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New Release of the Trinity Desktop Environment
mescobal writes: A new release of the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) is out. TDE is "a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the function and form of traditional desktop computers" which translates into a fully functional KDE 3 style Desktop. Something is missing in the new generation of desktop environments, since some people (perhaps more than "some") feel at home with Gnome 2 or KDE i3. They have repositories for Debian and Ubuntu-based distros. I'm now using it on Ubuntu 15.04, amazed about how well-planned things were in the previous generation of DE. We may have gained some things with Gnome 3 and Plasma 5, but we lost a lot of good features too. TDE brings them back.
so, do you sell your car when you get tired of the color or no longer like the wheels?
Maybe you should paint the car with one of the very many colors that are available and put some nice wheels on it to match. Sounds like someone doesn't like to get their hands dirty. Maybe Linus isn't for you.
The real issue with UI lately is the 'mobilization' of the desktop, to its detriment. Windows, osx, and linux all suffer from it now. At least the latter allows the user to run alternatives.
Pish and tosh.
I'm happily compiling my tool chain under FreeBSD 10.2 while learning Gnome3.
Which tools? Xorg, Gnome3, Eterm, xosview, Opera, Seamonkey, Firefox, Chromium, Midori, lynx, Thunderbird, Pidgin, LibreOffice, LibreCAD, xpdf, Audacity, xmorse, VLC, KeePassX, nmap, Wireshark, Zenmap, Nmapsi4, Vagrant, Packer, Docker, VirtualBox, awscli, cdrtools, dvd+rw-tools, etc.
Why? Because this is the only way to have that exact toolset configured just the way I need it. As a bonus, I get ZFS, and full-disk encryption, too!
As a sysadmin, for thirty-plus years, I've used whatever I was given (with the possible exception of installing some sort of virtual desktop enhancement to give me more window acreage), but my personal preference for the past two-plus decades, on my personal machines, has always been olvwm - I'm an old school UNIX guy, and I haven't found anything better.
I gave some thought to trying out Compiz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz) but decided to leave that for another day. Besides, I need more than six virtual desktops.
Almost everything you see on the Mac that is any good was developed under Linux, FreeBSD, and other Open Source projects.
Ubuntu is not a good spokesperson for UNIX, Linux, Open Source, or desktops.
~childo
Unfortunately, even if you install a real desktop, you still suffer from the 'mobilization' of the web.
So many websites have now been redesigned for touchscreens to the point where they're utter crap on a desktop machine.
I really can't wait until this 'mobile' fad is over, and the 'UX designers' find some other fad to chase after.
That's what I was thinking... they gave me a Mac Mini at work about 4 years ago. I gave it a real try - several months, but couldn't get over the UI, and couldn't understand why people claimed to like it so much. So I powered it down and worked on my old Linux box. Then Ubuntu switched to Unity, and I was like "this again? I went back to Linux to get AWAY from this."
I think anyone can get accustomed to just about any UI, and I think we're mostly hung up on how things worked before, but unless those new "paradigms" actually prove advantageous to work, then it's not just a fear of something new or disliking a learning curve - why should I learn something new when it gains me nothing?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Choice is good.
I think Gnome 3 sucks, but having figured how to get Mate to pretty much work how I like, am I going to start from scratch with something else? That'll be the same for the poor benighted fools who use Cinnamon, LXDE, KDE etc.
It'd have to be really awesome to be worth the time investment.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is not *another* DE. It is KDE3, which was the only good one in a time when KDE4 crashed all the time, Gnome3 has arond 3 features in total, and Unity got introduced. Now, however, it's old, and everybody and their mothed has moved on.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
There was a time when people thought Linux would become a contender on the desktop. That basically hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen in a big way. Thus linux users are starved for good native apps (kinda a chicken and egg thing going on too).
Now if you ditched KDE and Gnome and simply went with a full on clone of OS X, suddenly a whole ton of apps would come to Linux, whether it be running OS X apps as-is or whether you convince developers to do a simple recompile for Linux. Whether you like OS X or don't like it, the reality is this would boost Linux, bring apps, and give a shoe in for a possible desktop future for Linux.
And the reality is, OS X is actually quite good. Apple developers have always quite liked developing for the platform, users apparently like it, so nobody would be terribly upset.
Or you can keep running with the failed KDE/Gnome wars.
There's that, but, for the moment anyway, I've been able to avoid depending on here-today-changed/gone-tomorrow web sites for critical workflows.
You seem to have missed that on Linux you can completely ignore whatever crappy (e.g. KDE, Gnome) window-manager the distribution has standardized on. I have been running Debian with my own fvwm configuration for ages and that configuration I first created on sun-os. I had to do one rewrite when fvwm2 came out, but that is it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I never noticed. Of course, I never used KDE or Gnome or some other crappy "modern" window-manager. fvwm has all I need and excellent customization possibilities in addition.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You should have looked a tiny bit longer. Then you would have noticed that you can run one of a few hundred different window managers on Linux. What the distribution installer gives you as default is merely an example.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've got to say that the Mac desktop peaked with Snow Leopard. I'm running Yosemite on my Macbook and it's really not all that impressive. I remember upgrading from Leopard and seeing a massive speed boost. Now it gets just a little more sluggish with every upgrade. The major feature upgrade? The fucking Apple Store.
perhaps you should do some research instead of relying on a headline otherwise it shows your ignorance.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Trinity is the KDE 3 Desptop Environment. That was the time when Linux was still better than Windows. Better then Windows XP even. KDE 3 has a fast and sleak 2D desktop, not this sluggish 3D compositing. It even runs fast on top of VNC. All the applications are well thought out, in place, and working. Not this premature rubbish of Gnome 3 and KDE 4 or 5. It is stable and mature and has everything that a productive desktop needs.
