People have different ideas of what's good UX, because everybody comes from their own tradition of using desktops. Some people don't see anything wrong worth evolving from with mouse, point, click. The kind of thinking from the article, from someone that only worked on big companies, is the thinking from someone looking for the next big product, which I look with suspicion. At some point this stops being about good UX and starts being about a good product that makes good profit.

True revolution in UX will come from making customisation accessible, so everyone can decide what's best for them without losing their minds in endless customisation rabbit holes or having to rely on big and clumsy organizations.

True revolution in UX will come from making customisation accessible

...like it was back in the days when Windows actually had a very customisable UI[1], and then the "skinnable" UIs of the early 2000s (most of which were extremely gaudy, but then again, maybe that was what the majority of the population wanted.) Now it has devolved into little more than this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/experience/perso...

[1] and one of the included color schemes was indeed crazy, but a good demonstration of what was available: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46247605

Hot Dog Stand is really illustrative of the change in attitude. Previously: "It's your computer, of course you're allowed to make it look ugly." Now: "It's our computer, that's not on brand."

The difference between big-company and FLOSS UX design, including profit-motivated behaviors (a bit indirectly, but it's definitely there), is specifically addressed in the article, so I don't think that's a very fair characterization.

I actually agree about customization, but that's only part of it, and seems to be pretty orthogonal to what the article is talking about. You can only customize to features that are actually implemented by the system, and coming up with those seems like the harder problem.

Please give me the option to not use the, "Innovations."

I remember Windows trying to look like my smartphone screen a few years back... that was when I switched to Ubuntu!

The was by far the most common type of comment I saw on this topic on Reddit. Do people think they'll be held at gunpoint?

The final, particularly strong, objection from the tech community is "don't touch my stuff". People get angry when they have worked hard to get their desktop environment just as they like it and something changes to disrupt that.

Yeah, this can be a little extreme, and I feel we can benefit from being a little more open to trying new things.

The part about designing specifically for large displays and widescreen monitors was interesting. We can also reverse it, though: right now I'm away from home, and I only have this old laptop which is mostly great but has a shitty touchpad as the mouse, and I have to think this must be really common. However, this situation seems to be completely ignored by all desktop UX design. We seem to be pretty good at coming up with ways to use the mouse in our programs, but when the mouse is hard to control and unreliable, it causes pain. I guess I can use ratpoison or something, but that seems to be giving up too much.

Regarding the AI going deep into the filesystem and organizing my data...I'm extremely skeptical of inserting any kind of inherent unpredictability into how I interact with the computer. Giving a command or input should produce a well-defined and predictable (in principle) action. Getting rid of that paradigm fundamentally changes the relationship between the user and the computer in a way that, in my opinion at least, greatly diminishes its usefulness as a tool.

Here's another thing that's just completely ignored: touchpad as anything other than a mouse replacement. It's possible for a touchpad to allow things like pinch-to-zoom, but nobody's really doing that. You could even use it as a low res painting tablet.

Well, Apple is doing it. The touchpad experience on macbooks is really on another level than all other laptops and one of the main reasons that's keeping me there.

It's a gimmik

Pinch to zoom and two finger scrolling work well for me in most Windows apps. Apple has a few touchoad gestures that I don't believe have equivalents elsewhere, but they would be pretty neat.

The main issue with going beyond the mouse is that it involves changes across the event handling stack. For track pads, you have to build multi-touch infrastructure up ro a point and then there is a decision: what are gestures that are handled at a desktop level? What are gestures that get converted into semantically similar events (e.g. tap->LMB click)? What gets passed through as multi-touch? This ends up touching a lot of parts of the desktop software stack and the amount of required buy in to get this done on Linux seems massive.

Pinch-to-zoom is handled by libinput, and exposed to gtk apps. Works fine in firefox. Works in GtkWebkit views. works in Loupe the image viewer. works in Gnome Maps. Even works in Emacs, ffs.

Are you on X or smth?

I'm actually on a desktop without a touchpad.

I don't understand your initial comment at all, then. You want touchpads to have features they already have, which you haven't tried, because you don't have a touchpad?..

Or was there a different meaning?

I guess one problem is that the capability of touchpads really varies. Not all of them support recognizing multiple touch points for example.

And the original UX issue is much easier solved by bringing a mouse with your laptop.

I think the big issue is that the user doesn't have a choice in many cases. Windows obviously doesn't give the user a choice, they made the start menu much shittier and you had to live with it or go away. Popular distributions like Ubuntu also focus on one desktop environment, and it's often not easy to switch (it's possible of course, but at least when I tried it a long time ago just installing a different desktop wasn't enough).

Making it easier to choose allows for much more experimentation. I'm using Niri right now, which certainly isn't something you can just give users as a default.

I would replace the start menu with a Raycast clone. Most people want to open files, ask a question or run an app they know the name of, not scroll a list of things they might never use. If you add in semantic search users don't even need to know the app name.

It's also a perfect use for local System One models that can classify prompts and forward them to the right module - calculator for math, distrobox for shell commands, LLM for natural language questions and normal search for everything else. Not using a fixed classifier because plugins should be able to add their own question types.

The article mentioned WinFS and relational filesystems. That's another good idea, integrate metadata so you can support use cases like finding all pictures of your dog or all playlists with Ed Sheeran songs (to remove them). Everything bound to the file entries instead of ID3 tags inside the file or app specific databases. It would be a lot more reliable and probably faster.

IIRC bcachefs is already a relational database but I don't know how good the query APIs are. If we can't do full extendable tags then at least add user defined groups/tags like Work and Games and Photos to make finding things easier. People remember what a file is better than where it's stored.

I would replace the start menu with a Raycast clone. Most people want to open files, ask a question or run an app they know the name of, not scroll a list of things they might never use. If you add in semantic search users don't even need to know the app name.

So I’m looking at the Raycast web site, and aside from the UI being a little different, Raycast seems like it is itself a clone of the already long-existing KDE Plasma start menu (Kickoff) and KRunner? I guess the only thing missing from the KDE one is “AI”. Is there something I am missing about how Raycast is some innovation not already realised in the Linux desktop?

If we can't do full extendable tags then at least add user defined groups/tags like Work and Games and Photos to make finding things easier. People remember what a file is better than where it's stored.

Extended attributes[0] already exist if you want. But, as the linked wiki page indicates, filesystem attributes are fragile. And what is the tangible benefit? In practice, users can already just dump all their files into a random directory and use Baloo or whatever. Which is probably better anyway since it’s easier to have a D-Bus API with multiple user-space implementations than having to wipe and reformat to use a different filesystem if you have some problem with it.

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Extended_attributes

Raycast is successful because it's an incredibly widely used and adopted integration layer. The official repo has thousands of plugins, pretty well maintained together, collectively, and there are thousands more out there. https://github.com/raycast/extensions/tree/main/extensions

KDE krunner has plugins. But there is not afaik a big tent ownership system like Raycast. And krunner is only going to attract KDE users. Raycast is mainly mac, but also, there's Vicinae which runs on a lot more systems, and it can run >50% of the Raycast plugins without a sweat, is designed to be drop in compatible.

It's also absurdly easy to write Raycast extensions. It uses web platform technologies that "just work", that don't have ornery toolchains and need lots of dev libraries installed. With KRunner you can probably use whatever library you want to do whatever you want, which is good, but hard, where-as with Raycast there's a pretty comprehensive and powerful API that offers a ton, that is well defined, and that other plugins will show you the way on. https://developers.raycast.com/

And it's a 3rd party app that can pull the rug anytime without any consequence.

Vicinae works great and is compatible with most plugins, ye FUD grump. It's what I use every day!

Yes, first party owners never pulled the rug from under your OS extension, it's constitutionally prohibited

Good thing about open source is there are always forks.

Bad thing is there are never enough resources to maintain them

Raycast is krunner but with better UI, more features and more flexibility from plugin.

For me it was a major revelation when it was pointed out that, for someone who doesn't want his desktop changed, I did install all sorts of crazy things when I was starting with Linux (Compiz plugins, anyone?). And while Gnome 3 pushed me into Mate, it wasn't because it was different but rather because it was bad. So I'm excited about someone trying something new, particularly someone who realizes that the Desktop is not a tablet.

Here's an idea that I believe I read in HN as "the original purpose of the desktop": add a Desktop Manager that manages which icons are on your desktop and makes it easy to switch.

The desktop is kind of weird, in the sense that it's prime real estate but, at the same time, there's an expectation that you shouldn't put too much stuff there, and then it ends up cluttered anyway. I think it's worth trying a stronger separation between "Desktop" and any other regular folder, emphasizing that the Desktop is where you place links to the files you need right now, but with a mechanism to clear it completely (without losing data) and another to switch which icons you see right now, kind of like browser tab groups. That way, when you're working on a project you place the files you need on the desktop and when you're done you clean it up.

