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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 15 2018, @08:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-FOSS dept.

Linux system manufacturer System76 introduced a beautiful looking Linux distribution called Pop!_OS. But is Pop OS worth an install? Read the Pop OS review and find out yourself.

More at : https://itsfoss.com/pop-os-linux-review/


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @08:50PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @08:50PM (#622723)

    A garbage article, verbal diarrhea with no actual content.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday January 15 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)

      by Arik (4543) on Monday January 15 2018, @09:12PM (#622734) Journal
      Yeah, pretty much. He avoids actually reviewing anything meaningful, and explicitly points out that he's focusing only on the trivialities and gloss, as if that was something to be proud of.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:50AM

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:50AM (#623087)

        ...He avoids actually reviewing anything meaningful, and explicitly points out that he's focusing only on the trivialities and gloss, as if that was something to be proud of.

        A total waste of recycled electrons, in fact; typical advertisement. But, it's a better read than the system76 page (are they trying to make themselves cooler than Kali in younglings' eyes?).

        --
        It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:05AM (4 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:05AM (#622901) Journal

      Quote Article:

      After some time passed, after I tested it out, and as System 76 release more and more information about their new OS I happily found that I was wrong. What is great about Pop!_OS is not what it is. At this point, it is just another distribution that honestly fragments the world of Linux just a little bit more. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way.

      Anybody who writes about fragmentation with regard to Linux needs to be taken behind the barn and put down immediately.

      Look, people, its just Gnome with lipstick.

      The fact that Pop!_OS makes you read their entire intro page before mentioning Linux speaks to a certain dishonesty. Perhaps a little better than Solus [solus-project.com], who never mention it on their home page, but still dishonest.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:21AM (1 child)

        by captain normal (2205) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:21AM (#622942)

        Agree, there is something a bit too Barnum T. Bailey and Burning Man gee whizz about both the article and Pop!_OS's own site for my taste.
        The killer was this quote: “Apple of the Linux world.” Pradoed again we are.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:06PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:06PM (#623229)

        Fragmentation is basically the spiel used to turn every distro into a Fedora clone, with Systemd and Gnome as the "headline attractions".

        Fragmentation has not been and never will be the problem. The problem has always been with mayfly programmers that think they can rewrite decade-plus battle hardened code with something they whipped up over the weekend while learning some new language or other. This while giving the middle finger to any notion of API stability.

        The reason Linux the kernel so used everywhere is that Torvalds comes down like an angry Finn on anyone that screwed up the userspace facing APIs.

        The only reason the likes of Debian and RHEL has maintained some success is because they basically freeze the version of the software offered, much to the chagrin to previously mentioned mayfly programmers (to the point that they have now latched on to containerization as way to have their cake and eat it to, by replicating the kind of software installs that was done back in the DOS days) that always wants to see people use their latest and "greatest" creations.

        Damn it, one big reason that Windows is still around is that you are likely to be able to run software initially written back in the Win95 era. This because Microsoft has been adamant about maintaining API stability across Windows releases. You may even be able to run Win16 based software on Windows 10, if you install the 32-bit form of the OS (and the problem there is hardware rather than software related).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:01AM (#623507)

        The fact that Pop!_OS makes you read their entire intro page before mentioning Linux speaks to a certain dishonesty.

        Are we looking at the same page? The distro is targetted specifically at developers and lists as its primary selling point the fact that it is Linux and due to the ubiquity of Linux in the server environment the same platform developers typically deploy to

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 15 2018, @08:51PM (52 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday January 15 2018, @08:51PM (#622725) Journal

    That theme is ugly as fuck. It looks like Android 7.x/8.x, and to me, that is not a good thing. When and why did the flat, anti-functional, user-hostile "Material Design" aesthetic take over? Even the melodramatic skeumorphism of mid-period OS X is better than this.

    The rest of the review boils down to "It's Ubuntu Gnome but with a different skin." Whoop-de-shit. Gnome is the Ralph Wiggum of the F/OSS DE and WM world. It takes far too much work to get it into a usable state, which usually translates into "third-rate copy of OS X or Windows 10 with Dash-to-{Dock,Panel} and some custom themes."

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Monday January 15 2018, @11:57PM (37 children)

      by Marand (1081) on Monday January 15 2018, @11:57PM (#622854) Journal

      Oh boy, more GNOME. KDE really deserves more attention than it gets from distros. It's polished, attractive, lighter, and by default provides a more familiar way for users to interact with the system. It also puts more effort into cross-toolkit consistency, something GNOME devs give no fucks about, and It's more amenable to tweaking, whereas GNOME breaks shit often because you aren't supposed to be modifying their grand vision.

      The customisation alone should make it more appealing to people wanting to make their own systems, because it makes it easier to create their own visual style, but for some reason everybody tries to contort GNOME into their own style, when GNOME specifically discourages that because they want their visual language to permeate, and any customisation disrupts that design language.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:33AM (21 children)

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:33AM (#622887)

        KDE 4 killed KDE for a long time. I still have doubts it has reached the usability of KDE 3.5.9, hah. On the bright side it drove a lot of people to XFCE and other minimal desktops/shells/WMs. Enlightenment looks like it's still a thing too.

        --
        SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
        • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:11AM (1 child)

          by frojack (1554) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:11AM (#622903) Journal

          Except that XFCE is now more bloated than the current KDE. It uses more memory, and still looks sort of duct taped together, and is starting to suffer from haphazard integration of packages. They aren't even chasing the light-weight image any more.
          .

          On the other hand.....
          Some of the spinoffs fo XFCE, such as Manjaro's LXDE, and some LXQts are far far lighter and much more elegant.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:01PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:01PM (#624154)

            First of all, LXDE is not a spinoff from XFCE.

            Second, i wonder how much of the observed bloat is inherited from Gnome-derived plumbing. Plumbing that XFCE has to adopt as they do not have the manpower to go it alone.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:44AM (10 children)

          by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:44AM (#622925) Journal

          My 2 desktops are xfce and i3: i3 for when i need resources and quickness, xfce for when i can't remember how to do something (command i haven't written down, etc). I can remember stuff like 'palemoon' and 'smplayer', 'arandr' 'minecraft-launcher'...... but how to get my vpn going and getting to a settings manager/volume control(my one speaker vibrates unless it's volume level is lower than the other) etc: too much to remember without writing it down, and i have enough pieces of paper around. I'm expecting a paper tumbleweed to come blowing by any second. :(
          Getting. old. sucks.

