6 ms·

> It has polish and care that the stereotypical raging neckbeards who espouse the mantra of Linux on the desktop are unable to appreciate (or, apparently, build

by endgame 10y ago

> It has polish and care that the stereotypical raging neckbeards who espouse the mantra of Linux on the desktop are unable to appreciate (or, apparently, build), and it has to exist, even if merely as a counterpoint to all the ugliness. Please be nice :(. Some of those so-called "neckbeards" probably helped build the stack upon which things like elementaryOS rest.

Yhippa 10y ago
Is there a difference between "graybeards" and "neckbeards"? I think culturally there is a difference and he possibly meant to use greybeard here.
- chongli 10y ago
  Yes. "Neckbeard" has connotations of sexism and other ugliness. "Graybeard" merely connotes old age and anachronism.
  - hug 10y ago
    I would add experience, wisdom, and stubbornness to that list, personally.
    - chongli 10y ago
      Those traits tend to tag along with old age, at least as a stereotype.
      - sn9 10y ago
        At least in programming contexts, it also carries a connotation of competence.
simondedalus 10y ago
not to mention that i've yet to have as bug-free an experience on elementary as i have on vanilla ubuntu, or opensuse with kde, or a really basic arch + i3 install, or kali with gnome 3, or (the list goes on). the unearned appreciation of elementary has always baffled me. i mean, the developers are not hacks or anything. i quite liked geary, and i'm fine with distros multiplying (why not? just use what you want, it doesn't matter). but elementary is barely any more mac-ish than ubuntu with unity, and it's always felt like the beta version of someone's side project. to sum up, i'm happy that they have interest in their project, and i respect the effort they put into it. however, most of the praise for elementary seems to come from and for the wrong places; it's not particularly polished or user friendly (they have a history of "i'll choose for you," but not in as an intuitive way as Apple), its thematically unified design does not last unless you either use a vanilla install forever or put in just as much linux-y work in maintaining your install as you would w/ arch or debian or ubuntu (and you cared about how everything looks). to me, elementary is a nice little niche distro like bodhi linux. it's bizarre to me that people can use it as a main system unless they're very advanced (read: they play with config files like a sysadmin and code decently in at least bash), and it's outright unthinkable that people use it for anything beyond checking email if they're keeping a vanilla install. this stuff keeps the ecosystem healthy, but the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros).
- spoiler 10y ago
  > the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros). This was simply a "surface" observation of mine too, until I've first hand met people who were impressed with it, and haven't actually used used Linux, but merely used it occasionally.
- veddox 10y ago
  I used elementary myself for about half a year as my main system and have a bit of a split opinion on it myself. On the one hand, I did find the design to be very appealing - and contrary to what you claim, I haven't seen as nice a design anywhere else in the Linux world. (I may not be an old hand yet, but I've come around a bit.) I love how the whole desktop just works together to produce a very satisfying visual experience, and some of their homegrown apps are really sweet (specifically the text editor Scratch, but also the file browser). However, I can also confirm what you say about bugs - a vanilla Ubuntu LTS is quite a bit more stable than eOS is. Having said that, most of the bugs I encountered on eOS were either avoidable (by switching the browser to Firefox, for example) or I could live with them. The one I found most annoying was a bug in the music app that didn't let me save songs to a playlist. I did actually dig into the source code for that one, but eventually gave it up and went back to trusty old (terminal!) mocp. All in all, I enjoyed using eOS, but when the time came for me to buy a new laptop, I decided to go back to Ubuntu. ElementaryOS is a great project that deserves more attention (and more programmers working on it), but unfortunately does still feel too much like a perpetual beta. I'll keep my eyes on it, hopefully some day I'll go back, but not just yet.
matt4077 10y ago
Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are: - dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-good-bacon - design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse UI (all else being equal) so as to prove something - design = prettiness, and, by extensions, design being entirely a matter of taste and therefore impossible to criticize - the complete rejection of any argument or evidence that cannot be derived from any of the laws of thermodynamics, Shannon, or at least an RFC That being said, having browsed the elementary OS website, I'm not sure if isn't the victim of some of these errors itself. It sure seems to be a ripoff of macOS ca. 5 years ago applied as thin veneer to Linux. Their "brand" page may also be the first implementation of cargo-cult design.
- pavanky 10y ago
  Firstly, I see a lot of people complaining about the design, but the matter of fact is a lot more programmers are willing to work for free and make their contributions open source than designers are. This was more true a decade ago than it is now, so there is a lot of "if it works, do not break it" attitude. Secondly, "good design" is subjective as opposed to a program that achieves its goals. No matter what you do, you will have a substantial amount of people hate your designs. So when people come in and tell them that the design sucks, there are a lot of people also telling them that it is good and it works. What needs to happen is people come up with objective shortfalls in existing designs and let them know how that can be fixed.
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    My only problem with the design is the lack of maximize minimize and close buttons in the windows. I could care less if it looks like Mac or Windows or whatever I just need to have those three buttons otherwise I'll just use my phone if I want some "revolutionary different way of interacting with things" (tm).
    - sprafa 10y ago
amiga-workbench 10y ago
This might just be /g/ but I always get a lot of flak for running Gnome 3, other users like to point out how much screen real estate it wastes with padding, however that's the main reason I'm using it. I'm sick to death of XFCE and KDE setups with poor proportions and crazy alignment issues, I don't want an interface that is spatially hyper-compact, I want one that looks pleasant. I mean Christ, you can't even vertically align elements in XFCE Panels, the whole thing has an aversion to aesthetics.
- simondedalus 10y ago
  yeah, i got used to gnome3 during a redhat class, and subsequently on a default kali install for its own particular purpose, and i don't mind it at all. the alignment is good, and when you want to get rid of all the border stuff you can just full screen. for example, my firefox looks like something out of windows 95, but if i want to pretend i'm using i3, f11 -> fullscreen, ctrl+tab and i'm set. and if i want to see a bookmark toolbar, url bar, tabs, a title bar, and a menu, i can. why not? and yeah, the real goodness (which is not unique to gnome3) is the snap alignment stuff and ease of using virtual desktops and setting keyboard shortcuts. gnome3 could be a lot worse than it is. (edit: for me, everything gnome3 does, kde does better, but gnome3 "just works" a lot better than kde and, to some degree, unity. i'd rather be using i3 generally, but that can be more effort to maintain than its worth in certain situations)
  - amiga-workbench 10y ago
    I find window snapping pretty essential, using a Mac without better touch tool is truly painful. For my taste, Gnome 3 only needs a few small tweaks, dash to dock, dropdown terminal, and jetisoning adwaita out of the nearest airlock. http://i.imgur.com/jo7XbHl.png http://i.imgur.com/jo7XbHl.png
    - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
      I see greener grass in a parallel universe where the best Apple designers got together and created a really, really good tiling window manager — available as an addition to what we already have. I feel that whoever chose the Miller columns view in Finder, or whoever came up with the persistent global menu bar, these guys should be giving us an amazing tiling wm.

