Donate More by Donating Less
Posted by Fluid-Pirate646@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 94 comments
Posted by Fluid-Pirate646@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 94 comments
kalzEOS@reddit
All this money and the DE still sucks. I don't care what distro has it as their default, this DE sucks. They can't even (or maybe they don't want to) get fractional scaling to have clear text on Wayland, always blurry. They can't even get non-gtk apps to look normal on the DE. The best things they're good at are making it less and less usable by removing essential parts of it, and wellbeing or whatever the hell it is they implemented that 5 people will use.
EzeNoob@reddit
What have they removed in the last release?
Scandiberian@reddit
You can, you just don't know how to. I have 125% scaling with no blur on my laptop. Do so research and employ elbow grease before making up falsehoods.
kalzEOS@reddit
Say that to a new user. This is not a good look or something you should be proud of, especially for a DE that claims "simplicity". You can't say the same about KDE plasma, it is just there and works out of the box without fussing with it. GTFO with this lame shit. Keep pretending you love this depressing DE. Stockholm Syndrome at work here.
Scandiberian@reddit
KDE has way more bugs than I've ever found on GNOME. The Keyring feature has never worked properly, for example.
Plus, the windows DE design is outdated garbage that was never meant to be used by humans. Only IT engineers like the eye-sore that is have a billion menus read and popping at at the same time. The rest of us like a clean interface that just works.
So yeah, keep pretending you love that DE Stockholm.
Technical_Strike_356@reddit
When GNOME 3 and GNOME 4 came out, I distinctly remember seeing people complain about how the new UI looked like it was designed more for touchscreen users than for desktop users. Because of that, I decided that GNOME must have stellar touchscreen support, considering that they've oriented their UI/UX design around that.
But have you ever actually tried a touchscreen on GNOME? It's totally busted. Touches get stuck, the shell freezes, and your whole session might even crash.
So why did GNOME reorient their UI design if they don't care about touchscreens? Well, it's obvious. It's because they just want to be like other desktops. GNOME saw the direction Windows was headed in with their Surface Pros and wrecklessly copied it without actually doing any of the necessary implementation work.
Same story with fractional scaling. Instead of rendering their UI at the correct scale, they render it with the next highest integer scale and then downscale the bitmap to the correct size. Why do they do that? Well, only because Apple does the same thing. Except for Apple, that's not a problem, because they don't sell screens that require non-integer scaling settings. Yet another example of brainless "development" by the GNOME team.
GNOME's consistent bugginess and dispassionate attitude towards their users' experience will kill it sooner or later. Hopefully.
Scandiberian@reddit
I don't know why a Linux user would see other Linux users losing access to more options even if you don't understand them.
Just goes to show the tribalism runs deep. If GNOME ever dies Linux might as well die with it and we all become Mac users.
Technical_Strike_356@reddit
The problem is that GNOME is the face of the Linux desktop. The most popular "polished" distros (namely Fedora and Ubuntu) use it. It just infuriates me that there are people out there who hear about Linux, get the most popular distro, and then are turned away from the buggy mess that is GNOME. Just a few months ago I wanted to try out GNOME on a new computer so I flashed the latest Ubuntu version to a USB drive and booted it up. It tore like crazy out of the box and everything was blurry. And it's not like I was running some exotic/hostile hardware, I was using the Intel i5 8th gen with the iGPU that comes with it.
The GNOME shitshow is dragging the entire Linux desktop experience down with it.
Scandiberian@reddit
You're blaming Gnome for an issue that is exclusive to Ubuntu. It is widely known that Ubuntu is dog shit these days, so I don't know why you're pretending this is Gnome's fault.
Stock Gnome, no the garbage modded version that Ubuntu uses, works flawlessly on OpenSUSE, and I imagine it's the same on Fedora.
MrAlagos@reddit
GNOME 3 came out one year before Windows 8 and before any Microsoft Surface device was ever released.
Also, GNOME 4 has never existed.
Other_Refuse_952@reddit
The moment GNOME dies i'll just go back to windows. Out of all the DE i used, GNOME is the most polished, consistent and stands on its own feet. The other DE look like an outdated version of windows.
