24 ms·

Cosmic DE update: System76's new Linux desktop environment

255 points by Santosh83 4y ago

resuresu 4y ago
Just what Linux needs, more fragmentation.
- lucsky 4y ago
  They call it "choice" I think /s
  - pxc 4y ago
    This but unironically. Use a different operating system if you want your vendor to tie you up and tell you what to do. Buy a pretty toaster if you want a slick appliance— not a computer. I'm sick of this complaint, which boils down to this: desktop Linux (taken collectively) isn't very much like a product for consumers by a vendor who wants to suck you into their ecosystem. Guess what? That's *what's good* about the Linux desktop. If you want a no-choice monoculture whose design better supports a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware, you've got options already. If you want to be a consumer instead of a participant in a community and a tradition, go buy something.
    - nibbleshifter 4y ago
      Exactly this. I don't know why some people seem to want a "one true desktop" monoculture. The whole reason I use Linux is because I get to make choices that make sense for me.
      - pxc 4y ago
        In fairness I think I do know what they want, which is better support from third-party (and especially proprietary) software vendors. A Linux workstation can be painfully close to perfectly usable for a lot of professionals who have various personal reasons to prefer it to Windows or macOS— reasons you and I would likely emphatically agree with, no less! There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. I get it. I've contended with integrating disparate GUI frameworks on my system. I appreciate what Apple's virtual monopoly on app frameworks for macOS allows them to do in terms of accessibility and integrations and UI changes, in rapid, uniform ways. But you can't impose uniformity on the Linux desktop without draining the oasis, without killing what makes it a breath of fresh air in the first place.
        robinsonb5 4y ago
        I don't think it's even the UI that's the problem. The problem is this: > ./GuitarPro ./GuitarPro: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I bought this program several years ago while using a Mint 13 system - it won't run on Mint 20. Maybe I could set up a Docker, or copy the correct version of the libraries, or whatever - maybe it could be coaxed into working, maybe not - but while end users are likely to encounter this kind of roadblock Linux is just a non-starter as a platform for commercial software.
        nibbleshifter 4y ago
        Openssl specifically not providing a stable ABI is the bane of my fucking life. Many other libraries are similar. See: glibc... At least the kernel promises not to break user space. I guess because user space keeps fucking itself.
        pmontra 4y ago
        > There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. If Adobe builds Photoshop for Red Hat and make it run only on Red Hat, people wanting to use Photoshop will install Red Hat. The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu.
        pxc 4y ago
        > The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu. This is basically how Steam still works, pending the release of SteamOS 3.0, and it hasn't been a problem for other distros. They can sub in their own libs and repackage the thing or use an Ubuntu chroot. This is what Snap and Flatpak are for though, and I think they'll handle it well, going forward.
    - spoiler 4y ago
      I actually agree with you, but I think that's not what people complain about. I think people mostly complain about a lack of cohesion that Windows/macOS have. But then again, their design language has recently started to be less cohesive too (or more precisely, mix of older and newer design systems are apparent). Like, it's generally difficult to get something working/looking nicely and consistently on Linux. A somewhat exception to this rule is GNOME, but even then there's issues with KDE/Qt app theming sometimes. Like, until 2021 (I think) I lived with a broken looking inkscape and Krita (used it as a hobby) because I gave up trying to figure out how to fix the theming, since none of the fixes suggested online worked. Then one day after some random update it started working So, there's a lot of space for improvement and better cross compatibility between these "subsystems" Granted, though, it's getting better. But I assume not at a pace an average user can perceive. So, i thinking that's where people get frustrated.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        The Windows ecosystem has never had a coherent design. I fondly remember the Windows 7 days where we had Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and Zune Media Player each with a completely different design style despite coming from the same company. Similarly, Outlook vs Windows Live Mail vs etc or Word Perfect vs Word. And these are just comparing similar Microsoft products.
        spoiler 4y ago
        Ok I guess I've had a bit of a different perception back then, since thinking back I think you're rights. I guess the thing I was thinking of being cohesive were stuff like context menus, or integrating better with the window manager (or whatever it's called on Windows) than they do on Linux (since you had to integrate with the only existing one, not choose one). My earlier complaint about Krita/Inkscape is that most "labels" rendered in a colour and labels that was almost indistinguishable from the background, so I was largely working with shortcuts, or from memory and sometimes squinting to see what I'm clicking lol. It was an issue with all non-gnome apps, but I mostly used those two.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I'll buy/build a Linux desktop when we get quality hardware and software options (where "good hardware" means more than "fast CPU! big memory!"), but for now Mac is a pretty good experience. You can't hack around the source code for proprietary programs (I've pretty much never wanted to do this on any desktop system), but you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software.
      - pxc 4y ago
        > Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I realize I come off as extreme here, but that's really how I feel. I think that's an obviously fair way to describe the Microsoft Store and the Google Play Store. (Idk about iOS' App Store because I don't use iOS.) I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. (Windows suffers from that latter problem, too, though it's not as egregious as macOS.) > you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software. The core software is pretty much what we're talking about here: DEs and/or bundled apps. > for now Mac is a pretty good experience I understand that many people like it and I think their reasons for liking it are mostly good. But for me, using macOS is genuinely miserable, not just a little off. And I think the kind of app ecosystem that Mac people really love, of thoughfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee... is just not that great. To an extent that Mac lovers rarely admit or don't understand, a huge proportion of those apps exist only to compensate for Apple's own oversights, which wouldn't matter so much in an open ecosystem. The rest just aren't worth the cost of a closed ecosystem, in my opinion.
        yamtaddle 4y ago
    - lucsky 4y ago
      Dude. Chill. That was just a mild joke. Who hurt you?
      - pxc 4y ago
        No anger towards you personally, just venting about what has apparently become a pet peeve for me :) (I actually liked your joke— even upvoted it before I wrote my rant lol. Sometimes you just gotta let it out!)
        lucsky 4y ago
        Understood. I love venting too :D
- Longhanks 4y ago
  With friends likr Gnome, you don’t need enemies anymore. If gnome were to collaborate with others, there would much less necessity for forks (such as in the GTK2 days). But instead, the close any feature request minimally differing their pristine idea of what a desktop should look like, shut down any other discussion about the topic, and god forbid if you mention you want customization like themes or, gasp, tray icons. Sure, this may come off polemic, but I very much think that gnome is largely to blame for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Redhat. They've made some power-plays (including with Gnome) and have been successful at it. Ubuntu tried to do the same more than once, but fell so hard on their face every time that it can be hard to tell that they were trying to do the same thing.
