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New Desktop for Linux
naasking writes, "A new desktop project has been started by former Apple and AOL employees. Their goal is to create a graphical environment for Linux that "your mother could use." The company doing it is called Eazel. " It also is supposed to be based on GNOME. CT: Several people noted that this shell is destined to be the GNOME 2.0 shell/file manager.
So, do you catch all your own fish? Grow your own vegetables? I assume you don't. I suspect you have certain expectation that the supermarket will have the food you want and that it will be easy to find and purchase.
You may be particularly adept at finding your way around a computer. Others find farming, acting, writing, teaching, building, healing, cooking, etc. comes more naturally. I sincerely doubt you're spending a lot of time learning all the nuances of those aspects of life so why should they have to deal with learning all your skills.
Get over yourself and stop equating computer knowledge with superior learning skills. There are some very bright people who haven't a clue about file managers. Why should they spend their time figuring it out when they could benefit society more by doing what they do best?
Any idiot can come up with an easier interface than what Linux has now. But can they make one that my mother could install? Will they handle LIBC and other library incompatibilities?
Berlin not bloated??
There's nothing in berlin's design wich makes it inherently more streamlined. Rather the opposite, with CORBA being the base (every widget is a CORBA object). And i don't think that the relative small team behind Berlin will do better than Xfree in that respect.
But it's certainly exciting. Berlin's strength isn't efficiency, but power. Imagine applying arbitrary linear transforms on whatever graph node you wish. Want to rotate your netscape window 20 degrees? Do it. Want to zoom your terminal about 5%. Do it. Everything can be antialiased an sub-pixel-positioned.
http://developer.eazel.com/screenshots
Wrong about Netscape on Linux. Wrong. Wrong. NS is more unstable on Win32, especially if you haven't removed Internet Exploder.
Yes, NS has been incredibly unstable on Redhat and other distros in the past. This could be traced to some dependencies being mishandled by RH's supplied packages (75dpi fonts). Followup on your installs and you'll see that those packages have been updated--for just this reason--for a while now. I use NS 4.7 and it can run all day long on Linux without crashing. And my fonts aren't ugly at all. In fact, Netscape using XFS +truetype fonts (some of which are freely downloadable from Microsoft) has unquestionably better looking fonts that Netscape + TrueType fonts on Macintosh OS-8.x.(Don't know about OS-9's trutype performance) Mozilla isn't going change squat about plug-in support on Linux--only the spread of the Linux platform and knocking a few heads can fix that. Mozilla may help in that regard by being componetized, something the Netscape management refused to provide before, and being componetized, will be used in other people's products.
As for financial apps, well if Moneydance doesn't cut it, you could go online like businesses do. Free online, very comprehensive, personal finance management for your Mom is available from FNCentral If she can handle Quicken she can handle this.
X is the blue whale of software bloat. We don't need new window managers running on top of X. We need a streamlined replacement for X itself.
Go to the Gnome website. It's in their mission statement. THERE IS NO DEFAULT WINDOW MANAGER! It's just that distros like RH default to E, and E was the first fully GNOME-compliant WM (probably thanks to the fact that Raster was working at RH at the time. :^) Just my $0.02
> "your mother could use."
I've seen this on slashdot quite often, people talking about stuff "your mother" or "your grandmother" could use. I've never given it a second thought....until...
A few days someone (male, but not computer geek) told me about attending a meeting with a presentation of a some new gadget. "The guy was always saying stuff like 'easy enough for your mother', and when he was talking about skilled users, suddenly it was a he!" he said to me. It was clueless, he thought, and I tend to agree. If someone isn't a computer geek, computers can be hard to use, but it isn't generally harder for women than for men. Still, we tend to make this a gender issue by (almost) always using out poor female relatives as worst-case user examples.
Are we techies often unconsiously gender biased like this? I'm afraid the answer is probably yes.
One and the same. Old x-head from within Netscape.
In X, you middle-click to paste highlighted text, or if you have a two-button mouse, press the right and left buttons at the same time.
"no they don't have to use linux, or an inferior
OS, just suggest Be to them, and all is good."
AFAIK, Be doesn't have very many apps, and that may be a downer to regular Joes. Bear in mind that I say this as one who's been occasionally curious about the BeOS, but never gotten around to using it, mainly because of the worry I've described, so someone who actually uses the OS part or most of the time might correct me here.
Is that the same guy who used to work for Netscape on Mozilla...?
;)
If so there's hope for the project
Lounge singer? BB King is a lounge singer?
Heresy!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
2) It is NOT being developed by Apple or AOL. These are a bunch of people who used to work for Apple and AOL, but neither company is itself directly involved.
4) Once again, this is NOT Apple doing this. But I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people from the now-defunct Human Interface team there are now working on it.
I believe the article said former employess of Apple and AOL which implies that Apple and AOL are probably not involved. I fail to see where the misunderstandings are in these point.
Speaking of creating misunderstandings, the speculation in point four could very well lead to far worse the misunderstandings than those potentially laid out in the original ariticle. Who is to say that any of these people has ever designed a UI? I didn't see a list of resumes on the web page reporting the projects to which Apple/AOL projects they have worked.
My wife uses Linux all the time, and she's about as computer-literate as the chair she sits on. :^) The thing is, I set it up (with less fuss than I had doing a manual install of Windows.
:^)
:^) Basically nearly as simple as Windoze.
:^) to do autodetection of new hardware.
:^)
>4.Get rid of GNU. Yeah, that's right, drop the
>command line utilities that you know and love,
>and lose all that
>power. If granny can't remember her password
>how's she supposed to remember arcane commands?
No, no, no. My wife doesn't use these commands; yet, they're still there. How's that? She uses commands she *needs* to use, usually KDE/GNOME commands, with some commercial stuff like WordPerfect thrown in for good measure. I'm the one that usually does some voodoo on the machine with command line tools.
So how would you propose getting the machine going when something catastrophic happens-mimic the Mac, and make a graphical user interface System floppy/CD? This could be done--without eliminating command-line tools. I see absolutely no reason for eliminating them--merely make easy-to-use graphical alternatives to them.
>5.The gui must be the OS. This means, goodbye X.
>Most of the newbies who ask me for help request
>help with
>setting up X (well, networking comes close). X
>must disappear, or it must become so much a part
>of Linux
>that it's just there, and it just works, no
>matter what video card, RAMDac, or whatever the
>user has on their
>machine.
Well, my suspicion was right...and again, I say: no, no, no. The main problem is the fact that video cards aren't that well-supported. In fact, on distros such as Red Hat, usually if your hardware is supported, it's fairly simple to set up (simpler, in some cases, than getting your card going under Windows--I know my Voodoo3 was.
Simply making X--or any other graphical system--part of the OS, as you suggest, would bloat the kernel and *raise* the level of complexity of the system.
And as far as updates go, I've got a Mandrake 6.1 system, with a 7.0 CD in the mail. Whenever I want updates, I just run a nice little graphical manager that basically runs RPM for me. Sweeeeeeeeeet.
You make an interesting point--it would be advantageous to offer installations that automatically login a particular user. Such a system would necessarily open up security holes galore, but, then again, it's the same story on a number of OSs. Red Hat, Debian, Corel, Mandrake, are you listening? This is a fairly trivial change to init scripts, AFAIK. You'd need some way of SUing to a default user account (it'd still be nice to have individual users--perhaps model this on Microsoft's "just type in your name, optional password, and have at it" approach? Then the system would have to start up X, and hopefully X was properly configured under the install program.
Maybe distros should have new install floppies--one for the initial install, of course, but one that could also be inserted (yes, we in the know don't have to have this functionality, but still
This also brings up a question, which is sure to be controversial: what sort of level of complexity would it require to use Winelib to connect an X server (such as a modified Xfb server) to Windoze drivers, and is there much interest in this? Yes, I know, non-Intellers: this idea sucks for the Mac, Amiga, Alpha, and any other kind of alternative box you can think of. It's just a blue-sky dream at this point.
Just my $0.50.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
You should ask yourself why X has been around so long, and when so much activity focuses on interfaces and so little on fundemental windowing software. Because X is the right thing. There little left to add. It is not bloated. My Xlib has 391 calls, and half of those are rarely used.
Also, there's a particular train of thought which really irritated me. Allow me to refute it:
, but what happens when JoeRandomNewbie loads up his pretty desktop and it proceeds to segfault? What if XDM drops him to a standard login prompt like when Windows can't load all of its dll's?
How does a having a CLI available *hinder* an new user? Don't disable it, just hide it from them.
If you've got missing/corrupted system files under windows, and the GUI won't start up, you are just as screwed as if you were running Linux. And at least with Linux, you still have the possibility of getting something productive done... in text mode (lynx, pine, etc.) Hell, with a mac, if the GUI won't start up you are dead in the water. Your assertion that a CLI hinders new/untrained users is invalid: in all cases (windows, linux, mac) the non-techie user will simply end up calling tech support.
The CLI doesn't hurt anything if you don't use it, and it's indispensible to have as a backup.
I thought one of the selling points of Linuxconf over other admin utils was that linuxconf DOES allow you to also edit the config files by hand!? I jump from linuxconf to text files and back again all the time, with no negative side effects.
I've seen way too many monstrous Linux desktop screenshots to think of Linux as a home to "quiet, neutral [desktop] environment(s)."
As a professional, you can switch right now to whatever desktop environment you like. Just be sure your professional apps will run once you get there.
Aqua isn't "insulting." And you've never used it to do any work, so you can't really say what it's like. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want 3" square icons, but I'm also pretty sure that they're not mandatory. Think Demo.
I bet getting involved with Eazel's project is as simple as clicking.
They also use it because (at least in Australia) Microsoft gives them a folder of about 60 CDs full of all kinds of wonderful Microsoft products. It's good to assimilate them young.
E can be made to operate lightly by disabling some of the more intense eye-candy. I have it running /w gnome on a 486 laptop that only has 40m of ram and it's just as responsive on that box as windowmaker or afterstep, and it only really hits swap once more than three netscape sessions are open.
>Go between KDE, GNOME, E, Nautilis, FWM....
Desktop Environment, Desktop Environment, WindowManager(plus), Browser(file, web, etc), WindowManager...
Now what were you saying?
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Oh my GOD! they killed kernel!
You BASTARDS!!!!
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
i say Kernel 2.4 for president! who is with me?
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
how hard confusing can it be to go to a projects website to read what an application does? i guess its easier to just sit there and make assumtions...
:)
its called "choice," if you don't like it, thats also your "choice"
isn't that great? you don't pay a penny for it, yet people complain about how so many things there are...
/me shakes his head
(if only slashdot supported irc commands)
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Also, if this leads to a better wm-spec, the world will be a kinder, happier place. Where all programs and windowmanagers can get along and share their bells and whistles, creating a joyous cacophonic r(o)ar.
But, I think some of upper management is still trying to shake this Linux thing off. I can't wait to show them this, just to make them lose sleep. Oh and now open source projects with $10 mil. in VC off the bat... that's what I'm talkin' about.
> - What's the key combination to close a window?
:)
> Depends on what you mean. Alt F-C to close a document. Alt-F4 to close the entire application.
Ctrl-F4 to close a window, surely? Well, mostly...
> - Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
> Usually under the game name. Where did apache choose to install itself?
Or under the publishers name, then the game name, then a menu with the help file, uninstall, half a million web links, and buried somewhere in there, the game, in one of a variety of modes.
Hell I'd like an interface my 'technical' manager could use without coming into my office every few hours for help. Just an install program that didn't require you to make any decisions whatsoever would be nice because people won't make those decisions, they'll hector people like me to make them for them.
Wow... It's been a long time since I posted... You don't seem to get it... Windows and mac OS don't work out the box... they come on the box so you don't have to worry about the install... I've been using Win9X since 94 when Chicargo was first released to developers associtated with MS. It has always been a pain to install on anything but middle of the road hw. Any HW you have that is either: really cheep or really expensive requires manufactures driver disks... NT is the same way only worse if you have an unsupported disk controller. Most people don't ever setup windows them selfs or mac OS... Thats why most new computer come with a restore disk not an install disk. It fdisks and formats the drive and blows the "standard load" on the system matching the exact config from when the system was shipped.
"... That probably would have sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas..."
-Buffy Summers
Say Goodbye to Iowa
Oh joy. Former employees from Apple -- a company with an interface dumbed down to the point of unusability -- and AOL -- a company that dumbs down the internet to the point of unusability -- banding together to lobotomize Linux. Great news, I guess... anything that makes it easier to disengage the drooling millions from the great teat of Microsoft. At least with Linux, when they dumb it down, I'm not obliged to follow suit. My bash prompt will not go away because someone else decided it was unnecessary.
OTOH, the rush to World Domination has often led me to wonder -- will the presence of the clueless millions "improve" Linux the same way the opening of AOL's floodgates "improved" the Internet? You do realize that they're not going to clue in when they switch operating systems any more than they clued in when they went online, don't you? To them, this is just an extension of television.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Hmm...
On my system, ls -l looks like this:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 username group fileSize date name
so that `ls -l | awk '{print $3}' | grep "juser" `
is just juser repeated as many times as there are files owned by juser. In short, your command doesn't work.
It seems to me you've just made an argument for a GUI interface.
Yes!!! You are right on the money with that one!
I'm convinced and what I'm trying to say below is that what "mere mortals" want and need is something like what you're talking about. They don't want a beige box, or any box for that matter. They just want something that does the job with no muss and no fuss.
I believe that web-enabled cell phones and PDAs are steps in the right direction even if we're not there yet. A new Window Manager/File Manager/Eye Candy for X is not the holy grail of UI.
Soon, if you believe the hype, computers will be everywhere and then mortals won't have to think about using the computer. They'll have "smart appliances" which is all they really want or need. What is really required is for the OS to become invisible. No UI is the best UI!
Yeah, I could see someone creating something like the "secretary" you describe above and making a killing with the home office crowd. Just think, if it could screen for junk calls and junk e-mail, too. Hmm.......... (?) - the lightbulb goes on!
Now, is there a link for the MIT Oxygen project that you could share with the rest of us, or are you gonna make us hunt for it?
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Say what you will about Microsoft, but they employ numerous people in the usability group. The programming group works very tightly with the UI group. Do you think Windows has a bad UI? Think about what would happen if they did not have a usability group. Do not take my post as pro-Microsoft. My academic background is in Human-Computer Interaction, and I have interviewed for a program manager position in the usability group, so I have experienced how they operate in almost first person. Their usability group is already working on the version of Windows that will come out after the next version.
The fact that they are not looking for HCI folk is extremely disturbing. Having good looking, robust, object-oriented, enter-buzzword-here, widgets is not going to make a good UI.
Perhaps they already have HCI people working for them, and they are not looking to hire any additional personal at this moment. If so, please disregard my rant. :)
Cheers!
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
I gotta admit. I liked the Magic Link because it was *cute.* It wasn't economical and it wasn't viable. My Palm Pilot is certainly more useful in the raw sense of the term. But not as endearing.
:) I run Linux on the blue G3, but the iBook hasn't been indoctrinated yet.
But then again, I own a blue G3 and an iBook.
I use Linux almost all the time now, but I still think of the MacOS as "comfort food." Then again, if I use it for any length of time, I feel constrained by the interface and limitations. I much prefer that of MacOS X Server (i.e. NeXT).
_Deirdre
>
I have - Debian. It has an update-menus tool which is used by the package manager; any X utility or application that is installed will automatically install itself into the menu system in a consistent location (there is a policy which specifies which applications should go where). Not only that, but it is windowmanager-independent so that the same applications are available in the same places regardless of whether your users use GNOME, KDE, Enlightenment-without-GNOME, fvwm2, windowmaker, or any other windowmanager that provides for application menus.
This is all automatic and transparent and happens whenever a new application gets installed.
