3 ms·

I'm not sure people were hating on Gnome because of performance. Their overall design decision to pretend that v3 was somehow running on a tablet instead of a d

by ohazi 7y ago

I'm not sure people were hating on Gnome because of performance. Their overall design decision to pretend that v3 was somehow running on a tablet instead of a desktop is still pretty questionable.

zozbot234 7y ago
It has paid off though as touchscreen devices have become a lot more common. The fact that one can now run a modern Linux desktop on an actual tablet is also pretty nifty.
- stonogo 7y ago
  Which tablet?
  - farisjarrah 7y ago
    There are x86 tablets out there and also many people have done raspberry pi touch screen builds.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    Arguably, the tablet revolution never came, but the large smartphone revolution did. Software like PureOS en PostmarketOS exists because KDE and GNOME and other software was made touch-friendlier.
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  I have a Surface, easily the most popular x86 tablet. Running Linux on it had been a nightmare, I tried surface-linux and that just broke sleep. To this day I cannot reliably get Wi-Fi to work out of sleep despite trying every fix in the book. Sound breaks out of sleep. Hi-DPI support is still a joke, which is a problem when most (all?) high end x86 tablets have hi resolution screens since they're meant to be used up close. At one point I started to get logged out every 60 seconds if I tried to put the cover on it. Turns out hibernation was improperly configured, so instead of warning me, it'd log me out, try to hibernate, then try again 60 seconds later.
  - mceachen 7y ago
    What problems are you having with HiDPI? Is it the lack of fractional scaling?
    - BoorishBears 7y ago
      Well there is fractional scaling, it just looked like garbage and had tearing. But also handling a mix of low and high DPI displays... and any solution that includes the command `xrandr` is wrong, either because of clarity issues, or tearing/performance issues, or graphical bugs in the DE, or a mix of all of the above I don't get it, why can't we all just copy what OSX did. They got HiDPI so right with such a flexible solution, that I literally forgot that was still a thing until my latest endeavor with Linux
      - aeroevan 7y ago
        It sounds like you weren't using Wayland if you were playing with xrandr, and it handles mixed dpi screens without any issues
        BoorishBears 7y ago
        I tried both Wayland and X11. I feel like I'm going crazy because every time I mention the words Linux and HiDPI I have this same conversation, and it's been happening for years. The my takeaway is always, Linux users have ridiculously low standards for what works when it comes to UI. The conversation usually goes something like: "I don't know Wayland works for me with X setup" "What about the blurriness with fractional scaling" "Oh I'm used to it/It only happens with some programs <usually all programs using some incredibly ubiquitous UI toolkit>" Or: "What about when you move a window from one screen to another" "Oh I don't do that/Oh it gets a little blurry/Oh just use X11 and <insert Xrandr hack to mess with the frame buffer>" Or: "What about the tearing" "I got used to it/What tearing, I'm not gaming?" Or: "What resolution are your screens" "2k small screen and 4k big screen , I can just run the same scaling on both" I remember one time I had this conversation in person, and we failed at the, "move that window to the other monitor" step when it blew up the window to 200% size on the smaller screen. "Why do you expect the window to automatically resize itself and change the font" "Because the application is unusable when every UI element is twice as big as it should be?" "But I want my application to be unusable [paraphrase], you just think it should resize because that's what OSX does, stop bringing your OSX mentality to it and it's fine" I think that's when I should have stopped ever hoping for anything better and stop saying Linux and HiDPI in one sentence... but here we are...
- ohazi 7y ago
  Has it, though? Sure, you can now fat-finger a launcher icon and the comically oversized hide/close buttons, but basically all graphical applications (even the tiny handful of redesigned Gnome apps) are still primarily designed to be used with a keyboard and mouse. You need to throw that model out the window if you want a program to really work well on a touch screen. But if you do that, running the program on a desktop will be infuriating.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > You need to throw that model out the window if you want a program to really work well on a touch screen. I'm not sure that you do. The main issue really is having big-enough controls, and supporting things like scrolling via touch. The nice thing about Gtk3 is that it heavily nudges designers to make their applications touch friendly.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  Hardly. Microsoft did the same thing (or even started this trend) with Windows 8 but finally recognized they were wrong and did a almost a complete 180 with Windows 10.

