@tinker
if you want to be left out the discussion speak up, I will keep you in otherwise.

@alcinnz
Yeah, I see this as an interesting problem especially since the choice made with the distro has rather small impact on the userXP compared to the DE which only limits first choice when getting "exotic" like something very new or something very few people use.

So using the wording of UI patterns the decision of building "your" linux setup basically lacks consistency to be intuitiv to newbies.

@uniporn @tinker My partial solution is not to recommend “Linux” to newcomers (besides it helps to avoid the Linux v GNU/Linux argument). Instead I recommend particular “distros” as “operating systems” with their default desktops.

@alcinnz @tinker
sounds very reasonable, though I like to point out to people the ability to switch between various DEs and the main reason I see between major distros is the PM and the repos. Wherefor I usually recommend Manjaro since it is quite easy to install, brings sane repos and updates in one command. For the rest I myself am too happy with i3 (which apart from exceptions I know not to be very beginner-friendly) to play around with various DEs :D

@uniporn @tinker True. It depends on who we’re talking to whether the system’s defaults, repos, and/or package managers speaks most to them. Or if they don’t like defaults, Debian’s a good choice.

Personally I find elementary’s defaults just perfect for me, but it’s the software freedom I value recommending to others.

P.S. I wonder how well the GNOME3 or Pantheon apps play with i3? Because I’m aware of a design difference there that’d need to be configured away.

@alcinnz @tinker
> P.S.
Maybe I know / can try when you tell me what flaw / app exactly?

@uniporn @tinker It’s across all their apps (Noise, Epiphany, GNOME Maps, Audience, etc).

And the potential issue (though I might not understand things well enough) is that they’ve decided to merge the title bar and toolbar by leaving rendering of the window controls (minimise, maximise, close, etc buttons) to the app. As I understand i3 these controls could look ugly in i3.

@alcinnz @tinker
As of cheese these UI elements don't exist, neither does the toolbar :s (might be cheese has none, will try something rather light right away)

@uniporn @tinker Weird, but I guess I can see that. To achieve this programmatically GNOME & Pantheon’s toolbar/titlebar’s are added entirely separately from everything else.

This definitely needs to be figured between them.

@alcinnz @tinker
I might have started to type that text as an answere to the msg before the one I pasted it to. so sorry if I fucked up the context with that.

@uniporn @alcinnz - No, ya’ll’re fine. I’ll listen in!

@uniporn @tinker Also as a developer, you’re right. I can’t target my UI design to whatever Linux system the user has cobbled together. But I can target systems like elementary with a strongly defined experience.

And I can read standardised configuration files so my apps can work elsewhere. Maybe a standard like Flatpack will make this even easier for them.

@uniporn @tinker At the same time it’s worth looking at our strengths.

For starters we have standards for our desktops, which allows our apps to work pretty well everywhere. Even if they look best on particular desktops.

And second developers for proprietary desktops tend to be more keen on furthering their own brand rather then embracing the desktop’s experience. We don’t have as much (though still see some on elementary).

@alcinnz @tinker
yeah! I've read in some blog somewhere from an apple-user once about firefox that its UX was very "linuxy" (not the exact word but good enough) which collides with his designed OSX xp.

Where I think FOSS did some astonishing job with branding the UX of vi(m) which you find in really a ton of programms.
And damn is it user-friendly once you overcome the entrance-barrier :)

But I see that this is an issue for people used to windows, whichs UX I don't understand well at all.

@uniporn @tinker Yeah, except for me I find Chrome clashes worse than Firefox on elementary. They both seem to have decided they don’t care what constitutes as a “native” UX, though Firefox has gotten better after Quantum.

And I certainly acknowledge the importance of branding to UX, we need great icons and everything. But a UX issue I find (particularly on iOS and the Web) is that the level branding within apps leaves me needing to learn each one from scratch.

@alcinnz @tinker
Which explains the usecase for standards :)

for FF I find funny how you say quantum improved it: before quantum I think you could just override shurtcuts, now you only can add them which I find very limiting as you shouldn't accidently close your entire FF instead of just a tab... (which lead me to the workaround of disabling C-q on a WM level) and it made me switch to qutebrowser (which is mainly nice when you like vim (defaults :)))

@uniporn @tinker Hmmm, I didn’t notice that lack of configurability.

I’ll look into qutebrowser, but personally I’ve been enjoying developing my own browser. It’s easier, given a preexisting rendering engine, then I expected.

@kensanata @tinker
If I am getting this right this totally is a zero sum game, but it isn't a coin rather than a cube (or very much more dimensions, the concept is the relevant part here).
But maybe I am missing the point here.
But I really like the emphasis your view gives to the fact it is a fun activity the more or the less.

@uniporn @tinker Well, zero sun in that we all have only x hours per day to give, sure. But complaints are usually along the axis of “so much effort wasted” and my point is that this effort will get spent elsewhere, not on the tasks the complainers are thinking of. As such, us living life and spending our hours along “more dimensions” is exactly right.

@kensanata @tinker
Well there are quite some areas of life where the typical scales are insufficent. However I have not found a way to propagate my usual sulotion (more dimensions) or developing a new model in favor of people developing broken s*** scales.