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I don't know, they sure look similar to me.

I can only speak about Gnome 2, since i haven't had a chance to play with any Gnome 3 desktops (been playing with Vector KDE Classic, its nice) but the problem with the whole menubar on top bit is cargo cult usability where you copy the look without understanding WHY it looks like it does. in the case of OSX it is a application oriented desktop, the bar on top is supposed to be universal and changes depending on the app. With Linux you have a window oriented desktop where you have each window with its on controls AND the bar on top. It just makes no sense from a usability standpoint.

Personally I'm hoping we'll see some real innovation, I mean here we are, with systems so insanely powerful they would have been considered supercomputers a decade ago, and what do we get? It either rips off OSX, Windows, or cell phones...ugh. While I can understand where the classic desktop metaphor came from its 2012 folks, surely we can come up with something even better from a usability standpoint. Sadly though as long as iPhone and iPad are racking up the sales I think the only "innovation" is gonna be cell phone ripoff designs, which of course make no damned sense on a 27 inch monitor and is generally worse from a usability standpoint than the standard desktop metaphor.

I hate to break the news to ya, but lets gets some facts straight, mmmkay? First of all CLI doesn't give you mystical gonad powers, second of all CLI is a GUI not any kind of mystical I/O, its just a very VERY primitive GUI, finally here is a nice article that points out better than I ever could why your CLI is a pile of old cat turds not that you'll read it.

In the end, know what it comes down to REALLY, I mean what is really at the heart of it all? Losers. CLI has become the haven of the maladjusted loser, because it gives them the illusion, and that's all it is, merely an illusion, of being better/smarter/more leet than someone else. And THAT is why you desperately hang onto a GUI everyone else abandoned over 20 years ago, not because it makes ANYTHING better, but precisely because it does not. Linux is the bizzaro-world where the more fiddly and PITA you can possibly make it the better because it "proves" that you MUST be smarter/better/more leet by virtue of making the damnd thing work. Well to stick that final needle in your bubble copypasta into a CLI doesn't make you leet, it makes you a script kiddie.

So enjoy the 1970s Disco Stu, the rest of us will laugh our collective asses off and enjoy our nice GUIs and smirk.

I'll get hate for pointing this out but moving the buttons without any real reason is a classic case of cargo cult usability where you change something to mimic something else without understanding the WHY it is the way it is. We are seeing the same thing in windows with the upcoming windows 8, where someone at MSFT said " Nobody buys our cell phones, people buy our desktops, if we make them both alike people will buy both!" without even bothering to find out WHY cell phones are designed the way they are (hint, its the screen size) and instead simply trying to mimic the look.

Why? Because you think having a throwback UI older than Disco Stu's wardrobe makes you "leet"?

Lets get one thing clear right off the bat, okay? CLI is good for TWO THINGS and two things ONLY and that is 1.-Repetitive tasks, and 2.-Scripting. Now how many CONSUMERS are gonna be doing either of those things? Do you think Joe the backhoe operator is gonna get his web pages by scripting a daemon like RMS does? Do you think Suzy the checkout girl is gonna spend her weekends writing Bash scripts? NO!

The ONLY PEOPLE who need CLI are admins, if you are not an admin? Then you really don't need it. sadly too many in the FOSS community have this "CLI makes me smart and stuff!" when in reality CLI blows chunks unless your tasks fall into #1 or #2 above, if they don't? Pointless, absolutely fricking pointless.

If you want to pretend its 1978, call people "hackers" like RMS does, and pretend that copypasta is cool? hey knock yourself out, its a free country. But do NOT bitch and whine when your numbers stay where they are, which is lower than the fricking margin for error. For the love of God guys, its been 20 damned years already and you can't even beat Vista, which was the most hated MSFT release since WinME, doesn't that give you ANY clue? How about the fact the only headway you've gotten at all is Android, which guess what? Doesn't use a CLI for shit.

Look its your choice, either play to win or get off the field. but having this frankly insane delusion that you can get the masses to "embrace the power of CLI" like its the God damned force has gone on long enough. the market has made it clear its a big DO NOT WANT, oh and before anyone brings up Powershell? Yeah that's a SERVER TECH that nobody has on a desktop. in fact since its been out I have yet to see a single install of PS in the wild, nobody uses it.

In the end you could remove CLI via a patch tomorrow from Windows and OSX and you know what? Nobody would notice. Remove CLI from Linux? You'd be damned lucky if it would even boot, it sure wouldn't be functional for any length of time. Its your choice guys, but don't cry when everyone has told you why nobody wants it and you refuse to change.

