De-duplicating the desktops: Let's come together, right now
- Reference: 1762772898
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/10/deduplicating_the_desktops/
- Source link:
Indeed, Linux itself, and the GNU tools they're built from, are FOSS recreations of existing proprietary tools. But despite over a third of a century of continuous development, there's only one Linux – and there are very few alternatives to the GNU tools, either. Some areas manage to keep it together.
Some, however, fail quite spectacularly. Let's look at what in the eyes of the Reg FOSS desk is one of the more egregious examples: perhaps the most visible part of any end-user OS – the desktop.
[1]
As we have [2]discussed at some length before , a clear large majority of desktop environments in FOSS today share the same design, and it's a design that originated in Windows. Nearly 20 years ago, Microsoft threatened to sue over it. It never happened, but not because Microsoft lacked evidence: as we [3]spelled out in 2013 , the signs are very clear. It didn't happen because it wasn't clear who it should sue, or if it could sue anyone for free community-driven efforts.
What do we mean by Windows-like? Specifically, Windows 95-like – because every Windows version since then has inherited the same core design. When Windows 95 turned 20, The Register [4]gave it a small tribute , and you can see that core design right there. A panel across one whole long edge of the screen, and reading left-to-right, an app-launcher button first, then a row of buttons for open windows, then a recessed "system tray" with the clock, and usually some notification icons. Some of these act as controls for things like speaker volume. The launcher button opens a hierarchical view, with main applications and system-control functions at the top level, plus folders with subsidiary function.
An icon-based file manager, with an optional left pane in each window containing an expandable tree of the directory hierarchy. Before that, the most popular layout for file managers was the [5]classic Norton Commander style, now called an Orthodox File Manager . Even Windows 3's File Manager worked that way.
The Reg went into [6]considerable detail when we looked at the changes in GNOME 3. By all means argue if you wish, but please at least read that first. The core point is that the combination of UI features in Windows 95 was unique. Nothing before it had all these functions. At best, there were some disconnected features that were vaguely similar, such as RISC OS's Icon Bar or NeXTstep's Dock. But virtually everything invented from 1995 onwards had that exact combination.
By 21st century standards, Windows 95 was tiny . The first release fit onto [7]just 13 floppies . For those who don't remember diskettes, it was under 25 MB.
The original Windows Explorer was 200 kB of code. (The late great Geoff Chappell, sometimes [8]cited by The Reg , built a [9]thorough history .) Although tiny, it was a masterwork, and it re-defined the computer user interface in a way that wouldn't happen again until the iPhone, 22 years later. (And please do bear in mind that this vulture speaks as someone whose favourite GUIs start with classic MacOS and move on to RISC OS, BeOS, and Psion EPOC.)
In our opinion, it has not been bettered yet. That is why so many teams and products have copied the core design.
The original Explorer's design was not just visually simple: at least some of the underlying implementation was, too. For instance, in Windows 3.x and NT.x, Program Manager only supported a single level of hierarchy. Applications had to be kept in groups, stored in the [10].GRP file format , and those couldn't be nested. Instead, Explorer introduced [11]shortcut files , and the Start menu was stored in a simple directory tree: icons were shortcuts, submenus were subdirectories. Linux, naturally, has its own version, which is [12]rather more complicated .
NT 4 [13]adapted and re-used the Explorer , with just one significant change: NT enforced user accounts, and had an All Users tree as well as each user's own. (As an aside: in 1998, Microsoft replaced Explorer with what it called [14]Active Desktop , rebuilt around Internet Explorer 4 to counter a [15]lawsuit from the Department of Justice .)
There are an almost ridiculous number of Windows-style desktops on Linux – and mostly this applies to the BSDs, too. Most of them are implemented in C, and most use various versions of the Gtk toolkit for their widgets: menus, dialog boxes, buttons and so on.
In approximate age order, the ones still being maintained today are [16]Xfce ; [17]MATE , which is a fork of GNOME 2; [18]LXDE ; Linux Mint's [19]Cinnamon ; and [20]Budgie , implemented in the GNOME-centric [21]Vala language .
[22]
[23]
GNOME reinvented itself into something very un-Windows-like with version 3, but it still offers [24]GNOME Classic and [25]GNOME Flashback , which both have a more GNOME-2 like desktop layout. The Cinnamon desktop started out as a [26]set of customizations called MSGE but turned into a full fork, which is occasionally rebased onto newer versions of upstream GNOME Shell. Rather than fork the code, the [27]Zorin OS desktop still uses the approach of multiple extensions.
