Cosmic DE update: System76's new Linux desktop environment(blog.system76.com)
blog.system76.com
Cosmic DE update: System76's new Linux desktop environment
https://blog.system76.com/post/more-on-cosmic-de-to-kick-off-2023/
267 comments
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Why use a bandaid when you can get proper tiling in a bespoke window manager on Linux/BSD.
Not everyone uses or wants to use Linux. Or they prefer to keep a macOS system alongside their Linux system(s).
I don't see value in showing the other side of the fence when someone doesn't interested on the other side.
I don't see value in showing the other side of the fence when someone doesn't interested on the other side.
Unless you're living in XCode all day long or beholden to Final Cut then what does MacOS give you that you can't find on a truly open OS? Of course I am not forcing or coercing anyone to move to an OS they're not productive in. I am just saying keep an open mind to Linux. I tried the Magnet approach when I was a die-hard MacOS fan and apologist and it just didn't work as well as i3 does. I literally went to Linux because of i3 and stayed because everything "just works" like it used to on teh Mac.
Well, I'm using Linux for 20 years and macOS for 16 years at this point. I prefer Linux desktops and Mac Notebooks, due to hardware quality, and having an alternative OS in my life, so I can port features between them while developing something (i.e. The code I develop contains best features of both OSes where appropriate).
I'm also using KDE close to 15 years at this point, since 3.5.x and I'd prefer it over anything tiling or floating because of the feature set and power it brings.
So, why someone would want to use macOS? It's not only XCode and Final Cut (I prefer Eclipse on all platforms). Omnigraffle for example. A tool which can draw diagrams and technical diagrams, Dia can't come close, or any other alternative I tried.
Same for MindNode. More powerful mind mapping solutions exist on Linux, but MindNode works like an extension of your brain. I can create gigantic maps in minutes, limited by my typing speed.
Another example is Scan Thing. It's mostly an implementation thing, but that thing works so well for extracting text and images. Well, while we're talking about text, we can talk about Prizmo, which can correct the curves of camera scanned images and then OCR them, so PDF Pen Pro, which is a power tool for editing PDFs.
There also fun novelty tools like Monodraw which I use to draw ASCII diagrams for my code, and leave it as a comment inside my codebases.
Is Linux side gloom, then? Of course not. Kid3 is irreplaceable, so Gwenview, and macOS has no equivalent of it. Many of the other tools I use on macOS are built-ins for Linux systems and work much better than their macOS counterparts by leaps and bounds. Darktable is a powerhouse for photo post-processing, and while macOS alternatives exist, they're not as good as Darktable for my use cases.
So both sides have very good applications, macOS has hardware advantage on mobile side. The main reason I keep macOS on the mobile side because it's a POSIX compliant UNIX at the core, so it can work with Linux systems reasonably well, and yes I like the hardware and having another reference point to see where the world is headed. Living in echo chambers is not good, IMHO.
I'm also using KDE close to 15 years at this point, since 3.5.x and I'd prefer it over anything tiling or floating because of the feature set and power it brings.
So, why someone would want to use macOS? It's not only XCode and Final Cut (I prefer Eclipse on all platforms). Omnigraffle for example. A tool which can draw diagrams and technical diagrams, Dia can't come close, or any other alternative I tried.
Same for MindNode. More powerful mind mapping solutions exist on Linux, but MindNode works like an extension of your brain. I can create gigantic maps in minutes, limited by my typing speed.
Another example is Scan Thing. It's mostly an implementation thing, but that thing works so well for extracting text and images. Well, while we're talking about text, we can talk about Prizmo, which can correct the curves of camera scanned images and then OCR them, so PDF Pen Pro, which is a power tool for editing PDFs.
There also fun novelty tools like Monodraw which I use to draw ASCII diagrams for my code, and leave it as a comment inside my codebases.
Is Linux side gloom, then? Of course not. Kid3 is irreplaceable, so Gwenview, and macOS has no equivalent of it. Many of the other tools I use on macOS are built-ins for Linux systems and work much better than their macOS counterparts by leaps and bounds. Darktable is a powerhouse for photo post-processing, and while macOS alternatives exist, they're not as good as Darktable for my use cases.
So both sides have very good applications, macOS has hardware advantage on mobile side. The main reason I keep macOS on the mobile side because it's a POSIX compliant UNIX at the core, so it can work with Linux systems reasonably well, and yes I like the hardware and having another reference point to see where the world is headed. Living in echo chambers is not good, IMHO.
See I hear this and think: "KDE!?! That bloat?! There's no way I'd choose that over the simplicity of i3/sway!" And yet, that's the beauty of it all: On Linux/BSD you can choose your environment and customize it till your heart is content. The OS then becomes a tool shaped to your needs vs the other way around. Bayindirh you seem to take a more practical approach to things than I do and that's dope.
Re your point about Apple laptops and *Nix Oses I 100% agree which is why I am a supporter of the Asahi Linux project. I would love to see everything-working-out-of-the-box support for my favorite distro on M1/M2 hardware so I can get a nice M1 or M2 laptop but run my favorite OS on it instead of MacOS.
Re your point about Apple laptops and *Nix Oses I 100% agree which is why I am a supporter of the Asahi Linux project. I would love to see everything-working-out-of-the-box support for my favorite distro on M1/M2 hardware so I can get a nice M1 or M2 laptop but run my favorite OS on it instead of MacOS.
Well, people think that KDE is bloated. This is not true. Yes it consumes resources, but the bigger consumer is baloo, which is the file name and context indexer of KDE, which can be turned off with a click. So, In short why I do I use KDE? Let's take a look:
If I need to find something inside a file? There's Baloo, and it's available via KRunner ır Dolphin.
KRunner is also a great comand palette, window changer, and plethora of other tools combined. I generally open Krunner and open applications and do many things over it, no need to touch to mouse.
People rave about dual pane file managers, rightly so. Dolphin is both a single pane and dual pane file manager, rolled in one.
I connect to other services (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and whatnot), ah no tools. Dolphin has adapters for all of them. I can directly SFTP into a machine via fish:// for example.
I'm also a big music listener, so I rip some CDs from time to time? Do I need a tool? No. Open Dolphin, navigate to CD. There are folders (MP3, FLAC, OGG, etc.) drag your favorite format to your home folder. It's encoded on the fly. Metadata? It's retrieved when you insert your CD from MusicMatch service and reflected automatically. Neat. No?
More interconnectedness: Add your e-mail accounts and calendars to Akonadi. They are fetched and processed even if your mail client is not running. That's what multitasking is, if you ask me.
People think KDE's eye candy, but it has many quality of life things: Present windows with search, desktop grid with reorganization, dim inactive windows to prevent focus loss and eye fatigue. Just to name a few.
People terminal-hop, but Konsole is one of the best and fastest terminal emulators alongside GNOME's. New guys rave about speed, but this speed optimization thing is done by big boys in 2003-2004. GPU acceleration is also the same story.
KDE is not slow. If you disable windows appearance and destruction animations, things happen before you lift your finger from the button you're pressing. Animations take a bit of time, so things look slow.
KDE guys love GTK as they love Qt. Every KDE release comes with counterpart GTK renderers, so all applications look the same.
So, TWMs, i3/sway, and others are very nice things. They solve a lot of people's problems, and I support these people wholeheartedly, but KDE is an integrated solution which works well across the board. Give it a shot someday, in a VM.
Oh, you want to be pleasantly surprised? Try E17 (Enlightenment 17). That thing is really nice.
If I need to find something inside a file? There's Baloo, and it's available via KRunner ır Dolphin.
KRunner is also a great comand palette, window changer, and plethora of other tools combined. I generally open Krunner and open applications and do many things over it, no need to touch to mouse.
People rave about dual pane file managers, rightly so. Dolphin is both a single pane and dual pane file manager, rolled in one.
I connect to other services (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and whatnot), ah no tools. Dolphin has adapters for all of them. I can directly SFTP into a machine via fish:// for example.
I'm also a big music listener, so I rip some CDs from time to time? Do I need a tool? No. Open Dolphin, navigate to CD. There are folders (MP3, FLAC, OGG, etc.) drag your favorite format to your home folder. It's encoded on the fly. Metadata? It's retrieved when you insert your CD from MusicMatch service and reflected automatically. Neat. No?
More interconnectedness: Add your e-mail accounts and calendars to Akonadi. They are fetched and processed even if your mail client is not running. That's what multitasking is, if you ask me.
People think KDE's eye candy, but it has many quality of life things: Present windows with search, desktop grid with reorganization, dim inactive windows to prevent focus loss and eye fatigue. Just to name a few.
