The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs
- Reference: 1652776207
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/05/17/linux_desktop_feature/
- Source link:
Let's count the number of desktop designs in active development. Not desktop projects, different user interfaces. There's [1]GNOME , Ubuntu's [2]Unity somehow still hanging on in there, and [3]Elementary OS 's Pantheon. All have a vaguely macOS-like look: a top panel (woefully underused except by Unity, so mostly wasted space) and a dock, which if you are lucky you can reposition.
So, arguably, that's… one.
[4]
Pre-release Ubuntu 22.04 GNOME desktop showing Nautilus and neofetch
GNOME has multiple extensions and forks. Two come from the GNOME Project itself: [5]Classic and [6]Flashback . Both make GNOME 3 look superficially like GNOME 2. [7]MATE is GNOME 2, forked and updated.
There are lots more. In the Gtk family, there's [8]Cinnamon , [9]Xfce , and [10]LXDE . In the [11]Qt world, there's [12]KDE and [13]LXQt , and KDE 4 fork [14]Trinity .
[15]
That makes it… two.
[16]
[17]
Yes, two, because they are all reimplementations of the Windows 95 UI. Taskbar? Check. Start menu? Check. System tray with clock? Check. File manager with a list of locations on the left, and the current one's contents on the right? Check.
All the mainstream distros (Ubuntu and Mint, openSUSE and Gecko Linux, Fedora, Debian) come with largely the same choice of desktops, and they're all the same.
[18]
[19]Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu, but heavily customizes GNOME to make it more Windows-like. Interestingly, Zorin OS Lite looks and works much the same – just compare their [20]screenshots – but uses Xfce plus the [21]Dock-like Taskbar plugin.
[22]Deepin (and [23]UbuntuDDE ) are pretty, but the option of a floating taskbar doesn't disguise that it's still a Windows-like desktop. Another Sinocentric distro, Ubuntu [24]Kylin , has [25]UKUI , forked from MATE with added bling.
There's also SolusOS's [26]Budgie . There's nothing wrong with Budgie, but it is another variation on the same theme. Taskbar-like panel, tray, hierarchical menus… it doesn't do anything one couldn't achieve with modest customization of Xfce or MATE or LXDE.
A rose by any other name
Other desktops are even more niche: [27]Enlightenment is an option in several distros. The release of Enlightenment 17 took 12 years , and some admirers are reluctant to move on to newer ones – so for instance, one of the only Enlightenment-centric distros, [28]Bodhi Linux , responded to subsequent releases of Enlightenment by forking E17 to make the [29]Moksha Desktop .
The [30]Equinox desktop hasn't had a new release since 2014, but Arch Linux still includes it. Over in the FreeBSD world, there is the [31]Lumina desktop.
[32]
And ChromeOS itself has its own shell, called [33]Aura or [34]ash for short. It has a floating taskbar, with app-launch buttons, a start button on the left, and a system tray on the right.
[35]
The Linux version of Firefox running on a Chromebook
That's 21 different desktop environments, with a grand total of two different basic designs. A handful of them can be adapted from one to the other.
But isn't more choice a good thing?
One might ask why there are so many, and there are many answers to that.
Some are written in C++, some in JavaScript, some in Vala, most in plain old C. Some use Gtk, in various versions; a few use Qt; some use both; and a few, such as Enlightenment or EDE, use something entirely different. People have their own preferences in tooling, and that is fine.
I am also not saying that any of these environments are bad. I have my own preferences, but I completely respect that other people have their own. That's fine too.
That is not the purpose of this piece.
What it is asking is: why are they all the same?
So many different implementations of the "traditional" (since 1995) taskbar-and-launch-menu are not different desktops.
Yes, there are differences, but they are trivial and cosmetic. For example, the panel at the top, or the bottom, or both. Text buttons or graphical ones, centered on the panel or on the left. Panel attached to one screen edge, or floating. Or a panel plus a floating dock.
They are just cosmetically different versions of the same desktop.
That, I submit, is a vast waste of the time and effort of thousands of volunteer developers.
