• AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.socialEnglish
    49·
    7 days ago

    What’s wrong with wanting a UI you’re used to?

    Everyone wants other people to switch to Linux until they do literally anything a purist wouldn’t do with their own personal setup 😅

  • TotalSonic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    6 days ago

    There is a heckuva lot to be said for the classic “start” category based app menu, tied to a task bar. XFCE, MATE, OpenBox, all draw from a paradigm established in the Windows 95 design.

    • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 days ago

      Its not a bad design. Personally, I couldn’t get used to anything else (and I’ve tried). My first PC had Win 95 and I’m now on a Plasma desktop.

      Microsoft is doing a great job at completely crippling the fuck out of their start menu though, proving once again they have no idea what direction they’re going in.

  • ddplf@szmer.info
    7·
    5 days ago

    Linux Mint was designed to deliver a smooth landing from Windows, and if you’re the type of guy to have a problem with it, then the entire FOSS communtiy is gonna have a problem with you, because you’re making it harder for people to escape from corporate solutions.

  • gwl [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    Yeah gatekeeping is exactly how we get people to try Linux…

    Ooh wait, that’s the opposite.

    Let people use Linux however they want. That’s the whole point of the OS family, it’s incredibly customisable

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
    18·
    7 days ago

    Well, first I tweak my windows to mimic the appearance of the windows that I liked, windows 7. Then I tweak my Linux to mimic that.

    Just because hurr durr windows bad, doesn’t mean their huge team of UI and UX designers didn’t ever come up with a good design. And like most things Microsoft, I take pleasure in pirating it when I can.

    • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
      5·
      7 days ago

      IMO, Windows’s UI/UX might seem good only if you haven’t tried anything actually different. Tiling/scrolling WMs is the way.

      • skidicarus@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        7 days ago

        I’m pretty much always picking XFCE or KDE over just a WM. In the case of KDE, I use it like Windows. I make XFCE as Unity-like as possible, which I believe is the best interface for limited screen real estate.

        • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
          21·
          6 days ago

          I’m using the term “WM” loosely, as a more of a general term here.

          And no, i can’t call a DE that adds a title bar to every window, has a huge-ass taskbar, and a limited amount of free space per workspace “best for limited screen real estate”. Something like Niri, MangoWC or Hyprland (with scrolling layout enabled) works much better and cleaner precisely in that regard, since they offer

          a) a hotkey-first UX, meaning that everything usually represented by a UI button is moved to the keyboard and no longer needs to clutter the screen

          b) literally infinite horizontal space.

          I literally can’t go back ever since i gave tiling a try, any floating de/wm now feels clunky and awkward to me.

          • skidicarus@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            6 days ago

            I use KDE on my desktop because I don’t care about maximizing screen real estate in that context. I have a large monitor, so I can afford to lose some pixels to my taskbar or window borders. That being said, if I did care, I can make the taskbar autohide and pick a slim/minimal theme for the window borders. With regard to XFCE, I said I make it Unity-like. As such, there is no taskbar. I have a slim panel at the top that shows stuff I want to be able to see easily (i.e., pinned background applications, battery life, date, time, etc.) My dock-like panel autohides, so it takes up no real estate. Maximized windows merge into the top panel like in Unity, so the window borders take up no extra room.

            Any DE can become “hotkey-first.” For example, I launch terminal with CTRL+ALT+T. My application launcher is CTRL+SPACE, and it is text-based. Most DEs have default hotkeys for a lot of functions, and they are customizable.

            Of course, all of this comes down to how one’s workflow is. I don’t ever see myself wanting to scroll my desktop or deal with windows auto-tiling. Multiple desktops is another example. It’s something just about every DE offers, but I’ve never had a use for it. Different strokes for different folks.

            • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
              1·
              6 days ago

              I use KDE on my desktop because I don’t care about maximizing screen real estate in that context.

              my whole screen real estate banter was in response to

              I make XFCE as Unity-like as possible, which I believe is the best interface for limited screen real estate.

              Any DE can become “hotkey-first.”

              Yeah… no. Maybe i’m just too picky about my preferences, but ctrl+alt+t, alt+f4, and other “wonderful” hotkeys that require either a huge hand stretch, or two hands to press them, don’t sound like “keyboard-first” to me. Neither does setting up said hotkeys either with a gui utility, not really meant to be used with both hands on the keyboard, or editing an ugly auto-generated json or xml config.

              Of course, all of this comes down to how one’s workflow is.

              Of course, it’s nothing more than a matter of personal preference. I’m not trying to sell you anything, or prove your stance wrong. I just like talking about this stuff. Tell me if i’m being annoying.

              I don’t ever see myself wanting to scroll my desktop or deal with windows auto-tiling.

              The whole point of tiling/scrolling wms is that you have to deal with less things tho? The ideal goal, philosopher’s stone of those wms, if you may, is to make so that user, after the initial configuration, doesn’t need to concern themself with window positioning and resizing.

              Multiple desktops is another example. It’s something just about every DE offers, but I’ve never had a use for it.

              That’s because those DEs make it so that using them actually takes effort, because guess what, the default key bindings for them are horrible! On top of that, i’m not sure, but i don’t remember neither XFCE nor Plasma offering any sort of automation around it, (might be wrong tho) whereas in tiling/scrolling world custom rules for automatically assigning certain windows to certain workspaces, or, for instance, opening an app if you switch to a certain empty workspace, is considered a bare minimum. It naturally makes the process of navigating the windows even less chaotic. Basically, it creates a mental model, where you don’t have chaotically alt-tab around or seek anything with your eyes, since you just know where everything is. Your desktop becomes the perfect silent well-oiled machine that gets in your way as little as humanly (machinely?) possible, and it just feels soooo incredibly fucking nice.

      • Agent641@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 days ago

        I don’t really like the feel of a full tiling windows manager, I’ve tried it and I just can’t vibe with it. I use fancyzones on windows and fancytiles on mint, because I like to be able to define my zones of arbitrary size and position, like 3/8ths of a vertical screen, and snap a window to it, but then also sometimes adjust the window border a bit with the mouse. Or just stack window on top of each other. I use mouse a lot on both my work windows PC and my home Linux PC, so I customise both of them to be very similar and have the exact workflow I want, which is hyper specific. I even have the same 3-monitor layout, and keyboard and mouse on both my work PC and home pc so my muscle memory between work and home doesn’t suffer 😅

        • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          5 days ago

          Makes sense. Except I can’t really say my muscle memory suffers either. The workflow on my home pc is just so different that it actually occupies a completely separate section of my memory, rather than overwriting it.

          Btw, since you mentioned you’re heavily relying on mouse in your workflow, i suggest you to take a look at Kando. It’s cross-platform, and looks super cool.

  • AnimalsDream@slrpnk.netEnglish
    8·
    7 days ago

    Having grown up with a Mac before OS X came out, I liked that I could make XFCE look a bit more like OS 9, but I haven’t been able to find a suitable equivalent for kde yet.

    I might give a Windows 7 theme a try. As much as I hate Microsoft, I’ve been feeling unusually nostalgic for 7. That one was kind of peak for gaming.

    • chrisashtear@lemmy.zip
      2·
      6 days ago

      I like kde a lot, but their theming is kinda shit. The win7 themes dont really achieve aero effects that well.