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Enlightenment GUI

Rasterman Speaks On E17 And The Future 287

Posted by Hemos from the peering-into-the-crystal-ball dept.
JigSaw writes: "The team consisting of TheRasterman and Mandrake (among others) are hard at work to bring Enlightenment 0.17 to the Linux desktop. E17 will be a lot more than a window manager, something closer to a complete GUI solution for X. OSNews hosts an interesting interview with Rasterman and also features some (unseen-before) screenshots of E17. Some say that E17 will be the next big thing in the GUI design (even if Rasterman states in the interview that Linux won't probably take over the Desktop), with plans to incorporate libraries like eVas, which look very modern in concept, design and implementation."
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Rasterman Speaks On E17 And The Future More

Rasterman Speaks On E17 And The Future

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  • I've read the article and I've followed E for a while. I'm at a loss as to what people mean when they say Next Big Thing.

    Can someone elaborate, cause I just don't see it.

    • Re:next big thing? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by BlackSol ( 26036 )
      I tend to agree with you.

      The interview doesn't give much insight over what value it adds over existing GUI's. Without indicating what its going to do better and what value this adds, there's no basis for calling it the Next Big Thing.

      The interview, really seems to state that the next version, available when 3d cards are the default, will be the "Next Big Thing"
    • I'd be interested in that, too. All I could get so far from the interview and the screeshots is that it's nothing more than the 23876th incarnation of a WIMP-Interface. From what I could get so far, Natulius is more of a Next Big Thing than E17. Looks a bit like the Amiga's Workbench to me.
    • Until know, people have been sitting on their desktop (Windows people anyway, the Linux people all use S3s as we all know...) with super powerful 3D cards in their computers, but kept them idle a large portion of the time. Even in Windows, only a portion of the GUI is really hardware accelerated. EVAS is a brilliant idea that lets you use the 3D accelerator that you already have to make a great looking desktop that also runs really fast. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty big thing. Maybe not CLI -> GUI big, but those only happen once every few decades, and if you reserved "Next Big Thing" for stuff of that magnitude, journalists would never be able to use the phrase. And it IS such a nice phrase, is it not?
      • Actually almost all of the GUI is hardware accelerated. Just because it's not 3d doesn't mean it isn't hardware accelerated.

        "Making it purtier" is hardly a Next Big Thing. In any case, my desktop is already great looking.
        • Most acceleration is really just BitBlits. Take anti-aliasing for example. Most hardware doesn't do alpha blending in 2D mode. Thus, all of the nice AA text in a GUI has to be rendered in software. Then there are the transparency effects (fading menus and such). Again, since alpha-blending isn't accelerated, this effect has to be done in software. Things that are trivial to do in OpenGL (transparent windows, special effects) are really expensive on most 2D architectures.
  • Their "e" logo in the bottom-left corner of the screen (and where else?) is extremely unpleasant for the eye. People tend to prefer horizontal lines and rounded edges over this sharp and pointed stuff. It looks like a hard metal album cover. I'd have nightmares after working on a desktop like that.

    • Re:Scary (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 )
      So change it.

      That is one thing the E has going for it, everything can be changed.

      Granted it wasn't the easiest thing to do in previous versions. But E17 is supposed to have drag and drop theme designing.

      Unfortunitly every thing is now stored in EDB (databases) so I can't tweak my themes with vi. But there is a nice little database editor included. I'll just have to get used to that.

  • Not another... (Score:1, Troll)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 )
    Look, the problem with Linux, and I've said this time and again, is that we don't need a variety of desktop environments. If we did, GEM (for those of you old enough to remember what it was) and OS/2 would be competing with Windows. They're not, they're dead.

    Linux needs a single GUI. Be it Gnome, KDE, or whatever. Pick one, build it right. Follow Microsoft's example and do extensive usability tests, and make it easy and intuitive for the user to use it. Otherwise, you're just not going to see Linux EVER enter the desktop market. Yeah, I know, a lot of you guys use it. You represent less than 1% of the computer using market.

    I've always hoped that Linux could crack the desktop market. I want to see it compete with MS. I want to be writing applications for Linux. The problem is, I just don't think that's ever going to happen. There are too many factions, and no single one appears to have a huge advantage. All of these GUIs are being written by programmers, for programmers.

    I've used Gnome. I could figure my way around it 90% of the time, but I've been programming for 22 years. I'm way less than 1% of the desktop users in that regard.

    Give your GUI to your mother, your father, your grandparents. If they can all figure it out, then you're on to something. If they can't, then you've really got nothing.
    • I agree with you for the most part, but I just wanted to mention that I've seen a non-technical casual Windows user figure out how to use KDE with not much trouble. Not that there isn't any room for improvement, but KDE is mostly there, I think.

      -Karl

      • Re:Not another... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @10:57AM (#2203991)
        If you can figure out windows, you can figure out most any other window manager I've run across that even remotely considered itself "for the typical user". Windows is horribly unusable, especially for those of us used to Macintosh. The very design of Windows with its BS document-window-inside-application-window is a major drag on its usability, imho... If you're not in maximized mode you spend time hunting for your toolbar-- and now with Win2K you'll be clicking at the bottom of your menu to actually get to see the whole menu. Thank god for right-clicking, but that's no real compensation for a crippled menu bar.

        Windows is one of the worst window manager in existence. It doesn't do one thing and do it well, it doesn't have any shining features whatsoever. NOT ONE. So, my point is simple. The fact that Windows is so widespread has nothing to do with usability. The fact that many users are comfortable in Windows has nothing to do with usability. But they've learned to use it, so they consider it natural. But it's a computer. Using it is going to take practice-- and maybe even training. It's a very complex machine.

        Nobody expects to be able to drive a car five minutes after taking it out of the box, unless they've driven before. And yes, if you go changing all the controls radically, the driver's going to need retraining. So look at it this way. Would you expect to be able to drive an F1 just because you can drive a Ford Escort? I wouldn't. Same goes for powerful window managers like E versus crap like Windows.

