this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
283 points (93.8% liked)
Technology
86264 readers
5095 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Customizability, absolutely. But Linux has a distinct lack of respect for users (from a GUI perspective) and consistency. Customizability is frequently in direct conflict with consistency. Different distros have different GUI's. The apps in the distros use different toolkits for their development which yields wildly inconsistent GUI's inside the programs.
Whoa, different developers making entirely different projects might do things differently? That’s unfathomable!
I can’t believe that Discord and Steam and Firefox have different UI’s on Linux! Oh, they’re also different on windows and MacOS.
It’s almost like any app on any operating system is going to have a different gui!
Windows doesn't come with multiple Window Managers that you choose from like Kde vs Gnome. Windows programs have access to the same standard Windows toolkit for menus and dialogs. A program has to go out of its way to not use the standard libraries. That is usually only seen in programs that are using ported Linux gui libraries under Windows. Whereas in Linux, there are multiple GUI toolkits and multiple Window Managers meaning there is is absolutely no standard for any apps.
~~doesn’t come with”~~ doesn’t give you the option
Guess what, Linux also doesn’t “come with” multiple DE’s, it just gives you the ability to install and use a different one.
Having choice is always better. It’s always better to have an alternative to switch to if something goes wrong with your current software.
I personally don’t like Gnome, but I love that it exists! That way, if something bad happens to KDE, I know I’ll have a safe place for myself.
Oh come on. Your restatement means the same thing. Install a different distro and you can have a different DE.
And yes Windows doesn't give you the choice. I said that in my initial statement that customization is often in conflict with consistency.
Yes but you can't then also claim that all Linux distros are consistent.
No, you don’t have to install a different distro. You can choose to have any software running on any distro. I never said distros are consistent, because that’s my whole point, every dev is going to work differently, that’s the fucking point. You can do anything on any fucking distro
Ubuntu ships with Gnome. That you can change it is actually the point I was making.
I replied to this:
With the statement that consistency is often at odds with customizability.
Your claim was this:
Windows apps do not have as much inconsistency as apps on Linux because of the lack of customizablity. A Windows developer has to go out of their way to avoid the standard Windows libraries to make their app look unique. Linux apps are all different because there is no way to make them consistent. Even if you try to make your app consistent in say Gnome, someone is going to be running KDE.
Consistency is almost always at odd with customizability.