12 ms·

Quantum OS - OS based on Linux which conforms to Material Design guidelines

391 points by turrini 12y ago

jarcane 12y ago
But ... why? What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? And why a whole custom distribution, instead of a desktop environment?
- ofcapl_ 12y ago
  Good question. It could be even just a custom theme (with additional plugins) or something
- nautical 12y ago
  A simple theme will do ... !! Why such a waste of effort ?
- DCKing 12y ago
  (These answers are guesses) > What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? A sense of (generally well-regarded) design direction made by professional designers. Familiarity to Android users. Not reinventing the wheel and doing a worse job at it. > And why a whole custom distribution, instead of a desktop environment? It's easier to make an integrated desktop if it isn't distribution agnostic. This way you can easily depend on distribution-specific stuff like which version of Wayland it has, depend on systemd, PulseAudio, which package manager it uses, what font settings it has, which GPU drivers it uses. If you make this a desktop environment instead of distribution, then you need to make it work with a far more diverse set of variables, which I think is undesirable when you're starting out (or even in general).
  - ricardobeat 12y ago
    Your first reason is a bit condescending. KDE Plasma, Unity, Elementary, etc. all have clear design guidelines, and are all made by professional designers. They are not any less professional because you disagree with their choices / reasoning, and it's not clear that what makes Material Design work on mobile will translate well to the desktop at all.
    - DCKing 12y ago
      My comment was not intended as a comparison of this to other desktops, or to imply one. FWIW, I think Gnome 3 and KDE 5 are beautiful.
    - graublau 12y ago
      Big issue is that professional designers don't typically use linux distributions. It's a real shame because Linux really needs some attention.: https://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46netbook2.png https://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46netbook2...
      - tormeh 12y ago
        It's kind of pretty and ugly at the same time.
      - dharma1 12y ago
        I agree, and the reason is mainly lack of good design tools on Linux. It wouldn't take much though, perhaps there will be a Qt based design tool in the near future which will have a Linux port, and we'll see more designers (especially web designers) moving over. If there was Photoshop or Sketch for Linux, and a lot of people could migrate. And no, GIMP or Inkscape don't cut it
    - jshevek 12y ago
      >> Your first reason is a bit condescending. I didn't get that at all. He made a statement about one project. In that statement he didn't compare it to other projects, nor even mention them.
- slantyyz 12y ago
  >> What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? I don't think we'll really know until these devs provide a working version of their OS. I do think what this OS is trying to do makes for an interesting experiment -- even if it turns out to be a failure.
- graublau 12y ago
  > What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? A unified design language for a desktop OS is desperately needed in the Linux community.
  - jarcane 12y ago
    This strikes me as the "there are too many standards"[1] approach. You're not going to get that by adding yet another standard, and anything not written to that standard isn't going to look all pretty and Material Designed anyway. [1] http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
killercup 12y ago
I generally like the look and feel of Material, but I'm not sure how well it works with mouse and keyboard.
- andybak 12y ago
  From everything I've read it wasn't intended to be specifically for touch and Google's use of it for the new Inbox interface would seem to bear this out.
- shetter 12y ago
  From what I've seen of Material it's also a lot about classifying information visually and that's definitely something where desktop OS interfaces can be improved. Nobody likes looking at a jumbled mess of information spread on a flat plane without any general cue as to where you're supposed to look first.
- jon-wood 12y ago
  I use it regularly on a desktop in the context of Google Play Music, and it works great there. I'm looking forward to see where this goes.
scotu 12y ago
I really want not to be snarky and downplay anyone efforts, but I just wanted to point out that such an operative system already exists and is open source. You may have heard about it, it's called android... I can't even think of a valid reason to "reproduce" (aka making something that kind of looks like it but in the end is annoyingly different). For fun, maybe is the only valid one... Seriously though if you pulled a nice installer for really up to date android on my desktop the thousands of apps in the play store and I would be really grateful... Can someone think of any solid reason for why I should be interested?
- ecspike 12y ago
  I love Android but I'm also a developer. It's not productive to try and write code on Android. I have in the past skinned my Gnome Shell to look like Android Holo (I just applied styles someone else created). Much like bumper stickers or giving your hatchback racing stripes, it's a way that people can personalize their experience. Also for the people who are designing the skin, it gives them practice interpreting/adapting the spec and some of that knowledge may trickle back to the source.
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Because you still get all the benefits of a regular GNU/Linux system underneath, I'd presume.
- userbinator 12y ago
  People like to skin OSs in general because they want to change the appearance to something they like, while preserving the other familiar parts of the OS; I've seen Windows made to look like Mac OS, for example. Linux systems can be made to look (and behave) like any other OS, with enough customisation. It's understandable that people like the look of Android, but they don't want to deal with the rest of the Android ecosystem.
toto_tutu 12y ago
thanks for sharing, that's not easy to find nice and free UI for QT.
riyadparvez 12y ago
Link is broken!
- foz 12y ago
