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This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. "The traditional desktop computer is struggling to adapt the simple interfaces of mobile devices while al

This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. "The traditional desktop computer is struggling to adapt the simple interfaces of mobile devices while also keeping its focus on productivity." No, no, it isn't. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. "The desktop computer hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years. It’s still built on windows, folders and mouse input. But we have changed. We now use smartphones and tablets most of the time, since they are much easier to use." No, they're not. The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works. It may not be the prettiest or the most modern or even the easiest for a new computer user to navigate, but it works damned well for getting work done. That's why windows and mice are still around... they just work. This project... doesn't look like it does that.

baybal2 7y ago
Yes, his opinion and concept feel amateurish to me. A yet another GUI designed by a designer. What matters in GUI is an often overlooked thing called ergonomics — something beyond just code and visual design. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics
- hsikka 7y ago
  For what its worth, I recall this was like a student project from 2016 or something. I could be wrong, but it seemed like an impressive output under the circumstances.
  - Operyl 7y ago
    You're not wrong. At the bottom of the page is a link to the HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378
- ptidhomme 7y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out. I find the Windows UI to often have infuriatingly poor ergonomics, especially when it comes to mouse usage. For instance, why the heck put that closing cross button so far away on the right, which will build you some arm pain quite fast ? Why are some overly used buttons so small ? When I watch people that are not used to keyboard shortcuts use Windows (explorer for example), I'm quite terrified at their painful, and consequently slow, mouse-based workflow.
  - wanderer2323 7y ago
    one reason might be because with the fully opened window, the 'close window' cross is in the top right corner of the screen which is one of the infinitely large targets.
- latexr 7y ago
  > yet another GUI designed by a designer. That’s a weird complaint. I’t like saying “yet another application programmed by a programmer”. Well, who else is going to do it? It’s right there in the name! I’m guessing your objection has to do with a GUI being built by a designer that has a sense of visual hierarchy but no sense of usability/interactivity/ergonomics. I’m not sure if that’s the case here, but with that I can agree.
soperj 7y ago
Seems weird to design an desktop that only works with computers that have trackpads. It's basically a laptop only OS, even then though it doesn't work for a huge swath of people who prefer trackpoint.
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Most laptops don't have eye tracking either. I believe this concept is explicitly ignoring backwards compatibility with existing hardware in favor of trying to envision the best UI possible with current technology.
atoav 7y ago
I am probably what they call a power user. There are few people who can pick up interfaces as quickly as me. I tried really hard to make my smartphone productive and I kinda managed (wrote a thesis on it to a big degree during waits at bus stops). That means I really spent some time looking into productivity on smartphones and still didn't manage to get it somewhere comparable to a desktop PC after years of trying. The best thing was using an external keyboard, but then I could use my notebook as well.
lioeters 7y ago
> Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Hear, hear! The desktop computer (and the metephor of "desktop") works. People have learned and adapted to be very productive with it. I do not want a desktop computer with "the simple interfaces of mobile devices". I don't want to remember three-finger gestures on a trackpad, and certainly don't need voice-activated commands (it's faster and more accurate to type). Like you, I'd also argue against the statement that "we now use smartphones and tablets most of the time", or that "they are much easier to use". This completely depends on what the user is doing with the device. For certain kinds of communication, application or media consumption, sure mobile devices are easier to use. They're not that great for long-form writing (email, articles, books, programs), or as a personal information management system (file system, database). All that said, the designs in this project are beautiful, and there are some useful-looking interface ideas. I found this statement at the bottom: "Neo was designed to inspire and provoke discussions about the future of productive computing." It has definitely succeeded in this goal.
- farisjarrah 7y ago
  They really lost me at the whole 3 finger gesture thing. That's a very unnattural thing to do when you are only ever using 1 finger at a time for 90% of the interactions with the touchpad. Furthermore they have like 2 handed 3 finger gestures to do things like zoom in and out.... I feel like pinch to zoom is a lot more effective and natural.
