2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault


  • Dupa

    ...and @TimeBandit and @flabdablet and probably a few more people from around here. Why? Because they killed Unity.

    If you go to any of the Linux news sites and read comments under the articles about Unity dying, what you're going to see is that most people are glad. There will be a few outsiders admitting they liked Unity, maybe you'll also see a few people saying that it was their favorite DE, but most people will be extremely glad.

    Why? Two reasons: too much eye-candy and too little configuration options. "Canonical goes against the Linux philosophy, which is: the user should be allowed to configure everything". You can see this attitude even around here. Every heavy Linux user says they hate both Unity and Gnome, because they are either "too tablet-y" or they don't allow "enough customization". What's good then? Why, KDE and Xfce of course, where you can change 'most everything.

    And this is bad, because apart from Gnome and Unity being too "tablet-y" (something that Microsoft managed to push on their users and they still kinda hold their ground with W10), they are both a bit macOS-y. They are mostly closed to preference adjustment, they come with sane defaults and they try to follow a unified HID guidelines. They want the user to adapt to them and not the other way. And this, dear fellows, is a good thing.

    Through the years, especially the past decade, Linux has been getting better and better in terms of being a user-friendly OS. This was because of just a handful of things: Canonical's investment, Canonical's marketing efforts and a higher number of applications that are either cross-plat and a new user might be familiar with them from their time on Windows, or which are good enough to replace their Windows-based competition. But what lacks here is focus on user-friendliness.

    The two most popular OS's right now are Windows and macOS. They both gained their position because of good targeting and then focus on interface design. Say what you want, but I believe no one would dispute this: neither Windows or macOS are popular not because they allowed people to customize the shit out of them. They are popular because they identified their strengths, they showed good targeting with their marketing and because they built tools that empowered their user base.

    But this was long ago. Since then, the OS market became a kind of duopoly that seems hard to break. Both Windows and MacOS are great products and because of that, their ecosystem became so huge that it holds many people hostage. There seems to be no reason for them to jump to Linux. Actually, I believe the only group of people that isn't a bunch of nerdy and angry students who might be persuaded to jump to Linux for good are developers. And among them it's mostly a very specific group: web developers.

    There is no other targetable group that Linux might be appealing to. It's hard to buy computer with Linux, there isn't this much support for it (especially since most of the support people depend on is their child or their friend's child), there are no use cases for a non-dev user where Linux could be seen as better than either Windows or MacOS.

    There is only one way that Linux can convince casual users to move jump the ship. It's the ease and sheer joy of use. It's consistency in design. And it's well... good design. Only if people actually like working on Linux and not working on their Linux, will Linux become popular. Because most people don't care if they can change the font or how this gesture works, they care if they can do their work.

    And good UI/UX design isn't "allow me to make my Linux work like Windows". It means "give me sane defaults and consistency between apps". That's something that the Linux community, being mostly a "hacker" community, doesn't understand. If I want to download a file, I don't want 40 curl or wget options, I just want to download it. If I want to edit a file, I don't really care all that much about 999 different colors that the app might display, I want it to allow me to easily edit the file. I'd much rather have sane defaults for each app than gazillion of configuration options for every app.

    You might think that doesn't matter. Configuration is something that a user might want to do, but doesn't have to, so it couldn't possibly harm them. You couldn't be more wrong. It could harm them in many different ways, be it because they learn it's possible and they decide they want to give it a try and they break their DE, be it because someone might recommend them to make some changes and again: they break their DE. And it doesn't have to mean that their DE doesn't run, that it doesn't show the windows, it might just mean that it becomes harder to use and they don't know how to undo this change.

    Finally, there's the last and the greatest harm that too many configuration options harm the user. They take up the development time. They make the developers work on stupid shit like how to allow the user to change a color of something or where it shows when you first run the application, or whatever, while the developer could be working on new features or applications that the user actually want.

    That's why the news of the death of Unity saddened me. Among others, it meant that there's no money in making Linux DE's, i.e. there's no money in improving the user experience. It also meant that the hacker mentality of the Linux community prevails, that it won with the commercial and casual user-oriented mentality that Canonical showed. Unity wasn't the most configurable or the most beautiful of Linux DE's, but it was something more: it was a coordinated effort funded by a commercial undertaking to create good UX for the user. With this gone, there's almost no one else.

