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Moving Toward a Single Linux UI?
Anonymous writes "With the releases of Fedora 9, Hardy Heron and OpenSuSE 11 so close together, it's looking more than ever like an evolution to a common interface for major Linux distributions. Here's a compilation of screen shots and descriptions that make it appear to be the case. Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?" There are plenty of other options out there, of course, even considering only Linux distros that are based on Gnome and KDE, and plenty of wilder (or at least less common) desktops to choose from besides.
80x25 white on black bash, baby.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Ouch, Slackware, never gettin' no respect. Slackware 12.1 was recently released as well.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
I guess that if we're keen on getting more people into Linux, then some commonality across the major distros might be a good thing. On the other hand, it's not so great for the smaller distros if we get a kind of monolithic Linux which dominates the market and means that people are less willing to try something different.
Still, there'll always be enough of us who want to use things because they're different - and because they are better at doing exactly what we want rather than being more generic, suit-everyone tools.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
I'm all for choice. True, that can make it a challenge for Linux adoption, but we all know what happens when a product becomes a defacto monopoly.
I'm convinced that 'competition' between KDE and Gnome has only help to improve the quality of both interfaces. Furthermore, having Xfce, KDE, Gnome, etc, gives the user choices not just in the colour, but in the actual design and philosophy behind the UI. In other words, there is plenty of room to try out new and exiting idea that would be difficult would there be a single, monopolistic desktop UI.
My $0.02 CAD.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
The Gnome and KDE desktops are fantastic for mid-to-high-end machines, particularly when used with enhancements such as Beryl or Compiz/Fusion. For those still on Pentium I boxes or those who just want a more responsive experience, "flat" window managers such as Icewm or fvwm(?) do the job just lovely. They all have their own quirks and other ways of doing things (such as rclick application menus or Darwinian "docks" or even NT-like interfaces, but it's that kind of choice that draws me to Linux for pretty much everything. The simpler interfaces also make it easy for Grandma to use (ever tried administrating Vista? NIGHTMARE!) but there is always room for improvement. Come to think of it, you don't even need a GUI. The ultimate speedfreaks among us can use the command line for even more speed and not only that, even more control over applications.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
"Missing out on the desktop effects in Mac OSX and Windows Vista? Don't worry, as Ubuntu has them, too: Wobbling Windows, Cube Switching, Flame Effect, and all. Ubuntu's developers introduced these Vista-like desktop effects in..."
Vista-like effects? Somebody PLEASE show me how Vista does the multi-faceted 3D cube, the wobbly windows, the multitude of enhancements and customizations to the UI, etc.
I yearn for the day when IT reviewers in supposedly "mainstream" publications stop sucking on the teat of MS marketing shills and actually do some friggin research
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. Don't even think of it as a product, think of it as a protocol. HTTP won out over Gopher, and the first is everywhere and makes all kinds of apps able to talk to each other; the second is a (fondly, for me) remembered also ran. And that's a good thing.
Because that's my first thought when someone mentions that they use xfce or CDE -- "wow, that desktop environment sure is WILD!"
Which one do you use, out of curiosity?
I think the opposite goal is more desirable - a platform standard which allows you to run your GUI on any machine.
Why should I learn Gnome or KDE if I already know Aqua, or vice versa?
The best solution would be an interface definition standard that lets you use KDE on Windows, Mac or Linux with no installation or configuration necessary - just download your profile from a server or USB key.
Oh, yeah, and I'd like a pony too, as long as I'm wishing on pipe dreams...
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
No, I don't think so really. The problem is a Mac is considered to be a Mac, it has its own interface that people are willing to use because it is a Mac, not a PC but a Mac. When someone installs Linux, they expect it to be like Windows because it is on a machine that had Windows on it, when it isn't the cheap copy of Windows they were looking for they don't bother to learn it and dismiss Linux as having a horrible UI because they won't learn it. The concept of an operating system that runs on most computers has been lost and is replaced with Windows running on X86 based computers (PCs) and OS X running on Macs, so often it seems that in order to explain what Linux really is you have to compare it to Windows, from there people get the wrong idea that the interface is just like Windows and see it as a free copy, when they see GNOME/KDE/XFCE they are confused as it isn't Windows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Not only will it be year of the linux desktop.. but hell will freeze over.
Lets face it, linux users love choice. And since they're more likely than not to be fanboys (c'mon, everyone knows a linux convert is preachy about his newfound OS), then they're probably also fanboys about UI.
are also popular Linux distros and both also had recent major releases which the article neatly ignores. Oh well. Lots of choices.
In any case, let's place bets if the thread degenerates into KDE vs. Gnome... ug!
Personally, I wish GNUStep had more recognition.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
There is a limit to the degree this is possible, of course. Aqua relies on more than just a proprietary widget toolkit; its components are also tailored to the proprietary configuration backends of the OS for which it was designed. The popular Linux desktop environments tend to be easily adapted to other more similar Unixes like Solaris or BSDs, but would not work well on Windows, which features a fundamentally different design.
Well, KDE 3 can be configured to look and act very much like OS X -- right down to the menu bar at the top. (KDE 4 has some of the newer desktop effects toys, but it also has about half the features of GNOME, which has less than half the features of KDE 3.)
But actually, we do have something like that -- it's called X. The problem is, of course, that Windows and OS X both threw away decades of work and started from scratch, so you can't just write an X window manager and expect it to work anywhere but Linux. (Or BSD. Or OpenDarwin. Or Plan9. Or Solaris. Or Cygwin. Or...)
Personally, I think the better solution would be a common runtime -- either high level (think Java, or the Web/AJAX) or low level (think x86_64 + Linux + X.org) -- so that I can customize my environment as much as I want, and then run the apps I want in that environment. Much more flexible when I can actually write brand-new window-managing software than try to create a common spec for configuring existing window managers.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Linux is unlike Windows... because, of course, Linux is Not Windows.
I am an atypical user for sure. Check my Slashdot ID, I've been around a while. I'm 35 and have used the SAME X11 configuration since I was a 19 year old sophomore at CMU in 1991. That's 17 years of twm goodness. I have no window decorations of any kind - no titlebars, resize grab areas, etc, etc. Moving, resizing, iconifying, etc, are all accomplished by either keystrokes or keystroke/mouse button combos.
I would not recommend my environment for anyone but myself. I've been with my wife since 1996 and she has NEVER been able to figure out how to do anything when sitting down at my Linux desktop. If I open a mozilla window for her she can just stay in there and be fine. But anything else, forget it.
The first thing I do when I install a modern Linux distribution is turn off all of the services that support Gnome and KDE programs. D-Bus, avahi, etc, etc, there are tons of them and they all just choke up the system when you are not running Gnome or KDE (and even if you do, but at that point they are a necessary evil). It's getting harder and harder to install new Linux distributions and manage to clean out all of the desktop related stuff that they install and run. All I want is X11, twm, mozilla/firefox, emacs, xterm, and a few other odds and ends. It annoys me when I install programs like ImageMagick and they require libgnome. Why? I don't run Gnome, why should the program require it? But I am being pretty curmudgeonly here. Aside from the minor annoyance of having to have libraries on my system that I "shouldn't need" (to continue to live in the early 1990's), there's really no harm in it.
I keep telling myself that someday I will have to suck it up and start using Gnome or KDE. But that day never seems to come because I don't *need* those things, and they never work seamlessly enough anyway to make them worth my while. I know that eventually I will *have to* because no Linux distribution will support my ancient way of working someday. But until that time comes I am unlikely to change.
If you're using Ubuntu, Fedora or Suse, then there's a possibility that you're an average Joe and you use your computer for general things like web surfing, email, word processing, perhaps even movies or managing your music collection. Or, you use it at work and only care about its general productivity applications. If you're this person, then a uniform interface across distros isn't a big deal. If you can point, click, and drag, then you probably won't ask for much more than that.
