4 ms·

I use KDE daily and I don't see what your point is. I don't know Gnome because I don't use it, but saying that we have big GUI problems seems far fetched to me.

by wiz21c 4y ago

I use KDE daily and I don't see what your point is. I don't know Gnome because I don't use it, but saying that we have big GUI problems seems far fetched to me. I have a launcher, I can alt-tab between apps, I have a very nice file mananger, a pretty good console and, well, hemm, that's basically all I need. Ah yes, the BlueTooth thing is working but that user friendly; USB stick mounting is not super nice but works, everything is GPU accelerated (but tearing happens all over the palce), etc. So, yeah, it lacks polish here and there but it certainly does the job. Plus I get to read tons of community stuff about the platform. I'm sure Gnome can't be that different and thus, we should be happy that the community has been able to pull out 2 major D.E. plus a myriad of smaller ones. Happy birthday Gnome !

sph 4y ago
> I have a very nice file mananger, a pretty good console and, well, hemm, that's basically all I need This is exactly the problem. A vocal minority only needs a small subset of features, and criticise anybody that want a little more from their desktop, or at least to reach parity with commercial offerings. And then immediately go on to list all the problems with the free desktops. What about: * Functioning Wayland support on anything outside of GNOME (common retort: we do not need Wayland.) * Fractional scaling (common retort: Wayland does it, but see above) * VR support (common retort: I just need a shell, tyvm) * Lack of tearing across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: see your comment, "I don't need it". Wayland does it, but Wayland bad) * Variable Refresh Rate interface across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: I just need this option in xorg.conf, if you're on NVIDIA it's your problem) etc. As I said before, I'm fine with everybody doing their own thing. But please be mindful that what works for you, doesn't work for anybody. There's a selfishness and clique mindset that is very hard to like among Linux users. We're slowly getting to a better Linux desktop despite its users constantly bickering and pushing back any form of change that might improve their OS. It's a collective Stockholm Syndrome. https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  > Functioning Wayland support on anything outside of GNOME (common retort: we do not need Wayland.) Wayland is -trying to be- a means to an end, not an end by itself. > Fractional scaling (common retort: Wayland does it, but see above) This is really a toolkit (and to some extent window manager) issue, not a window system issue. You can have fractional scaling in both Wayland and X11, as long as the underlying toolkit (or the framework above it) can do it. For example Lazarus / LCL applications support fractional scaling in X11 even with the Gtk2 backend (which itself doesn't support fractional scaling) by doing the scaling. Window manager support for some common messages/hints (ala EWMH) so that the window manager is responsible for telling applications how to scale would improve things (e.g. being able to have per-window, per-application, per-output scaling values, independent of each other and independent of the DPI - after all i may want to scale some windows at 300% on a "regular DPI" monitor because i am taking a screencast that i want to be readable on YouTube even at bitrates). > VR support Last time i checked the issue was mainly that the space is very dependent on proprietary technologies - at least for the headsets that people would want to use. Valve has done some low level work (or, paid external people to do low level work, anyway) but even them have their own solution which i think is bound to Steam instead of some standardized way that can be used by any application. > Lack of tearing across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: see your comment, "I don't need it". Wayland does it, but Wayland bad) Lack of tearing where? Depending on where you mean it, this can be a feature instead of a problem (or at least any solution would introduce unacceptable problems). For example i prefer (i.e. it isn't a case of not caring, i actively prefer it) to have tearing on my desktop when moving/resizing windows, etc than have everything tied to the monitor's refresh rate because it makes the desktop feel much more responsive. Similarly for games where i use the mouse, i also prefer tearing to vsync because it reduces input lag (especially with some FP games that have their own issues, but the lag is there even with perfectly written games - this isn't just a workaround to the problem if badly written games, the badly written games are making it worse, but the problem is there even with good written games). On the other hand tearing during video playback is undesirable to me, of course (though with a high refresh rate monitor it isn't very noticeable - but i do not always use one). In all cases, tearing is controllable through the vblank_mode setting via the .drirc file in your home directory and the vblank_mode environment variable. My approach is simple: in the .drirc file i have the vblank_mode to 0 which forces all applications to ignore any requests for synchronizing with the refresh rate, but when playing a video (or want to run some game or application with vsync for some reason) i run it as vblank_mode=3 vlc filename (actually i use a script for that that is launched by my file manager so i don't really type it but the same idea). > * Variable Refresh Rate interface