[HN Gopher] System76 Developing "Cosmic" Desktop Environment
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System76 Developing "Cosmic" Desktop Environment
Author : TangerineDream
Score : 235 points
Date : 2021-04-13 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.system76.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.system76.com)
| snicker7 wrote:
| "Keyboard" or "Mouse" driven? What about trackpad? I would love
| some gestures to quickly switch windows and workspaces.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Gnome 3 has gesture support. I don't think many are built in,
| certainly not as many as mac OS gives you out of the box. But
| you can go wild: https://github.com/mpiannucci/gnome-shell-
| extended-gestures
| s3tz wrote:
| Yeah, I think for me it's almost entirely the trackpad that's
| the dealbreaker still. There isn't a single laptop that I can
| use linux on where the trackpad just doesnt suck. I'll tolerate
| the noise and the subpar display, even the speakers can suck,
| but the trackpad should be at least 80% of the way of what a
| macbook has.
| supernovae wrote:
| This looks exactly like Windows 10x...
| Already__Taken wrote:
| quite the compliment
| qihqi wrote:
| Does it has thumbnail in filepicker?
| justaguy88 wrote:
| What's their strategy here? Do they hope that their window
| manager will drive hardware sales?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I've been using Pop OS for a bit over a year now and it's
| perfect. I could totally see whole teams of developers being
| sold on switching to Linux as primary dev environments. There's
| zero futzing around with configs and such to get things just
| right--it's great right out of the box. I haven't had that kind
| of experience since MacOS X but this is even better since it's
| just real Linux and stuff like docker containers, etc. run
| natively without VM overhead.
| O_H_E wrote:
| Well, their additions to Gnome in PopOS have been very well
| received. So..maybe. The "power user" space (especially the
| non-cli oriented one) is really lacking out-of-the-box
| solutions rn.
|
| It wouldn't be the first time tailored software drove hardware
| sales.
| dagenleg wrote:
| I am genuinely wondering how big is the intersection between
| "non-cli users" and "power users" on Linux
| erinnh wrote:
| Considering this is a tiling window manager, rather high Id
| say.
|
| Im a power user, so to say, and Ive been using pop shell
| for about 6-9 months now. I love not having to write my own
| scripts to do the most basic tasks in sway anymore.
|
| Things like my calendar works throughout the desktop
| without me having to wrangle various things.
| mulmen wrote:
| Yes? The lack of a workable window manager is one of the
| biggest things that prevents me from using a Linux laptop as a
| daily driver.
|
| It makes sense that System76 would work toward a serviceable
| Linux desktop OS. For the same reason it makes sense that Apple
| develops MacOS but charges no license fees.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Cinnamon is brilliant, it's been my main choice since I moved
| from XFCE, it's a modern version of the classic desktop.
|
| For me it's more serviceable than anything else but as always
| ymmv but as a developer desktop that I do all my computing on
| Fedora Cinnamon is damn close to perfect, there is little I
| can think of to improve it.
| mixedCase wrote:
| "a workable window manager" sounds to me like you just mean
| "I want a macOS clone and I don't want to learn anything else
| even if it's more efficient". If I got it wrong, I'd
| recommend sway or any other tiling wm that adapts perfectly
| to laptop limitations of 1 screen and no mouse included.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Desktop workflow is a highly personal thing. I've tried to
| make tiling WMs work numerous times but it never sticks, I
| always go back to a more traditional floating-first setup
| with titlebars and the like.
| zepto wrote:
| Right but to be fair to the parent - tiling window managers
| are the _only_ kind that are superior to the Mac, and they
| are simply not to everyone's preference.
| IceWreck wrote:
| So they're making a gnome extension and branding it as a DE
| dsego wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, Ubuntu's Unity was a compiz plugin. It's a
| very sad state of affairs in linux desktop.
| sodality2 wrote:
| It is "GNOME-based desktop environment" making it sound like
| there are other changes as well.
| zydeco wrote:
| Will it have a spatial file manager?
| varispeed wrote:
| I wish they had a laptop with a latest and top AMD, 14" 4K IPS
| matte panel, programmers friendly keyboard (pg up/down home end
| on dedicated keys at least), expandable RAM and nvme drive,
| silent fans and metal chassis and a Linux support. Less important
| physical camera and wi-fi cut off switch. If there was an ARM
| chip with comparable performance to M1 I would consider it too if
| it was running Linux. After watching their talk with Louis
| Rossman I really like this company. Hopefully one day they'll
| have a product that will match my needs. The link to the talk:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGle6z9KfZQ
| luke2m wrote:
| Yes. That would be great. The classic thinkpads had an awesome
| keyboard and physical Wi-Fi and mic switches. That with modern
| cpu would be perfect.
| rlonstein wrote:
| I'd buy one but is there anyone selling an AMD Ryzen 5 or 7
| laptop with a good panel and keyboard?
| pkulak wrote:
| They need to make their own laptop. Then it's an instant buy
| from me. But right now everything is 1080p, plastic, with no
| USB-C charging. Bleh.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Note the latest AMD 5850U chip is 40% faster [1] than the M1
| for the same wattage! It really deserves more media exposure
| than the M1 which has the only merit of beating Intel.
|
| [1]
| https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+585...
| kllrnohj wrote:
| TDP rating != wattage consumed. In an ideal world it would,
| but it has _long_ since stopped meaning that generally. This
| includes the M1, which will happily exceed 15W of power
| consumption, and the 5850U almost certainly does as well
| since AMD 's previous generation CPU in that class happily
| exceeded 15W.
|
| You'll have to wait for a proper review that does power
| measurements to get a sense for how they actually compare on
| that front.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I agree, it'd be fairer to compare wattage at peak load.