If GNOME dies many people will leave Linux, i will not be the only one. Just because you don't like it (because it's not yet another windows clone) doesn't mean it needs to "die"... go away with this stupid mentality.
I personally don't like KDE, so i hope it dies fast. Kill it... how does that sound?
c12four@reddit
Can you share what additional steps you take to make...uh, stuff, appear non-blurry on your laptop? I am using GNOME too and I always feel like the default fonts are blurrier with 125% fractional scaling compared to 125% font scaling. Some people suggested "enable stem darkening" using fontconfig settings but that just made things even worse for me.
Symbolic icons (the monochrome UI icons) get blurry with fractional scaling too. Apparently that is how the 16x16px SVGs are supposed to work though because when a 16x16px SVG icon is rendered with 125% fractional scaling, you would get a 20x20px vector icon. The GNOME HIG also recommends to avoid icon sizes other than 16x16px, 32x32px, 64x64px and 128x128px.
Xwayland applications are still blurry on GNOME with fractional scaling enabled. I was suprised when I realized that even a fairly popular application like the VLC media player (installed from Flathub) was using the Xwayland session.
The conclusion I came up with was that I need to buy new, expensive hardware where I can avoid fractional scaling entirely and use 200% integer scaling instead.
Scandiberian@reddit
The way I fixed it was install dconf editor>org>GNOME>mutter>experimental features>activate xwayland native scaling>save>reboot PC
No idea about blurry icons though. I don't have any blurry icons personally. Are you using non-native apps on GNOME? I any case you can change the icons of apps albeit it's a annoying to do.
I think if I had ugly icons I'd just hide them inside some folder so I wouldn't see them. Then search directly for that app name in the search bar if I need to open it.
c12four@reddit
I was talking about the symbolic icons used everywhere on GNOME. There is a link in my previous comment as well...Nevermind.
Scandiberian@reddit
Gotcha. Sorry IKL admit I was lazy to read you comment all the way. Those aren't blurry for me either, and I don't think they've ever been.
The fix I gave you above should help with at least one of your problems, though.
FattyDrake@reddit
The fractional scaling issue is a core problem with GTK apps, which is primarily what GNOME apps are using.
You can set scaling factors but it's a global thing and apps that aren't built for it can have issues with UI elements.
It is likely going to be fixed in GTK 5 tho that's a few years out.
Technical_Strike_356@reddit
It's not just a Wayland problem, it's an issue with their UI toolkit on literally every platform. They try to blame X11 for their lack of fractional scaling support on X, but they still don't even have fractional scaling on Windows, a platform where literally every single app looks clear and crisp with a fractional scale. And though they claim to implement fractional scaling on Wayland, what they're actually doing is rendering everything with a scale of 200% and then scaling it down by some fraction, instead of... you know... actually rendering the UI at the correct scale in the first place. It's laughable. Not a single cent of my money is going to these "developers", KDE is where it's at when it comes to fractional scaling.
Hytht@reddit
What. last I checked even device manager, partition manager and some other Windows system apps are blurry with fractional scaling. Maybe they use some legacy UI toolkit but even on Linux only legacy apps have fractional scaling issues.
kalzEOS@reddit
Tell this to the moron above who wrote a bunch of nonsense defending them above. Go propose something to them on gitlab or ask for a feature. You'll be treated like you're stupid and don't know what's good for you. They have this Apple smug approach to their userbase like "hey, you fucking moron. We know what's best for you. Take it and shut up".
My money will go to the actual developers who take time out of their day to work with me when I report a bug. Some of them even apologize, and I'm like holy shit don't apologize, you're doing it for free, dude.
Rare_Ad8942@reddit
They already have more money than Linux mint and KDE because of Redhat funding, while offering a fraction of what KDE and Linux mint offer, and that is not to mention trying to sabotage Linux mint (gtk4 been libadwita only, forcing them to use another Bluetooth client,.....), regardless of whether those are truly intentional, other projects (like Linux mint and KDE) need and deserve the donations more and will probably put it in better use that benefits the open source community as a whole, rather than this semi-open source project that is always hell-bent on reinventing the wheel.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
I think this criticism is nonconstructive because it repeats pseudo-intellectual argument that "Red Hat is funding GNOME Foundation".