Don't forget the removal of all gradients and everything shiny or glossy. Gotta keep those UX designers doing something, right?
Honestly, though, I barely notice any functional or speed difference. I have a Mac Mini I bought a while ago as an inexpensive dev box, which I'm using to port my game to OS X. I actually see the lack of significant changes as a *good* thing, and hope it continues. It means that Apple considers the desktop functionality and design to be stable, and has no need to radically alter the paradigm like MS tried to do with Windows 8.1, or to make a "unified" desktop for multiple devices like with Ubuntu.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
google cached version of the site: http://webcache.googleusercont...
Or simply pressed "send" without thinking?
TDE is not "another desktop environment". TDE a maintained fork of KDE 3.5, with the expressed intent of maintaining the look-and-feel and functionality of KDE 3.5.
If anything, you should be congratulating them instead of condemning them as they are doing the exact opposite of what Unity is doing. Maintaining a working DE while adding subtle changes.
Oh, and for the record, Speak for yourself. My startup has ~10 employees running Fedora and thus far (6 years) it has been working great. At least in my case, Linux (KDE 4) *is ready* for the desktop.
Have you any idea how dumb that sounds?
Bollocks. Learning from mistakes is fine - in the lab. Releasing shit is inexcusable.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is not *another* DE. It is KDE3, which was the only good one in a time when KDE4 crashed all the time, Gnome3 has arond 3 features in total, and Unity got introduced. Now, however, it's old, and everybody and their mothed has moved on.
Can I just say "thank grudd for that". Trinity developers; we love you. Even better will be if you manage to keep API and desktop interaction convergence with KDE whilst still having everything work according to your own taste. However if we wanted the right to demand that we would come and work for the project ;-)
Key missing feature: simplicity.
For better or worse, "activities" is a confusing concept. It takes an abstract concept (the desktop) and another level of abstract concept ("workplaces") and adds YET ANOTHER level of abstract concept (an "activity") which fully requires the first two levels. The main session is itself an activity, which starts to become really mind-twisting unless you already know what an activity is.
KDE also has two different concepts for application: that of a traditional application and that of a "widget". This puts extra burden on users to get a global overview on how the system works.
They are other important "features" missing too. But I think simplicity is the main drawback, and for both activities and widgets, it's debatable if they pull their weight, so to speak.
I wont say it's drastic but on the 2.4 Core2Duo based Macbook the difference between 10.10 and 10.6 is noticeable. On my Quad i7 Mini that came with Lion I can't really tell the difference between 10.7 and 10.10 but then I think 10.7 might have been the most noticeable drop in performance. It's not a huge difference and really Yosemite isn't bad but all the features they've added are less than useless to me. At work we're still on Windows 7 so I can't really comment on Windows 8 but most of the people I've talked to that have it are less than thrilled with that. I still remember the debacle that was Unity when I ran it for a month or so trying to see if I could get used to it. Ubuntu just destroyed a great desktop. There is a certain point that something is done and things just need to be tweaked for performance and bug fixes.
Try FreeBSD!
I have been working with various Linux distros for over 10 years and really liked it until the recent "improvements" that have been implemented by most main stream distros.
I was a bit scared at first since *BSD always had that hardcore Unix vibe. Then I started using it for a project and it was like someone switch a light on. The file system layout makes sense and files are in consistent places, not peppered all over the file system with almost no logic to it. Services come with basic configurations where I have to turn additional features on. This is how Linux used to be.
My experience with FreeBSD has been entirely in a VM / Server environment but I think I'll spin up a VM to give FreeBSD + Trinity a shot during the F1 race.
If it works it will replace that modern Debian System D turd really quick.
Why should I have to fight with package dependencies and fiddling with config files every time some clique of nerds decides one DE is better than another? It soon became tiresome. Now that I've been on OS X for 3+ years I've never looked back. Its DE doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water every 12 to 18 months.
OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop. I use OS X on a daily basis and not one thing that's going on in iOS-land has adversely (or even noticeably!) affected my existence. Perhaps you could elaborate on what you mean?
I actually see the lack of significant changes as a *good* thing, and hope it continues.
Amen! The constant chopping and changing (often for no apparent reason) on Ubuntu drove me nuts. The same with Windows, which I have to use at work (thank goodness for Classic Shell). Whilst I'm no particular fan of the Dock on OS X one good thing about it is that it hasn't significantly changed in 15+ years. Windows has done more damage with throwing out the Start Menu than Apple ever has by having a crappy dock instead of a decent task bar.
