this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Reminder: System76 is not to be trusted (blogs.gnome.org)
submitted 4 days ago by hello_hello@hexbear.net to c/libre@hexbear.net
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Imagine spending 3+ years on staying mad at GNOME to release the most underwhelming software imaginable.

System76 is best known for spreading misinfo and lies about GNOME and other upstreams, selling overpriced re-branded clevos, "being made in America", loving rust and hyping on twitter and mastodon.

Most of the "backlash" against GNOME comes from the a community that has more opinions than users or just straight up misinformation and spite.

COSMIC is very poorly designed, it might be written in the "memory-safe programming language" but it's clear that they don't have a design backbone. They basically created the caricature of GNOME's adwaita but now you can paint your windows in whatever barf-inducing color you want.

They built an entire new desktop from scratch rather than work with GNOME or KDE and in that amount of time, literally every issue that sparked that redesign was resolved upstream in both aforementioned desktops.

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[–] TheModerateTankie@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The things some linux users are mad about kinda baffle me. Hostility towards gnome is one of them. I don't like the default experience but haven't had any issues with extensions, but I don't get updates to gnome as soon as they are released. It's annoying that system76 fed into that to promote their own stuff. Cosmic looks cool for the tiling options, and it would be nice if it's more efficient, but otherwise it doesn't seem that remarkable.

Flatpaks are another area of hated that confuse me. The amount of misinfo about how they work is baffling to me. People will install and troubleshoot arch and act like it's the easiest thing in the world and then throw their hands up and walk away if they have to open flatseal for some reason. It can be annoying if the flatpak doesn't work right or is shoddy, but sandboxed apps are good. Having everything installed system wide is a bad practice. Having to use unnofficial repositories if you want a newer version of an app is a security risk. Having app developers have to support every popular distribution and their current libraries is burden they shouldn't have to deal with.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 2 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

The hostility towards gnome comes from the fact that gnome is visible, successful, evolving and innovating (also they are woke). People hate flatpak because flatpak is adjacent to gnome and normalizing the desktop. Also elitist Linux users are terminally online and ramble about the "good old days" or whatever about things nobody cares or knows about or moved past from.

"There are languages people complain about and there are languages nobody uses." Type shit.

People should be mad about the tortured economics of trying to provide a free desktop to people, instead they choose to be mad about software not following the emacs school of software design and "muh Unix philosophy"

[–] sexywheat@hexbear.net 21 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I dunno my wife has had a system76 laptop for years and she loves it.

Plus, gnome makes me want to do arson I hate it SO much.

But that’s the great part about Linux you can choose what you want 🤷

[–] The_Grinch@hexbear.net 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Yeah I hate the arguments (which come from mostly GNOME and MacOS users) that take the form of "It doesn't stop you from doing this thing I personally feel is a bad idea, this is evidence of it being half-baked"

On XFCE I can put a dock/panel dead center in the middle of my desktop. I don't do that because I can't think of any possible use case for doing so. No one needed to explicitly tell me not to.

[–] sexywheat@hexbear.net 6 points 3 days ago

And then the more extreme example is that with Windows 11 you apparently can't even place your dock on the side of your screen at all any more.

So people with ultra-widescreen monitors just end up with a bunch of useless bullshit at the bottom of their screen lol.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

In GNOME you can also put the panel/dock in the middle of the screen. There just isn't a nob or lever taking up space in the user interface to do so.

Unlike MacOS, GNOME shell is a live running environment that can be virtually fully scripted at will. There exist community driven extensions that are allowed to innovate outside of gnomes timeline that do what you're talking about. This is what pop had done until they decided it was somehow easier to make an entire desktop from scratch than work with gnome on upstreaming.

You want icons on desktop then that's your prerogative, but you can't assume as a participant in gnome that your say should automatically be fulfilled just by the virtue of you being a user.

[–] Saapas@piefed.zip 5 points 3 days ago

GNOME's plugin are constantly breaking with updates. That was really annoying

[–] The_Grinch@hexbear.net 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

There isn't a knob or lever taking up space in the UI to do it in XFCE either. You create a new panel then drag and drop it exactly wherever you want it to be.

I wasn't comparing Mac OS and GNOME.