People terminal-hop, but Konsole is one of the best and fastest terminal emulators alongside GNOME's. New guys rave about speed, but this speed optimization thing is done by big boys in 2003-2004. GPU acceleration is also the same story.
KDE is not slow. If you disable windows appearance and destruction animations, things happen before you lift your finger from the button you're pressing. Animations take a bit of time, so things look slow.
KDE guys love GTK as they love Qt. Every KDE release comes with counterpart GTK renderers, so all applications look the same.
So, TWMs, i3/sway, and others are very nice things. They solve a lot of people's problems, and I support these people wholeheartedly, but KDE is an integrated solution which works well across the board. Give it a shot someday, in a VM.
Oh, you want to be pleasantly surprised? Try E17 (Enlightenment 17). That thing is really nice.
Pixelmator, iTerm, Time Machine, Photos, Garage Band, iMovie, Mail, Fork, Carbon Copy Cloner, Postico, Table Plus, Panic Nova, CameraBag, Soulver, Affinity, Capture One, Lightroom...
Is Time Machine reliable at all anymore?
After having 2 failed recovery efforts with Time Machine I had totally given up on it in my remaining Mac life (Time Machine had known recovery issues so I always made regular regular backups as well, so fortunately I didn't lose data).
After having 2 failed recovery efforts with Time Machine I had totally given up on it in my remaining Mac life (Time Machine had known recovery issues so I always made regular regular backups as well, so fortunately I didn't lose data).
I'd rather "make do" with not-as-great-or-polished OSS alternatives and not be in the Apple walled garden. But se la vi
>se la vi
C'est la vie.
C'est la vie.
Rectangle brings that and works seamlessly
https://rectangleapp.com/
> I’m not sure how people use their touchpads without middle click emulation either.
Because there is no need for middle click on mac? Not sure when you would use it, but there is probably a different combo (maybe even superior?) for whatever action that's mapped to a middle click. There is no emulation of a scroll wheel either.
> I’m not sure how people use their touchpads without middle click emulation either.
Because there is no need for middle click on mac? Not sure when you would use it, but there is probably a different combo (maybe even superior?) for whatever action that's mapped to a middle click. There is no emulation of a scroll wheel either.
> Because there is no need for middle click on mac? Not sure when you would use it, but there is probably a different combo (maybe even superior?) for whatever action that's mapped to a middle click.
Middle click opens a link in a new tab. A quick search suggests this isnt possible on Mac OS using the touchpad, which would personally drive me crazy.
Middle click opens a link in a new tab. A quick search suggests this isnt possible on Mac OS using the touchpad, which would personally drive me crazy.
I am a long time Linux desktop user (20+ years) but am still forced to keep a copy of windows around to use Adobe Acrobat for filling and signing forms. I have tried various Linux pdf applications (including commercial ones), using Adobe Acrobat via wine/crossover but haven't found a solution that works across the board. That is the only holdout from not having to interact with windows/mac.
Even if you are using windows, there is no reason to subject yourself to the bin fire that is Acrobat. Literally[0] every single other PDF program is better, faster, cheaper, easier to use than acrobat. Plus many of them don't randomly crash and burn half your CPU usage until you kill them like acrobat does.
[0] No, clearly I haven't actually tried all them, don't be so pedantic.
[0] No, clearly I haven't actually tried all them, don't be so pedantic.
Reading PDFs is no problem, I use `evince` since ~15 years and it does the job.
I _very_ regularly have to sign documents though, and as OP said, nothing beats Adobe for that. I even pay the subscription so that I can have it on my phone, sign on the go, etc.
I _very_ regularly have to sign documents though, and as OP said, nothing beats Adobe for that. I even pay the subscription so that I can have it on my phone, sign on the go, etc.
I use Okular for work, first on Linux for a long time and now on Windows, works superbly for signing/annotating PDFs and can be installed via package manager on either system (APT or Winget)
I've used Xournal to fill out PDFs on Linux.
Have you tried HelloSign? I just use that whenever I get something that needs signing.
Sejda pdf works well enough for me.
XournalPP
I lost any hope on the "Year of Desktop Linux" around the time Windows 7 came out.
Nowadays the only place I still use GNU/Linux as desktop experience, is my aging Asus netbook.
When it dies, it will most likely be replaced by a device from Apple/Google/Microsoft ecosystems.
Nowadays the only place I still use GNU/Linux as desktop experience, is my aging Asus netbook.
When it dies, it will most likely be replaced by a device from Apple/Google/Microsoft ecosystems.
You won't believe how things changed since then.
You need to install at least dozen applications on macOS to come near to features/capabilities of a run of the mill KDE desktop.
GNOME also improved a ton, it seems, but I'm not using it for a long long time.
macOS is lean, but doesn't have the composability and flexibility of Linux at any level. Things designed to add this composability feels bolted on loosely and limited at utility.
You need to install at least dozen applications on macOS to come near to features/capabilities of a run of the mill KDE desktop.
GNOME also improved a ton, it seems, but I'm not using it for a long long time.
macOS is lean, but doesn't have the composability and flexibility of Linux at any level. Things designed to add this composability feels bolted on loosely and limited at utility.
> You need to install at least dozen applications on macOS to come near to features/capabilities of a run of the mill KDE desktop.
I can get my run of the mill KDE desktop to hang at startup by dragging a networked folder with a custom icon to the taskbar, then attempt to log in over a flaky network connection. Or if I attempt to drag too many application icons to it in the Wayland session. Don't get me wrong, I like it, I mean, I use it, but Plasma 5 is still, at best, late beta. My only hope is that, unlike its predecessor, it doesn't get abandoned and rewritten when it gets a semblance of stability.
I can get my run of the mill KDE desktop to hang at startup by dragging a networked folder with a custom icon to the taskbar, then attempt to log in over a flaky network connection. Or if I attempt to drag too many application icons to it in the Wayland session. Don't get me wrong, I like it, I mean, I use it, but Plasma 5 is still, at best, late beta. My only hope is that, unlike its predecessor, it doesn't get abandoned and rewritten when it gets a semblance of stability.
Plasma on Wayland is a late beta yes, because Wayland itself is a late beta. I'd not use Wayland, yet if I want to use KDE, and if I need to install Wayland, I'd use another desktop environment.
I never restart KDE on my system, unless I upgrade my kernel, and restart the whole system.
I never restart KDE on my system, unless I upgrade my kernel, and restart the whole system.
Yeah, see, the fine print kills it. It's a "rock solid"* desktop, it does everything I want.
* Unless you use large network mounts, as long as you drag icons one at a time, for a fixed screen resolution, doesn't apply to Wayland, only until the next major rewrite...
* Unless you use large network mounts, as long as you drag icons one at a time, for a fixed screen resolution, doesn't apply to Wayland, only until the next major rewrite...
The fine print can be rewritten as follows:
*:Unless you use with Wayland backend, since Wayland is not mature enough.
Because my installation both has large network mounts, and I sometimes drag tons* of icons around.
*:Unless you use with Wayland backend, since Wayland is not mature enough.
Because my installation both has large network mounts, and I sometimes drag tons* of icons around.
Yeah, the fine print also needs a "works on my machine" bit :-).
Actually no. Because of my career, I deployed KDE to some very resource limited thin clients and it worked pretty well.
Also I talk with people who use KDE, and report bugs I encounter, or encourage people to report bugs when people I talk encounters them.
I'm pretty beyond "It works in my machine, so PEBKAC" at this point. I think using Linux for 20 years and managing a large fleet for 15 years helped on that front a lot. :-)
Also I talk with people who use KDE, and report bugs I encounter, or encourage people to report bugs when people I talk encounters them.
I'm pretty beyond "It works in my machine, so PEBKAC" at this point. I think using Linux for 20 years and managing a large fleet for 15 years helped on that front a lot. :-)
Oh, a milion humble apologies, my liege, I was entirely unaware of your decades of experience. Surely machines work better under your touch, for they can see the twinkle of authority in your eye. I shall revise my erroneous configuration for surely my ability to hold it right is insufficient; indeed, my mastery of software has dwindled since the days when my patches were accepted in KDE 3.1 and I am truly at a loss when it comes to manipulating the advanced software of our days.
The typical reply from Linux folks, "but things have improved so much", including missing the point I am aware of the current experience.
Most folks don't want a "go fishing experience", they want a prepared meal.
Most folks don't want a "go fishing experience", they want a prepared meal.
Well, I'm pretty aware that you know current experience way better than all of us, combined.
On the other hand, our parents, partners and non-technical friends use their Linux systems without ever calling us, the venerable yet dumb as a dead tree "Linux folks".
On the other hand, our parents, partners and non-technical friends use their Linux systems without ever calling us, the venerable yet dumb as a dead tree "Linux folks".