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:28AM (9 children)

            by Marand (1081) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:28AM (#622945) Journal

            This is off topic and I deserve to be downvoted for it, I know, but I wanted to offer a suggestion: instead of keeping a bunch of paper with notes on how to do things, give Zim [zim-wiki.org] a look. It's a wiki-style notebook so you can have pages and sub-pages, plus some limited formatting and image insertion, which would let you keep all those commands in one place, organised, searchable, and pasteable. If you want to get fancy, you can even link to files, so you could most likely create one-liner scripts to tasks you want to do and link to them to execute, though you might have to make a .desktop file to act as a launcher first. Not sure since I haven't tried, only used links to URLs and media files in it.

            You can also keep multiple notebooks in different locations, and the files are all plaintext-readable, so you don't have to worry about losing data to a binary format. Plus the multiple notebooks means, for example, I can keep a separate notebook stored on an encFS volume to store rarely-used but important information, so I can keep it encrypted without the other notebooks being affected.

            Something else you might want to try is making a directory with executable scripts and just keeping a link to that somewhere, so you can open it in a file manager and fire off common command/argument combinations in a click.

            • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:44AM (8 children)

              by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:44AM (#622979) Journal

              I've tried 'organization' software like that before and just find I get lost with it, not sure why. So I stick with paper and keeping .txt files for some commands.

              Of course, that means too many .txt files and too much paper, and.....I log into xfce and viola there it is, lol.

              Old dog trying to live with a not so good laptop while, surprise, still saving for a good desktop.

              I yam what I yam.....

              --
              --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
              • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:16AM (7 children)

                by Marand (1081) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:16AM (#622985) Journal

                Zim's not really intended to be organisation software, it's just a way to display text files with wiki formatting inside folders. If you use folders and text files you're most of the way there already, zim just lists them on the side and lets you put some formatting in. It's more like a writing aid, for keeping a bunch of notes, with no real pretense of being more. If you can make your way around wordpad or a similar lightweight editor, you can handle zim, because it's basically that plus a pane on the side that lists pages. The main benefits over plain text+folders is navigation and editing within a single application, linking to external files and resources more easily, formatting options, and embedding images or other files.

                Not much of a learning curve to it either. I got my mother, who had similar note-keeping habits as you, to use it and she loved it as a replacement.

                • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:53PM (6 children)

                  by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:53PM (#623107) Journal

                  Just installed it. Will give it a try: from the initial instance it looks easier than some I've tried, thanks!

                  --
                  --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
                  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:04PM (5 children)

                    by Marand (1081) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:04PM (#623126) Journal

                    You're welcome, hope it works out for you. I friended you so if you have any questions or issues with it you can make a journal entry about it and I'll get notified. Or you can drop a note in the only journal entry I have, it's sort of a placeholder "drop a message here" post for that sort of thing. Either way, I'll try to help if you need to know anything or want other suggestions along those lines.

                    On a personal note, I still use zim for most of my own notes despite emacs taking over most other text editing tasks. I like org-mode well enough for one-off things, like a single-file outline, and sometimes I use asciidoc for project files (beats markdown handily), but zim still remains my catch-all note holder. It's the digital equivalent of a notebook stuffed with random scribblings, and covers that use for me perfectly; the only thing it's really missing is I can't add sketches and hand-written notes to it without creating them in another program first. (Probably something that could be added as a plugin but I never got around to exploring that possibility...)

                    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:46AM (4 children)

                      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:46AM (#623419) Homepage Journal

                      How compatible is Zim with revision control? Most word processor file formats are terrible for it. A merge is a calamity.

                      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:23AM

                        by Marand (1081) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:23AM (#623440) Journal

                        Zim notebooks consist of plain text files (.txt extension), with sub-pages stored in subdirectories. So, say you have a TODO page, and beneath that, "Work" and "Hhome" pages. On the filesystem you'll have "TODO.txt", "TODO/Work.txt" and "TODO/Home.txt", with each file being human-readable. Zim files have a 3 line header, similar to HTTP headers with three entries: Content-Type, Wiki-Format, and Creation-Date. After that is the file body, which is plaintext human-readable conventions for formatting, as documented here [zim-wiki.org] and also available within Zim itself.

                        Which is to say, it's very amenable to version control systems because it's all plaintext. The only exception is, if you choose to attach a binary file to a page (either by adding an image to a page or using the "attach external file" option), you get the usual caveats with binary files and VCS. That and the general human-readability of it make it appealing to me, because I hate locking important info into non-standard formats. If Zim ever breaks or stops being maintained, my data is still readable, and it should be simple enough to make a parser for it if I ever need. :D

                      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:25AM (2 children)

                        by Marand (1081) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:25AM (#623441) Journal

                        Double post because I just noticed after submitting that Zim itself ships with a version control plugin [zim-wiki.org] if you want to automate the process. That page also says basically what I did, and I could have saved myself some typing if I had known about it before posting.

                        • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:06AM (1 child)

                          by Gaaark (41) on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:06AM (#627469) Journal

                          I'll answer through to you THIS way: (my zim came with the version control already in action).

                          I'm using zim now: VERY NICE! Thanks for the info!

                          --
                          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
                          • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday January 25 2018, @10:01AM

                            by Marand (1081) on Thursday January 25 2018, @10:01AM (#627614) Journal

                            Awesome, glad to hear it's working out for you. :D

                            It's amazing how useful it can be considering how simple the concept and execution is. Doesn't try to be super fancy, which I think works in its favour, at least for me.

        • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:19AM (7 children)

          by Marand (1081) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:19AM (#622939) Journal

          Early adoption of KDE4 hurt KDE. Distros like Ubuntu ignored warnings from the devs and packaged up what was essentially a developer preview and shipped it to end users. By the time Debian adopted it, it was pretty well comparable to the 3.5 that replaced it and continued to improve from there. Now it's on version 5 and is polished, smooth, and like frojack said, lighter even than xfce these days. Plus you can strip it down even further by disabling components you don't use; the defaults are oriented toward giving non-tweakers the best experience possible, so there's still room for improvement if you're willing to poke around in the expansive systemsettings program and turn a few things off.

