4 ms·

I stopped using GTK applications a while ago, so I don't use XFCE anymore, but I still love it, just... from a distance. It's an increasingly uncommon breed of

by alxlaz 7y ago

I stopped using GTK applications a while ago, so I don't use XFCE anymore, but I still love it, just... from a distance. It's an increasingly uncommon breed of software, which gets better with every release. No pointless shuffling of user interface features in the name of UX "innovation", no rationalizing bugs so that they look like deliberate design choices, just steady improvement. All this by an independent team with basically zero funding. IMHO, XFCE is one of the few relatively well-known projects that still embodies the spirit of free software as we once knew it. Kudos to the quiet and tenacious people behind it, who still manage to come up with one quality release after another, so many years down the road. If you want to support (at least some of) their work, Sean Davis has a Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/bluesabre https://www.patreon.com/bluesabre . Sean is one of XFCE's core developers and the Xubuntu tech lead. I don't know if there's a more official XFCE donation sink (this one is the only one I know of), but hey, it would be a great start!

terminalhealth 7y ago
> I stopped using GTK applications a while ago So you're only using something like ‎i3, ‎XMonad or ‎dwm?
- Avery3R 7y ago
  KDE native apps are built on qt too
- alxlaz 7y ago
  Ah, no, I'm using lxqt at the moment. It's not perfect but it's okay, and I trust its developers' common sense. Every once in a while I fire up Plasma 5, too, but I'm not convinced. In the last year or so it seems to have gone down the mobile-inspired UI rabbit hole and it's getting increasingly awkward to use. Other than that, I use the same kind of applications you'd expect any desktop user to use, from file managers to text editors and from office suites to web browsers. Only most of them are Qt-based :). The only GTK applications I still use are Firefox (GTK-ish) and Emacs, which can still be compiled against GTK2 which is a good enough compromise for me. It's nothing personal, I don't want to get into a big rant about how Linux used to be about choice and about how Gnome is a Red Hat conspiracy, or whatever flag is being waved in 4chan & friends. I just don't like GTK3's UX choices. Oversized widgets, awkward scrollbars and hamburger menus aren't pleasant to use on a 30" monitor. A few years ago I tried to get around that with a custom theme, but theming is... kind of frowned upon in GTK land, so it didn't end well. But, you know, their code -- their choice. I don't like the choices but I think it's a big step forward from the '90s and a big test of maturity for the open source community. Making (what I believe to be) our own mistakes is way better than cargo culting Microsoft and Apple, which is what we've done up until 5-6 years ago. Edit: also, why are you folks downvoting the parent comment? It's a productive question, even if it looks uninformed (i.e. I'm guessing the downvotes are because it's conflating "GTK applications" with "desktop applications", which looks silly but have you had a look at Ubuntu lately?). If you think that's a stupid question, fine, but are you really that sure you've never asked a stupid question in your life?
  - dTal 7y ago
    >Every once in a while I fire up Plasma 5, too, but I'm not convinced. In the last year or so it seems to have gone down the mobile-inspired UI rabbit hole and it's getting increasingly awkward to use. Can you cite an example of this? I use Plasma 5 and I genuinely don't know what you're referring to - in fact I really enjoy the way the keyboard is a first-class citizen, with sensible single-key hotkeys for all common actions. I'm more productive in Plasma than in any other DE - it's full of wonderful little power features that make life pleasant, without sacrificing ease of use if you haven't gotten around to learning them yet. I know there's some effort at mobile convergence behind the scenes, but I can't percieve any negative impact to me day to day at all.
    - alxlaz 7y ago
      > Can you cite an example of this? Sure, several :). For example: - The tree layout of Settings Manager is no longer around (it can still be enabled at compile time, though, and I think e.g. SuSE still does it). The default one is the strange hierarchy/screen-based which is pretty obviously meant for touch interfaces. - The same layout is used by Discover and it's very obviously a mobile design. Actually, anything Kirigami-based is like that :). - The new Virtual Desktops settings page in System Settings is very obviously reworked from the same perspective. Instead of two spinboxes (number of rows, number of desktops), you now have to click "Add" to add a new desktop, then manually edit its name (by default, they're all called "New desktop"). - The default Alt-Tab switcher, which is remarkably awkward to use from the keyboard (switches applications and brings windows to the front at every step, somewhat like Fluxbox' alt-tab if anyone remembers that) is actually very smooth to use on a touch device. You can sort of see that on a desktop, too, if you try to use your mouse the way you'd use your finger on a touchscreen. You can hold-to-scroll through the left-hand side view and switch to a given window by clicking its thumbnail. (Edit: plus the usual suspects: oversized widgets and titlebars, large icons with humongous space between them etc.) The good thing is that Plasma is super configurable. I don't mind changing