| Notebookcheck indicates 40W for AMD and 30W for M1, so I
| guess the perf/watt is closer between the 2 chips.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I see you can link directly to their comparison tool[1]
|
| 1: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-
| MH...
| pram wrote:
| The M1 is the entry level processor, and is still beating
| everything in single thread performance. What merits the
| media exposure?
| whycombagator wrote:
| Non-Apple TSMC 7nm and 40% faster at the same wattage
| (assuming GP is correct) compared to M1 seem like valid
| reasons for media exposure to me
| pram wrote:
| It's marginally faster than its predecessor.
| ori_b wrote:
| By that token, the M1 wasn't a big deal.
| xolve wrote:
| M1 being called a new era of CPU architecture, AMD really
| deserves a great applause here for being there as well.
| pram wrote:
| I'd assume that's because of the novelty of it being a
| competitive desktop ARM processor. The processor listed
| isn't much faster than the previous gen Ryzen, it's
| unremarkable from an apple to apple comparison.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| M1 has little-big architecture with 4 fast and 4 slow
| cores, while Ryzen has 8 equivalent cores.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| The M1 and 5850U are in the same laptop price range. But I
| agree on the single-thread, it's indeed 12% faster.
| toolz wrote:
| I recently bought a lenovo ideapad (ultrabook form
| factor) for under $900USD with a 5700u 16GB ram 512 nvme
|
| https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200
| -MH...
|
| I'd say AMD is really blowing the M1 laptops out of the
| water at half the price and more performance.
| Ayesh wrote:
| I recently bought a Lenovo Legion 5 (4800H, 512GB, 16GB,
| 1660ti) for around $1200 after checking the 4700u
| ideapad. This was before the Ryzen 5000 series launch, so
| I suppose the Legion 5 is around $900 mark these days.
|
| Many OEMs don't really give a good thermal headroom for
| the AMD processors, and only Lenovo seems to have done it
| right.
|
| Lenovo's stock management sucks though. There were no
| stock for many days, and had to go unorthodox methods to
| get my hands on a unit.
| emilsedgh wrote:
| What exact model did you get if you don't mind me asking?
| toolz wrote:
| huh, apparently price went up $150 since I bought it
| https://www.newegg.com/lenovo-flex-5-15alc05-82hv0000us-
| grap...
|
| edit: wow price went way up actually - I paid $790
| https://i.imgur.com/aBamY5l.png
| zakki wrote:
| Why do we call it an entry level processor? Is it marketing
| words?
| kaibee wrote:
| Drop the 4K IPS for a 2560x1440 panel instead.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| My aging eyesight says no. 4k or bust for me.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| at 14" is the difference even distinguishable? I can
| _barely_ tell the difference between 1080p and retina on
| screens that small
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| It's complicated. For me it's about how smooth the text
| is and how consistent the experience is. 4k with 2x
| (integer scaling) is a pleasant balance of crisp
| rendering and appropriate text size.
|
| The lower resolutions would require non-integer scaling
| and so far my experience doing that in Linux environments
| has been very poor. I don't expect this to be a smooth
| experience any time in the near future. I'd love to be
| proven wrong though.
| valvar wrote:
| What's your logic there? I would have thought that if your
| eyesight is poor, resolution matters much less as you can't
| tell the difference. You'd want to scale things 2-4 times
| anyway.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| 2x scaling at 4k is comfortable and crisply rendered
| fonts are a MUST. My eyes are far more fatigued at the
| end of the day if font rendering isn't crystal clear.
| Other resolutions require non-integer scaling and my
| experience with that has been... not great.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I am in the exact same boat, 2x scaling at 4k. I am young
| but I wear contacts that are not an exact perfect
| prescription due to the limitations of contacts.
|
| But people will swear up and down to me that there is no
| way I could possibly tell the difference between screens.
|
| You can literally see individual pixels on a 1080p
| screen!
|
| I am on Macbooks, but I want to switch to something with
| Linux so I am waiting for the gen 9 Thinkpad X1C with 4k
| screen to be available at some reasonable price.
|
| Font rendering is also clearly worse on Linux than Mac,
| making the fuzzy pixels even more unworkable. I dual
| booted a 2015 Macbook Air into several Linux distros and
| I could barely read the text no matter which settings
| were applied.
|
| More relevant to the overall thread: Pop OS is awesome.
| pkulak wrote:
| You can do 2x scaling on a 14" laptop at 4k? That's way
| too small for me.
| hyakosm wrote:
| 2x scaling in 4K is the Hi-DPI equivalent of 1080p: on 13
| or 14 inch screens, elements on screen are really tiny.
| On this screen size, we have mainly 1280x800 (Apple) or
| 1366x720 (PC) resolutions, where the Hi-DPI or Retina
| equivalent (2x scaling) is 2K.
|
| With GNOME, screen elements (texts, windows and widgets)
| are big (way bigger than macOS or Windows). In this case
| 1080p-like at 2x scaling should be OK with this screen
| size.
| varispeed wrote:
| I wouldn't say no to that if other specs matched.
| merb wrote:
| and thunderbold 4
| asdff wrote:
| I wouldn't even care if that laptop were an inch thick
| cooperadymas wrote:
| Everybody wants what they want and that's fine, but this
| comment shows why it's so hard for a small manufacturer to
| cater to developers.
| samstave wrote:
| My hp omen is pretty bad ass, check them out - has most of all
| that - no metal case though sadly..
| 867-5309 wrote:
| 4K on a 14".. what is the use case for that? unless you have
| some hybrid long-short sightedness (d)efficiency, use your
| laptop as a chesttop, or want quadruple the pixels for half the
| battery life I really can't see any benefit
| ekianjo wrote:
| > what is the use case for that?
|
| Marketing specs?