If the GNOME and KDE people want to provide their own mechanisms for doing this sort of thing, that's great, so long as they don't mess with a system that has been working wonderfully for several years now (since well before GNOME or KDE ever existed).
Stuart.
I would just like to take this opportunity to plug Abiword. For me, it is by far the most usable wordprocessor around for Linux. While it doesn't have some of the features that are found on other products (like page numbers) it is making rapid progress. The binary tarball is only about 5 megs. And to the best of my knowledege, we are the only one that has an overline feature. Come check it out. You'll be converted.
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
Wouldn't it be better to just finish the ones we already have? Then maybe grandma could use it.
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
Yes, thats exactly what I was thinking of, but I wonder if the Quake engine would be better suited to the task, after all it is optimized for speed.
I suspect that the Link you provided would be made to run as an extension to explorer, or intendet to replace explorer in windows...
I have to believe that Carmacks coding is more precise in this matter. (Not intended to be flamebait, just IMHO.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
As a UNIX user, I notice that you are trying to give Linux an MS Window like GUI.
:)
I don't like that.
You don't have to. If you don't like a particular GUI don't use it. No one is trying to force a particular user interface on anyone. The thing with Linux is that anyone who can code can change it as they see fit.
Why does a "Geek" need a "file manager" (or whatever you call it, what you're crying for) ?
It would be fun, thats why. I don't need a reason, its my opinion.
If you don't like the MIT's X System, you're not a "geek" or "nerd".
I never said I disliked it. I never said that I would even be using this window manager at all. I think that something needs to change with the UI for Linux before more people will begin to adopt Linux.
I may be wrong, but you sound resistant to the changes that are occuring with Linux. I admit that its not nearly as much of a tighly-knit group of users as we used to have. Still, some of us are beginning to sound like Amiga users, which is unfortunate (one of the reasons that the Amiga unfortunatly died). It does us no good to staunchly stand and proclaim that "Linux is unchangeable!" Linux is open, openness is about change. As soon as we begin to resist change we begin to die, we fail to adapt, we fail to be open.
I think that a newbie GUI is needed for the people who just want a stable OS that allows you to browse the web, Email, word-process, edit pictures/make cards, and play the occasional game. Its not fair to subject my mother to a CLI. She just does not understand it. All she wants to use her system for is mentioned above.
I guess the comment would then be that she does not need Linux, True! She does not, and that's why she has Windows on her machine. However, if we want to see some large scale adoption of Linux amongst the masses an easier method of interaction (one that the users are familiar with) is needed.
But it's not something that a real UNIX pro would use.
I doubt it is intended for this audience.
Cheers
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
This is one of the things that is needed for Linux. Its pretty well known though. I suppose that people will complain even more that there are too many WM/GUI's for Linux...
Even if this does not take off, (and I think it will, no SHOULD) it creates more "competition" which results in more choice. This is great.
--------------------------
Slight divergence:
A "GUI" that I would love to see for Linux would be one based on the Quake 1 source, a true 3D environment that interacts like quake. Bringing up windows would bring up 3D windows in the world which you could move around or have on "walls" of the level.
Just something I thought would be cool (although I cannot see it being as user-friendly as this "Mac" GUI idea) Still, it would be very geeky cool.
(I know that SGI had a similar thing for IRIX as seen in Jurassic Park, but there is AFAIK nothing like this for Linux.)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I can understand that.
I am not so much of a Unix geek as you, I am not old enough to be one, I got my first system at the age of 7 and it was a TRS-80, there was no way I could have used Unix at that age, the only things that had it were servers. I never got into Unix until relativly recently (4 years ago) using Solaris at college.
I understand where you are coming from, and how much it must suck for newbies like myself to come along and mess up Unix. Still, I dont think it will go away completly, BSD is still more Unix like than Linux (because it is a Unix in its own right.)
I still know a guy that *REFUSES* to code in C because it "creates too much bloat". He codes in assembly. He does not code overly fast, but his programs ARE fast.
To each their own I guess. Unfortunatly changes favoring the masses will happen whether we want them to or not. I *LIKE* a CLI interface, but from what I can tell I expect to see a voice-activated interface very soon. I say this because people want it. If they want that then system specs must increase, and bloat will increase too.
What can we do if people want this? Not much I guess, but we are in the minority.
So it goes.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Gnome and KDE are windowing environments that are meant for more up-to-date systems. The easy thing to do if you don't like the bloat is simply don't run the environment. You can run lestif, afterstep, or the command line (don't take as being a command line bigot here... i'm just pointing out alternatives).
If the applications you want to use only work with KDE or Gnome, then there's a reason to upgrade. If they do work under other window managers, then you didn't really need KDE or Gnome in the first place.But if you want all the spiffiness that the later window managers offer, you'll need to get a machine that's up to the task of that.
I'll disagree with you, then! :)
If switching between OSes could be as simple as it was for Mac users to switch to completely different CPU architecturers, a compelling argument could be made to switch to Linux.
If Linux had seemless compatibility with 100% of Windows applications, but the underlying OS was much more stable, people would flock to Linux in droves. Developers could then create native, Linux versions of their applications as they saw where the real demand was. And if people were already using linux in order and running windows applications on it, they'ed be very likely to begin investigating "native" linux applications that took further advantage of the services provided by the OS.
I can't imagine a reason why developers would want to target the capabilities of their software to those of machines that are already out dated.
Yes, Linux can run on 486's from 1992. So will all the rest of the software from 1992. But why constrain software that's written in 2000 to the capabilities of a 1992 machine? All this extra horsepower that 90% of us don't need might as well be used in making a system that's more attractive than what was considered state of the art in the early 90's.
Actually, a friend of mine just picked up a Mac Portable (pre-powerbook), running Mac OS 6.something.
Anythings better than that these days... YOu can only run application at a time, plus desk accessories. Double clicking an icon opens it. Double clicking a name sets you to rename it. Duplicating files creates "Copy of " files, so they don't appear in order anymore...
But back then, Windows wasn't where it's gotten today... But don't give System 6 too much credit.
I went out and interviewed at Eazel (they turned me down tho *doh*). Talking with Andy was enlightening to say the least. He has a lot of brilliant idea's about the project. I would definitely not say it's dumbing down linux, just making linux less work. Which I believe is something that is definitely needed, it took me about 3 hours to setup the development test box at my current company just in download and compile time. Now for every patch and re-compile it takes my time, and the CPU time. With Eazel that can be backgrounded taking the user-time out of it. Not sure if this has been said yet, but from my understanding it will be the replacement for GMC in Gnome 2.0 Take care, good luck to everyone invovled
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Got a great software wiard in the lead, Andy Hertzfeld. The one who's cludge, switcher, left us wih the get-info boxes that are the bain of the MacOS today.
Should make many great things happen.
I can't get my mother to quit using vi . . .
you don't like dropping it in the trash can?
ok. press "command-y" or choose "put away" from the file menu.
Or in more recent macos versions, go to the special menu and choose "eject disk", or control-click on the disk and choose "eject" from the contextual menu.
__WHAT DO YOU WANT APPLE TO DO??__ Even if throwing it in the trash is not the most intuitive way, what would you suggest they do _instead_?? you apparently dont' think a menu item or a contextual menu is "intuitive", because these are both in the OS.
The trash can eject thing is in fact just a remnant of "ghosting", a really nice idea that allowed you to do something no UI before or since has let you do: copy between two floppies without using a hard disk as an interrim. but in the end, because people like you were unable to handle using "put away" instead of "eject disk", apple removed this feature, and you can no longer ghost. So now "eject disk" makes it go away altogether. are you happy now?
what is your PROBLEM?? that dragging it to the trash should not be in the OS at _all_? are you upset simply the option is there?
Perhaps i'm overreacting to this. In fact i _know_ i'm overreacting to this. But it just upsets me when people bring out the same two or three stupid non-issues whenever the mac os is mentioned, and by the way of these two things that they call problems because they have misinterpreted them, claim the entire interface is worthless.
if i were going to post something saying "In Linux, there is a CLI, so you can't drag files between windows to move them around on your hard disk" (which is obviously untrue) i would get the crap flamed out of me.
But cdmrtaco can post in the _article subjectline_ "you have to drag a floppy to the trash to eject it in macos", which is just as blatantly untrue, and nobody minds. For God's sake, if you're going to trash the mac interface, target the actual _problems_, not rediculous things like "there's no right mouse button". (so buy a two-button mouse and map rightclick to control-click!!)
ok i'm done ranting now. you can all go back to your homes now there's nothing more to see.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I don't believe that you understand Linux or Unix at all. Some counter examples to your argument would be TiVo, Cobalt, Corel Linux, MacOS X, NeXTStep, etc. There is no reason that a Linux based system could not be as easy to use (In fact Unix has a great history in this area, which people often forget) as you wish, as well as having all the (Object Oriented) power under the hood that is the CLI. MacOS X Server already implements the MacOS style over BSD Unix (By way of OpenSTEP), what is easier to use than that?
Point by point:
Checked out Corel Linux, it almost asks no questions during install. Much easier than Windows. What about Lothar the Mandrake developed tool that does automatic hardware detection and module loading.
Right on, brother. I hate having to take apart a computer and writing down chip ID's and serial numbers to try to find out what driver belongs to a particular card. Fortunately this does not often happen with PCI/AGP devices because their device ID's are well documented. In fact it is emminetly possible to read all PCI IDs and match with drivers/modules, not only kernel modules but for X (XFree86 4) modules as well. Take a look at lspci some time.
As far as hardware support: When Linux/Unix/OpenSource is the dominate model then the manufacturers will have to write drivers for the dominant system first. Until that happens we are going to have to rely on vendors publishing specs and code, there will therefore always be a lag between new hardware and drivers. It will probably also mean that new drivers will not be able to use all the nifty (3D Video/Audio, etc) features right away, if ever. Definately a problem (at least while Linux is not the dominant system)
BIG mistake. Especially for home users. Even if there is only one user account, with no password, you still have the seperation of user versus system privilages, you can also more easily hide the inner workings (make it so that the user cannot normally cd above /home, for example). It also more easily allows you to have a maintenance contract with a third party, who could log into your system to do work and fix things if/when they need fixing. Personally I would like built-in smart-card authentication (Think SecurID, etc), the system sits at the xdm/kdm/gdm window, you insert your card and you are logged in. No passwords needed and it is probably more secure (as long as you don't lose the card), it is also easier to use than password auth.
Annother big mistake. There is no reason that the user would be forced to use (bash, awk, sed, grep, cat, etc) these tools but they are so darned useful, for system maintenance and also as a user, it would be a shame to throw them away. Just tuck under the hood, you can pull them out when needed.
This should not preclude a simple, text based, interface, something less demanding on the hardware being correctly installed and configured. Ability to configure (with a full featured environment, like Unix) from a network, USB, serial/parallel connection is a plus (for when things get _really_ hosed). For most users, though, it should boot into a graphical environment, this does not in any way preclude X. X may be an old protocol, but it keeps re-inventing itself to keep from being obsolete. Berlin or some unknown Display GhostScript model would be best, but this is a ways off.
Really X is about as, or more, complicated than the kernel of the OS. Integrating the two would drastically increase the number and severity of software failures. Alot of work needs, and is being, done to make the XFree86 implementation of the X network protocol more stable, alot of work is, and needs to be, done to make it more hardware agnostic (automatically detecting and configuring without user intervention). This does not preclude the use of the X protocol though, the implementations just need to keep getting better.
Damn Straight! Fortunately in the Free Unix world there is more graphical environments than you can shake a stick at. I personally like BlackBox window manager with the KDE toolkit. There is more work (KDE, GNOME, XFCE, GNUStep, etc.) being done in this area than in any proprietary system. I have complete confidence that the next big thing in UI development will happen here because the cost of tinkering to "just see what happens" is so low. When that paradigm (ooh, I used a buzzword) shift happens the OpenSource community and Linux will be at the forefront.
Anyway, there are several very usable GUI environements for Linux, just look at SuSE and its umpteen window managers/desktop environments. For new users I would recommend WindowMaker/GNOME, WindowMaker/GNUStep, XFCE, KDE (esp Corel Linux configuration), QVWM if they have Windows experience. Really, though, for the greenest and most fearful users, locking a system down so they only have access to what they need makes for great fault prevention (Think MacOS). Real users can exploit every capability of the system while new users can have unobtrusive training wheels attached. This of course (because of different distros) does not preclude advanced Guru users from the system they want (think Corel/Debian relationship)
Everyone is working feverishly on easy install tools, that war is almost won (actually many Linux distros are already easier than Windows to install, the fact that Windows is pre-installed is the only thing that is truly easier). Configuration is a slightly different matter. When a system installs it should ask the user some simple questions about how they want to use the system and how they want some basic things configured. The trick is to not go overboard on pre-written config tools (that become an unmanagable mess), and to make them integrate seemlessly with hand configured files. Give the users the options they need to get started, if they need something more complicated don't make a GUI tool that will get in the way. If, however, you can make a GUI tool that can handle the verbosity of options in your standard Unix service than so be it, but be very careful because Not Quite is worse than Not At All.
We are not deluded,it is being continuously redesigned based on the requirements of the people who use it. Whatever the future of OS design holds, Linux and GNU will be there.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Heck, my Grandmother is a computer programmer, and is making my Grandpa (who is retired) take courses at UIUC. She is probably the main reason I am interested in computers. I remember very fondly playing Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and MS Flight Simulator on her old PCjr. Heck, one of her boys is a SysAdmin and the other an Engineer at a chip fab.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Hear, hear. Where I work we still have some apps, like personnel databases, on the S/390 (IBM Mainframe). It takes the secretary about 0.23 seconds to find something, she just pops open a 3270 emulator window and flies through the interface.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
I've had good luck with CUPS the Common Unix Printing System. It supports LPD, SMB, AppleTalk, TCP (JetDirect), and the new IPP RFC (Internet Printing Protocol). Also the company that makes it Easy Software Products makes a graphical configurator (not needed) and a set of high quality print filters (very nice) based on GhostScript and .ppd files.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
This is weird but very similar to how New Deal Office (Former GEOS/GEOWorks) works. It has 5 user levels, at the lower level you get less options in most programs, in the higher level you get all the options. That way users don't get confused when they start out but they can step up as they go along (oh, and the user level is adjustable for each major program individually).
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
Motif has been around for a long time.
That doesn't make it less ugly or less
in need of replacement.
I have said this a zillion times: I want
X windows without any networking code.
I want windowing environment where
not a single bit is wasted on stuff like
"export" command. Assume the user has one
and only one display and render to that.
NO OTHER OPTIONS!!!
No, it damn well not have any networking code,
or more to the point, all networking code
should be separate. It should be trivial to
compile X for one display, two display,
n displays, two computers over peer to peer,
or n computers over LAN or whatever. The point is,
X is bloatware because it compiles EVERYTHING
in by default. And because code is not modular,
it too contains EVERYTHING by default. Now do you
see the problem? Or are you too brainwashed by
Larry Ellison, like the poster above you.
As for why, windows used to run much faster
with respect to graphics and rendering than
even your puny twm with X on same hardware.
I am not talking about quake performance here,
but simple window drag operations.
So I figure until X with basic window manager
can beat pants off every other system they better
not be focusing on any more functionality. And
maybe removing some of that functionality would
speed up the system. And from what I understand
the real performance leader they should be gunning
after is Be, not Windows, although just catching
up with Windows would be nice.
you mean Berlin ??
that project seems pretty interesting, but I am not sure it'll support window manager or one standard interface.
They want the stability and the low hardware requirements ...
The so-called "low hardware requirements" pretty much fly right out the window when attempting to appease the masses on the "ease-of-use" issue. To most people, "ease-of-use" means good looking gui tools. And good looking usually means lots of pixmaps, themeability, and so on. When was the last time you used a pixmap-intensive Enlightenment theme on a 486dx2-50 with 16M of RAM? The "low hardware requirements" of linux stem naturally from the fact that the GUI is not required. But for the "ease-of-use" people, the GUI is required.
