Fedora Desktops – Quick Look

Hello to all.

Yesterday and today I've been working on packaging the wallpapers for Fedora 19. Since we have a couple of new desktops in Fedora, I thought it would be good to expand our coverage to them as well. In short – since Fedora 19, new wallpapers will be visible in backgrounds selectors of Gnome, KDE, Mate and Xfce. LXDE does not show any pictures and has a plain file chooser for that, Cinnamon uses Gnome stack, but has a bug in its backgrounds selector (read on), so the background is usable but not visible.

I've had various experiences with testing the packages in the desktops and as a couple of these were driving me mad, I thought I'd write a quick showcase. I needed precisely two things – terminal to install/remove the WIP packages and means to set the background. So, up to some initial word or two, this will be about how to run a terminal and how to change a background in these desktops. Also, even though I did it in new user account, widget themes might not reflect fedora defaults as I changed them at one point and I also didn't reset configuration between switching the DEs. Maybe someday I'll test default config and do a quick review of look'n'feel.

For convenience I'll review the desktops alphabetically.

Cinnamon

On first look I thought this might be good – it had panel, menu and looked almost fine. First problem was the symbolic icons in system-tray. I had no idea what half of them meant, but at least there were bubbles popping out that clarified things a bit. Desktop wasn't clickable. Menu got me mad the more I tried to work with it. I could say, from my point of view (POV), this desktop is a wasted effort. If I wanted Gnome 3 I would use Gnome Shell, if not, I don't see the point of choosing this over Mate or XFCE. For me this was even more painful experience than Gnome Shell. It was like choosing the worst features from all the desktops I tried and putting them together.

So let's look how I start terminal. First I open a menu. Ugh. A bunch of icons, three columns, the first one without any text. Huge padding. The third column changes contents on hoover in the second column. I always hated dynamic menus on web and this is not an exception. Scrollbars everywhere because of the padding and fixed height. As I rarely start apps by typing their names, actually rather dislike doing it that way, this is absolute pain for me.

Now for the desktop background. As I noted earlier, desktop is not clickable. So I had to figure out how to change it. So, let's find settings. Oh, it's one of those icons without text…

This gets me into a common interface that I know from other desktops as well. This is good. No big issue here. One tiny complaint might be that theme, desktop and background are three separate tools. Also I wonder, why it uses different icons than the rest of the desktop?

So, let's click background.

Huge. What a huge waste of space. The images are neatly small, probably the ideal size, with a nice shading to boost, but that huge white-space totally kills it. Plus point for showing image name, minus for not showing image author. Furthermore, our background is missing. Because it's XML. It's supported (as evident by it being actually used as background), but not selectable. Someone who actually uses Cinnamon should fill bug about it. The background changes on click. Space waste is common with Gnome. The All Settings button could have been on the same row with the Close one. There is no single reason why one should be at the top and the other at the bottom.

GNOME

First impression terrible. Black theme, grey washed-out symbolic icons, no pop-up bubbles, no menu. Animation everywhere. Second impression better than Cinnamon, still not usable for me. Inexplicable removing/hiding of useful features, re-adding some of them three releases later, sometimes adding unneeded steps in-between (read on for more info on this). However it's actually usable desktop. It would be a pain for me, but it would probably be easy to use for my grandma, for kids used to touch interfaces on iPads, for game console or for browsing the internet (after all, it basically behaves like something between the web and modern Android-powered phones and it uses web technologies like javascript and css *ugh*).

Now on to the terminal. First go to top-left to open activities. Empty. As its primary task is probably switching between windows, I haven't entered any menu yet. First I have to click on the icon that looks like grid nodes (what's the idea? It does not even remotely suggest that this will get me app list).

Huge. So I finally got into the menu. With huge icons and (when compared to the icon size) small text. Weird looking scroll-bars everywhere. So next step is select category (you don't expect me to find Terminal among zillions of uncategorized apps, right?) and find terminal. Animations everywhere.

It's better than cinnamon, but the two steps to get into menu are strange and ineffective. Gnome Shell isn't optimized for using mouse. But lets continue to background selection. This is the worst background selection I've ever seen. I think the following four pictures speak for themselves, but let's explain a little bit first. So again, desktop is not clickable so I need to go through control center. Let's skip for now the fact that I don't see Theme or Appearance there (maybe I forgot to install something), the control center is categorized (like in XFCE) and Background is there. No issue from me. Kudos for the categorization. But then, after selecting Background, a completely useless window appears. It just shows the desktop. Whoa. Does that mean there are no pictures to select from? No. The desktop is actually clickable. I don't understand why this single step is included. It obviously extraneous, unneeded, confusing. Then the selection itself normal. I can select from installed backgrounds, pictures from XDG_PICTURES or plain color. The UI could be better, it could be worse, but it serves its purpose. The pictures are big, but there isn't too much of white space in between them, so no issue. However. Neither picture name, nor its author is present. Fail. The background does not change until I click Select.