        My biggest problem with E is that there don't seem to be any E applications. If I use E I still need to load half of KDE to run Konqueror, and then I'll need gtk for GIMP, and then there's all those applications that have pretty windows around them, but are really just ugly X applications. I cut my losses and just run KDE, but I'd rather run E.
        • Windows is one of the worst window manager in existence. It doesn't do one thing and do it well, it doesn't have any shining features whatsoever. NOT ONE.

          Errr, you've not really used Windows at all really have you? Windows is one of the best window managers out there. Its clean, easy to understand and completely consistent through out.

          But thats not really a surprise. Microsoft spends thousands every year with useability tests and studies. They gain feedback on their GUI from a massive number of computer literate and illiterate people alike.

          In fact, its so good and so consistent and so easy to use that much of the stuff in KDE, GNOME or whatever have been directly copied or influenced by Windows GUI.

          • Windows , kde and gnome are all crap as window managers.

            The person who invented the start menu will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

            So you move your mouse down to the bottom left. Then the menu pops up above and to the right. So you start moving your mouse up again. Then the next menu goes down. Then up. By this time you've run out of space and so the menus start going left instead of right. And up and down again. And then finally you can start the stupid application.

            In windows 90% of the time you have to navigate 4 submenus (normally one of the submenus has more than 30 items) and click 4 times to start an aplication. In enlightenment 90% you navigate one menu and click 2 times.

            There is a reason why microsoft came out with the fade away start button bar and that's because people hate it wasting their desktop space. The people who don't use the fade away bar also hate it but they hate having the menu bar keep popping up in the middle of what they are trying to do all the time. What I end up doing is changing the configuration back and forth between popping up and standing around. And it's not because I love messing around, it's because Microsoft UI is utter crap!

            I could go on... but the point is most drunken hobos could design a better window manager than windows 98.

        • Windows is horribly unusable, especially for those of us used to Macintosh. The very design of Windows with its BS document-window-inside-application-window is a major drag on its usability, imho

          gentlemen, our word for today is canard. microsoft has deprecated MDI since windows 95. there's lots of reasons to hate. and as someone who has supported mac and windows, no one ever had modality issues with windows menubars, selecting "file->save" in the wrong application. of course experienced mac users don't do that. experienced windows users also don't "hunt" for menubars either. that dog didn't hunt then, it sure don't now.
          • feh, should have previewed. should have read "there's lots of reasons to hate windows, this one is tired ten year old mac evangalista fodder and needs to be retired"
    • It's getting better though. Every version that comes out takes usability into account more and more. The one thing I wish they'd fix up are those damn x* and g* filenames in the program menus. It would seriously take about an hour to go through and just give them real names.

      And about OS/2, GEM (no, not old enough to remember, but I'll assume...) - they weren't Windows-compatible. I don't see any reason why people shouldn't have a choice of environments as long as they can all run one another's applications. That's about all.
      • But KDE and GNOME aren't really compatible. Sure you can run programs from both environments at the same time, but they don't really interoperate at all, they just happen to exist on the same desktop. I can run X applications on my Win2K desktop, but that doesn't mean that Win32 an X are compatible.
    • I agree with you that a standard GUI is one key to widespread adoption of a desktop platform. A single GUI might be more curse than blessing, however. Would Linux users really be willing to give up their freedom of choice to gain broad acceptance? Personally, I doubt it. Once you start down the path of uniformity, forever will it dominate your destiny.
      • Once you start down the path of chaos, you're pretty much screwed that way too. There's nothing that prevents people from making a desktop standard, then letting different people implement it (just like ICCM and the X window managers). That's probably the best trade-off, IMNHO.

    • Re:Not another... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BlackSol ( 26036 )
      Ahh but us programmers like our gui's to work they way we want them to. That means our gui's meet the needs of programmers. This is a result of the "scratch an itch" development model.

      The GUI you're asking for needs to be developed specifically for ease-of-use. Not programmer usability. That means a programmer will need to spend a lot of time working with people of little technical background to find out what works for them. The biggest problem with that is that these people don't know what they want, they only know what their used too.

      • Actually, programmers use vi, so its a non-issue. Seriously, though, I don't see legions of Windows programmers up in arms over Windows being bad for programming. All Linux window managers and Windows work mostly the same way, so what exactly is the difference? I'd just like some concrete examples of when the configurability (or multiplicity) of Linux GUIs has allowed somebody to do something really useful.

    • Re:Not another... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lupercalia ( 310569 )
      Both the Gnome and KDE usability groups have been very active lately. Their desktops are getting closer and closer to the point where they really are ready for your mom to run.

      Neither project seems to be lacking in programmers. Instead, they are advancing so fast that it is a big job just to stay on top of the improvements. Hell, the improvements in KDE from 2.1 to 2.2 were larger than those from Win95 to Win98 -- and the Windows update took 3 years while the KDE update took closer to 3 months, and was only a point release.

      Now, given the incredible rate of improvement in the desktops, and the increasing efforts of the usability teams, tell me why having two of them makes it *less* likely Linux will find a place in the desktop market. It seems rather the other way around to me.
      • Are Gnome and KDE completely compatible? If I write an application with Gnome specifically in mind, will KDE run the application as I wrote it? If not, that's why having two will make it less likely to succeed. If so, I stand corrected?
        • They can run each other's apps with no problem - the only thing is the widgets might look a little different, but this is easy solvable, since KDE can use GTK themes.
        • If you write an app for Gnome, KDE will indeed run it PROVIDING the KDE user has the Gnome libs installed. That is one of the VERY few things I don't like about Linux. One needs to have all of BOTH's (for the sake of arguement) libs installed.
          • That's just the same under Windows, where any program requires that you also install all the dlls that it requires.

