I wish they had a laptop with a latest and top AMD, 14" 4K IPS matte panel, programmers friendly keyboard (pg up/down home end on dedicated keys at least), expandable RAM and nvme drive, silent fans and metal chassis and a Linux support. Less important physical camera and wi-fi cut off switch.
If there was an ARM chip with comparable performance to M1 I would consider it too if it was running Linux.
After watching their talk with Louis Rossman I really like this company. Hopefully one day they'll have a product that will match my needs.
The link to the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGle6z9KfZQ
Note the latest AMD 5850U chip is 40% faster [1] than the M1 for the same wattage! It really deserves more media exposure than the M1 which has the only merit of beating Intel.
TDP rating != wattage consumed. In an ideal world it would, but it has long since stopped meaning that generally. This includes the M1, which will happily exceed 15W of power consumption, and the 5850U almost certainly does as well since AMD's previous generation CPU in that class happily exceeded 15W.
You'll have to wait for a proper review that does power measurements to get a sense for how they actually compare on that front.
I agree, it'd be fairer to compare wattage at peak load. Notebookcheck indicates 40W for AMD and 30W for M1, so I guess the perf/watt is closer between the 2 chips.
Is it? I see Geenbench gives the M1 as having 1733 (single) and 7652 (multi) GeekBench score, whereas a AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U system has 1414 (single) and 8140 (multi), so the M1 is quite faster in single core than it (22%) and slower but close in multi-core (the AMD being 6% faster).
And that's with the M1 having 4 slow cores for better battery life / consumption (with 8 full speed cores it would obliterate the 5850U).
> And that's with the M1 having 4 slow cores for better battery life / consumption (with 8 full speed cores it would obliterate the 5850U).
It's not really that simple. An M1 with 8 full speed cores would also consume significantly more power and would no longer work in something like the MacBook Air. On paper these CPUs are both targeting the same power budget, so if AMD can put 8 full-speed CPUs in the same power budget that Apple can "only" put 4 full-speed and 4 low-power then why shouldn't AMD get a win from that?
I had a laptop with a similar amd cpu and even though it was rated for the same wattage, it was a lot more inefficient. The laptop would get warm just watching youtube videos and the fans would always kick on.
In contrast to the M1 which is so efficient that Apple doesn't even put a fan in it on its lower end models, and it still barely gets warm.
Can you buy one today other than the HP EliteBook 845 G8, which starts over $2300? Because you can buy M1 laptops yesterday for less than half that and I can't find any other 5800U series laptops for sale.
Lenovo has a number of 5000U models coming out (including various Thinkpads), but if I were looking for an upgrade this year, I think I'd be most excited about the 5800H Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro (available for preorder now).
Regarding H vs U processors, based on my testing of a previous-gen 4800H laptop, it benchmarked comparably on a perf/W basis to the U series, but via 3rd party tools (I use RyzenAdj) you can easily set whatever TDP you want (eg from 10W or 15W to match a U up to 65W+).
Bulky, low res screen, design suggests that it relies heavily on active cooling, looks cheap and plasticy even in the marketing photos. I wouldn't buy this if it was 10x faster than a Macbook Air.
Interestingly, I have opposite preferences. I never had a Macbook Air, and I would not buy one regardless on the price because I don't like the design.
> Bulky
Often a sign of user-replaceable RAM and SSD, which is good. I don't mind if it adds a few millimeters to the thickness.
> low res screen
1920x1080 is enough resolution for a 13" laptop.
> design suggests that it relies heavily on active cooling
I don't want passively cooled computers, I want fast ones. All else being equal, compute performance is proportional to electricity consumption, and heat generated.
>I don't want passively cooled computers, I want fast ones.
Ok, but then why are we even making comparisons with M1 laptops? The M1 is a low TDP chip designed to be used in devices with minimal or no active cooling. Apple will no doubt be bringing out beefier chips for its higher end laptops in due course.
M1 CPU consumes up to 30W of electricity. That’s impossible to do with minimal or no active cooling. Instead of designing good cooling, Apple does aggressive thermal throttling.
The problem is not specific to Apple, many other companies are offering ultra-thin laptops with similar tradeoff.
As a consumer, I don’t like that tradeoff. I’m already paying for a fast CPU. Yet due to the lack of a proper fan assembly (a low-tech and cheap component, compared to CPU) I’m only able to get good performance for brief periods of time. While usually that’s OK, sometimes I want sustained performance for minutes or hours, even on a laptop.
The M1 Macbook Pro has active cooling, if that's important to you as a matter of principle. However, real world tests show that the performance gains from actively cooling the M1 are pretty marginal.
More broadly, it seems that you prioritize performance over everything else when it comes to laptops. Apple doesn't – especially not in its 13" range. What they are providing is a small form factor with crazy good battery life and performance that's more than good enough for most people.
Thermal throttling is not inherently a bad thing – it's a sign of a balanced design. If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with, then you want a processor that uses more power at peak loads than you can dissipate (so that you can take full advantage of the cooling off periods provided by non-peak usage).
> you prfioritize performance over everything else
More or less. I’m a programmer, and I want computers to compute things.
If I only wanted them to play youtube, I’d get a tablet instead. If I only wanted a laptop to run a word processor, I would look at these MacBooks or equivalent Windows devices.
> If you have a fixed amount of thermal headroom to play with
In case of ultra-thin laptops like macbooks, the primary reason why it’s fixed to just 10-15W is to look good on marketing materials. Technically, it’s easy and cheap to make it fixed to the value several times higher than that. After all, 10 years ago mainstream laptop CPUs were dissipating 35-45W: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge#Mobile_platform
I'm also a programmer, but don't find performance particularly important once it reaches an acceptable level. I would rather have a thin a light laptop (as would most people, judging by sales).
I should have noted I specialize on desktop and embedded development. I can always find uses of faster CPUs, more cores, and more RAM.
> I would rather have a thin a light laptop
I agree, but to an extent. I don’t have a gamer-targeted laptop because heavy to carry around.
But still, I believe these unupgradable ultra-thin laptops are a bad deal.
They only saving a few millimeters of thickness and ~0.2kg of weight, for a huge performance cost. BTW, I have installed 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD in my reasonably thin (2cm) and reasonably light (1.6kg) 13” laptop.
> as would most people, judging by sales
Judging by sales, most people don’t need a computer at all, they prefer phones and tablets. On the internets, more than half of page views are now from mobile devices.
But there’s no indication from benchmarks that it would have much better performance then the MacBook Pro. Indeed, it would be expected to perform less well on some common tasks - and it has half the battery life. I can’t even find a benchmark comparing that particular laptop to a MacBook Pro. Did you find one somewhere?
There're benchmarks comparing M1 with Zen 2 mobile CPUs such as Ryzen 7 4800U. Based on the results I saw, on average, AMD delivers similar single-threaded performance, and way better multithreaded performance.
Ryzen 7 4800U is very similar to Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U: same core and threads count, same frequency, same 10-25W TDP. The main difference of the new one is Zen 3 microarchitecture instead of Zen 2, and there're quite a few sources comparing Zen 3 to Zen 2.
If you want to be certain, wait for the direct benchmarks.
Also accessible for maintenance; you get the service manual with purchase; they actually bother writing the manual, and the support line isn't half bad.
Hate to break it to ya' but just chucking a chip into a gigantic heatsink of a frame, and relying on one or two USB-C ports to support gigantic networks of peripherals through a powered hub (sold seperately) which has issues running multiple added on monitors because the HDMI over USB-C tends to put off EMI in the 2.4 GHz band is honestly a step backwards compared to the characteristics you complain about. My old MBP would kill it's own network connection trying to drive large smart TV's through it's USB-C ports; and constantly stall handling all the input demands as I'd end up outtyping the capability of the processor to context switch on a typical programmer/scripter workload. Not had an issue one with System76's older school design approach to things like the Serval (whose battery life is abysmal comparatively, but I knew that going in. It's a workstation.)
