Hello and welcome to episode 67 of Linux downtime. I'm Joe.
I'm Martin.
I'm Hado and I'm Gary.
Good to talk to you all again.
So Martin, you have recently been using Pantheon Desktop
and really, really enjoying it.
And that got me thinking about customization
of the Linux Desktop.
What is the right level of customization
and ability to customize?
On one end, you've got Chrome and Pantheon type
Desktop environments.
And on the other end, you've got sort of Plasma i3.
I prefer something a little bit more in the center,
but where do we all stand on this end?
What is the right level of customization?
My opinions about that have changed over the years.
I don't know, six, seven years ago, I'd have probably said,
exposed as many options as is sensible to the users
to have them configure things the way they like.
And in fact, Ubuntu, MARTE is an expression of that belief.
But I don't necessarily subscribe to that now for two reasons.
One, I think good design and design-led decisions
can mean that you actually present the best possible outcome
to users so they don't have to be confronted
with a whole control panel of a Brazilian options.
And then from a developer point of view,
the fewer options that you expose,
the easier it is for you to actually have test coverage
that covers all of the different configuration
permutations as opposed to this infinite matrix of options
that you could never accurately reproduce.
I think a lot of us who got into Linux got into it
to customize our desktop, specifically desktop Linux.
And I think that is still a major draw of desktop Linux.
But as Linux went from a hobby to something I use day to day,
my opinion has shifted to where I want thoughtful,
sane defaults.
So to that end, desktops that require high levels
of customization out of the box frustrate me.
And I just don't have time for it anymore.
And I know GNOME 3, the layout is controversial,
but it's simple, it's clean, it's thoughtful,
and the defaults are fine for the most part.
Maybe one or two extensions?
Well, millions of people must agree with you
because Chrome is by far the most widely used
of all the Linux testtops, mostly thanks to Ubuntu,
but nevertheless, all of the big distros ship it.
So it must be doing something right.
And I see the value in Plasma if you do want to spend hours
and hours customizing your desktop to be interactive,
how all kinds of cool widgets,
but I just need to get down to work now.
And besides Ubuntu, another great example
of a thoughtful design for me,
what I'm working on a Linux laptop is Regolith Linux,
which is a Tiling Window Manager,
but with GNOME, Infra, underneath.
Yes, I can unholy mash up or a holy mash up
of i3 and GNOME, isn't it?
When Hayden said Regolith, what the listeners can't see
is everyone nodding along sagely with that.
Yes, Regolith is a very good implementation
of how to do that configurable desktop on top of GNOME.
And in some respects, Regolith feels a bit like
the Unix philosophy on desktops, right?
They've taken the bits of GNOME
and they've built the other bits around it
and on top of it and done a really elegant integration,
using things that have been cherry-picked
and configured and integrated to sort of be coherent,
which I think is pretty impressive.
That's said, I just use straight i3,
but yeah, I played around with Regolith a bit and it's nice.
And I think that that's good right
because my origin story isn't I got into Linux
because I wanted to customize my desktop.
When I got into Linux, there were no Linux desktop environments
at all, okay?
It was a whole bunch of Tiling Window Managers
and that was it.
I got into Linux because I was using Unix at work
and I wanted Unix, but I couldn't afford it
and then I found Linux and that's great.
But Gary here talking about i3,
I don't know that the desktop environments,
the sort of mainstream, nothing's mainstream
in Linux desktop, is it?
The well-known desktop environments,
the integrated environments,
I don't think they need to over-lickator
to the tweakers so much
because of the Tiling Window Managers that exist
and also the massive ecosystem of menu bars
and overlays and all of that stuff
that for people that really want to curate their own
graphical environment experience
have got all of the Lego bricks to do that.
Right, but look at something like XSCE
out of the box in, say, Debian.
It's, I'm not gonna use the word horrendous
but it's something close to it.
But then you look at Zabuntu
which is a pretty basic implementation of it.
It's sensible, it doesn't look beautiful,
it doesn't look terribly ugly as far as I'm concerned,
it's just fine.
Then you look at some of the other distros,
some of the arch-based distros in Dev OS
does a fantastic job of making it look really nice
and stylish.
And that's because XSCE is inherently customizable.
It gives the maintainers of these distros
the option to make it nice.
And so you can either just take a Zabuntu as it is,
like I do mostly, I move the panel to the bottom
and change a few little things here and there
but fundamentally I don't really change it
because they've just done a fine job of it.
But if I wanted to, I could just make it look totally different.
I could make it look like Pantheon
and Mac OS or whatever or Windows,
this even like a Windows 98 skin for it
if you really want it.
Yeah, so Hayden said earlier that he finds Gnome
to be mostly fine and with a couple of extensions
he can make it what he wants it to be.
For anyone that doesn't find Gnome to be mostly fine
they can probably use a bucket load of extensions
to make it what they want it to be.
In my case, I've recently started using Pantheon
initially on NixOS
but I am actually running elementary seven
on this machine here right now
and on my other main workstation as well.
