[HN Gopher] Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gesture... ___________________________________________________________________ Linux Touchpad Like MacBook Update: Touchpad Gestures Now Shipping Author : wbharding Score : 313 points Date : 2021-12-14 19:01 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.gitclear.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.gitclear.com) | ComputerGuru wrote: | I wrote a (userland) general purpose and driver/hardware-agnostic | multitouch daemon w/ gesture support for Linux that works with | the existing input stack (i.e. doesn't require switching to | libinputy but also supports it), if anyone is interested: | | https://neosmart.net/blog/2020/multi-touch-gestures-on-linux... | | https://github.com/mqudsi/syngesture | | The biggest benefit is that you can use drivers with actually | correct acceleration curves like xf86-input-synaptics (if you're | on X11) instead of the offensively bad, NIH reimplementation that | ships with libinput. | | Oh wait, I'm on HN so I shouldn't neglect to mention my project | is written in rust! | adisbladis wrote: | As someone who absolutely despises libinput (I have an | unsupported use-case which will never be supported) I applaud | this effort. | | Thank you! | matheusmoreira wrote: | > I have an unsupported use-case which will never be | supported | | Can you please elaborate? | pantalaimon wrote: | Is this compatible with the new XInput 2.4 touchpad gestures? | | https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/proto/xorgproto/-/merge_... | DerArzt wrote: | > Oh wait, I'm on HN so I shouldn't neglect to mention my | project is written in rust! | | Thanks for that, it gave me a chuckle. | toomim wrote: | Woah, this solves the acceleration problem? I want to try it!! | Thank you! | ComputerGuru wrote: | You're most welcome. Please read the article before | downloading or cloning from GitHub: this "solves" the | acceleration issue by not breaking it in the first place; | imho what libinput should have done by developing gesture | support on top of the existing, working driver/hardware stack | instead of throwing away the userland/kernel separation and | all layers of abstraction. | | The linked project is only the userland daemon that uses the | raw Linux Multitouch Protocol events to interpret gestures; | to get the acceleration curves working again I recommend | using this in conjunction with xf86-input-synaptics as your | actual input driver (which provides the correct acceleration | curves for compatible hardware - basically all touchpads | since they all cloned synaptics' hardware once upon a time - | but doesn't by itself have gesture support). | | Side note: Syngesture (this project) isn't dependent on X11 | or Wayland, but I don't know if anyone has ported or will | port xf86-input-synaptics to Wayland, which is/was pretty | much developed along the same lines as libinput: rewrite | everything from scratch without taking into account that some | things you're throwing out actually work really well | (regardless of the fact that they are built for X11 or not), | get rid of all abstractions that made it possible to plug in | better components/replacements at various points in the | stack, and without a concern for actual feature parity for | what they are purportedly replacing. | frostwarrior wrote: | Does it support three finger drag? It's the MacOS feature I | miss the most. | ComputerGuru wrote: | You mean click with three fingers once and let go to initiate | a drag, move the cursor with one finger on the touchpad to | its destination, then click and let go with three fingers to | end it? | | That's a very good question as I didn't consider stateful | gestures (where state doesn't reset when all fingers are | removed). It can be shimmed (without touching the code) in | the configuration file by replacing the invocation of xdotool | (or whatever) with a wrapper script that provides state | enabling a "toggle mousedown" rather than just explicit, | separate mouseup and mousedown events but I wonder if there's | a clean way to model that into the event loop as serialized | to/from the configuration file directly. Feel free to open a | GitHub issue if you like. | weikju wrote: | > You mean click with three fingers once and let go to | initiate a drag, move the cursor with one finger on the | touchpad to its destination, then click and let go with | three fingers to end it? | | Not quite.. on macOS, you can enable three-finger drag | which means that when you touch down with 3 fingers and | drag them on the trackpad, it's the equivalent of clicking- | and-dragging with a mouse. | | There's no laborious use three fingers then one then three | again. Just like swiping with 2 fingers does scrolling, | using 3 fingers just grabs whatever's under the cursor and | moves it (whether that's a window, or starts selecting | text, moves a scrollbar, anything). | lapinot wrote: | A while since i used macos but isn't this the same action | as taping then drag (eg down/up/down/drag/up)? | pph wrote: | After a quick glimpse it seems this only supports simple | actions upon registering a gesture, however it should be | possible to extend for that use-case. | | To abstract it a bit: You would need to | | 1. Trigger an event on the gesture start (detect 3 | fingers -> hold alt, mousedown) | | 2. Have mouse movement enabled | | 3. Trigger another event on gesture end (lift fingers -> | mouseup, lift alt). | nickysielicki wrote: | Until haptic touchpads become available outside of MacBooks, | touchpads are always going to suck under Windows and Linux. | Gestures aren't the main thing preventing me from enjoying the | touchpad on my Dell -- it's plenty big and it supports four | finger gestures under Windows. The problem is that the entire | thing shifts down a couple millimeters when I click and my finger | ends up dragging slightly, which moves my click off what I'm | clicking on. | | I don't understand how Apple has had a monopoly on this for half | a decade. Lenovo had a thinkpad come out last year with a haptic | touchpad but I haven't seen anything further. Is it patents? | AlexandrB wrote: | This was a really surprising thing to read. For me the Apple's | haptic touchpads were a slight _downgrade_ from their excellent | non-haptic touchpads in <=2012 MacBook Pros. I liked the stiff | clicky feel of the "real" touchpads over the haptic simulated | click. Though the haptic touchpads do seem to be more reliable | and are better at registering clicks near the top of the pad. | leetrout wrote: | They all have poor palm detection, too, IME | radicaldreamer wrote: | I had a coworker who worked on the haptic trackpad for 4 years | before he left Apple and they shipped it a year after that (so | at least 6 years or so of R&D), I'm sure there are dozens of | patents around the technology and probably a high barrier for | entry for other companies. | | He griped that they didn't even send him the 12" MacBook it | initially shipped in and that the R&D for it was ring fenced | from the Mac hardware teams so both were working in isolation | until the product was developed with the tech. | GhettoComputers wrote: | You're holding it wrong, just use the thinkpoint. | pmontra wrote: | Your experience is exactly the reason for I buy laptops with 3 | physical buttons and a touchpad that doesn't move. Then I | disable tap to click. Nothing moves around and it's very clear | which button I click, left middle or right. | | I also don't do any gesture except of course vertical and | horizontal scrolling. Maybe pinch to zoom would be useful like | on my phone. I got hotkeys for everything else I care about. | Anyway I welcome this project, it improves Linux. | thekyle wrote: | I believe that the new Surface Laptop Studio has a haptic | touchpad. | cxr wrote: | I'll make the same point I make every time this topic comes up: | there are Chromebooks with great touchpad experiences, and that's | been the case for a long, long time. This is not a "Linux" or | "open source" problem; this is a problem of ignorance and/or | insufficient interest on the part traditional (i.e. non-ChromeOS) | distros and their users. It's nuts that this was and continues to | be a high-profile, multi-year effort spawning discussions that | end up framing the whole thing as elusive--rather than, you know, | a solved problem that is pretty much not even worth mentioning | but for the long tradition of poor execution. | jeppesen-io wrote: | I can't really tell the diffeence between Gnome 40 and | Chromebooks touchpad experiences. What makes Chromebooks so | much better? | jeffbee wrote: | I think the main difference is Chromebook users did not have | to wait a decade to get working touchpad gestures. | [deleted] | dylan604 wrote: | You don't need gestures or touchpad at all in a terminal. I | surprised the touchpad doesn't go against some sort of ethos, | then again, maybe that's why they suck so badly.?? Real coders | don't let their hands leave the keyboard! | visarga wrote: | Between mouse and touchpad I know which requires less hand | movement away from the keyboard. | HatchedLake721 wrote: | Main reason I don't use external keyboard and mouse. | lpasselin wrote: | Which Chromebooks? | leetrout wrote: | Here's what I'm looking for: | | Solid linux laptop with a macbook style centered keyboard and | touch pad. (system76 has offset touchpad / keyboard and it drives | me insane) | | Near perfect palm detection on the track pad like a macbook. | | Does anyone have a recommendation? I've not tried any newer | lenovo lappies nor have I tried linux on a Razer laptop which | looks very similar to a macbook. | | Maybe just wait for linux to run on M1? | pmontra wrote: | +1000 for the centered keyboard (and touchpad) with 15"+ | screens. I'd pay an extra to get rid of the number pad. | jeffbee wrote: | Pixelbook Go. | GhettoComputers wrote: | What's wrong with OSX on M1? It works great for all CLI stuff. | howinteresting wrote: | The BSD coreutils are inferior to the GNU ones, and using the | GNU coreutils on Macs is a hassle. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Disagree! | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29456115#29456758 | howinteresting wrote: | I like the uutils idea but they have a very long way to | go. The GNU coreutils are still the very best you can | get. