Free Software has the advantage of offering multiple visions all at once.

Chances are, if you don't like the default your distribution offer, you can try something radically different.

"We don't need another window manager"

Funny because niri (with dankmaterialshell) just entirely changed my desktop experience.

As someone who still runs XFCE4 and likes it: I hope so. 🙂

One of the most appealing things to me about Linux and other *nixes is the fact that I can pick and choose my desktop and how it works.

I like KDE Plasma as someone who has primarily operated in Windows environments for most of their life. It gets updated frequently and new features are always being added.

On the other end of that spectrum you have stuff like XFCE whose desktop UI has been unchanged for at least a decade. Which is also good! I like XFCE a lot actually. I had a really cool skeuomorphic skin for XFCE and it was so much fun.

Then you have tiling WMs that really breaks the mold of what a desktop is. And I’m not really a fan of any of those projects because I’m used to a Windows/MacOS floating window style system. But they exist and that’s great.

I guess the point is. What makes the “free desktop” great is that I have choice. Which is why I don’t get people who argue about KDE vs GNOME or whatever. Just use what works for you!

My biggest problem with modern UX is that we've become too comfortable letting designers run amok. I don't want all these apps with their own design language. I want plain looking apps that use exactly the toolkit and color theme I choose.

Jesud, this comment section is sad. How can you be against better UX?! "I want to keep using my outdated badly designed UI and everyone who wants something else can suck it." you cannot be serious...

And of course no one watched the video

I use openbox because I don't want a new UX. I just want my computer to do what I want, I never understood people who want it to change constantly.

Whatever growth beyond current interaction models they are referencing, I want no part of. Everyone either wants to take options away and dumb things down, or display 5 separate programs on screen at once in the name of "productivity" when normal human beings simply do worse work when they multitask.

Change, or "improve" whatever you like, but let me keep what I've been using and like. I see so much horrible UX over the past 10 years from what I assume are simply just bored UX designers. They'll take something that works extremely well and just start throwing clicks at it. Drives me nuts.

I worked as a PM and ops director at a pm agency for 10 years and I can't count the number of ridiculously dumb shit that came from our UX staff that I had to go back and make them change. Most of it was "new" way of doing things.

We were building an internal time tracking app and the UX designer insisted on no "submit" button. He said it was too many clicks. I asked "then how will I know if they are done entering time". He said "if there's time in there then it's done".

I think people might be missing the point of the post a little bit. I don't think it's talking about the specifics of how your desktop environment is set up, it's talking about the desktop environment at a conceptual level. They all basically work the same way. My interpretation is that Scott Jenson is asking whether there's a better way to do things at a fundamental, i.e. completely change how a desktop environment works.

It will remain like it is now, with slight variations of the same thing, slowly converging until someone comes up with a new interface to replace touch and keyboard and mouse.

There were a lot more variation fifteen to twenty years ago, but everyone seems to have agreed on a few core common concepts that work well.

Now, if we get AR and a new input method, then that changes the constraints. It will be crazy for a while until we figure it what works, and then it will all look mostly the same again.

I don't think voice or vision will be the thing. The most promising thing right now that I'm aware of is that ring thing meta is working on. But the learning curve and what I assume will be strain it will put on your finger I think limits it.

I have thoughts, and it would be super interesting to speak to someone who's in the know about the R&D going on with AR and interfaces, but I suspect I'll just have to wait and see what people come up with.

In ten to twenty years or so. I don't think the tech for glasses or anything around them is there yet. 

I totally feel "suspicious" when people use UX/UI as a catch it all term.

User flows, research, prototyping, steps to get an action done are completely different from making a design system, defining the right composition, white space, typeface, hierarchy, accessibility. Of course, those two overlay in certain areas, but having constant wars on if rounded corners are cooler than square ones has nothing to do with either or not the software gets the task done concisely.

GNUstep. The services are the pipe of graphical user interfaces.

Does it need changing and what would it benefit?

With Linux you get the most variety, this is the OS where this discussion is least relevant, there are DEs/WMs for everyone, you can get any combination of touch first, mouse first, keyboard first, floating, tiling, stacking, kiosk mode, bars, panels, widgets, docks, applets that your hearth may desire.

What the videos you linked boil down to is:

- Detach the core system from the GUI to give developers freedom.

- Literally try anything and everything and see what sticks.

And this is literally what Linux does.

And in general those videos just bash on Windows 10 and how Gnome looked like in 2007, it's irrelevant here.

And just talking about Gnome because i feel like it and it's what i use:

Gnome is deeply keyboard centric and their team tries the most unhinged stuff, and i love it, you can literally do ANYTHING with spr key + arrows and pgup/down, but people bash on it because it also works fine on a touchscreen and somehow that makes it worse? idk sometimes it's not like the UI/UX is stuck but just people not wanting to try new stuff, they prefer to spend 5 hours setting up hyprland to end up with the same shortcuts and loosing the touchscreen usability because idk, cool internet points i guess..

Yeah it was also weird to me at the beginning to not have stuff on the desktop, or a minimize button, or a 'taskbar' or dock that's always there, but after using it for literally 5 days your understand how it's supposed to be used and realize that all those things were just extra stuff that was never needed and added extra steps. Why would yo minimize something to then maximize another program? just maximize the second one and the first one gets covered. Stuff on the desktop? pointless, it just gives you a second non-standard way to interact with files outside the file explorer and it ends up with users just putting everything there instead of using the home folder the way it's supposed to be used.

