Why is so much time and effort wasted developing desktops?

[Deb-fan]

When it's painfully clear Openbox is the only graphical interface gnu/Linux could ever need?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Does a plain openbox "desktop" have full accessibility support for visually impaired users?

How would a non-technical user go about installing an openbox desktop? I don't think they would have the faintest clue how to deal with a bare TTY system and no Debian ISO image provides such a desktop.

And how do you propose to handle new user configuration for elements such as the panel, volume control utilities and suchlike?

[Deb-fan]

All of such things are trivial. Visually impaired people only need be told that they have Openbox and they will be happy. Deaf folks can still see, so they'll know they have Openbox and shall be same. The main thing to consider here is all the energy which has been dumped into this when graphical perfection has already been achieved by Openbox and these resources could've been devoted to other areas which still require much work. Basically Openbox = mission accomplished, nothing further need be done and people involved in open source must learn to prioritize better.

3 guesses whose bored? Though as with Openbox there should really only need to be 1 required.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Visually impaired people only need be told that they have Openbox and they will be happy

Until they actually want to do anything with their desktop. Do screen readers even work in openbox? I was looking at adding a11y support to SharpBang but in the end I decided it just wasn't worth the effort because GNOME does that so well.

[Deb-fan]

^ If not out-of-box then it's got to be PEBCAK because Openbox knows no equal and cannot be matched. Sheesh I did mention I'm pretty bored here. Came to the point where enough is enough in terms of tweaking this system. Of course Openbox does play a major role in this though. Very lil left to dork with which could justify the time involved. For me, the ulltimate state of gnu/nix operating system configuration has been reached I'd like to thank many people, the Openbox devs for sure among those.

[tynman]

The question "Why is so much time and effort wasted developing desktops?" caught my attention. I'm not 100% sure what you even mean by "developing desktops". I assume you mean the effort in developing the software. But maybe you meant the effort we users spend choosing them and tweaking them.

Looking at the "View Active Topics" view of the Debian User Forum, I see that most of the topics have between a handful and a few hundred views. Two topics stand out: The topic "What Does Your Desktop Look Like?" has 2.2 million hits. The topic "What does your non-Debian Desktop Look Like?" has 585 K hits. There appears to be a big demand for the perfect desktop - whatever that means.

Without much effort, I can think of about a dozen Linux "desktops", i.e., Gnome, KDE, i3, Openbox, XFCE, etc. A few are pretty stable and don't receive that much attention (e.g., Openbox), while others are very active (e.g., Gnome). Overall, I would agree there is a pretty big amount of effort directed to this segment of software development. If I was king, I would temporarily redirect 75% of that effort to improving Wine until it could support the handful of applications (e.g., Quickbooks) that I still run inside a VM running Windows. (Running Win 7 in a VM on my Linux box works fine, so I am thankful for that. IMHO, KVM and VirtualBox are amazing. But it bugs me I need to do this. I would prefer to be free of Windows.)

[Deb-fan]

^ Real point of this is that imma dork. Though now that you mention the effort involved from the end-users perspective, yes, that just worsens how many human resources have gone into this topic, when everyone could simply install Openbox and have graphical Nirvana.

With all this time now I must find something to fill it. This thread brought something worthwhile to mind. Think I'm going to fork Openbox, not going to change any code. In fact everytime I've ever even attempted to learn about programming my eyes cross in 3mins or less. So no code fiddling, am just going to fork it so I can rename it to something more befitting. How does Perfectionbox grab people?

Signed, really bored dork. Additional appropriate Openbox fork names welcome.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Additional appropriate Openbox fork names welcome

How about "obsoletebox" — Wayland ftw!

[wizard10000]

TBH I was pretty skeered of *box until I started running Crunchbang Waldorf - building an openbox desktop from scratch can be kind of a daunting task

Even after I got comfortable I still ran fluxbox for awhile because I was allergic to XML config files - but I got better. openbox makes me happy but it took me quite awhile to get everything configurated the way I wanted

[Deb-fan]

Despite the OB raving in this my heart isn't set on Openbox. It's a hangover from Crunchbang dys here too. Never bothered becoming an OB guru. Needs are simple for me one workspace and a bottom panel with all running apps to keep oriented. Recently got more amored with fluxbox also. Couple silly nagglings got in the way. Irritating how difficult setting a simple color scheme in it appeared and what truly annoyed me I like to have a pop-up for tabbing through running apps.

Still evaluating lightest weight stacking wm's for real. May well get around to replacing Openbox anyway. Keep tint2 or offload it for something lighter. Probably retain tint2 for all it can do just can't see getting much better. Always have always will be a fanatical minimalist. That harks back even long before gnu/Linux dys and isn't subject to ever change. Though #! of course left a lasting impression. How can doing more, more efficiently with less ever be a bad config?

