Linux

I really, really hope Cosmic turns out to be a good DE, because Gnome does a lot of cool stuff that I really like, but the actual experience of using it is miserable for me. It always feels like it's fighting against everything I want to do.

I'm glad Gnome exists, but we need an option that does some of the cool and unique things they do while also being less opinionated.

Agree, my work flow is basically entirely broken without dash-to-panel, which is maintained by like one guy lol.

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. At this point my most starred git repos are all patches to get various extensions working on the current gnome release.

I've been looking to switch away but nothing I've used has had the it factor I want.

One of the reasons I prefer KDE or MATE. Too many extensions needed to make it usable. I also don't like the fact that they're installed through their website instead of your local package manager.

The ideas behind the GNOME Shell desktop metaphor have stayed consistent through the 3.x cycle, at least from ~3.10. The "problem" with GNOME 3.x is that it implements core ideas in the workflow that the user needs to grasp. Either you use it as they thought you should or you are better off with some other DE.

Sure, you may need some extension to feel more comfortable. I do use a couple, but if you need extensions to make it functional you really should consider switching to another DE/WM.

it will help developers

Until they break it.

ship extensions faster

Which they need to adress the regular breakages.

and with fewer bugs by using standard JavaScript modules and IDE support

If I wanted to suffer web technologies, I'd develop content targeting web browsers, not a DE. JavaScript does a lot of things, being conducive to bug free code is not one of them.

I really admire the pain tolerance and endurance of devs developing and maintaining extensions for gnome. At what point does it become acceptable for them to drop that garbage DE? Rhetoric question: always has been.

Arch does too, albeit to a lesser extent. Gnome updates usually take around 4 to 5 weeks after the official release to hit the Pacman repos.

Means you can stay bleeding edge but avoid day 1 breakages for the most part.

Yeah! They should have invented their own obscure language for no reason rather than use probably the single most well known programming language on earth!

Um, you're like more than a decade too late to ask this question. Javascript is pretty much everywhere now, whether you like it or not.

For the record, I dislike it as well - not the language itself mind you, but the fact that they're using it to make bloated desktop apps and desktop UX. Long gone are the days when devs cared about performance, sometimes going as far as writing code in ASM to get the most out of paltry hardware.

Nowadays, even a $25 computer like the Raspberry Pi has enough computing resources to run bloated JS apps, so no one really cares any more, except for old fogies like us who grew up using entire operating systems that fit on a single floppy disk.

The only real alternative to an embedded scripting language is lua, and too few prefer it over js. Lots of internals in gnome-shell is also written in js, allowing the scripting language to hook straight into the api and data structures without a plugin interface.

In a distant future everything is we assembly, with typed stable interfaces for plugins. But the might happen in gnome 8

gnome-shell-extension-appindicator moved to the new modules system 3 weeks ago

Yes but it would have been nicer to have a transition period in which both methods are supported for a little while so that you don't literally break every extension in existence up to this release

I find it naive to think GNOME would suddenly start caring about compatibility as moving to a standard doesn't guarantee such.