    Almost, because there's always Gnome. And say what you want about Gnome, they were the first decentralized Linux project that actually understood the value of the brand and how this could help them gain userbase. They were the first project that realized that overly-complicated customization options might harm the user. They were the first project to actually try to revamp their HID guidelines and then to redesign all of their applications to adhere to them. Of course, they are also the project that seems to suffer the most from CADT development and lack of respect for backwards compatibility, but we can always hope that this won't hurt their users.

    Apart from these guys now, there's almost no one who could save Linux on desktop, what with Ubuntu focusing on IOT devices, web and server farms. It's the elementary OS project. They have it all, almost: a cool domain name with the io TLD, an online shop, a website that looks like you have to pay to download their ISO and... real HID guidelines and great attitude towards the user in terms of both UI and UX design. This is a small project that started big: they decided they would ship only apps that go well with their DE and apps. They created their own GTK library to ensure every app has a similar look&feel. They also have a community of dedicated developers who want to write applications specifically for them, which nicely couples with the fact that they understand that Linux development must be funded somehow and they actually were able to set up a Patreon campaign where they earn enough to have one dev working full-time on their project. And last but not least, their OS looks very similar to macOS.


    This turned out to be a long post. Dunno why, I started writing this because I remembered recently the discussion about which installer was better, the Ubuntu or Debian one, where Debian was praised for the ability to choose which packages would get installed and then I remembered how @boomzilla likes his Xfce and hates Gnome and then I thought about Unity being killed off and so I thought up a great title and I sat down to writing.

    It's long and it might be all just ramblings, but that's actually how I see Linux's future and I'm interested in your opinion. I care deeply for Linux, I've been a heavy user for a few years, I'm not anymore because .NET and stuff, but I remember the ecosystem as it was in 2006 and I can see that the past ten years really helped the penguin and mostly thanks to Canonical. It was the money that could have brought Linux to home PCs and the sudden lack of it could relegate Linux again to neckbeards, webdev and servers. Hope this won't happen.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @kt_
    I agree with some of your points, but Unity was never the answer, for two reasons:

    • Canonical was never really interested in cross-desktop standards, and cooperating with upstream (GTK/Qt). They created their own, incompatible interfaces and simply called them "standard". 10 years ago there was a lot of talk about cross-desktop cooperation, like merging Evolution Data Server and whatever KDE was using at the time. Or creating common interfaces for password managers. (The latter may have actually happened, not sure about that.) Then Canonical came along with a huge "fuck you" and the cooperation efforts pretty much died.
    • It is painfully obvious that many of the engineers working on Ubuntu's desktop (Mir/Unity) were simply incompetent. The competent people left Canonical for greener pastures a long while ago. Also, Canonical cut funding for the desktop and its desktop platform long before they abandoned Unity. Launchpad is dead, Ubuntu One was a train wreck and was killed instead of fixing it, and the Ubuntu translation coordinator was fired 8 years ago.


  • I agree with some of what you wrote...

    EXCEPT

    All these vendors, Canonical and Gnome and Elemental just failed to make a desktop environment that I like to use.

    It's that simple.

    I like how windows and taskbar and desktop and tiling work on Windows. There are things that suck on Windows too (eg. multiple desktops, file system), but I can generally live with them. I don't customize Windows much at all. I mostly just use it as given.

    So if a Linux OS is to get me to switch to using their DE paradigm, they don't need to expose a 1000 switches. They just have to offer me something I like just as well or better.

    And Unity failed at that spectacularly. I mean, there are other DE-s that I don't particularly like, like MacOS. But none elicits the same frustrated rage response as Unity. It was just that awful. Good riddance.

    Elemental is basically copying MacOS, just with fewer options. They expect you to keep a MacOS-like garbage heap of windows layered on top of each other and there is not even the gimped minimize / tiling support from Mac. So that's a deal breaker for me.

    It's been a while since I tried Gnome 3, it might be the closest to what I might like. But I haven't heard any extra feature that is so good in Gnome to get me to actually try switching. They need to actually innovate, offer something more. Not just strip features they can't be arsed to maintain, make a pretty theme and expect people to flock over.