Ubuntu's 'macification' of their UI was so half-baked that it was a massive retrograde step. Forcing apps to render their menus at the top of the screen is only one aspect. The whole Linux ecosystem is NOT designed around this fundamental concept from OS X, and it was never going to work well - it certainly didn't before I gave up. I have no idea if it has improved since then, but now that I'm a happy Mac user - "fanboy" if you will (boo, hiss!!) - there's absolutely no reason to go back. All my dev stuff works on OS X and I have a fully functional unix underneath (if I care to go near it).
I suppose I'm not exactly thrilled about iOS features coming to Mac but Apple hasn't been as forceful at upsetting desktop systems.
Exactly. I haven't noticed ANY features from iOS suddenly ruining my day on OS X (Yosemite) so that's got to be a sign that Apple, indeed, has NOT upset the desktop like Microsoft did with the dreaded Windows 8.
I had been hopping around distros for several years before I settled on Ubuntu 10.04 for a while. I just grew dissatisfied with the endless and unnecessary changes that required me to read HOWTOs to install this or that to get back what I had lost. My brother and his wife had also switched to Mac around a year or two before and I saw how simple life could be. Once you go Mac you never go back (and I used to laugh at Mac fanboys; but now I'm one of them). There really is no better coupling between software and hardware than a Mac.
Almost everyone commenting here is an idiot practically.
It takes one to spot all, as the saying goes ...
You do not think it is worthwhile to invest a few hours into a tool that you are going to use literally for thousands of hours?
You are right, that is hilarious. Human stupidity is really boundless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is not good news. I'm a FOSS person, and love choices. Though I'd have loved to actually see the 'year of Linux on the desktop', and the confusing DE-mess (confusing to the new user, at least) was one of the reasons for it to not happen. The wannabe convert was so glued to the concept of 'the interface is everything' that she couldn't grasp the concept of 'the interface is just another layer'. And that 'learning' of 'yet another interface' was perceived as 'just too much'.
That's the drug dished out by Windows, mostly, that some silly icon on a screen is the application. And the task bar was never a good workbench in Windows in order to understand that you take applications like tools from a toolbox. And you put them back, if you don't need them temporarily.
So wars were fought about Desktops, and rather introvert nerds designed DEs like there was no tomorrow. And while I'm on KDE for many years now, they ought to have been hanged for the early Plasma versions. Likewise those who messed up Gnome. My preferred DE was the Gnome 1.4 of last millennium. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. Gnome 2 got me to KDE, and Plasma to XFCE. And Plasma after 4.5 back to KDE.
How the heck can anyone expect a 'Linux on the desktop' if desktop design decisions are handed over to nerd developers with nothing but time and ideas on their hands? And no governance that stops silly 'rewrites' and 'redrafts' of whole concepts for ever more shiny applets and widgets? The latter is fine, but not in mainstream DEs like Gnome, KDE. The W95 design has been with us for almost 20 years, with minor additions, and those were already perceived as 'too difficult' by many Windows users.
So what we get with TDE is a fall back for which I bet that there is no future. It can't because the only change necessary is the one that was done on Windows, and is currently done with Plasma 5: adopt a DE that can be unified for desktops and small screens. And exactly that is not done on TDE.
In a nutshell: TDE is the desktop (fork) that nobody needs.
OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop
That isn't quite true. It is suffering from 'mobilization', and also 'socialization'.
Snow Leopard (10.6) was the best release ever. Since then it has been going steadily backwards, albeit slowly.
I remember reading one of their '200 new features in the next release' that mentioned Facebook 46 times. That was when I knew it was all going to be downhill.
Apple got an early lead in the race to the bottom by taking away great things like expose, but then they seemed to falter a bit.
Linux and especially Microsoft were, as usual, late to the party, but have since caught up with Gnome 3 and Windows 8 respectively.
We'll have to wait and see who manages to get to their 'Hitler' version first.
I did try FreeBSD - once - but only as a curiosity. There was no way it was going to be viable as a desktop OS, for me at least. As far as distros I still respect it would have to be Debian, but even the stable branch was too out of date, and there was no way I was going to run unstable. I want my OS to behave, I don't want to be its slave. That's one thing I like about OS X, I hardly ever notice the OS.
Using a fork of something simply to keep what I was used to was the beginning of a slippery slope in my book. I didn't want to start using someone's fork that could wither and fall into obscurity thereby kicking off yet another round of DE evaluations until I found one that suited. I no longer have this conundrum because I have OS X. Its DE "just is" and "just works" and it's no longer a concern.
It's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs: with Linux I felt I never quite got to Self Actualisation, I was always stuck down at the Safety level fiddling around with config files and packages. With OS X I don't have to worry about any of the lower level stuff, I'm doing what *I* want to do, not what the OS forces me to do.
For the love of god, not this shit. Linux is all about CHOICE. Who fucking CARES what the default desktop is? It's for people literally too lazy to bother trying to find their best match. Besides Unity and GNOME3 for the tasteless brainwashed, there is always KDE4/5. If KDE4/5 is too bloated to taste, there are Cinnamon, MATE (essentially GNOME2), Trinity (essentially KDE3) , Xfce, and LXDE. Enligtenment has its partisans too. If every one of those seem too heavy and in-the-way, you can use one of the large variety of old standby (and plenty of newer) window managers that are less than full-blown desktop environments. Some of the better-known and wiely-used ones are awesome, Blackbox, dwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, ratpoison, twm, and Xmonad. That's far from an exhaustive list.
