Can a Fork Save Cutefish OS (or Its Desktop)? (debugpoint.com) 109
In April ZDNet called its beta "the cutest Linux distro you'll ever use," praising the polished "incredible elegance" of Debian-based Cutefish OS, with its uncluttered, MacOS-like "Cutefish DE" desktop.
But now CutefishOS.com times out, with at least one Reddit user complaining "their email is not responding" and seeking contributors for a fork.
But meanwhile, the technology site DebugPoint.com shares another update: It looks like the OpenMandriva project is already continuing with the development of the Cutefish DE (not the OS) for its own OS. For more details, visit the Matrix discussion page.
Besides, it's worth mentioning that Arch Linux already have the Cutefish desktop packages in the community repo. You can even install it as a standalone desktop environment in Arch Linux with easy steps. As you can see, it is easier to maintain the desktop environment to continue its development because the structure is already out there.
I have tested and reviewed hundreds of distros for years, and Cutefish OS is the promising one with its stunning desktop environment. It was written from the ground up with QML and C++ and took advantage of KWin. It would have been an attractive desktop as a separate component and could have been another great option besides KDE Plasma or GNOME.
Many open-source projects are born and die every year, and it's unfortunate to see the situation of Cutefish OS. I hope an official fork comes up soon, and we all can contribute to it.
But now CutefishOS.com times out, with at least one Reddit user complaining "their email is not responding" and seeking contributors for a fork.
But meanwhile, the technology site DebugPoint.com shares another update: It looks like the OpenMandriva project is already continuing with the development of the Cutefish DE (not the OS) for its own OS. For more details, visit the Matrix discussion page.
Besides, it's worth mentioning that Arch Linux already have the Cutefish desktop packages in the community repo. You can even install it as a standalone desktop environment in Arch Linux with easy steps. As you can see, it is easier to maintain the desktop environment to continue its development because the structure is already out there.
I have tested and reviewed hundreds of distros for years, and Cutefish OS is the promising one with its stunning desktop environment. It was written from the ground up with QML and C++ and took advantage of KWin. It would have been an attractive desktop as a separate component and could have been another great option besides KDE Plasma or GNOME.
Many open-source projects are born and die every year, and it's unfortunate to see the situation of Cutefish OS. I hope an official fork comes up soon, and we all can contribute to it.
If you like Mac OS Desktop (Score:3)
I don't. Happy WindowMaker user for 20 years.
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Heh. I use a Mac as my daily desktop, and if/when I have to use a Unix workstation, I also prefer WindowMaker. Both are pleasing to me, in different ways.
I’ve also been toying around with nsCDE because CDE.
Eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
praising the polished "incredible elegance" of Debian-based Cutefish OS, with its uncluttered, MacOS-like "Cutefish DE" desktop.
Am I the only person who doesn't like the MacOS desktop? I have a MBP for work and... I just don't like it. It's clunky and inelegant if you have several different programs you want to use at the same time for the same task. You know unix style, terminal + stuff.
It's notion of fullscreen is nasty.
It's virtual desktops are a poor imitation of the real thing.
The handling of sound with external speakers makes me long for pulseaudio.
And it doesn't have focus follows mouse.
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Longing for "pulseaudio" while working is the best example of being suffering with the worst ever...
I'd stick with ESD or even try PipeWire even before longing for pulseaudio...
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Longing for "pulseaudio" while working is the best example of being suffering with the worst ever...
You do realise I'm not exactly praising macs, here, right?
I'd stick with ESD or even try PipeWire even before longing for pulseaudio...
Pulseaudio has had most of the more egregious bugs hammered out of it through sheer weight of use. God knows why it became popular in the first place when it was so bad. These days, it's... fine. Like, it very rarely crashes now or fucks up the audio. At least I can choose whi
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God knows why it became popular in the first place when it was so bad.
Timing. Pulseaudio came out at a time when Linux's audio system was frankly completely unusable for a modern desktop / laptop. You want to change audio output without pulse audio, and you're not an experts? hahaha fuck you. You expect your bluetooth headset to automatically take over from your mic and speakers mid conference call? Hahahha fuck you even if you are an expert.
If you ever need to ask why something is popular instead ask: what were people missing that drove them towards using a buggy audio stack
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True though there was also: You want your audio to not regularly blast full volume, massively distorted sound at you? Hahaha fuck you. Thanks, pulse!