            You can think of the GUI "part" of Windows as being like KDE or Gnome. If you wanted to run a different Win32 GUI, but still run software written for Microsoft's GUI, you'd still have to have all the dlls installed for that one too. Of course, there isn't an alternative GUI/desktop shell and set of libraries, so that situation doesn't happen under Windows.

            That's just the way software is written these days - you put useful, reusable chunks of code in libraries, and install them once on the machine, rather than as part of every application that requires them.

            It increases app start up times a little (as these files have to be loaded and linked agaisnt), but decreases disk usage and promotes code reuse, which, as a programmer, I consider to be a Very Good Thing Indeed.

            Cheers,

            Tim
            • Actually that is not wholly true.

              For instance, Macromedia uses their own GUI toolkits. MS Office doesn't use the system ctrl3d stuff, they have their own GUI library as well.. They still use alot of the underlying COM/OLE stuff, though.. so it's a mixed bag.

              And Lotus Notes is just silly..

              Pan

            • That's just the same under Windows, where any program requires that you also install all the dlls that it requires
              >>>>>>
              Actually, its two totally different things. All the GUI libraries I know of on Windows use the underlying Win32 services. They use the same drawing services, the same printer services, etc. While it may be true (as the replyer to your post said) that there are different GUI libraries on Windows, the fact that they use the same underlying services makes it a moot point. The fact that loading both kde-libs and gnome-libs uses up an ass-load of resources is regretable, but not the main problem. The main problem is that apps using the two different systems don't interoperate perfectly with each other. On Windows, this problem doesn't exist, since there is only ONE object model, ONE printing system, ONE clipboard system, etc.
            • If you wanted to run a different Win32 GUI, but still run software written for Microsoft's GUI, you'd still have to have all the dlls installed for that one too. Of course, there isn't an alternative GUI/desktop shell and set of libraries, so that situation doesn't happen under Windows.

              wrong [litestep.com]. and yes, it's just as ugly to do this as it is to run KDE programs in GNOME or vice-versa.

        • They're both compatible as X applications; as long as you have the appropriate libraries for Gnome and KDE, there's no reason you can't run apps written for either at the same time on the same desktop. I'm not sure what the status of drag-n-drop between the two is - the standard X clipboard seems to work OK though.

          I'm not sure that I agree with the frequent remark that it would be more efficient to just focus on one desktop; you might instead get a situation where all the ex-KDE folks fight with the Gnome folks all the time, or vice versa, and so even less work gets done :) In a perfect world, putting all the developers onto one combined project would result in one great desktop. In the real world, differences of ego, technical direction, user interface preferences, object systems (CORBA), etc. are probably too great to ever get the entire development community to agree on a single desktop, at least until one or the other gains sufficient market share and flexibility that the developers of the other can make the switch fairly painlessly.

        • They use different libraries. You can run the apps if you have the libs, but you don't get the desktop integration. You can run plain old X apps on gnome and kde.

        • Are Gnome and KDE completely compatible? If I write an application with Gnome specifically in mind, will KDE run the application as I wrote it? If not, that's why having two will make it less likely to succeed. If so, I stand corrected?

          If you mean 'Can I run both Gnome and KDE applications side by side?' then the answer is a definite Yes. If you mean 'Can I cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop between the Gnome and KDE applications?' then the answer is 'Mostly'. Is it a good idea to do this if you have a small hard drive and 32Mb of memory then the answer is NO.

          Gnome has its own underlying architecture for communicating between Gnome apps - based on CORBA. KDE chose to build a Corba-like system called KParts. Most interoperability issues revolve around getting these two infrastructures to work together. In order to have both KDE and Gnome apps up and running, you need to have both infrastructures active (this is not a problem, it just requires more resources).

          There is also no requirement to run KDE apps under KWM either - Sawmill works fine. I suspect Enlightenment does too, along with IceWM, but I don't have any personal experience of those setups.

          Cheers,

          Toby Haynes

    • Linux can have as many GUIs as it wants. I think it's the role of the distros to pick one as their default, and push it. To some extent that's already happening with RedHat/Gnome, Mandrake/KDE and others. Since RedHat is the dominant distro, I would have to assume that Gnome will become the "standard" Linux GUI.
    • I used to say that I thought it unlikely that Windows was truly any easier to learn or use than KDE/Gnome for the truly computer illiterate. That the perceived difficulty in using linux desktops was because the user was used to Windows, and anything different would seem hard to use. I would point out how so many Windows users say Macs were hard to use, while Mac users think Windows was hard to use.

      But now, I have seen the proverbial mother (not mine, since she is quite computer literate and happy in both windows and linux environments), and I can say for certain that the Windows GUI is NOT easy to use, easy to learn, or at all obvious for useful definition of the word. By your own account, Windows is a failure.

      But clearly that is not the case (that Windows GUI is a complete failure), but so it would also be that the linux desktops are not either. They are in fact not easy to use for your computer-illeterate grandmother, but nothing is. They suit quite nicely for anyone who is capable of generalizing enough to drive both a Tercel and a Suburban.

      And this is true, despite the multitude of GUIs for Linux. So, in three words, you're completely wrong.
    • Linux needs a single GUI. Be it Gnome, KDE, or whatever. Pick one, build it right. Follow Microsoft's example and do extensive usability tests, and make it easy and intuitive for the user to use it.

      Hey! That sounds like AtheOS! [atheos.cx] I havn't tried sitting my mother in front of my AtheOS box and letting her go yet, but I think i'll get IPTables set up on my Linux box and give it a go. I reckon I can have her doing the basics in a few minutes.

    • If we did, GEM (for those of you old enough to remember what it was) and OS/2 would be competing with Windows.

