Burn My Windows
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- it put linux ahead of windows and mac in terms of appearance;
- it brought many new users and most were a good mix technical and enthusiasts;
- it showed the advantages of modular software;
- many plugins were useful and these useful plugins influenced desktops to this day;
- it was fast, stable and cool enough;
- it brought many new developers;
- it was an incentive for vendors to improve 3d linux drivers;
- it made X.Org developers improve redirection,
- it came by default on the most popular distro from 2006 to 2012.
At the time, there was some interesting developments and experimentation: métisse, sun's looking glass, bumptop, deskgallery... none of them was as successful as compiz. I'm proud I was myself part of it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X9bcrJ3TjY) and have my name written in some of its source files to this day, even if almost nobody use it anymore.
0: http://stressreliefpig.com/games/downloadable-desktop/deskto...
Some stuff, like the desktop cube, could be emulated, but not too well. On Compiz, everything was drawing during the animation, showing off the modular compositing that it enabled, whereas most desktop cube toys didn’t update the screen while rotating, making it less impressive.
I remember trying it in the XP/Vista era alongside Compiz/Beryl and it was quite unstable. As a result it never reached the popularity of the (mostly usable) WindowBlinds.
Yet ~15 years later here we are.
Desktop "progress" is now sadly now mostly done by Microsoft (geriatric at best) and Apple (mostly just implementing the new graphical design whims every year).
By all means make cool stuff but also make it opt in.
Things I need my OS to do are: run my apps (office/browser/games), connect my devices (printers/game controllers/displays), basic file operations (copy/paste/delete)
And while doing this be: secure, reliable, out of my way.
All these adding people/chat/weather widgets "innovations" (looking at you, msft) make me throw my hand up in the air and ask "why", I wish they would spend that time and energy on security and reliability instead.
Plasma 5 is great and ages like good wine. The interface does not change much, but receives big improvements each version that don't break habits. Focus is on fixing usability bugs. See the weekly posts at [1] for instance.
It gets refined instead of changed.
Microsoft and Apple both are stuck comparingly both running the same Windows 95 approach for all their desktops since.
> It pioneered useful things like selecting an area of the screen and saving it directly to a file
Pioneered? This was a standard feature on Macs since January 1997.
> It also showed how important compositing was on the desktop.
No, that would be the Quartz and Quartz Extreme compositors released with Mac OSX 10.0-10.2 years prior.
Compiz in the mid 2000s was a mixture of catching up to established ideas and a bunch of cute but useless visual wastes of time. It didn't pioneer anything except novelty display plugins and was quickly made obsolete when people realized that wobbly transition effects got very old very fast.
Maybe it’s more accurate to say it brought it into the reach of everyone with a bit of willingness to learn how to install an obscure OS (as opposed to having a ton of money)?
I don’t know how much these different compositing window managers inspired each other. To me it seems like there is some convergent evolution. Compositing window managers are obviously superior (no redrawing when moving windows). In the mid 2000s memory and graphics cards became cheap and powerful enough to make compositing viable.
Opposite end of the year though since Compiz was released at the start of 2006. Compiz had seen significant development over that year (unlike Windows that only ships big graphical updates in new OS releases). So much so that by the time Vista was out it had already forked a mature competitor: Beryl.
Plus Compiz wasn’t the first compositing Window on Linux either. Just arguably the best in that era.
> I don’t know how much these different compositing window managers inspired each other. To me it seems like there is some convergent evolution.
Technology almost always works that way. But it’s fair to note that Compiz did feel miles ahead of the competition at the time. Which I think is entirely down to its module system. Meaning anyone could build their own effects and not just wait for their OS developers to release a new service pack.
Compiz resulted in tons of Youtube videos showing how cool it is but it was a gimmick. An OS is much more than cool looking visualizations and to that end during the time it was introduced, Linux was less stable and so people come for the looks and then left because its Linux.
I still want to believe that Linux will become the king because we have lost so many freedoms over the years. As a result, every year I install a clean copy of Ubuntu on to my PC, start using it and then stop when I discover some serious bug. After that I put it back on the shelf and wait until next year. Maybe next year it will be better. This whole journey began during the Compiz era.
Driver support was patchy at times, but then it wasn’t exactly easy on OSX (Apple: “if we don’t support you then you’re shit out of luck”) nor Windows (Microsoft: “we support everything. Albeit you’d have to manually find those drivers yourself so if your system doesn’t boot or network access fails then you’re shit out of luck”) either. At least Linux shipped 99% of what you needed on the install CD.
For that reason, I’d almost always switch to Linux if ever I needed to debug a hardware problem in Windows or OSX. Though that’s less of an issue these days because I haven’t run Windows in ~15yrs and if you have a hardware problem on a modern MBP then you’re shit out of luck so there’s little point trying to debug it yourself.
Good for you that you had this experience but this is the standard talking point I have been hearing for 15 years. Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS. However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications. Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users. If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck. If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools).
Which is entirely anecdotal.
I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic over the last 20 years and for the at least 10 years of it the actual main reason Windows users don’t like Linux is simply because it’s not like Windows. It doesn’t matter how much better Linux might be or how crappy Windows might get, if people are comfortable in one thing then they generally don’t like switching to another thing that behaves differently. And Linux behaves very differently.
This is the reason Microsoft practically gives Microsoft products away at schools. Get them comfortable at a young age and most of them will stick with you for life.
Just look at how successful Android, ChromeOS, Linux netbooks (before Microsoft subsidised XP on them) are/were. If a compelling platform comes with Linux pre-installed people manage just fine. But if you ask them to take a Windows machine, wipe it and install something alien the of course a lot of people with struggle. It’s no different to how few people install 3rd party firmware on smart TVs, routers or other consumer devices.
But I’m fine with that. I used to get wound up with tactics like MS subsidies 20 years ago but these days I’m very much more live and let live. As long as people don’t impose their preferences on me, I won’t be an arse about my preferences to them. Just don’t try to fob me off with pseudo-technical rubbish when it’s clearly just a subjective bias.
> Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS.
Open source is only part of the equation. It’s that the whole OS is modular and easy to interface with. Whether it’s CLI components, common APIs or even just hot swappable services like desktop managers.
Windows has elements of this too but frankly Linux just does it better. And I say this as someone who use to author a competitor to Windows Blinds. I’ve done my fair amount of low level hacking on Windows, I’d even go as far as to say that Win32 APIs are fun. But Linux is just easier to mould into whatever vision you have. But that’s not a criticism of Windows, Windows caters for a different audience.
And it honestly doesn’t take any more effort to learn Linux than Windows. People just get a head start with Windows given that’s what you grow up with. However having taught computer literacy to old people, I can tell you that Windows can be just as alien if you haven’t already had that head start. Equally my wife has bought Linux laptops before (because they were cheap) and had zero issues with them. So the stories of Linux being anti-user are far overblown.
> However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications.
I haven’t forgotten that. You just wrongly assume that only Windows can do that.
> Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users.
I did actually give examples. :) eg Linux being easier to install because there’s no googling around to find the correct drivers. They just get picked up by default from your install media.