System76 isn't out to build dispose-a-systems or systems that can only be swapped back through them on warranty. These are systems intended to be user serviced. That means thicker. You have to account for fasteners, less/no glue, stay away from over-using overly brittle plastic bezels that break at the drop of a hat, more room for connectors, so soldering labs aren't required for swapping out or adding RAM/SSD's... More generous tolerances for hand room, ergonomic motherboard and keyboard layouts. I can trust my system more, because I can actually take care of it.
Compared to my old VAIO Z Series, which I love dearly to this day, but which I always crack open with fear and trepidation because of the over-reliance on FPC's, System76 stuff is a breath of fresh air for me. I'd prefer an XFCE derivative desktop over GNOME, but eh. I'll live.
I didn't have to go hunting all over the Net for years for an unofficial community driver that actually gets me passed the most recently updated by manufacturer driver from 2012 for the Nvidia GT 630M/Intel IHD kludge, I don't as a consequence have to run with Driver Signature Enforcement off, and hardly ever update, I don't have to worry about FPC's breaking or put up with software remapping two keys on the keyboard in software because it's easier than risking screwing something up while disassembling the whole bloody laptop to get to the keyboard and mobo so I can reseat the ribbon connector in the hopes of a more solid connection reviving the bloody. No longer functioning keys.
Heck. I ended up able to find my way through troubleshooting their initial setup tool after making my own life more difficult than it needed to be on OS setup bbecause I wanted to understand how the machine worked from boot to userspace.
Something I still have zilch insight into with Macs.
AMDs chip peaks at 4.4GHz vs 3.2GHz. Together they imply 30-40% better IPC. 5nm only offers 15% better performance OR 30% lower power consumption vs 7nm.
In truth though, the A14 design isn’t too much faster than A13 or even A12 despite them being 7nm. Most of its advancements were from clock ramps. I wonder if the hardware layer for x86 kept a lot of resources tied up on that instead of advancing the architecture performance more.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but comparing clock speeds cross-manufacturer and especially cross-architecture doesn't really make much sense, right?
As far as I understand it, just because AMD and Intel chips are in the 5GHz range doesn't mean it is realistic to assume that Apple could also scale M1 up to that frequency so looking at just frequency or just IPC mean next to nothing. We pretty much have to resort to frequency x IPC i.e. benchmarks to gauge the relative difference.
You're right that M1/A14 perf jump is relatively small and seems to effectively be a port of A13 to 5nm in terms of core design, so if we wanted to guess at AMD's perf at 5nm we could try to use that as a yard stick.
I remember seeing someone do the benchmarks on that but I can't seem to find it now. He lowered ryzen 5000s wattage to match M1 with an offset to account for 7nm vs. 5nm and found that AMD was still behind in perf/w but by something like 20-30%. I'll keep looking to see if I can find it.
He arrives at the M1 having a 1.23x perf/w advantage in Cinebench when accounting for 7nm vs. 5nm. Without that it has a 1.34x advantage. Note that this is measuring the core directly. Ryzen's IO die is a huge power sucker so this really shouldn't be used to decide what laptop to buy or whatever, it's just a peek into how close their core architectures are to each other.
According to the comparison the M1 has 10% faster single-core performance. That's not nothing, but it's not really "significantly better" or something you'll notice in day-to-day usage, either.
But this is also just a single test result that's going to be far from comprehensive.
I’d assume that’s because of the novelty of it being a competitive desktop ARM processor. The processor listed isn’t much faster than the previous gen Ryzen, it’s unremarkable from an apple to apple comparison.
Because it's available in the cheap models, including a model (the Mac Mini) that costs about as much as the AMD 5850U cpu itself.
Also, I see the M1 as having 1733 (single) and 7652 (multi) GeekBench score, whereas the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U has 1414 (single) and 8140 (multi), so the M1 is quite faster in single core than it (22%) and close in multi-core (the AMD being 6% faster).
So what gives, and how does that fits with the numbers given by the grandparent?
Because so far Apple has only released entry level products with the M1. It’s pretty obvious that they will release higher end chips for higher end products later this year.
I recently bought a Lenovo Legion 5 (4800H, 512GB, 16GB, 1660ti) for around $1200 after checking the 4700u ideapad. This was before the Ryzen 5000 series launch, so I suppose the Legion 5 is around $900 mark these days.
Many OEMs don't really give a good thermal headroom for the AMD processors, and only Lenovo seems to have done it right.
Lenovo's stock management sucks though. There were no stock for many days, and had to go unorthodox methods to get my hands on a unit.
Keep in mind only four of those cores on the M1 mac are performance cores. A M1 Mac with 8 performance cores would blow that thing out of the water based on how close they already are.
It seems incredibly likely that such a product would be reserved for the highest end models for example the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro starting at 2400 and 6k respectively and would be properly compared to high end laptops that like the example don't exist yet.
It's nice to see the CPU space heating up in recent years.
4K on a 14".. what is the use case for that? unless you have some hybrid long-short sightedness (d)efficiency, use your laptop as a chesttop, or want quadruple the pixels for half the battery life I really can't see any benefit
I currently have XPS 15 with 4k screen and I can easily see pixels, so 14 should be a little better. There is also the feeling that it is 2021 and should I still be seeing pixels? I think crisp high resolution view is much better for the eyes and feels more natural. I am also almost always within reach of a mains socket, so I don't particularly care about battery life, just that I can move the machine from one place to another easily.
I think different people mean different things by "see the pixels." I can't imagine being able to see individual pixels on a 15" 4k display at laptop distances, but I can imagine being able to notice minor distortions in the outlines of text, or more discomfort than necessary when reading small text, as a result of lower pixel densities. That could be reasonably described as seeing the pixels.
My iPhone has ~320dpi and I can't see pixels at non-ridculous viewing distances. I don't know what GP's viewing distance habits or eyes are like but for me, considering laptop viewing distance is probably like twice that of smartphones, I can't imagine a 15" 4K laptop being anything but overkill.
I love pixels. Seeing them reminds me that I am in front of a computer and not a TV. Same as a car that smells a bit of oil/gasoline. Feels like a real car.
Use a Mac with a Retina display for a week and see whether you don't notice a difference — and it's certainly nowhere near half the battery life. Everyone I know who's done this has never wanted to go back.
Well, the 13 inch Macbook Pro only has a QHD screen (2560x1600) at 227 PPI.
A 14 inch screen at QHD would still be 210 DPI.
A 4K (3840x2160) display at 14 inches is 315 PPI.
I have used retina Macbook screens for extended periods of time and increasing the DPI seems like overkill to me.
As someone who went from a mac (for the last 15 years including several retina MBPs) to a 1920x1080 13" screen on a lemur pro, I really don't find that it makes a huge difference to me. I thought it would really irritate me but it doesn't.
It's really noticable when reading/writing text. I personally do dev work for a living and when I have to use a FHD screen instead of a UHD screen it's really noticable.
It's kind of like going from 144Hz back to 60Hz when playing FPS games.
Based on lots of previous comments (and yours!) that describe a day/night difference, I've concluded this is highly personal.
Work issued me a 2018 Mac with a 2880x1800 15.4" display (220 dpi), and I work at home with it plugged into a 1920x1080 23.5" display (93 dpi) from Sceptre. They are side by side, all day long, and I vastly prefer writing and coding on the FHD display, to the point that I thought I was being trolled when I read comments about "never going back".
So, I'm guessing people just like different things!
Yeah, it must be. I much prefer using monitors at stock resolution, without scaling, for that sweet real-estate, rather than having pretty displays where I can't see pixels just so it's pretty. I had a retina MacBook for a while, it was very nice, but especially for dev work... I couldn't bring myself to care enough that I'd want a 4k screen (that I'd have to run at an effective 1080p anyway) vs just a 1440p monitor of the same size I can use without scaling.