I agree with the rest of your comments, but the hardware requirements are a red herring for this issue -- when you get Linux/X to look and fell like the "ease-of-use" people want so that they can easily move from MacOS or Windows, the hardware requirements are not going to be much different than those required for Windows (higher, oftentimes -- unless you're on a beefy machine, E+GNOME runs slower than windows, MacOS, or BeOS).
(Warning, blatant plug to follow)
fsv - 3D File System Visualizer
This was released just last month. It's LGPL'ed, built on OpenGL/GTK+, and while it lacks many features of the original fsn (and isn't even at 1.0 yet) it sports a slicker interface, and not one but two distinct approaches to visualizing the file system.
There have been some noises to making this into a Nautilus optional view mode, which would be pretty cool (since the program would then have a real file manager backend, and what with XFree4.0/DRI coming around the bend...)
iSKUNK!
Gnome Team: Those people working on all parts of GNOME. Like, um, what did you think I meant?
And, I'm sorry but when somebody from the 'Gnome Team' goes off and says 'hey we're our own company now and we're going to one up GNOME with our own version....' sounds like a fork to me.
Check their page, what mention of their project being part of GNOME do you see?
I didn't see any....nor any mention of it anywhere else....
Blech. Signatures.
I'm confused. Their site is pointless. developer.gnome.org has something about their 'friends at eazel.' but nothing else....
Isn't nautilus just another file manager type deal for GNOME ala gmc? I guess I don't see the need for this, really, unless they can do it better and faster than the GNOME team.
*shrug* enlighten us anyone?
What exactly are they doing here!?
Blech. Signatures.
You're not understanding what I am saying. I am sure that you tried to read the man pages, and that's a step that most new users don't even take. They see the command prompt and panic because they realize that they're not sure what to do and are therefore very uncomfortable with it. I am not talking about the people who try really hard but fail in UNDERSTANDING the docs, I'm talking about the people who make no effort to even LOCATE the docs. These people are in the majority, and making everything easier to use isn't going to help anything because these people will still be lost.
amen.
I'm glad _someone_ can understand what I'm saying. By clicking the mouse for the user, we're not helping them or ourselves in the long run. We're only encouraging people to become less self-sufficient.
Furthermore, how the hell does this qualify as trolling????
Ctrl-p, Ctrl-w, and Ctrl-s work for almost everything (exceptions excepted, of course :). There are many valid criticisms to make of the Windows UI (close button right beside maximize, for example), but those don't really fly.
That's just the window manager. It's not Gnome or Nautilus.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Thanks, I;m not going to give on this (I need a server..) Its just going to take some time to get used to installing an configuring.
Windows crashes regularly (I develop on NT sometimes.. uggg)
I'll get on some mailing lists, and look into some usenet groups.. Lotus has some really good ones for notes, I can imagine that the linux ones are better.
My point was that power requires learning..I guess it is exponential, in that you have to learn a lot more to get the stability. I don't like knowing only a fraction of it (aka enough to be dangerous). I'll keep working at it.
I'm new the linux stuff. I've used unixes (AIX, ,VMS, Solaris, SunOS, Digital UX) as a user, but I feel like I have to be a sys admin to figure out all these linux configurations. What goes where /bin /usr/local (although no less cluttered than windows). where is that x windows config file? If they can make it easier bless them.
I had to set up an NT server at my last job. It was way easier (although much less powerfull). What is the price of power though. How much time do I have to spend learning linux to make everything easy..? Maybe its just tht linux documentation that is confusing but I don't think it needs to be as difficult as it is.
I'm pretty familiar with Unix, heck I even know how to pipe. But this difficulty in administoring linux is going to hold it back..
I'm running suse 6.1 on virtual PC. I miss the mac extension manager that tells you everything thats loaded and run on boot, and you can shut it on or off with a click. I find it hard to tell linux to stop loading httpd and ftp servers. (keep in mind I've only been at this a couple weeks part time.)
Well couldn't you say the same about driving a car? How intuitive is that? If people had the same mentality about car driving, they'd expect to be seated in the car by some kind of lift, having the doors automatically shut, and then be put into some artificial sleep and then be awoken to sweet music at the time of arrival.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
This is not awkward, but people need to drop their conservative ways and try to adjust. Otherwise, nobody's going to force this technology on you (not in Linux anyway), so you're free to change to any other way of managing and viewing files.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
http://terror.hungry.com/products/Ywindows/ ...
... but it does not seem to have been updated in quite awhile
--AP
Caldera has come pretty dipping close. Most fun I've ever had installing an OS.
2.Hardware support for everything. Drivers need to be there for the hardware and they have to be installed automatically. Don't make the user guess what brand of video or sound card they have, 'cause generally, they don't know.
This is a moving target. And Linux hackers do a valiant job of keeping up.
3.Get rid of the UNIX model.
4.Get rid of GNU.
Get a clue.
5.The gui must be the OS.
6.This GUI must be slicker than whale shit in an ice flow.
The last four points have been a description of a Macintosh. If that's what you want, it is there for you, and OS X comes with a BSD kernel.
7.Did I mention that this stuff must work, right out of the box?
Are you listening to yourself? You want a pre-installed system: "out of the box". If you have this, points 1 and 2 are covered.
Granny buys her system at the local consumer electronics store. It comes pre-installed and the OS is already configured for the hardware which comes with it. If she is like most users, they won't ever add any additional hardware, and they'll get someone to help them install any new software because they are afraid the "Next..." button might not be the right one to press.
As for 3, 4, and 5, have you even considered how widely linux is deployed? It runs on everything from an Itsy and single-floppy routers to some of the fastest supercomputers in the world. Please, please, please keep the desktop in perspective.
What the world needs is for you (yes, you) to stop griping about what Linux does not have, and write it yourself.
Apple is really putting their foot in their GUI with Aqua (pardon the akward metaphor...). It is an insult to professionals who want to get work done in a quiet, neutral envirnonment. I for one do not want to be amused by my OS, i want to get work done...
If these folks do it right and Apple continues turning the Mac into a MTV OS, there will be a LOT of professionals switching over to Linux. I will be one of them.
Although the project is GPL, are they also opening up the project? that is, how can i get involved???
adrien
Point and Grunt
Me too! When you're using GNOME, you don't really need all the extras the E gives you - launcher, pager, epplets, etc. Sawmill is *just* a window manager, so it's generally much lighter.
See you, space cowboy...
Would she be any worse at it than my father? Let's keep pushing those stereotypes shall we?
Supermount that's distributed with Mandrake 7.0 "Air" is excellent. It removes the "mount /mnt/cdrom" and "umount /mnt/cdrom" from casual use. Very nice - should be standard on all distros as far as I'm concerned.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
yes.
Now *why* should *Linux* go down the "easy" route? Who says we need it on every desktop?
Never mind 'stop whining', go back and re-read the Advocacy HOWTO. I think you'll find it a far cry from the "every desktop" and "M$loth must die" attitudes.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
It is fair to ask questions about use, but not about your computer. In other words, it is alright to ask if they want to use gnome or kde as a desktop, but the next question should not be "what is the scan rate of your monitor".
Hardware support for everything. Drivers need to be there for the hardware and they have to be installed automatically.
The problem is that new hardware comes out daily. It is a literally impossibility to do this unless the producers of said hardware start supporting Linux directly. As it is, not even Windows NT can support USB, and it's been out for years! I thoroughly agree that all hardware should be plug and play and work out of the box, but Linux can not solve that answer alone. Hardware manufacturers are the real culprits.Get rid of the UNIX model. Yeah, no more user IDs, passwords or any of that. It can be too confusing on your grandma to have more names and numbers to remember.
What you are describing is not the Unix model, it is the security model. You can easily drop security restrictions by having a default user account and an easy interface to add new accounts.
Get rid of GNU. Yeah, that's right, drop the command line utilities that you know and love, and lose all that power. If granny can't remember her password how's she supposed to remember arcane commands?
Again, what does GNU have to do with granny remembering arcane commands? There are some great user interafaces built on top of GNU software. The key is to give the user a great GUI on top of the command line utilities. If you like using the whiz-bang GUI, more power to you. If you want to drop out to a shell, go right ahead. Granny isn't stopping you.
This GUI must be slicker than whale shit in an ice flow. Yeah, it must blow all other existing GUIs out of the water for ease of use, configurability, etc.
All a whiz-bang GUI does it provide eye-candy for the user and sell more chips for Intel. The GUI doesn't have to be whiz-bang, it should be transparent to the user. Users don't want to watch stuff, they want to use the computer. Thus the name user. Eye candy is great, and I love gnome, but it is not a requirement for a next-generation desktop.
John
Opinions change daily as new information arrives. Stay tuned.
Isn't that what FVWM'95 is?
Probably don't even have to do all the things the MS versions do either, simply the functions the users in question actually need.
2. Hardware support for everything. Drivers need to be there for the hardware and they have to be installed automatically. Don't make the user guess what brand of video or sound card they have, 'cause generally, they don't know.
There are NO operating systems which have these, the only way you get close is by having a system supplied preinstalled or by having a suitably competant person do the installation. There is also the issue that drivers require information from hardware suppliers, which some refuse to supply. Anyway no-one insists that "grandma" fixes her own televison or does her own plumbing... Installing an operating system is a skilled job!
There are issues in this catagory, e.g. Email programs which rather than integrating with pre-existing MTA's force the "POP3 and SMTP" type paradigm. Thus requireingi, otherwise unnecessary, user configuration.
i run linux on 386DX-25 machines (slackware) and it runs fine. perhaps youre confusing a bloated distro with E with linux ? linux is a kernel dimwit.
why ? the network is the computer. without networking code X is useless. no more remote apps, no remote console logins to machines without monitors, no X terms etc etc.
CLI mode gets old real fast ? good god man - thats the only mode worth running it in. dont blame us for your lack of basic skillz to type ls -al when required or run vi (or pico my favourite). just because youre a twit - the rest of us arent.
Most apps use the same keys- Some rouge apps decide that they're better, and use their own keys. (When I program In Windows, I try to stick to the common 'Standard)
But perhaps we need something else. Perhaps We need to Ditch X, all these WMs and start from scratch (It sounds really drastic-but it seems like the only way) How about an Open-Source API that's STANDARD throughout all Platforms, configurations, etc, Handles Printing, graphics, 3d Stuff, etc. We can take the good from X windows (client/server, remote display), the good stuff from windows (there _is_ good stuff, like the componentized archetecture- The registry is a beast, but it does it's job well.). The current state of Xwindows/Linux is managable, but if we want to add users to the linux userbase, stuff like this has to be very simple to do.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
If they get it working by year end, it will be a new GUI/OS shell for the next century. It's still the 20th Century, after all, no matter that we had a minor technical glitch a year early.
And, to be frank, my Mom could use this. She's so non-techno, and she's not alone.
Will in Seattle
I remember talking about this out at Linux World Expo w/ some GNOME people.
This isn't news?
I think the armada of trained mammles (damn spelling) need some time off to catch up to the news they have missed... hmm?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong... but I'm sure this was in the GNOME news.
If you lika me like I lika you...
I have to take exception with the characterization of mothers as technologically ignorant. This is a sexist and agist stereotype that simply does not hold true. I went back to school to be a programmer when I was in my 40's and found myself informally tutoring many of the young (predominantly male) students in my classes. I am the primary resource for my family (kids, husband) on all computer-related issues - a mother who actually knows a lot about this stuff - imagine that!
I know I got a late start in the technology business, but certainly have as much aptitude and savvy as most of the people I have worked with. I am just beginning to learn about Linux in all its incarnations, but don't feel like it has to be dumbed down for me...
There is consistancy. Each answer would do the requested task, in almost every program. And there are multiple ways to do it that would work in almost every program. Now that's consistancy.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't think there are too many companies (besides maybe Lotus, who suck) that make the keyboard commands obscure. That wouldn't help people or make people want to buy their products. Windows does have consistancy.
Someone once said that developers of Linux shouldn't waste their time on Linux. Instead, he said that they should spend their time improving Windows.
/. comments made it pretty clear how silly that argument is.
The
If a product starts out flawed, why waste time fixing it? It doesn't take re-inventing the thing, but then again, if you don't how will it get better?
Try it, you'll like it.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Hmmmm. As computer literate as a houseplant... Well, I wish you and your fiancee' a lot of luck, and I hope she has a sense of humor......
Doesn't GUI stand for graphical user interface? Your talking keystrokes, my man. The keystroke for printing in windows is point and click on the little picture of the printer.
Dump on windows all you want but you're out in left field like many old school unix/linux users on GUI. I won't get into the mouse vs keyboard arguement, but I have had several GUI classes and there ain't nothing intuitive about sequences of keystrokes. For new users, all tests show people learn with quickest with the mouse, (except little kids who have problems with mice not built to their scale)
You are asking the wrong questions.
- I like pudding.
This is exactly right. X is a dog, speedwise. And it's greatly touted advantage -- that I can run a program from Moscow via a desktop in LA -- means squat to the majority of users. (Moreover, the right way to do that today is to use a web browser... or, all else failing, run X inside an otherwise faster and more efficient environment.) Oh, well. Most Linux users seem to think that because X is associated with Unix it must be good. But that just isn't true.
OK, now try to put that into a script that takes the username as an argument so you don't have to do all that mouse dragging every time you need to do this. While you're at it, make your script be careful not to delete open files. Throw in a switch that will e-mail the user to let him know his files have been deleted. If you manage to do all this in a graphical interface, then please find a way to schedule the thing and make it also act only on files older than 1 week. When a GUI is able to do that (and other arbitrary similar tasks) I'll retire my command line prompt.
Granted, Gnome and KDE are crappy interfaces, but I'll have a crappy interface that still lets me do it the old fashioned way if I want to than a shiny new one that insulates me from the computer.
Why so obsessed with grandma/mother/other generic computer illiterate?
In the short term they may be a market, but in the longer term (10yr+) everyone with any real stake in society will have some level of computer fluency. Most new jobs are computer based, the educational systems will follow. In the long term the 3Rs will become the 1C. Today if you cannot read or write than you will be precluded from using many modern "tools" (try opening a bank account). In the future if you can't operate a computer you will be similarly deprived, regarless of whether it is right, wrong, or fair.
I don't believe you 'got' what I was trying to say. Let me spin it around.
...
In the future some people will be left behind. They not have minimally sufficient computer skills, and will be marginalised by society, I.e. no access to 'basic' services (see the illiterate bank account example).
Not a utopian vision, but IMHO a likely outcome. It is not an issue of OS (op-sys) or OS (o-source).
The point is that catering for low skill users (grandma) will become a moot point. Low skill users will become a marginalised group and left behind.
You are absolutely correct when you ridicule the "merged harmoniously" concept. There will be more divergence from a user POV that will leave low skilled users on the outer.
Currently a entry level user must develop some basic windows and win apps skills. In the future everyone will be expected to operate divergent interfaces on their phones, car, PDA, stove, fridge,
To sum another way: In the future you won't let your dvd blink 12:00, because that would indicate your probably not capable of setting up your on-line PDA or operating your car.
So who cares if grandma can't use Linux, her ilk wont matter 10+yrs down the line. Of course grandma can choose to learn.
The pointy haired suit wearing VC(s) would be much more willing to give out money to someone looking to make Linux easier to use, rather than FreeBSD. Linux is the hottest, latest buzzword, whereas FreeBSD is a small whisper in the corner.
Right now, that's just how it works.
Sosumi. just kidding. DONT!
I agree with much of what you say.
Bulletproof install: works if you know the configuration ahead of time. Barring that, the RH 6.1 install didn't hassle ME any. Win95 installs were usually fine, but I've had them go south on me. Not fun.