| varispeed wrote:
| I currently have XPS 15 with 4k screen and I can easily see
| pixels, so 14 should be a little better. There is also the
| feeling that it is 2021 and should I still be seeing pixels?
| I think crisp high resolution view is much better for the
| eyes and feels more natural. I am also almost always within
| reach of a mains socket, so I don't particularly care about
| battery life, just that I can move the machine from one place
| to another easily.
| postalrat wrote:
| Do you use any sort of desktop scaling? I'd hope not if you
| can "easily" see pixels.
|
| I'd imagine anyone who can "easily" see 4k pixels on a 15"
| screen would have text characters around 1mm tall.
| abreis wrote:
| 4K at 15" is 294 dpi. I'm very surprised to hear that you
| can see pixels at that density at a normal laptop screen
| viewing distance.
|
| My laptop is 'only' at 226dpi (16") and I can't see pixels
| unless I bring my nose to the screen.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| My iPhone has ~320dpi and I can't see pixels at non-
| ridculous viewing distances. I don't know what GP's
| viewing distance habits or eyes are like but for me,
| considering laptop viewing distance is probably like
| twice that of smartphones, I can't imagine a 15" 4K
| laptop being anything but overkill.
| acdha wrote:
| Use a Mac with a Retina display for a week and see whether
| you don't notice a difference -- and it's certainly nowhere
| near half the battery life. Everyone I know who's done this
| has never wanted to go back.
| gtf21 wrote:
| As someone who went from a mac (for the last 15 years
| including several retina MBPs) to a 1920x1080 13" screen on
| a lemur pro, I really don't find that it makes a huge
| difference to me. I thought it would really irritate me but
| it doesn't.
| BigJ1211 wrote:
| It's really noticable when reading/writing text. I
| personally do dev work for a living and when I have to
| use a FHD screen instead of a UHD screen it's really
| noticable.
|
| It's kind of like going from 144Hz back to 60Hz when
| playing FPS games.
| blumomo wrote:
| Isn't lemur pro 14"?
|
| As I'm mostly working on the terminal, reading/writing
| text, I'm also not seeing the lower DPI as a downgrade,
| having done the same switch as you.
| lbussell wrote:
| Well, the 13 inch Macbook Pro only has a QHD screen
| (2560x1600) at 227 PPI. A 14 inch screen at QHD would still
| be 210 DPI. A 4K (3840x2160) display at 14 inches is 315
| PPI.
|
| I have used retina Macbook screens for extended periods of
| time and increasing the DPI seems like overkill to me.
| Sayrus wrote:
| Text rendering is way smoother, you can also read smaller
| font because they are more detailed instead of being
| pixelated.
|
| While QHD is enough for me, 4K is great because it is a
| factor 2 compared to 1080p.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > 4K is great because it is a factor 2 compared to 1080p.
|
| I strongly disagree. QHD is perfect for me, because
| everything renders natively and looks beautiful. 4K without
| scaling is unusable, and 4K scaled up is just 1080p - You
| lose all the screen real estate you paid for.
| hvis wrote:
| You get 4K for rendering detail, not for screen estate.
| akvadrako wrote:
| You're missing the whole point of 4K at 14". Everyone
| uses it scaled but there is more detail, most importantly
| with fonts. You don't need any stupid sub-pixel rendering
| stuff.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| 4k scaled up like that is incredibly sharp fonts tho, it
| looks really nice. but yea total waste of space
| otherwise. i was surprised to see big sur default to 200%
| scale on a 4k attached to m1 mac mini but obviously
| screen real estate is the least of concerns with that
| garbage padded ui
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I really try to avoid looking at higher res screens too much.
| I like the lower price and better battery life of the HD
| screens and they look fine to me, but I think once you really
| try the higher res it will ruin the lower res for you.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| its true, i made the mistake of seeing small text on 4k and
| 1080p side by side and it can be hard to go back
| pkulak wrote:
| 4K at 14" is probably not a great idea because you'd need
| fractional scaling.
|
| I'm holding out for 13" 1440p, which is a perfect 2x.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I lost the Thinkpad display lottery with 1080p at 14' and
| it's one thing I'd want from macbook any moment.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Why IPS and not OLED?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I feel almost 100% the same. Only difference is I'd want a
| bigger screen than 14".
| still_grokking wrote:
| I of course appreciate the effort but besides "a big Gnome
| extension" I don't see much that could be called a new desktop
| environment.
|
| Also the planed features read a little bit funny to me, to be
| honest, as that are all things KDE Plasma provides out-of-the-
| box.
|
| But clearly looks like an improvement over vanilla Gnome, that's
| sure!
| ohazi wrote:
| I've been hearing a surprising amount of positive feedback from
| people who have tried the current Gnome based DE on Pop OS. I
| haven't tried it myself, but I've heard that they have some sort
| of tiling / snapping that works well. I'd like to try it, but I'm
| heavily invested in upstream Debian and am not really interested
| in installing another Debian derivative. Are there plans to
| package this up?
|
| I'm currently using XFCE on two computers with key bindings for
| snap left/right and snap top-left/top-right/bottom-left/bottom-
| right. On a big display, this setup is excellent. On a laptop it
| works, but often feels a little cramped, and it's particularly
| painful with a laptop trackpad instead of a mouse. It would be
| nice if there was an option to split ~67%/33%... apparently
| Windows(!) can do that.
