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Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

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Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#11

Post by willholloway »

exDM69 wrote: post #7
willholloway wrote: post #5

Post points out very well how inferior products that charge can beat superior products that are free. It's quite sad that Linux already has the best experience if you care about getting things done. In order to save the desktop we must kill the desktop. Stop the madness and get on with life: apt-get install ratpoison The desktop metaphor is the worst kind of skeuomorphic design. Why should I waste precious screen rea…

> The only thing tiling window managers need for better adoption is to ship with better defaults and a reference card for keyboard shortcuts. That works for hackers but for non-techies that aren't willing to put any time and effort into re-learning the basics. What I hope to see is more tiling windowing features on mainstream user interfaces for the intermediate users.

This is the direction Android will go in. I am pretty sure that in five years most people will have one smart phone that they dock at home to have access to large screens and keyboard/mouse. The laptop as we know it will be replaced by laptop shells with a smart phone dock.

And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers.

I believe tiling window managers would be fantastic productivity boosters for enterprise use. Less distractions for the worker bees.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#12

Post by [deleted] »

exDM69 wrote: post #6

After using a desktop linux box for about 15 years, I have moved on. Not because the desktop experience was bad, in fact I think it was one of the best out there. Sure, there are rough edges but the user experience of regular desktop activities (launching apps, browsing files) worked for me better than redmond or cupertino -flavored desktops. No, I moved on because I realized that I don't like the desktop paradigm. T…

[deleted]

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#13

Post by sliverstorm »

willholloway wrote: post #5

Post points out very well how inferior products that charge can beat superior products that are free. It's quite sad that Linux already has the best experience if you care about getting things done. In order to save the desktop we must kill the desktop. Stop the madness and get on with life: apt-get install ratpoison The desktop metaphor is the worst kind of skeuomorphic design. Why should I waste precious screen rea…

Allow me to say, as a regular user of a tiling window manager, that they have more than a few shortcomings. Shortcomings which go beyond defaults and shortcuts.

- Many applications are designed with a floating environment in mind, and as a result simply translate very poorly to a tiling environment.

- If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 medium size windows simultaneously.

- Often in a floating environment, I can overlap windows, maximizing utilized screen space by covering up unimportant parts of a certain window.

There are basically two reasons I keep using a tiling WM. First, it does pretty well with term emulators. Second, the existence of tabbed term emulators. The ability to spawn and destroy tabs on a whim without changing the screen layout really helps with my thought flow. If I was really a purist I'd be using GNU screen for that, but at that point what am I doing in X11 anyway?

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#14

Post by micro_cam »

The biggest surprise for me from this years google io was how much I like and use the chromebox. Chrome os is the best linux desktop distro I've used by far. A fast, stripped down kernel and intuitive, minimal ui and seamless auto updating.

It isn't cable of running a local dev server or compiling code, which are things I still need from my computer (I'm hoping for a chrome os pro supporting guest vms) but everything else is so easy I see the os gaining serious ground and think it is silly to leave it out of a discussion of desktop linux.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#15

Post by shmerl »

I think all of this is close to be pointless, when there is an abundant and sickening Windows bundling problem which persists until present day. End users don't care about any ISVs, ABIs and other such matters, and some even don't have a clue about OS names. They buy a computer with an OS preinstalled. And guess what that OS is? That's the problem which needs to be solved first. The rest as the author admits, will be solved under the market pressure.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#16

Post by willholloway »

sliverstorm wrote: post #13
willholloway wrote: post #5

Post points out very well how inferior products that charge can beat superior products that are free. It's quite sad that Linux already has the best experience if you care about getting things done. In order to save the desktop we must kill the desktop. Stop the madness and get on with life: apt-get install ratpoison The desktop metaphor is the worst kind of skeuomorphic design. Why should I waste precious screen rea…

Allow me to say, as a regular user of a tiling window manager, that they have more than a few shortcomings. Shortcomings which go beyond defaults and shortcuts. - Many applications are designed with a floating environment in mind, and as a result simply translate very poorly to a tiling environment. - If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack…

> If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 windows simultaneously.

This is my biggest issue as well. I would like a way to hide these windows and take them out of my next/previous stack. Out of all the tiling WMs out there I feel one has to have this feature but I've been so happy with ratpoison otherwise I haven't looked.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#17

Post by ekianjo »

willholloway wrote: post #11
exDM69 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only thing tiling window managers need for better adoption is to ship with better defaults and a reference card for keyboard shortcuts. That works for hackers but for non-techies that aren't willing to put any time and effort into re-learning the basics. What I hope to see is more tiling windowing features on mainstream user interfaces for the intermediate users.

This is the direction Android will go in. I am pretty sure that in five years most people will have one smart phone that they dock at home to have access to large screens and keyboard/mouse. The laptop as we know it will be replaced by laptop shells with a smart phone dock. And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers. I believe tiling window managers would be fantastic productivity boosters for en…

> And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers.

You seem to assume Android is just another Linux distro with a different windows manager? If so, you are mistaken. An Android system is very different from a Linux distro - they basically only share the kernels and it is quite wrong to classify Android as "Linux" because it creates confusion.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#18

Post by [deleted] »

willholloway wrote: post #16
sliverstorm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to say, as a regular user of a tiling window manager, that they have more than a few shortcomings. Shortcomings which go beyond defaults and shortcuts. - Many applications are designed with a floating environment in mind, and as a result simply translate very poorly to a tiling environment. - If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack…

> If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 windows simultaneously. This is my biggest issue as well. I would like a way to hide these windows and take them out of m…

[deleted]

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#19

Post by ekianjo »

willholloway wrote: post #9
elchief wrote: post #3

We already have linux on the desktop. It's called OSX. Seriously, I've been reading about dreams of linux on the desktop for 20 years. Give up. Move on.

People said the same thing about Apple in the 90's when it had 5% market share. Have you noticed that Linux is taking over the mobile market?

not Linux. Android. It's NOT the same thing. At all.

Re: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

#20

Post by sliverstorm »

willholloway wrote: post #16
sliverstorm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to say, as a regular user of a tiling window manager, that they have more than a few shortcomings. Shortcomings which go beyond defaults and shortcuts. - Many applications are designed with a floating environment in mind, and as a result simply translate very poorly to a tiling environment. - If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack…

> If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 windows simultaneously. This is my biggest issue as well. I would like a way to hide these windows and take them out of m…

I feel like a tiling WM could really benefit from a taskbar-like metaphor. It doesn't have to be precisely a taskbar, but the ability to make this or that application completely invisible without sending it to another virtual desktop is often useful.

Perhaps, to stay in keeping with the ability to do everything from the keyboard, treat the "taskbar" like a second stack, only reduced to names instead of shrunken windows.

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