[HN Gopher] KDE desktop cube effect returns
___________________________________________________________________
KDE desktop cube effect returns
Author : leidenfrost
Score : 166 points
Date : 2023-11-04 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.phoronix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.phoronix.com)
| tomrod wrote:
| I have always loved this effect and was sad when I had an OS thst
| didn't support compiz.
|
| Yaye!
| vasdae wrote:
| https://pointieststick.com/2023/10/27/these-past-2-weeks-in-...
|
| KDE should pay attention to font families and sizes. This looks
| really cheap.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It does? It looks great to me: clear and very readable. What's
| cheap about it? Or, alternatively, what would _not_ look cheap?
| gumballindie wrote:
| Fonts in screenshots do look a bit microsofty (cheap and low
| quality) to be honest. But fortunately fonts are trivial to
| install and change in kde.
| JohnFen wrote:
| What qualities about it make is seem cheap and low quality
| to you? I'm genuinely curious, because I'm not
| understanding this...
| vasdae wrote:
| It has absolutely no personality. If you go to a font
| search engine and look for "plain" you probably get that
| one.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Sure, it's plain -- but that doesn't seem like a bad
| thing for a default font in a utilitarian UI. In any
| case, is it the lack of frills that makes it seem
| "cheap"?
| gumballindie wrote:
| Looks thin and enlarged. Somehow "weak" - i dont know how
| else to describe it. Not a major issue, and is
| subjective. When i dont like fonts i just install others,
| its trivial.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, I agree it's a trivial "issue". It's not even really
| an issue, especially because it's just a default that is
| easily changed to suit anyone's taste. I'm just
| interested in getting a glimpse of how others view the
| world.
| graphe wrote:
| The fonts look ugly to me as well. As I read the news on the
| middle east, I was distracted by the beauty of this font.
|
| https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-
| east/articl...
|
| It is DISTRACTINGLY beautiful, especially the numbers. I'd
| rather have ugly fonts than forget everything but the way the
| numbers of people looked here.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Huh. I guess I must be aesthetically impaired. That font
| doesn't look any more or less beautiful to me than the KDE
| one. It's just different. They're both fine to my eyes.
| graphe wrote:
| It's just my opinion. Yours is just as valid. The KDE
| font looks like a basic font with AA. Both are fine to me
| too, but this font was distracting to me. As a font it
| fails to convey as much information to me but I LOVE the
| text. This site is very SEO written but has great
| readability although the font I'd consider ugly, it's
| very usable and functional.
| https://www.linearity.io/blog/old-english-font/
| mibsl wrote:
| To me this one feels cluttered, way too much going on.
| Definitely distracting, but I wouldn't call it beautiful.
| continuational wrote:
| I think the kerning is slightly off, looking at the end of
| the word "Their".
| sterlind wrote:
| random font tangent as an ignorant Westerner, but the
| Arabic writing system is incredibly beautiful, and there
| are many incredibly beautiful fonts, yet I often see fonts
| that look like they're welded together from PVC pipes. no
| slant at all, uniform weight, lots of circular bends. do
| these look ugly to native Arabic speakers too, or just to
| my Western aesthetics?
| ognarb wrote:
| The font used in Plasma is Noto Sans and the reason we (I'm a
| kde developer) use it is because it has a very large support
| for all language in the world, which makes it an appropriate
| default.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yeah, one of the first things I do on a KDE install is to set
| all the fonts to Inter[0]. It helps a lot but still doesn't fix
| KDE's selection of text sizes and weights which has always felt
| odd to me.
|
| [0]: https://rsms.me/inter/
| throw555chip wrote:
| I like the the way KDE looks and operates, the fonts are clear
| and easy to read. Please KDE developers keep them as they are,
| KDE is great!
| spandextwins wrote:
| Yay! Haven't been able to use that since around 10 years ago!
| Welcome back, friend!
| bloopernova wrote:
| Oh boy that's a blast from the past.
|
| I really liked the Compiz Fusion cylinder effect with windows 3D
| hovering, I used that effect for both alt-tab and virtual desktop
| switching.
|
| It looked something like this, although I'm pretty sure mine was
| anti-aliased more effectively:
| http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NPnXddu4LL4/UPRszBHQynI/AAAAAAAAAU...
|
| Now I just use 3 monitors (| - - is a great layout, highly
| recommended) and switch windows using what was called Expose and
| is now called Mission Control on macOS. I miss the
| experimentation; wobbly windows, flames, all sorts of zoom
| effects, and edge attraction effects.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Effects like Wobbly Windows and Magic Lamp are still in KDE
| waiting for you to come back :-) Those are built in, and more
| effects are available for download from the settings window at
| the click of a button.