          As for Enlightenment, it's lost most of its lustre now, because its claim to fame back in the day was desktop bling at a time when motif was still widely used. It was never my favourite, but now it looks dated and has a bunch of weird little issues. For an example, Terminology [wikipedia.org] is a terminal emulator using the toolkit Enlightenment uses, which makes it a clunky pile of shit any time you have to interact with the UI for anything. I gave it a try because of some interesting features (video and image viewing inside the term, for one) other terms don't do, but it just wasn't worth dealing with the quirks of EFL to use it. Speaking of EFL, this Daily WTF entry [thedailywtf.com] is a fun read on it. No thanks.

          If I want a lighter option than KDE, I'll stick with WindowMaker or notion.

          • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:42AM (5 children)

            by frojack (1554) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:42AM (#622951) Journal

            Early adoption of KDE4 hurt KDE. Distros like Ubuntu ignored warnings from the devs and packaged up what was essentially a developer preview and shipped it to end users.

            Nope. Not true.

            I was using it at the time. Opensuse was one of the worst offenders. The made it the DEFAULT, then months later when it blew up in their face they tried to deny they even recommended it.

            But NO, the KDE developers were NOT blameless. The actively pushed distros to do early releases, (more than half of the KDE developers and packagers were employed by distros at the time, and they REALLY really wanted kde4 to to get some testing, and in doing so they almost killed their brand. Then they refused to even handle security patches for 3.5x. Utterly and completely unprofessional.

            Finally there was a few changes of leadership and slowly over a two year period it became stable. But it was shit until KDE/Plasma5 came out, which also had minor-ish problems.

            --
            No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
            • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:39PM (4 children)

              by shrewdsheep (5215) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:39PM (#623152)

              Same experience here. Unfortunately, neither opensuse nor KDE have learned much since then. I filed some bugs with KDE only to get them closed or commented on derogatorily. If you watch a recent talk from a KDE maintainer given at a opensuse conference (on the opensuse youtube channel, sorry won't look it up) you will understand their disregard for the end user, testing, and software quality in general. That being said, I still prefer KDE over Gnome but I minimize my dependencies on programs my moving as much as possible to the command line. For example, I run my dovecot instance to manage, fetch and filter my email, so I can easily switch the client (Thunderbird at the moment) which will just connect to my localhost IMAP server.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:14PM (3 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:14PM (#623235)

                None of the big name userspace projects have learned anything. It is the same behavior that can be observed with Mozilla, Gnome, the various stuff happening under the Freedesktop umbrella, etc etc etc.

                It is basically the behavior observed by JWZ and summarized as CADT.

                And these days it seems to have gotten even worse as FOSS has become fashionable. Thus we get a eternal september style scenario where the major projects constantly attract new programmers with little respect for what already exist, and lots of energy for barfing out code. And the project management can't say no, because then they get the SJWs breathing down their necks (and a worry number of them are hardline SJWs themselves, that is using their time managing said projects to pad their social resumes and virtue signal).

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:04PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:04PM (#623265)

                  thanks, this cracked me up and i love FOSS. virtue signal RELEASE!

                • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)

                  by shrewdsheep (5215) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:05PM (#623267)

                  I general, I agree. However, there is one exception, namely Libreoffice. While far from perfect, the project actually improved software quality over the years going from unusable (like every new KDE series) to decent (hardly ever achieved by KDE). Also the project attracts a lot of non-technical people, has excellent funding and is well known in general. Quite some of their recipes could work for other projects such as KDE, IMO.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:21PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:21PM (#623296)

                    Dunno. As long as Libreoffice was stuffing in the improvements that was held back by Openoffice mismanagement it was doing fine. But recently they held a mascot competition that turned into a right farce, suggesting that the "social" people are creeping in and taking over there as well.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:09PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:09PM (#623230)

            KDE4 also badly broke with KDE3, resulting in a software schism where programmers had to pick sides.

      • (Score: 5, Funny) by melikamp on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:34AM

        by melikamp (1886) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:34AM (#622888) Journal
        I set up my relative with a PopOS, and running apt-get install kubuntu-desktop provided an instant improvement :)
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:27AM (9 children)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:27AM (#622974) Journal

        KDE4 took until 4.12 and 5 took until 5.10 to be usable for me. I spend most of my time in Plasma 5.10, soon to be .11 now, with some in Fluxbox or Xfce with Compiz/Emerald as the mood strikes.
          code so
        I actually did get Gnome looking and working mostly, sorta, halfway decent, but only as an OS X clone and with literally days of tweaking and googling and extension-installing added in. It's a mess. I don't know who the hell it was aimed at but it's a mess, and it feels creepy and big-brother-ish.

        IMO Linux as a desktop mostly peaked around Gnome 2.32 for GTK and KDE 3.5.10 for KDE. Something went horribly wrong with Linux after that and I can't put a name to it. All i know is i hate GTK3 with a passion. I want to like LXQt but it's got almost zero themes and still feels extremely unpolished, mostly because there's no unified look and feel since you need to set icons, Qt theme, GTK 2 theme, GTK 3 theme, font, and Openbox border and there's no single place to do all these. Wishing like hell I could code so I could just write a mini-application for the configuration center to centralize it all...

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Marand on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:08AM (1 child)

          by Marand (1081) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:08AM (#622983) Journal

          KDE4 took until 4.12 and 5 took until 5.10 to be usable for me.

          That's about normal for KDE. Early KDE3 releases were pretty garbage as well, but it polished up nicely by 3.5ish. KDE4 was mostly there around 4.4 or so but took a bit longer to get the majority of the little things dealt with, and Plasma5 has just hit a similar point around 5.9 or 5.10 like you said. That's why I follow Debian's release pattern for it, because by the time Debian adopts it, it's around that sweet spot. Though it seems like Debian this time around just barely missed it, shipping 5.8. There are some annoying bugs in 5.8 that disappear in 5.9 and up that most people won't deal with but of course I run into them regularly because of oddities of my system configuration.

