The BeOS Rebellion
Well, I am not much of a historian when it comes to computers. I do study history though, but of the Middle East in college. This is the thing though. There used to be a very nice operating system back in the 2000s called BeOS.
I got to download the iso image (about 50 MB) and installed it on an old Compaq computer and booted it with a diskette. This small operating system had many bugs but it was at the same time very capable. I really enjoyed playing with it.
The system was then not too popular and PALM bought it. That was the end of it as a free operating system and then other projects came out of it, like HAIKU and Zeta. Just imitations of the original system but this time based on Linux.
One of the things that impressed me the most about this system was its revolutionary System Menu. Unlike Windows, it was located at the top right of the screen. It was not a panel styled menu, it was rather like a box that expanded and contracted depending on the applications that you were running. If you right-clicked it, then you would be able to get the actual menu with all the applications installed on your computer.
Once KDE 4 came out and the right top corner was adorned with the plasma widget menu, I was immediately brought back to the way BeOS handled the system menu.
Now, my idea is, what if the OpenSuSE rebellion treated this menu like BeOS? Here is some results.
Now, you may wonder why? But I have noticed that as a user I spend a lot of time on the right side of the screen. I am right handed, scroll bars are on the right, add tabs button is on the right; close, minimize and maximize buttons are on the right. So it seems very useful to me not to have to go across the whole screen down to the bottom left in order to launch my applications.
Like it?
I got to download the iso image (about 50 MB) and installed it on an old Compaq computer and booted it with a diskette. This small operating system had many bugs but it was at the same time very capable. I really enjoyed playing with it.
The system was then not too popular and PALM bought it. That was the end of it as a free operating system and then other projects came out of it, like HAIKU and Zeta. Just imitations of the original system but this time based on Linux.
One of the things that impressed me the most about this system was its revolutionary System Menu. Unlike Windows, it was located at the top right of the screen. It was not a panel styled menu, it was rather like a box that expanded and contracted depending on the applications that you were running. If you right-clicked it, then you would be able to get the actual menu with all the applications installed on your computer.
Once KDE 4 came out and the right top corner was adorned with the plasma widget menu, I was immediately brought back to the way BeOS handled the system menu.
Now, my idea is, what if the OpenSuSE rebellion treated this menu like BeOS? Here is some results.
Now, you may wonder why? But I have noticed that as a user I spend a lot of time on the right side of the screen. I am right handed, scroll bars are on the right, add tabs button is on the right; close, minimize and maximize buttons are on the right. So it seems very useful to me not to have to go across the whole screen down to the bottom left in order to launch my applications.
Like it?
Written by Anditosan
1 comments:
very much so :)
i just love gnome top bar and i tried to locate (am a newbie) it to the exact place but this looks more handy and lovely
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