4 ms·

Top menu with reasonable use of available space rather than the half-assed attempt to appeal to a hypothetical normie user on a 2014 tablet/netbook that gnome i

Top menu with reasonable use of available space rather than the half-assed attempt to appeal to a hypothetical normie user on a 2014 tablet/netbook that gnome is doing Touchpad driver that isn't outright physically painful to use Progress in assistive technologies, font rendering, display technology and resolution rather than shipping hardly readable traditional Linux-style dark-blue on black terminal themes on today's dark default themes coupled with a lack of easy configuration Actually working power management, and actual power efficiency resulting in 10h running times (despite overreaching stuff such as systemd, the developer of which has now left for MS to feast on INIs) Focus on end user functionality rather than endless new developer improvements and abstraction frameworks for self-inflicted problems (snap/flatpack/Docker and other meta containers rather than fixing ld.so and glibc or just use static linking) when new apps aren't coming anyways A feeling that the desktop/Finder and UX is evolving and respecting habits rather than being restarted with every release State of the art commercial apps for media production rather than 90s apps struggling for compatibility as devs turn to new playgrounds

terhechte 4y ago
I would add Keybindings that are the same in all apps. Also, Having Command / Super as the keybinding key is awesome because it opens Control for the Readline / Emacs keybindings and doesn't end up in insane shortcut situations like every linux terminal where "copy" suddenly transforms from CTRL+C to CTRL+Shift+C. MacOS has by far the best idea and implementation of how desktop keybindings should work (and no, I love vim but having desktop-wide vim keybindings doesn't make sense because not every input field can easily be modal). I'm constantly surprised why no linux distribution has copied this.
- krylon 4y ago
  That is the one thing I really miss after going back to Linux. Especially the Emacs-style keybinding in all text input were a delight.
  - terhechte 4y ago
    FYI: You can enable them in Gnome with Gnome-Tweaks. Apparently a very recent version of Gnome dropped this functionality for reasons that are beyond my understanding (but that's often the case when I look at the decisions that the Gnome devs make). However, getting the Control -> Command/Super thing to work is much trickier. The best way is to use this: https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail However when I tried that, I ran into all kinds of weird behaviours all over the OS. Also, it doesn't work with Wayland.
    - benn0 4y ago
      Another option is https://kinto.sh https://kinto.sh . It worked perfectly for me out of the box on Pop OS, and with a few tweaks to shortcuts I’m pretty happy with the experience to the point where I can fairly seamlessly switch between computers and not be driven crazy by the shortcuts.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  You can't mention Emacs keybindings and claim "keybindings are the same in all apps" when Apple's Emacs keybindings are not the same as Emacs proper. For example moving a word left is now Ctrl-Option B instead of M-B. Most terminal emulators let you remap Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+V if you really want.
  - lobstrosity420 4y ago
    > Most terminal emulators let you remap Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+V if you really want. But that doesn’t really help does it? Because now you’ve made killing and backgrounding a process just as hard. What you need is an extra accelerator key, which is only available on expensive boutique keyboards and not available at all on laptop keyboards.
  - terhechte 4y ago
    Sure, it's not the full Emacs keybindings. But the existing ones are still better than what Linux Desktops offer. Some of the missing ones can be added by updating the `DefaultKeyBinding.dict` [1]. So in comparison to Linux not only does it have better Emacs keybindings support, macOS also allows adding a ton of custom shortcuts per system - without having to install weird xmodmap daemons that mutate your keys (which you also can do on macOS). [1] https://gist.github.com/jwreagor/9670905 https://gist.github.com/jwreagor/9670905
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      An eye-opener for me on how useful all the configurability of Linux actually is has been looking into getting macOS-alike keyboard layouts and shortcut behavior on Linux. There's pretty high demand for it (lots and lots of posts all over the Web from people trying to figure out how to make it happen) and there are whole projects based around it, so I assume a fair amount of time has been spent trying to make it work, yet all the options I've found are janky as hell and fail to work under all kinds of common scenarios. The more distance I get from using Linux as a daily-driver desktop OS, the more it looks like most of the benefits of its configurability and modularity are fairly superficial—especially in its GUI stack—while the harm it causes is deep.
alxlaz 4y ago
> Top menu with reasonable use of available space rather than the half-assed attempt to appeal to a hypothetical normie user on a 2014 tablet/netbook that gnome is doing This (space efficiency, not necessarily the top menu bar) is the main thing that's keeping me away from Linux at this time. "Liberating" a Macbook Air feels like a great idea right until you have to do actual work on it, at which point, unless you're using the terminal, the screen will be largely empty space and huge widgets, with whatever text or image you're working on cramped between all those beautifully hand-crafted organic breathable widgets. Edit: I'm not talking about window decorations being large, I'm talking about application widgets being large. You can fit like three macOS buttons in the space of a single Adwaita- or Breeze-themed button. See e.g. this SE thread for a comparison -- not with macOS, but basically the same problem: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/489533/how-to-get-a-compact-look-in-gtk https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/489533/how-to-get-a...
- circuit10 4y ago
  Isn’t this mostly a Gnome problem? Gnome isn’t the only DE
  - alxlaz 4y ago
    No, it's not mostly a Gnome problem. The default KDE theme, Breeze, is equally tablet-quality, and unless you want to fiddle with old QtCurve (which is nowhere near as space-efficient as macOS anyway) you're largely stuck with Qt's Fusion, which is itself barely tolerable. As for Gnome applications, it's not a Gnome problem, it's a GTK problem, that affects all GTK applications, regardless of what DE they run under, and all GTK-based DEs, like XFCE.
- agentgumshoe 4y ago
  There are many desktops for Linux running the full gamut from large intrusive window dressing to nothing at all and all levels of efficiency in between.
  - alxlaz 4y ago
eitland 4y ago
> Top menu with reasonable use of available space Top menu does sound like a reasonable compromise until one has to switch between the bottom left corner of the screen and the menu in the top left enough times. I'm all for efficient use of vertical space - I am one of those who still remove the top tab bar and use tree-style-tabs, but in practice I think there is a reason why most of the world allows the menu to follow the thing it is linked to. Also note that these menus doesn't add up on other systems either. I only "waste" space for one menu line on my Linux or Windows applications too. > snap/flatpack/Docker Meanwhile on Mac I still have to use AppZapper. > A feeling that the desktop/Finder and UX is evolving and respecting habits rather than being restarted with every release You are probably comparing to Gnome and Unity here I guess, not KDE 5 or Windows? > State of the art commercial apps for media production rather than 90s apps struggling for compatibility as devs turn to new playgrounds This varies with job description I think. In my field one of the reasons why I still hesitate to get a Mac next month - despite its many advantages - is the fact that so many open source programs I use looked ugly on Mac last I checked and some weren't available at all. Meanwhile on Linux I can just ap-get them or in Windows I can apt-get them in WSL and run them, GUI and all inside Windows. That is kind of magic!
- teddyh 4y ago
  > Top menu does sound like a reasonable compromise until one has to switch between the bottom left corner of the screen and the menu in the top left enough times. A top menu was reasonable for the original 9” Macintosh display of 512×342 pixels. (The original Macintosh could not even multi-task, and the visual components of the operating system were not designed for multiple programs at once.) The top menu was always close enough, and famously used Fitts’s law to its advantage. The NeXT system (17” display, 1120×832 pixels) realized that something even closer to the mouse pointer is wherever the mouse pointer happens to be right now, and added a right mouse button to the NeXT mouse; this button was completely dedicated to showing the menu, and was not used for “right-clicking” anything.
sixothree 4y ago
Sound like you need to give Windows a shot. It may be hated, but Windows 11 pretty much addresses your issue point by point.
zdragnar 4y ago
Funny, I've had consistently worse performance and battery life (due to worse performance) on macos / mbp than my lg gram running linux.

