GYESME
Minimal by default. Modular by design. Enabling GNOME to run on the Linux distribution you choose, with essential options available when needed.
What is GYESME?
GYESME is a design-led downstream of GNOME that explores architectural optionality through well-defined abstraction boundaries. It treats minimalism as a default state rather than a constraint, and modularity as a structural property rather than an afterthought.
The project investigates whether a thin mediation layer can sit between GNOME and its surrounding environment, allowing the desktop to remain visually and conceptually minimal while supporting optional functionality, alternative workflows, and broader portability across Linux distributions.
Why does GYESME exist?
GYESME grew out of a practical, day-to-day experience rather than an abstract design goal. I am a long-time Linux enthusiast. The first distro I ever used was Red Hat 4.2 in the Autumn of 1997 on a self built PC with a 80486 processor. So that's almost three decades of loving Linux. My daily driver nowadays is Void Linux with Xfce running on X11. Void’s simplicity, predictability, and independence from large, tightly coupled subsystems are qualities I value highly. It reminds me of Slackware, which was the second distro I used.
At the same time, I am genuinely interested in GNOME as a desktop environment. I regularly test recent GNOME releases in virtual machines and appreciate the direction GNOME has taken in terms of visual coherence, interaction design, and its focus on Wayland. Ideally, I would like to move my primary desktop to GNOME on Wayland.
In practice, that transition has proven difficult. With changes introduced around GNOME 49, GNOME increasingly assumes the presence of systemd in ways that make it effectively unusable on Void Linux, which intentionally follows a different approach to init and service management. This creates a hard boundary: either abandon the distribution I value, or give up on running a current GNOME desktop.
Beyond this specific issue, the situation highlights a broader architectural pattern. GNOME’s emphasis on simplicity and consistency has gradually led to more tightly prescribed defaults and implicit assumptions about the surrounding system environment. While these choices are reasonable within certain contexts, they reduce portability and make alternative system designs harder to support.
With GYESME, I'm not seeking to reverse GNOME’s design direction, nor to argue against systemd as a project. Instead, it treats GNOME as a platform whose internal boundaries can be examined more explicitly. The project explores whether a thin abstraction layer can separate policy from mechanism, allowing optional behavior, alternative backends, and broader portability without compromising GNOME’s minimalist design or long-term maintainability.
Extensions, forks, and scope
In the short term, GYESME treats GNOME extensions as an exploratory layer. Extensions provide a practical way to prototype behavior, workflows, and optional features, and to identify where existing APIs are sufficient and where architectural constraints emerge.
A fork is considered only when such constraints make clean abstraction or modularity impractical through extensions alone. Any consolidation into downstream components is treated as a research outcome rather than a starting premise, and is guided by clarity of interfaces, maintainability, and respect for upstream design goals.
Consider GYESME an invitation to explore these questions together, openly and pragmatically, and to discuss where architectural flexibility might coexist with modern desktop design.
Minimalism as a principle
Minimalism in GYESME is not primarily aesthetic. It is a governance principle.
- Defaults are protected more aggressively than options.
- Optional features must remain truly optional.
- Complexity is opt-in, reversible, and documented.
The goal is not maximal configurability, but clarity, composability, and restraint.
On systemd independence
GYESME does not oppose systemd, nor does it seek to remove support for systemd-based systems. Instead, it aims to avoid unnecessary hard dependencies on systemd-specific functionality where reasonable alternatives exist.
This approach improves portability, testability, and long-term resilience, and allows the desktop to function across a wider range of Linux distributions and init systems without compromising functionality.
Non-Goals
GYESME is not an attempt to “fix” GNOME, nor is it intended to compete with or replace upstream GNOME development. The project does not aim to recreate legacy desktop paradigms, nor to reintroduce every removed feature or preference.
GYESME is also not a customization framework focused on visual theming or extensive user-facing configuration. Minimalism remains a core value, and additional behavior is introduced only where it can be made optional, well-scoped, and maintainable.
Finally, GYESME does not seek to impose a universal workflow or ideology. Users who prefer GNOME’s upstream defaults, or who value tightly integrated systemd-based environments, are already well served elsewhere. GYESME exists to explore alternatives, not to invalidate existing choices.
Project status
GYESME is currently in an exploratory phase. The focus is on research, architectural discussion, and documentation rather than implementation. First things first, and we'll concentrate on the most important things.
Development direction is expected to emerge gradually through discussion and contributor input rather than predefined commitments.
Get involved
If you are interested in GNOME internals, desktop architecture, or the long-term evolution of Linux desktop environments, you are welcome to participate.
Discussions, research, and careful disagreement are valued as highly as code.