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Comment by Ezhik | Hacker News Reader

That's... About the opposite of what I expect to see when I hear people talk about Linux on the desktop. It's definitely interesting though.

But... Where's the GUI love? :(

I know it's all about the terminal, but god damn it, I'm trying to drop OS X, and just because I can use bash doesn't mean I dislike having nice things like desktop transition effects or transparency or auto-mounting USB drives. I swear, if I have to read another Arch Linux forums post about how things Windows 98 could do out of the box are bloat...

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I don't think any of the mainstream Desktop Environments (Unity, KDE/Plasma, Gnome3) or even some of the second-tier DEs (MATE, xfce, lxde) on Linux these days are that far off.

The GUI experience on Linux suffers mostly from inconsistency when using applications written with different toolkits, awful font rendering, and a general sense of being in the uncanny valley if you're used to other desktops environments.

My first computer in the mid 90's was running Linux on the desktop, and aside from a smattering of Windows here and there for games throughout the years, I've mostly stuck with it. Using Windows and OSX isn't some revelation in usability these days. OSX is more aesthetically pleasing, and a bit more consistent I think, but otherwise I don't find it profoundly better than the Linux options. I don't think it's more discoverable, and certainly hasn't been more stable in my experience- and there are definitely features I miss going from Linux to OSX on the desktop.

Two years ago, I bought a Macbook Air to my wife after she complained that she was not able to make nice photo books with the software available on Linux (Ubuntu). Since then, she considers that Gnome (she does not it is Gnome, for her it is Linux) is way more user friendly than the Mac.

She has been annoyed many times by the way her Mac is running. One day she lost all her books because of a new version if iPhoto which suddenly requires you to have a kind of remote on Apple servers, the spreadsheet/writer tool is really bad at opening Excel and Word documents, the email client has very small fonts, etc...

For basic day-to-day usage, we found that Windows/Gnome/Macos are basically at the same level of consistency/quality. You can complain against some stuff on each side, they have inconsistencies on each side, but at the end of the day, one is not any more really better than the other, but she hates the fact that she has no ideas why sometimes on the Mac it does not work.

Has she managed to make photo books on Linux? Which software?

We live in Germany and we were using the services of Pixum[0]. This is not free software and the Linux installer is working correctly.

[0]: https://www.pixum.de

> The GUI experience on Linux suffers mostly from inconsistency when using applications written with different toolkits

This is true, however Windows suffers from the same problem (and OSX too, however in a minor degree).

> awful font rendering

Only by default maybe. I did tweak my fontconfig (just some symlinks available in /etc/fonts/conf.avail) and IMO the font rendering in my Linux systems are better than my Windows systems (even after tweaking Windows ClearType).

There is the fact that some applications does not support fontconfig, however I can't think anyone that I use daily at least.

The infinality fontconfig patch completely fixes this, but no distribution ships it because of patent encumberence.

Hmm, the FreeBSD port print/freetype2 has LCD_FILTERING ("Sub-pixel rendering (patented)") enabled by default since 27 Nov 2014.

infinality is obsolete. Freetype 2.7.0 ships a new interpreter (that's… based on infinality. but faster and simpler) http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/freetype-devel/2016-07/...

I'll have to check if I'm missing something but I haven't been happy with the effect on Ubuntu despite hearing this for a while.

You are absolutely right. Theres a whole bunch of apps that are 'blurry' when running on a retina display.

"The GUI experience on Linux suffers mostly from inconsistency when using applications written with different toolkits"

I have never understood the claim different software should be stuffed into the same user interface paradigm. Mainly it's an artifact of the encumbrance the software stack we use to compose user interfaces imposes on us.

OS level components should have the same look and feel.

Otherwise I see it as a bonus that different applications look and behave differently. I see no added value for the user if, say, Spotify and Word used the same toolkit.

I agree completely. Most big desktop applications make no attempt to conform to platform look and I have never heard people complain of that.

I was thinking more specifically of things like having to configure HiDPI settings differently for Qt and GTK, for example. There are also some copybuffer inconsistencies at times. It's not a big deal for anyone who is motivated to deal with it, but probably irritating enough to make some people give up early on even if they would otherwise like having a system that's configured properly.

Oh yes, I agree, DPI settings should be global accross the system as much as possible and copy buffer should definetly work consistently. Generally it's the application's responsibility to implement the tie in to these platform systems - on the interface level that should preferably not be tied inseparably to any UI code).

To me however, this is on a different architectural level than how the UI itself is inplemented (which, technically, is just motion graphics with hotspots, but psychologically is the most important part for most users).