by ohazi 7y ago

I'm not sure people were hating on Gnome because of performance. Their overall design decision to pretend that v3 was somehow running on a tablet instead of a desktop is still pretty questionable.

zozbot234 7y ago

It has paid off though as touchscreen devices have become a lot more common. The fact that one can now run a modern Linux desktop on an actual tablet is also pretty nifty.

stonogo 7y ago
Which tablet?
- farisjarrah 7y ago
  There are x86 tablets out there and also many people have done raspberry pi touch screen builds.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Arguably, the tablet revolution never came, but the large smartphone revolution did. Software like PureOS en PostmarketOS exists because KDE and GNOME and other software was made touch-friendlier.
BoorishBears 7y ago
I have a Surface, easily the most popular x86 tablet. Running Linux on it had been a nightmare, I tried surface-linux and that just broke sleep. To this day I cannot reliably get Wi-Fi to work out of sleep despite trying every fix in the book. Sound breaks out of sleep. Hi-DPI support is still a joke, which is a problem when most (all?) high end x86 tablets have hi resolution screens since they're meant to be used up close. At one point I started to get logged out every 60 seconds if I tried to put the cover on it. Turns out hibernation was improperly configured, so instead of warning me, it'd log me out, try to hibernate, then try again 60 seconds later.
- mceachen 7y ago
  What problems are you having with HiDPI? Is it the lack of fractional scaling?
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    Well there is fractional scaling, it just looked like garbage and had tearing. But also handling a mix of low and high DPI displays... and any solution that includes the command `xrandr` is wrong, either because of clarity issues, or tearing/performance issues, or graphical bugs in the DE, or a mix of all of the above I don't get it, why can't we all just copy what OSX did. They got HiDPI so right with such a flexible solution, that I literally forgot that was still a thing until my latest endeavor with Linux
    - aeroevan 7y ago
      It sounds like you weren't using Wayland if you were playing with xrandr, and it handles mixed dpi screens without any issues
      - BoorishBears 7y ago
        I tried both Wayland and X11. I feel like I'm going crazy because every time I mention the words Linux and HiDPI I have this same conversation, and it's been happening for years. The my takeaway is always, Linux users have ridiculously low standards for what works when it comes to UI. The conversation usually goes something like: "I don't know Wayland works for me with X setup" "What about the blurriness with fractional scaling" "Oh I'm used to it/It only happens with some programs <usually all programs using some incredibly ubiquitous UI toolkit>" Or: "What about when you move a window from one screen to another" "Oh I don't do that/Oh it gets a little blurry/Oh just use X11 and <insert Xrandr hack to mess with the frame buffer>" Or: "What about the tearing" "I got used to it/What tearing, I'm not gaming?" Or: "What resolution are your screens" "2k small screen and 4k big screen , I can just run the same scaling on both" I remember one time I had this conversation in person, and we failed at the, "move that window to the other monitor" step when it blew up the window to 200% size on the smaller screen. "Why do you expect the window to automatically resize itself and change the font" "Because the application is unusable when every UI element is twice as big as it should be?" "But I want my application to be unusable [paraphrase], you just think it should resize because that's what OSX does, stop bringing your OSX mentality to it and it's fine" I think that's when I should have stopped ever hoping for anything better and stop saying Linux and HiDPI in one sentence... but here we are...
ohazi 7y ago
Has it, though? Sure, you can now fat-finger a launcher icon and the comically oversized hide/close buttons, but basically all graphical applications (even the tiny handful of redesigned Gnome apps) are still primarily designed to be used with a keyboard and mouse. You need to throw that model out the window if you want a program to really work well on a touch screen. But if you do that, running the program on a desktop will be infuriating.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > You need to throw that model out the window if you want a program to really work well on a touch screen. I'm not sure that you do. The main issue really is having big-enough controls, and supporting things like scrolling via touch. The nice thing about Gtk3 is that it heavily nudges designers to make their applications touch friendly.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
Hardly. Microsoft did the same thing (or even started this trend) with Windows 8 but finally recognized they were wrong and did a almost a complete 180 with Windows 10.