Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What killed the Linux desktop

tirania.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 385 posts

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#181

Post by Contero »

lazyjones wrote: post #111
freyrs3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Design is about usability and understanding the user Here's the point you're missing. The overwhelming majority Linux users don't give a flying hoot about the average user or mass adoption. They just want a system that gets out of their way and let's them do their technical tasks. Linux succeeds and excels at this because it is precisely designed for that niche and curated by its end-users. There are however people…

> They just want a system that gets out of their way and let's them do their technical tasks. That's precisely what Linux fails at. Most minor UI/desktop-related tasks that are hassle-free with Win7 or OSX take far too much time. Time that most people don't have and don't want to invest. Example: doubleclicking on a .ttf file in the Xfce file manager (plain Debian Xfce) does nothing. Right-clicking offers various unr…

I'm a technical user who spends a lot of time using Linux, and it gets out of my way for doing development quite well.

Of course, that's because I exclusively connect to Linux machines through an ssh terminal on my Win7 workstation. I've personally abandoned all hope for using Linux as a desktop OS. I live in the terminal on Linux because that's where the design actually lives. Anything GUI related is an afterthought.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#182

Post by icebraining »

sjs wrote: post #146
rufugee wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry..I strongly disagree. You have me on the video support...OS X does a much better job there. You even have a point on audio drivers...they can be a pain at times. But design? Gnome 3 and Unity to me are FAR superior to OS X in terms of UI experience. YMMV of course. I bought a Macbook, gave it a fair shot, and it ended up being a dust collector simply because the desktop experience was painful compared to Ub…

It sounds like you expected a clone of Windows and were predictably disappointed. > I got maybe three hours of the supposed 7 hour battery You should have taken it back. Seriously. > Perhaps I'm set in my ways You hit the nail on the head here. There's nothing wrong with that but most of your complaints amount to "this is not what I am used to". > the absolute insanse window switching behavior On Windows and Linux I…

On (...) Linux I cannot switch to an app bringing all windows to the front, I have to do it one at a time.

Sure you can. Just launch (or move) each application to its own virtual desktop. You can even group them logically, like an email reader with an IM client!

What if I wanted to switch back and use that app again?

Window and Linux applications are not disposable, they can be launched more than once.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#183

Post by jmelloy »

mratzloff wrote: post #69
scrumper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much spot on. I believe that the lack of "strong-D" Design you refer to is because Linux's desktop is pretty much the ultimate committee-driven project. It's very democratic: great for preventing abuse, but rather bad when it comes to vision. Most of us here know how difficult it is for one person in a company to drive an idea through without it being diluted; countless product companies have gone bust…

Maybe collaborative development is incapable of producing something as complex and difficult as a clean, well-designed desktop environment and API? Forking, competing spinoffs, factionalism are all useful things in some ways, but they're death to this kind of project. The Rails community seems to manage.

Rails has a pretty strong leader in DHH.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#184

Post by raverbashing »

snitko wrote: post #170
atirip wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware? What hardware? Frankly, I havent bought nothing over last 10 years. I have laptop, you see...

I bought Samsung Galaxy S3 recently, plugged it in via USB and was not able to browse it because, as far as I understood, MacOSX has no support for "media devices" whatever that is. I had to download some obscure Samsung "Kies" software through which I was able to get to the filesystem and upload some files. Wasted hours.

Oh my

This is 100% to blame on Samsung, sorry.

Even though my Samsung phone is seen as a USB device (and it works on MAC OS X), but maybe in the newer models they removed this functionality (and called it a feature)

People may complain that iPhones need iTunes but then again it's iTunes not the gigantic pile of crap that is Kies

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#185

Post by flatline3 »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #173
flatline3 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workspaces? You mean virtual desktops? Those date back 1986, implemented at Xerox PARC (and patented!). As for appstores, I assume you're talking about the packaging systems, which are similar only if viewed from 50,000 feet. The packaging systems were not stores. You couldn't buy packages. They didn't serve as an agent to sell other people's personally submitted packages. They had "apps" but no "store". The applicat…

You got me on workspaces, I wasn't aware of the Xerox implementation. I didn't mean packaging, I meant app stores, see Lindows and CNR.

Wasn't CNR just an subscription-based package repository service?

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#186

Post by joe_the_user »

nirvana wrote: post #25

I think he's right, but I think he's missing a key point. Design. Design is what killed the linux desktop. It never had it. OS X has it. Even windows, crappy as it may be, has it. Before I go on, let me say that Design is NOT "making it look pretty". In fact, thinking that this is what design is, is what leads many linux advocates to reject the needs of design. Apple's work looks pretty-- because it is designed to fu…

Design is important, really. However I find it disturbing that such a self-righteous rant has crawled up the rankings in this thread...

Design is an engineering discipline.

Design isn't engineering discipline. It is certainly a discipline and deserves respect but the reason software engineers fail at design so often is that it is different discipline with a different mindset.

Apple's work looks pretty-- because it is designed to function well.

Here I simply disagree. Apple's look pretty because they are designed well. I don't find that they function well in terms of usability - that I have to use the mouse for nearly everything is a usability nightmare. The way they've hidden file system is also a usability nightmare. But enough prettiness and responsiveness, Apple can still feel enjoyable to use without being more useful or even as useful as Linux or Windows.

