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Lubuntu is taking a new direction

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Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#71

Post by peatmoss »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #49
peatmoss wrote: post #46

As an exercise, I threw OpenBSD and GNUStep on a machine the other day. I wouldn’t say GNUStep provides the best Free/Open desktop, but I want to believe that it could. The thing is, many of the modern Linux desktops seem to be heavily wedded to a lot of dconf and systemd infrastructure. OpenBSD has managed to build analogs for enough of the heavily Linux-centric infrastructure that Gnome 3 depends on, but man it’s c…

> I didn’t see KDE in the OpenBSD ports when I looked, and I suspect it too is because KDE has become wedded to Linux-only services. I doubt this is the issue. KDE Plasma 5 seemed okay on FreeBSD when I tried it recently, although I don't have any recent KDE+Linux experience to compare it with. More likely there just hasn't been enough developer interest to get it properly ported to OpenBSD. Edit: To get more at your…

> I felt like there was just too much of a mismatch with the rest of the FOSS GUI ecosystem.

Definitely. It probably has the largest mismatch outside of exotic options like, I don’t know, a Smalltalk image.

I think that’s why the Free *nix desktop struggles to this day. We never built the core infrastructure that allowed useful inter-application messaging. We never built the application frameworks to enable a really great, consistent UX. When we finally did, we built dconf and systemd.

I can’t say these things are horrible, but neither can I say they offer anything more than macOS’s system services or Cocoa APIs. And the price of being different, is that macOS is far and away the best GUI platform today (I’m not a fan of the Mac these days for other reasons, but the UI consistency is first rate, owing to their frameworks and the NeXT legacy). We could have shared (maybe still could share) so much with the Mac. And importantly, we could have benefited from Apple’s singular vision while also providing an escape from the walled garden.

But yeah, the FOSS GUI ecosystem chased FVWM bling for a long time. Oh my goodness, I spent hours tweaking FVWM configs, later Window Maker, Enlightenment, and who knows what else. But it was all skin-deep looks. We spent so long chasing window themes, but ignoring the hard work of building infrastructure.

KDE and Gnome were ultimately late, divisive, and different from everything else. So much of Linux and the BSDs is great, it bums me to see us so far behind Apple, when we could have chased tail lights until we overtook them.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#72

Post by alttab »

hobs wrote: post #59
woolvalley wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they got into using linux later in life. Not all of us messed with linux when we were 12 ;)

Still made me feel a billion years old as I am pretty sure I had quite a few Warty Warthog cds around at one point.

CDs? I had 7 floppies for Doom. And I bought a sound card!

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#73

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

nurettin wrote: post #62
woolvalley wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they got into using linux later in life. Not all of us messed with linux when we were 12 ;)

When I was 12, it was all windows 3.1, IBM OS/2 and Solaris for the cool cats.

When I was 12 it was C64.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#74

Post by peatmoss »

paulie_a wrote: post #66
peatmoss wrote: post #46

As an exercise, I threw OpenBSD and GNUStep on a machine the other day. I wouldn’t say GNUStep provides the best Free/Open desktop, but I want to believe that it could. The thing is, many of the modern Linux desktops seem to be heavily wedded to a lot of dconf and systemd infrastructure. OpenBSD has managed to build analogs for enough of the heavily Linux-centric infrastructure that Gnome 3 depends on, but man it’s c…

Honestly I remember trying gnustep, it was ugly. I can't even emphasis how terrible it looked from a ux/UI perspective compared to literally every other desktop.

Yup, they were doing the hard part of making application frameworks and consistent APIs, and were always deferring window dressing. By contrast, old school FVWM and later Enlightenment were pushing limits of themability without really building anything of substance beyond literal window dressing.

No reason GNUStep couldn’t be as beautiful as anything else. Oddly, I find the NeXT aesthetic oddly fresh looking today. I was struck by how good it looked when I took a trip to the Living Computer Museum and played on their NeXT cube. What’s old is new I guess.

Still, not supporting themes from the getgo was definitely a reason GNUStep didn’t get traction early on, I’d

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#75

Post by berti »

_arvin wrote: post #38
Nition wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently replaced my main desktop PC after nine years and the new CPU benchmarks at only about twice the performance. Double the performance isn't too bad obviously, but that's about the same timespan as between the 486 and the Pentium III.

I'm right there with you guys. I made my desktop in 2014 with a Haswell i5-4670K @ 3.4GHz. Overclocked it to 4.3GHz, and I still don't have a reason to upgrade. I really want a Ryzen 2700X also but staying patient. Newer and better hardware will keep coming out so I'm in no rush. (but my next CPU will definitely be AMD) My current thing right now is compiling the Linux kernel exactly catered to my Haswell machine, an…

In a similar boat with my old 4770k and a new RX580. I'm kicking myself for the k model though, as I would like to pass my old GPU through to a Windows VM, but the unlocked k model CPUs don't have VT-d, necessary for IOMMU.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#76

Post by Moru »

nurettin wrote: post #62
woolvalley wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they got into using linux later in life. Not all of us messed with linux when we were 12 ;)

When I was 12, it was all windows 3.1, IBM OS/2 and Solaris for the cool cats.

If that makes you feel old, I must be ancient.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#77

Post by berti »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #60
woolvalley wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a ~33% decrease in power usage. So a i7-8700 which also has a similar score now has 65W TDP vs a 95W TDP. Since moores law is leveling off, programming skill & quality will become more important to extract more performance out of computers. I forsee less javascript and python and more golang, java & rust and other %100 statically typed languages in the future.

A language's documentation, ease of use, and community are all far more important than CPU performance. Point me to one java project on Github with >1000 stars and I'll give you a hundred Python and JS projects.

You answer to his/her assertion that popularity will shift is that it hasn't shifted yet?

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#79

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mrdmnd wrote: post #39
_arvin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm right there with you guys. I made my desktop in 2014 with a Haswell i5-4670K @ 3.4GHz. Overclocked it to 4.3GHz, and I still don't have a reason to upgrade. I really want a Ryzen 2700X also but staying patient. Newer and better hardware will keep coming out so I'm in no rush. (but my next CPU will definitely be AMD) My current thing right now is compiling the Linux kernel exactly catered to my Haswell machine, an…

Just remember, http://funroll-loops.teurasporsaat.org/

So... always use `-O0 -march=i586`, because using obvious optimizations for your hardware is a total waste of time and will definitely never ever be beneficial? Seriously, I get that it's possible to go off the deep end over optimizing, but that site is way off the deep end in the opposite direction.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#80

Post by riquito »

hyperpallium wrote: post #68

Are low-end phones now on par with these 10 year old systems? It's difficult to find a phone with less than 1 GB RAM. And although ARM CPUs are much less powerful than x86 with the same clock, 1 GHz also seems a mininum.

Nevermind arm/Intel, consider that the Intel processor of a notebook is way less powerful than its desktop counterpart
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