> makes them feel like using toys rather than proper desktops. Fascinating. I consider systems like Android, Windoze and MacOS to be like toys for the same reason: superficially beautiful, but not actually a good tool for work.
This is a bad take
Of course it's a bad take, just another in a long line of people who think their own personal workflow is the only one anybody would ever need.
Even if the poster was kidding, it's symptomatic of the Linux ecosystem — never strive for better, what we've had for years is just fine, and be sure to mockingly put down any idea that dares to lift things up.
> makes them feel like using toys rather than proper desktops. Fascinating. I consider systems like Android, Windoze and MacOS to be like toys for the same reason: superficially beautiful, but not actually a good tool for work.
The problem with MacOS is that much of its refinements for power users are so different from Windows (and Linux desktops modeled after it), that people don't expect they can do things the easy way. Suppose you have a document open. You want to attach it to an email you started writing. In MacOS, you drag the icon from the window's title bar into the email. That's it. No need to browse to the same thing you already ha…
I've been looking for blog posts and content about macOS UX design and testing. Because it really is stellar. I'm curious what kind of stuff the elementaryOS team is reading that informs their design choices. Any ideas where to look?
I had a similar perspective as you. I couldn't get past a lot of default design decisions made in many distributions and I didn't want to spend the time tweaking my machine. I installed Pop_OS after seeing the Theano release a couple of weeks ago and basically haven't booted into windows since. As a casual user I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a similar linux experience as I was.
Dude... I was reading all these comments mega confused. I installed Pop_OS a few months back and it's a million times easier to use than Windows. From installing applications to changing my background. One terrible experience I had was when Windows did something to the Linux bootloader and I had to try work out how to fix that, but I can't really blame Linux for that. Honestly I am so much more productive on Pop than…
It's almost as bad 5 years later then. - icons on task bar too low - icons on task bar vertically not aligned - task icons different size than pinned icons on task bar - task text vertically aligned too high - icons stylistically not matched - system icons unreadable (badly designed, all look the same, don't convey purpose adequately) - task bar icons on right are vertically all over the place - task bar mini icons s…
I am surprised that this is the current state of UI, holy shit. Does any techie care about their UI or “good enough” is where the care ends? You couldn’t pay me to look at that all day.
Making a good UI requires that you have some sort of central list of guiding UI principles, and the wherewithal and authority to enforce it.
That means you need a team to:
- Come up with a detailed set of UI principles and guidelines
- Test that they're sane
- Enforce them across the entire system
Steps one and two require user interface experts, who're probably already getting paid good money to do principle UI design at Apple or Microsoft.
Open source without a backing company will have a particularly hard time with step three, because these projects tend to be communal and at least a little fragmented/disjoint by nature.
Imho, gnome is quite nice. I think I'm in the minority maybe but I would be pretty sad if gnome went away one day (or had another memory leak/slowdown issue)
The mostly-silent majority. KDE has some nice features but under the shiny screenshot it's still a disorganised and inconsistent jumble. GNOME gets out of your way and lets you get on with your work. Customising every last detail isn't necessary to be productive, and if it is a DE isn't for you anyway.
> KDE has some nice features but under the shiny screenshot it's still a disorganised and inconsistent jumble.
I'm not too deep into GNOME's architecture, but I don't see that at all.
KDE is the KF5 Frameworks on top of Qt on top of QML and C++. Desktop widgets, panel widgets etc. are all architecturally the same thing, "Plasmoids". Settings screens are all isolated and also architecturally the same thing, "KCMs".
On the other hand, GNOME is GTK on top of GObject on top of C, Vala, JS, Python, Rust and a few other languages still, because they still haven't really decided what they want to go with. The extensions are written in JavaScript, but run in the same process as the entire Shell, meaning that if anything locks up or just takes longer in an extension, then your Shell does the same.
I don't want to argue that GNOME is horrible in this aspect, but in my opinion KDE is better at it.