  - anchpop 7y ago
    Three finger gestures are actually pretty nice when you get used to them. I even use the four finger gestures that Windows has somewhat frequently (to switch between virtual desktops)
  - asdff 7y ago
    Three finger is the one gesture I actually use on my macbook pro. My thumb sits on the edge of the laptop, my index is on the glass, and my second and third fingers are hovering at the ready. At some point I got into the habit of scrolling with fingers 2 and 3 rather than 1 and 2. Four finger, or really anything requiring me to lift my palm rather than pivot from the keyboard, is absurd though.
angleofrepose 7y ago
> The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works. That's not how innovation or success is measured in any way whatsoever. We had alchemy for centuries before Science, it was not right, nor was it good enough because it "just worked". This project is exploring a number of ideas and it reads like you are dismissing it because of the poor writing and its interest in non-traditional input methods. I think you would enjoy re-looking at the project if you just ignored the text. It is fun to think about how much more usable the desktop could be, and it will be experiments and discussions like this one where we make progress towards that goal. > No, they're not I totally agree with you. Mobile sucks for just about everything if someone is used to working on a computer, but it is the case that many millions more people have mobile devices than laptops or desktops. If we could work on a system that gave them more power than the trash we have for them so far, that would be incredible. E: for what its worth, I tried getting deeper into this in my top level comment further down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157536
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >That's not how innovation or success is measured in any way whatsoever. We had alchemy for centuries before Science, it was not right, nor was it good enough because it "just worked" well the problem with alchemy was that it didn't work. The desktop does indeed work in the sense that people who are productive and do heavy work do utilise traditional desktop paradigms. At least I've never seen a highly productive developer who is into tons of touchscreens and arcane finger gestures. I don't really see how the performance of well configured keyboard commands is supposed to be beaten by voice or touch input, because physically the former is just significantly faster, and importantly, composable.
  - wlesieutre 7y ago
    I like Newtonian physics better as a comparison. Is it a perfectly accurate system that solves all problems? No, it doesn't handle very small things or very fast things. But it's a pretty good model for anything I need to do with it. I do like some of the ideas here though - especially the fullscreen column mode. It feels like a more powerful and flexible version of the multitasking in macOS plus what's coming in iPad OS. I think it'd fit right in on Mac, if they could figure out an intuitive way to interact with that windowing model. Not sold on their trackpad gestures. No issues with multi-finger gestures in general, but I like having 3-finger drag as a direct interaction with my content instead of taking 3-fingers to interact with the window manager. Definitely wouldn't want want to go back to the old double-tap-and-drag.
on_and_off 7y ago
>Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Really ? Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder.
- airstrike 7y ago
  Ask anyone to do any real work – i.e. to be productive – on mobile and watch them struggle, at least in relative terms vs. how they'd fare using a real computer.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. > Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder. What does it have to do with productivity? Ask them to find a picture 100000 times on a smartphone and on a desktop having similarly capable software but with smartphone/desktop specific UI features. But you didn't suggest that, because I'm sure you intuitively realize how ridiculous this comparison is.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    > Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. Why would Fitt's law have anything to do with smartphones being slower? If anything, it is the opposite. A phone screen is smaller, so all targets will be close to each other - and Fitt's law says these will be faster to access than on the large screen of a desktop. BTW, that's also why interfaces on mobile have big icons with lots of white space around them - Fitt's law says that bigger targets are faster and easier to reach.
    - zzzcpan 7y ago
      To fit equivalent desktop functionality to the smartphone you have to make targets either smaller, which will make them impossibly slow to use, or hide them behind other targets, which again will make them slower to use requiring hitting multiple targets instead of one. I.e. can't cheat Fitts's law. > targets will be close to each other Close to each other targets are effectively smaller targets, because the area you are hitting them with has some dimensions and has to fit in a smaller area to avoid hitting closer targets too.
