As a long-time Linux user, I feel like it says something about the maturity of desktop Linux that it is good enough now for the kinds of users that find LibreOffice insufficient.
Visual Studio for Mac is rebranded MonoDevelop which actually started on Linux. It is even deader though as MS stopped releasing code to MonoDevelop even before they killed Studio for Mac.
If you are doing C# on Linux though, check out Jet Brains Rider. You can try the Early Access Program for free. Some people ( like me ) consider Rider better than Visual Studio. It is certainly better than Visual Studio for Mac.
You better hope that Cinnamon migrates to Wayland before Red Hat stops supporting Xorg. Despite the deeply researched and evidence based opinion above, Red Hat is the the primary contributor to many of the technologies propping up Mint. Xorg is MIT licensed of course and Red Hat has no obligation to share their changes for Xorg with Mint but they do. Most of the original software Red Hat writes is released under the GPL and used by every other distro. The very first program that Debian runs when it boots was written and is maintained by Red Hat. Fedora was founded by Red Hat to explicitly be community based and they pay the salaries of many of the prominent contributors. Regardless of what you think of Red Hat’s behaviour, I am embarrassed for anybody that honestly believes Red Hat is closed source, even without the all caps.
Colour spaces are ready. They are saying I may be hard to wire it up in all the right places in a month. Why not take two months and get it in? I mean, it has been over a decade already.
Many people have been waiting for 3.x for literally half their lives. To save a month, they are going to launch 3.x with the big change being the toolkit? Seems like a wasted opportunity.
If it were going to be 6 months or more I would agree with you. From the write-up though, they delay would only be a few weeks.
I realize that the major point of GIMP 3 is the port to GTK3. That said, I feel like colour spaces are what people have been waiting for and probably the most significant deficiency that keeps GIMP from being treated as a professional tool.
If they are really this close, why not set the GIMP 3 release date for when colour management is ready?
Non-destructive editing will be huge as well. GIMP 3 is really going to be a crazy leap forward. It is going to be amazing to finally get access to all this work that has been walled off for decades.
The bug situation sounds terrible. Honestly though, they should just get 3 out and then make bug fixing the number one job until it gets into better shape.
Not only is it a small team but right now there are basically two different projects ( 2 and 3 ). With only one code base, perhaps the pace of progress can improve.
You are correct that EndeavourOS is a rolling release. In that sense, you never have to ( and never really do ) “upgrade” to these new “releases” since you are essentially always using the latest software.
The releases do two things:
1 - they provide updated install media that are closer to the current repo contents so that upgrading after install is a smaller and more reliable operation.
2 - they provide an opportunity to change the system defaults. For example, the move to dracut. If you installed a couple of years ago, you can upgrade all your packages but you will still not be using dracut ( unless you make that change yourself ). Everybody that installs EOS now will use dracut by default. That is true of other things, like this change to KDE for the offline install.
Calamares uses the QML / Qt toolkit. Most of the people involved in Calamares are also involved in the KDE Project.
XFCE use the GTK toolkit.
So, it is totally reasonable to say that KDE is “more native”.
While Wayland maybe a factor, KDE itself will not be fully Wayland compatible until Plasma 6 next year. So that does not really explain the timing of this move.
I use XFCE myself so I am a bit nervous about the change. We will see.
As I like to stay evidence driven, I should say that I use XFCE mostly and, as such, am not typically a Wayland user on most of my machines. I will let other readers decide how that impacts the indictment “Wayland’s worst enemy is its fans”.
I am not sure what the “sides” are here either. If I was to try to draw that line, it seems to be between people providing software and those using it. Because the people writing the software are moving to Wayland.
Which leads us to “at this rate”. GNOME and KDE will both be Wayland only next year. What percentage of the Linux Desktop population do we think that represents right there? Enlightenment has already moved. Ubuntu uses Wayland. Red Hat uses Wayland. The Steam Deck uses Wayland. XFCE and Cinnamon will move next year. Wayland only window managers are appearing and gaining in popularity. What percentage of the Linux Desktop universe are you expecting will still be using X at the end of 2025?
Some people may wait 5 years. Then again, Ref Hat will have stopped contribute to X by then and, as I said, nobody is rushing in to dev X. How long is running X going to stay viable?
I would say that BSD may take a little longer but they are starting to move too.
Liking Wayland or not has nothing to do with any of these facts.