> 4K is great because it is a factor 2 compared to 1080p.
I strongly disagree. QHD is perfect for me, because everything renders natively and looks beautiful. 4K without scaling is unusable, and 4K scaled up is just 1080p - You lose all the screen real estate you paid for.
You're missing the whole point of 4K at 14". Everyone uses it scaled but there is more detail, most importantly with fonts. You don't need any stupid sub-pixel rendering stuff.
4k scaled up like that is incredibly sharp fonts tho, it looks really nice. but yea total waste of space otherwise. i was surprised to see big sur default to 200% scale on a 4k attached to m1 mac mini but obviously screen real estate is the least of concerns with that garbage padded ui
I really try to avoid looking at higher res screens too much. I like the lower price and better battery life of the HD screens and they look fine to me, but I think once you really try the higher res it will ruin the lower res for you.
I use 4K on 14". Windows defaults to 300% scaling so clearly the defaults agree with you. But 200% scaling is usable; things are a little small but the extra real estate is worth it.
I guess if my math is right, that's 104 ppi after 3x scaling? Bit large, but not bad. Take a couple fonts down in size a tad and you're probably golden. I've been writing off 4k laptops, but this brings them back into consideration for me.
Since they resell Clevo designs, they'll definitely offer such a laptop but it may take them a few more months to have one available.
They seem to be several months behind new hardware launches, which as I understand is partially because their value-add is rigorous testing and hardware support for linux. They will often patch or back port the newest kernel for the latest drivers.
There are a few things that they've never even tried, and would be obvious for the type of folks that use linux. High resolution and power efficiency are two of them that almost everyone wants.
No kidding. The OP posts a list of 10 very specific things, including some that are difficult to accomplish, expensive or nearly pointless (4k on a 14"?). "If you do this, I will support the company". So noble.
What's your logic there? I would have thought that if your eyesight is poor, resolution matters much less as you can't tell the difference. You'd want to scale things 2-4 times anyway.
2x scaling at 4k is comfortable and crisply rendered fonts are a MUST. My eyes are far more fatigued at the end of the day if font rendering isn't crystal clear. Other resolutions require non-integer scaling and my experience with that has been... not great.
I am in the exact same boat, 2x scaling at 4k. I am young but I wear contacts that are not an exact perfect prescription due to the limitations of contacts.
But people will swear up and down to me that there is no way I could possibly tell the difference between screens.
You can literally see individual pixels on a 1080p screen!
I am on Macbooks, but I want to switch to something with Linux so I am waiting for the gen 9 Thinkpad X1C with 4k screen to be available at some reasonable price.
Font rendering is also clearly worse on Linux than Mac, making the fuzzy pixels even more unworkable. I dual booted a 2015 Macbook Air into several Linux distros and I could barely read the text no matter which settings were applied.
More relevant to the overall thread:
Pop OS is awesome.
Yes, they are needing for to change name, however. "Pop_OS!" is very a stupid name, no low hyphen "_" charactir or exclimation in name is good. Only "Pop OS" is good.
2x scaling in 4K is the Hi-DPI equivalent of 1080p: on 13 or 14 inch screens, elements on screen are really tiny. On this screen size, we have mainly 1280x800 (Apple) or 1366x720 (PC) resolutions, where the Hi-DPI or Retina equivalent (2x scaling) is 2K.
With GNOME, screen elements (texts, windows and widgets) are big (way bigger than macOS or Windows). In this case 1080p-like at 2x scaling should be OK with this screen size.
It's complicated. For me it's about how smooth the text is and how consistent the experience is. 4k with 2x (integer scaling) is a pleasant balance of crisp rendering and appropriate text size.
The lower resolutions would require non-integer scaling and so far my experience doing that in Linux environments has been very poor. I don't expect this to be a smooth experience any time in the near future. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
Yes, I can definitely tell. I have owned both WQHD and 4K laptops. At least for text, I can tell the difference at first sight, and I’m more comfortable with 4K.
...And use a panel that covers at least 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.
I bought an Acer at the tail end of last year because I need color accuracy (and couldn't get my hands on high-end HP or Dell or Lenovo in Thailand because markets).
You know, I thought that that would bother me on a keyboard. However, it turned out that having PgUp/PgDn/Home/End on Fn+arrow keys, after getting used to it, is a speed improvement (at least for me). I don't have to move my hand as much. In fact, I liked so much that I have Alt+Left/Right arrow mapped as Home/End in AHK (on normal keyboards).
Laptops that aren't apple are dog slow at adding HDMI 2.0, USB-C in sufficient numbers, etc etc etc.
You'd think the amount of business laptops still made by Dell and HP would lead to a better set of mobos for laptops in general (since they are made by such a smaller number of vendors I think), but it is dog slow. The Desktop is supposed to be totally dead but the mobo support for features runs way ahead of still kind relevant laptop market by 12-18 months.
When I bought a linux laptop 4 years ago I was between System76 and Dell Developer Edition. I ended up going with Dell and I’m very happy with it but I’ve kept an eye on these guys ever since.
Really like what I see from PopOS and I will probably buy from them next time.
Take a look at the Thinkpad P14s - I don't think they offer a 4k screen but apart from that I believe it ticks all your boxes. I'm running Fedora 33 on mine and it's brilliant.
+1 on HP Omen. Fits most of your demand except for the 4k screen. I have the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H version and it's significantly faster than the beefiest macbook pro you can buy.
I have the same one - and the symmetry in the design when you open the case is beautiful, the dual SSD lots mirrored on each side from each other is really nice.
actually thats not 100% true. asus has a motherboard for that: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Motherboards/Pr... it's possible on the motherboard side (this board supports amd mobile), so it should be possible for laptops, too. in fact there was a laptop for ryzen gen 2 with a motherboard that somehow added it, but I could not find it.
Nice to see! And glad they are...gasp...listening to people. The Gnome devs could learn a lot from that approach. The most popular distros all include a dock. And yet with Gnome 40, they not only refused to add a dock, they moved what gimped dock they had to the bottom of the screen. But you can't see it until you hit the top left corner. I wish I was making that up. (keyboard shortcuts aside, in fairness)
Rant aside, I'll definitely give it this a go. PopOS is a really nice distro.
I mostly like Gnome. I have been using it for years. But the development team of Gnome is so closed minded that it makes my head hurt.
I asked on the bug tracker if Evince could have a tabs feature, so I can have 10 pdfs open in one Evince window. They asked me to cite a usability study showing that it would objectively improve user experience.
It's clearly unreasonable for a developer to ask a bug reporter to cite a usability study out of the blue.
However, I don't think it's unreasonable for a developer to do so if the person commenting explicitly claims that not having a feature hurts usability:
I find it unreasonable in this case as well, just like when people ask for studies during the course of a conversation.
It cuts the conversation short and it brings nothing to the table, at worst people will come up with studies they haven't read and that often neither side is equipped to critically interpret and analyze (and doing so would take hours or days of work for an expert). To me it's a falsely scientific method of discourse, I'd rather have people elaborate on their personal opinion and use case than anything like this.
If you want a laugh, duck for the thread where the developers debate how to implement .epub format in Evince before ultimately deciding that Evince doesn't actually need to be able to open the most popular ebook format in the world.
Can they cite a usability study suggesting any of the changes they made from gnome 2 to gnome 3 (or current) were not major regressions to the user experience?
I use gnome as my daily driver. Was OSX previously. Now, I can’t stand the wasted real estate of a dock. I really love Gnome, so maybe they’re listening to some of us and not to others.
I think most people just want the option. I don't want to force a dock on you. I also don't want you to force a barren wasteland on me. That's what I liked about this design shown in the video, it's all optional!
To be pedantic, you can see the dash/dock when you hit the super key, I don't believe anyone actually uses the hot corner.