One common thing about gnome and cinnamon is it's use of awful flat grey everywhere. No single hint of colour or shaded gradient. In sheer contrast to the next DE.

KDE

This takes a lot of time to actually start, but then you are finally welcomed by a desktop that looks like designed by an artist. Yes. This is the only Fedora desktop that looks great and consistent. It can be clearly seen the theme has been designed by professionals and lots of time has been invested in it. For my taste it has too much animations, but knowing KDE it can be probably turned off. UI is another story though. Not my cup of tea, but about half of linux users like this, so I'll say it's good and detailed but for me it offers too much detail, it easily becomes overwhelming. It does not usually waste space. This is a desktop I could use after a bit of customizing.

Now let's start terminal. Like many people are used to from file managers, right-click on desktop offers you to start terminal in KDE. So +1 from me.

Another way is through menu. The design is similar to cinnamon, but works better. It looks like cinnamon took the idea from KDE, kept its worst parts (fixed size, scrollbars anywhere, change menus on hoover) and made it even worse by adding gnome-like bits. While it behaves menu like, it's still in the same place, things get replaced, and due to fixed size, scrollbar is not uncommon. This is one of the worst parts of KDE, from my POV, but unlike Cinnamon or GNOME it does not get on my nerves.

To change desktop wallpaper, right-click on it and select Default Desktop Settings. I don't fathom the word Default in the name, but other then then all cool. What comes up is finally something that has done things right.

The image sizes are reasonable, white space is neither too big nor too small and most importantly, it shows both name and author of the wallpaper. Let's repeat it because it's important. KDE is the only Fedora desktop environment that shows both wallpaper name and its author in its Desktop Background selection app. This is how it should be done. The only thing that would make it even better would be to also show the license. You need to click Apply to change the background.

LXDE

Lightweight desktop with all it takes. It's fast, it works, but it's simple. Configuration might take longer than in other DEs but it looks like highly usable desktop if you don't mind less features. Now let's start terminal. Finally a sensible categorized menu without scroll-bars. As expected, terminal is quickly found.

Changing the wallpaper is also standard. Right-click on desktop and select Desktop Preferences.

The selector itself is light weight. No previews, just a file chooser and a few more options. Cannot probably expect much more from a lightweight desktop, right? And it does it's work without any unnecessary steps.

Mate

A direct continuation of a desktop I used to use. This is fork of Gnome 2 with the intention to provide and upgrade Gnome 2 experience and as such it behaves. Nothing unexpected. Menus work as usual, icons have colour, things are usually efficient. I still could use this, but nowadays I prefer XFCE. So let's start terminal. It's almost the same as in LXDE.

Nothing really wrong here, but too big icons and too much padding. If you have small screen or many apps, scrollbars appear. There's an option to start it from desktop context menu like in KDE as well.

Same goes with desktop settings. Directly accessible from desktop context menu. This is what we get.

Image size good, padding could be smaller, but just like with GNOME – no name, no author. Fail. Wallpaper changes on click.

Xfce

I'm not sure in which category this falls. It's not lightweight like LXDE, it's similar to gnome 2, but it's not gnome 2 ;-) Currently my desktop of choice so I skip on praising this time, only one note – the default config looks "bleh", but its actually highly tweakable and after some time it can be made look really good (although partly due to the lack of really professional looking GTK2/3 themes not as good as KDE). Starting terminal in XFCE is quickest of all the DEs I've tried thanks to special launchers to "Preferred Applications" that are also included in default bottom panel.

It can be also started from menu. It's similar to Mate, but it's all-in-one solution. There isn't separate menu for Settings and Administration. The icons are smaller, there's less padding so it takes much longer for scrollbars to appear. This is what I like the most.

Terminal can also be stared from desktop context menu.

Background selector can be run from the same place as well. This is what it looks like.

No waste of space, preview included, simple selector. No name, no author, but filename is present, so while it isn't fail, there's still lots of room to improve. Wallpaper changes on select.

Conclusion

While I was writing this, I realized that even though I write it alphabetically, it also reflects how I like the DE I write about – the first one least, the last one most. Interesting coincidence. If I had to draw some conclusion I'd say that traditional desktops are very good for starting applications, terminal especially, KDE is midway and GNOME and Cinnamon lag behind. I think the change from menu to something else is making things worse rather than better (this counts for Windows 7 as well, I find it very hard to find an app I want to start there without using keyboard). When selecting background, KDE is the obvious winner with both being quick and easy and providing most of important information. Gnome and Cinnamon both fail tremendously in this. Last, when it comes to design, KDE is the obvious winner with a very professional polished look, traditional GTK2 based desktops are so-so with lots of room for improvement, Cinnamon and GNOME are terrible and very amateurish from my POV.

