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The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

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Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#81

Post by willtim »

digi_owl wrote: post #78
willtim wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gnome stack is horrible. I long ago started questioning the sanity of the devs when they tried to build an entire office suite in C. Start any Gnome/GTK app and it will continously spew assertion failed log messages at you. Gnome has also forced certain standards, e.g. Network Manager when superior alternatives exist (the excellent Connman).

I seem to recall that Connman came to be after Network Manager was established. And frankly i am unsure if it was Gnome or Red Hat that brought it on, but then i find the lines blur between the two (after all, it seems like the most active Gnome devs are on RH payroll).

Connman was developed by Intel, there's absolutely no Gnomeness involved at all. I think you are correct that Network Manager was first, but it took a long time to stabilise and came with far too many dependencies, including X11 and a full Gnome install!

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#82

Post by jokoon »

I think the core of the argument about linux is not about having a well designed system that works well, but that it should be an american technology that dominates, and not anything that is managed by a non american, especially if he is against corporatism and tend to do things in a way that can be perceived as arrogant.

So basically, linux will not prosper as long as it is not in the interest of the US.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#83

Post by roider »

Tiling window managers like i3 seem to allow the perfect mixture of terminal and graphics. After spending some time using i3 I've noticed (when using for work, etc.)that desktop environments universally seem extremely inefficient and slow. For certain types of tasks a mouse is essential, but being forced to use it for nearly everything in OSX seems like a massive waste of time. I'd like to see a study on efficiency among proficient users of desktop environments and proficient users of WM. Users who view themselves as fluent in an OSX desktop environment and users who view themselves as fluent in a WM(say i3) probably spend different amounts of time executing the same tasks. IMO not having to use the mouse as frequently seems like a tremendous efficiency booster.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#84

Post by mrkgnao »

cgdub wrote: post #69
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…

You can also go one step further and have the configuration for the entire OS in text files with something like NixOS. https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html Want to see what your PC was really like 2 months ago, including rolling back updates and removing new applications you installed and vice-versa? You can do that. Even if you switched desktop environments.

Can you get a Spacemacs setup working on NixOS, with layers and so on? In general, assuming one is willing to write a bit of glue code/NixOS versions of patches/ebuilds/PKGBUILDs, can one get one's configuration from $distro working on NixOS?

I use Haskell, so I've been meaning to switch to Nix for a while.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#85

Post by nols »

jokoon wrote: post #82

I think the core of the argument about linux is not about having a well designed system that works well, but that it should be an american technology that dominates, and not anything that is managed by a non american, especially if he is against corporatism and tend to do things in a way that can be perceived as arrogant. So basically, linux will not prosper as long as it is not in the interest of the US.

Linux is extremely successful though, just not on the desktop.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#86

Post by TheCoelacanth »

benologist wrote: post #51
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 clo…

That's probably my favorite thing about Macs. The unix/emacs-like keybindings like C-f, C-b, C-n, C-p to move the cursor, C-c to kill a process in the terminal, etc and the Windows-like keybindings like ⌘-c, ⌘-v, ⌘-x for copy, paste, cut, ⌘-n for new window, etc both exist by default without colliding. I can get this on Linux if I spend a week remapping things but not by default. As far as I can tell, there's no way to get this on Windows.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#87

Post by fmoralesc »

notalaser wrote: post #16
digi_owl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a bunch of alternatives to explorer.exe (yep, the very same damned .exe as the file explorer), but its been ages since i played with them. They all had quirks and issues, as best i recall.

Litestep used to be very sleek at one point. I've used it for an year or two without any problems.

I remember making themes (and even a "distro") for litestep when I was in highschool. Good times.

The best shell I ever used for Windows in terms of productivity was a blackbox variant, xoblite (http://xoblite.net/).

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#88

Post by vondur »

willtim wrote: post #76
sandGorgon wrote: post #68

Ubuntu has turned into this franken-beast that is simply not cutting it for me anymore. Right from the installer (that doesn't work well on XPS 13 with name) to Unity to Mir. Fedora 24 has been brilliant and works awesome out of the box. I am constantly recommending F24 to people and have never had a bad experience.

Ubuntu are playing a (very long) game. If they manage it, IMHO they'll be in a better place than Fedora's UI which is built on a stack that increasingly only Redhat will continue to develop.

I would argue that RedHat is in a better position to do most of the development of the Gnome desktop and Wayland vs Canonical being able to manage the transition to Mir and keep Unity going.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#89

Post by tyrust »

lottin wrote: post #62

Nice article, but what's wrong with that page? ublock reports 409 requests blocked and increasing...

You can click on the uBlock icon and open the logger (little icon that looks like a window with lines) to see which requests are being blocked. I'm seeing xhr's to https://collector-medium.lightstep.com/api/v0/reports being blocked every few seconds. Probably some medium analytics request.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#90

Post by AceJohnny2 »

I remember when I discovered Unix as a college freshman (HP-UX with CDE), I spent way too much time fiddling with the desktop settings. For a while I even ran a buggy Enlightenment because wow was it pretty.

I loved trying out new visual styles. I spent so much time on wallpapers.

It took me years before I realized that what I really wanted to optimize was app layout. Any screen space that wasn't used by an app was wasted space. Space I could use to have a few extra lines in a terminal, a few extra columns of code...

I used AwesomeWM for a few years because I loved its concept of "tagging" windows which let you mix-and-match which you were displaying at a given time (this is my "all code" setting, that's my "all terms", and this is my "some code some term..."). Now I'm on macOS and I dearly miss it.

Anyhow, I haven't looked at a desktop wallpaper in years, and I like my window decorations as minimalistic as possible.

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