          Still, much better than the alternatives despite those issues. Even Windows and Android are both full of random minor bugs of the same type despite having the weight of massive mega-corps behind them. One Windows 7 example that absolutely infuriated me was the way it would ignore sub-pixel anti-aliasing settings on a per-application basis at random, so that some applications would show red and blue fringing if I used light text on dark background, despite having it disabled at the OS level. Plus its multi-display support being a decade behind Linux, though it finally got a bit better about that with W10.

          All i know is i hate GTK3 with a passion.

          Probably because by GTK3, it stopped being treated as a cross-platform toolkit for application developers and became the GNOME toolkit. Breakage caused in non-GNOME gtk applications is irrelevant, only the needs of GNOME devs matter. If it breaks for non-GNOME desktop users, that's fine too, and like I said in the other comment, that's around when GNOME decided that a unified visual design and "GNOME brand" is more important than anything else. The end result is that Gtk3 is developer-hostile unless you're writing GNOME applications, and user-hostile unless you're a GNOME user. Why anybody would choose it for a new project at this point is beyond me.

          Since I'm making accusations, I'll follow up with some examples:

          * GTK3 change breaks roxterm [sourceforge.net] because "nobody but gnome-terminal used this feature" so they removed it in the middle of a minor point release. You know, when you expect an API to remain stable. The dev gave up on the project because of this. (I've seen a few projects I used die for similar reasons, though that's the only one I can think of right now.)

          * Can't find the bug report due to gna.org shutting down, but gtk3 massively broke tablet support in mypaint by randomly changing how it handled certain tablet events, and when the mypaint devs reported it to gtk3 devs, the response was of course "NOTABUG WONTFIX" and blaming mypaint, even though it affected other programs as well. They eventually backtracked on it and it got fixed later, though.

          * Back when KDE4 and GNOME3 were newer things, they were building enhanced systray options to provide more features than the bare-bones one both supported. KDE did it first, tried to get GNOME devs to support it when they started working on doing the same thing, and the reaction was the typical NIH, GFYS and they implemented their own version instead.

          * Similarly, any nice cross-toolkit integration in desktop environments probably comes from KDE devs, because the GNOME side thinks if you want consistency the correct solution is to only use GNOME applicatons. So KDE devs took on the burden for users on both sides, making Qt styles that copy the current Gtk style, and Gtk styles that copy Qt styles, so that users in both environments can get a consistent interface. for Qt and Gtk applications.

          * GNOME even treats its own users with similar contempt, removing configuration options and intentionally breaking software and themes between point releases because they felt like it. You're supposed to take the default and like it, damn it.

          TL;DR: GNOME thinks it's another Apple or Google and can dictate how everyone works, but without the resources or skills of either.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:31PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:31PM (#623243)

            Sadly so much of Gnome, Freedesktop, and a few other big projects that glue Linux userspace together, have the same names and emails attached to them. And more often than not said emails are either redhat or collabora ones.

            End result is that one is looking at a massive echo chamber.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:22PM (6 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:22PM (#623238)

          What happened was a group of people that thought mobile/touch was the future (largely inspired by experiences working on the software side of the Nokia Maemo device platform), followed by a drive to chase after Microsoft as the latter unveiled their GPU powered Vista desktop.

          All this lead to a frenzy of UI/UX experimentation (KDE4, Gnome3), and a pile of new sub-systems and middleware/plumbing (Wayland, Systemd).

          Funny thing is that this coincided with Gnome and KDE holding joint developer gatherings.

          Sadly some very vocal senior userspace programmers have convinced themselves that the status quo of Linux userspace was fundamentally broken and required a complete rebuild. And they have sold this idea to the masses with a lot of bling and bluster.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:10PM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:10PM (#623268)

            menu driven nav is outdated. gnome was right about how to handle workspaces. it's not even close once you get used to gnome3.

            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:50PM (4 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:50PM (#623344) Journal

              Menu driven nav *is* outdated, and it was outdated before it was invented. Know the proper replacement? Keyboard shortcuts. Which I can set up in just about any WM or DE. I'm mostly in Plasma now and have the same small set of shortcuts for Plasma, Fluxbox, and Xfce.

              In a roundabout way, one that reminds me of that quote about Americans being trustworthy to do the right thing after trying everything else, Gnome (mimicking OS X long before) has a sort of interactive real-time program search; hit the right button, type a couple of letters, and get a dynamic list of matching programs. But...we don't need Gnome for this. Such a thing can theoretically be implemented standalone; just query /usr/share/applications, draw a grid of what you find inside, and make them activate when clicked as if from inside a file manager.

              --
              I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
              • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:24PM (3 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:24PM (#623697)

                Except that with Wayland you will need the compositors permission to set up a keyboard shortcut...

                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:49AM (2 children)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:49AM (#624029) Journal

                  Good grief, really? I have five words for THAT proposal and they ain't "Mercury Crystal Power, Make Up."

                  --
                  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:06PM (1 child)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:06PM (#624159)

                    Yep. The compositor is the only party of the desktop stack that can read all keystrokes.

                    There is perhaps some yakking about getting a protocol in place to allow other programs to petition the compositor to register a shortcut, but expect Gnome to come up with one variant, KDE another, and then Gnome strongarming the rest into adopting their solution before promptly scrapping it as "imperfect".

                    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:08PM

                      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:08PM (#624338) Journal

                      Fuck that noise. If I have to I'll move onto a BSD variant that stays with vanilla X.org rather than let this buggy, user-hostile Wayland trash eat my desktop. I've already cut out systemd from my life, and if anything Wayland is even easier to get rid of.

                      --
                      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:03PM (3 children)

        by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:03PM (#623092)

        My experience with KDE has consistently been that it's crash-happy. That's why I never stick with it. I have Kubuntu 16.04 on my wife's laptop, and it's rock solid and she likes it though I think they picked an awful color scheme. But otherwise, all the beauty in the world is irrelevant if stability is poor and I've had enough problems with non-LTS versions of Kubuntu and Fedora KDE spin that I gave up. It's a damn shame, because it's gorgeous.