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Can you quantify that? How is it the best or better than | the rust ones? | howinteresting wrote: | No, of course I can't quantify that. Not everything in | life is quantifiable. But I can tell you from over 15 | years of experience writing shell scripts across Linux | and MacOS that the GNU coreutils are superior. Little | things like 'find -name' without '.' working, to bigger | ones like 'sed -i' and 'readlink -f'. | | I love Rust but uutils are really not mature enough, | which is understandable given how new they are -- the | linked thread has examples of where they fall short. I | would be delighted to start using them once they become | drop-in replacements for GNU coreutils (so existing shell | scripts don't break). Meanwhile, I use fd and bat in | interactive shells (but can't use them in shell scripts | distributed to others obviously). | GhettoComputers wrote: | >The GNU coreutils are still the very best you can get. | | I don't understand this statement then, have you heard of | this https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/GU | IDE.md | | It sounds like you want bash POSIX support and it to be | default before you would use them. The error nobody else | replicated, and its stable enough to be included in | debian. | https://sylvestre.ledru.info/blog/2021/03/09/debian- | running-... | trasz wrote: | GNU coreutils are an exercise in software bloat. | xtracto wrote: | I use both OSX and Linux extensively. I had the choice to go | either way for my work computer and I chose OSX (intel chip). | | A couple of days ago I wanted to use a Ruby gem ( | https://github.com/rubyjs/therubyracer ) for some random | project. To install the library (compile native bindings), | OSX wanted me to download an install 12 GB of crap (full | XCode, it didn't work with the command line tools)... In | linux it was just a matter of downloading and installing the | gem (100MB at most). That's crazy. | | What I dislike more and more about OSX is how they have been | aggresive against developers and technical people in the last | years (like, why do I have to jump through hoops to modify my | /usr/lib folder with SUDO/root? I AM ROOT ASSHOLE OS, LET ME | DO WHATEVER I WANT TO MY COMPUTER. | | But other than that, it's OK. | visarga wrote: | Use MacBook to ssh into your real Linux box or VM. It's a | beautiful terminal for Linux. | GhettoComputers wrote: | If you have the butterfly keyboard no it doesn't! | GhettoComputers wrote: | Have you tried the Nix package? Not sure if homebrew has | the same issue. | sce wrote: | It reminds of a coworker, a frontend developer and Linux | user. He asked for a macbook pro from his employer, and after | using it for a year he switched back to Linux. He said it was | because he missed using it. | | I use Linux primarily because of ideology, but luckily it's | also the best OS out there, for me at least and many others. | | For others Mac OS or Windows will be better for them, and | that's fine. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I use both, I don't LOVE OSX, and find it annoying, but its | just as bad as gnome to me. | josteink wrote: | > What's wrong with OSX on M1? | | It's not open-source and it's not Linux. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Their kernel at least is and it's Unix. From a user | standpoint I don't have any issues with it, it's like if | Linux could run photoshop natively and had good paid | software and you can't change the UI. It's not ideal but it | works for me. | alerighi wrote: | But the rest of the system is not. I want I computer that | I can use in the way that I want, with the software that | I want, and not a computer that must be used as Apple | wants, and limits you in using an hardware that you | bought. | | The reason why I use Linux is that I can do whatever I | want on my computer, I don't have to have signed | applications, annoying prompts to tell me that the | software is not Apple approved (till there are the | prompts and Apple doesn't decide to forbid all unsigned | software as on iOS), and similar. | | Also from an hardware standpoint Mac are overpriced | machines, with insufficient I/O that forces you to bring | a bag of adapters with yourself and components that are | all soldered on the motherboard, impossible to upgrade. | GhettoComputers wrote: | > But the rest of the system is not. I want I computer | that I can use in the way that I want, with the software | that I want, and not a computer that must be used as | Apple wants, and limits you in using an hardware that you | bought. | | You can't run a lot of software on linux, you can run | less of it compared to windows and osx. All hardware is | limited, all the x86 laptops have soldered CPUs, there is | no such thing as unlimited hardware. | | >Also from an hardware standpoint Mac are overpriced | machines, with insufficient I/O that forces you to bring | a bag of adapters with yourself and components that are | all soldered on the motherboard, impossible to upgrade. | | M1 is not overpriced for its benefits, the x86 stuff I | agree with though and fuck their keyboards. No more Jony | Ive, so ports are back! | | >The reason why I use Linux is that I can do whatever I | want on my computer, I don't have to have signed | applications, annoying prompts to tell me that the | software is not Apple approved (till there are the | prompts and Apple doesn't decide to forbid all unsigned | software as on iOS), and similar. | | The problem I have with this is that its not that you can | do whatever, you MUST do it and use a lot of time in | configuration. I find the root prompt just as annoying in | linux. I just want a working environment, not a bunch of | software that asks me to set every preference. | fsflover wrote: | > Their kernel at least is | | It does not solve main problems of the proprietary | software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software- | even-more-impor.... | GhettoComputers wrote: | I don't see the problem, I want to run better software I | have to pay for, not crappy free stuff, and giving choice | to do that is not a negative. If linux did not allow any | paid software, it would not make it a better OS. | fsflover wrote: | > better software I have to pay for, not crappy free | stuff | | Free software is not about price, it's about freedom. It | can (and should!) be paid for. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I have tried to replace photoshop with free software | forever, and nothing still comes close to CS2. I don't | care to make my life harder or use crappier tools because | its not free. There is nothing free about crippling a | workflow. | leetrout wrote: | No snark: I love OSX but as I get older I would like to | support free as in beer and free as in speech computing | devices. | | I think there could be some real hope for Linux on a laptop, | especially the M1, and being able to use all the Linux tools | directly (looking at you, containers). | GhettoComputers wrote: | I mean from a user standpoint I don't have any issues, I | would use the M1 until Linux on there gtt set s stuff like | GPU acceleration, at least OS X is free beer and the kernel | is FOSS even though it's BSD. | smoldesu wrote: | Well, except Docker. And all of your apps that are still x86 | (and ARM support is WONTFIX), and then there's the 32-bit | applications and the 32-bit libraries, and the plate-spinning | clusterfsck that we call Homebrew, and your coreutils have to | be manually upgraded or replaced altogether, and then you're | probably going to want to find a replacement for | Terminal.app, and while you're at it you may as well install | a better window manager like Amethyst or Yabai. What's that? | I can't disable the normal desktop interface and need to make | do with 4gb of memory bloat at all times? That's alright I | guess, I'll just disable system integrity protection and try | to remo- hold on, you're telling me that there's a new update | coming through? And none of my software is ready yet? That's | unfortunate, it's already rebooting... and now we're in a | boot loop. Siri, when was my last Time Machine backup? Siri? | You there? | | It may be hard to believe, but sometimes, for some people, | just installing Linux is what they need. | cultofmetatron wrote: | have you looked at the https://frame.work/ laptop? dunno about | palm detection but its centered like the macbook | randomluck040 wrote: | This is so great but unfortunately not available in Germany | yet. Looking forward to it. | leetrout wrote: | Thanks! That looks really cool | Engineering-MD wrote: | I've not tried it, but the framework laptop I'm told is fairly | similar. | fsflover wrote: | https://puri.sm/products/librem-14 | devwastaken wrote: | All of that looks decent except for the barrel power adapter. | fsflover wrote: | It can also be charged from usb-c. | bubblethink wrote: | It's 2-3 generations old at this point. Really wouldn't | recommend getting something this old. Comet Lake -> Ice | Lake -> Tiger Lake -> Alder Lake (now). The starlabs | starbook is quite interesting if you care about coreboot. | kesslern wrote: | I haven't had any issues with palm detection on my Thinkpad X1 | Extreme. It's just worked since day 1. I have both Gen 1 and 2. | stronglikedan wrote: | I have a Thinkpad X1 Yoga Gen 6, and haven't had any issues | with palm detection either, unless I rest it too hard and it | registers a physical click (which maybe only happened once or | twice). | fsflover wrote: | I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete due | to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. From what I see the | proprietary operating systems are in decline now, whereas Linux | is getting better and better all the time. | [deleted] | rvz wrote: | Hardly a dent has been made on the desktop. I still see users | running either Windows or macOS. | | ChromeOS is possibly the 'closest' to this (and that is | proprietary), but Google is going to replace it with Fuchsia | anyway; meaning that we will soon be back to square -1 on the | Linux desktop. | | Oh dear. | snemvalts wrote: | Just wait until your wifi or suspend breaks on a distro change | on your 5 yr old laptop. | wilsonjholmes wrote: | I have had terrible luck with suspend/hibernation on all of | the laptops I have used Linux on, so I just resort to | shutting down and starting up... I have SSDs so it is not | that big of a deal, but still. I cannot wait for the day I | can simply close my laptop lid and have the battery not drain | ~12% an hour. | pmontra wrote: | Which laptop do you have? I'd like to keep clear of it and | its manufacturer when I'll have to buy a new one. My nearly | 8 years old ZBook from HP loses maybe 3% per hour with 32 | GB RAM to keep powered. It was much less with 16 GB. Don't | you have a 128 GB laptop, right? | | More seriously, did you check if people have the same | problem with that laptop and Windows? Or some firmware | update from the manufacturer to fix the battery. | WJW wrote: | Wifi is the worst. I had a wifi driver fail on me the other | day after the updates included a newer kernel version that | didn't work with the current wifi driver. Newer ones were | available on github, but downloading requires wifi. | Eventually I managed to make a hotspot out of my phone and | connect to github via bluetooth. | | Otherwise, no complaints. | fsflover wrote: | Never happened in 10 years. I recommend to try hardware | _designed_ for Linux and not "Windows certified". Ideally, | with preinstalled Linux. | snemvalts wrote: | Happened to my x220 | Aaargh20318 wrote: | > I can't wait until all proprietary software becomes obsolete | due to FLOSS becoming good enough for everyone. | | The problem is 'good enough' is a moving target and FOSS isn't | exactly closing the gap. | [deleted] | marcodiego wrote: | It definitely closed many gaps. Most servers, supercomputers, | embedded devices, routers, smartphones, smart tv's... depend | on free software one way or another. | | A few software markets have been completely dominated by | FLOSS: system software, compilers, lexers, shells, kernels, | codecs, programming languages, arduino-like tools... | | On the professional market, just look at what blender became. | Other examples for end users: OBS is probably the most used | broadcast software available. People ignore that most people | don't need the features Sound Forge and Audacity has probably | many more users. Other examples in this same category: VLC, | Handbrake, Inkscape, 7-zip, Calibre, Krita... | | Even on the places where it is not a leader, it is sometimes | good enough. I can totally easily edit a video using | kdenlive; record, edit and master a music using Audour; | compose a scene using Natron; compose music using MuseScore; | edit 3d models using Wings3D; design an environment using | SweetHome3D; render using many of the top-notch state-of-art | FLOSS renders like Luxrender or whatever comes with Blender | these days. | | Desktop software is much more beautiful, intuitive and stable | than before. And it doesn't try to milk you for money, | attention or personal data. Flatpaks, AppImages and snaps | finally make it possible for users of the most popular | distros to use the same software, the same version, working | the same way regardless of the distro. | | Now, go back a few years. The situation was entirely | different. You could do nothing of what was described using | only FLOSS if you go back enough. Or, you could, but it would | be complicated and unstable. This is no longer the case. | | Of course there are still gaps, but many have been closed | over the years and most remaining ones are slowly closing. | iamstupidsimple wrote: | > A few software markets have been completely dominated by | FLOSS: system software, compilers, lexers, shells, kernels, | codecs, programming languages, arduino-like tools... | | While not discounting how good coreutils are, everything | you've listed is basically a commodity at this point. | | Companies who live higher in the stack swoop in and claim | all of the value. | commoner wrote: | That's not a bad thing. Proprietary software tends to | lead by implementing new features first, and then FOSS | alternatives catch up over time. As the software category | matures and innovation slows down, the FOSS solutions | become strong enough to overtake the proprietary | solutions in popularity. At that point, the software | category is commoditized. | | It's a gradual release of intellectual property into the | commons, similar to the expiration of patents and | copyrights, but at a pace determined by market forces | instead of government regulation. | 29083011397778 wrote: | I would absolutely disagree! 20 years ago, Linux required | some arcane incantations, but was sold in stores, and was | somewhat useful. 10 years ago, Linux required patiently going | through lots of forums to find out why sound didn't work, and | tweaking some config files - though fewer than before. This | year, Linux was featured on LTT as "Can we viably switch / | use Linux for home use as regular geeks?" | | You're right that "Good Enough" takes many forms, and it is a | moving target. But whether it's closing the gap might just be | a difference in which timescale one uses. | Aaargh20318 wrote: | Sure, you may be able to download an ISO or USB image and | relatively easily install Linux today without worrying | about what sound or graphics driver you need like you could | with other OSes 20 years ago. But that doesn't mean the | competition didn't move forward as well. | | Today I can wipe the entire drive on my MacBook and re- | install everything from scratch over the internet, without | install media, directly from the firmware. When can I buy | an off-the-shelf computer that can do this with Linux ? | | After installing macOS I set up my account, enter my iCloud | details and all my photo's just appear, I can send and | receive text messages, phone and video calls. My clipboard | syncs to my phone, and I use my phone to take a photo or | scan a document and insert it directly into whatever | document I was typing. I can start typing an e-mail on my | phone, decide it's too long to type on the little on-screen | keyboard and seamlessly move the task to my desktop. I can | take a photo of some text on my phone, copy it as plain | text, and then paste the text into anything on my desktop. | | All of this with no setup required. | | How much time will it take Linux to be able to do all of | this ? And what else will it have to catch up to by then ? | ximeng wrote: | My Ubuntu laptop is just fine apart from every now and then | randomly pausing and not accepting user input for a minute or | so at max CPU. Seems to be maybe Chrome related, so that's | maybe the next thing for me to try to migrate off after | Windows. | pmontra wrote: | It reminds me of an issue with the gsconnect GNOME extension. | They apparently fixed it. I reinstalled it today and it seems | OK. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Is it an extension doing it or low ram? Never happeneds to me | on skylake thinkpad even with 8GB ram, just slow to open. | ximeng wrote: | Quite difficult to debug as system is unresponsive when it | happens, so would have to delve into logs. Maybe a Chrome | memory management or graphics acceleration issue, I don't | use many extensions but it's possible I guess. 12GB of RAM, | but that can get eaten up by Chrome pretty easily. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I use ungoogled chromium, try the flatpak, new binary | doesn't work in Ubuntu, works great for me. Try with them | all off and turn them on one by one. | [deleted] | handrous wrote: | I think it's more likely Google's new Fuchsia OS will displace | Linux for most desktop use (and maybe more than just that) than | that Linux will get its shit together and ship a GUI layer good | and cohesive enough to compete. And I write that as someone who | used Linux desktops heavily (and, for long stretches, | exclusively) for about a decade. | | It's, what, BSD licensed? Open source, but not GPL-alike Free | Software. Still, that's pretty decent. | | I reckon the only way that doesn't happen is if they pull the | plug (quite possible) or they shift to keeping the GUI layer | proprietary (also quite possible). | trasz wrote: | BSD is Free Software, FSF-certified. | handrous wrote: | Ah, even after all these years I get tripped up on which | terms only apply to viral-license open source. | trasz wrote: | There is just one: "GPL". I'm not aware of any other | viral licenses. But I suspect you've meant copyleft | instead, which is something different from virality - | there are plenty of copyleft licenses, eg MPL, which are | not viral. | handrous wrote: | Maybe that's what I was looking for. FFS, way back in the | mists of time I'm pretty sure I had a _hat_ that read | "COPYLEFT". You'd think I'd be able to get it correct. | outworlder wrote: | > From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in | decline now | | It is a very slow decline, but it's being largely going on | unnoticed. Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of | paid software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn't | uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) someone. | Unless you were a Linux rebel running slackware or whatever. | | We can do a lot on Linux now. We have thousands of Steam games | running on the Proton+Wine+Vulkan combination (often with | similar performance, in some cases even better). Most of the | missing apps are available in the browser - which is a blessing | and a curse. | | Everything is moving to open source software. The issue now is | different: we have commercial offerings on top of open source, | closing their gardens. Take Android. Ridiculous amount of open | source software, arguably the most deployed software worldwide. | Controlled by a corporation. | | Lots of apps have moved to the web, where we have a similar | problem. Their foundations are most often based on open-source. | But they are behind some corporation or another. | | Heck, the big cloud providers all have in their core a whole | plethora of open source software. | | The operating system concept, as we know it, is in decline. | This may be a global maxima for FOSS OS. I hope it isn't. | jodrellblank wrote: | > " _Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of paid | software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn 't | uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) someone._" | | Windows XP had built in zip support and was released 20 years | and 4 months ago. Before that, from memory pkunzip was free | and it was zip which needed payment, but wikipedia links to a | review of an early version from a BBS here | http://cd.textfiles.com/rbbsv3n1/pool/pkpolicy.zip which | states that it was free for noncommercial use, shareware | license for commercial use, and that Phil Katz had helped | people implement unzip (on deflate algorithm I think) in | their own code without charging for his help. | | You move onto talking about Steam (not open source) which is | used as a DRM and payment engine for many closed source games | - and that is one of the more popular uses of closed source | software (as well as things like Microsoft Office), XBox, | Playstation, Nintendo and PC gaming. Having proprietary Steam | running a proprietary game after you login to Valve's | proprietary online authentication, on a free reimplementation | of proprietary Win32, but hooray because there's Linux | somewhere inside, doesn't seem very close to the future | Stallman was hoping for or the ideals of free software or | open source. What would it mean to change the source of an | online game? Probably that you can't connect to any servers | anymore. What would it mean to move your FIFA team to another | game engine? | | The GDPR at least gives Europeans some rights to download | their data from cloud services in a machine readable format, | but strangely you don't seem to have that right to your data | in a proprietary game stored on your local machine with | access gated through a proprietary online service. | marcodiego wrote: | >> "Rewind the clock 20 years, there were all sorts of paid | software offerings everywhere on the desktop. You couldn't | uncompress a zip without paying (or stealing