  Maybe it was taken down due to negativity. But here's an article about it, with screenshots: http://9to5google.com/2014/11/21/quartz-os-linux-material-design/ http://9to5google.com/2014/11/21/quartz-os-linux-material-de...
- realityking 12y ago
  It was there a minute ago and it suddenly disappeared, including the GitHub repository. Weird. Edit: It seems like it just got renmaned. It's now available under https://github.com/quantum-os https://github.com/quantum-os but the blog is not yet up.
  - jesse_m 12y ago
    The Google+ page says they need to come up with a new name because it conflicted with the Quartz graphics stack name used by OS X. This might be why everything is taken down.
zorbo 12y ago
Pointless cached version without the pretty pictures: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ypB2BA-9GhIJ:quartz-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-initial-plans/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ypB2BA-...
- Danieru 12y ago
  Here's one of the missing photos: https://github.com/quantum-os/quantum-os.github.io/blob/master/images/desktop_layout_1.png https://github.com/quantum-os/quantum-os.github.io/blob/mast...
- lnanek2 12y ago
  That turned out handy since it is returning a 404 now: "There isn't a GitHub Page here"
mattd9 12y ago
The new version can be found here: https://github.com/quantum-os https://github.com/quantum-os You can read the reasons here: https://plus.google.com/113262712329378697012/posts/M1muF1f766H https://plus.google.com/113262712329378697012/posts/M1muF1f7...
nsmartt 12y ago
Can now be found here: http://quantum-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-initial-plans/ http://quantum-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-in...
igammarays 12y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't get this Material Design everywhere thing? Maybe it's why I'm not a designer, but do we really want all our UI experiences everywhere to look exactly the same (with perhaps color variance only)? I mean I'm all for having design principles, like the timeless principles of typography, which have near-infinite variance, but with a powerful yet subtle underlying set of guidelines which make it beautiful and legible. Material Design seems to me like Google branding forced all over the place. Boring.
- sampl 12y ago
  I'm a designer, big MD fan, and I'm dying to see some decent design in OS desktop land. But I don't get it either. Design is all about understanding a problem/context and creating a solution to match it. MD is a great answer to a completely different problem than this project is solving.
- calinet6 12y ago
  UX designer here. It's way overhyped. The concepts behind it are great (using good motion design, giving proper feedback, showing clear affordances for actions, and lots of other good stuff), but that does not mean that everything has to look like Google's material template to work. For everyone: take the UX cues from Material, sure, but please make it your own. The clone army is getting very, very old.
  - orbifold 12y ago
    The sad truth is in particular in the free software space there are only a few gems of truly inspiring consumer software, the rest are mindless rip-offs with terrible UI. Especially the chrome and rendering techniques used on a modern linux desktop compared to both Windows / Mac OS X are hacks. Compare for example the graphical foundation libraries of Mac OS X with the X11 + compositing wm + gtk / qt stack. So for example Yosemite style translucency might be implementable, but not in the presumably nice way OS X is able to do it, because OpenGL is not integrated as tightly in the graphics stack in Linux.
    - 12y ago
sz4kerto 12y ago
Please no. Material design might work well for mobile devices, where you don't spend too much time in front of a single screen (by screen I mean app screen, not the physical screen). The screenshots show exactly what the problem is: - really bright colors in the top bars: that's exactly what we _don't_ want in desktop apps, as the focus is on the (changing) content, not the title bars. Grab this http://quantum-os.github.io/images/desktop_layout_1.png http://quantum-os.github.io/images/desktop_layout_1.png, resize it to full screen, and you'll see what I mean. - large empty spaces: for me it's too much even on touch-based devices, but on the desktop it's just utter waste of real estate. I want the desktop to get less and less popular, so then the OS and app makers can start optimizing for people who create stuff (e.g. me), and it could look like http://i.imgur.com/7Tu2i6W.png http://i.imgur.com/7Tu2i6W.png or http://yxbenj.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vs2012_colortheme_example.png http://yxbenj.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vs2012_colortheme_...
- afro88 12y ago
  Totally disagree on the only mobile point. I've been using Google Inbox as my main mail client for about 2 weeks now and it's great. Doesn't get sore on the eyes and my workflow with it is really quick (as in, it doesn't rely on touch to work). Yes I know it's a web app, but it may as well be a standalone application. I do agree on not using material colours for app title bars. But that's my only real issue. I personally think material design looks great, and this example screenshot looks much cleaner and aesthetically pleasing already than the current linux offerings
  - Brakenshire 12y ago
    Also, given that touchscreens on laptops and even desktops seem to be a thing now, this could well be a starting point for a Linux operating system which can scale seamlessly from smartphone to tablet to laptop. Obviously it's not for everyone, but it could be good as a kind of 'tablet plus', for watching videos, checking emails/facebook etc. Although Sailfish OS and Ubuntu seem to be much more serious in that respect.
  - dkersten 12y ago
    I personally love Inbox on my phone, but hate it on my laptop. I don't like how everything is so spaced out and personally don't find it easy on the eyes or matching my workflow at all. In fact, I've been trying to do as much of my email-related tasks as possible on my phone these past three weeks because of it, because Inbox itself is fantastic.
DCKing 12y ago