Getting rid of stuff:
No one seems to complain about the MS Dos prompt option, which is still on Win98 (I haven't seen 2k). Stripping stuff that you already have that is being adopted by others (separate user profiles in Netscape, Windows, etc.) is marketing suicide. Like you say, "power users" can know and use the cryptic command lines to get stuff quick. The GUI idea succeeded because normal users don't need the intricacy, but need the usual operations to be easy and impossible to forget. GNOME's explorer utility, and in fact all those GTK apps, are the beginning. I think it might surprise some of us how satisfied "granny" can be with a GNOME desktop with some handy icons in the taskbar.
The GUI must be slick:
Everyone is for this, but I don't actually think it's a big deal. The GUI is supposed to be easier than typing. Easier in terms of knowledge and simplicity. That's it. I guess that ease-of-use, but easiest to use is awfully close to Macs: one button, one purpose, click everything that moves.
Complication is death for GUIs.
Yeah. If you have to read the documentation or pay for support, they didn't make it easy enough to use, now did they?
I said most of the time. That is the exception, not the rule. If I sat and thought about it, I could come up with a few more examples, but in general it's like WinZip:
The Wizard is simple, but doesn't do much.
The Classic interface is powerful, but is hard for newbies.
You rarely get both. Which is really too bad, but that's life.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
Simple: Easy to use IS good. Mind you: Powerful IS good too.
Most of the time, however, Easy to use != Powerful.
The apparent goal here is to get Linux on every desktop, and the way to do that is to make it easy to use. The nice thing about Linux is that, even after all of that, if you would rather do things the hard way, you CAN. While it would be nice to get my network card to work without using ifconfig (damn PC card, even in Corel Linux I had to write a script that called ifconfig to get it to work on a regular basis), it's nice to know the option exists (or, I would have to open the COntrol Center every time).
Linux has the potential to be easy to use and powerful, all at the same time. So stop whining.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
I would hate to build anything on top of Gnome.
I have used gnome in the past from time to
time, but eventually something always happens
that places Gnome in some wacked state from
whence I can never return. Gnome resembles
an M$ product -- sex appeal sans stability.
I was talking to the sysadmin who installed it last night and she said it was actually fairly simple to do. She installed it mostly because she preferred it over CDE but it has become rather popular in the CS labs. I think she said she only installed it about two weeks ago. FYI, one (or more) of the CS/SE classes at RIT uses kdevelop and it is also installed in the CS labs.
CNet doesn't seem to respond. I wonder if some evil frustrated teenager somewhere has just sent instructions to bomb news.cnet.com down to all the machines he has compromised...
I like and use KDE all the time, the other desktops I've tried are mostly more beautiful but otherwise crap, kind of unintuitive, too much animations and other useless shit, panels behave strangely etc. At least with KDE all the machines behave the same or can easily be made to behave. I think KDE is easy, too, and anybody that can use Windows could live perfectly well with KDE. The silly part is, there are practically no useful applications that support KDE. I use Gtk+ stuff all the time.
I just hope this new "even-your-granma-can-use" desktop isn't just a Windows-like theme on Gnome. if it's something as well-organised as KDE, AND theme-and-stuff-compatible with Gnome, then I think it's good news.
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
Actually, I have a copy of The Adventure Shell, dating from 1984. it's basically a shell wrapper that emulates a text adventure. Might need some work to make it work right on a modern system, I don't know. If someone wanted to fix it up some, it'd be fairly easy, though probably just as easy to reimplement.
.less .lessrc .logout .knapsack .limbo
Anyway, here's some sample output:
Welcome to the Adventure shell! Do you need instructions?no
You are in your own home. The room looks empty.
There are exits labeled:
advsh
as well as a passage overhead.
-> look
The room contains:
.inputrc
There are exits plainly labelled.
advsh
... and a passage overhead.
->
It's available here:
ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/shells/advshell.shar.Z
There's another file in the same directory called advsh.tar.Z, which is apparently similar, though written in C, and which I haven't looked at.
Do you want configurability or vendor lock-in? Geez.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
One of the reasons I don't use linux very much is that it lacks the ease of use I need in a desktop system. Sure I can install a dozen different utilities and end up with something that is almost as easy to use as Windows or a Mac, and keep up with the updates to those programs, but it is far more efficient to just run Windows, especially now that Windows 2000 has created a much more reliable (In relation to Windows anyway, it still sucks compared to Linux for reliability) desktop OS. If someone could get me a linux distro where EVERYTHING, especially driver installs and file management were as easy as they are in Windows, Linux would become my primary OS on my non-gaming machines right then and there. And if someone knows of such a distro, please let me know!
No decent web browsers is another reason I rarely use linux. Netscape blows ass in any OS out there. Opera is cool, but not all that friendly to neophytes.
Like it or not, IE 5 is probably one of the best web browsers out there. It is still a big bloated mess tho.
Hopefully if enough people BUY Opera for linux, at some point it will really go from a great web browser to a great web browser that anyone can just start using as intuitively as he would use IE 5.
Although a big download, StarOffice makes an excellent browser uner Linux. It even handles fonts very well.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I've already been improving gnome faster than the gnome team. I'm currently killing all the poorly choosen keyboard shortcuts in gmc and giving the menus a more consistent layout, modeled after MacOS'. You'll see these things, plus spring-loaded folders (another mac goodie) and anything else I decided to include sometime in the near future. I might even code a set of *real* control panels if I have time. It's about time we had mac people get involved in the shaping of linux's user interface.
Eazel is indeed working on GNOME itself, it is not a new desktop project.
Sorry - I wasn't sure where the line came from, but it sounded lounge singerish.
In future usage, I will be sure and credit BB King. :)
I've configured zillions of ascii-based configuration files. As BB King once said, "The thrill is gone, baby."
Better? I should make that sig someday.
--
Why is this? Why is the prefured start menu configuration Start/Programs/Company/Application?
It makes much more sense to group your applications by function and not by the company that makes them. Why put Age of Empires next to MS Word? Why not put it next to StarCraft?
Therefore GNOME does not "have" fonts. Neither does it force you to change that background. Or for that matter that style of titlebar (use a different WM theme). Don't like the amount of icons on the screen? Get rid of the one's you don't want. Of all the bad aspects of GNOME, and that screenshot you could have picked on, you picked on the ones that either don't exist, or are not GNOME's fault.
The fonts are the reponsibility of the X server, (or XFS in newer distros). Short of dumping X there is nothing GNOME can do about it.
GNOME should however adopt an official WM, and work on making it integrate well with GTK themes. Sawmill is a prime candidate for this.
At the end of the day, it's just one screenshot. And one which was designed to demonstrate GNOME's component technology, not the beauty of the GUI. The Mac OS X one on the other hand was designed to do just that. Compare like for like if you're going to criticise. (That's not to say however that there are no criticisms, or that all of your criticisms aren't valid.
Incidentally the GNOMErs do know that the UI aspects need work. That's why they've started up a project to improve them. How about lending a hand? The GNOME development site is here.
Well, cars have automatic transmissions now, that seems to make driving a bit more intutive.
:)
If you compare a car from the 20's or 30' I think you will see that they have become more user friendly. Should we still be out in the front of the vehicle turning a crank to get our car started?
I'm still waiting for a car that I can push the remote button to start it from my keychain so it will be warmed up by the time I get to it.
Power brakes, antilock brakes, starter motors, Auto transmission, power steering, etc..
--
--
Umm, I can actually use something like this for my wife. :) I had her using a text based menu, which she didnt like. A GUI based menu would be even better.
--
--
I agree with Cheerio Boy here.
Open source is great, I want it to be the future. But the learning curve for someone who hasn't had a full on computer background sucks. I've got lots of graphic designer friends who think the concept is cool and would love to move over to Linux/ Open Source/ GPL software but when they find out what you have to do to get it to run on your computer (usually a Mac for them) they freak, and say "actually I think I'd rather stick with Adobe/Microsoft products, dealing with them is manageable".
Me, I'm a librarian turned academic researcher who loves the whole Open Source movement but finds the idea of working out how to get my modem or printer working with Linux instead of Windows or Macs absolutely terrifying (found some HOWTO's and that did it for me). Somebody write some user friendly interfaces and manuals and you'll find an awful lot more sympathisers turning into active users.
(rant) I understand that some humans gain satisfaction from being part of arcane groups and don't actually like freeing up knowledge.(/rant)
As they say in the library world - everybody is a beginner in something.
Maybe these dudes should plan a field trip out to Xerox headquarters before they really get going on this....just a thought -I have two brain cells remaining, and they are fighting....-some guy with two brain cells
Damn straight :) I don't have a mouse at the moment seeing as my (very-old) PC is on its last legs, and one thing I can say about Windows is that I can do everything w/o a mouse. There are keyboard shortucts for almost everything in the basic GUI, and with MouseKeys turned on I can control the pointer with the number pad. Without these features I might as well give up using it altogether.
to paraphrase a master:
project forking leads to overlapping effort. overlapping effort leads to
incompatible systems. incompatible Systems lead to the Dark Dide.
my plea to the developrs of this system: don't fork Gnome. Gnome already has
a huge following and a lot of work has gone into it. it's bad enough having
to decide between KDE and Gnome. adding a third will not only make it harder
for new users to choose, it will alienate current users.
speaking as an avid gnome user, can honestly say that gnome is a good idea
that really needs help. a lot of work should go into unification of design,
and i hate to mention it, but speed too.
a powerfull interface is what makes an operating system worth using. unix
worked for so many people in the beginning beacase of how easy it was to
tell the computer what you want it to do. now that the industry expects you
to do this graphically, we need people like you that know how to make
powerfull GUIs.
i've never used AOL, but if the number of people that use it is any
indication, you folks must know how to make a computer system easy to use.
the same could be said for apple, and apple systems are used by the
technocrats as well as the grandmothers. kudos to you for that.
lastly, good luck.
Another thing "mere mortals" want is an all-graphics interface; everything point and click. Hmm, I can't see how something like:
rm `ls -l|awk '{print $3}'|grep "juser"`
could be graphical, not with the same flexibility and any kind of Unix without the pipe/redirect capabilities would be kinda stupid.
How about this:
You have a window view something like windows explorer in list view, with a column for "owner". You switch to this view, sort by owner (click on the column heading), locate the group of files belonging to "juser" and rubber band them. Then drag them off to the delete bin.
Now I realise that it seems more long-winded, but it is fairly intuitive and I think the average windows user would understand it much more easliy than firing up a shell. And of course you would have lots of fun if you decided to try and recurse or something clever like that; I have yet to see a gui which lets you easily perform the same operation over a whole directory tree. There must be a way!!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
But that's not the point. If you wanted something to be parameterised, send emails, run automatically etc, then of course you'd use a script. There's no reason for not having a scripting tool alongside a GUI...I could write what you want in Perl, Python, sh, cmd whatever. And that could be on NT, or Solaris, Linux etc. My original post was simply to say that for one off tasks as would be performed by JoeUser, you can do it easily and quickly. If you want to start writing programs, then you'd get a programmer to do it!!
I do not advocate a GUI as the only way to be...surely everyone can understand that the different approaches are better for different situations and we should be able to use both? That means we need a world class GUI (and IMHO NT and OSX both beat anything I have seen on Linix or Solaris) and also a world class shell/scripting tools. NT has bash and Perl, but the implementations are somewhat behind their unix versions, so I'd say the *nix win that round. Now bring the 2 together and we have a winner...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The only thing that KDE needs is to adopt a BeOS like usage of MIME. BeOS adds the MIME data as a file attribute thus all tracker has to do is get a list of attributes from the folder. KDE's file manager unfortunately has to guess what type of file a given file is half the time. That said I think there is a resentment (and in many respects, rightfully so) of average users because they are what keeps the status quo in power. I would like to see the Linux team work towards making the kernel better with new hardware and take much less interest in older hardware. That is the difference between Be and the Linux team. Be knows that the future hardware IS ALL THAT COUNTS, yesterday's hardware will be meaningless tomorrow. Even though Be hasn't been able to get quite the support they want/need at least they have the right idea. Anyway KDE 2.0 will bring many features to Linux that have long been missing like a good GUI based web browser. Mozilla still isn't ready for public consumption. One thing that would be good is to add kernel support for Windows binaries so that a Win32 emulator could be made. It could be a case of a user pointing the emulator at the Win32/MFC libraries on their Windows partition and the emulator creates a pseudo-windows environment for the Win32 app. Similar to what Apple is trying to do in MacOS X with non-carbon apps from OS classic.
Perhaps what needs to be done is we need to spend less time worrying about Linux and more time worrying about the adoption of open source ideology among Windows and Mac developers. There is already a strong growing open source movement among BeOS developers and Be encourages such development. They figure they make the platform, you make the apps.... and that is why BeOS has a better chance of making open source shine in the public's eyes than Linux/BSD. Be fully documents everything as far as their API goes because they have everything to LOSE by not doing so since all they make is an OS. So what you get is a very powerful, slick commercial quality OS that is open source developer friendly.
no they don't have to use linux, or an inferior OS, just suggest Be to them, and all is good.
Please tell me the line in the GPL that says you can't charge money for software under it. As far as I can remember, the major selling point for getting corporations to use it is that they can sell the software. Of course, they generally have to do it for a good price, otherwise someone will just read the code and write something 90% compatible that will do the job better for a lower price. Probably one of their competitors.
-RickHunter
--"We are gray. We stand between the candle and the star."
--Gray council, Babylon 5.
Well, if this is true, things don't look so hot for Eazel. I suspect that any neophyte employees they hire will get a crash course in "Linux culture" at some point. Then, if they do get treated badly, I suspect support will evaporate.
-RickHunter
--"We are gray. We stand between the candle and the star."
--Gray council, Babylon 5.
The points I was trying to make were:
I wasn't saying I'd pay for this, no. I couldn't even find anything on the website about what they'd done so far. If it were a really good shell program, I might pay a reasonable sum for it.
-RickHunter
--"We are gray. We stand between the candle and the star."
--Gray council, Babylon 5.
The standards and protocols that we really need to worry about are file and documents. Until there are better standards and wider support for things like word processor documents, a computer is still going to need more help than the "mere mortal" wants to worry with.
And if linux truly wants to go mainstream, it'll have to be in a significantly different form than how it currently exists. Most people don't need the majority of features that linux offers. They don't need the infinate customability and such. The only reason I see for even trying to put linux on the desktop of such a person is because even the "mere mortals" in the computer world deserve an OS that is secure and stable. And you can have secure and stable behind all sorts of interfaces.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
"The Linux Community" will not be dropping legacy support if this were to come about. This would just be dropping legacy support for a particular GUI that is primarily aimed at Joe Q. Public.
And Joe Q. Public doesn't ordinarily have a 486 or an old Pentium. Oh no. He has a PIII-500 to do his word processing on, because that was what he was told he was needed to do word processing. He doesn't get something cheap from somewhere, he gets a brand new box from a chain store and pays over the odds for it. But he does get all the brand new p'n'p hardware and all the perhipherals to match.
The only people I know running 486s and old pentiums these days are todays 386 basement hackers that know they can get some use out of old computers if they have an OS that doesn't require 32Mb to run, but is tricky to set up.
I think that by dropping support for old hardware that is hard (or impossible) to make one-click installations for, on a system designed for one-click installations only is an OK thing to do, providing you don't make it mandatory for the whole OS. Which no-one was advocating in the first place.
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Who said you couldn't? You still can. And for people who want a prettier, more "user-friendly" UNIX, they can have that, as well.
It's about creating new choices, not limiting the ones you have. It'd be non-sensical for Linux to move away from the CLI, and it's NEVER going to do that. So you can have your CLI, and Joe Newbie can have his GUI, and we all can have a good operating system underneathe us.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
I think we have the same idea here, we're mostly discussing semantics.