Admittedly Windows has improved vastly in that area too but I think Microsoft had to borrow a lot of ideas from Apple and Linux to get there.
> If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck.
That’s just as big a problem on Windows and macOS as it is any other operating system, Linux includes. Software breaks on any platform. Heck, I’ve had far more instances of Windows Server failing after a broken update than I have on Linux despite running 2 orders of magnitude more Linux servers. And we are talking severs! Never mind all the junk that slows desktop Windows down from a thousand different independent update managers to printer bloatware that isn’t an issue on Linux. And Windows itself isn’t exactly big free itself either.
> If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools).
That’s not really a fair comment when Windows has multiple different control panels (has the Font applet even been updated from Win 3.x yet?) that were designed for entirely different desktop paradigms. Each with slightly different functionality and thus finding the right option usually requires clicking around a dozen hyperlinks in different applications for 10 minutes until, by chance, you happen upon the right applet.
Honestly mate, I’ve got nothing against other peoples preferences. Maybe you should relax your outlook on others too. Or at least stop pretending your preferences are technical in nature because for the vast majority of peoples that’s really not the case. For most people, it’s far more down to familiarity than it is down to which platform is objectively better (not that a vague term like “better” can ever be an objective metric anyway)
Just to reiterate: Every OS has problems but in MY experience Linux has broken on me in fundamental ways. MY experience is that Linux cannot be trusted for day to day usage even though I have been giving it chances for 15 years now. I'm glad that you have the fortune of having a better experience but I am not going to ignore what I have experienced with the OS just because you said it was good.
I'm not going to waste my time with this anymore so I bid you good day.
At risk of sounding like a school child: you literally started it.
My point was initially just to say that other people get on fine with Linux. Then you took us down the rabbit hole conflating preference with technical fact.
> Just to reiterate: Every OS has problems but…
Exactly my point. You try to sound impartial but then drift into anecdote and bias. Like what you like, I’m really not here to argue you into using another operating system.
> I am not going to ignore what I have experienced with the OS just because you said it was good.
I feel like I’ve said this a dozen times already…but: I’m all for people having preferences and I’d never dare try to change someone’s opinion. But you’re conflating preference as technical fact. Maybe you should relax a little and appreciate other peoples preferences too instead of assuming you’re right :)
If you read back what I’ve posted you’ll see I’m not here to argue with you that you’re experiences don’t matter to you. I’m just saying it’s all subjective.
Having done as much research as I have on this topic over the years (had to for work) it’s funny how much of what we believe is fact is actually just down to preferences and those preferences are usually just down to comfort (like an old friend) rather than technical capabilities.
But I’ll happily end the topic here if that’s you’re desire. :)
No. When someone relates their negative experience with an OS you happen to use, that is not a personal attack or invitation to expound upon your own contradictory experience. This happens every single time anyone ever says anything even remotely negative about the Linux Desktop. Can you honestly say the same happens with anywhere near the same frequency when discussing Windows or MacOS problems?
What personal attacks are these? All I’ve seen thus far are adults having a mature conversation.
> or invitation to expound upon your own contradictory experience
That’s literally the point of social platforms. You cannot post an opinion on a public forum and then declare that other people are forbidden to rely. If that’s your bag then you’re better off writing your thoughts and then popping them in a glass bottle and casting that out to sea :P
> Can you honestly say the same happens with anywhere near the same frequency when discussing Windows or MacOS problems?
Yes. Happens all the time and on any topic. This is a message board, opinions will differ and people will want to discuss them. I don’t see what the issue is there (as long as it’s civil).
Eg this started out a positive thread talking about Linux composing managers and there wasn’t any need for anyone to start arguing about how much better Windows was but that happened. And I’m fine with that. Weird you should think I’m not allowed to reply when that does happen though.
Anyway, this has gotten meta and in my experience that’s usually the point when the quality of conversations deteriorate so I’ll duck out of the chat now :)
That isn't what happened, this is my point about taking things personally. Let's look at what was actually said:
> Compiz was great at drawing curious people in but I'd argue that Compiz helped many people write off Linux.
After which that opinion was elaborated to say that despite the attraction of the window effects, Linux's issues during the time period in question drove people away and left them with the impression that Linux was all gimmick that couldn't hold up to serious use.
Your response to this was:
> I switched to Linux full time before Compiz took off and did so for exactly the reasons you cited the other platforms were superior: Linux was more stable, easier to reason with (as it was doing less magic behind the scenes), components worked better with each other since POSIX is designed for interoperability.
Which, at least to me and apparently nebula, sounded a lot like the "no, Linux is great actually" defensive anecdote you see every time anyone says anything negative about Linux. Worse, you didn't even engage with what was being said, only saying that you had a great experience. What does that have to do with the argument presented?
> That’s literally the point of social platforms. You cannot post an opinion on a public forum and then declare that other people are forbidden to rely.
There are useful replies and then there's tired old defensive performative argumentation. I'm arguing that 'I had a good time with Linux' in the context of what was posted is much more the latter than the former. I might be a touch too sensitive to this sort of thing after hearing it out of Linux Desktop evangelists for 20 goddamned years, though.
> Yes. Happens all the time and on any topic. [...] Eg this started out a positive thread talking about Linux composing managers and there wasn’t any need for anyone to start arguing about how much better Windows was but that happened.
Take a look back at the original nebula post and you will see that he only ever mentioned Windows negatively.
But don’t bother looking it up. I’m done chatting to you after the last barrage of personal attacks you’ve made in the other thread. There’s only so many times you can post offensive remarks and miscomprehend the conversation while others are being polite and patient before their patients eventually wears out.
> I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic over the last 20 years and for the at least 10 years of it the actual main reason Windows users don’t like Linux is simply because it’s not like Windows. It doesn’t matter how much better Linux might be or how crappy Windows might get, if people are comfortable in one thing then they generally don’t like switching to another thing that behaves differently. And Linux behaves very differently.
Now, I am curious if that research is public anywhere? That's been my gut feel for the last 20 years too, but I've never had any data to prove it either way (provided the methodology for that research stands to scrutiny).
Now back to the point, I agree that Compiz contributed to both attracting and pushing people away from Linux. It exacerbated any stability issues in the graphics drivers, but at the same time, there was a huge presence of all the Compiz-stuff around. I similarly already used Linux (since '98) for stability and hackability on the desktop, and I had no interest in Compiz because of the fragility.
Still, it's obvious from the discussion here that there were people who were both pulled in and pushed out due to Compiz situation. As nebula says themselves, it hasn't really pushed them out, but instead it's the continuing troubles they experience with every yearly attempt to switch to Linux (and sure, their choice of hardware may contribute to it: I've had better experience with Thinkpads than even with Dell XPS 13 preloaded with Ubuntu). Basically, just like you get a very specific model if you want to run Hackintosh, you should look for computer models with decent support to run GNU/Linux on (it's just that there are many more models to choose from that would run great OOB): and don't trust the certification, because that doesn't cover all the things a consumer might care about.
Because, it was less work to use windows. I like programming, I even like configuring, but I want to do them when I want and not because I need to do something third and computer is failing.
