@red11 I was bummed about that too but what I learned after that was pointed out:
while the Tweaks repo is still mildly active in gitlab, there hasn’t been a release since GNOME 46
there is some dependency (or other reason) that prevents it from being packaged in a flatpak
Either of those facts are reason for it to not be included in a Universal Blue offering the way it has been described to me.
The Dconf Editor flatpak is installed in bluefin at least. So if Refine doesn’t have something you need (I am in that camp too) the workaround is to get more familiar with the gsettings details of the feature you need to tweak and use gsettings directly or Dconf Editor.
That is where things stand right now the way I understand them.
The reality is that (as you must be aware) these projects are going through some real growing pains this cycle. We all need to be a little patient with the core team.
If we look at Tweaks source code repository there was a week ago one line change commit, before that there are some translation updates that get automatically committed from translation system and before that a year old commit. Last release was a year ago, but looking at release history previously releases was every few months. What we can say is that development of Tweaks is not really vibrant.
Questions:
Is Tweaks still useful (does options in program work)?
Yes, it works.
What is problem?
Unmaintained software can poses all kind of issues, like sudden update of Blufin and some option from Tweaks stops working.
Security issues are not fixed (if they are any)
What if user still wants to have Tweaks?
If it is not included in image, the option is to rpm-ostree layer it, use distrobox/toolbox or similar which is quite a task for simple tweak tool to have.
Who is going to be affected?
Average Linux user moving from other Linux distro is used to apt/dnf install package. Similar in Blufin is “rpm-ostree install” but we would like users to not use this method unless really needed. We point user to distrobox/toolbox, but this is just another layer of complexity for average user to deal with just to install simple tweak tool.
Is Tweaks available as flatpak?
Currently no and if program’s development is not very vibrant, then I don’t expect flatpak is going to be created, because it requires quite some time and effort to create flatpak.
What are alternatives?
Refine (to some extent)
Manual gsettings.
What is Blufin philosophy?
Operating system should be something users do not take care of. Users should use programs.
Similar to mobile phone philosophy, you just update mobile phone software, but you use programs.
What Blufin users can do to help out:
Install Refine and test it out.
If some vital feature is in Tweaks and not in Refine, go to its bug/feature issue list and politely ask developer if feature can be added (please first check if issue is not already reported and provide as much info as possible so developer can have material to work with)
Try to get alternative e.g. gsettings and post it here.
If we eliminate all of the vital features that are in Tweaks and not in Refine in some simple other way (like e.g. one line terminal command), then we are prepared to remove Tweaks from main image.
A lot of people here have made those same arguments. The fact is that it is not actively maintained. The changes you are seeing are all for translation fixes.
Do this. Create a fedora distrobox. Do sudo dnf info gnome-tweaks. You will see the latest version is for Gnome 46 - 2 major versions ago.
Available packages
Name : gnome-tweaks
Epoch : 0
Version : 46.1
Release : 4.fc42
Architecture : noarch
Download size : 352.8 KiB
Installed size : 1.4 MiB
Source : gnome-tweaks-46.1-4.fc42.src.rpm
Repository : fedora
Summary : Customize advanced GNOME 3 options
URL : https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tweaks
License : GPL-3.0-or-later AND CC0-1.0
Description : GNOME Tweaks allows adjusting advanced configuration settings in GNOME 3. This
: includes things like the fonts used in user interface elements, alternative user
: interface themes, changes in window management behavior, GNOME Shell appearance
: and extension, etc.
Vendor : Fedora Project
Remember, some of the core team work for Red Hat. They know stuff we will never know.
And, in my opinion, there is a lot of value in knowing what is behind the features of GNOME that I care about. So learning how to use gsettings to make GNOME display my maximize button is a good thing.