The desktop is kind of weird, in the sense that it's prime real estate but, at the same time, there's an expectation that you shouldn't put too much stuff there,

If we go further into the metaphor of a desktop, there would be sections for tools and sections for pending work. The inkwell versus the blotter, if you will.

But then, well, what difference is there between a designated permanent zone of the desktop for non-tools, versus a regular window showing some contents of a folder, which the user has chosen to position above an empty area?

On old Macs you could drag files and folders on the desktop, work from there, and then put them back where they belonged with a single command, one by one or all at once. Applications used file IDs to refer to them, so all references kept working (not only with the desktop, but with all moves and renames). But old Macs had a different filesystem; modern filesystems are probably not fit for that.

Modern macOS still lets you keep editing a file even if it's moved somewhere else, I think because file editing is done with the actual file ID rather than its bare location on the filesystem.

Windows, on other hand, prevents you from doing this in my experience.

I agree, GNOME 3 and all the subsequent versions are so bad. They made GNOME into a glorified tablet environment, but I'm using a desktop, not a tablet, for a reason.

I'm still mad at GNOME developers for ruining such a good desktop environment.

Luckily, Linux Mint managed to create a good environment that is as pleasant as using GNOME 2.

How is gnome bad? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49825642

I left Gnome 3 for Mate early on and I never looked back, but here are the issues I remember.

First, dialogs could not be dragged to the side. It took me less than one day to realize that, when it comes to naming a file, I need to look at the document to remember, for instance, the name of the institution I'm writing to. If I can't move the Save dialog then I have to cancel, find the name, remember it, and start the save process again, at which point I also lost the folder I had navigated to.

Showing app icons without categories is useless to me because sometimes I don't know what the app is called, only what it does. I know I have a webcam app and I know it should be under Video, but I have no idea what it's called. Gnome's flat hierarchy makes it harder for me to find what I'm looking for.

Removing the individual window menus and the icons for minimizing and maximizing kills the muscle memory I've built over the last 30 years - same reason why I hate that the X button on Mac doesn't really close the program.

But on the topic of Mac, that's for me the main problem: that Gnome 3 wanted to be MacOS and copied their ideas regardless of whether they make sense to their users. I know the things I mentioned above may sound small but those are constant papercuts that remind me every 5 minutes that I didn't use to have so many papercuts. I can't imagine that anyone did a proper usability test before dropping what, to me, were breaking changes.

There were other factors like the attitude of "this is how it is now so take it or leave it", but the whole process led me to realize that I don't want to think about my window manager and that, if I'm thinking about it, then it's getting in my way of doing actual work.

First, dialogs could not be dragged to the side

It's GTK, not gnome and I agree it's not the most logical behavior, but I don't think it's all that relevant to the general workflow the gnome-shell provides.

App icon without categories

Folders are a native feature of gnome-shell, it's on your distro for not using it.

Maximize, minimize

Getting used to something is surely a strong effect, but I don't think it's a fair criticism in and of itself, otherwise every change would be unequivocally bad. See my broader reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49829080

I really don't think gnome copied too much stuff from mac, especially that I like gnome and pretty much dislike Mac. Gnome people have a pretty well thought out design and workflow idea, so this criticism doesn't fly. I can accept that you may not like that design idea, but it's definitely not a cheap, no thought copy of Mac.

There's no point in answering this question, either you get it or you don't. If you get it you get it. If you don't it's because the way you want to use your desktop fits exactly into the design decisions of GNOME and you can't even imagine somebody wanting different features. It can't even be chalked up to an extreme lack of imagination because there is a plethora of desktop environments that do things differently from GNOME that you could look up to figure out why one might think GNOME is bad.

Go to gnome.org, scroll down to "Developer Platform" and look at the title bar of the screenshot there. If you see a clean interface, then no reason other people give you will help.

But, if you do see the arrows there and think - why are there so many arrows and dots? It looks like bad UX. They you can see the issues others are talking about.

what an amazing example. We have on one window title bar:

- a "+"

- a down-arrow which presumably opens some sort of menu

- a hamburger menu (why is this different to the down arrow?)

- a "..." menu (err, isn't this the same as the hamburger menu and/or the down arrow?)

- A "hammer" icon next to the word "fetching". Because... Hammer Time! Also, yeah we use a hammer to fetch things. I think that's something we can all get behind.

- another two down-arrows. One probably opens out options for the "hammer" bar. The other...?

- an up and down arrow. Maybe this actually changes the options for the "hammer/fetching" bar.

- A search magnifying glass (no search field curiously).

- A cross.

So you have a problem with a particular GTK application? Wow.

How about actually talking about the topic at hand, which is the gnome shell and its UX?

The Desktop isn't prime real estate when you are actually using your computer and have windows covering it. Then it becomes cumbersome to access anything on it, even with a one click show desktop button.

Having the desktop not also be a file dump by default and instead a space for mostly useless widgets was one of the few good things KDE 4 did.

Key issue driving any conversation about desktop environments; so many people have vastly different workflows and expectations for their computer.

Personally, I keep my desktop absolutely sterile, usually some geometric patterned background, and that's it. Autohiding taskbar, no shortcuts, etc. It keeps me from having the "stepping into another room" effect when I sit down at my computer, which I'm very prone to. That means I can hit win/option/spotlight depending on the comp and launch the program I sat down to get into, without thinking "Oh yeah, I meant to edit that excel file..." and going on a 30 minute tangent.

When I first met Linux desktop in the nineties, I was blown away - and I was completely convinced that Linux would overtake Windows as the preferred desktop within a few years. Little did I know that what we would end up with was a thousand mediocre variants of it, instead of a few awesome ones.

My own Linux desktop experience peaked with Compiz, and I have been on macOS ever since.

Good talk.

Even if the desktop turns out to be done though, UX polish like that drag thing is still a good idea. Like why does no major desktop let you just put icons on your desktop the way classic Windows does?

Could be because this promotes a bad UX? In GNOME, you have a dock for your most used applications, which can be launched or navigated to with Super+1/2/3.., there is the apps menu accessible with Super or by clicking the top bar, where you can organize apps as well as search for them. Desktop icons are distracting, and requires you to remove windows obstructing them to access the icons. If every DE just mimicked windows, we wouldn't ever be able to move forward. Though KDE is there for you if you prefer the windows way.

Can you show me the studies that show it's bad UX for the reasons you said?

KDE doesn't let you do it either. You can only put desktop widgets on your KDE desktop.

No, thanks, I require no modernization. I just need stable, but customizable UI, so that I can customize it once and use it my entire life without needing to adopt to new stuff constantly.

I also need an easy backup strategy for it. I want a single file blob somewhere I can throw in Syncthing l, and have it get backed up to the cloud.

stable, but customizable UI,

Which you can't get without modernization because pre-modern solutions don't offer that. But also, what do you do throughout your "entire life" if you want to customize something to do what's not implemented? That's also modernization.

Effectively all you're asking for is a simple opt in so you can change at your own pace

Which you can't get without modernization

What kind of "modernisation" do you think is necessary for that? XFCE like 12 years ago was already pretty customizable and it remains customizable. Themes, colors, button layouts, some behavior and effects can be changed. XFCE panel allows full customization - I can choose its position, start button logo and text, shortcuts and other elements. It's as flexible as it can be.

Don't touch my stuff objections run strong. Three things: it's a chicken & egg problem, agents help fix this, and third the 'some assembly required' issue.

Some backdrop, a thesis: tech used to be exciting because there was apparent motion, things changing. The dread hadn't set in, and I think that dread set in because tech shifted from close intimiate and touchable technologies we could touch, to far off systems running in some cloud data center/keep. Change was fun when we got to be on for the ride and feel some ownership but change happening to us was annoying.

So lately, it's hard for anyone to know what their preferences really are. We aren't trying a ton of human empowering things. The organizational systems Scott talks about here? We see some absolutely ferverously dedicated people enjoying Niri, enjoying new infinite space tiling systems. That's a rare example though! A couple people stumble their way into it. There's not that WinCustomize era where it's apparent people are active and busy and rebuilding, remixing their world on and on. People aren't in a receiving trying mode, because in part there's not a ton to try, and because there's no scene, people aren't kicking out new things either. The social poverty of the area & lack of things to look forward to mean people aren't looking, and people trying stuff are lucky to get traction, even when it's good.

This admits some of the "don't touch my stuff." Because we haven't been seeing as much upside to change. But also: it's pathetic! These peole have had their spirits crushed and have no peers out there who are having fun, so they can just wallow in their grumpiness. And we need to kind of ignore these users, because they don't know: they think they want not even faster horses but merely horses that stop breaking down or which start only turning left unless you pay premium. Let these naysayers and grumps alone. But more than anything: show the people you can reach good stuff! Activate interests! Try to restore a sense of motion & exciting change! Create more powerful, richer, more beautiful systems!