There is a difference between just liking the way things behave because you're comfortable with it and preferring the way it behaves because it is better.
To this day there is a good chance that if I want to run the latest version of any piece of Linux software I will have to compile it from source like it's the 1970s in order to do so. That is a problem that Windows and MacOS have never had, and the Linux Desktop community has been very slow and reluctant to do anything about.
Hell, even today as Flatpak beings to emerge as the dominant cross-distro application packaging format, it is still lacking basic features of 1980s Desktop software management and gets a lot of flak from the community for existing at all.
indeed there is. However the vast majority of people fall into the former category while assuming theyre the latter category.
Or to put it another way, everyone cannot be right that their preference is technically superior. Ergo our preferences must be subjective.
> To this day there is a good chance that if I want to run the latest version of any piece of Linux software I will have to compile it from source like it's the 1970s in order to do so. That is a problem that Windows and MacOS have never had, and the Linux Desktop community has been very slow and reluctant to do anything about.
That’s a huuuuge generalisation there. The truth is it depends on the Linux distribution (Arch and Fedora are bleeding edge, Debian and CentOS are not) what repos you have enabled (stable, testing, etc) and even what software you’re running. Eg some niche cross platform thing on GitHub might require compiling for all OSs never mind just Linux.
Linux will see more regular platform updates than Windows and macOS where you’re limited to service packs and new OS releases. You also don’t have to wait until “patch Thursday” for patches on Linux. They get released as soon as they’ve passed build and test pipelines.
So there are definitely plenty of examples where the generalisation is a way off. But for the sake of impartiality I do agree that some niche software and some distros will make you compile from source. However its definitely not the norm for common software and hasn’t been for 20 years.
> Hell, even today as Flatpak beings to emerge as the dominant cross-distro application packaging format, it is still lacking basic features of 1980s Desktop software distribution and gets a lot of flak from the community for existing at all.
Yeah cross platform package management is broken in Linux. Snap, flatpak, etc. all have problems. Personally I think the real issue is that Linux is trying to emulate Windows and Mac with portable installers. If you want a platform where the responsibility is on the user to download and install applications manually then there are already mature options available for that (Windows and macOS). So there’s no point trying to compete there. Where Linux excels is with its package management taking the risk of application installation away from the operator.
This won’t be to everyone’s preference but that’s fine because not every platform should behave the same. Just because a specific paradigm makes sense for one platform doesn’t mean it makes sense for every platform.
Just look at how fundamentally different remote management on Windows vs Linux is. Windows is based around RPCs while Linux is based around scripting. Neither is wrong or right. Both work effectively despite being completely different approaches.
And here lies the problem with people who say one is better than another: they look at the differences and say “I don’t like it” but think it’s a technical decision when in fact it’s just an emotive response based on what they’re comfort zone is.
That sounds arrogant and condescending. In order for that to be true you would have to presume that any given behavior was objectively better, and therefore anyone who prefers different behavior only does so because they are comfortable with the 'wrong' behavior.
> That’s a huuuuge generalisation there. The truth is it depends on the Linux distribution
No, it doesn't, and I'm really tired of hearing "you chose the wrong distro, bro" for literally every distro because none of them actually do what I, and many others, want. Why is it considered so insane to want a stable base system and be able to install applications of any level of bleeding-edgeness on top of it without jumping through a bunch of hoops?
> Linux will see more regular platform updates than Windows and macOS where you’re limited to service packs and new OS releases.
You clearly haven't kept in touch with Windows through the Windows 10 era.
> Yeah cross platform package management is broken in Linux. Snap, flatpak, etc. all have problems. Personally I think the real issue is that Linux is trying to emulate Windows and Mac with portable installers. If you want a platform where the responsibility is on the user to download and install applications manually then there are already mature options available for that (Windows and macOS). So there’s no point trying to compete there. Where Linux excels is with its package management taking the risk of application installation away from the operator.
I disagree with literally every statement in here except the first two sentences. There is no reason one cannot have "portable" applications that are also managed with a store or package manager! It just means that you don't actually have to and you don't need an army of unpaid volunteers to repackage shit constantly. And Linux, in my experience, doesn't excel at taking the risk away as I have seen updates break other package's dependencies plenty of times.
We're getting off in the weeds. My original point, I think, stands: Linux doesn't behave the way I think is best, therefore it isn't 'comfort' that makes me not like the way it behaves, it's my preference for a different --better in my reasoned opinion-- behavior.
> This won’t be to everyone’s preference but that’s fine because not every platform should behave the same.
If this is truly your opinion then you have phrased your initial assertion in a very poor and condescending sounding way. You very much make it sound like "people who don't like the way Linux behaves are just idiots who can't learn new things".
> And here lies the problem with people who say one is better than another: they look at the differences and say “I don’t like it” but think it’s a technical decision when in fact it’s just an emotive response based on what they’re comfort zone is.
Oh, I see, it's because you actually did think they're just idiots.
That’s the literal opposite of what I said. I was saying what’s “right” is often subjective and people (ie not just technical users but non-technical users too) often (ie not always but in a great many cases) chose what’s right based on what is familiar or comfortable.
That’s basic human psychology. There’s a number of published papers that demonstrate this exact phenomenon.
> > That’s a huuuuge generalisation there. The truth is it depends on the Linux distribution
> No, it doesn't
Of course it does. A bleeding edge distro is going to have packages mainlined sooner than a conservative enterprise distro. This isn’t some shocking news, it’s Linux 101.
The whole point of distributions is they are different distribution of packages on Linux. So it should be pretty obvious that some will ship different packages to others.
> and I'm really tired of hearing "you chose the wrong distro, bro" for literally every distro because none of them actually do what I, and many others, want
I didn’t actually say you chose the wrong distro though. I said the age of packages depends on a number of factors including what distro you use (but not limited to).
The second part of your statement reaffirms my point about how there’s not right or wrong with preference. Linux doesn’t do what you want it to do your preferences lay else where. You’re even admitting there that others have told you that you’re trying to bend Linux into behaving in a way that distro wasn’t designed to. Thus that’s a preference you’re demonstrating and not a statement of something being technically superior nor inferior.
> Why is it considered so insane to want a stable base system and be able to install applications of any level of bleeding-edgeness on top of it without jumping through a bunch of hoops?
It’s not insane and there are platforms out there that manage that better than others. However it’s pointless me listing them because there are a myriad of other reasons you don’t like Linux too.
> And Linux, in my experience, doesn't excel at taking the risk away as I have seen updates break other package's dependencies plenty of times
No software is infallible but package managers are robust and have been for at least 15 years. The only times I’ve seen a package manager go tits up is when I’ve intentionally overridden it’s default behaviour and then forced it to proceed regardless. Basically knowingly forced it to break. I’ve had Linux (and FreeBSD too) running for years, constantly upgrading it from the package manager without a single issue. So I don’t doubt you’ve ran into issues but with package management on Linux, after all you seem to find all the problems on Linux, but generally it does work well for most people.