  - johnchristopher 4y ago
    Meh. No, gnome is not. XFCE was there before gnome 3 and is still here today. Same for all other popular desktop environments.
    - LinAGKar 4y ago
      Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie were not.
      - johnchristopher 4y ago
        Gnome 3 can't be responsible for Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie adding 3 fragments to the desktop environment space instead of those 3 adding 1 by merging each other. Gnome 3 brushed people the wrong way but blaming it for fragmentation when those 3 went away to do their 3 different things doesn't make sense. Come on, MATE and Cinnamon ? To be consistent Cinnamon shouldn't exist and only MATE would make the cut if Gnome 3 is the problem. Numbers I can find speak for themselves though: https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm There's no fragmentation, only KDE and Gnome.
- Darmody 4y ago
  I don't actually see the fragmentation here. You can move from Gnome Shell to this without having to change the software you use.
  - runjake 4y ago
    I think they are referring to the human resources part of the fragmentation issue: capable people working on yet another desktop environment. The, perhaps unrealistic and naive, thinking behind this is that if these capable people combined their efforts into one desktop environment, we'd have one great Linux desktop environment, instead of several okay desktop environments.
    - Darmody 4y ago
      Well, they are not starting everything from the scratch. And as you say, you can't have people with different ideas working on the same project. Cosmic exists because Gnome devs have their own roadmap that many people dislike.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      That assumes they would even in theory work together, or would have a design choice they can all agree on.
      - runjake 4y ago
        Yep, thus "unrealistic and naive."
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Is there a right amount of fragmentation? Or is monolithic control like Windows and MacOS better? Part of the promise of open source software is that it can be adapted and extended. Part of the promise of Linux is that the kernel and the DE are not completely dependent on each other. So it can hardly be surprising when people take these promises at face value and make things with them.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I'm fine with trying new things. In particular, I'm curious as to whether people have tried to build a desktop environment around webkit or similar--basically using the web stack instead of traditional GUI toolkits? Is there some obvious reason this is a bad idea (yeah, I know working in JS is unpleasant, but we have alternatives these days and frankly all of the native GUI toolkits for Linux are pretty unpleasant as well). EDIT: I know ChromeOS exists, but that's a lot more than a desktop environment (can't even run a compiler natively for all intents and purposes iirc).
  - rrgok 4y ago
    That's a great question about using web tech to build a DE. I've been wondering the same for sometime. Someone should shed some light on this.
    - deleted 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
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  - Eeems 4y ago
    So Gnome?
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Gnome just embeds a JavaScript runtime (and probably not a particularly good one) as an embedded scripting language. It's not using a web engine (which would handle styling, layout, accessibility, etc in addition to running JS). https://gjs.guide/ https://gjs.guide/
  - dvdkon 4y ago
    I think Deepin's DE used to be based on HTML years back, but they switched to Qt.
- rrgok 4y ago
  On one hand, it is great to have different options. On the other, think about the amount of effort wasted away. Sometime I wonder what can they pull off if KDE team, Gnome team, XFCE team and now Cosmic team got together.
  - godshatter 4y ago
    People want different things. The extra work added on different desktop environments is work that neither Microsoft or Apple is doing, and I think that's a good thing. If you want an environment for the average Joe, use desktop A. If you want a techy "fiddle all the knobs" one than use desktop B. If you want a minimalist one, use Desktop C, etc. MS doesn't make three or more versions of their OS suited for different populations, you get what they want to give you. Same for Apple. Diversity is a strength of Linux. I don't think Pepsi worries about fragmentation with their various flavors of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and whatever other hundreds of brands they own. Sure, diversity can be a problem if there aren't enough developers to go around but I'd rather have more options than fewer.
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    There is no one-size-fits-all solution here because there isn't a single entity controlling the development and access of Linux desktop environments. Pretty sure if all of those teams got together to somehow deliver a solution, neither the devs or the users will be happy with the result.
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      The team working on a single desktop wouldn't necessarily be much bigger anyway.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    Same with billions of programming languages, frameworks. Do you guys complain because there is more than 1 game studio? You'd rather have one movie/serie and a handful of actors director so all movies and series are made by the same team in order to not waste ressources? A single house architecture plan so that everyone live in the very same house with no customisation possible?
- winrid 4y ago
  This is long overdue. The Linux desktop needs a lot of polishing and i feel like we've hit a wall with productivity considering the gnome file picker has had the same issues with thumbnails since i was in highschool with Ubuntu 6.10. If Rust helps us actually improve and change things, then fine.
  - krolden 4y ago
    Try kde
    - winrid 4y ago
      I'm on KDE right now (KDE Neon). Basic stuff like, installing Chrome still uses the GTK file picker, is an issue. Loading screen goes to wrong monitor and oriented wrong. Plugging in monitor sometimes makes both go black requiring hard reboot (I think I fixed this with a kernel flag...). Just overall polish. Although I do like Neon as a distro so far.
      - Vogtinator 4y ago
        All of that works here on Tumbleweed... Chrome is actually one of the browsers that had KDE file picker integration early on. Initially it called kdialog, now it uses xdg-desktop-portal.
        winrid 4y ago
        Yeah I think it might be a system wide config issue causing Chrome to use the wrong picker. But anyway I should really give an RPM based distro a go at some point.
  - criddell 4y ago
    It needs more than just polishing. It would great to see the community come to agreement on a modern permissions model so that you can do things like grant access to your camera/microphone/calendar/location/photos/etc... for ever, just this time, or never. I know it's being worked on and there are some competing systems, but it would be great for there to be a single API.
- krolden 4y ago
  Ummm, a vibrant ecosystem of desktop environments/window managers is one of the best things about Linux.
  - BizarreByte 4y ago
    Except for the fact virtually all have serious usability issues, bugs, and general problems. The community spreads its efforts thin into a thousand projects rather than making one amazing one.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      Windows and Mac also have usability issues and they are driven by two companies that don't allow break ups of their DEs. I don't think that a FOSS community will ever converge on an amazing DE without part of it breaking apart and starting a new one, for the sake of building something even more amazing or failing on the way.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  The back-end stuff doesn't really change, so more DE options is not going to be the end of the world.
exabrial 4y ago