Uhh...this is the SAME guy that says everyone that doesn't worship at the feet of RMS is a "sekret M$ Ninja" that works in a hidden cove in Redmond to destroy FOSS. The guy is the new twitter without any of twitter's style, he just screams "Shill" while he craps all over himself with impotent nerd rage.

And as far as loss of FOSS "freedoms"...whose fault would that be? its because the FOSS products have frankly been piss poor knockoffs of other real products that we see ourselves in the situation that we are in. Frankly the FOSSies have had 20 damned years to make a better product and the ONLY time they gained is when google bitchslapped them and took Linux away from them and made an actually usable product. Hell Gnome has ripped off Apple's OSX so badly I'm shocked they don't just use their wallpaper while they are at it which is extra hilarious as Linux is a windowing OS while OSX is an application based OS so having a top mounted menu bar doesn't even make any damned sense!

In the end its not a "conspiracy', its not MSFT hiring Ninjas to kill FOSS, its piss poor half baked products that frankly never get any better. look at ANY forum after a release and see how many "update broke my drivers" post you see, i bet my last buck they'll number in the hundreds. there is NO QA, no QC, its ALL half baked and poorly built. they can get by with this in the server space because MSFT charges ass raping prices there, but that shit just won't fly in the consumer space. And if you think I'm a "M$ Ninja" for saying this perhaps you'd like to tell this Red hat developer that says the same thing only nicer he is a "M$ Ninja". For the record MSFT hasn't even given me so much as a T-Shirt, I'm simply not slurping the FOSSie koolaid. if a product works it works, if its shit its shit, and right now Linux on the desktop is firmly in the latter category. As for why read the link above, he lays it out better than I ever could.

Win2K was nice, win 7 was nice, XP was Fisher price but easily switched and XP X64 was built like a tank and again easy to skin. if you want to talk fugly though then lets talk metro, the half assed "Its a desktop, its a tablet, its half of one and half the other and neither really works!" which has to be the stupidest damned UI since MS Bob. I mean do you see Apple making iOS the new mac OSX? Nope they are working on making the APPS work on both because hey! That actually makes sense. I swear MSFT and so many of the other UI developers are stuck with the cargo cult mindset where they THINK they understand a thing but in reality they are just aping the most obvious layer which which just gives you a "kinda sorta but not really" half assed design. And can we find the fucknuts that came up with the bright idea that ALL OSes should be fucking cell phones and throw them under a bus, please?

The sad part is they have a couple of really good products they just don't have a fucking clue what to do with them. they should push back Windows 8 for another 2 years to give Windows 7 time to be adopted by businesses and they should go back to having the consumer and business desktop be two different things. no business is gonna want the social bling bling fucking trainwreck that is Metro as a business OS, they should spin off metro into an OS strictly for ARM and X86 tablets and phones and leave Windows for the desktop. But frankly win 7 is damned good, winPhone 7 is nice, they just don't have a single original thought on what to do with either. in a way it reminds me of the clusterfuck that was HP and WebOS, where you have this really nice thing but a company so lame they couldn't sell porn in a prison.

Actually if you'd have read the comments (as opposed to the tiny summary which is written by a guy that got hit by "Voldemort syndrome" one time too many and snapped) you'd see just what you are complaining isn't there, a nice long discussion of CLI VS API VS GUI for a job. Personally i have to agree with many of them that the current fad of using CLI in place of an API is just dumb, you have tons of programs in Linux that literally scrape CLI, now WTF is the point of that? But if you want something meatier here. Final verdict? if you're not writing scripts its kinda pointless as that is the big selling point of CLI, how scriptable it is. As one of the guys put in the comments of the first link "Its like building a robot to type on a keyboard, sure it'll work but its kinda pointless".

Sadly that pretty much sums of FLOSS desktop OSes at the moment, kinda pointless. See this overview or see this article. But in the end if you aren't scripting you simply are taking more time to do less, if that floats your boat fine but I can do the same trick with a simple link launcher program that takes arguments.

I have to agree. From the 1.x to the 3.x one could really see a solid progression of improvement, some big leaps, some small, but it was there. Then came 3.5.x.....OMFG. That is the only way I know to describe it...OMFG.

