Perhaps most of our computing will move to the cloud, but you know what device we’ll still be using for most of our interactions? It will be a PC, simply because it’s easier to enter data with a real keyboard than any other interface.
Tag Archives: desktop environment
Welcome to Classic Shell
Classic Shell is a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but were later removed. It has a customizable Start menu and Start button for Windows 7 and Windows 8, it adds a toolbar for Windows Explorer and supports a variety of smaller features. Look here for the full list.
Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice & Power Users
The new design is obviously optimized for touchscreen use (where big targets are helpful), but Microsoft is also imposing this style on its traditional PC users because all of Windows 8 is permeated by the tablet sensibility.
How well does this work for real users performing real tasks? To find out, we invited 12 experienced PC users to test Windows 8 on both regular computers and Microsoft’s new Surface RT tablets.
via Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice & Power Users Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox.
The underlying problem is the idea of recycling a single software UI for two very different classes of hardware devices. It would have been much better to have two different designs: one for mobile and tablets, and one for the PC.
GNOME (et al): Rotting In Threes
I have never gotten into the KDE vs GNOME debates, so this is not GNOME bashing, nor, as you’ll soon see, are these systemic development problems limited to GNOME. Yet what I’m hearing is that with GNOME v3 the goal is to promote their “brand” and make it dominant, in part by greatly limiting what users can change on their own systems, and partly by breaking or simply removing whatever support they’re no longer promoting as ‘The Way’. The reach of this selfish and narrow-sighted development goes beyond GNOME and affects GTK apps in general.
via GNOME (et al): Rotting In Threes « IgnorantGuru’s Blog.
What follows is a sampling of quotes from various places and assorted devs which paint a picture of a growing culture of anti-user, conformist philosophies. There’s a bit of text to review here, but I think it’s worth it to hear what GNOME devs have to say about their intentions and goals, in their own words, and what others are saying about that!
GNOME 3.8 Is Dropping Its Fallback Mode
Matthias Clasen on the behalf of the GNOME Release Team has announced that they have decided to eliminate GNOME’s “fallback mode” with the upcoming 3.8 release that allowed a “GNOME classic” mode that didn’t depend upon OpenGL/3D rendering and was more like the GNOME2 traitional desktop.
via [Phoronix] GNOME 3.8 Is Dropping Its Fallback Mode.
Now for GNOME users without a proper GPU and drivers, if you want to still use GNOME, you will need to use LLVMpipe for a software-accelerated experience of the GNOME Shell.
Gnome has totally gone off the rails. Luckily there is a fork for Gnome called Mate. Mate is supposed to be shipped with Fedora 18. I have used Mate in a Linux Mint virtual machine and it works well. I tried loading it into a Fedora 17 VM many months ago and it had problems but I’m sure all of that will get worked out. IMHO, Gnome has become a product of hubris. I’ve tried to use it and just can’t deal with the constant context switching to do simple tasks like opening a terminal window.
Wayland 1.0 Officially Released
In terms of actual Wayland adoption, Ubuntu developers may try again to have Wayland become the Ubuntu System Compositor for Ubuntu 13.04 in April, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see that delayed until Ubuntu 13.10 one year from now. Wayland is making nice progress and it’s becoming likely that it will succeed the X.Org Server on the modern Linux desktop, but there’s still much work ahead. Even the Wayland adoption within Fedora and the other more experimental / bleeding-edge Linux distributions has been slow.
A freasy future for GNOME
But lot of projects are already tackling the issue, each from their own perspective: Mozilla launched a mobile OS, LibreOffice is working on an online version, KDE has OwnCloud, there’s FreedomBox. In what sense are they different? I’ve the feeling that their ultimate goal is exactly the same as ours: offering freedom to those who want it.
Debian Now Defaults To Xfce Desktop
The default desktop task has been changed from GNOME to Xfce within the Tasksel Git. While one might assume the change is due to the criticism expressed by many GNOME users since the 3.x series — with some saying it’s losing its relevance on the Linux desktop — the main reason expressed within the Git commit comes down to Xfce being able to fit entirely on the first Debian CD.
Features/MATE-Desktop – FedoraProject
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 18
via Features/MATE-Desktop – FedoraProject.
Fedora will be usable again as of Fedora 18.
MATE | The traditional desktop environment
MATE | The traditional desktop environment.
What is MATE?
MATE is a fork of Gnome 2.
It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop to Linux users using traditional metaphors.
Just installed MATE in a Fedora 17 VM and it works just like Gnome 2. Fantastic! I can now use the latest and greatest Fedora and Ubuntu builds.