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Seeking Enlightenment (The H)
The H interviews Carsten "Rasterman" Haitzler, leader of the Enlightenment project, about the desktop and its future. "The biggest thing E17 brings to the table is universal compositing. This means you can use a composited desktop without any GPU acceleration at all, and use it nicely. We don't rely on software fallback implementations of OpenGL. We literally have a specific software engine that is so fast that some developers spent weeks using it accidentally, not realising they had software compositing on their setup. E17 will fall back to software compositing automatically if OpenGL acceleration doesn't work. It is that good. It even works very nicely on an old Pentium-M @ 600Mhz with zero accelerated rendering support." (Thanks to Tom Arnold.)
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Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 1, 2012 22:54 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] What does E17 bring to the table that is being ignored by other desktops? Which then continues to a few things that are done by various other desktops. E.g. loads of configuration options: seems like KDE. Freedesktop.org standards: AFAIK every desktop does that. Fairly traditional UI: striving to keep that does seems unique now. Compositor that turns itself off: not only KDE, also done by GNOME as well as Unity AFAIK. A huge advertised feature is not needing hardware compositing. But though nice, the graphics card I bought 4+ years ago (seems it the GPU was made in 2007) because it was silent (no fan)+cheap. That GPU is way quicker than what is needed for compositing. Meaning: to me the lack of need for compositing is technically interesting, but doesn't seem to add any practical value for most.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 0:44 UTC (Fri) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]
How good are the lower-end graphics chips used on phones and other SoC at compositing? I have no idea, but this is the only place I can imagine it would be relevant anymore..
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 4:20 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Completely capable. Nobody ships a smartphone without an entirely competent GPU these days.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 9:56 UTC (Fri) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link]
Speed is good even at the lowest end. However, many GPU drivers are either closed (nvidia, mali), buggy (ati) or both (powervr). This means really good 3D acceleration is only available to intel graphics these days...
So one might prefer software compositing simply for the stability.
A bit out of date Posted Nov 2, 2012 10:35 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
The free radeon graphics driver is perfectly usable for a composited desktop. I guess nouveau is in the same category. So even people like me who do not want to use the closed drivers find no lack of support. This leaves only PowerVR on traditional computers which ironically is used on some Intel systems.
A bit out of date Posted Nov 2, 2012 14:29 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Running Gnome 3 full with nouveau here, no issues.
A bit out of date Posted Nov 2, 2012 18:47 UTC (Fri) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]
Am I the only one with serious radeon compositing issues? I have:
08:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc NI Caicos [AMD RADEON HD 6450]
gnome-shell is painfully slow. Cinnamon draws its desktop overview at about one frame every three seconds.
A bit out of date Posted Nov 2, 2012 21:50 UTC (Fri) by colo (subscriber, #45564) [Link]
Are you sure you have the radeon firmware blobs installed and properly loaded by the DRM module? Without them, you won't get properly hw-accelerated OpenGL on many of AMDs more recent GPUs.
A bit out of date Posted Nov 2, 2012 23:04 UTC (Fri) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]
Updating drivers to git from today fixed it. Tiling makes a big difference on low-end (and thus low memory bandwidth) radeons, apparently.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 3:02 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> the graphics card I bought 4+ years ago
Forget hardware. Try running mutter/llvmpipe in VNC. The CPU usage spikes are still beyond anything that one would find comfortable.
In fact, the whole Gnome Shell paradigm of "let's change every pixel on the screen every time something happens" is pretty bad for remote work.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 3:57 UTC (Fri) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]
VNC seems to be not the right protocol there. I gather that SPICE has optimization for this exact use case, though I haven't tried it out myself yet.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 4:54 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
VNC is not my choice either. It's just that this is what works now and what infrastructure where I work supports. I cannot do my work 5 years from now.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 8:45 UTC (Fri) by dsommers (subscriber, #55274) [Link]
Even though VNC performance isn't optimal, compared to SPICE, making SPICE "clever" to not to complete screen refreshes when not needed, isn't solving the issue on the right place.