Agents help though. Change sucks when it gets in the way. The downsides though are lower than ever, if you have systems flexible enough to let agents work them. If something changes in a way you don't like, an agent may well be able to make quick work of it! Tell it, and it'll go fix it.

Last: the granularity of build it yourself systems is not great. Downloading Sway, a desktop shell atop it,then a launcher, then a host of other small utilities to cobble together is a lot of decision making to do, and most of these options for these roles have lots of competitors with little interoperability. The tools that makeup the desktop stand alone, small pieces, and it's up to you to pick each one and loosely couple it, with it's bespoke means of doing so. These patterns of assembly suck. There's significant money heading towards a new omakase system, and I don't think it's necessarily the authoritarianism/fascism per se, the desperation for authority to make sense of the world, but given how scattered the pieces are, I have some sympathy for why they want someone to say they've built the beautiful well hewn omakase thing. And that your agent can customize it.

One of my favorite examples for a system that does compose nicely is astronvim on neovim. It takes some well known very great core plugins for nvim, and builds a little zellij like mini-framework to nvim's tmux atop that: a visual leader key, with menu system builtin. It creates a framework for more to plug into. And then the community has lots and lots of plugins or packs of plugins that it takes from upstream plugins everywhere, and it packages them for astronvim. Hundreds if not thousands of plugins. Most require not that much extra to hook in nicely in to the framework, to make them more apparent, visual, seen in the broader system. The system composes capabilities into itself nicely, integrates. Where-as when you get a regular nvim plugin, it usually can assume either nothing or way too much about what kind of nvim it runs on. It has to define it's own world. I think astronvim is an incredible model for making common layers for assembly, and it's packs show something inbetween a single plugin and an app: it's a unit of software that aggregates a couple other modules, yet is shy of being a full app. That kind of composability of experiences is unique and special: not having to assemble every piece ourselves, and yet not having an entire massive system dropped on us. Figuring out how to deliver better units of capabilities, composable subsystems, is really missing on the desktop and is much needed.

I watched the video form of this and it was pretty informative, but I left it not really feeling anything was missing from the current desktop in terms of window management. It’s simple and old enough to be pretty well designed already.

What I do find is really lacking is UX inside of many foss apps. So many of them feel like windows xp programs with toolbars that look like junk drawers.

I mean I'd love if toolbars would stay and people would stop messing with window decorations.

I want boring consistency.

What I found interesting is desktop ui hasn’t changed much from either a windows layout or Mac layout. Isn’t there any other ui which is as useful as those two? Is there no ongoing research on os ui?

They only superficially look similar but have nothing to do with Windows or MacOS on the feeling

no mention of Arcan yet, so I'll throw that in the ring..

https://arcan-fe.com/about/

personally I think we need to shift from the 'file location' paradigm to tagging (thinking xattr).. that will solve many problems with UI (also raise some for sure).

Ha I reported that drag and drop bug 20 years ago. Windows does it in an even smarter way - it raises the window on mouse-down but only if the target isn't a drag source.

As I recall X11 doesn't really support that at all so there was no way to implement that on Linux. Doing it on mouse up seems sensible though. I couldn't find my bug report but I bet it was met with "I like it broken".

He talked about the desktop building blocks, basically the familiar WIMP model plus the desktop clipboard, as the way that users move data around. Expert users can move data around quickly, he said, but there's a problem: the desktop is stateless. He called this the curse of direct manipulation; there is no working memory to the desktop. ""If you copy a few too many things to the clipboard, oh sorry, it's gone"". > > Jenson theorized that the reason there are so many desktop environments, window managers, and Wayland compositors for Linux—as well as alternative clipboard managers—is because the desktop isn't quite working right for users. He thought it was really about working memory: ""How do I manage my data in such a way that I can remember it across all of these things and actually use it."" His perspective shifted to asking ""what would we do to working memory to improve the desktop UX?""

I feel this so much.

I think that there's a "better" windowing system where all of your stuff sticks around way more than it used to. Clipboard history, but also just "oh you have these windows open while working on this task".

People have really leaned into coding harnesses + chat windows as a way of grouping together work. I think there's a more general idea in this space. Don't make me explicitly keep track of things, just hold onto it all for me!

There's some universe where my desktop is basically a Notion-like thing, and I can just throw things into semi-persistent workspaces (that I close out when I'm done). Desktop Environments that make this work nicely will be quite cool IMO

(A simple and dumb version of this is the BeOS "group various windows together, even though they aren't from the same application" stuff. Very cool stuff IMO

KDE has clipboard history, for the record. Persistent across reboots. I can't understand why it's not more prevalent

I think that's clear text somewhere on the disk (I guess SSD these days). Might contain sensitive data, I'm not keen on it.

Clipboard history, but also just "oh you have these windows open while working on this task".

I feel this. When I first got to learn what a workspace was (in Eclipse, of all things), and I really drilled down into the English meaning of it (I'm Dutch), I thought about exactly what you're describing right now.

I've been using approximately the same desktop setup for ages, and yet, it often still feels like I'm living in the future because mainstream desktops still haven't really adopted some of the best features, and in some ways are moving backward. This is kind of a disorganized laundry list, but ...

For one, the ability to change how the desktop itself works while it's running, without restarting it... modifying the code on the fly. And if I manage to crash the window manager or some other desktop component, easily just restart it without having to log out or restart all the other programs.

And being able to pretty easily run and manage hundreds of windows. Log in, open one desktop for each project, and just leave it running until the project is done. Maybe reboot for upgrades once every year or two, but otherwise no disruptions.

NO DISRUPTIONS. I don't even have the underlying plumbing installed for notifications and stuff like that. They can try to interrupt me, but they'll find those API calls aren't plugged in to anything.

Freely mixing and matching tiled and floating windows, each of which can be its own tab group with multiple arbitrary windows sharing the same frame. Super handy having free-form placement and grouping of absolutely anything.

No minimized windows. No task bar. No icon tray. No desktop full of icons underneath the windows. The entire screen is one big canvas, to be used however you like. If you need more space, just hit a key to open another desktop.

Manage nearly everything with a keyboard. Mouse usable but not required.

Sloppy focus, of course. (i.e. focus follows mouse, but stays focused if mouse "falls out" of a window into empty space) Not click-to-focus. And definitely no raise-on-click or raise-on-focus.

Mouse keys built into the keyboard, for clicking, scrolling, and moving. Mouse warp too, to teleport the cursor, like having two mouse cursors and a key to swap between them.

A full set of launcher hotkeys which are easily configured and managed by making short shell scripts. Like, F1 to F12 run scripts from ~/bin named like "f1" to "f12", and "shift-f1" and "ctrl-f1" and "shift-alt-f1" and "hyper-shift-ctrl-f1", etc... if a script exists, the key is mapped. Ideally just symlink the named key to a program or script with a more descriptive name, like "shift-f3 -> open-todays-journal-in-vim.sh" or something like that. Easy to see exactly what each key does, with a "ls -l" or similar. (can send a normal f1-f12 event by holding Fn and hitting a number key or the two keys next to the numbers, but I barely ever have a reason to)

Network transparency for everything, of course. It's wild that newer desktops have chosen to remove such a useful feature.

Work at my desk with a notebook to either side, all using a single keyboard+mouse... just slide the cursor off one screen and onto the next. Pick up a notebook and move to the living room. Use its keyboard+mouse to control the notebook plus the television, in much the same way... slide the cursor off one screen and onto the next. Pack up and go to a coffee shop. Control the remote home computers from the local notebook, using their running desktop session. Or run programs natively on several remote computers, with the windows all opened together on one desktop on the notebook.

Automate inputs easily, whenever desired. Record and play macros which work in any program.

Configurations revision-controlled and synced across all my devices, privately, without any data leaking to a corporate cloud.

Organize data into a rich set of nested topic directories or project directories, instead of organizing things by file type into places like "~/Pictures", "~/Documents", etc.

But also, a directory for each day, to hold all the other misc stuff which doesn't fit elsewhere. And a key to easily access it.

Shell scripts can easily know what program I'm using in the GUI, and what directory the focused program is working in, so scripts can take context-sensitive actions.

Automatic private logging of what I do, with easy time tracking and arbitrary queries, using simple plain text log files which are small, easy to grep, and easy to build custom tooling around.

Human-readable plain text everywhere. Plain text files are versatile, powerful, portable, compact, timeless, accessible, and future-proofed.

No churn. No need to retool every few years. Long-lived tools which are mature and robust. Maybe not the flashiest or most fashionable tools, but "bells and whistles" and "useful life" are typically at odds with each other.

A rich vocabulary of small, simple tools which each do one thing well... makes for a powerful, expressive world of deep functionality thanks to the power of language. It empowers the user to do anything they can express. But a small set of huge tools, while initially a bit easier, tends to quickly become limiting and stifling.