terhechte 4y ago

I would add Keybindings that are the same in all apps. Also, Having Command / Super as the keybinding key is awesome because it opens Control for the Readline / Emacs keybindings and doesn't end up in insane shortcut situations like every linux terminal where "copy" suddenly transforms from CTRL+C to CTRL+Shift+C. MacOS has by far the best idea and implementation of how desktop keybindings should work (and no, I love vim but having desktop-wide vim keybindings doesn't make sense because not every input field can easily be modal). I'm constantly surprised why no linux distribution has copied this.

krylon 4y ago
That is the one thing I really miss after going back to Linux. Especially the Emacs-style keybinding in all text input were a delight.
- terhechte 4y ago
  FYI: You can enable them in Gnome with Gnome-Tweaks. Apparently a very recent version of Gnome dropped this functionality for reasons that are beyond my understanding (but that's often the case when I look at the decisions that the Gnome devs make). However, getting the Control -> Command/Super thing to work is much trickier. The best way is to use this: https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail However when I tried that, I ran into all kinds of weird behaviours all over the OS. Also, it doesn't work with Wayland.
  - benn0 4y ago
    Another option is https://kinto.sh https://kinto.sh . It worked perfectly for me out of the box on Pop OS, and with a few tweaks to shortcuts I’m pretty happy with the experience to the point where I can fairly seamlessly switch between computers and not be driven crazy by the shortcuts.
goosedragons 4y ago
You can't mention Emacs keybindings and claim "keybindings are the same in all apps" when Apple's Emacs keybindings are not the same as Emacs proper. For example moving a word left is now Ctrl-Option B instead of M-B. Most terminal emulators let you remap Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+V if you really want.
- lobstrosity420 4y ago
  > Most terminal emulators let you remap Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+V if you really want. But that doesn’t really help does it? Because now you’ve made killing and backgrounding a process just as hard. What you need is an extra accelerator key, which is only available on expensive boutique keyboards and not available at all on laptop keyboards.
- terhechte 4y ago
  Sure, it's not the full Emacs keybindings. But the existing ones are still better than what Linux Desktops offer. Some of the missing ones can be added by updating the `DefaultKeyBinding.dict` [1]. So in comparison to Linux not only does it have better Emacs keybindings support, macOS also allows adding a ton of custom shortcuts per system - without having to install weird xmodmap daemons that mutate your keys (which you also can do on macOS). [1] https://gist.github.com/jwreagor/9670905 https://gist.github.com/jwreagor/9670905
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    An eye-opener for me on how useful all the configurability of Linux actually is has been looking into getting macOS-alike keyboard layouts and shortcut behavior on Linux. There's pretty high demand for it (lots and lots of posts all over the Web from people trying to figure out how to make it happen) and there are whole projects based around it, so I assume a fair amount of time has been spent trying to make it work, yet all the options I've found are janky as hell and fail to work under all kinds of common scenarios. The more distance I get from using Linux as a daily-driver desktop OS, the more it looks like most of the benefits of its configurability and modularity are fairly superficial—especially in its GUI stack—while the harm it causes is deep.