        GNOME 3 is a huge adjustment for people accustomed to a user interface that follows the Windows 95 style. It may well be better. But for example all the PCs in my house have an account for each family member. I have a hard enough time convincing my wife and kids to use Linux, I'm not going to make them adjust to a radically different graphical interfaces.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:13PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:13PM (#623272)

          you should let them try it. my non tech family members were impressed with it's purdy and wanted it. they actually gasped and said, "what is that. i want that". you'd be surprised what a little eye candy will do.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @07:25PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @07:25PM (#624307)

            The term worried seems more fitting than surprised.

            That humanity can be that shallow should really worry us.

            But then Apple is hailed at the epitome of tech design, so...

          • (Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Friday January 19 2018, @02:36AM

            by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Friday January 19 2018, @02:36AM (#624527)

            I wouldn't be surprised at the effects of eye candy, because it draws my attention too. I keep trying GNOME 3 and KDE because they genuinely do look much prettier than most other Linux desktops. The Elementary Linux desktop comes close. But while Xfce, MATE, LXDE, LXQt, and many others are quite functional I find them noticeably less beautiful than GNOME 3 or KDE.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:15AM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:15AM (#622870)

      When and why did the flat, anti-functional, user-hostile "Material Design" aesthetic take over?
      [...]
      GNOME [...] third-rate copy of OS X or Windows 10

      I think you answered your own question.

      The existence of GNOME is due to a scary quasi-proprietary license that Qt had back in the day.
      That toolkit (used by KDE) and its sometimes-payware|sometimes-gratis-and-libre nature freaked out some developers and they avoided the whole deal.

      GNOME started life as an all-FOSS-all-the-time alternative to KDE, and used GTK (the GIMP toolkit), which has always been gratis and libre.

      The reason that everybody gets to make 1:1 comparisons and whine -now- is that, in 2008, Nokia bought Trolltech (Qt's owner) and dumped the payware part of the Qt license, removing the pall hanging over KDE.

      .
      ...and there's Red Hat[1] trying to follow in MSFT's footsteps in rejecting the Unix Philosophy [wikipedia.org] and adopting systemd.
      In addition, there are Red Hat people on Debian's governing board who approved the same deviant move there.

      [1] You should have noticed by now that Red Hat never uses the word "Linux" in their ads.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:54AM (3 children)

        by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:54AM (#622932) Journal

        Same with google/android: "the world" says "nobody uses linux" until you point out that THEY are using it in their phones and tablets. Then they go "Huh?"

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:18AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:18AM (#623002)

          "the world" says "nobody uses linux" until you point out that THEY are using it in their phones and tablets. Then they go "Huh?"

          Ah, let's not also forget it also runs a fair percentage of their WLAN boxes and Firewalls, not to mention the networking gear running it.
          Sad, but true..@work we have a boss who is a sphenisciphobe when it comes to OS related matters, he was directly responsible for the demise of our old Smoothwall firewall machines as they ran 'an OS that no-one supports' and replaced them with Draytek 'appliances' (which at that time ran...Linux and so does all the wireless gear we have waiting to be deployed). Our phone system? the old Cisco system was Linux based...the new one is (as far as I can tell) also Linux based.

          I call him a sphenisciphobe, that's not totally fair as he hates all Unix or Unix-like OSes but it serves here as the most overt symptom of his asininity, needless to say he's also a big fan of Apple products, so whenever he pulls out his iWhatever (phone or tablet) the irony isn't lost on us.
             

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:57AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:57AM (#623090)

          and TVs

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:35PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:35PM (#623247)

          The sad part is that the DE people will not recognize that the reason the kernel is that much used, while the desktop lingers in the wastelands, is that said DE people and their compatriots at the plumbing layer, can't be assed to maintain stable APIs.

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:15AM (2 children)

        by Arik (4543) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:15AM (#622999) Journal
        "GNOME started life as an all-FOSS-all-the-time alternative to KDE, and used GTK (the GIMP toolkit), which has always been gratis and libre."

        And then it took over GTK and perverted it beyond recognition.

        GNOME also originally stood for GNU Object Model Environment, and it had a clear mission. After a little while, they decided they didn't care about the mission, or the name, and they dumped that.

        Now it just means annoying little creep that needs to stay out of my garden.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:39PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:39PM (#623249)

          Given that it was founded by Icaza, that then went on to unsuccessfully start a couple of companies based on cloning Microsoft software (the file explorer, Outlook) before finally getting aqui-hired by Microsoft over the .NET clone Mono, one may wonder.

          Never mind that we have another code monkey running roughshod through the Linux ecosystem right now, Poettering...

          • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:52PM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:52PM (#623345) Journal

            Yeah, I've had my suspicions about de Icaza and Poettering for years now. They're blunting Hanlon's Razor, because at this point the question "are they double agents or just completely up their own asses?" pans out the same way with either response...

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:43PM (#623251)

        The payware part was gone long before Nokia grabbed Trolltech.

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:26AM (3 children)

      by driverless (4770) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:26AM (#622908)

      I thought it looked like Windows 8. I mean, ye Gods, first Microsoft, and now there's a Linux distro that's succumbed to the same brain rot.

      Also, in reference to the, ahem, "review", I know the other site has the term Slashvertising, if it's posted here is it Soylentvertising? Doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same way.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:35AM (2 children)

        by captain normal (2205) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:35AM (#622949)

        I've seen "Soyvertisment" used.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
        • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:48AM (1 child)

          by driverless (4770) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:48AM (#622953)

          Ah, yeah, that sounds better.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:14PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:14PM (#623127)

            Soyvertiselent

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:07PM (#623321)

      I too hate the flat UI design that seems to be standard these days.

      How am I supposed to know what is an interactive element and what is not?

      Do NOT tell me to hover the mouse over everything or click everything, that is not helpful advice, I want to use my eyes! That is the point of a screen.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Monday January 15 2018, @08:56PM (12 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Monday January 15 2018, @08:56PM (#622728) Journal

    as the article (yup read TFA) points out, integrating hardware and OS can make users' life pretty good, no matter their power level. Let's hope the parable is not like apple's orcommercial unix's, where integration leads to walled gardens because you have enough users under your belt.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:28PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @09:28PM (#622749)

      ... not the decor.

