4 ms·

For me the strength of a "DE" lies not so much in the UI elements you list, but in applications working in concert cohesively through conventions imposed by the

by sho_hn 12y ago

For me the strength of a "DE" lies not so much in the UI elements you list, but in applications working in concert cohesively through conventions imposed by the environment and shared global state. Things like a HIG, shared bookmarks (e.g. filesystem locations), shared context services (e.g. search engines, web accounts, ...), shared behavior settings. You're going to reply "but these things work outside DEs as well" - they do (though only to a degree), yes, but these systems were conceived and standardized in context of the desktop environment projects, and that's no accident. As communities they attract developers and spawn efforts to make things act in concert. And they continue to be the breeding ground for more goodness of that same nature. So even if you're not fond of what you think of as DE UI, you have benefited from their development, and continue to benefit from them. The DE communities continue to shoulder this kind of work almost exclusively.

leephillips 12y ago
I don't use a DE (I use the dwm window manager), but I'm always on the lookout for better ways to use my computer. You make an interesting point about DE development enriching the system as a whole, but that's not an argument for actually using a DE. What can it do for me that's worth devoting the extra gigabyte or so of memory, plus the extra CPU cycles? You mention some things about shared global state, but, as you acknowledge, they do also work without the DE. Can you be more specific about how having a DE installed can provide me with some significant improvements in workflow?
- sho_hn 12y ago
  Keep in mind: I wasn't actually trying to convince you to install a DE if you don't want to use one. I'm a KDE upstream developer, and our KDE Frameworks 5 library set explicitly supports writing applications for shell environments other than Plasma (and even other than Linux), and many of the KDE Applications projects care greatly about their audience outside Plasma's userbase as well, including some of my own. My point was that the DE development and user community has greatly enriched the ecosystem in general, and continues to do so. I'd like it if people who aren't fond of DE UIs (which, again, is fine by me) would acknowledge that more, instead of disparaging DEs as they often do. It shows a lack of understanding of how things work and flow in the greater community. The reality is that your experience outside the DEs would be far poorer today if the DEs didn't exist, because it's been and continues to be the DEs that drive many platform-y developments that enhance applications. Know whose work you rely on and what motivates them. But of course, I can provide some concrete examples of shared global state popping up in my own workflows: * The KDE platform has a framework to manage user search engines. You can manage them in System Settings, Plasma's control center application. Many KDE Applications will alow you to select text and hand it off to a search engine from the context menu (along with providing an entry point into the management UI, which can also run outside of System Settings; this takes care of making it work outside Plasma). The Plasma Desktop shell does the same, though, with its Run Command box, which is one keyboard shortcut away, also being aware of search engines and being able to start searches. * The shell similary exposes things like favorite file system locations, which also pop up in file dialogs and file managers, in Run Command, the launcher, and other places. * The KDE platform has the best support for international calender systems and calendering data like holiday information available in free software today, and the clock/calendar thingie you can stuff in a Plasma panel reflects those abilities, as do the applications built on the same platform. And many other little examples broadly in the same vain. As you can see, the pattern is: The platform can do a lot, and there's some benefits to the shell being built on the same platform as the applications, at least for me. That doesn't need to be the same for you; you may interact with your computer in different patterns. You still get to enjoy the applications.

by sho_hn 12y ago

leephillips 12y ago

I don't use a DE (I use the dwm window manager), but I'm always on the lookout for better ways to use my computer. You make an interesting point about DE development enriching the system as a whole, but that's not an argument for actually using a DE. What can it do for me that's worth devoting the extra gigabyte or so of memory, plus the extra CPU cycles? You mention some things about shared global state, but, as you acknowledge, they do also work without the DE. Can you be more specific about how having a DE installed can provide me with some significant improvements in workflow?

sho_hn 12y ago
Keep in mind: I wasn't actually trying to convince you to install a DE if you don't want to use one. I'm a KDE upstream developer, and our KDE Frameworks 5 library set explicitly supports writing applications for shell environments other than Plasma (and even other than Linux), and many of the KDE Applications projects care greatly about their audience outside Plasma's userbase as well, including some of my own. My point was that the DE development and user community has greatly enriched the ecosystem in general, and continues to do so. I'd like it if people who aren't fond of DE UIs (which, again, is fine by me) would acknowledge that more, instead of disparaging DEs as they often do. It shows a lack of understanding of how things work and flow in the greater community. The reality is that your experience outside the DEs would be far poorer today if the DEs didn't exist, because it's been and continues to be the DEs that drive many platform-y developments that enhance applications. Know whose work you rely on and what motivates them. But of course, I can provide some concrete examples of shared global state popping up in my own workflows: * The KDE platform has a framework to manage user search engines. You can manage them in System Settings, Plasma's control center application. Many KDE Applications will alow you to select text and hand it off to a search engine from the context menu (along with providing an entry point into the management UI, which can also run outside of System Settings; this takes care of making it work outside Plasma). The Plasma Desktop shell does the same, though, with its Run Command box, which is one keyboard shortcut away, also being aware of search engines and being able to start searches. * The shell similary exposes things like favorite file system locations, which also pop up in file dialogs and file managers, in Run Command, the launcher, and other places. * The KDE platform has the best support for international calender systems and calendering data like holiday information available in free software today, and the clock/calendar thingie you can stuff in a Plasma panel reflects those abilities, as do the applications built on the same platform. And many other little examples broadly in the same vain. As you can see, the pattern is: The platform can do a lot, and there's some benefits to the shell being built on the same platform as the applications, at least for me. That doesn't need to be the same for you; you may interact with your computer in different patterns. You still get to enjoy the applications.