The same is true for Windows. If you’re competent then you can run a stable Windows install for years without any issues. And equally on Windows people might bork the system installing the wrong software. Such as accidentally installing a dodgy copy of Firefox from a spoofing website.
This doesn’t mean manually installing software is worse - I’m just exampling where package management tools do help. Microsoft would agree too since they provide a number of tools for pushing software out in an automated way.
> You clearly haven't kept in touch with Windows through the Windows 10 era
I don’t see why you make that statement when Windows 10 still proves my point: updates happening slower and less frequently than on Linux.
That’s not a bad thing though. It’s just a different operating model.
> We're getting off in the weeds. My original point, I think, stands: Linux doesn't behave the way I think is best, therefore it isn't 'comfort' that makes me not like the way it behaves, it's my preference for a different --better in my reasoned opinion-- behavior.
“Better” in your context is subjective to your preference though. Which is the point you keep missing. And if the term is subjective then it cannot be argued as technically superior.
Then there’s the question of why do you subjectively prefer the platform that you’re already familiar and comfortable with rather than this other platform that feels alien to you. Could it perhaps be because it’s familiar?
> If this is truly your opinion then you have phrased your initial assertion in a very poor and condescending sounding way.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones:
> You very much make it sound like "people who don't like the way Linux behaves are just idiots who can't learn new things".
> Oh, I see, it's because you actually did think they're just idiots.
We don’t have to agree on everything but the ridiculously hostile way you’re twisting my post makes it hard to have a sensible conversation with you.
Give me a way to interpret this other than condescension. You're saying that people who espouse a preference are not doing so based on valid reasoning, and the only evidence you have offered for this is that you have a different preference.
I agree that 'better' is subjective, I don't think I ever said otherwise.
You don't give people the benefit of the doubt that when they say the prefer some behavior over other behavior that they have legitimate reasoning behind it. That's arrogant nonsense entirely deserving of the stereotype that IT people are arrogant, and I for one am sick of people acting like this in our industry.
…and now that you finally grasp enough comprehension skills that you’re not making wild presumptions and insulting interpretations of my posts, now you accuse me of being arrogant and the “stereotypical problem with people in IT” in your very same post that’s agreeing with the entire point that sparked all the initial venom? Even now you cannot bring yourself to be polite with other people and instead insult them while simultaneously agreeing with them.
We’ve chatted a few times before and each and every time you’ve failed miserably at even the most basic comprehension while repeatedly making aggressive and insulting remarks. On one occasion even berating me with the same point I’d literally made the post before. And Ive seen you do this to other people too. So I’ve been more patient in this conversation than you deserve. There’s one tangent where you can’t even follow the thread and keep referring back to the wrong parent while making a big hoohar about how everyone else has misunderstood the conversation.
Maybe the reason everyone in IT always disagrees with you and comes across a certain way is because you are the one being an illiterate ass to them? Communication is a two way street and I don’t have this issue with literally anyone else on HN apart from yourself. And after this experience of insanity I’ll certainly make sure I don’t bother to engage with you again too.
However, I submit that your language is not as clear as you might think it is. I am still not sure if you're trying to say that most people prefer certain behaviors purely out of comfort, or if you're agreeing with me that there is a good chance they prefer behaviors for legitimately technical reasons that just happen to be subjective. Your initial post on the subject very much strikes me as the former, and frankly so do nearly all your posts after that, yet you seem to insist that I am misunderstanding.
At the time it was easy to hear people complaining about how ugly linux was. Compiz helped a lot in that front. We were used to people saying "you can't do that on linux" and then things quickly changed to us saying "you can't do that on your OS".
Let's not fake it: linux is still far from being a diamond of UI design or consistency, but well, competition has its own problems too. The point is: things improved a lot and that event at that time in history made things improve a bit faster. To the point that almost two decades later something like this gets to the front page of hacker news and is filled by comments of people with fond memories of the time.
> This whole journey began during the Compiz era.
Another evidence of the impact it had.
>Another evidence of the impact it had.
Well for me it wasn't Compiz that brought me into Linux, it was this idea of something different from WIndows but it may have had this impact for others. Compiz was a gimmick to me and after trying it once I put it aside to try and just make my regular Linux installs remain stable.
While I'll agree those are important for usability, I'm not sure they're necessary for adoption. Windows 10 uses a mix of UIs ranging from win32 windows 95 legacy to MAUI and most popular programs implement their own UI frameworks and it's doing ok.
It's an old joke that one of the best ways to make someone perpetually unhappy is to teach them proper font kerning.
YMMV. I myself am very happy with Gnome and would say it's about as nice to use as a Mac. You can, of course, install ugly applications with horrendous UIs, that use Athena or Motif widgets, limited only to X bitmapped fonts or an ncurses UI that would work on a VT-52, and so on - but that's kind of a feature of Linux - it's Unix and it runs a lot of things originally built in ages long past. It can be consistent if you want, and it can embrace the past in ways no other OS can dream of.
Except, maybe, IBM's z/OS, but that's a completely different beast.
Not really jarring anymore with ok functionality between apps. I wish gnome-shell was more stable and shipped with a dock…
It does. It's just that it's hidden now by default.
What I really would like is a simple e-mail/messaging program to consolidate my mail, Slack and Teams inflows on a single threaded timeline.
What do you do when you encounter a serious bug in your OS of choice?
When I say serious bug I typically mean serious OS breaking bugs.
Some examples from these past years(these all happened different years):
1) After clean install, desktop crashes after first reboot and I am thrown into terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on.
2) After Clean install, I wish to copy some files to an fat32 USB drive(Sandisk purchased directly from them). I get some error while the file is being copied, the drive is unmounted and then when I go to another system running Windows to check if my file was copied, the drive is corrupted causing all my files to be lost. Result: Stop usage and move on.
3) After clean install, I go ahead and connect a second monitor. Now my desktop becomes a garbled mess on both screens. I disconnect screen and the desktop remains a garbled mess on the main screen. I force reboot and upon reboot now I have been dropped to the terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on.
These issues don't happen on Windows and Mac in my experience. Don't get me wrong, Windows is degrading in usability and Mac is as well (at a much slower pace) but they are not falling apart in these fundamental ways. The very foundations of Linux seem to be built on sand and that does not convey trust when you expect your system to be more than just a toy. This is a machine to get work done on and I depend on it. I cannot be dealing with silly issues like this.
1) sounds like a hardware issue or hardware compatibility issue. Unfortunately, while Linux does come with great and extensive hardware support out-of-the-box, you'd still benefit from choosing hardware that works well with Linux. Thinkpad T series (I usually use X1 Carbon, but as the highest end ultraportable it can introduce some Windows-specific firmware issues that they only resolve in a few months after release — they did that with Gen6 when they switched to new always-on-standby, but they introduced a BIOS option for Linux ~6 months later) is usually the best bet out of big manufacturers, and Linux-focused ones like System76 are a good choice too. So if you want to try out Linux next time, get Linux hardware that will work well with it first (or be ready to debug issues like the ones you mention).
