Current desktop innovation

Is Innovation Worth It?

Pop!_OS borrows features from other distributions and then reshapes them with its own thoughtfulness and thoroughness. By doing so, it has produced the most innovative desktop environment in the past decade. However, I wonder if System76 has made the same mistakes as earlier desktop innovations such as Gnome 3 and Unity. In its attempt to improve the desktop, has it simply replaced one form of clutter with another? More importantly, does its design assume that all users work the same way and that there is only one way to be efficient?

I do not pretend to have the answers. Anyway, it would be wrong to judge an effort that is still maturing. For now, all I can say is that Pop!_OS is a desktop environment worth watching. I suspect that its automatic tiling in particular will soon start to appear on other desktops.

Infos

  1. Pop!_OS: https://pop.system76.com/

The Author

Bruce Byfield is a computer journalist and a freelance writer and editor specializing in free and open source software. In addition to his writing projects, he also teaches live and e-learning courses. In his spare time, Bruce writes about Northwest Coast art (http://brucebyfield.wordpress.com). He is also co-founder of Prentice Pieces, a blog about writing and fantasy at https://prenticepieces.com/.

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