Thankfully, most of Plasma’s apps still export the menu, so global menu will work 98% of the time there.
Honestly just wish Cutefish had continued. Idk why it died, had a decent following of people who were interested.
Precisely. Would be cool if someone did a whole fork on Gnome and just readded some of the stuff that Gnome so stupidly removed.
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Did I say how much I hate Gnome?
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Yeah same here. The extensions breaking almost every release did it in for me. Gave up on it after that.
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I thought the System76 folks would have done that. They rewrite the whole thing and not add features. Why?
Because the Rust mind virus infection was too deep by that point. Their main dev (Jeremy I think his name is, is a big Rustie; not a nice guy if you’re not a liberal) convinced them they needed to use Rust for the next desktop.
Their Gnome-based Pop desktop was actually pretty good (still couldn’t use Global menus but whatever) for being Gnome-based.
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Howdy fellow grey-beard. 
I used to manage Xterminals at my first sys admin job (even took the NCD training class), CDE over ISDN from SunOS was a “fun” exercise in patience until you got your xterm window displayed. But it was far better than having to drive to the office when on-call in the late '90s. Best of all, provided and paid for by the company.
Perhaps some. I am certainly not one of them. I’ve been using Macs since the venerable MacPlus. For 20 years or so, I did not have anything else in the house except for my fileserver.
There are two reasons I’ve stuck with MacOS so long: a good *NIX-based CLI and a UI that is consistent across all the GUI apps I use. Readily available OSS command line tools? 
Emacs bindings in GUI apps? Consistent cut and paste bindings across all apps? Open apps without taking hands off keyboard?
The recent HW & software problems means I won’t be buying any more, though. Apple is part of the problem plaguing us all at this point–exhorbitant prices for bespoke parts that underperform, anti-consumer designs with nearly zero repairability which also drives up ewaste. Even the OS is no longer fully under the control of the owner.
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This is a pet peeve of mine in Linux. Which is why I hold the belief that toolkits should drop and one should remain. Which one? I’m not sure, I’d have to dig into them some more.
I’m not sure how it could be fixed since ctrl and alt are used so much for other things in Linux, particularly ctrl. There’d have to be adoption of a standard across the board equivalent to cmd (e.g. the clover or splat key) on MacOS. Maybe option?
Seems like a very large windmill to tilt at if approached at the DE/WM level.
Something like “AutoHotKey” (OSS) on Windows that is application aware could solve the problem with a system-wide “intercept overlay” giving the end user the ability redefine their keybinds across the board.
A few GUI apps, like Sublime Text, let you to rebind anything or everything, but it’s a rarity.
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Oh no, bad idea. A single UI toolkit would be SO much of a compromise it would be unusable. Either it will try to include everything (and fail at it), becoming so bloated as to become over complicated and unusable, or would be severely limited because the mega-committee running it wouldn’t be able to agree on anything but the most basic of functionality. And in that second scenario, a multitude of extra toolkits would spring up to address the missing functionality, and you’d still end up with splintered UI/APIs anyway.
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I wasn’t referring to key binding but rather GUI toolkits (GTK, QT, etc)
Then I believe Linux will continue to struggle with user market share and will always be considered a “hobby OS”.
Normal everyday users don’t want 20 UI toolkits. They want one, and that one done well. Instead of one or even two that are done very well, we have 30+ and none could completely replace Windows or macOS entirely so far.
Don’t get me wrong, love Hyprland and Plasma and the direction they’re going.
Plasma is gaining ground, Deepin China desktop is doing alright.
Then we’d need to get widespread support for dedicated Linux compatible drivers so the system doesn’t break with each update (talking to you NVIDIA).
Normies want simple. They want nice looking, easy, convenient, buttons, clickies, they do not want terminals, flatpack vs .deb vs .rpm
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I use windows at work, and it is a hobbled mess of UI. Some programs are from windows 95 or xp, some look like they belong on a mac, and some have multiple menus spread around that all serve the exact same function. That is just the stuff that is made by microsoft. When you start looking at third party software there is a wide range of UI and app designs and poor app designs.
Linux being spread across gtk, qt, and whatever else does not matter to the average normie that can’t tell the difference between a computer and an OS. The only thing holding Linux back at this point is the fact that when I go into WalMart or BestBuy to buy a laptop there are only two options; a windows laptop for $500 or a mac laptop for $5000.
Between using linux at home and windows at work I think Linux is already a much more coherent system. If you run Plasma with only qt apps, or gnome with only gtk apps then it feels like everything was designed by the same group of people.
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In response to glomar _response, I feel your pain. However, why does everything have to be for the normies who only want buttons to click? Don’t the advanced users deserve to have nice things? I think they do.
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Oh I agree with you. I personally quite enjoy parsing through config files. I just see so much about “2025 is the year of the Linux desktop” and “it’ll become mainstream”, and the fact is that it won’t as long as it remains as split as it is. But yes, I agree. There should be options for power users as well. It’s a tough one to figure out.
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Hyprland. If I could find a good app launcher that can be pinned into my bar then it could be close enough to the same experience as Plasma, but with good tiling. I love Hyprland, it made my 10 year old laptop feel almost new again and somehow uses less battery than Plasma. The difference in perceived performance was almost the same as going from Win10 to Linux. The only gripe I have is that sometimes I have a toddler sleeping ontop of one arm and I would like to just use a mouse to launch apps instead of keybinds or SUPER and then scrolling around to the right app.
Any suggestions for a good app launcher with a bar button in Hyprland?
Is there a “close current window” button that I can add to my bar?
Look at the nwg project by Piotr. Specifically nwg-menu. I dont know if it can be used with any bar or if it requires nwg-bar.
We already have nwg-menu, nwg-dock-hyprland, nwg-drawer, nwg-launchers and nwg-panel in the repos of Rome. I believe they are in Cooker as well
If we could have the best of both worlds, native tiling could be integrated with Plasma and the end user can just choose. It would be great if it could just work smoothly and look good. Rust language aside, perhaps Cosmic is headed in the right direction with tiling built in and not a second class citizen. I might have said that before, apology if applicable.
I love that they are baking tiling into it.
That said I’m not a fan of Rust or System76’s styling choices.