[kelnos]

I think the problem is that making things look to the user as an integrated, polished experience is exceptionally hard when you have the loosest of loose coupling all over the place, and differing views as to how to get things done. Sure, you can put APIs and documented IPC interfaces between things, but that doesn't mean everything will match up in a usable way. So, eventually, you just decide: screw it, we'll own the entire stack, or at least gain enough influence over the people who make parts we don't control, such that everything works seamlessly for us.

In part, this is why Apple can give their customers such a polished, "just works" experience. Buy all-Apple gear, and stay in their software ecosystem, and (modulo bugs) everything will work together seamlessly.

I don't like this outcome by any means. And I still think that some desktop components certainly benefit from loose coupling and well-defined interfaces, and it's possible to avoid the "polish" downsides in some cases. But doing everything that way, while still being able to put everything together in a polished way, might actually be impossible.

[indymike]

Maybe the idea if a perfect,integrated experience doesn't matter as much as we think. The web's chaotic ux won. Games... roll this own up. Now electron is eating the engineered ui.

[ironmagma]

> Maybe the idea if a perfect,integrated experience doesn't matter as much as we think.

This is not an uncommon view. However I can’t help but be convinced it’s the main reason the year of Linux on the Desktop hasn’t happened yet.

The user really does want their computer to seem like just one “thing,” at least in the way that it comes out of the box. When we visit websites it’s understood that these pages don’t interact with each other and weren’t designed to work together.

The OS, on the other hand, is supposed to be a system per the name.

[kaba0]

Then how is it the browser with the absolute majority?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/o2a0kp/there_are...

[ironmagma]

I'm not sure what you're asking. The browser is not an OS, so the websites are not supposed to form a system. People using Microsoft's default browser is yet more evidence that people generally stick with the OS defaults, because they are supposed to work.

[kaba0]

I wanted to write OS, and couldn’t edit it later on :/

My point was that windows is the most popular OS despite it having a ridiculous amount of “native” looks. So linux not having one is not the reason for its less than ideal desktop uptake.

[ironmagma]

Looks are not the most important part. Functionality is.

Besides, as bad as Windows’ UI fragmentation is, Linux’s is worse. When opening a Linux application, from Pidgin to Firefox to the control panel to Telegram, there is absolutely no guarantee of what you’ll be getting. Having 7 design languages is bad, but what’s worse is having 0.

[shadowgovt]

It matters a lot for a desktop UX. People have no patience for a laptop that can't sleep when the lid shuts.

[curt15]

Or animations that stutter. Smartphones have been managing consistent 60fps animations for years now, and MacOS is similarly smooth.