System76 Making Progress With COSMIC Desktop - 10-bit Color Support Added, HDR Plans

[AmericanLocomotive]

no. That is outright false.

UX is "User Experience". It's how the user interacts with the system. Over the past 30 years, computer users have grown acustomed to the idea of having a "Desktop" with files and folders. It's how a computer "is" to the vast majority of users. If you suddenly change that just because, leaving users frustrated and confused why they can't put their favorite list of recipes on their desktop, it's bad UX.

Wat?
No.
Neither phone, nor tablet follow that stupid "desktop metaphor",

What do you think the "Home" screen on a phone or tablet with icons and folders is? It's a pseudo-desktop. Not quite as configurable or fully featured as a PC desktop, but close enough.

not even modern PC GUI. Starting with Windows 98 "desktop metaphor" is deprecated and works in legacy mode. Can you name a single desktop metaphor improvement since windows 98? There are none. So, either it is perfect or it is abandoned.

What are you even talking about. Legacy mode? Deprecated? Right off the top of my head, Apple recently added "Stacking" to desktop icons, allowing you to group similar files/folders, and then quickly expand them if necessary.

Especially now, 15 years after desktop metaphor was dropped by most popular OSes. Neither android nor ios support desktop metaphor. None of them allows you to drop your file on "desktop".

Windows and MacOS are the most popular operating system. Both fully support and enable desktop icons by default. 86% of PC users are using MacOS or Windows - both operating systems that support and embrace desktop icons.

Do you even know what a "Desktop metaphor" is? If you have files, folders and applications able to exist on your desktop - your system is fully embracing a desktop metaphor.

[Daktyl198]

Thank God that someone has decided to create another Linux DE instead of working on fixing any of the current desktop environments.

I have always said, one can't have enough half baked desktop environments just like we can't have enough Linux based distros, most of them clones of a small handful of barely usable distros.

Really looking forward to trying out COSMIC failure once it's available,

The problem with this worldview is that it implies that the existing DEs WANT to be fixed. Every DE has project leads and core developers that actually determine what gets added, removed, or fixed. The developers of Cosmic have already been making fixes to Gnome and to the ElementaryOS applications they utilized, but those projects have their own visions. The Cosmic devs can't just go in and add features to Gnome that the Gnome team doesn't see as useful, or relating to their own view. Same with the KDE team, who are extremely well known for being overly stubborn and bureaucratic rather than bleeding edge.

The reason why there are so many half-assed DEs in the world is because every Linux project is owned and controlled by a control-freak with a vision, who refuses to listen to reason or accept well intentioned changes to his project. Beyond that, Linux is full of people who will bitch (and bitch LOUDLY) if you break their well-known workflow that they've had going for 30 freaking years. That's why Wayland even exists, because the X.org developers couldn't just start ripping old crap out of X.org without breaking the 50 year old "X11 specification" that apparently some people still use. And those people would kill anybody that messed with their setup.

[Daktyl198]

What do you think the "Home" screen on a phone or tablet with icons and folders is? It's a pseudo-desktop. Not quite as configurable or fully featured as a PC desktop, but close enough.

I agree with you as a whole on the desktop icon thing, but it's important to realize that a mobile device home screen is not a pseudo-desktop. It's just a fullscreen start menu. iOS and Android simply started out with only app launchers, and nowhere else to put apps. Android and iOS eventually added folders out of organizational necessity due to, again, literally having nowhere else to put applications.

Eventually Android added the app drawer and almost immediately people took advantage and cleaned up their home screens so that they could see their wallpapers. Many people default to a blank home screen, with most used apps on one of the secondary "workspaces". Now iOS also has somewhere else for apps to live and people are basically just using the home screen for widgets. Especially since app searching and voice assistants exist and work well these days.

[Daktyl198]

My main issue with HDR support on Windows is that it destroys SDR rendered content, washing it out. With HDR turned off, SDR content looks vivid and bright on the panel, but without the luminosity and contrast. With HDR turned on, SDR content (and even the Windows desktop) suddenly loses all color, becoming so dull as to almost be tones of grey. HDR should be an enhancement over SDR, not destroy it.

If Linux's support does the same thing, then HDR is useless as 99.99% of content is SDR.

[Quackdoc]

My main issue with HDR support on Windows is that it destroys SDR rendered content, washing it out. With HDR turned off, SDR content looks vivid and bright on the panel, but without the luminosity and contrast. With HDR turned on, SDR content (and even the Windows desktop) suddenly loses all color, becoming so dull as to almost be tones of grey. HDR should be an enhancement over SDR, not destroy it.

If Linux's support does the same thing, then HDR is useless as 99.99% of content is SDR.

this is due to window's subpar inverse tonemapping, if it does any at all. which im not convinced it does.

[sophisticles]

@Daktyl198 and Quackdoc:

I think you guys may be missing something.

In order for HDR content to be displayed in HDR, you need a monitor/TV capable of displaying HDR content.

If you attempt to display HDR content on a monitor/TV that lacks HDR support, it will display "washed out", unless you tone map it, i.e. map the HDR values to SDR values.

If you want to display SDR content on a HDR capable monitor/TV, then the content must be inverse tone mapped.

Neither SDR->HDR nor HDR->SDR is a function of the OS, this is handled by filters that can be applied during the encoding process or the decode/playback process.

You need to set you media player to the proper settings or check the driver control panel for global settings.

[Quackdoc]

@Daktyl198 and Quackdoc:

I think you guys may be missing something.

In order for HDR content to be displayed in HDR, you need a monitor/TV capable of displaying HDR content.

If you attempt to display HDR content on a monitor/TV that lacks HDR support, it will display "washed out", unless you tone map it, i.e. map the HDR values to SDR values.

If you want to display SDR content on a HDR capable monitor/TV, then the content must be inverse tone mapped.

Neither SDR->HDR nor HDR->SDR is a function of the OS, this is handled by filters that can be applied during the encoding process or the decode/playback process.

You need to set you media player to the proper settings or check the driver control panel for global settings.

it is. tonemapping should be done at the level of the display server or compositor or whatever the right terminology is. I believe in cosmic's case it will be handled by smithay, it's the same thing as when you load an ICC profile into the compositor, the compositor does the color shifting and what not.

well it's not a 1:1 analog, but in the end, it's not that hard to implement tonemapping in a shader, I brought it up before, but as far as I know, the current standard for tonemapping SDR to HDR is defined in BT.2446. in the end, it's all a part of color management anyways

[szymon_g]

is there a way to try it on the newest ubuntu?

[Tian]

is there a way to try it on the newest ubuntu?

there is a package for arch (cosmic-epoch-git) so maybe if you use something like makedeb to compile the pkgbuild to ubuntu?

[Quackdoc]

there is a package for arch (cosmic-epoch-git) so maybe if you use something like makedeb to compile the pkgbuild to ubuntu?

I tried that and it didn't work for me, I have my own pkgbuilds for each individual app in cosmic-epoch, they are on my github, username is the same, repo is pkgbuild-scripts if anyone wants to try that instead. none are chroot tested tho