from) | someone." | | > Windows XP had built in zip support and was released 20 | years and 4 months ago. Before that, from memory pkunzip | was free and it was zip which needed payment, but wikipedia | links to a review of an early version from a BBS here | http://cd.textfiles.com/rbbsv3n1/pool/pkpolicy.zip which | states that it was free for noncommercial use, shareware | license for commercial use, and that Phil Katz had helped | people implement unzip (on deflate algorithm I think) in | their own code without charging for his help. | | Free as in beer. Not FLOSS. | | > You move onto talking about Steam (not open source) which | is used as a DRM and payment engine for many closed source | games - and that is one of the more popular uses of closed | source software (as well as things like Microsoft Office), | XBox, Playstation, Nintendo and PC gaming. Having | proprietary Steam running a proprietary game after you | login to Valve's proprietary online authentication, on a | free reimplementation of proprietary Win32, but hooray | because there's Linux somewhere inside, doesn't seem very | close to the future Stallman was hoping for or the ideals | of free software or open source. What would it mean to | change the source of an online game? Probably that you | can't connect to any servers anymore. What would it mean to | move your FIFA team to another game engine? | | Stallman about non-free games on linux: | https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.html | fossuser wrote: | For the vast majority of users the OS is just a way to get to | the web. | | The web (browser) is the OS, but the apps are centralized, | incompatible, and primarily SaaS subscriptions (or worse, ad | based). Desktop operating systems are primarily thin clients | to these services. Native apps on the existing stack are dead | outside of a few niche applications. It's why I think Urbit | is cool, if you built an OS from first principles to take | into account the web what would it look like? It's basically | moving the API layer up the stack to include auth and | application distribution. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Is android or iOS proprietary? The desktop is declining, it's | market share is so bad that windows literally build an | android emulator and Linux subsystem. I'd say it's less on | desktop but all the computing is mobile. | | It would be better to move away from all OS and just have ISA | software. | vlunkr wrote: | I think that for it to really take off someone needs to release | a laptop where linux is truly supported over windows, and they | maintain, or help maintain, a distro to runs perfectly on that | hardware. That's the only way you're going to avoid the driver | issues that will ruin the experience for typical users. | | I know there are some, like System76 but looking at their site | quickly, they start at around $1,000. For the average user | that's waaay too high, especially if they can get what they | need out of a chromebook. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Chromebooks existed for years, even has coreboot. | | They have them for Dell, and Lenovo Thinkpads. The main issue | is there is no benefit for the end user. Why would they want | to switch to linux as an end user? | deadbunny wrote: | Knock $50 off the price and people will care. | GhettoComputers wrote: | They just installed Windows on their netbooks last time | it was even cheaper. The people who think steam deck will | make linux mainstream are going to just see the next deck | come with windows and everyone who gets a deck installing | windows on it to play games. | mirekrusin wrote: | You mean FOSS, not flossing, right? | | There are many people who love open source and yet applaud when | proprietary solutions move things forward - good for them. | | There is place for everyone with good intentions, we can all | make life interesting, no need for war tinted atmosphere. | fsflover wrote: | https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/floss-and-foss.en.html | mirekrusin wrote: | Thanks | aaronbrethorst wrote: | 2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop. | duped wrote: | Android, iOS, Windows, and OS-X together account for 97% of | consumer computing devices if this is to be believed | https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market- | share/all/worldwide/202.... | | Android is the only "open source" out of the bunch, but most | devices running it have plenty of closed source internals the | devices' are useless without. | | There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that | they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset and | development velocity of Android and iOS. | vineyardmike wrote: | I don't think there will ever be a FOSS OS for consumers that | is the prefered option. | | There is too many moving targets to ever be "done" and | chasing those customers is profitable and requires money. | That's the perfect domain of a business. | | I'm ok with this too. As another comment mentioned, once upon | a time you couldn't unzip a file with outpaying. Now it's | standardized and free (as in freedom and beer). Let apple and | google and Microsoft fight and spend money tweaking the gui | just right and bundling in whatever crap they want. FOSS | community will lag behind and pick up the tail freeing | everyone not on the bleeding edge. | | Imagine if things like unzipping wasn't free in 2021? How | much shittier phones and services would be. Hell even Niche | projects like the oculus quest would be a mess without basic | tools being ubiquitous. | | Unlike some FOSS supporters, I'm ok with commercial interests | in software. 2021 might not be free, but it's still in the | making - if 2020 is free, everyone can help build the best | 2021 from a more level playing field when we can stand on the | free shoulders of giants. | | Ps: companies should donate more to open source software | development and protection and maintenance. | fsflover wrote: | > There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. | | I am using my Pinephone with Mobian/Phosh as a daily driver | now. It's a bit rough but getting good enough quickly. | GhettoComputers wrote: | At least the OSX kernel is open source and easy to port to, | Saurik and the early jailbreakers got apt and all the CLI | tools on the first gen iPhone. | | >There's still no viable FOSS OS for mobile/tablets. Not that | they don't exist, just that they don't have the featureset | and development velocity of Android and iOS. | | Tell me what I can't do with Android that linux can do, I can | do the reverse of what I can do on Android that linux on | mobile can't. Its there if you want it. All the new Android | phones are getting mainline. Check out my thread. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373106 | | Sailfish has good Android emulation as well. | duped wrote: | I know it's changed recently, but for quite awhile the | answer to "what can I do on Android that Linux on mobile | can't" was "make a phone call." | | That class of product issue is why FOSS is different than | the marketplace. It's often behind in creature | comforts/UI/UX and lightyears beyond in technical | capability. Because FOSS developers spend time on things | they care about, not about what the market does. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I prefer when FOSS piggybacks onto larger projects. | F-droid is amazing, I have all the comforts of real | android and the nerdy stuff from FOSS and root addons. I | get the best of both worlds, great hardware for the | price, great support from a good UI, and great support | from the ports of CLI and nerds who also like to have | their android phones be real linux computers. | radicaldreamer wrote: | People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet | to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more | time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and | sometimes a lot more time than that. | hasel wrote: | Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to | select gnome... It's that easy. | thatguy0900 wrote: | Arch is not a good goto if you don't want to spend a lot of | configuration time | edgyquant wrote: | To get an OS? Sure. To get one setup to run my dev | environment, games and media? I have to pull in a GitHub | repo and run a script that installs and configures | everything for me (before the usual tasks of logging in to | a hundred websites.) I swore Linux was super easy to setup | for years, and as someone whose daily driver is MacOS now I | still agree it's the easiest to setup to my needs, but all | 3 main OSs can get you a system in a couple | clicks/keystrokes. Windows is probably the most difficult | to setup for me (MacOS is at least unix so my scripts for | Linux mostly work on the Mac as well) and I only use it for | my gaming pc (which was for years Ubuntu, I just decided to | install windows on it since I only use it to game anymore.) | | I love Linux, it's been my OS since Vista came out and I | switched to SUSE Community Edition, but we get so used to | our OSs we forget part of the ease of use is being | familiar. When I problem pops up on Ubuntu I can solve it | within a minute. When one pops up on Mac it takes me some | googling (and I give up on windows.) None if these systems | are all the easy (or difficult) to use, it's just a few | basic concepts and then a ton of time figuring stuff out. | outworlder wrote: | > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've | yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% | more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a | Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. | | That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that | makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the | software. Hackintoshes are a good indication of how things | would look like if they had to support more hardware than | they do. | | This is one of the reasons why I have recommended Macs for | the less tech savvy members of my family. Just works, great | manufacturer support (noone really comes close), has things | like Time Machine to keep backups running. My "support calls" | dropped drastically. | | My mother had a Linux netbook(remember those?) for banking | purposes but a Mac for general usage. She would be able to | browse on Linux, but things would get messy the moment she | would want to, say, use her cricut machine. | | Let's compare with Windows? That truly takes a whole lot of | time, specially because the OS seems to "rot" over time. It's | become less of an issue (possibly also because our hardware | is so powerful). My Windows desktop has taken way more work | to maintain than my Linux machines(plural) + Macs. I have to | keep that for VR, Fusion360 (going to ditch that as soon as I | can) and the odd game that doesn't work properly (Sea of | Thieves in-game chat?). Can't wait to get