Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment • Hacker News Board

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#81

Post by zdragnar » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #49

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like as the computer literacy of the people making decisions in tech companies has gone up, the care that's being invested into actually making good user interfaces has gone down. This applies to Macs, Windows, and also to Linux desktop environments. Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more…

a classic market irony example is keyboards.. Every single user here has a keyboard, yet keyboards on a mass scale are cheap and badly designed, with no end in sight.

My keyboard was embarrassingly expensive, but I love it. You can get what you want, but what most people want is to not care about it at all.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#82

Post by shortrounddev2 » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #49

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like as the computer literacy of the people making decisions in tech companies has gone up, the care that's being invested into actually making good user interfaces has gone down. This applies to Macs, Windows, and also to Linux desktop environments. Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more…

a classic market irony example is keyboards.. Every single user here has a keyboard, yet keyboards on a mass scale are cheap and badly designed, with no end in sight.

How could the design of keyboards be improved?

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#83

Post by causal » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:33 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #48

mwidell wrote: post #43

Look at how the icons at the bottom have almost zero margin to the overly rounded sides. Why is it so hard for anyone outside of Apple to make a visually appealing GUI? It just requires a little bit of taste and sense of aesthetics. I am baffled that this hasn't happened yet. The closest thing so far is probably ElementaryOS.

My whole issue with the COSMIC thing has been that it seems to be designed by developers. Not designers. At every corner they make baffling choices. The speed and functionality are great. The design not so much. I'm hoping this UI matures and allows for customization so that I can get it where I want it.

Yeah I think the HN crowd easily underestimates the amount of specialized talent and effort that goes into a good design. Much like good software, good design blends in so well that users don't realize how hard it was to make.

Apple spends billions on design, even inventing many of the core paradigms that have since become foundational. Apple still frustrates me with a lot of their choices, but let's not pretend just anyone can match their design prowess.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#84

Post by bityard » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #71

[Posted different version under a now flagged comment] I would love a completely customizable desktop system. Be able to select different window arrangers, docks, etc., for each workspace. -- Thinking bigger, something useful would be persistent and named "worksets" of workspaces, that can be closed and reopened. One workset at a time, or multiple. It would help to be able to view/edit/access the same docs and tools…

It sounds like you are describing what KDE's "Activities" feature aspires to be.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#85

Post by petabyt » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:35 PM UTC

Looks like all the UIs are made with iced, a new UI library. My question, is this missing all the accessibility features found in uikits like Gtk and Qt? Does each app respect my system theme?

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#86

Post by bainganbharta » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #42

Looks great. I'm very happy that they are letting me get rid of their ugly brown UI. I might switch back to POP for this.

Might want to get an eye exam first.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#87

Post by digitalsankhara » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:41 PM UTC

danielvaughn wrote: post #46

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. I feel like as the computer literacy of the people making decisions in tech companies has gone up, the care that's being invested into actually making good user interfaces has gone down. This applies to Macs, Windows, and also to Linux desktop environments. Just 15 years ago, there was a heavy focus on usability and making user interfaces clear and readable. Now, the focus seems to be much more…

I think people learned the wrong lessons from Apple. They thought that Mac products were successful because of their aesthetics, but in reality it's because they were the only products that tried to be usable.

To be fair I think MacOS classic (i.e. MacOS 9 et.al) was well thought out and usable IMHO.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#88

Post by dartharva » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

I wish ChromeOS's desktop environment gets ported and reimplemented across mainstream Linux and we're all freed from the GNOME/KDE GTK/Qt hell. It's just sad that Google's Linuxes (Android and ChromeOS) can do things like HDR, VRR, decent fractional scaling, decent font rendering, etc. but desktop Linux is still starved for these things to this day.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#89

Post by diego_sandoval » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

culebron21 wrote: post #24

I see a slightly restyled Mate desktop environment. Nothing really new, some marginal advantage like a tiny bit more visible window focus. Scrollbars still invisible. Buttons even harder to distinguish from not-buttons, and not clear how a disabled button can look when everything is so graywashed. Generally, looks like another designers take on style, not usability.

If you ignore the fact that it looks much better than Mate, maybe.

The sentiment of "looks don't matter" seems to be very common among Linux users. Or maybe they don't see the difference, but it would be like not seeing the difference between a beaten Lada car and a modern Toyota Camry.

Re: Cosmic: A New Desktop Environment

#90

Post by the_duke » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:47 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #2

One cool feature that I didn’t see described very well here is Cosmic allows you to group windows in tabs, but the tabs can be different applications. Kind of an interesting idea that the OS/window manager is what should be responsible for tab support, not each application.

i3 , the tiling window manager, has had this for many years.