Linked by David Adams on Fri 18th Jun 2010 19:17 UTC
Linux Magazine has a profile of Daniel Fore and the Elementary project. Elementary is a Linux distro that's committed to a clean and simple user experience, but it's more than a distro - it's actually a multi-pronged effort to make improvements to the user experience for a whole ecosystem of components, including icons, a GTK theme, Midori improvements, Nautilus, and even Firefox. The work that elementary is doing isn't limited to their own distro, and some of their work is available in current, and perhaps future, Ubuntu releases. The results are really striking, and I think it's probably the handsomest Linux UI I've ever seen.
Thread beginning with comment 430584
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[2]: rip-off Mac OS X!
by nt_jerkface on Sat 19th Jun 2010 04:11
in reply to "RE: rip-off Mac OS X!"
Member since:2009-08-26
OSX is far from being wondrous in terms of user interface, that's one of the reasons why I'm not using it.
I don't like it either. It's ok if you just launch a few programs but switching through a dozen programs in the dock gets annoying. The other issue I have with OSX is that it doesn't make proper use of the right mouse button.
I think a better strategy for the Linux desktop would be to build around a cross development platform (Qt) to attract developers. People turn on a computer to use applications, not screw with the UI. Distros need to work to make life easier for cross-platform, proprietary developers. Stallman's plan of having the people's army code everything has been a failure.
RE[3]: rip-off Mac OS X!
by Neolander on Sat 19th Jun 2010 04:38
in reply to "RE[2]: rip-off Mac OS X!"
Member since:2010-03-08
I think a better strategy for the Linux desktop would be to build around a cross development platform (Qt) to attract developers. People turn on a computer to use applications, not screw with the UI. Distros need to work to make life easier for cross-platform, proprietary developers. Stallman's plan of having the people's army code everything has been a failure.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that, since most of the software I use on a daily basis was coded by the people's army and works fairly well. I'd rather say that we don't need proprietary software for everything, but that we should not bar it access either.
Two tasks of a linux distro that are often ignored, in my opinion, is to reach API consistency (instead of GTK here, pulseaudio there, QT up above, and VDPAU somewhere in the wild) and to heavily documentate said API in an easily accessible way.
As an example, for scientific calculations, the combination of Python and some science-oriented APIs is astonishingly getting widespread, but most people still prefer Matlab over Python. (I chose Matlab because contrary to other scientific software like Mathematica and Maple, its syntax is in par with that of Python in terms of awfulness and being inadapted to the job in my opinion)
What are the two top differences, before anything else ? Matlab has got a huge and helpful help system, and its various commands are tightly integrated with each other. To the contrary, with things like Numpy and Scipy, all you get is a bunch of HTML pages (which already feels clunky and unprofessional to start with), and the commands do not feel integrated with each other (as an example, when you want to introduce a formal parameter in python, you can't just use a variable without attributing a value to it, it will get you an "undefined symbol"-like error).
Today, on Linux, when Adobe wants to decode an H.264 stream using the hardware in Flash Player and ask the community which APIs are available, the answer is something like "xv, VA-API, VDPAU, (and some others)".
On OSX, the answer is like "Use api X in the latest safari or fallback to software rendering". Guess which platform gets the most polished release in the end...
In my opinion, by using a single coherent set of APIs and a good documentation that's fully available at a single place, the Linux world would ease the life of both proprietary software developers and amateurs. Better software availability would ensue.
Edited 2010-06-19 04:41 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2010-03-08
Errr... No. Really, no.
Had Apple spent much on usability and GUI, they wouldn't have rolled out horrors like the Dock, application-centric window management on a single virtual desktop, and the Finder.
If desktop Linux distros start to mimick OSX, I'll consider that the Linux desktop has failed to deliver an interesting product, and just go back to Windows and say goodbye to easy development. Or go arcane and try my best to get used to Haiku. OSX is far from being wondrous in terms of user interface, that's one of the reasons why I'm not using it.
Edited 2010-06-19 03:55 UTC