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This article contains quite a few technical terms, which I will explain these in the following paragraphs, those that are already familiar with these terms may skip to the next section. A basic understanding of linux and it’s desktop environments is assumed.
Server side decorations (SSD) is the term for when when the application’s titlebar is drawn by the system and client side decorations (CSD) is the term for when the applications draws it’s own titlebar. KDE prefers the former, while GNOME prefers the latter. KDE and most other desktop environments supports both, while GNOME only supports CSD.
They justify the rejection of SSD because it isn’t part of the core Wayland protocol and at the same time push client apps for the “minimize” and “maximize” buttons (along with respecting some settings) despite it also not being part of the core protocol and it being only possible through extensions. There’s a ton of tiling compositors that don’t even have any concept of minimize/maximize, so why should this be required of every client app?
It feels backwards to ask the app developers to be the ones adding the UI for whatever features the window compositor might decide to have. They might as well be asking all app developers to add a “fullscreen” button to the decoration, or a “sticky” button, or a “roll up”/“shade” button like many old school X11 WM used to have. This would lead to apps lagging behind in terms of what they have implemented support for and resulting in inconsistent UX, and at the same time limiting the flexibility and user customization of the decorations, not just in terms of visuals but also function and behavior.