Lubuntu is taking a new direction • Hacker News Board

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#221

Post by copperx » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #205

copperx wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that I was a kid when I read the news on Slashdot that the Linux desktop experience was going to be basically a competition between Gnome and KDE. At that moment I knew that Linux would never win on the desktop. All those wasted developer hours. I am still heartbroken to the day. In capitalism, competition benefits the user, even if the products are virtually identical, because then they compete on price.…

The thing is, however, that GNOME and KDE are not indistinguishable - they each have very different goals, ideas on how the desktop should be, how to design applications and UI, what sort of technologies to use and develop, etc and all these end up making two very different desktop environments. As a result, they (and other DEs and WMs, of course) cater to different users and while there are some users that can use b…

Of course, they have different goals, they're using different frameworks and so on. But ask yourself this. If the average Windows user had a choice of two different desktop environments, would they be more likely to be thankful for having a choice, or is it more likely that they would be confused?

Windows and Mac OS X don't allow much customization. Not because Microsoft and Apple are lazy, but because they want the average user to be able to pick up any Windows PC or Mac and be immediately familiar with how to use it.

If we didn't have the Gnome and KDE wars, we would have likely ended with a "standard" Linux desktop.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#222

Post by copperx » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #198

mih wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longtime Linux user who switched to Ryzen 1500x recently from an old Core i7 (2011 model). As far as the processor goes, I have faced no problems w.r.t stability. Paired with an ASRock motherboard, there are no problems with other functionality such as suspend/resume either. Occasionally the Desktop compositor hits a snag freezing my machine and requiring a forced reboot, but I would fault the NVidia drivers for this…

I can't resist crosslink my post from two days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656645 I for myself couldn't suffer a machine where I occasionally need to reset , destroying flow.

I read your post twice and you didn't mention rebooting. Were you rebooting because of docking?

Most of your gripes come from running Linux on a laptop machine. If you are a person who likes to work on powerful desk workstations, Linux behaves great on those. Granted, some things, such as multifunction printers (which are mostly software-driven) don't have support. You do have to be careful when selecting hardware, unfortunately.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#223

Post by chx » Sat, Aug 04, 2018, 7:29 AM UTC

copperx wrote: post #222

chx wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't resist crosslink my post from two days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656645 I for myself couldn't suffer a machine where I occasionally need to reset , destroying flow.

I read your post twice and you didn't mention rebooting. Were you rebooting because of docking? Most of your gripes come from running Linux on a laptop machine. If you are a person who likes to work on powerful desk workstations, Linux behaves great on those. Granted, some things, such as multifunction printers (which are mostly software-driven) don't have support. You do have to be careful when selecting hardware, u…

No, I just found your off-the-cuff comment absolutely typical of the desktop Linux situation: it's totally stable except when it freezes so hard you need to find a reset button.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#224

Post by badsectoracula » Sat, Aug 04, 2018, 7:29 PM UTC

copperx wrote: post #221

badsectoracula wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, however, that GNOME and KDE are not indistinguishable - they each have very different goals, ideas on how the desktop should be, how to design applications and UI, what sort of technologies to use and develop, etc and all these end up making two very different desktop environments. As a result, they (and other DEs and WMs, of course) cater to different users and while there are some users that can use b…

Of course, they have different goals, they're using different frameworks and so on. But ask yourself this. If the average Windows user had a choice of two different desktop environments, would they be more likely to be thankful for having a choice, or is it more likely that they would be confused? Windows and Mac OS X don't allow much customization. Not because Microsoft and Apple are lazy, but because they want the…

Considering the popularity of tools like Classic Shell, how much people despite major changes to the Windows UI and even to the lengths some people went to make the classic theme usable on Windows 8 and 10... yes, i'm 100% certain that there would be a lot of users thankful for having a choice.

Re: Lubuntu is taking a new direction

#225

Post by manaskarekar » Mon, Aug 13, 2018, 11:00 AM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #191

manaskarekar wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that LXDE isn't the first choice when you're thinking about customizing your desktop (check out reddit.com/r/unixporn if you're into this sort of a thing). I meant that from a point of view of comparing it to others like gtk3, unity, cinnamon etc for some specific features that I find useful. Of course, not all distros will lend themselves to all types of customizations easily and customizability, at least to…

I'm not really in to ricing like /r/unixporn is, I just think my tools should be simple and flexible so that I can align them with my workflow. For instance, why do we need one single global menu with all the apps categorized according to a .desktop file? That's overcomplicated and restrictive garbage. Here's a simpler alternative: let me place as many panels on the desktop as I want, let me place widgets on the pane…

Without commenting on your suggestions, I'll say this, I am not that big on menu based launchers.

I used to use Gnome Do as my primary launch tool. Now I just use a shortcut (Windows Key + Space Bar) for the 'Run' dialog (usually found by Alt + F2) and I know the first few chars of my favorite tools after which they autocomplete.

For everyday use, it's hard to beat the speed and simplicity of that.