> everyone has different preferences that they should accommodate. That is pragmatism, and that is treating your users with respect.

I completely disagree. Not every product is made for every person. If you don't like it, use a different product. It's not like there aren't a plethora of desktop environments to choose from. There is obviously a sizeable portion of the desktop Linux market that finds GNOME to be a perfectly usable desktop environment.

Your comment is similar to asking why Tesla does not create cars with internal combustion engines.

The problem with GNOME is that it caters to a very narrow audience, yet it is the default in most Linux distributions.

That is not a GNOME problem. That is a distro problem. Users should petition their distro maintainers for change.

We do, but we get "spins". When a distro starts they accidentally pick a core desktop environment by simply picking one first. They call their distro Foobar Linux and everyone is happy. Later people realize that the choice of desktop environment wasn't good for everyones needs and they add a KDE spin called Koobar Linux or Foobara Linux or who knows what else worse unrelated shit they can call it.

The end result is that most users who are getting involved in Linux for the first time are making this choice long before they even know they are making this choice or being given an option simply by picking a random letter version of a distro like Xubuntu or Kubutnu or not having a letter at all and it being Ubuntu alone.

There are a few distros that have done it better and given the user a choice upon install to pick their DE. OpenSUSE has always done something like that from what I recall and I appreciate it a lot.

Where is the problem here?

The real issue should be: Fedora/Debian/Ubuntu cater themselves to a very big audience and yet chose to set GNOME as the default

My understanding[1] is that distros prefer GNOME as the default due to it's release cycle being significantly easier to package then KDE's.

[1] Going off comments from one dev behind the Aeon distro on why it uses GNOME and not KDE, despite being an OpenSUSE spin-off.

> There is obviously a sizeable portion of the desktop Linux market that finds GNOME to be a perfectly usable desktop environment

yeah the ones who don't know how to change it.

I've been using Linux since Ubuntu 12.10-ish days, and I use vanilla GNOME on Fedora Workstation while knowing how to add extensions. Why are you discounting experiences like mine?

I hope your extensions still work at the next update!

As I said, I don't use extensions, so why are you discounting experiences like mine?

alright, sure, you can have it! I'll allow it this time.

That's almost the same setup as mine and I think there are a lot of users like us out there that want to use a regular desktop experience but sometimes want a bit of spice. I think the Burn My Windows extension gives me enough fun when I need it without diverting too much of my time to "ricing".

> I completely disagree. Not every product is made for every person. If you don't like it, use a different product.

These are large systems with their own ecosystems within them. When a project does this kind of thing it destroys a lot of the value that other developers are bringing for no gain.

Honestly, it appears as laziness sometimes like taking the easy route of keeping your verbose C codebase from growing more hair. Other developers are quite happy and accommodating to add experimental features gated behind a flag or option and still maintain a cohesive and polished experience.

Every option you add increases the size of your test matrix. It becomes untenable.

You do not have to include all experimental features in your test matrix.

If you are not testing a full matrix, you are creating less reliable software and waiting for bit rot.

This assumes you keep all of your features experimental.

No, that would be like Tesla making a car on which you can’t open the windows, because Elon thinks you shouldn’t need to.

So then don't buy the car. That's an easy solution to your problem.