Once you understand that the 'desktop' just literally just a background image meant to look nice when nothing is open (1% of the time because what are you even doing at the computer if nothing is open) then the way the Gnome desktop does thing just feels natural, it's just you and whatever program you are using, the desktop doesn't try to get in the way or give you new ways to do stuff that other programs already do, it just presents programs in a clean way and add some useful stuff like a clock, calendar and notification tray.

Kind of lost me when I found out Scott Jenson worked on Mac's UX. Maybe it's just me, but I do not like working on a Mac. It's a totally convoluted mess in my opinion. I especially hate the fact that when you quit a program in a Mac, it's doesn't quit. You have to go to the "task bar" (or whatever it's called on a Mac) and right-click on the applications icon and choose quit again. What's the point of the minimize button in this scheme is closing an application just minimizes it? Also Finder seems about worthless to me.

I also don't like the Menu bar for applications at the top of the screen instead of connected directly to the application. if you've inadvertently lost mouse focus on the application you're working with, you've got to click on the application and then go back to the top of screen to find its menu entries.

I also don't like the Windows buttons on the left, or the fact you can't customize them to the right. I asked if there was a way to change this on a Mac and was told, "If you don't like the way a Mac works, uses Windows." So much for customization.

Admittedly I haven't used Macs much, but these are a few things I hope Linux never makes standard. If this is good "UX" I don't want it.

As somebody who as to train many high schoolers (and some doctors) on how to use a Linux desktop, I would say we are right now in a very unique time where we can try something completely different. I don't think this can be understated: iOS and Android has completely changed how end users think about navigating around their virtual space. The concept of "Window Management" is practically missing with current teens and I doubt the next generation will have the same expectations of how to control a desktop environment as most people do right now. The expectation for things to work exactly the way they did back in the 90's has never been lower.

I'm not saying we need to throw away all the current desktop paradigms but I think the time is ripe for anybody to just throw away the expectation of how a window or widget works and try something from left field and see if anybody likes it. Of course, since it's Linux, we can all have the choice if we want to use it or not.

Why not just post the transcript, rather than linking to youtube?

Are we stuck with the same writing system forever? Are we stuck with the same mathematical notation forever? Are we stuck with the same musical notation forever? Because the Latin alphabet isn't perfect, and modern mathematical notation isn't perfect, and musical notation isn't perfect either, but you know what these things all have in common? They're good enough. We accept that replacing those systems with theoretically better alternatives would not be worth the disruption it would cause and we deal with it, because perfect is the enemy of good. I eagerly await the day "UX" people learn this lesson.

As someone that uses only window managers, yes!

The biggest issue of desktop interfaces is precisely because there are so many ways to interact with them, mouse, keyboard, touchpad, stylus, touchscreen and etc. And part of the issue of the experience is interfaces trying to "work for all of them" which leads to compromises.

The real advantage of linux is precisely that there is different DEs/Windows managers so the experience can be custom tailored towards the input method. Instead, we see the experience moving towards making it more generic which leads to a compromised experience for everyone.

That guy has some interesting perspective about usability. And I think we already have some tools that are going to explosively change the desktop experience once someone finds a clever way to use them and market them that appeals to users. For example, we already have things like eye tracking and programmable display buttons that have a lot of potential but not a lot of uptake.

I'd also disagree on how I use a desktop has not changed in 20 years. I didn't watch this video, I read the automatic transcription, except the part where he demonstrated his combined WM/clipboard which has a visual component. Autotranscription is relatively new and powerful—if still occasionally inaccurate. I didn't scroll through the lines using a scroll wheel, I used the multitouch scrolling gesture of the trackpad which wasn't practically available in 2005 (I'm going to guess 2008 is when it was available in mass-market). I used a NFC token to log in to my google or github account, then I used OAUTH2 to log into other services instead of passwords. Windows users have "Windows Hello" biometric unlock and fingerprint readers have gone from a specialty corporate security item to available on almost every laptop. There's hundreds of little details that have changed.

Love tiling and scrolling window managers

Gnome Tweaks

have you met awesome wm? there's lots of weird efficient solutions but they just aren't widely adopted

Oh look a mega corp UX designers contribution is saying we need more UX design... maybe he is unaware that on Linux we can just do things (Compiz, Hyprland, etc)

The GNOME project has completely rethought the user experience, and many GNOME users complain about it incessantly, clamoring for extension to GNOME that will make it less GNOME-like and more like the much older, more standard experience (app menu, dock, etc.). Those who embrace the UX as intended by the developers tend to find it to be an elegant and beautiful experience. I use "vanilla" GNOME, with no extensions installed to change its functionality (save for a system tray, used primarily as a notification). GNOME is intended to be heavily keyboard-centric, which is very similar to a touch interface. The superkey is what unlocks the beauty and simplicity of the UX, though many still prefer to navigate the system with a mouse.

The point is this: we're not stuck with the same desktop UX forever, for we have a vastly different design already, and it's the default on most distributions. The problem is many insist on using it like the older metaphor for the desktop rather than the way it was designed to be used. So yes? We're stuck, but by choice?