The XFCE global menubar plugin being deprecated likely happened because there’s no standardized way for applications on Linux to surface their menus to the environment for display (or to power a Unity-style HUD or whatever), which means that hackery via plugins for GTK and Qt are required to make a global menubar work. Keeping that hackery functional probably is a constant battle.
There’s also how GTK apps have been on a crusade against menubars since GTK3 which doesn’t help matters. Same goes for Linux builds of Electron apps, which don’t offer the user the option to display a menubar even though all the menu work is already done for macOS builds.
Whatever the case it bums me out too. I know a lot of people hate global menubars but I’ve always loved them and it kills me that they’re not a practical option on the Linux desktop, despite ultimate customizability being one of the most frequently-cited reasons to use Linux as a desktop OS. You can do anything you want, as long as what you want falls within the boxes of Win9X-like, tablet-like, or "trendy minimal tiling window manager"…
Global menu bars are a great way of making complex functionality discoverable without overwhelming the user. They should be thought of like an index at the back of a book — not for everyday use, but a universal standard way to call upon infrequent tools, and to discover commands which might be useful.
It's disappointing the degree to which a bulk of the Linux community seems to be chasing whatever paradigms they learned on whatever Windows machines they were first to exposed to (or pay no consideration to UX at all).
It seems that the Stallman-esque "FOSS or die" attracts a lot of people who think about engineering problems more than HCI ones, and there is a vocal subset of "FOSS or die" in every Linux community I've encountered.
> I know a lot of people hate global menubars but I’ve always loved them and it kills me that they’re not a practical option on the Linux desktop, despite ultimate customizability being one of the most frequently-cited reasons to use Linux as a desktop OS.
Isn't that the point? It's so customizable that app writers opt out of menubars. And the system menubar has no power over the apps.
I meant customizability for the end user, which in my opinion should rarely if ever be compromised by app devs.
As for the global menubar, it doesn’t need to wield any power over third party apps… it’s just there to display a list of menus provided by the front most app, and there’s not really a good reason for apps to not provide that even if their devs don’t want a menubar within the app’s window.
If you can't code your own <whatever> are you really the intended user of the customizable Linux desktop? /s
But if there's no standard for it supported by at least Qt and GTK+ then you can't expect it to "just work". Even then you'd get the apps that use some other toolkit that doesn't work.
There’s also how GTK apps have been on a crusade against menubars since GTK3 which doesn’t help matters. Same goes for Linux builds of Electron apps, which don’t offer the user the option to display a menubar even though all the menu work is already done for macOS builds.
Whatever the case it bums me out too. I know a lot of people hate global menubars but I’ve always loved them and it kills me that they’re not a practical option on the Linux desktop, despite ultimate customizability being one of the most frequently-cited reasons to use Linux as a desktop OS. You can do anything you want, as long as what you want falls within the boxes of Win9X-like, tablet-like, or "trendy minimal tiling window manager"…