Green Island: A New Qt-Based Wayland Compositor

[liam]

No.

If you don't like them, don't use them. They are brilliant and keep your fingers away from them.

The cool thing about virtual desktops is that they leverage your spatial memory in a way ad-hoc groupings don't. This I find useful, I have a clear map of where things are on which desktop and it makes finding things easier. There is nothing worse than 20 overlapping windows and then trying to sift through them to find what you're looking for.

Since you don't use Gnome, as I recall, I don't really care about your opinion on this matter.
However, for the sake of argument, let me expand a bit on my previous idea. These groupings of windows would be running, essentially, virtual desktops invisibly. To get make them visible should only require a tiny bit of UI code.
To your specific example, I don't know why you'd have a task that requires 20 windows. However, for the sake of understanding, you'd still have those 20 windows to sift through on your virtual desktops.
If your issue is the alt-tab presentation, there are a few extensions that provide different ways of presenting the windows (some limit what is shown on a desktop basis).

This exactly. If you have a little bit of spatial or photographic memory you "feel" where stuff is. Even with fullscreen (a weird consumer trend that will hopefully pass not causing more damage than Gnome3 and 15" 1377x768 panels) this is an advantage because you gain one dimension for your orientation.

Don't conflate spatial memory with photographic memory. Optimizing a system for the later group would be akin to optimizing a general curriculum based on the abilities of those in the top .001% of intelligence.
The fullscreen thing is, IMHO, a result of small screen/low resolutions and bad window managers, and not necessarily due to "consumer trend(s)".

[pingufunkybeat]

Since you don't use Gnome, as I recall, I don't really care about your opinion on this matter.

That's a very constructive attitude. Virtual desktops are something that in no way depends on your preferred desktop environment -- they all offer virtual desktops, and they all allow you to turn them off.

However, for the sake of argument, let me expand a bit on my previous idea. These groupings of windows would be running, essentially, virtual desktops invisibly. To get make them visible should only require a tiny bit of UI code.

Sure, but you essentially end up with virtual desktops, only you can't visualise them (because they are invisible). I don't see the added value.

To your specific example, I don't know why you'd have a task that requires 20 windows. However, for the sake of understanding, you'd still have those 20 windows to sift through on your virtual desktops.

Not really. You group them together based on the task at hand, just like you would with your groupings. Put all windows you work with on a particular desktop. Then you only need to sift through those, plus it's easy to zoom out and see at a glance what is where.

You then change the background for each desktop so it's immediately apparent where you are at the moment. Visual memory ftw.

[vgrade]

https://twitter.com/vgrade/status/26...870720/photo/1

[liam]

That's a very constructive attitude. Virtual desktops are something that in no way depends on your preferred desktop environment -- they all offer virtual desktops, and they all allow you to turn them off.




.

My point about you not using Gnome is that you prize a multiplicity of options over other attributes. So I don't think we are going to come any kind of agreement on these matters. It was said more in exasperation than anything else.

Sure, but you essentially end up with virtual desktops, only you can't visualise them (because they are invisible). I don't see the added value.

Mental imaginings is a barrier to better general usability. People have varying amounts of ability, in that regard, and a desktop should make as few assumptions in those regards as is possible, IMHO.
If someone is a visual person, you go to overview and see the various groups of windows (the exact UI wouldn't be like Panorama, but, at a high level, that is the closest thing I've seen). The alt-tab can also be exposed in different ways (perhaps it would limit you to a particular task group, but that would need to be mocked up and tested). Assigning keyboard shortcuts to the task groups should also be possible.

Not really. You group them together based on the task at hand, just like you would with your groupings. Put all windows you work with on a particular desktop. Then you only need to sift through those, plus it's easy to zoom out and see at a glance what is where.

I think you misunderstood what I meant. If you've used Panorama all the windows you have open aren't visible (even assuming you choose to go with the mouse navigation, which I assume you wouldn't) only the windows in the task group that you're currently using are visible. So, as I said, it is no more cluttered with windows that virtual desktops would be, but the advantage is that they are conceptually easier to use, IMHO.