      It's funny you should say that, because one of the reasons I prefer OS/2 over Linux is because of its GUI. The WorkPlace Shell is powerful, attractive, consistent, and still light years ahead of anything else today. Almost every OS/2 application has some integration with the desktop. I can't say the same about Linux. Most Linux GUI apps don't add icons or menu items to my desktop, because there are just too many different desktops (GNOME, KDE, whatever), and it's just too hard to support them all.

      And it's not like this is a hard problem to solve. All you need to do is define a standard for adding icons and menu items, and then incorporate that standard into every desktop environment. But of course, all of the Linux desktop developers are too busy competing against each other to work together and solve to a common problem. Until that changes, Linux will never have a chance at winning the desktop.

      • Very good point. I think this also falls in with the lack of good installers for Linux apps. The installer needs to just run, install the software, add an icon and be done. When this can be done in Linux, it will be 90% of the way to being a viable desktop replacement for Windows.


        Other than that, it's not the 'usability' of the window manager that is stopping Linux from being a good Desktop OS. There is another ability that Linux lacks that will keep it from ever being a viable desktop.
        Take for instance my laptop. It has a built in pointer device that is recognized as a PS/2 device. If I install Linux [in this case Mandrake 8, though I use Slackware for servers], it recognizes this pointing device and configures X to use it.

        Now say I decide I'm sick of using the keyboard 'clit' and want to use my USB mouse. In Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K, I just plug in the mouse, and it is instantly usable. But not so in Linux. I have to edit the XF86Config and restart the X server in order to use my USB mouse. This is NOT something that a non-techie 'mom' is going to be able or willing to do, and until Linux[X] can see the switch automatically, it's not going to make much headway against Windows.

        There's also the "mostly non-existant, but occassionally working but quite convoluted support for wheel mice" issue. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Usually not with my MS Optical Intellimouse. These things need to be seen and configured automatically and work with ALL the apps in X. Not to mention support for *ALL* the buttons on the mouse. Even when I get the wheel support working, I get three buttons plus the wheel. The 2 buttons on the side are then useless.


        It's little things like this that Windows does well and automatically that keep Linux from getting any serious desktop usage from the average Joe. The main funcionality of the various window managers is NOT the problem.


        Ender

    • You just explained precisely why Linux does need multiple GUIs. If you make a GUI that your mother/father/grandparents can use, then little of the existing Linux base will want to use it. There's a lot of people who think the Win9x-type interface, which Gnome and KDE copy, is somehow "normal" and ok. These people need something like KDE or Gnome just so they can avoid having to learn new things. But this results in a desktop which, just like Windows Explorer, is hard and awkward to use. There should be at least two common desktops: at least one (there's currently two) for the Win9x refugees, and at least one for getting stuff done when you're in a hurry.

    • Linux needs a single GUI

      So hold a book to each side of your face and look at your monitor. There. See, Linux has only one GUI. Feel better?

      Open Source isn't about standardization, its about choices. If something isn't quite right, you can tweak it until its what you are looking for.

      Assume for a minute that the entire Linux population standardized on RedHat's distribution running, say GNOME. This is good. Now when a newbies learns "Linux", s/he will be comfortable sitting down at any "Linux" box. The world will rejoice. All is great.

      Now assume for a minute that I, as the Uberhacker that I am, decide I'm not quite happy. GNOME sucks, I want something better. I take "Linux" and change the GUI environment and create... "GarvIX". One of two scenarios may play out:

      • The RedHat commando squad breaks down my door and drags my ass off to court screaming "Thou shall not hold your own opinions. Thou shall use what we tell you."
      • I'm happy and the newbies are happy too since they can still sit down at any "Linux" box and know what to do, this "GarvIX" thing though is a whole different matter. Time goes on and I show people "GarvIX" and people like it. Other Uberhackers start using. Next thing you know, we have "GarvIX" conventions. Before long everyone is using it except my grandma.

      The point is that with standardization, someone controls the standard. Migrations to something better only happen when the entity deems it was time. Its called a monopoly [microsoft.com].

      The other point is that "GarvIX" IS different. Just as RedHat/KDE, RedHat/GNOME, Debian/KDE, Debian/GNOME, etc. are also different. If it makes you feel better think of your operating system as Redhat/GNOME/GNU/Linux or ReGNOGL for short. Go forth and make everyone use it.

      • Now assume for a minute that I, as the Uberhacker that I am, decide I'm not quite happy. GNOME sucks, I want something better. I take "Linux" and change the GUI environment and create... "GarvIX". One of two scenarios may play out:
        >>>>>>>>>
        Actually, in the ideal scenario, it would be the APIs that would be standardized, not the desktop environment. So you'd just write GarvIX to implement the standard API and then distribute it to all your followers. This is the same concept as OpenGL, btw. You write to the API, and the implementation is totally up to you. Of course, if you don't like the API, you just have to deal with it. After all, you don't see people rewriting OpenGL do you? (D3D is a subject for another discussion...)
    • Linux needs a single GUI.
      Perhaps I have been trolled, here, but... Why the hell does Linux need to take over the desktop market, and why does it need a single GUI to do that? Linux is doing just fine, by my book, and I really couldn't care less about the rest of the desktop market. Linux is not a product that you need to market, and it's not a business plan -- it's the result of countless programmers scratching itches. So don't presume that you can attach to it your vision of where it should go.

      Back to the topic at hand, one of the reasons I stopped using Windows and MacOS is that I was tired of having to do things their way. I happen to use Enlightenment and Blackbox a lot, because I like they way they work, and I don't use Gnome or KDE because I don't like the way they work. What makes you think that it is possible to make a single interface (graphical or not) that will please everybody? The fact that you can choose and then (in most cases) heavily customize your interface is one of the best things about UNIX and Linux. The window manager is just another user-level application, and it's nice to be able to run whichever user-level application suits you best.

      Pick one, build it right.
      Define "right". You're not going to be able to make an interface that is all things to all people. What more likely would happen is that you would force your assumptions about how computers should be used onto everyone else, which is the thinking behind many of the things that I hate about Windows. Why do you want to repeat those mistakes?

