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I use Windows/MacOS/Linux(Ubuntu) on a regular base.

As a ordinary end user, I feel

1. Windows software are usually good at product function design.

2. Mac has a better enforcement on overall UX. The visual across different software (from different vendors) are much consistent.

3. Linux desktop is unfortunately still missing above 2 points.

Some Linux distro provides really good visual, but it only applies to its built–in programs. If you'd like to switch to the external programs, the system visual might be fragmented.

I really hope in this new wave people could make some consensus on the visual of Linux desktop.


> make some consensus on the visual

That's really too bad, IMO Linux and FOSS desktops really shine in the subjective-fit zone, not this consensus area.

Once you start having to please..._waves hand at group of people_...first the fun goes out the window, and then you're playing to an entrenched userbase who are bringing most of their expectations from their subjective past experiences anyway.

Personally when I started using desktop Linux purely for me, and not "as someone who speaks for a professional userbase" I was able to finally appreciate it and become more of the OS-native power-user that my Windows & Mac experiences wouldn't let me be when I tried to force them along on the ride.


The problem with your line of reasoning is that Linux is not an OS. It's a broad ecosystem of components that get assembled into distributions. I have used the word ecosystem deliberately, because it's very similar to any of its biological counterparts.

Things evolve in a pretty organic way. The advantage of this is the lack of a central authority and much more resilience. It's a bit like the Internet. But obviously, there's some room for improvement in terms of user experience.

Ideally, I think this should happen through some loose standards and RFCs, pretty much like it occurred for the Internet.

With that said, the overall user experience is very good if you stick to a pure GNOME desktop. KDE and Xfce are also pretty good. Personally, I prefer running just X and three applications (Firefox, Emacs and XTerm). This way simpler, and there's almost no common UX at all. Just three very different platforms with very well known conventions (hypertext, Emacs applications and text, respectively).


> the overall user experience is very good if you stick to a pure GNOME desktop. KDE and Xfce are also pretty good.

Yes, exactly users have to stick to one single environment. But when you want to use Gtk application on KDE, then ...


> Some Linux distro provides really good visual, but it only applies to its built–in programs. If you'd like to switch to the external programs, the system visual might be fragmented.

I've noticed that this has improved considerably when using KDE; on both Slackware and openSUSE, KDE and non-KDE applications both seem to look and work equivalently great. There are of course some applications I use that don't match the overall system's look and feel (Steam, Ardour, and SolveSpace all come to mind), but they're squarely in the minority at this point.


Agreed, KDE is great. I like Kubuntu and KDE Neon. A little bit frustrated when I have to use a Gtk application; it's sometimes not working well in a KDE environment.


I tried kubuntu but it felt a bit wonky with some broken stuff, etc KDE neon i never tried but looking into it heard it doesn't have a lot of users behind it and it's mostly a bleeding edge testing ground.

My best experience so far has been manjaro KDE. The defaults seem fine and work. Pacman is so nice. The AUR, snaps, flatpaks, appimages... Tick some checkboxes and they're all there. I don't feel troubled trying to find software anymore. My GTK and QT apps look fairly consistent by picking matching themes for both.

I love it so far.


> I really hope in this new wave people could make some consensus on the visual of Linux desktop.

Consensus over the whole scope of open source?? That's never going to happen.


I mean the consensus about the visual/UX style like we have on Windows or Android.

It's not that hard, I believe.


On windows and android was consensus reached between all interested parties or was consensus reached within microsoft/google?


> On windows and android was consensus reached between all interested parties or was consensus reached within microsoft/google?

This is exactly the number 1 challenge for Linux Desktops: hard to coordinate with each party, then we end up hundreds of different distros.


Think about this, there is no notification system on HN. If you got any errors, you'd better send an email to the moderators here.

I did this when I first created the ID, the moderator helped me out. Or my ID will be shadow blocked. :D


What he described is not only a Discord "issue", it applied to other modern communication tools as well. I feel Discord is better than Slack because there is no 10K searchable message limit for free accounts and ridiculous pricing model.


This article is behind a paywall. I know there is a Chrome extension called "Bypass Paywalls". But I really don't want to use it, as it breaks the business model of the writers.


I am inquisitive about what kind of enterprise communication software you think is good.

MS Teams is not perfect but it's not that bad either. I have used Teams, Slack, even Discord a little bit. I don't think anyone of them is above average.


I started my career on IRC, that was pretty good but needed a little bit of discipline and a good pastebin to work effectively.

I have used Skype for Business (formerly Lync, former-formerly Office Communicator) and that was in some ways worse than teams.

I have also used XMPP for internal communications and that was infinitely better than Skype for Business for the things you would want a chat program to be good at.

Slack is good enough, significantly better than teams but definitely what I could consider a baseline, it improves on IRC in a meaningful way in many areas and is a bit superfluous in others. (though, I suppose many people would consider the things I prefer superfluous, so, hum)

Zulip is quite exceptional, I highly recommend trying it.

I use Slack/Zoom at my current employment and it's perfectly serviceable, on MacOS, Linux and Windows.


I followed up on this and had some conversation with one of the Skywalking PMC members.

They escalated the situation to the company legal of Byte Dance (the parent company of Volcengine Inc.). Then Volcengine has added an Apache license file for Skywalking. Skywalking is open-source software, it has no commercial license. So nobody knew how to evaluate the impact of this violation. And some people thought it was well resolved.

I felt very frustrated about this. It means there is totally *zero* risk to violating an open-source software.


- The ability of Google Workspace organizations to turn off “Web & App Activity” for all users will be removed.

Why is this? The company should have control over how employees use the company assets.


Because the number of companies that disable this company wide is large enough that google believes that by muddying the waters like this employees will give them the loophole they need to get back at that data.

The proper way to do this is:

Admin level:

- default to off

- options

  - enable

  - disable 

  - allow the user to set this

    - default to off

    - default to on


Admins are tech savvy so they could protect their users' privacy with 1 toggle.

Obviously bad for business when 90% of your revenue is from ads.


Try to stop thinking too much. There is a book called "The Power of Now". You live at this moment, you only need to care about this moment. You moved the box to the car, it's fine. You don't need that thing at this moment. When you need it, just go get it.

I know it will sound like old school.


I noticed it's "Last update: Aug 28, 2003". So what is the point here?


These 2 predicates are totally different.

The predicate in the 1st statement is actually an expression "created_at + INTERVAL '90 DAY'", it's not column "created_at".

Some databases allow users to create indexes on expression. So if you want to write the 1st statement, you need an index on expression, not a normal index.


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