Gnome settings

The Gnome settings are improving but there are just not enough yet.

a d w a i t a

The devs even have the gall name their theme components "Adwaita" which means "the only one" in Sanskrit, as a (in)direct message to themers and fiddlers to not try to customise the UI of their system.

Seems as if someone has forgotten what GNU/Linux stands for — and where Gnome has travelled through over the decades.

They have made a whole website about this, "don't theme my app" or something, it's really annoying. They cite a bunch of examples in which people — and companies — try theming Gnome to customise it for their own preferences (or distribution identity) and the theming results in all kinds of breakages. Then users complain to the Gnome devs that the themes aren't working. Well, fair enough that the Gnome devs don't want to deal with these complaints, nor even receive them — but to turn around and tell the users that we are at fault is honestly wild.

Moreover, it's not like the Gnome devs' design choices are in any way stellar. You can find a tonne of entirely valid and understandable grievances littered around the internet — at least, in any corner that gnome devs & shills don't have the power to delete posts and comments.

One such ridiculous design choice is the ENORMOUS size of the header bar in every app. There's no way to customise this.

Another ridiculous design choice is the total removal of any and all indication of which window is active. This is MIND-BLOWING. Yes, there are minor changes, but honestly I have excellent vision and the distinction between active and inactive windows is very hard to see at a glance. Moreover, drag-and-drop behaviour no longer activates the target window, so (more than 20 times in the last week) I have typed several words into the wrong window. This kind of stupid fucking shit wouldn't be a problem if we were allowed to customise the appearance of our very own computers.