Check qtfm/draco as a starting point for the desktop

[probonopd]

Can we turn qtfm/draco into the missing hello Filer and hello Desktop described on https://github.com/probonopd/hello/wiki#what-needs-to-be-built?

Reference: https://github.com/probonopd/draco/releases/tag/continuous

[rodlie]

Note that I have not done a lot to draco/qtfm in a while, but my plan was to start working on draco/qtfm this summer again. There are some missing features and a couple of bugs, but IMHO a simpler/better starting point compared to Lumina (no disrespect).

[probonopd]

Yes, simple is what I am looking for. :+1: Maybe you'd like to have a look around here to see whether you think it could be a good fit.

[probonopd]

After having experimented with qtfm/draco for a while, I like what I see. It is actually the first desktop and file manager that is not ancient and seems straightforward for my taste.

It is very pleasing under the hood, not bloated code-wise, written in Qt, does not carry a lot of technical debt from the G* stack. Technically, I like it a lot, as it shares a lot of the vision with the system I would like to build.

It appears that @rodlie is sharing a lot of my design philosophy, which is centered around

• "Less, but better" (Dieter Rams)
• Easy
• Not bloated

When it comes to UX, in in its current form, qtfm/draco is not (yet?) what I envision for hello. I don't know whether this is due to intentional choice or just due to the fact that some design decisions where inherited from pre-existing software.

There are two major UX paradigms in existence on desktops, the Windows-influenced one and the Mac-influenced one. With this I do not mean "skinning". I mean the deeper design philosophy. GitHub UX, for example, clearly fomes from the Mac world:

Default button clearly emphasized and on the right-hand side

Edit: Turns out that Qt on Linux can be configured to behave like this: https://github.com/rodlie/draco/issues/48#issuecomment-626377693

It seems that in its current form, qtfm/draco is mainly appealing to users who grew up in a Windows world (without attempting to clone Windows) with some Unix-isms like Alt-F2 thrown in. It shows in things such as

• Icons on the desktop are ordered on the left-hand side
• Start menu in the bottom left
• No global menu bar
• Window chooser at the bottom of the screen
• Clock in the bottom right
• Default (OK) buttons on the left in dialog boxes
• Zeroconf nowhere
• Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl key for commands, Alt-F4 to clone things
• Window close/minimize/maximize at the right-hand side of the title bar
• Default iconset from Gnome
• Default fonts from Linux

As you can tell from this project, I would like to create something that is appealing to users who grew up in an early Mac world (without attempting to clone the Mac). This would imply

• Icons on the desktop are ordered on the right-hand side and visually clearly accented
• Start menu merged with current Alt-F2 functionality and invoked with Alt-Spacebar
• Menubar at the top of the screen, ideally we move the application menus up there (like Ubuntu Unity could do)
• What is currently in the bottom right of the screen moves to the upper right
• Clock in the upper right
• Default (OK) buttons on the right in dialog boxes
• Zeroconf everywhere (e.g., show servers in the file manager)
• Keyboard shortcuts: Alt key for commands, Alt-W to close things
• Window close/minimize/maximize at the left-hand side of the title bar
• Default iconset from elelmentary-xfce
• Default fonts URW35

This could further mean little cosmetic touches such as

• Rounded rects in the screen corners

Overall, not technically radical changes, but a distinctively different look and feel.

Generally I am opposed to making everything configurable, or else you basically end up with KDE. if it was just for myself, I would hardcode the Mac-like paradigm just like currently the Windows-like paradigm is hardcoded.

At the same time I realize that forking for just those (little) things may not be a good idea, as it would mean duplicating a lot of (maintenance) work.

While almost every open source desktop currently appeals to the Windows paradigm, I am not aware of a good one that appeals to the Mac paradigm (Haiku OS coming closest but it is not Linux based which currently limits app availability).

Hence the need for the "hello" project.

So I am wondering @rodlie whether we could add a "paradigm" switch to qtfm/draco that would basically switch between the 2 paradigms.

@rodlie what do you think?

Can we turn qtfm/draco into the missing hello Filer and hello Desktop described on https://github.com/probonopd/hello/wiki#what-needs-to-be-built?

[probonopd]

Check out https://github.com/helloSystem/.