The amount of CPU spikes and memory suckage just went off the charts, testing FF with the wide variety of hardware I need to support (everything from first gen netbooks and 2004 era P4s to the latest multicores) I have found FF to be completely unsuitable for purpose on anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT. Anything less than that and the CPU spikes will take control away from the users, sometimes for as long as two minutes if the new tab contains video, and you can just let FF sit without being used and it will continue to climb on memory usage until it hits swap for no damned reason other than major memory leaks.

Personally I blame this on Cargo Cult Usability as they have seen Chrome growing in popularity and have decided 'hey if we ape Chrome we'll be popular too!" while ignoring the simple fact that it is the underlying webkit engine that gives Chrome its speed and power and trying to bolt chrome style additions onto gecko is a recipe for disaster.

Personally when 3.5.x came out and I saw how simply worthless FF was on anything less than a 3GHz I started testing various alternatives, finally choosing and moving my users over to Comodo Dragon which gives the speed of Chrome, the ability to function well even on netbooks, no Google phone home crap, and some nice security features. The sad part is by trying to ape Chrome they are running off their users to Chrome because they are taking what once was a great browser and turning it into shit. It is a damned shame as I thought I would always use FF, but I don't need the hassle of supporting multiple browsers on multiple chips and now that they pull the plug on the previous the second they release "teh new hotness" I don't even get time for testing before they are borking shit all over again.

You know the browser is in bad shape when even my dad, who can't fricking STAND change, and will put up with half ass software rather than switch, is telling me "Son you gotta find me something else, this new Firefox is just too damned slow" and he is on an AMD quad with 4Gb of RAM! So long Moz, and thanks for all the fish.

What is sad is it is a classic case of cargo cult usability where they try to ape the looks but not what makes the Chromium based browsers great, and that is Webkit.

For example I have to support users on a wide range of hardware, from circa 2004 office P4s to first gen netbooks and nettops to the latest multicores and since 3.6.x Firefox has frankly been unsuitable for purpose on anything less than a 3GHz P4 with HT and 2Gb of RAM and even then you better close that sucker out daily to keep FF from slamming the swap. Compare this to what I've switched my customers to Comodo Dragon (Chromium based with some nice extra security features) and even on the 1.8Ghz Sempron I use as a nettop the Dragon is fast, it NEVER loses responsiveness, doesn't slam the CPU and I can leave it on for days because unlike FF when I'm not doing anything with it the memory footprint stops growing which isn't the case with FF. And this is of course while having low rights mode on Win Vista and 7 which FF still hasn't implemented.

I personally think it is Gecko. I just don't think the engine is able to take all the extras being bolted onto it like separate plugin containers. The guys at Moz can ape Chrome all they want to, it isn't gonna turn Gecko into Webkit.

Because, and I'm sure to get hatred for pointing this out, a lot of the developers out there seem to suffer from Cargo Cult Usability where they implement basic ideas without understanding the underlying structure which is why you saw a previous poster talking about "dept store knockoffs" because when you implement some of the front end without the underlying structure it feels like a badly done copy.

Take Gnome for example. they have ripped off (homage, whatever) a lot of the Mac GUI without understanding how the structure ties in which makes it 'off". For example they have the traditional Mac menu in the correct placement but their DE is windows based and Macs are application based which causes it to make no sense. Since Macs are app based all apps use the same menu at the top whereas with gnome each app typically has their own menu layout or at least did last time I tried it with Ubuntu 10.04, which makes having the top menu kinda pointless.

With KDE they seem to follow the Windows model but yet again they don't implement the features, just the look or at least that was the case last time I tried it (again with Ubuntu 10.04) because while they had a lot of the familiar layout they didn't have breadcrumbs or Readyboost or superfetch or many of the other features that makes Windows more usable.

So I think Canonical is in the right here, even if it falls flat or takes a while to get solid, in that the way to go is to forge a "Linux centric" model where you have a completely different GUI that won't make people feel "cheap knockoff" when features they are used to in Macs or windows aren't found or are different. By switching to Unity+Wayland they will have a different "look and feel" to other OSes, thus removing some of the preconceived notions people have when you use a Windows or Mac centric layout.

I don't know about that considering that IE and Webkit are currently safer than Firefox for all of those running a modern version of Windows (Vista and 7) thanks to the fact that both IE and Webkit support low rights mode and Firefox doesn't. In fact the only way to get Firefox to actually function with lower rights is to disable the security features that makes low rights mode secure in the first place!

