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  • t.s.
    replied
    Originally posted by markus40 View Post

    Fine, the focus is on me. Whatever that means.
    For you. The focus is on Gnome v3. Also fine. For me, it is a continuation of 22 years of, let me put it in other words, frustration of Gnome.
    That's fine, really. But nothing chances in my stance and opinion. I'm glad there is a desktop who tries to take another path.
    Building a desktop is hard. I experienced a lot of them and most of them. Even the ones with loads of cash behind them, were frustratingly bad. But I had to use them and I adapted. Maybe that makes me appreciate what we have with Gnome in another way then you.
    Maybe, I'm wrong and XFCE is how the 'real' Linux desktop was meant to be, but I'm glad that this is not the case. That paradigm belongs, in my opinion, to the past.
    Even on my work T41 with Win10 the taskbar, full of icons started by tasks my employer wants to have running, has become a meaningless tool, where I don't see the tree in the forest.
    I never go to the windows menu and search in the application tree. I type what I want. All those things Gnome 2 was great at, are, again in my opinion, obsoleted. Sue me...
    Yes, to each their own. Well, glad you all happy using GNOME.

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  • markus40
    replied
    I forgot Nvidia, and you're right, I don't have or use devices from Nvidia, because of this. This is something that should be solved before a big rollout. Users won't understand. I saw somewhere they were abandoning their implementation (EGL streams I believe), lets hope they come with an acceptable solution.

    Originally posted by JackLilhammers View Post
    Under Nadella though I think that they're winning back the mindshare without even fighting.
    I don't even think they're trying to control things with the old EEE modus operandi, because they don't need to
    I agree, their comeback is strong, it became a better company, they learned to co-exist.
    Last edited by markus40; 24 May 2021, 07:42 AM.

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  • JackLilhammers
    replied
    Originally posted by markus40 View Post
    Of course, I'm agreeing. But out of curiosity, I'm using Wayland for more than a year and not noticing anything missing. I find it a pretty smooth ride. What is missing in your opinion?
    We're getting closer by the day and I'm pretty confident that everything will be fine by 2022. I just think that we're not there yet.
    Personally at home I can't make the switch because I have an optimus laptop and as a "nerd" I know it's Nvidia's fault, but as a user I perceive that Wayland is not there yet.
    At work on the other hand I can't use Wayland on a project that I'm developing because my company uses AnyDesk which doesn't support it yet. Again, it's not Wayland's fault, but as a user my experience is broken.
    This brings to my answer, maybe this rollout could have been engineered in a less disruptive way. Maybe with better backwards compatibility.

    Originally posted by markus40 View Post
    I thought this was pretty obvious, not? They could not keep the developers on their platform with their tools and their environment. Most of the development nowadays is not for the desktop, it is not solely coupled with Microsoft development tools. Although they are undoubtedly excellent. Development is mostly for mobile and server backends. None of which are dominated by Microsoft. In 90s and 00 it was obvious they were trying hard to eradicate everything, not Microsoft related. Pretty aggressively too. Maybe the developer world was not in war with them, but Microsoft sure was in war with everybody else. They didn't succeed. Internet, (nginx, Apache, python, PHP), Firefox and later Chrome (JavaScript), and mobile (android, iPhone) happened. None of which controlled by Microsoft.
    From that perspective they undeniably lost, and it was for the better!
    Under Nadella though I think that they're winning back the mindshare without even fighting.
    I don't even think they're trying to control things with the old EEE modus operandi, because they don't need to

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  • markus40
    replied
    Originally posted by JackLilhammers View Post
    I don't have anything against Wayland, as long as it reaches feature parity before being shipped by default with Ubuntu LTS, because otherwise it would be an awful user experience.
    Of course, I'm agreeing. But out of curiosity, I'm using Wayland for more than a year and not noticing anything missing. I find it a pretty smooth ride. What is missing in your opinion?

    Originally posted by JackLilhammers View Post
    IThat said, I don't think security should be the primary focus. I'm not saying it should not be neglected, but if security breaks functionality than maybe there's something wrong at a design level. A silly example: a house with no openings is inherently safe, but less than useful
    Again, also true and something I have to deal with daily at work. But again what is lacking? Keep in mind I'm not the kitchen-sink type and don't think Wayland should solve everything X11 did (but did it really?).

