So many people are wearing blinkers (in the UK) or blinders (in the US), and we could blame two culprits instead of their innate stupidity: macOS and GNOME. It’s mostly a mix of narrow-mindedness and sheer stupidity, but let’s blame external factors instead.

In a comment to my post regarding nautilus-compact-list, I noted:

One week later…

It’s not that GNOME users don’t feel the need for a Compact List view.

It’s not that “nobody wants my nautilus-compact-list”!

It looks like very few people actually use such a view, regardless of the OS or the preferred file manager. Under Windows, the file manager defaults to a detailed list view, and this has dumbified people. Some other people might have been influenced by Midnight Commander (or, back in the day, by Norton Commander) or by any other orthodox file managers that also default to detailed views.

I still don’t get it: how can they live if they can only see about 20 files at a time in a folder with 500 files? Or maybe they don’t have such folders (except for some system ones, which they couldn’t care less about).

But I know who I wrote about “nautilus-compact-list”; who didn’t bother to answer; who answered; and what they answered.

We are literally living in Idiocracy!

Here’s what happened, in more detail.

🤔

I wrote to Linuxiac’s Bobby Borisov. No answer.

I wrote to 9to5Linux’s Marcus Nestor. No answer.

I wrote to OMG! Ubuntu’s Joey Sneddon. No answer.

After more than 24 hours, Joey approved a comment of mine that replied to another comment that had this complaint:

GNOME feels like a half-baked vibe-coded project. Now that I’m finally making the full switch to Linux, I had to abandon Ubuntu in favor of Kubuntu. Nautilus was one of the main reasons. I depend heavily on a robust file manager. I simply couldn’t justify putting up with such a mediocre file manager.

Here’s what my comment says:

Apparently, everyone bothers to add to Files/Nautilus features no other Linux file managers have, but literally nobody feels the need for a Compact List view, something that the original Nautilus had, and Caja, Thunar, Dolphin, PCManFM and PCManFM-Qt have (and even Windows Explorer has since… Windows 3.0!).

nautilus-compact-list has exactly 3 downloads. We must be living in Idiocracy already.

I don’t expect much feedback. The mere fact that Joey needed more than one day to approve my comment suggests that he’s biased against me.

I wrote to The Reg’s Liam Proven. This time, I got an answer! Two, actually, because we exchanged a bit.

He couldn’t care less (he was polite and didn’t use those words, but that’s the gist of it). OK, so he rarely uses Thunar’s compact list view. He prefers the detailed view since orthodox file managers like Norton Commander were in vogue. Since the mid-1980s, he’s used every OS in the known universe, and these days he’s into XFCE as far as Linux is concerned, but at heart he’s a Mac user, and Finder lacks a compact list view. He’s more into Miller columns if a third view is to be considered, which so far didn’t exist under Linux or Windows, but things started to change:

🤔

As I was visiting The Reg, I noticed another article by Liam Proven: Orbit Global Menu: A working global menu addon for GNOME. Obviously, as a Mac user, Liam loved the idea.

In the comments section, the first comment (by Neil Barnes) complained that he couldn’t get on with global menus. No wonder, once you know that only Classic Mac OS and macOS use it. Nobody else does!

Liam’s answer is complete nonsense:

Suggestions:

1. Get used to using menu keystrokes more.

2. Turn on mouse acceleration and get used to using it.

Before you or anyone shouts at me:

If you care where they are, this suggests you’re using the mouse for them. In-window menus are harder to hit; this is science — it’s called Fitt’s Law.

General principles here: If you’re using the mouse then learn to use it better. Also, for greater efficiency and speed, learn not to use it — learn the shortcuts because you will get faster and more accurate. We all want that, don’t we?

Pratchett’s Patrician hung mimes upside down facing a sign that said LEARN THE WORDS.

My version: LEARN THE KEYSTROKES.

My first comment, titled “The top panel should go,” wasn’t received that badly in some of its arguments, but obviously Liam rebuked my argument against a global menu and my rebuttal of Fit’s law’s relevance:

But the real ergonomics or human factors argument against a global menu is that many apps are used with non-maximized windows. We’re really no longer in the days of Classic Mac OS and 512 × 342, 640 × 480, or 832 × 624 pixels. When an app only takes up part of the screen, and the global menu is literally 3 inches away from the place where the app’s window ends, this forces the user to MOVE their eyes and mouse to an area of the screen they shouldn’t be interested in!

And no, Liam, this is not what Fitts’s law says! It DOES NOT say that a global menu is better! Especially not about moving one’s EYES!

But, of course, vultures and other Apple users are so used to this crap that they want it everywhere.

Read Liam’s reply in situ.

I replied to each of his counterarguments with my counter-counterarguments. Because there’s a length limit, I had to add two comments:

  • The first one answered Liam’s assertions in 6 points. I won’t copy it here because it’s a bit long.
  • The second one was going to be problematic because it reproduced an answer given by Gemini!