I think a lot of the "right answers" for interface design have been figured out for a long time. That is not to say new interfaces are bad... but anything which throws out the old battle-tested solutions in favor of something radically different is going to take a long time to reach anywhere near the same level of usefulness.

This all sounds extremely interesting. Could you go into detail about how you've achieved these things?

Man, there have been so many cool ideas for the Linux desktop in the past, and somehow none of them worked out or were polished into a usable state. Some things I remember: * I think at one point Canonical tried to have a cool personal data sync with Ubuntu One using CouchDB which would have synced all your data between devices directly, not using a cloud? * KDE 4 tired to have everything be a plasmoid (widget)? You could drag contacts to your desktop? But now we mostly have panels and tray popups again * Similar, things like Evolution data server or Akonadi or Telepathy which promised to implement the "backend" for services like email, calendar and chat once and then you could integrate custom UIs into many apps and places in the desktop with a synchronized view (chat with a contact in your email programm? write a calendar appointment from you chat app that your friend sent you?) * Maemo on the N900 had one contact list which served both SMS, Skype and XMPP and starting a chat using any one of those would get you to the same app/interface, same for the call, all happening in a single interface.

That is really the direction of "UX" I'm interested in. Not so much about where to display what, but to make my computing device feel less like an accumulation of applications and data, but to have a more integrated experience, ideally even across devices. My laptop and phone barely talk to each other and the user account on each device is distinct, so sharing resources already fails on authentication not being solved.

I think open source is in a unique position to actually provide a much better UX than any proprietary computing environment, since it's not tied to a single company trying to sell you stuff. Gnome and KDE don't care where you store your emails or calendar, they don't want to upsell you into their cloud storage. Open source is free to integrate the best services in a way that has the best UX and it can even do things like sync directly between your devices, because it doesn't need to generate new business opportunities.

The issue with KDE is not the "UX", the issue is the crashiness and jank, which is an issue of C++ and the OOP-ness of Qt, respectively and no amount of philosophizing will fix that. Users can excuse high memory usage, users can excuse low FPS, users cannot excuse jank and crashes.

It is very hard to pin down the problems with Qt because on the one hand you can produce well-working UIs with QML if you are committed to it, see Telegram which has a near-perfect UX and I've never had it crash on me. But I think this is more of a cultural problem: KDE is spread thin, has no real leadership and tries to create a "inoffensive medium" of a desktop that pleases "everyone".

What would be better is a) finally ditching Qt Widgets completely and using QML for everything across all applications, b) moving towards a more functional-reactive approach and getting rid of the OOP mindset inherited from Qt Widgets (which fuses visual and domain data) - hard to achieve with Qt and c) requiring the developers to use some version of Windows and macOS in between, because it happens often with Linux users that they get "blind" to their own issues habitually, they need to experience what 90% of the world uses, so then they can take the good ideas to KDE. But if you use Linux 100% of the time, obviously it'll be "the best" because you're so used to its jank.

Also, develop a target audience. He hates on Omarchy in the video, but at least Omarchy has a target audience: the agentic-first, keyboard-first hypebro libertarian SaaS web developer. Okay, maybe a niche audience but at least that's something. KDEs target audience is... "everyone". Which then results in a "mid" desktop which just has to be worshipped by the fact that "it's open-source". And now, apparently the target has switched to "corporate users / governments". I'll say this is a bad idea because that's like an abusive relationship, you have constant bureaucracy, have to agree with their politics and views, have tons of red tape and low IT literacy. But at least it's "a" target audience, better than pleasing "everyone".

I will believe KDE cares about UX once they finally fix the clock to have the same font size for date and time, like Windows does it - first rule you learn in web design is to not use too many font sizes and KDE immediately breaks a very basic UX rule and has inconsistent font sizes everywhere. Then afterwards, they need to learn about stem widths and why using "1px borders" and thin fonts is not exactly the best thing for readability or low-resolution monitors. There's just so much wrong with KDE and Qt, architecturally and visually, that the "bad UX" problem is just a downstream result and I don't think a glorified Stage View will fix this.

I will believe KDE cares about UX once they finally fix the clock to have the same font size for date and time, like Windows does it

At least the date time on KDE taskbar is readable and you can change it to show date and time side by side and that uses same font size for both. Windows taskbar date time are so tiny (with so much empty space around it) and doesn't even change if you change font scaling.

The article also links to the video recording of the actual talk. I usually prefer text, but video might be a better medium for conveying these ideas: https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-7-are_we_really_going_to_use_...

(link timestamped to 29min, where the demo starts.)

I was at Canonical during the Ubuntu Phone thing, and it was wild to watch that play out. It started out with a bunch of good ideas... but somehow, every last one of those good ideas got overturned and reversed.

Like, "let's put the buttons at the bottom so the user can reach it with their thumb while holding the phone" got turned into "let's put every important button at the top left where it's literally the hardest place on the whole screen for an average user to reach during typical use".

Or, more importantly, it started out as something like... "Debian/Ubuntu has a rich repository of high-quality full-featured battle-tested popular programs curated by community experts, designed by and for users to empower themselves, so lets give users a way to run all those beloved programs on mobile devices". And then it became "let's get rid of the package repository and forbid users from running anything from it, and build a brand new system which is incompatible with everything, and instead has a commercial app store where corps can sell proprietary software and Canonical gets a big cut of each sale, and the OS has only a small set of proof-of-concept placeholder programs, and is designed to restrict the user so corporate partners can have more profit and control".

And then when it didn't work out, the company kinda doubled down on some of the worst parts of it and went all-in on Snappy.

Instead of bringing phones up to the level of a desktop, as promised... the company tried to bring desktops down to the level of a phone. And that trend has been increasingly popular in the corporate Linux world lately... "Androidifying" desktop Linux.

sigh

I'm tired, boss.

Rarely commented upon: It was Windows, with its horrific mess of user settings and sub-settings panels dating back decades, which introduced the idea of just typing in what setting you were looking for and pulling up a list of relevant panels. That was...kind of smart? If you're not going to actually go through and optimize everything? And then MacOS copied it, VSCode copied it... it became the default way to find whatever you were looking for. Need to fix the way your trackpad is working? Here: Instead of spending an hour digging through the mouse and input and keyboard and trackpad and accessibility and all the drivers for everything you own, just type in "speed". Okay, better.

The problem is that this doesn't really fix the underlying issue, which is the bozo explosion of footguns in the UI itself. In fact, it just papers over all the problems.

A good UI needs to be opinionated. And also, getting rid of cruft is at least if not more important than building any new feature.

This happened earlier, with various power-user programs that had hundreds of settings leading the charge. I think TOAD for Oracle had this feature back in the 00s. Or does `grep .vimrc` count, perhaps?

No, a good UI needs to serve the needs and wants of the user - not those of the developer.

No, a good developer needs to anticipate the needs of the user. The ones they didn't even imagine. And then fix the system and take out all the garbage.

Only a narcisist thinks he can adequately anticipate all needs of the user.

ONLY a narcissist? Are you sure? Do you... perhaps... always consider yourself sure?

What about maybe like, a developer who actually talks constantly to their users and spends half the day emailing with them 7 days a week? Would that person maybe not be a narcissist and still be in touch with what their users need? Maybe even capable of anticipating a majority of their needs?

We could do well with change on the desktop, but very little of the change I've seen during the past 10+ years is actually benefiting the user. Even on Linux, the changes happening are stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish.

All the other changes I see are just shuffling around the UI, which doesn't really help anyone. And even newer features are either so marginal as to not matter, or can't be trusted to stick around. Why bother to learn a new UI, when all that does is get you back to square 1, and it might not even stick around? I'd be much more interested in tweaking my DE if I could be confident in knowing that those tweaks will persist and not cause other problems down the line, but I have no such assurance.

I don't blame the casuals for hating UI updates. I myself went to Linux to get a more cohesive and stable experience. If we're going to make changes, we need to not break workflows that already exist. New features and workflows need to either not be in the way for established users, or opt-in until they're established and known good. Doing anything else is user hostile, and by this time, given how much we know users don't like changing UI, dare I say, evil.

Yeah and when change do occur, its for the worse (e.g. Gnome)

Why bother to learn a new UI, when all that does is get you back to square 1, and it might not even stick around

Exactly. That's why I gave up and stay on i3 and the common tools I use. I've been for a few month under hyprland and yeah no I'll go back to X11+i3 the pain it provides is just not worth it even if the common user would think they're pretty similar.

I'm already upset that I have to use Windows at work because I've not used it in years and I have to relearn everything again (like every time you want to change some settings it appears that Microsoft has moved them?) that I don't have the free time to spend to do the same on Linux. I just want my computer to work and to work the same unless I specifically decide to change it, not because some update thought it would be cool to move things around

That sentiment is probably what it means to growing older though

How is gnome "for the worse"?