Also to be pedantic, there are plenty of desktops that don't use a dock, in the form of most window managers. I'm currently running opnebox with no dock and it's totally fine, though the approach is better suited to tiling window managers.
I love the hot corner. In some distributions this behaviour is disabled and I always turn it back on to the point that I automatically make the gesture on other operating systems as well. When I'm browsing on my laptop, I often end up with my finger on the touchpad. A quick swipe to the top left is quicker than moving my hand to the super key. On desktop, a low-precision swing of the mouse is also quicker than moving my fingers to the super key. I don't get the hate the hot corner gets.
All in all, I honestly don't really care about the changes they made to the dock. As long as my shortcut buttons work, I can deal with some small changes if they improve the polish of the system overall. I like the Gnome aesthetics that improve with every version, so I'm open to the tweaks made in Gnome 40.
I'm a GNOME user and almost never use its dock directly. I have my typical programs added as favorites on the dock and switch to them directly via keyboard with meta + 1 through meta + 9.
Seldom used applications don't make that cut, but they're... seldom used. I tend to switch to them using alt-tab rather than clicking through on the dock.
In general, I prefer using the keyboard, so I have never once wished that a dock was more prominent in GNOME. I'm glad it stays out of my way until I explicitly summon it with a keypress.
Seems recently the Gnome team have been too busy demanding RMS' cancellation to listen to their userbase. That's clearly more important work than, you know, actually writing good open source software.
Although I know some who would say Gnome has never been good. Opinions on DEs can be pretty harsh.
When you say 'dock', do you mean the top bar? Well, that would be a development. If you mean a menu of application icons at the bottom, I never had that in GNOME 3 on Fedora.
I actually like GNOME 3 as a desktop: the streamlined process of hitting the Super key or moving the mouse toward the corner and typing in the application name that I want to launch, with the whole screen used for the preview. I also never put anything on the desktop (as in icons, files etc.). Even saying this I get strange flashbacks to 2000s computing.
What pushed me away from it at the end (to KDE) was the applications. The trend in GNOME is clearly removing or at best hiding everything except the barest minimum required for pretending we have an app. At some point it shifts from very annoying to unusable. And now I'm putting up with KDE's own weirdnesses, like insisting on creating a cryptographic wallet for everything, or broken hibernation on desktop (a.k.a. big people computer). I hope it's just standard Linux jank and not sign of decline of the space.
I've recently switched from my usual MBP upgrade to System 76 (Oryx Pro). While yes, Apple's walled garden does feel like a Rolls Royce compared to anything, the price tag difference this time was just way too step for me to keep buying a new Mac: It was basically 2x or more for roughly similar hardware, if not slightly worse on the MBP side. Overall, using Pop_OS! with its specialized GNOME3 setup has been a bliss, and I must say I had expected a far more difficult migration. In a few days I was happily up and running with my new machine. And then, there is the support - Apple's support outside of visiting a Genius Bar is basically non-existent. System76 has diligently helped me even set up external hardware that wasn't theirs! Long story short, very much looking forward to COSMIC and continuing this experience. The only thing I do miss a lot is my iTerm2... :)
iTerm2 is a beauty, is there a closest equivalent on Linux?
There seem to be 25 popular choices especially now with the GPU-accelerated ones. Tried a few of the classics like Termite and they all seemed painfully outdated and crappy compared to iTerm.
On iTerm2 my windows are full-screen, black background, zero border or window decorations. I cycle between windows with cmd-` it switches instantly from one full-screen terminal to the next. It's what to me a console should be.
Every terminal app I've tried on Windows or Linux insists on having a goddamn window border. I don't want even a single pixel of border.
And yes, this is enough to make me a die-hard iTerm2 user.
(users care about little things more than developers sometimes realize)
In KDE, in addition to being able to do this full screen, you can have regular windows without any chrome if you want. You just right click on the window title bar and change settings. You can easily set a rule to do this as well if you'd like.
Xubuntu user here: If I open my xfce4-terminal in fullscreen (F11), there is no border and I can cycle between all open terminal windows with Super+Tab. I can also disable the border in windowed mode, though that also removes the title bar.
I use dwm and of the handful of terminal emulator's I've used, none have a border or window decorations. So I don't think they "insist" on having borders.
I really love the fact that I can change profiles depending on CLI prompts. So, when I SSH into a server the background color of my terminal changes to blue. When I change to root but background changes to white. This, along with banner support, helps me keep track of where I am and what user I'm currently using.
This functionality may be available in other terms, but iTerm just seems to nail pretty much everything in one package. I just wish it was available for Linux.
Most terminal emulators are missing support for splits; moving from iTerm2 was painful for me. Been using terminator and kitty, but I still miss iTerm2 5 years later.
I had the same experience, Apples Terminal.app is a really beautifully built terminal. But newer versions of iTerm2 proved me over, it finally felt as fast or faster than Terminal.app.
What initially invited me to test iTerm2 was the one button quake style scroll-down terminal, but I stayed for the better tab management and much more customizable options.
One thing that irks me about Konsole is that it doesn't rewrap the scrollback when the window is resized. Apparently that will be fixed in Konsole 21.04 though:
There are some useful features (tmux integration), but honestly I agree. I've moved back to Terminal.app entirely myself; though honestly I mostly live in the Terminal panel in VSCode these days anyway
Or if you are up for something new, try fish, which has a nice out of the box experience and so many nice features. Like 'alt + h' for manpage of the command you are working on, or 'alt + s' to toggle sudo. Multi-line editing is a bliss too. The only thing I dearly miss is cmd <<< "string".
I originally discovered and started using iTerm2 because I was looking for an OS X equivalent to Yakuake, which is pretty much the same thing as Konsole but with a dropdown/Quake-like UI.
My solution is tmux. I’m using white status line with C-z prefix on localhost, and green status line with prefix M-z on servers. This way I can reuse my finger memory, be equally productive on macOS, local Linux, remote Linux.
I use iterm at work and a combination of alacritty, fish and i3-wm (so I don't open multiple tabs but just several terminal windows) on my personal machine, I'm really happy with that setup.
How is it with lots of text being displayed? VSC's terminal is unbearably laggy for me when there's more than like 10% of the terminal covered in text, is this similar?
That's exactly what I did a week ago (with a Fusion 15, but System76 was a serious competitor). It took a day to customize the thing to my heavily-apple-influenced habits and it was a joy to find out I could actually feel _pleasure_ using the machine, something I had forgotten 3 or 4 macOS updates ago.
Now, do we need another DE? Dunno, wouldn't make the top of my wishlist. I realize the good I'm getting comes much more from intelligent choices of sensible defaults rather than specific features. It's removing - or, if you prefer amend - the noise (apps/utils/extensions/clutterware) the key here, even more so for the open-source software ocean of half-baked solutions. Yes, that's what distributions are for but unfortunately even the biggest struggle to keep a steady route (think Ubuntu and Unity, for instance) and often fall for the latest shining tech everybody wants (hint: no, there's a whole lot of people who'd better like a stable, predictable, coherent environment to a new set of flashy icons and widget palettes).
And if you wonder what would make the top of my whishlist, it's solid a development environment (again, a-la macOS but it's actually a-la OpenStep and NextStep, where it all started) enforcing good defaults at the OS level, letting people/companies build quality apps easily and preventing them to disrupt/reinvent existing OS patterns/paradigms (without a reason). Or we could keep on downloading browsers-disguised-as-applications and call it a day.
When Ubuntu dropped the hammer on Gnome2, I saw Unity desktop and was kinda... ewwww. And next I have installed Gnome 3. After 15 minutes with it I decided that Unity is actually not that bad, so I switched to it.
In the following years Unity kinda grew on me, so I'm sad that it was axed and now everyone use this Gnome3 abomination. It is not as bad as it was five years before, but loss of top menu and general preference for biggins buttons instead of drop-down menus is a bad idea for desktop computers.
