I had some other things to say on the subject.
Because the cyclical nature of it is a tad amusing.
But instead I will just mention … a lot of what Mac UI has implemented and people saw as new and flashy was actually done in the linux world first. KDE not being an insignificant source.
That said, for myself, I dislike all the Desktop Grid, Window Overview, Fullscreen Search, etc … mallarkey.
And even launchers largely at all for that matter.
Well, in truth, it’s more likely rounded corners that annoy me the most; not that they exist, but that UI designs keep using them; not using them; rediscovering them; as you say, cyclic.
It was much the same on the web; first using pixel-perfect .gif and .png images, then with pseudo-elements, and finally border-radius…
Yeah, the rounded corners look like crap. But what do you do, Graphic Designer types have fallen in love with the idea.
It’s going to be a real PITA until or if they add the Desktop Grid to the hot corner Options. Muscle memory means the first thing I do to change desktops is move the mouse pointer to the top right corner of my screen.
I think it’s rather a Windows’ification that’s going on than a macOS’ification, although Microsoft has of course made its entire fortune by stealing from others.
But even then still, I think we’re overlooking the elephant in the room, i.e. Google. They were the ones to push the unfortunately still popular flat user interfaces and hamburger menus onto the world, as if nothing else exists anymore than smartphone screens.
Personally I do like and prefer the macOS user interface guidelines over those from either Microsoft or Google, and at least macOS is a UNIX system, whereas Windows is just MS-DOS on (heavy) steroids.
In fairness, it was more the desire for web sites to have one theme to rule them all that popularised this type of UI; rather than using separate layouts for desktop and mobile devices. With the introduction of @media queries and so-called responsive design, everything between those mainstays was also covered.
Google-esque layouts actually scale quite well if the design is well conceived to begin with. The burger menu’s; well, it’s difficult to have anything remarkable to say about those; except that they’re functional
Icons are an important part of UI, generally. We, as humans, respond better to icons than most other elements; labels, for example. MacOS has traditionally encouraged effective use of icons in the OS, while Windows has only recently… well, let’s not talk about Windows; Linux was better in that respect.
I have reverted the Plasma 6 taskbar to the general appearance in Plasma 5. Wasted space for the sake of cosmetic appeal is something I dislike, except in the case of publishing a document, where white space is a distinct advantage for readability.
I typically don’t complain much about any GUI, although occasionally they can all become rather tiresome. One day soon I might just give all players the royal salute and start using LCARS.
A frontend graphical package manager can incorporate a notice to read important notices ELSEWHERE. See Rigo, the defunct Sabayon Linux’s package manager [the purple strip at the top of the package manager window]
If you click on the [let me see] button, it brought you to a simple webpage where the update warnings were. I assume this can be adjusted to link to post 2 of an update announcement thread.
I have proposed this suggestion at least 2 times previously, in the original Manjaro Forum, and in the 2nd or third one that used to be archived here but is now gone. There seemed to be no interest in it [standard previous response - “those who can’t be bothered to read will just ignore the popup”].
So if anyone else wants to pursue this suggestion again, go for it. It won’t be me.
I use terminal commands to update all my distros (including Sabayon in the past). But I always thought Rigo’s popup was a helpful functionality for those who relied on a graphical updater, to inform them when they should read something important before commencing update.
When Manjaro is installed, Manjaro Hello runs automatically, and presents links to Documentation (Readme, Release Info, Wiki) and Support (Forums). This keeps opening at login until it’s told not to.
My point is that information is given from the onset for users to find information needed, if only they would actually use it.
A compulsory PDF download (at forum signup) with a variety of required information might potentially be useful; but of course that would also be subject to my previous point.
Sadly, whatever measures are put in place there are always users that will not read anything more complicated than simple Step by Step instructions they can copy/paste…
For those having all applications missing in Plasma, remove krunner5 and restart/reboot. After updating I had to remove the leftovers below, though I think most of them do no arm.
Interestingly my partner did her upgrade from the pamac gui, and everything went fine, she eventually got the message ‘Requires a Reboot’ and did so, with no issues.
I did my upgrade after hers, and used pamac in the CLI, and at some point lost my desktop, but was able to guess when the upgrade was completed by running ‘pamac checkupdates’ and then rebooted without any issues.
Here’s another unhappy user. I was also surprised that a lot of the tools I developed, interacting with various components no longer work(ed). I miss a lot of backward compatibility, which may be understandable from a KDE (and Manjaro) developers pov but from a user perspective this is pretty bad. I’m using my rig for multi media stuff, like guitar recording and rebuilding several tools, scripts and whatnot is no joke.
Imho, with big updates like this pamac (and pacman) should give a proper user warning including an explicit overview of compatibility loss with previous components.
If you mean you need to, for example, rebuild third party packages after updates then I’m afraid thats just how it works. AUR helpers already automate this somewhat by allowing you to search and update and rebuild. Nonetheless dont forget that the AUR is fundamentally unsupported.
As to the changes inherent to Plasma 6 … its nothing new. Not only does it come from KDE devs … but in this case Manjaro Stable users are among the latest adopters in the linux world. There has been ample warning for I dare say a year or more with the changing of package nomenclature, qt6, etc.
As to surprise about the functioning of packaging or rolling release in general, I dont really have a response. Again its how it works. Maybe a rolling release is not for you?
@cscs thanks for your response. I’m technically pretty broad and fluent, developer etc etc. But It’s not that I, and many others, eyeball every change coming out. And Manjaro is not Arch which does require some more attention.
This time I skipped checking the incoming update, been too busy building a new guitar pedal board. Which is fun, unlike checking compatibility for every change with every update. It’s almost like us Linux users don’t want it to become a mainstream desktop platform.
Anyway, I’ve just rebuild my latest tools. All good. I like Manjaro and I will keep it.