GNOME Recognized as Public Interest Infrastructure

The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to announce the GNOME project is receiving €1M from the Sovereign Tech Fund to modernize the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support features that are in the public interest.

This investment will fund the following projects until the end of 2024:

  • Improve the current state of accessibility
  • Design and prototype a new accessibility stack
  • Encrypt user home directories individually
  • Modernize secrets storage
  • Increase the range and quality of hardware support
  • Invest in Quality Assurance and Developer Experience
  • Expand and broaden freedesktop APIs
  • Consolidate and improve platform components
TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Great news! Maybe now they’ll spare a day of work to get desktop icons going again. No more funding excuses for the fanboys now.

Quik,

Why would you want desktop icons? I mean I get it, there were quite popular back in the day, but I don’t see how a big junky place of a desktop has any benefit

RoadArchie,

Shooting yourself in the foot to dab on the people trying to convert to linux

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

Also forcing people to go KDE to be again disappointed because their design is bad.

kariboka,

KDE is awesome

TheAnonymouseJoker,
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

Meh. The design and all is very good, great even, but the performance is donkey. And no, telling people to turn off animations and compositor is not a valid solution, when other DEs keep the animations, especially GNOME.

turbowafflz,

I wonder if there’s a way they could neatly implement them without cluttering the desktop. Like what if they were somewhere in the overview or something?

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

What’s the point of going against every tried and true DE experience. Why can’t we just have them, disabled by default so some people don’t freak out.

Chewy7324,

I really like Gnome but requiring extensions to work properly is bad design imo.

For example my moms laptop runs Gnome and she doesn’t need much except 3 basic features: a dock, desktop & tray icons. Tray icons are necessary because Nextcloud relies on them to show the sync status, desktop icons are great to have temporary files easily accessible for a presentation.

In my opinion the most frustrating decision of Gnime is to not allow making the “dash” permanently visible, in other words, a dock. I’d argue it’s even an accessibility option because it’s easier to click on something visible than having to open the overview.

It’s frustrating since Gnome is an almost perfect desktop for anyone who wants a simple, working desktop.

TheGrandNagus,

I use Gnome without extensions, it’s great. IMO Microsoft didn’t invent the perfect UX paradigm back in the early 90s. People use a task bar and start menu because they’re used to it, not because it’s better IMO.

I’m glad Gnome had the balls to do away with tradition and go with something different. It’s led to a much better workflow IMO.

Chewy7324,

Gnome is great for people who like the opinionated workflow. Sadly that is not most people, at least I know of 5 people who tried Gnome and 4 came to the conclusion that the lack of a taskbar/launcher/dock makes it unsuitable for their desktop usage.

If Gnome had an optional dock, they might’ve actually used it and found out how great Gnome is. Maybe at some point they’d even disable the dock and return to the blessed workflow.

danielfgom,
@danielfgom@lemmy.world avatar

You might not want to but the average user definitely uses that. It should be a toggle in settings for the best of both worlds

d_k_bo,

extensions.gnome.org/…/desktop-icons-ng-ding/

TCB13,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

For the 1000th time, those extensions aren’t even close to what something really native would offer. They fail in some circumstances like drag and drop to certain plains and behave inconsistently.

aniki,

deleted_by_author

    •
    TCB13,
    @TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

    Welcome to Linux. It’s dope here. Things are FAST.

    Yes, until you decide to use GNOME and suddenly everything “endlessly complex” while you wait for pointless UI animations to finish. :P

    eclipse,

    Never had issues with Gnome on low end hardware but, you can disable animations in the accessibility settings. (No extensions needed!)

    TCB13,
    @TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

    Not all animations.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    GNOME is the snappiest DE on low end hardware besides LXQt and XFCE, but go on.

    d_k_bo,

    GNOME Extensions actually run in the gnome-shell process itself and can do most things that a builtin solution could offer.

    They fail in some circumstances […] and behave inconsistently

    That proves why they shouldn’t be part of GNOME Shell themselves. Offloading some (debatable) functionality to extensions helps keeping the core components reliable and maintainable.

    Side note: there is also a DING implementation with supposedly better DnD support: …gnome.org/…/gtk4-desktop-icons-ng-ding/

    redcalcium,

    No amount of funding will make native desktop icon happen if the devs simply don’t want to implement then.

    InstallGentoo,

    Human ego is quite fascinating

    TheGrandNagus,

    It’s zero to do with ego and 100% to do with them believing desktop icons are awful.

    TheGrandNagus,

    Desktop icons 🤢

    Shadywack,
    @Shadywack@lemmy.world avatar

    This money would have been far better given to KDE instead of the assholes at Gnome.

