Sadly, the enshittification has also taken over parts of the Linux desktop as well though. For example, the mobile-first, flat-everything user-hostile design. (like gnome)
Dark themes were not common while skeuomorphism was mainstream, they are only in demand right now because viewing an extremely low-contrast white flat theme is an eyesore.
Luckily, KDE and the similar still exists and you can theme it:)
This is the 2nd time this word has been used to describe the Linux desktop in this thread, and it's disingenuous. FOSS doesn't do any of the things described with enshitification article: it doesn't sit between buyers and sellers and screw each of them in turn. That's not what's been happening. Maybe the software goes shit, but it is not "enshitification". At every turn there's been alternatives (GNOME3 -> Unity/Xfce, KDE4 -> Trinity, Pulseaudio -> Pulsewire, systemd -> upstart, Debian -> Devuian, etc)
Stop misusing the word, you're discrediting the good work of FOSS.
Bland, corporate, utterly inoffensive and lifeless "design"? Check. Trying to remove theming from users? Check. etc....
The only reason why they haven't succeeded like other OSes is because it's FOSS. But they really want to take away the user's choice, shift the Overton window, and pretend like things were always bad.
Yes you are, see:
>they are just progressively making things worse
That's things going "shit". That's been around for as long as software has been around (e.g. Borland). Enshitification is a very specific thing: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
To quote it:
I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.
>shift the Overton window
You're all over the place. This has nothing to do with enshitification.
I'd prefer we reserved this word for when stuff gets worse because of money / investors, with incentives at odds with the user needs.
I don't believe Gnome suffers from decisions that are bad because of financial incentives.
I also think enshittification is a strong word, and a wrong one.
Because praise the shit. Praise the choice of shit. You like your shit. I like my shit. I enjoy my Gnome shit, I enjoyed Gnome 2 shit but I love Gnome 3 shit. I don't like KDE shit. I can't remember how to spell XKFG shit because it's not big enough to fit in my memory.
It's all choice. And praise choice. I do like Gnome. If you want to keep running Gnome 1 like it's 1999, I'm sure there's a way to do that too.
They limit the feature set so they can stabilize on a smaller basis.
They take UI/UX decisions they think are right.
That's what I think.
I also think they managed to build a beautiful UI that works quite well and that pleases many people.
I also think they removed useful features, lagged on important features (thumbnails in the file picker, which I always found bad anyway, including in the Gnome 2 days). I also think they believe they know better than their users on what they need when they really don't, that they should be more understanding of users trying to work around the flaws instead of despising them, and that they shouldn't both reduce the feature set to a minimum and break extensions in each release. And I do indeed think they made UI like it would be used on tablets, degrading the experience desktop, way too early when they didn't work well on tablet anyway for many reasons and KDE was the only bearable option on tablets at the time.
So I really believe they truly do what they think is best, but I also like the KDE approach way better: listening to the users, trying to polish things while not removing too many features, being humble in their decision, and acknowledging their users might have different needs / taste. (for instance, in Plasma 6, they are reverting to double click by default - many KDE devs prefer simple click and think it's objectively better, but they recognize many users are disturbed by this default.)
I'd need some strong evidence that they are selling you to some other party in order to enrich their investors. Who are these investors? How do they even get profits from Gnome? What choices have been made that let 3rd party companies get better access to you/your data from Gnome itself?
Differences of opinion aren't evidence of intentionally screwing over users in order to get more money for investors.
My first successful experiment with Linux was in 2003 (having flopped in the late 1990s, when Linux could be found on the shelf in stores everywhere). The desktop I used then was Gnome 2. My current desktop is Gnome 2, with more or less the exact same look and functionality, though it's called Mate. It's only enshittification if you have a way to force it on people against their will.
And the great thing about e.g. a window manager is that there is no lock-in effect. I must use GitHub because everyone is using GitHub (even thought I like the git e-mail workflow better), I must use WhatsApp because everyone is using WhatsApp, and I must use the Slack and their damn Electron app because my company chose Slack and I don't have a choice.
Gnome does nothing like that: I don't use it, and I don't even know how many people use it. I don't see why there would be a reason to complain about it; if you don't like it, don't use it.
To be honest, the only thing that bothers me about Linux desktop environments is that there isn't a simple way of getting a 4G dongle and using my laptop as a phone (calls, SMS, etc).
And it may even be true this time around (I love me some KDE).
But for me, it doesn't matter. Once I discovered i3 I just never went back, there is just no desktop that can compare to it.
Obviously I'm not your typical user, so this is an aside from a "nerd", but it's sometimes interesting not having a horse in that race anymore (I've been using i3 for 10-15 years I think at this point?)
