[Mister_Snuggles]

One feature that differentiates Linux from other systems is the sheer amount of choice that you get.

For example, with Linux I can choose GNOME, KDE, a selection of other desktop environments, or I can choose a simple window manager like twm and sort of roll my own environment. Or maybe I could set my system up so that it runs without a window manager and just gives me a full-screen emacs environment.

With Mac OS, for example, someone else made all of the choices and I have to live with them.

What Google is doing will probably end up getting pretty close to your vision, but I suspect that the end result will be very similar to Android - a system that's technically Linux at its core, but where all of the choices have been made for you.

[mamon]

This wide choice is actually putting Linux at disadvantage: instead of consolidating efforts to create one decent desktop environment we have half a dozen of half-assed ones.

God, I've just recently have to downgrade to Gnome 3.24, because the latest 3.26 version kept crashing with the segfault error few times a day.

[Mister_Snuggles]

It extends beyond desktop environments, that's only the most visible piece.

Closely related to desktop environments are the two major UI toolkits. Why does Kate have a different file picker than Gimp? Why does LibreOffice give me yet another file picker? On MacOS and Windows, the file picker is a solved problem.

Init systems, until fairly recently when most distributions consolidated around systemd, were in a similar state.

The current Wayland vs X situation is another example - some distributions prefer Wayland and its quirks, whereas others use X and its quirks. In this case, it seems pretty clear that Wayland is the winner and we're just waiting for everything else to catch up.

[badsectoracula]

> Why does Kate have a different file picker than Gimp? Why does LibreOffice give me yet another file picker? On MacOS and Windows, the file picker is a solved problem.

Because these file pickers are implemented by two different GUI toolkits that have a different idea of how file picking should be done. This isn't anything new, Xaw programs used their own (handmade) file dialogs, Motif had its own, Java/Awt had its own, Java/Swing had its own, etc. Unless you want to force everyone use a single toolkit (which is unrealistic for several reasons) you cannot get the same behavior everywhere.

Note that this isn't specific to Linux, in Windows and probably macOS you get the same unless you stick to applications using only the native APIs and avoid any cross platform application that use Gtk, Qt, Swing or any other toolkit that cannot tie itself to a single native widget library (and TBH even with some applications that do tie themselves to Win32, they sometimes end up implementing their own file pickers anyway).

And of course file pickers tend to be the most shared of GUI elements, when it comes to the actual UIs themselves even in Windows you get a ton of different toolkits, styles, behavior, etc that totally ignore the native look and feel (assuming there is one since Win32, WinForms, WPF and UWP all behave from slightly to totally different from each other, depending which ones you compare).

> In this case, it seems pretty clear that Wayland is the winner and we're just waiting for everything else to catch up.

Wayland is very restrictive for many uses and actually lacks several useful features compared to X11 - some it pushes towards the applications in the stack (so instead of a single solution that is shared among -say- 1000 clients you get 1000 solutions), while other stuff are simply impossible (unless you are XWayland which gets special status, leading to the ironic situation that even under Wayland the X APIs provide you with more functionality :-P).

[Mister_Snuggles]

You're absolutely right that the problem isn't unique to Linux, it was just the easiest example I had on hand and was relevant to the discussion. I could just as easily fire up a variety of programs on my Mac that feature different file pickers and GUI conventions.

Windows, as you point out, is kind of thrashing around when it comes to what it wants its GUI to be. I don't think the situation will ever improve there as Microsoft is very reluctant to break backwards compatibility.

> Wayland is very restrictive for many uses and actually lacks several useful features compared to X11 - some it pushes towards the applications in the stack (so instead of a single solution that is shared among -say- 1000 clients you get 1000 solutions), while other stuff are simply impossible (unless you are XWayland which gets special status, leading to the ironic situation that even under Wayland the X APIs provide you with more functionality :-P).

I will admit that I haven't dug into Wayland very much, but this is my impression as well. I try it (the Wayland KDE on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) periodically, but it seems a lot crashier than X.

[badsectoracula]

> Windows, as you point out, is kind of thrashing around when it comes to what it wants its GUI to be. I don't think the situation will ever improve there as Microsoft is very reluctant to break backwards compatibility.

I don't think they need to break backwards compatibility, they just need to focus on one of their existing tech and try to make the other stuff behave similarly. There is no reason for example why they cannot provide new window classes (as in RegisterClass) that implement controls that look and behave similar to the UWP stuff - after all there are already a bunch of 3rd party "Metro/UWP style" components for other toolkits. It is just that none is "official".