Yes. I have never got that insistence on UI nativity. Is there any OS where it's actually practical to only use programs that conform exactly to the vendor's UI style? All the major desktop OSes depend on tons of "non-native" programs to actually do work. Android usually requires some, and I'm not sure about iOS as I've never seriously used it, but I would guess the case is similar there.

It seems like "must be UI native" is a way for Mac fanboys to try to enforce their preferred design paradigm on otherwise-uninterested people.

To give credit - Apples human interface guidelines for the original Macintosh were wonderfull in giving guidance where the UI as a concept was bound to be foreign to most. Also, the first commodity GUIs were on resource strained hardware so they could not do everything effectively.

I think we are now at a point where the glowing animated screen is far more familiar to most people and the raw power available on most devices is such the only rational constraint for UI design is that use experience must be understandable to most and that the underlying system must play nicely with rest of the device.

If I have a choice, I'm always choosing native application for macOS. It's eating less memory (because all shared libraries are already loaded), it provides similar experience as other apps (menu bar, context menu), it's usually works much faster (because Objective C is quite fast compared to some interpreted languages). Sometimes I don't have a choice (like Intellij Idea), so I have to live with Java or Chromium application, but I don't like that experience.

Check out Elementary OS and their Pantheon DE for consistency. One of the few distros that actually has (sane) designers onboard and adheres to the outline set by those designers.

Has anyone gotten the Pantheon DE running on other distros?

It works on Arch, but needs some tweaking. I tried it a while ago but decided I didn't like it so I don't know the current state.

Last weekend, a friend of mine asked me to "wipe his laptop". When i asked him why, he replied he had viruses, it was slow etc. After asking him what he used it for he said "web and nothing else". He agreed to try something new and I installed elementary OS for him. First install i'd done. After 21 years of linux experience i have to say it's a really sweet desktop. He was super happy and couldnt believe how "fast his laptop was". Hats off to the elementary OS people. Its a sweet system.

I'm using Fedora 25 as of 2 days ago along with some repos that were listed from the Korora project. I've been blown away by how smooth this experience has been so far.

This is the first time in years of experimenting with desktop/laptop linux where I've been able to say that it's close enough to gain mainstream popularity.

If you're ok with Ubuntu as a base OS, Elementary OS may be what you're looking for. It has (in my experience) the most modern macOS-like interface that is still minimalist enough to not get in the user's way. It is clean, fast, and beautiful to look at. I've been using it as a daily driver for over six months now and I'm still finding things to love about it.

I do wish it was based on a more sane (for my tastes) distro like Slackware or Gentoo, but that probably wouldn't work given how much it depends on the Ubuntu/Debian way of doing things under the hood. The fact that it has made me give up Slackware on the desktop still surprises me; I'd been using Slackware almost daily since about 2001 but the last few releases have felt trapped in the past while struggling to catch up to every other distro feature-wise. Maybe that's due to their insistence on remaining systemd-free (something I am proud of them for) but whatever the reason, I now only use Slackware on servers and really old hardware, and only use Elementary on the desktop. Anything else in either setting just doesn't compare.

Install the Elem OS DE on another distro?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon

I've tried that and it's just lipstick on a pig. There's so much of Elementary that is more than just the DE itself, that makes it feel so complete and cohesive.

Can you expand on what some of those things are, or link to something that does? It sounds like a great lesson for other distros.

You can read a lot about it on their blog, specifically this post:

http://blog.elementary.io/post/153360513026/busting-major-my...

ElementaryOS looks awesome.

I was going to put it on my Chromebook as my main OS, but theres a silly bug with the legacy BIOS for specifically my chromebook (Toshiba Chromebook 2 2015) that makes installing any Ubuntu flavor, or ElementaryOS, just not work.

I ended up putting Mint on it, since the OS installer would actually render.

Still want to try ElementaryOS someday.

Do you know if eOS collects any user data during use and sends it home?

It does collect data for use within the OS itself, to assist the user with searching their own system. My understanding is that none of this is ever sent out over the network. You can turn off individual data sources, or disable data collection altogether and use traditional command line tools for searching for your stuff. The linked screenshot is of the default settings under the Privacy tab in Settings, with a tooltip explaining why you would want to turn off collection.

http://i.imgur.com/1FbMQkm.png

I've actually just bought the brand new XPS 13 developer, and planning to install eOS as soon as I get it! I believe I'll need to upgrade the kernel to get full use of the processor arch, but others have done it, and have mostly been successful.

It looks really good though, and the community behind it seems to be growing, so I'm hoping to become active contributor.

> doesn't mean I dislike having nice things like desktop transition effects

While transition effects are pretty, I personally do dislike them: if it's not instantaneous, it's too slow.