If you're a "power user" on any *nix distro (be it the three above or any others) and you like to customize every aspect of your kernel, desktop environment, and everything in between, then you'll already know which environment is your favorite and you're going to set it up the way you want it, anyway. So it doesn't really matter what the distro has by default.
So whatever a distro has by default really shouldn't matter, be it varied or vanilla.
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What matters far more is standardising the way the distros handle other things so that HowTos, installation scripts/instructions for printers etc can be written once without a whole lot of "On Ubuntu do this, on Fedora do that" stuff. Things that would help a lot:
*Pick one printer handling mechanism.
*Pick one package manager.
*Standardise one one usb/udev/pam.
*Pick one wireless management policy. Hide madwifi/ndiswrapper etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I agree! What the Linux Desktop needs is consistency and then it will be manageable to support and I can move everyone over to it.
"Here's a compilation of screen shots and descriptions that make it appear to be the case" I honestly don't get it. Those screenshots and descriptions do not have no connection to the summary. The summary makes no sense. What's the point of this story really?
The problem is though, what I find is easy might not be what you find is easy. What a lifetime Mac user finds is easy isn't what a lifetime Windows user thinks is easy. There are interfaces that are "easy" already out there, the problem is, to many, easy is simply little customization available. A common interface though, isn't what every computer needs though. For my aging Pentium III, JWM might be great for it, for someone with a quad core CPU and a fast graphics card Compiz-Fusion might be great for it. My aging Dell with a Pentium 4-era Celeron is great when using Xubuntu, however regular Ubuntu or Kubuntu is too slow for it. Different situations need different solutions. Different people need different solutions. Myself I find that Ubuntu is by far the easiest to give to a new computer user, for the long-term Windows user though, Kubuntu seems to be better. The thing that makes Linux great is there is no one thing that a Linux distro is, and thats part of the reason it is growing.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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).
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Dunno...
In the whole KDE vs GNOME thing, I lean very heavily in favor of KDE 3.5 and would choose it over GNOME in any situation.
Yet I would much sooner use GNOME than KDE 4, as things stand.
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The more all these distros converge and provide nearly identical desktops, the clearer it will be that most of them don't actually need to exist in the first place.
This is temporary, and is a common complaint about KDE 4.0. The idea with KDE 4.0 was to ship what they had to encourage further application development. There are lots of changes to KDE, including using a new version of QT (the underlying toolkit).
The basics are there, but customizeability, as you noted, is lacking. From what I understand, that flexibility (especially in terms of the main panel) will return with KDE 4.1, to be released this July.
KDE 4.0 isn't for everybody. After reading about some of these limitations, I decided to wait until KDE 4.1 before upgrading my Kubuntu laptop's KDE version. As I understand it, KDE 4.1 will bring applications like the PIM framework up to speed, and I should be able to make my desktop look and work like I'm used to with KDE 3.5 (a substantial alteration from the default).
KDE hasn't abandoned the philosophy of a very flexible user interface, it's just taking time to re-implement the features in the serious overhaul that is KDE 4. I can wait.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
For a long time most distros have had some kind of 'server' install to avoid this, infact I think it's always been that way.. the entire piece is just rubbish fluff.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
tar xvjf pidginwm.tar.bz2; ./configure; make; make install; exec >/dev/null
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
It's "easy" to throw away pretty much all legacy technology (like MacOS 10 did) and write something totally new (Aqua/etc) in a "proprietary" system that makes it "stand out", as you say. But you have to respect that Linux distros can do what they do and still remain with the very flexible and well-known X, all the while remaining completely open.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the tools and UI available in Linux distros when compared to MacOS. It is just a matter of the lack of a centralized company that strongly enforces consistency and a single set of tools. Also, development effort is split between competing UI's under Linux. Is that a good thing or a bad? You decide... good arguments can be made on both sides of the table.
Anyway, if you run a KDE environment and use ONLY KDE applications (or Gnome and used ONLY Gnome applications), things look, feel, react very consistently and pretty seamlessly and with a modern look and feel.
Well, X is a standard. So is dbus. Gstreamer will be supported by Phonon, so KDE4 will natively support it the way Gnome apps do.
Various pieces are often turned into libraries which are intended to work on both. Wrappers are often written so that you don't have to think about it -- I can check one little checkbox and all my gtk apps will use a qt theme, so if I wasn't a tech, I wouldn't even know Firefox wasn't a KDE app.
In order to do this, though, you have to understand just what it is you want to standardize.
Tell me one thing: Which problem are you trying to solve?
Are you trying to solve the problem of apps working on one system or the other? Completely solved. I use KDE, but I often use Firefox, and occasionally VLC -- both use gtk+, and were likely written for GNOME.
Seriously, I can type "sudo apt-get install foo", and I'll get an entry "foo" somewhere in my launch menu. Hell, even Wine can do that now -- I can double-click on an EXE and Wine will run the installer, drop menus in my Launch Menu under "Wine", and place shortcuts on the desktop. Yes, the desktop -- a folder called (surprise!) "Desktop", and shared between GNOME and KDE.
Are you trying to solve the problem of users having to choose at install time? (Oh no, a choice! Woe is me!) That's easy, too -- give them Ubuntu. It makes the choice for them -- they get GNOME. Those who later learn enough to care might switch to Kubuntu and KDE -- that doesn't even require a reinstall.
Are you trying to solve the problem of wasted effort within the projects? Don't bother. The GNOME people aren't ever going to provide as much configurability as KDE (I can choose what happens when I middle-click on a title bar!). But GNOME is the default choice for Ubuntu, so it gets a lot of polish -- it won't ever completely die.
Besides, competition is good. Each project does things the other won't. Each project is often improved in an effort to compete with the other.
And again, the big, important stuff often ends up being shared.
Are you trying to solve the problem of RAM usage? If that's a problem, in a day when often the minimum you'll get is 2 gigs, you've got bigger problems. And if you really do have those bigger problems, you can probably use a slimmed-down KDE or XFCE -- you'll probably be choosing apps specifically for low RAM usage (ruling out Firefox, maybe?) so all this means is you have to consider toolkit, also.
Or you just install Xubuntu and be done with it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
But what about X11? Well, these days, if you're using GNOME, or KDE, or Xfce, and applications written for those environments (which is to say most modern applications for X11 desktops) then you only have two toolkits, which can be themed so they render using the theme of the other (using either GTK-Qt theme, or QtGTK Style), and has consistent cut and paste that works across (and between) them all. Yes, you can get some Xlib applications if you hunt around, but then you can get ugly Tk applications on Windows if you hunt around (or X11 applications on the Mac). The reality is that, these days, the Linux desktop really isn't that much more inconsistent that Apple or Microsoft. Actually, I would go so far as to say that it is actually more consistent than what MS is currently producing.
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Exactly, I don't see how this is so major in Linux. In Windows just about every app has a different look and feel to it, some resembling Windows 9X, others XP, others Vista some others even seem to be more at home on the Mac while yet others seem to be totally original. With Linux, most anything starting with a "g" will look just fine on Gnome and just about that starts with a "k" will be good on KDE. About the only OS that everything seems to flow together like how everyone thinks Linux should would be Mac OS X and that is mostly because most of the applications people use are written by Apple themselves.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The KDE developers have stated that KDE 4.0 is more of a technology preview. A lot of functionality is still missing and is due to be added in the upcoming KDE 4.1 due out in July. As a long-time KDE user I'm sticking with 3.5.9 until this is resolved. Though KDE 4.0 looks a lot nicer, the missing functionality kills it for me. And when I hear people say that they should remove functionality because 90% of the users don't use it just makes life difficult for the 10% who do. I make heavy use of some of the less common options. I can't even use Compiz because some custom keyboard shortcuts I've added won't work in Compiz (i.e. I map Ctrl+Alt+F to toggle raising and lowering a window) since I often have 20 or more applications open at any given time. I really hope they keep the customizability and hope they just move the more advanced, rarely used options into an advanced tab or something.
