doesn't he know...
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Jul 16, 2014 4:48 PM EDT |
...that GNOME is not the only Linux desktop environment? |
| theBeez Jul 16, 2014 5:11 PM EDT |
Well, not only that. I simply don't care much which desktop comes with it. As long as it's got icons and a menu, I don't really care. The thing most people tend to forget is you spend very little time with the DE on average. You use the applications - like GIMP, Dia, Graphviz, LyX, SciTE, you name it. And those are bound to many toolkits (which are bound to several DE's). But they all run and they all run together. So who cares? |
| Steven_Rosenber Jul 16, 2014 5:36 PM EDT |
I'm pretty sure he knows that there's more out there than GNOME 3. And sure, I would have liked to see him go into more detail. But the facts on the ground are that this is a Debian Developer, capital D's, who left Linux for Macintosh. I'm sure it wasn't a change he made without a lot of thought. Even though the Linux desktop is in pretty good shape relative to where it was, say, 5 or 10 years ago, the "change the world" hope seems to be gone, or at least greatly dissipated. Though we still need desktops and laptops to get things done, could we have seen the air being taken out of the room by the tablet and smartphone? And free OSes are not doing well on those devices at all (and locked-down Google-controlled Android doesn't count). In some ways, since laptops and desktops have been left for dead, that presents an opportunity for desktop Linux to excel in what is a stagnant or shrinking market. I'm not sure whether the DD in the original post is talking about hardware-configuration issues, the software not working how he wants, or both. But overall I think he's saying that the struggle to run a FOSS desktop just became less important to him. |
| gus3 Jul 16, 2014 6:58 PM EDT |
Jamie Zawinski made the same switch some years ago, with mostly the same animus. I value my freedom too highly to be bound by any sh!tty license agreement with the Borg. |
| eldersnake Jul 16, 2014 7:07 PM EDT |
"But overall I think he's saying that the struggle to run a FOSS desktop just became less important to him" I think you're right about that. It does surprise me how often people who seemingly have a great love for FOSS end up going to... an Apple product, of all things. It seems like such a great irony. And the only reason seems to be convenience and ease of use (some platform-specific tools/programs too, sure). I personally couldn't do that though. I don't have many issues with desktop Linux in general, but when I do have to fight with something, it's never enough to make me even contemplate going back to Win or Mac. |
| jdixon Jul 16, 2014 8:29 PM EDT |
> I personally couldn't do that though. I personally couldn't afford to do that. Whether I think Apple is a better product or not, it's not worth the price. |
| mbaehrlxer Jul 16, 2014 8:37 PM EDT |
theBeez: exactly. some time ago i discovered that i even could tolerate windows if all i needed to use was putty and a webbrowser. the thing that i don't understand is, how do you deal with package management on the mac? recently at a railsgirls event we had a couple coming with two macs with different versions of OS X. there is a very nice native package for rails, it worked on one machine, but not on the other. for some reason it didn't support the latest version of OS X. we fumbled around for hours trying to get rails to run using homebrew without success. even as a server developer, i run all the same applications and libraries that i use on the server, on my desktop, because it helps to have a second environment to test in and i can use GUI tools to work on my code.. so easy access to install applications and libraries is a priority. i need installation and upgrades to work reliably and i can't afford to spend hours to get some software to run if i need it for my work. and unless i am developing for Mac or iphone all the tools i need are better supported on GNU/Linux. greetings, eMBee. |
| tuxchick Jul 17, 2014 12:27 AM EDT |
"But overall I think he's saying that the struggle to run a FOSS desktop just became less important to him" What struggle? If Mac works better for him, fine. For me Windows is a gawdawful struggle. Linux is easy and does what I want. Macs are nice. Drawing a general conclusion from this-- Linux is teh doomed!-- is rather an overreach. |
| tuxchick Jul 17, 2014 12:32 AM EDT |
Quoting: Even though the Linux desktop is in pretty good shape relative to where it was, say, 5 or 10 years ago, the "change the world" hope seems to be gone, or at least greatly dissipated. These are good points. The general-purpose Linux or Windows desktop is overkill for most users. We've known that for a long time. Unfortunately no one with the knowledge and financing ever got it together to market a simplified Linux machine, which I think would have done well, given a reasonable price and good marketing. I think 90% of Android users just like the cute little Droid. |
