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Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

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Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#201

Post by gnud »

CameronNemo wrote: post #178
gnud wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming Iced has no A11 support (these projects never do). Probably no RTL support. Possibly no reusable "system" widgets like open/save dialogs.

Can you clarify what you mean by "these projects never do"? Your comment comes across as dismissive. Especially since I already noted that it was lacking a11y in my original comment. Anyway although a11y and i18n support have not been implemented, they are planned. https://github.com/iced-rs/iced/issues/250

It wasn't meant as dismissive of the project. It's totally fine to write a UI library that has another focus (games, for example). I'm just tired of those projects being suggested as alternatives to native/GTK/Qt in discussions here and elsewhere.

If Iced actually gets cross-platform accessibility support, that's great! Very few projects have that today. More certainly wouldn't hurt. But until it does, you shouldn't base a DE on it.

Edit: The issue you linked to is about RTL support. That's also required, but doesn't touch on a11y.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#202

Post by [deleted] »

diskzero wrote: post #63
Narishma wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTK is just a library, you can use it from any language it has bindings for.

Understood. I have made significant contributions to GTK. My contributions possibly had memory leaks or memory corruption issues that will bring down the higher Rust layer. I am trying to understand the purpose of the Rust layer. It is fine with me if it is because Rust is interesting, but what is being presented doesn’t seem like a Rust desktop environment _to me_.

[deleted]

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#203

Post by yepthatsreality »

apatheticonion wrote: post #181
yepthatsreality wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would love it if there was a shameless clone of the MacOS DE for Linux. Elementary OS

It's a great approximation, but I haven't had a lot of success using Elementary. The best experience I have had so far is Gnome41 on Debian Bookworm (my current setup which I log into about once a week) - though the DE has some design choices that cater more to mobile desktop environments at the expense of desktop usability (I don't want to appear ungrateful towards the volunteers developing it, it's a great project…

Sounds like you just want to keep using MacOS. All of that should be more or less easy to tweak on Linux but that’s currently the trade-off. What you’re asking for is someone to rip off MacOS but it’s only acceptable if it’s a rigid and as well supported as MacOS which is developed by a trillion dollar company.

That or perhaps join the Elementary OS QA team so that it can have a chance at reaching that really solid _feel_.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#204

Post by uoaei »

twblalock wrote: post #195
SkyMarshal wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I'm always skeptical when underlying language choice is featured prominently as a selling point for any new project. > It tells me, this is a technology-first, users-second enthusiast project. > And thus, I'll be surprised if it tackles the deepest issues users need solved. Some of the deepest issues that users need solved are ones that Rust was designed to solve at the language and compiler level. 1. System st…

> It's like buying a Toyota, you know from the brand alone that you're getting a certain baseline level of reliability, maintainability, durability, and longevity. Rust is like the Toyota of programming languages - it can produce many different types of cars/programs, but they're all guaranteed to come with a baseline level of assurance, and to eliminate common classes of problems that degrade the end-user experience…

This is true and also mostly unhelpful. It's possible to build a car without a muffler. Does that mean it happens often enough that we need to dedicate a whole pooh-pooh session to the possibility? Is a manufacturing process not more likely to be useful if it prevents this error from ever occurring?

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#205

Post by stonogo »

nopenopenopeno wrote: post #189
pkulak wrote: post #64

I know that open source and Linux in general don't need/want another DE, but selfishly... I really want System76 to succeed. They give me the same kind of feeling I had when Apple was kicking butt in the early 2000s. And I think that for them to become a general-audience company, they need to really own more of their software. They have some great ideas, and they've already plugin'ed Gnome to within and inch of it's…

I left PopOS and never looked back when I needed nvidia-docker to do some deep learning work and learned they had knowingly made it difficult to impossible to reliably use nvidia-docker with PopOS, and they recommended their own unmaintained project that doesn’t even intend to be a replacement for nvidia-docker. It couldn’t have been more useless to me. Breaking compatibility with Ubuntu-compatible dev tools is one t…

They occasionally have driver mismaatches between the upstream containers and the distro-provided driver. This happens because nVIDIA only supports Ubuntu LTS releases and Pop moves faster. I solved it forever by pinning nvidia's repos to a higher priority. Otherwise I can't figure out what "unmaintained project" you're talking about, or what "tooling standards" are.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#206