|
| I really appreciate the sense of whimsy that comes with stuff
| like this. Best of all, it is there if you want it and not if
| you don't.
| CSSer wrote:
| How about the window going up in flames on close?
| tekeous wrote:
| We have that too, it's called BurnMyWindows in the KDE
| effects repo
| CSSer wrote:
| That's such a blast from the past. It may seem frivolous,
| but it's funny what draws a kid in. I spent a lot of time
| in middle school fussing with drivers to get hardware
| acceleration to run on crappy secondhand laptops, all so
| I could play with the cube, wobbly windows, and the flame
| effects. I had no idea it was doing this at the time, but
| it helped familiarize me with POSIX concepts that later
| gave me a jumpstart on my career.
| dkersten wrote:
| I used to use the "cube" but with six or seven sides (so
| whatever a hexagonal or septagonal cylinder is called), with
| the faces being transparent so you can see the windows floating
| in the background.
|
| Nowadays I use an open laptop with two external monitors, with
| the laptop out to the left, my largest monitor in landscape in
| the center and a portrait monitor to the right: - -- |
| twicetwice wrote:
| I have settled on exactly the same setup! It's pretty great.
| My right-hand monitor is a terminal 24/7. My center monitor
| is code--I used to think I'd want vertical for code, and it
| is nice sometimes, but at my current job I benefit from
| having several files open side-by-side more than I benefit
| from seeing more of one file. It's a 4k monitor and I have it
| fractionally scaled so that I can read comfortably, but I can
| also fit up to four files side-by-side on the screen at once.
| It is very useful. And then the laptop screen is for Slack,
| docs, AWS dashboard, whatever is useful at the time.
| stavros wrote:
| I will never understand people who have a landscape monitor
| as their main. The only thing landscape is good for is
| videos, everything else is portrait (including many videos).
|
| The only semi-reasonable excuse I've heard is that people use
| a landscape screen as three or four portrait screens (so four
| windows side by side on it), but then just get a portrait
| screen and split it four ways also.
|
| You can pry my | - from my dead fingers.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| My monitor is primarily a gaming monitor. As such it's
| stand does not allow for rotation to portrait.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Does it have holes for a VESA mount on the back?
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I use a 43" 4K TV as a monitor. It completely fills my
| visual field, and I cannot turn it sideways.
|
| I hope this comes across as a semi-reasonable excuse.
| runjake wrote:
| I use landscape monitors because it effectively allows me
| to have two portrait arrangements side by side on one
| screen.
|
| Also a vertical monitor is terrible on my neck. Humans
| necks are designed to look down but not up above eye level
| for extended periods.
|
| I learned this after extended discussions with a
| neurosurgeon on what the most common neck and brain
| injuries are, and what I could do or not do to best avoid
| seeing her.
|
| That said, we are all different. Use what you prefer!
| stavros wrote:
| You're right, I have the screen much lower than eye level
| (because I basically lie back on my chair), but this is
| generally good advice.
| rgoulter wrote:
| This idea sounds nice. How big is your monitor?
|
| I just tried turning my monitor vertical. My initial
| impression is this left me with very little space with
| which to read text; and felt like it'd hurt my neck if I
| were to look up to the top of the monitor. I did get to see
| more content vertically. (A bigger monitor would alleviate
| the former but exasperate the latter).
| stavros wrote:
| It's 24", I found that anything larger than that was a
| bit too large.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I use a 24" 1440p screen. On a 1080p monitor (or 4k at
| 200% scaling) there isn't a lot of width left if you turn
| it, and if you go for more pixels than 2560x1440 (at 100%
| scaling) the text gets too small on a 24".
| ashton314 wrote:
| Unless you have a super high DPI display (which in this day
| and age you probably do) rotating the screen breaks sub-
| pixel antialiasing, which makes text look blurrier.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Is that a given? I don't think there's an inherent reason
| why the font rendered couldn't anti-alias vertically
| instead of horizontally.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Only if something is broken in your configuration. You
| should be able to set the subpixel layout. Sure, the
| subpixels will be divided vertically instead of
| horizontally, but it should still help.
| scott_w wrote:
| I don't need an excuse. I just like it.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I find my laptop slides around too much when I'm trying to
| type with it on its side.
| kadoban wrote:
| There's a limit to how far up and down it's comfortable to
| look for long periods of time. That limit, in most desk
| setups, is pretty much the height of the top of a landscape
| monitor. Once you reach that you might as well just have a
| wider monitor to be able to see multiple threads of work at
| once.
