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GNOME 50 Ends the X11 Era After Decades (linuxiac.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself.

In other words, the GNOME project is finally closing one of the longest chapters in Linux desktop history. With the upcoming GNOME 50 release, scheduled for mid-march 2026, the desktop environment will officially drop support for the native X11 session, making Wayland the sole display system moving forward.

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[–] 37 points 1 year ago (14 children)

For me the X11 era continues for now (until the next version of xfce I expect) and the era of GNOME ended 23 years ago.

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  • [–] 48 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    Gnome is so bad it hurts. I was reading a blog post by factorios linux dev earlier.

    Once Wayland support was implemented, I received a bug report that the window was missing a titlebar and close buttons (called "window decorations") when running on GNOME. Most desktop environments will allow windows to supply their own decorations if they wish but will provide a default implementation on the server side as an alternative. GNOME, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that all clients must provide their own decorations, and if a client does not, they will simply be missing. I disagree with this decision; Factorio does not need to provide decorations on any other platform, nay, on any other desktop environment, but GNOME can (ab)use its popularity to force programs to conform to its idiosyncrasies or be left behind

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Ah yes, client-side decorations. One of their most controversial decisions (and for the GNOME project, that's really saying something). And yet, no amount of user feedback will ever break them out of their "we know your needs better than you do" attitude.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    People just want things to never change. How many of those users do you think actually bothered to look into why GNOME won't implement SSDs?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    I don't understand what change has to do with it. The problem is, lots of people have used it, tried it, criticized it, and been ignored. It has nothing to do with change.

    Change is fine, as long as the new version is better than the old one. Look at how KDE evolved. Sure, there were a lot of people that didn't like the 3 -> 4 transition (not me personally, I loved KDE4), but very few people lament what KDE has become today and it certainly is very different from what it was during the 3.x days.

    Personally, yes, I and a lot of other users have read why GNOME does not implement SSDs, and frankly their reasoning is not very convincing, but I don't think it matters that much. The fact is, users don't care why it's not implemented - if they don't like it, they're just going to criticize the project and that's just why GNOME is so widely hated.

    Trust me, I don't want to hate GNOME - I wish I could just make my life easy and use it as a sane default. But if it's not good, then I can't do that - and by "good", I mean how I define a good desktop, not whatever creative definition they dreamed up.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    People compare gnome to Desktops with a 30 year old interface which is painfully cumbersome but that they are used to.

    I was on the no Gnome camp after Gnome 2 but came back around Gnome 40 (2022) and I was surprised at how simple and stable it is. I agree that many things that are extensions should be built in, but I also agree with the filosophy of not spreading resources to thin and if people want a feature, they can build it.

    I only use two or three extensions but mostly need only one: Forge.

    I still use Niri as my primary environment but I think that Gnome is good.

    I grind my teeth every time I need to use an environment with an old style menu and cumbersome tiling.

    C'mon. End users haven't used drop down menues to start apps for a long time. The iOS/Android drawer style is more comfortable and can adapt to the user's organizational preferences.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    i think gnome is actually pretty good... for a desktop with limited duties. like launching a browser and email--perhaps a word processor, and not much else. think a chromebook alternative that could actually do more if you wanted. a lot of things are 'hidden' to the user by default, what a user does need to be able to access (wifi, etc) is relatively easy to find, nice big icons that you can put front-and-center while relegating system-related things to a folder. i've set up a number of systems like that.

    for my own uses though, gnome does need a half-dozen extensions for me to consider it 'usable'.. but i would still prefer a 'traditional' desktop experience such as cinnamon

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    I completely agree. For basic things, it is very good. But for productivity, it leaves a lot to be desired, because they (the developers) simply cannot accept that different people work in different ways and they refuse to accommodate that.. I prefer environments that can be adapted to my workflows - I don't want an environment that forces me to adapt to it. And it doesn't help that extensions tend to break on upgrades.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    The CSDs vs SSDs has very little to do with users, it's about pushing application developers to create their own decorations and get rid of the awful title bar. In the end GNOME caved and created libdecor and now I still have half my applications with an extra bar that has literally 1 button.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I think the conflict comes from the philosophical opposition to the application being in control of such a thing. Title bars are for window management and application termination, which are beyond the purview of the application itself. GNOME decided that they wanted it to be something different and include application controls as well all on their own.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    Interesting, I was not aware of libdecor. Sorry to hear that it degraded your experience - it really sucks when things like that happen. For what it's worth, I have seen some interesting themes which could be a reasonable solution to that problem - basically, they made the titlebar very thin or completely missing, except in the area where the window buttons were located, which were enlarged. Not sure which window manager they were made for though - I think it was either xfwm or openbox.

    But in any case, this is the problem with CSD - it doesn't really have a complete, holistic vision. It's great that they're trying to be innovative, but then they very quickly run into problems like the one described by the Factorio developer above. So now they're in a very awkward position that simply cannot meet everyone's needs.

    And yet, we never had this problem before they went on their quixotic CSD journey - that's why many people think it was a really bad idea.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I used to love GNOME 2, but now it's unbearable. It looks and it behaves as if it's a toy for kids.

    Also, why do apps have buttons in their title bar? It makes no sense.

    I'm sad that a good open source project such as GNOME has become so bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Become "so bad" is different than "I don't like it"

    A lot of people use gnome without any issues. It's stable, it has one of the simplest workflows and it's generally out of the way.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    This is an skill issue

    1. Developers can still make apps with server side decorations on GNOME.

    2. If they choose to support CLIENT side decorations, its the CLIENT'S responsibility to have window buttons.

    3. Most such apps are open source, so even if the window decorations are buggy, those can be fixed.

    GNOME exists along with KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon DE etc. GNOME is for minimalism, the others have
    different levels of customization support.

    People are free to choose!

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