    MadBigote,

    How so? I miss the old gnome, but I have accepted gnome 3 for what it is. Kde was quite interesting for me back in 2012, but it didn’t perform well with my old setup. What’s new with kde? Id like to give it a try, but I’m too old to break my SO by having both gnome and kde on it.

    Shadywack,
    @Shadywack@lemmy.world avatar

    The KDE guys have been on fire for the past two years. Between their theming, color selection, and session handling they’ve come a long ways. They’ve also implemented some gnome-only features such as the overview, albeit in a very optional way. As opposed to eliminating a panel and forcing you to use the overview to see what applications or windows you have open, or available to launch, it’s just a window management tool instead of a UX paradigm.

    Their wayland session is stable and also deals with xwayland in a very different way. If you set a custom scaling factor, the QT apps and GTK apps are talked to in a way that makes the same scaling factor consistent across all your applications, even under a wayland session with xwayland. The Gnome devs hand-wring about how the world has to be perfect before implementing an idea, where the KDE devs try something and then iterate if it’s successful.

    unexpectedteapot,

    I am aware of the difference in philosophy taken by both Gnome and KDE, but would you mind elaborating on the ‘assholes’ bit?

    Shadywack,
    @Shadywack@lemmy.world avatar

    Trundle on over to KDE-land, and you find a very different tone. They’re not too proud to adopt paradigms that conflicted with core design principles if they’re widely beloved (look at Overview as a prime example). Fractional scaling is miles ahead of Gnome in functionality and performance impact, solved in both X11 and elegantly in Wayland so that xwayland apps have a hook to get correct DPI info without looking blurry. The deep customizations available have negated the need for much of their session modifications, as they rapidly adopt good ideas (floating panels anyone? Ahh yes, Plasma has got you).

    They’re also extremely nimble when it comes to changing course on their backend. They went from having a buggy Wayland session to having the most stable one by far. They also take criticism far better, either taking it in stride or recognizing then they did something off-base.

    Gnome can go to hell, and fuck the stupid ass GTK which is objectively inferior to QT. Redhat can nibble on my shit too for all I care.

    caesaravgvstvs,

    Sovereignty from whom though??

    Turns out, the Germans.

    Seems like a cool initiative

    twei,

    yes, we are quite good at funding foss

    pingveno,

    Sovereignty as in it is sponsored by or own by a nation-state. Similarly, Norway has a sovereign wealth fund derived from its oil profits.

    caesaravgvstvs,

    Yes! I just kinda posted it as a rethorical question. I think it’s important to know where the money is really coming from :)

    Sentau,

    How are gnome supposed to improve hardware support? Do gnome devs write drivers and such at the present time¿?

    fossisfun,
    @fossisfun@lemmy.ml avatar

    Variable refresh rate (VRR), HDR, OLED (e. g. I’d like the panel to become grey and move items around a bit to lessen burn-in) all involve GNOME for hardware support.

    Sentau,

    Yeah I forgot about monitor support. Guess that’s pretty important. But is pixel shifting gnome’s responsibility or should that be done through monitor firmware so that it’s OS agnostic¿?

    fossisfun,
    @fossisfun@lemmy.ml avatar

    Your’re right, ideally wear reduction should probably be done by the display itself. But considering how little manufacuters often care about OS-agnostic approaches, it might be necessary to have software workarounds?

    Pantherina,
    @Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

    I prefer KDE currently, because

    • normal application tray and buttons for close, maximise and minimize
    • dolphin ! (But any capable filemanager with spacesaving UI, extensions, an editable location bar, drag/drop dialogs, selection mode, preview, pinned favourites, kfind integration,… would do)
    • spectacle
    • kate
    • systemsettings (keyboard shortcuts, theming, mouse speed, Graphic tablet, flatpak permissions, system info, …)

    are all simply better than the GNOME counterpart. Also things like the clickboxes of decorations actually reaching to the top corner is something so obvious its crazy that GNOME simply ignores that and you need to directly point to the “x”.

    I like that Gnome is untraditional though.

    stockRot,

    Windows XP’s grip ever tightens well past its death

    Pantherina,
    @Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

    Did the windows before not have regular menu with all that? I think its an okay concept, even though I can imagine something like workspaces could make sense too.

    HiddenLayer5, (edited )
    @HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml avatar

    Good design is good design.

    M137,

    As the first paragraph says: “The GNOME Foundation is thrilled to announce the GNOME project is receiving €1M from the Sovereign Tech Fund to modernize the platform, improve tooling and accessibility, and support features that are in the public interest.”