agumonkey 7y ago
True information ergonomics is subtle, you need a fair amount of laissez-faire so the user feels in control but at the same time fill gaps at the right time. I remember being shocked at an old AS400 application that was so lean, easy to learn and use and so useful. It blew any admistrative or even web (new trend at the time) application I've used in every dimensions. Of course it was about to be retired and replaced by .. a web app.
- anthk 7y ago
  Ditto, that's why I hate today MS Access and all that shiny crap. With a simple TCL TUI interface to some SQLite database, you could do the same stuff even with a built-in help with no effort at all, and running with half of the resources.
Romanulus 7y ago
Remember Windows 8? BARF!
coldtea 7y ago
>>"The traditional desktop computer is struggling to adapt the simple interfaces of mobile devices while also keeping its focus on productivity." >No, no, it isn't. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be.* Only because it has more freedom (to run all kinds of apps, services, etc). Not because it necessarily offers better interactions. Most people are far better at what they do with their mobile phone, than with their desktop OS.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  > Most people are far better at what they do with their mobile phone, than with their desktop OS. Maybe instagram influencers, but what about developers, media producers, authors, and on and on and on where high output of creative work is the goal?
  - sli 7y ago
    Or any job that requires creating documents or spreadsheets, managing inventory, and so on and so forth. A small business might start out doing these things on a mobile device, but a some point you just are not going to be productive trying to keep up with these things without a PC. The closest to using a mobile device for "real work" that I see regularly in the real world are those Square POS systems that are basically just a tablet on a stand with a card reader. Beyond that, it's just things like vendors at a farmer's market or something. Not really high volume.
addicted 7y ago
I think the first quote is pretty accurate. OS owners are trying to adapt their OSes so they work across desktop and mobile, but as a result, the desktop OSes are far less productive. A classic example was Windows 8, but Mac OS has become far less productive as well. Just look at the new Marzipan based apps, or the push for "Full Screen everything!" which is the complete opposite of the OS X paradigm. In the Linux world as well, icons and buttons have been made unnecessarily larger to serve potential mobile and touch usage.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  Have you had to buy a new computer screen lately? When you're running a Linux desktop at 200dpi or more you will appreciate the larger icons. But on low res screens this immediately feels like a waste of space, partially because dpi scaling is such a mess.
- ndarwincorn 7y ago
  > In the Linux world as well, icons and buttons have been made unnecessarily larger to serve potential mobile and touch usage. Please choose more specific language for that last point, because while I agree generally I only see ~two desktop projects (Unity and KDE) that have prioritized touch in the foss world (vs. the couple dozen others that haven't). Meanwhile if I started using libinput-gestures and tweaked my Awesome config a bit I could have a desktop that more or less replicated the OP.
AsyncAwait 7y ago
It's also worth noting that the ideas they're proposing already exist, at least to a large extent. The "panel" system just looks like a tilling window manager, tags were a thing on BeOS and are implemented on userspace by KDE etc. for global search to work better and you can already control your PC by touch & voice, macOS puts Siri front & center for that matter, (not that I think that's a good thing).
blunte 7y ago
Fortunately some people ignore the standard "realistic" advice that doing a thing is pointless because the status quo is good enough. Perhaps the desktop is adequate for you, but for some of us the thoughts come so quickly that the interface becomes an immense bottleneck. For some types of work, tmux, zsh,and a low latency terminal ease the pain. For other types of work, a highly optimized GUI is beneficial. I welcome new experiments in user interfaces. While Neo might not be "the solution", it might bring new ideas that eventually get used in other better solutions.
topspin 7y ago
> This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. That's fine. I'm all for people experimenting. My opinion is that this "rethink" has been rethunk multiple times now and hasn't found enough friends to be successful, but hey; maybe all those other attempts at a 'productive' rework of the traditional desktop were just poorly implemented and this is The One! What I am most thankful for is that this isn't being imposed on some existing, working, healthy desktop environment. I have suffered through too many iconoclastic desktop nightmares. They've all failed and had to be reverted and I loathe the thought of suffering another one. Metro, early KDE Plasma, Unity... I'm fed up with it and I'll bounce from whatever platform tries to put me through it again. If this or any other desktop "rethink" is really so wonderful and amazing that it deserves to appear someplace that matters then let it demonstrate that by accruing a following on its own merits; DO NOT try to foist it onto some innocent captive audience. All that does is generate an epic amount of immortal hate for your work.
