felipec.wordpress.com/2025/09/23/the-ruby-community-doesnt-have-a-dhh-problem/
>DHH is clearly talking about people of color in London
"People of color" are not native to London. If you won't acknowledge that, you're either oblivious or racist (Anglophobic/anti-White). I hope it's the former.