love lxde

Story: The Little Desktop That CouldTotal Replies: 23
Author Content
ab1

Oct 19, 2011
10:22 PM EDT
Love LXDE, love the traditional desktop, hope it always remains an option. I use it with Peppermint 2.
helios

Oct 20, 2011
12:00 PM EDT
We're going to be looking at this for HeliOS. Given the fact that both Canonical and Gnome want to impose their "vision" on us, the lxde option is attractive.

My suggestion for those who want to impose their visions on others....

Purple microdot. You can tell us all about it later.

Then again, given the functionality of Unity or G3, or lack thereof; I would suspect they have discovered the wonders of Lysergic acid diethylamide on their own.

Can you say "little pink bunnies"?

I knew you could.
tuxchick

Oct 20, 2011
12:04 PM EDT
Go ask Alice.
dinotrac

Oct 20, 2011
2:39 PM EDT
When she's tall or when she's small?
kennethh

Oct 23, 2011
2:39 PM EDT
Quoting:"I really don't understand how the leaderships of three fiercely independent, highly competitive operating systems abruptly and simultaneously began to pursue a single goal, the total iconification of the desktop so that its screen would resemble an over-sized phone."


It's beyond strange, borderline conspiratorial stuff for sure.

Nice that helios will stick to a tried and true desktop that meets the wants of an ordinary person. I just hope other distributions follow suit and forks start to emerge that won't sink within 2-3 months.

Grishnakh

Oct 23, 2011
9:46 PM EDT
kennethh wrote:It's beyond strange, borderline conspiratorial stuff for sure.


"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity."

There's no conspiracy here, it's just a case of plain ol' jumping on the bandwagon.
jdixon

Oct 23, 2011
9:51 PM EDT
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Except that, by and large, these don't seem to be either stupid or incompetent people.
Grishnakh

Oct 24, 2011
3:45 PM EDT
jdixon wrote:Except that, by and large, these don't seem to be either stupid or incompetent people.


http://www.despair.com/meetings.html (I saw one years ago that was even better, with the same tagline but the picture showed about a dozen mice all caught in the same trap. Wish I could find it now.)

Organizations are almost always stupid. Just look at MS; they've been making utterly stupid blunders for years and years: ActiveX, Zune, heck their entire marketing division couldn't sell water in the desert, contrast that with Apple whose marketing can sell ice to Eskimos. One of the three here is MS with Win8/Metro. Gnome isn't much better; a bunch of software geeks who've been jumping on the bandwagon for a decade now with their "usability studies", making things "less confusing", etc. The only organization that's been making a lot of successful moves in this bunch is Apple, and if you look at them, they're actually the most conservative from what I can tell: they have their touchscreen UI on their iPhone of course, but are they doing that on OS X? Their latest seems to be making some small moves along those lines, but overall it isn't really that different from the previous versions of OS X. It's Gnome3 and Win8 that, compared to their previous versions, are a giant change. Apple's just doing what it's always done, marketing to non-power users/non-technical people/people who like easy-to-use and shiny things even if it means locking them in and restricting their activities, and the other two are jealous of their success in that market and trying to copy them, and doing a poor job of it. Both of them are missing some important factors, namely that they're playing in different markets (in which Apple is NOT successful), and their lame attempts at copying Apple are just going to hurt them in the places they're strong at. Gnome is a Linux DE, and Linux users simply aren't like Apple users, they're almost the diametric opposite. Trying to make your UI look and work like Apple's, along with all the restrictions, isn't going to gain you many fans in the Linux crowd, which tends to be full of highly technical users and others who like "getting their hands dirty". MS is strong in the business market, which despite all its efforts, Apple simply hasn't done very well in. Businesses don't like change, and changing Windows too much too fast is going to hurt them; just look at the horrifically bad corporate adoption rate of Vista when that came out; none of the businesses upgraded to that, they just stuck with XP until Win7 came out. With the Metro UI, Win8 is going to be an even bigger dud than Vista.
tuxchick

Oct 24, 2011
3:50 PM EDT
So what's the difference between Vista and later Windowses? Not much that I can see, just more lipstick on the same bloaty pig. With apologies to pigs. It's still the best and most efficient portal into the World Wide Botnet and unnecessary hardware upgrades.
Grishnakh

Oct 24, 2011
4:01 PM EDT
@tuxchick: From what I hear, they fixed a lot of the performance problems that plagued Vista. Plus, computing hardware caught up, so fancy UI effects aren't the performance-killer they once were. Here's an article that goes into some detail:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/152895/windows_7_first_look_a...

One thing they touch on was UAC, where Vista would ask "are you sure?" for every little thing, which apparently really annoyed people.

Do the changes make it great? Certainly not. But apparently not as horrible as Vista, which was largely reviled. I guess this one's "good enough" so people stopped complaining.
Fettoosh

Oct 24, 2011
9:12 PM EDT
Quoting:where Vista would ask "are you sure?" for every little thing, which apparently really annoyed people.


Coming in Windows 8, users won't be annoyed anymore sine the questions will be going to the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) to pose the question to the BIOS. They will be up the creek without a paddle since they won't have any say at all.



Steven_Rosenber

Oct 24, 2011
10:13 PM EDT
I had users -- in my own company -- complaining about one of my sites not working right. Yep, turns out they were running Vista and IE 7. Can't a player catch a break?
GaryBaxter

Oct 25, 2011
12:55 AM EDT
Helios said: "We're going to be looking at this for HeliOS. Given the fact that both Canonical and Gnome want to impose their "vision" on us, the lxde option is attractive.

