Fortunately I use Xfce, not GNOME

[tggzzz]

From https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming-wider-community-not-happy/

GNOME to prevent theming, wider community not happy
...
There are various problems non-GNOME GTK developers are running into, but as a user, my biggest problem is GNOME’s adoption of libadwaita. GNOME is going to ship a library, libadwaita, that when used by an application, will force it to use the default light Adwaita theme, with no option to change it to dark mode or a different theme. The end result is that if you use GNOME, you’re going to start seeing applications – both from GNOME itself as well as from third parties – that do not respect your choice of GTK theme, and instead always default to light Adwaita.
...
But of course, this problem extends beyond GNOME itself, as other popular GTK desktops, such as MATE, Cinnamon, and Budgie, also make use of both GTK applications, as well as components and applications from GNOME. On top of that, countless popular distributions, such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and Pop!_OS, all use custom themes. Their desktops will be severely broken since GNOME and GTK applications will no longer use their custom themes.
...
This is a shitty situation, and the GNOME developers are causing a lot of bad blood and rifts here that really could have been avoided. Theming and customisation are a core aspect of the Linux desktop, and breaking it like this is going to make a lot of non-GNOME developers as well as users very, very unhappy.

I'm sick of spotty 25yos "forgetting" the hard-learned lessons of history, and thinking new->better, and that they know what "new" should be.

Personally I like a GUI where

• all the menu options are visible, but dimmed if not applicable
• the menu operations stay in one place, and don't move/appear/disappear depending on what some cretinous algorithm decides I'm interested in
• I choose what best suits my eyesight and reading capabilities - not a dyslexic with 20/20 vision

[Whales]

Working with popular GUI frameworks is a PITA from a technical perspective, so it's interesting to see them evolve to also be a PITA from a user perspective.  I once saw the existence of multiple GUI frameworks as bad; now I see that they're really good things to have around (and their "ugliness"/differences are a shallow problem compared to the real problems of day to day computer use).

Gnome & GTK is particularly sad because it was once a great thing with lots of themes and adoption back in the 2.x days.  I started using Linux with Ubuntu and Gnome 2, it was the ants pants.  I still use lots of 2.x GTK programs (it's like win32, it will have to always be there).  The GTK2 save dialog is still miles ahead of the GTK3 save dialog, I hate "search" based navigation of files.

Apparently Qt is easier/better than it used to be; but it's been years since I tried so I can't comment.  Is using their qmake mandatory?  I vaguely recall gtk-server being convenient, Puppy Linux uses it for GUIs in shell scripts.

[magic]

I guess RedHat's corporate customers don't give a damn about theming

Fortunately I use Xfce, not GNOME

Indisputably the best integrated DE for Loonix

If only they stayed with GTK2...

[tggzzz]

I once saw the existence of multiple GUI frameworks as bad; now I see that they're really good things to have around (and their "ugliness"/differences are a shallow problem compared to the real problems of day to day computer use).

... and so he became an "enlightened one" Welcome to wisdom - I wish more people gained it

[DiTBho]

too many forks, too many bugs, too many regressions

[amyk]

I don't think it's long before someone comes up with a "shim" that looks exactly like libadwaita but allows theming, not unlike what Windows has had for many years with utilities like WindowBlinds and the like --- and the latter did it without any source code.

[Benta]

What's so important about themes?
Some one wants "Goth" icons or what?
That GNOME wants to clean up their act is understandable. It's devolved to a GUI heavier than Win10.

[james_s]

I abandoned Gnome years ago. A new version came out (3?) that I quickly determined was a complete shitshow. Never looked back.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I got used to fiddling around with apps for gtk1 libs and the sdk when 2 was already on everything. When 3 came out I tried to play catch up but quickly lost interest. I remember firing up a distro with gtk3 (mandrake 9?) and knowing almost straight away it wasn't for me.

[Doctorandus_P]

I used Cinnamon for a while and was quite appalled by the bad quality of their themes. The vast majority were just unsable, because of too small a contrast between some of the items, or just plain ugly colors.

Adwaita was about the only usable desktop theme and I used it for quite some time.
Then I switched my desktop back to XFCE. A significant part of my reason for this is that I make a lot of screenshots, and the screenshot program for Cinnamon just sucks. Too many buttons to punch each time just because it tries to "help" you and outsmart you. XFCE just has two setting screens for each screenshot. It first lets me choose what I want to make the screenshot of (whole desktop, window, custom) and then asks me what I want to do with it (Save, clipboard, or load in a drawing program) which is perfect for my use.

I don't like "Thunar" much in XFCE though. It's a pretty basic file browser, and it has troubles with recognizing file changes, which is quite annoying sometimes,  but it does the job. Most of it anyway.

It also does not show file dates properly. When I've had a few compile cycles of some uC program, it shows all files as "today". What sort of idiot ever thought it up to make that the default?

I've also never had a Linux version that can properly handle modifications to mimetypes and associations of those with programs. There probably is some cli to do it, but I'd much prefer some mouse clicks and typing in a shebang for creating a new mimetype.

I don't care much for tweaking the UI and all the theme nonsence, but it has to be something simple and with balanced colors, and no silly mistakes with things that should be clearly distingguashable (such as the title bar and the menu of a program having the same color. The "Kokodi" theme works reasonably wel for me. It's somewhat similar to the windoze95 look I am familiar with.

[james_s]

It is annoying when there are about 30 themes and at least 28 of them are absolutely awful, but it's better than not having any themes to choose from at all.

[SiliconWizard]

I actually use Gnome 3 on my laptop (with a dual-boot). It's OK-ish for this use, which is just on the go. And I can always boot to Windows if needed. My main workstation is still on Windows, and then I have a couple "headless" Linux boxes with no desktop environment.

The lack of customizability of Gnome 3 has always been mind-boggling. Using it on my main workstation would drive me crazy. Sure you have themes (but as discussed here already...), and you have extensions. Problem with both is that pretty much every Gnome update breaks extensions, which have to keep up (and be rebuilt). Extremely annoying. At each Gnome update, you're pretty sure half ofyour extensions will break. This lack of stability for extensions is a major issue, and goes hand in hand with the attitude of the Gnome team, which will make it harder, not easier, to make Gnome customizable even when they pretend you can.

One may not care for true "theming", but since you can almost change NOTHING on bare Gnome 3, themes are all you have if you want any change to the UI.

Xfce is not too great though. At least for me. If/when I eventually switch to Linux for my main workstation(s), I'm not sure yet what DE I will choose. I'll probably consider KDE these days (although I've always tried avoiding it), as it now looks like the most usable one.

[Benta]

I run Lubuntu, meaning LXQt. Works great for me.