Rather go to the root of the problem, fixing gnome-shell or whatever else responsible for these massive screen refreshes. This will make the overall performance better in the long run. "Fixing" SPICE (or even VNC for that matter) is just an ugly hack.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 4:25 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> fixing gnome-shell or whatever else responsible for these massive screen refreshes
It's the overview. If you want to start an app, for instance, almost every single pixel on the screen will be changed because of the overview. And then, it will be changed back again to what it was before. What a waste of bandwidth (the higher the resolution and depth, the bigger the waste). And all for no good reason whatsoever.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 4:34 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Define "good reason". There are great UI reasons for the behaviour of the activities menu, just as there are great resource usage reasons for not doing so. You've applied weightings to one and assumed that they're universal.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 5:24 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Gnome design documentation talks about distraction avoidance nonsense. As if autohide panel didn't already exist...
Apart from that, what are other reasons? To throw a kitchen sink at users when they want to start an app? To reduce desktop visibility? To annoy with useless animations?
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 16:24 UTC (Sat) by lsl (subscriber, #86508) [Link]
When I want to start some GUI program with the Gnome Shell I press the Mod4 key (or Super/Windows/whatever key) and start typing its name. I think most users appreciate it that they are shown in launching what program pressing the return key would now result. You certainly can argue about whether the displaying of results has to be full screen but an "autohide panel" is definitely not a solution to that problem.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 18:07 UTC (Sat) by robbe (guest, #16131) [Link]
The panel can function the same: popup when you press Mod4, offer search, etc. Just not take over the whole screen. But that's how Windows does it, so it must be bad, I guess.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 12:20 UTC (Sun) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] But we *must* consume the whole screen! The user might be using a tablet, or a phone, and there's simply no way we could detect that and do something different on regular monitors!
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 14:48 UTC (Sun) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
The biggest issue on a phone isnt even that the screen is smaller, it's that typing is not possible. A phone user is hunting and pecking whether with a physical or on-screen keyboard, so they will be entering characters slowly and hoping to find at match without entering the entire string. SOME users on a PC will be doing the same, and the same response is appropriate in any case of a slow typer - use all that idle time to search and display possible matches.
But when you have fast input coming in you should NEVER be interrupting that to search and display possible hits - that is counterproductive on any platform. (Even on a phone if someone can somehow send the input fast enough the same thing would apply.) The computer in that case should simply keep listening to the input. If the user hits mod4-firefox-<enter> at a decent pace without pause, there doesnt need to be any sort of GUI update for it at all, the only response needed is to launch firefox.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 15:00 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
So I start typing something, pause, type another few characters, realise that what I was searching for is already on the screen, go to tap it and then you update the results underneath me and I launch the wrong application?
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 16:29 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
I would say that once the UI has been shown it should be kept up-to-date with the typing at any speed.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 20:31 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
The context was in terms of avoiding unnecessary repaints because of the bandwidth consumed. If it's an unacceptable performance hit it's an unacceptable performance hit independent of whether the user pauses or not. It's fine, though - it turns out that Gnome doesn't wait for any drawing to be carried out before responding to keypresses. You're free to interact with it while it's redrawing things.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 21:39 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
The thing is, if you want to come up with some absolute standard of when a performance hit is too much, you have to make way too many assumptions to do so. A slow user on a fast system will need all the help he can get - while a fast user on a slow system is going to want to throttle you if the computer seizes up trying to do searches and display suggestions when he knew what he wanted. There are going to be a whole continuum of use cases and explicitly tuning for one spot on the spectrum detunes all the others.
Simply waiting for a break in the input before triggering (and thus not triggering at all when input is fast and complete) gives you a kind of autotune for all kinds of cases. I am not talking about a long pause, just a momentary hesitation. Even on a new computer a fast typist can sometimes get ahead of the display, and on a slow machine it isnt hard at all to do that. Once it's all caught up and hits an idle loop, you can worry about whether it might make sense to make a suggestion.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 3:34 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
What are you defining as a slow system? I haven't found any hardware that runs Gnome 3 that is unable to reasonably keep up with my typing.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 18:44 UTC (Tue) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]
I like Gnome 3, but my crappy netbook (Acer Aspire 522, all AMD parts) is pretty slow. If you have a couple of applications running it can take more than five seconds after you write "firef" in the overview and the Firefox icon shows up.
My iMac was much faster, but that can't run recent Fedoras (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=865031)
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 20:06 UTC (Sun) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
Personally I am a curmudgeon and won't be truly happy unless I can flip a switch somewhere to make it actually wait for a TAB before searching or updating searches. That to my mind is truly the best answer.
