Aral Balkan
Folks: Why don’t you use Debian.
Also folks: Why not xfce?
Me: Trying Debian out for the first time in a VM with xfce… *enters password*… *presses tab*… Oh! Oh…
(There are few absolutes in design but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this is the absolute worst way you can design a simple sign-in form that has two text fields.)
Jonat
@aral Not sure why it's so terribly designed, but use can use a different lightmdm (the desktop manager) theme or even ditch lightdm and use something else all together.
Aral Balkan
@Jonat I’m initially being prompted to enter my password. Only after I move off the field do I understand that actually, that was the username field. Nothing tells me that, it’s just an empty field. A great example of why placeholder text is not a label and that if you are going to use it that way, at least do not focus any of the fields by default to begin with.
(Also, no one using an operating system cares about the components. They say, hey, this OS sucks. A lesson we have to learn in #foss)
Aral Balkan
The VM is deleted now and it just reminded me why I avoided Linux for so long. Thank goodness for GNOME and thank goodness for distributions like Fedora (especially Silverblue… very excited about both the present and the potential there).
Aral Balkan
@tfiebig Fedora Silverblue.
Tobias Fiebig
@aral What is your poison of choice then? 🙂
Josh
@aral You probably won't like Qubes-OS then..🤣
Aral Balkan
@joshua Ah, well, Qubes is a very domain-specific OS. But, yes.
Steve
@aral @devinprater Oh, I don't know; the sign in UI in the latest GNONE might be even worse. If you rely on #accessibility tools like Orca, you're also likely to get "panel panel panel" as you navigate rather than any useful information. Linux on the desktop is a major shit show right now.
Aral Balkan
@sclower Yes, GNOME unfortunately has not practiced accessibility as design in the past. Here’s hoping that changes. (I‘m seeing some positive indications that it is.)
寮
Aral Balkan
@darius @tfiebig It the transactional/“immutable” bit that makes updates such a non-event that I love. You still use workstation in a toolbox/container if you need to compile anything (and need dnf) but I’m increasingly finding ways around that. I quite love it. Can’t imagine using anything else for my dev machine at the moment.
Darius
@aral @tfiebig How does the experience compare to Workstation?
Aral Balkan
@darius @tfiebig One piece of advice: instead of the recommended “everything in a container method”, try using methods that install things in your personal account. So, apart from flatpak, of course, I install stuff via cargo, go, etc. and have recently been wondering why I didn’t just use brew.
When I need to compile stuff, I use toolbox.
(And rpm-ostree if you must layer packages on the main OS.)
G’luck + hope you enjoy it :)
Darius
@tfiebig @aral You got me curious. I'm gonna give this a spin.
Aral Balkan
@aerphanas Customisability is not an excuse for shoddy design.
You don’t build a house with a leaky roof and then tell people you can change it if you like.
This is the mentality that led to people not using Linux for many years. Thankfully, it’s being abandoned in some circles at least (e.g., see GNOME).
Make beautiful defaults and customisability will truly become an advantage instead of a cop out.
Muhammad Aviv Burhaundin
@aral linux is all about customization, you can do whatever you like, don't like the look of lightdm? Just change to a different DM or Customize yourself
Aral Balkan
@edges Pointing out a design flaw does not imply a lack of technical knowledge. (I have forty years of the latter as a programmer.)
Those are workarounds for a flawed design. If free software is to compete with proprietary crap, it has to work well by default.
Увпуы :vb:
@aral@mastodon.ar.al if you want, you can use lightdm
sudo apt install lightdm
Or no DM
sudo apt remove sddm lightdm
Or you can install theme for sddm
akareilly
@aral @edges@shitpost.poridge.club
For curiosity, how often does saying this cause German hackers to tone police you? Asking for a me.
Aral Balkan
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aral Balkan
@raptor85 Thanks for highlighting this. It’s is an important lesson for free and open source projects to learn. People who use a tool don’t know or care what components go into it. Nor should they have to. If your Honda doesn’t start, you don’t take out the ignition and say, oh, this piece was by Mitsubishi. If every Honda doesn’t start, people stop driving Hondas. Almost no one blames Mitsubishi. Only the Honda engineers and a handful of car enthusiasts do. Honda’s the one that chose to use it.
Raptor :gamedev:
@aral what's pictured there is LightDM, not XFCE btw, debian uses LightDM for it's display manager, the XFCE session doesn't start until after login. Generally GDM or SLIM are recommended, I use SLIM personally, SDDM you se on a lot of more modern distros though because it gives the iconifiied login some people like
I agree with the bad design though though, just make sure you're putting heat on the right projects, this is a LightDM/Debian decision! XFCE did no wrong here.
andi
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