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Elementary OS

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Re: Elementary OS

#241

Post by jawngee »

pippy wrote: post #205

The quality of MacOS releases have been dropping since Snow Leopard. With Sierra, they dropped the accessibility setting for disabling scroll inertia. This is serious for someone who's getting RSI. I use Elementary OS as a secondary OS, and I have to say I'm loving it more and more while the quality of MacOS continues to drop.

That setting is still there.

System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options > Scrolling > Without Inertia

System Preferences > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad > Mouse Options > Scrolling > Without Inertia

Re: Elementary OS

#242

Post by Skunkleton »

Scea91 wrote: post #89
izacus wrote: post #5

I really like elementaryOS - not for myself (need to use macOS for dev), but pretty much all of my family was migrated to it. It has proven to be significantly more stable and simple to use than Windows and the default applications really nicely hit the simplicity and usability for a user that primarily needs web, email, photos and minor document editing. I'd even argue it's better than macOS for that user profile (e…

Not sure about the stability. I am using Ubuntu for over a year and it's way less stable than Windows was. Sometimes I encounter crashes when suspending or waking up. I also encounter lots of minor problems. For me the Windows experience was definitely more polished. Is Elementary OS significantly different?

Generally the less like a server your computer is, the less nice the driver support. I have a Xeon workstation with a nvidia quatro graphics card at work and it has been rock solid for years. The same cannot be said of my laptop.

Re: Elementary OS

#243

Post by nextos »

matt4077 wrote: post #192
endgame wrote: post #139

> It has polish and care that the stereotypical raging neckbeards who espouse the mantra of Linux on the desktop are unable to appreciate (or, apparently, build), and it has to exist, even if merely as a counterpoint to all the ugliness. Please be nice :(. Some of those so-called "neckbeards" probably helped build the stack upon which things like elementaryOS rest.

Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are: - dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-good-bacon - design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse UI (all else being equal) so as to prove s…

I think the problem is that Linux and its ecosystem follow a bazaar model. In this setting coordination is harder, which is critical for a nicely designed UI.

That said, my favorite UI design was mid-to-late 2000s GNOME, as implemented by Ubuntu 6.09 Edgy Eft. It was simple, and everything just worked. Sadly, Ubuntu has become a bit more complex and buggy these days.

I think that, if I want to get the best of Linux as a developer, running a text-based keyboard-driven environment (mutt, emacs...) on a tiling manager is the best route to happiness.

Re: Elementary OS

#244

Post by Normal_gaussian »

simondedalus wrote: post #219
amiga-workbench wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might just be /g/ but I always get a lot of flak for running Gnome 3, other users like to point out how much screen real estate it wastes with padding, however that's the main reason I'm using it. I'm sick to death of XFCE and KDE setups with poor proportions and crazy alignment issues, I don't want an interface that is spatially hyper-compact, I want one that looks pleasant. I mean Christ, you can't even vertic…

yeah, i got used to gnome3 during a redhat class, and subsequently on a default kali install for its own particular purpose, and i don't mind it at all. the alignment is good, and when you want to get rid of all the border stuff you can just full screen. for example, my firefox looks like something out of windows 95, but if i want to pretend i'm using i3, f11 -> fullscreen, ctrl+tab and i'm set. and if i want to see…

You say you would rather be using i3 generally, yet you also say that you can pretend by using fullscreen on a window.

Do you not use the tiling? Do you simply use it for greater screen real-estate?

I'm curious as my preference of i3 focuses on the tiling

Re: Elementary OS

#245

Post by sgdesign »

pavanky wrote: post #199
matt4077 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are: - dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-good-bacon - design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse UI (all else being equal) so as to prove s…

Firstly, I see a lot of people complaining about the design, but the matter of fact is a lot more programmers are willing to work for free and make their contributions open source than designers are. This was more true a decade ago than it is now, so there is a lot of "if it works, do not break it" attitude. Secondly, "good design" is subjective as opposed to a program that achieves its goals. No matter what you do,…

The open source movement is a programmer thing to begin with. "Source" does stand for "source code" after all, so it's no surprise that designers don't contribute as much as programmers.

Designers do their own part by putting out the design equivalent of free open source code, in other words free icons, fonts, templates, concepts, etc.

Re: Elementary OS

#246

Post by cooper12 »

rcarmo wrote: post #123
xaduha wrote: post #113

Not interested in Elementary OS at all, but I do keep an eye on Solus https://solus-project.com (Well, there's also http://papyros.io , but I'm not confident that it will amount to anything) BTW, that practice of making keywords (which often repeat throughout the text) into links (often to your own damn blog) is abhorrent.

It's not a blog, it's a Wiki ( https://github.com/rcarmo/sushy ), and the blog just hangs off it. I see no damning in that - you can always either not visit or not click :)

Then you gotta warn us in the title that you link everything :). Just kidding, but on a more serious note I also found it very distracting. Sure, link the first occurrence of the word, but I see no reason macOS needs to be linked every time it's mentioned. Even the big daddy of wikis, Wikipedia, recommends against linking things that have already been linked and very common terms [0]:

> An overlinked article contains an excessive number of links, making it difficult to identify links likely to aid the reader's understanding significantly. A 2015 study of log data found that "in the English Wikipedia, of all the 800,000 links added ... in February 2015, the majority (66%) were not clicked even a single time in March 2015, and among the rest, most links were clicked only very rarely", and that "simply adding more links does not increase the overall number of clicks taken from a page. Instead, links compete with each other for user attention."