These sort of issues happen even more on Windows if you clean install it on a wide variety of hardware (MacOS can't even be installed on your non-Apple system, I am guessing, so I'd say that it's even worse :). The benefit Windows has is that it comes pre-installed on those systems.
I've seen 2) frequently ~5 years ago myself: you had to really ensure that you unmounted FAT32 devices cleanly and waited for the system to announce that the drive was safe to remove: don't do that a few times, and filesystem will be messed up enough for Linux FAT32 driver to be able to cope (Microsoft, having developed FAT32 themselves, has an obvious advantage there). They don't seem to cause as much corruption anymore (only the file you were transferring might be corrupted), or maybe I learned to wait properly. Also, flash drives can degrade and cause all sorts of issues where it seems to work properly in other systems but causes silent corruption. If this was an old flash drive, that's the most likely issue: I've learned to go with only SanDisk Extreme flash drives because they have the best write endurance, but they are multiple times more expensive for the same capacity compared to other flash drives (including SanDisk ultra stuff).
3) is really weird, and external display connectivity has been a huge issue ~10 years ago, but I haven't seen any issues since (including in presentations on random projectors, multiple screen types and such): the only stuff that still annoys me is the default of setting up new screens as extended, chromeless display areas (I'd definitely default to "mirror screens"), but once a screen is set up, it saves the settings forever. Still, this is most obviously a driver issue (integrated Intel graphics is usually most stable, Nvidia most performant, but AMD should be becoming the best of both worlds in the last few years, though it's hard to get their GPUs).
And since you say these don't happen with Windows, just 10 days ago I had to reboot my X1 Carbon into Windows (that it came preinstalled with) to file some tax paperwork and I connected it to my Dell 4K TB3 display (which I dock to and undock from repeatedly on Linux without issue: all of this is pretty high end Windows equipment). On reboot, TB3 light remained on and it stopped charging and passing DisplayPort through (still worked as a USB hub, and rebooting back into Windows did not fix it). I was thinking I'd have to go to the service shop since my laptop is still under warranty, but as I was pulling my SSD out to prepare for that, I realised I could just disconnect the battery and see if that helps, and luckily, it did.
In short, dealing with hardware is hard (which all your issues seem to be), and all of the operating systems have different quirks. As above, I had a pretty terrible issue with an expensive Windows laptop and Windows-supporting screen ($3000 + $1200) which worked without issue under Linux for more than a year. Apple has a huge advantage because they control the hardware they ship with, Windows is generally worse on arbitrary hardware but has the benefit of being pre-installed and "pre-debugged", and Linux is better than Windows but has to be clean installed (I am pretty confident that if you took random 20 laptops off the market today and attempted to clean install both Windows and Linux on them, you'd get a fully working Linux system more easily; MacOS easily loses out on such a benchmark).
With Linux the issues are fundamental to how the OS is designed and maintained. Several of these issues were fixed only to come back one or two releases in the future. These sort of terrible regressions don't inspire confidence.
You have listed excuse after excuse to justify these failures when in reality both other OSes have had these functions worked out over 10+ years ago.
1) I have heard this excuse before that I should stick to official Linux hardware. I have had issues with Thinkpads as well and some of these issues happened on a Thinkpad. I have also been hesitant to jump onboard System76 or Purism because their systems just look like junk and in 2021 when we have stunning Mac laptops with beautiful trackpads and retina displays and me entering my 30s I just don't have the stomach to spend hundreds of dollars on laptops that look like they came out of the mid to late 2000s. In the case of System76 they are rebadged Clevo systems from what I understand(could be wrong about this). So in reality I am paying for QA for this year of distro with no specific guarantee that I won't start hitting the same issues a few years down the road when the regressions start to come. There is no garuntee that System76/Purism will fix some small regression in a multi year old system. They suffer from the fact that the community will move on without them and so they have to maintain support. Mac systems have been supported for 7+ years. I have a 2012 Macbook Air that still runs pretty decent with no regressions on the latest MacOS (well second latest since they finally discontinued it giving it ~9 years of support).
2) I have never had any doubt as to Windows's ability to correctly write data to a USB drive ever since I started using this functionality back in Windows XP!
No I specifically mentioned that I bought Sandisk and direct from them to remove this commonly used excuse where Linux people blame everything but the OS itself. The flash drive is fine. Windows has written to it successfully without ever throwing an issue. MacOS has written to it multiple times without issue. The flash drive is not at fault!
I want you to stop for a moment. Picture yourself as the user. You have come to expect over the years that when you copy a file to a USB mass storage device, the file is correctly written. You don't do file integrity checks or other silly stuff. You just copy your files to the drive, unmount it and then move on. Now imagine you are trying linux out and you follow the same mindset. You copy files over and then unmount and move on. The horror and shock of losing precious data will definitely put permanent anxiety and distrust into the User's mind that will be very difficult to restore. If you cannot trust copy and paste then what can you trust? The OS is fundamentally flawed because these copy and paste operations in the GUI are basically abstracting command line operations that may or may not fail silently. This is garbage design compared to MacOS and Windows. When these other OS'es fail, sure they don't show you the error most of the time but the GUI is strongly tied to the operations that are occurring and so when they fail, you know they have failed. You're not in limbo because you are looking at a GUI that is not correctly tracking what the underlying command line application is doing.
3) All I know is that I have never had display issues in Windows and it is not even a thought on MacOS. In fact MacOS handles multi display so beautifully because it scales things perfectly. This is better than even Windows because while Windows always gets multi-monitor working without fuss, things like font rendering leave a lot to be desired. MacOS give you everything: Stable muti-monitor support, beautiful scaling and excellent font rendering across displays with different resolutions. Linux is not even in the same ballpark because you don't really know if the display you hook up will even start up properly and then when you need to do config changes you are stuck doing some stupid stuff like installing xrandr. You cannot expect to plug in the damn display and move on with your life. I recently hooked up a 640x480 CRT along with a 4K display to mac and to my surprise, it handled scaling across these wildly different displays perfectly. I couldn't believe it! I have gotten so confident in the Mac ecosystem that I don't even doubt it anymore. It just works and that freedom allows me to remove that cognitive load off of my mind.
I am happy to see you strongly disagree while making such a wild assumption even after I said it was factory pre-installed system.
I'm not using any "frankenstein Windows environment": this is factory installed and up-to-date Windows installation on a recent high end Windows laptop.
You are dismissing my experience in a worse way than you are saying your experiences are being dismissed. It's also not hard to find evidence of Windows messing up flash drives online too.
If all you can do is discuss in bad faith, there is no reason to discuss further.
If you want to argue that most of Compiz effects were overused and tacky then that’s a different issue; also an entirely subjective one.
Similarly compiz was important for the world beyond MacOS, while being utterly useless it attracted the attention of lots of kids like myself while also producing useful side-effects in the Linux ecosystem, and no doubt pushing desktop's outside of Linux.
Compiz was indeed a pioneer, and also explored far more effects compared to MacOS X for better and worse - In fact I'm pretty sure Apple copied the 3D rotating desktop from compiz for a short time... not that it's a particularly imaginative effect, compiz just stumbled upon it first.
... so how about we stop being petty.