|
| I've also been playing with i3 on another laptop, and for a lot
| of things the experience is clearly better (e.g. web browsing on
| a laptop without a mouse), but for others (e.g. kicad) it either
| doesn't work well, or I haven't managed to configure it well
| enough yet. The rabbit hole is infinitely deep, and while I enjoy
| tinkering with it every now and then, I'm probably not going to
| use it as a daily driver anytime soon.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| It's just a set of about 3 gnome extensions, at least on Pop OS
| 20.10 right now. So in theory you just need to install the
| gnome extensions and you're good: https://github.com/pop-
| os/shell
|
| I've been using it for a year and love it--typing this reply in
| a browser window tiled next to a terminal. It's easy to add
| little exceptions too for modal apps you want to hover outside
| the tiling.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| I'm using it on a Surface Pro 3 that runs Pop OS and have
| nothing but positives to report.
|
| Additionally, it's by far the best tablet experience I've had
| not just on Linux, but period.
| marmaduke wrote:
| do you have any issues with sleep/suspend on the surface? I
| have a sp4 and had such issues even with Windows for the
| longest time.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Currently using System76 with Pop_OS! as my daily driver.
|
| Love it. No regrats.
| [deleted]
| kharann wrote:
| Looks great! When I introduce people to Linux I usually start
| them off with PopOS!, or KDE I really think it's a great DE. I
| would probably use it if I wasn't heavily invested into window
| managers
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| When Ubuntu dropped the hammer on Gnome2, I saw Unity desktop and
| was kinda... ewwww. And next I have installed Gnome 3. After 15
| minutes with it I decided that Unity is actually _not that bad_ ,
| so I switched to it.
|
| In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it
| was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not
| as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and
| general preference for biggins buttons instead of drop-down menus
| is a bad idea for desktop computers.
|
| I wish someone would fix Gnome3 by making it look back like Unity
| .
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I had abandoned all the desktop environments for xmonad and
| then stumpwm. However, I've recently given KDE Plasma a chance,
| and it's really grown on me: especially for my current setup
| (55" TV), it's much more ergonomic than tiling WMs and it
| doesn't have the annoyances I had with KDE4, Gnome 3 or Unity.
| Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote:
| As someone who has used too many distributions and window
| managers to count (over the course of many years), I've settled
| on Ubuntu and whatever their default UI. And I quite liked
| Unity as well after a while.
|
| Of course if there was a major reason to switch away from
| Ubuntu or their default DE, I would, but it's the pragmatic
| choice. The constant "finding" of the perfect fit gets in the
| way of actually doing stuff. Once you adjust expectations
| towards a system, I'm still far happier with Ubuntu I could
| ever be with macOS or Windows, and don't waste time having a
| different system to work with every two weeks (slightly
| exaggerating).
|
| Is it perfect? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Is it great compared
| to alternatives (factoring in speed of deployment and
| productivity from the get to)? Definitely yes.
|
| I'm glad popOS uses Ubuntu and Gnome as backbone and tries to
| give you a customized experience rather than completely
| reinventing everything. Though for me, as long as Canonical
| doesn't screw it up in a major way, stock Ubuntu it is.
| dsego wrote:
| > Though for me, as long as Canonical doesn't screw it up in
| a major way, stock Ubuntu it is.
|
| It's not like they're not trying, with snaps and all... we
| shall see.
| Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote:
| I guess what constitutes a "major screw up" can be debated.
| I don't have a problem with snaps.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| I never liked Gnome3 and I never liked Unity. I have however
| been more than happy with XFCE distros. Simple task bar, simple
| menu, doesn't waste space and can look quite nice if a little
| attention is given to design. If you are unsatisfied with the
| major DEs it's worth at least trying.
| crooked-v wrote:
| To me, XFCE feels like a visual evolution and refinement of
| Windows 98 - and I mean that in the best possible way.
| Windows has three or four separate and inconsistent visual
| styles that get mixed nowadays, macOS has UI style changes in
| every single yearly update for seemingly no other reason than
| to change things, and Gnome 3 threw any good sense in
| usability out the window, but XFCE is still trucking along
| with a single style that stays consistent and highly usable
| without being ugly.
| znpy wrote:
| I have found peace of mind using XFCE :)
| silon42 wrote:
| A someone that prefers Gnome2 and KDE... Gnome3 and Unity are
| both ewwww...
| pmontra wrote:
| I'm using a dozen extensions to make Gnome 3 behave like
| Gnome 2 as much as I can. No animations, no menu on top, no
| top bar, task bar at the bottom, no dock, no activities, one
| virtual desktop per project. That was impossible with Unity.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| The best thing about Unity is that now it will never change for
| better or worse and still works with Ubuntu 20.04. It's fairly
| minimalist and frozen in stasis like I wish Apple had done with
| the SnowLeopard UI.
| thepangolino wrote:
| The only thing I liked about unity was the HUD that allowed
| you to search through application menus by typing the setting
| you were looking for. Do you know if there's anything
| offering that functionality for Gnome3?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| This is my biggest missing feature from the Mac. Do any of
| the major GUI toolkits for linux support this?
| Tsiklon wrote:
| MacOS sort of supports it - the help menu for each app
| has a search box CMD+Shift+/ (or CMD+? If you prefer to
| think of it like that) will open it up.
|
| Each of the menu bar options should be searchable, and
| the search box will open the requisite menu to the
| correct branch/leaf and highlight it for you.
| ktpsns wrote:
| There is for instance http://afiestas.org/appmenu-runner-
| meet-the-kde-hud/ , and I bet there are similar tools for
| Gnome. However, from what I heard of Unity, it seems to
| be a hell of a work to keep/maintain it running for all
| kind of programs (regarding the different UI toolkits).
| ekiwi wrote:
| If you hit the Windows key on Gnome 3, you can type the
| name of a program, file or system setting and it will
| generally find it.
| llarsson wrote:
| That's not it. Unity let you find at you typed to get to
| menu options. So you did not have to care whether the
| item you wanted was under File, Edit, or whatever, you
| could just start typing "preferences" and it would let
| you find it and go to it with the keyboard.