    None of the Linux vendors has ever managed to produce a better OS than Windows or Mac, on practically any metric, and certainly not on those that are important to casual users. AND they didn't have the money and the first mover advantage that Windows had.

    That's why they failed. Not because of poor Boomzilla, who just wanted Unity to stop taking dumps on his lawn.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    It's been a while since I tried Gnome 3, it might be the closest to what I might like. But I haven't heard any extra feature that is so good in Gnome to get me to actually try switching. They need to actually innovate, offer something more.

    I wonder what GNOME 3 would be like now if Canonical, who made the most popular desktop distribution at the time, had actually supported it and contributed code/features.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Also, I cannot stress enough how disappointing it was to see Ubuntu One die. If they had actually invested enough money in it and hired competent developers, they could have made it work. A lot of people were excited about it at the time, and would have paid for the service.



  • @asdf said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Also, I cannot stress enough how disappointing it was to see Ubuntu One die. If they had actually invested enough money in it and hired competent developers, they could have made it work. A lot of people were excited about it at the time, and would have paid for the service.

    I don't get it.

    It looks like a shitty version of the Google and Apple logins / ecosystems.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    It looks like a shitty version of the Google and Apple logins / ecosystems.

    Highlighted the problem for you. It was basically a bunch of integrated services for Ubuntu (file sync, music shop, SSO), developed at a time when alternatives, like Google Play / Drive, were not as popular as they are now. If they had actually managed to produce applications that don't suck and had been willing to invest enough money, this could have been a huge source of income and provided great value for users. But they fucked it up, as usual.


  • Dupa

    @asdf said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @kt_
    I agree with some of your points, but Unity was never the answer, for two reasons:

    • Canonical was never really interested in cross-desktop standards, and cooperating with upstream (GTK/Qt). They created their own, incompatible interfaces and simply called them "standard". 10 years ago there was a lot of talk about cross-desktop cooperation, like merging Evolution Data Server and whatever KDE was using at the time. Or creating common interfaces for password managers. (The latter may have actually happened, not sure about that.) Then Canonical came along with a huge "fuck you" and the cooperation efforts pretty much died.

    I wasnt aware of that. But are you sure of the causality here? Couldn't it be that the cooperation efforts died as they usually do on the OS communities?

    • It is painfully obvious that many of the engineers working on Ubuntu's desktop (Mir/Unity) were simply incompetent. The competent people left Canonical for greener pastures a long while ago.

    Why do you say that?

    Also, Canonical cut funding for the desktop and its desktop platform long before they abandoned Unity. Launchpad is dead, Ubuntu One was a train wreck and was killed instead of fixing it, and the Ubuntu translation coordinator was fired 8 years ago.

    Launchpad is not a very good example here and Ubuntu One was a failed endavour. They still continued work on Unity, though.

    The last one, I'd need to look into that to be able to comment, TBH.


  • area_pol

    @kt_
    The major selling point of Linux is that you can customize it an no one is telling you how you are supposed to use it.
    It is not surprising that people who chose a customizable and independent OS, also want customizable and independent graphical environments.

    I would say Mint's Cinnamon is more beginner-friendly than Unity. It has sensible defaults. When you start it, it looks like a Windows desktop, with a start menu, task bar, normal window decorations and all that. I definitely recommend it.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @asdf said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @kt_
    I agree with some of your points, but Unity was never the answer, for two reasons:

    • Canonical was never really interested in cross-desktop standards, and cooperating with upstream (GTK/Qt). They created their own, incompatible interfaces and simply called them "standard". 10 years ago there was a lot of talk about cross-desktop cooperation, like merging Evolution Data Server and whatever KDE was using at the time. Or creating common interfaces for password managers. (The latter may have actually happened, not sure about that.) Then Canonical came along with a huge "fuck you" and the cooperation efforts pretty much died.

    I wasnt aware of that. But are you sure of the causality here? Couldn't it be that the cooperation efforts died as they usually do on the OS communities?

    I obviously cannot prove the causality, but the fact that Canonical created both additional friction and additional development / support costs - because everyone had to deal with their new stuff - certainly didn't help.

