On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 2:15 AM, Joey Hess wrote: > I do wish that some of the .. energy .. seen in these threads could be > used for something more interesting. For example, find a way to detect > touch screen systems, on which xfce is *not* pleasant, and don't install > a desktop task there, but a separate task with whichever UI is currently > best suited for tablets.
The situation with touch screen systems is a bit more complicated than just "install a tablet UI". By way of example; my primary computer is a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 Tablet. This is a normal Thinkpad laptop with a touchscreen where the screen can be rotated and therefore hide the keyboard with or without the touchscreen being hidden. Right now I'm using it as a desktop though, with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. For this particular machine, installing a normal desktop is the probably right way to go. Unfortunately none of them appear to have sane touch interaction; the touchscreen selects text instead of scrolling or buttons are tiny. I rarely use this device in tablet mode but I imagine the many artists using it would do that quite often. I seem to remember that with Windows 8 coming out and having pervasive support for touchscreens, there are even external monitors with touch support. Clearly on tower machines with a touch-screen monitor you aren't going to want a tablet OS. Another example; a while ago I installed Debian on a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. While at the time the touchscreen didn't work in Debian due to Linux and Xorg driver issues, installing a tablet UI is clearly not the right choice there either; you need something with big buttons that is finger-friendly, at the time enlightenment had a UI that was designed for smartphones. I also have had an OpenMoko with Debian on it. For OpenMoko devices the enlightenment UI has issues due to the OpenMoko's screen inset meaning that UI elements close to the edge are unusable. The QtMoko UI however avoids that issue but isn't in Debian yet. http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2012/12/03/debian-mobile/ My conclusion is that the right UI to choose is quite machine-specific and also user-specific. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6hsaxf1dvu07_pdjvhwm810r0cxtexkbe_n8bceatz...@mail.gmail.com