Referencing decades in two-digit form fell out of favour with the Y2K issue. Perhaps it should be resurrected.
At the turn of the 20th century, fashion was to refer to "oh-eight" and such, IIRC. I don't know that the decade had a common nomenclature. I suspect there's a Wikipedia article on that somewhere....
Hrm ... not really, or at least not readily.
Half way through I was thinking, we could probably go back to 2 digit years now. . ..
In English, verbal reference to "1999" was "nineteen ninty-nine". But "2000" was "two thousand" rather than "twenty-aught" or "twenty-oh-oh".
There's an interesting aside here, the ephochal 1968 science fiction film classic Stanley Kubrick / Arthur C. Clarke collaboration 2001: A Space Odyssey was conceived as "twenty-oh-one" as I recall,[1] but came to be referred to largely as "two thousand and one". Whether this was simply due to the same psychological / verbal awkwardness of "twenty oh-one" or itself shaped subsequent usage I'm not sure.
I do note that the years in the span 2000--2009 are typically referred to in my experience as "two thousand one ... two thousand nine", but from 2010 onwards, the pattern is far more typically "twwenty ten", "twenty eleven", ... "twenty twenty-two", etc. There seems to be a similar pattern for the span between the years 999 and 1010 at least that I'm aware: "nine ninety-nine", "one thousand", "one thousand one", ... "one thousand nine", "ten ten", "ten eleven", ...
If I can nerd-snipe anyone into tracing what usage, patterns, history, and psychology of millennial-decade-span verbal year references are and why ... well, I'm sorry, I guess?[2]
________________________________
Notes:
1. I'm pretty certain Clarke references this in his many essays. Probably in The Lost Worlds of 2001
2. My first nerd-sniping target is of course myself... Some easily-found results:
- "How to write dates" notes the "two thousand" / "twenty ten" distinction: https://blog.harwardcommunications.com/2017/09/28/how-to-wri...
- NPR dedicated a story to the pronunciation of "2010" ... and reaches no conclusion, though it comes up with another cultural reference, "In the Year Twenty-Five Twenty-Five", in addition to my suggestion of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And an ominous reference to "the year we'll all be talking about: 2020"...: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120470...
- This Reddit thread discusses rationales, precedents, and a few further references: https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/rrzzcd/why_can...
- NY Times: "Naming the '00s" (2009): https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/15segal.html
- Wikipedia seems to suggest that the 0--9 years of millennial centuries (1000, 2000, 3000, etc.) are pronounced as n* thousand, followed by the "twenty", "thrity", "forty"... followed by years after the year 10 of those millennial centuries, though without citation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_numerals#Dates
I'm not sure what AP, Chicago, or MLA style guides suggest.
It was far more than just a gimmick, and I really miss the effects today.
It reminds me of discussions around Mac vs PC in the early days. The experience of using a Mac was more "fluid" than Windows. The Mac would draw windows faster, move the mouse faster (as in more refreshes of the cursor position per second) and that made it more comfortable to use. At the same time I also used Sun and SGI boxes regularly and the stark difference between the jerky mouse movement of the Sun and the fluid, Mac-like, movement of the SGI made the former an inferior experience (even though I liked OpenWindows over SGI's window manager whose name I forgot).
I'd love to have wobbly windows back.
Using both, I can't imagine getting excited by KDE wobbly windows in the same way that Compiz could get a "wow!" by demoing wobbly windows -> desktop cube.
It was a short, beautiful peak of Linux on the Desktop where a high was reached and then desktops just fell away from it.
4Sight!
https://wiki.preterhuman.net/4Sight_Window_System
http://www.vintagecomputers.info/pitechrep.html
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sgi/iris4d/007-2001-030_4Sight_...
4Sight Programmer's Guide: GL/DGL Interfaces. NeWS. Window Manager.
Settings > Workspace Behavior > Desktop Effects > Enable Wobbly Windows
Enjoy :)
It has always been like this.
Thanks to you and others for working on it! Looking at the video almost 15 years later, I feel wistful for the joy that accompanied some of these desktop effects, and wonder where it has gone today.
$ yt-dlp -F 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ'
[youtube] xC5uEe5OzNQ: Downloading webpage
[youtube] xC5uEe5OzNQ: Downloading android player API JSON
[info] Available formats for xC5uEe5OzNQ:
ID EXT RESOLUTION FPS │ FILESIZE TBR PROTO │ VCODEC VBR ACODEC ABR ASR MORE INFO
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
sb2 mhtml 48x27 │ mhtml │ images storyboard
sb1 mhtml 60x45 │ mhtml │ images storyboard
sb0 mhtml 120x90 │ mhtml │ images storyboard
139 m4a │ 1.55MiB 47k https │ audio only mp4a.40.5 47k 22050Hz low, m4a_dash
140 m4a │ 4.13MiB 127k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 127k 44100Hz medium, m4a_dash
251 webm │ 4.11MiB 126k https │ audio only opus 126k 48000Hz medium, webm_dash
17 3gp 176x144 8 │ 2.67MiB 82k https │ mp4v.20.3 82k mp4a.40.2 0k 22050Hz 144p
160 mp4 192x144 25 │ 1006.62KiB 30k https │ avc1.4d400b 30k video only 144p, mp4_dash
278 webm 192x144 25 │ 1.70MiB 52k https │ vp9 52k video only 144p, webm_dash
133 mp4 320x240 25 │ 2.01MiB 61k https │ avc1.4d400d 61k video only 240p, mp4_dash
18 mp4 320x240 25 │ 9.42MiB 290k https │ avc1.42001E 290k mp4a.40.2 0k 44100Hz 240p
242 webm 320x240 25 │ 2.81MiB 86k https │ vp9 86k video only 240p, webm_dash
That said, In the mid 2000s, Linux was better but still had issues getting video/etc configured properly (depending on what you wanted to do/your hardware). I specifically moved to OS X because video just worked.
Just looking at all the options in the Compiz window was exciting. I can have fish inside my desktop cube?
// This effect is a homage to the good old Compiz days. However, it is implemented //
// quite differently. While Compiz used a particle system, this effect uses a noise //
// shader. The noise is moved vertically over time and mapped to a configurable color //
// gradient. It is faded to transparency towards the edges of the window. In addition, //
// there are a couple of moving gradients which fade-in or fade-out the fire effect. //
Showing friends the crazy 3D desktop, the wobbling, burning windows, and all of the other crazy customization and effects it provided gave me a kind of unique confidence and excitedness in my explorations. It was like jet fuel for learning. Bash, vim, Unix philosophy, Python - all things I got sucked into because I liked the aesthetics and promise of Linux. Lessons that outlived the window manager and paved the way for my career.
Compiz couldn't have done a better job.
And... it went nowhere. A shot at a truly amazing desktop that would put it even above OSX.
Squandered.
The desktop market is STILL, ten years after windows 8, STILL ripe for the taking.
Windows won because of software written on it, OSX because of exceptional hardware that comes with the OS. Things like compliz are for nerds and inconsequential on the grand scheme of things
If you like the Windows 95 approach both Microsoft and Apple are using you have KDE/Plasma, mature, stable and full of helpful gimmicks.