But mathstuffs answer would probably please a lot more people, and it will even make me happy in comparison to the alternative.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 7:52 UTC (Tue) by mgedmin (subscriber, #34497) [Link]
Use Alt-F2. Tab-completion the way to always worked in bash. (No double-Tab to show all matches, though.)
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 14, 2012 14:52 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
You are kidding, right ?
You can't make a system which works slightly different on a desktop than on a phone ?
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 14, 2012 14:58 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] And here we see proof that no matter how blatantly obvious a piece of sarcasm is, there will always be someone who botches their Detect Sarcasm roll :)
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 14, 2012 16:45 UTC (Wed) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link]
That is what slight sleep deprivation can do to you at times.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 2:27 UTC (Sun) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
I disagree. This is something that Apple figured out years ago (and subsequently forgot, the company has definitely reached senility at this point, but I digress.) You should definitely not be getting visual feedback if you hit a control button and start typing - at that point the interface should be concentrating on accepting your input not on talking back. WHEN and IF you pause, hesitate for a moment, THEN it's appropriate to think about bringing up a visual hint. Bringing it up every time is NOT helpful it's annoying as all fsck, the result is a very annoying system that effectively is always talking instead of listening. Bad computer!
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 8:41 UTC (Sat) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
Going to the root of the problem would involve running the desktop manager locally and only the particular applications that need remoting will be sent over the wire.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 4, 2012 22:38 UTC (Sun) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] Rather go to the root of the problem, fixing gnome-shell or whatever else responsible for these massive screen refreshes. I like the animation; it is pretty minimal. Obviously when stuff is remote you have to ensure that it is efficient. But I wouldn't want all the limitations and trade-offs that you need for something like that applied to when I have a local connection When it is remote, it needs to be responsive / quick. You immediately suggest not doing screen refreshes. But that is a pretty easy view because your focus is that animation. What if you have some application that is also graphically intense? It seems better to determine on a case by case basis what the best solution is. For the animation, maybe making gnome-shell efficient when used during a remote desktop viewing (ideally anything, VNC, SPICE, remote X, ...). But making e.g. SPICE more efficient would also help for some applications. I like things that automatically do the right thing, eventhough that might take a while to get right. During which a visible 'knob' might be seen as a better solution. I still love that you don't need an xorg.conf, etc.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 22:47 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> You immediately suggest not doing screen refreshes.
Unnecessary screen refreshes should not be done. Nobody needs a dash, a workspace switcher and expose when they just want to start an app.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 22:52 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I sometimes use overview mode, sometimes ALT-F2.
The different screen is to avoid any distractions. It focusses you on what you're currently doing (current application). I understand that for you the reasoning behind the way GNOME works is not what you like. But that is why there are multiple desktops and also why there are extensions in GNOME.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 6:31 UTC (Fri) by idupree (subscriber, #71169) [Link]
I experienced this locally while I (my user) accidentally didn't have video-card privileges. Using llvmpipe, which I eventually realized, gnome-shell would frequently use more than half of my quad core Sandy Bridge i7 CPUs. For reference, my screen is 1920x1080 (about twice as many pixels as 1366x768). That was enough CPU to make things a bit laggy and make me debug the problem. I'm kind of impressed that Linux was silently so resilient to that permissions problem that I didn't even know anything was wrong at first. How do systems with weaker CPUs manage?
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 16:48 UTC (Fri) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]
> In fact, the whole Gnome Shell paradigm of "let's change every pixel on the screen every time something happens" is pretty bad for remote work.
No idea where you got this from but this is just wrongs. It only changes the pixels that actually changed (i.e tracks damage events) and copies the changed region from the back to front buffer.
Once we have GLX_EXT_buffer_age (hopefully soon for 3.8) it will be able to do that without copying anything.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 17:06 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
It's all well and good tracking and updating only the regions that change, but when common operations like opening a menu are implemented with effects that change the entire the screen, then... (which I think was bojan's point ;)).
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 4:17 UTC (Sat) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Exactly. That is the problem of the overview - it is unnecessary. Just because phones do it, doesn't mean my desktop should too.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 4:00 UTC (Mon) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
Overview could be very useful. For instance, grouping windows into task groups a la Firefox's Panorama, or search results which let you explore your file resources in quick, rich ways (say, typing in "background-repeat" gives you a list of its properties and clicking on it would then open up devhelp, or whatever tool can display the docs). Mobile devices, to my knowledge, don't do these types of things b/c they really aren't designed for serious multitasking.
