4 ms·

What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? I feel that as a community we

by tuxie_ 4y ago

What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? I feel that as a community we want to work on impressive things but we forget the small, boring stuff that actually makes a difference. That's why then my Linux desktop has every app icon with a different style, the margins are slightly off, the fonts are clunky, and overall just doesn't look as polished as the proprietary options.

cmeacham98 4y ago
Maybe, it's possible that the skillset and motivations of somebody working on a Wayland compositor is different than somebody working on font rendering? On second thought: everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent.
- tuxie_ 4y ago
  > everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent. Correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like you are downplaying the importance of the UX, and that's kind of my point. We talk about "making sure app icons are consistent" like it's a demeaning thing to do. I don't think they should be making anything but what they want to work on. I do wonder, however, what's the use case for what they are building because, honestly, my first reaction was "wow, impressive", followed by "I remember compiz doing this 15 years ago and it didn't stick". And finally, I was piggybacking on this post to talk about the more general issue of Linux desktops never looking as sharp as the proprietary options. Sorry, I don't mean to criticize the devs' work, it was more of a general though about the "state of Linux on the desktop".
  - oblak 4y ago
    Was anyone else doing OpenGL desktop rendering at the time? Yes, almost no one cared for the wobbling windows, virtual desktops being rendered on a cube, etc. Me included. True. But I have to ask: did none of it result in anything useful? I, for one, think having the ability to zoom out can be useful. I literally cannot browse without the ability to zoom in/out a web page. I feel that we've barely scratched the service with GUI in general, not just desktop Linux. MacOS and Windows desktop environments used to be better than what was available on *nix but that is no longer the case. I say that as someone who dislikes KDE and absolutely hates Gnome 2, including its countless derivatives.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
> What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? Fun. > I feel that as a community we want to work on impressive things but we forget the small, boring stuff that actually makes a difference. You are commenting on a project named "fire" with windows going up in flames.... That is like commenting on scifi movies that you shouldn't be able to hear explosions in space: True, but why bring that up?
- tuxie_ 4y ago
  > Fun. Fair enough. > You are commenting on a project named "fire" with windows going up in flames.... That is like commenting on scifi movies that you shouldn't be able to hear explosions in space: True, but why bring that up? Yeah, I hear you. As I wrote in another comment, this post made me think about the general issue of Linux desktops, and that feeling of "jealousy" (for lack of a better word) when looking at proprietary desktops and seeing how slick they looked. I'm talking like 15 or 20 years ago of course, then when I discovered i3 I forgot that wallpapers even existed. Nowadays, having worked for a few years with brilliant frontend devs and designers I have a deep respect for the work they do and I feel like as a community we are missing out on that. That's where I was coming from.
- hedora 4y ago
  I bet you could hear explosions in space. There'd be little impacts and a shockwave of atmosphere from whatever exploded. It'd probably be quiet though.
  - chrismorgan 4y ago
    “You can’t hear explosions in space. Unless little bits of what blew up hit you.”
tjoff 4y ago
> What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far [...] Just to hijack that a little, having a huge workspace and navigating it by panning and zooming out is quite a powerful idea. Back in the day I had neat multidisplay setup that gave me 4960x1600 pixels, I used to remote into that from a small ibm/lenovo thinkad with 1024x768 screen resolution. The default behavior of changing the remote resolution to match the screen remoting from was a complete disaster. 30 windows being scrambled and resized was a nightmare and left a mess unlike no other. But, with the right options you could retain the original size and just get a view onto that massive workspace. And with the little thinkpad-nub and the "third" mouse-button you can seamlessly pan through that. It was a fantastic experience and a great way to utilize that small screen. Later I learned that there was some really old (late 80s maybe?) window-manager that actually behaved much liked that by design, and that idea is something I've kind of missed ever since. So that was something I discovered by mistake, by using something that the designers probably didn't intend to be used that way (without the thinkpad-nub, having a workspace smaller than the remote is usually a quite painful experience). A 3d-accelerated window-manager that encourage playing around could be used to find such neat and very useful workflows.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Agree, I recall setting X11 up this way at some point (I think this was not a WM but an X setting). I actually looked at wayfire and tried using it for a while, but I'm now so used to sway/i3 shortcuts it is difficult to switch. There is swayfire, but I could not make it work due to some package incompatibilities.
zamalek 4y ago
> What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? If you're using a multi-touch table.