If you ever need to ask why something is popular instead ask: what were people missing that drove them towards using a buggy audio stack like that in the first place.
Yeah, sounds wasn't great, but pulseaudio had a disease worse than the cure. It was so horrendously buggy at the time, and ESD was generally OK. There's also the question of who they is, users, dis
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I wonder why all you got to go by is hate for a person. I see someone who has provided two solutions that people have clamored for. What have you done other than shit on it on Slashdot? Is your worthy contribution to the problem just being butthurt that someone else did something?
Grow up kid.
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It didn't just work: it was buggy as all hell in the beginning.
I don't know about the internals of ESD, but that did just work, at least back then.
The easy path was to use the inexplicable dominance of one desktop system to push an incredibly buggy piece of software. Sure we needed something like that, but it was sodding awful at the time. That's pretty shabby, TBH. It's the kind of thing crappy companies do.
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True though there was also: You want your audio to not regularly blast full volume, massively distorted sound at you? Hahaha fuck you. Thanks, pulse!
False. A bug that hasn't been present for many years. Literally the opposite of hahahah fuck you, and more "thanks for reporting this, here's an attempt to patch"... well multiple attempts. The issue persisted for a while.
Yeah, sounds wasn't great, but pulseaudio had a disease worse than the cure.
No. Pulseaudio had bugs. Bugs were rapidly patched (like the one you mentioned). That isn't a disease. You could happily not use it while people who wanted the functionality could decide whether or not they wanted to live with the *temporary* bugs.
Please get some perspective.
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I forget that people rage out and don't read the context setting posts earlier in the thread.
That audio bug persisted for ages, after the point where firefox dropped everything else. I use pulse these days because as I said through sheer weight of use it for debugged. It was pretty shabby how hard incredibly buggy software was pushed.
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ESD? (Score:2)
I'd stick with ESD [...]
ESD? Now that's one three-letter sequence I've not seen in a FOSS post in a long long while. ESD's like the GWB of sound systems. It belongs in another era.
If you want something that's supported and not systemd-infected, you still have a bunch of choices from the Linux kernel standard ALSA, the now (I believe) out-of-tree OSS (Open Sound System), and even OpenBSD's sndio [sndio.org] (which has been ported for use with GNU/Linux systems, along with the usual BSD variants).
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Hey, I remember when you had to pay 4Front for an OSS license. I had one for my Solaris 8 SPARC box a gazillion years ago ...
ESD is the hot new thing compared to that mess.
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PulseAudio has always worked well for me for me since not too long after it was released. We all encountered some issues when RedHat rushed it out. By now it's fairly flawless at what it does, although limited in scope, which PipeWire is addressing. PulseAudio absolutely brought Linux audio out of the stone age. And it still does things that you can't do on any other OS without third-party software. Certainly I can't imagine using Linux audio without PulseAudio or now PipeWire.
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And it doesn't have focus follows mouse.
Plasma hasn't done focus follows mouse correctly for many, many years, if ever. It has a gob of options, almost none of which make sense, and none of which are what I want: alt-tab control of window focus along with focus follows mouse, and pop-up windows that do not immediately expect keyboard input do not steal focus.
But maybe I'm expecting too much. Then again, the window manager I was using in the late 90s had all of these mouse and focus features figured out as the default. It also kept popup window
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Plasma hasn't done focus follows mouse correctly for many, many years, if ever. It has a gob of options, almost none of which make sense, and none of which are what I want: alt-tab control of window focus along with focus follows mouse, and pop-up windows that do not immediately expect keyboard input do not steal focus.
Not sure if it's the localization for your language, but in English, it's quite comprehensible, and works As Expected-- I suggest you use "Focus Follows Mouse", and decide if you want "mouse precedence" or not (Your description suggests you might). Turn on focus stealing prevention (low is fine for me), and I use a small delay (300ms) to keep the windows from leaping up as I move the cursor around.
Just about every combination of option is available, so if it's not working right, chances are, you're not set
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Thanks for the tips, but I have tried every possible combination. I don't want my windows popping up when my mouse gives them focus. I'm not sure under what circumstances that behavior is useful, but different strokes and all that. Note that in my world at least, a window having focus does not mean that window is necessarily the top window.
I also want absolute focus follows mouse. As in, when my mouse is over a window, that is the window that has focus. When you do that in Plasma, you lose alt-tab, whic
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Sorry, but this is BS.
