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Proposal For Gnome To Become Linux-Only
Moderator writes "Could Gnome drop support for non-Linux operating systems? That was a recent proposal on the Gnome mailing list, although there were significant objections in response. Quoting: 'It is harmful to pretend that you are writing the OS core to work on any number of different kernels...the time has come for GNOME to embrace Linux a bit more boldly.'"
Gnome is supposed to be written to support X Windows.
I currently use gnome on my Linux and FreeBSD platforms, and have for quite some years. Now they're looking to tell the rest of us to PFO because they've tied themselves too tightly to Linux ... why is it even tied to the kernel anyway?
The end result will be that I and others won't use Gnome at all (not even on my Linux installs) ... but, hey, if your "be all you can be" plan is all about working on only one system, that's fine. Just don't be surprised when the number of people who use it drops off.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Outside a few egomaniacs with a one distro to bind them all mentality, this is not how things have been done up till now. I don't think the larger community wants to change either.
FreeDesktop.org has turned out some nice software but I don't like what they doing. Its one thing to suggest some high-level standards and try to create some consistency among projects that are already tied to a set of core libraries, its another to have to assume your specific daemon systemd or whatever is running. There is no reason to require something like that when it would be simple enough to abstract things in away that highlevel stuff like a gtk dialog can start an stop services in whatever way a particular distro wants to set things up.
Taking Gnome entirely Linux specific is the same deal, it means you have to accept a whole heap of stuff and conventions or you can't use it all. Thats dumb, ultimately its going to make distributions more varied not less. As a few core decisions will determine the entire software stack.
Over the short term it will enable people to polish up somethings and make them work real nice, as time marches on though its going to mean that something written for a Debian based distro wont be portable at all to something based on REHL or Slackware, or any of the BSDs. We will all end up with few software choices not more.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
KDE is far from the only recourse, as there are a number of other Desktop Environments already in common use, including XFCE and Unity/GNOME 2. However, GNOME requiring systemd would be a giant mistake as it would be a kick in the face not only for non-Linux based OSes, but for any Linux-based distro that use a different init. I haven't followed the Canonical /GNOME controversies much, but this inclines me to think Canonical isn't being as unreasonable as some think to diverge from GNOME. Optional systemd integration is probably a good idea.