My next laptop is going to be from them, no doubt. I'm hoping someday they offer Arm offerings too!
- ok_dad 4y ago
  I have one of their cheapest compact models, the Lemur, and I love it. I don't use it much lately, but everything "just works" for the basic cases, and I only have to sometimes deal with poor Linux support for non-System76 peripherals which would be an issue on any Linux notebook. I plan to buy a desktop from them soon because I'm not into having a laptop now that I work from home permanently and I also want to run some games on it that you absolutely cannot run without a graphics card.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
    At this point, my white whale for a Linux laptop is functioning sleep. Any problems/higher than expected power consumption?
    - gkbrk 4y ago
      Is it? My ThinkPad running Linux goes to sleep and wakes up just fine.
      - nerdponx 4y ago
        Mine does too, but the battery still dies after a while, unlike my MacBook which seems to have nearly unlimited sleep capability.
      - pmontra 4y ago
        There are a number of factors. In my case it's the driver of the graphic card. I never had problems with sleep on any of my Linux laptops. The problem is with shutdown. Shutdown is shutdown when I'm using the Noveau driver for my NVidia card but it's reboot when I'm using the NVidia driver. Unfortunately Noveau doesn't get sync right for my card with both Wayland and X11 so I have to use NVidia with X11. The few times per year that I have to poweroff I press the power button right before the BIOS screen appears. At least version 470 of the driver fixed the brightness control keys. The didn't work for years and I remapped them as hotkeys to run xbacklight.
cmm 4y ago
Things some people (ahem) learn only _after_ investing in System76 hardware: most of the premium goes not toward Coreboot development (S76 employs all of one full-time firmware guy) but rather toward a largely-pointless rewrite of Linux desktop in Rust. Welp, lesson learned
- Shared404 4y ago
  I'm actually very happy to see this. I like S76's additions to GNOME, and I'm happy to see them moving to a place where they'll no longer be stuck on GNOME's whims and wishes. They've been positioning themselves to have a more put together and unified stack as time goes on, and this is just one part. On top of that, it seems to me that a DE is a very good place to get memory safety, so I'm glad to see someone moving that direction.
- JasonFruit 4y ago
  Things I learned after buying one of their machines: I now have a nice usable laptop that has great hardware compatibility with every Linux distro I've tried. They can spend the money however they like, if you ask me.
- nix23 4y ago
  > Welp, lesson learned Yes go to HP/Dell/Lenovo/Apple where no one works on open firmware, i don't understand your mindset....
  - cmm 4y ago
    I wonder what's worse: not supplying open firmware at all, or doing it at the S76 level. You get laptops that don't suspend as shipped, you still cannot remove of disable Intel ME, but yay another desktop shell!
    - newsclues 4y ago
      Are these S76 level bugs, or issues from their suppliers? The leap in scale from using Clevo designs with S76 software to designing your own hardware is massive. They worked with HP. But if you are expecting Apple MacBook Pro level devices in the Linux flavour, I think it's going to take a few more years of buying what they are selling to achieve that scale.
whalesalad 4y ago
"Pop!_OS" - the name of this distribution is also a potential name for a future Elon Musk offspring. Also probably a great forcing function for ensuring that all of their build tooling works with bizarre names lol.
skrtskrt 4y ago
I’m waiting for (probably far off) day when System76 makes its own laptops instead of using Clevo hardware. I just can’t deal with that keyboard & trackpad quality. Everything System76 makes themselves is awesome.
- blondin 4y ago
  > I’m waiting for (probably far off) day when System76 makes its own laptops instead of using Clevo hardware. I just can’t deal with that keyboard & trackpad quality. oh, i never knew that! i thought they made everything. for real though, who thought that having pgup and pgdn as mini keys on top of the left and right arrow keys was a good idea? and how did that get through quality assurance?
  - JonathonW 4y ago
    Page up and page down in that location is fairly common in business-class laptops; Lenovo, Dell, and HP all do it in at least some models.
    - trinix912 4y ago
      IBM ThinkPads had Back/Forward buttons there. They acted like the back/forward buttons on mice these days. Very useful for browsing in Windows Explorer and IE. I loved them.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    They make their desktops but not their laptops. That's probably why their laptops can sometimes have some weird quirks (keyboard layouts, screen resolution options, etc).
  - trelane 4y ago
    It's really common. The term is ODM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manu...
  - qotgalaxy 4y ago
brundolf 4y ago
[deleted]
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  Just to clarify, System76 doesn't make Framework laptops; that's a different company.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    [deleted]
    - slaw 4y ago
      Framework doesn't sell Linux laptops. They have option to buy laptop without operating system, which is very rare.
    - tssva 4y ago
      Framework laptops are capable of running Linux but they aren't "Linux laptops"in the manner System76 systems are. They ship with Windows or no OS.
Kukumber 4y ago
I don't know if that's the image compression, but the font looks very blurry.. they need to fix that asap Also i'm not a fan of the color scheme, they'll need to make things a little bit more vibrant Looks like it's still the Gnome Shell, not a fan at all
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  > they need to fix that asap Why does this urgently need to be fixed?
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    Good text rendering is pretty essential imo, not only for usability but also because it can make software look dated and... cheap, I guess. Sure, looks don't really matter, but for text they really do.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Huh, I usually associate poor text rendering with modern software.
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  It's the compression. There are some pretty heavy JPEG artifacts in the screenshots.
- uo21tp5hoyg 4y ago
  It's the compression and it's kinda insane how different they look before and after[1][2], maybe they should disable compression for UI previews. [1] https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-828c-5a10e3cb2e47_image2.jpg?auto=compress,format https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-828c-5a10e3cb2e47_image2.jpg https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8... [2]https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b4c5-0e0ddf7d8bd3_image4.jpg?auto=compress,format https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b4c5-0e0ddf7d8bd3_image4.jpg https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b...
WuxiFingerHold 4y ago
This looks really good. I'm curious when we'll get to see the first beta of the whole DE and especially how the tiling will work. I recently switched back from Pop!_OS to Ubuntu because of really annoying bugs with the tiling window manager and especially with the suspend functionality. So I think they should not neglect their current DE.
- nilslice 4y ago
  recently updated firmware fixed the suspend issues I had on lemur pro!
kibwen 4y ago
I got a System76 last year and I have no urge to go back to Windows. I was worried from prior experience with desktop Linux 10+ years ago that I'd be suffering a constant toll of minor breakage and annoyances, but it's been a lovely experience. (It's also possible that every Linux DE these days is this good, I only have a single sample.)
- okamiueru 4y ago
  I was about to reply to you before reading your last sentence. I'd say that is very much the case. In fact, I tried pop! out of curiosity, and found that I liked it less than arch + gnome. At least overall, there was a little mix of pros and cons.
- colordrops 4y ago