    • It is painfully obvious that many of the engineers working on Ubuntu's desktop (Mir/Unity) were simply incompetent. The competent people left Canonical for greener pastures a long while ago.

    Why do you say that?

    I was involved in the Ubuntu community for a while, and my personal impression was that the competent people left because of Canonical's lack of coordination and competent management. I won't go into details here, since it'd be extremely doxxy.

    Also, Canonical cut funding for the desktop and its desktop platform long before they abandoned Unity. Launchpad is dead, Ubuntu One was a train wreck and was killed instead of fixing it, and the Ubuntu translation coordinator was fired 8 years ago.

    Launchpad is not a very good example here and Ubuntu One was a failed endavour. They still continued work on Unity, though.

    Launchpad is part of their ecosystem; and they tried to get people to develop commercial software for Ubuntu for a long time. I wonder why they were not very convincing...

    Also, yes, they technically continued work on Unity, but did they really put enough manpower into it? And was the whole Mir project managed by competent people? If you take a look at the last few years, you have to conclude that the answer to both questions is "no".


  • :belt_onion:

    @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Every heavy Linux user says they hate both Unity and Gnome, because they are either "too tablet-y" or they don't allow "enough customization". What's good then? Why, KDE and Xfce of course, where you can change 'most everything.

    These discussions always make me feel like a unicorn of some kind. I'm a heavy Linux user and I had no problem with either Unity or Gnome (though I didn't really get to use the former enough to see its interfaces as I have Gnome's). In fact, I prefer Gnome to KDE. I have a lot of work to do. Gnome doesn't bother me while I'm trying to do it.

    So the generalization needs to be broken down further. (And supported with evidence, but that's another story). Is it hobbyist users vs. professional users? Is it younger users vs. older users? (I'm not @boomzilla old, except insofar as I may be his alt, but I probably exceed the median age of users.)

    I just don't know. But there's clearly some faction's experiences missing here.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @adynathos said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    The major selling point of Linux is that you can customize it an no one is telling you how you are supposed to use it.

    No. That's what the (loud!) group of power users likes about it. Its major selling point is that it's not Windows, and that it's free.

    I'm not saying customizability is bad. But that's not what the average Joe wants; you will never increase the market share of Linux this way. Also, even those who want customizability, want sane and consistent defaults. A standardized default Linux desktop benefits everyone.


  • :belt_onion:

    @asdf said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    That's what the (loud!) group of power users likes about it.

    That's what a loud group of power users likes about it. I've done (still sometimes do) kernel development for Linux and still don't want to feel on a day-to-day basis as if I'm driving a rocket ship, with a thousand knobs and dials, even if I do have to step into that cockpit occasionally.

    So maybe that's the TL;DR of the OP. There's an extremely loud "power user" group (note the scare quotes, how often are their systems actually working?), and when they started screaming, the reaction was, "Abandon ship!" instead of, "We're doing something right, keep going!"


  • area_pol

    @asdf said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    No. That's what the (loud!) group of power users likes about it. Its major selling point is that it's not Windows, and that it's free.
    I'm not saying customizability is bad. But that's not what the average Joe wants; you will never increase the market share of Linux this way.

    Yes, that is the other advantage, but you most computers are sold with pre-installed Windows, it is rarely factored into a buying decision.
    I think Linux is generally used by people who know about it, care about the software they use, and make the conscious decision to use Linux. So, in some way, "power users".

    I don't see why the existence of a beginner-friendly version would be a problem for the power users. When Unity was introduced and I did not like it, I did not complain to Canonical to change it, instead I switched to Mint and then KDE.

    So if the moral is that they should not complain about things that are not their business, I agree.

    A standardized default Linux desktop benefits everyone.

    Yes, but we cannot agree on what this default desktop should be like :)


  • Dupa

    @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    I agree with some of what you wrote...

    EXCEPT

    All these vendors, Canonical and Gnome and Elemental just failed to make a desktop environment that I like to use.

    It's that simple.

    I like how windows and taskbar and desktop and tiling work on Windows. There are things that suck on Windows too (eg. multiple desktops, file system), but I can generally live with them. I don't customize Windows much at all. I mostly just use it as given.

