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I too am not looking to move to something that doesn't support Wayland (mostly because of Nvidia, who I doubt will support Xorg forever), but I don't share the negativity in the comments. This looks great, especially since it seems to be part of a larger effort to create a cross-platform UI toolkit (https://fyne.io). The world needs more developers tackling ambitious projects like this, and less OpenAI API wrappers.
Keep up the good work!
> that doesn't support Wayland
Dont know what the state is but they work on it
Amazing comment and thanks for the support!
It's based on X11, unfortunately. I've fully transitioned to Wayland based desktops
I would be very happy to try FyneDesk if it would be based on Wayland.
I see they work on full Wayland support, and targeting to do it in v5.0. What's the ETA? Last release was 1.5 year ago!
> The 0.4 branch of releases marks the end of X11 native implementations as we will begin the move to Wayland (and XWayland) for 0.5. > https://github.com/FyshOS/fynedesk/releases
Plans shifted due to external factors - the next release will be X11 but after that (later this year) work begins on the Wayland transition.
Ideally we will support both through the transition but unclear at this time.
> You can expect work (on Wayland) to begin on that after the upcoming major release. We are waiting on a fix in an upstream library.
from the Author
I was under the impression that there’s a seamless compatibility layer for running X11 under Wayland?
Wayland is a dead end. It will never replace X11 because it's architecture is fundamentally flawed and prone to lags by design.
It's support for CJK input is also basically broken with no chance of ever getting revived.
Our best bet on a solid Linux gui lies with XLibre.
However, saying that, a gui written in Go has very little reason to exist, because we already have excellent GUIs written in lower-level languages.
If there is anything Linux doesn't lack it it's desktops.
I really dislike the way xdg-desktop-portal works though. Ive been totally unsuccessful trying to implement colour picking in Arch/Hyprland with it. The API is absolutely abysmal
Your comment seems very entitled.
When it’s ready, and faster if you help.
For me it could be the foundation of a modern take on Oberon and Inferno linage of operating systems user experience, given how Go came to be, with mix of Limbo and Oberon-2.
Having the desktop environment, and given Go's stance on dynamic linking (and kind of abandoned plugin package), replace the dynamic behaviours in Oberon and Inferno commands and application extensions, with D-Bus or net/rpc.
However given the state of desktop fragmentation, most likely it wouldn't be worth the effort, only to get the feeling how it could be like.
My ambition is for it to be the best desktop for developers or people learning to code.
We are integrating an app editor into FyshOS which (although now renamed and at https://apptrix.ai) can be seen in an old video as a preview: https://youtu.be/XXmDmn-et4E?si=5n1Ao-V6dKurXzS6 (mostly from 15:30 in)
> given Go's stance on dynamic linking (and kind of abandoned plugin package)
There is indeed a promising alternative to Go plugins which - very similar to the Oberon System - directly loads and runs the object files generated by the compiler: https://github.com/pkujhd/goloader.
The last commit for the dev branch was 3 days ago, so there is some development still happening. The last merge to main was March 2024, though.
I think they use master for releases only. Development branch is actively worked on and more than 100 commits ahead of master which is totally active. Last full release March 2024 is totally fine. People can always build from develop branch.
usual passive-aggressive HN comment on someone's effort
This actually looks quite good for a brand new development. I am big fan of vertical docks but that vertical time...
Last update to master was last year, develop not much more going on. It looks like it was started 7 years ago.
New? It doesn't even look like it supports Wayland.
I have been a Linux user for 20 years and I have no idea what display server or windows manager I use. Every time this theme pops up on HN a lot of people argue very passionately about this and I feel I have no understanding at all of this. What are the stakes? Why does this matter? Why is there so much argument going on around Wayland, Xorg, X11 and whatever?
I guess it is like cars, some drive them, and some like to open the hood. That make a nice topic for discussion because we can all share anecdotes of broken stuff on Linux desktops. Same for Emacs/vim, instead of sharing what we are programming, we complain/argue about editors, because they are the shared experience we have in common.
Wayland is a must for me at this point. If it starts supporting it I will give it a serious try
You can expect work to begin on that after the upcoming major release. We are waiting on a fix in an upstream library.
Honest question: why? I tried Wayland for a while but couldn’t tell what is different about it as just a user.
If anyone else was wondering, after some digging around, I confirmed you can change the window decorations/buttons to the right side, seems like that was added on version 0.2.
I'm trying to understand who is behind this and what their motivations are. Is this developed as a hobby, is this part of a for profit venture, an academic project sponsored by a university, or ...?
The best I can find is the parent Github account, which has two users: https://github.com/FyshOS
The project is being developed as a volunteer open source project because we think it should exist. There are 4 core members on the team https://github.com/orgs/FyshOS/people but we accept contributions from around the community.
We are always looking for sponsorship and of course commercial partnerships would be pretty cool too!
Oh man. This is really interesting. Might have to try it out. I have been experimenting with Fyne and like it. Been wanting to mess with customizable DEs but hate the whole headache of setting most up. Go makes things doable for me.
Yes give it a play - we are trying to make it super easy to get into developing on the desktop environment.
For example the modules on the panel or desktop are basically just functions that return a `fyne.CanvasObject` so it's basically just like making a panel in a Fyne app :).
What does this do (or will it do) better than existing DE's?
It is really easy to code on, supports lots of different platforms (including embedded and mobile devices). Some times established projects can be superseded with newer ones build with more modern tools. I get that feeling in this space and it's huge what has been built already.
Will definitely give it a shot this weekend. Any known quirks to be aware of on Pop!_OS 22?
Neat. I wonder what performance is like compared to normal desktop environments.
Probably better than Gnome’s single threaded-ness.
I bet it’s smooth given how concurrent friendly Go is with channels and go routines etc.
Based on the name its probably based on Fyne... Last time I tried to use fyne was not great. They overly fixate on mobile first to the detriment of any other platform.
I bet running circles around the JavaScript mess of GNOME.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40011100 (2024, 64 comments)
X or Wayland?
It seems to rely on compton so no Wayland I guess, which makes is an interesting toy, but not a serious option.
I played with fyne some months ago. Binaries are gigantic and what does drive me crazy it is consuming cpu all the time even if it should stay idle
Any known CPU usage bugs have been resolved. Last time it was the cursor animation but we fixed that too. I can now compare our apps to OS provided native equivalents (we're not there yet but it is getting close!)
Looks promising. Will try this weekend. Any tips to quickly try it out?
Fyne is an interesting library, and although I'm sure it can do a good job on the desktop, last time I tried it I was disappointed by how "meh" it works on mobile (Android in my case).
It does run, but I feel like it's more of a prototyping tool, or a tool for building internal apps. It's kinda slow, graphically inconsistent with the rest of Android, and it has little to no support for features like foreground services, the camera, and more.
I really hope they can improve, but with limited resources and funding, and such a wide scope, I'm not sure if they will ever be ready for more complex projects. In any case, best of luck to the devs!
god i would love a sensible windows 2000 or macos 10.6 desktop right now
You like fyne a lot, huh? I started writing a desktop app with it but got stuck, it can't really do very nice tables and the styling is not flexible enough for me
Nice werk
> FyneDesk: A full desktop environment for Linux written in Go
Monocrome icons, tiny scrollbars, label buttons, Material design at its finest. Nothing new here. /s