Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based system

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Sik
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by Sik »

mikejmoffitt wrote:On Linux, different distros do different things, and different applications may or may not respect font configurations.
This is because programs are given a blank window and are expected to do all the rendering themselves (this is why every toolkit looks so different and there doesn't seem to be a "native" look). Yes, this also means doing all the widget interaction themselves as well. How come most Linux users seem convinced this is a good thing is beyond me, but I guess that even suggesting absolutely anything that isn't "let me do absolutely anything I want" is considered like a war declaration.
lidnariq
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by lidnariq »

Sik wrote: there doesn't seem to be a "native" look
Raw X11 calls (e.g. XDrawText), such as in the SDL2 error dialog, and a bunch of really legacy programs (xless, xman, xmag, editres, older versions of Tk, &c). Only really supports 8- or 16- bit per character bitmap fonts without antialiasing.

By now, I'd be content going back to the X11 experience of 1991 instead of the fetid pile we've evolved into instead. And I really don't expect Wayland to fix anything I care about (as opposed to just break everything I still care about)
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Banshaku
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by Banshaku »

I just started to use Linux, are you guys trying to discourage me right away? :lol:
3gengames
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by 3gengames »

Each toolkit does fonts how they like to do fonts. Pick a toolkit and let someone else manage a nice library, or spin your own. It's not as bad as you make it, it's flexibility. But I can't wait until Nvidia gets their Wayland driver compliant and Wayland comes along. It might not fix it, but getting rid of Xorg helps.
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by tepples »

Once we no longer have X11, what can fans of traditional desktop Linux say in reply to "Android is Linux, and that ought to be good enough for you"? Because the possible compromise when switching to Android is that Android has traditionally enforced a window management policy of all maximized all the time.
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by 3gengames »

Android runs on Linux and is built on Linux, but Android is additional software to be an OS onto it's self, so I don't really care whatever Android wants to try to do. By the time it matters, hopefully Google or Canonical will have finally made the market running pure Linux+DE OS's and get rid of the middleware we don't need now, which is Android.
Sik
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by Sik »

The only thing Android has in common is the kernel and nothing else (what we traditionally think as "Linux" is actually GNU, a completely different operating system - hence their whole insistence of calling it GNU/Linux). In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some day Google goes ahead and replaces Android's kernel with their own or maybe a BSD kernel. Maybe drivers will be affected (but Android is driver hell anyway), but as far as apps care, as long as the same syscalls are there it shouldn't matter.
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by tepples »

I'm well aware of that. Their response would be along the lines "Why do you need GNU/Linux when you can just use Android instead of GNU/Linux?" For a while, I've been trying to use "X11/Linux" as shorthand to distinguish operating environments that embrace multiple tiled or overlapping windows. But with X11 getting replaced with Wayland to plug the "XEvilTeddy" hole in the snap package format's isolation model, that may lose its distinctiveness. And I need the shorthand as a rhetorical means to avoid "those who demand multi-window are too demanding" and "Samsung's recent Galaxy tablets have a split-screen mode; replace your Nexus with a Galaxy and use only apps that opt into this Samsung proprietary feature" comebacks.
Sik
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by Sik »

tepples wrote:But with X11 getting replaced with Wayland to plug the "XEvilTeddy" hole in the snap package format's isolation model
It has more to do with the fact that merely showing a bitmap on screen has an absurd amount of overhead just because it wants you to set up a network connection (even if to localhost) just so send it the data. But yes, the keystroke snooping (and way more, as just about every resource is shared) is ridiculous, that actually makes it the least secure operating system in practice and the situation isn't DOS levels of bad only because it isn't the most popular so there isn't much effort put into it.
calima
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by calima »

This is hardly the place, but anyway...

I think the network architecture of X11 is a significant advantage over all other OSes, and throwing it away with Wayland is a mistake. On no other OS can you transparently network any application anywhere.

Macs have VNC built-in - entire screen to one point only. Windows has RDP, which is usually the entire screen, but has limited support for apps only, again to one point only. In X, I can transparently have windows open on my screen from ten computers, some in LAN, some across the world, all cooperating seamlessly, using the same window decorations, passing copy-paste, in merged harmony that's not interrupted by having to switch entire screens.

The applications of this in thin clients and remote computing are obvious. It's also regularly used by scientists using compute clusters, for things like weather modeling.
tepples
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by tepples »

calima wrote:in merged harmony that's not interrupted by having to switch entire screens.
I wonder whether that's an advantage for the majority of the public, which appear to have accepted tablet OS publishers' mentality of "You will eat switching entire screens, and you will like it!" Most posts that mention the phrase "all maximized all the time" other than my own are actually by people preferring this policy, some even asking how to accomplish this. See an anonymous question on Tom's Hardware and kyleg's answer on MetaChat.
Sik
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by Sik »

Pretty much every "average Joe" user I've seen in my life maximizes every window, and I myself maximize everything and use alt+tab all the time, so there's definitely some rationale behind that (I guess that unless you have a large enough monitor to have two windows side by side without losing too much space in each, you're always going to want to do this).

That's completely irrelevant though since this is about having programs seamlessly running on different computers through the same endpoint (be it windows or switching fullscreen apps or whatever). For the record just looked it up, it looks like Wayland may end up getting network transparency after all. Though the biggest problem of X11 wasn't doing things over network, but enforcing it regardless of situation (which makes absolutely no sense when the screen is in the same hardware other than to be "elegant").
calima
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by calima »

That's VNC-like sending of pictures, which is inefficient compared to X with well-made apps. It's also an afterthought - it's not usable right now, and probably won't be in years.

X using a socket over localhost carries very little performance harm, even if it's not elegant.
lidnariq
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by lidnariq »

Ever since short-screen monitors became standard, I basically always put two things (emacs/xterm/&c) left-and-right. My use patterns are also extremely "not normal", so.
calima wrote:That's VNC-like sending of pictures, which is inefficient compared to X with well-made apps.
The obnoxious pedantic argument is that any program using libfreetype or gtk3 is already just sending pixmaps everywhere anyway.

Which is why I'd like to avoid them, but I can't. :(
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Re: Possible compromise(s) when switching to a *nix based sy

Post by tepples »

Sik wrote:Pretty much every "average Joe" user I've seen in my life maximizes every window, and I myself maximize everything and use alt+tab all the time, so there's definitely some rationale behind that (I guess that unless you have a large enough monitor to have two windows side by side without losing too much space in each, you're always going to want to do this).
Even a 1024x600 pixel netbook monitor is wide enough for two 80-column-wide windows using a 6-pixel-wide font. That's how I have IDLE (Python IDE) set up on mine: source on one side and output on the other.
Sik wrote:That's completely irrelevant though since this is about having programs seamlessly running on different computers through the same endpoint
It's also about the availability of multi-window mode for those who want it, as I mentioned above:
tepples wrote:the possible compromise when switching to Android is that Android has traditionally enforced a window management policy of all maximized all the time
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