Desktop Neo – rethinking the desktop interface for productivity

Lennart's selecting from among the best widespread ideas, adding in several that are currently fringe, and coming up with a few twists of his own. The result is several things I'd very much like to have right now.

Any company looking hard at the desktop would be idiotic not to make him an offer. Lennart would be best advised to pick very carefully from among those he's tendered, and to make clear his own expectations.

The losers will be chasing his taillights for the next 20 years. Possibly 40.

The vision here is strong, but practical. It's dispensing of numerous tired elements of existing design, but replacing them with what appear to be far more workable models. I see some weaknesses and holes in the presentation, but at this stage these are details, not as is so often the case baked-in architectural flaws.

The synthesis of tiling, desktop, and touch interfaces in particularly is quite promising.

My biggest concern is that Lennart would accept an offer where his ideas would be absorbed into the black hole of an ossified company.

The obvious contenders for him are Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Ubuntu and Mozilla might be in the offing, and dark horses might emerge from Amazon or one of the existing hardware vendors -- Asus, Samsung, or LG, perhaps.

I think Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon would all be mistakes. The first two are far too wedded to their legacy platforms. Amazon is simply a horrible place to work, and the first rule is to not work for assholes.

Google, Ubuntu, or Mozilla offer the opportunity to develop this project and maintain an open-source offering. They'd probably be at the top of my list. I've suggested Google talk to Lennart and make him an offer.

One of the major hardware vendors might be of interest. I haven't kept track of where KDE/Qt are headed, but that's another option.

What I'm most thinking is, "damn, this would be a great time for a credible challenger for the desktop to appear". I'm not sure there is one.

But the world is Lennart's oyster.

I've commented further on the interface, and on what I see as weaknesses based on the presentation:

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/bzZws5Vh...

Second: less-than-full-height windows can be quite useful. Being able to specify a "stack" into which, say, I place a video (or video-chat) app, various A/V controls, and possibly some monitors or other smaller windows, perhaps a shorter terminal window or three, is easily something I'd like to do.

With WindowMaker I can _arrange_ windows in a pseudo-tiled state. Unfortunately it's too easy to accidentally drag one off somewhere. Generally, though, this can be quite handy.

What I'd really like to be able to do is to specify roles for certain window locations. Say, a browser, image editor, and audio editor all occupying the same larger window space, which I can tab between.

And I think you're quite right about applicability of tiling metaphors.

Being able to specify a workspace state and return to it is hugely significant. But that requires deep stateful awareness of pretty much every app, including terminals, and the command / console-mode tools running within them.

But at the higher level, I'm liking what I'm seeing here.