default settings that I don't like. In fact, I'm all for fashionable defaults, I completely understand the dynamics involve there. But I also don't trust that I'm going to be able to change these default settings 12-18 months from now -- not to settings that are appropriate for a desktop machine with a large monitor, in any case. And KDE is a big beast. It's hard to migrate settings even between two computers running the same KDE version. If you go all in, it's hard to turn back. I've already done that once with KDE 3.2 and it took me months to sort it out when 4.x hit the market. I'm not sure I want to do it again. Edit: FWIW, I do try to keep an eye on it because it's actually the only Qt-based desktop environment that's unlikely to get abandoned soon :). Plus, while Plasma 5 feels a bit bumpy to me, it's definitely better than KDE 4, and that's a big deal. Last night, in fact, I tried my hand at hacking on Breeze a little, to make it slightly more compact. It's definitely better than other flat themes but boy is it awkward to use with those huge widgets. If I can get it to look okay, I'll try to see if there's a way I can get this into upstream, too (maybe make some things configurable?), or just package it separately as a compact theme for me and anyone who's interested. Historically, the KDE community has been super friendly and willing to help newcomers. I'm not sure if it's the same now that there's a visual design group and whatnot, but I'd definitely rather write code than whine about software I get for free :).
- jazoom 7y ago
  This was what I was wondering to. I'm still learning about the ins and outs of Linux.
- hedora 7y ago
  EvilWM is a nice non-gtk window manager (though I don’t actively avoid GTK, it has been my daily driver on and off for years).
pizza234 7y ago
I personally don't see anything particular in this philosophy - the MATE project (arbitrary sample) has the same attitude. I guess it all comes down to old-school DEs just sticking to the old metaphor.
baybal2 7y ago
> No pointless shuffling of user interface features in the name of UX "innovation", no rationalizing bugs so that they look like deliberate design choices, just steady improvement. > All this by an independent team with basically zero funding. And so was the GNOME and GTK ecosystem at large, until the grandeur took the better of them, and the age of developers akin to L.P. came, and all worthy devs went away because of them.
- lmz 7y ago
  Wasn't GNOME 2 mostly funded by the likes of Red Hat and Sun (for the Java Desktop System)?
  - baybal2 7y ago
    Yes, and that was the moment when things start to go wrong
    - IntelMiner 7y ago
      Why?
chris5745 7y ago
Xubuntu has been a daily driver for me for a decade. The donation link is good to know about, thank you! Also, may be good to check out their list of “officially endorsed” products, which seems to help the project too. Not sure how this stacks up compared to a direct donation of course. https://xubuntu.org/products/ https://xubuntu.org/products/
- LMYahooTFY 7y ago
  Very cool, thank you for sharing. I had sat on Ubuntu for a while, decided I should learn more linux by installing debian, and failing that, I opted for Xubuntu. I was never a fan of Ubuntu's UI/UX, and wanted something snappier, less rounded, and preferably shipping without so much bloatware, and this seemed to tick most of my boxes. Do you mind sharing any particular things you like/dislike about Xubuntu?
  - chris5745 7y ago
    IMO Xubuntu is a no-frills, simple and reliable Linux distro that is good for daily use on middle-aged and newer machines, but also good for giving older hardware a chance to feel snappy and responsive even as it ages. Device drivers are available and “just work”. I don’t need a fancy UI and window animations. The low overhead and relative simpleness of the OS are it’s best features. I don’t have a lot of fuss that wouldn’t also be had with many other Linux distros. The occasional manual fix and stack overflow search for some minor issue, the aging repositories that may or may not be maintained anymore, etc.
  - hiram112 7y ago
    > and preferably shipping without so much bloatware I'd definitely be interested in something like this. But does the Xubuntu version limit more than just the typical Gnome desktop environment and associated apps - i.e. is it less bulky with all the services and command line apps that a typical Ubuntu install includes?
    - ldiracdelta 7y ago
      If minimal is what you want, you can install minimalist ubuntu and then only fetch xfce with `sudo apt-get install xfce4`.
jacquesm 7y ago
> No pointless shuffling of user interface features in the name of UX "innovation" The stock Ubuntu has a very nasty habit of doing this. And it's trying very hard to make all the mistakes already made elsewhere including commercials for businesses baked into the core operating system and other nonsense.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Ubuntu has stopped including the sponsored OS nonsense as of at least Ubuntu 18.04 and maybe much sooner. Now its just Gnome desktop with some tweaks. I prefer Ubuntu Budgie the most currently.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    I just installed 18.04 on a new machine and ended up being greeted by an Amazon shopping icon that restores itself for every new account made.
    - _-david-_ 7y ago
      They still have the icon but they do not send your dash searches to Amazon anymore.
      - liability 7y ago
        The icon constitutes an ad.
zepearl 7y ago
Thx for the Patreon link :)