Unless you're speaking about ChromeOS and Android, which take the Linux kernel as implementation detail, and replace the GNU userspace with Web and Java based technologies, I pretty much doubt it, given the 2% market share of Linux Desktop usage across the globe.
Nope. I'm talking about people using GNU/Linux systems. These people are our relatives, and our friends. We see with our eyes, chat every day.
Maybe I'm on an island with everyone which makes this 2%, but these people are real, and they are not compiling things from source or throwing their machines out of windows because of frustration.
They just use their computers, be productive and live happy lives.
Maybe I'm on an island with everyone which makes this 2%, but these people are real, and they are not compiling things from source or throwing their machines out of windows because of frustration.
They just use their computers, be productive and live happy lives.
In a way it has stripped out a little of the fun of it, but that is a very VERY minor thing by comparison to systems that now just work!
As for Desktop environments, it is very rare that I have had any game breaking events on these for a very long time. The foundations are mature and hardened nowadays.
I have had the occasional issue on a elderly T400 Thinkpad when transferring large files on Mate and Enlightenment DE but I get the feeling that is potentially a hardware issue.
As for Desktop environments, it is very rare that I have had any game breaking events on these for a very long time. The foundations are mature and hardened nowadays.
I have had the occasional issue on a elderly T400 Thinkpad when transferring large files on Mate and Enlightenment DE but I get the feeling that is potentially a hardware issue.
Oh, you can still have fun. Just run something that's not a a full DE. My Sway setup is super stable now, but only after an ungodly amount of tinkering. :D
I think it is just a part of slightly yearning for the heady days of youth.
A few times I have come across younger people who are sort of upset that they missed the earlier years of computing. I mean I get it, but they are so lucky to be inheriting a world of computing that is much more rock solid than anything we used to have. No configuring autoexe.bat /config.sys or the joys of Win95 just stopping for... some reason.
Also if I want to relive the early days of Linux, PinePhone has got me covered. ;)
A few times I have come across younger people who are sort of upset that they missed the earlier years of computing. I mean I get it, but they are so lucky to be inheriting a world of computing that is much more rock solid than anything we used to have. No configuring autoexe.bat /config.sys or the joys of Win95 just stopping for... some reason.
Also if I want to relive the early days of Linux, PinePhone has got me covered. ;)
I don't entirely blame them for feeling as though they missed out. If you are technically inclined, those old machines were much more accessible, everything was new, and they presented meaningful ways to push the limits while working individually or with a small group of friends. In contrast, everything today is either handed to them on a silver platter or requires significant investment.
Well, almost everything. I find microcontrollers offer some of that old spirit.
Well, almost everything. I find microcontrollers offer some of that old spirit.
Yup, all the years of incremental improvements have really made the whole experience amazing. I switched from MacOS a few years ago and never looked back. It's been amazing. Fedora 36 + i3wm and Steam+Proton for gaming. It's as close to the perfect workstation/gaming/fun environment that I can think of.
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.
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.
Everything System76 makes themselves is awesome.
Really wish they would just merge with Framework to make an amazing Linux based hardware & software package.
I just wrote into System76 support looking for a replacement battery for my Lemur Pro (swollen battery), and mentioned I'd switched to my Framework in the meantime. Just got a response a few minutes ago:
> I received your message in the support ticket that you have gotten a Framework Laptop. A great choice.
Gave me a burst of hope for official Pop!_OS Framework laptops sold through S76.
> I received your message in the support ticket that you have gotten a Framework Laptop. A great choice.
Gave me a burst of hope for official Pop!_OS Framework laptops sold through S76.
If that means getting 15" framework laptops with discrete GPUs, sure. If it means sticking to the current framework or a larger one with the same basic hardware... nothanks.
You'll be happy to know that system76 pangolin laptops are not clevo.
source: https://fosstodon.org/@soller/109677885135544538
source: https://fosstodon.org/@soller/109677885135544538
Why is the author so secretive about who made the hardware?
They may not have permission to share it. They may just be acting coy because the scope of the conversation. They may just not know it. They may feel it just doesn't matter. Who knows?
A S76 QA engineer shared more details on Reddit.
> The chassis and motherboard for this product are manufactured by a company called Emdoor. The final assembly will be done in-house at System76's Denver factory (the same place Thelios and Launches are manufactured.)
https://old.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/10a3lqj/amd_ryzen...
A S76 QA engineer shared more details on Reddit.
> The chassis and motherboard for this product are manufactured by a company called Emdoor. The final assembly will be done in-house at System76's Denver factory (the same place Thelios and Launches are manufactured.)
https://old.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/10a3lqj/amd_ryzen...
who makes the pangolin? I heard they were getting HP to make them some machines
is the touchpad better? Have to agree with GP that clevo touchpads are bad, i have the orpy5 and the touchpad is the worst. Its bad on windows too so it isn't just some linux driver thing. Super easy to do stray palm presses and send the cursor to random places.
I purchased a high end workstation and was incredibly disappointed by the case construction and extraordinarily weird design choices made in service of aesthetics or...something.
I'm surprised. I have a 2 year old Thelio, and I really like the internal layout for my use case.
Same, I love the little slot where screws fit and the upper location for hard drives.
Yeah, exactly. First time I've encountered that. And since my goal was to add a SATA dive, it a very pleasant discovery.
what are some of the examples that you were dissatipointed by?
I can’t speak for the OP but just take a look at any $50-100 ATX PC case and see all the features it has in terms of cable management, connectivity, airflow/ cooling of all critical components and modularity. That in my view is the bar that a high end workstation should be better at.
[deleted]
It’s sold out now but they did a collab with HP called the Dev One. I haven’t seen one in person but I hear the hardware quality is quite good.
https://hpdevone.com/
https://hpdevone.com/
I don't get it: a Linux laptop with physical buttons on the touchpad but only two of them. I've been pasting text with the middle button all the time since forever and any time I had to use a two buttons mouse or touchpad it was hell. My ZBook has three buttons. It was one of the reasons I bought it.
Less visible downsides: only 1 TB SSD (I have 3 TB now), 16 GB RAM (I have 32) and the screen is smaller as the laptop is "12.73 x 8.44 x 0.75 in; 32.34 x 21.46 x 1.91 cm"
The only good points are that it weights almost half of mine and it's numberpad free :-)
Less visible downsides: only 1 TB SSD (I have 3 TB now), 16 GB RAM (I have 32) and the screen is smaller as the laptop is "12.73 x 8.44 x 0.75 in; 32.34 x 21.46 x 1.91 cm"
The only good points are that it weights almost half of mine and it's numberpad free :-)
> I hear the hardware quality is quite good
Word is, it's HP EliteBook 845 G8
(https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/wc9d7a/hp_de...)
Word is, it's HP EliteBook 845 G8
(https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/wc9d7a/hp_de...)
> 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?
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?
It's really common. The term is ODM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laptop_brands_and_manu...
I vastly prefer pgup and pgdn there. Moving between tabs in a browser is Ctrl+PgDn / Ctrl+PgUp, and physically mapping it near left/right arrows matches my mental mapping.
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.
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.
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).
Weren't they working on making their own hardware a while ago (5 years ago, I think)? Have they ever given an update on that?
Yeah, they announced that in 2019 if not earlier. At some point they said it would be delayed, presumably due to the pandemic.
Similar for me. When I looked at System 76 laptops 1-2 years ago, the keyboard type was a deal-breaker for me. They were like Asus ROG laptop keyboards, whereas I strongly prefer keyboards like my Lenovo Legion's.
I was hopeful when they announced an all-AMD laptop recently. But unfortunately it's too small / underpowered / non-upgradeable for my needs, and I couldn't tell from the pictures if the keyboard was more to my liking.
To be fair, even Framework laptops don't have swappable keyboard types, AFAICT. So even a System76-Framework team-up wouldn't necessarily fit my needs.
I was hopeful when they announced an all-AMD laptop recently. But unfortunately it's too small / underpowered / non-upgradeable for my needs, and I couldn't tell from the pictures if the keyboard was more to my liking.
To be fair, even Framework laptops don't have swappable keyboard types, AFAICT. So even a System76-Framework team-up wouldn't necessarily fit my needs.
I actually got a laptop from sager (clevo) and after 5 years of heavy use. my biggest complaint is the dam case. all the plastic clips broke. only a few screws holding it together. lots of gaps now. and a few cracks in the plastic.
but it's been thrown in a back pack and gone through several years of traveling in a back pack
but it's been thrown in a back pack and gone through several years of traveling in a back pack
Why don't Clevo's customers ask Clevo to upgrade the hardware and create a premium line?
You can consider Purism instead, which already are making their own hardware. Happy owner here.