    Let’s hope that means improving all that.

    ILikeBoobies,

    Gnome has the best accessibility tools for disabled people

    It’s often glossed over

    milicent_bystandr,

    I’m also on KDE at the moment, but I appreciate the money going into FOSS desktop experience. Most importantly as keeping things viable for the future. Also KDE and GNOME both, one presumes, learn from each others successes.

    InstallGentoo,

    I wonder if this has anything to do with the shaman they recently hired

    lemmy_nightmare,
    @lemmy_nightmare@sh.itjust.works avatar

    🤣

    mellejwz,

    I hope they’ll ever fix the backspace issue for the on screen keyboard.

    SubArcticTundra, (edited )

    I really do wish governments invested more in open source. If it’s a generic thing like an operating system that the public could benefit from at large, they would be doing the public a service.

    Edit: Germany does it again!

    nexussapphire,

    Government ran distros in public schools and government offices wouldn’t be any more invasive than windows working with the government. Better yet there actually be some sort of education on using the os and exponential growth of the Linux desktop as a whole.

    I just wish KDE would get some love too. They work their asses off to make a desktop suit as many use cases and workflows as possible while maintaining a mostly polished experience. Their not afraid to implement stuff knowing it’s just a temporary solution till other projects catchup. They are actually willing to work with other projects on implementing standards and are developing standards like HDR on wayland for professional artists and gamers and are the first to jump on major features as soon as its solid.

    Gnome is just annoying mess great for smartphone users unwilling to learn anything new and had never touched a pc or Mac in their life. What’s the appeal of using something with half its features gutted for the sake of looks just to have everyone add it back in anyway. It’s an annoying Apple like philosophy of let’s implement counter intuitive interfaces to preserve a look and never change it back because we’re always right. You’d think they’d have improved the window snap feature since 3.0

    TheGrandNagus,

    Ffs I knew this submission would turn into a minority of Plasma users trying to piss on Gnome. Can you not just be happy that an open source project is receiving help and that this will be a big improvement for accessibility features?

    I never hear Gnome users crying about Valve heavily supporting KDE, so why are you angry about this?

    MazonnaCara89,
    @MazonnaCara89@lemmy.ml avatar

    I never hear Gnome users crying about Valve heavily supporting KDE, so why are you angry about this?

    This does not happen because Gnome is the most supported desktop environment out there, they have Red Hat, Google, Canonical, OpenSuse even Microsoft donated to Gnome. Don’t get me wrong some of this company do support kde too, but Gnome get treated in a different way because it’s the default de for most of the distros out there.

    TheGrandNagus,

    Like you said, these companies help KDE too. KDE also has more hardware partners, and more contributors.

    Even ignoring all that though, it still doesn’t answer the question: why cry over Gnome getting money to aid in accessibility improvements?

    I have never once heard anybody cry about the companies that support KDE, yet some people here go on like Gnome fucked their girlfriend. It’s pathetic.

    Nobody’s forcing anybody to use Gnome or any any other DE. Just be happy when nice things happen in the FOSS word.

    garam,
    @garam@lemmy.my.id avatar

    But I’m using xfce here… :‘) and It doesn’t even get some funds :’(

    Wayland on XFCE is still farr farrrrrr :')

    nexussapphire,

    I’m not complaining about gnome getting support, I’m complaining about kde being overlooked because gnome is the default desktop for Ubuntu. Kde is just a better tool for people wanting to just get things done. Gnome is pretty I’ll give you that but ask anyone, they are very hard to work with and stubbornly refuse compromise when working with others on creating useful tools and standards.

    Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it. Their efforts to make other projects wait for them to deside what’s best for gnome like they are the only desktop that matters. The projects like portals usually say their going to implement the standard despite what gnome wants and kde often helps with the brunt of that work.

    KISSmyOS, (edited )

    Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it.

    You have no idea what you’re talking about.
    It’s the job of the Gnome developers to update and improve Gnome.
    It’s the job of the extension developers to update their extensions when there’s a new Gnome version.
    And it’s the job of your distro’s maintainers to keep the versions of Gnome and the extensions in the repo compatible.
    If you install Gnome from your distro’s repo and extensions from Gnome’s website, YOU take on this job.

    Just install your extensions from your distro’s repo and you won’t have any issues.

    TheGrandNagus, (edited )

    I’m not complaining about gnome getting support

    You literally are.

    I’m complaining about kde being overlooked

    KDE isn’t overlooked. KDE gets funding too. Valve and others have put so much into KDE. KDE has the most hardware partnerships. KDE has more contributors.