As far as using the easy-but-restrictive interface in everyday use, I think that's a fair idea, and I do see your point that some users won't want to "graduate" to bigger-better things. That's OK with me. Just give me the choice to use whatever level that I want to.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Thanks for the clarification. :-)- ----
I suppose it's a bit late to reply (3+days after the story) but i think the desktop switchers in G/K don't implement like i said before but just send a message to the wm saying "would you mind changing to this desktop?".
Anyway, the thing I'm most curious about is why KDE has one default standard windows manager. Unless that particular one is the most customizable wm ever then i don't see the point. Now I really need to free up space to install KDE - I think that win98 partition is going to have to come off, it's not been booted in a loooooong time
--------------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
K and G are the obvious contenders now, but things can change very quickly in computers and while I wish these Eazel people luck I hope they don't dumb it down too much. There are many more "features" than the two I listed that could confuse newbies (be they newbies to computers in general or newbies to Linux).
- -----
I hope they stick to the policy on their main page: And we'll do it in a way that appeals to today's Linux users and to mere mortals
PS: GNOME supports loads of virtual desktops (in fact 2x2 the default, I don't know what K's default is, it's been a couple of years since I used it, I must try it again actually)
Technically, it's a wm feature isn't it? So, GNOME/KDE support but don't implement them
-------------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
Why just Linux. If they have there head screwed on they should be able to get it to compile on other Un*x's. FreeBSD at least.
Is this GNOME's fault. I've never thought about it before but does GNOME and/or KDE work on anything other than Linux.
Now, back to the post i'm replying to. I wonder if X will always be the protocol used. Is it that old now that it could do with a complete replacement - called Y maybe :-)
I wish I knew more about the exact details of how X works low level - is it an old program patched and extended into a mess or is it as efficient etc. as it could be?
Now to go off-topic:
In the case of fully GNOMEified programs (can you come up with a better name for programs that stick to the gtk instead of making "direct" calls to X) if this Y became the standard would it just be a case of rewriting the gtk or would the apps need to be patched also?
ie: Just to satisfy my curiousity, can you write X apps that don't need to make calls to X! Tcl/Tk aside.
-----------------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
In a sense I hope this doesn't lead to a standardised GUI.
- -
Why? Because whatever standard is chosen will be the one that is easiest for complete newbies (no virtual desktops, either 2-button or, god forbid, 1 button). Basically, no customization.
Whatever does _win_ (Gnome/K/Eazel/mixture/NoneOfTheAbove) it should mix simplicity AND power. What I mean is the defaults should be simple but if you want Ctrl-Alt-Middle Button to put the current app in bottom right desktop and minimized then that should be possible!
I want to be able to be easily able to edit (scriptable or something) what each button on the title bar does. There are some cool ideas from Nut&Bolts (Win95 utility now owned by McAfee I think) for open file dialogs that I want.
All these buttons and whatnot may confuse users so just have them disabled by default.
Enough of my wishlist. I want to be able to get cool new productivity tricks without having to replace my WM and learn how the new one works
-----------------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
There is a Windows interface design manual that outlines the ways applications should do things. If Winamp comes along and decides to make Ctrl-P be 'Preferences', then shame on Winamp, but that's their prerogative. I know that in just about every application that's worth it's salt, I'll be able to use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-X, and Ctrl-V to do my Copy, Cut, and Paste operations. Or Ctrl-Ins, Shift-Del, and Shift-Ins. Or Alt-E, C; Alt-E, T; or Alt-E, P. Or Shift-F10, C; Shift-F10, T; or Shift-F10, P. The alt's and Shift-F10's aren't really shortcuts, but a shortcut way to navigate through the menus.
:) but each desktop is different from the next. If you go to Win9x, Win2000, or WinCE you are presented with the same interface, same shortcuts, same interface paradigm. Go between KDE, GNOME, E, Nautilis, FWM, etc and you are presented with different interfaces, even different between the same desktop program. You have a trade-off: the more customaization you allow, the more fragmentation you end up with.
:)
Yes, there is more than one way to do it, and on most applications they implement all ways. But Rarely (have I ever?) come upon an app that uses something completely and totally non-standard.
What everyone SHOULD be worried about is that this new Linux Desktop further fragments the market. You say things are inconsistent on Windows, what happens when you now have more desktops than desktop productivity apps? In addition to each app for Linux having been written by someone that doesn't believe in following the norm (you think just because someone thinks they are too leet for a particular OS will think that his app should use the same shortcuts as everyone else?
Just freaking make up your minds already and pick an interface that use Microsoft users can bash equally.
Disclaimer: These opinions are my own, not those of my employer. Deal with it.
Well, shows how damn confusing it all is. :)
Molog
So Brain, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
I see this as an excellent stepping-stone for new linux users! One thing that is killing Linux in the PC desktop environment is that people are sick of taking the time to learn new stuff. Most users are just glad they kinda got Windows 9x figured out and they figure that if it is not broken, why fix it?
The fact is that it is broken, and the only way to get them to see the light is to offer something that is intuitive and does not require much knowledge to get things done! This is just to introduce the user to Linux, not a distribution that they would use forever! The cool thing about Linux is that once the user thinks that the OS is too dumbed down, or they have time for a challenge, or thier skills grow out of the easier distrib, they just install another distribution!
This is what Linux has been missing; a nice simple distrib that gets the user acquainted with the OS. That way they are actually learning the OS very gradually. Then they can go from there!
No offense, but you are *so* off the mark here, and here's why:
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Mark my words, we will see another such project in the near future, claiming to build a desktop that "your grandmother can use"!
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Why the disparity in system memory usage of E + Gnome? One with no swap space, one with 128Meg and most of it used and one with 16 meg and 20 Meg swap! The Math does not add up! Does anyone have the facts?
The only solution to the concern about the 'dumbing down' of Linux is to let projects like this, that are geared towards the "less experienced" user, go ahead full-steam.
In the long run, they'll probably learn enough of the system to be comfortable with making their own choices and can choose to move to KDE or GNOME or fvwm2 (my choice) or whatever. If not, well, hell, they're still on a Linux system and safely weaned off Redmond's digital crack.
The advantage to Linux -- and more importantly, the advantage of OS projects in general -- is that they can follow tracks that serve the advanced and the beginning user simultaneously.
The only real danger is in allowing the 'dumbed-down' version to become the standard as opposed to only one option of many. An affiliated danger is in not reaching out to the newcomers and trying to help them reach the point where they can decide for themselves whether they want the 'dumbed-down' version.
So I agree here -- full speed ahead on the 'two-bit' interface. We'll worry about bringing the newbies up to the full dollar after bringing them on board in the first place.
ikaros, who has been trying to convince his folks that he could make them a Linux box they could use
You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind -- Timothy Leary
Just a thought: is this new development "Eazel" pronounced like the crackhead in Friday? Heh, like Craig says, "You know you aint be catchin' no crackhead!" What a mascot!
"You point your finger at the moon, the fool stares at your finger."
From the standpoint of how they are promoting it to be as easy as a grandmother to use, riddle me this!:
How come people that have been using a computer for more than 2 months still not know how to use Windows? Thats right, you would have to make the GUI even easier to use (and extremely automated), to make it accessable to your mom, possibly beyond MacOS. Is that possible? Yes. But on the other side, there are people who need support with AOL, one of the most degeneratingly easy programs to use in the world, but with its ease of use, most functionality is lost. Will this also happen with this Eazel GUI?
Ctrl+P. Or... Alt-F, P... same as in KDE, generally...
- What's the key combination to close a window?
Ctrl+F4 to close a window in a multiple-document application. Alt+F4 to close the program itself.... same as in KDE.
- What's the key combination to save a file?
Ctrl+S... same as in KDE.
- Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
Any piece of software which has received a Microsoft Windows Windows-Logo certification, is required to ask you what location in the start folder to install. Incidentally, every game I've installed recently in Windows has asked me this (Ultima IX, Quake III, Unreal Tournament, The Sims, Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, and others). Oddly enough, the only recent game I've come across that -doesn't- let you choose, is a Microsoft game: Age of Empires II. Go figure...
Precious few KDE (or GNOME) apps, especially the non-KDE (or GNOME) ones, actually install themselves into your "menu" anyhow. Certainly there aren't nice, organized links to things like the software's web-page, the documentation, and so on... A lot of Windows programs do this. KDE (and GNOME) do not, except on initial install of the operating system.
Hopefully, -hopefully-, the good folks working on KDE 2.0 will address this issue, and come up with a really great system for installing/uninstalling software designed for their manager. It's about time we dump this text-based autoconf crap for GUI apps, and make install procedures "even your mother could use".
(And before anyone extolls the virtues of the various GUI package managers, I've yet to see one that provides icons... and certainly none of them will propogate said icons for multiple users, so that distributing a new app to all of a machine's users (or uninstalling) is easy.)
Daltorak.
they are no longer assimil^H^H^H^H^H^H^Haffiliated with aol/apple.
i think that if we want to take a step towards userfriendliness, then this is the way to go. if anyone knows user friendly its aol and apple. haveing members of those teams cross over should be considered a huge victory for our side
Here is a thought I have seen kicked around..
This should NEVER replace good old fashioned debugging and writing clean and effecient code.
Have a daemon I imagine it can be quite lightweight. All this daemon does is monitors a few programs and in the event of a hard crash/lockup instead of the "I had to run to another machine and telnet in to Kill X" This little daemon just kicks X around for a few and restarts it.
Now the idea is *simple* enough sounding. Keep X running at any cost. How much actual interfacing with X is required I dont know?
Another question is how much would a daemon of this nature drag the system down
MY *guesses* are it would not be terribly overweight or inneffecient.
Perhaps it could also interface with GNOME and every maybe 5 seconds save the desktop and all of the applications that are open etc. And in the event of a crash it wil restore your desktop.. I dont think that is to far away
Jeremy Allen
Jallen@idminc.com
An additional thought that *IS* a dream until one toolit becomes *THE* toolkit. Along with saving the state of the user area and all. Every application has a standard interface and you can along with the user area snag the exact state of the application and in a somehow effecient manner write these to a file and when it crashes you can just restore the wordprocessor and spreadsheet.. and or web browser to what it was right before the crash.. But thats a pipe dream :-) But with almost all our major apps still open source maybe not?
JA
Ex-employees from 2 companies who really know what 'Ease of Use' really is are now working on a project to help Linux out! Perfect.. This is preciesly what it needs. Geeks are usually great coders, but typical fall short of the "What's easy for Mom to use" area. It's okay. We like things more complex than most.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how they produce. If it was in Florida, I'd be working over there tomorrow!
-What have you contributed lately?
If it isn't it sure looks close...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
- Home users - Ultimately, these people are responsible for everything on their machine. Security, permissions, configuring new hardware, etc. It's lovely to think of granny playing aisle riot and emailing her grandkids from redhat, but let's remember too that under this model GRANNY IS ROOT. Think about the ramifications of this. When she fires up her pre-installed OS, who's she going to log in as? What happens when she starts saving her recipies in
/etc? I'm not saying that linux can't evolve to meet the needs of these people, but it will definitely take a lot of time, and as others have pointed out, will probably require linux to turn into something muuuuch different than most /.ers know and love. - Workplace users - this is the target. Linux is a complex multiuser environment that realistically requires a systems administrator, if only occasionally. The workplace provides exactly that. IT can set up the system, assign a login, provide tips and hints on how to do certain tasks, restrict access from places where people shouldn't play, configure new hardware (and when necessary, software), be there to answer questions, etc. For the user the experience is relatively hassle-free and as time passes, they may even begin to learn a bit beyond point-and-click. As more time passes and they've developed a basic competency, then maybe they'll install it on their home machines. They'll be around to show it to their neighbors, evangalize how cool it is, and help them get set up.
The whole emphasis is wrong, provided there even is an emphasis (which there doesn't appear to be). Screw granny, and target Bob Smith, CPA. Smooth the learning curve so that the first few weeks' experience will not be one of continual frustration. In other words, seed the home market through the workplace.--
"Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia salina"
Another thing "mere mortals" want is an all-graphics interface; everything point and click. Hmm, I can't see how something like:
rm `ls -l|awk '{print $3}'|grep "juser"`
could be graphical, not with the same flexibility and any kind of Unix without the pipe/redirect capabilities would be kinda stupid.
Apple Computer's first UNIX (A/UX) had a way of doing this called "commando"... it was a graphical tool for builing command lines. While in a shell you could type a CLIU command, then type 'command k' and a window would pop up that had essentially all the "-whatever' flags for you to choose from. It would *tell* you what those flags would to and give you sample output. It also allowed you to redirect, pipe, etc. Very Cool.
All this a an excellent MacOS Finder environment too.
I still have a couple of A/UX boxen around for entertainment purposes.
I've also been around unix too long as I've seen the wheel reinvented far too many times and it still doesn't roll that well!
--chuck goolsbee
seattle, wa
This is not a new desktop. This is yet another GNOME application. It seems to be like KFM.
Good one, guys.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
upper management wants a 2 bit interface - Yes/No.
I'm not sure upper management can handle such a complex interface. Think of all the decisions to make!
One of the great things about open source is that programs can be whatever programmers want them to be. There isn't pressure to ''dumb down'' the interface, but the possibility still exists to do so. Linux (and the other open source systems like *BSD, HURD, etc.) will continue to evolve regardless of their ''market share'' against commercial OSes.
Besides, Linux is *already* accepted--by many hard-core programmers, many of whom probably don't really care if it's accepted by the world of end-users. Those users who already accept Linux/open source are probably enough to keep the movement going, regardless of how many crappy OSes come out of Redmond.
A GUI that ignores keystrokes won't make friends among power users. Sure, a point and click interface is easy to learn, but people are known to use a program for *years*. Given enough time, they will come to find keystrokes faster and easier and less strain on the wrist. By ignoring keystrokes, you are doing your part to keep them newbies forever (and Windows already does too much of that.) On the other hand, many if not most Windows programs *do* have a standardized keyboard interface; in that regard, they appear to have Linux beat.
Same deal for dialogs. The newbies seem to prefer a neat hierarchy; the long time user would prefer to have everything in one convenient place. There, you may have to make a tradeoff, but not with keystrokes. A GUI design that ignores experienced users is making a big mistake. Likewise, an OS without a standard GUI interface is an OS with GUI problems.
--
Tom Hardy
rthardy@enail.msn.com
robert_hardy@blake.pvt.k12.mn.us
Tom Hardy
Through a buyout, perhaps? Or an IPO? It seems these days you can do an IPO with no other source of capital than VC. You can be drowining in red ink, but as long as your product has the attention of enough eyeballs, the IPO crowd will love you.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
-Elendale (Insert random AOL flame here)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Look, most of us are geeks and we have all fixed computers belonging to Mums, Dads autie beryls and fred down the street because that's what we do.
As long as Linux is stable, has an easy GUI and can be used with Micro$oft products then it becomes a viable alternative. The same goes for the "killer apps". They don't have to be BETTER than Micro$oft because they are FREE.
When was the last time your mother installed a hard drive?
Its a glorified Midnight Commander.
If I wouldn't pay for RedHat, I sure as hell wouldn't pay for some idiotic shell program.
Folks, it ain't going to happen. You still can't run any unix without knowing all about /etc and shell interfaces.
Linux is a success in the serving business and as a low-cost technical OS. This is where it shines and its best hope for growth. Why people think they can somehow turn it into the MacOS is beyond me.
Linux is an OS for people who already know how to use computers. Trashing X just to go after the home market (which linux will never capture anyway), would be insane - it wouldn't sell linux to any new users, and it would alienate the technical set.
The icons that you see in those Aqua screen shots are just plain (although large) bitmaps.
Ctrl+P or Alt f p
Alt+F4 or Alt f x
Ctrl+S or Alt f s
90% of games that I've seen ASK where to install themselves and default to Company Name\Game Name.
Do a random survey of 100 Window's apps and you will find 95% follow these rules.