What is worse is that, while some of these small differences make some people prefer one environment over another, they have another hidden cost: because of all the effort spread out over so many rival implementations, no one desktop successfully does everything that Windows itself could.
The hidden price of duplicated effort
A very important aspect of this is accessibility. Not only for blind users, but they make a good example. GNOME 2 was reasonably good for people without eyesight, but it's gone, and [36]none of its inheritors come close to matching it.
An excellent and very simple test of accessibility is to use a desktop PC and just unplug the mouse . Windows remains highly usable with only a keyboard. As standard, without enabling any special accessibility aids, windows can be opened, moved, resized, switched and closed, entirely with the keyboard. There are standard keystrokes for moving from one control in a dialog box to the next and back again , and for exiting without changes, and for closing accepting changes. There are hotkeys for opening menus, navigating them, and closing them.
These work inconsistently across Linux desktops. Some only implement a few of the standard keystrokes; some support most of them. Some implement the majority of the functions, but using different keystrokes. Some desktops banish menu bars completely, some retain them everywhere, some have an inconsistent mixture.
Nothing is as consistent as Windows. Apple's macOS, iOS, and iPadOS have a rich sets of controls for blind users and are highly accessible – but they do this with a whole new UI.
The touchscreen devices have an entirely separate UI of gestures, multi-finger taps and swipes for users who can't see the screen. It works very well, but it means that a sighted person can't operate the device at all. The accessibility features and keyboard controls of macOS are not available at all until enabled, whereas in Windows, they are part of the standard UI, there for everyone to use.
A Windows user with their hands on the keyboard can hit Alt-F4 to close a window faster than reaching for the mouse then aiming at a close box. Alt-Space-X maximizes a window in an instant, and the same keystroke works in Unity or in Xfce – but it doesn't in KDE Plasma (or in GNOME). Implementing the way the Windows desktop works for mouse users, but changing most of the keystrokes, actively hinders users who can't use a mouse. The experience for blind Linux users has got markedly worse in the last decade and a half.
Better accessibility helps everyone , not just people with disabilities.
Room for improvement
There is still abundant space for innovation within the existing, conventional desktop model. To pick some small examples: [37]in BeOS, window title bars were tabs , just long enough to hold the title text, and they could be moved along the top of the window, allowing different windows to be stacked yet remain individually accessible. Microsoft [38]tried then abandoned something similar , but if Groupy does it, why can't Linux?
Come to that, there is no particular need for title bars to be at the top. On widescreens, vertical space is precious. I'd like the option to have them on the sides, as they [39]do in [40]wm2 and [41]wmx .
In the olden days, app menus mostly were in one or two places: either at the top of the screen, as in Lisa OS, MacOS, DR GEM, and AmigaOS… or inside windows, as in Microsoft Windows and OS/2. NeXTstep did something different: menus were arranged in vertical columns at the top left of the screen, with submenus opening in adjacent columns. This had a very handy consequence: submenus could be torn off and repositioned elsewhere on the screen, turning them into instant toolbars.
[42]
NeXT System's Interface Builder
Rather than conceal menus, why not rethink them?
When the going gets weird
There is no point in criticizing something unless you're able to offer alternatives.
Graphical desktops go back to the start of the 1980s, and there was a decade and a half of experimentation before Windows 95 and NT 4 started to dominate. That means that there are entirely different models of the graphical desktop out there – and people nostalgic for them. Some have made it across to the open-source world. It's just that most are obscure and little-known. Here are a few that do things differently.
[43]
RISC OS dates back to before any of this was taken for granted
Acorn's RISC OS was designed before even Windows 3 or OS/2 1.1, which makes it idiosyncratic by modern standards – but highly functional. It's still around and [44]now open source .
It has no menu bars anywhere, just context menus everywhere. Maximize a window in its file manager, and it expands only enough to show all of its contents and no more. The title bar of document windows changes color to show if the contents have changed and should be saved. All title bars have a button that sends the window to the back, behind all the others.