I have one too. I love the very standard hardware - even a regular barrel jack for the power adapter.
That said, the keyboard could be better.
I hate the trend in flat-top keys we have now. I honestly love the feel of gently recessed keys. I had an early macbook pro and the keys seemed to press against my fingertips uniformly instead of having the "hotspot" you get in the center of the flat key.
That said, the keyboard could be better.
I hate the trend in flat-top keys we have now. I honestly love the feel of gently recessed keys. I had an early macbook pro and the keys seemed to press against my fingertips uniformly instead of having the "hotspot" you get in the center of the flat key.
I have a ~6-year-old Clevo laptop (from Mythlogic, which tells you something). After about five years, the keyboard kinda crapped out. Got a new keyboard, took about ten minutes to swap it in. The hard part was getting the part, had to order it from China.
I have one from mid-2014 (base model W550SU, now-bankrupt distributor), used about as heavily as anyone would ever use one (probably averaging sixty hours a week). Its keyboard was not great within one year (spongy), and distinctly unpleasant after two years (very spongy), with its space bar becoming extremely unreliable during the third year. It became impossible to type at speed on it.
But how about "do one thing, but do it right"?
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.
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.
recently updated firmware fixed the suspend issues I had on lemur pro!
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”.
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
Edit: I suppose the assumption, based on the paragraph and screenshot, is that they update depending on the arrangement of workspaces: horizontal vs vertical
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My next laptop is going to be from them, no doubt. I'm hoping someday they offer Arm offerings too!
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.
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.
At this point, my white whale for a Linux laptop is functioning sleep. Any problems/higher than expected power consumption?
I was in the same boat, but in my case I finally figured out that it wasn't that the hardware that couldn't do it, I realized the configuration wasn't optimized.
So I'll share my number one optimization trick. Install powertop and get familiar with all the tabs it provides.
Use: sudo powertop --auto-tune
it can make a HUGE difference.
After a while all the tricks started to snowball and I was able to set up my laptop so I could swap between nvidia discrete graphics (2-3 hours off a full battery) and the integrated Intel Xe graphics (13.5 hours off a full battery). Power consumption on suspend under intel graphics is negligible. Wake is flawless. Now I find myself wishing I knew windows better so I could get the same graphics-swap-trick working under windows too (dual booted system).
So I'll share my number one optimization trick. Install powertop and get familiar with all the tabs it provides.
Use: sudo powertop --auto-tune
it can make a HUGE difference.
After a while all the tricks started to snowball and I was able to set up my laptop so I could swap between nvidia discrete graphics (2-3 hours off a full battery) and the integrated Intel Xe graphics (13.5 hours off a full battery). Power consumption on suspend under intel graphics is negligible. Wake is flawless. Now I find myself wishing I knew windows better so I could get the same graphics-swap-trick working under windows too (dual booted system).
Personally I prefer TLP to powertop, they even have a FAQ page on the differences. https://linrunner.de/tlp/faq/powertop.html
Thanks!
I’m not familiar with TLP, but I’ll check it out.
In all fairness, windows laptops don’t have functioning sleep either. Only apple nailed it.
Edit: This is what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c
Edit: This is what I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKKcd3sx2c
Yeah, the classic let's copy Apple (power nap), but only half-ass it. Bonus points for completely throwing out S3 sleep (though I hear some laptops still support that).
Speaking of Linux, on my particular HP laptops (Elitebook 840 (intel 11th gen) and 845 (zen 3)) it wipes the floor with Windows. Even though "HP Recommends Windows 11".
Main reason being that it actually stays asleep. Windows, half the time, will wake back up moments in. When it stays asleep, there's a high probability that it will somehow crash and reboot [0] or just randomly wake up while being closed in a bag.
There's no power management while the actual OS hasn't started booting [1], so you get the screen going at full blast, etc. Good times, especially in a bag or at night [2]. It also sometimes starts spinning the fan while pretending to sleep. It does indeed get rather warm, so I'm not really sure what it does.
What Windows sometimes does and Linux never does: wake from sleep to a black screen, wake from sleep to a garbled screen, sometimes with the fan blowing like a jet engine.
---
[0] No, it doesn't reboot for updates. The event log talks about unexpected shutdown. It also doesn't run out of battery, since it also happens while being plugged in.
[1] I use bitlocker with TPM + PIN, so it doesn't boot on its own
[2] I don't usually close it because the screen touches the keyboard, so it gets dirty.
Speaking of Linux, on my particular HP laptops (Elitebook 840 (intel 11th gen) and 845 (zen 3)) it wipes the floor with Windows. Even though "HP Recommends Windows 11".
Main reason being that it actually stays asleep. Windows, half the time, will wake back up moments in. When it stays asleep, there's a high probability that it will somehow crash and reboot [0] or just randomly wake up while being closed in a bag.
There's no power management while the actual OS hasn't started booting [1], so you get the screen going at full blast, etc. Good times, especially in a bag or at night [2]. It also sometimes starts spinning the fan while pretending to sleep. It does indeed get rather warm, so I'm not really sure what it does.
What Windows sometimes does and Linux never does: wake from sleep to a black screen, wake from sleep to a garbled screen, sometimes with the fan blowing like a jet engine.
---
[0] No, it doesn't reboot for updates. The event log talks about unexpected shutdown. It also doesn't run out of battery, since it also happens while being plugged in.
[1] I use bitlocker with TPM + PIN, so it doesn't boot on its own
[2] I don't usually close it because the screen touches the keyboard, so it gets dirty.
> Only apple nailed it.
it used to be true, but sleep sucks now in the M1 line. When I leave my 14 inch mbp on sleep with 20% battery before bed I wake up to a dead battery.
it used to be true, but sleep sucks now in the M1 line. When I leave my 14 inch mbp on sleep with 20% battery before bed I wake up to a dead battery.
Sleep on the M1’s is as good, if not better, as it ever was. You might have a power hungry application throwing things off.
May be some app you use is preventing sleep from functioning correctly? Is this something that happens to many users?
I have two M1 macbooks, one that I use almost daily and another that I only use a couple times a week. None of them have had any problem with sleep or battery life, I'm actually extremely happy with them in this regard.
I have two M1 macbooks, one that I use almost daily and another that I only use a couple times a week. None of them have had any problem with sleep or battery life, I'm actually extremely happy with them in this regard.
M1 user here who's never experienced what you're saying. Sounds like a configuration issue.
> Only apple nailed it.
Meanwhile, my wife's Apple laptop fails to go to sleep if it's plugged into a Dell monitor via USB-C, instead it wakes up and dings every time it's about to go to sleep.
As always in Apple world, how well something "was nailed" depends on your exact circumstances, and when something doesn't work, you have no hope of ever getting it to work.
Meanwhile, my wife's Apple laptop fails to go to sleep if it's plugged into a Dell monitor via USB-C, instead it wakes up and dings every time it's about to go to sleep.
As always in Apple world, how well something "was nailed" depends on your exact circumstances, and when something doesn't work, you have no hope of ever getting it to work.
> Only apple nailed it.
On my old Intel Mac the so-called "smart sleep" would leave my laptop hot to the touch after carrying it in my backpack. Utterly useless. Even at its best it would still result in a 20% reduction in usable charge. Just give me a hibernate option, FFS.
On my old Intel Mac the so-called "smart sleep" would leave my laptop hot to the touch after carrying it in my backpack. Utterly useless. Even at its best it would still result in a 20% reduction in usable charge. Just give me a hibernate option, FFS.
Is it? My ThinkPad running Linux goes to sleep and wakes up just fine.
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.
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.
Mine does too, but the battery still dies after a while, unlike my MacBook which seems to have nearly unlimited sleep capability.
The power usage isn't great, but it's as good as any non-Apple compact laptop I've ever owned. It sleeps fine, but not in the "hibernate" type of sleep.
NFTs exist, but fully, and more-or-less reliably, functioning sleep states are still something Apple can use as a differentiator in 2023.
Markets are weird.
Markets are weird.
I love my system76 laptop. Shit just works. No messing with drivers, setting, etc.
Dumb question: when considering a company that sells branded generic laptops, why not buy from the generic laptop vendor directly (Clevo in the case [0])?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17039414
(Yes there's a response in that link from S76 folks but I'm still curious on the buyer side your reasoning.)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17039414
(Yes there's a response in that link from S76 folks but I'm still curious on the buyer side your reasoning.)
Same reasons other have stated really:
It supports a company selling linux laptops, and they make sure everything works out of the box, and provide support. Pretty much the same reason to use their OS, which is basically just Ubuntu + drivers. It should all "just work" which is exactly what a lot of people expect from a laptop.