And again, it required a couple of little tweaks
for it to sort of suit me.
But the thing is, is that a few years ago
those customization options didn't exist
for Pantheon stroke elementary, but they do today.
So I've been able to make a few configuration changes
that now mean this works as I would want it to.
It's very familiar.
It works a lot like Ubuntu Marte
which is kind of what I wanted.
It's not such a massive departure
from that traditional desktop metaphor
except there's no desktop of course.
But again, what I liked about elementary or specific,
so this is elementary seven I'm talking about
and I think generally speaking the components of Pantheon
are like six dots something.
I haven't looked at the exact versions
but the Pantheon bit that makes all of this happen
has been around for some months now.
And what I liked is that it was so very, very close
to what I wanted it to be
without me having to change anything
or even look to change anything.
And then when I did go to look to change things,
I'm really only presented with the essential options
when there is actually some value
or user value in changing something.
And I appreciate the thoughtfulness that's gone into,
well, this feature is going to have a configuration option
because there's a legitimate requirement
for somebody to want to change this particular behavior.
But where there isn't that legitimate requirement,
those configuration options don't exist.
These days, I actually quite like that.
Here it is, it's presented to you,
just start using it approach.
Whereas I don't really like that.
I can see why some people do like it
and I can appreciate a distro or a desktop environment
that is opinionated.
And like you say, offers certain customizations
where they think you should be able to customize it.
But I don't want to be told what to do.
I want to be able to change everything if I want to.
That's fine.
So you don't use elementary or ganame.
You pick the thing that enables you to do
what you want to do.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, what are the advantages of desktop Linux
is you have such choice.
You have customizability.
You have these opinionated designs.
For example, when Microsoft moved to Windows 11,
they made a major design change.
And some of the largest gripes have been addressed over time.
But it requires lots of feedback and time
and patience and waiting.
Whereas I saw a new distro on distro watch the other day
that is verbatim, Windows 11, UI, like identical.
And you could just make that change yourself
if you wanted on desktop Linux.
So again, I think that still a major draw of desktop Linux
is the customizability.
And that should not be underplayed.
Even though I think a lot of us have
gotten to a place where we want the same defaults
and we can choose from these opinionated options,
it's analogous in a lot of ways to Android.
And people who install various Android builds
and different launchers, or you have iOS,
where you have one set of options.
Until very recently, they've added some customizability
because they've run out of other ideas.
Yeah, but even then, try changing the keyboard.
Try installing SwiftKey.
You just get the iOS keyboard with SwiftKey skin on top of it.
I'm wondering if my acceptance of opinionated desktop
environments is a product of me having an iPhone
for the last year and a half.
Ah, yes.
Maybe you've just been beaten down by Apple.
Or maybe seeing the benefit of having good design decisions
made for me.
Well, is that arguably why GNOME is so successful?
Because they just have a bunch of defaults
and you can't really change much without getting
into extensions, which my understanding is,
these pretty unwise, if you want upgrades to work
and things and not run into problems.
You're better off just running as is.
GNOME has pretty much been following this,
I guess we'll call it guideline for a long time.
It goes back to their human interface guidelines.
But I remember back in, what was it, like 2007 or something,
we followed GNOME's example and we went through
and got rid of a bunch of preferences
because they were extraneous or they didn't make sense.
We didn't need them.
And GNOME had just gone through what they call
a preference as slash as well.
And that's kind of the thing.
Like we were talking about with Plasma
having so many options.
And GNOME has made the conscious effort
of bringing that down to make it more approachable.
And I think that's really what it comes down to is
we've all been saying the same defaults
and approachableness and stuff like that.
I think that's why GNOME always stays one step ahead.
I think that's what I want to say.
That's an interesting little bit of history.
So Gary there is talking about GNOME 2
and of course the Marte desktop
is the continuation.
It was originally forked from GNOME 2.
And GNOME 2 at that time was often criticized
by some people as being too inflexible
not having enough configuration choices
when compared to something like KDE of that time.
And it's always tickled me that by comparison
people talk about Marte as being
this highly customizable configurable desktop
environment because it's no more configurable or customizable
than GNOME 2 was back in the day.
I think it's just a reflection of how much further
the GNOME project have taken their eradication
of unnecessary preferences and options.
For me Marte and XFCE are the sweet spot
and GNOME is on one end and Plasma's on the other.
Plasma is just baffling.
And I know that Illinois a lot of Plasma users
but it's a baffling array of options.
Just everything can be tweaked.
Just everything can be tweaked.
To the point of just add absurdum as far as I'm concerned.
Whereas you look at Marte or XFCE
which are broadly similar with just a few little differences
and you might have some more modern technologies
let's say in Marte.
But as a user experience they're broadly on the same level
whereas GNOME without extensions is just like it
or lump it as far as I'm concerned.
And I don't like it and so I lump it and so I don't use it.
And I had the same experience with Elementor or a seven
as well I tried it and I just didn't get on with it.
I get what they're doing with it.
I get what that team wants to do
and they've got some really firm opinions about stuff
but I just don't agree with those opinions.
