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The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

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Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#51

Post by benologist »

manaskarekar wrote: post #14

Edit: Can the downvoter explain their reason? My personal favorite is the LXDE / Lubuntu 16.04 setup. All my subjective opinion, of course: - Sits in the sweet spot for bare bones distro vs batteries included. - Without decorations, I have essentially borderless applications, that I can quickly toggle the titlebars etc. - Kept sane keyboard shortcuts and did not remove them for some arbitrary reasons. Here's a random…

Only thing I dislike about Lubuntu is losing Mac keyboard shortcuts and hardware, a lot of them I managed to replicate and even found a (slightly unstable) Alfred alternative called Albert [1]. My Magic Mouse 2 could only work like a dumb mouse.

I turned off the tray at the bottom, the window borders and set apps to start full screen, switching between full screen apps was much nicer than what remains after Apple closed off whatever Total Spaces was using. It ended up being a really productive way to work due to the lack of distraction like crap software from Apple, Adobe, 1Password, iTerm etc endlessly begging for 5 minutes so you can watch their updates download. Or all the other notifications that mostly don't need to be read or exist.

[1] http://www.howopensource.com/2015/03/launcher-for-ubuntu-lin...

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#52

Post by bengalister »

I recently tried to use Linux (Ubuntu 16.10) as my primary desktop and failed again. I tried yearly since year 2000. But again in late 2016 I switched back to Windows (10) and MacOs. Driver support is getting better but so are my expectations and Linux (well Ubuntu) doesn't seem to catch up fast enough. For instance I failed having my dual graphic cards be used in extended mode with the my native laptop screen and an external HDMI screen monitor. My bluetooth headset has a hard time being recognized by the OS I have to retry many times. And I cannot have sound through on my monitor connected to HDMI output of my Nvidia graphical card. Maybe I used the wrong distro, but all these issues are non-existent when I switch to Windows 10. Linux desktop is getting better but is still a painful experience when used with non common setup.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#53

Post by tomc1985 »

santaclaus wrote: post #5

I wish one of the major Linux distributions would double down on design as a core priority (as in, bring in designers and give them serious pull). I'd kill for a beautiful, opinionated, and novel Linux desktop environment.

As long as it's not the Material school of design or any of these other sparse, happy atrocities that have graced the web and mobile over the last few years

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#54

Post by lima »

robmccoll wrote: post #49
awalGarg wrote: post #13

One not-so-unrelated thing I really love about linux is that the "configuration" for just about every application is stored in plain-text files, mostly in the user's home directory. Which means we can use git to version control them (like many many people do - the dotfiles trend). You can have a log of configuration changes for your system, you can have various profiles with branches, etc. Want to switch to a differe…

It's unfortunate that many of the modern components frequently seen in Linux environments do not appreciate/respect/promote the use of plain-text files and scripts. Thinking of systemd and its many utilities, Docker, etc.

> systemd

Isn't systemd's configuration entirely plain text?

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#55

Post by lima »

digi_owl wrote: post #42
awalGarg wrote: post #13

One not-so-unrelated thing I really love about linux is that the "configuration" for just about every application is stored in plain-text files, mostly in the user's home directory. Which means we can use git to version control them (like many many people do - the dotfiles trend). You can have a log of configuration changes for your system, you can have various profiles with branches, etc. Want to switch to a differe…

For every person loving those plain texts, there are one that want to see them purged from existence. Observe how Gnome has basically recreated the registry, complete with hidden magic switches...

Gnome re-created the registry because they needed features that plain text files don't have.

I simply have a hook for my dotfile repo which calls "dconf dump / > .dconf". This dumps the entire tree and it's nicely versioned in the repo.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#56

Post by jstimpfle »

digi_owl wrote: post #42
awalGarg wrote: post #13

One not-so-unrelated thing I really love about linux is that the "configuration" for just about every application is stored in plain-text files, mostly in the user's home directory. Which means we can use git to version control them (like many many people do - the dotfiles trend). You can have a log of configuration changes for your system, you can have various profiles with branches, etc. Want to switch to a differe…

For every person loving those plain texts, there are one that want to see them purged from existence. Observe how Gnome has basically recreated the registry, complete with hidden magic switches...

It's the worst. I've sufferred so much although I never wanted to care about it. I'm a little blurry on the details, but if you want to automize addition of some configuration to the dconf system you have to put your part of the configuration tree in /etc/ and recompile the whole config to a new binary file. I doubt anybody can measure the parsing advantage of a binary format, but the drawbacks are obvious. You can't just deploy by copying files. The target system has to be running, and you have to run the right update script in the right sequence.

This update sequence is also meant to live-update the configuration of the running system. Of course that wouldn't work reliably. My session dropped its hotkeys (the only thing I actually cared about) on every update.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#57

Post by rifung »

bengalister wrote: post #52

I recently tried to use Linux (Ubuntu 16.10) as my primary desktop and failed again. I tried yearly since year 2000. But again in late 2016 I switched back to Windows (10) and MacOs. Driver support is getting better but so are my expectations and Linux (well Ubuntu) doesn't seem to catch up fast enough. For instance I failed having my dual graphic cards be used in extended mode with the my native laptop screen and an…

> Linux desktop is getting better but is still a painful experience when used with non common setup.

Indeed every time I think of getting a new laptop or desktop, I try to do research into how well Linux will run on the hardware. Thankfully there seem to be a decent number of laptops that have Linux preinstalled now.

As much as I enjoy tinkering, even after using Linux for a while I still don't have a strong understanding of how things work, and it's frustrating to be forced to tinker when my intention was to get things done.

Perhaps I need to dedicate more time to understanding how things work?

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#58

Post by willtim »

bengalister wrote: post #52

I recently tried to use Linux (Ubuntu 16.10) as my primary desktop and failed again. I tried yearly since year 2000. But again in late 2016 I switched back to Windows (10) and MacOs. Driver support is getting better but so are my expectations and Linux (well Ubuntu) doesn't seem to catch up fast enough. For instance I failed having my dual graphic cards be used in extended mode with the my native laptop screen and an…

My experiences are similar, it's not the software that's the biggest problem, I use mostly FOSS anyway. It was the lack of decent hardware support, e.g. Skylake laptop support, Displayport MST, that drove me to Windows 10.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#59

Post by milkytron »

Although this blog entry is entirely about desktop interfaces, he does mention that

> ...Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android, have one common interface...

This is true for the first three without significant modification, but it isn't true for Android. One of my favorite things about Android when I had it was the ability to choose a launcher right from the app store. You can completely change your home screen interface with a downloadable app, and it's actually much easier to do than it is on linux last time I checked.

For desktops I agree, Linux has the most customization when it comes to the interface. But on Android, it's just as customizable as a Linux desktop(I mean... it is Linux after all).

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#60

Post by robmccoll »

lima wrote: post #54
robmccoll wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that many of the modern components frequently seen in Linux environments do not appreciate/respect/promote the use of plain-text files and scripts. Thinking of systemd and its many utilities, Docker, etc.

> systemd Isn't systemd's configuration entirely plain text?

Some of the configuration is plain text: unit, service, and environment files are plaintext. Which services are enabled and disabled cannot be controlled through file manipulation that I know of. Journal (log files) are binary.

I think what bothers me about both is that the presence of text files in a predefined location is not enough to make things happen on its own. Instead of the simplest possible everything-is-a-file and interacting with the filesystem is the interface, you have an additional requirement of calling binaries and their subcommands.

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