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Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

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Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#301

Post by nopenopenopeno »

fulafel wrote: post #296
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left PopOS and never looked back when I needed nvidia-docker to do some deep learning work and learned they had knowingly made it difficult to impossible to reliably use nvidia-docker with PopOS, and they recommended their own unmaintained project that doesn’t even intend to be a replacement for nvidia-docker. It couldn’t have been more useless to me. Breaking compatibility with Ubuntu-compatible dev tools is one t…

Can you expand on what in your view System76 did to impede it?

I’m sorry, I don’t quite recall the details but it was a few different things. The main one is forcing certain Nvidia libraries in the package manager so you need to take a few steps to undo some of the Pop OS Nvidia installation, which breaks other Pop OS stuff, of course.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#302

Post by nopenopenopeno »

mmstick76 wrote: post #228
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left PopOS and never looked back when I needed nvidia-docker to do some deep learning work and learned they had knowingly made it difficult to impossible to reliably use nvidia-docker with PopOS, and they recommended their own unmaintained project that doesn’t even intend to be a replacement for nvidia-docker. It couldn’t have been more useless to me. Breaking compatibility with Ubuntu-compatible dev tools is one t…

`sudo apt install nvidia-docker2` works on 21.10. I have been packaging NVIDIA's container toolkit since tensorman was created, because tensorman doesn't work without nvidia's container toolkit. It's a dependency.

Nvidia-docker is not the same as nvidia-container-toolkit, and neither of them have official support for 21.10 the last time I checked (a few months ago).

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#303

Post by wander_homer »

adamnemecek wrote: post #73
shmerl wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's probably a huge project they don't want to maintain. They could limit the scope though. I.e. focus on Linux only from the start at least. But it's probably still a lot of work.

...and a desktop environment isn't? Building your own GUI toolkit isn't that bad esp. if you have a team. Cross-platform isn't that hard, windowing is like the only thing that comes to mind where there are some differences in behavior. Rendering would be done presumably using some cross-platform GPU API like Vulkan or wgpu.

> Cross-platform isn't that hard, windowing is like the only thing that comes to mind where there are some differences in behavior.

And let's not forget the accessibility systems, clipboard handling, filesystem (e.g. a GUI toolkit needs file open/save dialogs, which means you want to monitor the filesystem for changes, which is different for all operating systems), audio, notification systems, printing, ... And probably many other things I can't think of right now which modern toolkits like Qt or GTK have to deal with.

A full GUI toolkit is already an incredibly ambitious endeavor and cross platform compatibility only makes it much more unrealistic to achieve in a timely manner.

A desktop environment on the other hand can be much less work and can grow more naturally. For example you can start with a window manager/compositor (which there are good libraries for), launcher and dock/panel. All the applications (file manager, image viewer, ...) can be leveraged from other DEs and replaced step by step if needed.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#304

Post by nopenopenopeno »

xvilka wrote: post #265
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left PopOS and never looked back when I needed nvidia-docker to do some deep learning work and learned they had knowingly made it difficult to impossible to reliably use nvidia-docker with PopOS, and they recommended their own unmaintained project that doesn’t even intend to be a replacement for nvidia-docker. It couldn’t have been more useless to me. Breaking compatibility with Ubuntu-compatible dev tools is one t…

Blame NVIDIA instead. If they had open source their blobs, it would have been everywhere out of the box. Most evil company for open source ever.

I’m not looking to blame anybody. System76’s approach just conflicts with my priorities when choosing an Ubuntu-based distro. I prefer to not have my OS surprise me with requirements that I replace a major portable dev tool standard with one of their bespoke unmaintained side projects. I doubt I am alone and maybe others will find the info useful. I just can’t trust their work any longer after realizing they were serious about that tool of theirs being a replacement.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#305

Post by pjmlp »

wmf wrote: post #109
pkulak wrote: post #64

I know that open source and Linux in general don't need/want another DE, but selfishly... I really want System76 to succeed. They give me the same kind of feeling I had when Apple was kicking butt in the early 2000s. And I think that for them to become a general-audience company, they need to really own more of their software. They have some great ideas, and they've already plugin'ed Gnome to within and inch of it's…

DEs are just the window dressing and computer management. That's how you end up in a situation where the contents of the window clash with the dressing because more and more apps can't be themed. If they want a consistent look they'll need to fork or write a whole new set of apps.