I'm just going to leave a comment to contrast the usual negativity. What I like about this is: - The developers are not attempting to reinvent the wheel. - Material Design is well-regarded on mobile devices, and it's interesting to see what you can do with its ideas on the desktop. - They clearly pick technologies that are the way forward on the Linux desktop: Wayland and Qt+QML. It's great that these things are maturing to the point that we can start leaving behind X and that it's clear that Qt has won the toolkit war. - Focused approach of not (yet) supporting different distros, but (like Elementary OS) an attempt to focus on getting it to work well for one system configuration. I hope these guys can put in the time and effort to make something out of this. It seems they are making a couple of good decisions already.
- nly 12y ago
  > Material Design is well-regarded on mobile devices Says who? Isn't Lollypop all MD based? I've heard quite a bit of 'meh boring' reactions to it
  - PaulHoule 12y ago
    I just got Lollipop on my 2nd generation Nexus 7 and overall it seems like a downgrade instead of an upgrade.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - 0xFFC 12y ago
      I don't have Android Lollipop and I am really curious , can you explain a little further?
      - PaulHoule 12y ago
        The new keyboard looks awful. There is some kind of network problem that causes 3 to 10 second latencies when I look up web pages at home with DSL but is not so bad at the gym with cable. I think DNS is involved. It used to be that a left hand swipe and a right hand swipe would bring up different menus but now I have to swipe multiple times to count through the menus. It's that kind of hamhanded design that make people think bigger devices are unwieldy
zenciadam 12y ago
What's its ultimate tensile strength of the OS?
Spearchucker 12y ago
I like this. I don't like it because I like Material or even Linux. I like it because I want to build a compelling user interface for my own app. The two best reference UI's I've seen (and yes, this is subjective) are Office and Visual Studio. Nothing else out there that's even vaguely mainstream and on a desktop pushes boundaries like those two. And yet I like neither of them. My own design (https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=bc4a9a14-cdd5-4c08-a3a6-9d6f9c7f1656 https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=bc4a9a14-cdd5-4c0...) reflects the best I can do. I'm not creative, nor am I an expert at UI or UX, so its really useful seeing what others come up with. And that is why I appreciate both the effort it took to put this together, and a new perspective that someone was generous enough to share.
- hollerith 12y ago
  I would download and explore Interact if you were to publish it under an open-source license.
  - Spearchucker 12y ago
    It will be open sourced. Just as soon as I have a working beta (core functions must work).
kagia 12y ago
I for one think it's time we saw bold and ambitious attempts at changing the desktop. Most desktops today are arguably variations of the desktops we were introduced to in windows95 and OSX (v10). The colours, placement and names change but rarely does anything new show up (save for metro desktop). With wayland and mutter/qt+ this is a great time to try out wild and out-there concepts. It's the only way to break out and really change the desktop. I can understand peoples frustration; the desktop, after all, wraps up everything we experience when we use our machines. However I will approach this with an open mind, and I certainly hope others will do the same.
- fmoralesc 12y ago
  The shell in Gnome 3 is arguably also a departure from win9x/osx desktop paradigm (it took some ideas from the latter, but it went in a direction different enough that I consider it its own different thing). It received quite a bit of backlash. I love it.
- laumars 12y ago
  In my personal opinion, Windows 95 was pretty much the benchmark for how to build an intuitive and productive desktop environment. There's obviously a few things that have come since that have improved upon it (eg quick search in the start menu / launcher, and the way how Linux better groups applications in it's launchers than Windows does in it's start menu) as well as mistakes made since (Windows quick launch start menu tool bar being one prime example). But for me, Microsoft really did create the design concept of optimal working environment. Obviously this is just my preferences - many would disagree. But I think the reason why there are so many variations on the Windows 95 desktop is because many people feel like myself in that it's a paradigm that works extremely well for them too.
  - wvenable 12y ago
    I agree and many attempts to push away from the Windows 95 design in order to be different have been usability nightmares
    - 12y ago
overgard 12y ago
I hope they package the desktop environment in a way that it can also be used on other distros. Going to an entirely new OS seems a bit much to me, but I'd be way more willing to try it out if I could just install it next to KDE or whatnot.
- mikkom 12y ago
  > Going to an entirely new OS seems a bit much to me To be brutally honest it sounds like they don't know what they are doing - at all.
  - dharma1 12y ago
    I did think that too - why not just release this as a Qt widget library? Why a new distro?
    - wolfgke 12y ago
      Even a new distro is not a new OS (in opposite to what they claim).
      - tormeh 12y ago
        So is Android not an OS because it uses the Linux kernel? If it is a program that manages other programs and is itself not managed then it is an OS, is what I've heard. Just because you're only making a small part yourself doesn't make the assembled thing not an OS.
        mikkom 12y ago
        Android is not distro, it is a fork. In similar way they could build a new os based on linux but the work compared to just replacing UI is massive and maintenance is absolutely not something you want to do if you just want to replace ui. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/an-introduction-to-google-android-for-developers/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/an-introduction-to-go...
imsofuture 12y ago
Are we still confused about OS vs window manager?
- Hario 12y ago
  Exactly. Is Gnome an Operating System? Is Unity? Then why is "Quantum OS" one?
- Rapzid 12y ago
