Brilliant!
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Apr 01, 2012 12:20 PM EDT |
Nicely done, this made my day :) |
| montezuma Apr 01, 2012 3:54 PM EDT |
Yes I bet this article is causing havoc in the Pennington area. |
| Koriel Apr 01, 2012 4:11 PM EDT |
Really nicely done, it had me up to the first blue screenshot then i remembered what day it was! |
| cr Apr 01, 2012 5:09 PM EDT |
Well chosen spoken words, Montezuma. |
| number6x Apr 01, 2012 8:38 PM EDT |
I can't wait for the gnome fanbois to defend the productivity increases that this new interface will bring. |
| tuxchick Apr 01, 2012 8:48 PM EDT |
Are there Gnome fanbois? Other than the devs? |
| r_a_trip Apr 02, 2012 5:46 AM EDT |
This piece is truly brilliant. The best April fools i've read so far. The most cynical and dry view of the "developments" in Gnome land. Yet, at the same time, it is a sad testament to the dire state of the desktop on Linux. We have two of the most visible projects (Ubuntu & Gnome) going off the deep end. For better or worse, during the Gnome 2 days, Ubuntu and Gnome 2 became "the face of Linux". They both have a lot of residual visibility, but their respective new desktop interfaces are an excercise in awkward unusability. In a perverted sense they are still doing what Microsoft is doing. They just pulled the trigger sooner than later to shoot themselves in the foot. In that sense they are probably aiming at future Windows converts. Hey, Windows 8 is awkward and incomprehensible. Come use Gnome 3 and Unity, you'll feel right at home. The Linux Desktop doesn't get me enthusiastic anymore. I'm on KDE right now, but there is a gnawing feeling at the edges of my consciousness that I might be compelled to switch again to something else. Maybe KDE stays the course, but there are no guarantees for sanity anymore. At any moment a UI project may decide to "invent the future". Is it wrong to muse about a desktop capable Android? |
| dinotrac Apr 02, 2012 9:38 AM EDT |
All -- Your dismissive tone disturbs me greatly. The new interface truly is brilliant, but it is also the result of many years of work and testing. I was honored to be an early tester over the years, and I can't tell you how much it improved my productivity and sense of satisfaction on the job. And -- the research was rigorously conducted so that no reasoning person can dispute the results: I worked on specially equipped computers that presented my day-to-day desktop most of the time, but, randomly and without warning, I would be presented with the GNOME 4 prototype screen, often obfuscated with some meaningless text in the middle to confuse prying eyes. At those moments, I was transformed into the kind of team player any organization wants to have on board: I would personally contact the nice folks in desktop support and share my good fortune with them. I would check in on fellow workers to see if they were having any troubles and to otherwise engage in team-building activities. I would let my management know that I had temporarily changed my priorities to communication and morale building. All good stuff. |
| tuxchick Apr 02, 2012 1:06 PM EDT |
Sorry, folks, but Dino was unable to finish writing his post. Some nice people in white coats came and invited him to go away with them. I guess he won a vacation or something. |
| Fettoosh Apr 02, 2012 1:14 PM EDT |
Quoting:Sorry, folks, but Dino was unable to finish writing ... Thanks for telling us @TC, I was still waiting for him to finish thinking he is still in edit mode. :-) |
| lcafiero Apr 02, 2012 1:24 PM EDT |
Yeah, what r_a_trip said: Best April Fool's Day piece of the day. |
| gus3 Apr 02, 2012 1:36 PM EDT |
@tc: Is he one of the Mega Millions winners? @dinotrac, buddy-friend-pal! Nice to see you! How have you been? |
| dinotrac Apr 02, 2012 3:39 PM EDT |
@tc -- Not true. I just got called into a very important meeting. Gotta tell ya, though, these long sleeves are making it very hard for me to do my crafts. |
| BernardSwiss Apr 02, 2012 7:32 PM EDT |
Bravo! I hope LXer can invite the Monty Python crew to impersonate LXer forum regulars again, for next year's April Fools festivities. |
| BernardSwiss Apr 02, 2012 7:53 PM EDT |
PS: @Dinotrac An acquaintance of mine (who's rather experienced in working conditions such as you describe) suggests that an excellent team-morale exercise is to swap one's daily candy allotment with one's colleagues. He also cautions that management in such environments are generally pronounced control-freaks, and can be counted on to quash any such creative activities among the lower echelons, should they catch on that this is happening. |
| Khamul Apr 02, 2012 11:43 PM EDT |