If you're happy with IceWM, or the like, then GS isn't for you.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 22:46 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Overview is a kitchen sink approach. It is entered for _everything_, including trivial things like starting an app. As I said before, unnecessary.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 22:48 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Your dislike of GNOME is understood.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 23:17 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Now you are trivialising. It is not a dislike (which would suggest something subjective).
Objectively, when a user wants to start an app, dash, expose, workspace switcher (placed too far to be useful) and animations are not necessary. Also, changing every single pixel on the screen (twice) is not necessary either.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 0:15 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
An interface is subjective, not objective. To you the animation is unneeded. But in fact the animations give usability hints. E.g. if you put your mouse in the corner it highlights via the animations that the mouse triggered a hot corner.
Saying such an animation is objectively not needed: it was done as a usability hint. Basically to guide the user. I don't see how you can state that such a hint is not at least in part subjective.
Technically you are right: animations are not needed. But a user interface is more than implementing technology.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 0:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
He was not saying that animations are bad, that is subjective
he was saying that animations are not needed if the user already knows what to do without them.
That's a very different statement.
If the user needs the hint, they can be good. If the user doesn't need the hint, it's hard to see what value they provide at all.
The suggestion that you hold off on the animation until the user gives some indication that they need help (by not doing anything for a short time) is a pretty good one.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 2:30 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> An interface is subjective, not objective.
So, I take it this is all subjective nonsense as well, right?
http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/
Seriously for a second, take my mobile phone (Samsung Galaxy S2), for instance. If you wanted to display a list of applications in its own dialog or menu over the running app, you could probably do that, but each of the buttons/icons would probably be too small to press. So, this is done in full screen on that device. This is a purely functional decision and is not subjective at all.
A different example. Fast forward to Galaxy Note 10.1 and you'll find multi window mode. Two apps, one next to the other. Enough space to do both, especially when using the pen. Something like this would probably not work on my SGS2.
And then there is the desktop, which uses mouse/glide point as a pointing device (very precise) and has a much, much larger screen. And yet, Gnome insists to treat this as a tablet or a phone by overlaying kitchen sink over my work every time I decide to do even the most trivial "something else". It changes my view (twice) in the process, forcing VNC to repaint large areas. It moves my windows around (expose), although I never wanted to do this. These are nonsensical usability regressions for a _desktop_ UI.
PS. If you wanted to see how a pretty good UI for one device is terrible on another, download Profimail for Android. I used Profimail on Nokia's Symbian for a long time and it was pretty much the best IMAP capable mail client on that platform. On an Android phone with no keyboard, it is pretty clumsy. The UI is all wrong.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 14:47 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
The one area where I can understand people wanting to employ large areas of the screen is precisely that of the applications or "start" menu, mostly because when you navigate inside that you aren't usually wanting to look in there at the same time as look at something else, although there are obviously exceptions. For example, you might want to drag something out of such a menu onto the desktop to make a shortcut to an application. That would be difficult if the menu were full-screen. (It also appears to be difficult when Nautilus doesn't like the drag operation, but anyway.)
Here, GNOME 2.x and KDE 4.x are suboptimal just as GNOME 3 and Unity are presumably suboptimal. Indeed, as I have publicly noted previously, KDE 4.x has an annoying iPod-like start menu that seems to confuse people, all to be able to squeeze a menu into a ridiculously small portion of the screen. Clearly, that isn't a good solution, either.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 15:33 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I did not say it was nonsense. I said it is not objective.
For instance, you bring up something on a mobile phone. There the text would be too small if not full screen. Something objective would state such criteria exactly and that criteria would be based on something subjective.
Obviously defining that e.g. a 4pt font is unreadable is quite easy. But when does it become readable? That is subjective. You can define e.g. 10pt and measure such a rule objectively, but rule itself ("10pt") was still based on something subjective.
I've read reviews about (IIRC) the Galaxy Tab, which is 5" or something. It also allows multiple windows (or something). Some reviews hate it (too small), some love it.
Note that GNOME is not very usable on a tablet. I suggest trying it before suggesting that it is a tablet interface.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 20:54 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> I did not say it was nonsense. I said it is not objective.
Wow! If it is subjective, it is automatically nonsense. Otherwise, why should anyone follow design guidelines that someone found nice for himself only?