    So if a Linux OS is to get me to switch to using their DE paradigm, they don't need to expose a 1000 switches. They just have to offer me something I like just as well or better.

    This was exactly my point, or almost exactly. I think a good starting point would be just so it doesn't do it much worse, you know, an acceptable level.

    And Unity failed at that spectacularly. I mean, there are other DE-s that I don't particularly like, like MacOS. But none elicits the same frustrated rage response as Unity. It was just that awful. Good riddance.

    Just curious, do you still remember what kind of issues you experience there?

    Elemental is basically copying MacOS, just with fewer options. They expect you to keep a MacOS-like garbage heap of windows layered on top of each other and there is not even the gimped minimize / tiling support from Mac. So that's a deal breaker for me.

    I dont really understand. There is tiling support. What does "garbage heap of Windows layered on top of each other mean?

    It's been a while since I tried Gnome 3, it might be the closest to what I might like. But I haven't heard any extra feature that is so good in Gnome to get me to actually try switching. They need to actually innovate, offer something more. Not just strip features they can't be arsed to maintain, make a pretty theme and expect people to flock over.

    None of the Linux vendors has ever managed to produce a better OS than Windows or Mac, on practically any metric, and certainly not on those that are important to casual users. AND they didn't have the money and the first mover advantage that Windows had.

    That's why they failed. Not because of poor Boomzilla, who just wanted Unity to stop taking dumps on his lawn.

    Sure, but a good part of this is, because they devoted their efforts to creating a customizable DEs instead of user-friendly DEs, which is exactly my point.



  • Linux ui needs to be 20 years behind the rest of the world, because that's how long a patent term is.



  • @kt_ Someday Linux people will understand the DE (desktop environment) is the OS. There's zero point to competing on any other factor when all Linux distros share the same kernel.

    But not today, and likely not this decade.


  • Dupa

    @adynathos said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @kt_
    The major selling point of Linux is that you can customize it an no one is telling you how you are supposed to use it.
    It is not surprising that people who chose a customizable and independent OS, also want customizable and independent graphical environments.

    Well, that's what I believe is a misconception about Linux, this has to change if Linux is to be a real desktop OS.

    Customizability isn't "a major selling point". It's a matter of fact for Linux, because of its hacker culture, that's where this idea came from and so it was used to advertise Linux.

    But It won't ever become a desktop success, if this doesn't change.


  • area_can

    Someone remind me in a bit to install gnome so I can compare how it's changed. Last I remember it was a real pain to navigate, but maybe it's because I'm used to window tiling.



  • @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    And Unity failed at that spectacularly. I mean, there are other DE-s that I don't particularly like, like MacOS. But none elicits the same frustrated rage response as Unity. It was just that awful. Good riddance.

    Just curious, do you still remember what kind of issues you experience there?

    I HATE their taskbar UI. The way icons kind of wrap near the end, and you need to fiddly flip through them. I hate how hard is it to distinguish what is started, what is minimized, what has multiple windows. I hated the window chrome, the way they packed it all up in the top bar, but made it ugly and unintuitive. I hated the ads in the launcher, the same as in Windows. And I hated that you couldn't customize any of it -YES I know customization is bad and all, but every other OS lets you change trivial details like on which side the taskbar should be located and shit like that.

    There were other things, but these stick in my mind and are the main reason I stoped using Ubuntu 5-6 years ago.

    I dont really understand. There is tiling support. What does "garbage heap of Windows layered on top of each other mean?

    It's been a while since I last tried Elementary, but if I recall correctly, there was no way to minimize or collapse windows. Everything you start stays on the screen for good.

    So the suggested workflow here is you start everything you want to start, then carefully arrange it on screen, then just keep switching between windows, with your current work swimming up to the top of the garbage pile.

    Basically, they are trying to be more Mac than Mac.

    I hate that. I like more dynamic windows, that can be quickly tiled and collapsed, as needed. Like Windows and related WM-s.



  • @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    I care deeply for Linux,

    Why?

    Honest question. Just because you want more choice in the market? Because that seems to go against the primary premise of your comment, which is that you want fewer choices that are higher quality.