So, in other words, you can't come up with a SINGLE EXAMPLE of a missing feature. I figured you would fail. No one has yet come up with a list of these mysterious missing features in KDE4/5 that were present in 3. I think I can recall some configuration settings that were in 3 and are missing in 4/5, but again those are not really "features".
Simplicity is not a feature. It is an attribute; one which in fact implies fewer features.
I remember that once upon a time I used Gnome 2 for a very long time. It was my definitive go to DE. Now this is my opinion, but in the years that followed, the usefulness of DEs took a nose dive into (not always but still crap) bloated garbage with "enhancements" over previous versions of you name it. I spent years hopping from one DE to another, version after version hoping to find something lightweight and that I could actually be productive in. Pantheon and XFCE come close, but aren't my cup of tea for various reasons. Anyway, I've tried them all repeatedly over the years. As someone who spends most of their time working across multiple terminals it occurred to me, "Do I really need a full DE?" A couple of months ago I took the plunge and dived into Awesome Window Manager - most assuredly not a DE. I am absolutely in love with it and now wonder how anyone survives without a tiling window manager.
i3 is really nice too, but I settled on Awesome.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Clearly false.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
CentOS PcLinuxOS Fedora Debian etc etc I released an updated ISO yesterday, things are really stable at the moment. and there is still things KDE3 can do that 4 can't and it's fast to boot* * the inverse is also true, some things kde4 can do that 3 can't, horses for courses.
http://chimpbox.us
Complete unadulterated bullshit. Nothing could possibly need doing LESS than "unifying" desktops and small screens. They are completely different animals, which need completely different look and feel. Sorry, but nothing I do on my phone is in any way parallel to the things I do on my desktop.
TDE, as a maintained and updated version of KDE3, a fine DE, is exactly an option we DO need.
How in the world will "mobile" go away? I don't pretend to know what the Next Big Thing is, but people are not going to return to physical keyboards anytime soon. I'm sitting on the couch with a laptop right now, but only because the kids have the tablets. This laptop is 6 years old, and I doubt I'd bother with another except that I need to do real work on it - as you point out, much of the new efforts are directed towards mobile.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
it has been going steadily backwards, albeit slowly.
I thought that Adam Sandler mesured the velocity and arrived "At a Medium Pace".
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Releasing shit is inexcusable.
Indeed - I still remember when KDE 4 was released as "production ready". Then I dragged my background out of the screen. Then users unleashed. Then one of KDE developers said: "Who needs users, anyway?" (not sure if he used the word "anyway", though...)
The KDE team backed up by stating that the users were all wrong - that the release was just for developers. As if all the previous news and blog rants were nonexistent, and as if they did not specifically tell the users that they're done with KDE 3 maintenance and that they should better jump ship while it is hot...
That faithful year I moved on to Gnome. Then Gnome people did the same. Now I am using Cinnamon and haven't looked back since.
People are just not aware of the immense power they have with a system that lets them change parts of it and still get it working the way they want. ;-)
Oh, yes - sorry, Ubuntu users.
Thanks for your kind words! (b***s***).
I beg to differ, because I foresee - not actually, but it will come - the day when I take a smartphone with me all the time, and plug it into a dock at home or work, to continue where I have left off.
Currently I am not there, though I own a lenovo ('S') with docks at home and at work, so that I can carry this (still in a backpack) to wherever I go, including holidays, to always have with me what I need and want, with actual relevant data in the cloud.
This suits me totally, except of the size of the current machine and its weight. Once a smartphone is powerful enough (8 GB of RAM, multicore @ 2 GHz, uHDMI - am not a gamer) and allows me to apt-get like my desktop, I'll be the first person to buy it.
When I'll be on the road, in a bus or train, it'll be a normal smartphone, and when docked it will be a normal PC with monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers connected to the dock. And, no, I don't consider clutching any smartphone against my ears when phoning as comfortable, so when docked, a basic free-hands phone application will be my piece of the cake.
Logically, a unified interface would be the DE of choice, adapting to the screen size intelligently, not just scaling up icons to a threatening size like Unity. Not like Plasma 4 with almost nothing visible on smaller screens due to just non-scaling ('Search and Launch'). While I hate the old 'Metro' interface, it goes the first steps into that unified direction: On Windows Phone 8.X it is a usable interface, and it tries to become usable also on a large desktop screen. I can only hope that Plasma 5 will go into that direction, too, and just be much better.
"That faithful year ...."
For future reference, the commonly-used phrase is "That fateful year ...."
I'm using Yosemite and I've not once been pressured into setting up a Facebook account by Apple. I don't have one, and don't care for it. I'm still not sure what you mean by 'mobilization' of OS X.
Nope. That's a statement of fact. It was my brother's wife who bought a Mac a year or so before my brother. We both liked to tease her about it but she shot back with the fact that she'd never rebooted (a slight exaggeration) and had dozens of browser tabs open. The writing was on the wall when my brother (an overclocking nerd clearly not sympathetic to locked-down hardware and OSes) finally switched, and with Linux going down the toilet, Mac was the only logical choice for me.