* use "focus follows mouse", not "focus under mouse" (which explicitly tells you it will disable alt-tab)
* Select "Click to raise window"
* Disable auto-raise
* pick a level for focus stealing prevention. If it's not sufficient consider "Focus follows mouse (mouse precedence)".
Or, failing that, create a window rule that explicitly blocks matlab from stealing focus.
Plasma is customizable enough that pretty much any combination o
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Tried all that, and it doesn't work.
Unfortunately, the per-window custom rules aren't documented with easy examples right in the tool, and when I try to find examples on the net, it quickly gets too difficult to be worth my time chasing down. Shame on the programmer for thinking their code was so amazing that they didn't need to write instructions on how to use it.
And then, there's still the annoying thing that new windows always go to the current desktop, not the desktop of the parent window. Maybe there'
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And then, there's still the annoying thing that new windows always go to the current desktop, not the desktop of the parent window. Maybe there's a custom rule for that. I looked, but didn't find one. When things aren't documented for ease of use, I don't care how powerful they are, they might as well not exist.
Now, that's a valid complaint. My other complaint is that opening a hyperlink, for instance, will open it in my "nearest" browser-- even if it happens to be in another activity.
As for the rest, I believe you want "Focus follows mouse (mouse precedence)", because it behaves EXACTLY the way you describe, doesn't break alt-tab, and doesn't break focus stealing prevention. But you need to enable "click to raise", and disable "autoraise".
I found a 40 page manual on window rules-- it's a little out of date, but
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I would use multiple terminals in MacOS, and I liked it. I switched back to Windows and I find it a lot clunkier. For linux I'm not using UI for it.
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The terminals are all one app. What sucks really hard is having different programs.
And windows? What? This entire story is about desktop Linux, which I find greatly superior to windows too.
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Am I the only person who doesn't like the MacOS desktop?
No.
It's notion of fullscreen is nasty.
Yep. Makes me want to barf.
I also hate the way you can click on an icon in the dock to bring back a minimized window but clicking it again doesn't make the window go away (I always seem to click the wrong one - there's usually no visual clue as to which one of several windows is the one I want).
Microsoft Windows is WAY batter at managing windows than MacOS is.
An honorable mention also goes to having a single menu bar at the top that changes with window focus. It's lunacy.
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Am I the only person who doesn't like the MacOS desktop?
No you aren't. MacOS' interface is not ugly by itself; but it is awful in a sense that EVERYBODY tries to mimic it. As a result of that, we have a great choice of quite similar, cargocult-inspired GUIs.
Re: Eh? (Score:2)
For all the faults I could pick with MacOS, Audio is not one of them. CoreAudio is a thing of beauty, and it's ridiculously versatile compared to windows. Recently had to move to a windows machine for my studio and was appalled there's no native system for combining devices into a single virtual device (RMI 16 channel rig and a time code input from a separate unit for synch from a multitrack tape unit. ) Found some third party software that could sort of do it, but the first sign of time code jitter and it
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For all the faults I could pick with MacOS, Audio is not one of them. CoreAudio is a thing of beauty, and it's ridiculously versatile compared to windows.
What is this "windows" of which you speak?
I've tried with Linux but the lack of ProTools and Cubase is a professional showstopper.
Yeah cool, but that's like 0.001% of users. I'm talking about when you plug in an HDMI monitor with sound, the volume buttons no longer function. Basic shit.
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What? That works fine on a mac
Maybe your monitor doesn't support CEC? Its the HDMI standard for volume control, if the playback device wont permit it, the sender is supposed to defer to the playback device and let the playback device control it, so a well configured sender will disable its volume control to avoid confusing the user.
Is there a CEC control option in the monitor's menus? (Sometimes called weird proprietry names like "Vieralink" on panasonic devices etc)
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How on earth does a different terminal emulator help with the OS being terrible at dealing with you wanting to use two different programs at the same time? That's still only one program.
No, who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who wants this look can install GNOME or KDE, configure it with a top panel using text menus, and use one of the many many docks available to provide the OSX-like dock. But why would they? The Mac style Dock threw away everything that made sense about the NeXTStep dock it was based upon. It sits at the bottom of the screen despite the vertical resolution already being limited by the prevalence of widescreen displays. Everything on it moves around on the screen as apps are launched or terminated, so you cannot use muscle memory to bring the mouse pointer to dock elements — you have to think your way through it every time. This design also makes the primary dock button not only move around, but also not be located in a corner where you can mouse there immediately.
