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> Honestly I don't think FreeBSD should focus on desktop story at all. I wish they didn't have to. I wish the open source community would rethink the desktop e

> Honestly I don't think FreeBSD should focus on desktop story at all. I wish they didn't have to. I wish the open source community would rethink the desktop experience from the ground up so that we can have truly portable desktop environments that speak a common API. Everything is so tightly coupled to the platform and a spaghetti mess of packages and tools that I don't think it can be achieved any way else. Apple has vertical integration of their OS, so they don't have to worry about supporting the world. But the state of things in open source land right now is a complete disaster. X vs Wayland, compositors? desktop environments? window managers? For instance, check out the Manjaro doc on switching desktop environments: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Install_Desktop_Environments https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Install_Desktop_Environme... Why is this such a nightmare? There is an entire section called "The Risks of Using Multiple DEs". There are 'two steps' for switching to XFCE: 1. Install a basic XFCE environment, sudo pacman -S xfce4-gtk3 xfce4-goodies xfce4-terminal network-manager-applet xfce4-notifyd-gtk3 xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin-gtk3 tumbler engrampa 2. Optional: Install and use LightDM, the recommended display manager for XFCE (record comes screeching to a halt -- what is a display manager and why is LightDM recommended?) sudo pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings && sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service --force This is relatively simple when you look at it here, but seeing this x 10 on the linked page where every single experience has a vastly different install and configuration process does not give me warm and fuzzy feelings. Anyway I got no suggestions on how to improve this -- rant over. I just wish that we'd settle on a really rock solid abstraction and then get back to work rethinking and rebuilding UIs in Linux/BSD. Without vertical integration and/or monetary incentives I do not see this ever happening.

aspaceman 7y ago
To be frank, setting up different DE, window managers, etc. is one of the few places where linux has little issue. The only problem being themes or having multiple bluetooth managers at the end of it. It's really just as easy as "sudo pacman xfce" and then selecting xfce from the display manager. The real issue is that you have all those choices, but none of them are as fully featured without caveat as a similar DE for Mac or Windows. And there's the separation between window manager, desktop environment and display manager which is very confusing.
heavyset_go 7y ago
You're inflicting this upon yourself by using Manjaro. Installing a different DE on Ubuntu is either a Xubuntu-desktop metapackage, or a tasksel menu-item, away. > X vs Wayland, compositors? desktop environments? window managers? Nothing on this list, besides desktop environments, are things the user ever has to think about, unless they go out of their way to.
- acqq 7y ago
  > Nothing on this list, besides desktop environments, are things the user ever has to think about, unless they go out of their way to. It seems you haven’t tried to use Ubuntu as a desktop, especially not outside of command line. I didn’t care about anything on the list but had to make decisions often because, from my point of view, the GUI applications providing basic functionality just didn’t work. The answer was many times “it’s because it’s Wayland” or compositor or whatever. Horrible experience, when I've used (just an example) gpart for years, it worked, then install a new version of Ubuntu and it doesn't. Then I investigate why, because Wayland. And I really never wanted to care about Wayland and compositor. Then I want to record a screen interaction. Should be easy. Again... doesn't work, investigate... "it's because it doesn't on the new compositor whatever"... Etc. I suspect that those who develop GUI on Linux don't use themselves what they produce, as a lot of GUI is often unusable, or, even worse, was usable once and then completely degrades, even with newer... compositors, or even some other kind of "improvement."
  - vetinari 7y ago
    1) There's no Ubuntu LTS release with Wayland as default display server. 2) Gparted doesn't work, because it wants to run as root. You should use an application, that runs only minimal, necessary parts as root, and the UI runs with your user's capabilities. 3) Wayland compositors do not provide unrestricted access to to composed display for very good reasons. They do provide an access through controlled API. That controlled API didn't stabilize into unified one among different compositors yet, so for screen recording you have to use compositor-specific utility for now. In Gnome-Wayland/Ubuntu, you have one available by default. So yes, when you clean up the capabilities over time, the old stuff will break. But without breaking it, you cannot develop your system. Apple also breaks compatibility will old apps, even more than most Linux distros.
pjmlp 7y ago
Never going to happen, GNOME and KDE are nice, but their frameworks experience still fails short of other desktop environments, even after all these years. They depend on too many moving pieces underneath them, and then there is the community hate how bloated they are, and how wonderful it is to reduce the experience to the twm days.
Fnoord 7y ago
> I wish the open source community would rethink the desktop experience from the ground up so that we can have truly portable desktop environments that speak a common API. Every distribution does it their own way. The correct comparison of FreeBSD is not Linux; it is a Linux distribution such as for example Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch, Debian, ... These distributions each have a relevant market share, making the comparison fair. Sure, there's overlap. If you want an OS which does it differently, consider having a look at NixOS. > For instance, check out the Manjaro doc on switching desktop environments [...] > There are 'two steps' for switching to XFCE: > sudo pacman > [...] You're not supposed to execute commands which you don't understand. You're not supposed to execute sudo commands which you don't understand. Manjaro is supposed to be a user-friendly Arch version, so that is at odds with using CLI if you ask me. I agree with you about the monetary incentive. Thus far, it does not appear anyone has succeeded, apart from Apple with iOS which is based on macOS which is based on FreeBSD. Jolla's Sailfish is struggling. Librem 5 with Purism's PureOS is delayed. Perhaps PinePhone?

