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Comment by netik | Hacker News Reader

and of course, it’s ugly. sigh.

Why is it that every OSS desktop has to look like a demo from the 70’s?

The desktop and UI conventions are largely inspired from NeXTstep, which is from the late 1980s and was considered ahead of its time. However, there is nothing preventing the use of alternative designs. One example is the Etolie project from the late 2000s and early 2010s, which used the GNUstep API but didn't rely on NeXT-style UI conventions:

http://etoileos.com/etoile/

If GNUstep gains traction, there will almost certainly be a project to create a modern desktop. I personally like the NeXTSTEP UI, but I wouldn't mind something new.

> If GNUstep gains traction, there will almost certainly be a project to create a modern desktop.

I think that's backwards. They need to create a project for a modern desktop to gain traction.

> Why is it that every OSS desktop has to look like a demo from the 70’s?

You need some unixporn[0] in your life.

Also people have different tastes and preferences and like the NeXTStep or Win95 or OS/2 or BeOS or Classic Mac or whatever look.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

I find it much more appealing than any of the modern "flat" UIs. GNUstep's prototype NeXTSTEP popularized this grey 3D look in the early 90s.

> it’s ugly. sigh.¶ Why is it that

Because you haven't sent the patches that would make it prettier (e.g. ones that would make it as pretty as, say, Mac OS).

Probably because they would have been rejected.

Some people like the ugly retro look. You can make KDE look slick and modern if you want, but some people want to make it look like Windows 95.

every few years i go and search for a NeXTStep theme for gnome or kde. (i also look at GNUstep but switching the whole desktop environment is more effort, since the needed packages are not easily available, and the apps i use do not have GNUstep alternatives either, so i am struggling a bit not knowing how to proceed)

Have you looked at modern Gnome or KDE Plasma? They are both at least as petty as MacOS or Windows.

KDE Plasma is great and actually seems to have inspired a bunch of Win11 approaches, so it is possible to get things looking good but there's definitely truth in the sentiment above: a huge chunk of OSS software looking terrible.

There's always the form vs function debate but it's a shame that more doesn't manage to have both form and function if the respective specialists could coordinate

> They are both at least as petty as MacOS or Windows

Yeah, no. I don't think you use macOS/win at all if you say stuff like that. It feels and always has felt rough around the edges.

I use both and I think KDE looks and feels great.

i still use MacOS and windows from time to time, and i simply have to disagree. using MacOS has just as many WTF moments as i get with Gnome (and KDE too i think, but i haven't used that in a while) a windows just leaves me baffled every time i have to touch it. ( https://commadot.com/wtf-per-minute/ )

The one thing I think is great in Windows is the whatever the active apps bar at the bottom is (taskbar?). Hover, get thumbnails, etc. On mac, I find it kind of painful to juggle a few windows of the same application. Can say the same in Linux as well, some apps don't even show up at all, even though they're running in a window/viewport.

I genuinely like and dislike most OS UIs I've tried. They all have things that irk me. While windows settings has gotten more consistent, it's also all the more painful when you had gotten used to the "old way" of doing things and where to look. If MS executives could just get TF out of their own way on some of the stupidity and force-feeding.

Mac, just feels a bit dated at this point, but the touchpad integration across all apps is great. Not to mention the macbook touchpads being second to none in terms of usability.

Linux, I can shift to almost exactly what I want. There are rough edges and spots you cannot reach via UI, but it mostly works without issue. Been using Budgie as my DE for over a year, fairly customized and like it a lot.

Not defending macOS here, but switching between windows and managing them is usually performed via Exposé, (ctrl-uparrow)

Thanks, That's a hotkey I wasn't aware of... I know I could use gestures (three finger swipe up), but usually using my mouse.

discovery of hotkeys can be a challenge. despite having used gnome for years now i only recently learned that i can switch windows with alt-esc instead of alt-tab, which is much faster when you have multiple windows of the same app or want to switch back and forth between to windows. and i only found this while searching for an extension that would make switching windows easier.

Unity used to show the keyboard shortcuts when you held the Super key:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/JDDku.png

To my knowledge, modern GNOME does not have this which is sad. There's this webpage instead:

https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/shell-keyboar...

the thing is that i would not even have thought of looking there. i was at "switching windows is a pain, how can i make it better" which is not "is there a hotkey to switch windows differently, because why would i even consider that there are multiple ways to switch windows, especially with gnome that kind of has a reputation of removing seemingly unneeded features.

It does have that reputation but I've found it very usable.

"Half-maximizing" windows with Super+Left and Super+Right is very handy when I need to see things side-by-side.

Moving windows from one screen to another by pressing Super and doing drag-and-drop, and moving windows across workspaces with Shift+Super+PgUp and Shift+Super+PgDown are also convenient.

oh, no doubt. i am still using it too. the reputation in this case was just misleading me. i simply need to research and learn more of these shortcuts

Also, if you’re at the command-tab picker, the up arrow key will switch to windows of the currently selected app (and left/right arrows will change the currently selected app). The macOS command-tab switcher has a bunch of functionality built in.

Modern KDE is actually more polished than MacOS in specific areas, like allowing a single window to span across multiple monitors in a seamless manner

Less polished in some areas too, though. It's slowly improving over time but for example fine UI/UX details like whitespace usage, control alignment/placement, and typography have always felt a bit… "off" in KDE as well in most software written with Qt, which I think probably boils down to Qt being more likely to be chosen by devs who are more technically inclined than design or UX inclined.

In my opinion GNOME and GTK apps generally get those details more "correct", though GNOME 3 and up goes way overboard on padding. Strip that padding down with a theme and its design is solid though, and Cinnamon, XFCE, and MATE get these right out of the box with no modifications necessary.

But that's why these "X has a better UI than Y" arguments are silly. I prefer KDE to any other DE because it worked (I now use MacOS and can't run other DEs) for me, and most people who prefer other DEs. That's OK. They all have different strengths and weaknesses (customization, resource usage, ability to run on certain OSes, high DPI support, etc).

I understand "petty" is a typo, but I kind of agree with that meaning too.

It would be great if Xerox PARC UI was already that advanced in the 70's, or UNIX's twm.

Call me cantankerous but I'd rather UI paradigms were frozen in this era. And it's 90s, not 70s ;)

I recommend a brief read on GNUStep before looking at a picture and going “blah ugly, bad!”

Also, some GUI on Mastodon showed how OSX would look without Aqua by patching some libraries, and it show up the same literal ugly interface from GNUStep/NextSTep. Literally the same, with the grey rectangles.

You could see the transition in OSX developer previews. Some apps would retain the old look, or icons.

Is this what you're referring to? https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/110708615280659758

Yes, that. Thanks.

I prefer the looks of Gnome over MacOS, particularly the text.

OSX it's as ugly as GNUStep/NeXTStep. Search for the Mastodon post on patching OSX to disable Aqua on MAC OS X < 10.5, and you'll see how they kept the exact same NeXTStep/GNUStep widgets. I am not trolling, Google/DDG it.

apart from calling it ugly i can confirm that. early OSX was 100% NeXTStep with a changed style. i loved it. MacOS now is really very much a modernized version of that.

Next time please provide a link.

You can see it in the thread now, and I was in a hurry, sorry.

This could not be found on either google or ddg. Link?

https://mastodon.social/@stroughtonsmith/110708615280659758

Because developers are not graphic designers.

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