Free GUI: Application "Ecosystem"

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

The aforementioned application "ecosystem" is the most moving-est of the moving targets in this ideation of Free GUI. It is kind of a blind list of disconnected wants that likely overlap with each other, and are very hard to express in words (as UX design already is, let alone when it's a venture into new territory.)

The point is to hone in on the purpose that these ideas intend to collectively accomplish - a beating heart that ties them together to make them jive and click to produce something special. A killer whale is big, but a beached whale is too big and too slow, not to mention pretty morbid boys.

Free GUI: Window Manager Capabilities

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

This post here mentioned some things about a window position API. This post is about describing some more API specifics and window manager capabilities.

I make a low key distinction between "capabilities" and "features" here, because capabilities could emerge into various custom features, or they could be prevented from becoming available to a use-case or workflow. It would all depend on any given system's configuration and scripting.

Free GUI: Containerized Apps (Plus Segues)

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

A desktop and application menu should be able to recognize and handle designations of containerized GUI applications to maintain a UX that makes sense with their usage context and priority.

Containers in this context might be used for handling favored application versions, or alternating versioning, or handling applications with multiple different configurations. This might also be useful in a development context. It might apply to making something like Docker or Podman more convenient on the desktop

Free GUI: Browser Engine

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

Free GUI needs a browser engine that can work with a system-wide customizable toolbar system, and whatever other system-wide features that get incorporated into the application ecosystem infrastructure. (spoken with a mockingly nerdy lisp while pushing your over-sized glasses back up your nose.)

More on Free GUI

Some additional random thoughts and ideas around Free GUI.

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

The Fast-Track Philosophy

The fast-track philosophy is very much about mitigating a chasm between advanced capability, and a perceived chaos of freedom. Perhaps one might reference the book: "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" to understand something about this tendency of FLOSS software. I don't know if that really fully embodies the issue per se, but I think it is related.

Staying Grounded on Free GUI

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

Best way to sum up grounding my last post is that it is a lot more hyperbole than I usually engage in on this blog. Still, I am very tempted to continue and to go full-on hard-sell and branding with this idea.

Free GUI is a reference to an idea for a new way of doing GUI for an OS desktop environment, as well as an application ecosystem. It is a series of standards, and an implementation of a user-facing GUI toolkit - as opposed to a graphical toolkit like GTK, Iced, or QT.

It is such an intense idea that by comparison to other desktops, it is emotionally closer to the idea of something like the RedoxOS project, although RedoxOS is an OS. The comparison is that it is a long term project that probably does not get truly seen for a proportionally long period across the time span of its development. This is different than a project like Hyprland has been for instance, where many people are using it early on, while it is still being very actively developed and changed.

(As a sidenote, RedoxOS is just about to get seen a lot more, if/when it gets general Linux VM support.)

For GUI to Be Free for Non-Developers

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

(Non-Developers AND Developers)

There is no great way to get UX right in a concise way. (It is possible to do better yes) Also very relevant is that really good UX requires too much specific attention, and then it gets locked in every time you think you have it just perfect. 

• Good UX is expensive and difficult in the short term and confining in the longterm.
• Good UX typically requires strange means of gathering user data
• After the fact, there're too few or too many biased deciders to go through for UX changes.
• improvements are not objective. Too many people that will be heartbroken, even if the UX wasn't well thought out in the first place. Misguided familiarity even with flaws. Results in group choice paralysis
• disconnected purposes of software influence what constitutes good design without examination

Thus, if you want to get a single, concise UX, you will be handicapping Linux.

UX for Linux does not only bare the typical problem of pleasing all people, all the time. It caries an additional challenge of there being more options of what to do on Linux, given its very many purposes and user types, and a desired propensity towards freedom and options. Thus, if you want to get a single, concise UX, you are effectively handicapping Linux.

The solution is for there to be at least one or two options (For a DE, and compatible Toolkit) that are about being more-or-less Windows replacements, but then to have a new advanced toolkit for a DE and application ecosystem that is built on the idea of applications that share a common method for making customizations to the UX, small and large. (Obviously still compatible with old application ecosystems.)