  • @adynathos said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    When you start it, it looks like a Windows desktop, with a start menu, task bar, normal window decorations and all that. I definitely recommend it.

    kt_ hit on this on his OP, but if your main selling feature-- the thing people are recommending you for-- is that it behaves exactly like you're biggest competition, you'll never be able to develop your own compelling brand. You'll always be "the ripoff of Windows" in the mind of users.

    You need a 10-foot design, meaning: you can instantly recognize your OS from 10 feet away from the monitor. macOS has this. Windows has this. Android, iOS and Windows Phone all have this (well, tiny screens so maybe not 10 feet but you get the point). Xbox, PS4 and Nintendo Wii-U (and presumably Switch) all have this. Fuck, even AS/400 dumb terminals have it, and they got there by accident. You gotta have it, it's a 1.0 thing.

    I mean you can make money at being the knockoff. "Luis Bitton" purses and such. But why would you want to? Especially in a product you've essentially giving away for free and not making much income from.



  • @asdf said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Also, yes, they technically continued work on Unity, but did they really put enough manpower into it? And was the whole Mir project managed by competent people? If you take a look at the last few years, you have to conclude that the answer to both questions is "no".

    That's a shame, because they were one of the few who actually paid money to their staff. They have the potential to hire quality people.

    (Problem is: they were probably just hiring the volunteers who had been involved in the open source community before, due to "familiarity", instead of widening the net and finding the most competent architects and designers who, by and large, do not contribute to open source.)



  • @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    things that suck on Windows too (eg. multiple desktops,

    Not a fan of how they work, or?



  • @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    So the suggested workflow here is you start everything you want to start, then carefully arrange it on screen, then just keep switching between windows, with your current work swimming up to the top of the garbage pile.
    Basically, they are trying to be more Mac than Mac.

    Even Mac Classic had WindowShade. (At least, once it got the ability to multitask.)

    0_1500824448922_windowshade_cp.png

    Ah. Look at that beautiful, ugly, beautiful OS.



  • @magus said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    things that suck on Windows too (eg. multiple desktops,

    Not a fan of how they work, or?

    Multi-desktop on Windows is barely an MVP. No gui to show you your current desktop, no keyboard shortcuts to send windows to other screens, they added a SECOND task switcher that you need to remember to bring up, that's awkwardly wedged next to Start...

    If Microsoft kept iterating, maybe we'd have had something good by now. But they ran off chasing the next thing, and this feature was left to rot.



  • @blakeyrat said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Even Mac Classic had WindowShade. (At least, once it got the ability to multitask.)

    Ah. Look at that beautiful, ugly, beautiful OS.

    I like how those 90-ies UI-s looked. Windows 3.11 too.

    Maybe next generation of hipsters will bring back the look.



  • @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Multi-desktop on Windows is barely an MVP.

    If you interpret "MVP" as "minimum viable product", then it looks pretty bad.

    However, if you interpret it as the FAR MORE COMMON "most valuable player" than it looks pretty good.

    But hey Cartman82 saved a few letters of typing.


  • Java Dev

    @blakeyrat One of the things I frequently miss in multi-monitor windows is that I can't drag windows to a different monitor in task view.



  • @pleegwat said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    multi-monitor windows is that I can't drag windows to a different monitor in task view.

    ... if the window already spans two monitors, why would you want to "drag" it to a different monitor? You mean drag it to a different pair of monitors?

    AFAIK the only window management task view offers is the close box. It doesn't let you drag any window.



  • @blakeyrat said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    If you interpret "MVP" as "minimum viable product", then it looks pretty bad.
    However, if you interpret it as the FAR MORE COMMON "most valuable player" than it looks pretty good.
    But hey Cartman82 saved a few letters of typing.

    But this way, instead of just breezing past, you had to stop and mull over my post a bit, wondering what I wanted to say, which is good for my engagement metrics.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Why, KDE and Xfce of course, where you can change 'most everything.

    Yeah, whatever. I don't even change the background. About the only thing I really change is where the taskbar panels are.

    @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    You might think that doesn't matter. Configuration is something that a user might want to do, but doesn't have to, so it couldn't possibly harm them. You couldn't be more wrong.

    I could be as wrong as you, though. Seriously, nothing you're saying reflects my experience.