LXDE has been very quiet for a few years since the main developer moved on to [28]LXQt , but recently there have been some updates. Even so, many distros still offer LXDE, and the Raspberry Pi OS still uses some LXDE components. Its successor LXQt, like [29]KDE Plasma , uses the Qt toolkit instead of Gtk, and C++ in place of C. So does continuing KDE 3.5 fork the [30]Trinity Desktop .
[31]
Rarely seen in the West but more common in the Eastern hemisphere are two more Windows-like desktops. Uniontech's distributions use the [32]Deepin Desktop Environment , and the Kylin family of distros use [33]UKUI . One or both are also available in various other distros from Arch to Ubuntu, and both seem to contain a mixture of Gtk and Qt components.
That's 13 so far. Now we move deeper into the dark forest…
It can do much more, but [34]Enlightenment shares the same default layout, and this goes for continuing forks [35]E16 and [36]Moksha . All use their own versions of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries rather than Gtk.
[37]
The [38]Equinox Desktop Environment, EDE uses FLTK rather than Gtk. As [39]FLTK is back in active development again , perhaps EDE is due for an update. [40]XPde used Kylix, the Linux version of Delphi, rather than C, but it too is long dead. [41]Lumina was built for FreeBSD in C++ and Qt, but in recent years it runs on Linux too. Similarly minimalistic is the ChromeOS desktop [42]Aura .
[43]IceWM is [44]back in active development , as is [45]JWM (Joe's Window Manager) . Even [46]FVWM95 got an update a few years ago. Now, to be fair, these are window managers, not desktops, but they still share the familiar taskbar-and-start-menu design and are used in current distros such as [47]antiX and [48]Damn Small Linux .
Now we're up to 23. We could dig deeper, but we hope that we've made the point by now. There are several different languages here (but a lot fewer than 23 of them), and several different graphical toolkits (but again, well under 20). This is a vast amount of effort spent reinventing, and then maintaining, the basic concept of a round thing on the end of an axle.
But the underlying concept here is really quite a simple one. The window managers can't match the functionality of the Windows 95 Explorer, and not one of the desktops captures the simple elegance of the original. Windows 95 let you put the taskbar on any screen edge, but you only got one, and you couldn't change its length, or re-arrange or resize its contents, let alone change their orientation. Multiple rows was your only option.
When this vulture [49]introduced the Tilde text editor , we chose the year in the title for a reason: 1976 is the year Bill Joy released the first version of Vi. The author has been reluctantly using Vi since 1988, and has disliked it for all 37 years. However, I must acknowledge that Vim is a great editor, loved by tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. That's in part why I wrote an [50]obituary for Bram Moolenaar .
Today, I suspect very few FOSS developers remember [51]Elvis or [52]Stevie . They were the other two leading FOSS Vi clones from the early days – you know, [53]the late 1900s .
Imagine if instead of Vim, we had 23 different Vi clones, and every distro included most of them, because their enthusiasts were still fighting over which was better. Imagine if every one of them had its own config file format, and couldn't import the others'. Imagine if apart from the core 1970s UI, they all used different keystrokes. All had their own routines for syntax highlighting, their own scripting languages, their own plugins, and so on.
Apart from the sheer mess, does it seem likely that any of them would have attained the functionality of Vim?
There is no way to combine all the different Windows-like Linux desktops into one, or even just three or four. There is no useful way to combine a substantial program written in C with one written in C++ or Vala, or one written to use Gtk with one built in Qt.
But they could work together and cooperate.
Remember the [54]Basics of the Unix Philosophy :
Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
That 1995 design was simple. The components of the desktop – the task bar, the file manager, the text editor, and so on – don't need to exchange lots of rich, complex messages.
[55]52-year-old data tape could contain only known copy of UNIX V4
[56]The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs
[57]Pop!_OS deejays prepare to release holiday remix along with Cosmic v 1.0
[58]Snap out of it: Canonical on Flatpak friction, Core Desktop, and the future of Ubuntu
Users should be free to – for example – use the MATE panel with the Xfce window manager, the Cinnamon file manager, and the Budgie start menu.
All could share a common settings format. All should be able to read the same config files, and understand the same core lowest-common-denominator functionality established three decades ago, like where the primary panel is. We didn't need to rearrange panel items then, and we don't now: to [59]rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic is a proverb for a pointless, wasted action.