I wish someone would fix Gnome3 by making it look back like Unity .
As someone who has used too many distributions and window managers to count (over the course of many years), I've settled on Ubuntu and whatever their default UI. And I quite liked Unity as well after a while.
Of course if there was a major reason to switch away from Ubuntu or their default DE, I would, but it's the pragmatic choice. The constant "finding" of the perfect fit gets in the way of actually doing stuff. Once you adjust expectations towards a system, I'm still far happier with Ubuntu I could ever be with macOS or Windows, and don't waste time having a different system to work with every two weeks (slightly exaggerating).
Is it perfect? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Is it great compared to alternatives (factoring in speed of deployment and productivity from the get to)? Definitely yes.
I'm glad popOS uses Ubuntu and Gnome as backbone and tries to give you a customized experience rather than completely reinventing everything. Though for me, as long as Canonical doesn't screw it up in a major way, stock Ubuntu it is.
I never liked Gnome3 and I never liked Unity. I have however been more than happy with XFCE distros. Simple task bar, simple menu, doesn't waste space and can look quite nice if a little attention is given to design. If you are unsatisfied with the major DEs it's worth at least trying.
To me, XFCE feels like a visual evolution and refinement of Windows 98 - and I mean that in the best possible way. Windows has three or four separate and inconsistent visual styles that get mixed nowadays, macOS has UI style changes in every single yearly update for seemingly no other reason than to change things, and Gnome 3 threw any good sense in usability out the window, but XFCE is still trucking along with a single style that stays consistent and highly usable without being ugly.
The best thing about Unity is that now it will never change for better or worse and still works with Ubuntu 20.04. It's fairly minimalist and frozen in stasis like I wish Apple had done with the SnowLeopard UI.
The only thing I liked about unity was the HUD that allowed you to search through application menus by typing the setting you were looking for. Do you know if there’s anything offering that functionality for Gnome3?
That's not it. Unity let you find at you typed to get to menu options. So you did not have to care whether the item you wanted was under File, Edit, or whatever, you could just start typing "preferences" and it would let you find it and go to it with the keyboard.
That is the single feature I miss the most about Unity. Gnome's prodigal attitude to screen real estate is annoying (though the Ubuntu version is somewhat better), but being able to search menus makes a real usability difference. I miss it every time I use InkScape or QGIS or similar programs with five layers of voluminous menus...
That went away with global menu, I'm afraid. In vanilla gnome every app handles it own menu however it likes, so this kind of integration is not possible.
For all its flaws, Unity really tried to offer an unified desktop experience.
MacOS sort of supports it - the help menu for each app has a search box CMD+Shift+/ (or CMD+? If you prefer to think of it like that) will open it up.
Each of the menu bar options should be searchable, and the search box will open the requisite menu to the correct branch/leaf and highlight it for you.
There is for instance http://afiestas.org/appmenu-runner-meet-the-kde-hud/ , and I bet there are similar tools for Gnome. However, from what I heard of Unity, it seems to be a hell of a work to keep/maintain it running for all kind of programs (regarding the different UI toolkits).
Right. If KDE or Gnome were to automatically generate searchable actions as part of the toolkit, that would be enough to get me behind one of them as a toolkit.
That is for the desktop menu (like the windows start menu). Searching that is fairly widespread (Off the top of my head KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, and XFCE all do it). I'm talking about the menu inside an application.
For example, I want to change the printer settings in libre-office writer. That's under the "File" menu. Given that it has nothing to do with files, I don't look there. On a Mac I can search all application menu items from the "help" menu. Why can't I do that with all GTK3 applications? Or all Gnome applications if it's out-of-scope for GTK?
I had abandoned all the desktop environments for xmonad and then stumpwm. However, I’ve recently given KDE Plasma a chance, and it’s really grown on me: especially for my current setup (55” TV), it’s much more ergonomic than tiling WMs and it doesn’t have the annoyances I had with KDE4, Gnome 3 or Unity.
Yeah, I’m really glad the KDE world seems to have recovered from the KDE4 disaster. However, the Linux desktop ecosystem largely feels like it’s just sort of rotting: I really like KMail, for example, but it had a bunch of show-stopper bugs last time I used it.
Yeah... the desktop environment itself is pretty nice, but a lot of the apps built around it are either abandonware or just plain low quality. At least nowadays GTK applications don't look completely out of place so even using all kinds of disparate programs (Thunderbird, Goland, Slack, Chrome, etc.) results in a pleasantly consistent experience.
Agreed. That's why I settled with using the standard theme (Breeze) with some minor panel changes to make the system work a bit like macOS: global menu on top, small self-hiding dock at the bottom.
The whole thing took maybe a couple hours of experimentation two years ago, and I've since been running with the same configuration.
I'm using a dozen extensions to make Gnome 3 behave like Gnome 2 as much as I can. No animations, no menu on top, no top bar, task bar at the bottom, no dock, no activities, one virtual desktop per project. That was impossible with Unity.
I never managed to install its desktop on Ubuntu. Anyway I'd have to customize it too. I never liked desktops with a top bar, since the very first Mac. I couldn't get rid of it on Unity so I never used Unity (same for Macs.)
I did use Gnome Fallback (Flashback?) until Gnome Shell had all the extensikns I needed and got rid of some bugs. Gnome Fallback was almost abandonware by the time I switched. It started to develop new glitches as the world around it moved on.
Is Gnome Classic the other option I have at login on Ubjntu 20.04? I gave it a try one year ago. Either it didn't work or wasn't the desktop I was looking for. I prefer my custom desktop. Of course nobody can develop one system that suits the tastes of every single person. The important thing to do is to leave enough freedom to make people customize their systems.
First off.. this is not an official release (kairos) like my Kinto project, but you can install https://ubuntubudgie.org and use their global menu or run my script which will fully configure everyone w/ my Kinto project and other various fixes.
You will have a modern desktop with a global menu.
> general preference for biggins buttons instead of drop-down
I could never understand the strong revulsion some people have with that design language. To me the Windows 95 "File Edit etc." toolbar is terribly eye straining and has no place in the 21st century. Besides, with the ubiquity of touch screens in laptops the GNOME team has been entirely vindicated in their decision to take a more touch oriented approach. Larger buttons are easier to click with the mouse too.
And we can't understand your revulsion to having usable screen real estate and high quality (non-touch) screens and input methods. I don't want to paw at my screen all day with gorilla arms.
I installed Mint on a 9 year old iMac for my girlfriend to use, who's not particularly technically inclined. She picked it up immediately, without issue, which is honestly a great selling point of Cinnamon in my opinion
You're not alone. Once I had the keyboard shortcuts down-pat, I adored Unity honestly. I can't seem to get used to Gnome 3 no matter how hard I've tried, so I've given up sadly. I don't have any desktop Linux installs these days aside from my old iMac running Linux Mint downstairs that only my girlfriend uses!
Unless they also fork Gtk3 and Gtk4 the GNOME will still seep in and ruin the desktop. Things like gtkfilechooserwidget are terribly broken in gtk3 and gtk4 but at least gtk4 finally got a patch that allows you to paste into a file->open window without it error'ing out. But gtk4 is still firmly in the "no text entry window for you" in file chooser menus by default.
Also, I looked at the github repo for cosmic under pop!_os's stuff and there's no actual code. It's all boilerplate with a single gsettings schema .xml file. There's no DE in that repo.
My favourite “UX bug” is when Discord wants to upgrade, it downloads a newer deb, you open it in App Store, and it only shows the “delete” button. Wonder if it’ll ever be fixed.
Yeah the AppStore is a joke...the search especially, thats one big point where devs don't eat their dogfood, i bet that 99.9% of Gnome-devs never try'd "AppStore" (so much for linux desktop year), but a working thing like synaptic is probably too complicated for "normal" Linux-Users (do they even exist?)...just give them a Store (that does not work)...thanks gnome.