Not only that, you also end up with half baked applications because there isn't a consistent development stack so applications are stuck with UNIX IPC for communication about themselves.

GNU/Linux apps will never have something like OLE 2.0 or XPC that actually works consistenly across desktops.

There is D-BUS, but not everyone cares it is there.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#306

Post by pjmlp »

xvilka wrote: post #265
nopenopenopeno wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left PopOS and never looked back when I needed nvidia-docker to do some deep learning work and learned they had knowingly made it difficult to impossible to reliably use nvidia-docker with PopOS, and they recommended their own unmaintained project that doesn’t even intend to be a replacement for nvidia-docker. It couldn’t have been more useless to me. Breaking compatibility with Ubuntu-compatible dev tools is one t…

Blame NVIDIA instead. If they had open source their blobs, it would have been everywhere out of the box. Most evil company for open source ever.

Hollywood and HPC are don't seem to care about it.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#307

Post by pjmlp »

opan wrote: post #286
xvilka wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame NVIDIA instead. If they had open source their blobs, it would have been everywhere out of the box. Most evil company for open source ever.

>Most evil company for open source ever. I won't ever defend nvidia, but... I really think Broadcom is worse. They've ruined tons of routers and wireless cards. Also, the Raspberry Pi is full of blobs because of them.

Raspberry Pi seems to be doing just fine with them, whereas the FOOS competition is where exactly?

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#308

Post by tibbydudeza »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #177
tibbydudeza wrote: post #40

So what is the win for System76 here ???. They just make boutique computers computing against the like of Dell/Lenovo when it comes to Linux friendly computers. How many sales do they do per year to justify this direction

The win is that they’re no longer required to work around Gnome as Gnome’s vision is to minify the DE. This makes it difficult to develop a custom flavor if your base keeps removing features or making strongly opinionated UI decisions.

But why develop a desktop OS at all if your main focus is to sell computers unless you want to become like Apple and offer a bespoke hardware and OS experience ???.

Google has done that with Chromebooks successfully but they focus on the educational market where the folks using them has very little choice in the matter.

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#309

Post by pjmlp »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #264
jolux wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's possible to make buggy, slow, crappy software in any language. True. > Rust is no exception. Also true. > Nobody should derive any confidence from the language a product is written in. This, on the other hand, is a non-sequitur, or at least it's too strong, because Rust can do things that C can't do : safe deterministic memory management and safe concurrency without data races. These things are not just availa…

> they are the defaults in Rust. Exactly, this is what I should have explicitly said. Language defaults have a powerful effect on a project's norms and culture. > You have to go out of your way to get these things wrong. Yes, you actually have to try to write shitty Rust code, at least where there are defaults that prevent it. Thus the average Rust program will have that baseline level of quality. Like TQM/TPM/Six-Si…

Like ActixWeb?

Re: Exploring System76's New Rust Based Desktop Environment

#310

Post by LeFantome »

mariusmg wrote: post #108
pkulak wrote: post #64

I know that open source and Linux in general don't need/want another DE, but selfishly... I really want System76 to succeed. They give me the same kind of feeling I had when Apple was kicking butt in the early 2000s. And I think that for them to become a general-audience company, they need to really own more of their software. They have some great ideas, and they've already plugin'ed Gnome to within and inch of it's…

> I really want System76 to succeed Succeed at what ? Re-implementing Gnome in Rust ?

I have seen this comment a few times but basically half the desktop environments for Linux are GTK. So, using GTK does not equal “re-implementing Gnome”.

I use Cinnamon with Manjaro - it is not GNOME but it is GTK. Unity was the same. MATE is old GNOME but quite different from new GNOME — still GTK though. XFCE, LXDE, and pretty much every popular DE outside KDE and FVWM2 is based on GTK.

Choosing Rust has nothing to do with re-implementing GNOME either although I do like that choice. If nothing else, this ensures well tested Rust bindings and paves the way for devs to write other GTK apps in Rust—-perhaps even ones intended to target GNOME itself.

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