rid of it and use | only Linux - which takes hardly any "maintenance" at all | (other than installing updates and even that is just a | click). | 2muchcoffeeman wrote: | > _That 's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does | that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and | the software._ | | It's an ideological bar though. Pick a line or models of | laptops and officially support that specific line. Keep the | list smallish and from popular manufacturers. Everything | else deals with it they way we do now. | | Linux on supported hardware is pretty low maintenance. But | it's still not quite as nice as MacOS. And god forbid you | get the latest hardware. | pkulak wrote: | This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I | got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime. | Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to | run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through | menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are | all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit | them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the | filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to | Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those, | and how you work around it changes with every major version | of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the | 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a | solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would | love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder | isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the | Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic | spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million | cuts. | | That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia | and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's | worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a | formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it, | unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone | at least has a list of the packages they need that they can | copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer | is done. | kitsunesoba wrote: | Depends on what you're used to and what your needs are. I | can have a Mac in reasonably usable shape in 30-45m, | whereas getting Linux configured to my liking (especially | under KDE) quickly turns into a multi-hour affair and ends | in an unsatisfying state because of all the little things | that can't be the way I like unless I start digging into | source code or writing my own desktop bits. | kayodelycaon wrote: | MacOS is a lot easier if you restore from a Time Machine | backup. In four hours I can buy a new machine and be logged | in and working like nothing happened. Done that plenty of | times. | | I think the biggest thing I can point to is how well Apple | products work for the average person. I buy new ones every | 2~3 years and keep N-1 as a spare. N-2 goes to someone who | has asked me too many PC support questions. | | Everyone I've given an apple laptop has eventually bought a | new one. They bitched about the price, but they were | ultimately willing to pay for it. My dad worked for IBM for | many years and was not happy I "wasted money" on my first | mac in college. Ten years later after him still saying | that, I gave him a laptop. That was a few years ago and | last month he bought a new M1 Air. Meanwhile, a number of | the people he works with have converted to Apple laptops | because they've seen how well his works. | stnikolauswagne wrote: | I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to | install any program twice and all my settings so far have | carried over between devices, with the sole exception of | security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have | never had this little issues with switching devices thanks | to migration assistant. | pkulak wrote: | Ah yeah, I guess I've never done the migration assistant | thing. Seems dirty not to start with a clean slate, but | maybe that's just my hangup. | | But, you can also just copy your home directory on Linux | for the same kinda process. | zippergz wrote: | I do think that's where you're hurting yourself. I've | been using Macs since before OS X came out, and in the OS | X era I have never had long downtime when switching to a | new machine. In the old days before Migration Assistant, | you'd just clone the drive. These days you use Migration | Assistant. I do understand the "dirty" sentiment, but in | reality I've been upgrading via cloning or Migration | Assistant for close to 20 years now with never a clean | install, and it's worked well. | pkulak wrote: | Absolutely not hurting myself. I love Linux. :D I don't | think I'll ever switch back. I actually understand how | every aspect of my machine works, and this feeling of | control is absolutely addictive. | | I kinda lost the thread at this point, but I was just | trying to make the point the Macs aren't magically usable | out of the box, at least for power users. | handrous wrote: | I have dozens of GUI programs--commercial and open-source-- | and even more command line programs and I'm like 99% sure | the _only_ one I installed in any way other than `brew | install [name]` was homebrew itself. Oh, wait, not quite | true: Apple 's software (Numbers, Pages, Keynote, et c.) I | manage through the App Store. That's it. | | The fact that Brew's package selection is one of the most | complete that exists (I think Arch's and Gentoo's get | _fairly_ close, maybe with a few not-enabled-by-default | ones added in?), is one of the main reasons I like it so | much. | GhettoComputers wrote: | You can't really configure a Mac at all. | duped wrote: | You don't need to nearly as much, by comparison. | howinteresting wrote: | How do you turn off workspace switching animations on | Macs? | | Note, I said "turn off", which the "Reduce Motion" | setting does not do. | | Also, how do you get a 4k monitor to run at 144Hz on an | Intel Mac? | GhettoComputers wrote: | Depends which OSX version you have for both, I don't know | if your hardware supports the last one, but you might | need the correct cable, HDMI doesn't do it for me, and if | your intel GPU can't, it won't, not an OSX issue. | howinteresting wrote: | They are both MacOS issues. | | The first one is simply impossible to do on Monterey. | | The 4k 144 thing is a software regression (so not a | hardware limitation) that still hasn't been fixed: | https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253168625 | GhettoComputers wrote: | I hate the every year we update model. I never do it for | iOS or OSX. Miss snow leopard: selling point: 0 new | features. | cassianoleal wrote: | I don't have a 4k monitor but I have an ultrawide that | does 144Hz. The only way I found to use it that way was | via SwitchResX. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Does it make a big difference? I heard 60hz freesync | would make a bigger difference than high refresh, it | looked nice when I had 144hz but aside from me sliding my | mouse it didn't really change anything. | GhettoComputers wrote: | If you can't, you can't call it need to. I'd compare it | to GNOME. | kitsunesoba wrote: | From someone who's used both macOS and GNOME a good deal, | GNOME to me feels a lot more like iPadOS if it had been | mildly adjusted to run on desktops than it does macOS. | There's several aspects of GNOME and its app suite that | are more inflexible than macOS and its apps. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I completely agree. If someone uses GNOME and says OSX | isn't configuration friendly, the critique is very | hypocritical, enough to be dismissed. If you say that and | use almost any other DE (I love KDE) sure. Someone saying | the overcooked steak is disgusting while eating a burnt | piece of toast is hard to take serious, they are | constantly breaking addons and plugins, its like they | don't want any 3rd party support, not unlike the often | critiqued apple desktop. | matthewfcarlson wrote: | For some that's a feature, not a bug. I really wish there | was at least a CLI you could use to tweak certain behaviors | instead of a mix on nvram and system preference | GhettoComputers wrote: | Agree but they're complaining like I bought food at a | restaurant and I can't cook it. Seems like an invalid | complaint. | irae wrote: | You can't really configure your car after you bought it | either. Or your blender or your hair dryer. | | Not everything in the world needs to be configurable to be | good. Yes, when moving from Windows to Mac, people miss | stuff that could be configured. When moving from Mac to | Windows, from Mac to Linux etc, it is always the same | story. | | But people often miss the point that being configurable | does not always means making it better necessarily. Part of | configuration is to allow people to work differently, and | that is good. But configuration to make it work like the | competition (make Mac work like windows, or Mac work like | linux) is beyond what configuration should be able to do | anyway. Otherwise you end up with no consistency and a bad | compromise. | | Even with Macs trying to offer a consistent experience, Mac | apps can often behave differently. Back in the day when I | used Linux I felt like many apps I needed to learn how they | dealt with the most basic things like the menu locations, | like window management, preferences/settings/configuration | etc. Too much configuration is not healthy all the time. | And Linux culture of "configure all the things" might be | hurting Linux adoption itself. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I agree, configuration is evil. I love my zero config | fish shell. | __MatrixMan__ wrote: | I guess it depends on what you're configuring. I'm using | microk8s at work and the part of my team that has to deal | with the VM-encapsulated version that runs on Mac or Windows | is always mired in configuration woes. | | Granted, that's a far cry from touchpad configs--but if you | keep your dotfiles in git then touchpad config is something | you only have to once (per touchpad that you own). | [deleted] | hanklazard wrote: | Try pop!