Dirty, dirty ... dirty pool @Head_on. Ye bad lil monkey ye! Ah the next big Redhat/ibm shocker. Wonder what heavy handedness they'll employ to speed up adoption of Wayland. Kid gloves have certainly come off nowadays in terms of what, when and how quickly upstream sets the direction gnu/Linux is going take and on what time table it seems. As to this one not much worried regardless. Though when comes to outmoding all the junk which may get turned second class software citizen without being Wayland natively supported unless relying on some bloated compatibility deal = Xwayland, in this I will heartily resist to a greater extent. Overall like systemd so not so much a biggy to me. Not so sure about Wayland + sway.

Might go so far as to freeze vs any weird attempt at quasi fork like Devuanish claim to fame. In other words meaning I could happily take Debian and the kernel as they stand today and keep right on using them and xorg for years and years. May or not embrace Wayland but in this it'll totally be on my time frame. Not prompted or sped up by anything upstream dictates. Wayland when ready or Buster and 5.x kernels-etc for as long as I like.

Any good recommends for lightest stacker ? Thought of doing an absolute minimal Fluxbox theme, no toolbar, no slit and just using tint2 with the thing but meh lighter still as long as it's decently visually appealing and functional doesn't much matter to me. Suggestions welcome fellows.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Not so sure about Wayland + sway

It's the future, I've tasted it

Any good recommends for lightest stacker ?

https://packages.debian.org/buster/cwm

Part of the OpenBSD base system (so audited by their devs) and keyboard-driven. Very nice.

[Deb-fan]

Thanks always appreciate your input Head_on. Certainly seen you mention Wayland + Sway. Still won't be made to get in any hurry as regards adopting anything or abandoning anything either. Am content to wait until ready in this thing. Another awesome thing about compulsive tweaking and minimalism. All the principles, techs etc I've amassed are universal. After adjusting for hardware, base config never need change I'm good to go pretty much forever when it comes to personal computing. If can easily make a 10yr old dualcore laptop blaze, for minimal cost hardware, minimal component upgrades if wanted will always be readily available and will pretty much always have top notch performance here. Pretty much indefinitely if just opted to keep using Debian as it stands right now.

Though still plenty of refinements and ever something more to learn and tweak. At this point it's mostly just to pass time and for the sake of it. Still an optimization area here and there I need to keep prodding at o course, shrugs. Though upstream and Wayland can go defecate in their head gear. I've got nothing but time and won't be having any compelled choices from anyone.

[wizard10000]

...Any good recommends for lightest stacker ? Thought of doing an absolute minimal Fluxbox theme, no toolbar, no slit and just using tint2 with the thing but meh lighter still as long as it's decently visually appealing and functional doesn't much matter to me. Suggestions welcome fellows.

fluxbox comes with a panel but IME openbox + tint2 uses about exactly the same amount of RAM as fluxbox with its integrated panel. Also, fluxbox hasn't been upgraded since 2015

I found a really great tint2 readme - https://gitlab.com/o9000/tint2/blob/master/doc/tint2.md - it helped me to build a pseudo-pager with tint2.

[Deb-fan]

Fluxbox with just included themes running on it uses about 1/3rd as much ram as OB + tint2. No doubt could strip the thing down further too. Like just a solid color full screen image and run tint2 or a comparable panel. Still trying with which way to go, definitely going to give Head_on's suggestion a go, again likely just keep tint2 with whichever is settled on. The overhead for what all it can do is really hard to beat. Much more if any effort for any resource savings is getting to the point of being pointless here. Wow, a whole 6mbs on a 4gb laptop.

Have better areas yet to focus on but fully endorse what a one time #!/Archer named Awebb once said. People spend 99.3% of the time using a computer looking at an app or browser, so who gives a crap what's underneath that? So my take is lighter = better. I just need a clock, panel and convenient way of keeping track of what's running and toggling through them. Proud of the fact my preferences and config tastes could run decently on a 1gig-mem lower speed dualcore proc and barely or not even touch swap or lag in 2020. Part of criteria being a fully modern browser with 8-10 tabs open or streaming video at a reasonable resolution. All the rest is just gravy. Often times would like to stack this os on this crusty pc up against much better specced hardware running the monstrousity known as win10. Would bet cash it'd more than hold own in side-by. Gnu/nix has plenty of tools itself. Ie: hybrid suspend vs fastboot, if someone were to want to resort to such junk, blah blah. 115mb @boot idle and almost no cpu-load on a 64bit os in 2020. Not too shabby.

So a bit more fiddling with Windows managers and panel choice I guess. Then calling such more than good enough.

[wino]

For most people the desktop envirnment is the 'vehicle' that gets them to use linux.