    Originally posted by JackLilhammers View Post
    PPS: Why would you say that Microsoft lost the developer wars?
    I thought this was pretty obvious, not? They could not keep the developers on their platform with their tools and their environment. Most of the development nowadays is not for the desktop, it is not solely coupled with Microsoft development tools. Although they are undoubtedly excellent. Development is mostly for mobile and server backends. None of which are dominated by Microsoft. In 90s and 00 it was obvious they were trying hard to eradicate everything, not Microsoft related. Pretty aggressively too. Maybe the developer world was not in war with them, but Microsoft sure was in war with everybody else. They didn't succeed. Internet, (nginx, Apache, python, PHP), Firefox and later Chrome (JavaScript), and mobile (android, iPhone) happened. None of which controlled by Microsoft.
    Last edited by markus40; 24 May 2021, 05:52 AM.

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  • JackLilhammers
    replied
    Originally posted by markus40 View Post
    I'm glad about what they do with Wayland. I'm of the opinion they learned what went wrong with X11 and took another path by making it very minimal with a focus on what it certainly must be, secure.
    I don't have anything against Wayland, as long as it reaches feature parity before being shipped by default with Ubuntu LTS, because otherwise it would be an awful user experience.
    That said, I don't think security should be the primary focus. I'm not saying it should not be neglected, but if security breaks functionality than maybe there's something wrong at a design level. A silly example: a house with no openings is inherently safe, but less than useful

    PS: About your previous experience with Kde, I'm sorry it happened, but I think you sort of missed my point. However it was not that important

    PPS: Why would you say that Microsoft lost the developer wars?

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  • markus40
    replied
    Originally posted by 144Hz View Post
    jacob TLDR Gnome Convergence is already here and it was so non-intrusive most people didn’t realize it.
    I think many people don't realize what is coming together desktop wise at this moment through Gnome. They mostly concentrate on what is gone, instead of what is and will be gained. Or maybe they see it but don't like it and would like to be stuck in what was.

    Maybe a too long stretch, but in a certain way it reminds me about how Microsoft lost the developer wars.
    Last edited by markus40; 24 May 2021, 04:08 AM.

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  • markus40
    replied
    Originally posted by jacob View Post

    Forget BSD. Unix itself has been developed as a single code base.
    So, Linux and systemd are truly GNU.

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  • markus40
    replied
    Originally posted by t.s. View Post
    4. . We're out of topic. Now the focus is about you, not GNOME.
    Now I'm in the mood, lets continue with the focus on me.

    I'm glad about what they do with Wayland. I'm of the opinion they learned what went wrong with X11 and took another path by making it very minimal with a focus on what it certainly must be, secure. Furthermore, I'm glad there many things left to be implemented by the 'window manager', if we have to give it a name, or should I say not implemented but integrated. Because the all-in-one singing and dancing implementation will halt innovation. The famous remote X11, did you ever use it? I did and went for XRDP because of the limitations. It was implemented at the beginning of X11 and never enhanced to include innovations in the field. I will quote something here which will illustrate how broken X11 was and let you figure out the implication for remote X11 for yourself.

    The X protocol's text-rendering facilities do not support anti-aliasing and aren't used much these days. (I think the reason is that the X font protocol doesn't have any place for an alpha channel.)
    GTK and Qt render text in the client using the FreeType library, getting a pixmap with an alpha channel as the result. If the X server supports the RENDER extension, the client can send that pixmap to the server to have it blended onto the display using its alpha channel. If the X server doesn't support RENDER, the client has to retrieve the region of the screen where the text is to be displayed (taking a small screenshot, basically), do the alpha blending client-side, and send the resulting opaque pixmap back to the X server to be displayed.
    It was stuck in the 80s and not because it was good. So now the heavy lifting will be done with pipewire and the 'window manager' has to make sure it gets the permission to access the desktop for streaming. If something new comes along it can be integrated too or replace pipewire. X11 at the end was/is a Frankenstein monster with a large portion circumvented to keep it relevant in this century. And it did this very well. Thanks to, lets not forget the team behind Wayland. I'm still running it on my media PC/server and does its task well

    I'm all for the minimalistic approach and let the innovation competitions begin. As I see it, this started with the dropping of the X11 font rendering, udev and then the removal of the ESD sound daemon and the implementation and integration of pulseaudio, Network-Manager in Gnome 2.x. The desktop doesn't have to solve those things. It needs to integrate them and as something new comes along, and it is good, it will replace the old. It is maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think Wayland learned from the past and is a continuation of what was started with udev (and HAL which was a bad idea quickly fixed), freetype, cairo, Network-Manager, pulseaudio, gstreamer, systemd and so on (all integrated not implemented by the desktop). And now we even see the result of this, by the phasing out of pulseaudio by pipewire and taking Jack and Video along on the ride. Maybe it will swallow gstreamer, who knows, the border is gray and that is fine because the desktop can pick nowadays. Without circumventing around things integrated in the display server. Like font engine, printer server, input drivers, audio and the kitchen sink. There already many things being swapped out underneath nowadays. It's called innovation. And no desktop has to wait for the others to do it, they can do it right away because it is possible now. Maybe Gtk will be superseded too, who knows. I'm not overly attached to any of it. But I can predict it will not be a C++ replacement. That is yesterday, nobody will swap things out for a C or C++ implementation.