  My experience now is that the Windows desktop is intolerable compared to Linux at this point. Overwrought, buggy, and confusing. Mac is better but it's far too locked down. If you are willing to put some effort into customization, especially with tiling window managers and other WMs besides gnome, you can get a sublimely efficient and natural experience. I'm currently using Sway and it's vastly better than commercial desktops for software dev.
  - doubled112 4y ago
    I find Mac’s desktop experience to be really limited. I was shipped one from work and it didn’t grow on me at all. Fancy Zones is fantastic on Windows, corner tiling is at least a thing in most Linux DEs, and then there’s Mac. Same way window management worked in System 7. Maybe worse because there was at least a visible grab corner back then. I’m not sure how people use their touchpads without middle click emulation either.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      You can install Magnet on macOS to get this corner snapping/tiling functionality, it's nice. > I’m not sure how people use their touchpads without middle click emulation either. Because macOS application doesn't need and not designed for it.
deafpolygon 4y ago
[flagged]
- Shared404 4y ago
  The downvotes aren't because you've stated some uncomfortable truth, it's because you've not added anything to the conversation. Duh it's Linux. It's S76. Lot's of people here _want_ Linux.
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    > Lot's of people here _want_ Linux. Yes, because as it turns out - it's our only alternative.
- timeon 4y ago
  > But a fundamental issue is Is it? Is it really though?
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    Yes. Yes, really.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > the underlying system is still just.. Linux. Don't be ridiculous. It's GNU+Linux. Linux is only the kernel. In all seriousness, though - yeah, that's... the point. Linux distros have their pain points, but they beat Darwin or NT.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    The GNU software is insignificant compared to the rest of what is included in the operating system. Most casual users won't even actively use GNU software.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
jagged-chisel 4y ago
Are these four-finger gestures customizable? Is there perchance a profile for the incoming macOS user to match what they expect? Edit: I suppose the assumption, based on the paragraph and screenshot, is that they update depending on the arrangement of workspaces: horizontal vs vertical
- askvictor 4y ago
  I just want 2-finger gestures to be configurable (or at least the same as on Windows as I use both). For some reason it has been almost impossible to get a two-finger left/right swipe to act as forward/back actions (the only browser it works for is Epiphany, which doesn't support plugins until the most recent version)
  - jagged-chisel 4y ago
    Oof. You are indeed welcome to your own customizations, but having the scroll gesture suddenly become a navigation gesture because I dared bump into the end of a scroll area is absolutely infuriating. Customization ftmfw.
    - askvictor 4y ago
      The problem is that the two finger gesture isn't customisable in Linux/X/Gnome/Application/I'm-not-even-sure-who's-repsonsible. Or at least it's extremely well hidden. The gesture works fine for me on Windows and ChromeOS (and OSX which I think was the first). It's more of a long-pull that's hard to accidentally trigger.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Using PopOS, I have three-finger left/right mapped to back/forward in Firefox. Intuitively I would expect two-finger left/right to control horizontal scrolling, although I'm well aware that some browsers/platforms interpret this as back/forward.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Yes, I have PopOS configured to use four-finger gestures to navigate workspaces and bring up the overview of all open windows in a workspace.
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
I would enjoy it greatly if people would stop making any more fucking desktop environments for Linux, thanks. 5,000 of them is enough.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gchamonlive 4y ago
  Nobody is forcing anyone to go through all the different DE offerings. Sometimes, innovation springs out of reiteration. You find out new ways of doing something, with its own set of tradeoffs, by pursing different avenues. So please direct this energy towards something productive. Maybe write your own DE, or your own IDE. Who knows what would come out of it. Certainly something better than wasting energy on aimless ranting, that is for sure.
  - wilsonnb3 4y ago
    I kind of agree with the GP, mostly because I feel like if we could focus the efforts of the various DE communities on a single project then we could finally get a Linux DE that has as much polish as Windows and MacOS. Probably just a pipe dream though.
    - Kbelicius 4y ago
      Why do you think that all these different DEs exists? Because all those people that currently work on all those different DEs wouldn't be able to agree on anything if they were all working on the same DE. Lets also not forget about the mythical man month.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Not GP, but (all else being equal) the more people that are using the same DE as me, the better off I am. The more DEs that exist, the less likely a person installing linux will use the same DE as me.
haberman 4y ago
What are people’s opinions of PopOS? I tried it one after reading a good review, but the experience had enough bumps that I resolved to just do Ubuntu next time.
- hexis 4y ago
  I like it, but I'm a fairly unsophisticated user of any Linux desktop.
- FridgeSeal 4y ago
  I use it as the main OS on my desktop, fairly unsophisticated usecase-some web browsing, programming, playing games via Steam. I’ve encountered no real friction or hiccups. It feels like “ubuntu but cohesive”.
- acomjean 4y ago
  I use it for work. I kind of like it, works well enough and it keeps updating and not breaking which makes me happy. I feel its like ubuntu on training wheels. The Gnome desktop environment is servicable, the only issue is I which there was a shortcut on the top bar for sound selections. Basically it seems pretty robust, and I don't have any issues.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  I like it. Used it on an AMD/Nvidia desktop and had minimal problems. The fact that it comes with the proprietary nvidia drivers is nice for gamers. Main reason I stopped using it is because I dislike Gnome 3 and there isn’t much benefit to running popOS over another Linux if you don’t use their DE.
- pbohun 4y ago
  I've run PopOS for over 2 years now, and am happy with it after distro-hopping for years. It runs Steam very well, the interface is great and works well with a hi-res display, and it is very easy to setup custom keyboard shortcuts, which I use to launch programs. My workflow is pretty simple, I mostly want the OS out of my way, but when I have to interact with it, it's been nice.
- 4y ago
alexklarjr 4y ago
They changed text from puke orange to puke grass. This is progress I aways embrace. May be in far away future my grandchildren will be able to select the text colour or even define it themselves at their loking. That quantum leap would be called “century of linux on desktop”.
indigodaddy 4y ago
I’m pretty happy with EndeavourOS/Cinnamon, but this looks very nice too. I’ve always been attracted to PopOS, but various quirks or actual boot-preventing problems have prevented me from actually installing it on various systems..
sshine 4y ago
Pop_OS! is a great fork of Ubuntu that unfortunately messed up my suspend and made my cooler run on max because the GPU was somehow always active.
djray 4y ago
I'm not a fan of the trend toward monochromatic, low-contrast desktops. Colour iconography seems to be frowned upon, whereas it's a definite aid to speed of comprehension. The settings list in particular is just a sea of text with small icons that are only minimally useful. Microsoft went this way with its Metro design language but has come to its senses in more recent years and both Windows and Visual Studio are more colourful now. I'd recommend a tweak to the amount of whitespace, too. I'd prefer smaller dialogs or a larger default font (and maybe a wider one, too) to balance out the vast areas of blank space.

