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Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

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Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#61

Post by fader »

rbanffy wrote: post #51
hasenj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "more than one user" thing is a Unix feature, OS X basically gets it for free. It's not copied from windows; if anything, windows tried to copy it from Unix, and it was horrible before WinXP

No. It's the desktop login thing. IIRC, you couldn't do that under X. Windows offered the lock screen and log-in as another user on XP. OSX decorated that with a 3D cube and Linuxes started getting it a couple years later.

While (I believe) you're right about Apple adding the 3D cube effect for multiple logins, X was explicitly designed to allow multiple concurrent users on the same machine. While many Linux distros did not have that configured by default in the early days, some did and it was certainly doable on the rest.

(That's one of the things that display managers like xdm/gdm/kdm do -- handle starting and stopping of X servers for user logins.)

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#62

Post by rbanffy »

fader wrote: post #61
rbanffy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It's the desktop login thing. IIRC, you couldn't do that under X. Windows offered the lock screen and log-in as another user on XP. OSX decorated that with a 3D cube and Linuxes started getting it a couple years later.

While (I believe) you're right about Apple adding the 3D cube effect for multiple logins, X was explicitly designed to allow multiple concurrent users on the same machine. While many Linux distros did not have that configured by default in the early days, some did and it was certainly doable on the rest. (That's one of the things that display managers like xdm/gdm/kdm do -- handle starting and stopping of X servers f…

But, if you stop the X server, what happens to the processes connected to it?

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#63

Post by Symmetry »

dorian-graph wrote: post #6
Xuzz wrote: post #4

I think it's really awesome that Linux is finally taking the lead with innovation on the desktop — Gnome-Shell and Unity are just the beginning. And, they are not "catch-up": they are released both before and with more interesting changes than Lion or (what we've seen of) Windows 8. However, what Cupertino and Redmond are up to isn't "nothing", it's just not the desktop. The Windows Phone "Metro" UI is downright amaz…

I feel as if this article has a strong tinge of exaggeration (See: ".. ALL desktop ...") and you make some good points too. I haven't tried Gnome3 extensively and daily I use Snow Leopard (On my MbP while I'm out) and Win7 (Main desktop machine) and Gnome3 and more specifically, Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity, hasn't really caught my attention in any huge way. The new sidebar on Unity reminds me of the Dock and the new Win7…

Its true that the Unity UI was influenced by the Mac OS dock, but there have been a lot of UNIX UIs that were using docks all the way back into the 90s.

Also, its not true that Compiz stole the Windows 7 snapping feature, that was in Beryl even before Windows Vista came out. They _did_ steal the Windows 7 auto-tiling and MacOS expose though - so you do have a point. Its sort of nice to see all the cross pollination between the different platforms, and nice to think that UNIX is contributing a lot to pushing forward the state of the art.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#64

Post by Symmetry »

rbanffy wrote: post #28
blankslate wrote: post #21

Sadly, the article completely fails to mention the amazingly useful innovations made by tiling window managers like wmii, ion3 and xmonad. Granted, they're not as new as Unity et al, but they offer a compelling, complete and fairly radical departure from tradition, and one that I really do miss on OS X.

Windows 1 used tiled windows (MS programmers didn't learn how to overlap windows until Windows 2) and Emacs has them since the 70's. I am not sure if tiling windows could be called innovation.

There's a big difference between just having tiling windows and having all the features that make them more useful than a stacking windows manager.

But really we should be giving credit to Plan 9 here for pioneering the model of the modern tiling windows manager.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#65

Post by jamesgeck0 »

hasenj wrote: post #50

Unity is very innovative, and so is Gnome 3, but that does not equal "all innovation". In fact, about 70% of Unity's innovations are features copied from the mac: indicators, launcher, panel. Gnome shell, while innovative, I don't see it as aimed for the typical end user, instead it's aimed for the more technical users. gtk2 is still present in Unity and it's still a major anti-innovative set back. To be honest, I li…

Gnome shell is not aimed at technical users. It's simplified or removed many features which were present in Gnome 2, as well as a lot of customization. The tagline, "Made of easy", and the usability testing they've done suggest that Gnome 3 is trying to be a general purpose environment that anyone can use.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#66

Post by jamesgeck0 »

dimmuborgir wrote: post #13

It's unfortunate that KDE doesn't get the attention it deserves. It has been long rebuked as a Windows clone. But, KDE's Plasma Desktop is highly innovative (through a wide range of interesting plasmoids). The fact that it can be easily scripted in JavaScript makes it even more awesome.

Plasma is just a framework for building little desktop widgets, isn't it? Except that everything on the desktop (including icons and taskbar) is a widget?

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#67

Post by username3 »

Symmetry wrote: post #63
dorian-graph wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as if this article has a strong tinge of exaggeration (See: ".. ALL desktop ...") and you make some good points too. I haven't tried Gnome3 extensively and daily I use Snow Leopard (On my MbP while I'm out) and Win7 (Main desktop machine) and Gnome3 and more specifically, Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity, hasn't really caught my attention in any huge way. The new sidebar on Unity reminds me of the Dock and the new Win7…

Its true that the Unity UI was influenced by the Mac OS dock, but there have been a lot of UNIX UIs that were using docks all the way back into the 90s. Also, its not true that Compiz stole the Windows 7 snapping feature, that was in Beryl even before Windows Vista came out. They _did_ steal the Windows 7 auto-tiling and MacOS expose though - so you do have a point. Its sort of nice to see all the cross pollination b…

The first Windows had a dock in 1985. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2008/11/20/happy-annivers...

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#68

Post by jamesgeck0 »

jerhewet wrote: post #59

I've gone back to the standard desktop on Ubuntu 11.04, because the Unity UI is everything I despised (and disabled) in Windows 7. I don't want a damned cell phone UI on my laptop or desktop, and I sure as hell don't want a damned web browser as my desktop UI. My computers aren't "appliances".

The Unity UI looks and functions nothing like a web browser?

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#69

Post by Symmetry »

This article didn't really get into the part I most care about, the incredible range of custom window managers you can find that work for various *NIXes. The fact that the way X is set up allows you to roll your own window manager so easily has really allowed a froth of new ideas to be tried out - and the best ideas to be incorporated into the big desktop environments and Mac and Windows.

I was sort of worried that the move to Wayland might hurt all of this. Compiz seems to be preparing to do double duty as a X windows manager and a Wayland display server based on what plugins you have loaded, but I wonder what might happen to other window managers in the transition? On the other hand, nobody is forcing anyone to give up X.

Re: Linux: The Source of All Desktop Innovation

#70

Post by Symmetry »

username3 wrote: post #67
Symmetry wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its true that the Unity UI was influenced by the Mac OS dock, but there have been a lot of UNIX UIs that were using docks all the way back into the 90s. Also, its not true that Compiz stole the Windows 7 snapping feature, that was in Beryl even before Windows Vista came out. They _did_ steal the Windows 7 auto-tiling and MacOS expose though - so you do have a point. Its sort of nice to see all the cross pollination b…

The first Windows had a dock in 1985. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2008/11/20/happy-annivers...

No, thats just the taskbar. For it to be a dock the icons have to persist when the window isn't open. RISC OS had the very first dock in 1987: http://www.osnews.com/story/18941/pt_VI_the_Dock
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