by tuxie_ 4y ago

cmeacham98 4y ago

Maybe, it's possible that the skillset and motivations of somebody working on a Wayland compositor is different than somebody working on font rendering? On second thought: everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent.

tuxie_ 4y ago
> everyone is equally competent and motivated at everything and these developers are wasting their time and should be making sure app icons are consistent. Correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like you are downplaying the importance of the UX, and that's kind of my point. We talk about "making sure app icons are consistent" like it's a demeaning thing to do. I don't think they should be making anything but what they want to work on. I do wonder, however, what's the use case for what they are building because, honestly, my first reaction was "wow, impressive", followed by "I remember compiz doing this 15 years ago and it didn't stick". And finally, I was piggybacking on this post to talk about the more general issue of Linux desktops never looking as sharp as the proprietary options. Sorry, I don't mean to criticize the devs' work, it was more of a general though about the "state of Linux on the desktop".
- oblak 4y ago
  Was anyone else doing OpenGL desktop rendering at the time? Yes, almost no one cared for the wobbling windows, virtual desktops being rendered on a cube, etc. Me included. True. But I have to ask: did none of it result in anything useful? I, for one, think having the ability to zoom out can be useful. I literally cannot browse without the ability to zoom in/out a web page. I feel that we've barely scratched the service with GUI in general, not just desktop Linux. MacOS and Windows desktop environments used to be better than what was available on *nix but that is no longer the case. I say that as someone who dislikes KDE and absolutely hates Gnome 2, including its countless derivatives.

diffeomorphism 4y ago

> What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? Fun. > I feel that as a community we want to work on impressive things but we forget the small, boring stuff that actually makes a difference. You are commenting on a project named "fire" with windows going up in flames.... That is like commenting on scifi movies that you shouldn't be able to hear explosions in space: True, but why bring that up?

tuxie_ 4y ago
> Fun. Fair enough. > You are commenting on a project named "fire" with windows going up in flames.... That is like commenting on scifi movies that you shouldn't be able to hear explosions in space: True, but why bring that up? Yeah, I hear you. As I wrote in another comment, this post made me think about the general issue of Linux desktops, and that feeling of "jealousy" (for lack of a better word) when looking at proprietary desktops and seeing how slick they looked. I'm talking like 15 or 20 years ago of course, then when I discovered i3 I forgot that wallpapers even existed. Nowadays, having worked for a few years with brilliant frontend devs and designers I have a deep respect for the work they do and I feel like as a community we are missing out on that. That's where I was coming from.
hedora 4y ago
I bet you could hear explosions in space. There'd be little impacts and a shockwave of atmosphere from whatever exploded. It'd probably be quiet though.
- chrismorgan 4y ago
  “You can’t hear explosions in space. Unless little bits of what blew up hit you.”

tjoff 4y ago

> What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far [...] Just to hijack that a little, having a huge workspace and navigating it by panning and zooming out is quite a powerful idea. Back in the day I had neat multidisplay setup that gave me 4960x1600 pixels, I used to remote into that from a small ibm/lenovo thinkad with 1024x768 screen resolution. The default behavior of changing the remote resolution to match the screen remoting from was a complete disaster. 30 windows being scrambled and resized was a nightmare and left a mess unlike no other. But, with the right options you could retain the original size and just get a view onto that massive workspace. And with the little thinkpad-nub and the "third" mouse-button you can seamlessly pan through that. It was a fantastic experience and a great way to utilize that small screen. Later I learned that there was some really old (late 80s maybe?) window-manager that actually behaved much liked that by design, and that idea is something I've kind of missed ever since. So that was something I discovered by mistake, by using something that the designers probably didn't intend to be used that way (without the thinkpad-nub, having a workspace smaller than the remote is usually a quite painful experience). A 3d-accelerated window-manager that encourage playing around could be used to find such neat and very useful workflows.

cycomanic 4y ago
Agree, I recall setting X11 up this way at some point (I think this was not a WM but an X setting). I actually looked at wayfire and tried using it for a while, but I'm now so used to sway/i3 shortcuts it is difficult to switch. There is swayfire, but I could not make it work due to some package incompatibilities.

zamalek 4y ago

> What's the use case for being able to zoom out of my desktop that far and have windows permanently rotated at an arbitrary angle? If you're using a multi-touch table.