Furthermore, I had all of the best of Windows and OSX on my Linux desktop years ago, and then most of the functionality was broken. GNOME went from 2 to 3 and began to be crap, so there went that. avant-window-navigator, compiz, and the very attractive emerald window decorator were all essentially abandoned. (All of them have come back to some degree since.) If people really wanted their Linux system to look and act like OSX, none of that software would have gone out of maintenance to begin with.
Instead of that crap, what actually makes sense is to use the latest KDE Plasma, and stick a panel over on the right that does the job of both panel and dock. Or install one of the old NeXT-style window managers.
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If you like GNOME 2, then you can use MATE.
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If you like GNOME 2, then you can use MATE.
And it's almost as good, if a bit more bloaty and less performant because of GTK3. But it's still not quite as good, and anyway KDE is finally good now, so g'bye GNOME.
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My problem with KDE is that some parts of KDE are done in Qt with conventional widgets (which look great and I can theme them to look the way I want), and the other parts are using QtQuick which doesn't look quite right. Theming doesn't really work, things are too big, spaced out, and lacking in contrast. It's a bit like Windows 10 really, where it's a jarring combination of Win32 and UWP (or whatever they call it this day), and I don't like the look of UWP apps at all for all the same reasons as I don't
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GNOME went from 2 to 3 and began to be crap,
Does anyone actually like GNOME?
The weird thing is it is some sort of "default" and massively dominant but I've never met a single person who actually positively likes it. Linux users are generally customisers or defaulters. I'm the former and I have my repo of settings I clone on to a new machine to pull in X session, bashrc, fvwm2rc and a bunch of others. I like my machine being just so. I know plenty of customisers, none use GNOME.
The defaulters just use what
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It's dominant because it's pushed by RedHat. Also it's got a large number of useful libraries. (But I'm still not convinced that Gtk3 is better than Gtk2, or even as good. It probably isn't aimed at any of my use cases.)
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It's dominant because it's pushed by Redhat and Debian, because GNOME is Free Software and KDE is only Free Software compatible. Back when it was good, that is in the 2.x days, it also supplanted the Motif-based CDE on both HP-UX and SunOS 5 systems. It covered all of the necessary functionality with minimum resource consumption, and without trying to change the interface paradigm laid out in IBM CUA (which was also implemented by Motif, as well as Windows.)
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But why now?
Gnome 2 had its fans and lives on. I have never encountered a single person online or in person who likes GNOME 3. It's running on momentum sms a weird desire to turn Linux into something it isn't. There are nice alternatives that are Free these days like KDE and XFCE.
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Yeah, I didn't realize that all of KDE went fully Free, I thought it was just Qt. I installed it regardless :)
I hope there is more coming-to-senses in the future, and GNOME can go away.
What's extra sad is that GNOME was one of the biggest reasons cited for switching Debian to systemd
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KDE is only Free Software compatible
Stuck in 1999, I see...
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Sorry, was. But it's undeniable that they screwed themselves for a long time with their bullshit licensing.
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I liked Gnome 2 because the way it worked made sense to me and I could make it look the way I wanted. When I learned what Gnome 3 was going to be, I was horrified. Not only did it change the look and feel (and make it hard to customize without third-party extensions that might stop working at any moment) but it was an intense resourse hog at a time that I couldn't afford to upgrade my hardware. After a bit of research, I migrated to Xfce and never looked back. It's muc
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I use and love XFCE, but it is probably not going to get ported to Wayland, so, when X11 goes away, most likely, so does XFCE. :(
I'm not against Wayland per se. But I do NOT want to be forced into a choice between KDE and GNOME. Neither of these lets me do what I've been doing for decades: just let me work, help me launch stuff, but otherwise stay out of my way, and don't consume more resources than does my actual work.
