this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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Linux Memes

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Whatever you say (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux_memes@sopuli.xyz
 
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[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 92 points 1 month ago (3 children)

If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.

Would have been better to frame it this way.

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I mean, the full letter seems like a lot more than that. There's complaints about 'branding', and 'identity', and 'intent', most of which strays away from supportability and into the realm of concerns about control.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That’s what I was saying, they would have been better off framing this as a support issue. Everything else they touched on was more than unnecessary

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago

My apologies, I misread your comment then.

The support concerns are definitely warranted in some cases.

[–] MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 month ago

That doesn't "generate publicity" in an asinine manner. Rejected.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

Except that it would be like the meme where a guy shoots the app and then says "How could the app's developer have let this happen?"

[–] RushLana@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 1 month ago

Tired of people being "dont' make an open-source app then xD".

This letter has nothing against the hobyist that theme their system for fun and everything against distro that put their own stylesheet as default breaking something and leaving the maintenance burden to the app dev.

And before I hear "Word that differently then" I want people to remeber the main way you will see this is as a github badge and that other aproch have already been tried over the course of the last 15 last years. Hell I've been guilty of reporting an issue with an app because the ubuntu gtk2 stylesheet was breaking icons.

Sorry for the incoherent rambling.

[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] kn33@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I run Debian. does Debian fall afoul of this request? idk.

[–] Qwel@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No, Debian never had a custom preinstalled theme afaik

I'm not aware of any distro who kept their custom themes after this letter was published. ZorinOS still has some theming, but it looks like they only slightly changed some colors (where the previous one was rather invasive)

[–] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Qwel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 month ago

So I just checked:

Gnome apps have themed decorations and vanilla content. It's misaligned and it doesn't look good, but it's rather safe functionnality-wise. Also there's no ~/.config/gtk-4 so I don't know how they did it

A lot of other apps are clearly themed, but they are not maintained by signatories of the letter (that I know of)

The only offenders I could find are file-roller and gnome-disk, with gnome-disk having a very small theming issue. They use the same config file as all the apps that want to be themed, so they would have to patch them in order to prevent the theme from applying. Which would prevent user theming and generally be a mess.

[–] mat@jlai.lu 11 points 1 month ago

Don't use open source or libre license then XD Or just tell people to back off

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.org 6 points 1 month ago
[–] vapeloki@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

"You are not doing this to Telegram ' - dude, Telegram is Qt. KDE/Plasma forces Qt themes.

The GTK theming engine is just broken tough.

[–] ColdWater@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

Average GNOME dev mindset:

[–] tekeous@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Pfft, screw that

When I theme MY system and say I want Dracula on every app I want Dracula on every app I don’t give a fuck what the developer thinks

[–] srestegosaurio@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

The letter is not about that… in fact they are cool with ppl theaming their systems. The problem is when downstream packaging decides to include themes by default while keeping the original names…

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You don't have any say over what I do on my computer.

As long as it isn't illegal of course.

[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Even if it WERE, they can't stop you. They can only punish you post hoc.

[–] srestegosaurio@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago

…Have you read the thing?