      Instead, try accepting the fact that people are different and situations are different, and it's non-trivial to make something that works for them all.

      Follow Microsoft's example and do extensive usability tests, and make it easy and intuitive for the user to use it.
      Where do you get this idea of an "intuitive" interface? (To paraphrase someone whom I forget) The only intuitive interface is the nipple; after that everything is learned. I also think that you are making the common mistake of confusing "ease of use" and "ease of learning". The many possibilities presented by the command line may be more difficult to learn than a "wizard", but in the long run it's easier to use (try aliasing or scripting or cronning a wizard).

      I've always hoped that Linux could crack the desktop market. I want to see it compete with MS. I want to be writing applications for Linux. The problem is, I just don't think that's ever going to happen. There are too many factions, and no single one appears to have a huge advantage. All of these GUIs are being written by programmers, for programmers.
      Leaving aside this insane idea that programmers all come together and work in harmony for free to write things that do not interest them... what is it about the existence of multiple window managers (let's not use the overly-general term 'GUI') that precludes acceptance of the operating system? Does the existence of multiple operating systems keep people from buying PCs? No, most people just use the OS (Windows) that comes bundled. In the window manager/desktop environment arena, most people will simple use the one that's presented by the distribution (RedHat, probably) that they install.

      So, perhaps, instead of worrying about making a single interface to please all people, we should try to make Red Hat choose a default that will look exactly like Windows so we won't scare the poor wittle new users, of whom we don't think enough to trust to figure out something new like they once figured out Windows. Fortunately, I think Red Hat knows enough about its business to work towards using a non-threatening and easy-to-learn interface as the default. Give it time.

      Alright, enough irrational ranting -- the "We need a single perfect (Distribution|Window Manager|Shell|Programming Language|...)" argument just really ticks me off, as I highly value freedom and diversity. Sure it's inconvenient and confusing sometimes, but I'm glad we live in a world where people are (to some degree at least) free to go their own way and choose a tool to suit the situation or their tastes.
      • > Why does Linux need to take over the desktop?

        Well, that depends. If you mean "take over" literally, as in, be the only one, then I don't think it does.

        But if you mean, why does Linux need to get easy to use, and be reasonable replacement for Windows, then I think this is very important.

        1) Much of the world is far poorer than North America/Western Europe/Japan. An old P75 with 32MB would be server-class to much of the world's population. MS-Windows will never cater to this market. If you run Windows on that hardware it's either pathetically slow, or pathetically obsolete. Linux makes this hardware capable of connecting to the modern internet (perl, php, apache, postgreSQl, IPv6, and more).

        2) Monopolies are bad. MS wants .NET to take over, and likely to provide all content on a pay-per-use basis. They also want a piece of all online financial transactions. If the only platforms out there are Windows, people aren't going to have much choice... Ditto with things like office suites, and control over your work. If the only way to edit a file is Word 2005 over .NET, what'll you do when MS decides you've violated a license and shuts you down remotely until you prove otherwise? If there's a perfectly functional alternative that you can place generic office staff at, this type of control is much harder to exert.

        3) Freedom. Microsoft's only complaint about hardware-level content-access-controls is that they didn't have enough say in the implementation. Today, DVD players only come for Windows (and Mac, a bit) because of market forces. It's possible that in five years they would only be legal on an MS platform. (To legally access the access-control circuits, you'd need to send the right auth codes, which thanks to the DMCA, only an MS OS can send...) If another platform takes hold and a significant number of users adopt it (10% or more) companies and governments will think twice before making something Windows only.

        I'd never think of forcing someone to run Linux, or any other OS. My only concern is that in a few years they might not have a choice.

        I can honestly see MS making a case that "Any content protection can be cracked, on a general purpose computer" and getting government support for a computer than contains Windows 2005 in ROM, preventing anyone from having any direct access to the hardware. It'd also be likely that any attempt to swap the ROM, or bypass the OS would be a DMCA violation because, of course, the only reason to access the hardware directly is to do something the manufacturer didn't intend and that's obviously illegal.

        Then there's the whole economic thing... Today I can get a mobo and CPU for about the same price as a 10GB HD, the smallest I can find. If I leave out a HD, it chops the cost of a basic system to 2/3. Thus a cheap Duron system, with 128MB of RAM, is around $300. Toss in an ethernet card with boot ROM and you can remote boot. Run apps off of a remote X-Server, and you can bypass CPU limitations of the client PC.

        Thus for $350 or so, in total, I can setup an office workstation with a word processor, spreadsheet, database, 3d model editor, 2d graphics editor, email, browsing, compiler/IDE, etc.

        I couldn't even buy a copy of MS Office for that price, or the OS, let alone the hardware required to run either 2k or XP (9x OSes aren't stable enough, imho).

        This will only be possible (and legal) if MS doesn't get its way. To prevent that, we need to get people using Linux, so you aren't looked at oddly when you suggest a non-MS solution.

        btw, just to smack anyone who says something about MS's terminal services... Think of the costs. Unix is cheaper to run, cheaper to buy, and cheaper to admin. While technically MS could do this, it wouldn't work as well, as quickly, or cheaply. Setup time on the unix version is also much lower.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yes there need to be standards, but a lot of users like me are scared of this copying of Windows crap because people are familiar with it. Both KDE and Gnome suffer from these (to me) fatal problems:

      We need consistent, tested support for point-to-type. I have never seen a single user (on either Linux or NT) who has used point-to-type for a day or so switch back. It is obviously superior and the only thing stopping it is the unfamiliarity of users with it. I would like to see point-to-type be the default in any Linux desktop. Let's see a little "innovation" instead of this sheep-like copying of Windoze and Mac!

