Xfce Forum

organicode

Member

Registered: 2026-04-01

Posts: 20

Can a DE ever be finished? Young dev fixes old bug in ... this

I was just researching an unrelated energy-guzzling-slop-machine and found this story. The Register is cloud(g)lare so providing an Internet Archive link for you fine folk instead.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260416020 … eepreading

Basically a young programmer in(?) Germany, loves an old D.E. called "Enlightenment E16" because the community around it considers it to be "finished software". But she identified a bug that, if I understand correctly causes a system to crash if it can't position an ellipsis for long filenames. Eg.

Filename 1:
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
Filename 2:
20260320_T235959_The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog(MUST_EDIT_SO_NOT_DISCRIMINATING_AGAINST_DOGS)

                                    | <---- Boundary/edge of region that the filename
                                    |        that filename must be fitted to, using
                                    |        ellipsis (...) if needed.
File 1 ellipsis can be positioned:  |
The quick brown fox... the lazy dog |
                                    |
File 2 ellipsis positioning hangs system because start and end words are too long?:
20260320_T235959_The... MUST_EDIT_SO_NOT_DISCRIMINATING_AGAINST_DOGS)
                                    |
                                    |

I'm fairly sure I'm not quite understanding exactly how it breaks but I think the above is the gist. She capped the search for an ellipsis position at 32 attempts. (and if anyone knows anything about binary search even that is probably ridiculously generous(?))

I also really liked the idea of people pushing back against adding stuff in software for the sake of "innovating" etc. We now know from the epstine files where probably a large amount of mone(--cut)... 'printed debt-slave currency' comes from to fund said "Innovation"... and why so much "Innovation" happens on micro$lop and goog servers (and through linked foundations and institutions incl MIT as a known massive offender in the space)?

Make. OSS. Healthy. Again???
Make. OSS. HONEST. Again.

I think Xfce ticks a similar good box for me, As pieces of software I don't believe Xfce strives to be "finished software" but i think it has a mindset that considers so many use cases that it doesn't want to be everything for everyone all of the time, but almost everything to the vastest majority. I think it gets the closest.

MOHA