by alxlaz 7y ago

terminalhealth 7y ago

> I stopped using GTK applications a while ago So you're only using something like ‎i3, ‎XMonad or ‎dwm?

Avery3R 7y ago
KDE native apps are built on qt too
alxlaz 7y ago
Ah, no, I'm using lxqt at the moment. It's not perfect but it's okay, and I trust its developers' common sense. Every once in a while I fire up Plasma 5, too, but I'm not convinced. In the last year or so it seems to have gone down the mobile-inspired UI rabbit hole and it's getting increasingly awkward to use. Other than that, I use the same kind of applications you'd expect any desktop user to use, from file managers to text editors and from office suites to web browsers. Only most of them are Qt-based :). The only GTK applications I still use are Firefox (GTK-ish) and Emacs, which can still be compiled against GTK2 which is a good enough compromise for me. It's nothing personal, I don't want to get into a big rant about how Linux used to be about choice and about how Gnome is a Red Hat conspiracy, or whatever flag is being waved in 4chan & friends. I just don't like GTK3's UX choices. Oversized widgets, awkward scrollbars and hamburger menus aren't pleasant to use on a 30" monitor. A few years ago I tried to get around that with a custom theme, but theming is... kind of frowned upon in GTK land, so it didn't end well. But, you know, their code -- their choice. I don't like the choices but I think it's a big step forward from the '90s and a big test of maturity for the open source community. Making (what I believe to be) our own mistakes is way better than cargo culting Microsoft and Apple, which is what we've done up until 5-6 years ago. Edit: also, why are you folks downvoting the parent comment? It's a productive question, even if it looks uninformed (i.e. I'm guessing the downvotes are because it's conflating "GTK applications" with "desktop applications", which looks silly but have you had a look at Ubuntu lately?). If you think that's a stupid question, fine, but are you really that sure you've never asked a stupid question in your life?
- dTal 7y ago
  >Every once in a while I fire up Plasma 5, too, but I'm not convinced. In the last year or so it seems to have gone down the mobile-inspired UI rabbit hole and it's getting increasingly awkward to use. Can you cite an example of this? I use Plasma 5 and I genuinely don't know what you're referring to - in fact I really enjoy the way the keyboard is a first-class citizen, with sensible single-key hotkeys for all common actions. I'm more productive in Plasma than in any other DE - it's full of wonderful little power features that make life pleasant, without sacrificing ease of use if you haven't gotten around to learning them yet. I know there's some effort at mobile convergence behind the scenes, but I can't percieve any negative impact to me day to day at all.
  - alxlaz 7y ago
    > Can you cite an example of this? Sure, several :). For example: - The tree layout of Settings Manager is no longer around (it can still be enabled at compile time, though, and I think e.g. SuSE still does it). The default one is the strange hierarchy/screen-based which is pretty obviously meant for touch interfaces. - The same layout is used by Discover and it's very obviously a mobile design. Actually, anything Kirigami-based is like that :). - The new Virtual Desktops settings page in System Settings is very obviously reworked from the same perspective. Instead of two spinboxes (number of rows, number of desktops), you now have to click "Add" to add a new desktop, then manually edit its name (by default, they're all called "New desktop"). - The default Alt-Tab switcher, which is remarkably awkward to use from the keyboard (switches applications and brings windows to the front at every step, somewhat like Fluxbox' alt-tab if anyone remembers that) is actually very smooth to use on a touch device. You can sort of see that on a desktop, too, if you try to use your mouse the way you'd use your finger on a touchscreen. You can hold-to-scroll through the left-hand side view and switch to a given window by clicking its thumbnail. (Edit: plus the usual suspects: oversized widgets and titlebars, large icons with humongous space between them etc.) The good thing is that Plasma is super configurable. I don't mind changing default settings that I don't like. In fact, I'm all for fashionable defaults, I completely understand the dynamics involve there. But I also don't trust that I'm going to be able to change these default settings 12-18 months from now -- not to settings that are appropriate for a desktop machine with a large monitor, in any case. And KDE is a big beast. It's hard to migrate settings even between two computers running the same KDE version. If you go all in, it's hard to turn back. I've already done that once with KDE 3.2 and it took me months to sort it out when 4.x hit the market. I'm not sure I want to do it again. Edit: FWIW, I do try to keep an eye on it because it's actually the only Qt-based desktop environment that's unlikely to get abandoned soon :). Plus, while Plasma 5 feels a bit bumpy to me, it's definitely better than KDE 4, and that's a big deal. Last night, in fact, I tried my hand at hacking on Breeze a little, to make it slightly more compact. It's definitely better than other flat themes but boy is it awkward to use with those huge widgets. If I can get it to look okay, I'll try to see if there's a way I can get this into upstream, too (maybe make some things configurable?), or just package it separately as a compact theme for me and anyone who's interested. Historically, the KDE community has been super friendly and willing to help newcomers. I'm not sure if it's the same now that there's a visual design group and whatnot, but I'd definitely rather write code than whine about software I get for free :).
jazoom 7y ago
This was what I was wondering to. I'm still learning about the ins and outs of Linux.
hedora 7y ago
EvilWM is a nice non-gtk window manager (though I don’t actively avoid GTK, it has been my daily driver on and off for years).