jancsika 7y ago
> It may not be the prettiest or the most modern or even the easiest for a new computer user to navigate, but it works damned well for getting work done. Just to troll a little-- the "prettiest or the most modern" comment leads me to believe you're arguing for desktop applications which get installed to the OS as opposed to applications which run in the browser. But I find browser apps as accessed on the desktop to be prettier, more modern, easier to discover, easier to install/re-install/remove, more accessible, and vastly easier for collaboration, than the native applications written for a given platform. On the desktop they run much faster than on mobile. And the thing is plugged directly into the wall so you don't have to worry about battery drain. (The one caveat to this being audio/video/3d creation-- for most of that you still need proprietary native applications for workable and stable UX.) I'd really like some kind of Linux distro that boots me straight into Firefox's most stable auto-upgrading release, then have some keyboard shortcut to gracefully degrade down to xfce Debian or whatever for everything else. Perhaps with a default dialog: "Warning: you are about to drop down to a Debian box. Refresh Button, Back Button, Touchpad, Audio, Wireless, and Fonts will all be set to Frustration Mode. Ok?"
- walterstucco 7y ago
  Funny I went back to XFCE out of frustration of the more modern desktop experience on other DEs Elementary's Pantheon is very nice until you have to consistently work for hours a day on something Same goes for Gnome/KDE with KDE coming second just after XFCE for its ability to set the scale factor to decimals
jameslk 7y ago
> This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. It seems like exploration more than change. You seem to dislike the ideas without providing much substance other than reiterating the cliche "if it ain't broke don't fix it." It's unfortunate this is the top comment as this type of feedback doesn't provide much for the author or anyone else. Is there something specific you dislike other than change itself?
- kgwxd 7y ago
  Not op, but I agree with them. To me, it's more like "if it ain't broke, don't break it". We already know how anti-productive mobile UI is and we've already seen attempts to make desktops more mobile-like fail hard (e.g. Windows 8).
wry_discontent 7y ago
Having used a tiling window manager like i3, I disagree. The desktop metaphor isn't as productive as a tiling wm, and using one at work is so tedious compared to what I can do at home.
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
> The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works. Thank you. I am always amazed at why this is apparently so hard to understand to so many people. Perhaps most of them are young and the drive to innovate (for the sake of innovation) is simply so strong that it makes them ignore simple truths of life? In regards to desktop interface I so wish that many more companies and projects understood this already and stopped wasting our time with new fancy "ways to operate desktop"... It's easy: the screen is a rectangle of pixels that needs to present information. We have inputs. For the inputs, the keyboard and mouse works the best. There are some other tools and there is some variation, but in essence, that's it. It is simply the best way to operate a desktop for a human. Out of those two initial variables there are only so many ways to organize the multitasking of that information, and we have figured it out already. The human design is not going to change for many more decades, the way information works in this universe is not going to change, the way point to things on a screen is not going to change, etc. I guess humans, despite being very sophisticated neural networks (ok and perhaps some other architectures mixed into them), still do get stuck in local maxima, and knowing that tend to do that, they always try to get out of the maxima where they find themselves, just in case, to try to come up with a new maxima, to see and figure out if they have missed something. It makes sense and thank god for all those people trying to do this and innovate for the sake of innovation. But to me at least it seems very certainly that the desktop as it is today (and in many ways as it has been for 30 years) - is the global maxima of computing interface. We don't need another way, this is the best way already. Solutions to some problems are just created very early. Sometimes the traditional is the best.
Grustaf 7y ago
Phones and iPads _are_ much easier to use, for a lot of things. Not necessarily for writing essays or doing spreadsheets, but there is a whole range of things that are significantly quicker and more intuitive on mobile.

