I’m disappointed at how ingrained tribalism is in the desktop Linux landscape and how frequently I have to remind chatters to treat developers from other desktops with kindness and respect

You may have a favorite desktop that you really love and feel passionate about and that’s great, but we should not be putting down other desktops or their developers for having their own way of doing things. They are our colleagues and often our friends. Just about everyone who works on desktop Linux is an expert in their field in one way or another. And everyone is passionate about what they do and cares deeply about the experience they deliver their users.

@danirabbit I wonder if we need a more direct approach there. Like if some super KDE fan constantly trash talks gnome on their gitlab or somewhere else, then that should also be reason enough to remove them from any other Linux desktop community, especially KDE (KDE is just a random example here, I don't want to imply that it's specific to any desktop).

It sometimes feels like we don't speak up enough about it and should more clearly state that none of this is acceptable anywhere at any time.

Except the Nazis. Bootlickers get fucked. Your shit is trash

@karolherbst @danirabbit It also always seems to be people who aren't actually involved in any of the desktop projects. From what I can tell, KDE, GNOME, Pantheon, etc. developers are all super friendly with one another and respect each other's work a lot.

@thomholwerda @danirabbit yeah.. it's mostly just the users.

But then it's not about specific users either, but more about setting up expectations and somehow not enough people say it's not okay to trash talk specific desktops constantly.

Like sure, some desktop have certain ways of doing it that suck for some users, but some just make it part of their online character to shit talk some desktop 😢

@karolherbst @thomholwerda @danirabbit it often feels like it's users treating developers and desktop environments like sports team fans

@McNeely @thomholwerda @danirabbit oh yeah, that's exactly what it is, just even more para-social thinking the devs of their fav desktop are their heros/friends/whatever.

It's absurd how entitled they feel sometimes, especially the "Linux is about choice crowd", which are the most toxic of them all as they often use that phrase to literally harass developers.

@danirabbit I’ve learned to appreciate the diversity in Linux desktops. For example I don’t like KDE, but others do, and if it means they’re using that instead of Windows, I will 100% support them.

@Danielle Foré Why make a big fuzz about matters of personal taste at all?

@danirabbit XFCE is far and away my favorite DE for _me_.

That said, I really liked some aspects of Budgie, I absolutely adore GNOME for others just getting stared, I used to use LXDE/LXQT, and I really appreicate how much KDE lets you do (but found I spent all my time fiddling).

I've not yet tried COSMIC nor Elementary, but like you said, let folks do their thing if it isn't for you, just acknowledge that and move on. Horses for courses, an ass for every seat, and all that.

@danirabbit Whenever I hear a Mac user asking for a good distro I always comment about Elementary among others 😊

@berniethewordsmith @danirabbit

Come to Distrowatch to hear the moaning about Gnome and systemD.

@danirabbit Yeah I believe trashing other DEs to be dumb and just wasting time. I feel like Linux having so many desktop options and customisability to be a strength, and *especially* if these DEs actually collaborate with each other.

This isn't about competition, but about choice, something other OSes tend to lack, that is given to you for free.

For example, I run sway on my computer, I quite like it and I feel quite productive with it - but I still recommend other envs besides sway - I have friends I helped move to linux use completely different DEs I don't use, yet recommended to them (gnome, cinammon, Pantheon, KDE, etc...) and they love it. Despite not having really used KDE or gnome (etc) much in the last few years, I still enjoy seeing progress in these, I feel very happy seeing these get more and more polished over time, and the developers are super nice and helpful too :)

I strongly believe that more distros should adopt MX Linux's set of GUI-based configuration tools, instead of assuming that every window manager ships with a decent effigy of the #Windows Control Panel or expecting every user to get cozy with the terminal.
Scripts and invocations are cool, but they shouldn't be the only way to interact with the computer).

Who knows, maybe OpenSUSE's #YAST is better.

@danirabbit Ugh, yeah... I mean, I get that people have their preferences and sometimes even think they have good reasons. But also... Just let people enjoy using their software. You don't have to shit all over them.

I like the vast majority of desktops... except vanilla GNOME Shell. They went out of their way to remove things from the desktop paradigm, and make it complicated technically to add things back.