  I'm getting the impression that they are wanting to start their own distro using the UI to pull in users.
tormeh 12y ago
Is it based on Unity? It looks really good.
sandGorgon 12y ago
For people wondering about GTK,this was posted on Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2mzqy5/xpost_from_rlinux_a_new_linux_distro_being_worked/cm9785d http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2mzqy5/xpost_from_r... >Evolve OS reached out to them, we started with a chrome OS esque environment, and we started a material gtk theme. This uses qt, which is good for new apps, but not existing. Evolve is implementing a new lib for animations, that'll work with gtk, and existing apps. We've got dreams for it, check out the live stream on YouTube!
gcb0 12y ago
You know what would be a great idea? get a Window Manager that everyone is hating because the usability and customization that took years to achieve is being throw out of the window by the new maintainers just to copy Apple's UI, and let's use that and add Google's latest UI mumble jumble, and instead of just releasing as a window manager, let's call it a new distro.
Vecrios 12y ago
So much negativity in these comments. Instead of saying "why?" or "MD is for mobile screens," present your opinions in a factual matter to support your arguments. I personally don't prefer the MD/Metro look design philosophy. This stems from the fact that I believe in designs that help accomplish a task, not prettify it for the sole of prettifying it.
- jshevek 12y ago
  I agree regarding the negativity. They come to "hacker news" but don't think like hackers.
augustk 12y ago
If the special effects can be turned of and it will be as efficient as the Blackbox Window Manager I may give it a try.
coleifer 12y ago
Is this in any way related to this project? http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2mka7r/update_material_design_gtk_theme_things_are/ http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2mka7r/update_mate... It's based on Evolve OS.
kolbe 12y ago
Material Design aside, the development community should have somehow reserved the name "Quantum OS" for the first operating system to run on the first quantum computing devise. I'm almost offended that some port of Linux is trying to bogart it.
livebeef 12y ago
They should just write a gnome/metacity theme and call it a day. There is no point in having a new OS/distribution just to feature a new UI.
marknadal 12y ago
I've been asking a lot of people if they know of any "fresh start OSs that have modern minimalist UX" lately - and haven't gotten any good responses. So much that I've been planning on maybe building my own soon. But THIS, this looks like a great beginning! I'm super excited to watch this make progress! Congrats, great job, and keep it up.
ai_ja_nai 12y ago
I'm not getting why someone has to declare "we are creating a new OS", instead of just settling on "we are creating a better UI". OS is a very serious thing that has nothing to do with usability as it is perceived by grandma
- josteink 12y ago
  To be fair a "OS" is a compilation of lots of components: kernel, user-land utilities, a user-facing graphical environment and associated tools. You know, the source behind the whole "GNU/Linux" affair. This means that somewhere you have to draw the line. Android has a Linux-kernel, but (from a user's point of view) shares near nothing with a "regular" GNU/Linux OS, so it's considered an OS of its own. Which I think most people will be fine with. That Debian is a GNU/Linux OS should be beyond any debate. Ubuntu is a plain Debian-derivate. Is it its own OS? It's "merely" added a prettier installer, pre-bundled some common firmware and added a new (different) login-manager and GUI shell (Unity) and tried to add some consistent themes on top of that? Elementary OS is (as far as I know) based on Ubuntu. It's the same story, except this time they're not just changing the shell (Pantheon instead of Unity), they're also creating lots og new user-facing GUI applications consistent with their own design-guidelines to compliment it. A user using elementary OS and just the pre-provided GUI-apps a no terminal, will only see components provided by elementary OS. A new OS or just a new GUI? If we accept the principles behind Android being its own OS, this should be too: A user sees nothing of the traditional Linux apps or Linux DEs. If we don't accept elementary OS as its own OS, why don't we? And if so why do we accept Android as such? You have to draw the line somewhere, and I agree this is hard. But if we accept elementary OS as its own OS, how is this (once built) not?
- sysk 12y ago
  UI/UX is a very serious thing of its own given that the most popular consumer OSes today are arguably not the most technically superior.
2lphacod 12y ago
Firstly, really great initiative. Looking forward to this. However, arent these two objectives contradictory "The focus will be on creating a "stable" and easy-to-use operating system" and "Our goal is to base our work on the latest upstream versions available" instead of using more tested and reviewed versions. Unstable drivers are a very common issue making the linux experience hard.
kchoudhu 12y ago
"Google, will you hire me? Pretty please?"
knappador 12y ago
Bells should be going off in a head somewhere about using Android alongside a desktop Linux home-rolled to become an amalgamated ecosystem of both and "just work" on a PC form factor but with LTE. Developers are demanding it so much that we're building it.
Rapzid 12y ago
I would be more interested in this as a desktop environment alternative, or a skin of an existing one. Not as a new distro though. The message is a bit mixed but I gather they want to control a new distro ecosystem and are starting with the UI as a way to draw in users.
rrggrr 12y ago
Reminds me of BEos. Not quite sure why. Great effort. Keep at it.
eklavya 12y ago
If nothing else, a material UI widget set comes out of it which I can use to write android and ios apps. Thanks for this :)
desireco42 12y ago
This is one of the best ideas I heard in years. To me this totally makes sense, plays on Linux strengths etc. I wish you best and intend to follow closely.
MrBra 12y ago
Why not having just as a theme for current Linux window managers? What is the reason for a whole O.S. behind that?
lwelly 12y ago
Where can I download it from?