If you like the out of your way approach and still have all the luxury of a modern desktop (a bit like windows 8 wanted to be) there is Gnome Shell.
If you don't want to waste resources just try something like openbox and if you hate desktops all together try something tiled like awesomeWM
If desktops would be any argument for the average users nobody would be using windows today.
I can bet that more folks in school wanted to try out linux (This was around the time when Canonical was sending out free installation CDs to whoever wanted to try out Ubuntu) because they thought it was "cool" rather than because of any of the other philosophical or technical arguments for Linux.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the quality of the Linux desktop of today, but I don't see anything really different from Windows/Mac apart from getting subpar support from many software/hardware vendors.
Maybe is just nostalgia, or maybe I'm growing old and grumpy...
It's more or less the same reason why I like Gnome's minimalistic approach.
I have ADHD and everything I DON'T need is an OS that distracts me. FFS, I'd work from a VT-100 (even though I'd prefer a 3278-2 or 3279) if that was possible.
It sucks though if you really want things another way. Then you have to mess around with third-party addons that break every time there's a major upgrade. It's the main reason I moved back to KDE (and the OS being closed off more).
I would never choose to use Gnome for this reason because it does the same thing. But at least on FOSS we have many options available, to each their own!
I really really want to see this come back. Even back then it was never released to stable and I got it from a script that grabbed and compiled all the bleeding edge stuff. It worked for a few weeks and then an update somewhere broke it and I never saw it work again :(
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3210/compiz-windows-e...
Hah, for me, this was when I started getting deep into WINE and also some of the games available for Linux (SuperTux, that one game where you shoot a ball and it sticks to other balls and if enough of them are the same color they disappear, and some DOOM port).
Frozen bubble.
[0] I misremembered, it was actually Perl.
I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. It was probably 50ish lines of C code, and I made some serious assumptions about what video card and modes were present.
I really really loved computers and coding back then.
Reading the comment below about being elderly and soulless also resonates for me at the moment.
I miss the romance of it all. :) I've been married to computers for nearly 40 years now, and all of the spice is gone. It's just comfortable and regular and routine.
Oh well, on to another 2-hour interminable sprint planning sesh (sigh) -- "yes dear, I'll be right there"
I did dad's homework up into my mid teens, so it was a good payoff for him! :)
I never asked him if he liked the book Tom Sawyer. I bet he did.
Call me crazy but little novelties like this are part of what make computers fun.
I always laugh at the people that take this notion way too seriously. If their CPU is only 98% idle, it's a travesty. I imagine the same people driving around in cars stripped of all paneling and upholstery, because every little bit of unnecessary weight hurts performance!
> There's no point in not having a little fluff that makes the experience a bit more fun.
Well put. Considering how much time we spend staring at these stupid little number boxes, things that makes the experience a little more enjoyable are worthwhile, even if they're dumb and frivolous.
Units of energy expended per unit of "enjoyment" is certainly a factor to consider, but in this case the extra energy consumed is very minimal.
Back in the Compiz days, my virtual desktop switcher was a 3D cylinder. Holding the middle mouse button would zoom out my current desktop, placing me in the center of a giant 3D cylinder which I could rotate by moving the mouse to switch to a different desktop. And it worked with my dual monitor setup!
That was immersive as hell, and I felt so freaking productive having that spatial awareness of my other desktops. Back then I was doing Android development with Eclipse, and I would have one desktop for code, another desktop for logcat and an ADB terminal, and another desktop for documentation/music/etc.
And of course, all of my windows were wobbly.
Today I don't use anything fancy like that anymore, and I barely ever use virtual desktops for anything, even though switching between them with a keybinding is much easier/faster than that old setup I had. ALT+TAB takes about as much effort as CTRL+ALT+ARROW, but one is muscle memory and the other is not. If I ain't getting a fancy 3D cylinder, why bother?
This is really the power of Linux... You can make it what you want it to be.
It was the VM crashing and the window destruction effect was quite appropriate as my work wasn't saved :/
Maybe we should only burn windows when the application crashed non-zero :D
But even in a PowerPoint presentation, if it's done in good taste, it can be quite stylish.
*googles PowerPoint release date. Answer: 2004.
I guess that checks out. I’m old now.
Typed from my KDE desktop, with wobbly windows and desktop cube effects. Desktop computing should be fun.
[1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2950/compiz-alike-win...
That said, I don't quite understand why no viable alternative has arisen.
Gitlab was a good attempt, but its interface turned out to be kind of clunky and more "team-oriented" than makes sense for general open source projects. I strongly believe that if it had a "slick" interface like Github, it'd be more popular.
Sourcehut is fantastic, but lacks the same "issues" and "pull requests" system.
Mailing lists honestly kind of suck, if only because there's zero semantic markup in email (excluding HTML-in-email which is a clusterfuck that nobody should use), making it difficult to track comment replies, embed code blocks, etc. And submitting patches over email is a chore compared to making a PR, viewing diffs, etc. on a platform like Github.
Also the social networking features of Github are unobtrusive and fun. Following other users has introduced me to a variety of interesting projects, starring projects is a fun way to show support, and the ability to watch a repo for releases is useful (although I wish it were an RSS feed instead).
Worse though is the dependence on the plain ASCII codes, limiting their utility (if you even call them that) to GitHub's display. On a terminal (at least where I'm likely to use "git log"), it's just a bunch of dumb ASCII codes taking up line space.
I don't really get it. Why not just use the real emoji? At least it'll display properly outside of GitHub.
But they didn’t, and the few quirky things that OS X did, like the puff-of-smoke effect, have been quietly removed. I hate how sterile Apple’s products have gotten. Sure, they’re beautiful, but they don’t have the kind of character the old ones did.
I wish something like Kaleidoscope (or Burn My Windows) existed for Macs.
You can read more about Eric Trout's extension here:
https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999...
You are definitely correct about loose OS security. It was possible to do a lot of damage with just a HyperCard stack, and those were pretty widely distributed.
I wish all desktop windows could have shaders applied.
I'm trying to convince myself to write one for a curved CRT look and one for phosphor persistence.
https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/main/samples/Pixe...
The Windows Terminal team has a lot more fun than the others, it seems.
Instead of having fun, they should be performing doctoral research to improve performance. (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362#issuecomm...)
https://github.com/cmuratori/refterm/commits/main
And there is movement in getting changes into the terminal itself:
I preferred Apple's animations which like the 'genie' one have a functional purpose too: they show where a minimised window is going.
For me, the perfect animation is extremely quick so it doesn't make the desktop feel slower, but still just noticeable enough to make it feel sophisticated. And it should have a function, not just for show.
SimulaVR (simulavr.com) is interested in potentially adding compiz effects like this into its VR window manager. There are some really cool ones you can do in VR, but I won't say more. =]
I don't think many people will contribute with a rule like that. Project is neat though.
Why do you think that is?
I don't like emojis, but I have even less regard for how boring the internet has become.
Ah yes, the Kid Rock aesthetic. Much less tacky.
All the more reason to not require them?