Restrict yourself to applications written by MS or Lotus or Corel or other top developers of Windows app, and it will be more like 99% if not 100%.
In other words, you don't know what the fork you are talking about.
I agree this is a good idea, and I love Linux the way it is. But I'd disagree that this is a 'dumbing down' of Linux. It's simply providing an easy-to-use shell, for those people who are afraid of the command line. Everything that Linux is and can do, all the functionality that we all know and love from Linux, will still be there.
--- Math illiteracy affects 8 out of every 5 people.
ALT+F, P
ALT+F4
ALT+F, S
...not Microsoft's fault, even though they don't set a good example. Microsoft Office should install to Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft\Office.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Why? That's dumb. They shouldn't assume the user has only one display. I have several displays on some of my systems, and one on others. I like being able to install the same product on all of them and use them with the same ease. Why the hell should someone make assumptions about my system? To make life easy for developers? To optimize the OS to *your* system. If you want something customized to your display, write or recompile your own kernel, but X damn well better have networking code, and render to every display i tell it to!
If your Gnobe segfaults or it takes forever to Start Gnome than you just need to install at least the October 1999 release of gnome and that problem goes away! I had the problem, I fixed it with the new relase. I'm hooked on it. I really like the Gnome applets. Try the weather applet, it's pretty cool!
Isn't Eazel just making the new GNOME 2.0 file manager "Nautlius?" More information would be appreciated!
Uh, my Windows 2000 server (final release) bluescreens and dies belly up when you send it too big print jobs (note that too big in this case doesnt mean very big...). If a system is "stable", i'd like to think that it doesnt need a reboot when it's printer driver fails.
Windows 2000 is cute. Thats about it... it looks nice and it has so many features you could (and probably will) drown in them. Cute... nice features maybe... but not stable.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest
...
that Linux is a UNIX workalike ?
As a UNIX user, I notice that you are trying to give Linux an MS Window like GUI.
I don't like that.
> Windows without the X is like making love
> without a partner.
(By mwikholm@at8.abo.fi, MaDsen Wikholm)
> As an added benefit, it would help everyone to
> maintain clean hard drives free of all junk
> files... deleting would just be too much fun!
Why does a "Geek" need a "file manager" (or whatever you call it, what you're crying for) ?
There is a tmpwatch script that automatically removes unneeded files.
(Coincidence: just today it wiped off 100 MB on one of my machines.)
A really good configured system maintains itself.
Why must there be a "panel" on a GUI ??
My afterstep config w/ wharf and zharf looks cool,
does especially not look like MS Windows, and is way more handy - for newbies as well as for me.
Problems to understand the filesystem ?
Read the documentation and put your "Geek" sticker in the backburner until you understand UNIX.
Then realize that Linux is a UNIX system,
not something that is to be compared to MS Windows or MAC.
If you don't like the MIT's X System, you're not a "geek" or "nerd".
I like to type this on one machine, with the actual work being done on another machine on my LAN.
How do you want to make this "handy" for someone who can't imagine that he's typing and reading on a machine, that doesn't really process the keystrokes ?
GNOME and KDE are good for newbies - no question.
But it's not something that a real UNIX pro would use.
Fine day Everybody, george./
-
The only thing is that I think Staroffice and finance apps are too complicated,
but hey, I use the pgms I wrote myself to keep track of money and such.
But no, I don't do my taxes in hexadecimal...
george./
-
Yes folks, you are right.
There's just something inside me, that doesn't like to be a face in the crowd,
and doesn't like to make a kewl Unix System look like Bill Gate's best idea (to buy the original DOS code).
If you want your mothers use Linux, then you are right.
I don't [want that].
I fear the efforts of the developers will very soon be financially abused by companies that are already on that track.
It's not even Corel or IBM or DELL, just take RatHead.
What these companies do is creating an easy-to-use OS (like MS Windows, for your mams) and make big bucks outta the work of real nerds who originally never thought about money.
I don't like folks being abused.
And I do NOT HAVE A CHOICE when it comes to GUI's for Linux.
Afterstep is not what is was.
It doesn't look like NEXTStep anymore -- it's MS Windows-, MAC- like... well, you can read it here on Slashdot.
I'm part of a real minority - okay.
But I just don't want stuff everybody has.
I want something SPECIAL.
Linux is/was something special.
Not KDE or GNOME.
Once it looks like MS/MAC, the thrill is gone.
At least, for me.
Fine day Everybody, george./
Don't get me wrong... I don't mind the idea of having an easy-to-use window manager (though I like Enlightenment) but isn't all of this competition over developing The Right Window Manager just going to create more confusion in interface design for Xwindows applications?
This is one of those cases where I wish the designers could all just sit down together, talk about the current situation, and come up with a reasonable compromise. I like the ability to pick what I work with, but IMHO the competition in designing window managers is going to make it harder for Xwindows application designers to make their programs function robustly and consistently across different environments. Perhaps Xwindows itself could use some reworking for ease-of-use...?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I'm not real sure how eazle is connected with gnome, but Nautalis is in Gnome CVS and is a central component of the Gnome 2 desktop.
---
Xiphoid Process Records - http://xiphoidprocess.com
San Francisco based electronic music.
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
Windows is hard to use at first, but once users get the hang of it and take time to learn it, like anything else it's not that bad.....
Ramon Ray, analyst @ editor, Smallbiztechnology.com
I think the real reason computers are a pain to use is the paradigm we use when designing user interfaces: today's user interfaces are about telling the computer how you want it to do something, not what you want it to do, but most users are interested in results, not the process of getting those results.
In The Beginning, computers didn't have a lot of power, so the user interface meant you had to tell it how to get from point A to point B in excruciating detail. We wound up with systems like Unix's command line shell, which gives you a small number of commands and the means to pipe the output from one to the input of the next until you build a composite command that does what you want - but to build that command you have to tell the computer what to do at each step in between. If the end result you want is "get rid of all the files belonging to the user named 'Joe'", what you have to tell the computer is "list all the files, pipe that result into a filter that looks for 'Joe' and rearranges the output a bit (awk or perl), pipe those results into a command executor (xargs), and pipe that output into the command that removes files."
Windowed interfaces are largely more of the same - if you want to get rid of all the files belonging to Joe, you would go about executing a sequence of commands using the mouse: open a folder, sort by user, select a block of files, and drag to the trash can. It's essentially the same thing you did with Unix, just expressed a bit differently. In both cases, you're still telling the computer how to get to what you want, not what you want itself.
I'm beginning to think that the real trick to getting computers that are easy to use is to shift paradigms - to begin thinking in terms of an interface where you tell the computer what you want and it figures out how to get there, as opposed to the more familiar concept of stringing together primitive commands.
What would such an interface look like? It would have to have a large input vocabulary, so you could express all the possible goals you might be interested in - which probably rules out point and click. Beyond that, I suspect it starts looking more like AI than anything else, or at least like a system with a very large rules base and a pretty fancy abstraction system.
It would make a very interesting research project for someone to create such a system that takes typed natural language commands from the keyboard and translates to Unix shell commands.
I found out about Oxygen through Scientific American. Here's a link to the online summary: http://www.sciam.com/1999/0899issue/0899quicksumma ry.html . The actual issue has quite a bit of info. Here's another link, this one to the MIT web site: http://www.lcs.mit.edu/news/releases/oxygen040799 .
Gnome is unstable and lame (just an opinion) and Kde is better but still needs improvement. I think the only way to beat windows on the desktop is to have an aesthetically pleasing GUI designed to be simple. Better looking widgets are a must as well as simplicity. Also the apps need to follow the same user interface concepts as the GUI. This helps users learn to use both. The only answer is to start over from scratch
- NCP's are the New American Welfare System
This is the one area where that Linux really needs help. I have long argued that Linux was a horrible desktop product because of its lack of standards for the user interface. Of course, any time you say anything negative about Linux, the wackos moderate you down. Linux has shown itself to be strong in the serving area against all comers and goers but serving does not require a human interface, only a geek one.
Apple's 10 year-old MacOS 6 is far more thoughtful to the needs of the basic computer user than the current desktops provided by GNOME and KDE. Mainly because these are products made by geeks for geeks -- your Grandma need not apply.
Once a real human interface is developed for X, Linux can really break open the holy grail of the home & business desktop. Until then, Linux will be left to the domain of the geek and file serving. Kudoos to eazel!
I hate to say this, but for *good* quality printing from *nix, I've found the available answers to be 'buy a postscript printer', 'buy a postscript printer', and 'buy a postscript printer'. Unfortunately it's quite hard to justify the cost of a Color Laserjet 4500 or other "low-end" colour laser printers.
I'd be extremely happy if somebody could tell me how wrong I am.
----------------------------
Thanks for that.
Guess they're sending a hit out for "Wakko Warner" now...
I should have called my account "Steve Balmer".
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Apparently, to most, it wasn't.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Not to be pedantic, but this is inaccurate.
They would only need to get the pay license if they want to distribute without source. If/how much they charge, and whether or not they are a "commercial" organization doesn't enter into it.
It's arguable that QPL is like GPL in this respect, and less like LGPL.
New XFMail home page
My mom and my grandmother can both read. Both have not problem playing solitary, and they can write down all the nessicay steps to do so. THey could log into a cli, startx, move to the xterm and type xsol -preferences sol.pref -conf sol.conf -other stragne_option. If that is really what it takes. Yeah they'd hate it and wouldn't understand, but they can do this. They can even write down how to log out after words and do it.
My uncle has 4 kid, the oldest is 6. I setup microsoft networking so he can print on his new computer (via some old 10base2 network that I discarded) to the old 486 that still runs quicken just fine but won't do the games that the kids play. The kids however cannot figgure out how to get past that log in screen. I had to disable that. He is better off using sneaker net (which he can figgure out via written insctructions) so that the kids can play their games.
The kids can turn the comptuer on, and they can use the mouse to double click the game application on the desktop. Chaninging a CDROM is byond their abilites. (The oldest can do that, but the 3 year old would scratch the cd if they left them in her reach, and yes the three year old plays games on the computer)
I've heard that KDM is a login that kids have a chance to use, if there is no password on the games account. (I can prevent the games account from loging in via anything but local connection if security is a concern) Can kids use the rest of the system? I've not tried to set my system up that way so I can't make more comments in this area.
PS, why are their so few kids games for unix? We could use a few decerate the treehouse things that I see the kids enjoying now.
In fact, I'd not care if my {insert-non-educated-relative-definition} could use Linux. There's always some windows/AOL for it. What I care for if *I* can use it and if it's convenient for me. GUI firewall configuration is more convenient that ipchains -L/ipchains -A repeated, so I take it. GUI email clients aren't good with me, so I still use pine. That's what I want from Linux - to be me-oriented, not some imaginary super-dumb user-oriented.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Because you don't know to use/find right themes. Go and self-educate. BTW, I don't really like that theme - too artistic for everyday work.
And bringing Mac theme to GNOME is work of few days or even hours. How much it would take to bring GNOME theme on Mac?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Never heard that linuxconf ever required me not to touch config files. I touch them all the time and linuxconf seems to cope with it nicely.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Quite seriously, if it's to be useful, it should hardly be characterized as "Just A File Manager."
Consider:
And that is where it starts to get interesting.
The thing about Linux, as it is today, that is kind of scary to people that need to think of computers as "appliances," is that it doesn't have a unified way of treating things as "documents."
A "document manager" that lets you make sure that stuff doesn't get lost due to it falling into a directory that you didn't know you needed to look at is going to be the killer app of the next decade.
I agree that Explorer is quite horrifying; I look at it as the "machine gun" of computing.
People tend to be horrified at this analogy, but its ability to accidentally destroy files quite analagous to the notion of walking around the office carrying an M-60 with finger on trigger. You slip up a bit, and "Oops! I accidentally shot up 15 cubicles and killed 8 coworkers."
If these guys can do some good HCI work, perhaps taking some of the better concepts from OS/2 and NeXTstep, and actually create a usable and powerful "document manager," this seems to me to be quite a worthy task.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Both of them do focus mainly on Linux. They do run on other operating systems (the sysadmins in the CS labs here at RIT recently installed KDE on the Solaris boxen) but Linux is still the OS they're most concerned about.
What i would like to see (note that I am not a big unix guy - this may already be possible) is a file manager in which 'rules' can be set up for how the content displays in the window for various directories, file types and files.
(naturally they'd be overridable)
For a similar thing, consider how readme files appear when ftping to particular directories.
Various components could exist for html display (a linked library, i'd guess) or flash, or generic ls data, or whatnot. This helps preserve the unix philosophy of many small tools. The rule file merely calls different components according to the info in the rule file.
CSS would probably be useful in designing the rules - letting the rule styles generally cascade down for consistency.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Jakob Neilsen has some interesting stuff on his Web site, such as his Death of File Systems paper, on why he thinks that the hierarchical directory tree model isn't necessarily what you want to expose to the end user; there's also a paper by him and Don Gentner, Anti-Mac, with thoughts on what a different-and-possibly-better user interface might look like.
Havoc Pennington, GTK+ developer at Red Hat, said in this article:
That makes "switching apps" even more irritating than it is now. I might personally prefer an interface that exposes "apps" somewhat less - for example, if I'm editing a bit of source code, I wouldn't mind being able to put a link into it to a spec for the protocol it implements or dissects, and be able to click on that link, while editing the source code, to pop up a copy of the spec.
I've wondered whether a document/hyperlink-based desktop metaphor might work better for my files - source files, specifications, notes to myself, Web pages on other sites, saved netnews articles, saved mail messages, etc., etc. - than the directory-based metaphor used by existing OSes/desktops. I hate having to manually search for the damn mail message/note-to-myself file/whatever that explained how to do XXX....
I.e., components, such as Nautilus and, I think, the KDE 2.0 file manager will use?
There are other ways to link tools together than to build shell scripts, pipelines, and the like.
the last comment is the best. "[run windows bins w/o] something idiotic like vmware or wine"
right.
the only other choice left is wabi.
here's a little clue. to drive a car you need to learn how do do it. you know now, right? ok, now go drive a semi. or drive a car in a different country - maybe even one where they drive on the other side. drive a forklift. drive a motorcycle.
they all require training, and all they accomplish is moving you from point a to point b.
think of windows as steak and potatoes. think of linux as a stew. and think of your skills as a knife and fork. yes, you can eat your linux stew with a knife and fork, but it's hard. it would be easier to just use a spoon.
finally consider that most people on the planet have never used a computer - it's just as easy for them to get the spoon as the fork and knife. and since they generally don't have a lot of money, which os is the right price for them?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
So I'm really looking forward to this.
Speaking of Lusers, a private email from Andy Hertzfeld, in response to my post here, threatened that I was "subject to legal remedy."
This makes it REALLY REALLY clear that Eazel Does Not Get It.
Go ahead Andy, feel free. My address for service of process:
Deirdre Saoirse
2033 Sharon Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
_Deirdre
Actually, I can see a few things:
- Transparency in the menus and dialogs
- Anti-Aliased text
- Sharp-looking icons because they are vector- and not pixmap-based, and will scale to any size and still look good.
There are many improvements that you cannot see from a screenshot, such as the cool way the buttons throb, the 3d way the dialogs slide out of their windows, and the way windows iconize by being "sucked" down, bending and distorting like a genie being pulled into a bottle.This is because of Quartz, a new vector-based graphics layer upon which Aqua is built.
Read the Ars Technica article for more info.
bp
It sounds like they're building extensions to GNOME... And it's all GPLed... GNOME people can grab whatever theyed like from it. So can KDE people. So if it makes good progress, expect to see pieces of it pop up all over the place, or even see Gnome co-opt it.
An effort like this has needed to be started for a long time... Unfortunately it doesn't seem like enough of an idea to base a business on. Look: If it doesn't amount to anything, then no one want's it. IF it becomes the greatest thing since sliced bread, then it ends up being taken over or absorbed into Gnome, and in turn gets distributed with all the major distro's... Not much revenue for the original authors/concept people.
