
Linus Torvalds switches back to KDE - recoiledsnake
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LinusTorvalds/posts/DbmEE8kXLDA
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vasco
This sounds like a scene from the movie "To Rome with Love" where this normal
guy is followed around by reporters and he tells them how he likes to brush
his teeth and exactly which kind of toast he ate in the morning.

Not sure why it is interesting to know that Linus (or anybody else) is
installing a piece of software to try it out. Perhaps a livestreaming site
where people would go "Whoa, did you see the way he opened the browser" would
have some popularity too!

~~~
zokier
He's not just installing something to try it out. He is _announcing_ that he
is installing something, and in that way both promoting the software he is
installing and de-promoting (?) the software he is switching from.

You could read between the lines that he isn't completely happy with XFCE or
he wouldn't be seeking new DE. And overall that was fairly positive "first
impressions review" of KDE from Linus.

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nnq
...best Linux DEs I know are:

1\. latest Mac OS + ssh-ing into your Linux machine 2\. a Windows 7 + ssh-ing
into your Linux machine 3\. latest Mac OS or Windows 7 + Linux server in the
VM

(...now fastening my seatbelt and gettin ready to be downvoted all the way to
hell:P )

~~~
Adrock
Perhaps you could explain why you feel this way? That might make it less
trollish and make this into a productive conversation. If the only response
you can anticipate is downvoting, you're doing it wrong.

~~~
nnq
...to calm things down, I actually believe using one OS for all your needs can
work for most people that have all their skills in one "bucket" ...but not
when you're put in the position of doing devops + web development + design
(and yeah Adobe software is important and hard/impossible to replace for 90%
of people doing pro design - if only for being able to edit and send back
edited copies to your colleagues) + desktop app development (either Windows or
Mac OS...), because you're going to use 2 OSs no matter what (and it's going
to be Mac OS or Windows + a Linux or BSD...) + using some finance shit that
REQUIRES Microsoft Office, and when you're already at this point, the only
sensible solution, perfomance-wise (and the only one that actually _works_ if
you throw in some occasional video editing in the mix with premiere or after-
effects...) is putting the Linux in the VM, because you need a "monster"
machine to do it the other way around (and a "monster" machine under 2 kgs /
4.5 punds and with good battery life is not available right now...), so here's
one winded road that got me here...

And yes, I believe either KDE or XFCE are DEs that can work for me (XMonad is
cool but I'm not into tiling WMs...) if I were to only do server-side dev and
devops...

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zokier
Offtopic but how you are supposed to find interesting G+ comments? There is no
way to sort or filter them, and there isn't even threading so you must
basically read every one of the 500 comments to see if there was anything
interesting in there? What's the point if +1'n stuff if the stuff with lots of
+1 doesn't get promoted in anyway?

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tobiasu
Google+ comments are annoying don't you think? There's hundreds of them under
every popular post, and they add exactly zero useful information. The real
name policy appears not to stop people from posting trivial bullshit like "$X
FTW" (surprise, surprise). Google demonstrates again (see the youtube
trainwreck) that it can't handle comments in a way that furthers interesting
discussions while pushing the one-liners and trolls down to the bottom.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Google can't, yes, but who can (genuine question)? Even control-freak Apple
can't stop all the noise in App Store reviews (even though they all have to be
screened by someone at Apple before appearing online). App Store reviews are
literally 98% noise and 2% signal (all buried in 43rd page)...

I'd love to know _who_ has been able to do this. Maybe Yelp? (I don't use Yelp
as it's not available in my country, so I don't know).

~~~
tobiasu
Reddit, Slashdot, or even just HN all have better systems than what Google is
doing. Sure, making something perfect is extremely hard, but even a 80%
solution would be great for the G+ and YT users.