by endgame 10y ago

Yhippa 10y ago

Is there a difference between "graybeards" and "neckbeards"? I think culturally there is a difference and he possibly meant to use greybeard here.

chongli 10y ago
Yes. "Neckbeard" has connotations of sexism and other ugliness. "Graybeard" merely connotes old age and anachronism.
- hug 10y ago
  I would add experience, wisdom, and stubbornness to that list, personally.
  - chongli 10y ago
    Those traits tend to tag along with old age, at least as a stereotype.
    - sn9 10y ago
      At least in programming contexts, it also carries a connotation of competence.

simondedalus 10y ago

not to mention that i've yet to have as bug-free an experience on elementary as i have on vanilla ubuntu, or opensuse with kde, or a really basic arch + i3 install, or kali with gnome 3, or (the list goes on). the unearned appreciation of elementary has always baffled me. i mean, the developers are not hacks or anything. i quite liked geary, and i'm fine with distros multiplying (why not? just use what you want, it doesn't matter). but elementary is barely any more mac-ish than ubuntu with unity, and it's always felt like the beta version of someone's side project. to sum up, i'm happy that they have interest in their project, and i respect the effort they put into it. however, most of the praise for elementary seems to come from and for the wrong places; it's not particularly polished or user friendly (they have a history of "i'll choose for you," but not in as an intuitive way as Apple), its thematically unified design does not last unless you either use a vanilla install forever or put in just as much linux-y work in maintaining your install as you would w/ arch or debian or ubuntu (and you cared about how everything looks). to me, elementary is a nice little niche distro like bodhi linux. it's bizarre to me that people can use it as a main system unless they're very advanced (read: they play with config files like a sysadmin and code decently in at least bash), and it's outright unthinkable that people use it for anything beyond checking email if they're keeping a vanilla install. this stuff keeps the ecosystem healthy, but the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros).

