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LXQt 0.11 Released

lxqt.org

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Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#11

Post by lj3 »

scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

Desktop Linux has bigger issues than UI toolkits. That's probably one of the reasons why you're having difficulty getting developers interested. I, personally, wouldn't contribute any time to a UI toolkit or desktop environment until some of the more egregious problems facing the linux desktop get resolved, if they ever can be.

There's an ugly catch-22 that's been playing itself out in the linux ecosystem for a while now. Linux drivers for modern hardware sucks, especially Wifi, video and audio cards. None of the manufacturers are willing to get serious about developing drivers for Linux until it gets more users and it can't get more users without better drivers. OS X was able to sidestep this problem by forming corporate partnerships with hardware manufacturers. They become far more willing to develop drivers for your system when it can buy them hardware sales. To date, nobody has decided to create a desktop based on Linux that has pockets deep enough to encourage the kind of development it needs.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#12

Post by mushiake »

daurnimator wrote: post #9
scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

> Not to mention the sad state of UI toolkits right now. This isn't about GTK vs. Qt or anything... but you can't pick up your favourite language (Python, JS, whatever) and easily write cross-platform apps that work well on Linux. This frustrates me to no end. - Qt is almost impossible to fully bind. The vague hacks we had all got tossed out the windows with the move from Qt4 to Qt5. I've given up putting my own effo…

smoke/kde was supposed to be contender for gobject-introspection, however it is barely maintained.

It is only(?) used by common lisp[0].

And there was claro[1].

[0]https://github.com/Shinmera/qtools

[1]https://github.com/Araq/Claro

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#13

Post by bratao »

scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

Could you please explain what the state of KDE ? I always cheered for them, because I was a big fan of Qt

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#14

Post by toyg »

lj3 wrote: post #11
scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

Desktop Linux has bigger issues than UI toolkits. That's probably one of the reasons why you're having difficulty getting developers interested. I, personally, wouldn't contribute any time to a UI toolkit or desktop environment until some of the more egregious problems facing the linux desktop get resolved, if they ever can be. There's an ugly catch-22 that's been playing itself out in the linux ecosystem for a while…

> it can't get more users without better drivers

Drivers on Linux have always been like this, that's not the issue.

The real issue is that modern line-of-business application development (which is where the money is) has left the desktop for good. Windows has the same problem. It's not the Linux desktop that is dying, it's "the desktop" as a concept. Desktop vendors are sandboxing everything to death, for security reasons; and sandboxed apps are basically equivalent to a browser. More and more, the desktop is just a bootloader for browsers.

The only way out of this rut would require inventing something amazingly useful that is safe to share across desktop apps but not with browsers. The desktop needs something that appeals the mainstream and cannot be browserized. I don't expect Apple to ever come up with this (they love "browserization", it opened the market to their profitable mobile hardware), but Microsoft should really give it a go.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#15

Post by scrollaway »

bratao wrote: post #13
scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

Could you please explain what the state of KDE ? I always cheered for them, because I was a big fan of Qt

I'm being a bit unfair on KDE. Their efforts on Frameworks are excellent. Kwin especially is an amazing thing. But as a desktop, it's a disaster. Bloated, awful UX. Nearly every "core" app basically depends on the entire desktop, which makes them unusable outside of it.

Bleh.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#16

Post by daurnimator »

mushiake wrote: post #12
daurnimator wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention the sad state of UI toolkits right now. This isn't about GTK vs. Qt or anything... but you can't pick up your favourite language (Python, JS, whatever) and easily write cross-platform apps that work well on Linux. This frustrates me to no end. - Qt is almost impossible to fully bind. The vague hacks we had all got tossed out the windows with the move from Qt4 to Qt5. I've given up putting my own effo…

smoke/kde was supposed to be contender for gobject-introspection, however it is barely maintained. It is only(?) used by common lisp[0]. And there was claro[1]. [0] https://github.com/Shinmera/qtools [1] https://github.com/Araq/Claro

It too seems to be stuck on Qt4.