I have lots of commit rules in all my projects but they're simple, straightforward, and easy to remember because they're useful and commonplace. eg "Short one-line commit message, more details in the paragraph beneath it, atomic commits with single change per commit, no individual commit breaks the tests".
935e922 (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD) :tada: Bump version number
aeec220 (tag: v7) Merge branch 'feature/3d-noise'
17fae26 :lipstick: Tweak labels
a331736 :twisted_rightwards_arrows: Merge pull request #21 from Schneegans/feature/3d-noiseIf you'd like more thoughts on the matter.
(and the original article now lives here: https://www.bekk.christmas/post/2019/11/gitmoji-yay-or-nay )
https://schneegans.github.io/news/2021/12/02/flypie10
>More Fly-Pie Updates!
>In the last couple of months several new versions of Fly-Pie have been released. In this post, I want to highlight the major new feature.
>New features were added in version 8 and version 10. The versions 9 and 11 were released as well, but they contain bug fixes only. Here are two trailers to celebrate the respective releases:
Fly-Pie 8: New default dark theme and support for GNOME 3.36, 3.38, 40, and 41!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9t7hfkE_5w
Fly-Pie 10: A new Clipboard Menu, proper touch support & much more!
If you do try it out, please _please_ ignore all the gimmicky effects (yes, including burning windows)- they're a distraction from the pure utilitarianism that compiz offers.
TIL: Gnome Extensions can be written in JavaScript.
Here's done even more amazing pie menu stuff since then, including Fly-Pie -- why don't all web browsers and window managers support this yet??? This stuff is extremely useful, practical, easy to use, and deeply customizable, not just beautiful window dressing, eye candy, and fancy effects.
More Fly-Pie Updates!
https://schneegans.github.io/news/2021/12/02/flypie10
Fly-Pie 8: New default dark theme and support for GNOME 3.36, 3.38, 40, and 41!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9t7hfkE_5w
Fly-Pie 10: A new Clipboard Menu, proper touch support & much more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGXtckqhEIk
Pie Menus: A 30 Year Retrospective
https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#ed08
>Spectacular Example: Simon Schneegans’ Gnome-Pie, the slick application launcher for Linux
>I can’t understate how much I like Simon Schneegans’ Gnome-Pie, as well as his bachelor thesis work on the Coral-Menu and the Trace-Menu. Not only is it all slick, beautiful, and elegantly animated, but it’s properly well designed in all the important ways that make it Fitts’s Law Friendly and easy to use, and totally deeply customizable by normal users! It’s a spectacularly useful tour-de-force that Linux desktop users can personalize to their heart’s content.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17098179
Pie Menus: A 30-Year Retrospective: Take a Look and Feel Free (medium.com/donhopkins)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17106453
DonHopkins on May 19, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Pie Menus: A 30-Year Retrospective: Take a Look an...
I'm very impressed by Simon Schneegans' work on Gnome-Pie:
http://simmesimme.github.io/gnome-pie.html
And especially his delightful thesis work:
Trace-Menu:
I really love how the little nubs preview the structure of the sub-menus, and how you can roll back to the parent menu because it reserves a slice in the sub-menu to go back, so you don't need to use another mouse button or shift key to browse the menus.
Coral-Menu:
That looks like a nice visual representation with a way to easily browse all around the tree, into and out of the submenus without clicking! I can't tell from the video if it's based on a click or a timeout. But it looks like it supports browsing and reselection and correcting errors pretty well! (That would be something interesting to measure!)
There's another useful law related to Fitts's law that applies to situations like this, called Steering Law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_law
The steering law in human–computer interaction and ergonomics is a predictive model of human movement that describes the time required to navigate, or steer, through a 2-dimensional tunnel. The tunnel can be thought of as a path or trajectory on a plane that has an associated thickness or width, where the width can vary along the tunnel. The goal of a steering task is to navigate from one end of the tunnel to the other as quickly as possible, without touching the boundaries of the tunnel. A real-world example that approximates this task is driving a car down a road that may have twists and turns, where the car must navigate the road as quickly as possible without touching the sides of the road. The steering law predicts both the instantaneous speed at which we may navigate the tunnel, and the total time required to navigate the entire tunnel.
The steering law has been independently discovered and studied three times (Rashevsky, 1959; Drury, 1971; Accot and Zhai, 1997). Its most recent discovery has been within the human–computer interaction community, which has resulted in the most general mathematical formulation of the law.
Also here's some interesting stuff about incompatibility with Wayland, and rewriting Gnome-Pie as an extension to the Gnome shell:
JS has its place, using it for systems programming isn't one of them IMHO, since I prefer to have the core of my computation stack slim and fast. I can almost forgive the electron apps their piggyness given the desire to build cross platform, but gnome? Yah, no thanks.
Having those hooks written in compiled languages/etc is bad enough, I found myself regularly cleaning the runas & windows explorer context menus of loads of cruft because the click latency was noticeable, and now not only can one plug in a ton of stuff but it needs to thunk though to JS to do it (and not picking particularly on JS, because it would be just as bad in java or python or whatever other scripting language one chooses).
Its just a waste of cycles, and for projects I work on, engineering time is "cheap". That applies to most system programming if one spends 1/2 a second considering that the code forms the foundation for hundreds of millions of devices all burning energy and the time of their users.
Thank you the detail. The philosophy is that Gnome is NOT configurable, really, just does a VERY limited and consistent desktop thing. It doesn't even have icons on the desktop (by default).
I find that it is "easy" for most users -- there is really nothing there! If you want icons on the desktop, add an extension for that. And, the idea of extensions is that they are small programs that are easy to manage. It is possible to turn them all off with a click! (if they are getting in the way).
I just counted -- I have 36 extensions on my Gnome 41. Note that icons on the desktop = extension, start menu for programs = extension. You can certainly start programs without a start menu -- that is the default "Gnome Way".
On the other hand -- being able to consistently customize is very nice (I particularly like "argos" extension, which makes it delightfully easy to add buttons, gather and display information and more -- and as a bonus, is fully compatible with the MacOS bitbar plugin.
Yes, I use a lot of extensions, but I do have 4 or 8GB of RAM is my laptops, and i3 or better processors, so this becomes a reasonable fit for me.
I don't see desktop extensions as the "core of the computation stack". Can you expand on that idea, please?
a) after a minor apt-get update the extension will stop working
b) the extension will leak memory and after a few days of uptime my desktop will be unusable
That's why I'm still running Cinnamon. Gnome extensions are a thing created to deflect the biggest criticisms towards Gnome's questionable direction, yet they are a second-class citizen and never really work well enough to be acceptable.
Using something like this boils down to whether you don't mind wasting cycles and RAM on pretty effects or you just want the best performance consistently.
For most of us, that depends on whether we have had the experience of struggling to maintain good GUI performance or not. The younger users will have no hassle with using something like this, they've always had plenty of GUI performance.
For those of us who have had the experience of the necessity of only using plain-color wallpapers because it took too long for an image wallpaper to repair itself after moving a window on the desktop, it will remain one of those 'interesting thing to see, but not for me' effects.