|
| That was pretty good, actually.
| [deleted]
| dguaraglia wrote:
| Maybe join us Plasma users in the dark side. Honestly, it's
| pretty sweet and you can configure it to look and behave _just_
| the way you want it.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Yeah, I'm really glad the KDE world seems to have recovered
| from the KDE4 disaster. However, the Linux desktop ecosystem
| largely feels like it's just sort of rotting: I really like
| KMail, for example, but it had a bunch of show-stopper bugs
| last time I used it.
| dguaraglia wrote:
| Yeah... the desktop environment itself is pretty nice, but
| a lot of the apps built around it are either abandonware or
| just plain low quality. At least nowadays GTK applications
| don't look completely out of place so even using all kinds
| of disparate programs (Thunderbird, Goland, Slack, Chrome,
| etc.) results in a pleasantly consistent experience.
| axaxs wrote:
| Nice to see! And glad they are...gasp...listening to people. The
| Gnome devs could learn a lot from that approach. The most popular
| distros all include a dock. And yet with Gnome 40, they not only
| refused to add a dock, they moved what gimped dock they had to
| the bottom of the screen. But you can't see it until you hit the
| top left corner. I wish I was making that up. (keyboard shortcuts
| aside, in fairness)
|
| Rant aside, I'll definitely give it this a go. PopOS is a really
| nice distro.
| stereolambda wrote:
| When you say 'dock', do you mean the top bar? Well, that would
| be a development. If you mean a menu of application icons at
| the bottom, I never had that in GNOME 3 on Fedora.
|
| I actually like GNOME 3 as a desktop: the streamlined process
| of hitting the Super key or moving the mouse toward the corner
| and typing in the application name that I want to launch, with
| the whole screen used for the preview. I also never put
| anything on the desktop (as in icons, files etc.). Even saying
| this I get strange flashbacks to 2000s computing.
|
| What pushed me away from it at the end (to KDE) was the
| applications. The trend in GNOME is clearly removing or at best
| hiding everything except the barest minimum required for
| pretending we have an app. At some point it shifts from very
| annoying to unusable. And now I'm putting up with KDE's own
| weirdnesses, like insisting on creating a cryptographic wallet
| for everything, or broken hibernation on desktop (a.k.a. big
| people computer). I hope it's just standard Linux jank and not
| sign of decline of the space.
| clircle wrote:
| I mostly like Gnome. I have been using it for years. But the
| development team of Gnome is so closed minded that it makes my
| head hurt.
|
| I asked on the bug tracker if Evince could have a tabs feature,
| so I can have 10 pdfs open in one Evince window. They asked me
| to cite a usability study showing that it would objectively
| improve user experience.
| toomanyducks wrote:
| To be pedantic, you can see the dash/dock when you hit the
| super key, I don't believe anyone actually uses the hot corner.
|
| Also to be pedantic, there are plenty of desktops that don't
| use a dock, in the form of most window managers. I'm currently
| running opnebox with no dock and it's totally fine, though the
| approach is better suited to tiling window managers.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I love the hot corner. In some distributions this behaviour
| is disabled and I always turn it back on to the point that I
| automatically make the gesture on other operating systems as
| well. When I'm browsing on my laptop, I often end up with my
| finger on the touchpad. A quick swipe to the top left is
| quicker than moving my hand to the super key. On desktop, a
| low-precision swing of the mouse is also quicker than moving
| my fingers to the super key. I don't get the hate the hot
| corner gets.
|
| All in all, I honestly don't really care about the changes
| they made to the dock. As long as my shortcut buttons work, I
| can deal with some small changes if they improve the polish
| of the system overall. I like the Gnome aesthetics that
| improve with every version, so I'm open to the tweaks made in
| Gnome 40.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Funny, the hot corner is my favourite thing in Gnome.
|
| I like the dock on the left of my screen and I'm happy that
| there is ways so everyone can customize this the way they
| want.
| elisaado wrote:
| Same here, I find myself swinging my mouse to the top left
| whenever I am helping my mother on her laptop with Windows.
| s3tz wrote:
| It's a completely unnecessary extra action the completely
| breaks your flow.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| I'm a GNOME user and almost never use its dock directly. I
| have my typical programs added as favorites on the dock and
| switch to them directly via keyboard with meta + 1 through
| meta + 9.
|
| Seldom used applications don't make that cut, but
| they're... seldom used. I tend to switch to them using alt-
| tab rather than clicking through on the dock.
|
| In general, I prefer using the keyboard, so I have never
| once wished that a dock was more prominent in GNOME. I'm
| glad it stays out of my way until I explicitly summon it
| with a keypress.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| The power of window managers. Use whatever floats your
| boat. I love i3wm too much and its the exact reason I love
| Linux
| schmorptron wrote:
| Fork & maintain unity, pretty please? :)
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Is this built as a Gnome Shell Extension? Would love to be able
| to just pop this into my shell on OpenSuse without having to
| change to an Ubuntu based distribution.
|
| Also, what are they going to do once nobody is supporting Gnome
| 3.38 anymore, porting this to Gnome 40+ seems like it's going to
| be a pain in the ass. Hopefully it doesn't necessitate a Gnome
| Shell fork...
| young_unixer wrote:
| I was really hoping for a traditional, Windows-like environment
| but with professional modern design. Like XFCE or KDE, but
| beautiful.
| tored wrote:
| Yes, me too. System76 has done great work with Pop!_OS and
| pushing Linux as a true laptop OS, however their default theme
| and wallpaper always make me nauseous, something I feel a color
| blind would put together. Beautiful is not something I
| associate with Pop!_OS and System76.
|
| Weird thing is that Linux as a server has made great progress
| the last decade, but it seems that the Linux desktop has
| evolved backwards. It started sometime around the introduction
| of Gnome 3.