If you have a desktop system that's giving you problems in linux because of incomparable hardware or crappy drivers it's a pretty easy to find what component is working well for other people and swap some parts, but laptops are such a pain I don't even want to open one up if I can help it. It sounds like System 76 works with Clevo to put together certain builds they might not offer normally. Why risk getting a similarly spec'd Clevo only to find out it's got a different wireless chipset or GPU variant and now you're stuck with a bunch of of problems to try to work around.
It supports a company selling linux laptops, and they make sure everything works out of the box, and provide support. Pretty much the same reason to use their OS, which is basically just Ubuntu + drivers. It should all "just work" which is exactly what a lot of people expect from a laptop.
If you have a desktop system that's giving you problems in linux because of incomparable hardware or crappy drivers it's a pretty easy to find what component is working well for other people and swap some parts, but laptops are such a pain I don't even want to open one up if I can help it. It sounds like System 76 works with Clevo to put together certain builds they might not offer normally. Why risk getting a similarly spec'd Clevo only to find out it's got a different wireless chipset or GPU variant and now you're stuck with a bunch of of problems to try to work around.
I bought my S76 laptop via my work's "choose your own workstation" program. It's a great way to support continued development of the software I use PLUS when you buy via S76 you get lifetime support for the device. The support is not something I've made use of often, but it certainly paid off the one time I needed it. Basically, it depends on your idea of "value" - do you value money (buy cheaper hardware) or time (buy S76 with support)?
Yea, I had to pay for the battery, but when my battery died they shipped one out immediately with free shipping for the cost of the battery (no markup from the "aliexpress special" I found later; and I bet theirs is more reliable than that one). Also, when I had password issues with FDE due to my own failure, after the warranty ran out, they emailed back and forth for days until we fixed the issue.
I bought a NUC from them years ago that was always a bit wonky, but not unusable. Until one day I couldn't stand it any more and sent it back for repair. At that point I'd had it for well over a year, maybe more than two. It came back with a fixed controller and has worked flawlessly ever since. So, you pay for support. And the price difference is peanuts compared to all of our hourly rates.
Edited to add: the repair was free of charge.
Edited to add: the repair was free of charge.
> when considering a company that sells branded generic laptops
What company does that?
What company does that?
The company this thread is about: System76. They dont build their own laptops (which, is understandable for a small company).
No, they co-design the laptops and ship them with completely different firmware. That's very different from what you're saying is happening. You even linked to a thread where an employee discussed how it works.
It'd be nice if they made the laptops themselves, but not even Apple does that.
It'd be nice if they made the laptops themselves, but not even Apple does that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like it a lot, using it on my Framework since I got it, and on a S76 laptop before that. Came from Mint, I like the simplicity of Pop. High "just works" factor.
Only other place I can imagine going is NixOS, but I suspect PopOS+Nix might be a better balance for me.
Only other place I can imagine going is NixOS, but I suspect PopOS+Nix might be a better balance for me.
I prefer it over Ubuntu simply because of the nvidia image that's available instead of relying on generic drivers initially and then installing the proprietary ones. I have had no issues w/ it, though I had with Ubuntu over nv drivers.
Unfortunately I am stuck with NVDA until well, Triton has AMD support, or RocM PyTorch catches up in performance.
Unfortunately I am stuck with NVDA until well, Triton has AMD support, or RocM PyTorch catches up in performance.
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.
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.
I really like it. Switched from Ubuntu several years ago (due to snap), and I like it a lot more than Ubuntu. The UI is nice, settings are well thought out and the app store is the best one I've found in all distros.
Only had a few minor issues with it over the years. The Nvidia driver gave me some problems on my discrete graphics a while ago, for which I found a solution online.
Occasionally the login screen fails to appear waking from suspend. Closing and opening the laptop lid fixes that; I haven't bothered to try to figure out what's going on.
Running on a ThinkPad T560.
Only had a few minor issues with it over the years. The Nvidia driver gave me some problems on my discrete graphics a while ago, for which I found a solution online.
Occasionally the login screen fails to appear waking from suspend. Closing and opening the laptop lid fixes that; I haven't bothered to try to figure out what's going on.
Running on a ThinkPad T560.
Running it pre-installed on a laptop. Other than the fact it seems like they push updates multiple times a day, it has been the closest I have had to "it just works" in a long time.
My experience is pretty bumpy. I have their laptop called Adder. Top issues I've ran into:
o the screen is redrawn incorrectly for Chrome windows
o there is a 10% chance that I'll have to reboot if I close the laptop without explicitly putting it into sleep mode with Fn-F12
I am running the latest PopOS and keeping packages up-to-date. I have asked support but their advice either doesn't fix the problem, or involves so much effort (reinstalling everything for example) that I never do it.
I am running the latest PopOS and keeping packages up-to-date. I have asked support but their advice either doesn't fix the problem, or involves so much effort (reinstalling everything for example) that I never do it.
>What are people’s opinions of PopOS?
I used PopOS for a while, and as a distro I thought it was nice.
Unfortunately, I encountered an unrecoverable/won't boot/have to reinstall error twice on my laptop of the time. So I went back to Ubuntu.
One anecdote, probably isolated or coincidence, but it's the sort of thing that happens to people and they never go back (but I bet I'll try it again, since swapping distros is pretty easy nowadays).
I used PopOS for a while, and as a distro I thought it was nice.
Unfortunately, I encountered an unrecoverable/won't boot/have to reinstall error twice on my laptop of the time. So I went back to Ubuntu.
One anecdote, probably isolated or coincidence, but it's the sort of thing that happens to people and they never go back (but I bet I'll try it again, since swapping distros is pretty easy nowadays).
I like it! It's nicely polished and their Pop Shop app installer is better than gnomes.
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”.
I like it, but I'm a fairly unsophisticated user of any Linux desktop.
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..
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
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.
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.
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.
How many people do you realistically need for working on Coreboot/firmware stuff? I guess that one full-time person is just all that's needed?
And I bet that many System76 users don't actually care about all of this either. Some do, but I'm not so sure the majority do. It's certainly not something that actually sells significant amount of machines in the mainstream market. Having a usable functional desktop does.
And I bet that many System76 users don't actually care about all of this either. Some do, but I'm not so sure the majority do. It's certainly not something that actually sells significant amount of machines in the mainstream market. Having a usable functional desktop does.
> I guess that one full-time person is just all that's needed?
Emphatically not. I mean, just look at the bug tracker. Or how about this data point: my Lemur Pro (lemp11) could not suspend at all when shipped -- the model started shipping in Summer IIRC, but the relevant workaround/fix was only finally released in November. So yeah, the Coreboot/firmware field is very understaffed.
Emphatically not. I mean, just look at the bug tracker. Or how about this data point: my Lemur Pro (lemp11) could not suspend at all when shipped -- the model started shipping in Summer IIRC, but the relevant workaround/fix was only finally released in November. So yeah, the Coreboot/firmware field is very understaffed.
I certainly care a lot about having a Linux desktop that works well with the hardware I bought for it, and has a company with a vested interest in keeping it that way. I admire how Apple controls their entire stack and is able to do interesting, smooth integrations with all of their offerings.
That is why I went with System76.
A year ago I asked on my local Linux mailing list for some hardware recommendations, and I mentioned I would like to buy something w/Linux pre-installed. A lot of people got upset with that idea.
I am done installing OSes. I never learned anything from it, and I buy a system to use it, not to configure it.
A year ago I asked on my local Linux mailing list for some hardware recommendations, and I mentioned I would like to buy something w/Linux pre-installed. A lot of people got upset with that idea.
I am done installing OSes. I never learned anything from it, and I buy a system to use it, not to configure it.
> Welp, lesson learned
Yes go to HP/Dell/Lenovo/Apple where no one works on open firmware, i don't understand your mindset....
Yes go to HP/Dell/Lenovo/Apple where no one works on open firmware, i don't understand your mindset....
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!
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.
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.
I am still kicking myself for not scooping up the Dev Ones when they were $200 off. They had a keyboard nipple dammit!
The DevOne is a really interesting and unexpected product. I hope they iterate and follow up with a new one eventually.
>You get laptops that don't suspend as shipped
They have not suspended the laptops during shipment?
>you still cannot remove of disable Intel ME
Yeah right? Another good point for open firmware.
They have not suspended the laptops during shipment?
>you still cannot remove of disable Intel ME
Yeah right? Another good point for open firmware.
Can't upvote you enough.
You'd think they'd have clear priorities, yet they don't seem to understand firmware matters, and that there are enough Linux desktops already.
I don't like the idea of supporting a Linux distro or DE I won't use or ever care about.
You'd think they'd have clear priorities, yet they don't seem to understand firmware matters, and that there are enough Linux desktops already.
