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I believe that Sway will be the key to mass Linux desktop adoption, once someone wraps it into a modern distro like Arch. Unfortunately work on kmscon has disc

I believe that Sway will be the key to mass Linux desktop adoption, once someone wraps it into a modern distro like Arch. Unfortunately work on kmscon has discontinued. I'm currently using rxvt-unicode. I've been looking at exploring alacritty. Is there any chance you'll be building your own console emulator? I've had this idea floating around, that in addition to supporting ANSI escape codes, of a terminal that supports a lightweight markup language for UI. I saw your recent activity regarding Vulkan support. Your WM has just about all the components necessary to build these kickass graphical "console" applications.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I am building my own terminal emulator on the side, not very seriously: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scurvy https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scurvy I'm not particularly interested in extending ANSI any further than, say, xterm. I do have big plans for Sway and the rest of the ecosystem, though. I am working on a GUI toolkit: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/chopsui https://github.com/SirCmpwn/chopsui And I'm also thinking about pulling the TUI layout out my work on aerc2 into a standalone library: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc2 https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc2
- braderhart 9y ago
  chopsui is right on track with what I'm thinking. The web and browsers are broken, and this is the answer. You're a wizard.
braderhart 9y ago
Did I mention that all this amazing work is being done by a few forward-thinking people vs the bloated desktop crap we've seen from billion dollar companies for years.
eikenberry 9y ago
> I believe that Sway will be the key to mass Linux desktop adoption... I'm curious what the basis of this thinking is. Sway looks like a nice i3-like tiling window manager for Wayland, but I don't see how such a piece of software would make so much of a difference.
- braderhart 9y ago
  I used Windows primarily for over 20 years. I experimented with dwm back in 2006 and really enjoyed the idea. Something clicked in my brain a while back and I tried Arch Linux. It took a lot, and I mean a lot of stubbornness on my part (and on Arch) for me to figure out how to get a minimalist desktop with just about everything working. Now that I do though, it is very easy and simple to understand. I really don't need any bloat and my OS is pretty much portable at this point, and I have great software to do pretty much everything I want. My computer isn't terrible, but it is much older. I've got external monitors connected to it. Using i3 just feels natural at this point. I definitely feel more efficient. I have everything integrated that on Windows requires compatibility layers. My passwords are stored using Pass, so I can even use latest encryption. I use browserpass for password integration. I've got integrations in rofi for Chrome tabs. I mean, the simplicity and speed make using a computer exciting and enjoyable for me. If I were using a VR or AR device, I don't want to manage location of items. I like technology helping me and not getting in the way. This is what I think a properly optimized and configured desktop could be like, and I haven't ran into any issues. I can even watch YouTube and other streaming services natively and with graphics acceleration using mpv and youtube-dl. With this framework, we won't need Android for mobile and Vulkan integration isn't too far away. I feel like with a little creative thinking, that tiling window managers can be whatever you want them to be. Take this for example, https://i.redd.it/lcz6566yfwsz.png https://i.redd.it/lcz6566yfwsz.png Or this, https://imgur.com/a/VBQML#fIjDknv https://imgur.com/a/VBQML#fIjDknv Now take GTK/Gnome or Qt/KDE + X11, which are a strong learning curve for UI development, and bloated upon dependencies galore (some of this is just poor packaging) and evaluate how much of that codebase is actually producing quality applications to win the Desktop space for Linux. You have 2 (some would argue 3 or more) commercial Linux distros that have been unable to do so, and now partner with Microsoft. I see developers flocking towards JavaScript because that is being pushed as the solution for UI development. There is a reason that Linux desktop is failing, and I believe that tiling window managers help solve that. No offense to Mozilla or Chrome teams, but damn your browsers are bloated and unnecessary. I can't wait for chopsui or whatever else the right scripting language is to come along and sweep it all up, because that is what will happen. Sorry Microsoft, but your 4GB OS will be blown away by something that will probably clock in at less than 1GB with Wayland/Vulkan. Now wrap that into container isolation, and you've got yourself a policy framework.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

I am building my own terminal emulator on the side, not very seriously: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scurvy https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scurvy I'm not particularly interested in extending ANSI any further than, say, xterm. I do have big plans for Sway and the rest of the ecosystem, though. I am working on a GUI toolkit: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/chopsui https://github.com/SirCmpwn/chopsui And I'm also thinking about pulling the TUI layout out my work on aerc2 into a standalone library: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc2 https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/aerc2

braderhart 9y ago
chopsui is right on track with what I'm thinking. The web and browsers are broken, and this is the answer. You're a wizard.

braderhart 9y ago

Did I mention that all this amazing work is being done by a few forward-thinking people vs the bloated desktop crap we've seen from billion dollar companies for years.

eikenberry 9y ago

> I believe that Sway will be the key to mass Linux desktop adoption... I'm curious what the basis of this thinking is. Sway looks like a nice i3-like tiling window manager for Wayland, but I don't see how such a piece of software would make so much of a difference.

braderhart 9y ago
I used Windows primarily for over 20 years. I experimented with dwm back in 2006 and really enjoyed the idea. Something clicked in my brain a while back and I tried Arch Linux. It took a lot, and I mean a lot of stubbornness on my part (and on Arch) for me to figure out how to get a minimalist desktop with just about everything working. Now that I do though, it is very easy and simple to understand. I really don't need any bloat and my OS is pretty much portable at this point, and I have great software to do pretty much everything I want. My computer isn't terrible, but it is much older. I've got external monitors connected to it. Using i3 just feels natural at this point. I definitely feel more efficient. I have everything integrated that on Windows requires compatibility layers. My passwords are stored using Pass, so I can even use latest encryption. I use browserpass for password integration. I've got integrations in rofi for Chrome tabs. I mean, the simplicity and speed make using a computer exciting and enjoyable for me. If I were using a VR or AR device, I don't want to manage location of items. I like technology helping me and not getting in the way. This is what I think a properly optimized and configured desktop could be like, and I haven't ran into any issues. I can even watch YouTube and other streaming services natively and with graphics acceleration using mpv and youtube-dl. With this framework, we won't need Android for mobile and Vulkan integration isn't too far away. I feel like with a little creative thinking, that tiling window managers can be whatever you want them to be. Take this for example, https://i.redd.it/lcz6566yfwsz.png https://i.redd.it/lcz6566yfwsz.png Or this, https://imgur.com/a/VBQML#fIjDknv https://imgur.com/a/VBQML#fIjDknv Now take GTK/Gnome or Qt/KDE + X11, which are a strong learning curve for UI development, and bloated upon dependencies galore (some of this is just poor packaging) and evaluate how much of that codebase is actually producing quality applications to win the Desktop space for Linux. You have 2 (some would argue 3 or more) commercial Linux distros that have been unable to do so, and now partner with Microsoft. I see developers flocking towards JavaScript because that is being pushed as the solution for UI development. There is a reason that Linux desktop is failing, and I believe that tiling window managers help solve that. No offense to Mozilla or Chrome teams, but damn your browsers are bloated and unnecessary. I can't wait for chopsui or whatever else the right scripting language is to come along and sweep it all up, because that is what will happen. Sorry Microsoft, but your 4GB OS will be blown away by something that will probably clock in at less than 1GB with Wayland/Vulkan. Now wrap that into container isolation, and you've got yourself a policy framework.