> doesn't mean I dislike having nice things like desktop transition effects or transparency

If you're using a DE (like Gnome) they bring it by default. If not, well, you can choice any of the multiple window compositors out there. However if you're using something lightweight enough to not bring a compositor by default, well, you probably asked for it.

Compton is a lightweight alternative BTW.

> or auto-mounting USB drives.

This isn't really a problem since systemd-logind. Just make sure that you're starting X.org in the same TTY that you logged in, or at least make sure you're using a Display Manager. After that, any File Manager that supports auto mounting will work, even without running a DE like Gnome.

Last time I setup my i3-wm workspace it was simply a matter of cloning my configuration from GitHub. Everything DBus related (including auto mounting) worked. Never more I needed to do insane things like:

$ ck-launch-session dbus-launch i3 # or it was dbus-launch ck-launch-session?

> Compton is a lightweight alternative BTW.

I think compton is the only choice, isn't it? As far as I know, xcompmgr and cairo both are not being developed anymore. And even compton is an unhealthy project, see https://github.com/chjj/compton/issues/352.

It's actually quite simple to get some (all?) of the things you mentioned on an i3 setup (and other DMs, I'm sure). All you need is a compositor, like compton.

Arch-Wiki article: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compton

I am sitting on a pile of hacks of an Openbox setup right now, and it does most of these things (the one big thing missing at the moment is a language switcher, learned it the hard way), so I'm used to it.

It's the attitude that annoys me, I guess. A lot of OSS stuff doesn't feel like it's made for "real" people - sane defaults and such. With i3wm specifically it's just more obvious because it's minimalist-to-a-fault, but there are little things I find counter-intuitive even in something like GNOME.

And while I do appreciate modularity of a light WM, and being able to fine-tune things to my liking, I'd like to see more projects like elementaryOS, regardless of how many times people say it's all "bloat" or "botnet".

Yes, I see your point. I personally like this kind of stuff, tinkering with my setup and whatnot. But it's definitely not for everyone. Have you tried using a Desktop Environment under the hood of i3, like xfce? Might be closer to what you're looking for.

There's also a subreddit called "unixporn" where people post their various setups, usually accompanied by their configs. Might be worth to take a look at.

Other than that, there's really only waiting or going back to macOS, I suppose...

> but there are little things I find counter-intuitive even in something like GNOME.

I find plenty of counter-intuitive things in OS X and Windows as well. Linux desktops aren't perfect by any means, but I don't find them to be far from Windows or OS X, and they're better in some ways.

I think part of the issue is the number of choices on Linux. There's a wide range of desktop environments/window managers, and of course a wide range of quality too. And with such variety, there's sure to be plenty of options that are not made for "real" people, since many of them were just made for the author.

You should try KDE then. It's pretty great, I think it's the best desktop environment on any platform.

Messed with it very briefly while distro hopping, actually. Found that it did a lot of things UX-wise very nicely, but I ended up not keeping the distro for whatever reason, then just never came back to the DE. (I think it was the Kubuntu LTS not playing along with my laptop?)

Try manjaro kde. It has pretty good auto detection and configuration for hardware. Looks like ubuntu messed up release 16 and it rears its ugly head on many ububtu based os. It feels so brittle. Debian based netrunner kde is also nice but I like manjaro better for its excellent ux.

Maybe if it wasn't such resource hog and not segfaulted every few minutes...

Check out the poorly named /r/unixporn subreddit. It's screenshots of people's fancy GUI setups with explanations of what they're using to get things to look that way.

I find elementaryOS rather pleasant and consistent in its UI. I am currently trying to switch away from macOS and eOS seems the only Linux distro that does not make my eyes bleed.

another option that I found to be similar in experience was Gnome3.

times might have changed since I did this last, but go to youtube and look up "compiz linux" (added linux just in case compiz matches something else ).

I used to run XFCE + compiz, which you configure using a program called ccsm. It's not hard, either use apt-get or click on the "software" icon from the start page. Install compiz (and maybe compiz-extras or whatever), and ccsm (again, times may have changed so it might be called something else).

That will get you a 3D accelerated desktop. You can let your desktop be a rotatable cube, rubbery wobbly windows, real opacity/transparency, and an accelerated magnifying glass/zoom effect which I used quite a bit (hold down windows key and the mouse wheel zooms you in/out). It also supports inotify, so its windows-like when you put a USB in you'll get the little dialog box saying "USB stick inserted". Highly recommend you give it a spin.

Over time, I got over the coolness of it, and just switched over to xmonad so I dont even need the mouse (much) anymore.

> I know it's all about the terminal

Thats only true if you want it to be. I would recommend to look into gnome shell. And maybe KDE

Checkout /r/unixporn

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