_os. Really easy to install and use. It's my daily | driver on a carbon X1 and I'm not a developer or anything. | WJW wrote: | pop! is indeed really nice, with the possible exception | that for some reasons I have to manually recompile the | nvidia drivers (and sometimes wifi drivers) with some | arcane `dkms` commands every time the OS updates include a | kernel update. After the second time this happened I just | pasted all the commands in a text file for later reference | but it sure is annoying. Apparently not everyone has this | problem though, so maybe my computer is just weird. | leetrout wrote: | Tossing out a second +1 for pop! | | I've not used it in about a year now and I do miss it. They | were adding support for a tiling WM mode and it wasn't bad | (needed some work). | | I was using it on System76 hardware and had zero issues | with the OS and S76 replaced my keyboard when it went bad. | 2-718-281-828 wrote: | maybe you're just a passionate tweaker. the basic stuff I | need for my workstation has to be configured on any OS - be | it Windows, Linux or Mac. the more advanced stuff is mostly | optional and I usually do it additionally on linux just | because I can. so, I'd say this is a bit of an apple-pear- | comparison. | kevinherron wrote: | Oh sweet summer child. | fsflover wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29534714 | AlexanderDhoore wrote: | Year of the Linux Desktop!! /s | hvgk wrote: | If that happens I'm going to eat my mac mini for lunch. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Does it matter? Most servers and phones run Linux. My damn | Sony DSLR runs android. Desktops are dying Linux won. | [deleted] | marcodiego wrote: | As part of the FLOSS rooting crowd, I'd really like that to | happen. But we have to face reality: on the desktop, after | decades we're still fighting for 2% of the marketshare. | | Not that progress hasn't happened. Quite on the contrary. Linux | on the desktop experience nowadays is VASTLY superior to even 5 | years ago. Of course, users from other camps will complain of | features that have been lacking for many years (thumbnails in | the file picker!) but alternatives aren't without their | problems either: get a seasoned linux to try MacOS or Windows | and you'll recognize weaknesses on the other approaches too. | | For me, linux on the desktop has been ready for a long time. I | don't care if the market share is still in the single digits if | it is good enough for me. Since I like the freedom, privacy, | security and (yes) ease of use of desktop linux and do not | depend on non-multiplatform software and services, there's just | no better OS for me. Not everybody has this choice though. | | So, linux on the desktop not being popular is not a problem. If | it continues popular enough not to be ignored by hardware | vendors and service providers, everything else will continue to | improve over time. | fsflover wrote: | > there's just no better OS for me | | Try Qubes OS. | GhettoComputers wrote: | What benefit will he have? | fsflover wrote: | https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/how-to-pitch-qubes- | os/4499/15 | GhettoComputers wrote: | If you can't pitch it yourself, I don't see the point, | the first link is just about paranoia. | | Were you ever curious but afraid: - to click on that link | in the email, - to open that email attachment, - to go to | that shady-looking website, - to install and run that | suspicious program or even a virus, - to insert that USB | stick from someone untrusted? Wth Qubes you do it all | securely in a disposable VM and your personal files are | safe. The worst thing which might happen is that the | disposable VM breaks. | | If the pitch is to make people paranoid to run a new OS | they need to learn isolation on, there are way easier | ways like running a normal VM, which most people are | still not going to understand very well or do. | [deleted] | fsflover wrote: | > If you can't pitch it yourself, I don't see the point | | I linked my own text. | | Security is one benefit, and I agree that it's not so | important for everyone. There are other benefits, as | described. A normal VM is much less secure, because the | host OS will have the Internet access and you will not | benefit from hardware virtualization. It's also less | convenient in my opinion. The UX of Qubes is really good. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Most of those pitches are not important. | | >Were you ever been concerned about opening your personal | email (controlling numerous online accounts) in the same | browser where you go to random websites? Actually, even | when the browsers are different it can be a problem on a | monolithic OS! | | Mozilla has containers that people also barely use. | | >On Qubes OS, you open those things in separate VMs, | isolated with hardware, not software. It's often better 2 | than physical (air-gap) isolation. Recommended by | Snowden. | | It runs VM, this is not isolated with hardware. | https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2019/03/05/qsb-048/ | | >Are you tired of remembering tens of complicated | passwords, or using a password manager? On Qubes OS, you | can save all your passwords as plain text (in a dedicated | offline VM) and copy them into the necessary fields (in | other VMs) whenever needed. | | Password managers are fine, why would someone tire of | them? | | I don't think you are pitching it correctly, if you want | to succeed at selling Qubes, remember most people use | laptops, the amount of ram required to run Qubes and the | battery drain is not worth it for the performance hit. It | would be much better to sell it as an OS on a remote | computer that uses Xen, there are huge problems like | audio quality, slow loading, and I would never recommend | it as a mobile device OS. Most of the benefits are done | with less resource intense methods, and learning a new OS | for most of these features and mainly drawbacks is not a | good pitch. I think it would be great on a remote device | with your computer as a thin client, but it has very | little day to day practical use. | GhettoComputers wrote: | I agree completely I don't care if it's not mainstream. | Desktops are usually gaming computers from what I see in my | groups no reason to have Linux on there. Linux is on all the | servers, most mobile devices, and I mentioned even Sony | cameras run Android. | | I don't see any benefit to Linux on desktop being mainstream. | I like that it keeps away a lot of users since making things | too easy since they're unwilling to compile from GitHub is a | feature, not a bug. It's a mostly a programmer OS for | programmers. | RussianCow wrote: | I find this attitude completely elitist and counter | productive. Why shouldn't Linux be for everybody, usable on | every type of device? Why should we need to rely on | proprietary software for our day-to-day tasks? Don't you | think there is benefit to this? | GhettoComputers wrote: | >Why shouldn't Linux be for everybody, usable on every | type of device? | | It is, but you often have the effort to put into it. | Windows isn't usable for everyone, but that doesn't make | me elitist, OSX is hard for others, but I don't see that | being a problem. Some people can't do everything you do, | and there are differences in our abilities. If you expect | everything to be easy, and people not willing to put in | work to have a functional OS, you should not expect them | to use linux, it offers no benefits to most users, its | made by hackers to hack on, Android is linux for | everyone, and even then they find it hard. Don't expect | people to run when they can't crawl. | | >Why should we need to rely on proprietary software for | our day-to-day tasks? | | Because the free stuff sucks, GIMP still sucks. They | stuck to having 3 windows open forever, GNOME doesn't | like being configured, GTK always breaks stuff, and I | just want stuff that "just works". When FOSS does it well | like KDE being better than Windows's UI, or Firefox being | better than IE6 I will choose it. I don't pick based on | their principals, I just want good software, and like | most people I am willing to pay for quality. I refuse to | use a pinephone out of principal, I refuse to make my | life hell. | pjerem wrote: | FYI, Gimp have a single window mode since about a decade. | fwiw, I love gimp as it is (and I prefer multi windows). | | I think saying it sucks is just being rude against one of | the most amazing foss project of all times and it's | maintainers. | | Yes Gimp isn't photoshop but it covers 100% of my needs. | Totally worth the money I never put on it. | GhettoComputers wrote: | >FYI, Gimp have a single window mode since about a | decade. | | I know, I used it recently. They are so bad with the UI I | find myself using Krita as a better photoshop | replacement. | | >I think saying it sucks is just being rude against one | of the most amazing foss project of all times and it's | maintainers. | | Comparing it to Krita, it is hard to compliment any of | it, the UI, the features, the difficulty. Its been 25 | years, and lots of FOSS stuff has caught up with paid | options, and I see Krita being a photoshop replacement | way before GIMP becomes usable. | dsego wrote: | Somebody can probably say the same things about ms paint, | not much of an argument there. | kitsunesoba wrote: | >get a seasoned linux to try MacOS or Windows and you'll | recognize weaknesses on the other approaches too. | | The tricky part of identifying "weaknesses" coming from and | going to any two OSes or desktop environments is figuring out | exactly what qualifies as a weakness and what is simply | unfamiliar. | | Like for example, a lifelong Windows user is probably going | to think that anything that's not the spitting image of a | Win9X style desktop is chock full of "weaknesses", and a | diehard tiling WM veteran Linux user is going to see anything | not built around tiling as "weak", when neither is fully true | in an objective sense. | | This is a bit of a frustration for me as someone who | primarily uses macOS but dabbles in Linux: most people | haven't used macOS extensively, and so Mac-style desktops | tend to be seen by the individuals who develop DEs as full of | "weaknesses", and as a result there are no Linux DEs that are | mac-like beyond the surface. There's no shortage of Winlike | DEs though. | btdmaster wrote: | Not exactly Linux, but would helloSystem[1] be suitable? | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26092040 | kitsunesoba wrote: | I've been keeping my eye on that and it will probably | come closer than anything else to date, but I'm skeptical | that it'll nail everything so long as it's using Qt. Much | of what makes macOS interesting is rooted in Cocoa, so a | good macOS clone is going to have to be built in | something that's a close analogue (if perhaps modernized | in some ways) to Cocoa. | sneak wrote: | The thing that makes the Mac the Mac is not the window | chrome. | baq wrote: | graphics drivers alone are in the tens of millions of lines | of code (counting both kernel and user mode). there's no way | open source community can do that amount of work for free | every couple years as long as new hardware is being | developed. | | this may become the case once hardware is good for 20 years. | we aren't there yet, though we're closer than a decade ago. | (typing this on an aging 8 year old desktop, which is really | due for an upgrade). | commoner wrote: | The FOSS community depends on contributions from GPU | vendors to have their products supported on Linux in a | reasonable timeframe. As long as the contributions are | released under a FOSS license, the vendors are part of the | FOSS community. | | Intel provides excellent Linux support for its GPUs through | open source drivers,[1] and is about to launch a line of | dedicated GPUs in early 2022 with the same level of | support. | | AMD has provided good support for essential GPU features | through its open source Linux driver since 2015,[2] but | compute features such as full OpenCL support (for most AMD | models) are still locked in its proprietary drivers.