255 points by Santosh83 4y ago

resuresu 4y ago

Just what Linux needs, more fragmentation.

lucsky 4y ago
They call it "choice" I think /s
- pxc 4y ago
  This but unironically. Use a different operating system if you want your vendor to tie you up and tell you what to do. Buy a pretty toaster if you want a slick appliance— not a computer. I'm sick of this complaint, which boils down to this: desktop Linux (taken collectively) isn't very much like a product for consumers by a vendor who wants to suck you into their ecosystem. Guess what? That's *what's good* about the Linux desktop. If you want a no-choice monoculture whose design better supports a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware, you've got options already. If you want to be a consumer instead of a participant in a community and a tradition, go buy something.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    Exactly this. I don't know why some people seem to want a "one true desktop" monoculture. The whole reason I use Linux is because I get to make choices that make sense for me.
    - pxc 4y ago
      In fairness I think I do know what they want, which is better support from third-party (and especially proprietary) software vendors. A Linux workstation can be painfully close to perfectly usable for a lot of professionals who have various personal reasons to prefer it to Windows or macOS— reasons you and I would likely emphatically agree with, no less! There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. I get it. I've contended with integrating disparate GUI frameworks on my system. I appreciate what Apple's virtual monopoly on app frameworks for macOS allows them to do in terms of accessibility and integrations and UI changes, in rapid, uniform ways. But you can't impose uniformity on the Linux desktop without draining the oasis, without killing what makes it a breath of fresh air in the first place.
      - robinsonb5 4y ago
        I don't think it's even the UI that's the problem. The problem is this: > ./GuitarPro ./GuitarPro: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I bought this program several years ago while using a Mint 13 system - it won't run on Mint 20. Maybe I could set up a Docker, or copy the correct version of the libraries, or whatever - maybe it could be coaxed into working, maybe not - but while end users are likely to encounter this kind of roadblock Linux is just a non-starter as a platform for commercial software.
        nibbleshifter 4y ago
        Openssl specifically not providing a stable ABI is the bane of my fucking life. Many other libraries are similar. See: glibc... At least the kernel promises not to break user space. I guess because user space keeps fucking itself.
      - pmontra 4y ago
        > There's this hope that if only for the fragmentation, Linux might finally have Photoshop or whatever. If Adobe builds Photoshop for Red Hat and make it run only on Red Hat, people wanting to use Photoshop will install Red Hat. The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu.
        pxc 4y ago
        > The big problem is what happens when Microsoft makes Excel work perfectly on Ubuntu and only on Ubuntu. This is basically how Steam still works, pending the release of SteamOS 3.0, and it hasn't been a problem for other distros. They can sub in their own libs and repackage the thing or use an Ubuntu chroot. This is what Snap and Flatpak are for though, and I think they'll handle it well, going forward.
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I actually agree with you, but I think that's not what people complain about. I think people mostly complain about a lack of cohesion that Windows/macOS have. But then again, their design language has recently started to be less cohesive too (or more precisely, mix of older and newer design systems are apparent). Like, it's generally difficult to get something working/looking nicely and consistently on Linux. A somewhat exception to this rule is GNOME, but even then there's issues with KDE/Qt app theming sometimes. Like, until 2021 (I think) I lived with a broken looking inkscape and Krita (used it as a hobby) because I gave up trying to figure out how to fix the theming, since none of the fixes suggested online worked. Then one day after some random update it started working So, there's a lot of space for improvement and better cross compatibility between these "subsystems" Granted, though, it's getting better. But I assume not at a pace an average user can perceive. So, i thinking that's where people get frustrated.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      The Windows ecosystem has never had a coherent design. I fondly remember the Windows 7 days where we had Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and Zune Media Player each with a completely different design style despite coming from the same company. Similarly, Outlook vs Windows Live Mail vs etc or Word Perfect vs Word. And these are just comparing similar Microsoft products.
      - spoiler 4y ago
        Ok I guess I've had a bit of a different perception back then, since thinking back I think you're rights. I guess the thing I was thinking of being cohesive were stuff like context menus, or integrating better with the window manager (or whatever it's called on Windows) than they do on Linux (since you had to integrate with the only existing one, not choose one). My earlier complaint about Krita/Inkscape is that most "labels" rendered in a colour and labels that was almost indistinguishable from the background, so I was largely working with shortcuts, or from memory and sometimes squinting to see what I'm clicking lol. It was an issue with all non-gnome apps, but I mostly used those two.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I'll buy/build a Linux desktop when we get quality hardware and software options (where "good hardware" means more than "fast CPU! big memory!"), but for now Mac is a pretty good experience. You can't hack around the source code for proprietary programs (I've pretty much never wanted to do this on any desktop system), but you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software.
    - pxc 4y ago
      > Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I realize I come off as extreme here, but that's really how I feel. I think that's an obviously fair way to describe the Microsoft Store and the Google Play Store. (Idk about iOS' App Store because I don't use iOS.) I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. (Windows suffers from that latter problem, too, though it's not as egregious as macOS.) > you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software. The core software is pretty much what we're talking about here: DEs and/or bundled apps. > for now Mac is a pretty good experience I understand that many people like it and I think their reasons for liking it are mostly good. But for me, using macOS is genuinely miserable, not just a little off. And I think the kind of app ecosystem that Mac people really love, of thoughfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee... is just not that great. To an extent that Mac lovers rarely admit or don't understand, a huge proportion of those apps exist only to compensate for Apple's own oversights, which wouldn't matter so much in an open ecosystem. The rest just aren't worth the cost of a closed ecosystem, in my opinion.
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
  - lucsky 4y ago
    Dude. Chill. That was just a mild joke. Who hurt you?
    - pxc 4y ago
      No anger towards you personally, just venting about what has apparently become a pet peeve for me :) (I actually liked your joke— even upvoted it before I wrote my rant lol. Sometimes you just gotta let it out!)
      - lucsky 4y ago
        Understood. I love venting too :D
Longhanks 4y ago
With friends likr Gnome, you don’t need enemies anymore. If gnome were to collaborate with others, there would much less necessity for forks (such as in the GTK2 days). But instead, the close any feature request minimally differing their pristine idea of what a desktop should look like, shut down any other discussion about the topic, and god forbid if you mention you want customization like themes or, gasp, tray icons. Sure, this may come off polemic, but I very much think that gnome is largely to blame for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Redhat. They've made some power-plays (including with Gnome) and have been successful at it. Ubuntu tried to do the same more than once, but fell so hard on their face every time that it can be hard to tell that they were trying to do the same thing.