I wish my discord did that... it just errors after timing out trying to connect to their update server. Sometimes force killing helps, sometimes trying the next day does. Once it connects the rest is all automatic though.
That's an application specific feature. For example Firefox or Gimp implement this preview and add it to the file chooser, but most applications don't.
Way to go, it's nice to see the innovation. System76 seems like a company that is paying attention to what their customers want, creating something useful and unique out of various well-considered parts.
I've been hearing a surprising amount of positive feedback from people who have tried the current Gnome based DE on Pop OS. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard that they have some sort of tiling / snapping that works well. I'd like to try it, but I'm heavily invested in upstream Debian and am not really interested in installing another Debian derivative. Are there plans to package this up?
I'm currently using XFCE on two computers with key bindings for snap left/right and snap top-left/top-right/bottom-left/bottom-right. On a big display, this setup is excellent. On a laptop it works, but often feels a little cramped, and it's particularly painful with a laptop trackpad instead of a mouse. It would be nice if there was an option to split ~67%/33%... apparently Windows(!) can do that.
I've also been playing with i3 on another laptop, and for a lot of things the experience is clearly better (e.g. web browsing on a laptop without a mouse), but for others (e.g. kicad) it either doesn't work well, or I haven't managed to configure it well enough yet. The rabbit hole is infinitely deep, and while I enjoy tinkering with it every now and then, I'm probably not going to use it as a daily driver anytime soon.
It's just a set of about 3 gnome extensions, at least on Pop OS 20.10 right now. So in theory you just need to install the gnome extensions and you're good: https://github.com/pop-os/shell
I've been using it for a year and love it--typing this reply in a browser window tiled next to a terminal. It's easy to add little exceptions too for modal apps you want to hover outside the tiling.
None that I've noticed. There was a small issue with wifi dropping intermittently, but a small tweak fixed that as well. I regularly lock the screen for long periods without issue.
Really, I'm not a Linux power user who is happy to hack for hours to make audio work. It's amazing the degree to which this just worked out of the box
I recently upgraded from a 10 year old Lenovo W520 to a System76 Lemur Pro, and have been extremely pleased with the purchase. It is lightweight (~2 lbs); software is fast, responsive, and free of bloat; chassis feels robust; specs are above average for the ultra book category (40GB RAM and 2 NVMe drives); good battery life (around 6 hours real world use); and good online documentation. Overall, I would highly recommend, and I am excited to see what direction they continue to go in as a company.
Just checking in to say I'm loving my Oryx Pro ~1 year later. It's been a fantastic system (I wrote about it when I first got it[0]), and although I use it more as a desktop (it sits on my desktop attached to two monitors with the lid closed) it has been a workhorse for me.
The software and drivers also work fantastically, and are open source -- I've even contributed a line or two.
BTW I use arch :). But I mention that to say it works great on Arch too.
System76 may have actually bring about the era of the linux-first desktop/laptop, and I'm glad I bought it instead of a Lenovo.
[EDIT] whoa the post is from 2019, it's been like 1.5+ years. Time flies.
I'm charging my Darter Pro over USBC-PD right now. It works perfectly except for when applying firmware updates which check to see if the charging cable is connected, and that might be expected if the firmware update would interrupt the PD charging.
Good point! At maximum draw with the GPU going BRRRRRRR I am going to have a bad time; But it would still be nice to have it as an alternate charging option.
Right now I am on battery and am only drawing 28W, so I think it could manage most of the time.
I and likely many other people are very happy to not have usbc PD.
I've lost two ports on my work mac due to the power mux chip deciding that I just don't need whatever port it's plugged into now and blowing it up.
I’m fine with it. One of my usbc ports is already shot by a 3 year old. While the heavy duty power cord is still going strong 4 years later. BUT my computer can pull down some serious amps when I play FS2020 at a whopping 20FPS in ultra... so there’s that.
I have one, and it doesn't seem to work. I haven't filed a ticket though, as I don't really care. I just tried a usb-c pd compatible cable, although I'm not certain the brick that connects the cable to the wall is pd compatible. Usb c, eurgh, why do I have to think about this sort of thing.
A lot of Lenovo laptops have one USB-C port which doubles as the power cable. I'm typing on a Thinkpad right now with that very configuration. My daughter's Chrmoebook is the same way. She bent the USB-C port on it and now it won't charge. I'm being really, really careful with my Thinkpad.
The improvements and changes System76 have added to base Gnome are really great. I particularly like the many different keyboard driven ways to manipulate windows and even enforce tiling on top of Gnome, rather than having to run i3, bspwm, or some other dedicated tiling window manager.
Also, all we don't need is another fork. The biggest problem with open source is that there are so many forks that there's no focus on polishing what we already have. https://itsfoss.com/desktop-linux-torvalds/
I wish Ubuntu would maintain a gnome3+ fork like that, with top menu and reasonable file picker, or partner-up with System76. Not because I can't use another distro, but because I think a well-tested default target desktop distro is important and helping the community. I'm still on Ubuntu 20.04 because I need third-party based stuff to run, such as Chromium and Electron-based apps such as Skype and Teams (which however doesn't actually work). But gnome3 simply sucks so I'll have to move to something else; maybe Kubuntu or even Unity again (the community fork).
File picker loss of functionality is the fault of Gtk3 and Gtk4. It would still apply even in systems without GNOME at all. Maintaing a fork of Gtk3 and 4 with patches to restore 2010 era functionality would be difficult but not infeasible. Arch does some of it.
I've looked at the code and it is quite a terrible mess. It's no two line patch to change settings anymore because everything gets reset multiple times in functions you don't expect.
The fragmentation is one thing, but it's the way each variation is really just subtly different from several other variations that exemplifies what Linux has become. This is supposed to be the OS of composability, why are DEs so inflexible that you need so many bespoke variations?
Does anyone run System76 hardware with a distro other than Pop!_OS and if so, how's it working out for you? I love what the company is doing and will probably consider a System76 laptop in the future (once they move away from Clevo to custom designs), but I'm pretty attached to my Linux environment of choice. Arch Linux and KDE Plasma have been very good to me for years and the idea of moving to an apt + GNOME-based system doesn't quite appeal to me. That said, the tiling window management features here look really nice and I'd love to see something similar for Plasma (KWin scripts work fine but have always felt just a bit jank in my experience).
Honest question, why is it that whenever any party tries making a new DE/WM it always turns out to be a GNOME derivative? Unity, Cinnamon, Budgie, Pantheon, MATE.. and now COSMIC. Why not choose something else like KDE or XFCE to fork?
The other way of looking at it is that Gnome is rampantly opinionated, and if you disagree, a fork might be your best option far more often than it is with other desktop environments.
A lot of great usability improvements from MacOS! Great news. Looks like the Ubuntu Unity separation will be less painful... Gnome isn't that great to use without a lot of customization.
System76 is more than just a laptop, PopOS! is great. It's also nice to have CoreBoot and a discreet Nvidia RTX GPU. With PopOS they have figured-out scaling with various monitors... I have an external ultrawide that's not even 2k and it works great with the laptop's built-in 4k with proper scaling on both (not easy to do)... a regular 1080p external also works great.
Finally, I think I configured the most expensive workstation in my life with these guys, north of $80k.
Yes, me too. System76 has done great work with Pop!_OS and pushing Linux as a true laptop OS, however their default theme and wallpaper always make me nauseous, something I feel a color blind would put together. Beautiful is not something I associate with Pop!_OS and System76.
Weird thing is that Linux as a server has made great progress the last decade, but it seems that the Linux desktop has evolved backwards. It started sometime around the introduction of Gnome 3.