Nearly two dozen different Windows-like UIs represents a titanic waste of programmer effort, skill, and time. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, working hard for decades… but all on different projects, meaning that none of them achieve greatness. For an example, look at [60]KDE Plasma's 36 launcher menus .
It is 27 years since the [61]first release of KDE , and I suspect that Microsoft has been laughing all the way to the bank ever since. The FOSS world can do better, and it's time it started to try. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aRIaJu8BfUWXkmjapjXhwwAAAUM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/linux_desktop_feature/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/24/where_start_started_20_years_of_windows_95/
[5] https://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/all/ui-museum-norton-commander-5-0/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/
[7] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20050819-10/?p=34513
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2010/01/20/microsoft_emergency_ie_update/
[9] https://www.geoffchappell.com/studies/windows/shell/explorer/history/index.htm
[10] https://fileinfo.com/extension/grp
[11] https://fileinfo.com/help/windows_shortcuts
[12] https://www.baeldung.com/linux/desktop-entry-files
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/chen_windows_95_sizeof/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/1998/11/27/court_documents_reveal_ms_moves/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/1998/08/11/microsoft_moves_to_have_case/
[16] https://www.xfce.org/
[17] https://mate-desktop.org/
[18] http://www.lxde.org/
[19] https://projects.linuxmint.com/cinnamon/
[20] https://buddiesofbudgie.org/
[21] https://vala.dev/
[22] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aRIaJu8BfUWXkmjapjXhwwAAAUM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[23] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aRIaJu8BfUWXkmjapjXhwwAAAUM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[24] https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/gnome-classic.html.en
[25] https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback
[26] https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/07/linux_mint_12_gnome_3/
[27] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/24/zorin_os_18_beta/
[28] https://lxqt-project.org/
[29] https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
[30] https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
[31] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aRIaJu8BfUWXkmjapjXhwwAAAUM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[32] https://www.deepin.org/en/dde/
[33] https://www.ukui.org/
[34] https://www.enlightenment.org/
[35] https://www.enlightenment.org/e16
[36] https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/
[37] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aRIaJu8BfUWXkmjapjXhwwAAAUM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[38] https://edeproject.org/
[39] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/26/fltk_14_released/
[40] https://sourceforge.net/projects/xpde.berlios/
[41] https://lumina-desktop.org/
[42] https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura/
[43] https://ice-wm.org/
[44] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/05/icewm_version_3/
[45] https://joewing.net/projects/jwm/
[46] https://github.com/mintsuki/fvwm95
[47] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/01/antix_23/
[48] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/14/damn_small_linux_returns/
[49] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/
[50] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/07/bram_moolenaar_obituary/
[51] https://elvis.the-little-red-haired-girl.org/
[52] https://timthompson.com/tjt/stevie/
[53] https://mashable.com/article/late-1900s-student-professor-burn-tweet
[54] https://cscie2x.dce.harvard.edu/hw/ch01s06.html
[55] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/unix_fourth_edition_tape_rediscovered/
[56] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/linux_desktop_feature/
[57] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/03/cosmic_1_before_xmas/
[58] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/03/canonical_jon_seager_qa/
[59] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rearrange_the_deck_chairs_on_the_Titanic
[60] https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=709&ord=latest
[61] https://kde.org/announcements/1-2-3/1.0/
[62] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Came in here expecting to find this, but ready to post it if no one else had. It's what always happens.
Don't need to exchange lots of rich, complex messages.
True.
But you know that they will.
Complexity just seems to be so damn addictive - even when people *try* to avoid falling for sunk costs and cramming in that library which "almost does what we need (and 317 other things besides), if we just add a plugin here; it'd be a shame not to".
Aren't we overdue for a revamping of DBUS?
Re: Don't need to exchange lots of rich, complex messages.
And that is just bad engineering.
Elvis has left the building
And you are right, haven't seen Stevie for a while now.
Re: Elvis has left the building
There are two reasons for all those vi clones:
1. Vi is a damn good text editor
2. It used some AT&T proprietary code so it couldn't be open-sourced in its original version
Because of those two factors there were a lot of people who wanted the vi goodness so, independently, decided to write their own clone. It wasn't a matter of people writing their own clone just for the sake of writing a vi clone, it was people writing a vi clone because it was the only way they could have the vi goodness.
Some were better than others. I remember - vaguely - having vi for either DOS or Windows which even came with its own terminfo which lived in \etc, of course.