391 points by turrini 12y ago

But ... why? What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? And why a whole custom distribution, instead of a desktop environment?

ofcapl_ 12y ago
Good question. It could be even just a custom theme (with additional plugins) or something
nautical 12y ago
A simple theme will do ... !! Why such a waste of effort ?
DCKing 12y ago
(These answers are guesses) > What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? A sense of (generally well-regarded) design direction made by professional designers. Familiarity to Android users. Not reinventing the wheel and doing a worse job at it. > And why a whole custom distribution, instead of a desktop environment? It's easier to make an integrated desktop if it isn't distribution agnostic. This way you can easily depend on distribution-specific stuff like which version of Wayland it has, depend on systemd, PulseAudio, which package manager it uses, what font settings it has, which GPU drivers it uses. If you make this a desktop environment instead of distribution, then you need to make it work with a far more diverse set of variables, which I think is undesirable when you're starting out (or even in general).
- ricardobeat 12y ago
  Your first reason is a bit condescending. KDE Plasma, Unity, Elementary, etc. all have clear design guidelines, and are all made by professional designers. They are not any less professional because you disagree with their choices / reasoning, and it's not clear that what makes Material Design work on mobile will translate well to the desktop at all.
  - DCKing 12y ago
    My comment was not intended as a comparison of this to other desktops, or to imply one. FWIW, I think Gnome 3 and KDE 5 are beautiful.
  - graublau 12y ago
    Big issue is that professional designers don't typically use linux distributions. It's a real shame because Linux really needs some attention.: https://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46netbook2.png https://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46netbook2...
    - tormeh 12y ago
      It's kind of pretty and ugly at the same time.
    - dharma1 12y ago
      I agree, and the reason is mainly lack of good design tools on Linux. It wouldn't take much though, perhaps there will be a Qt based design tool in the near future which will have a Linux port, and we'll see more designers (especially web designers) moving over. If there was Photoshop or Sketch for Linux, and a lot of people could migrate. And no, GIMP or Inkscape don't cut it
  - jshevek 12y ago
    >> Your first reason is a bit condescending. I didn't get that at all. He made a statement about one project. In that statement he didn't compare it to other projects, nor even mention them.
slantyyz 12y ago
>> What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? I don't think we'll really know until these devs provide a working version of their OS. I do think what this OS is trying to do makes for an interesting experiment -- even if it turns out to be a failure.
graublau 12y ago
> What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS? A unified design language for a desktop OS is desperately needed in the Linux community.
- jarcane 12y ago
  This strikes me as the "there are too many standards"[1] approach. You're not going to get that by adding yet another standard, and anything not written to that standard isn't going to look all pretty and Material Designed anyway. [1] http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/

killercup 12y ago

I generally like the look and feel of Material, but I'm not sure how well it works with mouse and keyboard.

andybak 12y ago
From everything I've read it wasn't intended to be specifically for touch and Google's use of it for the new Inbox interface would seem to bear this out.
shetter 12y ago
From what I've seen of Material it's also a lot about classifying information visually and that's definitely something where desktop OS interfaces can be improved. Nobody likes looking at a jumbled mess of information spread on a flat plane without any general cue as to where you're supposed to look first.
jon-wood 12y ago
I use it regularly on a desktop in the context of Google Play Music, and it works great there. I'm looking forward to see where this goes.

scotu 12y ago

I really want not to be snarky and downplay anyone efforts, but I just wanted to point out that such an operative system already exists and is open source. You may have heard about it, it's called android... I can't even think of a valid reason to "reproduce" (aka making something that kind of looks like it but in the end is annoyingly different). For fun, maybe is the only valid one... Seriously though if you pulled a nice installer for really up to date android on my desktop the thousands of apps in the play store and I would be really grateful... Can someone think of any solid reason for why I should be interested?

ecspike 12y ago
I love Android but I'm also a developer. It's not productive to try and write code on Android. I have in the past skinned my Gnome Shell to look like Android Holo (I just applied styles someone else created). Much like bumper stickers or giving your hatchback racing stripes, it's a way that people can personalize their experience. Also for the people who are designing the skin, it gives them practice interpreting/adapting the spec and some of that knowledge may trickle back to the source.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Because you still get all the benefits of a regular GNU/Linux system underneath, I'd presume.
userbinator 12y ago
People like to skin OSs in general because they want to change the appearance to something they like, while preserving the other familiar parts of the OS; I've seen Windows made to look like Mac OS, for example. Linux systems can be made to look (and behave) like any other OS, with enough customisation. It's understandable that people like the look of Android, but they don't want to deal with the rest of the Android ecosystem.

toto_tutu 12y ago

thanks for sharing, that's not easy to find nice and free UI for QT.

riyadparvez 12y ago

Link is broken!

foz 12y ago
Maybe it was taken down due to negativity. But here's an article about it, with screenshots: http://9to5google.com/2014/11/21/quartz-os-linux-material-design/ http://9to5google.com/2014/11/21/quartz-os-linux-material-de...
realityking 12y ago
It was there a minute ago and it suddenly disappeared, including the GitHub repository. Weird. Edit: It seems like it just got renmaned. It's now available under https://github.com/quantum-os https://github.com/quantum-os but the blog is not yet up.
- jesse_m 12y ago
  The Google+ page says they need to come up with a new name because it conflicted with the Quartz graphics stack name used by OS X. This might be why everything is taken down.

zorbo 12y ago

Pointless cached version without the pretty pictures: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ypB2BA-9GhIJ:quartz-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-initial-plans/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ypB2BA-...

