On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 7:42 PM Ty Young <youngty1997(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Bill,
Not an average Fedora user but I've used several Linux
distributions(including Fedora and versions there of) over the years.
What you are bringing up is 100% valid and isn't new or specific to
Fedora. It's been a known and valid complaint that there isn't enough
software in distro X or that the quality of what does exist in distro X
is poor.
The unfortunate reality is that none of what you describe will likely
change in any significant way, at least not with the standard Linux
distros(Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Arch) etc. Too much of Linux is ideology
based(GNU, among other political ideologies) instead of just making the
best software/platform possible, which pushes away people who would like
to contribute and use Linux software. There is little, if any,
compromises by those who believe in these ideologies. They are willing
to stand by their beliefs until the very end.
This, sadly, results in the situation where we are now: lots of Linux
distributions and/or desktop shells that are either of poor quality or
abandoned. Software developers don't want to support half or dozen(or
more!) Linux distributions, so they either don't support Linux or only
target a specific distribution. That makes users mad and leave so
developers don't bother targeting those distributions... and well, yeah,
you get the idea.
You miss the point of how FOSS projects work. Read up on some history
and get some understanding of the cultural background before you
blithely say that ideology and passion are what is killing Linux
distros. People who are passionate about FOSS and develop their
platforms work to produce quality software because they care for it.
High quality software is an effect of the process, not the deliberate
goal. And this means that sometimes FOSS *isn't* the highest quality
it could be, because the person working on it as a passion cannot do
so alone. That's the opportunity for you to step up and help make it
better.
That, in itself, is the core difference between FOSS and proprietary
software. FOSS is full of passion and possibility, while proprietary
software is defined only by its usefulness and restrictions.
It's best not to bring up any such issues, especially in
Fedora/Gnome
home turf. They have "Code of Conduct" nukes that are used to silence
any discussion they don't agree with. Just take a look at the Gnome
subreddit, wherein the moderators have been caught and continue to issue
thread/comment locks and temp bans for (nicely) pointing out bugs in
Gnome. It's scary stuff, and is only getting worse with Gnome's Code of
Conduct allowing racism. They will deny it endlessly that this is the
intent but have publicly fought against revising it to clear up the
intent after public outcry.
Be silent and fall in line, or be sent to the gulag.
This is very rude and definitely a huge misrepresentation of the
Fedora community. While it is true that Fedora Workstation is GNOME
centric, Fedora is one of a select few that contains virtually every
major desktop environment and window manager, as well as several minor
ones. We have Lumina, Xfce, MATE, KDE (my favorite and what I
personally run), Cinnamon, Deepin, Pantheon (from elementary OS!), and
many others. We support several desktop environments quite well, and
offer spins for most of them at
https://spins.fedoraproject.org. Most
of these have official teams (Special Interest Groups) that support
these environments. If you're interested in one, join one of them.
I don't know anything about the GNOME subreddit, nor do I really care.
GNOME is not Fedora. And Fedora itself is not defined by GNOME. We are
a separate, larger entity that does quite a bit more and has a much
more diverse audience.
Like all good communities, respectful discourse is permitted, but
being belligerent, hateful, and condescending is unnecessary and
unwanted. Let's be excellent to each other. Be good to your fellow
human.
--
真実はいつも一つ!/ Always, there's only one truth!