12 ms·

You will find lots of such examples of a feature which you personally find very important and wonder why such a simple thing is not supported yet. I guess every

You will find lots of such examples of a feature which you personally find very important and wonder why such a simple thing is not supported yet. I guess everyone has such examples. And you will also find such examples for MacOSX or Windows. For me personally, I wonder why mouse wheel/scroll acceleration is still not implemented. I implemented it a while ago for Xorg, which is outdated now, and also the maintainer was not happy with my approach. It's now a long outstanding proposal for libinput, https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/7 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/7 / https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/405 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/405 (original bug report from 2010: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29905 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29905). Anyway, I guess there are actually not too much people caring about this feature. And the intersection of those who do and those who have enough free time and knowledge to implement this is just empty. Btw, I don't quite understand the comment about KDE. It sounds like the the author claims that KDE lacks other relevant features. But comparing Gnome vs KDE, it is quite clear that KDE has much more features. This is never a complaint I heard about KDE.

swebs 6y ago
At least enough people care that its become a meme in some tech communities. https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme
- jdright 6y ago
  Yes, and Gnome is in part responsible for a lot of "desktop" issues with linux. Distros must switch to KDE by default to help eliminate part of this stigma. KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. Don't know that I agree there. I actually really like GNOME's workflow on laptop, especially with Pop OS's extensions.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    I disliked KDE 3 & 4, however KDE 5 is great. Plasma Desktop is impressive and pleasant to use.
    - k_sze 6y ago
      Yep. I’ve been a long time GNOME user and I switched to KDE Plasma when I upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04. I don’t think I’m looking back.
    - kdtsh 6y ago
      In the early-2000s like many other people I was attracted to the Crystal[1] theme/icon pack, but it did not take long for it to start looking tacky to me. I feel like KDE never really abandoned this kind of look-and-feel until Plasma was released, which is very clean and pleasant. It has discarded cartoon-ish icons and has sharper lines and colours which are nicer to look at. I am a big fan! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal
  - eznzt 6y ago
    My personal opinion is that KDE is less polished, more bloated (in terms of features and options), and slower than GNOME.
    - jdright 6y ago
      Did you try it recently? That was also the stigma of KDE 4.x. 5 is snappy and bloated is probably the wrong word to featureful. I just can't stand gnome exactly due to the opposite: bare bones, missing features, lack of integration and mainly lack of standardized ux.
      - Zardoz84 6y ago
        Add that Gnome it's painful slow and uses more resources that KDE.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      Plasma Desktop uses about the same amount of resources as XFCE.
    - O_H_E 6y ago
      > more bloated (in terms of features and options) that might be subjectively correct to a lot of people, but I find that they are usually set to sane defaults and a lot is disabled by default. Also, I would like to emphasis that the choice of disto kinda matters here as they sometimes change defaults.
    - just_for_you 6y ago
      I think this may have been true in the past, but KDE 5 is nowhere near as bloated as KDE once was. (And they've also made huge strides in consistency and a sane UI experience.) I've tested comparing Gnome/KDE on old hardware (eg, 2 GB of RAM and CPUs built for power conservation), and subjectively I found KDE to be a lot snappier (Gnome Shell always choked for me when hitting Activities) and, after a few hours of uptime, found it used less memory than Gnome. On the same box, it even gave Xfce a run for its money, which was surprising. Although, when it comes to peddling Linux to other people, I'm hesistant to install KDE for anyone because it's a bit too configurable. I'm always afraid of getting asked for help because of someone accidentally messed up their UI and losing their taskbar or something like that. KDE's came a long way in recent years, but that "you can configure everything" core will always probably be there. And on the flip-side, if I install Gnome, people often find it outlandish and barebones...
  - JeremyNT 6y ago
    > KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. I have nothing against KDE, but come on. Many of us really do prefer GNOME despite its perceived deficiencies. This is just a matter of personal preference.
    - jdright 6y ago
      Nothing against options, but having distros with a default on Gnome just seems wrong, defaults are supposed to be good and complete.
      - Kalq 6y ago
        Wish somebody would tell that to the Emacs maintainers.
    - ziftface 6y ago
      I'll never understand this. It's like people who swear by xfce. Both are borderline unusable to me, but gnome certainly isn't in that category, despite its bugs.
      - alekq 6y ago
        Which feature(s) exactly do you miss on XFCE that makes it unusable in comparision to GNOME?
        ziftface 6y ago
        Didn't mean to pick on xfce, I haven't used it in a couple years to be fair. But when I did, it just didn't fit my workflow that well. For example, I'm used to pressing command+space and getting system-wide search for all files and apps. This is basically the default behavior on gnome, I just needed to remap the shortcut. I also often move desktops and the "activities" view makes that really simple.
      - koolba 6y ago
        Xfce is stable, lightning fast, and best of all, its users never have to learn a new interface layout every other year.
  - young_unixer 6y ago
    I find KDE to be pretty ugly. For instance, margins and paddings seem to be all over the place [1]. At least Gnome gets that part right. [1] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      If you don't like the defaults, there are thousands of 3rd party themes that are directly listed and installable from KDE's theme preference pane.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        Do any of them solve the problem?
        gsich 6y ago
        No.
    - O_H_E 6y ago
      That page looks kinda out dated, and "contains some ideas how to improve the Plasma notification system". So a lot of that is mocks and not real screenshots.
      - ognarb 6y ago
        Yes, this page is full of mockups created years ago.
    - tylerjwilk00 6y ago
      Agreed. It occupies some weird uncanny valley of design that is hard to pin point.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      Absolutely. It feels like they're getting there (VDG is working on it and shown some results), but they're just a few years away. ... it has been feeling like that for the few years I've been following it.
  - curt15 6y ago
    >KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. IMO, one aspect where Gnome excels is its tight integration of alternative input methods. I remember it being controversial that Gnome blessed ibus over alternative engines, but as a result, setting up CJK input is simple and foolproof. Although I prefer KDE in every other way, I have never managed to get ibus working correctly in that environment.
    - just_for_you 6y ago
