Other/future projects • Re: GTK2 revival

Your favorite OS (OpenIndiana?) seems stuck in that time-frame you mention. How many technologies that gained traction in the last 10 - 15 years are available on OpenIndiana? How many modern init systems, desktop environments, display servers, audio servers and package formats are available on OpenIndiana?

Well, it is still in active development, that is packages are being maintained and kept working. I see it as kind of in the position of trying to move forward but taking a while. And it's also not the only OS I use, I also use modern Windows, and occasionally Fedora. And it is worth noting that OI is not using GTK2, but uses GTK3. And if even alternate operating systems that you seem to suggest are 15 years out of date are not on GTK2 anymore, but in fact support GTK3 reasonably well, then... not really seeing how that detracts from my point? But yeah, some of these technologies that are on Linux may only ever be suited to Linux and may not ever be the standard for all Unix-like operating systems. For instance, OI already has it's own SMF thing that's sort of like systemd in some ways, and in fact was doing a lot of what the newer init systems were praised for while Linux as a whole was still on sysvinit. The only thing really arguably "out-of-date" I've noticed is X11 instead of Wayland, and Wayland isn't exactly a universal POSIX standard anyway, at least not yet. Perhaps one day, but I'm sure that would take awhile, if it ever happens. Not that I doubt other systems could maintain their own X11 stack, like historically there was Xsun, and one of the BSDs has Xenocara, etc. Whether they go that route or follow Linux down the Wayland path, we'll see.

But yeah, to put it in context. I have a laptop with Windows 11 that I use for Office and all kinds of practical stuff. I have one desktop computer running OpenIndiana, and another running Windows Server 2022 because it's on an older machine that isn't really able to run Windows 11. And I think another machine that runs Fedora. So what I use is actually kind of a mixed bag.

Based on forum activity it seems the Pale Moon user-base is legacy oriented. Not only on Linux, but also on Windows. Many people seem to be using Windows versions and Linux distros that are out of mainstream support. There aren’t really any comments on the Pale Moon forum that praise Windows 11 or the latest Linux distros. Instead you see comments about how bad Windows 11 is and how bad the latest Linux technologies are.

Pale Moon will always be a legacy browser until you can become Google and implement “web standards” across the web. You will always play catch-up with million/billion dollar companies.

My opinion is that there's a difference between being a bit behind but trying to move forward slower, and just picking an era and freezing it. That's the frustration. See, my mental model was that the users expected X number of years of legacy support, maybe wanted a longer tail, but now I'm getting frustrated because they seem to want a specific era of hardware/software to be supported forever no matter how far out it gets. They don't care if it's 10 years, 20 years, maybe even 30 years out, they want the exact same thing and won't bring their expectations in line at all. I think that's what I'm getting annoyed with... like, let me explain my mindset a little. I don't think staying on XP during the Vista era and early during the 7 era was so bad. I don't think staying on 7 through the Windows 8 and early Windows 10 era was so bad... like, yeah, you can use older stuff... but after a certain point it gets a little ridiculous.

People think I am a tech optimist or something... it's really more like I'm looking at this in terms of years of legacy support and the difficulty of supporting an aging stack as it gets further and further out of date. There's just... in my mind, a certain point at which it stops being reasonable to use something older as a daily driver. Hopefully that makes sense and will be enough to get people to stop calling me out. LOL. :/

The way I look at it is this... no one gets mad we don't support Windows 3.11, no one gets mad we don't support Windows 95, no one gets mad we don't support Windows 2000. Some people get mad we don't support XP... then all of a sudden, you go past that era, and everyone is screaming at you that it's not okay to drop anything and acting like you're a traitor or thinking like a big corporation if you even suggest it. It's really annoying.

Like... with web standards, we do in fact move to support a lot of them but it takes longer. Which means forward motion. But if people just want something stuck in the past, maybe it should be stuck in the past in terms of web compat and security as well... in which case, why work on it more? LOL. Not serious, just trying to make a point. But yeah, I don't like this legacy box that users seem to want us to stay in, and the dismissive attitude towards any attempt to do better.