- johnchristopher 4y ago
  Meh. No, gnome is not. XFCE was there before gnome 3 and is still here today. Same for all other popular desktop environments.
  - LinAGKar 4y ago
    Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie were not.
    - johnchristopher 4y ago
      Gnome 3 can't be responsible for Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie adding 3 fragments to the desktop environment space instead of those 3 adding 1 by merging each other. Gnome 3 brushed people the wrong way but blaming it for fragmentation when those 3 went away to do their 3 different things doesn't make sense. Come on, MATE and Cinnamon ? To be consistent Cinnamon shouldn't exist and only MATE would make the cut if Gnome 3 is the problem. Numbers I can find speak for themselves though: https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm There's no fragmentation, only KDE and Gnome.
Darmody 4y ago
I don't actually see the fragmentation here. You can move from Gnome Shell to this without having to change the software you use.
- runjake 4y ago
  I think they are referring to the human resources part of the fragmentation issue: capable people working on yet another desktop environment. The, perhaps unrealistic and naive, thinking behind this is that if these capable people combined their efforts into one desktop environment, we'd have one great Linux desktop environment, instead of several okay desktop environments.
  - Darmody 4y ago
    Well, they are not starting everything from the scratch. And as you say, you can't have people with different ideas working on the same project. Cosmic exists because Gnome devs have their own roadmap that many people dislike.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    That assumes they would even in theory work together, or would have a design choice they can all agree on.
    - runjake 4y ago
      Yep, thus "unrealistic and naive."
Finnucane 4y ago
Is there a right amount of fragmentation? Or is monolithic control like Windows and MacOS better? Part of the promise of open source software is that it can be adapted and extended. Part of the promise of Linux is that the kernel and the DE are not completely dependent on each other. So it can hardly be surprising when people take these promises at face value and make things with them.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I'm fine with trying new things. In particular, I'm curious as to whether people have tried to build a desktop environment around webkit or similar--basically using the web stack instead of traditional GUI toolkits? Is there some obvious reason this is a bad idea (yeah, I know working in JS is unpleasant, but we have alternatives these days and frankly all of the native GUI toolkits for Linux are pretty unpleasant as well). EDIT: I know ChromeOS exists, but that's a lot more than a desktop environment (can't even run a compiler natively for all intents and purposes iirc).
- rrgok 4y ago
  That's a great question about using web tech to build a DE. I've been wondering the same for sometime. Someone should shed some light on this.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Eeems 4y ago
  So Gnome?
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Gnome just embeds a JavaScript runtime (and probably not a particularly good one) as an embedded scripting language. It's not using a web engine (which would handle styling, layout, accessibility, etc in addition to running JS). https://gjs.guide/ https://gjs.guide/
- dvdkon 4y ago
  I think Deepin's DE used to be based on HTML years back, but they switched to Qt.
rrgok 4y ago
On one hand, it is great to have different options. On the other, think about the amount of effort wasted away. Sometime I wonder what can they pull off if KDE team, Gnome team, XFCE team and now Cosmic team got together.
- godshatter 4y ago
  People want different things. The extra work added on different desktop environments is work that neither Microsoft or Apple is doing, and I think that's a good thing. If you want an environment for the average Joe, use desktop A. If you want a techy "fiddle all the knobs" one than use desktop B. If you want a minimalist one, use Desktop C, etc. MS doesn't make three or more versions of their OS suited for different populations, you get what they want to give you. Same for Apple. Diversity is a strength of Linux. I don't think Pepsi worries about fragmentation with their various flavors of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and whatever other hundreds of brands they own. Sure, diversity can be a problem if there aren't enough developers to go around but I'd rather have more options than fewer.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  There is no one-size-fits-all solution here because there isn't a single entity controlling the development and access of Linux desktop environments. Pretty sure if all of those teams got together to somehow deliver a solution, neither the devs or the users will be happy with the result.
  - prmoustache 4y ago
    The team working on a single desktop wouldn't necessarily be much bigger anyway.
- prmoustache 4y ago
  Same with billions of programming languages, frameworks. Do you guys complain because there is more than 1 game studio? You'd rather have one movie/serie and a handful of actors director so all movies and series are made by the same team in order to not waste ressources? A single house architecture plan so that everyone live in the very same house with no customisation possible?
winrid 4y ago
This is long overdue. The Linux desktop needs a lot of polishing and i feel like we've hit a wall with productivity considering the gnome file picker has had the same issues with thumbnails since i was in highschool with Ubuntu 6.10. If Rust helps us actually improve and change things, then fine.
- krolden 4y ago
  Try kde
  - winrid 4y ago
    I'm on KDE right now (KDE Neon). Basic stuff like, installing Chrome still uses the GTK file picker, is an issue. Loading screen goes to wrong monitor and oriented wrong. Plugging in monitor sometimes makes both go black requiring hard reboot (I think I fixed this with a kernel flag...). Just overall polish. Although I do like Neon as a distro so far.
    - Vogtinator 4y ago
      All of that works here on Tumbleweed... Chrome is actually one of the browsers that had KDE file picker integration early on. Initially it called kdialog, now it uses xdg-desktop-portal.
      - winrid 4y ago
        Yeah I think it might be a system wide config issue causing Chrome to use the wrong picker. But anyway I should really give an RPM based distro a go at some point.
- criddell 4y ago
  It needs more than just polishing. It would great to see the community come to agreement on a modern permissions model so that you can do things like grant access to your camera/microphone/calendar/location/photos/etc... for ever, just this time, or never. I know it's being worked on and there are some competing systems, but it would be great for there to be a single API.
krolden 4y ago
Ummm, a vibrant ecosystem of desktop environments/window managers is one of the best things about Linux.
- BizarreByte 4y ago
  Except for the fact virtually all have serious usability issues, bugs, and general problems. The community spreads its efforts thin into a thousand projects rather than making one amazing one.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    Windows and Mac also have usability issues and they are driven by two companies that don't allow break ups of their DEs. I don't think that a FOSS community will ever converge on an amazing DE without part of it breaking apart and starting a new one, for the sake of building something even more amazing or failing on the way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
ssnistfajen 4y ago
The back-end stuff doesn't really change, so more DE options is not going to be the end of the world.