Gnome 3 just works. It takes up reasonably small visual space, shows windows, has multiple desktops, I can do everything with either just a keyboard or with just a mouse. The "explode" overview is fast and I can actually find the stuff I'm looking for even with many windows.

I much prefer it to a Mac or a Windows machine, where stuff like super+left/right click doesn't work to move/resize windows, has some idiotic model that your app can run with no windows, only apparent by peeking at the top left corner's text, has 2 different maximize/full screen that messes up the virtual desktop order for no reason, and you literally have to get a better alt tab extension because the native is that useless. All this by a company considered to be "good at design".

Let's not even get started with modern windows's idiosyncrasies.

Gnome 3 just works. It takes up reasonably small visual space, shows windows, has multiple desktops, I can do everything with either just a keyboard or with just a mouse.

And 20 extensions because by default it's borderline useless

In the gnome file explorer there's 3 different menus, marked only by generic icons, and I always forget the one to open a new tab.

Well, use another file explorer? Just because it's also developed under the same project, how does it have any relevance here? Especially that on Linux the file browser has no special status as on e.g. windows.

That was my point to be fair, it's not the gnome DE in itself the main issue it's the ecosystem. You wouldn't tell most windows or osx user to replace explorer or finder, and yes that can be a solution just like changing the whole DE can. Software update should not get me this passionate about it or it's clearly that something's wrong

Completely fair to complain that the icons do not indicate the purpose of each menu. They do helpfully name each menu in the tooltip: the hamburger on the left is "Main Menu", the three vertical dots in the location bar is the "Current Folder Menu" and the down arrow next to the view switcher is "View Options".

The Main Menu offers global actions, and appears in the left-hand global pane of the window. The Current Folder Menu offers actions specifically related to the location named in the location bar. The View Options menu is part of a split button with the view switcher, and has additional view-related options.

You're right that the icons themselves do not explain their full and complete functionality. Fortunately, we do not need to rely on hoping for the right labels for actions (be they textual or iconographic). For software intended to be used on a regular basis, it's worth spending a bit of time internalizing the model.

Gnome doesn't even have maximise and minimise buttons on windows without an extension. It absolutely does not 'just work'.

Even just yesterday there were comments pointing this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49802633

has some idiotic model that your app can run with no windows

Sorry for wanting background programs to run in the background and get out of my way.

Well, it doesn't have a tray per se, so what would minimize actually do? That's not good criticism that it's different from win XP ergo bad.

For maximize, it's double click on the top bar, or super+up. It has a huge target for the mouse and it's super intuitive. Unlike having a 3 or how many state maximize button that just elongates my window along one axis for some reason.

For minimize, just put it on another workspace you don't use. I think it's a much better mental model, and the tray itself is absolutely not intuitive (the number of times I had to explain to elderly relatives that this tiny icon here is where your window went to. No, this another icon that looks almost the same, but doesn't have that border - how intuitive - was not running it's just pinned. Oh and yeah on this one you have to just hover over, no not click, because there are multiple windows grouped together)

Well, it doesn't have a tray per se, so what would minimize actually do? That's not good criticism that it's different from win XP ergo bad.

It doesn't fit with workflows I have. Ergo Gnome does not 'just' work.

For maximize, it's double click on the top bar, or super+up.

Very discoverable.

It has a huge target for the mouse and it's super intuitive.

No, it's not intuitive. I use it, but only because I read about it on the internet.

Unlike having a 3 or how many state maximize button that just elongates my window along one axis for some reason.

You might want to read Apple human interface guidelines for what those buttons actually do. It's even explained in the OS (although I admit, not very front and centre).

For minimize, just put it on another workspace you don't use. I think it's a much better mental model,

I don't. I don't want the equivalent of a junk folder on my phone filled with apps I can't delete. I want to be able to delete those apps. Just the same, I want my background programs to be out of the way, not visible, in the background. I don't want to always have that one workspace that's just dead space.

and the tray itself is absolutely not intuitive (the number of times I had to explain to elderly relatives that this tiny icon here is where your window went to.

What program even made that talk happen? Even if a program ends up in the tray, you can reopen it the normal way without issues.

No, this another icon that looks almost the same, but doesn't have that border - how intuitive - was not running it's just pinned.

What are you even talking about here? What are you talking about when you say 'pinned'? If the icons look the same, that's a fault with the program, not the idea of a tray.

Oh and yeah on this one you have to just hover over, no not click, because there are multiple windows grouped together)

Grouped windowed in the taskbar is a misfeature and should never have been implemented. I'll agree with you on that point.

You might want to read Apple human interface guidelines for what those buttons actually do.

Almost every app on MacOS does whatever they want with the minimize and close buttons. They are completely useless to me, you never know what will happen. And this isn't a recent problem, the way multiple windows are treated as one app is just unintuitive.

Almost every app on MacOS does whatever they want with the minimize and close buttons. They are completely useless to me, you never know what will happen.

It's gotten worse over the years. I wish developers did better.

And this isn't a recent problem, the way multiple windows are treated as one app is just unintuitive.

It's largely the same on Linux and Windows as far as I know, or do you mean just as far as the traffic light buttons are concerned?

I just keep my windows maximized all the time. What would I need minimize and maximize buttons for? If I have need for several windows next to each other, Gnome gives me handy keyboard shortcuts.

Sorry for wanting background programs to run in the background and get out of my way.

Sounds like those "background programs running in the background" should be user daemons instead of GUI applications.

I just keep my windows maximized all the time. What would I need minimize and maximize buttons for?

I have too many windows open to keep them all maximised.

If I have need for several windows next to each other, Gnome gives me handy keyboard shortcuts.

Those are undiscoverable and should not be the only option.

Sounds like those "background programs running in the background" should be user daemons instead of GUI applications.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I manage with the programs that are, not the ones that could be. I'm not interested in developing my own DE, not redeveloping all the other programs surrounding it.

One isn't even a GUI application. The second sees regular use with a GUI, but only for reconfigurations that take less than 10 seconds.

My workflow works for me, and has for the past 10, probably 20 years if you include earlier programs doing the same kinds of things. Why would I want to relearn a new UI for only marginal benefits?

Those are undiscoverable and should not be the only option.

Super left right up down. Literally the most logical, and what's used everywhere. And just grabbing and "squeezing" it onto the target edge works, for longer than on the other two major desktops.

Super left right up down. Literally the most logical, and what's used everywhere.

It's used everywhere and it's completely undiscoverable. Both are true at the same time.

And just grabbing and "squeezing" it onto the target edge works, for longer than on the other two major desktops.

Good, that's another option. Now, the only thing missing is the default option that's been in use on computers for over 30 years, namely maximise and minimise buttons.

I have too many windows open to keep them all maximised.

You can have as many windows maximized as you want. There's not upper limit to maximized windows.

Those are undiscoverable and should not be the only option.

Just do `<super> + appname` and you'll jump to the window in question. No discovery required. The WM will do the discovery for you.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I manage with the programs that are, not the ones that could be. I'm not interested in developing my own DE, not redeveloping all the other programs surrounding it.

One isn't even a GUI application. The second sees regular use with a GUI, but only for reconfigurations that take less than 10 seconds.

The not-gui application you could put into a user-defined daemon (check [0] on how to create user services). The GUI-for-reconfiguration thingy you can put on a workspace, then it's out of your way and still accessible for reconfiguration.

Why would I want to relearn a new UI for only marginal benefits?

To be snarky; "Why would I want to relearn riding for a new horseless carriage with only marginal benefits?"

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User

You can have as many windows maximized as you want. There's not upper limit to maximized windows.

I phrased that wrongly. Sorry about that.

I constantly maximise windows, and I often minimise them too. I use the buttons for that. Sometimes i double click the title bar, and sometimes I just drag to the top. Neither of the latter two, or any other way to maximise or minimise windows, implie that the buttons shouldn't be there. I still use them, regardless of the other options, and I like it that way.

Just do `<super> + appname` and you'll jump to the window in question. No discovery required. The WM will do the discovery for you.

Knowing that you're supposed to do '<super> + appname' is undiscoverable.

The not-gui application you could put into a user-defined daemon (check [0] on how to create user services). The GUI-for-reconfiguration thingy you can put on a workspace, then it's out of your way and still accessible for reconfiguration.

No thanks. I'm good.

To be snarky; "Why would I want to relearn riding for a new horseless carriage with only marginal benefits?"

To be even snarkier: Why live? I still haven't found a good reason. But while I'm doing it, I don't want to make my existence harder.

Relearning a new UI doesn't have any obvious benefits. People would have told me about the benefits by now. The horseless carriage has obvious benefits. People have told me about those, and it didn't take much to convince me. It shouldn't take much to convince me to relearn a new UI. The UI simply has to be good and have features which make my life easier. Gnome isn't and doesn't have any, going by the times I've tried to use it and the ways people try to convince me that it's actually good.

