Also though, I have no idea why anyone wants their linux to look like any modern windows version even as far back as XP and more so as new as 11.

It just don't add up to me.

This being said, ZorinOS already exists just sayin...

mostly sharing it because...[sarcasm]well, what we need is to be more like microsoft windows...sigh.[/sarcasm]

https://www.xda-developers.com/tried-out-this-linux-distro-that-looks-like-windows-made-by-microsoft-engineer-based-ubuntu/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/kumbaya-song-meaning

side-eye dude

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Lee_Jones

alternatively

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000169/

just fer fun

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119654/

posted by stargate-sg1-cheyenne-mtn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbaya

There can be no offense when none is taken.

Or, to put it another another way...

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended."
        — Linus Torvalds, 2012

OMMMMMMMMMM....OMMMMMMMMMM.....

There can be no offense when none is taken.

What are you talking about?

I am lost. This seems like irrelevant banter.

Correct me though if I am wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAXtO5dMqEI

one gives themselves peace

others mostly bring violence

refuse to engage and/or obey _enough_ and many will attempt to destroy the peacefully non-compliant

as always, your mileage will vary

I am glad I unsubscribed so I only have to see this problem if I want to.

I would like to have peace . . .

"Peace" is not 'out there' and dependent on someone else's actions. Let criticism roll off like water on a duck's back . . .

gnome is developed by people either in the corporate employ and/or under corporate direction. I have honestly never understood or seen the point in it, but there it us.

Money, obviously. Mostly from RedHat, and a few other commercial entities with interest in a desktop GNU/Linux product. Having a cohesive, tightly controlled, recognisable GUI environment - one GUI environment - is a pretty big part of that, and cruical to offering the likes of RHEL for both servers and workstations. GNOME and freedesktop are RedHat these days, and systemd+wayland+pipewire+GNOME(+LGPL/MIT licencing) is what RedHat envisages a user-friendly, sellable and support(contract)-able Linux desktop to be.

Indeed... Though with FOSS the "developer or not" bit is still somewhat less black-and-white than it is with commercial software. You can patch or fork and be your own "developer" if you have the motivation, but often it's (artifically) difficult enough that "walk away, go do (or use) something else" is the smarter choice.

What these (relatively) modern "open source" organisations are doing is trying to have thier cake and eat it - i.e. benefit from free code by unpaid "not a developer" contributors, while also gatekeeping all the decision making. Come to think of it, much the same thing Redhat was trying to get rolling 20 years ago.
That's what most of the co-ordinated attacks on forks, alternatives, and even silly little things like application theming are really about. What's ours is ours, and what's yours is also ours, you will eat what we give you and be grateful. Because we have more money, more developers, and more to gain from branding and vendor lock-in. Politics is a smokescreen, it's all about image, money and control.
Oh look how they flip out when somebody, uninvited, dares to play with one of "their" bigger toys. See how quickly Godwin's law, cancel-culture, and plain-old slander are mobilised to shut it down.

You can accept this situation as status-quo and get on with life, you can go somewhere that hasn't been infiltrated (yet) and hope it holds out, or you can wear the hair-shirt of "desktop GNU/Linux 15 years ago" (i.e. lots of choice, but also lots of work and lots of jank) by sticking with the original FOSS spirit and becoming a developer, amongst the many projects small enough and esoteric enough to escape notice and remain the domain of the true software nerds...

Or one can just rage ineffectually about it all I guess - but it won't achieve anything, and I'm pretty sure this board isn't meant as a therapy session.

I don't see gnome project's actions and future plans as anything new or startling.

gnome is developed by people either in the corporate employ and/or under corporate direction. I have honestly never understood or seen the point in it, but there it us. It has been developed and offered as a brand/product for over a decade now and most people who have been using Linux for a few years will know whether or not they want to use it or avoid it altogether.

gnome project developers famously stated on their mailing lists that they wanted to restrict themining, installing and choosing non default applications and modifying the appearance.  It's a stated goal of the project that someone looking over the shoulder of a gnome user can instantly see that they are using gnome (as is the case with Windows or macOS).

For the gnome project, the old "we're dropping support for xyz [to push users onto abc] because of [all these man power and maintenance related reasonings]" is just normal day to day workflow. Your only choice is to vote with your feet. As you will learn from the OpenBSD project: if you're not a developer, you don't get to make the decisions - we are "along for the ride".

I would like to have peace, but I find it unlikely since he likes to poke at me even when I  am just making a thread that has zippo to do with him.

GNOME, alt right wingers, redhat. I dislike all three of them and he cannot accept that people need a place to vent about them.

Which is why, I dislike him so, he won't let me vent without throwing his piss on me.

Anywho, I very much hope peace can be found. But I am kind of skeptical given most of what he does is try to start stuff.