exabrial 4y ago

My next laptop is going to be from them, no doubt. I'm hoping someday they offer Arm offerings too!

ok_dad 4y ago
I have one of their cheapest compact models, the Lemur, and I love it. I don't use it much lately, but everything "just works" for the basic cases, and I only have to sometimes deal with poor Linux support for non-System76 peripherals which would be an issue on any Linux notebook. I plan to buy a desktop from them soon because I'm not into having a laptop now that I work from home permanently and I also want to run some games on it that you absolutely cannot run without a graphics card.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  At this point, my white whale for a Linux laptop is functioning sleep. Any problems/higher than expected power consumption?
  - gkbrk 4y ago
    Is it? My ThinkPad running Linux goes to sleep and wakes up just fine.
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      Mine does too, but the battery still dies after a while, unlike my MacBook which seems to have nearly unlimited sleep capability.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      There are a number of factors. In my case it's the driver of the graphic card. I never had problems with sleep on any of my Linux laptops. The problem is with shutdown. Shutdown is shutdown when I'm using the Noveau driver for my NVidia card but it's reboot when I'm using the NVidia driver. Unfortunately Noveau doesn't get sync right for my card with both Wayland and X11 so I have to use NVidia with X11. The few times per year that I have to poweroff I press the power button right before the BIOS screen appears. At least version 470 of the driver fixed the brightness control keys. The didn't work for years and I remapped them as hotkeys to run xbacklight.

cmm 4y ago

Things some people (ahem) learn only _after_ investing in System76 hardware: most of the premium goes not toward Coreboot development (S76 employs all of one full-time firmware guy) but rather toward a largely-pointless rewrite of Linux desktop in Rust. Welp, lesson learned

Shared404 4y ago
I'm actually very happy to see this. I like S76's additions to GNOME, and I'm happy to see them moving to a place where they'll no longer be stuck on GNOME's whims and wishes. They've been positioning themselves to have a more put together and unified stack as time goes on, and this is just one part. On top of that, it seems to me that a DE is a very good place to get memory safety, so I'm glad to see someone moving that direction.
JasonFruit 4y ago
Things I learned after buying one of their machines: I now have a nice usable laptop that has great hardware compatibility with every Linux distro I've tried. They can spend the money however they like, if you ask me.
nix23 4y ago
> Welp, lesson learned Yes go to HP/Dell/Lenovo/Apple where no one works on open firmware, i don't understand your mindset....
- cmm 4y ago
  I wonder what's worse: not supplying open firmware at all, or doing it at the S76 level. You get laptops that don't suspend as shipped, you still cannot remove of disable Intel ME, but yay another desktop shell!
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Are these S76 level bugs, or issues from their suppliers? The leap in scale from using Clevo designs with S76 software to designing your own hardware is massive. They worked with HP. But if you are expecting Apple MacBook Pro level devices in the Linux flavour, I think it's going to take a few more years of buying what they are selling to achieve that scale.

whalesalad 4y ago

"Pop!_OS" - the name of this distribution is also a potential name for a future Elon Musk offspring. Also probably a great forcing function for ensuring that all of their build tooling works with bizarre names lol.

skrtskrt 4y ago

I’m waiting for (probably far off) day when System76 makes its own laptops instead of using Clevo hardware. I just can’t deal with that keyboard & trackpad quality. Everything System76 makes themselves is awesome.

blondin 4y ago
> I’m waiting for (probably far off) day when System76 makes its own laptops instead of using Clevo hardware. I just can’t deal with that keyboard & trackpad quality. oh, i never knew that! i thought they made everything. for real though, who thought that having pgup and pgdn as mini keys on top of the left and right arrow keys was a good idea? and how did that get through quality assurance?
- JonathonW 4y ago
  Page up and page down in that location is fairly common in business-class laptops; Lenovo, Dell, and HP all do it in at least some models.
  - trinix912 4y ago
    IBM ThinkPads had Back/Forward buttons there. They acted like the back/forward buttons on mice these days. Very useful for browsing in Windows Explorer and IE. I loved them.
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  They make their desktops but not their laptops. That's probably why their laptops can sometimes have some weird quirks (keyboard layouts, screen resolution options, etc).
- trelane 4y ago
  It's really common. The term is ODM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manu...
- qotgalaxy 4y ago

brundolf 4y ago

[deleted]

hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
Just to clarify, System76 doesn't make Framework laptops; that's a different company.
- brundolf 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - slaw 4y ago
    Framework doesn't sell Linux laptops. They have option to buy laptop without operating system, which is very rare.
  - tssva 4y ago
    Framework laptops are capable of running Linux but they aren't "Linux laptops"in the manner System76 systems are. They ship with Windows or no OS.

Kukumber 4y ago

I don't know if that's the image compression, but the font looks very blurry.. they need to fix that asap Also i'm not a fan of the color scheme, they'll need to make things a little bit more vibrant Looks like it's still the Gnome Shell, not a fan at all

marginalia_nu 4y ago
> they need to fix that asap Why does this urgently need to be fixed?
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Good text rendering is pretty essential imo, not only for usability but also because it can make software look dated and... cheap, I guess. Sure, looks don't really matter, but for text they really do.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Huh, I usually associate poor text rendering with modern software.
LinAGKar 4y ago
It's the compression. There are some pretty heavy JPEG artifacts in the screenshots.
uo21tp5hoyg 4y ago
It's the compression and it's kinda insane how different they look before and after[1][2], maybe they should disable compression for UI previews. [1] https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-828c-5a10e3cb2e47_image2.jpg?auto=compress,format https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-828c-5a10e3cb2e47_image2.jpg https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8... [2]https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b4c5-0e0ddf7d8bd3_image4.jpg?auto=compress,format https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b4c5-0e0ddf7d8bd3_image4.jpg https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b...

WuxiFingerHold 4y ago

This looks really good. I'm curious when we'll get to see the first beta of the whole DE and especially how the tiling will work. I recently switched back from Pop!_OS to Ubuntu because of really annoying bugs with the tiling window manager and especially with the suspend functionality. So I think they should not neglect their current DE.

nilslice 4y ago
recently updated firmware fixed the suspend issues I had on lemur pro!

kibwen 4y ago

I got a System76 last year and I have no urge to go back to Windows. I was worried from prior experience with desktop Linux 10+ years ago that I'd be suffering a constant toll of minor breakage and annoyances, but it's been a lovely experience. (It's also possible that every Linux DE these days is this good, I only have a single sample.)