I'm not complaining about GNOME and its users doing whatever they want. I am complaining about GNOME as a project and community fostering a culture of shitting on and occasionally using their position to strongarm and bully other people and projects who are doing whatever they want to do, especially on the grounds of it not being "sleek" enough for their taste, bulldozing over useful features and desktop paradigms, and no, not just "traditional" ones. I wish I had the privilege of not caring about what GNOME does but we don't live in that world.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Can you give an example of this? I really am not aware of any case where gnome folks had that much sway over other projects.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

GTK is/was the defacto standard GUI library for Linux for well over 2 decades. Of course their decisions impact more than GNOME desktop users.

GTK used to be the library you would target when you wanted what I'd describe as native Linux look and feel. Now that's not really a thing any more.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The native Linux look and feel is not a real thing. It was a coincidence created by the fact that gnome and gtk was, as you mentioned, the de facto Linux toolkit and the design culture at the time.

Unless youre advocating for a world where everyone must be forced to compile down to gtk, you're welcome to keep your revisionism to yourself.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago

What are you even talking about. Of course native look and feel existed as something that both application developers and users desire.

It's not an absolute but an application can feel out of place or it can fit into a desktop environment.

[–] Beaver@hexbear.net 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This kinda just sounds like the GNOME devs are mad that they're getting treated the way that treat everyone else.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Did you read the full blogpost? Whatever imagined enemy you've imagined the GNOME community to be, system76 is a capitalist firm in the US that stands to gain from denigrating projects like GNOME.

This isn't a beef between volunteers over some technical spat in a bug tracker. this is a pattern of slander and purposeful misinformation all designed to make GNOME out to be unreasonable while making s76 out like victims. All with the express intent of advertising their own product.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

System76 doesn't claim to be victims, they claim technical disagreement.

How would they even benefit from slandering Gnome? They are selling laptops with Gnome desktop too.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I saw a few cases of those situations happening recently System76 / Pop! OS finds a bug (where ‘find’ often means that they confirm an existing upstream bug is impacting their OS version)

They write a patch or workaround, include it in their package but don’t upstream the change/fix (or just drop a .patch labelled as workaround in a comment rather than submitting it for proper review)

Later-on they start commenting on the upstream (Ubuntu, GNOME, …) bugs trackers, pointing out to users that the issue has been addressed in Pop! OS, advertising how they care about users and that’s why they got the problem solved in their OSSystem76 / Pop! OS team, while you should be proud of the work you do for you users I think you are going the wrong way there. Working on fixes and including them early in your product is one thing, not upstreaming those fixes and using that for marketing you as better than your upstreams is a risky game.

None of you read the article it is impossible on hexbear to expect people to read the original article. angery

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I read the article. But it's also not the first time I've heard about the story and I don't think you can go to the Gnome blog for a neutral perspective. There are other sources reporting that popos does upstream fixes.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The links to the twitter shit stirring is real.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I've read the tweets, talking about an actual degradation of features in a piece of software doesn't amount to "shit stirring" in my book.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Considering how many people have dogshit "takes" on GNOME about how they secretly hate theming and GTK is their personal playground to bully everyone, yeah it did.

Also I don't know where you come from, but posting passive aggressive ultimatums against volunteers in developing software is not a good look.

edit: found the gitlab mr the blog was referring to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libadwaita/-/merge_requests/232

This API may be interesting for developers which do not want to give up support for themes. That's not my case. The GNOME Files app hasn't supported themes for a very long time, there is no reason to explicitly opt-in to themes now. As a co-maintainer of a core app, I'm not looking forward to the added support burden. So, my initial reaction to the proposed API addition is that I don't intend to use it in nautilus.

(J. Soller from S76)

do you want nautilus to remain the default file manager for Pop!_OS and Ubuntu?

okay-okay I love passive aggressiveness on an issue tracker. Truly makes people like you.

Reposting the tweet here so someone reading this doesn't get it twisted:

J soller from S76 tweeted this

"What we will do instead is replace GNOME components entirely if it becomes too costly to apply our style to them. Come up with a way forward for custom styles, or lose users.",

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Not sure hate is the right word but Gnome sure seems to be getting rid of application theming. That's what at least half the post is about.