baybal2 7y ago

Yes, his opinion and concept feel amateurish to me. A yet another GUI designed by a designer. What matters in GUI is an often overlooked thing called ergonomics — something beyond just code and visual design. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergonomics

hsikka 7y ago
For what its worth, I recall this was like a student project from 2016 or something. I could be wrong, but it seemed like an impressive output under the circumstances.
- Operyl 7y ago
  You're not wrong. At the bottom of the page is a link to the HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10932378
ptidhomme 7y ago
Thanks for pointing this out. I find the Windows UI to often have infuriatingly poor ergonomics, especially when it comes to mouse usage. For instance, why the heck put that closing cross button so far away on the right, which will build you some arm pain quite fast ? Why are some overly used buttons so small ? When I watch people that are not used to keyboard shortcuts use Windows (explorer for example), I'm quite terrified at their painful, and consequently slow, mouse-based workflow.
- wanderer2323 7y ago
  one reason might be because with the fully opened window, the 'close window' cross is in the top right corner of the screen which is one of the infinitely large targets.
latexr 7y ago
> yet another GUI designed by a designer. That’s a weird complaint. I’t like saying “yet another application programmed by a programmer”. Well, who else is going to do it? It’s right there in the name! I’m guessing your objection has to do with a GUI being built by a designer that has a sense of visual hierarchy but no sense of usability/interactivity/ergonomics. I’m not sure if that’s the case here, but with that I can agree.

soperj 7y ago

Seems weird to design an desktop that only works with computers that have trackpads. It's basically a laptop only OS, even then though it doesn't work for a huge swath of people who prefer trackpoint.

Ajedi32 7y ago
Most laptops don't have eye tracking either. I believe this concept is explicitly ignoring backwards compatibility with existing hardware in favor of trying to envision the best UI possible with current technology.

atoav 7y ago

I am probably what they call a power user. There are few people who can pick up interfaces as quickly as me. I tried really hard to make my smartphone productive and I kinda managed (wrote a thesis on it to a big degree during waits at bus stops). That means I really spent some time looking into productivity on smartphones and still didn't manage to get it somewhere comparable to a desktop PC after years of trying. The best thing was using an external keyboard, but then I could use my notebook as well.

lioeters 7y ago

> Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Hear, hear! The desktop computer (and the metephor of "desktop") works. People have learned and adapted to be very productive with it. I do not want a desktop computer with "the simple interfaces of mobile devices". I don't want to remember three-finger gestures on a trackpad, and certainly don't need voice-activated commands (it's faster and more accurate to type). Like you, I'd also argue against the statement that "we now use smartphones and tablets most of the time", or that "they are much easier to use". This completely depends on what the user is doing with the device. For certain kinds of communication, application or media consumption, sure mobile devices are easier to use. They're not that great for long-form writing (email, articles, books, programs), or as a personal information management system (file system, database). All that said, the designs in this project are beautiful, and there are some useful-looking interface ideas. I found this statement at the bottom: "Neo was designed to inspire and provoke discussions about the future of productive computing." It has definitely succeeded in this goal.

farisjarrah 7y ago
They really lost me at the whole 3 finger gesture thing. That's a very unnattural thing to do when you are only ever using 1 finger at a time for 90% of the interactions with the touchpad. Furthermore they have like 2 handed 3 finger gestures to do things like zoom in and out.... I feel like pinch to zoom is a lot more effective and natural.
- anchpop 7y ago
  Three finger gestures are actually pretty nice when you get used to them. I even use the four finger gestures that Windows has somewhat frequently (to switch between virtual desktops)
- asdff 7y ago
  Three finger is the one gesture I actually use on my macbook pro. My thumb sits on the edge of the laptop, my index is on the glass, and my second and third fingers are hovering at the ready. At some point I got into the habit of scrolling with fingers 2 and 3 rather than 1 and 2. Four finger, or really anything requiring me to lift my palm rather than pivot from the keyboard, is absurd though.