> You can define e.g. 10pt and measure such a rule objectively, but rule itself ("10pt") was still based on something subjective.
Surely, you have to be kidding. You obviously do not think that it is possible to measure at which font size majority of people can easily read the text, at which size majority of people can comfortably hit a button with their finger etc.
> Note that GNOME is not very usable on a tablet. I suggest trying it before suggesting that it is a tablet interface.
I did not claim Gnome was usable on a tablet. Only that Gnome developers insist on making my desktop behave like a tablet/phone. Which is unnecessary, because my desktop is neither of those.
PS. You have just reduced decades of usability research to nothing more than someone's whim.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 22:18 UTC (Tue) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link] Wow! If it is subjective, it is automatically nonsense. In the definition I looked up, it states for nonsense: "Subject matter, behavior, or language that is foolish or absurd.". I was not claiming that what you said is foolish or absurd, I just don't agree with you. Surely, you have to be kidding. You obviously do not think that it is possible to measure at which font size majority of people can easily read the text, at which size majority of people can comfortably hit a button with their finger etc. You claimed you could measure similar things objectively. I did not claim Gnome was usable on a tablet. Only that Gnome developers insist on making my desktop behave like a tablet/phone So GNOME is not usable on a tablet. I'm a GNOME developer, and I don't insist on making your desktop behave like a tablet/phone. I don't really care what you use on your desktop actually. I'd like to see some reference of those developers. Actually, a few designer would be more appropriate. PS. You have just reduced decades of usability research to nothing more than someone's whim.No need to get personal or to claim you're an expert on usability research. Seems like two different fallacy arguments.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 23:34 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> You claimed you could measure similar things objectively.
> No need to get personal or to claim you're an expert on usability research. Seems like two different fallacy arguments.
I did not get personal. I was arguing that by your reasoning (i.e. that usability issues are purely subjective), you have reduced objective, scientific research to someone's whim.
I did not claim I could measure such things. Usability experts claim they can.
> I'm a GNOME developer, and I don't insist on making your desktop behave like a tablet/phone. I don't really care what you use on your desktop actually.
I think this just about sums up the attitude many feel is coming form Gnome developers' camp. I have been using Gnome for many years and helped with fixing of many bugs. According to you, for this I should just get scorn.
I'm not that easily dissuaded.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 6, 2012 0:09 UTC (Tue) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
I did say "could".
I don't think the way it is presently implemented is either very user-friendly or particularly flexible but I think experimentation with modern-ish graphics are important in order to develop better UIs.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 9:42 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"Meaning: to me the lack of need for compositing is technically interesting, but doesn't seem to add any practical value for most."
A "powerful enough" GPU isn't really very powerful at all when it doesn't have drivers.
GPU too new and you'll have to fall back to unaccelerated drivers (how long were R600 devices out before the R600 got real 3d acceleration? Do southern islands users even have accelerated 3d yet?)
Got a system with VIA onboard graphics? No (reliable) 3d for you.
Running on almost any ARM system where you either can't get hold of the vendor's binary blob or you're not running the blessed versions of X/kernel etc? No 3d for you.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 10:00 UTC (Fri) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
I sort of agree, but disagree :)
E.g. VIA onboard graphics: How often does this occur? Isn't that only on non-server stuff?
What I mean that if you buy something in a shop and the thing was created for Windows, how likely will you be able to run something composited.
In any case, I said it is interesting. But interesting as in: if something else fails, it'll still work. But what if the other thing doesn't fail? In those cases, I'd like to know what Enlightment brings to me as a desktop. The question was asked, but the answer doesn't really give much.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 16:47 UTC (Fri) by dtalen (subscriber, #86448) [Link]
> In any case, I said it is interesting. But interesting as in: if something
> else fails, it'll still work. But what if the other thing doesn't fail? In > those cases, I'd like to know what Enlightment brings to me as a desktop. > The question was asked, but the answer doesn't really give much.
I think that the way Carsten answered was actually pretty clear about where he sees the major strengths of Enlightenment. I've never used it before, but it sounds like it's in the same vein of XFCE: configurable, lean, and geared for folks that don't want a bunch of extra stuff. Some of the choice bits:
- "Our typical user is someone who is keen to explore something new and different. Someone who wants control and power. They are probably already familiar with Linux and have reached the limits of what they have and want to push the boundaries."