Community FLOSS

There are many ways to do FLOSS organization that can be done at the same time, meaning that the FLOSS world can contain organization models that encourage small teams of developers to make money off of applications at the same time that there can also be ideas and infrastructure that encourage much more distributed development organization, where monetary compensation is of a much lower priority.

An Obvious Take on FOSS Funding

The idea of trying to create institutions that are not corrupt, and who have the right priorities does not require any particularly ingenious skill - just people with a clue, who also have the willpower. 

That simple thing for FOSS will be what people call cult behavior. But it's just what all institutions with particular interests do - look out for their interests. For FOSS, that includes a much stronger focus on funding smart infrastructure chains and pathways. - Looking for logical gaps in applications and tools, and trying to fill them in.

In the case of FOSS, there is not a singular institutional form (as in non-profit, for-profit). If for-profits can do it, then more power to them. If non-profits can do it, then more power to them.

If development community can be see a mutual benefit to contribution, then more power to them for building the same things that the FOSS institutions are building: even the for-profits.

Nim vs Swift

 All Posts Tagged: FLOSS Infrastructure 

This is specifically about the last post here. I forgot to talk about Nim. I think Nim is more directly comparable to Swift, than it is to Zig, such that it would be treated much more like a highly performant applications language like C++ is treated.

It's not like Nim clearly falls out of bounds of being a systems language, but I do not think that Nim has a clear enough focus on systems programming to be like C, Rust, and Zig.

So, the reason to bring this up is to ask the question of whether Nim or Swift should be the premier Linux applications language to dethrone C++ . . . in a tentatively serious hypothetical.

Swift and Zig

 All Posts Tagged: FLOSS Infrastructure 

Swift seems like one of the biggest opportunities for the Linux application development world. It seems to pair nicely with Zig in a few ways.

In general, Swift complements systems languages pretty well from a feature perspective. It means that systems languages are for systems programming, and Swift is for applications. And Swift does scripting well too.

• Swift and Zig are a really good fit for Linux contexts.
• They are good with each other in terms of feature coverage.
• Swift should get good interoperability from Zig, maybe Rust too
• It should also be worked on in a serious and dependable way, by a group other than Zig and/or Swift - a group who is interested in piecing all these things together, that also intends to sustain their work for a while.
• Part of this effort is to make Swift seriously interoperable with Zig on Linux, as well as make Swift very interoperable with a serious native Linux GUI tool like Qt or GTK, or maybe Iced if that pairing is not too strange of an abstraction or too far away from native performance and code translation.

No Names for Native Linux GUI

 All Posts Tagged: FLOSS Infrastructure 

There has probably never been such a thing as what I am talking about: You know, a "complete" native GUI stack for Linux, and then it's possible that a complete GUI stack could encompass more for native Linux than one would for web or Windows ever had.

I suppose the primary thought of this post can be summed up with a question. Once an idea of what the heck a native GUI stack constitutes, then: Are there really existent, let alone great, native Linux GUI stacks even right now in 2025?

OSS is Broken - Create FOSS Community and Infrastructure

FOSS can get unnecessarily political. It can get too religious. But there's a better alternative to being the opposite extreme of those things, which is barely acknowledged or understood, disjointed, and non-existent.

FOSS needs a motherload of attention and infrastructure and teamwork of a grassroots community of individuals and small organizations that are conscious of

• a novel, FOSS-pertinent developer compensation model
• a developer contribution model to fit with the compensation model
• an ethically charged zeitgeist
• an equal measure of pragmatism
• common sense vision 
• (a goldy locks zone between overly specific and disjointed.)

In Defense of WASM Q4 2024

Edit: This is not a technical post, but exists overarchingly as a take from a distance. I consume available cursory information about WASM, but I have no technical experience using it, especially at an enterprise level. With that in mind: see what I get right, and see what I get wrong.

I have recently seen references to the idea of using unikernels and containers, which (for all I know) might actually be closer in effect to a virtual architecture.