You then change the background for each desktop so it's immediately apparent where you are at the moment. Visual memory ftw

Sure you can change the background. I prefer naming the groups, as Panorama does, but some people may prefer the more visual differentiation that backgrounds provide (since I basically never see my desktop it doesn't matter to me but, as you say, some people do care and the amount of code added shouldn't be a great deal).
Ideally, I would like a way to arrange windows in each task group in a specific pattern and have them remain that way (a bit like tiling but not as rigid).
For the most part I would imagine you would only need a few task groups and those would almost never change (say, Research, Coding, Fun Time, for example). So, once you set these up, and setting them up is as easy as launching the windows in Overview, lassoing/drag-n-drop/alt-click/whatever the windows you want to group, name the group.
There's probably some other things that would be general productivity boosters that don't also incur significent mental overhead, but these changes aren't too difficult and would make GS more generally useful.

[misGnomer]

Reading about Green Island: A New Qt-Based Wayland Compositor, which also mentions Hawaii Linux Desktop Environment and Maui OS "the Wayland-friendly desktop that can be used on other Linux distributions too" got me curious so I did the natural thing and 'oogled the aforementioned terms.

There appears to be very little public information about these projects out there, but among the few hits was a somewhat soberingly sceptical viewpoint on Mr Fiorini's (PLF ?) track record for carrying projects through:

He likes to start these little toy OS projects. He loses interest and they get abandoned after a little while. He has started (and given up on) several since OpenBeOS (now Haiku) began. Some pieces from previous projects get re-used in each reboot, and there are common themes. Fiorini likes Qt a lot, for example, so that usually features, and he's always interested in new-ish technologies born on Linux, DBus was one example, Wayland is another.

The on-again off-again OS project has been called BeFree, Vision, Mockup, and now apparently Maui. Maybe I missed some names in there.

The thing is, I'd be interested in hearing how these projects get off the ground. Glancing over the rather spartan Maui project FAQ left me with more questions than I had before, like how are the other "desktop" environments (IIRC some GNOME developers have wanted the whole concept of "desktop" canned and banned...) either too much or too little configurable...


NB: FWIW I don't know any of the characters involved even remotely and I apologize in advance if the quoted message was part of some (to me) unknown flame war, but the questions that were raised there did sound valid enough.

[cbamber85]

Let's try to move back to the actual thread topic, instead the bland Gnome/KDE flame war (people like different DEs, get over it)...

Reading about Green Island: A New Qt-Based Wayland Compositor, which also mentions Hawaii Linux Desktop Environment and Maui OS "the Wayland-friendly desktop that can be used on other Linux distributions too" got me curious so I did the natural thing and 'oogled the aforementioned terms.

There appears to be very little public information about these projects out there, but among the few hits was a somewhat soberingly sceptical viewpoint on Mr Fiorini's (PLF ?) track record for carrying projects through:



The thing is, I'd be interested in hearing how these projects get off the ground. Glancing over the rather spartan Maui project FAQ left me with more questions than I had before, like how are the other "desktop" environments (IIRC some GNOME developers have wanted the whole concept of "desktop" canned and banned...) either too much or too little configurable...


NB: FWIW I don't know any of the characters involved even remotely and I apologize in advance if the quoted message was part of some (to me) unknown flame war, but the questions that were raised there did sound valid enough.

I noticed the same thing when I went hunting for screenshots.

I quite like the idea of a distro being locked to a specific DE if it creates a slicker and more stable experience, although it's a brave/stupid move for a brand new DE!

[ncopa]

"The idea behind Maui is to avoid traditional packages . . . Applications will be installed from bundles."

What is the difference? How are dependencies handled?

[Rigaldo]

"The idea behind Maui is to avoid traditional packages . . . Applications will be installed from bundles."

What is the difference? How are dependencies handled?

Apparently by bundles they mean all needed libraries etc will be in the bundle. So each program will have it's own set of libraries with the versions etc it needs. At least if it's similar to the bundles from Chakra Linux.
So- pretty much no dependencies will be needed. Until they explicitly tell, this is just a hypothesis though ..

