I’m noticing more and more Apps actively trying to avoid Themes and instead opting for the fixed default look. Even some of the Default Gnome Apps. And then there are initiatives like Please don’t theme our apps. Is this the slow death of GTK Themes, and if yes, why?

  • pivot_root@lemmy.world
    25·
    5 months ago

    Look at Mac or Windows users.

    Mac, maybe. Windows? No. Not by a long shot. I have the pleasure of using Windows 11 for work, and it’s just as bad as the fragmentation between Linux applications using GTK vs those using Qt—except it’s all made by one single corporation.

    Microsoft just can’t commit to a design language. You have modernized applications made with WinSDK using WinUI, and then you have the “classic” applications made with the Win32 API. And, their designs could not be more diametrically opposed. WinUI applications are crammed full of blank space and animations, whereas Win32 applications look like “and the kitchen sink” Windows XP programs with a coat of paint slapped on top. You have system legacy applications that came straight out of Windows NT and use the same L&F since Windows 8, full of stacking popup models and design decisions made to work around limitations, you have a couple of “modern” applications that use the “my first time making a Flash game” Metro design language of Windows 8, a few more applications that use squared-edge and small border design from Windows 10, and then, finally, the Windows 11 design.

    That’s four entire generations of designs crammed into a single operating system, and unless you only use it to browse the web, you are going to see all of them at some point. Fuck, the modern Settings application still opens the control panel for some things.

    And again, that is just Microsoft’s programs. How about third-party software? You have some programs still using Win32 because they’re built on the bones of your ancestors, other programs using Win32 because WinUI 3 only has official support for C++ or C#, some programs in Qt for cross-platform support, even more programs using Electron because it’s more cost-effective to churn out HTML that looks like Windows than to maintain multiple frontends, and even programs that use Unity or Unreal Engine as a goddamn GUI toolkit.

    Seriously, fuck that. Linux might be mostly split across two GUI frameworks and proprietary pity-offerings that only exist because the company was already using Electron, but at least it’s consistent within them.