angleofrepose 7y ago

> The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works. That's not how innovation or success is measured in any way whatsoever. We had alchemy for centuries before Science, it was not right, nor was it good enough because it "just worked". This project is exploring a number of ideas and it reads like you are dismissing it because of the poor writing and its interest in non-traditional input methods. I think you would enjoy re-looking at the project if you just ignored the text. It is fun to think about how much more usable the desktop could be, and it will be experiments and discussions like this one where we make progress towards that goal. > No, they're not I totally agree with you. Mobile sucks for just about everything if someone is used to working on a computer, but it is the case that many millions more people have mobile devices than laptops or desktops. If we could work on a system that gave them more power than the trash we have for them so far, that would be incredible. E: for what its worth, I tried getting deeper into this in my top level comment further down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20157536

Barrin92 7y ago
>That's not how innovation or success is measured in any way whatsoever. We had alchemy for centuries before Science, it was not right, nor was it good enough because it "just worked" well the problem with alchemy was that it didn't work. The desktop does indeed work in the sense that people who are productive and do heavy work do utilise traditional desktop paradigms. At least I've never seen a highly productive developer who is into tons of touchscreens and arcane finger gestures. I don't really see how the performance of well configured keyboard commands is supposed to be beaten by voice or touch input, because physically the former is just significantly faster, and importantly, composable.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I like Newtonian physics better as a comparison. Is it a perfectly accurate system that solves all problems? No, it doesn't handle very small things or very fast things. But it's a pretty good model for anything I need to do with it. I do like some of the ideas here though - especially the fullscreen column mode. It feels like a more powerful and flexible version of the multitasking in macOS plus what's coming in iPad OS. I think it'd fit right in on Mac, if they could figure out an intuitive way to interact with that windowing model. Not sold on their trackpad gestures. No issues with multi-finger gestures in general, but I like having 3-finger drag as a direct interaction with my content instead of taking 3-fingers to interact with the window manager. Definitely wouldn't want want to go back to the old double-tap-and-drag.

on_and_off 7y ago

>Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Really ? Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder.

airstrike 7y ago
Ask anyone to do any real work – i.e. to be productive – on mobile and watch them struggle, at least in relative terms vs. how they'd fare using a real computer.
zzzcpan 7y ago
Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. > Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder. What does it have to do with productivity? Ask them to find a picture 100000 times on a smartphone and on a desktop having similarly capable software but with smartphone/desktop specific UI features. But you didn't suggest that, because I'm sure you intuitively realize how ridiculous this comparison is.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  > Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. Why would Fitt's law have anything to do with smartphones being slower? If anything, it is the opposite. A phone screen is smaller, so all targets will be close to each other - and Fitt's law says these will be faster to access than on the large screen of a desktop. BTW, that's also why interfaces on mobile have big icons with lots of white space around them - Fitt's law says that bigger targets are faster and easier to reach.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    To fit equivalent desktop functionality to the smartphone you have to make targets either smaller, which will make them impossibly slow to use, or hide them behind other targets, which again will make them slower to use requiring hitting multiple targets instead of one. I.e. can't cheat Fitts's law. > targets will be close to each other Close to each other targets are effectively smaller targets, because the area you are hitting them with has some dimensions and has to fit in a smaller area to avoid hitting closer targets too.

agumonkey 7y ago

True information ergonomics is subtle, you need a fair amount of laissez-faire so the user feels in control but at the same time fill gaps at the right time. I remember being shocked at an old AS400 application that was so lean, easy to learn and use and so useful. It blew any admistrative or even web (new trend at the time) application I've used in every dimensions. Of course it was about to be retired and replaced by .. a web app.

anthk 7y ago
Ditto, that's why I hate today MS Access and all that shiny crap. With a simple TCL TUI interface to some SQLite database, you could do the same stuff even with a built-in help with no effort at all, and running with half of the resources.