So in short, while I use Xfce, and will continue doing so, from this short comparison, KDE comes out as the winner.

Change default font sizes rather than DPI

it's easy and most likely the correct way to change your font size

My Desktop

First I have to say that Fedora Desktop keeps improving with each release but there are still corners in which some love is apparently missing. So, to have assorted list of what I use and what I don't like about it I've decided to create a short post. Let me emphasize that I use my laptop both for school and for fun and it has only Fedora on it.

My usecases

• school duties – writing various homeworks, thesis, e-mail and IM communication, research on internet
• fun – watching movies, listening to music, ripping audio CDs, surfing web
• fedora – coding, design, packaging, using various web services

What I use to get things done

Communication

The communication channel I use most is e-mail. Somehow I've always found all webmail's not good for me (with the best so far being probably yahoo mail, closely followed by gmail) so I use desktop client. In past I've switched away from thunderbird – it didn't fit in my desktop, it tended to download same messages multiple times, I had to install enigmail extension to get gpg working, I wasn't comfortable with it,... And now I am using Evolution. Well, it's a great application and handles and manages my mail very well, but it's slow, slow, slow and once again slow. Plus, there are zillions of functions I will never use... So I am currently looking for a nice replacement, my requirements are:

• Handles POP3, IMAP and SMPT
• Translates gmail's lables to folders
• Knows how to handle GPG
• Can remember my passwords
• Has nice gnomeish simple GUI with icons coming from icon theme
• Handles HTML mail as well
• Integration with some system-wide contact book would be better than having it's own...
• Can preview attachments inside messages
• Can handle thousands of messages without significant performance loses
• Can gracefully handle multiple e-mail accounts
• Is FLOSS

I so far didn't find any that would fullfill all the points above. Do you know of any?

For instant messaging I use jabber, icq and msn, where the latter two via jabber transports. This means I have quite wide range of possible clients to use. Over the ages, I grew accustomed to gajim – and it's latest versions can even render math expresions using LaTeX. The only con I see with this client is that it tends to start slow and opening messages windows isn't fast either...

Occassionally (usually when I need to discuss something quickly with other design-team members) I also use IRC. I never grew accustomed to this service and have had some serious issues setting it up... Luckily, Empathy can handle this pretty gracefully (as oposed to X-Chat which seemed almost impossible to set up).

The rest of the web

So, in the past I've been using firefox (I was used to it from Windows, so I naturally picked it up when I switched to linux). And as I grew more accustomed to linux and gnome world, I've also grown away from firefox. Towards epiphany. I've been a happy user of this fast and simple web browser, until webkit revolution. My primary browser is now midori, for pages that don't work with it epiphany and for testing purposes I also have an unstable build of epiphany. WebKit feels faster than gecko and also is better integrated into the linux environment, plus the webkitgtk development has been really rapid these past few months. I cannot wait the moment I could switch from gecko altogether. As of now, the problems that are still blocking it are inability to access anidb from webkitgtk based browsers and inability to authenticate to koji.

For flash I use swfdec, but it's still a no-go if you expect a rich flash experience (which I do not). I use it mainly for some simpler flash-enabled websites. Youtube is best with totem's youtube plugin ;-) I use liferea for RSS and Atom feeds.

Homeworks and thesis

Well, to cut it short, I use TeX (csplain if you care about the details) for this purpose and the source files I write in gedit. This seems to be a killer combination, even to such extent that the only application from office suites that I keep installed because I occasionaly use it, is gnumeric... And, to not forgot about actually viewing various documents, I use evince. Works like a charm for PDFs, postscript and DJVU, which are the most common electronic document formats I view. Also, not to forgot one of the most improtant things for a physicist, gnuplot is the best application for making high quality plots.

Coding

Somehow, I feel like a do-it-all-in-notepad type of guy, because I do all the code writing in gedit. I think it's a great and powerful application, but from time to time I tend to think that some IDE goodies might help speed things up... But everytime I try to import my stuff to eclipse, it ends up with a totally nonworking disaster. I haven't tried anjuta for quite a long time though, maybe it would work better.

As long as version control systems go, I am fairly acquainted with CVS and GIT (and like the latter much, much more) and from time to time I also use SVN or HG, but I've never grew accustomed to these two.

Design

There's not much to say, appart from great thanks to lkundrak for providing us with the greatest and latest version of inkscape. Yep, you guess right – inkscape is doing a tremendously good job when working with vector graphics and the development seems pretty active too. Thanks to it's great abilities I use it not only for icon design but also for various other things like drawing images to accompany my thesis (because it can render LaTeX formulas and can export images to postscript, it's really helpful).

From time to time I also use gimp, but I am not much into raster graphics so I am not very skilled with it.