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Is there really such a move towards a common UI as long as the major distributions have distribution-specific customization? Of course, the distributions have every right to do them, and many of them are helpful. They also serve as some of the most visible differentiators between the distributions.
But I don't think that a common UI will be achievable when there are significant differences out-of-the-box even among flavors of the same desktop environment.
Think about what it would be like if the command "ls" was named something different in every linux distribution. Part of Microsoft's success is that there are GUI contracts that are very rarely broken so you almost always know how to do basic tasks with a new program.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
The different widgets in that screenshot didn't bother me so much as the fact that all those semi-translucent window borders all over the screen make so much of the desktop into a blurry smudged mess.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
But then you wouldn't have the problem of expecting your machine to behave like Windows because it previously had Windows on it now would you. And I was referring to the many people who wiped their Windows machines for Linux
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
My main bone of contention with X11 is that it's not being developed seriously as a GUI interface for modern machines. It seems that most of the development is going into code cleanups (important), bugfixes (important) and other maintenance functions. But that's just it - this is all maintenance stuff. The tree needed the reorganization, the code needed to be more modular, etc - nobody is disputing that. On the other hand, threading is overdue and secure X11 channels are insanely overdue. The configuration file changes make things simpler, but it makes it harder to maximise the use of the monitor and graphics cards, even though it's easier (and safer) for the "standard" modes. Simplification is good, but any loss of capability is a regression.
The console is good - and fast - for many tasks, and with the introduction of framebuffers some time back, is capable of many of the tasks people had to use GUIs for in the past. To make the best use of it, though, you really need GNU Screen, and Screen just isn't being maintained that much any more. Really, with framebuffer support and other graphics features for consoles being considered, some of the features of Screen might have to be moved into the kernel in order to function correctly.
I don't use the option of serial-port consoles, so I'm not sure how capable those are these days. PCs are not in the same league as minicomputers or mainframes, so I doubt anybody is looking to hook up a couple of hundred VT220 terminals any time soon, but it is an interface and the underlying code for a terminal is independent of where that terminal is physically located. It should make no difference to Linux whether you are using the local keyboard/screen, a terminal on the end of a serial cable, or indeed a terminal on the end of a USB line.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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One problem causing lack of a unified UI is that *nix is less about the UI and more about what underlies it, always has been. UI is secondary. While *nix works forward to a UI, Windows is working backwards to having better innards. It's very interesting.
If there was a clear favourite in terms of Linux desktop environments then maybe you would have a point, but this big split between KDE and GNOME seriously undermines the credibility of this solution. Having some group of bigwigs who have provided themselves with a mandate to make one DE a standard by decree would be an incredibly destructive move. Relations between KDE and GNOME would be damaged, which would in turn cause harm to interoperability efforts. Users (especially users of free as in freedom software!) would become defiant in the face of this attempt to push them towards the One True DE, which would also cause problems.
I agree that standards and interoperability between DEs are important, but I think that trying to corral people into the DE of someone-or-other's choice is self-defeating, trying as it does to work directly against human nature. I favour the encouragement of collaboration between the DEs seen in projects like freedesktop.org. Nobody can make this desktop divide go away, so instead of undertaking mad social engineering projects I think that we should embrace diversity in a pragmatic way, trying to smooth over the bumps where possible but also reap the benefits (and there are some!) where we can.
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You could even configure a Windows box and a Linux box to look similar, but they are not, and shouldn't be.
Having standards is good when implemented well. They should not limit what people want to do with stuff an any way, and should only serve to help interoperability.
Standards should also not discourage development of non-standard ways of doing things. For instance. Standard keyboard layout is good. Forcing every interface to a computer to be the exact same, and a keyboard... bad.
Standard method of fixing a windows box being to switch to Linux, good. Forcing all XP users to move to Vista... bad.
Common method of selecting which interface to use... good. Forcing the use of only one user interface onto many computers with huge variety of purposes and priorities.... BAD.
I use Lindows, you insensitive clod!
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
I think all the tweaks in KDE have gone while they overhaul the whole project. The same thing happened to gnome a while back. Remember when GNOME was the king of customisation? Then everything disappeared into text files and then eventually new tweak UIs became available. I'm running an Ubuntu desktop now and, apart from the icon on the Applications menu, it looks and feels very different from Ubuntu. The same will happen with KDE4, you just have to be patient.
People keep saying this but I don't see it. There are a couple of gnome apps which use .NET, but they are not essential and are easily removed or replaced if Microsoft decides to play really rough. Just because Miguel is now a paid promoter for MS technologies, doesn't mean that the GNOME project is compromised.
I really don't see the problem with using technologies like .NET or Java, although the latter is now approaching full GPL. As long as the standards are open, and remember that .NET has had language support advantages over Java for some time which are only now being addressed in java6, a free implementation is possible.
Of course if FOSS does gain world domination, saying this in public will probably have me shipped off to "free camp" for re-education. ;-P
I don't therefore I'm not.
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A common UI for Linux would suck, because not everyone wants the same thing. If there's a common UI, then that means a bunch of people are going to lose something.
A common UI for "major Linux distributions" is probably a good thing, since even though not everyone wants the same thing, a vast majority are happy to settle for the same thing even if it doesn't fit them well (ever heard of "Windows"?). Those people are the most likely to use "major Linux distributions" and those same people are probably the ones you're most likely to end up having to talk to on the phone. "Click on the foot or gear icon, and then..." Talking grandma through an UI that you know (because you're used to talking people through that one, even if you don't use it daily yourself) is easier than talking her through one of a hundred UIs that you vaguely remember having tried out for a couple days two years ago.
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With the amount of flexibility designed into KDE 4, I wonder if it can become a standard basis for window management. Once it's mature, I think it could emulate the interfaces of GNOME, KDE 3.5, Windows, OS X, etc. The user could simply choose their interface style from a menu, without the need to change the underlying window manager. This wouldn't limit your choices, but it would make changing your interface style as easy as changing your desktop background. How cool would that be?
KDE 4 still needs to mature for this to even be a possibility. And there will always be a place for lightweight window managers like XFCE.
Seriously, I have been a Linux user since 1995 and all I can say now is it is about time. I honestly don't care anymore about this cry for choice and freedom... no one is taking anything away, just simply standardizing the base distro on one vision.
Unification of the UI throughout all apps and windows is a must. You just simply cannot hit a moving target. Get a solid base foundation built and then have at all of the niche and one-off app and distros you want.
My personal dream day is when a major distro finally comes out with one look, one of each type of app which is as polished and unified as possible, and one window manager. No more ridiculous things in the kernel like IBM PS2 micro channel controller drivers or similar outdated garbage (yes I know they are modularized but still). Give me streamlined, solid, stable, fast, and straightforward.
My only hope right now is that a company like ASUS will continue on their way and accomplish it that way. Which is something I never thought I would say. Lets stop playing games and stupid idealistic crap and make Linux a true contender. Right now as sad as it is to say OS X has matched my wishlist for Linux in a few years as apposed to the past 13 I've spent with Linux.
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Well one thing the distro's seem to have agreed upon - foistering bloated slow software on their users.
I tried to install Fedora and Ubuntu on an old laptop last weekend and had no end of frustration, and even after considerable tweaking the experience is far from perfect. This is a machine on which I easily developed 1000's of lines of code running emacs and netscape and gdb and evolution (ok it struggled a bit with all that at once, but only then).
The main problems are:
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
This is why I love the choice of UIs. When I use Linux I don't want it to look like OS X or Windows. Been there, done that.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Just wanted to say that this is the best description of the problem that I've read in a very long time.
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OS X has built in X11 support as well. Although it doesn't 'feel' integrated, it does exist.
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
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I use XFCE and don't really have a reason to switch to gnome or KDE. I mean I can't really imagine what I'm missing, except that I'm sure those two are slightly prettier than XFCE. It bothers me not having an idea of what my computer is actually doing.