[45]As pandemic buying continues, Chromebook shipments soared 275% in Q1, says analyst
[46]Google's Chrome OS Flex could revive old PCs, Macs
[47]What does 2022 have in store for Asahi Linux on Apple chips? Drivers aplenty, but that GPU still needs tackling
[48]Comparing the descendants of Mandrake and Mandriva Linux
There are at least two implementations of it on Linux. One isn't public yet, but the older is the [49]ROX Desktop . It's small, simple, fast, and light. One peculiarity is that it has its own packaging system, [50]0install .
The ROX app-packaging system also inspired the more successful [51]AppImage , so a modernization effort could perhaps focus on that instead – or simply remove the functionality completely and leave it up to the OS.
[52]GNUstep is a reimplementation of NeXT's NeXTstep and OpenStep GUI in Objective-C. The [53]NeXTspace project is working at integrating it with a modern distro, but developer [54]Sergeii Stoian lives in Kyiv, so has other things on his mind right now.
[55]Étoilé was an effort to modernize GNUstep and make it more like modern macOS, which would be wonderful to see updated and brought onto a more modern basis – comparable to [56]the Hello System .
[57]
The reborn Common Desktop Environment
The original cross-Unix desktop, [58]CDE is [59]open source now . It would be an ideal match for a very lightweight Linux. Some of the CDE design made it into [60]OS/2 2's Workplace Shell , which was touted as a killer advantage of OS/2 2 back in its day.
Long ago, the classic [61]FVWM window manager was modified to [62]resemble Windows 95. Nearly three decades later, [63]FVWM3 is in active development. Perhaps it could be a starting point.
Or, for those more comfortable in Go, [64]FyneDesk .
[65]
Yes, really, Amiga OS 3 is still around
Also derived from FVWM is [66]AmiWM , an Amiga-like window manager. Since AmigaOS is enjoying a small revival – last year, there was a new [67]point release after 28 years (!) – maybe the time is right for an AmigaOS-like desktop.
The AmigaOS desktop, [68]Workbench , already has a FOSS relative called [69]Ambient , from [70]MorphOS , as does the all-FOSS [71]AROS in the form of [72]Wanderer . Either could be candidates, or at least inspiration. To try AROS, there's a special version called [73]Icaros specifically built to run on VMware.
Another unusual niche desktop that once inspired a lot of love is the [74]MAXX Desktop , which is distantly descended from SGI's IRIX desktop environment.
[75]
Mac OS System 7
Return of the Mac
One of the most widely loved and successful desktops of all time, of course, was the original Apple MacOS. If you never got to try it, version 9.04 runs well on [76]SheepShaver , and it's even possible to run the last-ever version 9.2 in [77]QEMU .
You can even run both [78]System 7 and [79]MacOS 8 directly in your browser.
A reimplementation could start with the basic multiwindow System 6 look, then add aliases and a hierarchical Apple Menu à la System 7, then progress to the full multi-threaded MacOS 8-style Platinum experience, complete with desktop drawers.
Both System 6 ( [80]ClassicWM ) and MacOS 7-8 ( [81]MLVWM ) Mac-style window managers already exist, as does a [82]Classic Finder recreation.
In its Atari ST incarnation, Digital Research's GEM had a file manager that was significantly Mac-like. The [83]PC version has long been open source , and reusing some of that code, there's an open-source ST version now too, called [84]EmuTOS .
There is a lot more to life than the tired old Windows model. What GNOME and Pantheon are doing to reinvent it is great, but at the same time both remove a lot of the customizability and flexibility that some of us rely on… as well as features that were not only crucial to users with some disabilities, but also helped everyone.