They need to provide some unification (even if underneath things are less than ideal) and this needs to cover all the tech they've made so far - Win32, MFC (which can build on Win32), WinForms and WPF (and others, if i forget anything).

> I will admit that I haven't dug into Wayland very much, but this is my impression as well. I try it (the Wayland KDE on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) periodically, but it seems a lot crashier than X.

The implementation aren't really a problem since they can be fixed, the issue is at the protocol level and even some of the goals/mindset that lead to it (e.g. the inability of clients to talk or share resources is considered a feature, but this is one of the thing that you need to implement reusable programs that work as components).

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Do you not see the contradiction here? If there was only GNOME, then you'd be stuck with GNOME's failings (whether obvious bugs like segfaults, or more subjective failures like their attempts to kill tray icons). Choice and diversity are the strength of *nix.

[Mister_Snuggles]

I think what they were getting at is that instead of the community developing one really great desktop environment they have divided themselves and ended up developing two desktop environments that are merely OK.

[badsectoracula]

This is because someone's great feature is another's broken mess.

For example, i cannot stand vsync anywhere with the only exception being video playback. I want my windows to follow the mouse precisely, not lag behind a few pixels, i want my games to react instantly, not lag a few milliseconds, etc. Yet GNOME, elementaryOS and even Wayland's whole design force it (well, Wayland could be implemented without vsync, but is anyone doing it?).

At the same time you have people complaining about tearing and when they force composition everywhere to fix it, they do not mind (or sometimes, even notice) the lag.

Similarly, i like how X allows composing applications and environments out of individual components (ironically this sort of application composition lends itself to the Unix idea of one app per role, but most modern toolkits ignore that feature so we ended up with almost nothing really supporting it unless you go raw Xlib or ancient toolkits like Xaw or Motif).

Others see it as anathema and the root of all evil (ok, i cannot put some more concrete negatives for this as i cannot comprehend how someone would dislike it, yet i always end up arguing with people - especially GNOME/Gtk+ people /for some reason/ - over at Reddit about it :-P).

There is no way to please everyone, so you have to allow for choices. Or deal with people constantly complaining about their lost choices, that works too i suppose :-P.

[johnchristopher]

I wasted the last two hours pinpointing what was causing my firefox instance to be stuck with the mouse cursor hand icon. Turns out drag and dropping url shortcut to a nautilus window freezes ff (well, it freezes the mouse cursor. edit: so firefox has to be killed because it doesn't respond to click or keyboard inputs anymore).

That's not a broken mess being someone's great feature.

It is (should be) a showstopper; in 2017, in Ubuntu. I found mention of the bug as early as march 2017 in fedora 2x (I think). I believe it's now lost in triage after not being taken care of then closed because that version of the distro is eol (until someone resubmit). How such a bug is shipped is beyond me. But hey, I could hack a patch.

[rayiner]

The Right Way (TM) to do it is to always have V-SYNC but use a screen with high enough refresh where you can't notice the latency. 60 Hz is probably good enough for 95% of people, and Apple is moving to 120 Hz in devices like the iPad Pro.

[badsectoracula]

I have my reservations about 120Hz being the right way since if you can see tearing at 120Hz without vsync it means that you can still perform actions that the refresh rate cannot keep up with and the vsync will introduce a delay. But without experiencing it myself i cannot be 100% sure. I am nitpicky about lag and reaction though so i have a feeling i wont like it unless it really is perfect :-P.

However regardless of vsync or not, i also dislike composition because it introduces yet another source for lag and at best you are at least a frame behind - unless your window updates are synced with the composition (which wont be because if that was possible then programs would be able to affect the compositor's own performance - imagine a game running at a 30fps in windowed mode, it would cause all window updates, etc to run at 30fps too if the updates were synchronized).

So, yeah, i'd rather stick with my compositionless, vsyncless, direct to front frame buffer X11 :-P.

EDIT: there is actually a way to have composition that works without lag and that is for the GPU to do the composition itself during the monitor refresh.

[CharlesW]

> One feature that differentiates Linux from other systems is the sheer amount of choice that you get.

It's a difference but not necessarily a feature if, as a user, you don't have the background to make informed and safe decisions about those choices.

[gkya]

Why would everything have to cater to the lowest common denominator on the scale from computer-novice to power-user? Those can just use Windows or Mac OS, or maybe Ubuntu. But why would their use cases invalidate mine?

Also, IDK how things are on Apple computers but on Windows no two apps look similar, so the common user should not have more difficulty with diverse UI paradigms on current Unices than on Windows.

[badsectoracula]

In that case you can simply use a distribution that makes the choice for you. Generally people recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint here.