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mseepgood
"trying out" != "switches". Let's see how long he can stand it.

~~~
trekkin
Very true. XFCE & LXDE are the cleanest DEs by far (among the top five)

~~~
tsahyt
From what I've seen, mate (the Gnome 2 fork) looks decent too. After the
disaster that was Gnome 3 I've went away from full DEs to a simple but great
tiling window manager (awesome, that's the name of it as well as the
description). Since 99% of my use cases really involve just a terminal or
firefox that's probably as good as it gets for me :) No bloat, just great
usability without ever needing the mouse - which is especially great on a
laptop since touchpads have always been suboptimal pointing devices.

~~~
rwmj
Although I don't use it day to day, I was rather impressed by Cinnamon (on
Mint). It's got the GNOME 3 visual wizziness, without all the usability
problems that GNOME 3 suffers from.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_%28user_interface%29>

~~~
sandGorgon
The Cinnamon desktop is a Kickstarter worthy effort. I believe it supersedes
Linux Mint in its possible impact, because it is potentially usable on any
Linux flavor.

~~~
bmasci
Cinnamon is great. I'm actually using a gnome classic DE right now, but i
suspect that I'll switch to cinnamon when it becomes more polished.

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ExpiredLink
Next Hacker News: Lady Gaga switches back to iPhone.

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timmillwood
When ubuntu moved to Unity i started using XFCE, but since 12.04 i'm surprised
how much Unity has grown on me, i use it every day.

KDE seems over complicated, i have never got on well with it.

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antihero
I don't know why more people don't just use tiling window managers. It's a bit
confusing at first but now I couldn't be happier. I used LXDE for a long time
then realised - why don't I just use dwm to open stuff, and actually get a
window manager that arranges my windows to maximise screen space usage?

~~~
justinvh
"I don't know why more people don't just use tiling window managers. It's a
bit confusing at first [...]"

That pretty much sums it up. I believe it's fair to say that casual users are
(often) adverse to dramatical change--and switching from a point-click-and-
move to a system that manages it all for you can be a bit crazy.

~~~
antihero
Well that's a problem with culture, I guess. Once you get used to a decent
tiling WM (I'm using herbstluftwm at the moment), they're absolutely fantastic
and useful. I think the experience easily competes with OSX, maybe not on ease
of use, but definitely on usefulness once there's some investment.

It's like people using GUI applications for things when they really aren't
necessary. I'm constantly helping out people who are using, for instance, the
GitHub Git client (which is great), because it abstracts away the logic of
using a system and creates more issues itself.

We're not really talking about average day-to-day users here, we're talking
about technical people (like Linus Torvalds), so the ability to spend time
investigating a new paradigm isn't unreasonable.

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z3phyr
Tell him its writern in C++ .... He will switch again ;)

~~~
raverbashing
Building graphical interfaces in C feels like carving a tree with a knife

Now, building them in C++ feels like carving a tree with a power drill.
Better, but still not the right tool

And GTK makes C feel like C++, the bad parts I mean, without the good ones.

I think Android does it in a good way, browsers also made it easier to create
nice interfaces, not sure how it works in IOS though.

~~~
meaty
I will vouch for your comment. I recently tried to knock up a simple GTK+ UI
for something and it was utterly painful.

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bkor
You can write GTK+ in pretty much any language, so if it was painful, you
chose the wrong one.

~~~
3amOpsGuy
I don't know. Take QT for example, I'm happy to risk blowing my leg off with
c++ just because I feel really productive with Qt, it truly is a wonderfully
productive library, and the external ecosystem is supportive, whatever complex
visualisation I want to draw, I can often find a lib that's happy to draw into
a qpixmap - c++ on its own or with boost etc. doesn't leave me feeling as
productive.

GTK feels drawn out to me in comparison.

~~~
raverbashing
Exactly

Some libraries manage to iron out the difficulties of the language. QT and
WxWidgets are examples of that.

GTK (on C) and Windows MFC are examples of how libraries can make it harder on
the user.

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tree_of_item
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727721>