Red Hat does sponsors GNOME Foundation, but they don't give them the amount of money one would consider sustainable.
Linux Mint, MATE, Budgie, Pop OS are all GNOME downstream, even smallest action within GNOME will have ramification downstream which most people interact with. KDE doesn't have this kind of downstream dependency, which is why you don't hear no Downstream KDE complaining about KDE (well, maybe 1: TDE).
X Project bad, and X project good is bad mentality to have in FOSS. This is why Microsoft and Big Corpo will crush us like ant because commenter like Rare_Ad8942 already did what Microsoft set out to do for free.
Open Source Community as a whole also includes those who likes and appreciates GNOME.
mmstick@reddit
You can remove Pop OS from that list now. That was true for 22.04 but no longer true in 24.04.
AgainstScumAndRats@reddit
Where can I download 24.04? I see 22.xx in Pop_OS download page, so 22 is still the primary Pop_OS OS thus it's still a downstream.
OP probably should update that list in 2056 when COSMIS finally finished.
Gravemind15@reddit
Don't really give a shit mate. Tell gnome to not be so hostile and maybe I'll care.
Rare_Ad8942@reddit
What I meant is that KDE and Linux Mint receive 150k≈ from donations and gnome receives 900k≈ , you can use kwin in lxqt and Linux Mint uses KDE Bluetooth client after gnome abandoned the old one, and Linux Mint apps a standalone meaning you can use them with pretty much anything. There is a lot these two do for how little money they receive compared to gnome big pockets, as for the influence of redhat and SUSE, I don't care as long we get a good product the rest of the community can enjoy using and developing upon.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
Mutter is being used by Budgie (Magpie), Mint (Muffin) and Elementary (Gala) - same conclusion, just different way to go about it.
Flatpak also maintained by mostly GNOME developers also modular. GIMP, GTK, Orca, these things are being used by everyone.
I get where you are coming from but GNOME Foundation is not just doing GNOME Desktop Environment. They're among few FOSS Developers circle that actually doing and paying the works for accessibility features in Linux (https://tesk.page/2025/06/18/its-true-we-dont-care-about-accessibility-on-linux/) not just GNOME.
KrazyKirby99999@reddit
Is it possible to donate specifically to Flathub, GIMP, etc. instead of the GNOME Foundation?
blackcain@reddit
You can donate directly to GIMP. GF manages their money but takes none of it.
ThatOneShotBruh@reddit
I thought that Cinnamon and MATE were forks of GNOME 2, meaning that they aren't directly downstream of the current GNOME project?
pr0fic1ency@reddit
That's true, I'll correct that.
SSUPII@reddit
I found a guy irl that said KDE needs to die and get forgotten because you need to pay a license to use QT for professional reasons
d_ed@reddit
That guy is a liar/wrong.
kuroshi14@reddit
How about a moderator of r/linux saying the following in a pinned comment?
d_ed@reddit
There is a CLA to contribute code. That's a valid fact.
The next line in that comment implying that it's not copyleft is not a fact.
kuroshi14@reddit
Eh, people always use this to say GTK is better than Qt. Here is a moderator of r/linux saying the same thing.
moanos@reddit
I took this as inspiration to set up a monthly donation to KDE 💚
wowsomuchempty@reddit
Mm, I should probably donate to sway..
AgainstScumAndRats@reddit
Talk is chep, show us the proof, crip.
chocolatedolphin7@reddit
Travel grants, internships... Stuff like this is why I never, ever found it reasonable to donate to most non-profits or foundations or whatever. As always, by far the best way to donate and contribute to any FOSS project is to just contribute code, submit and triage bug reports, help out new users, etc.