[3] | | Nvidia's open source Linux driver contributions are | minimal, and they've earned a bad reputation for that. The | reverse-engineered open source Nouveau driver is an | incredible effort, but falls behind Nvidia's proprietary | driver in performance and feature support.[4] This is what | happens when the hardware vendor doesn't cooperate with the | FOSS community. | | [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_graphics | | [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU | | [3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU_PRO | | [4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nouveau | dTal wrote: | >thumbnails in the file picker! | | Use a decent desktop environment, like Plasma :) | | Gnome's file picker is notoriously, offensively bad - to the | point that it makes me completely lose trust that any thought | has been put into the human factors of the rest of the | system. Plasma, on the other hand, continues to surprise with | its thoughtful and accommodating design choices. | | Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify | wasting either on frustrating software. | belltaco wrote: | >Life is too short, and brainpower too limited, to justify | wasting either on frustrating software. | | This is exactly why I switched from Linux to Windows and | never looked back. | sneak wrote: | No amount of good UX can justify the tools constantly | spying on you. | | The Windows UX these days is also horribly jankful in | other ways, too. | | I feel like Windows 2000 made a stronger case for | "switching to Windows and never looking back" than | Win7-11. | pjerem wrote: | Windows 7 was actually pretty clean. It was basically | Windows XP with a nice look & feel. Also the last Windows | without bloat everywhere (ok, IE) | | But yeah, 2000 was somehow the apogee. | | Plasma is pretty nice nowadays but I sometimes miss the | simpler times of KDE 3.5 | [deleted] | fsflover wrote: | For me, it's vice versa: this is why I switched to Linux, | because it gets out of my way. | boudin wrote: | Exact opposite from me. I just cannot use windows | anymore. Windows 10 feels like windows xp with adwares | pre-installed. | selfhifive wrote: | Unfortunately RAM is quite limited too. The idle windows | memory consumption is horrifying. | carlhjerpe wrote: | I'm gonna go wild and crazy and assume you work with IT | in some way since you're on HN. | | How on earth does idle RAM consumption matter to you when | a GB of RAM is cheaper than a beer? | | I'm not a Windows fan, I don't let Windows control any | hardware other than a GPU on any of my systems but i do | run it in a VM for gaming. I just don't see the problem, | more RAM usage could even be better for performance. It's | a useless metric. | depressedpanda wrote: | I can't stand KDE/Plasma for what many would consider a | silly reason: I want Confirm/OK/Next actions to be in the | lower right side of dialogs, and Cancel/Back in the lower | left. | | I have a vague memory of this being configurable a long | time ago (maybe KDE 3), but this setting disappearing in | later versions. | | Is it possible to change this in later versions of KDE? | artursapek wrote: | > after decades we're still fighting for 2% of the | marketshare | | I was using desktop linux for several years and recently | switched back to a Mac because of the massive hardware | improvements Apple made with its M1 chip. | | As much as I loved Linux, it's no longer just a software UX | thing. The battery life and speed of the new Macs beats any | Linux machine I could have bought for a comparable price. | vwoolf wrote: | _From what I see the proprietary operating systems are in | decline now_ | | [Citation needed] | | If anything, one of the world's most-used OSes, which could | have gone more open, did the opposite: | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... | | Yes, I approve of e.g. https://puri.sm, but they're so far | behind. | p12tic wrote: | Hi, I'm the developer behind this effort. I can answer any | questions you have. | notesinthefield wrote: | How does this differ from what Fedora is shipping in Gnome? | Touchpad gestures, sans acceleration are flawless. | cryo wrote: | Just want to thank the developers behind this and joined as | GitHub sponsor. Happy to see this also enters the Qt framework. | jwatt wrote: | Thanks for your work on this! | | Your report says Firefox gestures are working on Wayland, and | two finger swiping left/right appears to be configured in the | Firefox prefs to go back/forward in history: | browser.gesture.swipe.left = Browser:BackOrBackDuplicate | browser.gesture.swipe.right = Browser:ForwardOrForwardDuplicate | | However, Firefox doesn't respond to these gestures. Do you know | what's up with that? (I'm on Fedora 35, if that's relevant.) | Two finger scrolling up/down works just fine. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Is there binaries I can install or do I need to compile | something? I have no idea where the code is. | p12tic wrote: | In short - there are no binaries and it's relatively hard to | compile these manually, so I recommend to wait until the | Linux distributions picks these projects up. This usually | takes around 6 to 12 months. | dylan604 wrote: | Holy cow, that was a LOL from hell. Are you serious? 6-12 | months is the biggest tease. "Here's this really cool | thing, but maybe, if you're lucky, you'll be able to use it | in a year or so." That's the quarter super glued to the | floor kind of frustrating. | jwatt wrote: | It's not super glued to the floor. It's on a train, on | its way to your station. How far away your station is | from the train entirely depends on the length of the | release cycle of your Linux distribution, and is | completely outwith the control of this developer. That's | how Linux distros work. If you want it sooner you can | always use a rolling release, such as Manjaro. | pantalaimon wrote: | The new X server is already in Debian experimental [0], | with a bit of luck it trickles down to unstable just in | time for Ubuntu to pick it up for the 22.04 release. | | If you are running Arch you already have it [1]. | | [0] https://packages.debian.org/experimental/xorg-server- | source [1] | https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-server/ | azinman2 wrote: | > Bill believes that the biggest opportunity to improve Linux | touchpads is to adapt their acceleration curve to better match | the profile of a macOS touchpad. How do you feel about the | acceleration and precision that your Linux touchpad offers? | | Is this work only going to be for touchpads? I personally hate | the X11 curves with mice and vastly prefer Apple's. It seems to | be hard coded last I checked and not easily modifiable (there | are two parameters now but it's still a very different curve). | If trackpad curves also benefited mice (particularly those of | us who use Apple's Magic Mouse on Linux), that'd be amazing! | | Thank you for your efforts to improve these ergonomics -- it's | thankless and hard work but benefits many. | p12tic wrote: | For now we only focus on touchpads. I think that if we're | successful in delivering touchpad improvements then we will | gain credibility and trust that could be useful when working | on other input devices. | jez wrote: | Just want to echo the above sentiment--mouse-based | acceleration curves are in need of just as much love as | touch pads, and I'd love to see both! | k1rcher wrote: | Very interesting. I'm running PopOS on my framework, running | Wayland-- the touchpad gestures is very good. But still not up to | par with MacBook. I'm extremely curious as to how this compares. | | I think it's both PopOS's gestures as well as the hardware (the | framework touchpad is quite good!) that has resulted in such a | fantastic experience, at least compared to other laptop touchpads | I've used. Definitely the closest to MacBook gestures I've | experienced. | | I'm working on getting an eGPU setup going so I can properly run | X instead of Wayland, and am very excited to try this out. | | (Please correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is Wayland | if you're running integrated graphics, X if you have a GPU) | izoow wrote: | I always found touchpads on Linux to be quite okay, mice on the | other hand... For example, I find scrolling with mice in most | browsers on Linux unbearably slow compared to other systems, and | there's no option to speed it up, and overall a lack of | customization options when it comes to mice. I'm starting to | wonder whether Linux developers don't use mice, or if there's | something wrong with me or my setup, because I rarely hear about | it. And as stupid as it sounds, being able to scroll properly is | probably the #1 thing keeping me off Linux desktop right now. | proxycon wrote: | personally i've got a logitech mx master mouse, it has the | logitech hyperscroll technology. Quite wonderfull to use on | linux. | aetherspawn wrote: | A lot of apps don't interact well with Hyperscroll at all, | and when it sends the "1 pixel" scroll event continuously | every 10ms, they'll either keep scrolling for days after the | wheel stops spinning or scroll like 1000 lines when you only | moved it half a rotation. | sandreas wrote: | I wonder, why nobody is mentioning two-finger scrolling (also | inertial scrolling or kinetic scrolling). | | Interesting fact: Ubuntu and Fedora have a fully working | implementation for this - although scrolling is way too fast, | while other distros don't have this. KDE distros also don't have | this, even if KDE Wayland is used. | | Can anyone tell my, why on Ubuntu and Fedora this works for EVERY | app, whereas in other distros using GNOME 40 or 41 (e.g. Arch) it | is only working on SOME or NONE of the apps...? Is there a patch | for libinput or MUTTER, that is not in the official GNOME repos? | tuldia wrote: | Nice! Thanks for the hard work everyone involved! I have nothing | to complain, things just works for me so far, but great to see | improvements in the pipe! :D | disabled wrote: | I have my Ubuntu 18.04 looking like MacOS. The only thing | limiting it from really feeling like a Mac is the touchpad. | | You can see it here: https://ibb.co/H7khM7h | | A good guide for starting out is here: | https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu... | [deleted] | marcodiego wrote: | My girlfriend uses a