I don't like the idea of supporting a Linux distro or DE I won't use or ever care about.
Every vendor that seems to say they care about coreboot implementation seems to just be doing it to capture the eyes of people like us who actually care about it. But then as you stated, they'd rather spend their time/money to write their own DE than give a shit about open firmware.
If I was going to buy a coreboot laptop it would likely be a higher end Chromebook that mrchromebox has a hack for.
If I was going to buy a coreboot laptop it would likely be a higher end Chromebook that mrchromebox has a hack for.
I'm curious to know who you would suggest supporting instead.
MNT Reform is one too ;)
https://mntre.com/
https://mntre.com/
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
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
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-ad85-4e79-8... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8...
[2]https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b...
[1] https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/af08494c-ad85-4e79-8...
[2]https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b... vs https://images.prismic.io/blog-system76/de984d24-f265-4ebd-b...
It's the compression. There are some pretty heavy JPEG artifacts in the screenshots.
> they need to fix that asap
Why does this urgently need to be fixed?
Why does this urgently need to be fixed?
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.
Huh, I usually associate poor text rendering with modern software.
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.
[deleted]
Just to clarify, System76 doesn't make Framework laptops; that's a different company.
deafpolygon(3)
"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.
I would enjoy it greatly if people would stop making any more fucking desktop environments for Linux, thanks. 5,000 of them is enough.
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.
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.
> Nobody is forcing anyone to go through all the different DE offerings.
That's not quite right. Laptops purchased with Linux will come with a DE chosen by the vendor, and in many cases it is something custom. System 76 puts PopOS on their machines (is it a Gnome? is it something else? the screenshot looks like Gnome; but the name says Cosmic; I don't even know anymore). Tuxedo installs Tuxedo OS, which, I believe, used to be based on Budgie (they've since switched to KDE last time I heard). Anything with preinstalled Ubuntu comes with Gnome. And so on. So yeah, there is an element of forcing customers into a particular DE, unless they are determined enough to just wipe the laptop clean and install a system of their choice.
That's not quite right. Laptops purchased with Linux will come with a DE chosen by the vendor, and in many cases it is something custom. System 76 puts PopOS on their machines (is it a Gnome? is it something else? the screenshot looks like Gnome; but the name says Cosmic; I don't even know anymore). Tuxedo installs Tuxedo OS, which, I believe, used to be based on Budgie (they've since switched to KDE last time I heard). Anything with preinstalled Ubuntu comes with Gnome. And so on. So yeah, there is an element of forcing customers into a particular DE, unless they are determined enough to just wipe the laptop clean and install a system of their choice.
But not through all of them.
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.
Probably just a pipe dream though.
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.
> 5,000 of them is enough.
Why? You don't have to use ALL of them. Just pick one.
Why? You don't have to use ALL of them. Just pick one.
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Just what Linux needs, more fragmentation.
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.
Sure, this may come off polemic, but I very much think that gnome is largely to blame for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop.
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.
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.
The only "fragmentation" GNOME directly caused was MATE being forked out of GNOME 2. Fragmentation is just the natural evolution of FOSS because there isn't a monopoly shoving license terms down the throat of every customer. GNOME's philosophy is kind of restrictive but they are not the one to blame for the fragmentation of the Linux desktop especially considering DEs and distributions are SEPARATE things and many distributions provide multiple DE options bundled at install.
You need to look further into the past.
If Gnome wouldn't had poped up Linux would have a standard desktop named KDE likely today.
So the claim that they caused fragmentation seems not completely off.
If Gnome wouldn't had poped up Linux would have a standard desktop named KDE likely today.
So the claim that they caused fragmentation seems not completely off.
If GNOME did not exist, KDE would have been commercial ( Qt at least ). To prevent that, an alternative to GNOME would have arisen.
If KDE had not started with this flaw, I would agree with you.
For the most part, the Linux Desktop has been a majority using some variation of GNOME with a dedicated minority using KDE.
I have not used “GNOME” since the 2.x days but I have always been in the GNOME world. Even XFCE is really another base for GNOME.
I have not used KDE since the 2.x days either but current Plasma is pretty good and I do not mind it. I put Big Linux on a laptop and have not taken its version on KDE off yet.
If KDE had not started with this flaw, I would agree with you.
For the most part, the Linux Desktop has been a majority using some variation of GNOME with a dedicated minority using KDE.
I have not used “GNOME” since the 2.x days but I have always been in the GNOME world. Even XFCE is really another base for GNOME.
I have not used KDE since the 2.x days either but current Plasma is pretty good and I do not mind it. I put Big Linux on a laptop and have not taken its version on KDE off yet.
> If GNOME did not exist, KDE would have been commercial ( Qt at least ). To prevent that, an alternative to GNOME would have arisen.
KDE wouldn't be commercial.
Qt didn't have the ideal license back than but you could use it free.
At the point KDE would be the de facto standard Unix desktop there would have been enough power behind that to arrive in the end at the exact same compromise regarding Qt that we have now, I'm quite sure.
There was no need to split the Unix desktop forever, and cause infinite pain as a result, by invoking the nuclear option, which the Gnome people did!
And given the further background story of one of the most prominent people behind that whole story you can even construct a reasonably believable "conspiracy theory" around the things that happened… ;-)
KDE wouldn't be commercial.
Qt didn't have the ideal license back than but you could use it free.
At the point KDE would be the de facto standard Unix desktop there would have been enough power behind that to arrive in the end at the exact same compromise regarding Qt that we have now, I'm quite sure.
There was no need to split the Unix desktop forever, and cause infinite pain as a result, by invoking the nuclear option, which the Gnome people did!
And given the further background story of one of the most prominent people behind that whole story you can even construct a reasonably believable "conspiracy theory" around the things that happened… ;-)
Nah, if GNOME never existed either KDE would have fragmented or people would have invented other DEs. You can't wish away diversity.
Why would KDE fragment, if it actually didn't?
Also there are quite some other DEs. Only that there are just two big ones. If one of the big ones would not exist there would be a default one with the greatest market share.
Normal people don't reinvent the wheel when there is no need for that…
There was no need to split KDE. And Gnome exist solely for political reasons. Like I said, look at the history.
Also there are quite some other DEs. Only that there are just two big ones. If one of the big ones would not exist there would be a default one with the greatest market share.
Normal people don't reinvent the wheel when there is no need for that…
There was no need to split KDE. And Gnome exist solely for political reasons. Like I said, look at the history.
There wouldn't be a single standard desktop with >80% usage regardless of whether GNOME existed, and KDE will merely be among one of many desktop environment options. That's just the nature of how things work in this space.
Look at the history.
In the beginning there was only KDE. And it was regarded THE Unix desktop.
No sane people worked on anything else!
But than Gnome was created as a KDE clone. Solely for political reasons…
In the beginning there was only KDE. And it was regarded THE Unix desktop.
No sane people worked on anything else!
But than Gnome was created as a KDE clone. Solely for political reasons…
You’re talking about Gnome as if it’s an end onto itself. But it did not appear out of thin air just to disrupt KDE’s dominance.
Look at the history again. Look at the names on the emails and posts.
It was done by people, because they wanted it done. For “solely political reasons”? But that’s exactly what politics means: making sure people get what they want. As opposed to everyone having what you want.
Look at the history again. Look at the names on the emails and posts.
It was done by people, because they wanted it done. For “solely political reasons”? But that’s exactly what politics means: making sure people get what they want. As opposed to everyone having what you want.
> You’re talking about Gnome as if it’s an end onto itself. But it did not appear out of thin air just to disrupt KDE’s dominance.
It did exactly this!
Gnome was created because some people didn't like the Qt license.
There had been zero technical reasons. Still people decided to start form scratch just to have a different license.
> Look at the names on the emails and posts.
Good point!
There is one very special name on that list. Someone who turned out being a Microsoft u-boot according to some very popular "conspiracy theory"…
So if you like conspiracy theories you may add "divide et impera" to the possible reasons for the existence of Gnome. ;-)
> But that’s exactly what politics means: making sure people get what they want. As opposed to everyone having what you want.
It's irrelevant what I would like to have.
The relevant question was and is what would have been best for the Linux desktop as a whole.
Do you really want to argue that the miserable split where everything gets done at least twice is a good outcome?
It did exactly this!
Gnome was created because some people didn't like the Qt license.
There had been zero technical reasons. Still people decided to start form scratch just to have a different license.
> Look at the names on the emails and posts.
Good point!
There is one very special name on that list. Someone who turned out being a Microsoft u-boot according to some very popular "conspiracy theory"…
So if you like conspiracy theories you may add "divide et impera" to the possible reasons for the existence of Gnome. ;-)
> But that’s exactly what politics means: making sure people get what they want. As opposed to everyone having what you want.
