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Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

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Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#51

Post by jodrellblank »

Since the advent of Windows 10 ordinary people have gained the kind of virtual desktops that only wealthy Mac or tech-aware Linux users could have in the past (Win+Tab, new desktop at the top; Ctrl+Win+right arrow). Multiple clipboard copy/paste with a clipboard history (Win+V to paste). A running program history (Win+Tab and scroll down) to go back to them, and maybe to sync between devices when signed in with a Microsoft account. Ordinary programs reopen after a reboot, including things like Notepad coming back with unsaved file content. Windows' photo app on desktop does the same kind of image recognition and face recognition that smartphones do, enabling search-within-image. Windows tablet devices have handwriting recognition in basically any input box in any program

Nobody in tech will consider them "ambitious" since tech people could do them years ago, but what use is a video of live editing in Smalltalk on a research machine to most people?

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#52

Post by usefulcat »

LuvSauce wrote: post #33
_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.

> Now mostly everything just works

'Mostly' is the key--and the problem.

I've been using Elementary OS as a daily driver for at least a year, maybe two (and before that I used Mint for several years). For the most part (there's that pesky word again!), it works quite well. And it really is beautiful--aesthetically, I quite like it.

But boy do I wish that bluetooth would work reliably. Since working at home full time, noise-cancelling headphones have gone from 'nice to have' to 'nearly essential'. It worked more or less fine for a while, then some update broke something and it stopped working. Now it's working again, kind of, but connecting a pair of headphones causes most of the entire UI to stop responding for a full minute or two. Sigh.

And maybe the next time I update it will be fine again. Who knows? And that's the problem: every update feels like Russian roulette. And this isn't even a laptop. I use this thing for work; I do not have time to dick around all today troubleshooting obscure bluetooth problems.

If I'm going to continue to use it, I guess what I need to do is stop updating (or only update specific apps, like firefox) once I happen upon a relatively 'stable' configuration. Security updates be damned.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#53

Post by thunderbong »

jodrellblank wrote: post #51

Since the advent of Windows 10 ordinary people have gained the kind of virtual desktops that only wealthy Mac or tech-aware Linux users could have in the past (Win+Tab, new desktop at the top; Ctrl+Win+right arrow). Multiple clipboard copy/paste with a clipboard history (Win+V to paste). A running program history (Win+Tab and scroll down) to go back to them, and maybe to sync between devices when signed in with a Mic…

Seriously! The number of incremental features that have been coming into Windows 10 is really incredible.

Win+V itself had been an eye opener for many of my colleagues.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#54

Post by ZephyrBlu »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #36
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't care how good the interface is, I don't like touch screen typing compared to keyboard typing.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#55

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #36
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LabView (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LabVIEW) and Simulink (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulink) are intended for serious work for scientists and engineers.

There are many visual programming environments targetting different domains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_programming_language#Li...

The biggest issue is that visual programming environments tend to be domain-specific rather than general purpose. A general purpose visual programming environment would be difficult to build and still be as capable as a software developer using one of the mainstream programming languages with IDE.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#56

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

LuvSauce wrote: post #38
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not all computers are connected to the Internet.

In many high-security environments, the computers cannot be connected to the outside world. And yet those computers are still necessary and useful.

Many of us were using computers before the Internet became popular and they were still very useful despite their limitations.

Everything that matters is not online. Many businesses and government agencies have data that they would never want disclosed, let alone available on the Internet.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#57

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #37
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting. I have the Apple Smart Keyboard Folio (not the newest magic keyboard) and I've looked everywhere for a way to enable key repeat, to no avail. Am I wrong in thinking that traditionally key repeat is handled at the OS level, rather than the keyboard level? It seems weird to me that each individual keyboard would be in charge of implementing that, especially when the settings for it are part of a desktop OS.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#58

Post by smhenderson »

Something1234 wrote: post #12
ggm wrote: post #4

If you can show me the invested COW cost of electron is low enough I can live in electron apps. If Microsoft re-works W10+ to be a thin shim over the kernel and Office works on Linux clean-port, not webapp, I'll be fine too. Mostly what people want is the plan9 plumber: the ability to point and select things, and have s/w contextually work out how to DTRT with it. This is ORM. Corba. whatever. Patents suck. If you de…

Can you define what some of your acronyms mean? COW, DTRT, ORM. I think I know what an ORM (Object Relational Mapper) is, but not in the context you're using it.

I believe COW means Copy On Write in this context.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#59

Post by taeric »

bichiliad wrote: post #39
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 ho…

Portability is a shrine that so much has been sacrificed on. In rather interesting ways.

Pretty much, inarguably, Linux is the most per code there is. And it is done using what are easily accepted as not portable practices.

But it is not a gui, is the common refrain. To which I offer Scummvm.

But it isn't a business application? True, but I find it baffling that the ui afforded for those games is somehow easier than the ui most applications need.

I think the only other shrine that has killed more with nothing to show for it, is "easy to reason about threads." Of any sort. So much is done so a program can scale to absurd use cases, that they stall and get nothing done.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#60

Post by duckducky »

usefulcat wrote: post #52
LuvSauce wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Now mostly everything just works 'Mostly' is the key--and the problem. I've been using Elementary OS as a daily driver for at least a year, maybe two (and before that I used Mint for several years). For the most part (there's that pesky word again!), it works quite well. And it really is beautiful--aesthetically, I quite like it. But boy do I wish that bluetooth would work reliably. Since working at home full time,…

Use pulse audio volume control. See if it would help. Mine also broke after some system update. With this I was able to select bluetooth profile as well as set audio out via bluetooth. Before finding this bluetooth headset wouldnt work correctly on elementary os, but never needed it in linuxmint.

apt install pavucontrol

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