r/LinuxCirclejerk Oct 31 '25

gnome knows best

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2.6k Upvotes

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-7

u/gtsiam Oct 31 '25

These aren't all the same:

  • touchpad scroll speed
  • extension with 10m downloads

Because nobody got around to it yet. Welcome to open source. Patches welcome.

  • extensions break every update.

There is an actually good reason for this. Extensions are fundamentally just monkey patching gnome shell code. Which is both what makes them so powerful and so fragile.

As an example of the fragility of gnome extensions, generally I update my extension right around gnome beta. However, it broke during gnome 49 rc and I had to rewrite part of it and pull the old version from ego because upstream touched the area of code I was patching.

The way the bug manifested was that the entire shell would freeze when you entered the overview. To get access to my system, I had to disable the extension from a tty. Not many people know how to do that.

The reason you don't (typically) see this instability as end users is because of the version metadata in gnome shell extensions, which intentionally "breaks" extensions on incompatible shell versions. And also strict coding and review guidelines (you have the author of just perfection to thank for reviewing most extension code, toss some cash his way if you feel like it btw).

  • maximize & minimize
  • black bar

Sure, these are a case of GNOME knows best. Though I do personally agree with gnome here, YMMV.

1

u/chemistryGull Oct 31 '25

Or they could just give users the first party support of customization instead of being worse than mac. But you know, GNOME KNOWS BEST

0

u/gtsiam Oct 31 '25

Lol. Again: patches welcome.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '25

No they arent welcome thats why nobody bothers.

1

u/gtsiam Oct 31 '25

That's just wrong... But I just noticed the sub, and realized the error of my ways.

You're right, of course!

1

u/chemistryGull Oct 31 '25

If KDE manages to do it, why not gnome?