Romanulus 7y ago

Remember Windows 8? BARF!

coldtea 7y ago

>>"The traditional desktop computer is struggling to adapt the simple interfaces of mobile devices while also keeping its focus on productivity." >No, no, it isn't. Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be.* Only because it has more freedom (to run all kinds of apps, services, etc). Not because it necessarily offers better interactions. Most people are far better at what they do with their mobile phone, than with their desktop OS.

sixstringtheory 7y ago
> Most people are far better at what they do with their mobile phone, than with their desktop OS. Maybe instagram influencers, but what about developers, media producers, authors, and on and on and on where high output of creative work is the goal?
- sli 7y ago
  Or any job that requires creating documents or spreadsheets, managing inventory, and so on and so forth. A small business might start out doing these things on a mobile device, but a some point you just are not going to be productive trying to keep up with these things without a PC. The closest to using a mobile device for "real work" that I see regularly in the real world are those Square POS systems that are basically just a tablet on a stand with a card reader. Beyond that, it's just things like vendors at a farmer's market or something. Not really high volume.

addicted 7y ago

I think the first quote is pretty accurate. OS owners are trying to adapt their OSes so they work across desktop and mobile, but as a result, the desktop OSes are far less productive. A classic example was Windows 8, but Mac OS has become far less productive as well. Just look at the new Marzipan based apps, or the push for "Full Screen everything!" which is the complete opposite of the OS X paradigm. In the Linux world as well, icons and buttons have been made unnecessarily larger to serve potential mobile and touch usage.

gmueckl 7y ago
Have you had to buy a new computer screen lately? When you're running a Linux desktop at 200dpi or more you will appreciate the larger icons. But on low res screens this immediately feels like a waste of space, partially because dpi scaling is such a mess.
ndarwincorn 7y ago
> In the Linux world as well, icons and buttons have been made unnecessarily larger to serve potential mobile and touch usage. Please choose more specific language for that last point, because while I agree generally I only see ~two desktop projects (Unity and KDE) that have prioritized touch in the foss world (vs. the couple dozen others that haven't). Meanwhile if I started using libinput-gestures and tweaked my Awesome config a bit I could have a desktop that more or less replicated the OP.

AsyncAwait 7y ago

It's also worth noting that the ideas they're proposing already exist, at least to a large extent. The "panel" system just looks like a tilling window manager, tags were a thing on BeOS and are implemented on userspace by KDE etc. for global search to work better and you can already control your PC by touch & voice, macOS puts Siri front & center for that matter, (not that I think that's a good thing).

blunte 7y ago

Fortunately some people ignore the standard "realistic" advice that doing a thing is pointless because the status quo is good enough. Perhaps the desktop is adequate for you, but for some of us the thoughts come so quickly that the interface becomes an immense bottleneck. For some types of work, tmux, zsh,and a low latency terminal ease the pain. For other types of work, a highly optimized GUI is beneficial. I welcome new experiments in user interfaces. While Neo might not be "the solution", it might bring new ideas that eventually get used in other better solutions.

topspin 7y ago

> This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. That's fine. I'm all for people experimenting. My opinion is that this "rethink" has been rethunk multiple times now and hasn't found enough friends to be successful, but hey; maybe all those other attempts at a 'productive' rework of the traditional desktop were just poorly implemented and this is The One! What I am most thankful for is that this isn't being imposed on some existing, working, healthy desktop environment. I have suffered through too many iconoclastic desktop nightmares. They've all failed and had to be reverted and I loathe the thought of suffering another one. Metro, early KDE Plasma, Unity... I'm fed up with it and I'll bounce from whatever platform tries to put me through it again. If this or any other desktop "rethink" is really so wonderful and amazing that it deserves to appear someplace that matters then let it demonstrate that by accruing a following on its own merits; DO NOT try to foist it onto some innocent captive audience. All that does is generate an epic amount of immortal hate for your work.