- "Today Enlightenment offers most of what you get from GNOME and KDE, and probably the same if not a bit more than XFCE. It just doesn't try and ship a suite of apps with it. It is the desktop (Window manager, settings, file manager, application launching and management) minus the apps."
That doesn't mean that I'm encouraging you to switch, just that I think he did address that very question in the interview directly.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 22:22 UTC (Fri) by johnny (guest, #10110) [Link]
I think the statement "Our typical user is someone who is keen to explore something new and different." is kind of funny... Makes it sound like as soon as you've used E! for a while, and it isn't new and different anymore, you move on. ;)
(No offense intended: I'm sure E! is a great desktop, I just like the quote.)
3D & Virtual Machines Posted Nov 5, 2012 7:37 UTC (Mon) by gmatht (guest, #58961) [Link]
On the other hand, as someone who uses a lot of virtual machines, this feature sounds interesting. While support for 3D is common in VMs these days, a decent 2D interface seems much cleaner and is usually faster. I might give this a go since Lubuntu 12.04 seems rather buggy.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 1, 2012 23:08 UTC (Thu) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
If the performance advantage to be gained by using OpenGL for 2D graphics is so small, why does anyone bother using such a baroque interface for 2D in the first place?
If applications can really benefit from hardware accelerated 2D, why not have drivers implement something actually designed for the purpose, like OpenVG?
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 16:23 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
There is an OpenVG state tracker for Gallium3D-based drivers:
http://www.mesa3d.org/openvg.html
The proprietary drivers as well as the open source Intel driver don't support Gallium3D though, so I'm not sure how useful that is.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 17:32 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Actually, that state tracker doesn't seem to work with any actual hardware driver.
http://www.x.org/wiki/GalliumStatus What a shame...
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 22:29 UTC (Fri) by johnny (guest, #10110) [Link]
Come to think of it, if 2d raster operations can be done so fast in software, why not make a virtual gfx card driver so that desktops and other software that don't explicitly support software rendering can still work on lesser hardware?
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 22:31 UTC (Fri) by johnny (guest, #10110) [Link]
... which is probably what you meant.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 22:51 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
It's funny that you mention that because that's what llvmpipe _is_.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 1, 2012 23:16 UTC (Thu) by DrMcCoy (subscriber, #86699) [Link]
I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I for one will keep using e16.
Because I really really *really* love that 3-dimensional grid of virtual desktops. It somehow just comes natural to how I organize things in my head. I tried e17 several times in the past, but I just wasn't happy with it.
Likewise, I don't want any icons on the desktop, but instead just an xterm on each virtual desktop by default, and I don't want a menu bar either. And no unnessary window pop-up, roll up, etc. animations. Those just slow me down.
I never saw the need for compositing in the first place either.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 11:08 UTC (Fri) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]
Another very happy e16 user here.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 12:32 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
You are not alone. I've been using e16 ever since I heard CmdrTaco rave about it in (I think) 1999. You just cant beat its stability and reliability.
GNOME, KDE, XFce: take note! E16 has the primary virtue of all UIs: It just doesn't change. There were some modest adjustments of the configuration panels recently (last 4 years or so) and a single point where the way all settings were stored was changed. Other than that there have been no regressions of any noticeable kind for over a decade.
For serious work it's nice to know that I can rely on e16 both working and behaving as I expect. I've opened sessions which did not terminate for over a year without leaks or crashes of any kind.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 3:47 UTC (Fri) by Sho (subscriber, #8956) [Link]
> E17 will fall back to software compositing automatically if OpenGL acceleration doesn't work. It is that good.
Just for the record, we do that in KDE as well (I can't comment on how well-optimized KWin's XRender code path is in comparison to what E17 is doing, but it's under active development and has seen improvements in nearly every release).
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 16:10 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
I've tried kwin's XRender mode a few times and found it to be essentially useless because it's too slow. But I can't tell which part of the graphics stack is to blame here: the crappy Radeon HD 4200 IGP, the open source radeon driver, kwin or something else.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 16:23 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
I've only ever used when using KDE in a virtual machine, be it parallels, virtualbox or vmware: in all those cases, the xrender backend worked pretty well.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 16:26 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
Did you use any of the animations, such as the minimization effect? Because on my machine, those were always jerky and unpleasant.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 15:23 UTC (Fri) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link]
1990's - "Using OpenGL will let us use the full power of the graphics card to take away the work from the processor and let you have a faster desktop.
