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A new wave of Linux applications

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#501

Post by wink »

wildrhythms wrote: post #328
wink wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Scr…

Have you never needed to annotate/sign a PDF? On Mac OS just open Preview (the sane default for PDFs), use the annotate tools. There's even a built-in UI for "scanning" a signature via the front-facing camera, the software automatically cuts out the background so you have a signature to drop on the page. Save and the PDF is signed. Trying to do this on Linux requires moving a mountain.

I've only ever done this with my own signature (so, a one-time process), of which I have a scan and my workflow hasn't changed for 20 years, just the tools. as the other reply said, just inserting an image into a PDF is not a problem, and I still don't understand the use case of the camera. But in this case maybe I've had my signature available for longer than phones with cameras exist contributes to the fact?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but maybe all the office work I've done in my life is simply different.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#502

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

account42 wrote: post #472
floren wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the acme text editor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor) for work every day. It makes heavy use of mouse chords, so I need 3 real buttons on the mouse, and it's hard to find a mouse with 3 real buttons and a scrollwheel which doesn't get in the way of the buttons. I've got a Kensington Expert Mouse trackball which works pretty well, but at the end of the day an old Logitech PS/2 mouse plugged into…

I haven't used a mouse where you couldn't press the scroll wheel to get a midle click in a long time.

Some of the Logitech mice (MX Anywhere 2) switch the 'clickiness' (rasterization) of the scrollwheel on and off instead of sending a button click.

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/eol/mx-anywhere-2s-mouse.910-...

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#503

Post by lucaotta »

mappu wrote: post #210
Tmpod wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Qt (QML/QtQuick; Widgets are no linger the preferred method afaik) you have qmetaobjects-rs, which is reeally nice.

QML is practically electron - it's runtime interpreted declarative UI plus a Javascript engine. QML still has only rudimentary support for AOT compilation. Both the old qmlcompiler and the new qmlsc compiler are commercial-only: https://www.qt.io/blog/the-new-qtquick-compiler-technology . LGPL users only get the interpreter. Widgets is still the 'Real Qt'. Some very modern, responsive-layout desktop apps like Telegra…

> QML is practically electron

Nope. Electron is a whole browser under your seat, QML is a declarative language to instantiate C++ UI objects. The core logic of your application is written in C++/Qt instead of Javascript.

> QML still has only rudimentary support for AOT compilation

Fair point. But it shouldn't really matter in any application today, as your logic must reside in C++ models if you want to have real performance.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#504

Post by marcus_holmes »

dotancohen wrote: post #500
rjzzleep wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libAdwaita is an attempt at providing a consistent framework for making GUI applications in Linux. People commenting on MacOS UX often forget that people creating Mac GUI applications aren't magically better at doing UX than Linux users. It's orders of magnitude easier to make ok looking GUI applications on a mac. Besides the fact that cocoa on mac has evolved over a decade(when linux people were busy constantly rein…

> People commenting on MacOS UX often forget that people creating Mac GUI applications aren't magically better at doing UX than Linux users. It's not magic. It's attraction. Just like magnets. People who _care_ about UX are more likely to use a Mac than any Linux distro. Independently but related, those who use a Mac are far more likely to care about UX than the average Linux user. I say that as someone who dremels t…

> I say that as someone who dremels their phone and earbuds to make them easier to use, yet still prefers a Debian desktop.

yet??? clearly this should be "so"

The ability to dremel your OS is exactly the thing that Apple stops you doing, and why those of us who run Linux, run Linux.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#505

Post by dotancohen »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #504
dotancohen wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People commenting on MacOS UX often forget that people creating Mac GUI applications aren't magically better at doing UX than Linux users. It's not magic. It's attraction. Just like magnets. People who _care_ about UX are more likely to use a Mac than any Linux distro. Independently but related, those who use a Mac are far more likely to care about UX than the average Linux user. I say that as someone who dremels t…

> I say that as someone who dremels their phone and earbuds to make them easier to use, yet still prefers a Debian desktop. yet??? clearly this should be "so" The ability to dremel your OS is exactly the thing that Apple stops you doing, and why those of us who run Linux, run Linux.