jancsika 7y ago

> It may not be the prettiest or the most modern or even the easiest for a new computer user to navigate, but it works damned well for getting work done. Just to troll a little-- the "prettiest or the most modern" comment leads me to believe you're arguing for desktop applications which get installed to the OS as opposed to applications which run in the browser. But I find browser apps as accessed on the desktop to be prettier, more modern, easier to discover, easier to install/re-install/remove, more accessible, and vastly easier for collaboration, than the native applications written for a given platform. On the desktop they run much faster than on mobile. And the thing is plugged directly into the wall so you don't have to worry about battery drain. (The one caveat to this being audio/video/3d creation-- for most of that you still need proprietary native applications for workable and stable UX.) I'd really like some kind of Linux distro that boots me straight into Firefox's most stable auto-upgrading release, then have some keyboard shortcut to gracefully degrade down to xfce Debian or whatever for everything else. Perhaps with a default dialog: "Warning: you are about to drop down to a Debian box. Refresh Button, Back Button, Touchpad, Audio, Wireless, and Fonts will all be set to Frustration Mode. Ok?"

walterstucco 7y ago
Funny I went back to XFCE out of frustration of the more modern desktop experience on other DEs Elementary's Pantheon is very nice until you have to consistently work for hours a day on something Same goes for Gnome/KDE with KDE coming second just after XFCE for its ability to set the scale factor to decimals

jameslk 7y ago

> This seems to be very much change for the sake of it. It seems like exploration more than change. You seem to dislike the ideas without providing much substance other than reiterating the cliche "if it ain't broke don't fix it." It's unfortunate this is the top comment as this type of feedback doesn't provide much for the author or anyone else. Is there something specific you dislike other than change itself?

kgwxd 7y ago
Not op, but I agree with them. To me, it's more like "if it ain't broke, don't break it". We already know how anti-productive mobile UI is and we've already seen attempts to make desktops more mobile-like fail hard (e.g. Windows 8).

wry_discontent 7y ago

Having used a tiling window manager like i3, I disagree. The desktop metaphor isn't as productive as a tiling wm, and using one at work is so tedious compared to what I can do at home.

Erlich_Bachman 7y ago

> The reason why the desktop hasn't changed much in 30 years is because it works. Thank you. I am always amazed at why this is apparently so hard to understand to so many people. Perhaps most of them are young and the drive to innovate (for the sake of innovation) is simply so strong that it makes them ignore simple truths of life? In regards to desktop interface I so wish that many more companies and projects understood this already and stopped wasting our time with new fancy "ways to operate desktop"... It's easy: the screen is a rectangle of pixels that needs to present information. We have inputs. For the inputs, the keyboard and mouse works the best. There are some other tools and there is some variation, but in essence, that's it. It is simply the best way to operate a desktop for a human. Out of those two initial variables there are only so many ways to organize the multitasking of that information, and we have figured it out already. The human design is not going to change for many more decades, the way information works in this universe is not going to change, the way point to things on a screen is not going to change, etc. I guess humans, despite being very sophisticated neural networks (ok and perhaps some other architectures mixed into them), still do get stuck in local maxima, and knowing that tend to do that, they always try to get out of the maxima where they find themselves, just in case, to try to come up with a new maxima, to see and figure out if they have missed something. It makes sense and thank god for all those people trying to do this and innovate for the sake of innovation. But to me at least it seems very certainly that the desktop as it is today (and in many ways as it has been for 30 years) - is the global maxima of computing interface. We don't need another way, this is the best way already. Solutions to some problems are just created very early. Sometimes the traditional is the best.

Grustaf 7y ago

Phones and iPads _are_ much easier to use, for a lot of things. Not necessarily for writing essays or doing spreadsheets, but there is a whole range of things that are significantly quicker and more intuitive on mobile.