The Desktop
Ever notice how unused the first, biggest thing on our screens – the desktop – tends to be one of the things we get the least use out of. For some people, it’s a repository for all the junk that has nowhere else to go, building up a mass of documents and icons to become as big and ugly as the mess under the bed. For others, it’s a pristine, personalized picture that must be kept clean to maintain its effect. Either way, we almost always keep our documents somewhere else and launch our programs from a bar or menu.
So I propose we change this thing. KDE 4 had a great idea when they realized that it was no longer adequate for the desktop to just be another folder. They created something called plasma, to allow the desktop to become programmable and widgetizable. Unfortunately, I can’t say their implementation is very clean right now.
I think we should take this further. There is no reason why the desktop should necessarily have to take all the crap that gets put on it – couldn’t we just turn off the “folder” functionality and keep it clean completely? I’d also like some of my programs to dock, like widgets. The IM client, for example, would be a perfect thing to give some desktop real-estate to. Maybe a download manager. Granted, most of this will be covered up a good chunk of the time, but that leaves plenty of opportunity for things that are normally background (BitTorrent, SETI) to put their status pages on the desktop. I bet KDE could do some of that, at least.
I think this could be something bigger, though. I wish Gnome would innovate more in this regard, because sometimes I feel like KDE has all the ideas, and Gnome all the coders. Of course, I will warn that anything you stick on the desktop must absolutely take as few system resources as possible. Developers tend to ignore this, but I notice it when I suddenly have 50 background processes competing for memory and io access. With the multicore systems becoming the norm, however, I think we should be looking at what a computer can do in the background.
[...] an example, I present a recent project of mine to make desktop maintenance easier. As I was discussing this with one of my Mac-dev friends, a program called Hazel [...]
What Linux Needs « Fear of C said this on March 15, 2008 at 5:19 pm
[...] Problem with Desktop Competition Not to be confused with my earlier post on desktops, this one’s about what we are forgetting in the Gnome/KDE hype. Both work very hard at [...]
The Problem with Desktop Competition « Fear of C said this on March 15, 2008 at 5:45 pm