Jade: New Linux Desktop Built On Python, HTML5 & JavaScript

[Vistaus]

Web-based desktop eh? Kinda like what Microsoft attempted with Win98, but without all that evil proprietary stuff, I guess…

Kinda like what webOS did on mobile/tablet and SymphonyOS on Linux desktop (it also uses a HTML5-powered desktop).

[eigenlambda]

Beating human reaction times isn't as trivial as it sounds if you're a desktop programmer.

Do you have a folder with all the memes you've downloaded with like a thousand images in it?

How long does it take to ls -t | tail? How long does it take your favorite desktop to display the directory? How long does it take the open dialog?

In reality, these programs are 40% written by ignorant, arrogant ass-clowns, and 60% left to be completed never. Gnome 2 came close to completion and was thrown away. If the companies working on desktop linux were smart they'd back Mate or Xfce, but they're controlled by groupthink of Poetterings.

[harakiru]

Lol and here i am shying away from anything that is not dwm or i3 because it would decrase the battery life of my 2008 laptop.

[hax0r]

I tried Jade Desktop and it is pretty interesting, it uses Blackbox WM underneath, to me it is seems like Jade is a fullscreen webapp, once minimized you're back to Blackbox (that is if you install tint2 or some task manager to be able to minimize). There is no Alt+Tab support yet it seems, you cannot switch between apps, you cannot minimize, if you had firefox running and spawned a terminal, firefox is now gone out of the view and terminal took over the focus. Sparky also seems like a very comfy distro and Polish locale is very good, it even installs liquorix kernel for you, very convenient for desktop users as CFS in Linux is not a proper scheduler.

[HyperDrive]

Yes, I know, however, I was mostly even speaking about the last Safari build of the last macOS ;-) It is sad to see the modern web run on a "some years old browser", ... PS: Imagine how much longer battery life one would get without all this over-designed web stuff, ..!

I never tried macOS on my G5, to be honest, so I can only compare the Linux performance with similar x86(-64) machines. Have you tried TenFourFox? I've been entertaining the idea of trying to compile it for my G5, but I suspect its Linux support (if any) may have bitrotted, since TenFourFox is focused on macOS only.

[hax0r]

To be fair most web 2.0 or so, HTML 5 canvas and what not sites run like crap on my dual-core 2.x GHz G5 w/ 9GB of RAM that loaded the whole web instantly just half a decade (five years) ago, … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU1RK4TR-GA

I like your youtue channel a lot but still waiting for you to post code for the topic that you did on GCC-based x86 DOS programs with inline assembly running in 64KB memory space, please post code it was very interesting, you are very knowledgable, https://nullprogram.com/blog/2014/12/09/ is nice but your content was on another level.

[dkasak]

Hahahahahahaha. My 2 favourite solutions looking for a problem ... with the quality of developers that each camp brings to the party ... now creating a webby desktop, because even for local applications ... webby is now the best delivery mechanism. <yawn>. I'm sure it'll be a hit!

[Michael_S]

One HTML5/CSS advantage is that it allows people familiar with web technologies to contribute to the desktop environment design. I don't know if that was a factor in their engineering choice, but if you had relatively few under-the-hood engineers but a lot of web developers willing to contribute it might make sense to go that route.

LOL. The only laptops I issue at my company are from ~2012. With no plans to refresh ATM.

The relatively big company I work for (~30,000 employees, but not a household name) refreshes laptops for employees every 4-5 years, so almost nobody at the company has 2012 hardware. But the turnover isn't for the sake of speed improvements, just reliability. I don't know who crunched the numbers, but somebody up the corporate food chain decided that the failure rate of 5+ year old laptops causes enough added costs in lost employee productivity and added support effort that it becomes cheaper to simply replace everything.

[jacob]

"as it needs to be"? like unnecessarily draining the battery, with all the overheard. So this is how we got to battery life of 5h, when it could be 10h? To be honest, gnome2 did not had memory leaks and null pointer crashes that I would remember, ...

You have a point about the battery. On the other hand GNOME2 wasn't exactly an example of stability and efficiency either. Remember when it used CORBA?

[caligula]

One HTML5/CSS advantage is that it allows people familiar with web technologies to contribute to the desktop environment design. I don't know if that was a factor in their engineering choice, but if you had relatively few under-the-hood engineers but a lot of web developers willing to contribute it might make sense to go that route.

The relatively big company I work for (~30,000 employees, but not a household name) refreshes laptops for employees every 4-5 years, so almost nobody at the company has 2012 hardware. But the turnover isn't for the sake of speed improvements, just reliability. I don't know who crunched the numbers, but somebody up the corporate food chain decided that the failure rate of 5+ year old laptops causes enough added costs in lost employee productivity and added support effort that it becomes cheaper to simply replace everything.

Some of my colleagues use Apple products exclusively and on several occasions the only 'fix' for broken laptops was to replace the whole unit. For example some early unibody machines were in fact non-unibody systems with glue on the screen part. The hot air from the cpu fan dried this glue. It's basically an error in the machine's design and can't be fixed. Some later models had problems with power input circuits and produced graphical garbage on screen after 2 years of use. The cost of a battery replacement post extended applecare service was around $350. It's not surprising organizations switch to new hardware. Maintaining such old systems is quite laborsome.