Re:The world of Linux Handhelds in 2018
by squarefoot on Sunday March 04, 2018 @07:41AM
(#16514495)
The Linux users/developers ecosystem is dominated by techies who mostly find the typical Android/iOS user interface inadequate; very far from the normal phone/tablet user: we love to use the shell to get things done or spend time customizing the system here and there, therefore the lesser incentive to have a finger oriented interface. Most people looking for native Linux handhelds probably either don't need/like that interface, or adapt better to its absence.
I agree that the typical Joe User wouldn't find Linux appealing for that reason, anyway Gnome 3 attempts to fill the gap and it's usable even on my old Atom netbook. I then switched back to Xfce, but if I had a Linux tablet that would be the choice.
https://www.gnome.org
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> The Linux users/developers ecosystem is dominated by techies who mostly find the typical Android/iOS user interface inadequate
I think this is a shame, honestly. It’s really optimized for the needs of the minority and keeps it away from the majority.
That's a good thing, the majority isn't a good target group.
It’s a good target group when determining defaults. I’m not saying that we should remove all customizability; rather, I feel that out of the box a device should serve the majority of people.
I agree not nearly enough thought is being put into the defaults.
But the majority of Linux users are "techies", thus the defaults should cater to them.
The benefit of Linux is that you can customize it for deferent groups of people: that’s what distros are. You can have one where the defaults cater to technical users and one where it’s focused on the needs of the general population.
Part of the problem is ugly or inadequate defaults. I wish more UX and UI designers contributed to open source projects.
Re:The world of Linux Handhelds in 2018
by squarefoot on Monday March 05, 2018 @02:59PM
(#16523877)
Agreed 100%. As an example, Xfce defaults to (if one doesn't choose an empty panel) a two panel strips model: one in the upper side, one in the lower part of the screen. Now, who is the most likely user of Xfce, which is considered a lightweight desktop manager? I'd say mostly not-so-much-powerful-laptop/netbook or small pc users with no screen estate to waste. Most small laptops have 768 vertical points, and wasting part of them with redundant graphics is a bad choice.
On all installation I move all icons from the lower panel to the upper one, delete the lower panel, often set the workspace number to 1 and delete the workspace chooser, add a few launchers (audio, bluetooth where needed etc.), move the upper panel to the bottom, delete the standard menu in favor of the whisker menu, reduce the panel vertical size to 26 pixels and set a dark theme. On some machines I also create some launchers for Rox-Filer windows (shell aside it's absolutely the fastest thing for navigating directories, copying/moving files etc.) pointing to most used directories (Home, Documents, Audio, NAS storage if any, etc). The result is a much more useable desktop although still user friendly and uncluttered.