[arch-general] We have lost the desktop war. The reason? Windows 7.

[hollunder at gmx.at]

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:41:58 +0100
JM <fijam at archlinux.us> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 3:01 PM,  <hollunder at gmx.at> wrote:
> >[snip]
> > When will "Desktop" people start to see that they are being
> > intrusive? They live in their own small bubble called GNOME or KDE
> > and can't ever imagine anyone not wanting to use this.
> > Sorry for this "slightly" off topic rant, but it annoys me on a
> > regular basis when I see applications depend on gnome or kde,
> > mostly for some stupid reason called 'integration' which really
> > isn't of much use in the specific DE they integrate with and a
> > hindrance to everyone who's not running exactly that DE.
> 
> Being a Xfce user I wholeheartedly agree. I left Xubuntu for Arch a
> few years ago looking for minimal dependencies on applications and a
> way to recompile offending applications if needed. I have found what I
> needed.
> 
> Unfortunately, fewer and fewer applications are "desktop-agnostic"
> these days. To install a gtk2 application I am usually asked to
> download half of GNOME or at least libgnomeui and gconf. Gconf is my
> personal favourite. Xfce already uses xfconf (btw I love its
> description in the repository:"xfconf.. thingie" -- looks like not
> only I am confused), why am I supposed to use two different
> configuration databases? Why can't people agree on one? Why not just
> save configuration in plain files, it has worked before...
> 
> I have been filing feature requests on bugtrackers for alternative
> configuration systems, maintaining biased AUR packages and  bugging
> Arch devs about sudden additions of dependencies. But I feel I am
> losing. We are destined to live in a convoluted mass of redundant
> dependencies.
> 
> Regards,
> JM

Wait until dbus eat our babies and the dependency threads strangle us :)

Well, I guess they try to 'integrate' again, all config in one place,
but again only for their bubble.

I also encountered gconf a couple of times, and a bunch of other stuff
as well.
For me gtk and gnome are two very different things. Same goes for qt
and kde. Yet application developers seem to rarely see a problem with
adding gnome/kde dependencies to their gtk/qt app.
I wonder why this is.
I also wonder why they don't make more stuff optional.
Probably because it's hard, but what is the hard part there?