this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Reminder: System76 is not to be trusted (blogs.gnome.org)
submitted 4 days ago by alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@programming.dev
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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7224516

Imagine spending 3+ years on staying mad at GNOME to release the most underwhelming software imaginable.

System76 is best known for spreading misinfo and lies about GNOME and other upstreams, selling overpriced re-branded clevos, "being made in America", loving rust and hyping on twitter and mastodon.

Most of the "backlash" against GNOME comes from the a community that has more opinions than users or just straight up misinformation and spite.

COSMIC is very poorly designed, it might be written in the "memory-safe programming language" but it's clear that they don't have a design backbone. They basically created the caricature of GNOME's adwaita but now you can paint your windows in whatever barf-inducing color you want.

They built an entire new desktop from scratch rather than work with GNOME or KDE and in that amount of time, literally every issue that sparked that redesign was resolved upstream in both aforementioned desktops.

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[–] LostWanderer@fedia.io 28 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The fact this came from hexbear.net immediately raises some mental alarms in my head. So, before forming an opinion on this matter...I read the GNOME blog post and processed the presented information before deciding: hexshitpost or no. I found the blog post to ultimately be built on a strong foundation of knowledge/sources; written in a neutral and non-combative tone that calls out System76 without being incendiary or unnecessarily cruel. The case being lain out about System76's many incidents of spreading harmful misinformation about GNOME makes me understand why GNOME does have some haters these days in the Linux space...

It's curious that instead of polishing COSMIC before pushing it out in the world, they released a broken version of what should've been something cool! I agree, perhaps working with GNOME and KDE would've been better if System76 wasn't going to meaningfully invest in COSMIC's stability before release. I'm sure they'll fix it in post launch updates. From my brief experience with COSMIC, it did have the bones for a good DE, however, the polish was lacking. It made me sad and switch to Bazzite.

[–] Avicenna@programming.dev 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I did too have a look at the post for the same reasons and did visit some of the links given there. Honestly it looks more to me like tribalism than anything, see for instance comments and discussions here:

https://blogs.gnome.org/seb128/2019/06/27/system76-pop-os-team-should-learn-to-work-with-their-upstreams/

or

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/c67pkm/comment/es6p3zq/

I think by now both groups are so entrenched in their position that they convey things from a strongly biased position and don't have any desire to find a common ground.

[–] LostWanderer@fedia.io -1 points 3 days ago

Yeah, tribalism does happen in a lot of tech related spaces in addition to anywhere else in life. I think that GNOME devs and System76 will remain separate FOSS tribes that can never know peace between them. In a lot of cases, I feel that System76 started the hostility. However, GNOME seems fairly entrenched in their own ideas. I don't find GNOME bad by any means, it's just a REALLY opinionated DE that I can tolerate in little doses. I much prefer KDE for the flexibility it grants without installing a lot of extensions.

[–] illusionist@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

GNOME isn't hated by most linux users. That's nonsense

[–] LostWanderer@fedia.io 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Definitely some, I over-exaggerate, I've seen some concentrated hate in certain places for GNOME.

[–] illusionist@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I agree with that. Apart from that your post was really good and that made it look bad

[–] LostWanderer@fedia.io 2 points 3 days ago

I changed the wording to some haters. As there is some hate, but, anything with a critical mass is going to attract some haters.

[–] ninepointeight@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 days ago

Pathetic. This "us-vs-them" tribalist mentality of some GNOME folks is embarrassing. Better focus on your own work instead of finding fault in others. Let people work on their own projects in peace if you cannot collaborate with them.

[–] refalo@programming.dev 16 points 4 days ago

Yea this is some BS... gnome doesn't need any help to burn their own reputation to the ground, this is just a hitpiece by yet another one of their out of touch high and mighty contributors.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

So this is just some hexbear hatespeech?

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 7 points 3 days ago

In cross-post section it shows the first post to be 4y ago: https://lemmy.ml/post/88664

Why is that relevant now?

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 3 points 3 days ago

Gnomes UI has sucked since 3 and hasnt gone good places. For them to act all high and mighty about contributors smells a little

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I don't like System76's past actions with regards to Gnome, or their spreading of misinformation about Gnome, but shitting on Cosmic in response seems just as petty.

If you don't like it, don't use it.

[–] Lembot_0006@programming.dev 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Never worked with System76, but the last Gnome I have tolerance for is 2.x. I use MATE now.

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com -5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Valid, it's not for everyone. But Cosmic will be even worse with all their "I want my own sandbox to rule over"

[–] technom@programming.dev 8 points 4 days ago

You seem to be pretty invested in Gnome. But your slander against System76 and COSMIC desktop has no merit. Cosmic is still a work in progress and some friction is expected. But there is no problem in their methodology. They are also doing something that's very much a norm in the FOSS world - create something new and share it, if they don't like what's around. And so far they're receiving good reviews despite how immature the software is.

Gnome on the other hand has burnt its users so many times that this isn't even the first desktop to be born out of disagreements with them. And this is also not the first time they have slandered their competition. They absolutely don't respect anyone but themselves.

[–] Borger@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago

I'm liking COSMIC better than GNOME, personally. Not sure why you are mad that something else exists?

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

While I dislike the look and GNOME's approach to things ("we know better what the user wants than they do" aka the crApple approach), I do appreciate that they do provide an alternative for crApple users. They also write a lot of libraries and software that are undeniably good and useful. No one is forced to use GNOME so I'm glad they exist.

Of course this blog post only has one view of the issues and I'm not going to spend a morning going down the rabbit hole to make an opinion on it. But if System76 really does have a problem with upstream for whatever reason, they are free to fork their stuff and cut all communication. Since they did write COSMIC, it looks like that's their goal. Good on them. It may just decrease the drama and make GNOME developers' lives easier.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Apparently I must work for System76

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Disclaimer: The following content is my opinion and my opinion alone. I do not speak for GNOME as a whole, only for myself using the observations I’ve made. These observations may be incorrect.

With that being said, this post does have some merit