Cranky opinion: Notification systems make sense on phones, but have never made sense on desktop/laptop computers. I feel like I basically never get a notification on a desktop unless it's either some kind of ad or just the OS vendor deciding to annoy me.
Even on Linux, the notification system finds ways to show me ads for… other parts of Linux?
Okay fine, I GUESS the Linux notification system DID a couple times notify me when there was a new firmware to install in the firmware updater, which is theoretically actually useful, but I don't want to give it credit for that because the Ubuntu firmware updater does not appear to work right https://mastodon.social/@mcc/111654894333728435
Everybody who told me I was a fool for choosing Ubuntu seems to have been right :(
@mhkohne Yes, I suspect had I chosen something else I would still be encountering problems, just different ones.
However I feel I have also got strong indications that Ubuntu 23.10, specifically, is just a disaster, and has many persistent issues that 23.04 did not. Normally I'd say "well, I guess that's why you wait for the LTS releases" but 23.04 wasn't an LTS either and it seemed okay (albeit, I did not run it on a laptop, and laptops present additional difficulties)
@gizmomathboy So the thing is that the reason I am updating the firmware is Ubuntu gave me a notification to update the firmware, and clicking the notification takes me into the GUI firmware updater. This is the nature of my complaint. If I were on my own I'd possibly have just learned the command line version, but Ubuntu shuttles me into using the GUI instead and the GUI they shipped doesn't work right.
@thomasfuchs@mcc@mos_8502 The worst offender in my book is Windows' notification to ask if you want to switch off other notifications that it thinks you aren't paying enough attention to.
It's the one notification that I still get that I find intrusive and annoying enough to want to switch it off (any others being long gone), but of course, Windows won't let me 😒
@tom_armstrong@thomasfuchs@mos_8502 apple has this problem also :( can turn off notifications but can't turn off the notification that it's not showing you notifications which is exactly the same for these purposes as just leaving notifications on?
@mcc And Windows is even worse. I still can't understand how some people actually use Windows 11. Even 10 has a few like what you're describing. "Wouldn't you like to use this great feature that's designed to treat you like you're an idiot instead of doing things a more proper way?" I don't understand why so many things essentially advertise... themselves...
@mcc I have a custom debian + openbox install to avoid gnome generally and notifications specifically. It has some weird behavior but that feels like a fair trade for a quiet DE
I want to like the idea of a minimal DE but everyone always suggests "fvwm" and fvwm is just so ugly. OpenBox is just on the right side of the acceptable line though, so…
@mcc openbox is very good. Take a look at Bunsen labs. It's basically what I've got plus clean theming and some extra bell and whistles. It's a descendant of crunchbang a.k.a. the best looking distro of all time
@mcc lol Ubuntu appears to continue its slide into being ever more Windows-like UX wise.
(definitely agree with your point about desktop notifications, and every Linux DE that has em has seemed pointless and annoying; just hadn't seen that Ubuntu one before)
@mcc the one version of them i could imagine being useful are like, opt-in: when a long copy or compile operation is happening, something you could click on (context menu maybe?) that says like "give me a little notification toast when this specific thing is done"
@jplebreton used to when an application wanted your attention a little bubble would appear on its startbar-or-equivalent icon and it would maybe bounce or flash, like, once. it was easier to ignore that and deal with it later.
@jplebreton There's this comic where someone working on a computer is building mountains of flow diagrams in their heads and someone comes along and says "hey. did you get the memo about the meeting a 3 pm?" and then when they look back at their computer the mountains have collapsed into nothingness. Desktop notification systems are like building that directly into the computer. I was trying to do some work but now it's successfully distracted me and I'm thinking about the computer's thing
@mcc@jplebreton oh it was a backhanded complement..whatever they did in the new macos, notifications basically never display, but when they do it fills my screen with like a hundred at once.
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