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It looks like Wayland is on their roadmap as of 2021.
https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/w... [xfce.org]
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My thoughts exactly. However, I don't expect X11 to go away in the near future because most of the DEs in use don't support it yet. Right now, there are only three DEs that support it, with Enlightenment being the third and the people maintaining the various distros aren't about to force everybody to switch to one of those three or switch distros, because they know what would happen: people desert in drov
Re: No, who cares? (Score:2)
I find it surprising that people actually like GNOME 2. I tried several versions from the start every once in a while and always experienced bugs and found it generally slow and bloated. For me it never "just worked". I guess being used to fluxbox everything seems that way, although already 20 years ago I found KDE more appealing than GNOME. Anyhow I stopped trying a few years ago, I believe it was version 3 already, first thing I tried was opening a terminal, I was instantly put off. I cannot imagine anyon
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It sits at the bottom of the screen despite the vertical resolution
Falsehood number one. You can put the Mac doc on any edge of the screen you like.
Everything on it moves around on the screen as apps are launched or terminated
Falsehood number two.
I think I'll stop there. You clearly do not know what you are talking about.
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Yeah, my Dock has been on the left side of the screen for coming up on 20 years now. It's one of the first changes I made - right after turning off all dock animations.
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Falsehood number one. You can put the Mac doc on any edge of the screen you like.
You can move it, but by default it's at the bottom, and that's what people are used to. Further, I didn't claim it couldn't be changed, so there was no falsehood. Typically wrong Mac fanboy. APPL/DUMB.
Everything on it moves around on the screen as apps are launched or terminated
Falsehood number two.
Every time an app which is not pinned is launched, the dock grows. Every time one of those apps is closed, it shrinks. Consequently, everything on the dock is continually moving around to different on-screen locations. NeXT pinned the dock to the top right and grew it downwards, so this doesn't happen. I belie
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I just auto-hide the dock. You rarely use it that much except to open a few commonly used applications. It works better for auto-hiding than the Windows start bar because that has useful info that goes away. On OSX the useful info is on the menu bar instead.
Maybe people can at least agree that OSX is light years ahead of Windows which seems to ignore consistency and usability?
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Maybe people can at least agree that OSX is light years ahead of Windows which seems to ignore consistency and usability?
In what way?
I find the complete opposite. OSX is a constant fight to do basic things like file management and much more difficult to deal with multiple open windows at once.
Also: Laptops with no PgUp/PgDown/Del keys? Are you serious?
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Ah, I don't use a laptop's keyboard that often, they all kind of suck. Del key is there, maybe I remapped to Backspace... PgUp/Dn I never noticed a problem with, maybe because the scroll pad actually works quite nicely (though with patents it means other UIs can't copy some of it, the Windows scroll pads in particular suck badly).
File management? I use the command line mostly, but from the UI I don't recall any troubles, not as many troubles as using Window's Explorer. And I always had multiple windows
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Ah, I don't use a laptop's keyboard that often, they all kind of suck.
They don't have to suck as badly as Apple's keyboards do. Apple's keyboards are the perfect example of form over function.
https://www.urbandictionary.co... [urbandictionary.com]
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It was a struggle, but one I committed to doing so that I could transition to an M1 MacBook which was so objectively better than anything else I could get in the PC space, that I couldn't let the OS get in my way.
Ultimately, I worked through all of the annoying fucking differences, found things that it's excellent at. As for differences in keys, there are shortcuts for all equivalent functions.
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Mate is basically Gnome 2, and works very well for people who are looking for that kind of thing. Minimalist, simple, everything about it pretty obvious. Somewhat like Xfce the last time I looked at that.
The really nice thing about the Mate guys is that (unlike Gnome) for many years now they have refrained from fixing something that works!
Nope. (Score:2)
It's important to remember that Cutefish OS isn't ready for the masses. I experienced plenty of issues during my testing, but nothing distracted me from the brilliance of this desktop. I did have it locked up (and require a hard reset) after opening the Video Player app (while ONLYOFFICE was busy installing).
Forking it isn't going to help if you aren't also fixing it. The desktop seems to be built almost completely using Qt Quick so it will need a rewrite before it's of any use.
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I have no horse in this race: what's wrong with qtquick?
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The biggest problems are that it's difficult to debug and obscure. This means you don't have a lot of people with the skills to contribute and fix issues.
Yet another niche distro which adds nothing (Score:2)
"Cutefish OS is the promising one with its stunning desktop environment"
What makes a DE the key reason to choose a distro, let alone a tiny niche playtoy distro? Why is such an unimportant distro "news" on what used to be a site by and for clueful Linux and other OS users?
If I want a Mac I'll buy one.