The AT&T code was eventually freed so now there's no need for clones. Just use nvi.
Windows style WM ?
I have managed to get by with Openbox which doesn't have a task bar (although it might have—I haven't looked too hard) so probably not quite Windows style ?
The window rollup/down is far more usueful to me than iconizing to a taskbar.
The customisabe pop·up menus are far more intuitive the ever changing shemozzle of the Window start menu.
If it all gets too hard I'll have to settle for the OpenBSD cwm.
Re: Windows style WM ?
You might be interested in what Bunsen Labs has done with Openbox. Check it out and copy whatever they've used to theme it - it's gorgeous.
Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
I tried to move a colleague to Linux Mint 15 years ago. He was the least techy person you could meet.
All went well - until they said "Where's mu Outlook ?"
By which they meant that thing that everyone+dog had on their windows machine that "did email" and "did calendars" in the same screen.
"Well", I said, "Here's Thunderbird and Evolution and they work together ... hang on, where are you going"
And that was that.
A microcosm of how the *nix mindset has studiously avoided actually looking at what the noddy user *wants*.
Yes, we all know that we can supply what they *need*. But they will never see that.
When I tried that I had been using Linux since Dapper Drake.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
A microcosm of how the *nix mindset has studiously avoided actually looking at what the noddy user *wants*.
Yup. Users want to just power on and do stuff.
Linux is just too damn technical, pretty much right from the start. This article is making exactly that point and it's barely scratched the surface. Android has succeeded because it's so locked down that it's pretty much recognisable and usable to everyone (despite various manufacturers trying to differentiate themselves through what amounts to skinning the UI).
Choice is great..from a technical point of view. But from a customer's point of view it's just irritating and esoteric nonsense.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
What do you mean by "too damn technical"?
Anything that demands holding things up every month for a massive update requiring a reboot or two* and hangs itself up the rest of the time because the multiple anti-virus crapackages the PC vendor prei-installed are fighting each other it too technical for my liking. Especially when at least one of the crapackages keeps reinstalling itself after it had been supposedly removed.
And, when plugging in something as simple as a USB stick, it pops up a menu that witters on about installing drivers rather than just asking for permission to mount it and open it also seems unduly technical.
* That, of course, assumes that the update actually works and doesn't require low level command line stuff to shuffle about storage and a few other incantations to fix - or even a complete reinstall.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
> Linux is just too damn technical, pretty much right from the start. This article is making exactly that point...
Um, no, it really isn't. It's about duplication of effort.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
That is really a matter of Linux not being preinstalled. If you buy a Linux machine with Linux preinstalled you can "power on and do stuff".
I recently bought my 17 year old daughter (not an IT geek - she has applied for archaeology degrees) a Windows laptop and she found the setup irritating, the need to have am MS account to login intrusive, and wants me to install Linux on it.
Choice is great..from a technical point of view. But from a customer's point of view it's just irritating and esoteric nonsense.
Well, that is it for the principles underlying free market economics then!
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
MS account isn’t required you can skip that bit, they do make you click 3 or 4 times saying yes I’m sure go away! The worst part is the constant attempt to sell MSO365 after every update!
The MS windows control and handling of multiple monitors is still my favourite so far, Mac OS still hasn’t caught up and the last Linux version I used did not respond quite as slickly.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
A microcosm of how the *nix mindset has studiously avoided actually looking at what the noddy user *wants*.
Give that TBird does both email and calendars on the one screen and more (it still does Usenet and RSS doesn't it?) this is hardly a a matter of not giving the noddy user what it wants, it's a matter of the noddy user being unable to see what's in front of their nose. You should have put an entry for it onto the menu and called it Outlook.
On the other hand if the UI is made to resemble whatever Microsoft are currently offering too closely we get Liam complaining they lack originality (it looks too much like W95) or, when I've suggested easing users into Linux by Windows-like KDE themes, commentards demanding why would one do that.
And, of course, I find my W11 using friends complaining about what MS are doing to Outlook.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
> All went well - until they said "Where's mu Outlook ?"
To which the answer was "In your browser". Okay, it's broken, but not much worse than the official desktop version.
> A microcosm of how the *nix mindset has studiously avoided actually looking at what the noddy user *wants*.
It also seems to be a macrocosm of the Microsoft mindset since... ooh, about Win7, if not earlier. But the noddy user sucks it up from MS because that's all they know, so that's what they get.