across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: I just need this option in xorg.conf, if you're on NVIDIA it's your problem) Well, yes, it is your problem, whose problem would it be when it was your choice to buy from a vendor who has repeatedly shown disdain towards working with the community? My AMD GPU works perfectly fine with my VRR monitor under Xorg and i'm certain that the Intel iGPU on my laptop would also work fine if i connected the monitor to it - but both of these GPUs have open source drivers with support from their vendors. > But please be mindful that what works for you, doesn't work for anybody. There's a selfishness and clique mindset that is very hard to like among Linux users. [...] We're slowly getting to a better Linux desktop despite its users constantly bickering and pushing back any form of change that might improve their OS. It's a collective Stockholm Syndrome. You realize that with the latter part you are basically doing the exact same thing you describe with the first part, right? The people who you see "constantly bickering and pushing back any form of change" may actually see things that change in ways that do not work for them, thus making their experience of using their computers worse. This is why when making such "improvements" it is important to do it ways that doesn't invalidate existing practices - which also implies doing things in modular and replaceable ways instead of moving towards monolithic designs. (also i'm going to assume that in the first sentence you meant "doesn't work for everybody", not "anybody" since that wouldn't make logical sense unless you wanted to say "what works for you works only for you and nobody else")
- traverseda 4y ago
  My understanding is that fractional scaling actually works a fair bit better under QT at the moment, although maybe things have changed on the bleeding edge. KDE on wayland works great for me. Wayland doesn't make it any easier to get fractional scaling, obviously. It's up to the toolkits to support fractional scaling, and while you can magnify a window by like 1.2x under wayland it's going to get blurry, you're essentially just up-scaling an image.
- wiz21c 4y ago
  Thanks for your answer. So maybe we'd need some kind of poll to know what all of us collectively need. And I'm sure those who make Gnome (many at RedHat I think) have an idea. So maybe there is some interest, or unfortunate planets alignment that makes "simple" users to be second class citizen. That is, Wayland, VR, tearing are not things that prevent one of completing a professional task so they just don't get fixed... My point was that I see many area of improvements but none of them prevents me of being happy (I use my Linux DE 80% professional and 20% leisure; or 5% movies and 95% browser/coding). It seems that some of these areas are not on the improvement level for you but on the indispensable one. So as you said, there's some personal appreciation going on. So for me the equation is more like FLOSS quality + licenses >= proprietary quality + license. That is, I value the license difference more than the quality difference; hence I'm pretty happy with many sub standard tools :-) So now, in your list, the tearing is clearly, for me, the most painful issue at the moment. Watching movies is a bit painful at times. So in the end, well, ain't sure anything gonna change soon. But the sooner the better, I agree on that :-)
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Red-Hat has decided there is no money to be taken in Linux Desktop, the extent they improve GNOME is that even enterprises need some kind of basic GUI to manage their workstations. https://lwn.net/Articles/56947/ https://lwn.net/Articles/56947/
    - Crysstalis 4y ago
      Canonical has seemingly also decided the same thing when they cancelled Unity. And I do not blame them. Has anyone you know actually paid for a Linux desktop, outside of buying some really basic and general enterprise support?
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Back in the year days of desktop dream it was common to buy Manadrake and SuSE in their respective CD/DVD software box. For example, https://lizards.opensuse.org/2011/05/03/vintage/ https://lizards.opensuse.org/2011/05/03/vintage/ But that was 20 years ago.
- troyvit 4y ago
  > * Functioning Wayland support on anything outside of GNOME (common retort: we do not need Wayland.) That might be the common retort but according to this opinion piece there's more going on: https://news.itsfoss.com/wayland-core-protocol-issue/ https://news.itsfoss.com/wayland-core-protocol-issue/ If you accept that opinion piece then it's more that Wayland doesn't need anything but GNOME. KDE and others have been working hard to function well on Wayland and have made decent progress while still offering new features (like fractional scaling) given that they weren't really a consideration when Wayland started.
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    That article is pretty rambling and the conclusion does not make a lot of sense. GNOME also does not really support custom panels on X11 either (unless you use an extension). If they do not want to support custom panels then that is their decision, it should not have any influence on what other desktops decide to do. In my personal opinion, all those panel and decoration protocols are broken and are needlessly recreating many of the same problems as were present in X11.
    - troyvit 4y ago
      Thanks for the fact check. The article was labelled as opinion, and itsfoss.com can be a little rambling at its best, so it's good to hear a more informed counter-point.

