Hello world,
So my laptop updated again and now I notice that BaBar Task bar is no longer maintained and I’m unable to find any fork or a replacement for it.
Also the same with Dash to dock cosmic or workspaces Bar.
I find it kindof annoying with Linux that this happens, but this seems like an issue with Gnome breaking functionality to something every update althuogh nothing really changed… I thought it was a good pick back then but now it seems quite annoying.
Alvast bedankt.
There can be good reasons to change API specs. Such a move should be carefully weighed against the backdrop of alienation of developers that improve your project/product. In open-source terms we as the end-users are impacted as well, but often only receive second level concern 
Gnome in particular seems to update their APIs breaking backwards compatibility with every major release about once a year. I see that many of the add-ons I like struggle to keep up.
I sympathize with your pain - I am frequently affected by this as well.
I choose to use a distro that follows the philosophy of upgrading to the latest release as quickly as possible (Fedora) and I like Gnome. Because of this I take the stand that I to live with the consequences.
Maybe you are using a distro with similar philosophy and would be better served by using a different distro (debian, I guess is the other end of this spectrum with basically all other distros somewhere in the middle).
Another solution would be to switch from gnome to another window manager (e.g. KDE).
This is definitely a common thing with gnome specifically, and breaking 3rd party stuff is not just incidental, it’s deliberate. They want to wear down anyone that tries to modify gnome into finally giving up and comply.
The devs are outright hostile against anyone who wants anything different from their “vision”. Hell some of them are also mods on some linux reddits, and in my experience are as “soup nazi” unpleasant in person as the impression you might get from trying to extend their UI.
They basically think they’re the Apple of linux and if you needed the basic functionality they just removed or want to develop a different theme., then you are wrong.
Unfortunately the only viable solution is move off gnome. They have zero intention of changing, even over ten years ago they made it very clear they don’t want you as a user.
Yup, and the sad thing is they are copying the irrelevant bits.
The surface apple UI isn’t what makes it great, its the background services, etc. that gnome doesn’t even have.
When GNOME-3 switched to a tablet interface, I simply dropped GNOME like a bad smell and never thought about it again. XFce makes a good, popular, stable, lightweight and easily configurable replacement.
Last year was when I first started building my own Arch system on my T440p. I scanned through the Unixpron section on Reddit to see what my vision could be. And many systems that looked really nice were used GNOME as DE. So I decided to go with them like I decided to use Grub with my Arch build which was way easier to setup than sysD.
I did read into linux news and see what was coming on the new GTK4, which I find the most interesting because it has a uniform look to a lot. I just don’t know where I could find this uniform look.
And it was also the information that Gnome was phasing out user themes that crossed me, but yet I wasn’t going to use any crazy UI changes, only just a few adjustments.
And now I see that it isn’t allowed, and many devs of really good improvement addons/plugins have stopped maintaining. Even scrolling through the gnome extensions website is depressing.
I will, at some point when I have time again, to setup this system have to move to something nice that I find on somewhere on the internet.
KDE just turns me off as it gives the Android 3-4 energy. And Cinnamon is pretty much Win Vista.
Open to suggestions…