| jwells89 wrote:
| With large 16:9 monitors in particular this is a problem.
| 16:10, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, etc would all work better in
| portrait displays.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > so whatever a hexagonal or septagonal cylinder is called
|
| In case you're interested (probably not!), the word you're
| looking for is prism e.g. hexagonal prism or heptagonal
| prism.
| Vinnl wrote:
| For those on Linux (on GNOME and KDE, at least),
| experimentation is still alive and well in
| https://github.com/Schneegans/Burn-My-Windows#readme.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| You can still use Compiz with Mate to this day
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Unfortunately experimentation, at least at organisations, has
| been optimised out of existence by a combination of shareholder
| interests and agile cultists.
| ruined wrote:
| kororaa gang. got me into gentoo.
|
| i had a 21in viewsonic crt that was factory specced to
| 1600x1200, but kororaa would default to overdrive at 1856x1392.
| it had a bit of trouble with focus at that rez - the field was
| curved, and the screen was flat. i could have perfectly sharp
| edges, or a perfectly sharp center, but either way it was
| sharper than the factory max. i dumped the modelines and
| carried them with me in my heart. don't think i had that much
| vertical resolution again until i picked up my first 5k display
| in 2019.
| kelsey9876543 wrote:
| I remember how much I loved compiz and beryl in high school, my
| classmates always enjoyed watching me do assignments. I remember
| it becoming increasingly difficult to make work with OS releases
| and it forced me to just adopt a "normal" workspace based
| workflow, a 3 by 3 flat grid instead of the many sided cubes and
| shapes I used for compiz. I stayed on gtk2 longer than most
| people via mate, but now I mostly use Mac os with a flat 11
| workspaces and it feels so limiting. I wish I could use a 3x3
| workspace layout instead of a flat row of workspaces.
| qup wrote:
| I can only really use two these days, although one of them is
| cheating --it's a terminal running tmux with four windows. But
| I would replace tmux with four terminals which would go on two
| workspaces (2 each).
|
| The other is my browser, of course.
|
| I was a full time developer working like this. Tmux was my
| workspace killer, but of course not everyone works in a
| terminal.
|
| But I still gotta ask, how are you making use of 11 workspaces?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I use 4-8 at a time by using one per task or activity type.
| So one for my main web browser, one per project I have going,
| one to throw tools like volume controls, another for each
| additional web browser profile.
| kossTKR wrote:
| I easily use 9 as a full stack dev.
|
| 1) Coding apps
|
| 2) Dev browsers
|
| 3) Terminals
|
| 4) Sql /DB apps
|
| 5) FTP/File handling apps
|
| 6) Non work browsing / leisure
|
| 7) Specs and text
|
| 8) Graphics / Figma / Ps
|
| 9) Music / podcast player
|
| Once this is setup with shortcuts it becomes super fast to
| switch to DB-stuff, or terminal windows etc.
| o11c wrote:
| I use 12, though if I'm using them correctly many are
| usually empty. I assign custom visible labels, for which I
| use just a single letter. Also I am very familiar with the
| custom shortcuts to switch desktops or move a window
| between them; I use the wrap-between-rows shortcuts for the
| left-right ones. On occasion, I've found that many non-KDE
| environments are very primitive, often supporting only a
| single row and not even wrapping around the ends!
|
| There's significant overlap compared to yours but I don't
| quite all of the dedicated app types you do. One thing I
| will note is that I _don 't_ have a desktop for music - I
| use VLC and collapse it to the systray (I've tried other
| players, but kept finding audio files that would break
| them, and also it was often tricky to make global keyboard
| controls work).
|
| Column 1:
|
| I = internet, for general-purpose browsing that doesn't fit
| elsewhere.
|
| A = application, for programs (including) that don't fit
| elsewhere
|
| R = reading, for blogs and stories, assuming they don't fit
| better elsewhere
|
| Column 2:
|
| C = code, D = debug (or was it documentation? I admit I'm
| sloppy within a column), E = ... I don't remember, but
| basically I use it if I need a third virtual desktop for
| code-related stuff
|
| Column 3:
|
| G = games, H = help (usually a wiki or walkthrough), J =
| journal (a place for me to record my own notes, since most
| games don't provide a builtin way to do that, and even if
| they do their primitive text editor usually sucks)
|
| Column 4:
|
| X = extra, Y, Z - in case I need another set.
| snvzz wrote:
| I use 10, with i3 as window manager.
|
| I keep the most frequent ones at 1-4, as these are easiest to
| hit with left hand via meta+numeric row.
