They Say A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

[diagonal_mambo]

I do wonder what exactly is genius about the placement of the close/maximise/minimise buttons. Is it that they're sitting flush with the top of the window border? Wow, inspired...

The transparency and blur is nice, but I think a little overdone. The blur in particular looks very awkward. The transparency is fine, except that the window contents are entirely opaque. They don't gel well. However, they do get points for being able to do it: anyone remember the Murrine work to get Vista-style transparencies to Linux? Anyone using it?

Also, congratulations Windows 7 on finally getting an innovative window management feature. I refer, of course, to being able to drag windows to the sides/top of the screen. About time.

[myxal]

Go back now and actually read the previous posts, because it's about the design of the desktop and not about windows management. Like L33F3R said before; get your head out of it...


What?! Clear-looks is a copy of Windows XP stylo buttons with Microsoft Office 2003 bars. No! IT is copied.

I thought we were talking about Aero, which is the default.. Clearlooks looks like the XP or the "classic theme" from windows, and I love the latter. As for XP theme - not to bad, but overly large window decorations for my taste.

KDE4 just Mac OS X round style buttons copied, with some ugly gray sprayed over it, just because they can.


Please... buy some glasses...

Hold on a sec, are we talking about design or just bashing on poor choice of colors? I guess you could put that under "design" (and infuriate people who actually design the interface, in terms of behaviour, placement, dimensions, etc..), the ease of customization of KDE/Gnome makes the default theme/colors a moot point as far as I'm concerned.
Plastik (the theme I use in KDE4, very similar to Clearlooks/Windows "classic" and XP themes): (by default) three buttons (minimize, maximize and close, which highlight/glow red on mouse-over, in the top-right corner of the window, customizable button placement;
Aero: same as above, minus the customizable buttons, plus close button slightly wider, blurred translucent decoration and small details that are necessary as a result (window title text outlining)
I ask again: what's the great design difference I should be seeing here (apart from the translucency, which I'm getting to below)?

You just said that you thought it was superior! You're nothing but a fanboy.

Up there I was talking about window management, not the default theme/colors. Edit: Come to think of it where did I claim that either was superior?? All I said was that I don't find Aero as superior and Clearlooks/Plastik/XP/classic are roughly equal (even you just said they are a copy; go figure).

Once again; what does this have to do with the Windows 7 look? PS: Windows 7 does have stable drivers...

Uhh, I'm referring to linux here ^_^' (yes, I actually said that linux graphics drivers suck - which is why I can't have the translucent blurred window decorations, the main difference from Windows) Windows drivers aren't exactly perfect but at least one can update/downgrade them easily at will and all the hardware features are actually supported.

And your window also has a firefox sticker on it with an 'X' on it too? Puh-lease...

What I was saying is that the default theme looks nothing like a "real" window - you just gave a reason why it's not even worth trying - so what exactly was the following quote supposed to mean?>

And the Window decoration is not just transparent, because that way you'd be annoyed by the content underneath it, but blurred to make it even more look like a Window.

While we're at bad analogies, real windows have shades. Windows doesn't do window shading and while KDE/Gnome do, it's not really analogous to real-world shades.

Yeah they are not useful but let's bash Windows for not having them. Well Windows DOES have multiple desktops with a free-of-charge Powertoys package from Microsoft itself: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/D...powertoys.mspx

I said I don't find them useful but this apparently not a common opinion. And since I don't use them that much, I can't compare the quality of implementation/integration of Windows/KDE/Gnome.

Edit: I should've added this in the first post but just to be clear, this is all my opinion. I'm not a designer, I just voice what each interface feels like when I use it. I have yet to hear anyone bash the window decoration design of Gnome/KDE and favor Windows. A lot of apps do suck and integrate poorly but decorations are on-par, and management features are superior to that of WIndows. They're certainly not the reason I'd switch to windows (and there are plenty of reasons I'd do that).

[V!NCENT]

On the one hand, there sure are quite a few people in the community with their head up in penguin's a??, but I find claiming Windows' window management[...]

Go back now and actually read the previous posts, because it's about the design of the desktop and not about windows management. Like L33F3R said before; get your head out of it...

and decoration (of all things) as superior to KDE or even Gnome just laughable.

What?! Clear-looks is a copy of Windows XP stylo buttons with Microsoft Office 2003 bars. No! IT is copied.

KDE4 just Mac OS X round style buttons copied, with some ugly gray sprayed over it, just because they can.

Care to elaborate? How is it different from the default theme in ubuntu or random other distro??

Please... buy some glasses...

[...]and while the default KDE4 theme sucks IMO

You just said that you thought it was superior! You're nothing but a fanboy.

Since the graphics drivers are in the shape they're in and as stable as they are (=NOT), I can't afford translucency or compositing.

Once again; what does this have to do with the Windows 7 look? PS: Windows 7 does have stable drivers...

Not sure what kind of windows you have but my windows have the glass in the cetnre and the opaque frame on the outside - the opposite of what default Windows theme looks like.

And your window also has a firefox sticker on it with an 'X' on it too? Puh-lease...

I don't find multiple desktops particularly useful but not having them at all, I dunno...

Yeah they are not useful but let's bash Windows for not having them. Well Windows DOES have multiple desktops with a free-of-charge Powertoys package from Microsoft itself: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/D...powertoys.mspx

[myxal]

I think this is 1 of the few times i need to agree with you. All you people are saying it looks likes shit when its arguably just fine. Get your head out of the penguins ass and view the world as unfiltered as you can. You make us look like a club of blind people.