When I, an internet user see a link, it's visual distinctiveness cues to me that it might lead me to more information that emphasizes something. It's fine for websites to link to their own tags, but there's also overdoing it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Link...

Re: Elementary OS

#247

Post by matt4077 »

pavanky wrote: post #199
matt4077 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are: - dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-good-bacon - design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse UI (all else being equal) so as to prove s…

Firstly, I see a lot of people complaining about the design, but the matter of fact is a lot more programmers are willing to work for free and make their contributions open source than designers are. This was more true a decade ago than it is now, so there is a lot of "if it works, do not break it" attitude. Secondly, "good design" is subjective as opposed to a program that achieves its goals. No matter what you do,…

Design may unfortunately be one of the human endeavors ill-suited for the bazaar, while programming happens to occupy the completely opposite end of the spectrum.

An API is almost as binding as a law of nature. People will grumble, and maybe write adaptors, pile on abstractions, possibly even send you pull requests. But to change an API against the owners' will requires a bold and binary decision to fork with all it entails.

It also doesn't matter. There's only one limitation programmers are often exposed to: that of the choice of language/framework/platform... And witness how much flack a perfectly innocent language* like JS gets.

Within their implementation, programmers have free reign (within reason, don't get your hopes up, tab-indenting freaks)

For design, it starts out with a somewhat arbitrary definition of what is meant by a "style guide". Methods to validate implementations are tacked-on (if existing). A fully-formed style guide (...doesn't exist, but...) would reduce those implementing it to mere tools, while any style guide that allows creativity will inevitably lead to design-by-committee-that-never-meets. At a company, this tension is resolved by iteration, team-work and constant communication, allowing people to form a group identity. But that requires some sort of authority, a hiring/education process that creates a group with some basic, shared understanding/ideology/vocabulary and lots of FaceTime.

*applying the insanity defense

Re: Elementary OS

#248

Post by metafunctor »

mavelikara wrote: post #9

My mini Ask HN: After over a decade of using Mac OS X, I am considering switching to Linux for my dev laptop. The tools I worry about are those that interact with audio and webcam - Go To Meeting, Google Hangout etc. My work involves me having to teleconf with others often. Does anyone here have experience using Linux well in such scenarios. If so, what hardware are you using? Also, does sleep-on-closing-lid work wel…

This is why I still choose to go with Mac OS X, even if their most recent hardware is very, very expensive.

I don't have time to tinker with compiling kernels, configuring X11, figuring out which photo management software to use, setting up reliable backups, getting my Bluetooth headset to work, and, yes, getting the machine to suspend when I close the lid and wake up when I open it.

These are basics that will just work with OS X, very, very, reliably.

That said, if anyone can point me to a Linux distro (Debian/Ubuntu preferred) and hardware that actually work reliably together, please do.

Re: Elementary OS

#249

Post by simondedalus »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #244
simondedalus wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, i got used to gnome3 during a redhat class, and subsequently on a default kali install for its own particular purpose, and i don't mind it at all. the alignment is good, and when you want to get rid of all the border stuff you can just full screen. for example, my firefox looks like something out of windows 95, but if i want to pretend i'm using i3, f11 -> fullscreen, ctrl+tab and i'm set. and if i want to see…

You say you would rather be using i3 generally, yet you also say that you can pretend by using fullscreen on a window. Do you not use the tiling? Do you simply use it for greater screen real-estate? I'm curious as my preference of i3 focuses on the tiling

No I totally use it for tiling as well; I just meant that the "too much chrome" complaint about gnome3 can be overcome.

And while not as good as real tiling, keyboard shortcuts to the various snapped positions go a long way for the couple minutes of effort they require to configure in the settings UI.

Edit: e.g. super+arrow keys for various areas, or add in shift. Not a lot of planning required.

Re: Elementary OS

#250

Post by epidemian »

mavelikara wrote: post #9

My mini Ask HN: After over a decade of using Mac OS X, I am considering switching to Linux for my dev laptop. The tools I worry about are those that interact with audio and webcam - Go To Meeting, Google Hangout etc. My work involves me having to teleconf with others often. Does anyone here have experience using Linux well in such scenarios. If so, what hardware are you using? Also, does sleep-on-closing-lid work wel…

Google Hangouts works fine. I've had problems with Skype and audio after a distro upgrade on Ubuntu (but an `apt purge` and `apt install` fixed them).

Sleep-on-closing-lid has worked fine for me for many years.

It's funny that, with regards to Just Working after installation, Linux seems to be way ahead of Windows. I installed both of them on my laptop and while on Linux everything worked fine from the start without needing extra setup steps (including the multitouch trackpad; the not-so-standard function keys like keyboard brightness; even the this weird external subwoofer that came with the laptop), on Windows i had to download and install special drivers for all those things, and even for much more basic stuff, like the wireless card (had to dig through old computer stuff to find an ethernet cable to connect to the internet).

Now, i understand why this is the case. Linux distros are designed to be installed by their users, while Windows is designed to come pre-installed on computers. But i still find it curious how Linux is much more non-tech-savvy-friendly in this particular regard.

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