alxlaz 4y ago

> Top menu with reasonable use of available space rather than the half-assed attempt to appeal to a hypothetical normie user on a 2014 tablet/netbook that gnome is doing This (space efficiency, not necessarily the top menu bar) is the main thing that's keeping me away from Linux at this time. "Liberating" a Macbook Air feels like a great idea right until you have to do actual work on it, at which point, unless you're using the terminal, the screen will be largely empty space and huge widgets, with whatever text or image you're working on cramped between all those beautifully hand-crafted organic breathable widgets. Edit: I'm not talking about window decorations being large, I'm talking about application widgets being large. You can fit like three macOS buttons in the space of a single Adwaita- or Breeze-themed button. See e.g. this SE thread for a comparison -- not with macOS, but basically the same problem: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/489533/how-to-get-a-compact-look-in-gtk https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/489533/how-to-get-a...

circuit10 4y ago
Isn’t this mostly a Gnome problem? Gnome isn’t the only DE
- alxlaz 4y ago
  No, it's not mostly a Gnome problem. The default KDE theme, Breeze, is equally tablet-quality, and unless you want to fiddle with old QtCurve (which is nowhere near as space-efficient as macOS anyway) you're largely stuck with Qt's Fusion, which is itself barely tolerable. As for Gnome applications, it's not a Gnome problem, it's a GTK problem, that affects all GTK applications, regardless of what DE they run under, and all GTK-based DEs, like XFCE.
agentgumshoe 4y ago
There are many desktops for Linux running the full gamut from large intrusive window dressing to nothing at all and all levels of efficiency in between.
- alxlaz 4y ago

eitland 4y ago

> Top menu with reasonable use of available space Top menu does sound like a reasonable compromise until one has to switch between the bottom left corner of the screen and the menu in the top left enough times. I'm all for efficient use of vertical space - I am one of those who still remove the top tab bar and use tree-style-tabs, but in practice I think there is a reason why most of the world allows the menu to follow the thing it is linked to. Also note that these menus doesn't add up on other systems either. I only "waste" space for one menu line on my Linux or Windows applications too. > snap/flatpack/Docker Meanwhile on Mac I still have to use AppZapper. > A feeling that the desktop/Finder and UX is evolving and respecting habits rather than being restarted with every release You are probably comparing to Gnome and Unity here I guess, not KDE 5 or Windows? > State of the art commercial apps for media production rather than 90s apps struggling for compatibility as devs turn to new playgrounds This varies with job description I think. In my field one of the reasons why I still hesitate to get a Mac next month - despite its many advantages - is the fact that so many open source programs I use looked ugly on Mac last I checked and some weren't available at all. Meanwhile on Linux I can just ap-get them or in Windows I can apt-get them in WSL and run them, GUI and all inside Windows. That is kind of magic!

teddyh 4y ago
> Top menu does sound like a reasonable compromise until one has to switch between the bottom left corner of the screen and the menu in the top left enough times. A top menu was reasonable for the original 9” Macintosh display of 512×342 pixels. (The original Macintosh could not even multi-task, and the visual components of the operating system were not designed for multiple programs at once.) The top menu was always close enough, and famously used Fitts’s law to its advantage. The NeXT system (17” display, 1120×832 pixels) realized that something even closer to the mouse pointer is wherever the mouse pointer happens to be right now, and added a right mouse button to the NeXT mouse; this button was completely dedicated to showing the menu, and was not used for “right-clicking” anything.

sixothree 4y ago

Sound like you need to give Windows a shot. It may be hated, but Windows 11 pretty much addresses your issue point by point.

zdragnar 4y ago

Funny, I've had consistently worse performance and battery life (due to worse performance) on macos / mbp than my lg gram running linux.