On the one hand, there sure are quite a few people in the community with their head up in penguin's a??, but I find claiming Windows' window management and decoration (of all things) as superior to KDE or even Gnome just laughable.

Geniusly placement of the buttons.<snip>The close, minimize and maximize buttons look like the rest of the glass because the color red would be too distracting but when the mouse is on there it glows red.

Care to elaborate? How is it different from the default theme in ubuntu or random other distro?? (Note: I don't use Ubuntu but am pretty sure I saw the glow effect there, and while the default KDE4 theme sucks IMO, a theme I like and has the glow effect was one of the pre-loaded ones. Since the graphics drivers are in the shape they're in and as stable as they are (=NOT), I can't afford translucency or compositing. While useful in full-window translcency, blurred translucent window borders aren't something I care to have.)

And then windows are ofcourse windows so making them look like glass was just plain genius from a design perspective too.

Not sure what kind of windows you have but my windows have the glass in the cetnre and the opaque frame on the outside - the opposite of what default Windows theme looks like.

And the Window decoration is not just transparent, because that way you'd be annoyed by the content underneath it, but blurred to make it even more look like a Window.

See above.
Window decoration? Please. The fact you need it wider than 1 px is evidence of failure to manipulate windows efficiently - like the Alt+left-drag to move a window or Alt+right/middle-drag to resize them. (*waves at OS X users*). There's still no easy way to make random window "always-on-top" without third-party utils or direct involvement from the app's vendor. I don't find multiple desktops particularly useful but not having them at all, I dunno...

There are (lots of) things I'll praise Windows for (ABI compatibility making portable apps possible; allowing the user to install apps into whatever directory they feel like; auto-inflating swapfiles; power management; wifi management that doesn't break in every other version, simplistic GUI-driven utils for the one time you need something simple; dead-simple filesharing; after-the-fact compressed folders; on-line defragmenting...). But window management is one of those things "so exceedingly simplistic that only a caveman would want to use them."

I'm looking forward to graphics benchmarks

[L33F3R]

Are you serious?

The taskbar looks like KDE3 with compositing and the advantages of the KDE4 taskbar without the disadvantages + some enhancement KDE4 should take over. The fact that the Windows 7 'Kicker' icon lights up like the sun made it look like shit though... They should not have done that...

And the there is the Window decoration. Geniusly placement of the buttons. And then windows are ofcourse windows so making them look like glass was just plain genius from a design perspective too. The close, minimize and maximize buttons look like the rest of the glass because the color red would be too distracting but when the mouse is on there it glows red.

And the Window decoration is not just transparent, because that way you'd be annoyed by the content underneath it, but blurred to make it even more look like a Window.

And then, finally, on every OS you have an ugly looking toolbar with 'File, View, Help, etc'. Apple thought that they were so smart by placing it on top of the screen, but that is annoying too if you have to move your mouse a lot. So Microsoft just auto-hide it and everytime you need it just press 'Alt'.

Look I am not a Microsoft fan at all! But give credit where it's due...

I think this is 1 of the few times i need to agree with you. All you people are saying it looks likes shit when its arguably just fine. Get your head out of the penguins ass and view the world as unfiltered as you can. You make us look like a club of blind people.

[V!NCENT]

Man, that OS looks like crap.

Are you serious?

The taskbar looks like KDE3 with compositing and the advantages of the KDE4 taskbar without the disadvantages + some enhancement KDE4 should take over. The fact that the Windows 7 'Kicker' icon lights up like the sun made it look like shit though... They should not have done that...

And the there is the Window decoration. Geniusly placement of the buttons. And then windows are ofcourse windows so making them look like glass was just plain genius from a design perspective too. The close, minimize and maximize buttons look like the rest of the glass because the color red would be too distracting but when the mouse is on there it glows red.

And the Window decoration is not just transparent, because that way you'd be annoyed by the content underneath it, but blurred to make it even more look like a Window.

And then, finally, on every OS you have an ugly looking toolbar with 'File, View, Help, etc'. Apple thought that they were so smart by placing it on top of the screen, but that is annoying too if you have to move your mouse a lot. So Microsoft just auto-hide it and everytime you need it just press 'Alt'.

Look I am not a Microsoft fan at all! But give credit where it's due...

[RealNC]

I just wonder, why Gentoo's PTS is hard masked

Because the packager thinks it's not ready. I don't know if anyone is still working on it though.

grep phoronix /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask

[discordian]

Hope the Phoronix staff is fair enough to use the Server-Editions of Windows. Otherwise this will be quite devastating... alot Windows Benchmarks even run faster under Wine than directly under Windows (Desktop-Editions).
It has to do with Windows actually reserving cycles for lowlatency task(like audio/video), while Linux doesnt care for anything else but throughput (and thus benchmark scores).

[xav_19]

I think this is really cool, because now we can compare virtualization solutions under win and linux (and you can add a leval to that : windows under linux/windows/mac, linux under linux/windows/mac etc...), performance between bench under win and wine, and things like that. Maybe they're will be too much interesting things to test, but that's great anyway !

[Michael]

I fear that most of the tests depend on cygwin, so it's that what gets tested and not raw win7. There should be at least an option to disable these tests.

Cygwin is not touched at all.