| bandrami wrote:
| Terminal, Browser, Patchbay, Sequencer, Sampler, Synth,
| Mixer, Arranger, Text Editor, Blank Desktop. That's 10 (on
| Windowmaker) and I could easily add a couple more.
| kossTKR wrote:
| I remember having some mac app that could do this years ago but
| was abandoned as SIP destroyed many third party extensions.
|
| I really want my 3x3 desktops back also!
|
| Can it really be there hasn't been made an alternative yet?
| seltzered_ wrote:
| "Here comes the hotstepper..."
|
| ( see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29798448 for context
| linking to a popular video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ from 2007 demoing
| some cube effects alongside burning windows and such.)
| snvzz wrote:
| It is just added latency for questionable benefit.
|
| OTOH, it could actually be helpful to conceptualize the idea of
| virtual desktops.
|
| Once already used to virtual desktops, the cube becomes cruft.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's fun. That's benefit alone for a lot of people.
| tssva wrote:
| "It is just added latency for questionable benefit."
|
| I guess it depends on how beneficial you consider whimsy. I'll
| trade a little efficiency for a little whimsy most days.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Fun is a valuable benefit.
| snvzz wrote:
| Absolutely. If you love it, go ahead.
|
| I remember I even used it without the switch animation, as
| the latency irritated me.
|
| Just to fiddle by manually grabbing the cube and spinning it,
| while thinking.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Animations have a useful role - they provide often necessary
| visual cues on the context. For example, randomly jumping in a
| text page won't tell you where you are now in relation to the
| previous position. Scrolling through does.
| Narishma wrote:
| > For example, randomly jumping in a text page won't tell you
| where you are now in relation to the previous position.
|
| That's what scrollbars used to be good at, before they were
| dumbed down for dubious aesthetic reasons.
| rgoulter wrote:
| Right.
|
| On Gnome, when I switch left/right between virtual
| workspaces, the animation provides some indication of the
| switch.
|
| When I tried xfce, there was no animation, it didn't feel
| like an improvement.
|
| Perhaps this is down to preferences.
| mrob wrote:
| It's useful the first few times, and annoying time wasting
| all the thousands of times after that. Animations should only
| be included if there's an easy way to turn them off.
| kaba0 wrote:
| How is that 20ms, or even less constitutes waiting?
| mrob wrote:
| I've never seen a UI animation that quick. Most UI
| animations are hundreds of milliseconds. And even if
| somebody did make one, it would still be annoying. Even a
| little latency is enough to break the sensation that the
| computer is part of my own body, and instead make it feel
| like a third party I'm commanding.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I can't see I've ever felt like a computer is part of my
| own body. And I've been writing software for close to 40
| years.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Literally nothing happens instantly in real life, why
| should it be different with computers?
| mrob wrote:
| All hands tools (including common things like pencils and
| toothbrushes) react to your movement with zero added
| latency. Computers should be the same.
| snvzz wrote:
| >Scrolling through does.
|
| Yet "smooth scrolling" is latency, and to most who are
| already used to scrolling, it is extremely unpleasant.
|
| When one does scroll (i.e. move the viewport of a larger
| screen that's being presented through the inside of a
| window), it is because one wishes to already be seeing the
| target position.
|
| Any latency through added animation destroys the illusion.
|
| I quickly close any webpage that forces that strong
| discomfort upon me. And switch away from any application that
| does it against my wishes.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Though "smooth scrolling" that interpolates between detents
| is a considerably different creature than "smooth
| scrolling" that tracks touch and has inertia resulting from
| it. The former is like nails on a chalkboard whereas I find
| tracking/inertial scrolling quite pleasing with how it lets
| one use muscle memory to "fling" the page to a particular
| point with decent accuracy.
| CSSer wrote:
| I find it easier to maintain mental conceptions of three
| dimensional objects in my current working memory than I do a
| series of flat planes. I feel that we're wired that way.
|
| Take macOS as an example. The current space is shown as the
| largest view, which is silly because you're already on it. The
| other spaces are shown as little thumbnails you can hardly see
| the contents of. You can either slide between spaces one at a
| time or click. In the cube, each face is the same size, you can
| see the backside of each window and you can view each window's
| contents from an angle. It's the same reason a book is easier
| to flip through than a Kindle.
|
| I really wish we could shake this strange obsession with
| minimalism and return to embracing skeuomorphic
| representations. Computers should adapt to us, not us to them.
| We have insane transistor counts and memory density at our
| disposal. Why shouldn't we take advantage of that to provide
| even questionable benefits, as you put it, to our user
| experience?
