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

Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

lunduke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 94 posts

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#11

Post by juiceandjuice »

foob wrote: post #9
dorian-graph wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as if this article has a strong tinge of exaggeration (See: ".. ALL desktop ...") and you make some good points too. I haven't tried Gnome3 extensively and daily I use Snow Leopard (On my MbP while I'm out) and Win7 (Main desktop machine) and Gnome3 and more specifically, Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity, hasn't really caught my attention in any huge way. The new sidebar on Unity reminds me of the Dock and the new Win7…

'Spaces' aren't new They aren't new but they've been fairly common in Linux desktop environments since the 90's while OS X didn't introduce them until 2007. I'm not sure where they first appeared but at the very least they've certainly become a common idea because of Linux.

The 80s. Originally out of PARC.

Also, while Project Looking Glass (Sun) may have borrowed some stuff from Quartz, Apple borrowed a lot of UI stuff from Project Looking Glass

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#12

Post by sandGorgon »

r3demon wrote: post #8

Mobile is where innovation happens today and Linux has almost no presence on mobile devices (except all major mobile OS using linux/freebsd kernel). It's a stagnation, not innovation.

seriously?

What do you think Android is - and its not just the kernel. I have a working userspace on my phone. In fact, when I have spotty connectivity, the first thing I do is fire up the terminal and do a ping/traceroute.

Gnome != Linux.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#13

Post by dimmuborgir »

It's unfortunate that KDE doesn't get the attention it deserves. It has been long rebuked as a Windows clone.

But, KDE's Plasma Desktop is highly innovative (through a wide range of interesting plasmoids). The fact that it can be easily scripted in JavaScript makes it even more awesome.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#14

Post by jaimzob »

Honest question: as someone who dropped Linux in favour of OSX largely to get a nicer user experience, what is in the new generation of Linux desktops to tempt me back?

The videos linked from the article show a Spaces'esk virtual desktop and a more interactive Growl'esk notification box. Both very slickly done but not really anything mind blowing. The features in the other videos on the Gnome 3 site seem equally derivative; clones of the Window snapping from Win7, the icon view from Lion etc.

Am I missing something? Should I be looking somewhere else? KDE?

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#15

Post by blub »

sandGorgon wrote: post #12
r3demon wrote: post #8

Mobile is where innovation happens today and Linux has almost no presence on mobile devices (except all major mobile OS using linux/freebsd kernel). It's a stagnation, not innovation.

seriously? What do you think Android is - and its not just the kernel. I have a working userspace on my phone. In fact, when I have spotty connectivity, the first thing I do is fire up the terminal and do a ping/traceroute. Gnome != Linux.

Android is a Java userspace on top of a Linux kernel.

It doesn't help that most people say "Linux" to actually mean "GNU/Linux", but Android is certainly not GNU/Linux and it can't be "Linux" either, because that's just the kernel.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#16

Post by andreaja »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #11
foob wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Spaces' aren't new They aren't new but they've been fairly common in Linux desktop environments since the 90's while OS X didn't introduce them until 2007. I'm not sure where they first appeared but at the very least they've certainly become a common idea because of Linux.

The 80s. Originally out of PARC. Also, while Project Looking Glass (Sun) may have borrowed some stuff from Quartz, Apple borrowed a lot of UI stuff from Project Looking Glass

I liked the Looking Glass demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMWd1FOgr18

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#17

Post by drivebyacct2 »

jaimzob wrote: post #14

Honest question: as someone who dropped Linux in favour of OSX largely to get a nicer user experience, what is in the new generation of Linux desktops to tempt me back? The videos linked from the article show a Spaces'esk virtual desktop and a more interactive Growl'esk notification box. Both very slickly done but not really anything mind blowing. The features in the other videos on the Gnome 3 site seem equally deri…

before you got low UX, high customizability with Linux.

now you get very comparable effects (customizable and evolving with 11.10 too) with all of the customizability and flexibility of Linux.

I don't mind the UI/UX of my MBP, but I prefer both Unity and GNOME3 and my heavily customized GNOME2 installs. The app-indicators and control center in Ubuntu are actually easier to use than in OS X. ICS to my Xbox took 10 seconds in Ubuntu. It took 10 minutes of Googling and editting a configuration file to get it in OS X. My phone works out of the box as a router in Ubuntu, it's not detected as an Internet device at ALL in OS X, who knows why. (And those tasks took less than a minute or two to access directly from the app-indicators or control center. (And very excitingly, there is a whole new connection center planned for 11.10 which out to be even cooler/faster).

I wish more people would come back and really spend the time to give modern DEs a chance. I personally can't stand KDE even after a lot of customization, but even Qt apps are indiscernable from GTK+ apps in Ubuntu (yes, even file selection dialogs, etc).

It's also funny that no one seems to know the history of these UX elements. Spaces have been a *nix feature since the late 80's, early 90's. The Grid plugin existed in Compiz as an unstable plugin for a long time before Windows 7 came out. They simply refined it for Natty.

Also, anyone on a MBP should try Unity just to see the power of the uTouch API they've built. Compiz is actually multitouch enabled. You can move and resize windows with gestures as well as expose the dock.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#18

Post by jamii »

jaimzob wrote: post #14

Honest question: as someone who dropped Linux in favour of OSX largely to get a nicer user experience, what is in the new generation of Linux desktops to tempt me back? The videos linked from the article show a Spaces'esk virtual desktop and a more interactive Growl'esk notification box. Both very slickly done but not really anything mind blowing. The features in the other videos on the Gnome 3 site seem equally deri…

What I find exciting is the increasing integration of Telepathy into Gnome apps. The idea is to enable easy networking for all applications so the user can just pick contacts out of their address book and never have to worry about ip addresses or nat traversal. Things like collaborative editing or music streaming can be built on top of Telepathy rather than every application doing its own networking.

More examples:

http://people.collabora.co.uk/~cassidy/talks/2009-07-07-lets...

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#19

Post by wzdd »

Here are some of the iOS features that Apple has "shoehorned into Mac OS X" Lion which I am quite sure will appear in Linux free desktops in future: auto-save (system-integrated save versioning, integrated with backup); resume; airdrop (local file sharing without having to be on the same wlan). Even the full-screen feature, which seems pretty funny on the face of it, is actually more akin to Opera's "kiosk mode" than a regular full-screened application, and I am sure it will show up elsewhere.
Post reply on HN