      CJK input magically working easily and reliably in Gnome is the pretty much the only reason I use it over KDE. And setting it up doesn't require following a wiki, using the commandline and/or having to edit obscure config files or messing around with weird GUI settings apps. I have nothing against KDE by any means (I love it, and also really appreciate their initatives like KDEnlive, etc.), but I don't think I've ever gotten Japanese/Chinese input to work in it before. Maybe once, but then I gave up on finding a sane way to easily cycle between the different input types (eg, WinKey+Space).
      - CorrectHorseBat 6y ago
        I remember finding what worked was quite of a hassle in KDE, but once I chose fcitx over ibus I've had little issues with CJK input.
  - danmur 6y ago
    I think that's very much personal preference. I tried KDE a few months ago and I couldn't stick with it; it is slower than Gnome in a lot of ways, it's (to my eyes) much more cluttered, and has lags at annoying places. For example, I tend to hit the windows key and start typing to launch things, but under KDE there's enough lag before the menu opens that it doesn't catch my first few keypresses.
    - murrayb 6y ago
      This. I get periodically frustrated with Gnome and give KDE a go and always end up going back to Gnome within a couple of weeks. I want to like it, I want it to work but Gnome (on my setup) is more responsive and that is more important than all of the other deficiencies of Gnome.
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      I'm on a 3 year old laptop, and I tried several times to get a keystroke to be dropped after I hit the windows key and I couldn't get it to happen. I use windows-key and start typing to launch things all the time, and after reading your comment at first I thought I might have developed a habit to pause, but nope. I wonder what the difference is. My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. Maybe pro gamers can manage to keep the cursor in every time, but for me I often take 2 or 3 tries to click on something.
      - ognarb 6y ago
        > My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. This looks like a bug or you changed the default setting, just to be sure in System Setting -> Window Management -> Window Behavior -> is the Window Activation Policy set to click to focus?
        aidenn0 6y ago
        Ohhhhh. Of course I changed it to focus follows mouse because that's the One True Way(tm) of managing window focus. So I'm guessing that when the popup loses focus, it disappears. Thanks for solving that mystery. I'll ponder whether it's worth it to make the disappearing have a lag, conditional on the window activation policy.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    KDE or MATE, really.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    The default DE should be "sane and boring". I think the one that best fits this description at the moment is MATE.
  - scythe 6y ago
    Elementary is also working on a way to default most apps to a better file picker: https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbnails_when_using_the_open_file_dialog_box_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbn... https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-196acf9b06f0 https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-19...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - alekq 6y ago
    I was happy KDE user for very long time - first 3.x, then 4 (even with all those glitches and bugs at the very beginning). Then I had 7-8 years break off Linux and last year decided to install it on my new desktop machine. Went with Plasma first - did not go well. I simply cannot get comfortable with it and general look and feel is not working for me (I prefer defaults and I avoid much tweaking and any 3rd party customization). I settled on Cinnamon, but it was close tie with GNOME which was actually quite refreshing experience for me. So, to each his own, but I just do not see KDE as "the sanest" default.
    - Yaggo 6y ago
      3.x/4.x was the golden age for KDE. I never felt home with Plasma.
  - swiley 6y ago
    I've never understood why so many distros make gnome the default DE. There are much better and friendly ones, some of them forks and some written from scratch.
- numlock86 6y ago
  > https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme > Debunking: lInUx Is JuSt A kErNeL Ah yes, countering a meme with another meme. Good one.
andrewmackrodt 6y ago
I love Linux desktop but miss these creature comforts too. For me, my biggest input issue is the lack of customisation around trackpad deadzones, i.e. the 15% or so deadzone on the left and right of the trackpad. My trackpad is exactly in the center of my laptop but my palm is usually offset slightly to the left. This means my first interaction with the trackpad often happens in this deadzone area on the left-hand side of the trackpad, so no input gets registered until I lift my finger and "enter" it more towards the center. There are a huge variety of laptops with different size trackpads, different positions, varying levels of palm rejection etc but there's zero customisability around this seemingly simple behaviour. My Windows dualboot has no such issue and macOS of course (using a MacBook) works fantastically without this limitations.
- cmurf 6y ago
  Sounds like a libinput bug. https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libinput/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libinput/ https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/touchpad-pressure-debugging.html#debugging-touch-size-ranges https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/touchpad... I'd file a bug though, and see if whatever's wrong can be fixed for every trackpad of that same make/model.
  - andrewmackrodt 6y ago
    Thanks for the links, particularly the second one. It looks like something I may have experimented with before but I'll try again. It could be that my touchpad does not support ABS_MT_TOUCH_MAJOR (Dell XPS 2-in-1 2019). My "issue" is described as expected behaviour in this documentation: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-detection.html#palm-exclusion-zones https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-det... (the "A" event).
- sergeykish 6y ago
  I've never noticed such issue, quick search shows that one has to start on edge and movement in vertical direction [1]. Vanilla edges are 8% of the width on each side [2]. There was a proposal to add configuration option [3], rejected — they've tried this route before, it was impossible to test. Fortunately source is there and it is easy to patch (try to set 0%). That's quite common, for example there are several patched libinput on AUR [5]. Does your hardware has firmware palm detection mechanism? Current bug [6] (Palm exclusion zones are not worth it on some hardware). [1] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-detection.html#palm-exclusion-zones https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-det... [2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/blob/f2baea50c01f9e10fb2076f5dd64311347ac5c3e/src/evdev-mt-touchpad.c#L3265 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/blob/f2ba... [3] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/190 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/19... [4] http://who-t.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-libinput-doesnt-have-lot-of-config.html http://who-t.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-libinput-doesnt-have-l... [5] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=libinput https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=libinput [6] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/433 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/43...
alpaca128 6y ago
