Ask HN: Do you want a new desktop environment for your Linux box? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you want a new desktop environment for your Linux box?

8 pointsdizzyness11 comments

Hello, I'm building a new desktop environment for Linux from the ground up; new GUI toolkit, Wayland instead of X, etc. My goal is to have a beautiful Linux Desktop. And I mean beautiful, like every pixel counts.

The project is still in heavy private development and I'll share more information with interested people.

I'm trying to get the bigger picture regarding the current status of desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc.) for daily linux users. Do you like what you have ? Do you just use it just because you want Linux and you have no other choice ? etc.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

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I used to care more about beautiful... but now it's all about functional for me - and its important to consider that sometimes beautiful gets in the way of functional. It shouldn't, but it can without proper design.

I say "used to care" because I earn my income from using a computer, and anything that gets in the way of my efficient use of said computer is a problem. I've found problems with both Windows and Linux (Ubuntu, Gnome with and without Unity) that impeded my work; not always to do with the 'beauty' nearly as much as with the 'design' and workflow.

It should be as easy possible to accomplish tasks, not as beautiful as possible to accomplish tasks.

Keyboard shortcuts rock, mouse only sucks.

Design with usability in mind, but above all... design first!

As a Desktop Linux user since 2005 who has tried over 20 combinations of Desktop Environments/Window Managers on a wide variety of machines, it seems to me that you consider "from the ground up" a selling point. If you want a beautiful (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) desktop, I'll agree that that's the only way to go for a personalized/custom feel.

I've settled on StumpWM for underpowered laptops/terminal servers and openbox for all my desktop needs. As somebody who does not have the ability to create something from scratch like you're doing, I feel that openbox is as "barebones" as I can imagine a WM being, by default, and allows for AMAZING cutomization, without proprietary (unique) configuration methods that LXDE and Fluxbox use.

Edit: I have three machines running openbox, all three are tied for "most beautiful desktop I've ever seen" (again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder) and all three are set up completely differently (even Conky displays are each unique) but have the same configuration file locations/methods.

I'd love to see screenshots of them. I used to be HUGELY into making my desktops gorgeous, but lately I just need a fullscreen gnome-terminal with vim :) Still, love to see purty desktops.

I would like to see this project, I hope that you have some kind of minimal install that can be extended on a 'need' basis. I'm getting tired of installs (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu) where many things are standard installed even if you do not need them so currently I'm doing a LFS (linux from scratch) where I can decide what to install as applications etc. I also like a minimal use of resources so I have more at my disposal for actual work (that is what I liked about xubuntu and lubuntu) so I wonder how much CPU and momory all your 'beautiful' needs, I'm hoping not to much because I do like a nice looking desktop (even when I want it minimal)

I'm always looking for a new environment; I recently installed Elementary OS and I'm stunned with how much better my experience has been. If you spend your planning time working backward from the UX you're going to give users a special treat. Elementary OS has done a great job of executing a really nice environment through rigorous interface guidelines and real attention to detail and user experience.

I wish you the best of luck. If I can assist in any way in the future (I'm not a software guy - more design/front-end) I would love to.

Personally I adore OS X design, it's really cool. And besides cool design and usability, OS X has all the power of command line.

Yeah, I'm on OS X, but sometimes I want/need to use a linux distro, like ubuntu or gentoo. Well, I hate that Canonical tries to steel OS X design to their Ubuntu.

So try come out with really cool and different usable design. Don't try to steel existing designs fully, please!

My first Desktop was Gnome, it was ok, but I've always wanted a better performance and customization.. so I've been trying xfce, lxde, e17, and now I'm stick with Awesome! My advice it's to focus on performance and simplicity.

I'd love you test and give feedback, once you have a public version. I was never happy with Gnome, KDE or Unity.

well, i am very excited to learn about your project, i don't think i will be able to contribute anything valuable anytime soon, but i would love to test once it's released, specially since you mentioned Wayland!

I'd love more information. josh at isotope11 dot com

i just want folks to work on the existing solutions, especially on the popular ones like gnome and kde.

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