okamiueru 4y ago
I was about to reply to you before reading your last sentence. I'd say that is very much the case. In fact, I tried pop! out of curiosity, and found that I liked it less than arch + gnome. At least overall, there was a little mix of pros and cons.
colordrops 4y ago
My experience now is that the Windows desktop is intolerable compared to Linux at this point. Overwrought, buggy, and confusing. Mac is better but it's far too locked down. If you are willing to put some effort into customization, especially with tiling window managers and other WMs besides gnome, you can get a sublimely efficient and natural experience. I'm currently using Sway and it's vastly better than commercial desktops for software dev.
- doubled112 4y ago
  I find Mac’s desktop experience to be really limited. I was shipped one from work and it didn’t grow on me at all. Fancy Zones is fantastic on Windows, corner tiling is at least a thing in most Linux DEs, and then there’s Mac. Same way window management worked in System 7. Maybe worse because there was at least a visible grab corner back then. I’m not sure how people use their touchpads without middle click emulation either.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    You can install Magnet on macOS to get this corner snapping/tiling functionality, it's nice. > I’m not sure how people use their touchpads without middle click emulation either. Because macOS application doesn't need and not designed for it.

deafpolygon 4y ago

[flagged]

Shared404 4y ago
The downvotes aren't because you've stated some uncomfortable truth, it's because you've not added anything to the conversation. Duh it's Linux. It's S76. Lot's of people here _want_ Linux.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  > Lot's of people here _want_ Linux. Yes, because as it turns out - it's our only alternative.
timeon 4y ago
> But a fundamental issue is Is it? Is it really though?
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  Yes. Yes, really.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> the underlying system is still just.. Linux. Don't be ridiculous. It's GNU+Linux. Linux is only the kernel. In all seriousness, though - yeah, that's... the point. Linux distros have their pain points, but they beat Darwin or NT.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  The GNU software is insignificant compared to the rest of what is included in the operating system. Most casual users won't even actively use GNU software.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

jagged-chisel 4y ago

Are these four-finger gestures customizable? Is there perchance a profile for the incoming macOS user to match what they expect? Edit: I suppose the assumption, based on the paragraph and screenshot, is that they update depending on the arrangement of workspaces: horizontal vs vertical

askvictor 4y ago
I just want 2-finger gestures to be configurable (or at least the same as on Windows as I use both). For some reason it has been almost impossible to get a two-finger left/right swipe to act as forward/back actions (the only browser it works for is Epiphany, which doesn't support plugins until the most recent version)
- jagged-chisel 4y ago
  Oof. You are indeed welcome to your own customizations, but having the scroll gesture suddenly become a navigation gesture because I dared bump into the end of a scroll area is absolutely infuriating. Customization ftmfw.
  - askvictor 4y ago
    The problem is that the two finger gesture isn't customisable in Linux/X/Gnome/Application/I'm-not-even-sure-who's-repsonsible. Or at least it's extremely well hidden. The gesture works fine for me on Windows and ChromeOS (and OSX which I think was the first). It's more of a long-pull that's hard to accidentally trigger.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Using PopOS, I have three-finger left/right mapped to back/forward in Firefox. Intuitively I would expect two-finger left/right to control horizontal scrolling, although I'm well aware that some browsers/platforms interpret this as back/forward.
kibwen 4y ago
Yes, I have PopOS configured to use four-finger gestures to navigate workspaces and bring up the overview of all open windows in a workspace.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

I would enjoy it greatly if people would stop making any more fucking desktop environments for Linux, thanks. 5,000 of them is enough.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gchamonlive 4y ago
Nobody is forcing anyone to go through all the different DE offerings. Sometimes, innovation springs out of reiteration. You find out new ways of doing something, with its own set of tradeoffs, by pursing different avenues. So please direct this energy towards something productive. Maybe write your own DE, or your own IDE. Who knows what would come out of it. Certainly something better than wasting energy on aimless ranting, that is for sure.
- wilsonnb3 4y ago
  I kind of agree with the GP, mostly because I feel like if we could focus the efforts of the various DE communities on a single project then we could finally get a Linux DE that has as much polish as Windows and MacOS. Probably just a pipe dream though.
  - Kbelicius 4y ago
    Why do you think that all these different DEs exists? Because all those people that currently work on all those different DEs wouldn't be able to agree on anything if they were all working on the same DE. Lets also not forget about the mythical man month.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Not GP, but (all else being equal) the more people that are using the same DE as me, the better off I am. The more DEs that exist, the less likely a person installing linux will use the same DE as me.

haberman 4y ago

What are people’s opinions of PopOS? I tried it one after reading a good review, but the experience had enough bumps that I resolved to just do Ubuntu next time.

hexis 4y ago
I like it, but I'm a fairly unsophisticated user of any Linux desktop.
FridgeSeal 4y ago
I use it as the main OS on my desktop, fairly unsophisticated usecase-some web browsing, programming, playing games via Steam. I’ve encountered no real friction or hiccups. It feels like “ubuntu but cohesive”.
acomjean 4y ago
I use it for work. I kind of like it, works well enough and it keeps updating and not breaking which makes me happy. I feel its like ubuntu on training wheels. The Gnome desktop environment is servicable, the only issue is I which there was a shortcut on the top bar for sound selections. Basically it seems pretty robust, and I don't have any issues.
wilsonnb3 4y ago
I like it. Used it on an AMD/Nvidia desktop and had minimal problems. The fact that it comes with the proprietary nvidia drivers is nice for gamers. Main reason I stopped using it is because I dislike Gnome 3 and there isn’t much benefit to running popOS over another Linux if you don’t use their DE.
pbohun 4y ago
I've run PopOS for over 2 years now, and am happy with it after distro-hopping for years. It runs Steam very well, the interface is great and works well with a hi-res display, and it is very easy to setup custom keyboard shortcuts, which I use to launch programs. My workflow is pretty simple, I mostly want the OS out of my way, but when I have to interact with it, it's been nice.
4y ago

alexklarjr 4y ago

They changed text from puke orange to puke grass. This is progress I aways embrace. May be in far away future my grandchildren will be able to select the text colour or even define it themselves at their loking. That quantum leap would be called “century of linux on desktop”.

indigodaddy 4y ago

I’m pretty happy with EndeavourOS/Cinnamon, but this looks very nice too. I’ve always been attracted to PopOS, but various quirks or actual boot-preventing problems have prevented me from actually installing it on various systems..

sshine 4y ago

Pop_OS! is a great fork of Ubuntu that unfortunately messed up my suspend and made my cooler run on max because the GPU was somehow always active.

djray 4y ago

I'm not a fan of the trend toward monochromatic, low-contrast desktops. Colour iconography seems to be frowned upon, whereas it's a definite aid to speed of comprehension. The settings list in particular is just a sea of text with small icons that are only minimally useful. Microsoft went this way with its Metro design language but has come to its senses in more recent years and both Windows and Visual Studio are more colourful now. I'd recommend a tweak to the amount of whitespace, too. I'd prefer smaller dialogs or a larger default font (and maybe a wider one, too) to balance out the vast areas of blank space.