    I'm really appreciating Gnome 2.x as I did Gnome 1.x. But I see Gnome 2 as a catch-up to the 'modern' desktop as presented by Apple and Microsoft, which Linux was lacking, leaving the archaic *nix desktop behind. It introduced a lot of backend stuff to accomplish this. Gnome 3 I see as an evolution on this, enhance the desktop to the next level and make it our own. I respect the communities around KDE an XFCE. Don't like the dependency on all the dancing and singing QT for KDE. In my opinion, it lacks focus on what it wants to be, everything is no answer. Besides, it goes against me preferring modular. XFCE, it is not for me but admire their dedication. I don't see much relevance for it as an innovator in the desktop area, but that is me. The whole concept is very conservative. I'm overjoyed Xorg was founded to take XFree86 and drag it kicking and screaming into this century. No autoconfig for 12 years, in 2005, come on! As for Gnome, I think I see what they are doing, components to build a desktop freely to use by everybody. Ready to be replaced if something better comes along.

    To me, Gnome is not about Gnome-shell, mutter, C, JavaScript, clutter, Wayland, GTK etc. They all can go away, and it still would be Gnome.
    Gnome for me is about Gnome-shell, mutter, JavaScript, C, rust, clutter, Wayland, GTK, libinput, pulseaudio andnow pipewire, gstreamer, udev, dbus and now dbus-broker, flatpak, Cairo, freetype, OpenGL, Vulkan, systemd, Bluez, Network-manager, iwd and all other components, which can be swapped out if something better or new innovations will be developed without being stuck with an architecture that prevents the optimal integrations of those. Not being held back by anybody to do it.

    Is that enough of me?
    Last edited by markus40; 24 May 2021, 07:59 AM.

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  • delta_v
    replied
    I think, convergence is the ultimate ego, the ultimate hubris of an UI/UX designer.
    One set of guidelines to rule them all, one vision that extends to all computer interactions, write once, run anyw^W^W^W^W

    Different controls demand different usage flow of each and every application.
    While touch is at least discrete, like mouse pointer, and not analog, like gamepad or HOTAS sticks or VR controllers, it still differs vastly in the amount of precision you can expect from a user.
    Fingers are not transparent, a mouse pointer is much smaller than a fingertip and is usually designed to obstruct as little as possible.

    No matter how good or detailed HIG are, they don't mean anything until a majority (by use time) of programs follow that convergence and implement different flows for different usage patterns.
    As an extreme example, a shooter game to meet these convergence goals should seamlessly transition with the same gameplay between touch and KB+M. It is doable with compromises, but it's done very rarely.
    And you need a mass buy-in from all the third parties for the convergence to work for the user.

    That buy-in is possible only through the carrot and stick process.
    Mainly through stick as everybody seems to like a different kind of carrots.

    Apple is very well poised to try this because of their extensive control of the whole stack in their products.
    Microsoft can leverage the access to its console ecosystem and force you to implement compatibility with Kinect it doesn't even sell anymore.
    Gnome?.. Nah, not a chance. No control over any hardware stack, no leverage over the access to ecosystem, nothing.

    So it goes.

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  • finalzone
    replied
    Originally posted by t.s. View Post
    I'm not blaming RedHat. At least, not entirely. They contribution for linux ecosystem is huge. Although not all of the contribution is positive, but I benefitted much from them. Qt and KDE? Yes, it's a pity. But with what GNOME's doing now, we don't have much choice, do we? If only they want to hear others opinion (and reduce their memory footprint).
    Claiming having lack of choice is subjective when posting in the topic dedicated on GNOME in this case. As a power user, you are free to build your own distribution with your favourite desktop environment thus in full control of your custom operating system. However, yoou have to respect other people's choice notably the distributors, developers and even users happy to run that particular desktop environment.
    Frankly, ranting about a desktop environment some users have no interest to contribute in this topic highlights a sign of dishonestly. Effective way to provide a constructive criticism is in Bug/Enhancement tickets for that desktop environment instead of posting in a forum.

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