Naturally, but I want to underline that the things I’ve changed are “absolute requirements”, which I just couldn’t do without. But like I’ve described, it seems to not matter at all what I change or don’t change for these glitches to happen. So why does it matter if I, for example, enable the double-clickability of the top-left “icon” part of the windows (to close it)? (Which, BTW, should be the default anyway.)
But it will also be completely useless since they picked the most idiotic ideas possible: no way to minimize windows, no taskbar, no actual desktop, etc. In fact, it’s so bad that I refuse to believe that their intention was to improve what I remember from ~23 years ago as a reasonable but unpolished GUI when I was trying Linux out back then. I was truly shocked by how crippled it had become, and even more baffled by how it’s apparently the default for so many distributions.
I want neither, really. Modern GNOME is bad by (apparent) design and Plasma has many good things turned off by default and many bad things turned on by default. I wouldn’t need to change anything at all if the DE simply used sensible settings/choices from the start. Some things may be “preferences”, but others are just common sense. Attempting to use the default Plasma with literally no changes would drive me insane, just like GNOME. Or modern Windows. On the other hand, default Windows 95 was quite sane and polished by default, and not much had to be changed to be able to use the computer and not feel like you are fighting it and constantly suffering. Microsoft really spent serious time thinking about the user when designing it. (But then did their best to undo all that great work later.)
Since when are humans supposed to “adjust themselves” to “fit the computer”? That is a very curious stance to have when designing one of the most crucial parts of a computer: the graphical environment. Computers and their software aren’t supposed to be torture devices that you have to “get adjusted to” and suffer while using, or at least I hope this isn’t the case. They should be elegant and efficient machines/systems that aid and empower you to accomplish things in an efficient and satisfying manner. Which makes you feel good and in control – not frustrated, angry and like you are considered the lowest form of life. The latter is usually how I feel using modern computers, OSes and software. Things have gone in a very… unfortunate direction, to put it mildly.
Many UI/UX operations are not the result of simply “training” (or retraining) oneself to do it a certain way, but just naturally “make sense” and feels obvious to the user. You never need to read it in a manual, because you already did it on your own: you middle-clicked that tab to make it close, or something was located in just the right menu/sub-menu as one would expect. This is stuff which apparently made up a huge portion of the development of old commercial software, which sadly all too often is lacking or a mess in free software. Which I always find strange, because the developers must be using their own software, no? You would think that they naturally would encounter situations which they apparently don’t and which I then have to “whine” about years later and they just surly tell me “patches welcome”, etc.
(No, not everyone works in the exact same way, but that’s not what I’m saying.)
I don’t, and I can’t imagine what would make you think this. It’s actually the exact opposite. Just look at how long it takes me to respond here.
Over the years, I’ve reported and discussed many serious bugs in various projects, small and large, and the overwhelming response is nonexistent; they go entirely ignored forever, and I eventually give up and am forced to use something inferior/different simply because they don’t feel like fixing the bug for whatever reason, or don’t realize the seriousness, or have too much other work to do themselves and don’t care about the bug themselves.
I also encounter other people having long ago (sometimes decades in the past!) reported a serious issue which remains unfixed and sometimes even unaddressed for all that time. So it’s not just me “being rude and therefore ignored” or anything like that. You can probably see why I (for the most part) stopped even trying to submit pointless bug reports that are as meaningful as complaining about the customer service of major corporations to their complaint department. Frankly, at this point, whenever I hear “submit a bug report”, it feels more like a veiled insult/in-joke than a serious suggestion.
It’s also extremely difficult for an outsider to “grasp” a major project’s internal structure and code, let alone set it up to build it yourself, in order to stand any chance of developing and submitting a patch. This is just not a realistic expectation, although developers very often seem to find this impossible to believe.
I wish the attitude would be more like “we are going to make the best and most polished DE since Windows 95!” instead of “please lower your expectations so that what we have appears less bad”.
And just to make something crystal clear: I’m not saying that Windows 95, frozen in time, is the ultimate OS/desktop and can be used today. I’m saying that they made a real effort to make something that, if they had kept improving it instead of destroying it, would be a dream OS today instead of the nightmare that is Windows 8/10/11.
I’m extremely aware that volunteers make this and aren’t getting juicy monthly paychecks from a mega corporation. But not everything is about money, which you logically already know. You can still want to do things really well, because you make the world less bad by doing so, and because you yourself use it, and because you take pride in having been part of it. A lot of work clearly is done, so why not go all the way and not always be so offended when somebody offers their very honest and well-meaning feedback/questions?