spoiler 10y ago
> the articles and comments i read about it look like they're coming from people who simply don't use linux that much (and aren't aware that all the good things they see in elementary are done better in other distros). This was simply a "surface" observation of mine too, until I've first hand met people who were impressed with it, and haven't actually used used Linux, but merely used it occasionally.
veddox 10y ago
I used elementary myself for about half a year as my main system and have a bit of a split opinion on it myself. On the one hand, I did find the design to be very appealing - and contrary to what you claim, I haven't seen as nice a design anywhere else in the Linux world. (I may not be an old hand yet, but I've come around a bit.) I love how the whole desktop just works together to produce a very satisfying visual experience, and some of their homegrown apps are really sweet (specifically the text editor Scratch, but also the file browser). However, I can also confirm what you say about bugs - a vanilla Ubuntu LTS is quite a bit more stable than eOS is. Having said that, most of the bugs I encountered on eOS were either avoidable (by switching the browser to Firefox, for example) or I could live with them. The one I found most annoying was a bug in the music app that didn't let me save songs to a playlist. I did actually dig into the source code for that one, but eventually gave it up and went back to trusty old (terminal!) mocp. All in all, I enjoyed using eOS, but when the time came for me to buy a new laptop, I decided to go back to Ubuntu. ElementaryOS is a great project that deserves more attention (and more programmers working on it), but unfortunately does still feel too much like a perpetual beta. I'll keep my eyes on it, hopefully some day I'll go back, but not just yet.

matt4077 10y ago

Having an interest in design, I often feel a vibe of aggression towards the whole endeavor coming from some elements of OSS scene that I can see being equally infuriating or hurtful as "neckbeards". Among them are: - dismissal of design as a sort of thin veneer, somewhat fake, lipstick-on-good-bacon - design as a kludge aimed at amateurs, to the point of preferring the worse UI (all else being equal) so as to prove something - design = prettiness, and, by extensions, design being entirely a matter of taste and therefore impossible to criticize - the complete rejection of any argument or evidence that cannot be derived from any of the laws of thermodynamics, Shannon, or at least an RFC That being said, having browsed the elementary OS website, I'm not sure if isn't the victim of some of these errors itself. It sure seems to be a ripoff of macOS ca. 5 years ago applied as thin veneer to Linux. Their "brand" page may also be the first implementation of cargo-cult design.

pavanky 10y ago
Firstly, I see a lot of people complaining about the design, but the matter of fact is a lot more programmers are willing to work for free and make their contributions open source than designers are. This was more true a decade ago than it is now, so there is a lot of "if it works, do not break it" attitude. Secondly, "good design" is subjective as opposed to a program that achieves its goals. No matter what you do, you will have a substantial amount of people hate your designs. So when people come in and tell them that the design sucks, there are a lot of people also telling them that it is good and it works. What needs to happen is people come up with objective shortfalls in existing designs and let them know how that can be fixed.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  My only problem with the design is the lack of maximize minimize and close buttons in the windows. I could care less if it looks like Mac or Windows or whatever I just need to have those three buttons otherwise I'll just use my phone if I want some "revolutionary different way of interacting with things" (tm).
  - sprafa 10y ago

amiga-workbench 10y ago

This might just be /g/ but I always get a lot of flak for running Gnome 3, other users like to point out how much screen real estate it wastes with padding, however that's the main reason I'm using it. I'm sick to death of XFCE and KDE setups with poor proportions and crazy alignment issues, I don't want an interface that is spatially hyper-compact, I want one that looks pleasant. I mean Christ, you can't even vertically align elements in XFCE Panels, the whole thing has an aversion to aesthetics.

simondedalus 10y ago
yeah, i got used to gnome3 during a redhat class, and subsequently on a default kali install for its own particular purpose, and i don't mind it at all. the alignment is good, and when you want to get rid of all the border stuff you can just full screen. for example, my firefox looks like something out of windows 95, but if i want to pretend i'm using i3, f11 -> fullscreen, ctrl+tab and i'm set. and if i want to see a bookmark toolbar, url bar, tabs, a title bar, and a menu, i can. why not? and yeah, the real goodness (which is not unique to gnome3) is the snap alignment stuff and ease of using virtual desktops and setting keyboard shortcuts. gnome3 could be a lot worse than it is. (edit: for me, everything gnome3 does, kde does better, but gnome3 "just works" a lot better than kde and, to some degree, unity. i'd rather be using i3 generally, but that can be more effort to maintain than its worth in certain situations)
- amiga-workbench 10y ago
  I find window snapping pretty essential, using a Mac without better touch tool is truly painful. For my taste, Gnome 3 only needs a few small tweaks, dash to dock, dropdown terminal, and jetisoning adwaita out of the nearest airlock. http://i.imgur.com/jo7XbHl.png http://i.imgur.com/jo7XbHl.png
  - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
    I see greener grass in a parallel universe where the best Apple designers got together and created a really, really good tiling window manager — available as an addition to what we already have. I feel that whoever chose the Miller columns view in Finder, or whoever came up with the persistent global menu bar, these guys should be giving us an amazing tiling wm.