I have road driven Gnome 3, and in the most part it buys me nothing. Unity gives me the creeps. So I run a normal windows and taskbar desktop (bit like win 95), but I must say it's still pretty sucky. Partly because of inconsistencies across the platform.
Applications end up doing their own file management for example.
There are alternative innovative ways to access menus and trigger actions. Context tasks etc. But people are stuck in the past it's like they can't imagine anything different.
Linux also has inconsistencies between windowing tool-kits.
Mobile gets a little more attention these days. But that seems to also be stuck in a rut.
I meant experimental forks. Ubuntu foisting unity upon people was pretty damaging. Again if only they'd concentrated on the last 10%. Instead of creating a mess.
With age some tasks have become harder for me. I used to be quite a whizz at dragging and dropping, and fine pointer precision. Now I'm a bit of a fat handed twat, and my eyes aren't that great. I really do need a 10ft display with simple controls.
A lot of this is stuff is usability and ergonomics 101.
I ended up just going Blackbox or WindowMaker! (And yes, there are likely some who will look with disdain on my choice as if it prevents me from having valid opinions on the other DEs or UIs. I use OSX at home mostly, and Windows at work).
Experimental forks would be a safer way to go. I suppose if they don't have massive development teams/effort, it would be difficult to do. It would satisfy everyone who wants to go and invent the future and do exciting new things (which will likely revert to how they should be when real use of them occurs). I imagine the "let's maintain the existing" team would shrink.
Do you use a mouse or touchpad? As resolutions increase, we have to be more precise for UI or just scale everything 200% (like everyone does on 4K screens or Microsoft Surface Pro 4) thereby defeating having a high resolution in the first place......
My current window manager is pretty basic. But that's because I haven't been arsed to script up something, that would help me with window tasks. I tried double monitor for a while, but the main OSs sucked with the way they dealt with more than one. I gave up in the end, so just use a couple of workspaces and window cycle mainly. Main drive is mostly a laptop. Pointer (nub) is too stiff, touchpad is okay - nothing fancy.
Applications end up doing their own file management for example.
There are alternative innovative ways to access menus and trigger actions. Context tasks etc. But people are stuck in the past it's like they can't imagine anything different.
Linux also has inconsistencies between windowing tool-kits.
Mobile gets a little more attention these days. But that seems to also be stuck in a rut.
I meant experimental forks. Ubuntu foisting unity upon people was pretty damaging. Again if only they'd concentrated on the last 10%. Instead of creating a mess.
With age some tasks have become harder for me. I used to be quite a whizz at dragging and dropping, and fine pointer precision. Now I'm a bit of a fat handed twat, and my eyes aren't that great. I really do need a 10ft display with simple controls.
A lot of this is stuff is usability and ergonomics 101.