> it is quite clear that KDE has much more features. My guess is that the author prefers Gnome because yes, it has fewer features, but those feel more polished. KDE is powerful but some less frequently used features felt more like functional prototypes that were thrown somewhere into the nth level of the system settings. Then again the last time I tried it Gnome had a lot of issues as well, so maybe I'm completely wrong nowadays.
- ognarb 6y ago
  There is a lot going on each week in KDE trying to improve the situation. Nate Graham is making a summary of the parts, he monitors: https://pointieststick.com/ https://pointieststick.com/ There is definitely still quite a bit to improve but compared to 3 years ago, Plasma and KDE software has improved by a lot.
  - RedShift1 6y ago
    They pretty much had this nailed down in KDE 3.5, we're now 12 years later, how much longer will it take before current KDE will show any signs of being "finished"?
phkahler 6y ago
>> For me personally, I wonder why mouse wheel/scroll acceleration is still not implemented. This came up recently with SolveSpace. Two developers spent an amazing amount of time getting scroll wheel zoom right. Discussion here: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/pull/825 https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/pull/825 Love these guys, they give a crap about usability. BTW next release soon - after a bit more polish. Polish take time and work, but do you really care about the software if you don't spend some time unclogging the toilet?
tannhaeuser 6y ago
While you're here and know a thing or two about libinput: it's completely unusable for me, and the only reason I'm able to work at all is that the old synaptics package (on which libinput is based as a clean rewrite as I understand) still works. The reason is that libinput doesn't support sensitivity; I still remember the physical pain of hard-pressing the touchpad when my current notebook was new, and in particular the moment when I looked at the notebook and just stopped doing anything at all on it in conditioned anticipation of a frustrating experience. Also, kinetic scroll doesn't seem to work, amplifying the issue. I noticed Ubuntu have switched to KDE (or, alternatively, LXDE) as DE for their "Studio" variant. I'm guessing that's mostly because the minimal window decorations for resizing etc makes gnome hard to use, and Studio is for large notebooks or desktops anyway. I think the exercise of patience that was resizing windows on gnome2 has slightly improved, but I'm still speechless as to the loss of the global menu to be replaced by ... a centered clock accompanied by a minimal dot that I found out to display notifications after a while, and nothing else. I mean I'm glad that F/OSS for desktops still exists at all, but gnome3 is really just a big regression for no reason at all, and I'm starting to get a bit concerned where gnome is heading. It's not that we have a wealth of new desktop apps anyway. Maybe Ubuntu is testing the waters to switch to KDE as well.
- ognarb 6y ago
  Disclainer: KDE dev so take my opinion with a pinch of salt :p The decision by the Ubuntu Studio variants was made by the Ubuntu Studio developers and not by Canonical. The developers are also maintaining Fedora Jam with KDE installed by default too. Unfortunately all the big commercial distros are using GNOME as default DE because RedHat is providing the commercial support for GNOME already and it's easier for them to just make the same choice. So I don't think Ubuntu will switch to KDE anytime soo, even if GNOME developers don't like Ubuntu and make their opinion very public. For those interested on why artists like Plasma so much, David Revoy made a nice summary: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article783/kubuntu-linux-20-04-for-a-digital-painting-workstation-reasons-and-install-guide https://www.davidrevoy.com/article783/kubuntu-linux-20-04-fo....
worik 6y ago
This, lack of thumbnails, has annoyed me too, for years.
- input_sh 6y ago
  If you're used to GNOME, might I suggesting a fork? elementary OS has thumbnails for years: https://imgur.com/a/7JlJCnN https://imgur.com/a/7JlJCnN
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    Is that a file picker, or just the file manager?
    - gsich 6y ago
      file manager
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - 1_player 6y ago
    Why is there a metric ton of whitespace between the image and the label? Why doesn't anyone care about pleasant design in the Linux world? It's arguably the reason one would pick Elementary OS, yet this is the result.
ploxiln 6y ago
On macOS, I install https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll to disable scroll acceleration, because I find it annoying, and macOS has no config option to disable it.
- samatman 6y ago
  Hey at least it's possible. System Preferences-level config has a cognitive cost, it's ok by me to move 1% or fewer level stuff to plugins. My example is that I want the scroll direction reversed when I have my trackball plugged in, but not on the trackpad, and there's a helper app called Scroll Reverser which does the trick. Alas, my white whale is focus-follows-mouse, and I just... can't have it. Not worth abandoning the Mac over, not for me, but.. arrgh.
  - ibly31 6y ago
    How does "focus follows mouse" work? If I'm understanding; your desktop is a collection of various sizes windows, maybe overlapping and stacking. If your mouse goes off the side of the one you're focusing, it will auto focus the one you're now hovering over. Won't this lead to accidents where you'll have a larger window suddenly gain focus, with no way to see the old one and re-focus it? Seems easy to make a mistake. This maybe would be solved by a window manager that enforces never allowing windows to stack depthwise? Which OSX doesn't have of course. Just size-and-position-hotkey workarounds
    - samatman 6y ago
      Nope, what you're describing is a mistake in focus-follows-mouse, one which has been made more than once. In real, XWin-style focus-follows-mouse, the window you mouse over gets the focus, but, isn't pulled to the front. If you click, it gets the front and the focus. I use Moom, a semi-tile snap-style window wrangler, and a widescreen with three panels. What I want to do is just slide the cursor over and start typing, but I have to remember to click, and often enough I just don't. The One True Wiki has a nice discussion of the subject: https://wiki.c2.com/?FocusFollowsMouse https://wiki.c2.com/?FocusFollowsMouse
renewiltord 6y ago
You can solve this in hardware with a mouse with a free-wheel. My Logitech G502 lets you click a button to swap modes from free-wheel to braked-wheel.
- Nursie 6y ago
  I tried a logitech mouse with that feature, mx anywhere 2s, but you lose the mousewheel middle-click as the wheel-mode switch is a physical switch and cannot be remapped. Ended up taking it back for a refund and getting a g703 instead.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Interesting. The G502 has the middle-click on the scroll wheel and the wheel-mode is a separate one. Presumably like in your G703.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      I don't think I have a wheel-mode option on my G703. I have a small button above the wheel which changes the pointer speed, but nothing I can see that puts the wheel into an accelerated more. Honestly if the "2s Anywhere" had had the setup you described I would have kept it. Logitech tried to explain that middle slick was still there, on the button further back towards the palm rest, but it felt so unnatural and inconvenient. The 502 looks like a nice piece of kit.
m463 6y ago