That's because these buttons are useless.

Note : I come from GNOME 2 so maybe that's why I despise it because of the complete redesign they made. The app drawer is just not made for computer they just saw windows 8 ui and decided to go with it too

GTK4 decided to drop the ability to theme any apps (or are seriously going this way if its not already in place) but that's my computer and the lack of customization is litterally one of the main reason i left windows 15 years ago.

Renaming the apps to something totally generic is also weird like i want to install eye-of-gnome now called "photos" i have no clue what the package name is, same for engrampa or the file explorer.

The new design guideline is not to my taste but that's not the point here.

But it's a lot of small stuff like you copy / extract a file then no more window just a small indicator in the corner of the file explorer which cannot stay on screen so i can track the progress easily, and what happen if I close the explorer ? Does it continue in the background or stop because everything is closed i'll never know.

I also had a grip with the picture viewer which forced me to stay on eog until I finally took the dip and went to eye-of-mate but I don't remember it, just that it was enough for me to stop using it

To be fair my experience is more or less a year old since I've not used GTK software in a while but that's just a few exemple on how it clearly isn't as good as it used to be.

None of these are problems with Gnome shell though, it's just as happy running thunar or kde programs.

For file copy, I swear I have yet to see a variant of this that I actually liked. Not sure why it's so hard to properly solve.

Any system that is missing a task bar/dock/whatever you call it is a non-starter for serious work. That's a major regression that completely kills default Gnome, and shows just how incompetent their UX designers are. Even the Windows 8 designers knew better than that, and that's saying something.

Why would I want a "task bar/dock/whatever you call it" taking up space on my screen when I have more interesting things to do and look at?

When compared with GNOME 2.0. Mate and Cinnamon exist for a reason.

'you are used to that other thing' is not equivalent to being better.

Gnome 2 was really good for it's time. Gnome 3 is a dumbed down disaster, removing settings I care about (such as font antialiasing settings, which I need to change to not get literal headaches, subpixel AA is awful as is anything blurry).

And that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Gnome. I went to Xfce, MATE and then Cinnamon for some years, but I'm now back on KDE and it been good for several years (I left KDE when KDE 4 came out and went to Gnome 2).

But each to their own, use what makes you happy. But Gnome has a history of messing with your desktop, KDE less so in recent years.

<< That sentiment is probably what it means to growing older though

That does not mean you are not right. The tool is supposed to work for you and for your benefit.

Imagine car update haphazardly changed ways in which doors open ( looking at you Ford ). Is that you growing old or someone is fucking with things they shouldn't.

Change is fine, but it should be invisible. Some years ago, I drove a car that didn't have a turn signal lever. It had some sort of switch on the dash. An old lady asked me to drive her car someplace we were both going after dark - I had been driving it for an hour before I happened to notice. Despite that difference, since the switch was exactly where my fingers expected it, I didn't need to notice it.

YMMV.

I think Gnome is one of the better desktops out there. It goes out of my way and I very much like the changes it brought.

Yeah of course i've got no problem that people use it, but the devs have started to take a vert opiniated approach that is not aligned with my vision. It's just unfortunate that an update can break all my habits

I disagree. KDE 6 is really good, and each point upgrade to 6 delivers an improvement.

Care to point out what improvements KDE 6 has got that isn't something that's already been done in some other DE or OS, and isn't a bugfix or polish?

I haven't daily driven KDE to see what it's truly like, but from a distance it doesn't seem to be doing anything revolutionary or truly new, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

You should not be doing anything revolutionary. UX design is a well understood field with a lot of research into it. Doing something revolutionary or new is a bad idea. I'm sure there are new things in KDE, but nobody will be able to think of them for a long time because the new things are minor things that nobody is going to notice or care about.

You sound like you're disagreeing with me, yet what you write is inline with my opinion, but I might just be misreading your comment.

I wrote in my OP that 'even on Linux, the changes happening are stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish'. The comment I was responding to claimed disagree, and said that KDE does get improvements. I wanted to clarify what improvements those are, since I can't see why they would disagree with my original comment in the only improvements in KDE are 'stuff like bugfixes and reducing jank; small incremental improvements that have already been done, but are just getting their final round of polish'.

I don't think he misread your comment, I think you miswrote it. Your first sentence is:

We could do well with change on the desktop,

Not necessarily 6, but KDE Connect is such a seamless experience of integrating your phone with your computer out of the box. Sharing clipboard, files, notifications, controlling cursor and keyboard from your phone, controlling media - all of that just works really well, without online accounts, on your local network.

Sure, there's Apple Continuity, but looks like it was released 2014 (KDE Connect - 2013) and it's tightly locked to the Apple ecosystem. And yes, the 2013 version doesn't have the same feature parity or stability as the current one, but that's ok because we're not discussing bugfixes or polish.

It's innovative enough that GSConnect is the Gnome implementation of the KDE Connect.

KDE Connect is over 10 years old by now. Hardly new. I also think it's sort of an extension of Apple's Messages app on MacOS, which let you send and receive messages through iMessage from a Mac, and thus pick up where you left of with your phone. That might be a stretch though, since KDE Connect and later Continuity does a lot more (although I'd be very surprised if Continuity wasn't viewed as that inside Apple at that time).

I'm also pretty sure the basic feature set you're mentioning, like clipboard and file sharing, using your phone to control your desktop, was part of the 1.0 release. Are there any features in KDE Connect that are new-ish?

That said, props to KDE for actually making a feature that hadn't been done before. But if KDE Connect is the most recent example of genuine improvements in the desktop experience that aren't just fixes, that goes to show that nobody's actually doing anything significant (in a good way) to the desktop experience.

KDE used to be terrible. However today, despite some grievances, it's probably the most polished modern Linux DE experience. Enough so that Valve chose it for SteamOS. I am also enjoying it on a Bazzite system.

I used xfce for pretty much my entire life because yes, there's been very little meaningful improvement to the DE experience in 25 years. Modern KDE finally convinced me to switch, and it does feel like a much more mature, refined experience than the shit show that was past KDE. It's also stable and fast. You should give it a spin!

KDE does tiling really well and conventional window management really well. Doing both well is unique to KDE, AFAICT.

That sounds like polish and bugfixes to me. It's good that they do that though.

Tiling is a major feature that many people switch desktops to get, giving up lots in the process.

How long have we had tiling? It's not a new feature to me, but maybe I've just got my years off. Maybe the exact implementation in KDE is new, but the idea isn't.

You're one of today's lucky 10,000 then. If you've got a large screen, a properly flexibly tiling window manager is a game changer. Try out i3 or hyprland or press meta-T on KDE.

KDE is an experiment to pack 20 big things in a bag that can only hold 5 things. Then add one more thing in next release. And make every pixel clickable.

KDE 6's out of box experience is really good. You can tweak it to your heart's content, but you don't need to. It's not "every pixel clickable" unless you deliberately made it so. Older versions of KDE were more like you describe.

KDE had always been about adding 100 more features, 20 more toolbar buttons, etc. (and let that sink in)

I suppose some power users like that they can really do everything with it.

And yet the out of the box experience has substantially fewer than 20 buttons.

But why do we need changes on the desktop? What was wrong with the desktops of Gnome 2 / Windows XP / Snow Leopard era? I'll never understand why we couldn't just stick with that - it felt that desktop was solved back then and is going downhill ever since, change for the sake of change, or maybe marketing to make things look prettier.

One of the most unfortunate things to happen to Linux on Desktop is Gnome and their childish and contemptuous behaviour towards users. Of close to the 20 years of using linux on desktop the large part of it away from Gnome has been the best.

In fact, I think decoupling things from Gnome has been one of the best outcomes of Wayland.

The year of Linux will start the day we have a capable wayland desktop environment that is not foreign to Mac and Windows users without chasing stupid churn. /rant

Gnome 3 is one of the best things to happen to Linux on Desktop, and a salient example of actually modernizing the desktop.

GNOME 3 doesn't implement very basic, table-stakes DE features and patronizes users for expecting them, turning them instead toward a horrid, unsandboxed, privileged user script extension system which has no place in a DE.

They could have just kept hacking on GNOME 2 and we'd have been in a better place. If it wasn't for modern KDE I'd still be using xfce, a project which respects its users.

I don’t know. Niri took the PaperWM idea and built a first class experience around that, and it’s fantastic. I think that’s the way to do this sort of thing. Have a standalone project do the legwork while keeping legacy desktops stable.

The Linux desktop does need work, but it's not 100% up to speed yet, either. The ultimate UX can be found when the user has 100% control over the experience and we aren't there yet. Wayland won't allow window size/position to be remembered between sessions and too many UX designers think the desktop is just a big phone. Yes, we need work on UX and the first step should be to get Wayland to allow the user the same flexibility we enjoyed with X11. Using Linux with multiple screens means reverting to X11 just to keep from going nuts.