A good GUI means next to nothing until WINE is more up to the task of emulating windows... Pretty interfaces don't win desktops, plentiful, usable applications do. Witness Windows 3.1: Aweful in terface compared to Macs and OS/2... Incredibly unstable. Lots more apps. Guess who won the battle for the desktop?
Most people use windows because they're required to.
Company's standardize on windows because the programs they want are available. Schools standardize on windows to help students use what they'll one day use. Homes standardize on windows because so students can stay compatible with their schools computers, parents can bring home work. That plus when they have problems, there's huge amounts more of Windows users that may be able to help them out...
I don't think people use Linux because they're lazy... Unless laziness is not wanting to switch from what gets the job done to something they've just been hearing about for the past year...
I do know that Linux has come a long way in the years that I have been using it and much of what I used to have to do by hand is now automagically done (ethernet was easy as is ppp). I look forward to the coming years and seeing the progression. I think that the more companies that get involved with Linux will be good for Linux. I already see more driver for Linux and support of some kind from hardware manufactures, the next thing I'd love to see is shockwave support, yes I have flash, but I want shockwave too. It would also be nice to see stuff apearing on Linux first and windows second. I hope I hope.
I always have to laugh when my friends using windows have problems, and my Linux box is rock solid.........
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
that other desktop manager that i saw posted here last month? like the one that was going to be seen as the alternative to KDE and GNOME.
I can't remember it too well, except that it was apparently based on the Acorn interface (i think?) and it was based almost entirely on the drag&drop metaphor.
Anyone who knows what this was want to correct me? I was really excited about this, i was hoping a linux file manager would come around that would embrace drag&drop-- right now the only GUI that has a truly developed idea of how drag&drop _should_ work (drag from ANYTHING to ANYTHING and have the software figure out how that amkes sense..)is the Mac OS. It would be nice to see more OSes that really understand drag&drop (which Windows never will..)
Especially now that apple seems to be heading away from an application-based view of things (layers, the applications menu) and toward a window-based view of things (maximisation, minimising individual windows, the Dock, "virtual desktops" ala E or WM). forced "maximising" is not only in my eyes the worst thing ever to happen to GUI design, but it is the natural enemy of drag&drop. If my worst fears about Aqua come true.. bah, never mind, i'm rambling.
Anyone rememebr the acornish thing's name?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Despite their lacking business model, and the problems of creating a Linux frontend that anyone's Mom (excepting Dilbert's) could use without maybe interpreting Windows-keypresses as pipe functions, they get points in my book. On their front page, they say they're hiring hackers. And the mean CODE-hackers, not security experts, not white-hats, but honest-to-god, code-monkey hacks. What a concept.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Sounds like a bunch of folks with some decent professional GUI experience. Hopefully, they'll focus more on usability than widgetry.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
4.Get rid of GNU. Yeah, that's right, drop the command line utilities that you know and love, and lose all that power. If granny can't remember her password how's she supposed to remember arcane commands?
5.The gui must be the OS. This means, goodbye X. Most of the newbies who ask me for help request help with setting up X (well, networking comes close). X must disappear, or it must become so much a part of Linux that it's just there, and it just works, no matter what video card, RAMDac, or whatever the user has on their machine.
Sounds like an "updated" version of windows or a working OS X to me.
While that's what you may want, or you may want for the unwashed masses, I won't be using it (and neither will hundreds of thousands of other people who are the core of the Linux community). Some of us choose to use Linux for more than just the ideological reasons. Removing the ability to get under the hood and manipulate the system removes a very big reason for using Linux.
Removing the user and permissioning model may make it easy for grandma to use, but it also reverts to the "useful only as an appliance" paradigm. If there is only one user then that user can do anything to the system (which is why "try reinstalling windows" is the most common final tech support answer), and if you restrict the capabilities of the user to damage the system you then create an appliance/toy that is of little use to most of us.
Part of the problem with "the gui is the OS" is that in nearly every implementation I've ever seen, if the GUI has a problem you're left high and dry with no way to fix the problem -- because the GUI, which *is* the OS, is hosed.
I would venture to say that you don't "get" Linux (or any UNIX or Unix-workalike).
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
She's about as computer literate as a house plant.
:)
Hey now! I'll have you know my house plant contributed patches to the 2.3.x series of kernels!
My journal has hot
Remember, these "top designers" worked on General Magic's cumbersome "Main Street" UI metaphor. To switch apps, you would have to walk "outside and down a virtual Main Street to find the correct building/app. yuck...
cpeterso
Before someone says, "oh yeah can just add a purty theme for GNOME/KDE/X", I've never seen an X theme that doesn't look like Windows 3.1. Because the X themes and apps are so disconnected, there cannot be smoothly integrated. Maybe GNOME is working on this..??
cpeterso
In the current Linux Magazine, Dave Whittinger has a piece that takes a very controversial stand. And it has bearing on the issue at hand.
He says, in order for Linux to succeed on the desktop, stuff like Eazel has to happen. However, he also says that either KDE or Gnome has to go. Developers have to band together and concentrate on one GUI library. He told distros to pick one or the other desktop and make it the standard.
Now, the presence of a couple dozen different window managers, a couple dozen different file managers, a dozen widget libraries, and half a dozen desktops is way to much for a newbie to deal with. However, paring all this down to just ONE choice is the wrong way to go (let alone being completely unrealistic). It also ignores the fact that Gnome, GTK+, KDE and Qt are *NOT* for Linux. They are for X, and that means all of Unix, plus OS/2 and any other OS that has an X port.
Many GTK+ developers abhor Qt and will never ever use it. And vice versa. Ditto for Gnome and KDE. I know people that will switch back to fvwm rather than *use* KDE. There are a few ecumenical souls out there who actually support both Qt and GTK+ interfaces, but they are rare.
But Dave is correct about some things. It confusing even for experts when every other application has its own inteface. And every distro that is even vaguely geared towards newbies needs to pick a default desktop and leave the alternates on CD #2. And developers need to have good reasons before they start duplicating applications. Just saying "it's like kfoo but for gnome" isn't good enough.
Although fifty or sixty standards are too much, I believe that Linux/BSD/Unix/X is big enough for two desktops and two widget libraries. But those desktops are going to have to learn how to work together smoothly.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Taking your shell script analogy further, think of Nautilus or Konqueror as a shell. Then the component model makes sense. Konqueror does just one thing, and it does it well: it browses. It doesn't matter if I browse a file system, an ftp site or a web page. I'm still browsing. I'm still browsing in exactly the same way.
Keeping everything small in the Unix model only makes sense if you're going to *USE* them. And you use them by putting them together with redirection, pipes, tees or scripts. That design philosophy can be restated as "componentize". That's exactly what konqueror is.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Then keep your file windows small and your browser windows large. Nobody's stopping you. No one's forcing you to type an internet URL in you file manager.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Really. Having a choice is OK.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In fact, Nautilus isn't even a file manager, however it does have one among it's components, so it can be used as one if you feel like it.
This is the way it's done these days, both in Gnome, KDE (esp. in the new Konqueror in KDE2), on the Mac and even in old (shrug) Windows.
Here that sound? That's the sound of a thousand components coming this way.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Now our desktop is too difficult to use? Which desktop? we have over 50 or so window managers, and 2 object models. I can see something based on gnome helping out, but what happens when JoeRandomNewbie loads up his pretty desktop and it proceeds to segfault? What if XDM drops him to a standard login prompt like when Windows can't load all of its dll's?
Suddenly, cold hard reality sets in. This isn't MacOS. For it to be close, they would have to somehow castrate the shell interface. You can't really do much in BeOS until you drop to a command line. MacOS is good for new users because they CAN'T go to that level. Everything is taken in graphically, just as our minds tend to work.
I once worked at Egghead. On the week following WIN95 going on sale, fielded many questions. One of the people there wondered if he had to use "DOS words" When I asked hem what he meant by that, he said "like name _period_ dat dat dat" and It dawned on me he was referring to filenames! This seems to be a common thought pattern among users out there.
Linux not getting new users is all about the CLI. New users are afraid of it. If a "newbie" distribution is made, it would be accepted quickly, but what happens if it fails out of the GUI? Or if a release goes out that has something broken in it? And the usual questions like "does it run Word" comes to mind. Heck, if it runs on Intel hardware, and so does Windows, why can't it run Windows applications? You will have a lot of Linux users on paper but not in life. They would be Eazel users.
While innovation is great, I think this project may do more harm than good. It will be good in the sense that a lot of UI work would be done. It would be great if it could be downloaded for free and used under any distro as a window manager. But how will Eazel make money if it is a company. There's the obvious support, but even RedHat sells a physical product.
If they put it up for sale it may not reach full adoption like standard libraries such as GTK or tcl/tk or X protocol. But they probably have a plan to take care of this. I could be wrong, but they could just be the first with an idea.
I know that the OS to most of us isn't the sum of its GUI and ease of use. It's the kernel and the applications. I hope the Eazel foks remember that. It's a different paradigm.
Lowmag.net
After giving my 86-year-old Grandmother a Windows box, I've learned a lot about how easy GUIs are to use. Or aren't, as the case may be.
We talk a lot about "inituitive" GUIs, but that intuition has to be learned a click at a time.
The whole single-click vs. double-click vs. click-drag is fairly arbitrary in the Windows world. For example, why are toolbars single-click, while desktop icons double-click? It's easy for people who understand the difference, but it's not easy to learn if this is all new and frightening.
And especially for someone with coordination limitations, it's a real challenge to navigate and use Windows. Putting it into 640x480 mode on a 17" monitor helps, since it makes the icons bigger and easier to see. Putting the mouse on lowest sensitivity helps, except for the click/double-click timing issue.
I think that if we want to get the largest audience, a purely menu-driven system (like old BBSes, or DOS using Peter Norton's menuing utilities from the days when Peter himself was writing 'em) might be the way to go. I dunno.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Now, I realize that choice is a good thing. I think it's a good thing that Linux has two major consumer desktops (KDE, Gnome) and all of the standalone WMs that form much of the workstation market (AfterStep, CDE, etc). But really, is it better to start a new project for this kind of activity?
I think it would be better for these developers to contribute to the existing projects. It's kind of a waste of man-hours to go about writing another window manager if Sawmill, Blackbox or E will meet their needs. Similarly, I think it's kind of a waste of man hours to go about trying to build another project with similar goals to KDE and Gnome.
Besides, it may be special that they're starting to build this product, but who really believes that it will surpass Gnome/KDE? Even if they take the existing Gnome codebase and add modifications, I think it's unreasonable to expect that anyone else will be able to improve Gnome faster than the Gnome team. Both Gnome and KDE have built communities of developers and users, which help them develop better products. I don't think that this new entry will be able to do any more than the existing products, or advance at a quicker pace.
Of course, I could be wrong. Actually, I hope I am. Best of luck, guys.
Not to be rude, but:
- What's the key combination to print something in Windows?
Alt F-P
- What's the key combination to close a window?
Depends on what you mean. Alt F-C to close a document. Alt-F4 to close the entire application.
- What's the key combination to save a file?
Alt F-S
- Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
Usually under the game name. Where did apache choose to install itself?
****But no, your Grandmother doesn't care. All she wants to do is to be able to surf the web, send email, find where she put her files, and MAYBE hook up a scanner, printer, or cable modem. ****
Yes that's true, however Grandma also wants to make a bunch of those really neat/creative homade greetings cards... unfortunatly printing with Linux has a ways to go also.
Granted I haven't tried tooooo hard, but I have never had anything that resembles *good* quality when printing from Star Office or The Gimp or Word Perfect or Emacs...etc... Any suggestions on filters...etc that will improve my printing performance would be appreciated (HP desjet 693)
My point is that there are stil more than a few rough edges that need to be worked out before Linux can be targeted at the Grandmother crowd. I think we (a broad large blanket being thrown over the Linux community) can't get tooo hung up on the whole ease-of-use/eye-candy trap(crap) when there are still funnctionality issues that need to be dealt with.
After all, the whole Linux idea is supposed to be based upon functionality, not overtaking the evil competition.
I won't flame you for linux being already "easy to use", but I do ask: why is "easy to use" synonymous with "good" in so many folks' views? Why is it seen that it "must" appeal to the desktop luser as well as everyone else?
Isn't the idea of "winning the OS war" that (a) there is no war (b) it's the strength of quality signal that counts, not count(bums_on_seats)??
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Hey, luckily for you, there already exists an OS that is exactly what you want: Win 98 by Microsoft. Why reinvent the wheel?
Heresy you say? Well, lets look at your points.
Now, answer a question for me, WHY must Linux run on a every single desktop on the earth? Is this important? Some people seem to think that for Linux to survive an idiot-proof, warm and cozy version of the system must be assembled for "the masses." This way, Linux can achieve total world domination.
Now, I'm not a programmer, nor do I play one on TV. But after using Linux on my 2nd computer for year, I've come to some conclusions. The thing that makes Linux great (for me) is the open source ideals and the community the springs from around that. This is why I hang around, but the people you want to target with your magic-OS couldn't give a rats-ass about these ideals or the community. They just want appliance that works, and a close-source binary system would work well here.
In closing, there is no one-size-fits-all computer, for all users are different. And Linux isn't the be-all end-all of OSes and doesn't seem to try to be, but maybe the community behind is something neat.
and I hope it works and they make a lot of money. This type of thing is exactly what the GPL creates. When no one owns the basics they have to compete like hell to sell you the extras. More users = more apps = more users = more money for programmers/admins = more time to code = better code = more users.
--
+&x
It'll end up being a complete distrobution when they're done. Then they'll sell the cd's and the documentation and support for the entire distro. Remember, this isn't being aimed at people who want to download the software off the net and install it themselves -- it wouldn't do to say "Here's a filemanager for all you novices out there, but you'll have to install it over an existing scary-to-install installation.
Corel's distro is basically Debian + a filemanager. There's no reason for this company to do differently.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
The people who want it to be easy to use are asking for it to be easy to use because they want it to be easy to use -- they find it hard and would like it to be easier. They want the stability and the low hardware requirements and the neat apps and the security and all the other stuff without having to invest a lot more effort. They themselves want this for their own purposes, and they're happy when someone comes along and says: "Sure, I can give you that." Some people simply don't do complex things, and it's usually not prudent/fair to make them learn how to handle complex tasks that don't arise for them.
It's not the number of seats that matters so much (although I could present arguments as to why it does matter) but the satisfaction and happiness of the people who fill them. If Linux doesn't serve their needs perfectly but could do so if someone out there wrote some software to accomodate them, then let that programmer go ahead and do so.; especially if that software is just a shell wrapped around all the technical and gritty details that remain inside for people to play with if they so choose.
Linux isn't just about making an operating system that's fun for hackers to play with. It's supposed about making an operating system that can be extended to fit people's needs as they arise and if someone wants to address them. One of those needs is a click 'n drool interface. You can safely ignore it if it doesn't suit your needs.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I have many friends and relatives who you would probably put into the category of "desktop lusers."
Just because someone doesn't care about their computer for its own sake doesn't mean they should be forced to use an inferior operating system. I would very much like to be able to recommend linux to my friends, but right now although I use it myself, I would definitely not recommend it to most of my friends.
For me winning the OS war will be when we really have a choice. At home I have and I can impress my friends with my system. But at work it is a whole different story. Here, I'll have the choice when we have all the apps I need (and Lotus Notes is one of the necessary ones) and to have the apps, we need to have the audience and as the audience is the "dumb"...
:-)
:-)
At work all we have is Windows and AIX. AIX to run Baan and Domino and Windows to do almost everything else. A few NT servers could be replaced, but... *sigh* I won't start while I'm still in a good mood.