Hoffenwwoend@reddit
man you likely not giving money to foss at all, linux folk usually big talk and no action while their developers begging for jobs from big corpo lmao.
bananamantheif@reddit
Hey hey hey, calm your horses. I personally sometimes go to the repo and give it a heart
bananamantheif@reddit
Fucking interns, they've had it too good for too long
DueAnalysis2@reddit
Why is it not worthwhile to fund travel grants or internships? The former allows them to be part of a larger FOSS collaborative network by taking part in conferences and workshops and the like, and the latter allows them to develop new talent.
chocolatedolphin7@reddit
Travel is first and foremost a luxury, not a necessity for getting things done. This is common sense for anyone not born in the US/parts of Europe and from a highly privileged background. At least companies can usually justify events and travel with networking opportunities, brand awareness and such, but FOSS really doesn't truly need in-person events for 99.99% of software. And stuff like this being funded through arbitrary applications etc just brings all sorts of problems. In-person workshops also exclude people who might not be able to attend or didn't receive funding. I've seen this firsthand (outside GNOME) where some technical details were already discussed in-person and some stuff considered more or less "final", without much of it being discussed or documented publicly in writing. Which just serves as a huge barrier to entry for any new potential contributors.
blackcain@reddit
All this is true. But a lot of work gets done via in-person especially when making technical decisions. It's why the 'hallway' track at conferences are always the most powerful.
I've spent the last 3 years doing virtual conferences for my employer, there is no substitute.
That said, having smaller events in local communities could be more effective than a large conference in europe/U.S. Given that the U.S. is unsafe now - Europe is likely the most viable, but we are also doing events in India, Mexico, etc.
If you read Stevent's blog, we did consider eliminating GUADEC and we still might.
chocolatedolphin7@reddit
Nope, that's completely untrue and you know it. But sure, whatever makes you sleep at night.
blackcain@reddit
What's completely untrue? That hallway tracks are powerful? OK, bro - I'll take my 12 years of doing virtual and in-person event over your lived in experience.
DueAnalysis2@reddit
I agree, but I guess the solution from my perspective was to make more funding available for travel. But I guess that goes back to your first point
Which is where I guess I agree to disagree.
Scandiberian@reddit
No! You're supposed to be chained to your desk, coding. Never have fun, never interact with another human being, just code.
^dat guy, probably.
Edzomatic@reddit
I don't like the tone of this comment. You may not think that travel grants and other stuff are necessary but I'm sure there are not intentionally blowing away the money.
In addition I think if you use their product then you should donate if you can. CachyOS and gnome breathed new life into my laptop that was gonna become E-waste for free, and they deserve financial support regardless of what they do with the money as long as they keep delivering
blackcain@reddit
Help us out at https://endof10.org/ - get other folks to use GNOME/KDE whatever and also get new life out of their old windows 10 machine :D
blackcain@reddit
We could use that too! More volunteers is always nice to have.
PLAYERUNKNOWNMiku01@reddit
If I donate can I theme my apps?
emulation_bot@reddit
i really don't like this guys attitude
i can't support people like them
xX69_MuskyMouse_69Xx@reddit
there needs to be a aggregator for donations. processing fees are insane for small amounts. having a way to send a single payment and have the user able to divide up the donation to specific projects on a percentage basis so that it allows for small 1-2$ recurring payments for projects that either already have plenty of support or are niche would be nice
pr0fic1ency@reddit
Reminder to everyone GNOME isn't just about the opinionated Desktop Environment, but also GNOME Infrastructure, of which many distro/downstream may depends to.
usbeehu@reddit
Everything in and around Gnome is great except their shitty shell (and Gnome settings app).
pr0fic1ency@reddit
It's good enough for multiple desktop to use as base of their forks.
jEG550tm@reddit
Dont you think its weird how pretty much everyone starting eith a modified gnome desktop ends up making their own one anyway? Cinnamon, Cosmic... Its almost as if gnome isnt that good or something
Scandiberian@reddit
You wouldn't believe how many windows-style DE exist. Or how many window Manager variants exist.
It sounds like every since graphical option for a DE sucks and we should all just be using the command line.
jEG550tm@reddit
Nah the windows style GUI sucks. The GUI needs a whole revamp.