Your analogy doesn't even make sense; those protocols are nothing like desktop environments. Also KDE, gnome, XFCE, etc. all have been quite "usable" for some time now, so I don't see the point in consolidating the work. And it's not as if it's difficult to write desktop-environment-agnostic GUI apps. Anyway I just don't see the point of your argument.
I wouldn't mind so much if we weren't heading towards total (Linux) world domination by GNOME, and GNOME is headed towards being dependent on The MS Clone Formerly Known As Mono.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Seriously, linux has been standardized on gnome and KDE for a long time now, neither of which are functionally different from the other in any really significant way. I would say they differ from the MS windows environment in half a dozen ways at most, most notably in the use of multiple desktops.
I'm using XFCE at the moment which is in the same category, just with the kitchen sink left out.
k3b or gimp or firefox each do much better trying to figure out how to
do best those things that make them unique relative to the others. All
of this quibbling about consistent minutia buys you really quite little.
Sure it's nice but the rest of what k3b that makes it different from
firefox (or nero) is far more meaningful.
Gimp could completely ignore silly notions about fixating on things
that could be common with open office and instead focus on the meat
and potatoes image interfaces and the end users would be no worse
for it really.
Companies that are the posterboys for HID end up subject you to
some really heinous UI crap once you get past the "standardized"
stuff.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is why I went to OSX when the first 64 bit Macbook Pro's came out. I got sick and tired of things breaking in Linux, radical changes in how you set your configs with every point upgrade, sound breaking, etc., with every kernel update. I used Linux for longer than i can remember (since it was experimental in the early '90's), and just couldn't take the time wasted anymore. I still have fond memories of AfterStep on Red Hat 4.2 on a computer that seems stone age now - the simple austerity of it was cleansing compared to the current GUI's, and except for having a nice background image on my Mac I keep things fairly austere there too. Yeah, there was a hassle moving from 10.4 to 10.5, but unlike the monthly hassles I have with my Linux box when some weekly upgrade breaks something visible even with my low current level of Linux useage. Eye catching buzz in the GUI is for kids, and after you get over the thrill of creating their own look I bet most of the kids will grow into something more useable later on. Coming up from a VT-100, I was enormously conscious of how most of the bells and whistles genuinely detracted from the actual user experience and diminished the usability of the computer overall.
... name your favorite) that have come to Linux and the world at large. I just had to leave Linux to quit wasting too much time fixing things that shouldn't have broken from an upgrade, wallowing in download hell to get some some latest and greatest tool to run (and sometimes dealing with things that broke too). I've never tried RHEL, and suspect their longer term view with that distro may set it apart, but I've had it with Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSe, Knoppix, etc., etc. The OSX GUI is a class act, and if you want to act like a juvenile you can, and likewise you can have a more austere grown up interface, things work, I can download Open Office (actually NeoOffice) and not pay a dime to let M$ undo my Unix security model, etc. If I want to change a config I can usually do it very simply (rarely do you have to go down into the bowels to set a config), I have 40+ GB of my own CD's ripped to a lossless codec, and life is sweet. The only thing I missed was the Tea Timer in KDE Toys (honestly).
The good side of all the cruft is that with the large community there are a lot of tools (Eclipse, Netbeans,
4.0.4 adding support for multiple panels, I believe. Also, each release has added some more configuration options (though most are going into 4.1).
I believe having 2 major environments is best. People always have disagreements on how things should be done, with two major environments it's easier to try your different options, and often times one will win (like DBUS being based on DCOP), or things where people don't really disagree on anything a single standard is formed (icon theme naming). A major rearchitecturing like KDE4 probably wouldn't have been easy to convince people to attempt if everything relied on it. During KDE4.0's development KDE 3.5 was still being developed in a mostly bugfix mode, but it'd likely have caused a fork with a single environment which might have taken years to end (look how long GTK 1 apps have stuck around... XMMS was only recently killed off).
Now that it's starting to appear like the major rearchitecturing of KDE4 is paying off, the Gnome/GTK camp have begun discussing a GTK3 that breaks binary compatibility. The Gnome camp and the KDE camp are constantly competing with each other, yet at the same time working together (generally under the banner of FreeDesktop.Org). It's really the best of both worlds, as they try to one-up each other, but there's no problem for a dev from one camp to go up to a dev in the other and ask about how they implemented something, or how they worked around certain problems with the implementation. A monopoly is a bad thing, regardless of whether it's a giant corporation behind it, or a free software project (this is one of my criticisms with Mozilla... they've mostly had a monopoly on the Linux desktop so have been prone to neglect it... now with WebKit becoming very popular people have a choice and Mozilla has proper motivation to improve Gecko's modularity and Firefox's integration and performance).
We don't even have Apple stores here. Apple has always been known for it's more intuitive interfaces, even before they became popular with the iPod and iMac.
Both KDE and GNOME seem to be innovating on a massive scale to bring us a GUI we've all grown to hate.
:)
Congratulations guys for bringing us the Windows 2000/XP GUI on Linux!
Sincerely, G.
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
You're using the wrong distribution if what you've got is too slow for your hardware.
Look at something lighter like Puppy or Damn Small Linux.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Since today's monitors that are sold on the market are in majority wide screened, has anyone given thought to having some kind of vertical task bar on either side of the screen? Instead of having the two horizontal bars at the top and bottom in Gnome or the single task bar at the bottom in KDE, I think that would be more appropriate to save screen space for application windows. Also, small icons and applications shown in the task bar have more space if its a little wider and vertical instead of having them all crammed up in a horizontal bar.
I found the the KDE taskbar was more fit for that job than the Gnome taskbar because the KDE one adapts and scales the icons and other applets accoringly where as the Gnome one doesn't.
And what about Windowmaker or GnuStep? With wide screens on laptops and desktop lcd monitors, maybe its time for them to make a comeback and have the dock on the side of the screen!
What do you think?
Well there you have it - you *cannot* have a quick, streamlined system that also has a modern, good looking desktop. That means no matter what you do, todays modern Linux distribution won't work as it was meant to work on a Pentium II.
Contrary to what early Linux supporters were bragging about, once you add the bling that makes the system easy to use and attractive to new users (and you *have* to add it to attract new and novice users so there's no escaping it), all that work invested in having a top-notch kernel just melts aways, and it all comes down to drivers and user interface.
Consider that Windows XP is now a *very* old operating system, but whose GUI is still the golden standard, and you'll see why geeking out on consoles with ridiculous number of columns and rows is so childish.
-- Sig down
You'd still have the differences in ways to accomplish tasks..
/opt
- Upstart vs Sysvinit
- LVM vs not
- ext3(4?) vs. ???
- network device handling (/etc/sysconfig/network/ vs. ???)
- third party stuff in
- the battle each "packaging company" (yes, that would be valid) would face in maintaining that commonality, and the inability for the cats to be herded...
Diversity is good and healthy, and it's not too much of a stretch to say that "Good health is Diversity".
...and some people never masturbate.
some people never *need* to, but many *want* to.
Some people never meditate or pray, either, and it's safe to say that the do's will never know or share what the don'ts see/feel/experience, and vice-versa
There's enough room for everyone, and it's never going to get smaller.
As long as the source remains available, you'll never be shut out from your favorite curmudgeonly environment.
What's the point? If you want OS X, run OS X.
> What's the point? If you want OS X, run OS X.
The point is, why do I have to learn to use different interfaces to do the same kinds of things? I should be able to pick one I like (say Aqua) and use it on any computer.
It would be great if you could just learn how to use a computer *once*, but in our current state of affairs, you have to learn over and over again.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
* ducks * What's funny about ducks?
I always wonder why 'evolution' is used so much in software development when the implication is that there is no design involved. I know there is some design so 'progression' seems to be the better word. If anything the connotation associated with 'evolution' should make people realize that it is the wrong word and doesn't mean what people want it to, unless of course those at Red Hat and Novell really are letting time take its course and the software has AI to build itself without being designed by developers. I hardly think that is the case though.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Yes, I know, I had a Mac.