Why constantly fix a car that barely works?
I'm still running Debian, CentOS, and PC-BSD, but I can understand the frustration.
How in the world will "mobile" go away? .... people are not going to return to physical keyboards anytime soon
Yes they are, or they have never abandoned them. Typing (as opposed to just looking and reading) is just awful on a touchscreen. Also, the fad for smallness is going away already. The marketing droids will represent keyboards to the next generation as a "new idea", as they did analog watches.
One example (among many): you can tweak every aspect of the "look" and "feel" (icons, fonts, etc) AND save it as a "Theme" you can load anytime. You can do this *without* a third party application. It's an "out-of-the-box" feature.
La culpa no es del chancho...
For the love of god, not this shit. Linux is all about CHOICE. Who fucking CARES what the default desktop is? It's for people literally too lazy to bother trying to find their best match. Besides Unity and GNOME3 for the tasteless brainwashed, there is always KDE4/5. If KDE4/5 is too bloated to taste, there are Cinnamon, MATE (essentially GNOME2), Trinity (essentially KDE3) , Xfce, and LXDE. Enligtenment has its partisans too. If every one of those seem too heavy and in-the-way, you can use one of the large variety of old standby (and plenty of newer) window managers that are less than full-blown desktop environments. Some of the better-known and wiely-used ones are awesome, Blackbox, dwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, ratpoison, twm, and Xmonad. That's far from an exhaustive list.
The choice of DE is not merely a theme or a set of configuration changes, Unfortunately there's generally not a good separation between the system utilities and the UI it runs on, so it is not just a visual change but you're throwing away most everything you'd find under the control panel of device management, disk mangement, wired and wireless network connections, keyboard and localization settings, mouse settings, bluetooth settings, display settings, sound settings, power management, user management, accessibility options, default applications and so on. Switch DE and you're usually practically starting over, not to mention they actually have different capabilities so what worked under one won't work under the other. It's the same problem that you typically have when the answer to a problem is to switch distro, most likely the new distro will break in some other way sending you on a time-consuming and often futile search for a solution where everything you want works at the same time. Also every six months or so people will tell you all your old experiences are invalid, try again now on the current version.
The problem is they won't leave you any other choice but to switch. Many projects seem to be run by UX fascists, they're not offering an alternative they're taking away the old way and saying this is the new way and you will like it. I wish somebody would take a real modern desktop and write a GUI-less back-end leaving the front-ends to implement just the visuals. Then it wouldn't be such a big deal if they decided to break shit, just use a different front end to provide that functionality.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Most people used laptops to hook up to some projector so they could try to convince the decision makers of a potential customer that their product was better than the products of the competition, or that the only thing they were missing was the product they were now demonstrating. Others need laptops to fill in an online form to describe what they did. I know many who just had a laptop to check their mails whenever they had the change to get a coffee in a WiFi enable shop. All these use cases can be replaced by smart phones and tablets.
There is no reason to carry a heavy laptop around that needs to recharge every other customer visit when you can have a tablet that goes all day without needing to recharge and gets its own Internet access through G3/4.
'Real work' is a lot more than someone sitting behind a desk typing all day. Programmers and accountants, those are the people who need physical keyboards. Most other people are better of with a touch screen.
When I look a the warehouse of my company. People had a clipboard with a paper where they put check marks and write numbers on a real paper. When they were done, they went to a computer with a physical keyboard to put the same check marks and numbers in a computer program. Meanwhile someone else might have updated a number or check mark on another paper and the old school phone was needed to communicate what has to happen with those numbers.
We gave them a tablet to put check marks and enter numbers and they no longer need the double work and they no longer have problems with inconsistent data. And yes, people in warehouse also do 'real work'. They are the ones who make the 'x amount of items remaining' work on your business's webshop and make sure that the product that is ordered before 23:59 is delivered the next morning. This last service was -not- possible with the physical keyboard. Except off course when you force people to carry around a heavy laptop all day instead of the phablet that is attached to their sleeve.
I have a 4k monitor, with 125% scaling enabled.
The website where I order food recently managed to increase the amount of whitespace and lack of content to such an extent that now generally 10 rows of food fit on the screen.
10.
The rows are (pre-scaling) at least 140px high, even if no images are included. It's ridiculous.
Of course it doesn't help that determining the dpi of the user device wasn't well-supported in the past. Responsive CSS should really use min-resolution instead of relying on pixel counts:
http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
The workaround for the whitespace plague of course is creating and always applying some user CSS code for frequently visited sites.
You are stuck in an argument from 2006. Keyboards will not go away - as you imply, they are needed for real work. But the consumer world has moved on - you absolutely do not need a keyboard for consumption, or even social media. The "fad of smallness" already was under attack when Zoolander parodied it in 2001. The iPhone began the re-biggering of mass market cell phones, and they seem to have settled on a 5-6 inch form factor given their current capabilities.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I never noticed. Of course, I never used KDE or Gnome or some other crappy "modern" window-manager. fvwm has all I need and excellent customization possibilities in addition.