Fun

Well, ranging from soundjuicer through rhythmbox to totem and mplayer there is not much to complain about... Great applications working great, although rhythmbox somehow does not feel as much gnomeish as other applications to me...

My most favourite applications

Well, these are applications I definitely want to mention because I am really satisfied with them (in no particular order)

• Epiphany
• Midori
• Totem
• Inkscape
• GEdit
• Sound Juicer
• Nautilus
• mc
• git
• PackageKit

And which are your favourite applications?

My most used applications

There are also some applications that are running almost all the time I am logged in. These are

• evolution
• rhythmbox
• midori
• epiphany
• liferea
• gajim
• gedit
• gnome-terminal
• nautilus

My Idea of Future Gnome Desktop

Since I read a blogpost about GTK+ 3.0 Theming API Hackfest I've been thinking about how would like the Gnome 3 desktop to be... First I've had some more general ideas like: support real transparency everywhere, desktop should serve as a place for wallpaper and widgets, not as a storage room occupied by nautilus, gnome-panel should look slicker and be more interactive, ... But yesterday I've tried cairo-dock (which I haven't figured at all how to set it to not crash and work how I would like it) and that rather short experience gave me more clear idea what I'd like it to be.

First let's see what my desktop looks like now


There are two panels and an improvised storage room on the nautilus managed part more concretely:

• Menus
• Window list
• NetSpeed Applet
• CPU monitor
• Keyboard switcher
• Clock
• Desktop Switcher
• Application launchers
• Various session related applets - lock screen, log out, shut down
• Volume
• Trash
• Notification area
• Timetable
• Some documents, etc. on desktop

I find this layout particuraly useful since most things I am doing repeatedly are available on single click and the rest is two clicks ;-) Also thanks to the timetable on the desktop, figuring out which classes I have today is a matter of few seconds. And finally thanks to the network and cpu monitors I see how much I download/upload and how cpu behaves.

On the flip side this layout takes up a lot of space, the window list gets quickly filled, some of it feels rather duplicated with tray area (you know the 'minimize to tray' funcionality of nowadays's apps). Also the desktop itself feels cluttered and I cannot make the timetable bigger - the current size is as far as nautilus is able to scale.

And here's my (well let's say I rather put together various ideas from various people) solution trying to improve the usability as well as slickness (please note that the folowing image was made in inkscape, so it's not a real screenshot)



Now what has changed... Nautilus is no longer managing the desktop which in turn now serves as place for various widgets. I've put there the timetable in it's desired size (image widget - place an image you'd like on the desktop with desired size) and two monitor wigets - one for CPU and another for network. I can also imagine puting there a weather forecast, calendar, big analog clock, ...

Next thing that changed is that panel is no more. Instead there are two more widgets on the desktop - desktop switcher and dock area. There's not much to describe about the workspace switcher, just that it looks nicer and is not in any panel. More describing is due for the dock. Basically it's a reminiscent of the panel, but it's transparent, 3D-like and I've removed all differences between applets, application launchers, notification/tray area and window list.

The combination of launchers serving also for window list isn't a new idea, I've already seen it implemented in the cairo-dock, though due to frequent crashes I had not much fun with it. But as I said, I'd go even one step farther and merge also the tray icons. The idea behind is that there actually is no difference between those so why should we make one. It also saves a lot of space.

And now how it would work? Let's say I want to launch an audio player. I click on the audio player icon and it starts. The icon buttonises (shown with epiphany launcher) and starts to behave like it now behaves in task list and/or notify area. Right-click will hide (or focus if it is not focused) the window in the icon another right-click will bring it back, left-click will show a menu with the usual commands like play, previous, next, etc.

Now for pure notify icons it would behave slightly different, e.g. right-click on the signal icon (network-manager) will open a menu where you can select networks you'd like to connect to, left-click will open a menu with additional settings, just like it behaves now.

For the applications without their tray icon the launcher starts serving as a button in window list - right-click for minimize/focus, left-click for window menu.

When you'd want to open new window instead of focusing the current one, just hold shift and click the icon, or select new window from the menu that apears when you hoover over it. Windows of the same app would be grouped together and you'd select which one you'd like to choose by selecting one from the menu that appears when you hoover over the icon.

Next thing you can notice on the dock is menu and places. This would be similar to the Applications menu and Places menu, optionally the System menu as well, with the tiny difference that it would open on hoovering instead of mouse click.

This setup would mean that you'd have almost any action available for use on single click.

Final word to say about this is configurability, I think the dock should have an easy way how to manage the applets that are on it, prefereably similar to how you do it now with gnome-panel. The cairo-dock configuration window is a total no-no for me - in the basic view I wasn't able to set-up anything I wanted and in the Advanced view there was so much options that I got lost very quick.