There are other designs out there. There are more desktops than Windows and macOS, and all offer their own unique benefits. Reimplementing the same old desktop model over and over again doesn't help anyone: it just wastes a huge amount of talent and effort. ®
Get our [85]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.gnome.org/
[2] https://unityx.org/
[3] https://elementary.io/
[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/03/30/ubuntu_22_04_prerelease.jpg
[5] https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-help/stable/gnome-classic.html.en
[6] https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback
[7] https://mate-desktop.org/
[8] https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon-desktop
[9] https://www.xfce.org/
[10] http://www.lxde.org/
[11] https://www.qt.io/
[12] https://kde.org/
[13] https://lxqt-project.org/
[14] https://www.trinitydesktop.org/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YoNyQ7Duopsu5vqJcuUjzAAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YoNyQ7Duopsu5vqJcuUjzAAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YoNyQ7Duopsu5vqJcuUjzAAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YoNyQ7Duopsu5vqJcuUjzAAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/zorin_os_16_pro/
[20] https://zorin.com/os/download/
[21] https://github.com/nsz32/docklike-plugin
[22] https://www.deepin.org/en/
[23] https://ubuntudde.com/
[24] https://www.ubuntukylin.com/index-en.html
[25] https://www.ukui.org/
[26] https://github.com/BuddiesOfBudgie/budgie-desktop
[27] https://www.enlightenment.org/
[28] https://www.bodhilinux.com/
[29] https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/
[30] https://edeproject.org/
[31] https://lumina-desktop.org/
[32] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YoNyQ7Duopsu5vqJcuUjzAAAAEU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[33] https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura/
[34] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/master/ash/
[35] https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/08/27/linux-chromebook.jpg
[36] https://scribe.rip/@r.d.t.prater/linux-accessibility-an-unmaintained-mess-8fbf9decaf8a
[37] https://www.theregister.com/2007/01/30/forgotten_tech_beos/
[38] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/28/sets_scrapped_from_windows_10/
[39] http://www.xwinman.org/screenshots/wm2-default.gif
[40] http://www.xwinman.org/wm2.php
[41] https://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wmx/
[42] https://regmedia.co.uk/2011/02/08/next2_small.jpg
[43] https://regmedia.co.uk/2013/06/04/riscos_3_7.png
[44] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/23/risc_os_open_source/
[45] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/05/chromebook_shipments_canalys_figures/
[46] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/16/google_chrome_os/
[47] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/16/asahi_linux_2022/
[48] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/comparing_the_descendants_of_mandrake/
[49] http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/
[50] https://0install.net/
[51] https://appimage.org/
[52] http://www.gnustep.org/
[53] https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
[54] https://github.com/trunkmaster
[55] http://etoileos.com/
[56] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/hellosystem_maclike_freebsd_project_05/
[57] https://regmedia.co.uk/2012/08/08/cde_desktop_image_big.jpg
[58] https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
[59] https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/09/cde_goes_opensource/
[60] https://www.theregister.com/2012/11/27/the_os_wars_os2_25years_old/?page=5
[61] https://www.fvwm.org/
[62] http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net/
[63] https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3
[64] https://github.com/fyne-io/fynedesk
[65] https://regmedia.co.uk/2009/07/03/af09_2.jpg
[66] http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiwm.html
[67] https://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/news/1-latest-news/290-amigaos-42-for-all-classic-amigas-released-and-available
[68] https://classicwb.abime.net/
[69] https://sourceforge.net/projects/morphosambient/
[70] https://www.morphos-team.net/
[71] https://aros.sourceforge.io/
[72] https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;pic=3595
[73] https://vmwaros.blogspot.com/
[74] https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/
[75] https://regmedia.co.uk/2012/07/13/mac_1.jpg
[76] https://github.com/cebix/macemu
[77] https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/GuestOperatingSystems/MacOS9
[78] https://system7.app/
[79] https://macos8.app/
[80] https://github.com/RyuKojiro/classic-wm
[81] https://github.com/morgant/mlvwm
[82] https://bitbucket.org/bszyman/classic-finder-app/src/develop/
[83] https://www.theregister.com/1999/04/27/gem_the_gui_that_beat/
[84] https://emutos.sourceforge.io/
[85] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Or Ratpoison. Or twm.
The curse of overchoice
Overchoice is actually a term for when a consumer is given so many options, often varying in ways which are meaningless or confusing that they end up making no choice at all.
Linux has always had that issue and it is illustrated in the article in all the desktops that exist or existed. I expect most prospective Linux users just want to install the thing and use it for something. They really don't care what desktop is powering their experience providing it is easy to use, discoverable, familiar, doesn't throw any nasty surprises at them and lets them get on and do stuff.
Re: The curse of overchoice
The "subway" effect...
Re: The curse of overchoice
It's similar to what I know as the paradox of choice.