      Apple forgot that.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Monday January 15 2018, @10:17PM (5 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @10:17PM (#622789) Journal

        Apple is about Form over Function.

        Symptom: you're holding it wrong! It's that way so we could use a certain material for the back cover that looks really cool but impedes the operation of the antenna.

        Engineering takes a back seat to design. It's all about design. (What is meant by this is fashion and boutique, but they call it design.)

        Example: making laptops so thin that they become impractical -- but just for the sake of thin! Hey how about make it a few millimeters thicker (and stiffer)1 and double the battery life? What a concept! Add a few more standard connectors and get rid of some dongles? What an idea! Then patent it!

        1not meant to sound dirty

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday January 15 2018, @10:18PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @10:18PM (#622791) Journal

          I also should have mentioned the courage to get rid of the headphone jack.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:06PM (3 children)

          by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:06PM (#623093)

          The ultra-thin bit is mighty convenient when you're taking your laptop all over the house, to the coffee shop, to work meetings, and so forth. And it becomes a competition with rival vendors. "Our new Apple ____ is 1.7 mm thinner and 4 grams lighter than the ultra-light laptop from our competitor Dell!" (or whoever)

          So I understand why they do it. On the other hand, the lack of removable batteries and storage on so many flagship tablets and smart phones is a disaster. I would have thought consumers would flock to vendors that only offered both... but I would have thought wrong.

          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:00PM (2 children)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:00PM (#623158) Journal

            Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking thin. I think Apple has merely done it to excess. Now they're just trying for absurd.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:40PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:40PM (#623250)

              Yes, my iPad Mini (which I like a fair amount) was so thin I went out and bought a centimeter of black plastic Otterbox to surround it for the inevitable occurrence of bouncing it off my tile floors.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:28PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:28PM (#623699)

                And i have seen fanatics from both the iPhone and Android camp claim that it is a good thing that the phones are so thin that they can fit bulky cases on them.

                Sorry, but i will take a bulky phone that i can switch batteries on and that can take a fall without a case, thank you very much...

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:45AM

        by driverless (4770) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:45AM (#622927)

        Absolutely! Unless the plumbing's in order, it's somewhat irrelevant whether the carpet matches the drapes.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:19AM (3 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:19AM (#622907) Journal

      article (yup read TFA) points out, integrating hardware and OS can make users' life pretty good, no matter their power level.

      But you have to realize its all just configuration of standard Linux software, perhaps bundled with some video card blobs.

      Why build an entire distro for that?

      Just put up a package repository of configuration files for existing open-source drivers that matches them to your hardware. Its not even that hard because what drivers and configurations you need for Opensuse are going to be the same ones you will need for Ubuntu or Arch or RedHat.
      There's just absolutely ZERO point in building your own distro (and pretending it isn't linux).

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:41AM

        by Adamsjas (4507) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:41AM (#622921)

        I think Manjaro did something like that.

        They found a manufacturer that was already making Linux Laptops, and configured their Manjaro versions to run on the hardware.

        https://manjaro.org/hardware/ [manjaro.org]

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:00PM (1 child)

        by Bot (3902) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:00PM (#623319) Journal

        It is a lovely idea to offer that as an option. I would keep customizing my own distro as it would reduce the installation variables.

        User likes antix because his old laptop works well. Wants to keep using it. Downloads the configuration. Antix is without systemd. Systemd service files get downloaded anyway (they do no harm). User has problems, googles the problem, might be systemd related, starts editing files that no one uses.

        But hey, the package manager in post config could detect which init system is in use, easy peasy right? enter mx linux which has separate boot options for init.d and systemd.

        In a nutshell, hell.

        --
        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:31PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:31PM (#623703)

          > enter mx linux which has separate boot options for init.d and systemd.

          Interesting, sadly this leads to it showing up as being systemd based on Distrowatch...

  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Monday January 15 2018, @09:25PM (39 children)

    by tftp (806) on Monday January 15 2018, @09:25PM (#622744) Homepage

    Now, System 76 says directly on their site that this is a distribution for scientists, engineers, creators, makers, etc. It is designed for people who need to get things done on a technical level. The reason I say that this is that though we know who System 76’s target market is I see no reason why this distro can’t be for someone else.

    A scientist will use Scientific Linux. An engineer will not find his engineering tools there (they are 95% on Windows.) A maker of pictures won't find his Adobe tools here.

    Pop!_OS is not for a person who either considers themselves a Linux power user, someone who is used to traditional desktop paradigms with no interest in changing that, and/or someone who just simply doesn’t like the style of Pop!_OS.

    Not for power users, not for traditional desktop users, not for anyone who dislikes this easily dislikeable theme... I wonder who is left.

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Monday January 15 2018, @09:51PM (10 children)

      by MostCynical (2589) on Monday January 15 2018, @09:51PM (#622762) Journal

      Masochist beginners?
      That covers pretty much *any* linux beginner, though, so maybe they do have potential users!

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:16AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:16AM (#622906)

        I had a look recently at Pop!OS. Installed it, fired it up and after a poke around, shut it down and removed it. Sorry, this distro is more likely to chase newcomers back into the clutches of Redmond or drive a long-time Linux user to tears (and installing something stronger). All the new pastel flat design is also an eyesore on top of mediocre performance and features that are lacking. I was expecting much more from System76. If I did buy one of their laptops (not readily available where I live, plus 30% import duty) the first thing on the agenda would be to install Debian (though the Gnome devs tricks are getting old too), or Mint.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @06:39AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @06:39AM (#623016)

          install Debian (though the Gnome devs tricks

          So don't install gnome, it's not like the two are married anyhow.

          • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:19AM

            by Arik (4543) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:19AM (#623411) Journal
            The problem is the maintainers assume everyone is running it, so for instance when you look for help, that's the assumption.

            If you're not going to use GNOME you're better off with a distro that doesn't default to it. Such as Slackware.
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:27PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:27PM (#623299)

          > install Debian (though the Gnome devs tricks are getting old too), or Mint.

          Devuan or AntiX may be alternatives, as Mint is on track to succumb to the Gnome devs tricks as well.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:55AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:55AM (#622956)

        My 1st day using Linux, I discovered multiple workspaces|virtual desktops and loved that.
        (I understand that Windoze finally got this capability.)