There's a quote that I think of in situations like this: "Be the change you want to see in the world" - ghandi That said, you can't do that with windows or macosx. Now capitalism works, so apple and microsoft apply the money they make to hard/unsexy things like sleep-wake bug fixes and APIs and sane defaults. But they also bake advertising into their codebase and leech data home to the mothership and prevent you from running all the programs you'd like. So look at linux as an opportunity.
- lmm 6y ago
  You can contribute all you want but it's not going to be enough to stop Pottering or RedHat from hijacking the project and breaking everything. I used to contribute but these days what's the point?
  - sfgweilr4f 6y ago
    For more information on "Pottering", a random search produced this: https://slated.org/the_poetterisation_of_gnu_linux https://slated.org/the_poetterisation_of_gnu_linux The more you know.
    - m463 6y ago
      I've never heard of the term before, I wonder if it's the basis for "puttering" as in "puttering about the house" EDIT: nope, it's more direct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering a connection the article didn't make clear.
      - sfgweilr4f 6y ago
        I was quoting the parent comment for misspelling "pottering" as "poettering" since I'd not encountered either term. I'm not sure using someone's surname is such a great idea for this purpose. But I now at least understand why. Also their anger at the added complexity being done to Linux and surrounding structures including but not limited to systemd. But these structures are still in flux. Even if it means a mess along the way.
Technically 6y ago
Why would you gripe that a person uses your software but cares too much?
phendrenad2 6y ago
> the maintainer was not happy with my approach This is the absolute CORE of the problem with open-source software. Someone becomes the "maintainer" of a project, often through no skill of their own (they just showed up at the right time), which effectively makes them BDFL with infinite veto power. Hard-forks of popular projects are politically unpopular (for good reason), so that isn't an option. Instead, the whole world of software that relies on a package is broken or fixed at the whim of one dude.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- josteink 6y ago
  > This is the absolute CORE of the problem with open-source software. Someone becomes the "maintainer" of a project, often through no skill of their own That’s a bit unnuanced, isn’t it? Nobody randomly becomes the maintainer of a big/popular project without having a history of contributing. They were the ones willing to pick up the task of doing free labour for everyone after the last guy didn’t want the job anymore. As maintainer of a project, their job is to try to respond to bugs, maintain it, improve it and keep it working. All for free. If somebody submits a low quality or low effort patch which goes against the projects conventions or general strategies or patterns which will over time increase the maintainer’s burden, he is under no obligation to accept that patch. On the contrary, whoever submits the patch is the one who wants to benefit from all that time invested into the project so far, for his own good. I think it’s absolutely fair to expect/demand that they are also willing to put up some effort when they send in patches and receive feedback.
legulere 6y ago
> But comparing Gnome vs KDE, it is quite clear that KDE has much more features. This is never a complaint I heard about KDE. Usability is not about how many features a program has. Usually more features make it harder to have good usability.
eitland 6y ago
> And you will also find such examples for MacOSX or Windows. If anyone wonders, here are three from Mac last I used it: - fn took the place of ctrl on the laptop (but not the full keyboard). Unlike on Dell and Lenovo who also has this problem it could not be remapped neither at boot nor in the OS. - CMD - tab forced me to think ahead of time if I want to change to the last application or the last window of the same application. I.e. switching between two Safari instances takes a different key combination than switching between Safari and IntelliJ. - modifier keys worked differently between applications, e.g. selecting to the end of a word was either ctrl-shift, alt-shift or CMD-shift depending on application.
- oefrha 6y ago
  > CMD - tab forced me to think ahead of time if I want to change to the last application or the last window of the same application. I.e. switching between two Safari instances takes a different key combination than switching between Safari and IntelliJ. That’s a feature, not a bug. I personally hate having to tab through a million browser windows to find the application I need, or having to tab through unrelated applications when looking for a browser window, which is what I have to put up with when using Windows.
  - eitland 6y ago
    It is a feature which replace another feature (stack based switching). It broke my flow multiple times a day for three years until I got a Windows machine again. I guess we are just differently wired, the idea of stopping to consider which shortcurt to use was neither natural nor possible for me at that age (around 30). KDE does this perfectly however. It defaults to Windows/classic Gnome 2 behaviour but can easily be configured however one wants it.
  - silon42 6y ago
    It's not a feature for anyone used to standard alt+tab (and ctrl+tab). Often I wish switching between tabs was on first level too. I don't appreciate the Mac/Gnome way.
    - 6y ago
rob74 6y ago
First, I fully agree: this is not a bug, it's a missing feature. Second, I may be a minority here, but I actually don't mind this feature missing at all. I however do (or did) mind Windows putting its "thumbs.db" files all over the place, so that's the first thing I deactivate when installing it (along with enabling "show hidden files" and "show extension for known file types").
- xeyownt 6y ago
  - "Welcome to the new GNOME car. It's totally free!". - "Looks great. But there are no mirrors. Isn't that dangerous?" - "Yeah, but that's not a bug, it's a missing feature. Besides, we don't like mirrors because in all cars they need to be cleaned all the time." - "Really? Apparently the KDE cars also have mirrors but different technology, and they don't need to be cleaned at all. Also, what's the difference between a bug or missing feature if a lot of people complain about it?" - "Oh yeah. But honestly we really don't like that people have to clean their mirrors, so we prefer not to have them."
  - rob74 6y ago
    Looks like we disagree on what's a bug and what's a feature in a file picker. But the mirrors on a car are mandated by law, so the equivalent for that would be a missing Cancel button (which forces you to always open a file). If I had to pick a car part equivalent to the file thumbnails, it would probably be seat heating or a built-in navigation system - it's nice to have (for some, others never use it), but you can use the car without problems if it's broken or not installed. I'm not saying that it's not a nice feature to have, but it's also definitely non-trivial - it's not only thumbnails for images, if you do that people will also demand thumbnails for videos (including, of course, all ancient formats), PDF files, Word/Excel/PowerPoint documents, HTML pages etc. etc. etc.
noisy_boy 6y ago
> Anyway, I guess there are actually not too much people caring about this feature I do care about this feature just like the author and though I don't have any evidence supporting my thinking, I think nobody enjoys trawling through bunch of weirdly named files (which is typical of how downloaded image files get named by default) looking for that specific picture/icon. After the Gnome 3 debacle where they basically refused to listen to the users and even removed not-so-obscure features like tabbed windows in nautilus (which I noticed is back now), I just didn't have the confidence that raising a feature request would amount to much.