@r_a_trip: I don't think you have much to worry about with KDE. One of the main reasons they did a complete rewrite, resulting in the infamous KDE 4.0 debacle upon its release, was because they wanted a new architecture where the UI wasn't hard-coded into the desktop environment, and it would be easy to create new UIs using all the same underpinnings. We can see the results of this with the plasma-desktop, plasma-netbook, and now the touch-oriented version (plasma-active I think) that's used on tablets. Basically, the whole idea from the beginning (showing remarkable foresight on their part, though they bungled the execution a bit back in the beginning) was to use the same DE on different systems without trying to make one UI that was a giant compromise. They can't go and take that away, because it's built into the architecture. At the very worst, they could abandon maintainership of plasma-desktop, but surely someone would take it over if that happened. It'd surely be easier to maintain that than to create your own shell like the Cinnamon folks did. |
| r_a_trip Apr 03, 2012 2:48 AM EDT |
@Khamul Thanks for the reassuring words. You are right. Plasma is the decoupling of the plumbing from the chrome. It gives the KDE devs a lot more room to come up with usable ideas. I'm just still a bit shell schocked by the switch after years of Gnome 2. It will take time to ease into a world with K-apps. For one, I'll need to find the KDE equivalents of a few GTK tools, like Synaptic. GTK based apps work perfectly fine, but they look horrid on KDE. The Oxygen-GTK theme only seems to work partly and the chgtktheme utility doesn't fix it permanently. (Could be a Linux Mint Lisa-KDE thing...) Oh well, the silver lining in all this is that K3B finally doesn't look out of place anymore ;) |
| tracyanne Apr 03, 2012 4:44 AM EDT |
Quoting:KDE equivalents of a few GTK tools, like Synaptic. SynaptiK |
| tracyanne Apr 03, 2012 4:46 AM EDT |
Seriously though... Synaptic. |
| r_a_trip Apr 03, 2012 7:35 AM EDT |
@TA I'm not particularly political over toolkits. With the current climate under FOSS, I'm not even particularly political anymore over which projects are preferable. I'd love to use Synaptic under KDE and be happy as a clam, but under KDE 4.8 with the Oxygen theme Synaptic is a right eye sore. I've even heard rumors that Windows 95 was planning to call to get its interface back. (Yes, I've put the tickmark for managing GTK apps under KDE settings.) I know under KDE 3.x there was the Kynaptic frontend to Synaptic. This seems to have fallen by the wayside. Which is a shame really, because other KDE "native" package managers I've encountered so far seem to insist that selecting a package for installation should be a two click minimum process. (I hate being a KDE noob...again.) So it seems I can choose between the prettiness of KDE QT apps or the no frills, no nonse functionality of Synaptic, but basted in an extra helping of fugliness. As an aside, it's funny how KDE apps can look good all within themselves (albeit inconsistent) on a GTK desktop, but when you do the reverse, you are greated with an aestheticists worst nightmare. |
| tracyanne Apr 03, 2012 8:10 AM EDT |
Just a minute ::Opens Synatpic:: Mmm looks fine to me. ::Closes Synaptic:: |
| r_a_trip Apr 03, 2012 8:30 AM EDT |
Well,TA, I'm glad to read that you've got a pleasant looking synaptic. Mine is a mismatched throw back to UI's past. Maybe I need a better distro... |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 8:58 AM EDT |
@ra and all -- You will be pleased to know that I am taking positive steps to create a solid alternative for those who are tired of all the desktop silliness that uncaring, unethical, and clueless developers have foisted on us over the past few years. I am creating a distribution that will be simple and clean, freed of bells and whistles that turn out to be all noise and no music. I call it Dino's Optimized system, but you can call it DOS. |
| r_a_trip Apr 03, 2012 10:20 AM EDT |
I know this should be read as humor, but... DOS never got in the way (at least if you didn't want to go above 640K). DOS fitted on 3 floppies. In DOS you could just copy the program directory and it was "back-upped". No need for fancy hardware. Extremely fast boot times. No multitasking, so no distractions :-P Chique white on black color scheme. Norton Commander was all the GUI one would ever need. Now, can someone give me my meds? I'm having a severe attack of nostalgia. (I used to hate DOS, coming from Amiga Workbench 3.5.) |
| jdixon Apr 03, 2012 11:28 AM EDT |
> Extremely fast boot times. Especially if it was burned into an eprom like it was with the Tandy 1000 HX, :) But I still have a preference for OS-9. |
| JaseP Apr 03, 2012 11:59 AM EDT |
I loved the piece too... very satirical ... and sadly true at the same time... |
| Khamul Apr 03, 2012 1:25 PM EDT |
DOS sucked, precisely because it had no multitasking. It was nothing more than a program loader; it was not a true operating system. No multitasking sucks, because not only can you not switch between tasks quickly, you can't do multiple things simultaneously, such as keep a webpage or PDF document open for reference while you write code or do some other task pertaining to that reference information. |
| jdixon Apr 03, 2012 1:45 PM EDT |
> DOS sucked, precisely because it had no multitasking. Like I said, OS-9. :) A true real time, multi-user, multitasking operating system in 64KB. |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 2:35 PM EDT |