You have one or two options, it's THEIR fault if you choose a bad option.
Given a thousand choices its YOUR fault if you choice a bad option.
Why are they all the same?
Because IBM spent a crap-ton[0] of money and research hours on actual educated and well trained professionals to come up with what a computer interface should look like. The result was IBM's Common User Access , or CUA, back in the mid '80s (officially published in '87). Virtually all projects since, FOSS or proprietary, have been based on this ... albeit with some adjustments and supposed enhancements. Quite frankly, nobody has come up with anything better.
Yes, I know about Apple's HIG (human interface guidlines) from '84, but nobody but Apple-leaning programmers ever paid much attention to it.
[0] Or crap-tonne for the metrically inclined. The conversion factor is 1:1
Re: Why are they all the same?
I agree with Jake, the Win95 look works, has been used for a very long time and a lot of people have got used to it. GUIs are a means to an end, they should be there to let you do things and then get out of the way. They are not an end in themselves
There is an old saying "Form follows function" . A hammer looks like a hammer because that is what it needs to look like. The Win95 GUI gives you all the tools you need to start a program, organise you files and generally do thing on you computer. It works, so why change it?
FOSS is Darwinian in some respects, there is survival of the fittest, and there may be reasons why the choice of the GUI has come down to two models.
Taskbar? Check.
Start menu? Check.
System tray with clock? Check.
File manager with a list of locations on the left, and the current one's contents on the right? Check.
Wouldn't want it any other way.
Though I'm leaving Microsoft (due to license issues) I have to give them credit for making an effective UI.
At least up to and including Windows 7, that is...
Brilliant and exhaustive work of research
The author here has devoted a lot of time and work to produce this piece. I applaud the effort. I also appreciate the fact that the author has opened my eyes to the fact that, yes, basically almost everybody is implementing the Windows UI.
From a technical point of view, the Windows UI is a Good Thing TM . I remember reading about how Gates & Co really racked their brains over menu management, the homoginization of function keys and ease of use. Once upon a time, if you had access to Help, it could be via a function key, a combination of CTRL-
But, concerning the efforts of volunteer developers, I'm sorry but nobody is forcing them to invest themselves. It's their choice, and I'm sure that they are dead set on improving some aspect or another of the user experience. The real issue is that (probably) none of them, or at least not many of them, have a lot of experience in alternative UIs, they just dive in with their idea and go for it.
It's their choice, there's nothing you can do about that. Yes, after reading this article I agree it's largely a waste of time, but it's their time to waste.
Re: Brilliant and exhaustive work of research
Most of that wasn't Microsoft. It was IBM.
Not that unreasonable
I look at it as being similar to the way cars' UI converged on steering wheel/pedals/gear stick. You wouldn't want to learn to drive all over again for every new car would you?
You forgot the third ...
CLI. Works just as well with or without a mouse, is remarkably consistent over most flavours of Linux and even has a half decent re-implementation in Powershell for Windows. Ok - it's a bit down on the intuitivity scale but that does help keep the riff-raff out of true geekdom.
Re: You forgot the third ...
Which CLI? command.com? bash? The C shell? All are actually quite different, and there are many, many more.
Re: You forgot the third ...
Good if you know how to do what you want. Pretty poor on discoverability.
So what should a a 21st century UI look like?
If we are *still* using computer monitors, then the single worst part of UI design is to waste [1]valuable vertical space with a title bar, menu, all the space below the user area. Design features from Windows 3. Maybe earlier, see below.
It also seems to be to be anachronistic to have a menu bar item labelled "Edit" which, with word processing apps does not let you edit the document. Although pretty much everything else in the menu bar is just as obsolete.
Next would be the silly notion of application names. I do not care what an app is called, I care about what it does! So I do not want something called LibreOffice - especially not with camel¹ case formatting - needless key presses for an idiotic (and inconsistent) way to show where words start, I want an icon that says: write stuff of something else, equally informative.
In fact, the whole idea of icons seems rather 1970s (from the 3 Rivers PERQ). All a UI should contain is a single question: what do you want to do? with a free-form field for the user to write (or say) their instruction. It should then be up to the smarts inside to decide how to fulfill that command.