And you're right. It doesn't feel integrated, it's not really as accelerated, and it's not really going to be easy to replace the default UI with an X window manager -- or run OS X apps under X (particularly for things like actual remote X terminals).
Now, there are some fairly interesting things about the OS X graphics system, but there's exactly one proprietary implementation, so it's not really a good target for a standard.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Please don't let this become a slashdot meme. Please don't let this become a slashdot meme. Please don't let this become a slashdot meme.
There, I said it.
Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
Would it really harm anyone if each distribution offered a version of linux for beginning users that installs a single, unanimously agreed upon interface configuration that works the same across the board in all versions? It would certainly make attempts to document linux for first-timers a lot simpler if they actually saw what's in the book on the screen while they learn.
(More advanced users would still be able to obtain their "clean" linux flavor of choice to hack as they see fit...)
8==8 Bones 8==8
IMO Windows XP is a quick, streamlined system that also has a modern, good looking desktop.
It is also expensive. It has many security flaws discovered, but imagine that, running on most of the x86 desktops of the last decade. They are quickly patched and honestly my last security "incident" was in Windows 98 because I unwittingly installed a trojan.
Of course it is not open source, and periodically an installation must verify its legitimacy. On the other hand, it is gobsmackingly stable if you don't let it get overrun by crapware and if you have the technical expertise to troubleshoot most Linux issues you shouldn't even have to think to keep WinXP in shape.
I'm not a shill, every few years I try a handful of popular distros and have yet to find one I really like - but Ubuntu looks better and better. Actually I do like it, I just don't have a use for it. I have an OLPC XO-1 and it is very easy to use (and very very rough/incomplete around the edges... and center.) But I still happily run XP Pro because I have experience from DOS 3 onward, so I've never had a problem with all the bogeymen like BSOD that opponents still seem to think happen often. (I've seen a few... faulty RAM, unmountable boot volume errors on work PCs I fix (one mindless "repair install" later it's fully recovered and lost nothing,) and that's about it.) I don't know what my nominal uptime is because every month or two my giant hotrod obelisk of a desktop makes my room too hot and I shut it off overnight.
I also really like recent versions of OS X... it crashes on me every week or two, but I forgive it because it's... I don't know - comfortable?
Nothing against Linux, I've just never found one that offers me anything special or is worth the effort to set up and maintain it. It's not at all too daunting technically, but spending days on end running a maze of inconsistently written manpages and help articles to do basic tasks is... miserable. Still, in the last five or so years this has become much more the exception than the rule as far as I've seen so... it gets more viable every day (and already is for some.)
Here's a twenty; go buy some RAM.
Yeah, I miss my Amiga too, but at $20 a gig, I don't mind throwing a little memory at a problem if it means I can develop robust software in a tenth the time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
But a number of important things stay the same. For example, in any document-based application, Alt,F,S and Ctrl-S both give you Save. Always. Everywhere. Now, I've never used IE7 (I'm currently using Opera on Ubuntu...), and from your screenshot it doesn't seem to have a menubar. I don't know whether it just doesn't have a menubar, or whether it's hidden by default. But somehow I can be pretty certain that, whichever the answer is, pressing Alt,F,S will still give me save.
To be fair, Gnome now does this just as well as Windows. All the standard Gnome apps conform to the same guidelines. So let's look at a related area: well-defined boundaries in keyboard shortcuts. For example: in Evolution, check mail is F9; but Compiz uses F9 for its widget-gadget-dashboard thing by default. Problem: if you turn on 'extra effects' in Compiz, every time you check mail, you get your screen taken over by a moded widget overly
Now, why does this happen? F9 is check mail in Evolution because that's what Windows uses; and F9 is Dashboard in Compiz because that's what Mac OS uses. In Windows, F? keys on their own are per-application shortcuts. On a mac, F? keys on their own are system-wide shortcuts. On Linux, there is no one dictated standard, so everyone picks whichever convention they prefer, and you get conflicts.
Having well-defined app/system keyboard chord boundaries is a lot less sexy that mandating the colour of all applications toolbars, to be sure. But, as a UI contract, it's the more important of the two.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
And there I was all along thinking it was a kernel!
How out of touch can you be?
having gnome as the only wm is a lot like having george.... no wait he is president. oh well you get my point. stop being so freaking naive that the look of the desktop is how you determine quality of os.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
See my reply to your previous comment on the same topic.
(BTW, "Several applications, while similar, just work slightly differently for various things like opening files..."? When I was using Windows, I don't think I came across any application, ever, that didn't use the OS common file dialogue. What program are you claiming doesn't?)
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Once I was talking with dear old lady who works at my child's school, and I noticed that her computer was running Linux. So I asked her what distribution she had installed.
"What's that word? Distribution. What's that?", she said.
And you expect her to know what package managers and window managers are, let alone the plethora of competing projects and their philisophies?
I talked with her about it some more, and apparently a retired computer enthusiast had installed Linux on all the school's computers.
Anyway, the average user that buys Linux pre installed or what have you won't really need to be aware of all the competing options, so long as they can point and click and find the Firefox icon.
And the power user will just install what they want.
So where's the need for uniformity?
IMO, KDE sucks. If I wanted to run M$-Windows, I would.
IMO, Gnome is annoying, but less so than KDE.
I do not like the way a Mac GUI works, either.
If you want specifics, I can list them, but they're in old posts here.
Any common GUI is going to both suck and be VERY annoying, AFAICT.
I know that there are LOTS of KDE fans out there, and I'm happy that they have the choice, and the same applies for Gnome fans.
Personally, I need to take a few days and see if I can get Sawmill/Sawfish running again. For me, it's been all downhill since then, since I really resent the loss of useful screen real estate to tool bars and the like, and even that one seems to have lost the ability to have a window focused, but NOT front.
One of the nice things about Linux is that we don't all have to march to the same piper's tune. Why is there anyone trying to ruin that just to make it acceptable to some corporate dweeb who is NEVER going to use it anyway (since they're so brainwashed by M$, and the few cases where M$-Windows has a useful feature that no one has bothered to duplicate)?
I have already ordered OpenBSD 4.3 for a firewall, and could try it for a desktop, if Linux keeps trying to be M$-Windows, or continues to degrade my desktop experience.
Ducks aren't that funny.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
void karmakiller(int depth) {
// I win, but you have to read it bottom up :P
for (int i = 0; i < depth; i++) printf("| ");
printf("What's funny about this?\n");
karmakiller(depth+1);
}
int main() {
karmakiller(0);
}
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
... But you have to respect that Linux distros can do what they do and still remain with the very flexible and well-known X, all the while remaining completely open.There is nothing inherently wrong with the tools and UI available in Linux distros when compared to MacOS.
(If your answer to that is "Yes, and it was relatively easy, because it was within the last year and so since XRandr 1.2 was released, and I have xrandr-supporting drivers", then I'll raise the problem to getting three monitors to work, at all, somehow, ever. Considering that xrandr only supports two monitors and any drivers which support xrandr don't work with xinerama in any non-pathalogical way, good luck! (Maybe, in a few more years, xrandr will be able to handle more than two screens, and X will be where Windows Mac OS were... 10 years ago...). ).
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
what do you mean... its Window Maker
This is NOT a signature.
If we use a single UI for all Linux PCs everyone will have to share one monitor! I don't think that's very convenient.
Maybe we can work out a compromise - like one UI every 100 square kilometers. The monitors could then be made really big and attached to blimps. Would that be acceptable?
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I for one welcome our "What's funny about this" repeating overlords but in Soviet Russia overlord welcomes you.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Gopher, obviously.
for (int i = 0; i < depth; i++) printf("| ");
printf("What's funny about this?\n");
karmakiller(depth+1);
}
int main() {
karmakiller(0);
}
How do things like that get modded "insightful"?