OK, let me show you the last point from the first one:

❻ Let me use an LLM-style question: do you remember why every single desktop defaulted to the Win95 paradigm/metaphor and why, before the Windows 7 “Superbar” and macOS Dock popularized the icons-only approach, text labels were the default everywhere?

– Because they were aiming for the undeniable usability leap of Windows 95 over every single previous desktop. When Matthias Ettrich founded KDE in 1996, and Miguel de Icaza founded GNOME in 1997, they recognized that the Windows 95 taskbar solved the “where did my window go?” and “which of these minimized windows is which?” problems by providing a permanent, always-visible, explicit state of every open window. Even today, if I have several Firefox windows and several office documents open, I don’t need to move a finger to know which one is which. Obviously, only the current tab title is visible, but it helps enormously.

– Because the workflow of a power Linux/BSD user who opens several terminals under a desktop environment requires them to distinguish “which is which”, and a text-labeled taskbar allowed the terminal to pass its active directory or running process into the WM_NAME property. Remember, everything visible all the time, no finger moved!

– Because X11 was and still is window-centric, not app-centric. This makes a window’s title (WM_NAME) crucial. If anything, grouping windows by application was quite a complex task in X11!

Now, here’s the second, shorter comment:

❼ I asked Gemini 3.1 Pro about your use of Fitts’s law to claim that Apple’s Global Menu is the better choice. Here’s its answer:

Your intuition about the fundamental flaw in how Fitts’s Law is cited today is completely backed by modern Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. The people using it to defend the global menu on modern displays are applying a 1980s equation to a 2020s hardware reality, while completely ignoring cognitive overhead.

There were studies that proved the global menu was superior, but context is everything. In the 1980s, Bruce Tognazzini (Apple’s first HCI employee) ran extensive timing tests showing the Macintosh global menu was up to five times faster to access than a window-attached menu. However, those tests were conducted on the original Macintosh: a 9-inch screen with a 512 × 342 resolution.

Here is why the math and ergonomics have completely flipped on modern desktop environments:

The Fitts’s Law Math Shifted

Fitts’s Law states that the time to acquire a target is a ratio of the Distance to the target divided by the Width of the target.

– The global menu argument relies entirely on the Width variable: because the cursor stops at the physical top edge of the screen, the target is effectively infinitely “deep.” You can blindly throw the mouse upward without overshooting.

– However, on a modern 27-inch or 32-inch monitor, the Distance variable explodes. If your active terminal or file manager is in the bottom-right corner of a 4K screen, dragging the cursor thousands of pixels to the top-left to hit “File” imposes a travel-time penalty that completely neutralizes the “infinite edge” advantage.

The “Eye Movement” Blind Spot (Visual vs. Motor Space)

You correctly identified the exact reason Fitts’s Law is an incomplete model: it is strictly a motor-kinematic equation. It models hand movement, assuming the user’s eyes are already fixed on the target.

It completely ignores visual search time and cognitive context switching. Moving your eyes from a non-maximized window at the bottom of the screen to the global menu requires a visual saccade. You are forcing the brain to leave the context of the active work, locate the target in peripheral vision, move the eyes, process the menu, and then re-locate the exact line of code or text you were working on back down in the window. HCI researchers refer to this as a “context break,” and it takes far more mental energy than moving a mouse.

macOS and the Global Menu

You hit the nail on the head regarding disruption—breaking 40 years of ingrained muscle memory is an absolute deterrent. But macOS is also locked into the global menu because of its fundamental architecture. It is not just stubbornness or fear; it is a structural necessity based on how the operating system handles applications.

Here is why Apple is functionally trapped with the global menu today:

– The Application-Centric Architecture: macOS is application-centric. When you click the red “X” to close the last window of a Mac app, the application itself usually stays running in the background. If menus were attached to windows (like on Windows or Linux), an app with zero open windows would have absolutely no user interface. The global menu provides a permanent, anchor control surface for the active application, regardless of its window state.

– Window Aesthetics and Unified Toolbars: Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines prioritize extreme minimalism within the window frame itself. Modern Mac apps merge the title bar, window controls, and toolbar into a single, compact vertical space. Forcing a traditional “File Edit View” menu bar into every window would shatter this design language, consume vertical pixels, and force a complete redesign of every native Mac application.

– The “HUD” Search Workaround: Apple implicitly knows the mouse travel is terrible on large screens, so they built a keyboard-driven escape hatch. Pressing Cmd + Shift + / instantly opens a search bar floating over the Help menu. Mac power users rarely drag the mouse across a 32-inch display; they hit that shortcut, type the first three letters of the menu command they want, and hit Enter.

– Third-Party Legacy Lock-in: Every piece of Mac software developed since 1984 assumes the existence of the global menu API. Transitioning to a window-centric menu system would break decades of legacy software, require developers to rewrite millions of lines of UI code, and create a fragmented ecosystem where old apps use the top bar and new apps use the window.

Apple effectively painted themselves into a corner. What started as a brilliant ergonomic advantage on a 9-inch screen in 1984 became a permanent architectural pillar of the OS. To remove it now wouldn’t just be disruptive to the users—it would require rewriting the core philosophy of how macOS handles running processes.