Wayland won't allow window size/position to be remembered between sessions

It's not on the program itself to restore its position, but on the compositor, who has every right and control to do just that. AFAIK it does work in plasma Wayland.

That sounds great, but I don't fully agree... IMO a compositor should be able to provide a data structure (unchangeable, mostly or fully opaque) that the app can save/restore across sessions.

https://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-UI-Guidelines/Conte...

In 2004, the Eclipse IDE established consistent UI guidelines, built upon a cross-platform GUI library. API desgin is great, Looks and feels robust. The future of desktop GUIs looked bright. Little did we know that 25 years later it would turn out to be such a disaster.

Care to elaborate? How is eclipse a disaster, and how does that pertain to pushing new ideas for an OS?

I use Niri and love it. I think manually managing windows is a waste of time, and when I watch normal users they usually struggle with this and their desktop is a disaster zone. I never want to go back to that. Tiling window managers are slightly better, but they still require you do window management.

Listen, as long as control-alt-T opens a CLI window that I can fullscreen you can do whatever you want with that self-Gratification User Interface crap.

The only change to the CLI since I first learned it over 40 years ago is that it's gotten bigger and clearer and most desktops allow me to have multiple CLIs I can switch between.

A graphical user experience is all about how to limit what I can do in an effort to make it easier to learn. Imagine a hammer designed for ease of use by a beginning carpenter: remove the dangerous claw and nasty thumb-crushing head and replace the handle in case you hold it wrong and you end up with a nice oven mitt. The chattering classes on social media can coo over its colours and textures. Meanwhile actual carpenters smirk, hitch up their trousers (or, often, not) and switch on their nail gun.

So go ahead and build your bike shed with a box a nails and a pair of taupe quilted cotton hammers with a pattern of garden vegetables stamped on the back.

Do you hold your phone to the same standard and do everything from Termux there? Or the GUI disdain is reserved strictly to the PCs?

Smartphone UIs are a devastating blow to humankind. They make a real computer just redundant enough that people buy smartphones instead of computers and then just don't do anything that can't be easily done on a smartphone. Furthermore, as doing anything productive is so painful on smartphones, people just passively consume stuff instead.

I believe most objections to GUIs come from people who've never experienced good mouse control. If you're not using a high-end gaming mouse and a high refresh rate monitor, with sensitivity/acceleration curve selected with careful thought, on a mouse pad that suits your settings, you probably have bad mouse control.

Watch some videos of top-ranking aim trainer players so see how high the human skill ceiling is for mouse control, and look at the hardware they're using.

Simply implementing the NeXTStep v3.3 look and feel would immediately solve most problems, I think.

I used an actual NeXT workstation for 8 months as my only desktop in the mid 1990s and it was the most integrated and best GUI I’ve ever used.

Have you tried Nextspace? The project is aiming to replicate the look and feel of NeXTSTEP.

Did you ever use OS/2? It wins the crown IMHO because of the object-oriented nature of the Workplace shell. Things like the icons were functional objects that had code and data (and state) owned by them. Also, using Rexx as the scripting engine was a bold and great choice.

There have only been two changes I experienced in the past decades that felt meaningful:

(1) Removing the mouse from as many workflows as possible

(2) Switching to a tiling window manager, in my case i3

Everything else has just been various ways of shuffling things around with no benefit to anyone.

The meta problem with all this desktop UX design discussion is that it's not actually very problem driven.

Many of us solve our UI problems and we land into our own happy minima.

Many of the UX "solutions" are either invented problems or not my problems or worse, grinding some anti-me agenda.

Like many, a lot of my UX improvements have been to simplify the UI. Tiling, with just a few windows per virtual desktop in herbstluftwm: kitty, emacs, browser and some rare transient application (usually PDF or image viewer).

The idea in the screen shot horrifies me. Why would I buy an expensive high pixel monitor just to use only 10% of it to display a single window? Why would I want to waste CPU to animate the migration of a full window to a single button icon (another example given)?

These UI "innovations" are great for movie props but do they actually help in reality? Not that I see. The "stagnation" of UI to me is more a plateau. Anything truly new must be driven by new "I", no input/output channels between user and computer.

The one interesting idea I saw in the article was Lifestreams. I think storage and recall is something that needs improvement and new ideas because for me that is a problem. I produce and consume too much info while recalling it is hard and while also I often do not produce or consume info that I wish I had.

Again, it's the I/O that drives the progress.

Many of the UX "solutions" are either invented problems or not my problems or worse, grinding some anti-me agenda.

These UI "innovations" are great for movie props but do they actually help in reality? Not that I see.

Scott Jenson specifically mentioned in this talk that he doesn't view open source devs as programmers who couldn't care less about needs of non-power users, but this is exactly that sort of a tone deaf response, and a really narrow perspective.

Most actually novel things in Linux desktops since the ~late 2000s target the extreme power users. They have near-zero discoverability, terrible defaults, building substantial skills and constant practice and maintenance are required to use it for rather routine operations, etc. I mean I also used to configure my WM by programming it in Lua (because it expected the users to know it and I do), I also use emacs for quarter a century, I use Nix to set up my entire desktop, but I'm not saying everything else is useless and carries "anti-me agenda".

Your animation example is really telling, most users are like "where did my window go??" without it, I'm talking from the first-hand experience of watching young people trying to use a computer. The CPU argument is simply inane and 100% irrelevant for the modern hardware, I'd understand if it was distracting for you (and me too), but wasting CPU is a silly hill to die on. Power user interfaces that make simple things hard is the primary reason most young people outside of a really narrow group are not tech-savvy and look at desktops as obsolete ancient tech.

There are arguments that it's impossible to target both power users and any others, but these are all simply wrong. Both target groups are totally compatible, you can look at Microsoft's ribbon or superbar as an example of such an interface. In the worst case you introduce a simple binary setting if you don't want the cues, don't tell me it offends you somehow please.

(That said, it's funny to hear SJ mentioning his work on Finder, because that's probably the worst non-power-user file manager in existence.)

I think we could get a long way toward Scott's "working memory" ask by just making a smarter Clipboard Manager.

Many people don't use a clipboard manager at all, and even what exists today would be a huge upgrade for anyone accustomed to only a single clipboard "slot" that's instantly overwritten the next time you copy anything. Windows has one built in (though turned off by default), KDE Plasma ships with one, MacOS has third-party ones IIUC (not a Mac myself).

But imagine a clipboard manager that wherever you hit Ctrl+C also simply grabs the title of the active window and a deep link/URI that points to the cursor's current location (if a browser then it would be a URL, if a local program then some kind of local file:// URI). If you want to be really fancy, snap a screenshot too (maybe make this opt-in both for privacy and screenshot storage size concerns).

Then, whenever you pull up your clipboard history, a) it reminds you where you grabbed whatever text or image or document etc. that is, and b) with one click you can navigate back there.

I think we might get something like half of what Scott is talking about with "working memory" by adding this one affordance to existing clipboard history paradigms.

In the end, using any device is all about doing actions (the simplest being reading/viewing, but also editing etc.) on data. Now the biggest difference between desktop and mobile is that the first one is (was?) file oriented while the second one is software (application) oriented. Edit a document, listen to a music, on desktop you would historically navigate to where the file is, then open it with the program of your choice. On mobile, you would almost never do that, you would first open the app and from it select the file you want to interact with. This is changing a lot how you are organizing the way you work. On desktop, it is easy to put related files of different types in the same folder, for example you organize your birthday, you can have the list of the invited people in a excel file with their number, a subfolder with the songs you want to play, some pictures of the venue, a text files with notes and etc. It is not natural at all to organize things like that on mobile. Android and iOS are hiding the files as much as they can. (This is not the case on Ubuntu Touch for example). And it becomes the responsibility of the app to organize the files it can open. This has a big impact on what you expect your desktop manager to done or not. I would personally be very happy if I could organize applications how we can organize files, and simply reopen a work session where I left it (some PDF open, some terminals open, my IDE, my browser...) even weeks after. To complexify the topic even more, the same thinking can be done in the browser, which is basically an OS now...

Yes! You’re describing a fundamental dichotomy in approaches to GUIs in general! Historically, we can see the difference and some oscillation very clearly:

The Xerox Star, the Canon Cat and Apple Lisa’s OSes were largely document oriented, and placed no emphasis on the application at all. The Operating System owned the creation and editing aspects of the document. Developers could only add "tools" that slotted into the existing interfaces the OS provided. You’d never launch an App on any of those OSes, you’d "tear off" a new doc from the stationary pad on a Lisa (that sounds ridiculous as I type it).

That paradigm really goes against the idea of "Software as a separate product", which is an older idea, starting in the 1960s at IBM (they unbundled HW and SW, partly under anti-trust pressure). The document-centric GUIs/Shells don’t really allow for a separate software market.