aspaceman 7y ago

To be frank, setting up different DE, window managers, etc. is one of the few places where linux has little issue. The only problem being themes or having multiple bluetooth managers at the end of it. It's really just as easy as "sudo pacman xfce" and then selecting xfce from the display manager. The real issue is that you have all those choices, but none of them are as fully featured without caveat as a similar DE for Mac or Windows. And there's the separation between window manager, desktop environment and display manager which is very confusing.

heavyset_go 7y ago

You're inflicting this upon yourself by using Manjaro. Installing a different DE on Ubuntu is either a Xubuntu-desktop metapackage, or a tasksel menu-item, away. > X vs Wayland, compositors? desktop environments? window managers? Nothing on this list, besides desktop environments, are things the user ever has to think about, unless they go out of their way to.

acqq 7y ago
> Nothing on this list, besides desktop environments, are things the user ever has to think about, unless they go out of their way to. It seems you haven’t tried to use Ubuntu as a desktop, especially not outside of command line. I didn’t care about anything on the list but had to make decisions often because, from my point of view, the GUI applications providing basic functionality just didn’t work. The answer was many times “it’s because it’s Wayland” or compositor or whatever. Horrible experience, when I've used (just an example) gpart for years, it worked, then install a new version of Ubuntu and it doesn't. Then I investigate why, because Wayland. And I really never wanted to care about Wayland and compositor. Then I want to record a screen interaction. Should be easy. Again... doesn't work, investigate... "it's because it doesn't on the new compositor whatever"... Etc. I suspect that those who develop GUI on Linux don't use themselves what they produce, as a lot of GUI is often unusable, or, even worse, was usable once and then completely degrades, even with newer... compositors, or even some other kind of "improvement."
- vetinari 7y ago
  1) There's no Ubuntu LTS release with Wayland as default display server. 2) Gparted doesn't work, because it wants to run as root. You should use an application, that runs only minimal, necessary parts as root, and the UI runs with your user's capabilities. 3) Wayland compositors do not provide unrestricted access to to composed display for very good reasons. They do provide an access through controlled API. That controlled API didn't stabilize into unified one among different compositors yet, so for screen recording you have to use compositor-specific utility for now. In Gnome-Wayland/Ubuntu, you have one available by default. So yes, when you clean up the capabilities over time, the old stuff will break. But without breaking it, you cannot develop your system. Apple also breaks compatibility will old apps, even more than most Linux distros.

pjmlp 7y ago

Never going to happen, GNOME and KDE are nice, but their frameworks experience still fails short of other desktop environments, even after all these years. They depend on too many moving pieces underneath them, and then there is the community hate how bloated they are, and how wonderful it is to reduce the experience to the twm days.

Fnoord 7y ago

> I wish the open source community would rethink the desktop experience from the ground up so that we can have truly portable desktop environments that speak a common API. Every distribution does it their own way. The correct comparison of FreeBSD is not Linux; it is a Linux distribution such as for example Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch, Debian, ... These distributions each have a relevant market share, making the comparison fair. Sure, there's overlap. If you want an OS which does it differently, consider having a look at NixOS. > For instance, check out the Manjaro doc on switching desktop environments [...] > There are 'two steps' for switching to XFCE: > sudo pacman > [...] You're not supposed to execute commands which you don't understand. You're not supposed to execute sudo commands which you don't understand. Manjaro is supposed to be a user-friendly Arch version, so that is at odds with using CLI if you ask me. I agree with you about the monetary incentive. Thus far, it does not appear anyone has succeeded, apart from Apple with iOS which is based on macOS which is based on FreeBSD. Jolla's Sailfish is struggling. Librem 5 with Purism's PureOS is delayed. Perhaps PinePhone?