(Also, not true - I've successfully shunted a few users - okay, mostly elderly relatives for whom I am de facto sysadmin - onto Mint/Xfce, without much pain 1 .)
1 In truth, mostly because I can ssh -X in and configure/fix stuff easily (and please do not mention rdp... just - no).
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
> To which the answer was "In your browser". Okay, it's broken, but not much worse than the official desktop version.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
But they did say _15 years ago_. There was a Linux Mint 15Y ago but was there a web-based Outloook? I don't think there was.
I've spent this century avoiding Outlook so I am not sure. (Which is odd as I was a certified Exchange admin in the '90s and made good money deploying and fixing lots of Outlook. Thing is, that is _why_ I avoid it...)
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
[1]Yes. There was.
It was terrible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_on_the_web
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
Yes there was outlook via web 15 years ago.
Heck, I used outlook for web in 2001. It was junk at that time. ¿In 2010? IDK
Edit: Ninja'd by theOtherJD
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
This is where things get complicated. If you used corporate Exchange servers in 2010 then it also came with a (really bad) version of OWA; Outlook Web Access. It did the barest minimum necessary for a web based mail/calendar but it really wasn't a replacement for the fat client.
outlook.com, as a web service, didn't start until around 2013 ( https://news.microsoft.com/source/2013/02/18/microsoft-officially-launches-outlook-com/ )
So it's very possible that a user in 2010 using the Outlook application was using it as a POP3 client (IMAP if they were lucky) to another mail service.
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
> So it's very possible that a user in 2010 using the Outlook application was using it as a POP3 client (IMAP if they were lucky) to another mail service.
It stuns me to realize you're probably right. E.g. using an Outlook application to read Yahoo!mail or AOLmail (was that still a thing back then?). Working in tech in the 90's I associated "Outlook" with "Exchange", and usually "on-site" at that; presumably that isn't the majority case these days.
Now I wonder if what happens today: ie. do some people actually prefer the Outlook client on its own merits, regardless of the mail service they're connecting to? Reading their gmail with an Outlook client (assuming such a thing is possible).
Perhaps it's worth considering what the end-user is really asking for when they say "Where's Outlook?"
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
> I've spent this century avoiding Outlook so ...
... maybe you're not the right person to complain about the alternatives being no use to (fill in your choice of user category here).
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
Only Microsoft can release Outlook for Unix/Linux.
If they don't, you could log into OWA with a browser. New Outlook and OWA are practically at parity because they're both web apps (fine for web mail, terrible for a desktop app).
Re: Always looking the wrong way at the wrong thing.
"All went well - until they said "Where's mu Outlook ?""
I take the point, but these days, they would be logging into Microsoft365 and using their apps in the Web browser. Can do that from Windows, MacOS or Linux/BSD.
"Imagine if instead of Vim, we had 23 different Vi clones"
We almost do:
[1]vi Clones
Also neovim, qe, and some others which are vi modes in GUI software.
[1] https://www.linfo.org/vi/clones.html
Re: "Imagine if instead of Vim, we had 23 different Vi clones"
> We almost do:
>
> vi Clones
Oh, nice one! Well played!
TBH I had not heard of 3/4 of those.
Vile isn't an editor; it's an Emacs mode. Most of the rest aren't FOSS or aren't for xNix or have some other excluding factor -- but still, a great list. Nicely done.
There's well over a billion people using the Linux distro called "Android" (I use the GrapheneOS variant). So it _can_ be done.
(Desktop-wise, I use StumpWM with some XFCE4 helpers and yes, I wish the world for mix and match were simpler than dbus and polkit).
Except that "android" can look wildly different from one phone to the next depending on how much the manufacturer of said phone decided to mess with it. For some reason when it comes to phones tho, no one seems to mind. I wonder if it's not because with phones you very rarely have to use someone elses, you just get used to the one you have each time you buy a new one.
"you just get used to the one you have each time you buy a new one."
Sort of like when Windows and/or Office get their biannual major updates and change stuff, sometimes wildly and millions of users have to re-learn how to use their "standard" OS :-)
A design that originated in Window?
> .. a clear large majority of desktop environments in FOSS today share the same design, and it's a design that originated in Windows. Nearly 20 years ago, Microsoft threatened to sue over it. It never happened ..
Because Microsoft borrowed most of the elements from Apple. Apple sued Microsoft in March 1988 over borrowing "look and feel". Microsoft's defense was; you borrowed it from the same place we did - Xerox's Palo Alto.
