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A new wave of Linux applications

tuxphones.com

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#81

Post by stickfigure »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #16
traverseda wrote: post #9

I have to say I just don't like Gnome's design. The shift away from text and towards more and more abstract icons, the "don't theme my app movement", removing features I consider pretty essential like typeahead.... Maybe mobile is where their weird (to me) design choices will finally shine though. Also looking forward to what KDE can accomplish in this space.

The “don’t theme my app” thing just tells me that GNOME/GTK+/Adwaita aren’t built in a way that gracefully handles theming, or that devs building apps with them are doing things like hard coding colors when they should be using dynamic system colors such as those provided by UIColor[0] in UIKit. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicolor/ui_e...

Supporting themes imposes an ongoing technical burden across the whole ecosystem. It's not worth it. You don't hear people say "I hate macs because I can't make my title bars purple".

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#82

Post by jfb »

What if you don't want the same applications with the same interface modalities on different devices? Shouldn't we be much more concerned about data portability than application portability?

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#83

Post by floren »

kelnos wrote: post #72
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…

On the mice I've used recently, the scroll wheel itself was clickable as a middle button. Is that not sufficient for your purposes?

Unfortunately not... after prolonged use, my middle finger gets pretty painful from the mid-clicking. It's less ergonomic than a real button.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#84

Post by kelnos »

nomel wrote: post #70
asddubs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not, but I would love to some day. I fucking hate my android phone (and the iphone is just as terrible, in slightly different and often the same ways). Thank god for the people tinkering on pinephones and purism phones, paving the way for something less awful, with control in the hands of the user We're not there yet, but we won't ever be unless people put effort into it. The linux desktop used to suck, too

To me, phone os is an easy way to get to apps, switch between apps, and handle notifications. It appears to be something else for you. What is an ideal phone for you, and how would Linux help achieve that experience?

Not the person you're replying to, but I have the same issue. The phone OS is indeed a way to get to apps for me. And the problem is that the "alternative" phone OSes don't have access to apps that I've woven into my day-to-day-life: banking apps, contactless payments, video streaming, music streaming, etc.

None of these are available on platforms other than iOS or Android, unfortunately. Some of them have web experiences, but they're terrible on mobile when compared to their app.

I, too, would love to run a mobile-optimized Linux desktop on my phone, but it's not about the desktop, it's about the apps and functionality it gives me access to. So I'm stuck with Android for the time being.

What would be really cool is if these alt mobile OSes could perfectly emulate Android to the point that Google's SafetyNet would believe that everything is a-ok. Not sure if that's even technically possible, but could help bridge the gap and allow alternative OSes to gain some market share among people who aren't willing to give up many of their usual mobile apps.

> What is an ideal phone for you, and how would Linux help achieve that experience?

The main bits for me are privacy and control. I refuse to use an iPhone because I viscerally hate Apple's stranglehold over the platform. I very reluctantly use Android, hating that Google is always watching. A fully-open mobile OS where I get to choose what runs on it, how it runs, and what access it gets would solve both of those problems.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#85

Post by anthk »

allisdust wrote: post #35
smoldesu wrote: post #12

History is back around to repeating itself. I'm an avid Linux user (and even a developer who uses GTK pretty regularly), but the recent developments surrounding GNOME, Flatpak and their related libraries has not made me optimistic for the future of Linux applications. GTK4 is really bad. It launched with horrible text rendering issues (still unfixed, 10+ months later), broke compatibility with a number of basic featu…

Only if you are hung up on gnome of course. Plenty of alternatives that work out of the box in desktop space and flatapps aren't really needed really as one click with much less issues is possible many gui package managers. First option for anyone coming from other OS should be kde. Defaults are sane and customizations are easy to do. Frankly I really don't know why all distros provide gnome by default. There are nei…

I guess XFCE will be either moved to QT5 or, maybe, as a crazy move, rewrite everything in Motif.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#86

Post by jcelerier »

zozbot234 wrote: post #44
_jal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Visually, it is... fine, I don't care that much and the iconization of everything is probably just trend chasing. And personally I don't care too much about theming, but either it should be supported, or not. But it is so dumbed-down now that I find it pointless as a desktop. I try it out every time I rebuild, and become frustrated with how it doesn't do any number of perfectly reasonable things to want from…

> and the iconization of everything is probably just trend chasing Icons work better as touch targets due to their uniform shape. So I think the change is driven by ergonomics as well, in a context where touch support is already expected.

Touch is as relevant as 3d screens lol. I remember buying a laptop with a touchscreen back in 2011, there are as many today as there were back then. Tablet usage has dropped to less than single digits and are pretty much a dead form factor except maybe the iPad pro. Etc..

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#87

Post by fsflover »

jfb wrote: post #82

What if you don't want the same applications with the same interface modalities on different devices? Shouldn't we be much more concerned about data portability than application portability?

GNU/Linux phones are about FLOSS. Of course the apps have the data portability, too.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#88

Post by 867-5309 »

dkarl wrote: post #59
asddubs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dislike the gnome3 title bar with the icons. As you say, unlabelled mystery meat and hamburger menus. I'll admit, part of my dislike for the new title bars is probably irrationally rooted in just wanting things to stay like they were on windows 98 when I first became familiar with computers, forever, and never to diverge too much from that. But those unlabelled icons, they really do puzzle and frustrate me. O…

Unlabeled icons are terrible. I use Gmail more than any other application outside of dev tools like my editor and my terminal, and I use every single one of the message operations (archive, snooze, add as task, report spam, etc.) at least occasionally. After a month with a new work Gmail account I realized I was still waiting for the tooltip to pop up before clicking the buttons, just to make sure of what I was click…

it's made worse by the fact that tooltips are unavailable for mobile users

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#89

Post by kitsunesoba »

stickfigure wrote: post #81
kitsunesoba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “don’t theme my app” thing just tells me that GNOME/GTK+/Adwaita aren’t built in a way that gracefully handles theming, or that devs building apps with them are doing things like hard coding colors when they should be using dynamic system colors such as those provided by UIColor[0] in UIKit. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicolor/ui_e...

Supporting themes imposes an ongoing technical burden across the whole ecosystem. It's not worth it. You don't hear people say "I hate macs because I can't make my title bars purple".

You do however see many complaints when an app doesn’t support dark mode (which is closer to the typical use case of themes).

Additionally, see my other comment about accessibility, which is also negatively impacted by hardcoded UI appearances.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#90

Post by rvense »

stickfigure wrote: post #81
kitsunesoba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “don’t theme my app” thing just tells me that GNOME/GTK+/Adwaita aren’t built in a way that gracefully handles theming, or that devs building apps with them are doing things like hard coding colors when they should be using dynamic system colors such as those provided by UIColor[0] in UIKit. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicolor/ui_e...

Supporting themes imposes an ongoing technical burden across the whole ecosystem. It's not worth it. You don't hear people say "I hate macs because I can't make my title bars purple".

I switched from Mac to Linux (in 2008-2009) because I could understand it and make it my own, among other things with theming.
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