swebs 6y ago

At least enough people care that its become a meme in some tech communities. https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme

jdright 6y ago
Yes, and Gnome is in part responsible for a lot of "desktop" issues with linux. Distros must switch to KDE by default to help eliminate part of this stigma. KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome.
- Shared404 6y ago
  > there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. Don't know that I agree there. I actually really like GNOME's workflow on laptop, especially with Pop OS's extensions.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I disliked KDE 3 & 4, however KDE 5 is great. Plasma Desktop is impressive and pleasant to use.
  - k_sze 6y ago
    Yep. I’ve been a long time GNOME user and I switched to KDE Plasma when I upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04. I don’t think I’m looking back.
  - kdtsh 6y ago
    In the early-2000s like many other people I was attracted to the Crystal[1] theme/icon pack, but it did not take long for it to start looking tacky to me. I feel like KDE never really abandoned this kind of look-and-feel until Plasma was released, which is very clean and pleasant. It has discarded cartoon-ish icons and has sharper lines and colours which are nicer to look at. I am a big fan! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everaldo_Coelho#Crystal
- eznzt 6y ago
  My personal opinion is that KDE is less polished, more bloated (in terms of features and options), and slower than GNOME.
  - jdright 6y ago
    Did you try it recently? That was also the stigma of KDE 4.x. 5 is snappy and bloated is probably the wrong word to featureful. I just can't stand gnome exactly due to the opposite: bare bones, missing features, lack of integration and mainly lack of standardized ux.
    - Zardoz84 6y ago
      Add that Gnome it's painful slow and uses more resources that KDE.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Plasma Desktop uses about the same amount of resources as XFCE.
  - O_H_E 6y ago
    > more bloated (in terms of features and options) that might be subjectively correct to a lot of people, but I find that they are usually set to sane defaults and a lot is disabled by default. Also, I would like to emphasis that the choice of disto kinda matters here as they sometimes change defaults.
  - just_for_you 6y ago
    I think this may have been true in the past, but KDE 5 is nowhere near as bloated as KDE once was. (And they've also made huge strides in consistency and a sane UI experience.) I've tested comparing Gnome/KDE on old hardware (eg, 2 GB of RAM and CPUs built for power conservation), and subjectively I found KDE to be a lot snappier (Gnome Shell always choked for me when hitting Activities) and, after a few hours of uptime, found it used less memory than Gnome. On the same box, it even gave Xfce a run for its money, which was surprising. Although, when it comes to peddling Linux to other people, I'm hesistant to install KDE for anyone because it's a bit too configurable. I'm always afraid of getting asked for help because of someone accidentally messed up their UI and losing their taskbar or something like that. KDE's came a long way in recent years, but that "you can configure everything" core will always probably be there. And on the flip-side, if I install Gnome, people often find it outlandish and barebones...
- JeremyNT 6y ago
  > KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. I have nothing against KDE, but come on. Many of us really do prefer GNOME despite its perceived deficiencies. This is just a matter of personal preference.
  - jdright 6y ago
    Nothing against options, but having distros with a default on Gnome just seems wrong, defaults are supposed to be good and complete.
    - Kalq 6y ago
      Wish somebody would tell that to the Emacs maintainers.
  - ziftface 6y ago
    I'll never understand this. It's like people who swear by xfce. Both are borderline unusable to me, but gnome certainly isn't in that category, despite its bugs.
    - alekq 6y ago
      Which feature(s) exactly do you miss on XFCE that makes it unusable in comparision to GNOME?
      - ziftface 6y ago
        Didn't mean to pick on xfce, I haven't used it in a couple years to be fair. But when I did, it just didn't fit my workflow that well. For example, I'm used to pressing command+space and getting system-wide search for all files and apps. This is basically the default behavior on gnome, I just needed to remap the shortcut. I also often move desktops and the "activities" view makes that really simple.
    - koolba 6y ago
      Xfce is stable, lightning fast, and best of all, its users never have to learn a new interface layout every other year.
- young_unixer 6y ago
  I find KDE to be pretty ugly. For instance, margins and paddings seem to be all over the place [1]. At least Gnome gets that part right. [1] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Notifications
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    If you don't like the defaults, there are thousands of 3rd party themes that are directly listed and installable from KDE's theme preference pane.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      Do any of them solve the problem?
      - gsich 6y ago
        No.
  - O_H_E 6y ago
    That page looks kinda out dated, and "contains some ideas how to improve the Plasma notification system". So a lot of that is mocks and not real screenshots.
    - ognarb 6y ago
      Yes, this page is full of mockups created years ago.
  - tylerjwilk00 6y ago
    Agreed. It occupies some weird uncanny valley of design that is hard to pin point.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Absolutely. It feels like they're getting there (VDG is working on it and shown some results), but they're just a few years away. ... it has been feeling like that for the few years I've been following it.
- curt15 6y ago
  >KDE is so amazingly good that there is no excuse to keep using Gnome. IMO, one aspect where Gnome excels is its tight integration of alternative input methods. I remember it being controversial that Gnome blessed ibus over alternative engines, but as a result, setting up CJK input is simple and foolproof. Although I prefer KDE in every other way, I have never managed to get ibus working correctly in that environment.
  - just_for_you 6y ago
    CJK input magically working easily and reliably in Gnome is the pretty much the only reason I use it over KDE. And setting it up doesn't require following a wiki, using the commandline and/or having to edit obscure config files or messing around with weird GUI settings apps. I have nothing against KDE by any means (I love it, and also really appreciate their initatives like KDEnlive, etc.), but I don't think I've ever gotten Japanese/Chinese input to work in it before. Maybe once, but then I gave up on finding a sane way to easily cycle between the different input types (eg, WinKey+Space).
    - CorrectHorseBat 6y ago
      I remember finding what worked was quite of a hassle in KDE, but once I chose fcitx over ibus I've had little issues with CJK input.
- danmur 6y ago
  I think that's very much personal preference. I tried KDE a few months ago and I couldn't stick with it; it is slower than Gnome in a lot of ways, it's (to my eyes) much more cluttered, and has lags at annoying places. For example, I tend to hit the windows key and start typing to launch things, but under KDE there's enough lag before the menu opens that it doesn't catch my first few keypresses.
  - murrayb 6y ago
    This. I get periodically frustrated with Gnome and give KDE a go and always end up going back to Gnome within a couple of weeks. I want to like it, I want it to work but Gnome (on my setup) is more responsive and that is more important than all of the other deficiencies of Gnome.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    I'm on a 3 year old laptop, and I tried several times to get a keystroke to be dropped after I hit the windows key and I couldn't get it to happen. I use windows-key and start typing to launch things all the time, and after reading your comment at first I thought I might have developed a habit to pause, but nope. I wonder what the difference is. My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. Maybe pro gamers can manage to keep the cursor in every time, but for me I often take 2 or 3 tries to click on something.
    - ognarb 6y ago
      > My biggest KDE gripe is that popups from the system-tray disappear if you move the cursor outside of them. This looks like a bug or you changed the default setting, just to be sure in System Setting -> Window Management -> Window Behavior -> is the Window Activation Policy set to click to focus?
      - aidenn0 6y ago
        Ohhhhh. Of course I changed it to focus follows mouse because that's the One True Way(tm) of managing window focus. So I'm guessing that when the popup loses focus, it disappears. Thanks for solving that mystery. I'll ponder whether it's worth it to make the disappearing have a lag, conditional on the window activation policy.
- dleslie 6y ago
  KDE or MATE, really.
- int_19h 6y ago
  The default DE should be "sane and boring". I think the one that best fits this description at the moment is MATE.
- scythe 6y ago
  Elementary is also working on a way to default most apps to a better file picker: https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbnails_when_using_the_open_file_dialog_box_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/gs86hj/thumbn... https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-196acf9b06f0 https://medium.com/elementaryos/a-new-native-file-chooser-19...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- alekq 6y ago
  I was happy KDE user for very long time - first 3.x, then 4 (even with all those glitches and bugs at the very beginning). Then I had 7-8 years break off Linux and last year decided to install it on my new desktop machine. Went with Plasma first - did not go well. I simply cannot get comfortable with it and general look and feel is not working for me (I prefer defaults and I avoid much tweaking and any 3rd party customization). I settled on Cinnamon, but it was close tie with GNOME which was actually quite refreshing experience for me. So, to each his own, but I just do not see KDE as "the sanest" default.
  - Yaggo 6y ago
    3.x/4.x was the golden age for KDE. I never felt home with Plasma.
- swiley 6y ago
  I've never understood why so many distros make gnome the default DE. There are much better and friendly ones, some of them forks and some written from scratch.
numlock86 6y ago
> https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme https://wiki.installgentoo.com/wiki/File_Picker_meme > Debunking: lInUx Is JuSt A kErNeL Ah yes, countering a meme with another meme. Good one.