Post by stonogo »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #180
ijidak wrote: post #91

I know we developers love our languages. But I'm always skeptical when underlying language choice is featured prominently as a selling point for any new project. It tells me, this is a technology-first, users-second enthusiast project. And thus, I'll be surprised if it tackles the deepest issues users need solved. That doesn't mean it isn't cool as a proof of concept for a new or popular language. It just makes me qu…

> But I'm always skeptical when underlying language choice is featured prominently as a selling point for any new project. > It tells me, this is a technology-first, users-second enthusiast project. > And thus, I'll be surprised if it tackles the deepest issues users need solved. Some of the deepest issues that users need solved are ones that Rust was designed to solve at the language and compiler level. 1. System st…

Ok, but GTK uses Javascript, which is where most of that toolkit's defects (both security flaws and slowdowns) come from, not C. Calling javascript from Rust isn't going to be a materially different experience than calling javascript from C.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#207

Post by addicted »

pxc wrote: post #158
pkulak wrote: post #64

I know that open source and Linux in general don't need/want another DE, but selfishly... I really want System76 to succeed. They give me the same kind of feeling I had when Apple was kicking butt in the early 2000s. And I think that for them to become a general-audience company, they need to really own more of their software. They have some great ideas, and they've already plugin'ed Gnome to within and inch of it's…

> I know that open source and Linux in general don't need/want another DE Unpopular opinion, but more DEs is fine and good, especially if they will have teams that are either (a) large or (b) well-funded. Plasma and GNOME are very good, and Unity was actually great to use in its heyday. Imo what we don't really need more of are the conservative, under-resourced 'classic look and feel' DEs like most of the minor playe…

A DE is pointless without the apps that run on Linux.

And that's the problem with the proliferation of DEs. Applications, which range from having no developers actively working on them, to the best teams at Microsoft working on them, have to handle yet another DE, and have to deal with the bugs raised by the users of yet another DE, etc.

UI/UX is hard enough to begin with, but requiring devs to either maintain several UI/UXs, or try and come up with a design that works across the proliferation of DEs is highly counterproductive.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#208

Post by bluGill »

pkulak wrote: post #121
mariusmg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really want System76 to succeed Succeed at what ? Re-implementing Gnome in Rust ?

Selling lots of Linux-based hardware that they design in-house. > Re-implementing Gnome in Rust That seems a bit disingenuous. It's all still GTK.

Sure, but there are already a number of different desktops hurting for maintainers. There is a lot hardware that doesn't work great with my os (which might be a BSD) and I want them to fix that.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#209

Post by addicted »

sprash wrote: post #84
mixedCase wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the transition from version 3 to 4, GTK is now more focused on being a generic UI toolkit, with GTK4-based libadwaita now being the place to be for GNOME-specific patterns.

History and experience tells a different story [1]. Never trust a library that is maintained by GNOME. 1.: https://github.com/thestinger/termite

libadwaita exists solely to move Gnome specific stuff out of GTK into libadwaita.

And it's hard to see how an open source project with as many developers as Gnome/GTK have can have some secret agenda that is counter to what they are saying publicly and creating libraries and code publicly to implement.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#210

Post by apatheticonion »

moojacob wrote: post #187
apatheticonion wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gnome41 on Debian Bookworm is my current setup and am actually typing this comment from there. I use it about once a week and as far as I can tell, Gnome40+ is giving off signs that I might be able to use it as a daily driver (for work). Looking forward to the updated Files application and whatever else is coming in G42. That said, there are a lot of design choices that cater more to mobile form factors and the deskt…

That Chrome bug seems frustrating... have you tried changing chrome to use Wayland instead of XWayland? Go to chrome://flags and change Preferred Ozone platform from X11 to Wayland.

Thanks, yes I actually raised a bug with the issue Chromium issue tracker. I have set Wayland as the default and the resizing issues have settled.

There currently isn't a fix for the scroll being slower than other system windows and there also isn't a fix for issues with dragging tabs.

Middle click doesn't work but I think that's system wide

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