by wiz21c 4y ago

sph 4y ago

> I have a very nice file mananger, a pretty good console and, well, hemm, that's basically all I need This is exactly the problem. A vocal minority only needs a small subset of features, and criticise anybody that want a little more from their desktop, or at least to reach parity with commercial offerings. And then immediately go on to list all the problems with the free desktops. What about: * Functioning Wayland support on anything outside of GNOME (common retort: we do not need Wayland.) * Fractional scaling (common retort: Wayland does it, but see above) * VR support (common retort: I just need a shell, tyvm) * Lack of tearing across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: see your comment, "I don't need it". Wayland does it, but Wayland bad) * Variable Refresh Rate interface across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: I just need this option in xorg.conf, if you're on NVIDIA it's your problem) etc. As I said before, I'm fine with everybody doing their own thing. But please be mindful that what works for you, doesn't work for anybody. There's a selfishness and clique mindset that is very hard to like among Linux users. We're slowly getting to a better Linux desktop despite its users constantly bickering and pushing back any form of change that might improve their OS. It's a collective Stockholm Syndrome. https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/

badsectoracula 4y ago
> Functioning Wayland support on anything outside of GNOME (common retort: we do not need Wayland.) Wayland is -trying to be- a means to an end, not an end by itself. > Fractional scaling (common retort: Wayland does it, but see above) This is really a toolkit (and to some extent window manager) issue, not a window system issue. You can have fractional scaling in both Wayland and X11, as long as the underlying toolkit (or the framework above it) can do it. For example Lazarus / LCL applications support fractional scaling in X11 even with the Gtk2 backend (which itself doesn't support fractional scaling) by doing the scaling. Window manager support for some common messages/hints (ala EWMH) so that the window manager is responsible for telling applications how to scale would improve things (e.g. being able to have per-window, per-application, per-output scaling values, independent of each other and independent of the DPI - after all i may want to scale some windows at 300% on a "regular DPI" monitor because i am taking a screencast that i want to be readable on YouTube even at bitrates). > VR support Last time i checked the issue was mainly that the space is very dependent on proprietary technologies - at least for the headsets that people would want to use. Valve has done some low level work (or, paid external people to do low level work, anyway) but even them have their own solution which i think is bound to Steam instead of some standardized way that can be used by any application. > Lack of tearing across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: see your comment, "I don't need it". Wayland does it, but Wayland bad) Lack of tearing where? Depending on where you mean it, this can be a feature instead of a problem (or at least any solution would introduce unacceptable problems). For example i prefer (i.e. it isn't a case of not caring, i actively prefer it) to have tearing on my desktop when moving/resizing windows, etc than have everything tied to the monitor's refresh rate because it makes the desktop feel much more responsive. Similarly for games where i use the mouse, i also prefer tearing to vsync because it reduces input lag (especially with some FP games that have their own issues, but the lag is there even with perfectly written games - this isn't just a workaround to the problem if badly written games, the badly written games are making it worse, but the problem is there even with good written games). On the other hand tearing during video playback is undesirable to me, of course (though with a high refresh rate monitor it isn't very noticeable - but i do not always use one). In all cases, tearing is controllable through the vblank_mode setting via the .drirc file in your home directory and the vblank_mode environment variable. My approach is simple: in the .drirc file i have the vblank_mode to 0 which forces all applications to ignore any requests for synchronizing with the refresh rate, but when playing a video (or want to run some game or application with vsync for some reason) i run it as vblank_mode=3 vlc filename (actually i use a script for that that is launched by my file manager so i don't really type it but the same idea). > * Variable Refresh Rate interface across all 3 GPU vendors (common retort: I just need this option in xorg.conf, if you're on NVIDIA it's your problem) Well, yes, it is your problem, whose problem would it be when it was your choice to buy from a vendor who has repeatedly shown disdain towards working with the community? My AMD GPU works perfectly fine with my VRR monitor under Xorg and i'm certain that the Intel iGPU on my laptop would also work fine if i connected the monitor to it - but both of these GPUs have open source drivers with support from their vendors. > But please be mindful that what works for you, doesn't work for anybody. There's a selfishness and clique mindset that is very hard to like among Linux users. [...] We're slowly getting to a better Linux desktop despite its users constantly bickering and pushing back any form of change that might improve their OS. It's a collective Stockholm Syndrome. You realize that with the latter part you are basically doing the exact same thing you describe with the first part, right? The people who you see "constantly bickering and pushing back any form of change" may actually see things that change in ways that do not work for them, thus making their experience of using their computers worse. This is why when making such "improvements" it is important to do it ways that doesn't invalidate existing practices - which also implies doing things in modular and replaceable ways instead of moving towards monolithic designs. (also i'm going to assume that in the first sentence you meant "doesn't work for everybody", not "anybody" since that wouldn't make logical sense unless you wanted to say "what works for you works only for you and nobody else")
traverseda 4y ago
My understanding is that fractional scaling actually works a fair bit better under QT at the moment, although maybe things have changed on the bleeding edge. KDE on wayland works great for me. Wayland doesn't make it any easier to get fractional scaling, obviously. It's up to the toolkits to support fractional scaling, and while you can magnify a window by like 1.2x under wayland it's going to get blurry, you're essentially just up-scaling an image.
wiz21c 4y ago
Thanks for your answer. So maybe we'd need some kind of poll to know what all of us collectively need. And I'm sure those who make Gnome (many at RedHat I think) have an idea. So maybe there is some interest, or unfortunate planets alignment that makes "simple" users to be second class citizen. That is, Wayland, VR, tearing are not things that prevent one of completing a professional task so they just don't get fixed... My point was that I see many area of improvements but none of them prevents me of being happy (I use my Linux DE 80% professional and 20% leisure; or 5% movies and 95% browser/coding). It seems that some of these areas are not on the improvement level for you but on the indispensable one. So as you said, there's some personal appreciation going on. So for me the equation is more like FLOSS quality + licenses >= proprietary quality + license. That is, I value the license difference more than the quality difference; hence I'm pretty happy with many sub standard tools :-) So now, in your list, the tearing is clearly, for me, the most painful issue at the moment. Watching movies is a bit painful at times. So in the end, well, ain't sure anything gonna change soon. But the sooner the better, I agree on that :-)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Red-Hat has decided there is no money to be taken in Linux Desktop, the extent they improve GNOME is that even enterprises need some kind of basic GUI to manage their workstations. https://lwn.net/Articles/56947/ https://lwn.net/Articles/56947/
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    Canonical has seemingly also decided the same thing when they cancelled Unity. And I do not blame them. Has anyone you know actually paid for a Linux desktop, outside of buying some really basic and general enterprise support?
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Back in the year days of desktop dream it was common to buy Manadrake and SuSE in their respective CD/DVD software box. For example, https://lizards.opensuse.org/2011/05/03/vintage/ https://lizards.opensuse.org/2011/05/03/vintage/ But that was 20 years ago.
troyvit 4y ago
> * Functioning Wayland support on anything outside of GNOME (common retort: we do not need Wayland.) That might be the common retort but according to this opinion piece there's more going on: https://news.itsfoss.com/wayland-core-protocol-issue/ https://news.itsfoss.com/wayland-core-protocol-issue/ If you accept that opinion piece then it's more that Wayland doesn't need anything but GNOME. KDE and others have been working hard to function well on Wayland and have made decent progress while still offering new features (like fractional scaling) given that they weren't really a consideration when Wayland started.
- Crysstalis 4y ago
  That article is pretty rambling and the conclusion does not make a lot of sense. GNOME also does not really support custom panels on X11 either (unless you use an extension). If they do not want to support custom panels then that is their decision, it should not have any influence on what other desktops decide to do. In my personal opinion, all those panel and decoration protocols are broken and are needlessly recreating many of the same problems as were present in X11.
  - troyvit 4y ago
    Thanks for the fact check. The article was labelled as opinion, and itsfoss.com can be a little rambling at its best, so it's good to hear a more informed counter-point.