Scandiberian@reddit
I don't know why you say Cosmic is a GNOME revamp. It looks pretty similar to GNOME, workflow and everything.
It just makes a few windows bigger or smaller, and puts a weird border around the selected window. For me, that's not a significant difference at all.
Plus, cosmic divested from gnome more for political reasons than design philosophy ones. They just want more customisation options.
Plus cosmic uses a better programming language, so that's cool.
jEG550tm@reddit
Uh yeah exactly my point
Scandiberian@reddit
Just to clarify, for you GNOME is bad because you can't waste your afternoon customising it? Because for me that's a feature.
I want a DE that is minimalist and consistent across the whole interface, and that's what GNOME provides. People who want endless customisation on their DEs probably have nothing to do with their lives.
Also, I don't know how you can say GNOME "needs a whole revamp" and then give cosmic as an example... Lol.
jEG550tm@reddit
I am talking about GUI as a whole that needs a revamp, am I talking to a brick wall here or something?
And who says you have to waste your whole afternoon? They could very well have had customisation options, but with the default looking the way it does now, but it doesnt because gnome kept removing features to "give you more options" i guess.
Isnt the whole mantra of Plasma: "simple by default powerful when needed"? Whats stopping gnome from not being a shitty opinionated enshittified piece of software? Are we forgetting MATE also exists because of this?
You can waste 5 afternoons customising Cinnamon but do you see people being stuck or being lost in the UI because of that? No, because it comes with sane defaults.
If gnome is so good how come I have to go into the whole bluetooth settings window just to disconnect / connect my wireless earbuds? (work pc) and then, why do I have to install an add-on to have a bluetooth shortcut on the status bar, just for it to close anyway when i click on my earbuds?
Scandiberian@reddit
Because they don't want to waste time supporting features they don't deem necessary? And you can always add more features to GNOME of you want using extensions?
The reason KDE can be "powerful when needed" is because everything becomes a broken mess as soon as you get out of the defaults. Fonts look like ass, colours don't match, you get screen tear, Keyring doesn't work, so on and so forth.
None of those issues happen in GNOME because they are focused on making the whole system work well. For me, the things you pointed to are non-issues that can be easily fixed with extensions anyway.
But if you're so unhappy, why don't you just use KDE then? Fedora has a KDE spin, so go with that. Just don't complain when you have other issues that are inherent to the spaghetti code that is KDE.
jEG550tm@reddit
I use KDE fedora at home, I have pop os at work.
So the basic functionality of the desktop is what gnome deem unnecesary? No.
Installing addons is great, except it shouldnt be used to get back the very basic functionality a desktop should have. It should be used to ADD ON to an already functional desktop.
The bluetooth thing is the bare minimum my guy
I swear to god gnome fanboys are just apple fanboys in denial.
Scandiberian@reddit
The "maintainer" is a bunch of people who democratically choose what to change so maybe learn the basics about the project?
And what you're calling "basic functionality" with the Bluetooth thing is clearly not an issue since I never noticed it anyway and I use GNOME at home and work. Turning it knon or off is literally two clicks away, just like KDE.
Yes, I like the HIG which are actually good for human use, instead of the menu mess that is KDE/Windows. Not my fault you're on the wrong side of history.
jEG550tm@reddit
Oh yes "democratically" the same way orban is still "democratically" in office.
usbeehu@reddit
I couldn't agree more. I always hated the single panel solution Windows had, even when I didn't know other altrrnatives for that. It's some sort of legacy that worked like 30 years ago but the world moved on, and we no longer want to deal with a crowded inefficient panel.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
That's one way to look at it, sure.
The other way is that GNOME is good enough as base to build upon. Think of it like Android's AOSP of which Samsung and many others OEM build upon to create their own platform.
For COSMIC specifically it's a good thing that they build their own Desktop Environment, now they get to be upstream.
Every DE has their own pros and cons, GNOME's design might be seen as too simplistic for some but many also consider simplistic is a good thing.
blackcain@reddit
We're also building libraries and other software collaterals that downstreams can use.
