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>Of course my desktop machine doesn't actually have a "desktop" (a silly name for a place to hold random icons, a misguided attempt to make computers 'familiar'

>Of course my desktop machine doesn't actually have a "desktop" (a silly name for a place to hold random icons, a misguided attempt to make computers 'familiar' for folks who didn't quite get it by using a bad metaphor) A desktop full of icons was great. It was actually very convenient to have your most-used programs and most-accessed directories easily accessible in a grid on your desktop. Menus are worse. They're linear. To access something from a menu you need to move your mouse to the corner of your screen, click, wait for the menu to load (this often takes literally 20s on Windows for some reason), then move your mouse to click on a quite-small area of the screen in the menu. Or you could search in the menu, but for some reason that escapes me this also takes multiple seconds to process on Windows and even when it has processed half the time its search just doesn't find what I'm looking for, and wants to open my search query in a web browser instead. On a desktop, you have things arrayed out on a grid. If your mouse is in the middle of the screen, then it's in a sense O(sqrt(n)) time to get to something on a grid. Each icon can be larger (easier to click on) because they're not constrained to all be in a linear menu. And because you can choose the order they appear in, it's easy muscle memory to just click the same icon in the same spot every time. Desktops were great. I really hate this current trend of denigrating "files" and "folders" and "desktops" because their names are skeuomorphic. I blame Apple for this. They made such a big thing about removing the skeuomorphism from their notes app and replacing everything with bland samey flat design. People seem to have latched onto that and decided that anything remotely skeuomorphic must automatically be bad. Nobody is actually thinking about the top of their desk when they see a computer desktop. Maybe they did in the 1990s but not today. It's just a convenient grid of shortcuts to applications, files, and folders.

sophacles 3y ago
Why would i use a mouse to open apps and navigate a menu? I press a button and get a new terminal. I press a different button and launch a chrome window. Another one brings up a curated menu of common apps navigable by keyboard (either iterate through or search by typing the name). It all happens in under a second (except launching chrome, but that's mostly chrome not my system). Im not denigrating files and folders. Im not upset that desktop is the name, its fitting for the metaphor they were going for, its just a silly use of my screen - most of the time the "desktop" should be under actually useful windows that are doing actual useful work. Hell if i wanted a grid of clickable things I'd install something like EWW and have a button that poped up that grid instead - the problem with the desktop (besides being a bad metaphor) is that it's functionality should be overlay not underlay.
- memefrog 3y ago
  When I use a real operating system instead of an entertainment kiosk I use dmenu to open programs. But most people find using the mouse more intuitive than the keyboard. I think it's actually quite good that you get back to the desktop by clicking the 'minimise everything' button. It reduces cognitive load to switch tasks by making everything currently open "go away" and then starting a new task, rather than just loading up every new task on top of the old one. It's like opening a new window for a new task vs just opening 500 tabs in one window. Better yet are systems with multiple desktops where you start a new activity ("Okay checking my emails is done, time to do some budgeting") by going to a new desktop and then clicking Excel or GnuCash or whatever. The desktop is for most people just a generic collection of random stuff. That seems chaotic and bad and messy, but I think it's actually really powerful. It's like the filesystem. Probably for every type of document there is a better way to browse it. Photos are best browsed in a photo browser. Videos in a video browser. Documents in a document browser. But a traditional file browser is the best generic browser of things. Similarly, an overlay application launcher is probably better for quickly starting a program, and a 'recent files' launcher might be better for that, and a 'favourite folders' thing might be better for that, etc. etc. But in practice people tend towards a kind of 'managed chaos' that intentionally-designed systems don't handle very well. It's the backup, the default, the catchall. Every system needs something like that. That's what your desktop ends up being. Go to an office. Is everything filed perfectly? No, most stuff is and then there's always, inevitably, a 'miscellaneous' section. Everyone has that little jar with random screws and twist-ties and rubber bands and those little tags things that go around bread bags when they're twisted and a couple of coins. Everyone has that drawer which has USB cables and old phones and permanent markers and foreign coins from that time you went overseas. You need a 'random miscellaneous shit' category.

sophacles 3y ago

Why would i use a mouse to open apps and navigate a menu? I press a button and get a new terminal. I press a different button and launch a chrome window. Another one brings up a curated menu of common apps navigable by keyboard (either iterate through or search by typing the name). It all happens in under a second (except launching chrome, but that's mostly chrome not my system). Im not denigrating files and folders. Im not upset that desktop is the name, its fitting for the metaphor they were going for, its just a silly use of my screen - most of the time the "desktop" should be under actually useful windows that are doing actual useful work. Hell if i wanted a grid of clickable things I'd install something like EWW and have a button that poped up that grid instead - the problem with the desktop (besides being a bad metaphor) is that it's functionality should be overlay not underlay.

memefrog 3y ago
When I use a real operating system instead of an entertainment kiosk I use dmenu to open programs. But most people find using the mouse more intuitive than the keyboard. I think it's actually quite good that you get back to the desktop by clicking the 'minimise everything' button. It reduces cognitive load to switch tasks by making everything currently open "go away" and then starting a new task, rather than just loading up every new task on top of the old one. It's like opening a new window for a new task vs just opening 500 tabs in one window. Better yet are systems with multiple desktops where you start a new activity ("Okay checking my emails is done, time to do some budgeting") by going to a new desktop and then clicking Excel or GnuCash or whatever. The desktop is for most people just a generic collection of random stuff. That seems chaotic and bad and messy, but I think it's actually really powerful. It's like the filesystem. Probably for every type of document there is a better way to browse it. Photos are best browsed in a photo browser. Videos in a video browser. Documents in a document browser. But a traditional file browser is the best generic browser of things. Similarly, an overlay application launcher is probably better for quickly starting a program, and a 'recent files' launcher might be better for that, and a 'favourite folders' thing might be better for that, etc. etc. But in practice people tend towards a kind of 'managed chaos' that intentionally-designed systems don't handle very well. It's the backup, the default, the catchall. Every system needs something like that. That's what your desktop ends up being. Go to an office. Is everything filed perfectly? No, most stuff is and then there's always, inevitably, a 'miscellaneous' section. Everyone has that little jar with random screws and twist-ties and rubber bands and those little tags things that go around bread bags when they're twisted and a couple of coins. Everyone has that drawer which has USB cables and old phones and permanent markers and foreign coins from that time you went overseas. You need a 'random miscellaneous shit' category.