One blocker towards finishing this transition is that the graphical
Debian Installer still uses gtk2.

Kek, there is anything that we gain to change this to gtk3?

This excuse is da usual

wayland, systemd, dbus, avahi, elogind, pulseaudio, pipewire, network-manager and probably others too.

I detest corporations especially redhat.

I am sure most people here, including myself use corporate hardware, but there is no reason to use corporate software when you don't need to.

About STLWRT: I really wanted this project to succeed, but our best bet is to maintain gtk2 and someone else found a ton of things to work on and fixed them himself

He removed too many features IMO though that people actively use and if we want to get Ardour back into the gtk2 world we need to backport smooth scrolling and touchfeatures from their fork

I would rather spend the time to take what's useful OFF of gtk2 than to keep gtk2 running at all. That's where I am at this point.

Sadly, that's kind of where i'm at, it's why i've been trying to develop uber-simple apps with GTK3 that are reminiscent of the simplicity of GTK2.

I don't see the harm of leaving gtk2 and gtk2 apps in the repo though, there's lots of them that still work fine. Removing it all together and bullying devs into porting to gtk3 seems a little control-ish to be honest. Alsaplayer-gtk has been removed after debian badgered the dev to port to gtk3, he said screw that I just won't ship the package anymore and it will be CLI-ony now.

The whole idea of sharing and mutual support seems to have practically evaporated from the spirit of Linux community (and many other communities as well).

In general it's become vitriolic. Mostly because of social media and fanatic users who support only a single distro or single thing and attack everything else. I don't see it getting any better either.

Same as always, NIH here. We don't control that, so here's our replacement that we do control. That's all it ever is

Users feel entitled or demand it. When faced with choices people won't chose to their benefit if it costs them anything. They'll wait until it's too late and then, well, it's too late. 

I would rather spend the time to take what's useful OFF of gtk2 than to keep gtk2 running at all. That's where I am at this point.

The whole idea of sharing and mutual support seems to have practically evaporated from the spirit of Linux community

I would say that it still exists, it only has been marginalized by the corporate takeover which newer generations of Linux users aren't really aware of since they didn't experience Linux before the takeover (which has been gradual but relentless).

Also many users that come to Linux from Windows don't have first-hand Unix experience and therefore aren't really looking for a Unix-like system but rather for a Windows-like system without Microsoft, hence the acceptance of systemd and wayland.

Like many early adopters of Linux I got interested in Linux because it was a free Unix-like system for inexpensive PCs, having before had experience with Irix, Solaris and HP-UX at university and at work.

Many of those who switched to Linux more recently have never used any Unix system before, they don't care about the Unix heritage of Linux and this is why the the newer generations of developers are more and more getting rid of the Unix like features of Linux.

I don't think that even Windows and MacOS are end-user-oriented anymore. The days when they tried to please the average Joe or Jane are now gone. Gone are the eyecandies like the bubbly Aqua, the Aero transparency, the Bliss wallpapers and the like. Nowadays it's the wonderful choice between concentrated Bleach or Charcoal for your eyes, coupled with the most depressing and confusing GUIs ever possible on the market that no one could have imagined in their worst nightmares just a couple decades ago. Or the endless updates that cause your devices to malfunction or lock you out of your computer. Or outright destroy your data. Windows is no longer trying to hide the fact that it's been designed as a data collection and advertizing platform all along. MacOS maybe less so, due to the somewhat more niche audience, but the story is pretty much the same either way...

I don't believe it's all just about money. Of course the lack of material compensation and appreciation of another's work plays a role, but I feel that something much more important was forgotten. The whole idea of sharing and mutual support seems to have practically evaporated from the spirit of Linux community (and many other communities as well). Back in the day people seemed to have a much clearer grasp that corporatocracy etc. was a rotten game all along, and were willing to put their efforts and resources in a completely different direction, were willing to help and share with each other unconditionally, finding more and more kindred souls along the way and knowing their work will not be in vain, which allowed things to prosper. And in the golden age (the 2000s?) things were going along quite nicely. And it was not about any political ideology either, as we see quite well nowadays that all of them turn out to be one and the same, none of the -isms were meant for anything good. (Even Open Source was not fully about it, as today we see it everywhere but it doesn't really solve anything.) Perhaps back then people simply knew how to avoid that, and how to work best in each other's interests rather than trying to adjust themselves to something that's only going to bring more ruin and suffering. Today it's easy to acknowledge that we are on the wrong path, but we have lost the sight of the right path altogether...

There will probably never be a "Year of the Linux Desktop", because desktops and by extension laptops which run a consumer OS such as Windows or macOS are developed for profit first and foremost and to hold a users hand through normal usage, installtion of software, configuration and setup. That is to say that they are designed and engineered to meet the demands of a customer - and underlying complexity isn't a problem for such OS so long as the UI and getting things installed and working is "easy". The large teams develping such an OS are well paid and the people using it almost always pay for it, either with their money or their data. This model doesn't translate to FOSS software developed by volunteers, who don't service customers at all.

A "free" OS is a whole different ball game: No one is going to develop "Desktop Linux" completely for free - for people who want a Windows/macOS experience, if there are no rewards for doing so - which is why it hasn't happened to date.

Of the projects making the biggest strides in that direction, such as systemd, gnome, KDE, wayland, etc - they have attracted criticism from certain quarters for particular design decisions, increased complexity and/or corporate funding/influence.

Undortunately any efforts towards Linux on the desktop nowadays will be corporate backed aside from simple Window managers. There is the conundrum. To avoid this move away from UNIX style KISS philosophy, means embracing simpler software such as window managers and using the terminal - you can't have it both ways... well you can, but you need to get the skills to do it yourself.