    @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    and then I remembered how @boomzilla likes his Xfce and hates Gnome and then I thought about Unity being killed off and so I thought up a great title and I sat down to writing.

    FAKE NEWS! I'm a KDE guy.



  • @cartman82 Yeah but I don't provide the "likes" that marketers crave so it all evens out.


  • Java Dev

    @blakeyrat I meant multi-monitor ON windows, sorry.



  • @kt_ main reason I use Linux is that windows is expensive, why should I waste money buying a license for it?

    My notebook came with it preinstalled, but I needed to format it. Wtf doesn't they send a Windows DVD with it?



  • @heterodox said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    I'm a heavy Linux user and I had no problem with either Unity or Gnome (though I didn't really get to use the former enough to see its interfaces as I have Gnome's)

    I didn't mind Unity either, when I used it. It got the job done and IIRC the launcher and dock worked the way they should. My biggest gripe with it was that they had the power options in the top-right corner, somewhere that would have been more useful for a close button.



  • @blakeyrat said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @cartman82 Yeah but I don't provide the "likes" that marketers crave so it all evens out.

    Drat, foiled again!


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @wharrgarbl said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @kt_ main reason I use Linux is that windows is expensive, why should I waste money buying a license for it?

    My notebook came with it preinstalled, but I needed to format it. Wtf doesn't they send a Windows DVD with it?

    No, you're supposed to create your own recovery media.


  • Dupa

    @boomzilla said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @kt_ said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    and then I remembered how @boomzilla likes his Xfce and hates Gnome and then I thought about Unity being killed off and so I thought up a great title and I sat down to writing.

    FAKE NEWS! I'm a KDE guy.

    Shit, I need to delete the OP, it's all wrong!


  • Dupa

    @wharrgarbl said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    @kt_ main reason I use Linux is that windows is expensive, why should I waste money buying a license for it?

    Doesn't a license cost like 30$?

    My notebook came with it preinstalled, but I needed to format it. Wtf doesn't they send a Windows DVD with it?

    Kill your manufacturer. If it turns out they're a transhooker, ask @Lorne-Kates for help.



  • Unity was buggy garbage, and the GNOME 3 UI is so fundamentally broken people have to install extensions to have basic functionality such as a taskbar, because nobody is insane enough to do extra clicks to do something that should take on click such as switching the active application. Not to mention they take the lack of configurability way too far.
    Anyway Linux is going to be a clusterfuck until the transition to Wayland is done, because there is no standarized API so it's going to be pure chaos.



  • @cartman82 said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Basically, they are trying to be more Mac than Mac.
    I hate that. I like more dynamic windows, that can be quickly tiled and collapsed, as needed.

    Too few Mac users seem to know about ⌘H. (Not surprisingly, given that most of them these days probably came from Windows.)

    @blakeyrat said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    kt_ hit on this on his OP, but if your main selling feature-- the thing people are recommending you for-- is that it behaves exactly like you're biggest competition, you'll never be able to develop your own compelling brand.
    […]
    I mean you can make money at being the knockoff. "Luis Bitton" purses and such. But why would you want to?

    For two reasons, I think.

    One is that they probably think it’ll help people to switch if the UI looks just like the one they’re used to (back in my Linux days, KDE’s default theme looked pretty much the same as Windows 98 to the layman). The belief is probably that this will make it easier and more likely for people to switch because they won’t need to learn that to close a window, they now need the round button in the upper left corner rather than in the upper right (or whatever).

    The other reason, I suspect, is because the people who design the UI do so specifically to mimic the UI of the other OS they’ve long used and like, but attempt to improve it. Thus, you get KDE with windows that look like Windows, plus a “pin” button on the title bar so you can stick them to the current virtual desktop (to name but one example). And naturally, that results in a boatload of additional configuration options that are “missing” (in the designer’s opinion) in the OS that’s being mimicked.

    @wharrgarbl said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    My notebook came with it preinstalled, but I needed to format it. Wtf doesn't they send a Windows DVD with it?

    There was no install partition?



  • @wharrgarbl said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Wtf doesn't they send a Windows DVD with it?

    Dell and Acer do.

    HP gave me one but it was also set up to install all their crapware in addition to Windows.