My suggestion for those who want to impose their visions on others....

Purple microdot. You can tell us all about it later."

Really? I just lost all respect for you. Unity is just one DE among many, and no one is forcing you to use it. So in effect, all distros are imposing their vision on us. The lxde devs are imposing their vision, along with kde, gnome, and any other DE. People like you make me sick. If you were being forced to use something, then I could understand, but Ubuntu and any other distro can use ANY DE. Now you can go back to playing with yourself while looking at pics of RMS.
tracyanne

Oct 25, 2011
5:18 AM EDT
@GaryBaxter, does someone need a hug?
dinotrac

Oct 25, 2011
5:32 AM EDT
@GaryBaxter -

Quoting:Now you can go back to playing with yourself while looking at pics of RMS.


Not big on research and facts, are you?

Never mind your ignorance of such a statement WRT to helios. You're not required to know about him or what he does.

But...

Did you read the freakin' article?

It centers around Lubuntu -- clue alert!! -- a version of Ubuntu. Gosh! There's that freedom thing.

Maybe, just maybe, he was referring to desktop environments instead of distribution. Yeah, I now that "Canonical and Gnome" might have been confusing given that one is the company behind the Ubuntu distribution and the other is both an organization behind a desktop environment and the desktop environment itself, but...

ya know, Canonical is also the organization behind Unity, so...

a little actual reasoning might have gotten you to where you needed to be.













jdixon

Oct 25, 2011
11:42 AM EDT
> ...a little actual reasoning might have gotten you to where you needed to be.

Always the optimist, aren't you Dino?
dinotrac

Oct 25, 2011
11:55 AM EDT
@jdixon:

I always hold out the hope that my fellow person will be a bright and reasonable human bean.
helios

Oct 25, 2011
12:22 PM EDT
Really? I just lost all respect for you.

Really? It that all it took? I was willing to work a lot harder than it, but he!!, if that's all, I'll take it and call it a day.

Well, no...not quite yet.

Unity is just one DE among many,...

While true, it is also the DE that potentially disrupted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users. Oh, so if you don't like it, you can change to another DE? Really? I don't know about your spare time ratio, but changing the DE on my desktops is a major interruption for my 14 - 16 hour days. Canonical/Ubuntu showed not only disdain for their users by making Unity default choice in Ubuntu 11.10, they showed a complete lack of disrespect to the hundreds or thousands of individuals who helped Ubuntu become what it was.

Ubuntu states that they want to garner 200 million users. I'm guessing most of those will be new users because of the hundreds of friends and colleagues I have, maybe a handful of them are staying with Ubuntu. Again, it all comes down to a matter of trust. If I cannot trust you to produce a stable and reliable desktop, then you are not getting my loyalty, my money OR my endorsement.

The 300-400 new Linux users we create in a year at HeliOS will not see Ubuntu/Gnome3/Unity. This maybe a microscopic sliver in the scope of things but multiply that by as many people as Canonical pissed off and what you have is the most silent mass exodus in history.
tuxchick

Oct 25, 2011
12:54 PM EDT
@Grishnakh, now there is an idea for a slogan-- "New, with somewhat less suckage!" How awesome for one of the richest companies of all time.
jsusanka

Oct 25, 2011
2:10 PM EDT
"So what's the difference between Vista and later Windowses? Not much that I can see, just more lipstick on the same bloaty pig. With apologies to pigs. It's still the best and most efficient portal into the World Wide Botnet and unnecessary hardware upgrades."

Nice!! Very well said!!
Steven_Rosenber

Oct 26, 2011
12:22 AM EDT
As a frequent user of Windowses XP and 7, I can report that they are vastly more similar than different.

And Helios has to deal with real users, so I don't blame his desire to give them a desktop environment that is comfortable and familiar. It's enough of an uphill climb without having to explain Unity or GNOME 3.

LXDE and Xfce get my vote, though my desktop for one remains GNOME 2 in Debian Squeeze.
tracyanne

Oct 26, 2011
12:46 AM EDT
[quote]So what's the difference between Vista and later Windowses? Not much that I can see, ...[?quote]

Apart from the Viruses and the constant need to keep cr@ppy anti virus applications updated. The same this that annoyed me on windows 95 are still there in Windows 7, and more annoying things have been added.

The inability to actually delete anything unless you remember the correct Mouse/key combination. the fact that you must always select a scrollable area before you commence scrolling, other wise the other scrollable area you were just in will scroll ( I always forget to do this). Copy and move only work as expected when between directories on the same partition (read Disk in Microsoft new speak). You have to have a file extension that Windows will recognize, otherwise the wrong or no application will open the file. Microsoft hide the d@mn file extensions. Microsoft hide any useful information, and you have to hunt around to find out how to unhide it.

I would say Windows, whatever it's called XP, Vista, 7, is the same pig with more lipstick.
cr

Oct 27, 2011
2:10 AM EDT
The last time I was over at my folks' place to do battle with my father's regrettable XP habit, I was able to persuade the file manager to unhide known extensions (to his relief). Has that option been removed in 7?
tracyanne

Oct 27, 2011
3:12 AM EDT
@CR, it's still there same place.

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