It's irrelevant what I would like to have.
The relevant question was and is what would have been best for the Linux desktop as a whole.
Do you really want to argue that the miserable split where everything gets done at least twice is a good outcome?
You are talking as if those two DEs are the only two options in existence. They are not. Xfce started development in 1996 ahead og GNOME. And if the "political reasons" you talked about were related to licensing issues with Qt, then GNOME is not the one to blame for. Asking people to look at the history is only going to make them discover the truth you don't want to admit.
The truth that some people were not able to negotiate but resorted to the most violent method possible to get their will?
Yes, I hope people will discover that truth.
And yes, it was the Gnome people who choose the nuclear option!
Yes, I hope people will discover that truth.
And yes, it was the Gnome people who choose the nuclear option!
If you have to use words like "most violent" and "nuclear" to describe a valid & normal act of launching free & open source software that everyone had the freedom of choice regarding whether to use it or not, you need to seriously re-evaluate your personal priorities and worldview.
I use both GNOME and KDE daily for different use cases, and the fact that people like you who hold such views exist is downright disturbing.
I use both GNOME and KDE daily for different use cases, and the fact that people like you who hold such views exist is downright disturbing.
>And it was regarded THE Unix desktop.
That was CDE and for sure nothing like KDE or Gnome.
That was CDE and for sure nothing like KDE or Gnome.
KDE was regarded the spiritual successor of CDE.
KDE was not "THE UNIX DESKTOP"...it never was, not for a single UNIX. If anything Gnome (aka Java Desktop) was a Unix Desktop (SUN Solaris) and is it still for Oracle Solaris.
I dont want themes at all. I just want a vertical dock and tray icons!
Meh. No, gnome is not. XFCE was there before gnome 3 and is still here today. Same for all other popular desktop environments.
Mate, Cinnamon and Budgie were not.
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
There's no fragmentation, only KDE and Gnome.
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
There's no fragmentation, only KDE and Gnome.
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.
If Rust helps us actually improve and change things, then fine.
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.
Try kde
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.
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.
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.
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.
But anyway I should really give an RPM based distro a go at some point.
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.
Ummm, a vibrant ecosystem of desktop environments/window managers is one of the best things about Linux.
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.
The community spreads its efforts thin into a thousand projects rather than making one amazing one.
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.
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]
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).
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).
[deleted]
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]
I think Deepin's DE used to be based on HTML years back, but they switched to Qt.
So Gnome?
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/
I don't actually see the fragmentation here.
You can move from Gnome Shell to this without having to change the software you use.
You can move from Gnome Shell to this without having to change the software you use.
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.
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.
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.
Cosmic exists because Gnome devs have their own roadmap that many people dislike.
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.
Sometime I wonder what can they pull off if KDE team, Gnome team, XFCE team and now Cosmic team got together.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
The team working on a single desktop wouldn't necessarily be much bigger anyway.
The back-end stuff doesn't really change, so more DE options is not going to be the end of the world.
They call it "choice" I think /s
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Respectfully, this seems like a really out-of-touch perspective.
The software I use for Mac is a melange of open source and proprietary. I basically just use whatever is the least painful; sometimes that's open source, sometimes it's proprietary. Virtually every piece of software I use is high quality, and Mac doesn't really encumber my ability to use best-in-class software.
Linux desktop software is by far more brittle--it has to play nicely across a dizzying array of systems all while using crumby, buggy GUI toolkits from the 90s. Basic things like hidpi, webcam, (good) touchpad support are very unlikely to work out of the box if at all. Further still, support for popular apps can be really hit-or-miss on Linux. Not sure what the state of the world is, but for a good long time Spotify wasn't available on Linux. Yeah, I get that Spotify is proprietary and thus evil, but I don't really care about ideology, I want to be able to listen to my music without jumping through hoops (I would work around the limitation by using the web interface, but it was buggier and clearly a second-class citizen).
Like, I would love to be a Linux desktop user, and I often find myself daydreaming about how to build a Linux desktop platform that doesn't suck--it's not like I'm a MacOS partisan or anything. It's just that today, MacOS is wayyyy better than the Linux desktop. Linux can get there, but we really need to get rid of a bunch of cruft and build on a saner foundation (frankly, we should just use web APIs for building apps--something like ChromeOS but without the restrictions on what a program can do).
Respectfully, this seems like a really out-of-touch perspective.
The software I use for Mac is a melange of open source and proprietary. I basically just use whatever is the least painful; sometimes that's open source, sometimes it's proprietary. Virtually every piece of software I use is high quality, and Mac doesn't really encumber my ability to use best-in-class software.
Linux desktop software is by far more brittle--it has to play nicely across a dizzying array of systems all while using crumby, buggy GUI toolkits from the 90s. Basic things like hidpi, webcam, (good) touchpad support are very unlikely to work out of the box if at all. Further still, support for popular apps can be really hit-or-miss on Linux. Not sure what the state of the world is, but for a good long time Spotify wasn't available on Linux. Yeah, I get that Spotify is proprietary and thus evil, but I don't really care about ideology, I want to be able to listen to my music without jumping through hoops (I would work around the limitation by using the web interface, but it was buggier and clearly a second-class citizen).
Like, I would love to be a Linux desktop user, and I often find myself daydreaming about how to build a Linux desktop platform that doesn't suck--it's not like I'm a MacOS partisan or anything. It's just that today, MacOS is wayyyy better than the Linux desktop. Linux can get there, but we really need to get rid of a bunch of cruft and build on a saner foundation (frankly, we should just use web APIs for building apps--something like ChromeOS but without the restrictions on what a program can do).
> 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.
Mainly a DOS/Windows user for about five or six years, then Linux for about eight or nine (mostly Gentoo and, later, Ubuntu), macOS for my serious-business desktop needs since 2011.
To this part of your comment: Wut.
I truly have no clue what you mean by this. I think I use one program that might fit this description (Spectacle—which has several active replacements I could switch to, and still works perfectly, not so much as a single glitch, bug, or bit of jank that I've ever seen, despite its having been abandoned years ago)
Meanwhile, "brittle and relying on tons of solo-dev apps to hack in basic functionality" (ok, mostly not proprietary ones, sure) is about how I would have described desktop Linux. But... I suspect we have different definitions of "basic functionality".
Power management I never have to think about or fiddle with is table-stakes for me these days, for instance—I don't got time for that shit these days, a computer that can't do that fairly competently without my telling it what to do is just broken, same as a thermostat if I had to go poke it every single time I wanted the AC or heat to kick on, then watch carefully to make sure it actually did what I wanted, would be broken.
A good default en keyboard layout (why would the default not be a good one? It boggles the mind—and sure, that's a distro concern, not a "Linux" concern, but so's everything that matters on Linux).
"Find my" or equivalent.
Low jitter and reasonably consistent latency, at least under light load.
Solid, well-considered, capable, well-functioning accessibility features.
A trackpad good enough I don't even consider taking my mouse unless I'll be gone several days.
Bluetooth audio that works well enough that I don't hate it and spend no more than a minute or two a week fiddling with (and that mostly because I also use the same devices on Windows).
Seamless password & payment sync across all my (non-server) devices, relying on biometrics on all of them so I rarely have to type a password at all.
I'd be "hack[ing] in" all of that—and far, far more—back in on Linux, if I could attain it at all, and that stuff—the stuff that I rely on weekly, if not multiple times a day—is what I regard as "the basics".
I'd also still be using exactly one of those "thoughtfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee" text editors if I went back to Linux. Sublime beats anything else I've used on Linux, and it's not a close contest—failing that, something from Jetbrains. Open source editors and IDEs would only enter the picture if I somehow couldn't get Sublime or something from Jetbrains. Meanwhile, I struggle to think of anything else in that category that I use. It's mostly first-party or open-source. If I did more multimedia or GUI design I'd probably use a few more of those small-team proprietary programs, but I don't think it's controversial to assert that those largely blow anything available on Linux out of the water (except the ones that are cross-platform because they're—ugh—electron or browser-based, so do work on Linux) so it's not like I'm missing out on the riches of open-source, at least when it comes to that kind of thing.
Mainly a DOS/Windows user for about five or six years, then Linux for about eight or nine (mostly Gentoo and, later, Ubuntu), macOS for my serious-business desktop needs since 2011.
To this part of your comment: Wut.
I truly have no clue what you mean by this. I think I use one program that might fit this description (Spectacle—which has several active replacements I could switch to, and still works perfectly, not so much as a single glitch, bug, or bit of jank that I've ever seen, despite its having been abandoned years ago)
Meanwhile, "brittle and relying on tons of solo-dev apps to hack in basic functionality" (ok, mostly not proprietary ones, sure) is about how I would have described desktop Linux. But... I suspect we have different definitions of "basic functionality".