[TeoLinuX]

@Michael Larabel

Pier Luigi <---- first name
Fiorini <---- family name

[Kasoroth]

I usually just alt-tab and alt-` between windows, so I don't use the bar for window switching as much, but I will give you a few examples that Average Joe may notice in Unity.

Consistent Placement: The items on the bar remain static, so you always know exactly where the application you're looking for is when you want to switch to it.

Large Icons: Having large, color-coded icons improves visual memory and also helps you identify what you're looking for significantly faster than plaintext with a small icon.

That's just to address the one concern you gave. I'll list a few others. On Unity in particular, you've got global search at your disposal, so one keypress or click and you can immediately find and launch anything by name with just the enter key. That's infinitely better than digging through Gnome 2's app menu, let alone browsing for a particular file. Gnome Shell offers a similar feature. In Gnome Shell (and Unity as I have it configured) there is a hot corner (and keyboard shortcut) that immediately exposes all windows in a fashion where you can continue on and click the one you want immediately. No reading titles and trying to identify which one is which. This is a tremendous booster. I love Unity's HUD feature personally. That's one thing I've always missed from Mac. As far as I'm concerned the only real regression is the loss of the Compiz Cube, but I'll take Unity and Gnome Shell's extremely up to date visual styles over that any day. Gnome Shell is beautiful, hands down. Unity looks about as good as Windows 7, which means that it is pleasing to the eye, just not overly amazing. By default Gnome 2 was a downright eyesore. I would spend days configuring it in order to make it acceptable with things like Emerald.

I usually don't use Alt-Tab except when toggling repeatedly between two windows (I rarely "tab" more than once). The reason for this exactly because of your first point: Consistent Placement. Since the alt-tab order is based on the order last used, it's inconsistent and somewhat unpredictable if you don't remember what order you last used your windows in. If I want to check something in another window and then return to what I was working on, it's handy as a "go back" shortcut, but that's about all I use it for.

The large Icons are good for quickly finding an app (and pinning them in a consistent place for commonly used apps is nice), but sometimes you're looking for a specific document window, not an app. When you have 5 or 6 different spreadsheets open that all look very similar (same template with different data filled in), the "plaintext with a small icon" with the title is much better than any graphical window display/thumbnail view. That's what titles are for: Quickly and unambiguously identifying documents. A similar case arises when referencing multiple pdf documents that are primarily text based and not easily distinguishable by appearance. I actually like Unity for certain tasks, but some things I've switched from LibreOffice to Google Docs just to be able to open documents in Firefox tabs with nice "title-centric" navigation, and I keep KDE installed also because certain workflows are just too inconvenient in Unity. In my experience (it might just be the kind of documents I work on) "reading titles" is by far the easiest way to "identify which one is which".

One thing that I think would be absolutely great in Unity (and solve almost all of my usability issues with it) would be the ability to pin windows (not apps) to the bottom of the screen. It could be similar to the drag to top or sides to maximize or half-maximize, but would pin a "taskbar-like" item to the bottom of the screen for that window. The taskbar could go away when it's empty (and have auto-hide options even when it's not empty). The biggest problem with the traditional taskbar is that it gets cluttered up with things that you don't really want there (hence all the "minimize to system tray" options that music players, IM clients, etc have added as a workaround). This "pin to bottom" solution would solve the problem by showing only the windows you deliberately pin there. There could also be an option in the launcher's context menu for each app to let you automatically pin all windows from that app. I would probably set Evince and LibreOffice to automatically pin their document windows.

The HUD, search features, and keyboard shortcuts can all exist, pretty much independently of whether you use a traditional(ish) taskbar or not. I don't really use them much (except keyboard shortcuts for a few common things). Maybe it's just that my memory is really bad (visual memory or otherwise), but I find it much easier to browse through a deeply nested tree where each level has a small enough number of options for me to scan the whole thing quickly, than to remember the name of what I want to search for. The act of navigation through the tree is sort of a way of maintaining some structure on my own thought processes, and I'd find myself almost non-functional if I tried to work in an environment with a flat file system that relied solely on search. Search is great for finding things I don't have (on the Internet for example), but organization is much better for me for finding things that I already have, and (more importantly) remembering that I have them in the first place.

-Kasoroth