~~volunteers~~ IBM employees

I really don't get what your problem with sollers question here is. Of course he needs to know whether a compromise can be found with the Gnome project because it takes years to develop replacements. Of course he needs to make the call at some point whether it's more productive to continue work with Gnome or build something new and if you read the tweets it seems like it takes him fairly long to actually realize that gnome is removing theming, so he probably feels lead on.

I really don't understand why you are so upset about the decision of developing replacements after Gnome refused to continue providing theming support for their apps. For a desktop environment being able to theme the file browser seems like a pretty sensible requirement.

[–] lil_tank@hexbear.net 13 points 4 days ago

I had no idea about any of this but one time I tried PopOS and it was bad so I agree bean

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

You can pin files on your sidebar. The COSMIC designers didn't realize how inefficient this is compared to just a starring/labeling system. The sidebar should be for bookmarked directories, pinning files makes no sense.

Also menu bar items combined with symbolic icons on window title-bar is just so unappealing, it's like they decided to do the opposite of GNOME just for kicks and not understanding why those design decisions were made in the first place.

Imagine having a desktop that is just gnome extensions speed-dont-laugh

[–] Edie@hexbear.net 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Also menu bar items on window title-bar is just so unappealing, it's like they decided to do the opposite of GNOME just for kicks and not understanding why those design decisions were made in the first place.

Lmao. They decided to have a GNOME like appearance, but not even follow the design decisions. I might like KDE more, but if you're going to go with GNOME-esque don't do that shit.

ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

They really went and invented their own desktop just because they got mad that they had to spend an evening or two every 6 months to port their gnome extension.

There is a schadenfreude I feel now that they've decided to take on a job that nobody wants: making a desktop for a userbase with more complaints than users.

[–] Saapas@piefed.zip 4 points 3 days ago

But if it is so inefficient then why not just... not pin files there? I dunno it doesn't seem like it takes anything from you to have that option lol

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Tbh I don't really like what Gnome has done to theming. Of course that doesn't excuse system76's communication approach.

I feel like Linux desktop UI has peeked with Gnome 2.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As the blogpost states, GNOME didn't do anything to theming that couldn't be received gracefully by downstreams like Ubuntu.

It really is just a case of people leaning on GNOME for so long that they feel that they're entitled to the decision-making process.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm not really sure that's true. After Gnome 2 got deprecated we saw a lot of new desktop environments appearing, with their own sets of default apps. Canonical famously tried it's luck with Unity too.

Pop OS building their own DE from the ground up isn't people leaning on Gnome too much. It's the second release in a row that makes Gnome less satasfactory for distro integration. We saw similar developments when Gnome 3 came out.

Of course GTK apps are still a pain, and even more of a pain with GTK 4, to integrate. I don't really have the feeling that the Gnome guy is speaking for application developers as much as he claims to. A lot of app developers stuck to GTK 2 to the bitter end and younger devs don't even consider native widget systems any more, it's all electron apps, if there is a desktop app at all. I think that's a missed chance (of course also not centrally styleable).

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Preach!

I hope you don't mind the cross-post into the major Linux coms >w<

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 9 points 4 days ago

It's okay, System76 deserves it. No one should ever buy their rebranded clevos with coreboot at the prices they're advertising, just get a second hand OEM laptop like the rest of us.

[–] 9to5@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

From what I have seen I thought cosmic looked pretty but I have no dog in this

[–] Inui@hexbear.net 2 points 3 days ago

It has the best built-in tiling capability without relying on buggy KDE scripts like Khronkite or Gnome extensions that don't work for weeks after their major version updates. The rest of the thing is infinitely buggier though and not what someone should expect of a full 1.0 release.

[–] skeletorsass@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Do it even support other language? This kind of project never do so I can never test when I see it because no Chinese.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Seems like there's holes in it need fixing. Totally 1.0 quality software and not the result of missing self-imposed deadlines for years and then releasing what they had.

[–] microfiche@hexbear.net 3 points 3 days ago

I'm too cool to use Pop!OS because the name is p fucking lame.

[–] Saapas@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

PopOS version of GNOME was probbaly the best there was, including a lot of stuff that should've been default. It makes sense for them to just make their own thing than fight with GNOME imo