  • @wharrgarbl said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    main reason I use Linux is that windows is expensive

    You could have upgraded all the way from XP to 10 for $40.



  • @magnusmaster said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    Anyway Linux is going to be a clusterfuck until the transition to Wayland is done, because there is no standarized API so it's going to be pure chaos.

    Too bad Wayland is also terrible. It doesn't even bring Linux graphics primitives to parity with Windows 2000, much less Windows 10.

    It also leaves way too much power with the application, which is good if you really trust your application developers, but bad when every single application has its own demented ideas on how to (for example) smooth fonts and none of them bother to use the OS setting. Do you trust every single application developer to, individually with no help from the OS get DPI scaling, font smoothing, screen rotation, etc, correct? I sure don't.

    (Hell, I bet half those developers aren't even aware you can rotate a screen 90 degrees. But guess what? In WIndows or macOS screen rotation works regardless.)



  • @gurth said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    One is that they probably think it’ll help people to switch if the UI looks just like the one they’re used to (back in my Linux days, KDE’s default theme looked pretty much the same as Windows 98 to the layman). The belief is probably that this will make it easier and more likely for people to switch because they won’t need to learn that to close a window, they now need the round button in the upper left corner rather than in the upper right (or whatever).

    Do they have any evidence to back that up?

    Because people have been switching to macOS in droves from both Windows and Linux, and it behaves like neither of those. (In fact, macOS has probably the weirdest and most unique behaviors of all current OSes.)

    @gurth said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    The other reason, I suspect, is because the people who design the UI do so specifically to mimic the UI of the other OS they’ve long used and like, but attempt to improve it. Thus, you get KDE with windows that look like Windows, plus a “pin” button on the title bar so you can stick them to the current virtual desktop (to name but one example). And naturally, that results in a boatload of additional configuration options that are “missing” (in the designer’s opinion) in the OS that’s being mimicked.

    You're getting closer but you're not quite there yet.

    The problem is: these developers specifically have no idea how to recruit and interact with actual designers. Not just graphic designers, but interaction designers, UX designers, etc.

    Which makes sense, since the designers responsible for the macOS and Windows look make tons of money. Just creating the font that gives Microsoft's "fluent design" its distinctive look probably cost more than Gnome's budget for the last 3 years.


    BTW, completely off-topic, but the Wiki page for Segoe UI contains a little glimpse into how much the EU hates Microsoft for no reason:

    In 2004, Microsoft registered certain Segoe and Segoe Italic fonts as original font designs with the European Union trademark and design office. The German font foundry Linotype protested, citing Segoe UI's similarity to its licensed Frutiger family of typefaces. In its submission to the EU, Microsoft claimed that Linotype had failed to prove that it had been selling Frutiger and Frutiger Next prior to 2004.

    The EU rejected these claims, and in February 2006 the EU revoked Microsoft's registration.[2] Microsoft did not appeal the decision. Microsoft still holds United States design patents to various Segoe based fonts.

    Fuck you too, Europe.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat
    Frutiger is a really old font, and they are very similar:

    I wouldn't have let them patent that design, either.



  • @blakeyrat Did you not click on Frutiger? It says it's from 1976 and used in airports.


  • Java Dev

    And yet as of currently I find the UX of Cinnamon vastly preferable to the clusterfuck that is the Windows 10 UX. Finding my way around Windows has turned into a chore whenever I need to do something more advanced than starting a program (and even that can occasionally fuck up) because of all the massive inconsistencies introduced with the crude bolting together of Modern UI with the "classic" UI sprinkled with some extra bad design decisions. I don't understand why they can't just make different themes for keyboard/mouse and touchscreen and pick the appropriate for the device and/or user preference.

    Seriously, how does Microsoft with their millions spent on interface design get beaten by this OSS project which survives on voluntary work and donations? It's even been reviewed as "being perhaps the most user-friendly and all-around useful desktop available on any platform"! And it's partially written in fucking JavaScript! Get your shit together, MS! You used to be good at this!



  • @coldandtired said in 2018 won't be the year of Linux on desktop and it's @boomzilla's fault:

    You could have upgraded all the way from XP to 10 for $40.

    I had already the best windows that is 7


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