2000's - "OpenGL desktops can have more fancy features and we can do 3D things and shading and transparency and all sorts of cool effects."
2010's - "Using OpenGL to composite your desktop when you don't want the fancy effects that slow everything to a crawl is stupid, so we now fallback on using the CPU".
Well done, desktop guys. Nothing like being visionaries. (I'm not referring to the Enlightenment guys here!)
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 22:26 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
It's a sorry tale of how people can be enticed to make "demo-ware" which looks great when demonstrating something to other people - spinning that desktop cube makes everyone feel like Tom Cruise in "Minority Report", or whatever - and which gets the audience cheering and punching the air at an Apple-style keynote, but which adds relatively little to the experience for most users.
Back in the late 1980s, it really was a usability enhancement to be able to drag a window across a desktop and have the contents actually dragged along with the movement of the mouse, instead of the window outline being dragged and the window then being replotted (which was all the Apple Mac could really do at the time). Back then, opening or resizing a window on a fast system - not a Mac - didn't need a stupid animation of the window outline: it was impressive enough to just have a window appear or resize more or less instantly, instead of having the system stall for time.
What seems to have happened since is that many of the user interface "experts" have unquestioningly perpetuated the rituals of the supposedly most innovative environments. So that means animations of distorted, semi-transparent depictions of windows, complete with wobble effects that even Pixar would be embarrassed to use, ostensibly so that even mundane operations can seem "exciting" to people not actually doing anything more than tinker with their desktop.
I'm not arguing against things looking good, but I don't see anything like the bang for the buck that the introduction of "solid" window manipulation gave us over twenty years ago.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 22:47 UTC (Fri) by johnny (guest, #10110) [Link]
Speaking of Apple, they do do a good job keeping OS X free of useless graphics effects. There was a time when I thought OS X was boring, because it didn't have any fancy spinning boxes and wobbly windows, like Linux desktops. These days, when wobbly windows are "been there, done that", I'm very happy with how conservative OS X is.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 2, 2012 23:01 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I don't think the "wobbly windows" phenomenon has anything to do with UX designers or usability testing and everything to do with developers coding the feature just because they could.
As far as new accelerated graphics capabilities enabling new UI constructs, I would say that drop shadows titlebar fading on windows are useful for subtly hinting which is the active window. A big one would be Expose-style window management which is very useful. Animations on program start/minimize and desktop change can also be useful to help leverage spatial memory which is useful to some
Many of the UI additions which are the most helpful can be the most subtle though, the flashy stuff is probably more about showing off the technology than any kind of professional UX design.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 3, 2012 16:54 UTC (Sat) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
Your point about spatial memory is a good one, and I'm willing to concede that I'm arguing against myself in that visual feedback is a useful thing to provide to users and such feedback often needs improvements in hardware capabilities. In fact, I missed out the feature that was even more important than moving and resizing when applying "solid movement" of screen content: scrolling. Having immediate feedback when scrolling a window using a scroll bar is the difference between a usable application and a frustrating one.
I don't see the ubiquitous "cover flow" and "reflections on a shiny horizontal surface" to be visual feedback improvements in the same league, somehow.
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 11:07 UTC (Mon) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
So you're essentially saying that "useless animations are useless". I agree with that. :)
Seeking Enlightenment (The H) Posted Nov 5, 2012 12:22 UTC (Mon) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
Correction to the above:
2010: Graphics drivers still vary in quality to the point one would call it "they suck". We need fallback paths whenever the driver or GPU is incapable of handling an operation. Yet, the fallback path can still run into performance problems. In many cases, the effects work well and bring noticeable usability improvements.
I'm not sure I'm understanding the intention behind your comment, even after reading it a few times. In general, the effects do not slow down the user experience, but it's certainly possible in some cases (usually caused by bad drivers). KWin, at least, has fallback pathes, it can use XRender (when a good XRender implementation is available) or fall back to an entirely "2D" rendering, when even XRender does not perform well enough. Others chose llvmpipe as fallback, but that is not a guarantee for good performance. In general, some effects can be offloaded to the CPU, especially for "relatively cheap" effects, that can be a good trade-off to still get usability enhancements, even with bad quality graphics drivers.
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