It seems to me that the first steps to setting ourselves free of these out-dated ideas is to get rid of the limitations imposed by the traditional 2-button mouse and ASCII / 101-key keyboards.
[1] camel: a horse designed by committee. camelCase, just as dumb.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winmsg/images/cswin-02.png
Re: So what would a a 21st century UI look like?
"I want an icon that says: write stuff"
I regularly use a couple dozen or more programs to "write stuff". Are you seriously suggesting that I should have icons for all of these, each identically labeled "write stuff" on my desktop?
"of (sic) something else, equally informative."
Perhaps the name of the actual program you want to use would be a good idea?
CamelCase is fine. I have yet to find anybody that is confused by the concept.
Re: So what would a a 21st century UI look like?
> CamelCase is fine
actuallyItIsnt. itHasBeenDeprecatedInPythonForMoreThan10YearsAsItIsSoDifficultToRead.
You should check what [1]PEP 8 has to say on the matter.
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8908760/should-i-use-camel-case-or-underscores-in-python
Re: So what would a a 21st century UI look like?
Variable names that long are deprecated everywhere except in Java.
Re: So what should a a 21st century UI look like?
This is why I was really keen on [1]OpenDoc for compound documents. Put a block of text here, a picture there and possibly with words as part of the picture. Same editing tools available for each data type everywhere. Shame it didn't fly, I think all three partners gave up on the dream of displacing Windows and stopped investing.
BTW, that camel is a horse "designed" for a far harsher environment than your pretty nag could handle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
RISC OS
As the author indicated, RISC OS had (from around 1989) many features that didn't make it into Windows before Win95 (and some that no later system has). Apart from purely cosmetic things like marbled title and scroll bars (that by the size of the bar shows how large a fraction of the contents is shown, something that didn't make into competing systems until much later), RISC OS use a three-button mouse with the following functions:
Left ("select"): works mostly as the left button on most modern GUIs
Middle ("menu"): Pop-up menu activation
Right ("adjust"): does a variation of the left button, for example selecting a file icon without deselecting the already selected, selecting a window for input focus without sending it to the front, selecting a menu item without closing the menu, and so on.
This is something I miss in Linux GUIs.
It also had something like TrueType (but before this and IMO better, since it used cubic splines instead of quadratic splines and allowed anti-aliasing) which allowed all apps to share the same fonts. Printing was done by rendering pages using the same engine as screen rendering, so it was truly WYSIWYG (unlike Mac at the time). The only disadvantage was slow printing, as everything was sent as a bitmap (though you could print raw text using the printer's built-in fonts). But it made installing new printers quite easy: You just had to describe the commands for starting graphics mode and how pixels are sent to the printer. I had a printer that was not in the list of already-supported printers, and it took me less than half an hour to get it running.
Re: RISC OS
It also had drag-and-drop app installation, which ROX's zero-install seeks to implement on Linux.
Ultimately doing something different is really hard. You're on your own. I followed the development of Mezzo/Symphony in the 00s, which correctly identified the upcoming obsession with convergence and tried to design an accessible UI for all screen types not just the CUA/HIG terminal and keyboard. The developers would post these updates that showed their research was taking into account all types of users and not assuming the Win95 shell was the foundation. Unfortunately it was abandoned before it was completed and didn't get beyond putting menus in 4 places. http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/17107
Full-fat Enlightenment being vapourware is almost a meme a this point. Then of course there was the Moblin/Maemo/Meego fiasco which did a huge amount of work on fundamentally reimagining the interface of a computer for the 2010s, but again didn't go anywhere. I would argue it never got the chance to be offered as a serious alternative. The problem becomes that all the software you want or need to use has been built on the older paradigm of the CUA/HIG and developers have no interest in changing that. Unity/GNOME3 had to beg developers to make some applications compatible with the global top bar, but trying to reinvent the interface is just not people's priority when the people who have done it get burned.
Less is more.
One of the things that is seriously lost by "current" attempts at UI design is just how bloated systems have become. How many control panels do you need? .ini / registry / other config indices?