Only python bindings seem to have made it up to Qt5.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#17

Post by kitsunesoba »

scrollaway wrote: post #15
bratao wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please explain what the state of KDE ? I always cheered for them, because I was a big fan of Qt

I'm being a bit unfair on KDE. Their efforts on Frameworks are excellent. Kwin especially is an amazing thing. But as a desktop , it's a disaster. Bloated, awful UX. Nearly every "core" app basically depends on the entire desktop, which makes them unusable outside of it. Bleh.

Those have always been a big turnoff for me, too. On top of that, I've never liked KDE's UI design; parts of it come off as overcrowded while others have oddly distributed whitespace and the lack of flowing lines and symmetry in its control layout give a chaotic feel. From this perspective, I feel the gnome guys are doing a much better job even if they comically oversize many UI elements.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#18

Post by alphapapa »

scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

Well, I'm glad to hear someone like you (a DE developer) say these things. GNOME went off the rails years ago, and KDE seems to be headed that way with KDE 5 (or is it Plasma 5? or Frameworks 5? or...? Just KDE 5!).

I'll be keeping an eye on LXQt. In the meantime, KDE 4 still serves me pretty well. Dolphin is a fantastic file manager for when you need a GUI, and KWin is a great window manager. And KHotkeys makes configuring global shortcuts so easy. And Plasma 4 lets you make decent panels. So I'm glad KDE 4 is in Jessie, so I can keep using it for several more years.

At the same time, I'm really enjoying using TDE on some of my systems. I loved KDE 3.5, and TDE picks up right where KDE 3.5 left off. It's fast, stable, sleek, light on resources, and looks great. It does everything I could want a desktop to do.

In a way, it gives the lie to KDE 4 and 5. I'm sure Qt 4 and 5 have some advantages over Qt 3, yet look at how well Qt 3 is still working in TDE! And I don't have to wait years for KDE to get around to feature parity again, only to have them jump to KPlasmaFrameworksDE6 the year after that and start reinventing the wheel again.

The XDG thing is another good point you made. If it weren't for XDG, we probably wouldn't have the decently usable desktops we have now; or at least they would be much less compatible, causing a lot of pain. So to some extent I think we need XDG, or something like it. If every DE project has to coordinate and standardize separately, users will suffer. Maybe a new XDG-NG could be formed by LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE, and TDE, the DEs that seem to be the most sane, focused on stability and usefulness.

Anyway, I'm not exactly one of your users yet, but thanks for your work nonetheless, and thanks for caring about the future of desktop Linux. I'm with you in spirit if not currently in software.

One suggestion: you said in another comment that you spent most of your time on developer outreach. Well, what do I know--but consider the old cliche, "If you build it, they will come." Nothing attracts developers like good software. When software meets users needs, and those users are developers with the skills to itch-scratch, they will naturally want to help when they can.

So just keep working on the software, making the best, most useful software you can, for yourself first and others second. As it improves, more people will use it, and more people will join the project. Don't worry about numbers--it will happen on its own when you do good work.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#19

Post by mlinksva »

scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

Thank you for initiating the merger. I admired that because I agree fragmentation is a big problem -- http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2013/10/22/open-source-prolifer... -- and the Linux desktop is a prime example. Clearly more mergers are needed.

Re: LXQt 0.11 Released

#20

Post by idle_zealot »

a3n wrote: post #7
scrollaway wrote: post #2

So while this is on HN, I wanted to talk a bit about LXQt and desktop OSes in general. Context: I'm one of the original leads on LXQt, and I initiated the merge of Razor-qt and LXDE-Qt into LXQt. I've been using LXQt as my main desktop for several years now. I've kept up with what other desktops have been doing. I've been especially impressed by the efforts of the GNOME team, and especially disappointed with the clus…

> Most people who care about their desktop have migrated or are migrating to OSX I'm not among the most people. I don't care about my desktop, and I've migrated away from all the focus on appearance to tiling window managers, currently awesome. I almost never see my desktop, I just want my windows. I'm not a "the mouse is evil, twm's are efficient," I just got fed up with all the focus on the desktop. I don't care, I…

While I also prefer a tiling WM, the fragmentation of desktop environments still managers to affect me. Despite an abundance of options for basic applications like file managers, everything I've tried leaves something to be desired, often something that another option gets right. If developers would focus on just a few choices with incompatible philosophies, even people who didn't use their DE would benefit.
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