I just hope they offered another theme , i dont think the current one is very aesthetically pleasing, i love their vision as a company , I just dont like their laptops really, I bought a gazelle a few years back , i loved the unboxing experience and the very good support but it just feels cheap , the keyboard isn’t great either, and is pretty noisy . Seems like all linux laptop manufacturers are using similar chasis ? I want to support them , they are doing important work , but their laptops are not competitive for the price, you can install linux on a xps or a thinkpad, and get a better quality device for a lower price.
> Seems like all linux laptop manufacturers are using similar chasis ?
As I understand it, most Linux laptop manufacturers will gently modify a standard Clevo machine so it works a little better with Linux and leave it at that.
System76 makes decent laptops that run linux really well. Ive had zero of the notorious firmware issues of trying to linux-on-laptop.
As a software developer, I wouldnt ever use Pop_OS again. Vanilla Ubuntu is way better, and less complex, and has way better support. All I recall from Pop_OS related issues, on System76's behalf, are tumbleweeds.
Oh and Ive had 4 of their laptops, used primarily for software development, since 2016.
For a physical machine, its been a great experience, albeit slightly too expensive (and for that reason Im not buying them anymore).
At a software level, I am forever disinterested in whatever it is theyre offering. Even the marketing language describing this "Cosmic" thing is has hard to parse and understand as my experience with Pop_OS.
Well, their additions to Gnome in PopOS have been very well received. So..maybe. The "power user" space (especially the non-cli oriented one) is really lacking out-of-the-box solutions rn.
It wouldn't be the first time tailored software drove hardware sales.
Considering this is a tiling window manager, rather high Id say.
Im a power user, so to say, and Ive been using pop shell for about 6-9 months now. I love not having to write my own scripts to do the most basic tasks in sway anymore.
Things like my calendar works throughout the desktop without me having to wrangle various things.
I've been using Pop OS for a bit over a year now and it's perfect. I could totally see whole teams of developers being sold on switching to Linux as primary dev environments. There's zero futzing around with configs and such to get things just right--it's great right out of the box. I haven't had that kind of experience since MacOS X but this is even better since it's just real Linux and stuff like docker containers, etc. run natively without VM overhead.
Yes? The lack of a workable window manager is one of the biggest things that prevents me from using a Linux laptop as a daily driver.
It makes sense that System76 would work toward a serviceable Linux desktop OS. For the same reason it makes sense that Apple develops MacOS but charges no license fees.
Cinnamon is brilliant, it’s been my main choice since I moved from XFCE, it’s a modern version of the classic desktop.
For me it’s more serviceable than anything else but as always ymmv but as a developer desktop that I do all my computing on Fedora Cinnamon is damn close to perfect, there is little I can think of to improve it.
Yep - they've nailed the "Just give me a classic desktop but make it feel modern" the workspace switcher, alt tab behaviour, expose stuff, it's all modern but it also just works and stays out the way.
It's really excellent if you want your desktop to be..a desktop.
"a workable window manager" sounds to me like you just mean "I want a macOS clone and I don't want to learn anything else even if it's more efficient".
If I got it wrong, I'd recommend sway or any other tiling wm that adapts perfectly to laptop limitations of 1 screen and no mouse included.
Desktop workflow is a highly personal thing. I've tried to make tiling WMs work numerous times but it never sticks, I always go back to a more traditional floating-first setup with titlebars and the like.
Right but to be fair to the parent - tiling window managers are the only kind that are superior to the Mac, and they are simply not to everyone’s preference.
The benefits of tiling window managers are mostly realized when you use them with a very structured workflow. For example, one project per screen/desktop. I use i3 this way and I dedicate one desktop per patch I am working on, including the editor (vim in my case) and the the command line for the git branch.
Without such rigor, they can end up being more cumbersome and confusing than a traditional window manager. For the same reason, I specifically don't use a tiling wm for less structured tasks (i.e web surfing) because it would be too annoying otherwise. I so still tile all the windows in my traditional wm though.
Great to see a dock properly integrated into the settings app. The first thing I do in Pop_OS is track down and install the dash to dock extension and fiddle with the settings until it's sitting on the right-hand side of my screen just like God intended.
I really like Pop!_OS' tiling feature but the one thing that really bugs me is you can't disable windows always raising on hover. You're meant to be able to tweak it using Gnome Tweaks however disabling the option and enabling tiling means flinging your mousing anywhere causes all the windows in its track to raise to the front. If you've got a floating window it just disappears behind the stack.
Theres an open issue[1] but it hasn't been solved yet.
This looks really great. Pop OS is the one Linux that is almost perfect out of the box for me. But I always install Plank for my dock. I also like the Super key launcher change, that is basically how I use it anyway. Good stuff.
I was using it it and loving it for about 6 months. Then I did an upgrade and it broke the install. Major PITA. Went back to Ubuntu. It's unfortunate, and may have been fluke, but it degrades "trust".
Looks great! When I introduce people to Linux I usually start them off with PopOS!, or KDE I really think it's a great DE. I would probably use it if I wasn't heavily invested into window managers
Makes me wonder how usability studies are run. I should look into that sometime.
In my case, I've never liked the OSX style dock, and I use the super key to switch windows all the time. So the two biggest features I pulled out of that article are actually things I'll have to turn off.
Oh, and I used to love the hot corner, but it didn't work so well when I had multiple monitors on both sides of my main monitor. So I got used to just hitting super.
Yeah, I think for me it's almost entirely the trackpad that's the dealbreaker still. There isn't a single laptop that I can use linux on where the trackpad just doesnt suck. I'll tolerate the noise and the subpar display, even the speakers can suck, but the trackpad should be at least 80% of the way of what a macbook has.
Is this built as a Gnome Shell Extension? Would love to be able to just pop this into my shell on OpenSuse without having to change to an Ubuntu based distribution.
Also, what are they going to do once nobody is supporting Gnome 3.38 anymore, porting this to Gnome 40+ seems like it's going to be a pain in the ass. Hopefully it doesn't necessitate a Gnome Shell fork...
I don't know if the thing they're announcing here is just an extension, but the features mentioned in the article all come included in the pop shell gnome extension.
The way System76 is innovating is really great. In my opinion they are the only hardware company that has a good Linux strategy and the resources to implement it.
Now the last piece is getting big enough to develop custom bare-bones for their laptops. I hope they can pull that off.
Is this yet another GNOME3 fork? Please don't contribute to the fragmentation of the Linux desktop, seriously.
I'm primarily a KDE user, but I'd rather see all distros ship vanilla GNOME than the inconsistent mess we have today. Every time I help a new Linux user, I find that they're using a desktop I have never seen before, and I don't know how to help them setup Japanese input or HiDPI support without switching the entire desktop.
I recently previewed GNOME40, and it's great: finally, virtual desktops and the "dock" behave similarly to any other OS, and animations are as smooth as macOS. Also, Wayland now works so well that you won't even notice you're using it.
Even Canonical has figured out how to work with upstream to resolve their usability and performance concerns. Why can't System76 engineers do the same?
I wouldn’t mind trying it, but does System 76 support dual boot with Microsoft Secure Boot? I’m also curious if it can include pinch-to-zoom; I’m old enough to find it a must-have.
It's not a desktop environment, they are extensions for the gnome shell.
If you look at the source of gnome shell extensions and themes you'll find that they use JavaScript and CSS. If you spend enough effort you can make gnome look completely different.
I think that those "Let's make our own DE" dumb kids are both a symptom and a cause why Linux never broke on the mainstream workstation market.
Truth is that a shite miserable 25 year old xfce could be customised in a way good enough to compete with OS X. Why waste all the time on such a massive amount of extremely useless work? Just because it is fun?
And yeah, you can downvote this into oblivion, I don't care. The fact is that 80% of the comments on this thread are making fun of the very same retards for the very same reasons.
