Purism Working On PureBoot To Secure Your Data & Fully Verify The Linux Boot Process

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Purism Working On PureBoot To Secure Your Data & Fully Verify The Linux Boot Process

Purism has another announcement to make today... PureBoot! PureBoot is the privacy-minded, Linux-focused company's collection of safeguards to protect the boot process while empowering the end-user...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Purism-PureBoot

[Jaxad0127]

Something went wrong with their original link. New version: https://puri.sm/posts/pureboot-the-h...-boot-process/

[flower]

their products look nice. does anybody has some experience with them?
eg is it possible to use another distribution and keep the pureboot benefits (i just dont like gnome at all)

[Caliga]

flower, you should have asked in the Purism forum

In theory, all of this should work with any distribution, depending on your willingness to put effort in it and how much is already accepted by upstream etc.

But the desktop is certainly not a reason to NOT use PureOS, which is basically Debian testing.
I have it on my Librem 13, and I only use KDE Plasma. Use whatever pleases you

Same should be true for the Librem 5 phone, I expect I'll be able to just apt install plasma-mobile. Although I have to admit I'm still undecided. I might give their gnome-mobile shell (posh) a try. Because the thing that I find most annoying about Gnome 3 is that it seems to be developed specifically for mobile devices somehow, or at least fitting better there...

[Michael_S]

Because the thing that I find most annoying about Gnome 3 is that it seems to be developed specifically for mobile devices somehow, or at least fitting better there...

Before I start, I have no problem with any desktop preference. I am typing this from MATE, I have Xfce on one laptop, KDE Plasma on another, and Ubuntu Unity on my other desktop.

But I read the assertion that Gnome 3 is designed for tablets and mobile devices a lot, and I think it's incorrect. The most efficient way to use Gnome 3 is with hotkeys. Super key (Windows key on most keyboards) + type a few characters to launch an app or open a file, Alt+tab or Super+tab to switch applications, Super+up arrow to maximize, Super+down arrow to minimize, Super+` to switch windows in the current application, etc... etc...

Gnome 3 doesn't suck for people who use the mouse to open and close applications, minimize and maximize windows, switch workspaces, switch applications, etc... because it's optimized for mobile, it sucks for people who use the mouse to do those things because it's optimized for physical keyboard.

I think the distinction is important because the Gnome developers get accused of dumbing down Gnome in a way that works for casual mobile users and sucks for everyone else. I think they made a mistake, but the mistake wasn't dumbing down - Gnome 3 is really slick and productive for someone that gets used to the hotkeys. The mistake was thinking people would be interested in learning a new interface and new hotkeys, instead of just being annoyed.

[Caliga]

Michael_S, you're probably right. But it's not only the learning part. For example, I just don't want to use something like Alt+Tab on a regular basis. I want to mix and match. Usually, I click the menu button. But sometimes I just do Super + "calc" + Enter. And I use all key combos that involve →, ←, Pos1, End, Ctrl, Shift in any combination. But I want to choose myself. I want a minimize button etc.
I was completely puzzled when I first encountered the "new" Gnome (Fedora?) login screen. I clicked. Nothing happend. Hit some keys. Nothing happened. Finally, somehow I guess I figured I have to drag the screen upwards... That's when I shook my head and concluded this is somehow meant for touch screens.

[edenist]

The mistake was thinking people would be interested in learning a new interface and new hotkeys, instead of just being annoyed.

In my experience this underlies almost every "your OS/WM is crap" argument. It usually just translates to "my muscle memory for this product doesn't exist and I don't like the feeling of being sent back to first grade".

[starshipeleven]

But I read the assertion that Gnome 3 is designed for tablets and mobile devices a lot, and I think it's incorrect. The most efficient way to use Gnome 3 is with hotkeys.

No, stop right fucking there. This is exactly the same braindead bullshit that I've heard more than enough for Windows 8 back in the day.

The most efficient way to use anything is with hotkeys. No if, no but. That's the whole point of hotkeys, being faster than doing it with the GUI.

Hotkeys are basically their own interface. You could totally do without the rest of GUI, or even without a mouse if the hotkeys are good enough.
Which is more or less what people with tiling windows managers do.