And so that's why it's just not for me.
I think the reason why Pantheon and Elementor
were a good fit for me is because the way
that I actually configure Ubuntu Marte
the way I use it on a daily basis
is pretty much identical to the default experience
that you get with Pantheon Desktop.
So other than changing a few key bindings,
moving the dock to the left side of the screen
and making indicators work again,
those were literally all the,
oh I'm changing the wallpaper of course.
Once I'd done those few things
I was right back at home.
Although why would you want to change that wallpaper?
It's stunning on OS 7 I think.
It's not as good as the one I made.
Yeah well of course.
It's not as good as a plain black background
is what I have to say on that one.
I find it funny how you all are talking about
all this customization and how the
Tylene window managers of all the customization
but like my i3 setup is literally default
except I changed the launcher
but that's because it's not about
customizability for me.
It's about getting work done and just you know
having something that works well for my workflow.
And presumably you are really comfortable
with all the muscle memory of the keyboard shortcuts with it.
Yeah I mean super key D to run a program,
super key enter to open a terminal.
I don't need anything else.
Well aside from moving around,
you can jump between windows to super key arrows,
desktop super key numbers
and then if I need to move it
I just add shift to one of those.
I have all of those same keybind.
This is exactly how I drive my desktop environment
right here.
I find it interesting because you also said
the reason that you use i3 is because it gets out of the way
and you haven't got time to mess around with it.
You just want to get stuff done.
Which I think is what Hayden and I were saying.
We just want something that does all the hard work for us
so we can just get on and do things.
My early journey with Linux I think
was probably four or five years
of making endless notes and changes.
And I was just constantly configuring,
tinkering, tweaking, changing everything.
And not just the window manager configuration.
I think by this point I was probably into
after step or something like that
or GNU step, one of those.
It was all about patching, ex-all widgets
so they look like next step and all that nonsense.
And I realized that I was just spending
my whole entire time tinkering with things
and I wasn't actually using the computer
for anything useful whatsoever.
So I remember sort of having a stern conversation
with myself, it was like, right,
we're going to stop just endlessly tinkering
and tweaking and we're actually going to start using
these computers to get stuff done.
But was that valuable in your Linux journey?
Yes, without doubt.
It's been a long time since I've had to compile a kernel
from source and back then there were no kernel modules.
It was much more exciting.
Putting into a new kernel.
Well, and was it fun as the other question?
It sounds like it was.
Oh, totally.
Yeah, I mean, I was learning.
It was all brand new back then
it was all moving very, very quickly.
And I still do tinker with things.
I just don't do it on a hub,
well, I say it's still tinker with things.
I made a whole damn distribution at the end of the day.
That's the ultimate tinker project, I think.
So maybe I'm falling myself
and pulling the wheel over my own eyes
that I'd got out of this habit of tinkering
because that's clearly a lie.
Well, you just wanted it to be what you wanted it to be
and you looked around at what was available
and weren't fully satisfied.
And wasn't it more about supporting family members
and stuff that what Ubuntu Marte was about?
Yeah, I moved my family over to Ubuntu for the 606 release.
So they've been using what was GNOME 2 for many, many years.
And at that time when Unity was being introduced
and GNOME 3 was being kicked off,
they really didn't like those.
And I think it's fair to say both those projects
were a bit raw at that point.
So they weren't polished or by any means
ready for prime time, but they bounced off that.
And so I got into the Marte project
and ultimately made Ubuntu Marte in order to satisfy them
and keep them on Linux as opposed to going elsewhere.
Use Trinity desktop.
For anyone that use KDE 3 back in the day,
it's very nice Trinity.
It's not often talked about, it's pretty great.
Yeah, it's actually really fun.
It's like a really cool nostalgia trip
and it gets updates, it works.
I thought I heard that Comp is also had a recent release.
You know, if you want to get your Wobbly windows
and draw fire on your screen, stuff like that.
Yeah, it was always fun to show off.
Yeah.
And there's also Wayfire if you want to do it on Wayland.
So if you want to like get some sway action in your life, Gary,
instead of I3, you can do that.
And then layer a bit of Wayfire on top
and you too can have burning cubes of desktop workspaces.
You know, I might have to look at that.
That could spice up my Twitch streams a little bit.
Well, if you considered Geruda Linux,
that's an arch based one that is,
I don't know what the word for it is.
Gerish might be unfair, but blingy maybe.
It's definitely colourful.
It's eye catching.
It appeals to a younger crowd, perhaps, maybe.
Maybe that's unfair of me,
but that is the beauty of Linux though, isn't it?
And desktop Linux specifically,
that you can have a really boring,
gnome desktop that just gets out of your way
or you can go just mad and do something like Geruda
and everything in between.
But with that, we'd better get out of here.
Do let us know what you think about customising Linux desktops.
You can email us show at linuxnowtime.com.
We'll be back in a couple of weeks,
but until then, I've been Joe.
I've been Martin, I've been Hedon, and I've been Gary.
See you later.
♪♪♪