Re: A design that originated in Window?
> Because Microsoft borrowed most of the elements from Apple. Apple sued Microsoft in March 1988 over borrowing "look and feel". Microsoft's defense was; you borrowed it from the same place we did - Xerox's Palo Alto.
No, not a fair point at all.
Remember the bit in the article where I said "please read the previous one"?
READ THE PREVIOUS ONE.
*NO PART* of the stuff I am talking about is taken from Apple or Xerox. The Apple-ish parts of Win9x are basically universal to all desktop WIMP GUIs now. The _entire point_ of Win9x was to do something which _did not infringe on Apple IP_ while making a coherent comprehensible desktop GUI that played to Windows 2 and more to the point 3.x's strengths. So, it has great keyboard controls, it emphasizes multitasking to the extent of integrating a task switcher as a core part of the GUI...
So Win9x does not have a global menu bar. It does not have an Apple menu analogue with global system-management functions. It does not have desktop drive icons. It does not even have a fixed "this is the current app" indicator.
Much of the design is from Windows 1, 2 and 3, because it was Windows 4. But all the stuff that's new in 95 can be _defined and explained_ as "do it in a way totally unlike Apple, so we don't get sued."
While classic MacOS hid it, because classic wasn't very good at multitasking. Almost the only clue was an app name at the _right_ end of the global menu bar.
Re: A design that originated in Window?
Just for the record, it's [1]Xerox Alto , not Xerox Palo Alto .
One of the industry's greatest missed opportunities.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto
Linux desktop environments will work together the day after their authors' egos do.
I don't know if the Unix philosophy can work here.
It's possible that a graphical desktop is just too complex an object for the whole stdin/stdout/stderr pass all messages as text is actually a viable solution. I'm actually struggling to imagine what a genuinely "universal" messaging bus for graphical applications might look like even. One of the reasons Windows 95 was able to be as simple as it was was that they were much simpler times. We can't even consistently handle multi-monitor support for cases where the different monitors have very different DPIs yet. God forbid you have multiple touch-sensitive displays attached. Some of the weird things that happen under Gnome when you dock a laptop with three or more desktop monitors of varying resolutions and rotations are just... yuch.
I'd settle for one desktop that actually works consistently within itself before we start trying to cull down the outliers, and we don't even have that.
The Reg keeps confusing the default setup of most Linux desktops (look like something familiar) with the only way they work. New users prefer to start with something that looks familiar, those who care can customise to what they want.
My KDE desktop does not have a start button at all, nor a panel at the bottom. I do have something like a start button on my desktop, but it does not open a Windows like hierarchical menu but a full screen searchable grid of icons - although you can click on one level of categories to narrow things down. I did much the same when I used XFCE.
Dolphin, the KDE file manager, can look like a two paned orthodox file manager, depending on what choices you make in the "view" and "split" menus and buttons. Konqueror (its predecessor, which is still around) is even more versatile and can preview in panes etc.
, but you only got one, and you couldn't change its length, or re-arrange or resize its contents, let alone change their orientation.
SO Windows 95 was better than Linux desktops because it would not let you do things.
Users should be free to – for example – use the MATE panel with the Xfce window manager, the Cinnamon file manager, and the Budgie start menu.
Not sure about that particular combo, but you definitely can use XFCE with a different window manager, and the same with KDE. You can use use any file manager in any desktop environment I have ever tried (there are settings to change default file managers). Some panels will work with different desktop environments or with plain Window managers but its not something I have done myself.
Sometimes the things that you can't do are more important than the things that you can. Many a project has died because by trying to be all things to all men it managed not to be terribly good at any of them.
Keep dreaming
The non-techie users, which will always outumber the techie ones, will want consistency. You guys can love Linux all you want, but unless these non-techies are almost all on them on the same page, your year of the desktop will remain an elusive dream. And while you're at it, stop the chilish infighting. I swear, Torvalds needs chill pills.
Re: Keep dreaming
Another one who seems not to 'get it' when it comes to what FLOSS(Linux, and other OSes) are actually all about—it's this 'freedom' thing.
It doesn't necessarily give you what you want, but you are free to make it how you want it, i.e. freedom to a particular kind of crapness. And if you can't do that, then you are free to live with what other's have decided they want—another kind of crapness. Too much 'freedom'? Walled gardens are available, to varying degrees of their own particular kind of crapness.