Now will I ever go back to IE, or offer it to my customers as a recommendation? Not a chance in hell, after spending years cleaning up the mess that was the abandoned IE6 there is too much bad blood there, and thanks to Webkit I don't have to. But there are millions on modern Windows versions and for ALL of them currently IE is safer than FF by a long shot and if they promote that? I could see many simply sticking with IE rather than switching.

It is just common sense, why would you run the browser at a higher permission level than required? The browser is running unsigned third party code from the wild and wooly web, the lower the rights it has the better. Why Mozilla can't manage to add support after 4 years is just ridiculous. I'm currently typing this on FF 4 (which looks like a bad Chrome ripoff to me) but without low rights mode and now that the Chrome extensions have all my must haves like ABP and Forecastfox means this will probably be the last time I use FF or hand it to my customers.

It is a shame, as I've been a FF users since the early days, but what good is having a modern OS with enhanced security if the programs that benefit from it don't actually use it? So while I won't be going to IE I will be saying goodbye to FF for Comodo Dragon which gives me all the speed of Chrome and low rights mode without phoning home to Google.

I really had hopes for FF 4, but it seems like they are spending their time aping Chrome instead of simply making FF better. As XP dies out more and more people will be able to use the security features that FF simply doesn't support. What is the point of aping Chrome (such as tabs on top, no file/edit/view, bookmarks on the right corner) if you don't copy the important stuff like the increased security? Feels like cargo cult usability at play to me.

And I'm sure the fanbois will waste their mod points, but it doesn't make 2+2=5 nor will it change reality. You wouldn't run your OS as admin, would you? You agree that least permissions for the task is simply best secvurity practices, yes? Then why would you insist on running a browser that runs at higher permissions and in fact dies hard if you try to run it with less permissions than the user? Seems like a bad design problem to me, maybe that is why Moz still hasn't added it even after 4 years, Gecko is simply not capable of running with lower permissions.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I've had arguments here with guys saying "Oh they're not ripping off Chrome!" when I said from watching FF lately it smells like cargo cult usability which is EXACTLY what you are describing, where they've ripped off the superficial stuff but not the underlying functionality which I'd argue they simply can't because Gecko simply wasn't built for it.

For example I bet if you were to go over the MozDev blogs before Chrome you wouldn't see squat written about plugin sandboxing, maybe as a long term possibility, but nothing definite, same with JavaScript benchmarks and radical speedups.

But when Chrome came out with those they said "Me too!" only the problem was Gecko can't really do that without a rebuild so you have what I'm experiencing now where using the EXACT same extensions I have in Chrome FF will begin sucking RAM like a drunk sucking MD20/20 and after using a half a dozen tabs for half a day even with trim_on_minimize FF will suck up nearly the entire 1.5Gb of RAM on my nettop while flash runs like crap sandboxed, while Chrome has NO problems on the same machine doing the same tasks.

I'd say the FF devs really need to watch this "me too" Chrome ripping, because if they don't it'll bite them in the ass. If I wanted Chrome there is Chrome,Chromium,Comodo Dragon,SWIron, etc and all of them run better than FF aping Chrome. So instead of trying to match Chrome on every bullet point, why not just be the best FF you can be? Work on making the extensions framework even better (because lets face it, it is the extensions that keep folks on FF) while lowering memory and CPU usage and keeping things tight and unbloated. Quit adding crap to the main browser and leave them as extensions/plugins like your original mission statement to make a low resource fast browser with easy customizing. Let Chrome be Chrome, you be the best FF you can be. Is that really so hard?

Sadly I think you are right. Looking at the latest beta it looks so much like a Chrome ripoff they may as well just drop Gecko for Webkit. I could understand if they made a change because it gave the user a feature that had been requested, but this strikes me too much like Cargo Cult Usability where you just ape the other guy without really understanding the reasons behind the design and that just isn't a good sign.

Can you be more specific? On what are you basing your accusation of FF devs not knowing the reasoning behind UI decisions? What features does FF4 ape?

It's been a while since I've used FF but if FF4 does achieve feature parity with Chrome, I might consider going back. I would count emulation of good UI and features to be a Good Thing. Definitely not a Bad Thing and a reason to abandon a browser.

Sadly I think you are right. Looking at the latest beta it looks so much like a Chrome ripoff they may as well just drop Gecko for Webkit. I could understand if they made a change because it gave the user a feature that had been requested, but this strikes me too much like Cargo Cult Usability where you just ape the other guy without really understanding the reasons behind the design and that just isn't a good sign.

