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

[JM]

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