What software do you actually need on a computer to do "stuff" unhindered? A file system, memory management, a way to issue commands to the system, a method to interpret the output of the system, and applications themselves. Hardware drivers of course, too; and probably a way to manage them given the myriad hardware config one has to accomodate. Common menus and command line designs make a lot of sense to include in your design, and common interfaces for documentation.
A system that can do all that can be packed into virtually no space at all. Workbench did it with the intuition ROM and one 880kb floppy. (Amiga 1000 ofc had to load kickstart to RAM).
Feature creep is a sin, both Windows and FOSS world exhibit it. Apple are onto something good, but have done their best to ruin it with App Store nonsense.
For better or worse, your machine is increasingly a thin client terminal to look at applications hosted remotely through a browser. In many ways the old fat client model is outmoded for a lot of users. Fatter and ever-more troublesome to live systems aren't worth the hassle, besides being expensive. "Consumer" grade laptops are usually expensive trash; poor performing. Hence the console successes, and tablet computing taking over that corner of the market.
That leaves only the power users who don't want the trash being ladled up by the bucket. I like linux a lot, but I would in no way advocate it as being a clean design, nor will it ever be from it's very much fragmented-by-design origins in GNU world.
Menus
The most annoying UI development of recent years is that bastard hamburger menu. Small thing, not up against a screen edge, adding an extra level to the menu hierarchy. A severe breach of [1]Fitts' Law. Thankfully Firefox allows me to switch the standard menu back on.
The author mentioned the utility of tear-off menus. GIMP has had that since version 1.x at least, as does all those fugly Tk things. Other GTK apps not using it must be a deliberate choice, and one I just don't understand. Gimp also has the main menu available on a right-click anywhere in the image. Excellent choice, the biggest target possible is where the mouse already is.
There's a very good reason why MS made everything able to be driven by the keyboard, Windows 1.0 shipped when you couldn't count on there being one, or that the customer would [2]know what to do with it. Although [3]people with stopwatches consistently find that the belief in the keyboard being faster is a cognitive illusion. Still, if it makes you feel faster knock yourself out. The real time is in deciding what to do anyway.
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/videos/fittss-law/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpWhugUmV5U
[3] https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
There's a more fundamental question
The author uses the word "desktop" as a synonym for "User Interface". We've come to accept the [1]desktop metaphor as the default basis of computer UIs and it has persisted even as the work environment becomes less likely to include physical files and folders - or even a desk or office. But it's not inviolate. If you're concerned about the basic similarity of all UIs, you probably need to start several steps further back.
And the duplication and the projects that are half-done - well, welcome to the world of open source where everyone has a "better" idea for the interesting part but few want to be stuck with the drudgery like accessibility. Even if you could get several projects to amalgamate and share resources, the same would be true. It's hardly a surprise that the most complete offerings come from people who are contracted to do the whole job.
You could, of course, make the same argument about cars. Why do they all have steering wheels and similar pedals and brakes? It's simply because the value of being able to use a different vehicle without having to retrain exceeds the minimal ergonomic value that might arise from a revised design. And there are negligibly few cars developed by amateurs that would be let near a road to persuade you otherwise.
The "desktop" is, in the end, a means to an end. It should be unobtrusive. And it's most unobtrusive when it's familiar.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_metaphor
I have been saying this for years, at least 20 now
-> They are just cosmetically different versions of the same desktop.
-> That, I submit, is a vast waste of the time and effort of thousands of volunteer developers.
Yes. The piddling differences between these multitude of desktops are mostly spins (yes, they're forks) of other desktops. But other commenters have pointed out that we have other desktops. I would like to see one full complete implementation (call it what it is - a copy) of OS/2's workplace shell. It is still miles ahead of what a lot of the Linux desktop environments today, and it did in using far less memory.
-> CDE is open source now. It would be an ideal match for a very lightweight Linux
Is there such a thing as lightweight Linux these days? I remember running Linux very happily on a machine with 32MB of RAM back in 1998. What are the requirements for a Linux these days? Don't answer that hardware has gotten cheaper, I know that. I'm talking about requirements to run Linux on the desktop.
As long as you ignore tiling wm like i3 or sway, sure, just 2.