This one got 3 negative reactions when I wrote this post.

druck:

ai;dr

If people are interested in reading slop, they can ask an AI themsleves.

speleothem (replying to druck):

Ah! I got played – I blanked out on the Gemini Pro bit (see my response to ludditus). A good example how commercial LLMs are misleading 100% of the time. In hindsight not worth responding to, not even worth reading.

speleothem (replying to me):

Pressing Cmd + Shift + / instantly opens a search bar floating over the Help menu. Mac power users rarely drag the mouse across a 32-inch display; they hit that shortcut, type the first three letters of the menu command they want, and hit Enter.

Long-time Mac user* here. I’ve known about Cmd + Shift + / for ages. I use it once every few years, just to 1) check whether it’s there and 2) check whether it’s still as completely, utterly useless as it’s always been. It often comes up in lists of macOS keyboard shortcuts, but it’s only handy if your pointing device dies, in which case you have bigger problems to worry about. Maybe some other Mac users have a use for it, but I’ve always found it to be of zero practical use.

If you have a reasonably functional trackpad or mouse, moving the cursor to the global menu takes less time, takes less effort, and takes less context-switching than pressing a keyboard chord. And that doesn’t include the added time to type something into a search field. Yikes. Easier to just use a trackpad or mouse. Much faster and easier and less distracting. I think you may have outed yourself as someone who doesn’t use a Mac on a daily basis! Or maybe as someone who lives inside Emacs? That I can respect! (Emacs has no relation to Macs other than it can run on them and has a similar name.)

drag the mouse across a 32-inch display

Drivers and software for trackpads and mice are decent enough in macOS that screen size is irrelevant. I know it’s been an issue in the past in Linux, but macOS has been good about this for longer than I can remember.

*I also use Windows and Linux on a regular basis, but for the last 25+ years the greatest number of hours per day have been on Macs. And yes, I tried but never mastered Emacs. Likewise, the guitar. One of these years, maybe. Those of dextrous, long fingers have no need for any stinking GUI at all, and additionally have the gift of music!

If these guys are not retarded, then what is it that they are? Shitheads? “Commercial LLMs are misleading 100% of the time” because they don’t agree that the Global Menu is the best thing since sliced bread and tell the truth, namely that it’s a huge shit?

🤪

Once you are a Mac user, your brain stops functioning. Your reason ceases to exist. Whatever the Church of Apple says, designs, and sells is divine and infallible. “You’re holding it wrong” if it fails. Such oligophrenics can’t understand how absurd it is to have a window’s menu half a screen-length away from where the window ends!

Then, GNOME users, alongside Mac users, cannot understand the use of compact lists. Did they never see how ls prints its output? Haven’t they noticed that every other file manager has this view, except Finder, Nautilus, and Deepin’s file manager? And it’s as old as Windows 3.0 if we talk about GUI file managers.

Mac aficionados would rather die than admit that their love of the global menu is a habit, a reflex, and “this is how it is, and probably is preserved for backward compatibility or as a design choice.” And that for the rest of the universe, “one might need some time to adapt to this desktop metaphor.” Nope. Their god is the only true god.

Mac and GNOME users would also never try a compact list view, even if they visit a folder with hundreds or thousands of files, because “they never did it before, so why do it now?” They can’t possibly imagine how useful such a view can be at times! In contrast, I never said Miller columns wouldn’t be useful, but implementing them in a file manager that lacks the very basic compact column view is idiotic! The three fundamental views (Icon, Compact, Detailed), each with its own zoom level. Dolphin had them before thinking to restore the Miller columns. My nautilus-compact-list makes this possible in Nautilus. But nofuckingbody cares!

😡

Soon, there will be no usable desktop OS left for normal-minded people.

Windows 11 is already halfway there, into Hades.

KDE will most likely become the next Windows 11 someday. Maybe worse, and maybe sooner than expected! KDE Linux, which has enthusiastic reviews on DW, is a monumental pile of shit: Ventoy is not supported, many apps exhibit papercuts as a result of them being packaged as Flatpaks, only zram-based swap is supported, and so on. The KDE team seems to be actively involved in ruining KDE!

GNOME is the worst possible shit and the main reason “Linux on the Desktop” has ZERO CHANCE to happen.

Cinnamon is poorly designed. MATE is half-dead.

If XFCE breaks upon moving to Wayland, we’re fucked. I am fucked.

But Linux on the desktop breaks twice a year, anyway. And it’s going to get worse—immutable!

macOS? To join the League of Retards? Over my dead body!

I’m not going to become Amish, so what am I going to do? Well, maybe I die while Debian with XFCE is still usable on some hardware.

😡

Oh, I forgot! The desktop OS of the future is KORA, the Operating System for Intelligence. These retards are wrong on all counts but one: The Money is in the Desktop.

If people indeed become “AI-native prosumers,” then suicide is the only solution. Offline, unplugged, analog life won’t be an option unless a true apocalypse happens.