andrewmackrodt 6y ago

I love Linux desktop but miss these creature comforts too. For me, my biggest input issue is the lack of customisation around trackpad deadzones, i.e. the 15% or so deadzone on the left and right of the trackpad. My trackpad is exactly in the center of my laptop but my palm is usually offset slightly to the left. This means my first interaction with the trackpad often happens in this deadzone area on the left-hand side of the trackpad, so no input gets registered until I lift my finger and "enter" it more towards the center. There are a huge variety of laptops with different size trackpads, different positions, varying levels of palm rejection etc but there's zero customisability around this seemingly simple behaviour. My Windows dualboot has no such issue and macOS of course (using a MacBook) works fantastically without this limitations.

cmurf 6y ago
Sounds like a libinput bug. https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libinput/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libinput/ https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/touchpad-pressure-debugging.html#debugging-touch-size-ranges https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/touchpad... I'd file a bug though, and see if whatever's wrong can be fixed for every trackpad of that same make/model.
- andrewmackrodt 6y ago
  Thanks for the links, particularly the second one. It looks like something I may have experimented with before but I'll try again. It could be that my touchpad does not support ABS_MT_TOUCH_MAJOR (Dell XPS 2-in-1 2019). My "issue" is described as expected behaviour in this documentation: https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-detection.html#palm-exclusion-zones https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-det... (the "A" event).
sergeykish 6y ago
I've never noticed such issue, quick search shows that one has to start on edge and movement in vertical direction [1]. Vanilla edges are 8% of the width on each side [2]. There was a proposal to add configuration option [3], rejected — they've tried this route before, it was impossible to test. Fortunately source is there and it is easy to patch (try to set 0%). That's quite common, for example there are several patched libinput on AUR [5]. Does your hardware has firmware palm detection mechanism? Current bug [6] (Palm exclusion zones are not worth it on some hardware). [1] https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-detection.html#palm-exclusion-zones https://wayland.freedesktop.org/libinput/doc/latest/palm-det... [2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/blob/f2baea50c01f9e10fb2076f5dd64311347ac5c3e/src/evdev-mt-touchpad.c#L3265 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/blob/f2ba... [3] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/190 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/19... [4] http://who-t.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-libinput-doesnt-have-lot-of-config.html http://who-t.blogspot.com/2016/04/why-libinput-doesnt-have-l... [5] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=libinput https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=libinput [6] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/433 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/43...

alpaca128 6y ago

> it is quite clear that KDE has much more features. My guess is that the author prefers Gnome because yes, it has fewer features, but those feel more polished. KDE is powerful but some less frequently used features felt more like functional prototypes that were thrown somewhere into the nth level of the system settings. Then again the last time I tried it Gnome had a lot of issues as well, so maybe I'm completely wrong nowadays.

ognarb 6y ago
There is a lot going on each week in KDE trying to improve the situation. Nate Graham is making a summary of the parts, he monitors: https://pointieststick.com/ https://pointieststick.com/ There is definitely still quite a bit to improve but compared to 3 years ago, Plasma and KDE software has improved by a lot.
- RedShift1 6y ago
  They pretty much had this nailed down in KDE 3.5, we're now 12 years later, how much longer will it take before current KDE will show any signs of being "finished"?

