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Domain: bla.st

Stories and comments across the archive that link to bla.st.

Comments · 6

  1. Consistent UI appearance by slashflood · · Score: 2, Informative · on KDE Responds To Misconceptions About KDE 4

    Consistent UI appearance - It's true that Qt, GTK etc. based applications look different. But so do OS X applications where you have the white style, this brushed metal style and another one which escapes me right now.

    That's true.

  2. Re:A solid company created distro could be the tic by Jorophose · · Score: 3, Insightful · on Elonex ONE Subnotebook Shows Right Path For Linux

    both hardware mfr. and Linux developers
    Yes, but their hardware quality, especially in comparaison to Gigabyte (by itself it's fine), has been in a rather harsh decline since the launch of S775/AM2.

    Oh, they don't develop anything Linux/GPL IIRC. The linux distro on the eeePC is outsourced to Xandros, a shoddy company that puts my city's already crappy tech sector to shame. They were also one of the companies that signed a deal with MS, another reason to avoid them (Novell's turned out to be not too bad, the ones following it however were a lot worse).

    Still, I love the eeePC, because it was the first and the only subnotebook to be under 400$ and released to the "general market", something MSI, Dell, and HP have missed.

    Apple using them as their vendor
    Apple uses Foxconn parts.

    Linux has needed a single, unified, vision from the beginning
    I would like to direct you to kernel.org :)

    That said, really, there is no need for a unified Linux distro. Almost everything is "unified". The only thing that really differs amongst distro packagers are slight kernel modifications, small lib changes (basically things that would make an Ubuntu binary not run on Debian), and choice of package managers; even then, only two are relevant; .deb and .rpm.

    get past all o fthe choice/freedom crap
    Why are you using Linux again? Might as well go back to MS/Apple if you have an attitude like that. That's not to say we're all elitists, I even less, but if you don't like the "choice/freedom crap" then you're free to leave you know.

    and get on to a unified UI,
    Why? I freaking hate EDE. I hate gnustep. I hate FLTK. I love GTK. Why should we have a unified UI? All of the major desktops (Xfce, Gnome, KDE) have unified on a set of desktop standards, namely Tango, so there's nothing really non-"unified". Sure, there's different toolkits, but hey buddy:

    http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.media/vista.png (and they've left out non-MS toolkits too!)
    http://bla.st/static/blog/macos_interfaces.gif

    Yeah, good job Apple and MS! We should really be "unified" too! That's what people want! As opposed to two major ones, GTK, QT, and one minor one, FLTK!

    "Linux" looks rather unified to me. Look at how well GTK and QT can play together.

    a solid look and feel,
    Feels solid to me. If you have complaints make 'em verbose & direct so we can fix it.

    and most importantly ONE of everything that is best in class and 100% working by default.
    Yeah, like things on the OSX and Windows side work 100% amirite or amirite? You don't have to install every effing program you know. You're free to use the apps you like, and I'm sure it's in your distro provider's best intentions to give you the nicest experience they can. Otherwise you've got a bad maintainer and should leave.

    Since the OSS community will never agree to do this, a company is my only hope (as sad as that is). I'm wishing ASUS nothing but luck.
    Yeah, like Asus does such a good job; have you ever looked at their xandros desktop? Not exactly farts and sunshine there. I especially like that they mixed IceWM and KDE. That's two toolkits that need to be loaded. Good game, guys.

  3. Re:"Ready for my mom's desktop." by slashflood · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Getting Past "Ready For the Desktop"

    That's where Linux really drops the ball still and OS X/Windows still dominate. The UIs are extremely poorly designed on Linux and worse still they're often inconsistent with half a dozen ways to do the same operation.
    Not too long ago, somebody here linked to these two images.
  4. Re:mod me down, but picking just one would be grea by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Insightful · on Moving Toward a Single Linux UI?

    I think the best thing that could happen for Linux on the desktop is for one of the two major environments (I don't care which) to become THE standard, supported Linux X desktop standard.

    I know, choice is good. So is focusing your efforts on making one usable product that people can standardize on. People keep bringing this up, but it just isn't going to happen. FOSS developers will work on whatever they want to work on, and as long as there are different philosophies involved different projects will attract the interest of different developers. And there are very different philosophies driving the different desktop environments: GNOME is pitching for something simple and elegant above all else; KDE is far more interested in being configurable and cohesive; Xfce has efficiency as one of their primary goals; and the list goes on. With such divergent focus you are not going to get people (neither developers nor users) to all agree on one philosophy.

    What you can do, however, is work on standards and interoperability of protocols that underly the environments. You know, like Freedesktop do. That means common standards for inter-application communication (from cut and paste to DBUS), standards for how applications expose themselves to menus, standards for syustem trays, and so on. This effort is still ongoing, but the end result is that GNOME, KDE and Xfce can share application menus, system trays, clipboards, icon themes, and more. With other things like the GTK-Qt theme and the QtGTK Style, we're steadily heading toward the point where applications will be able to slot in seamlessly competing desktops.

    So in some sense what you want is being done, but it is not going to involve one desktop to rule them all. For that you need dictatorial control from on high to simply say what is "right". You won't get that in FOSS; it's just not how it works. If you want that you need something like Apple or Microsoft, and the consequences that come with such choices (although, to be honest, I'm not sure they offer models of perfect consistency either).
  5. Re:The appalling GUI inconsistency by Bazzargh · · Score: 1 · on How Microsoft Dropped the Ball With Developers

    One of the nice things from this article was actually this nice screenshot of a selection of current versions of MS software running on Vista. The thing to notice is that not a single one of those applications has a GUI the same as any of the others.

    I actually thought that was a pretty weak point he was making there, since he was implying thatOS X is consistent. See eg these screenshots from the Mac (this selection is a bit dated - 2006 - but the situation isn't much different on Leopard). I'm a Mac user btw, and I don't find these differences all that offputting.

  6. Why need $millions to start a web2.0 company? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Dot-Com Bubble v2.0?

    Why do so many web2.0 companies need millions of dollars in funding to start a website? http://bla.st/ started on ~$300 and three months (part time) work. What other big costs are there other than Staff and Marketing?