| BernardSwiss Jul 17, 2014 2:52 AM EDT |
Wasn't there an article posted not too long ago, by someone who was switching back to Linux from Mac, after having encountered one too many gotcha's on OS X? It seemed really nice at first, but the many, often subtle at first glance, issues (including "freedom" problems) accumulated until it didn't seem so great any more. The OS is always greener... |
| JaseP Jul 17, 2014 6:38 AM EDT |
Quoting: The OS is always greener... I think that is very poignant. What's more, many of these developers who are shifting platforms have Linux to thank for the fact that platform doesn't matter much any more. "Whatever" at work and Android or iOS at home wouldn't have happened unless there were those alternatives to begin with. Much of the disruption that made that happen was the Linux desktop, and the embeded Linux device (OK,... Sure,... iOS made alternative devices popular). If I use my own example,... Once upon a time, 13-14 years ago,... I was a Windows user. Then I discovered Linux. I had settled on KDE,... then KDE 4.0 and I went to Gnome,... Then Gnome 3.0 and I came back to KDE (with XFCE on my HTPCs for the light weight,... which may someday be replaced with embeded Android devices). I'm in a 2nd [bachelor's] degree CS program now,... And most of my development environment work is in KDE... Works fine (sometimes great). My girlfriend develops in KDE (I turned her on to it,... now she's learning QT,... ahead of me, I might add). I'm forced to work with a Win7/Visual Studio environment for X86 Assembly. Hate the environment (although if THAT were Windows 10 years ago, I might not have left). As soon as I have choice back, the machine that has Win7 on it is being wiped and replaced with a current Linux OS with a stable KDE. My point?!?! Things change. Development environments of choice fluctuate. But Linux groundswell has begun to reach critical mass. It now doesn't matter what environment you are in,... You can [do] work, regardless. At that stage, the cheap environment, with the most choice is going to "win." It might not happen now,... or next week,... or 10 years from now,... But, if Linux keeps on going the way it has for the last decade+, there will eventually be OS and development environment parity. PS: I notice that Andrew Wyatt, of the defunct Feduntu distro and Jupiter Power management fame (and a former poster on these boards) has jumped to OSX for development... And he used Android at home,... Interesting. Seems that Linux based OSes keep digging their claws into you,... Kinda what I mean,... you can never truly get rid of the FOSS bug once you have it... Debian will be just fine... |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 17, 2014 11:20 AM EDT |
Squirrel! |
| notbob Jul 17, 2014 11:30 AM EDT |
> you spend very little time with the DE on average. You use the applications.... BINGO!! I hardly ever see my desktop. Why would I? It does absolutely nothing. When I finally boot into my fluxbox desktop, konsole and Seamonkey also auto boot. I see my desktop fer about 3 secs. I also initiate other apps with my k/b or mouse. I'm not gonna do another mouse click or keystroke to clear my desktop jes to see a buncha icons when I can use that exact same mouseclick or keystroke to boot another app. I run all my windows at max, rarely, needing to tile windows. And what is it with transparency? Dumbest concept I ever seen ...or not seen, as the case may be. ;) |
| Bob_Robertson Jul 17, 2014 11:32 AM EDT |
> you spend very little time with the DE on average. You use the applications.... The folks in Redmond are well aware of this, which is why they tie their applications and utilities to the OS, so you "must" use their platform in order to use the applications. |
| cr Jul 17, 2014 1:50 PM EDT |
> you spend very little time with a good DE on average. FTFY. When the instructions on how to navigate menus, etc, to launch something seem more like "down this street and turn left into the driveway just past the 'slow children' sign, go through two adjacent back yards to get to the dirt road leading up to the culvert", or, worse, "Oh, you can't get there from here"... You tend to notice. A lot of it is familiarity, granted, but some of it is lack of obfuscation and deliberate crippling. |
| JaseP Jul 17, 2014 1:51 PM EDT |