Gnome 3 doesn't suck for people who use the mouse to open and close applications, minimize and maximize windows, switch workspaces, switch applications, etc... because it's optimized for mobile, it sucks for people who use the mouse to do those things because it's optimized for physical keyboard.

Wrong, it sucks because the GUI is optimized for mobile so you can't use the GUI effectively unless you have a touchscreen.

Hotkeys of course still work fine, but I have more or less the same hotkey functionality also on KDE, MATE, XFCE and anything else, so claiming this is a revolutionary new idea of GNOME devs is naive at best.

Gnome 3 is really slick and productive for someone that gets used to the hotkeys.

Any productivity software that has a completely turd-grade interface like say Photoshop or Sony Vegas or Blender is slick and productive if you use hotkeys.

You have no idea of the fat stacks hardware manufacturers of stream deck https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/stream-deck and similar "hotkey keyboard" devices are making with users of productivity software.

Really, pressing one button instead of doing a complicated 20s procedure with the mouse does have an impact on productivity.

The point here is that productivity software can't do much about it as they need to be complex and have a lot of options, so their GUI is bloated and inefficient.

If someone has to fall back on using a keyboard to operate a fucking desktop computer interface, then its designers are idiots, plain and simple.

Unless we are talking of tiling windows managers or other applications where this is a conscious design choice. Aka the keyboard is the only interface.

[johanb]

No, stop right fucking there. This is exactly the same braindead bullshit that I've heard more than enough for Windows 8 back in the day.

The most efficient way to use anything is with hotkeys. No if, no but. That's the whole point of hotkeys, being faster than doing it with the GUI.

Hotkeys are basically their own interface. You could totally do without the rest of GUI, or even without a mouse if the hotkeys are good enough.
Which is more or less what people with tiling windows managers do.

Yes!

Wrong, it sucks because the GUI is optimized for mobile so you can't use the GUI effectively unless you have a touchscreen.

I've personally not had any issues regarding this with GTK apps, can you give any examples?


What I do have issues with Gnome though is its inflexible design choices. To be able to use the desktop somewhat efficiently I need to configure a lot of settings and install 5-6 extensions. And even then the shell limits me with stupid designs such as there only being a fixed set of workspaces where you by default only have workspaces on the primary monitor but can configure it to have the same workspace on all monitors. It it really that hard to make it dynamic so you can have monitor independent workspaces? I really want to like Gnome and its clean UI, but I simply can't use it because it's so limited. The stutterfest and lagging animations on nvidia cards also make Gnome shell on X unusable for me (luckily I've recently switched to AMD though).

I don't use KDE either, but at least it's possible for me there to customize it to make it a pretty decent experience.

[Michael_S]

No, stop right fucking there. This is exactly the same braindead bullshit that I've heard more than enough for Windows 8 back in the day.

The most efficient way to use anything is with hotkeys. No if, no but. That's the whole point of hotkeys, being faster than doing it with the GUI.

Hotkeys are basically their own interface. You could totally do without the rest of GUI, or even without a mouse if the hotkeys are good enough.
Which is more or less what people with tiling windows managers do.

Wrong, it sucks because the GUI is optimized for mobile so you can't use the GUI effectively unless you have a touchscreen.

Hotkeys of course still work fine, but I have more or less the same hotkey functionality also on KDE, MATE, XFCE and anything else, so claiming this is a revolutionary new idea of GNOME devs is naive at best.

Actually, I think Caliga made the point more solidly by pointing out that the Fedora login screen requires a click and drag to interact with. That annoys me too, and it does lampoon my idea. I can't think of any reason to do that on a desktop, period.

I didn't think the way Gnome 3 works was revolutionary. I thought it was intentionally simplified so that it's easier for novices and also so power users are forced to switch to hotkeys. Because in all of the desktops I use - MATE, Xfce, KDE, I know hotkeys would be faster but I rarely use them. I use the mouse for minimize, maximize, change windows, logout, everything - because that's muscle memory for me. Gnome 3 is the only place where I switched to hotkeys when I used it because the mouse was too damn slow with the extra steps involved.