- cross-posted to:
- linuxmasterrace@feddit.de
- cross-posted to:
- linuxmasterrace@feddit.de
Hi everyone,
I’d like to have my apps as tiles within a full-screen view (ideally called via pressing the Windows button on the keyboard) in Linux, pretty much the Windows Metro look as seen above. I have all the icon files and just need to link them to the apps themselves. Might you know of a way to do that?
Thanks for your help! Temperche
This depends on the power user, though. iPad Pros are being used by professionals left, right, and center, and have completely replaced laptops for some because they have a decent typing sleeve. It’s not that they missed “power users” per se, it’s more that when they thought “power users”, they thought “Microsoft Excel” rather than “Photoshop”. Then again, Microsoft’s ARM offering back then was too slow to reasonably expect power users to switch.
IMO, they could’ve fixed some of this. They shouldn’t have sold tablets without keyboard sleeves. They should’ve used the Windows 8.1 design for Windows 8. They should’ve focused on getting browsers and applications available before the platform launched, not years later. They could’ve pushed touch screens onto laptop vendors so the UI makes more sense.
Microsoft still sells Windows tablets and I believe they’re actually quite popular among artists for their excellent pen support and the full version of tools like Photoshop being available. If they weren’t so Microsoft-priced, I would consider buying a Surface tablet before I’d look at an iPad, considering the sheer power and freedom the Windows ecosystem brings compared to iPadOS. Qualcom/Intel/AMD really need to step up their game and compete with the M2 on mobile already, though.
Art is a valid use-case for tablets, and actually the best one. For almost all of corporate office jobs however, tablets are a worse proposition than a regular workstation. Most people type more than they draw.
It’s fine, but that means that Windows 10’s “UI optimized for KB/Mouse with accessibility features for touch screens” was, in retrospect, the better choice all along. Windows 8 did the opposite and made the experience worse for everyone under the completely incorrect assumption that we were ALL going into a touchscreen-first world.
I still consider Windows 10 to be worse for tablets than Windows 8.1. Windows 10 is better for 90% of computers, but the touch interface went through a regression when they refocused on kb/mouse.
Tablet mode works well in recent versions of Windows, but that feels more like a layer on top of the OS rather than an integrated part of it like Windows 8(.1) felt like.
In a perfect world, we would have the option to choose, but Microsoft doesn’t want to maintain multiple shells of course. As for desktop use, I would love to get Windows 7’s UI and privacy friendly design on top of Windows 11’s state-of-the-art kernel. I know nothing like that will ever happen, but I can dream…
Having a dedicated touchscreen shell is something that I believe GNOME and KDE are trying to achieve, but I don’t know whether they succeeded UX-wise as I’ve never used them.
It’s unfortunate that Windows 10 was a regression for touchscreens, but if MS did not have the resources/willingness to support both well, then focusing on KB+M was the right call IMO. When building Windows 8 they simply miscalculated how relevant touchscreens would/could become for Windows in the 2010s.
If you want privacy, Linux is definitely the only choice anymore. If you want privacy and a good UI, Linux may be a good choice depending on your tastes in UI. I think KDE does UI/UX right for your average power user while retaining most of Windows’ UI paradigms (which is why SteamOS uses it for its desktop mode). Ironically Microsoft has actually been stealing a lot of design cues from KDE, especially with Windows 11. The lock screen of Windows 11 in particular is a straight ripoff of KDE Plasma, every time I walk in front of a locked Windows computer I have to do a double take. The rounded corners, slight Gaussian blur, cute-yet-serious font, it’s all there.