Linux Mint Looks To Fork More GNOME Software, Make XApp More Independent

Linux Mint published their monthly status update for April 2024 where they talk about ongoing testing for faster and more reliable repository access via the Fastly CDN to other more interesting software happenings like the likelihood that they will fork more GNOME applications as well as looking to make their XApp applications more distribution agnostic.

Linux Mint developers have worked on various applications themselves and shipped them under their XApp umbrella. They are now looking to make it more independent. Many XApps are already packaged for other Linux distributions but less so used by default.

Their hope is with a more independent XApp that they can collaborate more with other Linux distributions and see more contributions from other parties. As part of this they are looking for XApp to have its own GitHub repositories, own website, etc.

As part of the Adwaita library catering just to GNOME's needs and apps relying on libAdwaita really being focused on GNOME, they are looking at forking more older GTK3 versions of different GNOME applications to maintain them as part of XApp. Among the new applications they are looking at forking are Celluloid, GNOME Calculator, Simple Scan, Baobab, System Monitor, GNOME Calendar, and File Roller.

The Linux Mint April update goes on to note:

"libAdwaita is for GNOME and GNOME only. We can’t blame GNOME for this, they’ve been very clear about it from the start. It was made specifically for GNOME to have more freedom and build its own ecosystem without impacting GTK.

We want to send a strong signal upstream and towards other projects. We cannot and will not support applications which do not support our users and environments.

We can’t promote applications to our users which don’t support our users. The software manager will be vigilant towards that going forward and list compatible software by default."

It will be interesting to see how these additional forks evolve and how much interest there is from other Linux distributions/parties around a more independent XApp project.