In fact, you can see it in the rejection of apple's patents. This is why they think that apple patents are not original is because they reject that any engineering went into them. But that's just one example.

Wow! Holy leaps of logic, here we've got the disingenuous conflation part of the rant. For the sake of argument, the particular way iOS or OSX is designed might indeed be a work of genius but the patents Apple is hurling Samsung are not for that unique approach but rather are a disgusting grab of the right for anything vaguely like iOS or OSX, which would include really badly designed things.

Jeesh...

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#187

Post by colmvp »

diminish wrote: post #112
wheels wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have two monitors on my Linux desktop. A month ago full screen on video stopped working. [...] In this regard, both Windows and OSX just work. Just because it's never happened to you on OS X or Windows doesn't mean it doesn't happen. OS X 10.6.7 broke the output on my 13" Macbook for either of the two external displays I own. Both worked fine previously, when booted from the install CDs, or from Linux on the same…

To stress out again; OS/X has the poorest hardware support for 3rd parties; even compared to Linux. Just "think different" and buy some hardware and you ll see what I mean..

Wait what? Every scanner, printer, tablet, mouse, and even color correction device I've bought has worked on my Mac.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#188

Post by batista »

seabee wrote: post #129
batista wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I far prefer the Windows 7 interface to OSX, it's just stuff like the terminal/command prompt that really lets Windows down. I'm not sure. Windows has some overall design, but also has tons of design neglect. One example: due to static compiling and linking, you often get programs (and lots of them) that still use Windows 98 like Open/Save File dialogs, instead of every program automatically getting the latest OS s…

That example isn't due to static linking, it's because they chose a particular style of dialog which is deprecated and cannot be updated without breaking backwards compatibility. Software compiled in 1998 has no problem using the newest common dialogs if they used the standard API without installing their own hooks and customisation.

>That example isn't due to static linking, it's because they chose a particular style of dialog which is deprecated and cannot be updated without breaking backwards compatibility.

I'm not sure what this means though:

"it's because they chose a particular style of dialog which is deprecated and cannot be updated without breaking backwards compatibility."

So you mean something like the Windows API featured 2-3 different dialog styles and they set some option / flag in their code to use one that was subsequently not updated by MS?

Could be. But at least the dialog style could change, it seems in Windows API all drawing is hardcoded, so the dialog also comes with the old style buttons etc.

MS should have continue to offer the dialog styles they once had as options instead of deprecating them. But even failing that, they should at least made it so that their graphical elements (sub-widgets like buttons, text fields etc) are kept updated. That doesn't involve changing the API or binary compatibility will the calling program.

Also, seeing those dialogs in old shareware/commercial programs when run on modern Windows is one thing. But one also sees them in some very-rarely-updated MS applications that MS ships with Windows. At least you did, until Vista (haven't used Windows since).

Another infuriating thing from Windows dialogs of old --that still appear in apps: when the size of text-entries, icon fields etc is too small, but the dialog is not resizable.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#189

Post by nirvana »

mindslight wrote: post #96
nirvana wrote: post #25

I think he's right, but I think he's missing a key point. Design. Design is what killed the linux desktop. It never had it. OS X has it. Even windows, crappy as it may be, has it. Before I go on, let me say that Design is NOT "making it look pretty". In fact, thinking that this is what design is, is what leads many linux advocates to reject the needs of design. Apple's work looks pretty-- because it is designed to fu…

You're conflating design with the marketing and support that convinces people to open themselves to learning a new system design. Linux copied the Windows interaction paradigm (and everything else too - fvwm95/afterstep/olvwm/cde/etc) because the goal wasn't to create a new method of interaction and suffer from two adoption battles, but to appease people complaining about how Linux wasn't intuitive (after they'd alre…

>You're conflating design with the marketing and support

No, I'm talking about knowing that users are faster and more efficient when the menu bar is at the top of the screen rather than attached to windows. Design makes people more efficient. Undesigned things, or poorly designed things don't care about these factors, or do them half assed.

> The idea of someone saying my setup is 'wrong' from a design perspective is laughable,

This is because you reject design. You claim it is marketing. You reject it as an engineering discipline. That's my point.

>Where's the novel signal processing algorithms to clean up capacitive touchscreen input?

Patented, and you guys claim that the patent is disproven by the existence of "touch screens" in the past that worked by pushing one layer in enough that two wires touched closing a circuit.

> should get you the rights to the entire concept

The only people claiming that the rights to an entire concept are involved are those who are trying to claim that these are bogus patents... which is either profoundly ignorant or completely dishonest.

Re: What killed the Linux desktop

#190

Post by icebraining »

nirvana wrote: post #178
lttlrck wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like the Mac OS menu bar; drove me nuts stuck at the top of the screen like that, but a lot of people like it and I can understand that...

That's my point. It's not that a lot of people like it. In fact, whether people like it or not isn't really relevant. It's that this is the correct way to do it. When the menu bar is at the top of the screen, the user is much faster at getting the mouse over a menu item and clicking to open the menu. It works better. This isn't opinion, it's measurable scientifically. When the menu is on a window, you overshoot with…

Measured scientifically just means it's better for the majority of users; it doesn't necessarily mean it's better for me as a single individual.

Not that I'm arguing against the bar on top; in fact, I'll use the keyboard shortcuts anyway, so I don't particularly care.

Post reply on HN