A Glimpse at the Linux Desktop of the Future

hisham writes "Every now and then we see articles pointing out "what's wrong with Linux on the desktop." This one gives a nice overview not only of the problems we all know, but also where to look for solutions (app dirs, smarter filesystems) and what's out there (projects trying to change the face of Linux, like Klik, Zero Install and GoboLinux). Still, it usually boils down to things that Mac OS X already has or that are/were touted for inclusion on MS Longhorn. Fortunately, the major desktops stopped playing catch and are focusing on forward-looking Linux projects, like KDE Plasma and Gnome Beagle. Interesting times ahead."

Comments

Re:Dear Linux

[Markus_UW]

I have my 1280x800 working just fine... If I'm not mistaken, thats a rather similar aspect ratio, and a bizarre resolution. And my sound chipset doesn't work on a clean install of Windoze, but Slackware and ALSA found it just fine (and so did Fedora, Ubuntu, and SuSE).

Re:Mac OS X didn't work this morning

[James_Aguilar]

Conclusions?
1/ Mac OS X is not all that great

Way to go for the 'ole "Proof by Small Example" there.

Re:Seamless Vs Extensibility

[matvei]

One seldom commented disadvantage of tightly integrated desktops like Gnome/KDE is their lack of extensibility.

It's seldom commented because there is no such thing. The interoperability features that KDE provides are way more advanced than UNIX pipes.

Case in point: DCOP. Using the console DCOP client, or the DCOP APIs you can control almost every KDE program from your scripts. For example, if you want to pop up the K menu at the mouse cursor, just call `dcop kicker kicker popupKMenu 0`. Want to switch to the next virtual desktop using your script? No problem: `dcop kwin KWinInterface nextDesktop`.

With the evolving desktop, people stop writing general purpose tools that abstract data and functionalities as simple files and scripts, and instead write their stuff for specific desktops.

I don't really understand what your point is. AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong) there is nothing stopping you from using DCOP calls from a GNOME or XFCE application. If you are interacting with application X from your script, your script naturally depends on X. It doesn't matter if you use DCOP, D-BUS or pipes to do that.

Re:Desktop icons

[AKAImBatman]

Hello, Mr. Smith. You might want to reread my article. Immediately after the sentence you quoted is this:

For the purposes of easy to access files, it is in the user's interest to allow selected files to appear on the Desktop. In the proposed interface, the Desktop would be merely a label used by the system to identify which files should appear. As a result, the right click menu and/or toolbars can provide the user with the option to add or remove the file from the Desktop.

It tends to help to read the entire article before commenting. Don't worry, though. You're in good company. A large vocal user base has been misinterpreting my ideas since they've been posted. I'm working on a followup blog to see if I can hammer a few of these misunderstanding out. ;-)

Mods? How about a few points so that this correction will appear on par with parent post?

SymphonyOS???

[charnov]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Symphony and it's eadically different interface. SymphonyOS

Re:Dear Linux

[SenorChuck]

Actually, you can install the Creative sound drivers without the stupid original CD. I had to do this just yesterday.

I followed the instructions which I found here: http://www.help2go.com/postt14349.html

Hope this is useful to someone.