One great thing to fund is moving evolution data services out of evolution and turn it into a general desktop email service so that you can multiple email clients. Stuff like that would be good for everyone since we then can build a lot of gui email clients.
somethingrelevant@reddit
GNOME is a coherent and polished desktop environment that almost entirely achieves what it sets out to do. it makes sense it's a default on many distros. the problem is what it sets out to do is really annoying, and it being really annoying bleeds out and affects people who aren't even using GNOME, like me. it is quite a maddening ecosystem
pr0fic1ency@reddit
Completely relatable. But I'm trying to appeal to beyond GNOME Desktop Environment discussion, because GNOME Foundation isn't just working with GNOME Desktop Developers, there are Flatpaks, GTK, Orca, GIMP etc.
Gravemind15@reddit
I could go without the 1 flatpak on my machine.
I don't use gimp.
I don't build applications with GTK.
I don't even know what Orca is so I don't care about that either.
Apparently dbus is maintained by gnome. I don't make a conscious choice to use it. It comes with most of the distros, like systemd.
Why should I give them money?
usbeehu@reddit
Unity was so good, it's still my all time favorite. It had a lot of small details and quality of life features. It felt like the devs were actually used the stuff they made and spent lot of time to make it actually usable. Gnome devs are too idealistic, they have the "form over function" mindset.
blackcain@reddit
Consider Bluefin - it's basically Fedora Silverblue + Ubuntu design choices.
pr0fic1ency@reddit
I suddenly feel nostalgic hearing about Unity, because I remember it was "not for me" and I "have" to download Ubuntu GNOME iso from its official website which kinda look like dodgy website at the time lol.
usbeehu@reddit
Yes, it exists with the aim of bringing vanilla Gnome to Ubuntu. Also Ubuntu Unity remix exists too but it's no longer maintaied by full time devs so it's a lot less polished sadly. This is why I really wait for Cosmic desktop.
MeanEYE@reddit
I actually love it. Very few annoyances with it. Mainly memory usage and background being black instead of transparent or something similar, since solid color loves creating ghosts on LCD screens.
Apart from that, I like it. Simple, efficient and lets me do my work without getting in my way.
Scandiberian@reddit
The shell is horribly bloated and badly optimised. My laptop is always consuming 20w when I turn it on and when I see what's draining my resources it's always the GNOME Shell.
Love everything else about Gnome, though.
MeanEYE@reddit
Hm, I didn't measure power consumption so I can't make any claims on that. But yeah. It feels like it can do with some optimizations.
Gravemind15@reddit
I give money to open source but gnome will likely not be one of those. It's their choice to have an opinionated DE but it's my choice to not support those opinions.
Hoffenwwoend@reddit
just give money, linux folks doesn't walk the talk, which is why their developer begging for money lmao
Fuzzy_Ad9970@reddit
Considering how it makes me feel to think about giving the GNOME people money, and how little I care for their cries for help, I should really choose a different DE.
Hoffenwwoend@reddit
certified reddit momento
Business-Help-7876@reddit
only if with X support
Hoffenwwoend@reddit
seems to me you're not giving money to any foss org dude, gentoo folks are unemployed.
ElectricalSloth@reddit
why would anyone donate to this shitstain of an organization
kuroshi14@reddit
Question. Why are there no annual or financial reports available on https://foundation.gnome.org/reports/ after the year 2022?
c-pid@reddit
Not offical with gnome, just trying to answer this question. The report for 2023 is available as the first report directly shown. The needed paperwork for 2024 may simple not yet be done. Filing it for large entities such a foundation simply takes quiet some time and the legislator usually grants quite some time for the foundation to file all needed paperwork.
Heck, I as a freelancer haven't filed my taxes for 2024 yet and still have time till ~mid 2026.
blackcain@reddit
It usually will be available by GUADEC because we usually report all that during the general assembly meeting.
Mr_Lumbergh@reddit
Yeah, I won't be doing that. I haven't run Gnome since about 2011 and I see no need to go back to it.
DriNeo@reddit
IMO the lack of configurability requires more updates. Configurability requires less workforce because in the case some user is not happy with the config, he can change himself without waiting for an update.