Huh. I like to try out new things. Often the old things are better, but when declaring something as crappy, it's more authoritative to have first hand experience. That's why I keep a sacrificial machine around. It's actually fun, and sometimes you find out that the "smart guys" are full of it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
of Gnome 2 or the older standard desktops.... without being particularly slick and pretty. Xfce has the most customizable desktop because you can easily create launchers for apps, files, and urls. And you can define panels and dock those launchers into the panels..... something that Gnome never really offered.
Cinnamon is prettier and Unity is more "space-age" in its appearance. But when it comes to functionality, Xfce gives me what I need.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I would disagree. There are two platforms that explicitly got wholly consumed in chasing mobile UI: Windows and Gnome 3. Windows 10 at least rectifies those mistakes, though it does make a mess of update and privacy policies, but the mobile-ui-for-all part did go away.
Gnome 3 has, if anything, double downed on that, but even worse has made it even harder to customize your enviornment. Now you have to hope there's some extension out there that is maintained (since gnome breaks them every 6 months) or learn their partiuclar scheme of mostly-CSS (and again get befuddled every 6 months when they make changes, making it very rough to find a set of third party documenation for *your* 6 month window of Gnome and piss poor documentation even for those who would be willing to work on it).
KDE 4's thematic problem was not mobile at all, it was chasing damn widgets. Originally, the KDE4 panel was just a fixed widget that happened to try to be along a screen edge and the right size, playing havoc when a resolution change would occur. Add to this releasing before they had anything usable. Their approach to Plasma 5/KF5 is better and when it works right it isn't too shabby, but it still day to day feels glitchier.
Other Linux DEs are pretty much not really changing. This is both good and bad. Good in that they are avoiding getting caught up in things, but bad should the time come when Wayland actually becomes a thing. Also I wouldn't have minded a GNUstep environment more fully realized, and with a compositor (they aren't just eye candy).
OSX I don't actually get a chance to use, but from what I've read, the dubious changes are not mobile related, just... changing their minds about stuff in general.
OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop
That isn't quite true. It is suffering from 'mobilization', and also 'socialization'.
And yet, I use mine the same way as I've used it for years.
No facebook, no twitter, no iCloud - just applications. It works exactly the same way as when they went to 10 - I use only the new features I like. caveat: Spotlight has been ruined.
What they do, is offer options. If I want a Windows 8 sorta interface I can use launchpad. Not that anyone does, because that's gotta be the worst use of desktop space ever - just like W8 - but if someone does like it, it's an option.
So I've been derping around In OSX like I always have, with no weird adjustments to make other than abandoning Spotlight. One example out of the many that other OSs have foisted on their users isn't too bad at all
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Hmm, I don't remember the KDE 4 people saying that the early releases where production ready. I do remember that the KDE people use another version system. x.0, x.1, x.2 are all releases that aren't ready yet. This was the case with KDE 1.x, 2.x and 3.x. You were better of waiting for the x.3 or even x.5 release to have a production ready release. But KDE did not start as a GPL project and they didn't use the same version philosophy as GPL projects. From the nineties I still remember an interview with one of the developers that people had to wait for a x.5 for a stable release, but where welcome to test x.0/x.1/... releases to help fix bugs.
The big problem with KDE4 was that major Linux distribution ditched KDE3 for KDE 4.x where x
I never had problems with KDE4, but of course, the first KDE4 I installed was 4.8 which was production ready and remained stable throughout every update.
The biggest problem I have with the desktop environments is that they just seem to bring an update to their project: Gnome 2 to 3, KDE 3 to 4. But in reality it is a completely different program. It would have been better if Gnome 2.x was just the latest Gnome. They should have chosen a different name for Gnome 3. Maybe Shell DE or whatever. This way people could still install Gnome 2 a long side the latest product of the creators of Gnome. Currently is it impossible to install Gnome 3 next to Gnome 2 since one updates/upgrades the other.
The KDE people had to name KDE 4 just Plasma. So you could still choose to install the latest KDE (3.5) and give Plasma a try. Now KDE4 was an upgrade of KDE 3.5, but it was not production ready. You could have a system with Gnome, Shell, KDE and Plasma. Two DE made by the Gnome team and two DE made by the KDE team.
It seems that they wanted to keep the current user base by not changing names, but instead of keeping them they alienated their user base with confusing decisions. I personally like the Gnome Shell idea, creating workspaces on the fly. I love it. But Gnome 3 came only usable (bug free and enough features) starting from 3.10 for me. I remained on an old Debian old-stable for my daily work. That shouldn't have been necessary. They could have simple given Gnome 2 to the community. Gnome 2.13, supported by the community (not by fedora/red hat). Bug fixes where enough for me. I didn't need extra features, nobody did I think. And there was this add on system anyway that could add some features if you really wanted. Making it compatible with never versions of Glibc or the Kernel, that was all that was necessary. And I think that could be easily achieved by the same team of people that are now doing lots of hard work with a fork of Gnome 2.x without needing to choose a non related name like Coriander or was it Cinnamon?
Now we have these DE that are forks from 'finished' DE of the Gnome and KDE team that have names that most linux users never heard about, and that very little mainstream Linux distribution care about. If you want to DE of your choice you have to be lucky that there are repositories for your version of the distribution and have to be knowledgeable enough to know how to add those repositories and how to install those DE's without messing up your system.