Kids today have no appreciation for anything. A. Multi-tasking is not the test of an operating system, and DOS was substantially more than a program loader. B. You can live quite nicely without multi-tasking if you don't to things that need it. Lots of good work got done on DOS computers (and their predessors) over the years. C. It WAS possible to do multi-tasklng under DOS if you used 1. DESQview or Topview, or 2. Early versions of MS Windows. Windows 3.x was especially cool because it supported both cooperative mutli-tasking between Windows processes and pre-emptive time-sliced multi-tasking between DOS processes. |
| ComputerBob Apr 03, 2012 2:47 PM EDT |
(Insert short, cynical comment that everyone finds extremely relevant and hilarious) |
| gus3 Apr 03, 2012 3:14 PM EDT |
@CB: They all suck. Some just suck less. |
| Khamul Apr 03, 2012 6:27 PM EDT |
@dinotrac: For A., you make an assertion with absolutely nothing to back it up. I'll repeat it again: DOS was nothing more than a program loader. DESQview wasn't DOS; it was basically an OS, and it was loaded by DOS (which again, was a program loader). Just like GRUB and U-boot can load Linux or Windows, DOS was able to load DESQview, which was able to run and multitask DOS programs to a limited extent. The fact that DOS provided a few cr@ppy subroutines for dealing with I/O doesn't change the fact that it was a program loader, especially when every decent program bypassed these things altogether. Just look at DOOM; that game was almost a whole OS by itself, and it did nothing with DOS other than use it to load. |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 11:08 PM EDT |
@khamul.... I believe you were the one who made an assertion without backing it up. I'm curious -- had you been born yet when people were using DOS? |
| Khamul Apr 04, 2012 1:45 AM EDT |
I used DOS since the days of CGA. And you're the one who countered my assertion with no facts; if you think I'm wrong, explain why, otherwise STFU instead of being a jerk. |
| dinotrac Apr 04, 2012 6:34 AM EDT |
@kahmul -- or should I say pot? |
| number6x Apr 04, 2012 7:16 AM EDT |
I think that the tone of this thread was pretty sarcastic and meant as humor in response to an April Fool's joke. Anyone reading it should take everything with a grain of salt, and not not take it as statements before a Court. Lighten up people, its just a thread for fooling around. |
| helios Apr 04, 2012 11:10 PM EDT |
You know....I've been an LXer reader since 2005, maybe before....then, I can't really remember. I was a Senior Editor for LXer under the Adelstein regime and have contributed my share of comments and articles over the years. If I remember correctly, I brought one current Editor on board. I have seen "spirited" discussions, sometimes, they became more spirited than they needed to but over time, ruffled feathers were smoothed and we all got along. Without doing an extensive search, I don't think I have ever heard a forum member tell another to STFU. Khamul, that was not only out of hand, you mistook some all-in-fun-rib-poking for a personal attack. You need to learn to give as good as you get here instead of circling the wagons and acting like someone's trying to kick sand in your face. I believe Dino was only trying to assert that he might be a bit older in age and experience than you are. Given your response, I would have to say he is right. Regardless, it was nothing that deserved your confrontational and aggressive language. |
| Khamul Apr 05, 2012 2:58 PM EDT |
@helios: As I pointed out, I've been using DOS since the early days, and I also find it insulting when people try to pull the age card without actually knowing how old the person they're talking to is. I made an assertion, dino contradicted me with a statement that had no substance and only dismissed mine out-of-hand, and that too is insulting. So sorry if I don't sound very nice, but when people treat me poorly, I treat them the same in return. My experience is obviously long enough to know enough about DOS to speak about its abilities. |
| number6x Apr 05, 2012 3:36 PM EDT |
While I did use MS/DOS during the 1980's and early 1990's I never used the DOS that Dino is talking about in this thread (Dino's Optimized System). I can sure bet that Dino's system is even more optimal than Gnome 4, or even MS/DOS. Of course I believe that there was an OS called DOS before Gnome 4, Before MS/DOS and all the other 86-DOS's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS/360_and_successors Although I was alive for most of the 1960's I was a little young to get to use DOS. I didn't get on a 360 until DOS was replaced by VMS/DOS, a different beast. Dino might run into a problem if Big Blue has a trademark on just 'DOS'. maybe he could try an ee cummings style 'dos' instead? Dino, I do have a question about Dino's Optimized System... You state it has no bell's and whistles, but does it have a beep? |
| Khamul Apr 05, 2012 4:24 PM EDT |
Actually, DOS also ran on the Apple II. Of course, it had nothing to do with QDOS, MS-DOS, or the other systems that called themselves "DOS"; it was really just a generic term used by many companies. |
| number6x Apr 05, 2012 5:15 PM EDT |
That's right! Apple 2 called their early OS DOS.
Then there was ProDOS and GS/OS, correct? So I guess Dino's Optimized System (DOS) is OK! |
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