phkahler 6y ago

>> For me personally, I wonder why mouse wheel/scroll acceleration is still not implemented. This came up recently with SolveSpace. Two developers spent an amazing amount of time getting scroll wheel zoom right. Discussion here: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/pull/825 https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/pull/825 Love these guys, they give a crap about usability. BTW next release soon - after a bit more polish. Polish take time and work, but do you really care about the software if you don't spend some time unclogging the toilet?

tannhaeuser 6y ago

While you're here and know a thing or two about libinput: it's completely unusable for me, and the only reason I'm able to work at all is that the old synaptics package (on which libinput is based as a clean rewrite as I understand) still works. The reason is that libinput doesn't support sensitivity; I still remember the physical pain of hard-pressing the touchpad when my current notebook was new, and in particular the moment when I looked at the notebook and just stopped doing anything at all on it in conditioned anticipation of a frustrating experience. Also, kinetic scroll doesn't seem to work, amplifying the issue. I noticed Ubuntu have switched to KDE (or, alternatively, LXDE) as DE for their "Studio" variant. I'm guessing that's mostly because the minimal window decorations for resizing etc makes gnome hard to use, and Studio is for large notebooks or desktops anyway. I think the exercise of patience that was resizing windows on gnome2 has slightly improved, but I'm still speechless as to the loss of the global menu to be replaced by ... a centered clock accompanied by a minimal dot that I found out to display notifications after a while, and nothing else. I mean I'm glad that F/OSS for desktops still exists at all, but gnome3 is really just a big regression for no reason at all, and I'm starting to get a bit concerned where gnome is heading. It's not that we have a wealth of new desktop apps anyway. Maybe Ubuntu is testing the waters to switch to KDE as well.

ognarb 6y ago
Disclainer: KDE dev so take my opinion with a pinch of salt :p The decision by the Ubuntu Studio variants was made by the Ubuntu Studio developers and not by Canonical. The developers are also maintaining Fedora Jam with KDE installed by default too. Unfortunately all the big commercial distros are using GNOME as default DE because RedHat is providing the commercial support for GNOME already and it's easier for them to just make the same choice. So I don't think Ubuntu will switch to KDE anytime soo, even if GNOME developers don't like Ubuntu and make their opinion very public. For those interested on why artists like Plasma so much, David Revoy made a nice summary: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article783/kubuntu-linux-20-04-for-a-digital-painting-workstation-reasons-and-install-guide https://www.davidrevoy.com/article783/kubuntu-linux-20-04-fo....

worik 6y ago

This, lack of thumbnails, has annoyed me too, for years.

input_sh 6y ago
If you're used to GNOME, might I suggesting a fork? elementary OS has thumbnails for years: https://imgur.com/a/7JlJCnN https://imgur.com/a/7JlJCnN
- aidenn0 6y ago
  Is that a file picker, or just the file manager?
  - gsich 6y ago
    file manager
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- 1_player 6y ago
  Why is there a metric ton of whitespace between the image and the label? Why doesn't anyone care about pleasant design in the Linux world? It's arguably the reason one would pick Elementary OS, yet this is the result.

ploxiln 6y ago

On macOS, I install https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll to disable scroll acceleration, because I find it annoying, and macOS has no config option to disable it.

samatman 6y ago
Hey at least it's possible. System Preferences-level config has a cognitive cost, it's ok by me to move 1% or fewer level stuff to plugins. My example is that I want the scroll direction reversed when I have my trackball plugged in, but not on the trackpad, and there's a helper app called Scroll Reverser which does the trick. Alas, my white whale is focus-follows-mouse, and I just... can't have it. Not worth abandoning the Mac over, not for me, but.. arrgh.
- ibly31 6y ago
  How does "focus follows mouse" work? If I'm understanding; your desktop is a collection of various sizes windows, maybe overlapping and stacking. If your mouse goes off the side of the one you're focusing, it will auto focus the one you're now hovering over. Won't this lead to accidents where you'll have a larger window suddenly gain focus, with no way to see the old one and re-focus it? Seems easy to make a mistake. This maybe would be solved by a window manager that enforces never allowing windows to stack depthwise? Which OSX doesn't have of course. Just size-and-position-hotkey workarounds
  - samatman 6y ago
    Nope, what you're describing is a mistake in focus-follows-mouse, one which has been made more than once. In real, XWin-style focus-follows-mouse, the window you mouse over gets the focus, but, isn't pulled to the front. If you click, it gets the front and the focus. I use Moom, a semi-tile snap-style window wrangler, and a widescreen with three panels. What I want to do is just slide the cursor over and start typing, but I have to remember to click, and often enough I just don't. The One True Wiki has a nice discussion of the subject: https://wiki.c2.com/?FocusFollowsMouse https://wiki.c2.com/?FocusFollowsMouse

renewiltord 6y ago

You can solve this in hardware with a mouse with a free-wheel. My Logitech G502 lets you click a button to swap modes from free-wheel to braked-wheel.

Nursie 6y ago
I tried a logitech mouse with that feature, mx anywhere 2s, but you lose the mousewheel middle-click as the wheel-mode switch is a physical switch and cannot be remapped. Ended up taking it back for a refund and getting a g703 instead.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Interesting. The G502 has the middle-click on the scroll wheel and the wheel-mode is a separate one. Presumably like in your G703.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    I don't think I have a wheel-mode option on my G703. I have a small button above the wheel which changes the pointer speed, but nothing I can see that puts the wheel into an accelerated more. Honestly if the "2s Anywhere" had had the setup you described I would have kept it. Logitech tried to explain that middle slick was still there, on the button further back towards the palm rest, but it felt so unnatural and inconvenient. The 502 looks like a nice piece of kit.

m463 6y ago

There's a quote that I think of in situations like this: "Be the change you want to see in the world" - ghandi That said, you can't do that with windows or macosx. Now capitalism works, so apple and microsoft apply the money they make to hard/unsexy things like sleep-wake bug fixes and APIs and sane defaults. But they also bake advertising into their codebase and leech data home to the mothership and prevent you from running all the programs you'd like. So look at linux as an opportunity.