    Kde is just a better tool for people wanting to just get things done

    In your opinion…

    I do all my work on Gnome because it’s got an amazing and highly productive workflow, minimal distractions, and it’s extremely stable.

    I like Plasma, I like the options it has, I have it on one of my laptops, but it’s not what I’d use for work. The last thing I need is for kwin to crash and take all the programs I had open with it, losing hours of work. Yes, I’m aware this should be fixed in Plasma 6, but as of right now it’s a massive showstopper.

    stubbornly refuse compromise when working with others on creating useful tools and standards

    Gnome has championed a lot of open standards, and worked with others. You’re just repeating a Reddit meme. They’ve done so much flatpak, portals, open-desktop stuff in collaboration with KDE and others.

    Just think how many times they broke extensions without any regard for the individuals using it.

    You’re showing a complete lack of understanding about what extensions are.

    Extensions are impossible not to break from time to time. Extensions don’t use some unchanging API to work - they’re modifications on the DE itself. That’s why they’re so powerful.

    There’s no way around DE mods sometimes becoming borked when the DE gets a big update.

    Why are you acting like Gnome is against portals lmao, they’ve been massively pushing portals and open desktop standards, even going as far as refusing to implement features unless there’s a cross-desktop standard way of handling it (e.g. accent colours, which they are only now putting in place now that they and KDE have hammered out a sensible standard for it. Or a better system tray, which they’ve been trying to spearhead an open, cross-desktop solution for for years now, although little progress has been made by everyone). Of the DEs, Gnome has pushed for things like portals and flatpaks the most lol

    We get it. In your mind, Gnome = bad and evil and nasty, KDE = good quirky and kool.

    SubArcticTundra,

    Oh I see, I didn’t realize there was such a contrast between the cultures of KDE and GNOME. Idk why ppl are downvoting you

    Audacity9961,

    They are being downvoted because it is utter nonsense, spouted as authoritative fact.

    Anyone who has ever used gnome seriously, knows that although it can be used for touch it is heavily keyboard oriented.

    While not undermining the work of KDE devs who I have great admiration for, GNOME devs also work heavily on standards that benefit all of linux, and arguably do just as much if not more, as they are a very well resourced project.

    Swedneck,
    @Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    that would be a sound investment and we can’t have that, the government must focus on actively detrimental infrastructure projects to put money in the pockets of rich people.

    pingveno,

    The US has the US Digital Service. Alex Gaynor, who has had involvement in a wide array of OSS projects, is employed there.

    makingStuffForFun,
    @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

    Cool. Now how about image thumbnail in the file picker. I mean seriously…

    mfat,

    Wasn’t this fixed finally a while ago? I swear i read somewhere it was.

    makingStuffForFun,
    @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

    My understanding is it’s 13 years or so of requests, and still nothing. Something so incredibly basic, and required.

    Yearly1845, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    makingStuffForFun,
    @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

    Wow. Thank you. Finally

    MonkderZweite,

    Btw, why is filepicker a toolkit thing and not something the user can choose or switch out?

    d_k_bo,

    If the program uses xdg-desktop-portal, the file picker isn’t provided by the toolkit but by your desktop / portal implementation.

    MonkderZweite,

    Yeah, i mean outside of that. General Gtk and Qt applications.

    fossisfun,
    @fossisfun@lemmy.ml avatar

    Outside of that the toolkit’s file picker is used, as the system doesn’t seem to provide one (via the portal), so the only reasonable fallback is to show the file picker that you know is there, which is the one of the application’s toolkit.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    Its there now.

    InstallGentoo,

    Isn’t it only for gtk 4 applications?

    TheGrandNagus,

    Already done like a couple of releases ago.

    warmaster,

    I wonder if any of this will improve Wayland/mutter, I love GNOME’s UI… but I had to move to KDE for a better gaming experience.

    AProfessional,

    I don’t think that’s the focus. I know you won’t like this, but the Shell is already in a good place.

    HDR is in progress. VRR does have patches In progress.

    Sentau,

    VRR does have patches In progress.

    This has been the case for years at this point

    AProfessional,

    The gap between “nothing has been done for this task” and “multiple developers have written, reviewed, and discussed patches for this” is immense and positive.

    Sentau,

    These discussions took place several years ago if I remember correctly. The problem seems to be that cursor seems to want to refresh at a different rate than the content in screen and the people at gnome want the cursor to not feel choppy by being refreshed at the vrr determined refresh rate

    AProfessional,

    The MR has multiple commits about 4 months old. It’s a bummer it’s moving slow but I believe it will land someday. I hope at least.

    Audacity9961,

    There appears to be at least an aspirational goal for GNOME 46 to land experimental support.