| jwells89 wrote:
| For virtual desktops I always liked the original animation OS X
| used for that back in 10.5 and 10.6, where the camera pulled
| back to show an overhead view of your grid of desktops,
| including miniaturized versions of all of your windows.
|
| It did well to establish the idea that your current desktop was
| just a portion of a much larger surface, and by switching
| desktops you were changing the portion you were working in. It
| also leveraged spatial memory, as many Mac UI features over the
| years have.
|
| The implementation in current versions of macOS, which is your
| typical linear setup similar that found in GNOME, is harder to
| conceptualize for users because its animations don't
| communicate nearly as effectively, plus by default desktops
| move around based on frequency of usage which screws with
| spatial memory.
| selectodude wrote:
| There's very little in current versions of macOS that weren't
| better in 10.6.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Eh, it places your windows in a 3D navigable space, which
| actually was _sort_ of useful to quickly take in where you were
| at a glance. So not _100%_ cruft.
| haolez wrote:
| It depends on the implementation. If the actions don't wait for
| the animation to complete to do work, then you can move ahead
| of the animations (and maybe they could gracefully merge from
| one into the next animation).
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| When you already know what desktop you need to go to, then yes.
|
| Otherwise, this is a great way to see where you put that window
| you are looking for.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| I liked those effects back in the day, but have to admit I've set
| my macbook to "reduce motion" because it's faster to use with
| most effects disabled.
|
| For example alt-tabbing between spreadsheets to look at something
| while typing in another, the effects just waste your time at
| every window switch.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Same goes for (Android) phones. If your phone ever starts to
| feel sluggish, just turn down animation durations.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The problem is that animations happen _before_ the transition
| instead of _after_.
|
| I would love to see more desktop animations that happen _after_
| a change. One idea I have is to make some waves around the
| window you alt-tabbed to.
| ognarb wrote:
| Original source for this news:
| https://pointieststick.com/2023/10/27/these-past-2-weeks-in-...
| khobragade wrote:
| People on Gnome, try this rn it's great fun
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4648/desktop-cube/
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Rotating cube!! I remember playing with this 15 years ago on KDE.
| Unfortunately I only used Linux for hobby reasons, so I never had
| many tabs or applications open often enough to really make use of
| it.
|
| Does Windows finally have this rotating workspaces and maybe I'm
| just not aware?
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Does Windows finally have this rotating workspaces and maybe
| I'm just not aware?
|
| There used to be a Windows program called Yod'm 3D that did
| this.
|
| https://lifehacker.com/download-of-the-day-yodm-3d-windows-2...
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CLulkmwvwis
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Thanks. I use Windows for work, so it's not worth the effort
| trying to get this type of thing past the IT folks.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The first place I saw effects like this was in OS X 10.4 Tiger,
| where fast user switching (switching users without logging out
| logged in users) utilized a rotating 3D cube transition a lot
| like the desktop cube (just without gaps on the cube edges and
| the camera looking straight on instead from an upper angle).
|
| I thought it was a bit of a brilliant metaphor for multiple
| users, with each user's desktop representing a different "face"
| of the computer, and switching users is an infrequent enough of a
| thing that the effect doesn't become grating. It's a bummer they
| removed the effect a few releases ago.
|
| Full-on compiz effects with burning windows and all isn't quite
| my thing, but I think that modern desktops would benefit a lot
| from judicious usage of "fancy" animations that go beyond the bog
| standard fade and scale effects. If designed well they can
| communicate a lot to users.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Wow! I thought it would never happen. Good to see some people
| still value fun in the community.
| layer8 wrote:
| I always found those effects where you show on a 2D display a 3D
| view of a 2D UI to be like a weird category error for a GUI.
| babuloseo wrote:
| yes
| aeonik wrote:
| Nixie Pixel was the first person I saw on the Internet that
| introduced to me this 10+ years ago.
|
| Loved that old tricked out desktop.
|
| https://youtube.com/@NixiePixel?si=YZ3b-gHNAb1_m0Tv
| winrid wrote:
| https://github.com/KDE/kdeplasma-addons/tree/master/kwin/eff...
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I'm looking forward to Plasma 6, which also fixes night color
| mode on Wayland. Have to wait a few months though.
|
| > Plasma 6 is built on top of Qt 6 and is scheduled to be
| released in early February 2024. This page outlines important
| information and major changes coming in Plasma 6.
| boredumb wrote:
| what a trip, when i was a young'n I learned a lot about linux by
| breaking my display trying to get compiz fusion to decorate my
| terminals and turn into a cylinder.
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