Danieru 12y ago
Here's one of the missing photos: https://github.com/quantum-os/quantum-os.github.io/blob/master/images/desktop_layout_1.png https://github.com/quantum-os/quantum-os.github.io/blob/mast...
lnanek2 12y ago
That turned out handy since it is returning a 404 now: "There isn't a GitHub Page here"

mattd9 12y ago

The new version can be found here: https://github.com/quantum-os https://github.com/quantum-os You can read the reasons here: https://plus.google.com/113262712329378697012/posts/M1muF1f766H https://plus.google.com/113262712329378697012/posts/M1muF1f7...

nsmartt 12y ago

Can now be found here: http://quantum-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-initial-plans/ http://quantum-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-in...

igammarays 12y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't get this Material Design everywhere thing? Maybe it's why I'm not a designer, but do we really want all our UI experiences everywhere to look exactly the same (with perhaps color variance only)? I mean I'm all for having design principles, like the timeless principles of typography, which have near-infinite variance, but with a powerful yet subtle underlying set of guidelines which make it beautiful and legible. Material Design seems to me like Google branding forced all over the place. Boring.

sampl 12y ago
I'm a designer, big MD fan, and I'm dying to see some decent design in OS desktop land. But I don't get it either. Design is all about understanding a problem/context and creating a solution to match it. MD is a great answer to a completely different problem than this project is solving.
calinet6 12y ago
UX designer here. It's way overhyped. The concepts behind it are great (using good motion design, giving proper feedback, showing clear affordances for actions, and lots of other good stuff), but that does not mean that everything has to look like Google's material template to work. For everyone: take the UX cues from Material, sure, but please make it your own. The clone army is getting very, very old.
- orbifold 12y ago
  The sad truth is in particular in the free software space there are only a few gems of truly inspiring consumer software, the rest are mindless rip-offs with terrible UI. Especially the chrome and rendering techniques used on a modern linux desktop compared to both Windows / Mac OS X are hacks. Compare for example the graphical foundation libraries of Mac OS X with the X11 + compositing wm + gtk / qt stack. So for example Yosemite style translucency might be implementable, but not in the presumably nice way OS X is able to do it, because OpenGL is not integrated as tightly in the graphics stack in Linux.
  - 12y ago

sz4kerto 12y ago

Please no. Material design might work well for mobile devices, where you don't spend too much time in front of a single screen (by screen I mean app screen, not the physical screen). The screenshots show exactly what the problem is: - really bright colors in the top bars: that's exactly what we _don't_ want in desktop apps, as the focus is on the (changing) content, not the title bars. Grab this http://quantum-os.github.io/images/desktop_layout_1.png http://quantum-os.github.io/images/desktop_layout_1.png, resize it to full screen, and you'll see what I mean. - large empty spaces: for me it's too much even on touch-based devices, but on the desktop it's just utter waste of real estate. I want the desktop to get less and less popular, so then the OS and app makers can start optimizing for people who create stuff (e.g. me), and it could look like http://i.imgur.com/7Tu2i6W.png http://i.imgur.com/7Tu2i6W.png or http://yxbenj.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vs2012_colortheme_example.png http://yxbenj.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vs2012_colortheme_...

afro88 12y ago
Totally disagree on the only mobile point. I've been using Google Inbox as my main mail client for about 2 weeks now and it's great. Doesn't get sore on the eyes and my workflow with it is really quick (as in, it doesn't rely on touch to work). Yes I know it's a web app, but it may as well be a standalone application. I do agree on not using material colours for app title bars. But that's my only real issue. I personally think material design looks great, and this example screenshot looks much cleaner and aesthetically pleasing already than the current linux offerings
- Brakenshire 12y ago
  Also, given that touchscreens on laptops and even desktops seem to be a thing now, this could well be a starting point for a Linux operating system which can scale seamlessly from smartphone to tablet to laptop. Obviously it's not for everyone, but it could be good as a kind of 'tablet plus', for watching videos, checking emails/facebook etc. Although Sailfish OS and Ubuntu seem to be much more serious in that respect.
- dkersten 12y ago
  I personally love Inbox on my phone, but hate it on my laptop. I don't like how everything is so spaced out and personally don't find it easy on the eyes or matching my workflow at all. In fact, I've been trying to do as much of my email-related tasks as possible on my phone these past three weeks because of it, because Inbox itself is fantastic.