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I'm just gad to see a linux article
If I wanted.. (Score:2)
I f I wanted something that looks just like MacOS I'd run Windows 11. Meanwhile Debian+Xfce seems fine to me.
My Cutefish experience. (Score:2)
And it was, ok. I suppose. Kind of unremarkable really which is probably a good thing. I couldn't see an actual use case for it though and went back to Gnome.
I hope someone can keep it going however, as choice is a good thing.
Uncluttered = unusable (Score:2)
>"with its uncluttered, MacOS-like "Cutefish DE" desktop. "
So sick of "uncluttered" crap.
Translation of "uncluttered": Hide everything, especially stuff users want to use, including controls, scroll bars, menus, etc and prevent user from exposing anything. Pack everything in 200 levels of menus behind a single button. Remove all important settings, since "users don't need them.
99.99% of world won't use Linux (Score:2)
Kwinner / QooT fork of Cutefish OS / DE (Score:1)
I liked it a lot better than the other main MacOS-style distros (Elementary and Deepin).It was suggested that any fork should make the DE name different from the prototype distro name (similar to "KDE" Neon). I like the idea of a Cutefish distro fork based on MX 21.1 Linux and calling it "Kwinner" (from kwin window
Cutefish might be back - Github update (Score:1)
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if they want to grow from users not caught by Apple Stockholm Syndrome.
"I question why linux desktop doesnt grow while insulting the preferences of the people who purchased 29 million macbooks last year"
This comment is so stereotypical of the linux nerd superiority complex that it could be a parody of why linux desktop continues to lack tration in the genera populace.
There's no such thing as a "good" desktop, theres just what people are familiar with. By calling them stupid you are doing the same thing you accuse apple of here.
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The OSX desktop is objectively bad, and what's more, it's actually worse than the Desktop from the OS it's based upon. The vast majority of people aren't buying OSX because of the desktop.
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"GNOME, KDE, XFCE and such are all objectively bad"
thats just as valid a statement as yours is. use what works for you but to say people aren't buying macs because they like the interface is to both insult and ignore a large and very influential part of the PC market.
I don't particularly like OSX but I know several people who zip around it and are very productive in it but will say the same thing about windows even though I can work very productively in it. for me to say "mine is objectively better" is li
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thats just as valid a statement as yours is.
No, no it is not. There are known usability factors in UI design which Apple has deliberately ignored in the name of shiny shiny. That you don't know about this doesn't make your argument valid. It just makes you ignorant. Which makes sense, because here you are defending Apple.
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im neither insulting nor defending apple but this idea that apple users are all stupid morons who don't know any better is not winning linux users any favors
The whole idea that Slashdotters bitching about how Mac users make stupid choices on Slashdot where only a tiny (yet loud) handful of Macs-Uber-Alles types still tread is going to cause a disturbance in the Linux adoption force is an unfounded one.
or just admit that you like linux not just because it works for your preferences but it gives you a nice little superiority boner and you can feel smarter than the unwashed masses.
I am so far beyond trying to convince anyone to use Linux any more that I cannot even be perceived by someone standing on that point due to the curvature of the universe. Sooner or later I suspect that Google will converge Android and ChromeOS into something sligh
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> Im neither insulting nor defending apple but this idea that apple users are all stupid morons who don't know any better is not winning linux users any favors
Drinkypoop is not "Linux users".
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And if you don't list any examples of the flaws, you're just calling names based upon hearsay.
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"blah blah, XFCE and such are all objectively bad"
Them are fighting words, as I believe XFCE to have the perfect combination of usability, being customizable, and being lightweight. I really wonder what more people could want from a desktop. It has virtual screens, keyboard shortcuts galore, drag and drop, a start menu with search, and a ton of widgets. I think the issue people have with it is that it's too much "Microsoft Windows" like and doesn't look as pretty as Gnome.
Here's the rub. There are two types of people in the world, those who care about
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XFCE has been my preferred DE since roughly forever, for all the reasons you mention.
But, AFAIK, not being ported to Wayland. :(
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Not sure why people hate it. It's minimal, which is great! Get all UI fluff out of the way. Keyboard shortcuts make sense, stuff does what you want. when I used it first I was very familiar with X Windows and Windows stuff, and others, and was nervous. But it was very natural.
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While there is no such thing as a "good" desktop, it's NOT only what people are familiar with. It has a large element of "it depends on what you are doing". E.g. I frequently need to work with multiple windows that aren't all owned by the same application. One example involves being able to see and switch between FireFox, geany, and Idle without closing or hiding any of them. Many desktops have a problem with that. But in other uses that's not a problem at all.