The argument isn't that one _could_ dremel Debian, in fact, after recently installing KDE on a new machine I'd argue that one _has to_ dremel it a bit to get a good UX. The argument is that the Mac - for all its flaws - has a better UX.

People who care about UX will gravitate towards the Mac. A subset of these folks start developing software, as a consequence, the people creating Mac GUIs do better UX than those using and developing for Linux.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#506

Post by throwamon »

kombine wrote: post #454
29athrowaway wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use FreeOffice instead of LibreOffice, it has a more refined UI. https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Is this closed source?

It can't be, it says free in the name!

Yes, it's closed source. It's only free as in beer. Their website says: "What's the catch? There is none." It seems they offer this as a free product because they have a paid one with more features.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#507

Post by selfhoster11 »

voltaireodactyl wrote: post #478
selfhoster11 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot use that kind of trackball. It relies on actuation with my thumbs, and it hasn't worked out very well in the ones I tried. I prefer "ambidextrous" ones with the ball in the middle.

Well for the record then this is my jam and I cannot express how much I love it: https://www.rtings.com/mouse/reviews/elecom/huge-m-ht1drbk There’s also the slightly smaller Deft Pro ( https://switchandclick.com/elecom-deft-pro-review/ ) which I also own and use for travel — it has a superior scroll wheel and therefore may be a superior choice for you. For me the Huge has a perfect form factor that outweighs all else…

That Elecom is reasonably priced. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#508

Post by account42 »

_2paq wrote: post #451
chrismorgan wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My least favourite thing about GNOME is that it has co-opted GTK and sabotaged it so that even determined developers stand no chance of achieving native look and feel on other platforms and desktop environments. The G in GTK now ( de facto , not de jure ) stands for GNOME. (Expressed otherwise: I kind of have to use parts of GNOME because it has infected GTK and it’s much more difficult to avoid GTK than to avoid the…

With the advent of libadwaita, GTK really is GNOME toolkit. Most advocates are really deceptive when they talk about this and say GTK4 is agnostic to platforms but I haven't come across a single non-trivial GTK4 app that isn't based on libadwaita. Even LibreOffice is becoming a libadwaita app. The GUI ecosystem on Linux is mostly dead. I'm trying to switch to CLI and TUI apps for all of my tasks. If they don't exist,…

> The GUI ecosystem on Linux is mostly dead.

Qt says hi.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#509

Post by Milner08 »

chippiewill wrote: post #493
cudder wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse. On MacOS the scrollbars are invisible by default, and only appear while you scroll, plus a second or so after stopping. So to grab a scrollbar in MacOS you first have to scroll the document to make the scrollbar appear. Then you have under two seconds to move the pointer on top of the narrow scrollbar so it expands allowing you to grab it before it disappears again.

Been a while since I used a Mac, but I'm fairly certain there was a system level setting for whether scrollbars are always visible or not.

Yes there is.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#510

Post by account42 »

dleslie wrote: post #15
bogwog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the Pinephone store very clearly states that this is a beta device intended for experience linux developers/early adopters only. It’s not meant to be a daily driver yet.

It's not Beta. At the time I purchased it, it wasn't even Alpha. Beta, as a game developer, implies to me that there's a few outstanding show-stoppers but on the whole the product is safe to show to eager end-consumers who are willing to tolerate some rough edges. The PinePhone isn't even that, yet; I couldn't conscientiously hand it to a non-techy and ask them for feedback because I'm not even sure it would reliably…

> Beta, as a game developer, implies to me that there's a few outstanding show-stoppers but on the whole the product is safe to show to eager end-consumers who are willing to tolerate some rough edges.

I don't know what games you have worked on but as a user that description seems to match what is called "final patch" by the games industry.

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