1. GDM -- why would distributions work extra-hard just so you could install "your choice" of a login screen? Because it's "bloated"? How bloated is GDM? What computers can't handle it? How were they configured? After all, after you log-in, GDM does nothing, so all its dirty pages would just get paged to swap, and that would be that. A little bit of swap space? Is that the problem? How old is the laptop? Because on my 4-year-old laptop, it works fine.
2. Desktop applets -- I'm pretty sure it is easy to turn off any desktop applets. After all, half of them support "remove from panel" natively, and the ones that don't are pretty easy to disable, if you're that hard-core. It is probably not cost-effective for distros to invest that much maintainance on something that nobody uses. "Has no battery"? So this old laptop is powered by love and harmony?
3. Ah, life wouldn't be complete without a rant against Python, complete with implying that Python programmers are drooling idiots because otherwise they would have chosen a "real" programming language like C. But wait, there's more! After doing a back-of-the-envelope analysis of Python's performance problems (sans the envelope, of course), there's also a clear explanation of how to solve them. Never mind that the VM is loaded just once because of how executable pages work under linux.
And these days, there's an alternative. Get an eeePC or equivalent. For 300$, there's no longer need to resurrect your old laptops with crappy battery life.
Which one? I've seen several different OS file dialogs under Windows.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Dude, javac gives me a compile error. It doesn't understand 'printf', can you help me fix it?
maybe someday there will be only one look and feel, regardless of the distribution
Well, there may be a similar look, but I don't suppose there will be a similar feel (i.e. looks can be made similar, but functionality of the different DEs is pretty far from each other), so this is a real no go for all those people who choose their DE because of its features, not just because of its looks. There are some DEs which I'd never consider using, since simply don't provide me those behavioral and functional elements that I came accustomed to have, and I won't pick to use them even if they provide a visual consistency similar to my DEs of choice.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Mandriva is still better IMO.
What's in a sig?
In Soviet Korea "What's funny about this" repeating overlords welcome only old people.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
// I win, but you have to read it bottom upTruth is, you are a top-poster moron!
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
What I love about Outlook 2007 is that the main window uses a standard menu and toolbar setup, while the compose email/appointment window uses the office "ribbon" thing. Yes, that's right: Outlook manages to be inconsistent with itself. Office 2007 is even worse under XP, since it doesn't even use the standard Windows XP window border.
Also fun are realizing that almost no Microsoft application actually uses native controls. Notepad in that screenshot is the only Microsoft application using native controls.
Internet Explorer 7 doesn't even use native Windows scrollbars, emulating them horribly. Try it out if you have it installed - none of the mouse-over animations trigger. (This also happens in XP, although it's much less noticeable, but it's there. Open a Windows Explorer window and an Internet Explorer window and move the mouse over the scroll bars and compare.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
What is the summary author on? What part of "oh, a few distros are released at a similar time" equates to "they are all working to a common UI, or should be"?
I'm sure that everyone with their eyes closed or their monitors switched off will agree that Suse with the single bar and a slightly Windows-esque launch pad menu and seemingly a single desktop is very close to Fedora with its fairly standard Gnome layout, which looks almost identical to a graphical installer, a text-based installer and a Windows app for installing Ubuntu from Windows. About the only similarity is that they seem to use a similar Clearlooks-style widget set.
As for Compiz, I won't even bother going in to the detail of it being a separate project that lots of people use across many distros.
Please don't let "Please don't let this become a slashdot meme" become a slashdot meme!
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!
I had to reply to this because it's the biggest load of BS I've read all da.
All my extended family uses Ubuntu now because they can't afford macbooks and commercial software and have found Gnome to be totally usable. Plus they have old PC's and found Windows to become unstable and totally unusable after a year or so of use.
Copy/paste works in Linux. It WORKS. Try it.
Great OS for people on a budget. Not just geeks.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
"The problem is, of course, that Windows and OS X both threw away decades of work and started from scratch"
MS released the first version of Windows in 1986, and previews of NexStep (which is the foundation for OS X) began in 1986 too, so development work on both was pretty much concurrent with the original MIT version of X (1984, with X11 appearing in 1987). It's not therefore correct to say that either threw away decades of work.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
You know, reading the output of this gives me an idea: deeply-nested funnies printed on coffee cups.
A cunning person should get on cafepress and produce some mugs before this "What's funny about this?" dies out!
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
I really do not care except that it is insane to force people to get adapted to different relative locations of OK and Cancel.
Somebody adapted to one way will constantly make mistakes when forced to the other way.
Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense ?
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
I totally agree. When the average user says that **insert vastly inferior OS here** is EASY-TO-USE, what they actually mean is that it is FAMILIAR. With all the desktop customisation that goes on these days in Linux-land, it's no wonder there isn't a familiar desktop that users can get used to. Maybe it's time to start giving these users a REAL option by removing as many superfluous desktop options as we can.
http://stoploudness.org/
It can, but not everything plays nicely. As on major example, Firefox won't put its menu bar at the top of the screen. An inconsistency with a major application like that renders putting the menu bar at the top of the screen pretty futile. Hopefully Firefox 3 fixes that. KDE also by default puts a border on maximised windows, which puts the scroll bar a couple of pixels away from the edge of the screen, which is just plain stupid. At least it actually can maximise windows, unlike OS X.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I think it is a great idea to have a unified UI for Linux. It can be overwhelming for a newcomer trying to transition to Linux, but knowing that there are hundreds of different distributions out there with different capabilities and sometimes different UIs. The system can be set up, and often times already is, to offer alternative UIs if the user so chooses, but keep to a standard interface by default. That way, once the user gets familiar enough with the system where he wants to explore and change settings, he can.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
To me, this is just a sign that the community, and the software that has been built, is maturing. Rather than endless throwaway projects, things are starting to come together and less work is being duplicated.
And as long as the separation in the stack is maintained (so kernel, window manager, applications etc are interchangeable), I don't see this as a problem. 'Linux' as an OS will become more defined, and easier to support which can only be good. At the same time, all the customizations that geeks love to do will still be possible, possibly even easier than now.
I'm bringing that one back!
Put identity in the browser.
I do not forsee a single Linux UI becoming mainstream any time soon. Variety and open source projects are the very core of Linux. There will always be things one person favors over another and so on. Sure, maybe all distros will start shipping with the same default UI, but not everyone would adopt it, ever. Unless said UI contains options that would allow you to make it look like basically every currently popular UI (*box, enlightenment, etc). But then you'd have pages upon pages of configuration options.
Yes, indeed it *is* pretty easy now under most Linux distros for most hardware.
Historically, some Xservers have been capable of multihead long before there was such as thing as Quartz or MacOS 10. And it was doing it long before MS-Windows could. In fact, before there was Xorg, XFree, or even Linux.
But you are correct that it wasn't necessarily *easy* to do, but it wasn't in much demand, either. As demand increased, tools to make it easier evolved. Was that a limitation of X? No. Because X is just a graphics protocol. X has been multi-display/multi-head capable for an extremely long time.
Trashing X because multihead wasn't easy would be like throwing away OpenOffice because it doesn't have a rotate page option during printing. You can rotate the page BEFORE printing. Or the feature could be added into the printing dialogs if necessary.
On the flip side, the X protocol and Xorg/Xfree are completely open source and multiplatform, neither of which MacOS nor MS-Windows are. And X still maintains almost 100% backwards compatability with the protocol spanning all the way back to 1987 (prior to that, it changed too much for full compatibility).
Older people, and those who aren't familiar with, or interested in computers often get really confused is things aren't consistent from pc to pc. Having spent a number of years working tech support for a major ISP (thank god that's over...) I have to say that a standard UI can be great.
I've noticed that a lot of Slashdotters seem to think that everyone should be able to do all the techie things they do if they just sat down and tried, but if you've ever spent 45 minutes on the phone with some old woman crying on the other end that this is far too complicated for her, and why can't we just send someone out there to do this for her, and you're still on "Step 1: Plug in telephone line to wall jack." (I am NOT exageratting) then you'll probably realize that it's a good thing if these people's UIs are laid out in roughly the same manner.