DCKing 12y ago

I'm just going to leave a comment to contrast the usual negativity. What I like about this is: - The developers are not attempting to reinvent the wheel. - Material Design is well-regarded on mobile devices, and it's interesting to see what you can do with its ideas on the desktop. - They clearly pick technologies that are the way forward on the Linux desktop: Wayland and Qt+QML. It's great that these things are maturing to the point that we can start leaving behind X and that it's clear that Qt has won the toolkit war. - Focused approach of not (yet) supporting different distros, but (like Elementary OS) an attempt to focus on getting it to work well for one system configuration. I hope these guys can put in the time and effort to make something out of this. It seems they are making a couple of good decisions already.

nly 12y ago
> Material Design is well-regarded on mobile devices Says who? Isn't Lollypop all MD based? I've heard quite a bit of 'meh boring' reactions to it
- PaulHoule 12y ago
  I just got Lollipop on my 2nd generation Nexus 7 and overall it seems like a downgrade instead of an upgrade.
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    [deleted]
  - 0xFFC 12y ago
    I don't have Android Lollipop and I am really curious , can you explain a little further?
    - PaulHoule 12y ago
      The new keyboard looks awful. There is some kind of network problem that causes 3 to 10 second latencies when I look up web pages at home with DSL but is not so bad at the gym with cable. I think DNS is involved. It used to be that a left hand swipe and a right hand swipe would bring up different menus but now I have to swipe multiple times to count through the menus. It's that kind of hamhanded design that make people think bigger devices are unwieldy

zenciadam 12y ago

What's its ultimate tensile strength of the OS?

Spearchucker 12y ago

I like this. I don't like it because I like Material or even Linux. I like it because I want to build a compelling user interface for my own app. The two best reference UI's I've seen (and yes, this is subjective) are Office and Visual Studio. Nothing else out there that's even vaguely mainstream and on a desktop pushes boundaries like those two. And yet I like neither of them. My own design (https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=bc4a9a14-cdd5-4c08-a3a6-9d6f9c7f1656 https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=bc4a9a14-cdd5-4c0...) reflects the best I can do. I'm not creative, nor am I an expert at UI or UX, so its really useful seeing what others come up with. And that is why I appreciate both the effort it took to put this together, and a new perspective that someone was generous enough to share.

hollerith 12y ago
I would download and explore Interact if you were to publish it under an open-source license.
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  It will be open sourced. Just as soon as I have a working beta (core functions must work).

kagia 12y ago

I for one think it's time we saw bold and ambitious attempts at changing the desktop. Most desktops today are arguably variations of the desktops we were introduced to in windows95 and OSX (v10). The colours, placement and names change but rarely does anything new show up (save for metro desktop). With wayland and mutter/qt+ this is a great time to try out wild and out-there concepts. It's the only way to break out and really change the desktop. I can understand peoples frustration; the desktop, after all, wraps up everything we experience when we use our machines. However I will approach this with an open mind, and I certainly hope others will do the same.

fmoralesc 12y ago
The shell in Gnome 3 is arguably also a departure from win9x/osx desktop paradigm (it took some ideas from the latter, but it went in a direction different enough that I consider it its own different thing). It received quite a bit of backlash. I love it.
laumars 12y ago
In my personal opinion, Windows 95 was pretty much the benchmark for how to build an intuitive and productive desktop environment. There's obviously a few things that have come since that have improved upon it (eg quick search in the start menu / launcher, and the way how Linux better groups applications in it's launchers than Windows does in it's start menu) as well as mistakes made since (Windows quick launch start menu tool bar being one prime example). But for me, Microsoft really did create the design concept of optimal working environment. Obviously this is just my preferences - many would disagree. But I think the reason why there are so many variations on the Windows 95 desktop is because many people feel like myself in that it's a paradigm that works extremely well for them too.
- wvenable 12y ago
  I agree and many attempts to push away from the Windows 95 design in order to be different have been usability nightmares
  - 12y ago

overgard 12y ago

I hope they package the desktop environment in a way that it can also be used on other distros. Going to an entirely new OS seems a bit much to me, but I'd be way more willing to try it out if I could just install it next to KDE or whatnot.

mikkom 12y ago
> Going to an entirely new OS seems a bit much to me To be brutally honest it sounds like they don't know what they are doing - at all.
- dharma1 12y ago
  I did think that too - why not just release this as a Qt widget library? Why a new distro?
  - wolfgke 12y ago
    Even a new distro is not a new OS (in opposite to what they claim).
    - tormeh 12y ago
      So is Android not an OS because it uses the Linux kernel? If it is a program that manages other programs and is itself not managed then it is an OS, is what I've heard. Just because you're only making a small part yourself doesn't make the assembled thing not an OS.
      - mikkom 12y ago
        Android is not distro, it is a fork. In similar way they could build a new os based on linux but the work compared to just replacing UI is massive and maintenance is absolutely not something you want to do if you just want to replace ui. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/an-introduction-to-google-android-for-developers/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/an-introduction-to-go...

imsofuture 12y ago

Are we still confused about OS vs window manager?

