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Comment by chucknthem | Hacker News Reader

I somehow wish Linus would be so pissed off at these interfaces for linux that he goes out and writes something totally awesome like he did with git.

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I dunno. Git did not leave me with the impression that Linus is really good at making user interfaces.

  % git push
  fatal: protocol error: expected sha/ref, got '

Yes, this is an actual "helpful" error message.

A javascript, DOM-based window manager would be a worthy project for someone with the skills to do so. All prefs stored in JSON or somesuch. Separate from a browser to avoid frame-busting-busting-busting. Leave (and encourage) the styling and hacka-clicka-bility the users themselves. Twill happen eventually ... I'd just like it now :(

Isn't that HP webOS?

I haven't had a device yet to try that. They're supposedly coming out with a desktop version of "webOS". Will keep an eye out for an early release. I think they'll initially have that for Windows (whatever that means). Would love to try booting into the general concept from a shell on Debian.

> A javascript, DOM-based window manager would be a worthy project for someone with the skills to do so

You mean like GNOME shell?

A month or two back I started glueing XCB and spidermonkey together. The thought of DOM-based window management crossed my mind but I never saw the point of it. It makes sense in HTML where elements are nested inside one another, but in X, windows are seldomly nested - unless the application was designed that way. The heirarchy would be rather flat in a window manager.

Considering his ability to write OS kernels and RCSs, I'm guessing that his user interface design abilities are not very strong. Yes, it's a generalization, and maybe he's awesome at it, but they are very different skills.

Yes, considering the git UI I'm sure a window manager following the same principles would be... fantastic.

Well there is Awesome. Dwm is also quite nice

Awesome has been working very nicely for me [1], but I wouldn't use it as an example of a {usable, intuitive, user friendly, magical} user interface. If a friend of mine shows the slightest interest for Linux and I want to show them just how easy it is, I tend to use KDE or GNOME for the showcase.

[1] Well maybe it comes a bit too pre-customised, which (to me) is worse than not customised and without sensible defaults. Then again, I may the one to blame here, for using a package rather than building from scratch.

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