>KDE is my desktop environment of choice. KDE5 is rock-solid, configurable in any way possible and works great. It treats you like a responsible adult instead of a child like GNOME does these days, and after XFCE switched to GTK3, the RAM usage is on-par, more often than not a bare KDE install (Debian or Arch) uses around 300MB ram. This is with Baloo (search indexer) and Akonadi (PIM database backend) disabled.

The GNOME Foundation's supposed rationale for removing basic functionality from its desktop is to help inexperienced users, and international users. However, those are precisely the same users who are more likely to have a shortage of computing resources. GTK's bloat is really indefensible.

I find it pretty disappointing that these type of articles and the resulting comments like yours often can't seem to praise something like IceWM or AwesomeWM without also bashing GNOME or XFCE or something else because of "bloat." Who cares? Do you even care? I don't think you do, you'll just delete that desktop and move on and use whatever you want, and that's the whole point.

Also, your characterization of GNOME's rationale is totally wrong. The goal was never to make a desktop with no features, it was more to make a desktop that is streamlined towards certain functionality. If that's not for you, then use a desktop that's more streamlined towards what you want. There's plenty to choose from. What is the real problem?

Edit: I also want to address another common misconception that I see -- the GNOME Foundation does not direct development in a top down fashion and does not impose any rationale on the project. If some feature was removed, it was probably because an individual volunteer working on it decided that it wasn't worth spending time on that anymore, possibly because the need was better filled by a different project.

>Do you even care? I don't think you do, you'll just delete that desktop and move on and use whatever you want, and that's the whole point.

For the record: I care.

Can you elaborate? Is there something particular that you need that doesn't work on an RPi? If it turns out to be a small fix, then ultimately you may end up caring a lot less than you think.

Also, telling an individual user to "just use another DE" does not solve the problem, whose effects are widespread, on a whole ecosystem of software, its users, and developers.

Could you please explain specifically what one or more of these effects is? I may be able to offer suggestions on how to mitigate it. When I was talking about using something else I was specifically referring to the article, which is talking about using a different window manager, and makes a good case for switching, and may even be able to help you deal with some of those effects. I assume you agree with the article, if not then I don't understand because it seems odd to me to single out this one passing mention in a paragraph that otherwise goes against what was just said, so please elaborate if you can.

I'm not sure what the other user was thinking about, but I think that GNOME's push towards client-side window decoration is annoying and imposing. Depending on your WM, some applications become "useless", they waste space on small screens and just reinforce a sense of fragmentation. I get that it looks better on GNOME, and I appriciate it when using GNOME, but as there seems to be no system to remove the CSD on traditional systems, I still think it is an overall bad move.