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Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

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Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#31

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

firloop wrote: post #20

I don’t want to re-invent the desktop. As a software engineer, I’m annoyed that I can’t do my entire job on my phone. I’d like to see dramatically better portable input interfaces. I’d even be happy if more love was paid to “desktop light” environments. I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.

> I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.

And even that is a horrible experience because the iPad keyboard doesn’t allow key repeat, making vim a terrible experience. That used to be an issue anyway. Maybe they’ve fixed it.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#32

Post by OCASM »

walrus01 wrote: post #17
mikewarot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that one of the primary reasons things have stalled is the fear we all carry around because we don't have any decent operating systems. With MS-DOS you could copy the OS disk, write protect it... load up any random piece of shareware and just try it out. There was zero chance it would toast anything, and you might find a gem. We don't click on links that go to web sites we don't trust. We don't open email att…

some method to reliably run new stuff in a fully sandboxed environment (short of going through the time and effort to copy an entire disposable windows 10 home virtualbox machine), would definitely help with that problem. linux based ideas like qubes are are a step in that direction.

Sandboxie is a good option. Development stopped but on the flipside it's fully free now.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#33

Post by LuvSauce »

_where wrote: post #8

I want old pre-AppStore OSX/macOS that doesn’t nanny my installs or screw old drivers, with a good package manager, and easily tabbed and gridded terminal windows without tmux necessarily. I’d also like GPL’d Windows XP running flawlessly like a mac. I’d use Linux on the desktop, but I’ve never liked any of the desktop managers and it was never as reliable as OSX/macOS.

Would you mind using Linux? It's been my experience that it's done everything I wanted it to well. Linux on desktop has changed. I hated it too in the 2000s. Now mostly everything just works, KDE can look and feel like any desktop including OSX. Very reliable. You'll find a pirated version of XP running as you wish soon since the leak of the XP source code not GPL though.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#34

Post by ZephyrBlu »

firloop wrote: post #20

I don’t want to re-invent the desktop. As a software engineer, I’m annoyed that I can’t do my entire job on my phone. I’d like to see dramatically better portable input interfaces. I’d even be happy if more love was paid to “desktop light” environments. I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.

As in, you can't do your job on a tiny screen, or you can't do all your work using a touch interface?

I would hate to have to use a touch interface to write code.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#35

Post by maxerickson »

_where wrote: post #8

I want old pre-AppStore OSX/macOS that doesn’t nanny my installs or screw old drivers, with a good package manager, and easily tabbed and gridded terminal windows without tmux necessarily. I’d also like GPL’d Windows XP running flawlessly like a mac. I’d use Linux on the desktop, but I’ve never liked any of the desktop managers and it was never as reliable as OSX/macOS.

Xfce doesn't really do enough to get in the way.

I guess I don't pay much attention to the look and feel though, mostly clicking around inside a couple of apps.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#36

Post by OkGoDoIt »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #34
firloop wrote: post #20

I don’t want to re-invent the desktop. As a software engineer, I’m annoyed that I can’t do my entire job on my phone. I’d like to see dramatically better portable input interfaces. I’d even be happy if more love was paid to “desktop light” environments. I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.

As in, you can't do your job on a tiny screen, or you can't do all your work using a touch interface? I would hate to have to use a touch interface to write code.

Maybe no one‘s created a good touch interface for writing code yet. I feel like there’s actually opportunity to completely reinvent coding from something keyboard-focused to something more touch-friendly. At the very least for line of business apps anyway. There’s been lots of work done on visual programming system but they all seem to be centered on teaching children basic coding concepts, not actually getting stuff done in the workplace. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible...

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#37

Post by OkGoDoIt »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #31
firloop wrote: post #20

I don’t want to re-invent the desktop. As a software engineer, I’m annoyed that I can’t do my entire job on my phone. I’d like to see dramatically better portable input interfaces. I’d even be happy if more love was paid to “desktop light” environments. I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine.

> I have an iPad Pro that’s useless for software development without SSHing into a machine. And even that is a horrible experience because the iPad keyboard doesn’t allow key repeat, making vim a terrible experience. That used to be an issue anyway. Maybe they’ve fixed it.

iOS allows key repeat from external keyboards, but not from the onscreen keyboard. In theory a third-party keyboard should be able to implement that, although I can’t say I’ve seen any examples of it.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#38

Post by LuvSauce »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #27
tosh wrote: post #2

a few years ago everything that mattered was on the local machine (apps + files) and there was some interoperability among apps (+ standards around files) now most of what matters is siloed in saas tools and we access those through browsers or siloed browsers time to re-design https://twitter.com/__tosh/status/1316534733719908352

what in god's name are you talking about? Photo management? Image editing? Video editing? DAWs? Games? The browser itself? Compilers... static analysis tools ... a myriad of other native developer tools ? I could go on, but what on earth is the "everything" that no longer matters? If you had said "everyone's gone to mobile", well, that's a claim. But "everyone's gone to saas and browsers" ... that's not even wrong.

Imagine a computer without internet. It's way less useful. Everything that matters is online now. Pottering wants to get rid of /home on Linux for example. You can even do all that stuff online by SSHing a much better computer.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#39

Post by bichiliad »

taeric wrote: post #28

I want less in the "lets make the desktop good" vein, and more in the "lets stop making the desktop crap" vein. Things that seem to be making things worse, ironically, are all things that ostensibly are there to make them better. Web technologies, I'm mainly looking at you.

I think the portability of web technologies make them super appealing to new developers, which is what I think the appeal of languages like Java were a decade (or more!) ago. I think web tech has all of those advantages plus the ability to get started so much more quickly (it takes so little effort to get a simple website online).

I started writing some Swift recently and built a small app, and it kinda shocked me how simple it can be to get such great interface performance from so little code. I kinda wonder if there's some sort of middle ground, like web assembly with a more standardized starting point, base language, and set of UI components.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#40

Post by OkGoDoIt »

xnx wrote: post #14
x87678r wrote: post #3

Everything for my PC is one of: 1) Web based (something lightweight like ChromeOS can do it) 2) Command line (easy to ssh into a remote box) 3) IDE (heavy) I only need a light weight terminal for 1&2 but 3 keeps tripping me up. Would be great if IntelliJ ran with remote back end.

If games can run via the cloud (e.g. Stadia), it should be possible for any app.

Microsoft remote desktop seems to work pretty well over cellular on my iPad
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