There *are* objectively bad desktops, e.g.
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"I question why linux desktop doesnt grow while insulting the preferences of the people who purchased 29 million macbooks last year"
They didn't buy them because the way they handle applications is good or because there's plenty of software available. They bought them for the same reason that people buy $100 T-shirts and subscribe to Youtube "influencers".
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that is just your projection of what you think apple users are.
the reason macbooks became trendy in the firstplace is because they have really well designed hardware and software and they are combined in a very seamless fashion. apple users don't have to worry about drivers, os updates or in general many of the problems windows and linux users have to familiar with. they do in fact get a great selection of polished software with a long track record of stability.
to deny that is to deny reality and wish you
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apple users don't have to worry about drivers, os updates...
Because there aren't any.
"Drivers" is only something that people who add hardware have to worry about. I don't think any manufacturer ever shipped a Windows laptop without drivers.
None of that applies any more though. Windows has been able to find drivers automatically for every PC I've built in the last decade or so.
Apple works by marketing. Go into an Apple store and you'll see why people buy Apples (because there's a trendy, nicely lit high-street store that sells them).
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apple users don't have to worry about drivers, os updates...
Because there aren't any.
"Drivers" is only something that people who add hardware have to worry about. I don't think any manufacturer ever shipped a Windows laptop without drivers.
Funny you say that. The el-cheapo USB-C DVD reader/writer I just bought for my M1 14" MacBook Pro plugged in and worked straight away.
Granted; getting the Keyspan Twin RS422 Serial Adaptor from 2006 to work on this computer seems to be nigh-on impossible. The OS has been locked down so hard trying to jam this thing in is an impossible challenge; plus I have read the drivers for it were removed from the kernel. But in general plugging weird thngs into this computer is no harder than my XPS 15.
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to use a modern apple macbook pro and not find the whole thing a premium feeling, performing and stable experience
The people who buy $100 T-shirts say the exact same thing.
An awful lot of it is demonstrably in their heads though. What they're really paying for is to be in the $100 T-shirt club.
PS: Try paying $2000 for a Windows laptop and see if it feels premium or not.
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I dont even like apple products but I can easily tell why people do.
What about touchscreens? That's the single biggest UI improvement you can have on a laptop but Apple doesn't do it.
I love showing my touchscreen laptop to Apple users.
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What about touchscreens? That's the single biggest UI improvement you can have on a laptop but Apple doesn't do it.
Couldn't disagree more.
I love showing my touchscreen laptop to Apple users.
I imagine most of them say something like, "why on earth would you want a touchscreen on your laptop?"
Every laptop I've owned since about 2012 had a touchscreen, until I moved to Mac for my work machines.
Zero change in touchscreen use between the two.
That's not me knocking people who use touchscreens- to each their own. But for my datapoint, my wife's machine also has a touchscreen. She found out when I told her a couple weeks ago. Still zero change in touchscreen use.
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I guess it's really true: You can lead a horse to water...
(but a pencil must be lead)
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"... they have really well designed hardware and software and they are combined in a very seamless fashion..."
This is the typical nonsense people talk about Apple. They use (except for the latest generation of processors) exactly the same hardware everyone else does. And the OS combines with that hardware in exactly the same way that Windows or Linux combines with that same hardware.
But you have to consider the implications of the new processors, which are not what we might think.
Apple has always histori
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Hilarious piece from MacWorld ten years ago. Even the fanatics could see it.
https://www.macworld.com/artic... [macworld.com]
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Personally, I wish more Linux developers would take a chance and try new ideas instead of constantly trying to copy whatever Apple/Microsoft come up with. Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. The benefit to open source software written by volunteers is there's no profit motive. They aren't trying to make money selling something. If they try something that seems good on paper but doesn't work at all when implemented, they tried, it didn't work, so move on to the next idea. Rinse and repeat
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there are dozens of distros with over a dozen different desktop environments for linux actively out there being worked on. if new ideas arent being tried amongst all that development then what the hell are they all doing?
i would say the issue is exactly the opposite, one distro just needs to buck up and as closely as possible copy the windows interface, warts and all, to serve as a springboard for existing users to sit down in front of and be able to navigate and work within. once they are used to it you