I mean what are they gonna offer their users besides a "me too!" laundry list of appearance and features that will always be behind the one they are trying to ape? And as a FF users if I wanted the Chrome UI why would I just use Chrome or one of the million Chromium based browsers instead of FF?

That is why with the last couple of updates to the 3.6.x branch and after looking at FF 4 I've started testing Chromium based Comodo Dragon. I mean if they end up turning FF into a bad Chrome ripoff why wouldn't I just use a Chromium based browser, where with the looks I get increased security thanks to low rights mode on modern OSes?

I've always been a Mozilla user, since back in the days of the old suite. But I really don't like the way the browser seems to be headed of late. It is becoming seriously memory hogging, slow to react on netbooks/nettops, and the UI from the looks of FF 4 will just end up a bad Chrome ripoff. I'd hate to see FF die out, but it seems to me they are becoming the very thing they split off from the suite over, a bloated slow mess. Maybe one of the FOSS groups can fork it and maybe go back to the old days of just a slim browser that the user decided what extras it had via plugins?

First of all, WTF is it with the jack off font? You think you're hip making the thing look like a bad bash prompt? Second of all my money is not "tied into MSFT" as I give customers what they want instead of trying to force them to do things my way which is what Linux does. Here is my last conversation with a FLOSSie: "My customers do NOT WANT bash prompts and trawling forums! This is a problem!" /FLOSSie/"but CLI is powerful!/ "My customers DO NOT WANT and don't care! Make it simple and easy to fix problems!" /FLOSSie/"If they would only embrace the power of bash/ walks off in disgust at brainwashed FLOSSie

And here I am talking about desktops and the magic bullet problem, and you bring up...servers? Who gives a fuck? Symbian is number 1 on mobile phones! Yay! Doesn't have a damned thing to do with what we are talking about, which is why Linux is sucking on the desktop, how even machines built with Linux strengths in mind still won't sell with Linux, and how OEMs found out the hard way that Linux on the desktop is a deathtrap. I'm not the the only one saying these things by a long shot, yet we get ignored or ridiculed by a group that brags they got 1% while companies walk away in disgust.

It is a good thing the community "supports" Linux, because if it were a company it would be in chapter 11 right now. And don't waste your breath bringing up server companies because we are talking desktops, so stay on topic. You would think that after sitting in dead lasts for years someone would wake up and ask "what are we doing wrong?" but instead of finding out what the problems are and working to correct it we just see the same tired memes about Linux Security and how Linux is more usable and even you yourself trotted out the just use Wine and Linux supports more hardware along with hurling insults! You know why the call them trademarks? Because it is the same tired old shit we hear year after year AFTER YEAR. Nothing gets better, nothing ever changes, Linux still sits in the basement.

I am a businessman, I WANT to sell your product! I want and believe in free market competition! But instead of working to make a better product, we get instead 6 month release schedule (you HONESTLY think any real QA can get done in less than 6 months? Because I got some swamp land in Florida to sell you buddy!) and insults thrown whenever anyone points out the emperor has no clothes. But don't worry, you can keep your elitist attitude and insult throwing. Myself and every other business that has tried selling your product at retail have realized Linux is a dead end and walked away. Walmart, ASUS, Best Buy, Staples, nobody will carry your product. When no American retailers will touch your product, even for free, it is time to take a hard look and see what you are doing wrong. Will anyone do that? Nope they will delude themselves into thinking CLI is bet

At least I'm not the one jumping into discussions of enterprise OS management to brag about using an OS that is simply a poorly made ripoff of OSX.

I had an idea to fix this:

http://piestar.net/2009/06/24/idea-fixing-the-email-system/

There are many better ways outside micropayments - which would add up on a large system (such as a forum or social networking site).

Your not alone! http://piestar.net/2009/07/16/apple-the-new-microsoft/

I know, it's not like MS had a 3d compositing demo, complete with wobbly windows, over six years ago ... wait, they did. http://piestar.net/2009/03/25/compiz-microsoft-and-originality/ The amount of original things that Linux has come up with I can count on the fingers of one hand.

I've been saying this for _years_. I would write a long winded rant here but since I have written a blog entry on it ages ago you might as well read it there - Clicky here! Needless to say the guy is spot and the fact that there is now over 300+ comments on this thread means that he certainly touched a nerve.

More like Windows 95 since after all this time it seems that Ubuntu has only managed to create a bad knockoff. :)