Multi-Seat Support Running Well In Wayland/Weston

[schmidtbag]

Not everybody is interested in learning how an OS works or type long commands (or even cut and paste). Power/features is nothing if there is no "easy" way of accessing it. And GUIs are a better way for the average user (linux or whatever OS). Its not about hating it or something. Its about ease off use. And its not about the Linux user. Is about your mother or aunt.

I understand that, and like I said, I don't normally care if people prefer GUI tools. I myself have made several GUI frontends to CLI programs for the reasons you mentioned. But it strikes a nerve when words like "useless" are involved strictly because a tool is CLI based, and it's worse when the actual commands weren't even considered. Blindly hating something just because it isn't your style or know how to use it makes you a pretty noobish linux user. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but I don't appreciate a handful of easy commands to be called "useless" as though it were a fact.

[89c51]

I understand that, and like I said, I don't normally care if people prefer GUI tools. I myself have made several GUI frontends to CLI programs for the reasons you mentioned. But it strikes a nerve when words like "useless" are involved strictly because a tool is CLI based, and it's worse when the actual commands weren't even considered. Blindly hating something just because it isn't your style or know how to use it makes you a pretty noobish linux user. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but I don't appreciate a handful of easy commands to be called "useless" as though it were a fact.

Its not hate. Its a fact that people will use the easiest option available to get their work done. And if they cannot fins an easy option they might not bother at all. Some of course will use the command line in a similar way that some may use a hand whisk in order to make whipped cream but thats a minority. And its damn wrong to design something with minorities in mind or because you are doing things in a certain way.

[Ikem]

It's damn wrong to design something with minorities in mind

Nope. It's not.

Linux is all about minorities and their different needs.

[schmidtbag]

Its not hate. Its a fact that people will use the easiest option available to get their work done. And if they cannot fins an easy option they might not bother at all. Some of course will use the command line in a similar way that some may use a hand whisk in order to make whipped cream but thats a minority. And its damn wrong to design something with minorities in mind or because you are doing things in a certain way.

My point is it was still blindly dismissive. GUIs are NOT always the easiest option, nor the fastest, nor the most productive. Designing something with minorities in mind is also a little too situational. Here's some examples:
* A design where you DON'T want to focus on minorities would be a game where the main character is bright pink and can't walk forward (most people don't want to be pink)
* A design where you DO want to focus on minorities is if the game lets you change the appearance of the character using custom textures (most people don't care to make their own game art)

When it comes to multi-seat, anyone who wants to do that is a minority. With or without a GUI, configuring it will relatively be a challenge, and you're going to need to run some other CLI tools to complete the setup. I'm sure if multi-seat were designed for everyone in mind, someone would make a GUI tool at some point. However, considering it's a flaky and experimental feature, it wouldn't surprise me if GUI tools are discouraged because it could easily break your GUI as a whole, in which case, what are you going to do if you don't know the commands to recover?

[89c51]

My point is it was still blindly dismissive. GUIs are NOT always the easiest option, nor the fastest, nor the most productive. Designing something with minorities in mind is also a little too situational. Here's some examples:
* A design where you DON'T want to focus on minorities would be a game where the main character is bright pink and can't walk forward (most people don't want to be pink)
* A design where you DO want to focus on minorities is if the game lets you change the appearance of the character using custom textures (most people don't care to make their own game art)

When it comes to multi-seat, anyone who wants to do that is a minority. With or without a GUI, configuring it will relatively be a challenge, and you're going to need to run some other CLI tools to complete the setup. I'm sure if multi-seat were designed for everyone in mind, someone would make a GUI tool at some point. However, considering it's a flaky and experimental feature, it wouldn't surprise me if GUI tools are discouraged because it could easily break your GUI as a whole, in which case, what are you going to do if you don't know the commands to recover?

i don't share the same views. I firmly believe that if you make something easy to use people will use it, find new uses of it and make cool things with it. Even if it means breaking stuff. Designing a full featured gui with usability/ease of use in mind isn't easy by any means but its worth giving every user a chance of getting more out of his system.

Also if something is flaky it doesn't belong to a final product.

[IsacDaavid]

And much much slower than C and C++

That's a drawback for any interpreted language, but python is still a perfect choice for beginner programmers who plan to eventually extend their abilities beyond "hello world" programs.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

because you don't understand the power, necessity, and speed of the CLI

Eh? I understand how much power the command line offers. I just don't care. I want to click the button.

but they're FASTER as a group of CLI commands in a shell script.

They're only faster when you remember them off the top of your head. If you have to consult the man pages, a book, a webpage, or your own hand written notes, then it's significantly slower than a GUI which tells you up front what your options are and allows you to toggle some checkboxes and then click "next".

Yes, linux is gaining commercial attention due to it's lesser dependency on a CLI, and with distros such as Ubuntu, you might not ever have to pull it out. I agree that there's no reason a GUI tool can't be made for multi-seat. But just because you have to type something out, don't act like it's suddenly a bad or useless product because you can't handle it due to lack of patience or comprehension. I don't normally get worked up about people who prefer the GUI, but your approach to the current X multi-seat is shameful in a linux perspective.

Fair enough. The "useless" comment was incomplete, in context. It's only useless to the average user who doesn't make it a point to memorize the commands and their syntax.

[halfmanhalfamazing]

I firmly believe that if you make something easy to use people will use it, find new uses of it and make cool things with it.

I was thinking the same thing, sort of.

Multiseat configurations are (as the other poster correctly observed) flaky and experimental, precisely because they're not easy to set up.(which is also rather ironic considering the context of nearly 40 replies: multiseat is set up via the command line, config files, and scripts)

Multiseat could easily be "mainstreamed" if it were easy to setup and configure. Here's roughly how it would play out:

1: New users would see it's easy and give it a try
2: In many instances, said setups would fail initially, but lead to a whole lot of bug reports
3: The bug reports would lead to fixes, thus making multiseat a stable and viable configuration

I'm sure I missed a stage or two in my over simplification, but this is how it would go.

I myself have from time to time set up clean installs just to try out a new feature and report any bugs I find, for reasons like this. You'll make it easy for me? Sure, I'll find some bugs for you and report them.

[curaga]

Sadly i am useless when it comes to coding.

What's stopping you? I recall we had this same discussion something like two years ago. So you had two years to learn to code

[dee.]

Fair enough. The "useless" comment was incomplete, in context. It's only useless to the average user who doesn't make it a point to memorize the commands and their syntax.

Who says you have to memorize commands? Just put the command in a script and make a desktop shortcut to it, and you can run a CLI command from the GUI easily without having to memorize anything. Even an "average user" can copypaste text from firefox to gedit, save and set the execute flag, when given instructions on how to do so.