If you feel comfortable doing so, then you should be free to tweak and customize all you want, but a lot of people can only handle step by step instructions.
A certain amount of consistency out of the box is a good thing if you want Linux to have mass appeal. Although personally, I'd want to be able to maintain the same amount of variety and customability. I just think that making it so that there's a default UI that is consistant between distros.
Who cares about having a single UI? Do you want the exact same room as everyone else with the exact same paint - that black bar at the bottom, those mountains in the background, and the news/weather to the right? It may seem silly, but it's the screen we spend a good portion of the day staring at, it's practically another room.
You're going to have a hard time convincing those working on FVWM, XFCE, Fluxbox, and all the other non-KDE/GNOME desktop environments that a universal paint color has been decided upon and that they should all just roll over and accept it.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
right now I get a different file manager
opening up for every application I run -
no consistency whatsoever - browser,
print screen saver, general file manager,
etc. all bring up different applications
with different saved state
there needs to be a common file manager
with common saved state (most recent
folders visited, default folder, favorites,
etc. etc. etc.)
I spend my time redrilling down from top
level folders everytime I want to save-as
or open or create new files.
it's a joke
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Here's an idea: create one UI that is flexible enough to be customized however you like--even customized to have fewer settings to customize ;-o (lots of programs have a choice between "basic" and "advanced" settings anyway). That way you not only have choice, but you can have a "best of both worlds" interface with your favorite features from one together with your favorite features from the other.
Well, KDE 3 can be configured to look and act very much like OS X -- right down to the menu bar at the top. (KDE 4 has some of the newer desktop effects toys, but it also has about half the features of GNOME, which has less than half the features of KDE 3.)
Does that include an exact replica of the dock working exactly the same as in OS X? I'm asking seriously as that is the only thing I want from OS X when I am using Linux. I'd use AWN if my hardware could do compositing, but it can't, and can't do it in a VM either.
#!/
I have been lurking for a few years. I figured it was time to toss in a few thoughts. Check MY /. number. Two comments...
1) I provide basic support for XP and Mac workstations and networks. I have installed Ubuntu a few times and played around with Debian in the pre-Ubuntu days. I get the basic install finished. OO.o, firefox, and thunderbird all humming nicely and I have essentially reached parity with the most basic functions. Next I will pop in a cd and I am in what feels like troubleshooting mode. I can self teach my way through using apt, finding and reading documentation with a text editor, but at the end of the day I spend time trying figure out how to download the right app (I mean pkg) and get it installed and config'd with my hardware. All of this to supplant what felt much easier on a proprietary platform.
The GUI should bring software, hardware, and user together in a way that easy, efficient, and enjoyable. I would place more emphasis on ease than eye candy. All the *nix power users love command line because they conformed their brains (taught themselves) the intricacies of an arcane foreign language. Because of their disposition this pursuit was fun in and of itself. For the average user a computer is not a puzzle that they will have fun trying to solve. They want a tool that they can use as easily as possible to solve other problems. The GUI should be designed to provide this intuitive ease of understanding. If I want to listen to or rip a cd, how can the OS/gui make this process as easy and as intuitive as possible?
2) Closer to the debate. I wonder what lessons the content v. style debate in web development has to offer the conversation. This thought comes from one who knows html, css, a little php, and a little javascript. I am not a programmer (IANAP?), but is it possible to have software define the content of certain functions (i.e. cut, paste, print, etc.) and let the gui universally decide how to make those functions available? It seems as though each app (even within the windows and make screenshots included in earlier comments) are defining their own look and feel. The software can define the function and the gui can provide how those functions are made available. Sort of like applying a theme to firefox, only the theme (interface) connects to where the print option appears in menus, what shortcut keys can access print, and where the print button appears in toolbars. It seems like each pkg developer makes these "style" decisions creating inconsistency. There seems to be a desire to define a consistent style and try to persuade all the developers to conform. Instead let pkg developers create functionality and let gui developers create consistent hooks for how that functionality is accessed and displayed within all pkgs. This would allow copy and paste to show up in the same place/way across the entire gui. Flexibility and consistency, but probably a completely different way for pkgs and gui's to interact.
Now where is my free pony?
I get really frustrated every time I read something about 'the battle for the desktop environment' and stuff. Do that many people really believe there is some contest over which DE is to be the mainstream?
There's no need to throw all the DEs into a melting pot and try to make one thing, people have their own preferences. All that's really getting done at that point is another DE is being made for people to argue over about which is better.
Maybe it's better that way, though... I just feel like a lot of 'uncool kids who just don't get it' jump into the scene and start arguments that don't need to be there.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
You're missing a return statement in an int function . . . I'm sorry I noticed. :(
That's ok, I had no intention of returning :)
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Indeed, but what they threw away is the lessons of two decades of X development in favor of proceeding with their own proprietary architectures.
Apple especially had an opportunity to do something about it when they built Quartz and Aqua from scratch - when they were retiring QuickDraw and Display Postscript. Quartz is pretty cool, with its PDF-style display model, but it's not open and it's not capable of the neat things X is capable of, which is a pity.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
The sad thing about freedom is all the choices?
Frankly my experience with the Fedora9 GUI is not a good one. Upgrades that remove/reduce features aren't a good thing in my book.
Incorrect. I use a Mac as my primary desktop machine and have for years, I know the semantics. While what you say may be the theory, it is not the practice. In practice the green button means whatever the hell the developer wants it to mean. Firefox, for example, while displaying content larger then the screen (eg. a large image) will never expand to fill the entire screen, it always leaves a gap on the right. TextWrangler leaves a similar gap. This is horrible for usability, as it leaves no simple way to put the scroll bar at the edge of the screen using those applications. Safari, displaying the same content as Firefox, doesn't leave a gap. Don't think that's because Apple always do it right: iTunes will shrink to a minimalist player rather than expand to display as much of the playlist as possible. In theory the green button is nice and it does sometimes work. But I'd like a true Windows-style maximise as well, one which fills the screen to remove visual clutter and puts the scroll bar at the edge where it's an order of magnitude easier to hit.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
But for some reason, I've fallen back to a default where the only difference between a normal window and a maximized window is the size and the fact that the "maximize" button is now a "restore" button.
I can see where it makes sense in that you can grab that border and resize just as if it wasn't maximized. I still wish I could figure out how to get this back to the Ubuntu style, or tweak that default -- knowing that KDE does, in fact, provide a way to tweak just about any default.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
However, I was using WindowMaker before I ever touched OS X. It's not an "exact replica" in that it looks very different -- downright ugly, compared to OS X -- but it functions pretty much the same. They share common roots, in any case -- NeXT.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Both allow you to install KDE just by using a different disk image at install time.
to everyone wanting eye candy, instead of practicality, in which Linux is famous for. Instead of pretty eye candy, why don't you put in a real effort to solve the installation problem once and for all? That's one major problem that's holding back a lot of people. Yes, I know Apt-get, yum, etc. Except for one thing. They don't work reliably, and even major programs aren't in it. I can install Firefox, and Thunder-bird via tar.gz without a problem, but Pidgin? Even with Apt-get it's impossible to install without major surgery. And don't get me started on Ubuntu - 3 years, 4 different computers, not one time has it installed correctly. Debian 4 installs on all 4 systems with very little, to no problems at all. Folks, can we please solve these problems first before we do a MS and concentrate on eyecandy and bloat? Otherwise we'll have our own Linux Vista. - Kc
-- Kevin C. Redden kcredden@ gmail 392992
Incredible. I went from 5 Funnny to 0 Offtopic to 5 Funny to 0 Offtopic. Wow. All I can say is W O W.
BTW, why Offtopic? I would have understood Redundant, but Offtopic? Since when is Slashdot nonsense offtopic on Slashdot? Come on people!
Final remark: I may have been modded into oblivion, but look how many 5 Funny posts happened because of mine. I CREATED YOU!!!
