Re: Using a FreeBSD desktop was somehting about dog food

Hi,

in my experiences paid developers of huge FLOSS desktop environment
aren't willing to listen to users, while the unpaid developers of tools
such as panels, file managers etc., that can be used with each
lightweight window manager, are often much interested to listen to
users. However, to report bugs or request features, we need to use the
issue tracker of the projects, such as foo-panel's or
bar-file-manager's Flyspray, GitHub and Co. thingy. And if you want,
that they fix or add something for you, don't start you request with the
desire for a migration from Flyspray to Bugfoo or GitHub to GitBar.

For Linux and FreeBSD I recommend to avoid using KDE, GNOME and those
huge desktop environments, but instead to consider using a
lightweight window manager. There are a lot of lightweight window
managers available and many tools that can be used with those window
managers.

My preferred window manager is openbox and my favourite file manager is
ROXterm, but I replaced "ls" by "lsd". For me a command like "lsd" and
the Tab-key is more comfortable than 30 mouse clicks to show the
content of the same folder.

However, some software requires a team of paid developers and
a leadership. The team needs people with real world skills related to
the domain. This kind of software is usually closed source running on
proprietary operating systems only.

Since FLOSS software often is based on other software, this easily
becomes an issue. The prominent example is GTK. A lot of GTK based
desktop software is excellent, but the developers are either struggling
with discontinued GTK versions or need to rewrite the code constantly
to migrate to the current GTK version.

Regards,
Ralf