7 ms·

> Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away. Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop wit

by pmlnr 10y ago

> Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away. Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it. > We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff. Now that is indeed a real issue, and yes, ugh. Edit: I've misread the original, sorry, so adding a few things: if you're using the default apps or the ones built for that specific environment only, you're good to go with GTK3, QT, whatever. The trouble comes when you mix these, but that is true even for the MacOS. Personally I really dislike the approach of Chrome, not giving a s* how it _should_ look like to look at least a little native.

matthewking 10y ago
I think his point was that the Apple/Mac ethos foster high quality design and attention to detail, which is applied when developers build apps for the Mac.
- Mayzie 10y ago
  To be fair, so does elementaryOS. They really try to encourage developers to adopt their HIG.[1] So much so that most developers using or targeting elementaryOS integrate their design really well.[2] For those that don't but still use GTK3, they also integrate quite well out of the box. [1] - https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines [2] - https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/ https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/
oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
They meant "apps that are high quality", not "apps for high-quality desktops".
pjmlp 10y ago
Not really. GNU/Linux doesn't have desktop stack capable of matching Objective-C, Swift frameworks both in feature set and related GUI tooling.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  How thorough of a survey have you done?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I have used Gtk+, wxWidgets, Qt, KDeveloper, once upon a time between 1995 and around 2004. Still use GNU/Linux on my travel netbook and of course, some of our servers run it. Last time I used Qt in anger was 5.3, while trying to do a mobile project that I eventually ported to pure native APIs. Do you know of any other frameworks, besides those that cover all of these ones? https://developer.apple.com/reference/ https://developer.apple.com/reference/
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      Nope. Desktop application development in Linux is indeed pretty terrible. I was honestly just curious as to your background.
  - matzipan 10y ago
    Read my comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854556)
- pmlnr 10y ago
  GTK? QT? And, since we're talking elementary, Vala?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Not really, they don't even cover half of these ones https://developer.apple.com/reference/ https://developer.apple.com/reference/ Not to mention the related GUI tooling. Where is Instruments on QtCreator, for example.
    - matzipan 10y ago
      You have valgrind and many other tools instead of "Instruments". The GNOME project itself [1] has a lot of projects which compete with what you linked. Sure, Apple has a few billion dollars to dump into development every year, so you have to adjust for scale. [1] https://developer.gnome.org/references https://developer.gnome.org/references
StavrosK 10y ago
I don't know why, but MacOS feels more high-quality than the other desktops. I use Unity on all my computers and haven't run MacOS in years, but I think there's more "tearing" in Linux WMs. Things just don't feel like they stick together as much, sometimes the decorations will hang, the menus will disappear, there are blank icons in my notification bar, etc. It looks great in screenshots, but the feeling is much inferior, a fact I lament.
- toss1941 10y ago
  I know exactly what you mean. Are the technical issues because of X or because of design decisions? I have to think it's because of X because I haven't seen an OS GUI that was as stable and as predictable as Windows/OSX. Edit: Or put another way, I always run into weird graphical/display issues using Linux desktop flavors, whether they've been on a desktop PC or in a VM.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    Massive +1 to this. And enabling vsync manually in any flavor of linux I've ever used makes the framerate tank. I don't know what magic MacOS does under the hood, but no other linux distro I've EVER used comes close, with the possible exception of Gnome. Unfortunately Gnome is ugly as sin.
Fiahil 10y ago
> Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it. Sure, but since last time I've started KDE, I got a ton of segfaults errors coming from all over the place (and not just nepomuk)... Well, if the desktop is fine but the wifi interface or the notification tray is segfaulting, I'm just gonna throw the whole thing.
reinar 10y ago
> Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. well... no. Speaking as long-time Linux user who tried all of this and in the end using i3 to avoid constant stream of bugs from DE.

by pmlnr 10y ago

matthewking 10y ago

I think his point was that the Apple/Mac ethos foster high quality design and attention to detail, which is applied when developers build apps for the Mac.

Mayzie 10y ago
To be fair, so does elementaryOS. They really try to encourage developers to adopt their HIG.[1] So much so that most developers using or targeting elementaryOS integrate their design really well.[2] For those that don't but still use GTK3, they also integrate quite well out of the box. [1] - https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines [2] - https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/ https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

They meant "apps that are high quality", not "apps for high-quality desktops".

pjmlp 10y ago

Not really. GNU/Linux doesn't have desktop stack capable of matching Objective-C, Swift frameworks both in feature set and related GUI tooling.

kristopolous 10y ago
How thorough of a survey have you done?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I have used Gtk+, wxWidgets, Qt, KDeveloper, once upon a time between 1995 and around 2004. Still use GNU/Linux on my travel netbook and of course, some of our servers run it. Last time I used Qt in anger was 5.3, while trying to do a mobile project that I eventually ported to pure native APIs. Do you know of any other frameworks, besides those that cover all of these ones? https://developer.apple.com/reference/ https://developer.apple.com/reference/
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    Nope. Desktop application development in Linux is indeed pretty terrible. I was honestly just curious as to your background.
- matzipan 10y ago
  Read my comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854556)
pmlnr 10y ago
GTK? QT? And, since we're talking elementary, Vala?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Not really, they don't even cover half of these ones https://developer.apple.com/reference/ https://developer.apple.com/reference/ Not to mention the related GUI tooling. Where is Instruments on QtCreator, for example.
  - matzipan 10y ago
    You have valgrind and many other tools instead of "Instruments". The GNOME project itself [1] has a lot of projects which compete with what you linked. Sure, Apple has a few billion dollars to dump into development every year, so you have to adjust for scale. [1] https://developer.gnome.org/references https://developer.gnome.org/references

StavrosK 10y ago

I don't know why, but MacOS feels more high-quality than the other desktops. I use Unity on all my computers and haven't run MacOS in years, but I think there's more "tearing" in Linux WMs. Things just don't feel like they stick together as much, sometimes the decorations will hang, the menus will disappear, there are blank icons in my notification bar, etc. It looks great in screenshots, but the feeling is much inferior, a fact I lament.

toss1941 10y ago
I know exactly what you mean. Are the technical issues because of X or because of design decisions? I have to think it's because of X because I haven't seen an OS GUI that was as stable and as predictable as Windows/OSX. Edit: Or put another way, I always run into weird graphical/display issues using Linux desktop flavors, whether they've been on a desktop PC or in a VM.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Massive +1 to this. And enabling vsync manually in any flavor of linux I've ever used makes the framerate tank. I don't know what magic MacOS does under the hood, but no other linux distro I've EVER used comes close, with the possible exception of Gnome. Unfortunately Gnome is ugly as sin.

Fiahil 10y ago

> Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it. Sure, but since last time I've started KDE, I got a ton of segfaults errors coming from all over the place (and not just nepomuk)... Well, if the desktop is fine but the wifi interface or the notification tray is segfaulting, I'm just gonna throw the whole thing.

reinar 10y ago

> Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. well... no. Speaking as long-time Linux user who tried all of this and in the end using i3 to avoid constant stream of bugs from DE.