Orion for Linux

Lenni-builder

I just came here to suggest libAdapta support as well, especially if you build a Flatpak. It uses the default (GNOME) libAdwaita theme by default and applies custom ones if available (so either on themed GNOME or other DEs)

hashrack456

Please stick with libadwaita.

Lenni-builder

hashrack456 What would the advantages of libadwaita over libadapta be? Libadapta should behave exactly the same by default unless you explicitly want to theme/customize it.

RayE

Too many think Gnome is the only desktop environment. It is not even the only desktop environment with a large user base. No reason for Libadwaita to be required. It is easy to make it optional. But at the same time, I just want it to get out first.

Pan_con_palta_99

Lenni-builder Libadapta uses an old version of libadwaita.

nashv

I am happy to learn that you have chosen libadwaita. The consisteny and modern look in the interface is very welcome. And while, I can appreiciate that KDE is also popular, recent surverys have suggested that the main plus point of KDE over Gnome (customization) is not something most people engage in anyway.

In my opinion, Gnome is currently the most polished DE. And Orion benefits from it - not least because the 2 most popular Linux distros - Ubuntu and Fedora come with Gnome as "default" .

clintre

nashv Gnome and KDE are now both default options for Fedora due to their growing popularity over the last few years. The repos for the apps my company supports, are about 50/50 between the two on pulls. Our apps have libadwaita as optional so that it looks native on both Gnome and non Gnome desktops. It is an easy switch to have and does not cause maintenance overhead. The problem with Libadwaita is that it does not look good on KDE and looks out of place. Not that libadwaita is bad on Gnome, which it does indeed look good.

Vlad

clintre How do your apps make libadwaita optional? Is the dev burden doubled because of that? Really curious about details of implementation.

Lenni-builder

Vlad You could look into Ghostty's code to see how it does it. It has an option to disable libadwaita. But that disables some Libadwaita-only elements (like the tab overview for example), which Libadapta wouldn't do.

clintre

Vlad The projects I worked on do it in a similar fashion to what Ghostty does.

I say this, I am on a bit of a rant about Libadwaita and honestly, I do think it would be good to have it optional down the road, but being that this is based on Gnome Web, even I would suggest working more on getting it out at this point. As Gnome Web is pretty heavily entwined with LibAdwaita and would likely cause dev time. LibAdapta is something that would be good to look at down the road a bit as it does bring something more agnostic to the UI.

I got caught up due to some of the ideas that some were pushing that Gnome is basically the Linux desktop, which it is not. For full transparency, I have contributed to both Gnome and KDE in the past. I shouldn't have got as heated as I did, which is why I backed off for a while. I just try to focus on apps being something that is truly cross-platform between DEs. But, right now, the additional bandwidth is not worth it at this point. Let's get this out there and working.

Rox35

Ghostty does not use many widgets since its a terminal and they can maintain versions of the program without some features like tabs. A browser requires a lot more and you cant just have 3 versions of the GUI just to make 3% of the users happy.

LibAdapta will cripple you because it follows Linux Mint's schedule and not GNOME's. It's based on libAdwaita 1.5 and requires older versions of all dependencies. That means less widgets, more unfixed bugs on a codebase linux mint devs are not very familiar with. It's already EOL https://release.gnome.org/calendar/.

Nothing will satisfy everyone. LibAdwaita looks out of place in KDE as much as Kirigami apps look out of place in GNOME. Re-colouring them is not enough to achieve consistency because they follow different design guidelines. LibAdwaita apps will still have buttons on their title bars and Kirigami apps will still have a menu bar.

Orion should support a theme store and leave it at that. You could make a cross platform theme format that gets converted automatically to CSS for gtk and the equivalent for the mac version. That way you can validate it and make sure it works with future Orion features or even in extension popups.

kameyin

clintre I agree with all your points and also wanted to say thank you for speaking up. I think your reaction is understandable because the loudest voices pushing for libadwaita are also the ones who sound the most closed minded (not that they are, just that their replies sound that way). Arguing that GNOME is the only DE worth caring about goes counter to a lot of the open source and Linus ethos. Without someone speaking up and, more importantly, bringing lived experiences of working in the ecosystem, consideration for the rest of the user base would have been drowned out. There was a similar contingent of people speaking up when Ghostty 1.0 was released. IIRC, the creator of Ghostty noted that without them, he would not have prioritized fixing the bugs that non-GNOME users had reported and implementing that switch. Given the size of the team, I think it’s smart for Orion to take the same approach - get it out, then address the issues with other DEs. I’m just glad that @Vlad has acknowledged that this is a sticking point and that it is something that can/should be addressed.

hawdini

In my opinion, if it looks like the latest screenshot on KDE, then it’s going to look no more out of place than Firefox or Chromium based browsers do by default.

I’d say, release the product then tune it later if required. I’d say the WebKit part is more important than the window decorations at the moment.

emanuelserpa

I think GTK4 itself has the means to the app style themselves. You guys could just do your own twist to not look too much like a GNOME app, maybe get the GTK theme colors and allow the users to change the theme with their own colors.

Theming on Linux is hard because of the diversity of setups, Orion should look like Orion as Firefox look like Firefox and Chrome look like Chrome.

chriscz

Vlad looking awesome and love that there has been progress. I'm on KDE myself, but like others have said it's really about diversity in the browser space, and battery life for me. I could care less about precision in look and feel right now. This thread is quite long and not sure where else to look, but @Vlad around when-ish should we expect an alpha release to poke on?

Vlad

chriscz 6-8 months probably

LinuxGuy-cyber

PLEASE DO NOT USE THE LIBADWAITA LIBRARY. THAT'S THE ONLY REQUEST.

Otherwise GTK + WebKit. I'm sick of Chromium.

LinuxGuy-cyber

This might be quite irrelevant to the topic of libAdwaita, but I this page very nicely lists out all the awfulness of GNOME beautifully. That's why GTK-based desktops like Cinnamon (my daily driver), XFCE and MATE exist. I would request the devs to have a look:
https://woltman.com/gnome-bad/

GNOME tries to be the "brave guy" and discourage the use of the "traditional" desktop layouts like Windows or Mac, but, is it really practical? Some GNOME users go "Oh it removes clutter from your desktop... the taskbar approach is distracting" You can get the same experience on any of the other GTK desktops by:
Right click on Panel > Panel Settings > Auto Hide Panel
And it's much more usable, because you can change between different instances of a program very easily from the panel. (Many (most?) GNOME users install Dash to Panel / Dash to Dock anyway.)
And the huge buttons and spacing in apps, oh my. Disaster for screen space.

Promoting libAdwaita is kind of making GNOME the Linux giant (which it will never be unless KDE dies somehow). It's just reducing choice for the user. Why not use plain GTK4 when it works fine on all desktops?

P.S. I'm not really sure if work on libAdwaita has already started. If it has, I guess we'll have to roll with it.

icar

In Linux world you'll find lots of people with very strong opinions. I recommend you ignore them and focus on your product and how you want it to be. From the screenshot, it looks awesome and I encourage the devs to keep going. It's looking very promising.
Thanks a lot!

Pan_con_palta_99

Libadwaita and macOS apps look kinda similar, so I’d say Libadwaita is the way to go. And if themes are the main problem, we could just do what Ghostty did.

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