The 1984 Mac was kind of a middle ground, in my mind. It was a platform for discrete Applications (sold separately) but it also had the Finder which let you organise, open and delete documents separately from the Application that edited them.

Apple and later MS tried to bring the document-first concept back with OpenDoc and OLE respectively. OpenDoc never went anywhere then Jobs killed it, and OLE turned out much smaller in ambition and scope (and I think was never very popular with devs).

I think ultimately the intuition and perceived benefit behind document centric GUIs is pretty clear: the OS knows what kinds of artefacts it can handle, and presents a consistent and controlled interface to the user. File interoperability problems are minimised. Devs are allowed to extend functionality to an extent, but they can never take over the system or invent a new kind of interaction.

The App-first paradigm OTOH places more power in the Application developers hands, gives them the means to innovate, and allows for a larger, more diverse, more self-important software market to exist (see iOS).

Mixing the two, as the Mac does, comes with some confusion and complication for the end user, but I think is ultimately the right balance for everyone.

There are two things the document-oriented approach struggles with, though in many ways it's still the best we have.

The first is creating new documents: Lisa's attempt was understandable, Windows' File/New menu tends to miss out all non-Microsoft file types. Sometimes you just need to open the app, like inkscape, to get started off.

The second problem is with things inherently app-based like games. Sure, one could have 'File/New/Factorio game' in the Explorer menu (although that just copies a template file, it doesn't allow for customization) and one could make it so that double-clicking a save game opens Factorio (assuming .fac or something is associated with the correct program), but the usual way is start -> steam -> factorio -> load game (or, more likely, 'continue game' which the document-based approach also can't handle well).

I like my documents and my music organized into folders, most of the time I'm not fussed where my savegames are stored (steam cloud backups, after all). A sensibly done hybrid approach is best.

How to organize my Factorio blueprints is another question ...

"Android and iOS are hiding the files as much as they can."

This is the number one thing that bugs me about all the mobile OS platforms. The most important thing to me is my data not the programs that I use to operate on them.

Anyone can have a copy of the programs I use, but only I have my data.

Leaving the organisation of something so important to some XYZ app doing who knows what is just madness to me.

Win 3.11 program manager was application oriented. Win 95 was a mix, you could work document-oriented in Explorer (and most people did) but the start menu was still application oriented, with the exception of the "recent files" part (I forgen when exactly that was introduced). 'Libraries' pushes you from the files-and-folders back into a more application based model, to the point where I have an empty 'music library' and a folder music2 next to it where I can organize things the way I want.

I had a friend that stored her docs in a folder in the start menu back in win 95

It was odd at first, but it made a lot of sense from a document first mindset.

I eventually adopted a similar strategy myself.

I would personally be very happy if I could organize applications how we can organize files, and simply reopen a work session where I left it

This statement reminds me of Sugar, the desktop originally developed by One Laptop Per Child. Sugar is basically the exact inverse of where mobile is going, so it's kinda interesting to look back on.

Sugar tries to blur the line between files and applications. Instead, you deal in "activities" which are a file, bundled with certain context (ex: what program opens it), all in a pretty flat hierarchy.

The way Sugar does things, w there isn't a "File -> Open" in sight. All file opening happens from that Activities menu.

To be clear: Do I think we should just take what Sugar does and put it in GNOME? Hell no! Sugar is very simplistic by design, it's not suitable for adult productivity. But, it's an immediately intuitive concept. Imagine if the app drawer was a chronological list not of every app, but of every thing you've worked on in all apps.

I think that's an idea worth exploring, maybe for tiling WMs specifically where maintenance of the desktop itself (arranging it, organizing it, etc) is such a dominant part of the experience.

I think he's bang on with his observation that overlapping windows are a relic.

My wife, whose technical level leans her towards wanting to replace her mac mini when a VPN that she'd installed and then disabled left hostile firewall rules in place ("the internet is flaky on this computer"), is jealous of the tiling setup on my desktop (was hyprland; now sway with a custom dwindle layout). I think tiling has an audience beyond nerds, but I think nobody (perhaps with the exception of omarchy) has made a serious attempt at packaging it in a way that's accessible to business/productivity users. KDE's tiling attempts were, at least last time that I checked, somewhat bolted on and half-assed. I wish omarchy success in de-vibing their codebase, but it would be great to have some serious competition in the space.

The iPad offered only tiling till about 3.5 years ago, and tiling is still available as an option in Settings.

And some people connect their iPad to a full-size monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it as their main desktop machine.

overlapping windows are a relic.

I hope not. I've tried tiling and I just don't like it. I may be in the minority these days, and it may simply be my forty years of use patterns, but you'll have to take my overlapping windows from my cold, dead hands.

One of the main problems with UX in my opinion is that someone arrives, sees a problem in their own eyes, and try to make changes and impose their views on everyone. Because a lot of that is personal preference, taste, habits, ability, and so on. You can't have a one size fits all solution. If you try you end up discovering that there are many dimensions and that people are scattered around in the space. And either you try to remove dimensions, and yay suddenly you have a one-size-fits-all solution but only because you removed choice (Google is a big offender in that regard), or you realize that you have no right to impose your views, get more humble, and propose a new solution, expanding the choice of others (but that is rare).

The problem, in my opinion, isn't that they "do", but they "can". Once the windowing system gave up control, it disempowered the user. For example, allowing apps to change the window chrome. For me that was basically the end of usability of WIMP. We no longer have a strong separation of concerns. we need that back, and we need the user to be in charge of the behavior of the windowing system. my strong preference, for example, is that I cannot interact with any window that doesn't have focus until I give it focus. At some point in the last 20 years, that standard was broken, and I have been stuck ever since accidentally doing things to windows that don't have focus.

Scott Jenson has been working on user interfaces (UIs) and user experience (UX) for many years at Apple, Google, and other companies.

Wow, the exact person I don't want designing anything I work with. Go away.

What I'd like to see is Applescript 2.0. Applescript was ahead of its time by letting you script the Apple GUI, but it took an actual programming language to do it. Now an AI could do it for people. And also, if the interface was reliable because large numbers of people and AIs were using it, people could hand write programs as well, and they could be integrated into shell scripts, and they could have other things built on top if the layer was reliable.

There's no reason a GUI toolkit couldn't be written to enable a lot of this without the developer having to directly implement it. A lot of this could be done just by creating a default interface for manipulating the UI as a sort of DOM thing, and providing default support for synchronization, which is one of the big killers of trying to script a UI, knowing when a task is actually done and you can safely send the next command. (Or maybe someone implements https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482709 , which would also as a side effect improve the ability to synchronize for scripting uses as well.)

We've had so many stabs at this over the years, in Applescript, in expect CAD interfaces, in the ideas behind Powershell, in so many places, but in my opinion what has always killed them is the barrier to entry. Now that's gone. Anyone should be able to say "Take this spreadsheet, search for these rows, extract these columns, send them to Photoshop as a text input here, save the result as a PNG and send it to my AI with this prompt, send the result to my printer and tell my accounting software to complete order #blahblah and send the bill" nowadays, except for the fact the desktop system will buck and fight you every inch of the way because it's just not built for this.

Though what will actually happen is AIs will simply get so good at manipulating desktops in general that they beat any possible project like this to the punch. Even so, even an AI would prefer a genuine, guaranteed programmatic interface to a virtual mouse and keyboard, and be more reliable with one, for all the same reasons we would in their position. And it doesn't have to be a big bang, the AIs can use this when it's available and grease it over for programs that can't do this, and it will increase the reliability of the whole pipeline.

Do you mean AppleScript? AppleTalk was their networking protocol.

I too am in the "it's done, it works well, don't mess with it" camp.

I've tested everything. Xfce, tiling window managers, kde. Eventually I settled on Gnome, but I incorporate few "tiling features". Such as keystroke changing workspaces on one monitor and the second monitor always showing the same few "always on" apps.

I always have my terminal with tmux full screen on workspace 1. My Web browser on no 2. My IDE on 4 and my password manager on 9. Then if I watch a video it's always on 3, if I do graphics work it's always on 5 and so on.

I use ctrl-super-number to switch workspaces. If I need to move current window it's ctrl-shift-super-number.

On a work windows mashine I use the exa t same keys thanks to AutoHotkey software. So I have the exact same work flow on Linux and Windows. The only difference is on Windows workspace 1 is WSL terminal.

Ive been working like this for years. Select copy and paste works fine with left/right mouse button.

I have all my widgets I need showing the temperatures, what my pc and network are doing.

Why would I want to change anything?

TBH IMO the Gnome is pretty much done software except that some of the desktop Idioms they can borrow from Apple (like swipe three fingers to switch the workspace) if they're not patented and they could be in settings if someone wants to opt into those otherwise yes.

Gnome is "done software" already and I like it very much.