      Stop raising the windows when I click on them! This is less obvious but killer problem. Both KDE and Gnome will raise any window on a click. If I want to raise the window I will click on the title or border, or on an empty area of the window!! This foul behavior forces programmers to use horrifying kludges like tiled windows or "MDI" and then everybody bitches about the poor or buggy toolkit support for these, while failing to realize that these are horrid workarounds for an extremely simple and basic design flaw! This misfeature was removed from X in 1984, dammit, and we are somehow reintroducing it by copying stupid Windows into the X window managers! All old X window managers did this correctly, this disease is killing the ability for innovative user interface designs to be made. Note that it is trivial for an application to raise it's own windows and thus act like Windows if it wants to.

      (Gnome/Sawfish can have the click-to-raise turned off, but it is totally mysterious how to do it and requires changing key and mouse bindings. KDE is much worse, it appears to be impossible to turn click-to-raise off without also turning it off for the title bars, I have tried quite a bit).

      Stop raising the "parent" when a "child" window is raised. This additional Windows-copied foul behavior is almost as bad as the click-to-raise behavior in preventing overlapping window interfaces from being implemented. For the morons out there who are designing this stuff: yes a child window must be "above" it's parent, but that does not mean that there cannot be windows inbetween them! Both KDE and Gnome have this behavior and it cannot be turned off, pretty much forcing us to make *all* windows children, or *none*. This problem seems to exist in older CDE window managers too. But FVWM got it right, and there is no reason you morons cannot do it, too.

      You may think I am bitching, but I think the above are simple, basic, design errors in how the window managers work, and these simple errors are the main reason there is resistance to a "standard Linux desktop".

  • Groan - more alpha blending (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matthias Wiesmann ( 221411 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @10:08AM (#2203760) Homepage Journal


    While it might rejoince some that everybody is jumping the alpha-blending anti-aliasing bandwagon behind Apple's OS X, what annoys me it that they do not copy the intelligent concept behind Aqua: display PDF.


    What Apple has done is define an abstraction for graphical applications. What other copy is some of the nice uses of those abstractions: anti-aliasing and alpha-blending.


    It's really a shame the only thing they understand is the surface...

    • Hey guy- people were doing alpha blending and altialiasing long, long before OS X came out. Believe me, "display PDF" is not the origination of those concepts. Further, Raster was demonstrating early working concepts of how alpha and antialiasing would work in E17 long before OS X was available.
    • What do you mean, brought on by OS X? Windows has had anti-aliased fonts for at least a couple of years now.
    • Perhaps you have not heard of the Render extension?

      Alpha-blending and anti-aliasing are just some of the symptoms of a more powerful back end.

      It is you who is looking at the surface.

  • Sexy. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @10:15AM (#2203793)
    E17 very well might be the technology that makes advanced drawing APIs popular on desktop applications. NeXT never really made it very far into the market, and OS-X, while popular, is still pretty slow. I know 10.1 is supposed to be faster, but there is only so much you can do with software rendering! My only concern with EVAS is whether or not it will hurt the performance of windowed 3D apps (like 3D modelers).

    As an aside, this Rasterman guy is the only person in the OSS community that has any asthetic sense. While the Mandrake guys are busy designing lavander icons, the SuSE people are busy with the (ugly) Lizard motif, and the KDE2 guys are trying to make their desktop look like something out of Mattel, E genuinely looks good. I know there are themes, but the "look" of KDE or Mandrake are unescapable. Mandrake freezes you into installing their freaky purple desktop by making every X app depend on mandrake_desk. (No, I don't have the time to try to figure out the menu config file format and change it back!) And with KDE2, everytime something SIGs out, a cute little dragon comes up to inform you that your app crashed. Here's my theory. The KDE project is trying to capitalize on the success of the PaperClip from Hell (TM).

  • Right pew wrong church (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dar ( 15755 )
    Easy to use is not the issue for Linux. Most users could get used to E or kde or whatever manager. Heck, lots of people got by with DOS for years before Windows 3.1 came along.

    The problem with Linux is that it's just too darn hard to install - if you want sound, scanner, email, games etc. working.

    • As long as your machine is relatively recent, Mandrake's installer seems to handle it with grace.

      Scanners, email and games are actually no harder under Linux, I've seen... most problems stem from a flawed system base that's being built on, and a good installer should take care of that.

    • I'd have to agree with that - my wife easily figured out the Gnome panel and menu system which is more-or-less a W95 workalike (OK, OK, there's a lot more neat stuff, but for her it's W95 all over again) and she has no problems using Linux for email, web browsing, and word processing, but installing it would be something that she would never do. Not that she'd install Windows either, but of course most Windows users never have to.

      • but of course most Windows users never have to

        Bingo! So why hold Linux to the same standard as Windows when it comes to ease of installation? In my experience, as of RH 7.1, Linux has surpassed Windows in both ease of installation and time to install. Yes, there are some hardware combos that will trip up even modern Linux distros, but the same can be said of Win2K & XP. On average I find Linux easier to install than Windows.

        I suspect that almost anybody can pop an install CD into the drive, boot the box, click the Install [Gnome|KDE] Workstation button and click OK. That's just about all it takes nowadays given that you don't have any hardware that it doesn't recognize. I know that most of us would want to tweak our install quite a bit more than that, but doing a base install is pretty trivial these days.

        I think this whole "Linux-is-hard-to-install" myth needs to die. It was once that way, but the times they are a-changin, folks.
        • "Bingo! So why hold Linux to the same standard as Windows when it comes to ease of installation? "

          The whole installation issue is a non-issue. Windows XP still uses the scary DOS5/Win3.1-style text mode bluescreens for example, and that won't hurt it's sales one bit.

          Another non-issue is the GUI itself. Both KDE and Gnome are pretty much more than 'good enough'. Don't forget that people happily standardized on Windows 3.1 back in the day, even though it's GUI was terrible compared to all alternatives. (Examples of your wife/girlfriend/little sister using a Unix GUI are pointless because they are not doing any admin.)