        Being able to scroll a window without changing the focus was another thing I loved from the start.

        The *layers* thing with the various windows, where -you- can decide what's on top and what's below without changing the focus is awesome.

        Being able to roll up a window into the title bar (like a window shade) and just leave that little bit on screen without having to minimize the window comes in handy on occasion.

        I still marvel at the way the middle-click-paste thing works:
        Mark something and it goes into a buffer that can be copied with a middle-click.
        This is in addition to the Ctrl-C|Ctrl-V thing that lesser OSes have.
        I use the 2 in tandem all the time.
        Linux is better than Windoze here.
        (When that's not enough, there are clipboard stackers too.)

        The only masochistic thing with me and Linux is that I'm mad at myself that I didn't switch to it earlier.

        Sure, Linux was *different*; mostly it's been **better**.
        The only thing I can think of that still bugs me from time to time is that I can't grab the -top- of a window and stretch it in -that- direction.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:33PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:33PM (#623302)

          > (I understand that Windoze finally got this capability.)

          In a craptastic, Mouse driven, manner.

          You can't easily switch between desktops using the keyboard, as doing so involve the windows/super key and finger contortions.

        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:17AM (2 children)

          by Arik (4543) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:17AM (#623410) Journal
          I'm glad you liked those things, and I do agree with them, but I find it interesting that nothing you mentioned was actually about *linux.* You're talking about X and your Window Manager.

          One thing I like about Linux is having the freedom to choose Window Manager. Or to choose not to use X at all. Virtual terminals are an incredibly useful feature.
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:40AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @04:40AM (#623446)

            the freedom to choose Window Manager

            I see a contradiction between those 2 statements.
            With M$'s junk, I got M$'s (single) choice.

            Finding stuff that worked better for my use case (and being able to choose) was a big reason for switching to a FOSS OS.

            Of course, there was also MICROS~1's let's-wait-and-try-to-paste-on-the-security-afterwards thing.

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

            • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:22AM

              by Arik (4543) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:22AM (#623513) Journal
              "I see a contradiction between those 2 statements."

              But you only quoted one statement so I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about.

              "With M$'s junk, I got M$'s (single) choice."

              Yes, you're stuck with explorer.exe as your primary shell. Lightstep exists, but only in a permanently disadvantaged and marginalized space. CMD still exists, but you can only get to it through Explorer, and similiarly to how Debian assumes you prefer Gnome, Windows assumes Explorer.

              But LINUX is not Debian, and linux doesn't assume you have Gnome. It doesn't assume you have X. This is a very good thing.

              "Of course, there was also MICROS~1's let's-wait-and-try-to-paste-on-the-security-afterwards thing."

              Eh, their approach is awful of course, but I wouldn't feel too smug about it. Lots of 'linux' software suffers from the exact same approach. Gnome is an obvious target but far from the only one.

              Your typical 'linux' system (meaning X.org running on blobware drivers with SystemD and Gnome etc.) is only marginally more secure than Windows at this point, and that mostly because it's a more obscure target.
              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Monday January 15 2018, @09:54PM (11 children)

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @09:54PM (#622764) Journal

      A scientist will use Scientific Linux. An engineer will not find his engineering tools there (they are 95% on Windows.)

      Funy that. This engineer's been using Solaris and Linux for Engineering since 2001, and at home for fun since 1996.

      • (Score: 1) by tftp on Monday January 15 2018, @10:05PM (10 children)

        by tftp (806) on Monday January 15 2018, @10:05PM (#622772) Homepage
        I'm curious, what kind of engineering are you doing? What Linux tools work for you? In my area (mechanical and electronic design) there are no top notch Linux tools.
        • (Score: 2) by turgid on Monday January 15 2018, @10:11PM (9 children)

          by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @10:11PM (#622780) Journal

          Software mainly including embedded systems and now something a bit different with many in-house tools and FOSS.

          • (Score: 1) by tftp on Monday January 15 2018, @10:29PM (1 child)

            by tftp (806) on Monday January 15 2018, @10:29PM (#622805) Homepage

            Thanks! I sometimes do AVR (32) projects, but using Windows GUI. I am aware that there is a Linux toolchain, but never explored it. Don't even know if there is a debugger (gdb+Eclipse, perhaps? It was one of earlier official IDEs.)

            There is Xilinx, though. They always had portable tools, and they ship Linux tar along with Windows. I used it quite a few years ago. Their tools are the same on both OS. Some functions (distributed place & route, IIRC) worked only on Linux.

            But for me, as I said, eng tools for Linux do not exist. Autodesk went with Windows all the way. It's pretty, but not portable. And why to port? The tools cost 10x - 100x of the cost of the PC. SolidWorks, Mentor's software - all of that is Windows. Windows for them is just a runtime (as it was supposed to be, actually.)

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:51AM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:51AM (#622893)

            I wonder if this is a peculiarity of the English language. In my native language, the term engineer is almost exclusively used for mechanical engineers, while also being an official state-designated title to acquire after completing education.

            Software "engineering" works for me as a metaphor, but the distinction from "developer" to me seems too little to further muddy the meaning of the word "engineer". I guess you just have too many of those in the anglophone world so we quit making any more certified, diploma'd ones and now call our actual, mechanical engineers... masters. lol.

            • (Score: 4, Funny) by Arik on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:10AM (3 children)

              by Arik (4543) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:10AM (#622997) Journal
              "I wonder if this is a peculiarity of the English language. "

              No, just a long-term campaign to erode the language and make more money. Script monkeys started calling themselves "software engineers" back in the 90s, if not before, in an attempt to gain status by association. Real engineers build things that have to work.
              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
              • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:07PM (2 children)

                by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday January 16 2018, @12:07PM (#623094)

                Real engineers build things that have to work.

                Because real engineers* get their arses kicked if the things they build don't work.

                 

                *ie the ones who belong to their relevant Institution of Engineers.

                --
                It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
                • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:04AM (1 child)

                  by Arik (4543) on Wednesday January 17 2018, @03:04AM (#623405) Journal
                  Well because they are held liable if they don't work.