    Sentau,

    I am also sure that it will land as well. As a gnome user I hope it lands sooner than later. I am just frustrated because the pursuit of perfection is keeping us from having a better experience now. It’s the calculator on iPad situation. Just because the perfect solution has not been found yet does not mean there should be no implemented solution at all.

    warmaster,

    If I use GNOME I get the most beautiful desktop UI, if I use Plasma I get a better gaming experience. I wish I could have both.

    danielfgom,
    @danielfgom@lemmy.world avatar

    I hope they also look at Linux Mint and the Cinnamon desktop. It’s massively popular and that team work very hard. I’m sure they could use that support to help them focus on improving Cinnamon, the toolkit, accessibility etc.

    Happy for Gnome though, they are a long standing project and used by many distro’s. I have used Gnome in the past and it’s decent, although a little heavy on RAM.

    Would be great to see Debian also get this, being one of the oldest Linux distro’s and the basis for Ubuntu, which in turn has spawned many distros.

    ikidd,
    @ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh, good. Gnome gets more money.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    Unless its sarcasm, GNOME is well deserving as the most polished and optimally performant DE. GNOME is so good, Windows 11 copied its workflow, layouts and even the taskbar right-click menu with 23H2.

    twei,

    are you trying to say that this is a bad thing?

    Patch,

    I mean… yeah?

    A major GPL software stack used by major Linux distributions getting more money to invest in accessibility tooling seems like a “good thing”.

    TheGrandNagus,

    This but unironically. It’s a very good thing.

    jack,

    I’m very interested in the secrets storage. Hopefully that includes integrating programs with GNOME Secrets, especially firefox

    AProfessional,

    That is a Mozilla task. I can’t imagine they want it.

    jack,

    There are browser extensions like KeepassXC

    andruid,

    Awesome stuff! This is something that major already know, but governments are learning. You can actually invest in FOSS, and unlike renting software you can make improvements that will better fit what you need it to do and not have to pay more for privilidge in the future.

    And for everyone saying KDE as opposed to Gnome, they work together you dinguses! It’s a friendly competition at times, but being FOSS they can and do easily learn and grow from each other.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    GNOME is well deserving as the most polished and optimally performant DE. GNOME is so good, Windows 11 copied its workflow, layouts and even the taskbar right-click menu with 23H2.

    simple,

    and optimally performant DE

    Except it’s the worst DE in terms of performance. Using KDE instead of Gnome made a big difference in my weaker laptop.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    GNOME is the best performing modern DE outside of lightweight nice DEs. KDE is by far the worst alongside Deepin. KDE is so crap, I had to turn off all the animations and compositor to bring CPU usage from 70 to 10-15%. This was a stock Debian 12 KDE setup on i5-7200U. GNOME in comparison idles at 1-2%, max 3%. XFCE and LXQt sit around 0.5-1%.

    KDE is an absolute mess and is a hobbyist DE in comparison to the professional GNOME.

    simple,

    GNOME is the best performing modern DE outside of lightweight nice DEs.

    This is straight up not true, GNOME is a memory hog and uses almost twice as much as KDE. I’m idling ~4% CPU usage on an i5 7300HQ, which is just barely better than yours. There’s a reason the Steam Deck opted to use KDE and not Gnome.

    KDE is an absolute mess and is a hobbyist DE in comparison to the professional GNOME.

    As someone who used gnome for two years, hell no. Gnome is trying too hard to be minimalist and is lacking basic features that you have to use extensions for. Extensions which, by the way, break each update and have their own bugs. I also had to use gnome tweaks for basic crap like disabling mouse acceleration. KDE is a much more polished experience for people who actually use computers, but gnome is okay if you’re just looking for something simple that looks smooth.

    TheAnonymouseJoker,
    @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

    GNOME is a memory hog and uses almost twice as much as KDE

    It is unfortunate that every GNOME critic lives in 2015, and stick to those unhinged biases.

    Steam Deck’s decision to use KDE has nothing to do with performance, but with customisation of UI, which is also why they use custom compiled Arch to modify every nook and corner of what Deck runs.

    7300HQ has about 1.7-2x the performance of 7200U, according to PassMark. cpubenchmark.net/…/Intel-i5-7300HQ-vs-Intel-i5-72…

    KDE is a much more polished experience for people who actually use computers, but gnome is okay if you’re just looking for something simple that looks smooth.

    Its cool and hipster to be delusional, but when things get professional and you want stability and performance, GNOME is unbeatable. Nobody in the real world cares about the fancy one zillion features of KDE outside hipster hobbyists.

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