Microsoft did not invent the "Windows 95" desktop
Please do not suggest that other desktops mimic Windows 95. What this article describes as the "Windows 95 desktop" design originated with RISC OS , back in the days when Micros~1 was still futzing around with Program Manager.
Microsoft does not invent. They never have invented anything novel.
There would be at least four desktop GUIs less if GNOME had not fucked up so much.
I like having choice, if you have no choice you end stuck using a piece of faulty spyware disguised as an Operating System because they know they have a monopoly.
Say again.
"..LXDE has been very quiet for a few years since the main developer moved on to LXQt..."
What you did there. Did you see it? Because I think I see it. If you meant it. I think.
Tried for HP/Sun/IBM/SiliconGraphics
I remember the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) for early unix workstations, an attempt at a standard windowing environment for workstations from HP, Sun, IBM and Silicon Graphics. It was "OK".
Nerdy people like customising their UIs, which is why some like me love Vivaldi as a browser. So nerdy people will always result in a proliferation of desktop UIs.
Missing the point
I feel like the incentives aren't really ever included in these discussions.
Microsoft centers itself on one desktop environment because that's what's most economically advantageous. It shouldn't be forgotten that every desktop environment was likely created because somebody wanted something *for themselves* which other DEs didn't provide.
When we're talking about how they're missing the opportunity for the user experience, I don't agree, because they're both the user and creator.
If you have a problem with them only considering themselves that's fine, but nobody should be judging their efforts as if their unpaid work was intended to benefit the average person without that being explicitly stated.
Re: Missing the point
The article is bracketing together large projects such as Gnome and KDE that provide a desktop environment together with the small 'scratching an itch' projects such as (perhaps) JWM.
The large projects tend to want to provide a unified experience with either specially written desktop functions such as file managers or at least 'curated' ones. The smaller ones tend to focus on a window manager or perhaps an add-in panel.
As another poster says, most components of most desktop environments can inter-operate to some extent and there are sets of standards for things like notifications, inter-process messaging and so on.
So what do people think could be a first move towards reducing duplication? Basically which set of standards and protocols does some body or organisation select as ' the standard desktop' and then what do people have to be asked to stop doing? Not sure how you broker those kinds of agreement amongst what are independent (sometimes volunteer) projects upstream of distributions.
Or will it be a 'first-to-market' solution with a hardware package something like steamOS / console or the KDE Linux pre-installed on a mass-market device becoming very popular?
Icon: I'm dubious about how this gets started.
We already have this, almost
> But they could work together and cooperate.
Standards do exist to make taskbars and other desktop elements interchangeable. As long as the components follow the standards, they mostly work together; the main issue that you see is that there isn't something standardized for all DE features. Of course, customizations and configurations all tend to be done in different ways.
In fact, one of the driving forces behind the development of Wayland was to make it easier to develop and use these standards. The situation is admittedly all over the place, but a surprising number of desktop components are interchangeable. X11 had equivalent standards (that were harder to follow but more widely adopted), so this isn't a new thing.
Way to miss the point
All these developers are scratching an itch. I have no insight why they are doing it and they have no obligation to meet my needs or demands.
To call it wasted effort is to attribute motive without evidence and I would suggest denigration. I consider myself lucky to be able to use what others have developed.
Case study Timothy Pearson (TDE) decided that KDE3 was where it was at and forked the code base. His time, his decision.
I quite liked Konqueror being a local file manager (everything is a file, after all) but despite the loss not enough to choose TDE over current KDE. I took a look, it was nostalgic but I'm tagging along as a mostly free rider with the KDE project. (I've also looked at a couple of the other desktops that openSUSE provides but KDE does it for me. My dislike of GNOME is entirely unevidence based.)
Of course all this was under my control (and responsibility) with no-one nagging me to do this or that. That's one of the plus points.
It's just how it is. I don't think diversity of desktop is a problem. The paid for edifice of commercial software might get so unwieldy that even their obscene marketing budgets might fail to stop the collapse (slight evidence that windows 11 might be in the space) leading to a significant search for an alternative but until then just be grateful for what you have got and stop worrying about the year of LOTD.
BTW on datelines KDE was a free evolution of Sun's CDE unfortunately although reassurances were in place at that time Qt was free as in beer not as in speech (now both) So the GNU project started GNOME.
One desktop to rule them all.
What we need is [1]another desktop that does everything for everyone .
[1] https://xkcd.com/927/