>Truth is that a shite miserable 25 year old xfce could be customised in a way good enough to compete with OS X
In terms of appearance, maybe. Make that work consistently with most used programs with the same shortcuts, composition, behavior and rich integration between all these apps and then we're talking.
Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated and fast demands many people thinking, designing, implementing, testing and fixing. It is very expensive and only affordable for companies that can make enough money with to return the investment. Linux has no presence on the desktop because vendors that make the most money with it have 0 presence on the desktop.
Additionally, out-of-the-box functionality matters a lot. DEs like XFCE have insane tweakability, but outside of a handful of settings most users don't take advantage of that. The majority of Windows and macOS users don't spend hours tweaking their setup to perfection, they just install Chrome and Spotify and maybe vertically orient their taskbar/dock if they're feeling spicy and it's off to the races.
And moving the needle on the out of the box usability front often requires changes that can't be made by changing the default configuration or becoming a contributor to an existing DE. The GNOME team would likely never approve of the changes seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything more extensive.
>The GNOME team would likely never approve of the changes seen just in the short blogpost, let alone anything more extensive.
That's kinda the point of PopOS in the first place: retrofitting GNOME and Ubuntu with extra utilities for a better "out of the box" experience. Manjaro does basically the same thing on the Arch side of the fence, and both are essential to providing that experience you're describing. The GNOME team isn't intentionally holding back features or making intentionally bad choices here, they're just part of the brick in the wall. The GNOME desktop should be bland, so that the distro can provide a default and the end user can make changes where necessary. It's all part of one big machine.
Linux has no presence on the desktop market, yet apps like Steam and Spotify are ported to it, often with special considerations in mind. If we're talking about market share, you can have it: but in terms of software availability, everything is on Linux now. Wine is good enough to run any Windows app carte-blanche, and all of the most common apps (eg. Telegram, Discord, Zoom) have native clients.
Getting everything working reliably, beautifully, integrated and fast is not a matter of manpower, it's about the modularity of your system and the power the end-user has.
No matter how unpopular this approach is, I must agree... I've been on Pop OS for years, and it really is the best GNOME I've seen. However, GNOME itself is pretty weird and even slow these days – yet it's nearly the de facto Linux DE. And System76 is adding more bells and whistles, probably not making it more snappy.
This is sad to see, because there are stable, nice, and fast DE's, like Budgie. Or KDE, of course, but I'm more of a GTK person.
I also would like it more if System76 contributed to existing project like Bugie instead. It's tiresome how GNOME monoculture is dictating everything in GTK nowdays.
Unity was perhaps the biggest blunder in all of Linux-dom in terms of getting this OS out there; Ubuntu was sitting on the perfect opportunity to pull the rug from under Microsoft at XPs end of life -- could have just done "Hey, you want a simple, ultra-stable, ultra-familiar experience now that XP is gone?" And keep something Gnome2-ish and be the Volvo of computers.
And instead went with "Let's see if we can out-sexy Apple!" No. You can't. Ugh.
Why another WM to further divide up dev time for desktop environments.
I'm not say people shouldn't make what they want, but I think they'd meet their goals a lot easier contributing to an existing project instead of forking.
I'm still using unity because it was the last usable polished out of the box usable DE for me. I'm glad they try to do this, the linux desktop needs a contender to the too rich kde and too limited gnome, but with a modern touch.
That's the Linux desktop ecosystem. Another window manager that some users will use and will later complain that their browser isn't working with it or it crashes with etc Wayland, X11, Yet another Linux app or even Z shell, etc.
Sometimes it's only 'fun' swapping in alternatives of alternative system components, until you actually need to get work done. Then it must not get in the way of the user.
I prefer the desktop environment of 'It just works' and 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'. It's called macOS.
> I prefer the desktop environment of 'It just works' and 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'. It's called macOS.
Pffft. No it's called XFCE. My Macs are broken way more often by updates and are way less compatible with my hardware than anything else in my house. They really don't just work... They're dead ass not even half as stable as Manjaro.
Not in Big Sur it doesn’t. They dramatically changed the appearance for the worse. Tons more wasted space. They broke long-standing keyboard shortcuts.
The move to iOS-ify MacOS with Catalyst just doesn’t work. Messages on Big Sur is effectively non-functional. I have a chat with a friend that breaks the message entry box reliably. If he sends me a message I have to create a new message to him to get the input box. It’s janky crap.
Personally I’m excited by a hardware company selling a fully integrated Linux machine and taking an interest in making a working OS. This could finally get me free of Apple’s misguided antics.
That's your preference. But I would certainly be fuming if the only option on Linux was, say, GNOME. The workflow doesn't agree with me and neither do some of their UI choices. Thankfully, the "Linux desktop ecosystem" has afforded me a number of options that I much enjoy using.
There is a lot of awesome people in the Free Desktop community, who work hard for what they believe in. Criticism is always welcome, there is a lot of work to do and a lot of stuff to improve.
But having people who use a different OS come in and ridicule all of that work is not really nice.
I've been happily using the treaded GNOME without filepicker thumbnails for 10 years now and I'm neither less productive not less happy than you.
Enjoy your Mac! OSX has a lot of great inspirations for the Free Desktop.
Not parent commenter but I've had the same experience - and I'm sure this comment will be received just as poorly as theirs, but I've given up on Linux desktop. It just isn't stable. I've tried so many times and I don't know what 1) is wrong with me or 2) the "I'm just as productive on Linux" people are smoking. Just getting basic stuff to work like bluetooth is a hassle. Headphones stuck in headset mode, let's go drop an argument to the bluetooth kernel module to enable autoswitching to A2DP. Touchpad driver for my machine kinda sucks, click and drag is still a little broken. Screen tearing watching YouTube videos on Firefox. Oh and it randomly freezes requiring a hard restart. Good luck upgrading packages, you never know what will randomly break. Extra good luck upgrading to the next LTS release, your machine might not boot when you go to restart.
I've been wanting to love Linux desktop for 10+ years and I just give up. I don't have time for this stuff anymore. And I'm not using esoteric distros. Ubuntu LTS, I also tried Fedora and it was even worse.
Sorry, but none of this happens to me on macOS or Windows. They're not perfect - of course crash, have certain quirks, etc, but they waste much less of my time on basic desktop functionality being unstable or needing special treatment.
Speaking as someone who's been using exclusively Linux for the last 5+ years I think it's dishonest of people to say any distro "just works" like MacOS and Windows. For technical users who are willing to invest the time to configure things as they like I feel it's an unparalleled experience, but it certainly takes some work to get there. Most of the issues you mentioned are ones I've personally encountered and fixed (sans the freezes, that's abnormal).
Paradoxically I had a much worse experience with things breaking themselves and not working when using the allegedly more accessible/stable Ubuntu (LTS) than I do now that I use Arch. The Frankenstein-esque mess of held back packages seems to do a better job preserving bugs in amber than preventing them. I would honestly hesitate to steer any technical individuals towards Ubuntu at this point, and I suspect it's given a lot of people a sour taste of desktop Linux.
(just to be clear- I'm absolutely not saying arch is the "just works" distro, just sharing my experience comparison)
A lot of complaints sounds to be hardware specific, so there's really no cure for it than filing the bugs.
> Ubuntu LTS, I also tried Fedora and it was even worse.
The firmware for a lot of hardware has been lacking for years and sometimes can bug down after upgrades. And we shouldn't even speak about the proprietary buggy-man that terrorizes a lot of linux users trying to get their hardware to work, that is called NVidia.
If you would have waited upgrading for a few weeks after a new release becomes available things are often fixed. You need to understand is that it's community effort and filing bugs is also very important.
That's ok. My experience is much better and I don't know why there is a difference either.
I just don't get why people love to dunk so hard on something they don't use and do it in such a disrespectful way. What you said is totally fine, altough I could argue that you thinking I smoke is an insult, I mean it was one time, come on, I didn't even inhale.