Hario 12y ago
Exactly. Is Gnome an Operating System? Is Unity? Then why is "Quantum OS" one?
Rapzid 12y ago
I'm getting the impression that they are wanting to start their own distro using the UI to pull in users.

tormeh 12y ago

Is it based on Unity? It looks really good.

sandGorgon 12y ago

For people wondering about GTK,this was posted on Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2mzqy5/xpost_from_rlinux_a_new_linux_distro_being_worked/cm9785d http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2mzqy5/xpost_from_r... >Evolve OS reached out to them, we started with a chrome OS esque environment, and we started a material gtk theme. This uses qt, which is good for new apps, but not existing. Evolve is implementing a new lib for animations, that'll work with gtk, and existing apps. We've got dreams for it, check out the live stream on YouTube!

gcb0 12y ago

You know what would be a great idea? get a Window Manager that everyone is hating because the usability and customization that took years to achieve is being throw out of the window by the new maintainers just to copy Apple's UI, and let's use that and add Google's latest UI mumble jumble, and instead of just releasing as a window manager, let's call it a new distro.

Vecrios 12y ago

So much negativity in these comments. Instead of saying "why?" or "MD is for mobile screens," present your opinions in a factual matter to support your arguments. I personally don't prefer the MD/Metro look design philosophy. This stems from the fact that I believe in designs that help accomplish a task, not prettify it for the sole of prettifying it.

jshevek 12y ago
I agree regarding the negativity. They come to "hacker news" but don't think like hackers.

augustk 12y ago

If the special effects can be turned of and it will be as efficient as the Blackbox Window Manager I may give it a try.

coleifer 12y ago

Is this in any way related to this project? http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2mka7r/update_material_design_gtk_theme_things_are/ http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2mka7r/update_mate... It's based on Evolve OS.

kolbe 12y ago

Material Design aside, the development community should have somehow reserved the name "Quantum OS" for the first operating system to run on the first quantum computing devise. I'm almost offended that some port of Linux is trying to bogart it.

livebeef 12y ago

They should just write a gnome/metacity theme and call it a day. There is no point in having a new OS/distribution just to feature a new UI.

marknadal 12y ago

I've been asking a lot of people if they know of any "fresh start OSs that have modern minimalist UX" lately - and haven't gotten any good responses. So much that I've been planning on maybe building my own soon. But THIS, this looks like a great beginning! I'm super excited to watch this make progress! Congrats, great job, and keep it up.

ai_ja_nai 12y ago

I'm not getting why someone has to declare "we are creating a new OS", instead of just settling on "we are creating a better UI". OS is a very serious thing that has nothing to do with usability as it is perceived by grandma

josteink 12y ago
To be fair a "OS" is a compilation of lots of components: kernel, user-land utilities, a user-facing graphical environment and associated tools. You know, the source behind the whole "GNU/Linux" affair. This means that somewhere you have to draw the line. Android has a Linux-kernel, but (from a user's point of view) shares near nothing with a "regular" GNU/Linux OS, so it's considered an OS of its own. Which I think most people will be fine with. That Debian is a GNU/Linux OS should be beyond any debate. Ubuntu is a plain Debian-derivate. Is it its own OS? It's "merely" added a prettier installer, pre-bundled some common firmware and added a new (different) login-manager and GUI shell (Unity) and tried to add some consistent themes on top of that? Elementary OS is (as far as I know) based on Ubuntu. It's the same story, except this time they're not just changing the shell (Pantheon instead of Unity), they're also creating lots og new user-facing GUI applications consistent with their own design-guidelines to compliment it. A user using elementary OS and just the pre-provided GUI-apps a no terminal, will only see components provided by elementary OS. A new OS or just a new GUI? If we accept the principles behind Android being its own OS, this should be too: A user sees nothing of the traditional Linux apps or Linux DEs. If we don't accept elementary OS as its own OS, why don't we? And if so why do we accept Android as such? You have to draw the line somewhere, and I agree this is hard. But if we accept elementary OS as its own OS, how is this (once built) not?
sysk 12y ago
UI/UX is a very serious thing of its own given that the most popular consumer OSes today are arguably not the most technically superior.

2lphacod 12y ago

Firstly, really great initiative. Looking forward to this. However, arent these two objectives contradictory "The focus will be on creating a "stable" and easy-to-use operating system" and "Our goal is to base our work on the latest upstream versions available" instead of using more tested and reviewed versions. Unstable drivers are a very common issue making the linux experience hard.

kchoudhu 12y ago

"Google, will you hire me? Pretty please?"

knappador 12y ago

Bells should be going off in a head somewhere about using Android alongside a desktop Linux home-rolled to become an amalgamated ecosystem of both and "just work" on a PC form factor but with LTE. Developers are demanding it so much that we're building it.

Rapzid 12y ago

I would be more interested in this as a desktop environment alternative, or a skin of an existing one. Not as a new distro though. The message is a bit mixed but I gather they want to control a new distro ecosystem and are starting with the UI as a way to draw in users.

rrggrr 12y ago

Reminds me of BEos. Not quite sure why. Great effort. Keep at it.

eklavya 12y ago

If nothing else, a material UI widget set comes out of it which I can use to write android and ios apps. Thanks for this :)

desireco42 12y ago

This is one of the best ideas I heard in years. To me this totally makes sense, plays on Linux strengths etc. I wish you best and intend to follow closely.

MrBra 12y ago

Why not having just as a theme for current Linux window managers? What is the reason for a whole O.S. behind that?

lwelly 12y ago

Where can I download it from?