Linux is not about choice. Linux is about winning at all costs. systemd! pulseaudio! deprecating ifconfig. Wayland.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I got a UHD monitor and what I really miss is a simple way to say "This application is stupid, tell it that my screen is 1920x1080 and scale it 200%." Same thing with browsers, though they could optimistically render images at full resoulation if the image file has higher resolution than the display size.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Its DE doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water every 12 to 18 months.
You only say that because you have only been using OS X for 3+ years (assuming the 3+ means less than 4). It's possible you haven't noticed because after only 3+ years, you aren't familiar enough with the Mac to notice when something goes missing.
Workspaces arbitrarily changed from a useful grid to mandatory linear layout. Ditching a working file search for Spotlight that only allowed results to be sorted based on name, kind or "last opened". Dropping features during a crusade to eliminate features requiring filesystem metadata then turning around and going full metadata without reimplementing the lost features. Replacing mDNSresponder with discoveryd for no good reason since discoveryd didn't work, the proof being that they switched it back a few updates later. All of a sudden refusing to display users' custom icons is another one.
If you stay on the Mac, you will find Apple is constantly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, replacing what works with what isn't ready and leaving users with no recourse because Apple only supports the most recent couple of OS X versions with security updates.
I don't use activities, and KDE 4 has never tried to make me use them. There's no need to use widgets either. What's the problem? KDE has always been about having options, Gnome was the place to go for simplified lack of choice.
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OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop.
Bullshit! There are some things Mac does quite well ( having quick look would be awesome on my Windows / Linux machines ), and others that suck. It is no different than any other OS.
I started to use a Mac at OS/X 10.9 since they are so heavily used in academia. 10.10.x switched over to the iOS shit-tastic flat look on everything. It is atrocious to try and differentiate between UI elements now on a default install. Thankfully there are more than a few UI enhancements ( free even ) that can be installed to make it not look like a flat sheet of paper on the screen.
I won't even get into the blur crap they slapped all over the UI after they copied it from iOS land either....
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
I really can't wait until this 'mobile' fad is over, and the 'UX designers' find some other fad to chase after.
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
From the post I replied to: "Compiz, beryl, metro are mistakes, right? Wrong"
So which distro of Win 8 do you recommend?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Can you give any examples of how recent versions of OS X suffer from mobilization?
Expose didn't get taken away, it just got renamed to "Mission Control" and got merged with Spaces (which was a good idea) in OS X Lion. They also made it work with multitouch trackpad gestures (i.e. you can activate it by swiping up with 3 fingers). That was probably iPhone-inspired, but it was done in a way that was very suitable for a desktop/laptop environment.
The only thing I can think of that got a bit of a negative reaction was the flat design that was introduced in Yosemite. But this has nothing to do with mobilization, it's just a coincidence that both the mobile and desktop OSes moved towards a flat design at the same time.
From the post I replied to: "Compiz, beryl, metro are mistakes, right? Wrong"
So which distro of Win 8 do you recommend?
Windows 10, with all of the tracking settings turned off... ;-)
But I like the latest Gnome, especially out of the box as Antergos, http://antergos.com/ provides it. Gnome shell with extensions works great. I have it configured just like MacOS X (which I am using as I'm on my mac mini right now to post this). I run Antergos on all of my laptops and on ultrafit 64gb sandisk usb drives I can stick into any computer. Extensions install in a single click using firefox. It's blissful and all OSS heaven.
The difference here is that he didn't get tired of the version of Unity he liked (his car's paint and wheels), he didn't like the version of Unity that was forced upon him as a replacement. That's more akin to selling your car that you love after someone bashes it all to hell with a sledgehammer and steals your wheels; depending on the severity of the damage (and with body work it doesn't take much) it may be less costly to scrap it and buy a new one.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
While I generally agree with those who say Snow Leopard was Apple's best release, I also have to say that Yosemite does seem to be an (small) step back in that direction. Here's hoping that El Capitan continues that trend and we eventually end up with a faster and more stable version of what Snow Leopard gave us.
I also don't see the "mobilization" and "socialization" that some people are talking about, though I have been watching the OS become more of a consumption platform than a productive tool since Lion. They haven't destroyed it as a productive tool and, again, it seems they're starting to turn it back around with Yosemite, so I'm still using it for now. We'll see how long that lasts.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I think there's a reason Linux Mint gained popularity, especially now with it's Cinnamon desktop. It kept things simple and traditional on the UI side, while building on what's good about Ubuntu. As PC users, we've seen the slow evolution of a fairly standard user experience on the desktop. I think there's a reason we haven't seen much "innovation" there, in a similar way to how there's very little "innovation" in the basic controls of automobiles. I think the major issues have largely been tackled, and for the most part, the interface works quite optimally for mouse and keyboard users. There's simply no need to try to re-imagine the entire process. Boring, yes. But also productive and comfortable.
When I tried out a Windows 8 machine, I actually had a harder time transitioning to it than OS X or Linux Mint. The first time I tried it, I couldn't even figure out how to close a modern app. How ridiculous is that for someone who's used Windows for 20 years? Fortunately, with whatever other issues people may have with Windows 10, the UI is sane again.