| nix23 wrote:
| Oh no not another one....well i have i3 and change ~maybe later
| to sway.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Oof why does this blog hijack my browser history?
|
| Gnome additions are welcome as Gnome stupidly strips features to
| try to tell people how to use a computer.
| fnl wrote:
| I've recently switched from my usual MBP upgrade to System 76
| (Oryx Pro). While yes, Apple's walled garden does feel like a
| Rolls Royce compared to anything, the price tag difference this
| time was just way too step for me to keep buying a new Mac: It
| was basically 2x or more for roughly similar hardware, if not
| slightly worse on the MBP side. Overall, using Pop_OS! with its
| specialized GNOME3 setup has been a bliss, and I must say I had
| expected a far more difficult migration. In a few days I was
| happily up and running with my new machine. And then, there is
| the support - Apple's support outside of visiting a Genius Bar is
| basically non-existent. System76 has diligently helped me even
| set up external hardware that wasn't theirs! Long story short,
| very much looking forward to COSMIC and continuing this
| experience. The only thing I do miss a lot is my iTerm2... :)
| skrtskrt wrote:
| iTerm2 is a beauty, is there a closest equivalent on Linux?
|
| There seem to be 25 popular choices especially now with the
| GPU-accelerated ones. Tried a few of the classics like Termite
| and they all seemed painfully outdated and crappy compared to
| iTerm.
| joelthelion wrote:
| Gnome terminal is really good.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| On Pop OS I just stuck with gnome-terminal, it was plenty
| good if not quite as slick as iterm2.
| dsego wrote:
| There is tilix, not sure how close it comes though.
| https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/
| mxschumacher wrote:
| I use iterm at work and a combination of alacritty, fish and
| i3-wm (so I don't open multiple tabs but just several
| terminal windows) on my personal machine, I'm really happy
| with that setup.
| symlinkk wrote:
| What a waste of time. Just use vanilla GNOME.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I was willing suspend my incredulity of the merit of yet another
| desktop environment.
|
| ... but they lost me at "GNOME-based". [extends hands and head
| upwards:] Why, ye gods, why?
| llcoolv wrote:
| I think that those "Let's make our own DE" dumb kids are both a
| symptom and a cause why Linux never broke on the mainstream
| workstation market.
|
| Truth is that a shite miserable 25 year old xfce could be
| customised in a way good enough to compete with OS X. Why waste
| all the time on such a massive amount of extremely useless work?
| Just because it is fun?
|
| And yeah, you can downvote this into oblivion, I don't care. The
| fact is that 80% of the comments on this thread are making fun of
| the very same retards for the very same reasons.
| marcodiego wrote:
| >Truth is that a shite miserable 25 year old xfce could be
| customised in a way good enough to compete with OS X
|
| In terms of appearance, maybe. Make that work consistently with
| most used programs with the same shortcuts, composition,
| behavior and rich integration between all these apps and then
| we're talking.
|
| Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated
| and fast demands many people thinking, designing, implementing,
| testing and fixing. It is very expensive and only affordable
| for companies that can make enough money with to return the
| investment. Linux has no presence on the desktop because
| vendors that make the most money with it have 0 presence on the
| desktop.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Additionally, out-of-the-box functionality matters a lot. DEs
| like XFCE have insane tweakability, but outside of a handful
| of settings most users don't take advantage of that. The
| majority of Windows and macOS users don't spend hours
| tweaking their setup to perfection, they just install Chrome
| and Spotify and maybe vertically orient their taskbar/dock if
| they're feeling spicy and it's off to the races.
|
| And moving the needle on the out of the box usability front
| often requires changes that can't be made by changing the
| default configuration or becoming a contributor to an
| existing DE. The GNOME team would likely never approve of the
| changes seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything
| more extensive.
| smoldesu wrote:
| >The GNOME team would likely never approve of the changes
| seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything more
| extensive.
|
| That's kinda the point of PopOS in the first place:
| retrofitting GNOME and Ubuntu with extra utilities for a
| better "out of the box" experience. Manjaro does basically
| the same thing on the Arch side of the fence, and both are
| essential to providing that experience you're describing.
| The GNOME team isn't intentionally holding back features or
| making intentionally bad choices here, they're just part of
| the brick in the wall. The GNOME desktop should be bland,
| so that the distro can provide a default and the end user
| can make changes where necessary. It's all part of one big
| machine.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Linux has no presence on the desktop market, yet apps like
| Steam and Spotify are ported to it, often with special
| considerations in mind. If we're talking about market share,
| you can have it: but in terms of software availability,
| everything is on Linux now. Wine is good enough to run any
| Windows app carte-blanche, and all of the most common apps
| (eg. Telegram, Discord, Zoom) have native clients.
|
| Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated
| and fast is not a matter of manpower, it's about the
| modularity of your system and the power the end-user has.
| thastings wrote:
| No matter how unpopular this approach is, I must agree... I've
| been on Pop OS for years, and it really is the best GNOME I've
| seen. However, GNOME itself is pretty weird and even slow these
| days - yet it's nearly the de facto Linux DE. And System76 is
| adding more bells and whistles, probably not making it more
| snappy. This is sad to see, because there are stable, nice, and
| fast DE's, like Budgie. Or KDE, of course, but I'm more of a
| GTK person.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Colorful language aside, you're right.
|
| Unity was perhaps the _biggest_ blunder in all of Linux-dom in
| terms of getting this OS out there; Ubuntu was sitting on the
| perfect opportunity to pull the rug from under Microsoft at XPs
| end of life -- could have just done "Hey, you want a simple,
| ultra-stable, ultra-familiar experience now that XP is gone?"
| And keep something Gnome2-ish and be the Volvo of computers.
