6 ms·

> 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 :).
- _0ffh 7y ago
  Hi, I'm still on lxde, and I wonder how lxqt compares at this point in time. But if you try to search the net you only ever get comparisons to xfce, mate, or whatever. Would you be so kind to give me your take on lxde vs lxqt?
  - manaskarekar 7y ago
    I have used both. I was very sure they have messed up a perfect thing that was lxde, but 5 minutes of using lxqt and configuring it, I had all the good bits of lxde with a lot of awesome new bits. I was sold on it until it (18.10) booted to a black screen reboot loop and basic debugging didn't resolve the issue. I didn't have time to nail the cause but it could have very well been me tweaking config. I am back on 18.04LTS but will be upgrading happily to lxqt at 18.04's EOL.
    - asark 7y ago
      > I didn't have time to nail the cause but it could have very well been me tweaking config. I've had a couple failed Ubuntu upgrades recently, with similar behavior ("oops, you can't boot anymore, sorry!"). And I only use it on one fairly boring machine doing fairly boring things with it—I don't tweak anything.
  - alxlaz 7y ago
    I haven't used lxde so I can't tell you much about it. What I can tell you is that it has a "start" menu, a taskbar, a desktop switcher, icons on the desktop and Openbox :). It doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before, but pretty much everything it does, it does reliably. It's... I dunno, it's like FVWM95, only from this century. I used Openbox + a bunch of tools cobbled together before. It doesn't do anything my old setup didn't do, but it sure is more comfortable. No scripts, no custom setups... all that was fun twenty years ago but I'm not a teenage l33t h4x0r anymore, I got work to do nowadays... I'm not sure why people conflate it with Lubuntu, you can use it on any distribution, and the fact that it's very easy to package means there are few packaging-related problems with it. It's also pretty easy to compile from source if you need that, for whatever reason.
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).

KDE native apps are built on qt too

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 :).
_0ffh 7y ago
Hi, I'm still on lxde, and I wonder how lxqt compares at this point in time. But if you try to search the net you only ever get comparisons to xfce, mate, or whatever. Would you be so kind to give me your take on lxde vs lxqt?
- manaskarekar 7y ago
  I have used both. I was very sure they have messed up a perfect thing that was lxde, but 5 minutes of using lxqt and configuring it, I had all the good bits of lxde with a lot of awesome new bits. I was sold on it until it (18.10) booted to a black screen reboot loop and basic debugging didn't resolve the issue. I didn't have time to nail the cause but it could have very well been me tweaking config. I am back on 18.04LTS but will be upgrading happily to lxqt at 18.04's EOL.
  - asark 7y ago
    > I didn't have time to nail the cause but it could have very well been me tweaking config. I've had a couple failed Ubuntu upgrades recently, with similar behavior ("oops, you can't boot anymore, sorry!"). And I only use it on one fairly boring machine doing fairly boring things with it—I don't tweak anything.
- alxlaz 7y ago
  I haven't used lxde so I can't tell you much about it. What I can tell you is that it has a "start" menu, a taskbar, a desktop switcher, icons on the desktop and Openbox :). It doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before, but pretty much everything it does, it does reliably. It's... I dunno, it's like FVWM95, only from this century. I used Openbox + a bunch of tools cobbled together before. It doesn't do anything my old setup didn't do, but it sure is more comfortable. No scripts, no custom setups... all that was fun twenty years ago but I'm not a teenage l33t h4x0r anymore, I got work to do nowadays... I'm not sure why people conflate it with Lubuntu, you can use it on any distribution, and the fact that it's very easy to package means there are few packaging-related problems with it. It's also pretty easy to compile from source if you need that, for whatever reason.

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).