All comments here are either:
A. "I'm so glad I'm on Linux distro A and not Windows but the UX and UI is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro B, it solves the problems of A"
B. "I'm on distro B and not Windows, but package management, upgrade and/or compatibility is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro C, it solves the problems of B"
C. "I'm on distro C and not Windows, but it doesn't support my audio or video equipment and I need to install and/or spend a few hours searching and compiling various solutions online until my machine is a Frankensteinian monster and while it works for me, it's not for everyone" followed by "have you tried distro A, it solves problems of C"
I love the flexibility of Linux in some respects, but I've had stability issues on Ubuntu and Mint, UX issues on some Fedora based ones, and Puppy Linux, compatibility issues in Elementary (and fixes that were available in Ubuntu never made it to Elementary and I got tired of waiting). I've gone through way too many distros finding the one that works for me and none have been really as pleasant as described by people.
For work I have to use a Mac, and the inconsistencies in keyboard shortcuts annoys me each and every day. Not to mention non - standard UI components stand out like a sore thumb - especially window maximizing, rescaling, browser and IDE shortcuts, etc. I wouldn't be using it if I didn't have to.
Honestly, the OS that I have had the least trouble with and the most enjoyment was Windows XP, closely followed by 7. 8 was a mess of UI and UX oddities, and 10 is only marginally better. If there was a version of windows that was as streamlined as XP for the modern world, I'd fork out $50-100 for it considering the time it would save me and my time being worth more than the hassle, and that my contribution might help subsidize the cheaper community or pirated editions of the OS.
Is it binary-compatible with Windows & Mac OS? If it's not, then it's not a replacement and the title should be changed to reflect that. I respect the idea of speed and privacy (though I'm still a minimalist - I believe in using 16/32-bit and less than 1GB RAM). But before I can "replace" Windows, I need an OS that actually works like Windows.
wtf
It's a valid comment. Most of the 'replacement for macOS' comments here essentially pre-suppose that people only use macOS because it looks pretty and...? What? That people just play with Finder and TextEdit all day?
If I can't run Lightroom or Affinity Photo on ElementaryOS (hint: I can't) then it isn't a replacement for macOS.
I know I can use DarkTable or GIMP, but I don't want to because they are lacking in various ways that make them less useful, to me, than the apps I named above.
(I've been using Linux as a daily driver for two years now, have been administrating Linux servers for nearly two decades - I know Linux).
Has Linux changed a lot? Last I tried installing it years ago, I had to find each driver individually and had to get some stubborn ones working. At the time I thought to myself - no average Joe would figure this out, no wonder nobody uses Linux (and by nobody I meant non-devs)
Had less problems with Linux tyan with Windows for about 10 years now. Installation is quicker. No bloatware/scareware to uninstall (bundled McAfee etc). I've spent more time hunting for drivers on Windows than on Linux the 10 last years. Linux is also significantly faster for some of my workflows (git commits, anything with maven or node). For me (partially colorblind, never cared much about fonts, everything is an…
For old scanners, you can try VueScan (paid app under Linux) which is a real breeze for those scanners which you cannot find driver anymore.
Sure. But you have heard of Snaps and Flatpack, right?
I hadn't until you mentioned it. It's possible. But even then there are endless issues with drivers. Like research your chipset, find a repository on github, and then clone and build it yourself kind of issues. Trust me, I like the idea and would love getting past our two party system. But Linux will never be easy.
You are stretching now. There probably are some chipsets that have issues, but most drivers are built into the Linux kernel. There are always going to be issues with drivers, but this is not across the board.
Your argument is that Linux cannot be easy, not that there isn't any issues.
Anyway, I'm cool if you don't want to use it and if you want to maintain your worldview, but you haven't presented me any real arguments or evidence to back this worldview.
I think you are quibbling about things that 99.9% of people quite frankly don't care about. A substantial group will leave everything default and for most of the rest the fact that you can change the colorscheme/style/background is sufficient. It's somewhat like a wine aficionado discussing the 7 delicate flavors that or an audiophile considering the virtue of using a slightly more expensive cable. So when I ask how…
99.9% of people are perfectly fine with doors with a pull handle and a sign saying "PUSH" on them.
Software is full of pull handles with push on them but none of the described examples seem at all similar.