|
| And instead went with "Let's see if we can out-sexy Apple!" No.
| You can't. Ugh.
| abbaselmas wrote:
| System76 blog is on tumblr! I thought that tumblr was dead.
| asidiali wrote:
| This was my biggest takeaway also, why Tumblr...
| spicybright wrote:
| Why another WM to further divide up dev time for desktop
| environments.
|
| I'm not say people shouldn't make what they want, but I think
| they'd meet their goals a lot easier contributing to an existing
| project instead of forking.
| Lobosque wrote:
| Forks may also contribute upstream
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I'm still using unity because it was the last usable polished
| out of the box usable DE for me. I'm glad they try to do this,
| the linux desktop needs a contender to the too rich kde and too
| limited gnome, but with a modern touch.
| polyamid23 wrote:
| It's a gnome extension.
| rvz wrote:
| That's the Linux desktop ecosystem. Another window manager that
| some users will use and will later complain that their browser
| isn't working with it or it crashes with etc Wayland, X11, Yet
| another Linux app or even Z shell, etc.
|
| Sometimes it's only 'fun' swapping in alternatives of
| alternative system components, until you _actually_ need to get
| work done. Then it must not get in the way of the user.
|
| I prefer the desktop environment of ' _It just works_ ' and '
| _If it ain 't broke don't fix it_'. It's called macOS.
| wayneftw wrote:
| > I prefer the desktop environment of 'It just works' and 'If
| it ain't broke don't fix it'. It's called macOS.
|
| Pffft. No it's called XFCE. My Macs are broken way more often
| by updates and are way less compatible with my hardware than
| anything else in my house. They really don't just work...
| They're dead ass not even half as stable as Manjaro.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| You are basically teabagging.
|
| There is a lot of awesome people in the Free Desktop
| community, who work hard for what they believe in. Criticism
| is always welcome, there is a lot of work to do and a lot of
| stuff to improve.
|
| But having people who use a different OS come in and ridicule
| all of that work is not really nice.
|
| I've been happily using the treaded GNOME without filepicker
| thumbnails for 10 years now and I'm neither less productive
| not less happy than you.
|
| Enjoy your Mac! OSX has a lot of great inspirations for the
| Free Desktop.
| sk1pper wrote:
| Not parent commenter but I've had the same experience - and
| I'm sure this comment will be received just as poorly as
| theirs, but I've given up on Linux desktop. It just isn't
| stable. I've tried so many times and I don't know what 1)
| is wrong with me or 2) the "I'm just as productive on
| Linux" people are smoking. Just getting basic stuff to work
| like bluetooth is a hassle. Headphones stuck in headset
| mode, let's go drop an argument to the bluetooth kernel
| module to enable autoswitching to A2DP. Touchpad driver for
| my machine kinda sucks, click and drag is still a little
| broken. Screen tearing watching YouTube videos on Firefox.
| Oh and it randomly freezes requiring a hard restart. Good
| luck upgrading packages, you never know what will randomly
| break. Extra good luck upgrading to the next LTS release,
| your machine might not boot when you go to restart.
|
| I've been wanting to love Linux desktop for 10+ years and I
| just give up. I don't have time for this stuff anymore. And
| I'm not using esoteric distros. Ubuntu LTS, I also tried
| Fedora and it was even worse.
|
| Sorry, but none of this happens to me on macOS or Windows.
| They're not perfect - of course crash, have certain quirks,
| etc, but they waste much less of my time on basic desktop
| functionality being unstable or needing special treatment.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| That's ok. My experience is much better and I don't know
| why there is a difference either.
|
| I just don't get why people love to dunk so hard on
| something they don't use and do it in such a
| disrespectful way. What you said is totally fine, altough
| I could argue that you thinking I smoke is an insult, I
| mean it was one time, come on, I didn't even inhale.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| That's your preference. But I would certainly be fuming if
| the only option on Linux was, say, GNOME. The workflow
| doesn't agree with me and neither do some of their UI
| choices. Thankfully, the "Linux desktop ecosystem" has
| afforded me a number of options that I much enjoy using.
| mulmen wrote:
| Not in Big Sur it doesn't. They dramatically changed the
| appearance for the worse. Tons more wasted space. They broke
| long-standing keyboard shortcuts.
|
| The move to iOS-ify MacOS with Catalyst just _doesn't_ work.
| Messages on Big Sur is effectively non-functional. I have a
| chat with a friend that breaks the message entry box
| reliably. If he sends me a message I have to create a new
| message to him to get the input box. It's janky crap.
|
| Personally I'm excited by a hardware company selling a fully
| integrated Linux machine and taking an interest in making a
| working OS. This could finally get me free of Apple's
| misguided antics.
| kactus wrote:
| Wonder if the file picker will have image thumbnails.
| mushufasa wrote:
| current pop_os has image 'previews' in a sidebar as you select
| images, which isn't the same as a thumbnail but accomplishes
| much the same purpose
| kactus wrote:
| That's the same as stock GNOME and is terrible UX.
| k_bx wrote:
| My favourite "UX bug" is when Discord wants to upgrade, it
| downloads a newer deb, you open it in App Store, and it only
| shows the "delete" button. Wonder if it'll ever be fixed.
| nix23 wrote:
| Yeah the AppStore is a joke...the search especially, thats
| one big point where devs don't eat their dogfood, i bet that
| 99.9% of Gnome-devs never try'd "AppStore" (so much for linux
| desktop year), but a working thing like synaptic is probably
| too complicated for "normal" Linux-Users (do they even
| exist?)...just give them a Store (that does not
| work)...thanks gnome.
| nix23 wrote:
| No we don't do that in Linux world, please place "metadata"
| where it belongs...the inode.