MacBook and likes it. She bought a cheap | windows all-in-one desktop and simply couldn't use windows. I | made the effort during one weekend to make it look and behave | like MacOS as much as I could. | | Appearance-wise it is very very close. I got some gnome | extensions to mimic the behavior quite closely too. In terms of | software, it is still missing MSO and some magic apple | integration to their other products. Otherwise, she is now a | happy linux user on the desktop. | andrewmackrodt wrote: | There's more to macOS than look of the desktop, notably the | universal menu and full screen mode opens to a new workspace. I | find the latter a big productivity boost when working on an | undocked laptop as the gestures to switch workspace or windows | between an application are so well integrated. | smoldesu wrote: | Universal menu is built into KDE and can be added to GNOME | with minimal hassle (though the devs might try to shank you | for it). Dynamic workspaces are also a pretty bog-standard | feature for desktop environments, so if that's all that MacOS | means to you then it might be worth taking another look. | kitsunesoba wrote: | KDE global menu is nice in theory but too many apps | disregard it entirely which makes things awkward. Might be | ok if you can restrict your app selection to Qt only but | that's very difficult to do for most of us. | smoldesu wrote: | I mean, the majority of apps I use on a regular basis | support it. Chromium, Discord, Konsole, Dolphin, | Mailspring, VS Code... the list goes on, and it's not | just limited to QT applications. If your only holdout as | a Mac user is the global menu, I think you'll be | perfectly contented with what KDE offers. | monsieurbanana wrote: | As another data point, one of the worst things on osx for me | is their window management, specially that full screen mode | creates a new workspace. I switch workspaces with command + a | number, and that breakes it. | nullwarp wrote: | Same for me, I find WM absolutely infuriating to use. | | I have to download a 3rd party application to be able to | alt-tab between windows (I will have a few firefox windows | open at a time at least) | | Often times i'll do the three finger swipe up thing and | I'll have like 50 desktops for some reason, and you can | only delete them one at a time. | | And why does the dock keep the icon of every app I open and | close. | | I just don't get it, and I'm glad i3/sway exists. | GhettoComputers wrote: | WTF does the green button do? I still don't know. | kitsunesoba wrote: | Yellow has always been minimize, did you mean green? The | green button's function used to be roughly "resize window | to fit content" which makes sense because Mac desktops | have never been built for maximizing windows, but it | depended on developers to let the system know what a | program window's ideal size was and cross platform devs | never did, so they changed its primary function to full | screening the window and putting it in its own virtual | desktop. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Yes, green. Very inconsistent button. | AlexandrB wrote: | For me one killer feature is how MacOS treats every text | field equally. I can use the Emacs style Ctrl-A/E/K/etc | shortcut keys _anywhere_ I enter text and it works[1]! To me | it 's deeply ironic that this is a feature in MacOS but not | Linux (unless you count the terminal). | | [1] With the exception of websites and SPAs that rebind these | keys to something else. I really don't like sites that do | this. | codezero wrote: | Does Ubuntu sleep/wake easily with a lid close (maintaining | runtime state), and avoid weird battery drain issues? | | To me, that's the killer feature of macOS. I am usually | connected w/ a mouse and keyboard, the touchpad is great on the | go, but nothing really substitutes the ability to turn it off | and on again without thinking twice. | GhettoComputers wrote: | Laptop kernel driver issue. Newest 5.17 doesn't 5.16 does on | my laptop, but most laptops I have had that flawlessly | function. | josteink wrote: | 121 sponsors is pitiful. | | Consider me in, and I hope everyone in here who honestly wants | this to happen considers sponsoring too. | gowld wrote: | $60/yr for an unfinished touchpad driver is high. | null4bl3 wrote: | That sounds awesome. I remember trying to create a setup using | touchegg some years ago, with very little luck | GhettoComputers wrote: | How do I install it? | mdoms wrote: | There are some extremely confusing instructions here (these are | the only installation instructions linked anywhere from the | main website): | https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Libinput#Installation | | Linux will NEVER be a mainstream desktop platform as long as | end users have to answer questions like "am I 'under Wayland'?" | or "what does 'under Wayland' mean?" or "why does the | alternative to 'under Wayland' seem to be 'for Xorg' (whatever | that is)?" or "how do I 'install the xf86-input-libinput | package' and why does it have such a weird name?" | zamadatix wrote: | On a normal distro it's just part of the default install, not | something you have to even know exists. Arch just doesn't | have a "default install", it's "build your own" distro | focused on power users that like to control things at that | level. | mdoms wrote: | Literally just read this exchange in this very thread. I | wish you "linux is easy" folks could agree on something for | once. | | > > People have been saying this for the last 20 years and | I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least | 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak | than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. | | > Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to | select gnome... It's that easy. | zamadatix wrote: | Eh, I don't even consider myself in the "Linux is easy" | group but I wouldn't pull up the word of a negative karma | fresh single comment account that was created after the | conversation started as gospel for the validation an | entire group of people on HN are inconsistent. | | It just happens you don't need to do anything special to | install this on any traditional distro that ships with a | default GUI install option. Regardless of your views on | the viability of Linux overall these changes to libinput | are really as zero effort as it can get on any OS, just | wait for the update to push. | GhettoComputers wrote: | This looks old, is it the same? It looks like its only for | wayland too, uhhh fuck... I didn't know if it was merged | already or I need to edit a config, or uhh maybe is it a | kernel flag? I love linux, this sounds like normie stuff to | the usual user buts its probably very alien to anyone who | never used it. | p12tic wrote: | You need to wait up to a year for the distributions to pick up | the code into their default installs. Installing bleeding edge | window managers, widget toolkits and similar software yourself | is more difficult than it's worth for a normal user. | iknowstuff wrote: | It would be lovely if Firefox supported the two-finger | back/forward swipe. | jillesvangurp wrote: | Nice, I recently replaced my mac book pro with a cheap Samsung | laptop (emergency replacement, the mac died and the new ones are | unobtainable currently). | | I installed Manjaro on it and it was a relatively OK experience | getting that going. I had some issues with the sound that took | some "maybe this will work" style copy paste of all sorts of | magical cli incantations to get working. But I kind of knew what | I was getting into so I'm not disappointed by that. The important | thing is that I have a functioning laptop with all my developer | toys running. | | However, the touchpad support is so awful that I ordered a mouse. | I never needed one of those with any macbook I've ever owned. It | seems it's impossible to configure the touchpad in a sane way | without ending up with piles of custom scripts. E.g. the | scrolling speed is way off and I constantly have my single clicks | interpreted as middle clicks, which does such fun things as close | the browser tab instead of opening it. Simple tasks such as | selecting text are made hard because the mechanical pressure | needed for the clicks actually tends to move the cursor by enough | that you basically mis-click. I briefly used the touchpad under | windows before I wiped the disk. So, I know the same touch pad | can behave a lot more reasonable given better software. | | So, any improvements in this area are very welcome! | zekica wrote: | Cheap laptops have generally crappy touchpads. I have one (on a | Lenovo ThinkBook) that has 5 finger multi-touch and it works | completely fine with Gnome 40+ gestures. The only thing | bothering me is a lack of consistent inertial two-finger | scrolling. Never had left clicks misinterpreted as middle | clicks. | MayeulC wrote: | I'm left wondering -- isn't this a toolkit/library issue? | | I am a bit afraid of seeing gestures handled differently in | multiple programs, like inertial scrolling, or pinch-to-zoom | speed. At least gestures are always detected by libinput AFAIK, | so there's that. | | But instead of implementing this in every application, wouldn't | it be nicer to implement the common part in a library and link | that library to all app that require/want touch handling? This | would provide homogeneous behavior, and would allow sharing | configuration files. | p12tic wrote: | Most applications will use either Gtk or Qt widget libraries, | so a lot of similarity of how applications behave already | exists. | | I don't think it's possible to make Gtk and Qt themselves | behave identically at this point. For example Qt is a | commercial project and an effort that would break backwards | compatibility is not worth it. Gtk on the other hand has strong | opinions about how things should work, so it would be hard to | change that too. | mgaunard wrote: | Why do touchpads exist? First thing I do is disable them. | | Do power users (which tend to use Linux) really use those things? | marginalia_nu wrote: | They're not that bad if they have decent wrist detection. I'd | rather use a proper keyboard and mouse of course, but my laptop | is quite comfortable to use with a touch pad (on Linux). | | Although I don't buy into the whole gesture stuff. I just want | the basics. | stjo wrote: | Let me explain my downvote: | | 1) Obviously such efforts will help non-power users as well. A | lot of people use touchpads. | | 2) Yes, power users also use touchpad. Duh. | mgaunard wrote: | Touchpads get in the way of using the keyboard reliably, | which is your primary source of input. | | They also provide inputs that are themselves unreliable and | inaccurate. You're better off controlling the cursor with a | trackpoint which also means you don't need to move your hands | off the keyboard. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-14 23:00 UTC)