BTW, I've been trying since yesterday to reach the Trinity Desktop site to see what it's all about, and it's been down, and apparently not for just me. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Well, I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with Linux Mint.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
where a normal DE feels to me harmful, I found LXDE really useful: fast, usable and completely customizable
it is essentially a windowmanager (openbox) + a filemanager (pcmanfm) + a panel (I'm using fbpanel as substitute) + some small utils (editor, login screen, network manager, etc)
every single piece of the environment can be changed with another that you like more, letting you revive the old days "build your linux"
Now that I've been on OS X for 3+ years I've never looked back. Its DE doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water every 12 to 18 months.
No, you just have to worry that some turtleneck will get in a snit and Apple will change hardware platforms.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Gee, the old Power PC to Intel chestnut, eh? Time has shown that Apple made the right decision on that one.
I may have noticed the iCloud default once but when you save it elsewhere most applications (that I've seen, anyway) remember your last-used location. So it's not a major issue.
My brief look-see at FreeBSD would have to have been at least 5 years ago. But why bother checking it out again? Mac is already BSD underneath. I've got a rock solid unix with a damned good UI on top of it. I also once used Linux Mint and yet now you are having to leave it for something else. This is the story of many Linux users: having to chop and change all the time. I decided to get off that merry-go-round.
Why should I bother conducting "research" into which window manager might give me a reasonable approximation of a sane and stable UI like I have on my Mac? I've done plenty of research in my many years of using Linux, and the end result was that Linux on the desktop was a fool's errand. Unless Apple decides to follow the Ubuntu/Unity or Microsoft/Metro examples, there's no point looking around for an alternative when I have no need and there is certainly no signs that there is something better out there I'm missing out on.
How about we talk about TDE?
How about you take your own advice instead of getting your panties in a bunch over other people's posts?
You really do have to wonder why some people are so precious about free speech. He could have chosen to ignore the threads he disliked, or he could have chosen to contribute something valid and useful. But no, he went straight for the dummy spit :-)
I don't use activities, and KDE 4 has never tried to make me use them.
Actually, at least some variants of KDE 4.x had the workspace pager replaced by the blue/red/green activity balls in the taskbar by default. I remember this especially because I had to go read up on what an activity was!
It was simple enough to change that, but I definitely count that episode as trying to "make me use them".
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Maybe you should paint the car with one of the very many colors that are available and put some nice wheels on it to match.
Sure, I'll do that on my project car where I'm doing it just for the fun of it but for most people in most use cases the computer operating system is a tool to do a job.
Along with all the KDE4 trolls of that time, you obviously had reading and comprehension problems with the KDE 4.0 release. It was released as a development release for app coders to port their apps upto KDE4.
Some of the distros screwed up, not KDE.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Yawn. Not *another* desktop environment. " - that implies you didn't know it was an existing DE, thats the research i mean, you knee-jerked a response at the headline.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
so, do you sell your car when you get tired of the color or no longer like the wheels?
Maybe you should paint the car with one of the very many colors that are available and put some nice wheels on it to match. Sounds like someone doesn't like to get their hands dirty. Maybe Linus isn't for you.
Actually 99% of the population do sell or (wish they could replace) when they tire of some aspect of their car and pay mechanics to get their hands dirty, others like being weekend mechanics while others grew out of it and found other things to keep us busy
Same with computers an IT products
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
I'm sorry, I should have continued - yes, "ugghh..." was my initial reaction, I did change it. Been using Linux since the early 90's, and I know a lot of old-timers don't like Ubuntu, but Ubuntu makes it easy - I want to program, not tweak the system to death, but at least there's some fairly easy choices.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I totally hate the phonification of desktops. Surefire way to get me to use something else.
As one who prefered KDE to all other linux DEs thru 4.x, but dislikes 5.x (and in my latest distro test, PClinuxOS was one of my 4 or 5 "finalists") -- now downloading the ISO of PClinuxOS-with-TDE to give it a look.
KDE5 looked to me like change for the sake of change, or because Win8 and smartphones did it, not because it was more functional on a PC. Nowhere near the sharkpit Gnome is hovering over, but still headed the wrong direction. :(
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Oh. No doubt.
Still does jack and shit to alleviate all the pain that it caused.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Sure it does. The finder has been dumbed down substantially since the initial releases.. It probably peaked around 10.5 or 10.6, then they started 'ios'ing the system.
Windows 10 does not rectify those mistakes. Yeah they brought back a half usable start menu but that's about it.. Now, instead of the single confusing control panel they brought out for vista (which in turn replaced the more usable xp panel), the user must now navigate back and forth between two to get things configured..and the new one is half broken (monitor management for ex). Microsoft seems dead set against giving people the configurability they want (window metric configuration for ex) in a sane, consistent manner.
Gnome 3 is terrible and the project shows the same kind of willful ignorance of what users want that microsoft does. Of course, this didnt' start with 3, they've had this minimalism ad reductum attitude for a long time, cutting configurability from 2. This attitude also shows in other OSS projects, another big one being systemd.
OSX suffered from 'ios'ification with the release of 10.7, along with the isuite. Final cut X was dumbed down, too, and dubbed 'imovie pro' by users, and from what I saw, the name was justified.
looks like KDE to me and that thing is a hog. I'll stick with Gnome.