Quoting: And what is it with transparency? Dumbest concept I ever seen ...or not seen, as the case may be. ;) Disagree. Transparency is very useful,... like when running commands in a terminal where you want to see the name of a PPA you want to install or underneath to something you are currently on... Just because you don't use it, doesn't mean someone else doesn't... Plus, using a compositor in Linux actually takes a bit of GUI processing away from the CPU and throws it on to the GPU (provided you are using an OpenGL based compositor)... |
| notbob Jul 17, 2014 2:33 PM EDT |
> Plus, using a compositor in Linux actually takes a bit of GUI You may have a good argument. Unfortunately, I have zero idea what a "PPA" is. The Free Dictionary lists over one hundred possibilities. Plus, as I don't use a "compositor"(?), so that part of yer argument is also lost on me. My problem with transparency is, how one must reconfigure it to accommodate what's underneath it. What if you use a light colored font to accommodate a dark background and then go to an opposite color scheme. What then? Reconfigure the transparency? If you know of a transparency color scheme that works under all background conditions, I'd love to hear it. ;) |
| gus3 Jul 17, 2014 3:56 PM EDT |
tuxchick wrote:The general-purpose Linux or Windows desktop is overkill for most users.Which is why I rolled my own with Sawfish as the WM, enough keyboard shortcuts to make it KB-centric, and GKrellM and Xearth for eye candy. And good luck doing anything like that in LoseDows or iWhatever. |
| CFWhitman Jul 17, 2014 4:11 PM EDT |
I believe that JaseP was talking about a Personal Package Archive, which is a supplemental software repository that can be added to Ubuntu based distributions. Basically, though, he was talking about any time you may want to view something underneath your active window for reference. If you have limited screen area, then I guess transparency could be useful for that purpose. A compositing manager (e.g., compton or xcompmgr) or compositing window manager (e.g., Compiz) is a way to add special effects to your desktop in X-window, including transparency (but also including many other things from basic effects like smooth scrolling to 3D animations). Some people forgo compositing in order to make their desktop more lightweight. However, this does not necessarily work well with all hardware configurations. If your GPU is decent you may actually get better performance with compositing enabled rather than missing or disabled. Of course, you are not obligated to use transparency just because compositing makes it available. |
| BernardSwiss Jul 17, 2014 10:29 PM EDT |
I initially thought transparency was really cool -- but I've come to see transparency as, usually, merely a semi-adequate substitute for "mouse follows focus" (or even better, "sloppy focus") and more trouble than it's worth, except in environments where one can't focus one chosen window while still viewing others. |
| JaseP Jul 18, 2014 9:58 AM EDT |
Quoting: If your GPU is decent you may actually get better performance with compositing enabled rather than missing or disabled. True,... And under the category of decent,... most Intel GPU chipsets of the last few years fall into that category, meaning that you'll get better graphics performance with just about any machine made since 2005-2007 with the hardware assisted compositor enabled. Like you said, you're not obligated to use the special effects, but even regular window re-draws, scrolling, opening and closing of windows, etc. is usually faster, and uses less CPU. Note that the same cannot necessarily be said of MS Windows' special effects. The lower resource use under Linux gives an argument for using the fancy stuff, however, since it doesn't have any significant performance cost overhead... |
| cmost Jul 19, 2014 11:02 AM EDT |
This developer basically switched from a completely open, transparent world of FOSS for perhaps the most closed, proprietary system in existence. And yes, I realize that OSX uses the Darwin kernel but that's a mere drop in the ocean considering Apple's draconian choke hold on users. While I really like OSX I wouldn't use an Apple product if someone paid me! I dislike Apple as a company and I detest how it controls every aspect of what users can or cannot do on its devices almost to the point where one feels as though one is borrowing the device from Apple. Finally, considering that Apple gets away with charging two to three times what a device is actually worth based on its specifications, I have to question the common sense and intelligence of people who are such rabid Apple fanbois. |
| mrider Jul 19, 2014 11:37 AM EDT |
A colleague of mine once described OSX as "being in a really comfortable limousine where the window between you and the driver are sound-proofed and the driver goes wherever (s)he wants regardless of what you want". |
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