                  If you don't carry a multi-million dollar professional liability policy then in my mind you're no engineer. When bridges fall down and the people on them die or are horribly disfigured we don't accept excuses like 'well it was easier to use the libraries we knew' - large settlements have to go out.
                  --
                  If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                  • (Score: 3, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday January 17 2018, @05:24AM

                    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday January 17 2018, @05:24AM (#623452)

                    ...When bridges fall down and the people on them die or are horribly disfigured we don't accept excuses like 'well it was easier to use the libraries we knew'...

                    You mean a sign on the bridge saying something like:

                    DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY. The software bridge is licensed made available "as-is." You bear the risk of using it. Acme Engineering* gives no express warranties, guarantees or conditions. Acme Engineering excludes the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. You can recover from Acme Engineering and its suppliers only direct damages up to U.S. $5.00. You cannot recover any other damages, including consequential, lost profits, special, indirect or incidental damages.

                    probably won't work? It seems to be acceptable for some software makers :)

                     

                    *No longer just a mail order shop.

                    --
                    It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:35AM

              by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @07:35AM (#623031) Journal

              I have a science degree of sorts, and I apply the scientific method to my software development, unlike many others who apply hubris and superstition. I also did a bit of "proper" engineering at a nuclear power station before I went into software.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @06:49PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2018, @06:49PM (#628409)

            That's not engineering.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday January 15 2018, @10:11PM (8 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @10:11PM (#622777) Journal

      Millennials who have time to waste will like this. It harks back to the day when there were more Linux distributions than there were Linux users.

      Ah, to be that young and have the illusion that you've got infinite time ahead of you. Clue: life goes by fast. Don't waste it. Before you know it, your 20s are behind you. Soon you realize you're in your 30s. Do you remember how your childhood seemed like it took forever and now adult years go by faster than childhood? Clue: the years go by faster and faster as you get older. Don't waste it.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by turgid on Monday January 15 2018, @10:13PM (1 child)

        by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @10:13PM (#622782) Journal

        Pink Floyd wrote a good song about that.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:04AM

          by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @02:04AM (#622933) Journal

          Jethro Tull: "Too old to rock and roll, too young to die".

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:16PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:16PM (#622787)

        So your lesson is to use Windows.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday January 15 2018, @10:21PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 15 2018, @10:21PM (#622796) Journal

          No, actually I use Linux. I have never owned a Windows box. Linux systems have become simple and dependable.

          At work I have Windows, but I am not responsible for maintaining it. And they do an excellent job BTW. I run the same open source development tools and other applications on Windows as on Linux, so it works out fine for me.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday January 15 2018, @11:14PM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Monday January 15 2018, @11:14PM (#622836) Journal

          So your lesson is to use Windows.

          I think he was saying, "Use Windows and die." But you would be astonished to learn how fast time seems to go by when you are almost 2400 years old. A week is like the snapping of your fingers. The entire era of the PC, and Microsoft, is such a piddling small part of the history of humanity, let alone of the Cosmos, that it hardly deserves mention. Unix, however, is eternal, replicating as it does the Mind of God and the very Structure of the Universe. I guess that is why engineers can't use it. Not broken enough.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:15AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:15AM (#622904)

        Thank you

        My theory is that your “clock” was s set when you are born then that second remains just as long at birth as at death it just the universe a second is getting shorter and shorter. Explains the accellorantion or star away from us without dark matter or other tricks.

        • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:15AM

          by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 16 2018, @03:15AM (#622966) Homepage Journal

          It's logarithmic.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:38PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:38PM (#623303)

          The instances of time is the same, the perception on the other hand...

          What seems to be going on is that as we grow older, we do not notice/remember individual moments that are similar to the ones we had before. Effectively the brain is applying a very aggressive de-duplication process to conserve storage. So those weeks of office drone work just stack one on top of another and is then flattened such that only the novel moments stand out. And with age comes less and less novel moments (unless one specifically go out and look for them).

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @11:03PM (#622828)

      Clearly, it depends on the engineer.
      There are plenty of examples that disprove your claim.

      Task-specific spins of Linux were around over a decade ago.
      Ubuntu Electronics Remix [google.com]
      Fedora Electronic Lab [google.com]
      N.B. Those were bootable and 100 percent usable without even installing.
      Combine that with a thumbdrive for your work product/data files and you have a use-it-anywhere thing.

      ...and a Linux package manager makes it simple to get the apps you need[1], [google.com] even if those don't ship with the ISO of your preferred distro.
      [1] Latest page [ubuntu.com]

      ...and if your "Windoze-only" app is old enough, it will likely run via WINE.
      There are also guys whose app has become the industry standard because they made a commitment to always be WINE-compatible and who did that well over a decade ago. [google.com]

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:47AM

      by driverless (4770) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @01:47AM (#622929)

      Not for power users, not for traditional desktop users, not for anyone who dislikes this easily dislikeable theme... I wonder who is left.

      People who want the look and feel of Windows 8 without having to run a Microsoft OS.

      Somewhat limited market, I think.

    • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:54AM (3 children)

      by crafoo (6639) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @04:54AM (#622994)

      Probably not sound engineers or music artists either, given the continued, multi-decade joke of real-time sound on linux.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:43AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @05:43AM (#623008)

        Probably not sound engineers or music artists either, given the continued, multi-decade joke of real-time sound on linux.

        Indeed, I use Linux for most tasks, I use the Linux box I'm typing this on to play music, but my DAW machines on the same KVM switch are all Windows boxes, the main workhorse still runs XP (If it ain't broke...), and I might be forced into adding a Mac into this mix as well if a project goes ahead.
         

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:41AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:41AM (#623071)

        You will probably not laugh when I'm telling you that I use JACKD for multi-platform, realtime, networked sound between Windows and Linux. JACK does a lot of things right and should have been adopted as default by some distros to give it the exposure it deserves, but instead it went under below the half-baked solutions KDE and GNOME kept pushing.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:41PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:41PM (#623305)

          In large part because JACK was seen as complicated and cumbersome, while PA was seen as "automagical" and could offer that pr app volume slider that Windows had introduced recently...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:19PM (#623275)

      "An engineer will not find his engineering tools there (they are 95% on Windows.) A maker of pictures won't find his Adobe tools here. "

      all of you whores will be routed around and left to rot in your prisons.

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