Power management I never have to think about or fiddle with is table-stakes for me these days, for instance—I don't got time for that shit these days, a computer that can't do that fairly competently without my telling it what to do is just broken, same as a thermostat if I had to go poke it every single time I wanted the AC or heat to kick on, then watch carefully to make sure it actually did what I wanted, would be broken.
A good default en keyboard layout (why would the default not be a good one? It boggles the mind—and sure, that's a distro concern, not a "Linux" concern, but so's everything that matters on Linux).
"Find my" or equivalent.
Low jitter and reasonably consistent latency, at least under light load.
Solid, well-considered, capable, well-functioning accessibility features.
A trackpad good enough I don't even consider taking my mouse unless I'll be gone several days.
Bluetooth audio that works well enough that I don't hate it and spend no more than a minute or two a week fiddling with (and that mostly because I also use the same devices on Windows).
Seamless password & payment sync across all my (non-server) devices, relying on biometrics on all of them so I rarely have to type a password at all.
I'd be "hack[ing] in" all of that—and far, far more—back in on Linux, if I could attain it at all, and that stuff—the stuff that I rely on weekly, if not multiple times a day—is what I regard as "the basics".
I'd also still be using exactly one of those "thoughtfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee" text editors if I went back to Linux. Sublime beats anything else I've used on Linux, and it's not a close contest—failing that, something from Jetbrains. Open source editors and IDEs would only enter the picture if I somehow couldn't get Sublime or something from Jetbrains. Meanwhile, I struggle to think of anything else in that category that I use. It's mostly first-party or open-source. If I did more multimedia or GUI design I'd probably use a few more of those small-team proprietary programs, but I don't think it's controversial to assert that those largely blow anything available on Linux out of the water (except the ones that are cross-platform because they're—ugh—electron or browser-based, so do work on Linux) so it's not like I'm missing out on the riches of open-source, at least when it comes to that kind of thing.
> A good default en keyboard layout (why would the default not be a good one? It boggles the mind—and sure, that's a distro concern, not a "Linux" concern, but so's everything that matters on Linux).
You must have had some very bad experience with keyboard on Linux. Just curious: what was that?
You must have had some very bad experience with keyboard on Linux. Just curious: what was that?
Normal en keyboard layout's just not good—too hard to type various characters that occur in English text, some uncommon-but-not-rare and some downright common (—, ü, å, ¢, °, •, é, ç, ñ, and so on, and sure, a bunch of those are for loan words, but that's still English).
Linux has good ones, I've just never seen one as the default; if you just click through the "happy path" you'll have a crap one, and there's little guidance on which you should pick if you need to, like, actually compose text in your native human language, so the user just has to know in advance or go look up which one to select.
Mac's default, meanwhile, is (at least) nearly as good as the best Linux has, so you can start fluently typing English without having to fiddle with settings or memorize weird number sequences (sure, there's still some memorization, but much of it's simpler and closer to making sense and far more guess-able than, say, a four-digit string of numbers). Last I checked, Windows gets this wrong, too. Why either of those operating systems does that, I have no idea. That it was even incorrect didn't occur to me, somehow, until I switched to Mac and was like "why isn't the default at least this good on every platform!?"
Linux has good ones, I've just never seen one as the default; if you just click through the "happy path" you'll have a crap one, and there's little guidance on which you should pick if you need to, like, actually compose text in your native human language, so the user just has to know in advance or go look up which one to select.
Mac's default, meanwhile, is (at least) nearly as good as the best Linux has, so you can start fluently typing English without having to fiddle with settings or memorize weird number sequences (sure, there's still some memorization, but much of it's simpler and closer to making sense and far more guess-able than, say, a four-digit string of numbers). Last I checked, Windows gets this wrong, too. Why either of those operating systems does that, I have no idea. That it was even incorrect didn't occur to me, somehow, until I switched to Mac and was like "why isn't the default at least this good on every platform!?"
Linux has the "Compose key" concept that solves 99% of what you list in your claim. You have to map it to some physical key on PC keyboards, though. All the DEs I checked let you do this in the settings. My only complaint is they they don't allow out-of-the-box to assign it to the Insert key, which I never use in its intended function.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Back in the days even on windows you had java apps with different toolkit / experience. Now you have electron apps, there isn't even much cohesion.
I quitr remember that on Mac it is barely better.
Now take some specialized areas such as DAW, video editing software and 3D editors and you can just throw that idea of cohesion out of the window regardless of the OS.
I quitr remember that on Mac it is barely better.
Now take some specialized areas such as DAW, video editing software and 3D editors and you can just throw that idea of cohesion out of the window regardless of the OS.
Yep, I think cohesion is only going to die going forward, and I think web technologies are going to be what kills it. Electron is already popular, and nowadays every platform has a system web browser that can run in a "webview" mode so you don't have to bundle a full browser with each app. And building apps with HTML/CSS/JS is wayyyyyy easier than using native toolkits or cross-platform toolkits, especially if you want to target multiple platforms.
Hmm. I think that devs developing for macs tend to at least try and reuse established design language forms. I've only recently started using a mac for work and a lot of stuff I use seems to try and feel "maccy" (with varying degrees of success). But then again, I don't use many mac apps either, so I could have a poor sample rate and was recommended good looking apps by colleagues
On Linux, if you used Gnome but ran a KDE app (or were on Gnome but ran a GTK app) you'd by default get something that looked horrendous broken visually but worked, and sometimes the visuals actually managed to break the app (ie thing being out of proportion, or invisible etc). It would look great and cohesive if you ran a GTK app on Gnome, or a KDE app on KDE, etc.
I think it's gotten much better at some point when these environments decided to support each others themes, though.
I wish they all sat down and came up with a unified theming framework for apps (maybe based on CSS, since they kinda use CSS flavours already), but have the rest be implementation details. Dunno how realistic that is, though.
Windows I think I missed the mark actually. A lot of people pointed out stuff I didn't think about or forgot about (every Office Suite release looked different, Java apps etc, branded stuff like Adobe or specialist software, etc).
I think it might be because I never really used those apps that my much, since Windows was basically only my gaming OS
On Linux, if you used Gnome but ran a KDE app (or were on Gnome but ran a GTK app) you'd by default get something that looked horrendous broken visually but worked, and sometimes the visuals actually managed to break the app (ie thing being out of proportion, or invisible etc). It would look great and cohesive if you ran a GTK app on Gnome, or a KDE app on KDE, etc.
I think it's gotten much better at some point when these environments decided to support each others themes, though.
I wish they all sat down and came up with a unified theming framework for apps (maybe based on CSS, since they kinda use CSS flavours already), but have the rest be implementation details. Dunno how realistic that is, though.
Windows I think I missed the mark actually. A lot of people pointed out stuff I didn't think about or forgot about (every Office Suite release looked different, Java apps etc, branded stuff like Adobe or specialist software, etc).
I think it might be because I never really used those apps that my much, since Windows was basically only my gaming OS
> 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).
It's the age of Electron, baby! For better (more frequent cross-platform support, rapid app development, empowering the masses of web devs to create desktop apps without retooling) and for worse (non-native look-and-feel, high resource consumption). Nobody really has a cohesive collection of apps on their desktops anymore, not even Mac people.
> I think people mostly complain about a lack of cohesion that Windows/macOS have.
Like we've both noted to some extent here, I think this is pretty much a thing of the past. It can be pretty good on Linux, at the same time. If you stick to KDE or Gnome (which I think are both reasonable propositions), your desktop on Linux will be way, way more cohesive than Windows has ever been in my lifetime (maybe ever).
It's the age of Electron, baby! For better (more frequent cross-platform support, rapid app development, empowering the masses of web devs to create desktop apps without retooling) and for worse (non-native look-and-feel, high resource consumption). Nobody really has a cohesive collection of apps on their desktops anymore, not even Mac people.
> I think people mostly complain about a lack of cohesion that Windows/macOS have.
Like we've both noted to some extent here, I think this is pretty much a thing of the past. It can be pretty good on Linux, at the same time. If you stick to KDE or Gnome (which I think are both reasonable propositions), your desktop on Linux will be way, way more cohesive than Windows has ever been in my lifetime (maybe ever).
In a strange turn of events I think you might have a better shot at a cohesive experience on a carefully curated Linux desktop these days than macOS. Even Apple's first party apps are now a mix mash of different UI styles. Once you start installing third party apps you get something that looks more like a Linux desktop from 15 years ago than the glory days of OSX.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> ./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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Dude. Chill. That was just a mild joke. Who hurt you?