"they threw away is the lessons of two decades of X development in favor of proceeding with their own proprietary architectures"
Perhaps they, like many in the UNIX community during the mid 1990s when X was a horribly slow, resource-hogging POS, simply believed that it was poorly suited to personal computers, and therefore not worth considering. There have after all been alternative UNIX-based projects that were intended to overcome what many saw as inadequacies in X, e.g. NEWS, Berlin / Fresco, and Y Windows. Others have attempted to overcome its performance problems by providing direct interfaces to hardware within the X framework (FBUI, DRI, etc.)
"Apple especially had an opportunity to do something about it when they built Quartz and Aqua from scratch - when they were retiring QuickDraw and Display Postscript."
Mike Paquet, who was one of Quartz's authors, said that the reason Apple chose not to use X (after spending some time considering it as a possibility) was due to the fact that their version would end up being so different to any other version time they'd added all the features they wanted that it wouldn't have been compatible.
"but it's not open and it's not capable of the neat things X is capable of"
What "neat things" can X do that Quartz isn't capable of?
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Ha ha ha. Good try John.....
Oh, I'm not suggesting that they should have simply adopted X11 and modified it, just that they should have taken some inspiration from the feature set. All the alternative GUI projects you mention had good ideas that would provide fertile ground for a designer of display architectures.
Inded, and he would know. However, the situation they have now - running X11 on top of Aqua - is not exactly ideal for X11 users. We have some researchers on our faculty who had a devil of a time getting display forwarding to work right on the Macs, for example.
Mainly network transparency, user configurability, choice between multiple window managers, and the ability of a single machine to have multiple GUI users simultaneously logged in.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
"I'm not suggesting that they should have simply adopted X11 and modified it, just that they should have taken some inspiration from the feature set."
Perhaps they would have done so if certain aspects of that feature hadn't made X into a less than ideal system for handling graphics on stand-alone computers.
"the situation they have now - running X11 on top of Aqua - is not exactly ideal for X11 users."
The alternative from Apple's viewpoint (i.e. building Aqua on top of X11) would have involved changing so many aspects of X11 itself that they'd still have been faced with writing yet another compatibility layer on top of it to run X11 applications, so we'd have ended up with a situation that's pretty much the same as the one we have now.
"Mainly network transparency"
Apple, Microsoft, and a variety of third parties have managed to produce graphical remote desktop software that works extremely well over networks without incurring X's overhead when handling graphics on stand-alone machines.
"user configurability"
I fail to see where X itself (as opposed to some of the software that runs on top of it) is more configurable than Quartz or the Windows device layer.
"Choice between multiple window managers"
This is not an attribute of X itself. There's nothing to stop people from writing different Window managers that run on top of the base Quartz Compositor layer or the Windows GDI apart from the fact that very few of Microsoft's or Apple's customers would want to use it. Note also that there are many FOSS supporters who regard the plethora of window managers, desktops, and toolkits on Linux as being one of the primary reasons for its failure to compete as a desktop OS, so it's debatable whether X gains or loses from not having a standard window manager and desktop.
"The ability of a single machine to have multiple GUI users simultaneously logged in"
Both Apple and MS support a variety of mechanisms for doing this, e.g. VNC and RDP. They also have their own software for remotely managing clients (in the standard client / server sense rather than the way X uses client and server), i.e. Apple Remote Desktop and Microsoft Terminal Services, both of which have capabilities that go far beyond those of X (e.g. shared clipboards, remote drag-and-drop, file and printer redirection, and a bunch of other stuff).
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
All that matters is a common API, not so much a common desktop layout (but that can be somewhat useful too if there is some standardization on that which will come from users voting their preference by preferring certain desktops). Having a common API at least means that the DEs will play nicely with one another, which is extremely important if users want to keep a maximum freedom of choice to move between them.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Could be. I don't know enough about the design of X11 to say one way or the other, but I will say that A/UX (ca. 1991) provided a smoother integration of X11 and Macintosh than Mac OS X does.
Perhaps not X itself, but as should be apparent by now, when I talk about X, I'm speaking broadly of X-based interfaces.
Even if Quartz/Aqua offer some measure of user configurability, this is not something that Apple endorses, supports, or promotes. As such, it's more of a quirk than a selling point.
Again, this may be possible, but Apple does not make it easy or tout it as an advantage of their user interface. They prefer to give us a one-size-fits-all solution.
Yes, but these are not transparent methods and require the user to make extra efforts to use them. I would love to see multiple monitor/keyboard/mouse support out of the box, but I'm not holding my breath.I have to admit I'm no exper on these, but from my experience of ARDC, it is sluggish enough to make it a pain to use on a daily basis. It's something I would only want to use when I have no other choice. Certainly not to run workaday apps remotely.
All this niggling, however, is getting away from my original point - there is a need for standardized GUI configurability. Apple could be at the forefront of this approach (think multi-user Spaces and screen sharing on one machine), but instead they seem committed to promoting Aqua (or rather Leopard's GUI now, whatever that is called) and giving just enough support to administrators and X users to mollify them. I wish they would be a bit more daring, and really turn the GUI world on its head again.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
" will say that A/UX (ca. 1991) provided a smoother integration of X11 and Macintosh than Mac OS X does."
Agreed.
"as should be apparent by now, when I talk about X, I'm speaking broadly of X-based interfaces"
What do you mean by "interfaces"? The design of toolkits for example isn't dependant on any properties of X: Qt has been ported to both Windows and OS X, and uses native widgets in each, and there are (currently partial, but working) KDE ports for each of them.
"Even if Quartz/Aqua offer some measure of user configurability, this is not something that Apple endorses, supports, or promotes."
They certainly don't promote them, but they endorse and support them for developers. The difference therefore is what each considers to be a developer: in the Linux world, there is no real distinction between end users and developers, whereas both MS and Apple regard them as being separate categories who have separate requirements.
"Again, this may be possible, but Apple does not make it easy or tout it as an advantage of their user interface."
1) It's absurd to suggest that writing a window manager for _any_ system is easy, and writing one for X is just as hard as writing one for the Windows GDI or Quartz.
2) Neither of commercial vendors tout it as an advantage of their UIs because it isn't an advantage of their UIs (Quartz and the Windows GDI are part of the drawing subsystems that their UIs use), and it isn't an advantage of the X UI either because it doesn't have a UI.
"They prefer to give us a one-size-fits-all solution."
That's because unlike X, Apple and MS have window managers and UIs as part of the base system. IMO this is one of the major reasons for their success among non-nerds.
"these are not transparent methods and require the user to make extra efforts to use them"
VNC is a transparent method because the original source has been used to produce a wide variety of implementations, some of which are FOSS. It is a standard protocol built on another standard protocol (RFB).
RDP is an likewise an extremely well documented protocol that's based on T.128, and therefore has both FOSS and proprietary implementations of servers and clients.
"I have to admit I'm no exper on these, but from my experience of ARDC, it is sluggish enough to make it a pain to use on a daily basis."
Which version? Versions prior to 2.0 didn't use VNC.
"All this niggling, however, is getting away from my original point - there is a need for standardized GUI configurability. "
Even if this was the case (and I'm not convinced that it is), it's extremely debatable whether the mechanisms X uses are an ideal foundation for such a standard.
"Apple could be at the forefront of this approach (think multi-user Spaces and screen sharing on one machine)"
Doing this while maintaining the multimedia performance that Apple's significant professional graphics user base demands would be extremely difficult.
"but instead they seem committed to promoting Aqua (or rather Leopard's GUI now, whatever that is called) and giving just enough support to administrators and X users to mollify them."
Aqua is a desktop, not a drawing layer.
"I wish they would be a bit more daring, and really turn the GUI world on its head again."
I don't think Apple would have set the world on fire with X-based technologies, and open sourcing of their own UNIX mechanisms such as launchd hasn't resulted in wide scale adoption by others, so it's not very likely that something more complex would be greeted with enough enthusiasm to make the effort of trying to establish new standards worthwhile.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.