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The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

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Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#91

Post by cgdub »

mrkgnao wrote: post #84
cgdub wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spacemacs works fine if you install it normally. Most dotfiles in your home directory will work as usual.

I'm not familiar with ebuild or PKGBUILD. You'd probably have to rewrite them as Nix expressions.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#92

Post by hathawsh »

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…

It's interesting that your experience is so different from mine. I've preferred Linux environments since about 1998. Sometimes I boot to Windows, but Windows feels very limiting. With Linux and KDE, I can use custom keyboard shortcuts with ease, I can put my whole OS on a thumb drive, I can run the same instance on other computers, I can copy an instance as many times as I like, and I can try different variations of drivers and settings with no worries that I'll break anything so badly that I can't fix it. I can downgrade anything. I can upgrade programs and drivers even while they're running. I can upgrade at my own pace. I can run the same software on either a desktop or a server. For the few programs I use that don't run well in Linux, I have Wine, virtual machines, and dual booting.

I like Windows and Mac OS, but I feel like they have a long way to go before they're useful for my day to day work.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#93

Post by dnzm »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #86
benologist wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually, unless I'm mistaken, the whole z-x-c-v thing was a thing on Macs way before it came to Windows.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#94

Post by Symmetry »

roider wrote: post #83

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 a…

What I do is run a tiling window manager inside a desktop environment. XMonad inside Gnome is what I'm using right now. For 95% of what I do every day I'm just using the keyboard but when I do something unusual there's still the friendlyish GUI to take care of it.

On Ubuntu it's just a matter of

  sudo apt-add-repository ppa:gekkio/xmonad
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install gnome-session-xmonad

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#95

Post by eric_bullington »

rifung wrote: post #57
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 understa…

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

Yes, if you don't already, learn basic command line very well, with stderr/stdin/stdout, pipes, sed, grep, find, cat, make, etc. etc. You'll then thrive in Linux, and it will help you with OSX, too.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#96

Post by psadauskas »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #90

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 w…

I'm in the same boat, I used AwesomeWM for several years, before switching to OSX around 2010, just because the Mac hardware was superior to just about everything else, but I always felt crippled in the window manager. iTerm2 + tmux can get close, but switching to the browser never "fit" in that flow.

A few weeks ago I switched back to Linux on a NUC, and its like I've come home again.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#97

Post by willtim »

vondur wrote: post #88
willtim wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ubuntu won't need to develop Qt, it has an increasingly vibrant community.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#98

Post by city41 »

I think even more importantly, Linux allows DEs and WMs to do practically anything they want. The window manager i3 simply is not possible on OSX. OSX tiling window managers use the accessibility API as a hack, and it's just not very good at all.

I can't even begin to express how much I love i3. I literally switched from OSX just for i3, it's made me that much more efficient, focused, less frustrated and allows me to use my ultrawide monitor to its fullest potential.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#99

Post by eikenberry »

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…

If you ever decide to try again, try to time it with a new computer purchase and buy a system from a vendor who ships Linux based systems. Hardware support is always the trickiest bit with Linux as it tends to lag behind a bit due to developers not getting access to the hardware until after it is publicly available combined with the Linux driver model (in kernel drivers) + the distribution model of sticking with stable kernel releases.

TLDR; If you want good hardware support without worry, buy from a Linux vendor.

Re: The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments

#100

Post by rootbear »

mverwijs wrote: post #71
rootbear wrote: post #10

In the environment I'm in, my Linux home directory is shared by multiple systems. Most are CentOS 6, but we're starting to use CentOS 7, too. I'm using the default Gnome 2 Desktop on 6, but Mate Desktop on 7, as I don't like Gnome 3 or the "Classic" option. I can't point to any specifics at the moment, but I've had what I think are issues of these desktops stepping on each other. Being able to switch between DEs is n…

If in this case you've a /home that is an NFS mount shared across several nodes running different *nix or even Linux distros then yes, that is a problem. Centos6 will have different Gnome versions than Centos7. However, both will write in ~/.gnome, possibly .gtk, or .gtk-3.0 or wherever the hell they write to these days. Better to share your data through an nfs share in /data instead of /home and take the pain of not…

I'm beginning to think that's the right approach. Or, have a minimal home directory with a .bashrc that sets $HOME at login to an appropriate sub directory. Might not be too robust...
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