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A new wave of Linux applications

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#241

Post by heavyset_go »

jcelerier wrote: post #226
eric4smith wrote: post #205

Until there is as “simple” to use an app like Preview on the Mac, most of these new generation apps are garbage. I’ve just switched to Ubuntu on a workstation I have lying around. And man, is it hard to use for just normal everyday use. Yes, it has the basics covered, but like many others my job has a lot of simple image manipulation related stuff. Convert pdf to png. Assemble multiple images into a pdf. Quickly shar…

> Take a simple thing like screen capture - you have to remember to save the screen that you captured otherwise it just sits there doing nothing in the screen capture app. idk with KDE this seems to work ? I hit screen capture and spectacle shows up and saves it to images.

Can confirm this works on Plasma. There's also Flameshot[1], which is cross platform, that works really well and has pretty much every feature you could ask for in a screenshot app.

[1] https://flameshot.org/

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#242

Post by firecall »

eric4smith wrote: post #205

Until there is as “simple” to use an app like Preview on the Mac, most of these new generation apps are garbage. I’ve just switched to Ubuntu on a workstation I have lying around. And man, is it hard to use for just normal everyday use. Yes, it has the basics covered, but like many others my job has a lot of simple image manipulation related stuff. Convert pdf to png. Assemble multiple images into a pdf. Quickly shar…

It's all true.

I can use Ubuntu, for instance, perfectly fine for web-dev. It's great.

But in the end, I'm just fighting it.

The UI/UX on todays Ubuntu and apps isn't as good as macOS was 10 years ago!

And yes, I know there are other Distros and I can customise KDE and Gnome and so on. But they are all offer a very shallow user experience.

I wish the Linux GUI and App landscape looked better!

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#243

Post by duped »

bityard wrote: post #71
ugjka wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you use a mouse without a scrollwheel?

Genuinely curious what you do when you have to navigate a long document or page that doesn't have a clickable table of contents. If you're at the top and you need to get somewhere close to the bottom, do you just sit there and flick the scroll wheel for 5 minutes?

Alt + Scroll in my text editor

Middle Click -> Scroll on the web

Page Up/Page down everywhere else

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#244

Post by hall0ween »

greggsy wrote: post #234
beepbooptheory wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn a little about imagemagick [1], it will change your life! Edit: also, I bet doing an rclone mount of your Dropbox will be pretty seamless and stable, havent tested this personally though [2]. If you don't like the command line interfaces, then yeah you are probably better off with a Mac. 1. https://imagemagick.org/ 2. https://rclone.org/dropbox/

Most users don’t want to use the CLI.

Linux self selects: if you use linux you’ll need to become familiar with command line.

It seems out of whack to complain about linux without investing a wee bit of time with cli.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#245

Post by wink »

eric4smith wrote: post #205

Until there is as “simple” to use an app like Preview on the Mac, most of these new generation apps are garbage. I’ve just switched to Ubuntu on a workstation I have lying around. And man, is it hard to use for just normal everyday use. Yes, it has the basics covered, but like many others my job has a lot of simple image manipulation related stuff. Convert pdf to png. Assemble multiple images into a pdf. Quickly shar…

Trying my best not to sound like a raving Linux zealot, but what you see as normal productivity stuff I may not have done... ever.

Converting a PDF to a png? Why? Maybe IrfanView could do that, it's what I've been using on Windows for any conversion since ACDSee went out of fashion...

I've never seen a GUI tool that works as flawlessly as pdftk. Yes, it's CLI, but it works better than anything I ever encountered.

Screenshots? You just need to find the right app, I'm not happy with the windows thing (I've been using Greenshot for a while and it's on par with whatever I use on Linux).

But yeah, my comparison is only Windows, I've never owned a mac. And maybe I'm on the completely other end of the spectrum in my perception of what "normal tasks" are.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#246

Post by taeric »

greggsy wrote: post #233
taeric wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't claim you are wrong... But I struggle with versions of those on my Mac on a regular basis, as well. Screen capture, in particular, is hilariously fickle for me. I finally got it so that it puts the image in my clipboard. Which is great, until I try to remember how to get it directly to a file. Because, I can't remember where that setting is anymore. And I have no idea how to make a pdf on this computer. Combi…

Shift+Command+5 gives you the full screenshot experience, and let’s you define where to put it (Desktop, clipboard, etc.) Once you select a location, it will be the default for next time. Preview let’s you create a PDF pretty easily? No idea what’s going on with your restart issue tho.

Thanks for the 5 tip! Hopefully I remember that.

Not clear how to use preview to make a pdf with multiple images. I'm guessing that is something that is easy if you have to do it often? I'd probably reach for html or word. Probably word, first.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#247

Post by haroldflowers »

I've been a long time linux desktop user, recently switched over to macOS after getting fed up from not being able to do many basic "productivity" related tasks, without having to open a terminal, search for a package on google, fiddle with some config, do a rain dance, etc...

Skimming through just the blog post and some of the comments on this thread gives me a bit of a flashback thinking of all of the headaches I've endured __trying__ to get Linux to work for simple stuff like document management, PDF markup, synced notes, calendars, display scaling, general performance things, etc.. This was fun and interesting at first, but after a while there were diminishing returns. Believe me, I really wanted it to work, I love Linux (as a server). It hit me at some point that life is brief, and technology should probably be making my life easier, not more difficult.. So I switched to macOS.

That aside, it is really important for progress on this front so that we don't have a total monopoly, and kudos to anyone working in the space. Fighting the good fight.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#248

Post by wink »

imiric wrote: post #240
eric4smith wrote: post #205

Until there is as “simple” to use an app like Preview on the Mac, most of these new generation apps are garbage. I’ve just switched to Ubuntu on a workstation I have lying around. And man, is it hard to use for just normal everyday use. Yes, it has the basics covered, but like many others my job has a lot of simple image manipulation related stuff. Convert pdf to png. Assemble multiple images into a pdf. Quickly shar…

The issue is not the lack of good tools on Linux, just with the ones shipped with the major distros and DEs. Quality and simple tools do exist if you look for them: - Image viewer: feh - Screen capture: scrot - Dropbox: Syncthing - Converters: Pandoc, ImageMagick - PDF viewer: zathura - Media player: mpv etc. Granted, some of them are CLI only (though they might have GUI wrappers), but desktop users with productivity…

I've had problems with scrot and drawing selections, so I've been using maim for a while, otherwise: yes, exactly my kit - but for IM's convert I have to search for the syntax every damn time, it really sucks.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#249

Post by beepbooptheory »

greggsy wrote: post #234
beepbooptheory wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn a little about imagemagick [1], it will change your life! Edit: also, I bet doing an rclone mount of your Dropbox will be pretty seamless and stable, havent tested this personally though [2]. If you don't like the command line interfaces, then yeah you are probably better off with a Mac. 1. https://imagemagick.org/ 2. https://rclone.org/dropbox/

Most users don’t want to use the CLI.

Yes, then I just think for now they are better of with one of the other two. I think its great what progress is happening on the GUI front, but I won't argue with gp that some things are a little sketchy.

But for those who do have the patience and understanding for the shell and man pages, well they can become more powerful than the other Oses combined!

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