lmm 6y ago
You can contribute all you want but it's not going to be enough to stop Pottering or RedHat from hijacking the project and breaking everything. I used to contribute but these days what's the point?
- sfgweilr4f 6y ago
  For more information on "Pottering", a random search produced this: https://slated.org/the_poetterisation_of_gnu_linux https://slated.org/the_poetterisation_of_gnu_linux The more you know.
  - m463 6y ago
    I've never heard of the term before, I wonder if it's the basis for "puttering" as in "puttering about the house" EDIT: nope, it's more direct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering a connection the article didn't make clear.
    - sfgweilr4f 6y ago
      I was quoting the parent comment for misspelling "pottering" as "poettering" since I'd not encountered either term. I'm not sure using someone's surname is such a great idea for this purpose. But I now at least understand why. Also their anger at the added complexity being done to Linux and surrounding structures including but not limited to systemd. But these structures are still in flux. Even if it means a mess along the way.

Technically 6y ago

Why would you gripe that a person uses your software but cares too much?

phendrenad2 6y ago

> the maintainer was not happy with my approach This is the absolute CORE of the problem with open-source software. Someone becomes the "maintainer" of a project, often through no skill of their own (they just showed up at the right time), which effectively makes them BDFL with infinite veto power. Hard-forks of popular projects are politically unpopular (for good reason), so that isn't an option. Instead, the whole world of software that relies on a package is broken or fixed at the whim of one dude.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
josteink 6y ago
> This is the absolute CORE of the problem with open-source software. Someone becomes the "maintainer" of a project, often through no skill of their own That’s a bit unnuanced, isn’t it? Nobody randomly becomes the maintainer of a big/popular project without having a history of contributing. They were the ones willing to pick up the task of doing free labour for everyone after the last guy didn’t want the job anymore. As maintainer of a project, their job is to try to respond to bugs, maintain it, improve it and keep it working. All for free. If somebody submits a low quality or low effort patch which goes against the projects conventions or general strategies or patterns which will over time increase the maintainer’s burden, he is under no obligation to accept that patch. On the contrary, whoever submits the patch is the one who wants to benefit from all that time invested into the project so far, for his own good. I think it’s absolutely fair to expect/demand that they are also willing to put up some effort when they send in patches and receive feedback.

legulere 6y ago

> But comparing Gnome vs KDE, it is quite clear that KDE has much more features. This is never a complaint I heard about KDE. Usability is not about how many features a program has. Usually more features make it harder to have good usability.

eitland 6y ago

> And you will also find such examples for MacOSX or Windows. If anyone wonders, here are three from Mac last I used it: - fn took the place of ctrl on the laptop (but not the full keyboard). Unlike on Dell and Lenovo who also has this problem it could not be remapped neither at boot nor in the OS. - CMD - tab forced me to think ahead of time if I want to change to the last application or the last window of the same application. I.e. switching between two Safari instances takes a different key combination than switching between Safari and IntelliJ. - modifier keys worked differently between applications, e.g. selecting to the end of a word was either ctrl-shift, alt-shift or CMD-shift depending on application.

oefrha 6y ago
> CMD - tab forced me to think ahead of time if I want to change to the last application or the last window of the same application. I.e. switching between two Safari instances takes a different key combination than switching between Safari and IntelliJ. That’s a feature, not a bug. I personally hate having to tab through a million browser windows to find the application I need, or having to tab through unrelated applications when looking for a browser window, which is what I have to put up with when using Windows.
- eitland 6y ago
  It is a feature which replace another feature (stack based switching). It broke my flow multiple times a day for three years until I got a Windows machine again. I guess we are just differently wired, the idea of stopping to consider which shortcurt to use was neither natural nor possible for me at that age (around 30). KDE does this perfectly however. It defaults to Windows/classic Gnome 2 behaviour but can easily be configured however one wants it.
- silon42 6y ago
  It's not a feature for anyone used to standard alt+tab (and ctrl+tab). Often I wish switching between tabs was on first level too. I don't appreciate the Mac/Gnome way.
  - 6y ago

rob74 6y ago

First, I fully agree: this is not a bug, it's a missing feature. Second, I may be a minority here, but I actually don't mind this feature missing at all. I however do (or did) mind Windows putting its "thumbs.db" files all over the place, so that's the first thing I deactivate when installing it (along with enabling "show hidden files" and "show extension for known file types").

xeyownt 6y ago
- "Welcome to the new GNOME car. It's totally free!". - "Looks great. But there are no mirrors. Isn't that dangerous?" - "Yeah, but that's not a bug, it's a missing feature. Besides, we don't like mirrors because in all cars they need to be cleaned all the time." - "Really? Apparently the KDE cars also have mirrors but different technology, and they don't need to be cleaned at all. Also, what's the difference between a bug or missing feature if a lot of people complain about it?" - "Oh yeah. But honestly we really don't like that people have to clean their mirrors, so we prefer not to have them."
- rob74 6y ago
  Looks like we disagree on what's a bug and what's a feature in a file picker. But the mirrors on a car are mandated by law, so the equivalent for that would be a missing Cancel button (which forces you to always open a file). If I had to pick a car part equivalent to the file thumbnails, it would probably be seat heating or a built-in navigation system - it's nice to have (for some, others never use it), but you can use the car without problems if it's broken or not installed. I'm not saying that it's not a nice feature to have, but it's also definitely non-trivial - it's not only thumbnails for images, if you do that people will also demand thumbnails for videos (including, of course, all ancient formats), PDF files, Word/Excel/PowerPoint documents, HTML pages etc. etc. etc.

noisy_boy 6y ago

> Anyway, I guess there are actually not too much people caring about this feature I do care about this feature just like the author and though I don't have any evidence supporting my thinking, I think nobody enjoys trawling through bunch of weirdly named files (which is typical of how downloaded image files get named by default) looking for that specific picture/icon. After the Gnome 3 debacle where they basically refused to listen to the users and even removed not-so-obscure features like tabbed windows in nautilus (which I noticed is back now), I just didn't have the confidence that raising a feature request would amount to much.