pizza234 7y ago

I personally don't see anything particular in this philosophy - the MATE project (arbitrary sample) has the same attitude. I guess it all comes down to old-school DEs just sticking to the old metaphor.

baybal2 7y ago

> No pointless shuffling of user interface features in the name of UX "innovation", no rationalizing bugs so that they look like deliberate design choices, just steady improvement. > All this by an independent team with basically zero funding. And so was the GNOME and GTK ecosystem at large, until the grandeur took the better of them, and the age of developers akin to L.P. came, and all worthy devs went away because of them.

lmz 7y ago
Wasn't GNOME 2 mostly funded by the likes of Red Hat and Sun (for the Java Desktop System)?
- baybal2 7y ago
  Yes, and that was the moment when things start to go wrong
  - IntelMiner 7y ago
    Why?

chris5745 7y ago

Xubuntu has been a daily driver for me for a decade. The donation link is good to know about, thank you! Also, may be good to check out their list of “officially endorsed” products, which seems to help the project too. Not sure how this stacks up compared to a direct donation of course. https://xubuntu.org/products/ https://xubuntu.org/products/

LMYahooTFY 7y ago
Very cool, thank you for sharing. I had sat on Ubuntu for a while, decided I should learn more linux by installing debian, and failing that, I opted for Xubuntu. I was never a fan of Ubuntu's UI/UX, and wanted something snappier, less rounded, and preferably shipping without so much bloatware, and this seemed to tick most of my boxes. Do you mind sharing any particular things you like/dislike about Xubuntu?
- chris5745 7y ago
  IMO Xubuntu is a no-frills, simple and reliable Linux distro that is good for daily use on middle-aged and newer machines, but also good for giving older hardware a chance to feel snappy and responsive even as it ages. Device drivers are available and “just work”. I don’t need a fancy UI and window animations. The low overhead and relative simpleness of the OS are it’s best features. I don’t have a lot of fuss that wouldn’t also be had with many other Linux distros. The occasional manual fix and stack overflow search for some minor issue, the aging repositories that may or may not be maintained anymore, etc.
- hiram112 7y ago
  > and preferably shipping without so much bloatware I'd definitely be interested in something like this. But does the Xubuntu version limit more than just the typical Gnome desktop environment and associated apps - i.e. is it less bulky with all the services and command line apps that a typical Ubuntu install includes?
  - ldiracdelta 7y ago
    If minimal is what you want, you can install minimalist ubuntu and then only fetch xfce with `sudo apt-get install xfce4`.

jacquesm 7y ago

> No pointless shuffling of user interface features in the name of UX "innovation" The stock Ubuntu has a very nasty habit of doing this. And it's trying very hard to make all the mistakes already made elsewhere including commercials for businesses baked into the core operating system and other nonsense.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Ubuntu has stopped including the sponsored OS nonsense as of at least Ubuntu 18.04 and maybe much sooner. Now its just Gnome desktop with some tweaks. I prefer Ubuntu Budgie the most currently.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I just installed 18.04 on a new machine and ended up being greeted by an Amazon shopping icon that restores itself for every new account made.
  - _-david-_ 7y ago
    They still have the icon but they do not send your dash searches to Amazon anymore.
    - liability 7y ago
      The icon constitutes an ad.

zepearl 7y ago

Thx for the Patreon link :)