          The huge issue affecting Linux/Unix adoption is post-install configuration. This is where the ease-of-use advocates are running smackdab into the Unix traditionalists' love of vi and flatfiles and custom compiles. Until someone can plug a printer/scanner/mouse in and have it 'just work', the OEMs that ship most copies of Windows will want nothing to do with Linux because they will get destroyed on support costs.
          • I've found that linux's install is easy because of the better hardware support out of the box!

            Q: how many windows boxes have you installed which require *NO* driver downloads?

            Q: how many linux boxes have you installed which need a patch to work?

            sure there's ata100 and such... but compare the set of hardware devices that linux 2.4 installs on compared to win2k with no driver downloads
  • It's nice to see E still moving along. The more Desktop/WM's we have the better off we'll be. One of the things that seems to be lost in the ranting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussions about "The Linux Desktop" is that with all the different GUI options available we can make Linux look like anything we want and thus it will fit into any environment. If you need it to look like WinXX [qvwm.org], CDE [xfce.org], Mac [biglobe.ne.jp] or Bob The Builder [nickjr.com]'s desktop it can.

  • Kudos to E! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Zues1 ( 265572 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @10:33AM (#2203874)
    I have been using "e" from Dr14 on, Even when trapped in WIN32 hell, I emulated the Look and feel of "E" under Litestep.(even thought there was a win32 port E-Seance) DR17 is really really fast. And very impressive. If you do a CVS build and give it a honest go, I think you will find that it is much faster than your current windows manager. Even runing evas_test app shows you the differance in rendering technics. I am very Impressed with the latest offerings from the E team, But I agree that new logo blows!

    My two Cents!

  • First, Enl. has a beatuful feature - translucent windows while moving them.
    Second, MacOSX has another beautifle thing - translucent windows while working normal.
    No fake-translucent like gnome-terminal (dimmed root window pixmap), but really, really translucent.
    I hope that I will be able to see xterm with tcpdump running through xterm with BitchX soon.
    • As I understand in the past this was very hard to do with X. The program itself would have to do screen captures and blend itself with the windows it was over.

      The way E does the translucent move, is when you start to move a window, E does a screen grab of that one, unmaps the real window, then you move the screen grap, when you put it back down it remaps the real window in the right place. Try moving a window that has some motion in it. All action stops when you start to move.

      With the render exention now in X11 it will be a little easier to do blending, saw Netscape with translucent menus at the 2000 ALS. But will all E17s widgets being rendered in OpenGL they should be able to neat things with eachother, but I still think there'll be some limits between windows.

  • Taking a look at Raster's EVAS (Neon Genesis? Perhaps he's trying for GUI instrumentality) - it looks like a less ambitions version of Apples' DisplayPDF and NeXT's DisplayPS. Both of those systems go further than what raster suggests with evas.

    Evas proposes "canvases" as core objects that store information about the state of a graphical object - so that when redrawing needs to be done, the graphics displayed by a window may be easily and quickly redrawn without the client application worrying about it.

    This is exactly what DisplayPDF/PS does in a more elegant way. Postscript is a powerful complete (as in turing complete) language which is optimized to express the structure of graphical objects.

    In the interview, Raster calls OSX "pretty". Either he doesn't know about Apple's display technology, or he doesn't want to comment on their system - which is very similar, and more advanced, than what he is suggesting with evas.

    -Laxitive

    • Re:evas? displayPDF? instrumentality! (Score:5, Informative)

      by raster ( 13531 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @11:30AM (#2204150) Homepage
      the fact that evas has is "canvas" is nothing new. it's an ancient idea. the fact that i did start it off simple and dind't go completely bezerk with abilities and features (display postscript, display pdf) - just kept the core and basics, meant that i could actually finish it in time to use it for writing the app i needed it for: e 0.17 AND it menat i could also accelerate it via multiple back end rendering paths. it's quiteodd too the apeolpe assume it is ONLY opengl - in fact i woudl not suggest using the gl backed rendering engine on anything but an nvidia driver because so far no driver i have found comes even clsoe to being stable enough or complete enough. but nvidia is about the closest. my own software rendering (imlib2 does that for evas) which is quite fast is what i normally use for evas - so you don't NEED hardware. you can use normal X11 pixmaps and X primitives as a rendering back end for evas too. this keeps it simple - but still makes it able to be extended easily, and has allowed me to make it work and work well in a relatively short period of time with a relatively small amount of resources.

      that is what the power is.. and it can be easily extended. new object types can be added - new things like having clipping paths could be done, extra object attributes can eb added that affect their display.. but the more complex the feature the harder it is to support in the back end rendering... and the less likely it is to be able to be hardware accelerated and instead have to be done more slowly in software - even the software optimizations are lezz liekly to be effective the more complex it is. thus i choose to only impliment what i really need - and that can go a surprisingly long way :) the end result is a canvas that is fast.. hardware accelerated or not, that does its primitives well and does the job i need... and can be improved in time with no effect on the programs using it other than positive ones (new features... or faster & better quality rendering etc.)

      evas solves the problem in an elegant way... and rememebr it isn't the same as dps/dpdf - its a canvas. that is a different concept.

      i also know a bit more about apples display technology than you think - it defintiely is pretty - and yes... i'm not going to comment much in detail on it as i dont, imho, think i know enough details to make a very concise sumamry of it and get it right 100%. but i know enough to know what they are doing (approximately) and why etc.

      evas is a different technology - it is much closer to the java canvas, tk canavs, gnome or qt canvases. it can be extended and wrapped and made more pwoerful with layers ontop that use it as an optimized rendering system... and that is incendentally one of the side projects happening right now :)

      anyway.. just thought i'd comment a bit - don't want to flame - just want to fill in the gaps ininformation that wasn't provided for you before :)

  • Just out of curiosity, are there any movements out there to clone OS/X's interface? I've sworn never to give money to Apple, but I might be interested in playing around with a clone someday. :)

  • Anyone doing any real UI innovation? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by omf ( 517132 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2001 @12:29PM (#2204410)
    Although pretty desktops are a nice thing, I haven't seen anyone do anything really new in user interfaces for some time. Microsoft keeps hiding more features behind right-mouse-clicks and animated menu pop-ups. Apple, sadly, emulates Microsoft more and more every day. Linux UIs are splintered into so many variations that it's impossible to keep track of which are going to go anywhere.