| superkuh wrote:
| Unless they also fork Gtk3 and Gtk4 the GNOME will still seep
| in and ruin the desktop. Things like gtkfilechooserwidget are
| terribly broken in gtk3 and gtk4 but at least gtk4 finally got
| a patch that allows you to paste into a file->open window
| without it error'ing out. But gtk4 is still firmly in the "no
| text entry window for you" in file chooser menus by default.
|
| Also, I looked at the github repo for cosmic under pop!_os's
| stuff and there's no actual code. It's all boilerplate with a
| single gsettings schema .xml file. There's no DE in that repo.
| tekromancr wrote:
| Things System 76 does: maintain their own os distro, desktop
| environment, coreboot fork, system firmware
|
| Things System 76 refuses to do: usbc PD
|
| I say this as a very happy S76 customer
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm fine with it. One of my usbc ports is already shot by a 3
| year old. While the heavy duty power cord is still going strong
| 4 years later. BUT my computer can pull down some serious amps
| when I play FS2020 at a whopping 20FPS in ultra... so there's
| that.
| gshulegaard wrote:
| Last Galago I purchased came with a power brick but _also_
| supported usb-c power delivery.
| fullstop wrote:
| I'm charging my Darter Pro over USBC-PD right now. It works
| perfectly except for when applying firmware updates which check
| to see if the charging cable is connected, and that might be
| expected if the firmware update would interrupt the PD
| charging.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| Firmware/bios/uefi/coreboot seems like a reasonable thing for a
| hardware company to spend energy on
| foxhop wrote:
| I love USBC power. Is there a good reason?
| isantop wrote:
| The laptop mentioned requires a 200W charger (dedicated GPU,
| high-end CPU). This is double what the USB PD specs allow.
| wging wrote:
| They actually do have USB-C power in many models.
| zoward wrote:
| A lot of Lenovo laptops have one USB-C port which doubles as
| the power cable. I'm typing on a Thinkpad right now with that
| very configuration. My daughter's Chrmoebook is the same way.
| She bent the USB-C port on it and now it won't charge. I'm
| being really, really careful with my Thinkpad.
| llcoolv wrote:
| There of course is - you don't write a perfectly useless
| kernel patch - you ain't coolandfun andthatsit.
| foxhop wrote:
| I don't follow, does USBC power distribution not exist in
| the Linux kernel?
| O_H_E wrote:
| Well, that is still essentially Clevo hardware and so system76
| don't really have full reign over the design process yet.
| tekromancr wrote:
| I seem to be mistaken! Sounds like quite a few models DO have
| PD now. I guess I am just grumpy my Oryx pro 6 doesn't.
| isantop wrote:
| Hard to do USBPD with the Oryx because it's hard to deliver
| 200W over USBPD (Which has a maximum standardized power
| delivery of 100W)
| ruph123 wrote:
| > Things System 76 refuses to do: usbc PD
|
| And: LVFS
| notwhereyouare wrote:
| I'll admit, I haven't tried on my laptop, but doesn't the
| Darter Pro support USB C charging?
|
| Direct from their website Charger 65 Watts, AC-in 100~240V,
| 50~60Hz, DC-out 19V, 3.42A, USB Type-C Charging Compatible
| iudqnolq wrote:
| I have one, and it doesn't seem to work. I haven't filed a
| ticket though, as I don't really care. I just tried a usb-c
| pd compatible cable, although I'm not certain the brick that
| connects the cable to the wall is pd compatible. Usb c,
| eurgh, why do I have to think about this sort of thing.
| fullstop wrote:
| It works. I use this brick:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083ZBXXN5
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Good to know. I use https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078S3M2NX/
| ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glc_...
| kodah wrote:
| I never regret being a PopOS user. This DE is almost exactly what
| I have running today, which is compelling.
| amanzi wrote:
| Great to see a dock properly integrated into the settings app.
| The first thing I do in Pop_OS is track down and install the dash
| to dock extension and fiddle with the settings until it's sitting
| on the right-hand side of my screen just like God intended.
| least wrote:
| The improvements and changes System76 have added to base Gnome
| are really great. I particularly like the many different keyboard
| driven ways to manipulate windows and even enforce tiling on top
| of Gnome, rather than having to run i3, bspwm, or some other
| dedicated tiling window manager.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| I wish Ubuntu would maintain a gnome3+ fork like that, with top
| menu and reasonable file picker, or partner-up with System76. Not
| because I can't use another distro, but because I think a well-
| tested default target desktop distro is important and helping the
| community. I'm still on Ubuntu 20.04 because I need third-party
| based stuff to run, such as Chromium and Electron-based apps such
| as Skype and Teams (which however doesn't actually work). But
| gnome3 simply sucks so I'll have to move to something else; maybe
| Kubuntu or even Unity again (the community fork).
| superkuh wrote:
| File picker loss of functionality is the fault of Gtk3 and
| Gtk4. It would still apply even in systems without GNOME at
| all. Maintaing a fork of Gtk3 and 4 with patches to restore
| 2010 era functionality would be difficult but not infeasible.
| Arch does some of it.
|
| I've looked at the code and it is quite a terrible mess. It's
| no two line patch to change settings anymore because everything
| gets reset multiple times in functions you don't expect.
| heftig wrote:
| What is Arch doing?
| superkuh wrote:
| https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gtk3-classic/ is a
| partial fix, but it still doesn't restore the filename-
| entry location bar.
| HorkHunter wrote:
| KDE really is the unsung hero of the Linux community
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| First thing that came to mind is "why are they basing this on
| Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish" - slightly confusing name :)
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Way to go, it's nice to see the innovation. System76 seems like a
| company that is paying attention to what their customers want,
| creating something useful and unique out of various well-
| considered parts.
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