    So - the question remains: who's doing anything more than cosmetic work on modern user interfaces? Several people have commented on the fact that it's a huge hurdle for a truly non-technical person to understand any of the existing UIs. I completely agree.

    Raise your hand if you've tried getting your parents to understand how to use a desktop UI (those with parents younger than 40 need not apply...) And I don't mean just to memorize how to perform a particular action, but to really know it well enough to go off and do things you may have not taught them how to do. I've tried, and friends of mine have tried, and we've all come to the same conclusion: UIs have gone virtually nowhere since early days of the Macintosh.

    So we've got alpha blending, anti-aliasing, 32-bit color, and more fonts than you can shake a stick at. That makes things very pretty, but it doesn't actually help you accomplish much more. It doesn't make computers any easier to understand for anyone, techies or non-techies.

    I don't think anything will deserve the title of "Next Big Thing" until it actually does something new, and prettier graphics ain't new...

    • So - the question remains: who's doing anything more than cosmetic work on modern user interfaces? Several people have commented on the fact that it's a huge hurdle for a truly non-technical person to understand any of the existing UIs. I completely agree.

      All these UI designs are natural extensions of previous ones. It's probably better to extend a flawed interface that everyone's familiar with instead of building a better one from scratch. Anyone looking to build an interface should probably keep one eye on Microsoft's manual of style regardless of the platform. They key thing is to keep things easy and the users at ease.

      The most important connection between contemporary UIs is their reliance on the screen/mouse/keyboard combination. Compare how you use a computer to how you do anything else in life and it becomes obvious how much of a burden these UIs place on the user. It really isn't natural, we've just adapted. And so to answer your question, I don't think we'll see a major jump in usability until an avenue appears that will allow us to at least ditch the mouse. Touchscreen or similiar is probably the next step - as this technology becomes cheaper and more common, applications will start to be written to better deal with this kind of interface. Beyond that is probably voice recognition, that alone would make the Microsoft Start menu almost unnecessary. Beyond that... I can't even guess. It's Sci-fi territory.

      For the forseable future, those of us who work with computers in a technical capacity will probably keep our own interfaces just out of habit. The rest of the world will most certainly move in a simpler direction, towards computers you can talk to and poke at.

      • Thank you! That's what nobody seems to understand. Windows's interface is the easiest for the sole reason that that's what everyone knows. I'm not sure that most /.'ers remember this, but an entire generation of normal people used CLI machines to do regular business work. It wasn't any more difficult for them than GUIs are today. What is easy is what you understand, its as simple as that.
    • Well, can you think of anyting new? Xerox/PARC basically invented this whole GUI thing eons ago, and there haven't been any significant changes to that paradigm. Buttons, menues windows and icons - everything else is just details.

      Look at it this way - we have two kinds of interfaces; GUI and command line. What innovations have people made with command line interfaces? We have all sorts of new shells since the first VT-100 terminal rolled off the production line. With some nifty utilities, bash is more than good enough for doing just about anything with a computer (except looking at pictues and such, but there are framebuffer viewers nowadays). But shells like bash, and the utilities they use, are still regular old command line systems. They work just fine on VT-100 and 320 terminals. The paradigm hasn't changed, and it doesn't really need to.

      It's possible that the same is true of GUIs. We can dress them up and build new utilities, but the underlying assumptions have remained the same for more than two decades. Given the history and continued usefullness of command line systems, I predict that GUIs as we know them will exist for a long, long time to come. When something new comes along, it will not be a GUI - it will be something else entierly. Maybe it will be a 3D enviornment, like in Snow Crash. Maybe it will be a speech based system, like in Star Trek.

      But even in Snow Crash and Star Trek, GUI and command line enviornments still exist.

      The GUI was invented because command line enviornments had weaknesses. GUIs never (at least not in enviornments that should be taken seriously) replaced command line systems because GUIs have their own weaknesses, and those weaknesses happen to be where the command line way of doing things is strong. When something new comes along, it will probably be to get around the weaknesses of GUIs, but if it really is different, it will have it's own weaknesses where GUIs are probably strong. Some people might bemone the new thing, as people bemoned GUIs because they waste resources and whatnot, but those people are probably users of systems that don't let you choose the style of interface for the problem at hand (*caugh* windows *caugh*).
  • thats all i can say. i use enlightenment all the damn time and have been snapping at my bit to see it ready. the one thing that i love most about E is that it is as minimal or monstrous as i need it to be. the icon box alone was a stroke of genius. in my opinion anyway (which doesn't count for much)
  • I think too many people focus too much on "big" things rather than things that work. The next "big thing" will not be a desktop environment with objects that can be remotely embedded into PalmPilots over an infrared link. The next "big thing" will not be a totally different graphics model ala DPDF. The next "big thing" will not be a 3D interface with force feedback effects. All of that BS is just intellectual masturbation for programmers who have no real work to do.

    The next big thing will be a users desktop. A desktop that is configurable enough, powerful enough, easy enough, nice looking, cohesive, efficient, fast, and stable. To date, no such desktop exists. KDE and GNOME are slow, Windows is unstable and (fairly) ugly, QNX and Be lack useful features like object models, and all of the X window managers are not cohesive enough. The guy who manages to make a desktop which does all of the above will be a hero to the masses, even if the intellectuals chide him for having no vision.

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