IMHO, winning is *not* having quality. It has never been quality and it never will be. I really think that in case to win, we need to crush MS. Its share on the desktop needs to be less than half of what they have right now, otherwise they'll still be too powerfull and be a too-save choice. A breakup of MS will help too.
Thimo
--
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux!
* = or any other program.
Ask anyone what program they use most every day, and they will probably answer NS/IE.
:-)
Actually, I most often get this answer when asking people who their ISP is.
heh-heh-heh, ex AOL workers, someone had to say it.
George
What the world really needs is a new OS (perhaps based on the Linux kernel, perhaps not) that bundles ease of use and robustness in a single package.
It's high time some of you stopped deluding yourselves into thinking that GNU/Linux is the be-all and end-all of Operating Systems.
You're right, of course. But that isn't going to happen all at once. And as long as Linux exists and has some advantages, it would be nice to improve it in a good way. I don't see anyone taking any steps toward an alternative system.
So, in other words, make the same design mistakes that Microsoft did that alienated all the legacy hardware users out there? You do realise, of course, that Linux is not all about servers running the latest and greatest in hardware? It is largely developped by and aimed toward those poor souls running 486s and low to mid-range older Pentiums who want to get the most out of their hardware. People who run Linux aren't all basement hackers on 386s or anything, no. Linux runs just fine on large SGI machines, sure. The point is that the Linux community is not the type to drop legacy support ... ... I shouldn't have even replied to this its so preposterous.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Yes, it is.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
I'm not sure upper management can handle such a complex interface. Think of all the decisions to make!
:-)
Oh-No Manager Bill! =-)
One of the great things about open source is that programs can be whatever programmers want them to be. There isn't pressure to ''dumb down'' the interface, but the possibility still exists to do so. Linux (and the other open source systems like *BSD, HURD, etc.) will continue to evolve regardless of their ''market share'' against commercial OSes.
True but we're talking about making Linux available to the average user. Remember that the average user is trained almost from birth to have people do things for them, not the reverse. Until that changes or we're big enough to alter the game we're all playing then we have to work within that framework if we want Linux to be usable to Joe Public.
Besides, Linux is *already* accepted--by many hard-core programmers, many of whom probably don't really care if it's accepted by the world of end-users.
This is true and much appreciated for without those users we'd probably not have a working Linux to speak of at all! However, remember that one of the best ways to get something to flourish, especially if you care about making it big, is to get the general public interested in it. While this may not be the ideal solution due to "comittee" type issues it will most definitely blow the doors off even more than they are.
And maybe someday - hopefully someday soon - we'll all be using some form of Linux for all our uses. One can only hope.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
"Bah!" - Dogbert
And with general society today your point would be...?
;-)
Unfortunately this is the sort of thinking that the "unwashed masses" (sorry clichet filter kicked in) want in their day to day lives. The current spate of government and other similiar groups have this as a main agenda on their tickets because they want to control everything. If they force people into this mode then they get to do that - no questions asked.
Aren't you glad we're at least asking questions about what should be?
The Tick - "Spoon!"
"Bah!" - Dogbert
I agree with your sharpshooting - please have patience on a previous VB programmer who's doing pennance by re-learning C on Linux. ;-)
/etc/inittab for the shutdown line. means?"
As for modularity that's fine too but remember that what we need to do is have a level of access that will be acceptable for the new user. Unfortunately this means using a lot of extra code to hide most of the functions "behind the scenes" so that the user does not become confused.
An ideal solution would be not just a mode of install (Basic, Full, Server, etc.) but a mode of usage as well! Imagine having an internal switch setting for each user account that allows the system to treat the new user at a level that they feel comfortable with.
I hate to bring M$-isms into this but maybe a first-time "wizard" that asks the user simple questions to determine the level at which the user should be able to use the system.
"Do you know what GREP the
That's actually a bad example but you get the idea. When the user eventually grows/learns to a level that they can use the system then they should have gotten to a point where they can turn that switch off on their user account and move on to a more complex setup. Doing that would allow both newbies and experienced users to use the same system without have major problems or conflicts. You can also do this for the installation choices as well and eventually get to the point where even a beginning user will not have too much problem installing and configuring a new system.
Modularity will help that certainly but there needs to be a shift in thinking so that the newbie "level" is designed for totally new users and not anything higher.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Then keep your file windows small and your browser windows large. Nobody's stopping you. No one's forcing you to type an internet URL in you file manager.
I think that the poster was trying to say that the implimentation of Win98 like features is a bad thing and should not be copied to the unix/linux envirnoment because they are in fact two entirely seperate things.
Unix design philosophy makes use of small tools linked together not large software programs doing everything at once.
I know this I have designed a number of shell scripts and am intrigued about how it is working. If you do any shell programming you know what I am talking about.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
------Flame on-------------
You know one of the reasons I even bothered with linux in first place was because it offered a plausible alternative to be being bludgeoned with the OS that is windows into upgradding PC hardware. Having something that works is at the core of what most humans think is a good idea.
---------Flame off-----------
In general I think that it's fine to increase power of whatever however there should be a system or a library that would be called libscale or whatever that impliments a series of usable features that could be scaled to whatever thing happened to be running. For example you can create open source quake that allows for dynamic AI routines or whatever with massive 128bit graphics rendered to whatever you want but you could also have (almost) the same thing with gameplay and such with no sound, low res graphics (maybe ascii) or perhaps something that would allow you to do more tweaking for the particular processor.
In short there really is not excuse to increase bloat just to make something spiffy or "modern"
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
-------Yeah flame so sue me------
When I refer to NT or solaris I am not refering to the kernel I am refering to the kernel AND associated system components.
While although technically feasible linux could be seperated from the wm it is not considered as part of the whole package that we expect.
I guess English may not be your first language so let me state this formally and slowly:
[The system we currently call] Linux [ and it's standard material that comes with it] is generally slow for me in condition x (ie running GNOME).
I actually dare you to run a "linux system" with just a kernel and nothing else. Going to be a little difficult.
Oh and by the way I ran linux with slackware 3.4-3.6 on a 80386sx 20mhz 4MB ram 80MB hd for at least 2 years. It gets real old real fast running in CLI mode for that long when I could run much better, much faster win3.x programs on the same machine.
---------Flame off--------
You know theory dosn't really matter all that terribly much for even natural human interfaces. Highlightig the fact that "linux" strictly speaking as being the kernel makes little difference to someone already ensconsed in the OS.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I would hate to build anything on top of Gnome.
I have used gnome in the past from time to
time, but eventually something always happens
that places Gnome in some wacked state from
whence I can never return. Gnome resembles
an M$ product -- sex appeal sans stability.
Darn it I tried I really tried. I guess the only reason I use anything GNOME related is because some apps can be run without the need of the whole things running. Mostly I use Gnome-terminal and the occasional other possibly useful app.
What really truely pains me is that it takes so much of my system with it.
486dx66/16MB ram/340MB hd/20MB swap.
I can barely get anything to actually work without a tremendous slowdown.
I have figured out one thing with linux which I think is accurate.
All the development on linux apps is going into what that theoretical computer in the sky will be able to do and not what the average or low end machine can do. The size of the disk space requirements, the size of programs, the need to compile almost everything yourself (and then spend 10+ hours banging your head against the wall getting the said features to work). It is intensely agraviating. I only use it because my machine isn't supported by the bastards in Redmond and never will.
Gnome could very well streamline it's use of memory and perhaps allow for a seamless use of things. Perhaps scale itself for whatever machine or system profile. Have graphics taken to vertain levels depending on the memory or disk space would be an excellent start.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Although many Gnome/KDE fans I'm sure are not happy with this, I think this is a godsend. I find that (IMO) programmers (like myself) sometimes have a hard time separating the details of the project from the product. There are always little quirks that the user must understand, that really have nothing to do with the end product and only through backs from engineering. Apple has, IMO, done an excellent job of separating the engineering from thier desktop. An example of some terms that I've always felt turns off non-computer types is Object Oriented, development libraries, or multi-tasking. Does a user really need to know what these are and what they do, of course not. They just need to understand the benefits that they bring, not the details of what they do!
-- Moondog
Although some people might not like the idea of a 'dumbing- down' of Linux, I think it's really good news as this will doubtless help convince other people that Linux really is one of the best choices (if not the best choice) around.
OTOH, it will convice me that Linux is turning into a Windows clone and that I should switch to FreeBSD, as that will be, for me, the best choice around (though OpenBSD sounds reasonably good as well). A Windows clone (however stable and open-sourced) is not what I want to use - I want to use UNIX, dammit! If I can't get that from Linux anymore, I'll go elsewhere. Which is too bad, I really like RPM a lot (yes, not all distros have it but mine do and I like it).
And from what we've heard about Windows 2000 I think it's clear that it's not all that unstable. Plus it's more user- friendly than any desktop we have . . . I still prefer Linux, but an easy- to use GUI would be welcome.
Most people are not going to like using Windows 2000 (unless there is an "technical idiot" mode built in somewhere). Since when is administrating an NT box simple and user-friendly? From watching my NT-fan friends at it, Linux seems a hell of a lot simpler (yes, familiarity with it and all that), but having to install things in certain arbitrary orders (and the software doesn't stop you or even warn you away from making a mistake) seems like a real pain in the ass to me (for instance, I heard from someone today that if you install DNS before (or was it after? Can't remember) Active Directory, your install get's fucked up). Personally, I don't want to deal with that kind of shit ever.
From what I've heard, it's actually pretty stable. I know a few people using it. One of them managed to crash FreeBSD (sound card driver went south) but not Windows 2000.
Even as a UNIX freak and anti-M$ bigot I could probably figure out the basics of NT/2000 admining fairly quickly (yes, I would make many mistakes but I could figure out at least some of it), but could your favorite technophobe? I doubt it. Especially if they've been using pure point and drool client OSes (Windows 95/98, MacOS, etc) their entire life. Which leaves exactly what? Several hundred million poorly secured and unpatched Windows 2000 boxen. Just what the world fucking needs.
When you are visiting and you want to write a new startup script for her, just escape to the command prompt, or switch over to Enlightenment or KDE or whatever your favorite desktop shell/environment is.
I think that one environment will never appeal to everybody. That's what Windows tried to do, and that's one of the reasons we all use Linux today. By providing muliple environments for users of different skill levels, Linux can become truly an OS for anybody.
- MacOS
- BeOS ( I know, I know, embedded systems. It's still a good consumer OS. )
Do we really want to sacrafice the power of UNIX on the altar of widespread acceptance? I know I don't. Linux stripped of its UNIX history is worthless, Linux is UNIX. That's like saying an eagle that can't fly is the same as a tiger. The eagle was built as an aerial predator, cutting its wings off doesn't allow it to survive as a gound predator. Linux is the ideal platform for me, Mac is the ideal platform for my grandmother. Let's just quit trying to homogenize the OS market : no matter how many X modules you write, one size doesn't fit all when it comes to operating systems.- Dave "It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy" - Steve Jobs
Easy to use == less them spent working around and configuring stuff == more efficient, more time to get on with my life == Good.
-Being able to drag and drop components from different applications is easy to use. Interoperability is good.
-Being able to plug and play peripherals without wasting time configuring them is easy to use.
-Being able to use an application without having to learn arcane, but ultimately completely arbitrary commands is easy to use.
why is "easy to use" synonymous with "good" in so many folks' views?
Forgive me if I seem condescending here, but I think the answer is obvious. No matter the quality, a tool (of any kind) has absolutely no utility, and therefore no value, if no one can use it. That being said, there are places for both complex tools (requiring special training) and simple tools (requiring more than two brain cells). This isn't an attempt to steal away your ultra-flexible command prompt, just a way to get more functionality out of your computer without having to look at it should you be so inclined. If you're not, don't use it, but please don't gripe about it being there. This OS is not now, and never was, the exclusive property of you and your hacker kindred. Bring on the masses...
bp
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
He throws a gnife.
It misses.
-> Throw axe
"Join me now and share the.... AAAACK!" [THUD]
You've killed a little GNOME.
The body disappears in a puff of greasy black smoke.
I agree that Linux needs to become usable for someone who doesn't have the slightest clue about command lines.
But that's not a reason to get rid of them.
For a lot of things, command lines are much much more efficient than even the best GUI could be, so why not give people who know how to handle it the option to do it? I don't think people would find it confusing if they had the "Command Line" button, even if they never used it.
Same for User IDs and passwords - why get rid of them, if we can just do something like
"su user -c exec startx" in rc.local?
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
We've all seen these before, but compare them and think, "What is Aqua doing that GNOME is not?" Nothing! Both screenshots are simple desktop+explorer shots. Yet somehow the Aqua screen looks like da bomb and GNOME looks like shite.
Look again. Look at the details.
Look at the use of fonts: The Aqua fonts are antialiased, the GNOME fonts aren't. The Aqua font was designed by someone who knows what they're doing aesthetically; the GNOME font looks ugly and unbalanced at screen resolution. There are two sizes of the font on the Aqua screen, and they're different enough to contrast well; the GNOME screen has at least three sizes, and they're close enough that it's not obvious at first glance that they're actually different sizes. It adds up to a cluttered look where Aqua's use of fonts looks smooth and slick.
Look at the use of color: the GNOME screenshot shows colors from the horrible garish 16-color Windows palette; the Aqua colors are subtle and harmonize well.
Look at the use of icons: the GNOME screen has a huge number of little icons, and most of them are not obvious at first glance. The spreadsheet window has two whole rows of these things, and they're not even designed to go well together with a consistent style. Again, the look is cluttered. The icons visible in the Aqua screenshot have some technical advantages (more colors, larger size), but more than that, they look like they were all designed by the same person with the same sense of color and shape. They look like they belong together. Again, the impression is of slickness versus confusing clutter.
Look even at the smallest details. On the GNOME screenshot, notice how the white boxes around the desktop icon names are a little too large, and not quite balanced top to bottom? Notice how the background pattern is so garish that it's not easy to see the icons themselves, and it would be distracting if the windows were small enough that you could see more of the desktop? Notice how the menus with accelerator underlines sit a bit higher than those without, in the PDF window?
People don't necessarily see these details explicitly. They might not even be able to point them out in a screenshot. But they notice them, all right.
-- Jason A. Lefkowitz
Read my blog.
I hate to sharpshoot, but....
A yes/no response takes up one bit, consisting of either a 1 or a 0.
Having said that, I think this is an opportunity for the modularity of Linux to shine through. If you want the easy GUI (the 2-bit one), you can have that, even make it the default install interface so you don't even have to set it up. If you want to work only from a console(the 64-bit interface), that too is acceptable. If you want something in the middle(the 32-bit interface), you have many choices.
Remember, it's all modular. I use KDM at home so that my 3-year old can click on the icon for him to log in and have his own little world (he likes to run 5xXroach, 5xXsnow, and wine at the same time), but I can use the virtual consoles or X if I want to, and I just pick which window manager to use at log-in. Even a no-brainer can figure out how to log in, and the more advanced users can pick which option to use.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
I have to disagree. Lets look at a few things. First of all emulating windows never did anyone any good. OS/2 emulated Windows 3.1 functionality (I was able to run pretty much any 3.1 app that I put on OS/2 Warp)I'm not saying that OS/2 died because it ran Windows apps. I'm saying that People aren't going to come to Linux just because they can run Windows apps. They have Windows to do that for them already. Linux needs easy to use apps that will bring people over to Linux. If we have to rely on running Windows apps then we have lost. Linux either stands alone or it doesn't stand.
Molog
So Brain, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
As I point out occasionally, the whole configuration mess needs a rethink. I'd start by dropping support for all non-PnP hardware, all ISA hardware, and driving the configuration process strictly from the PnP tree. No end user should ever have to deal with IRQs, device address numbers, or hardware conflicts again. Yeah, some legacy hardware won't work. So use an old version of the OS on those machines, or upgrade.
I can understand the mindset to make a product that can surpass or compete with Apples simplicity and ease of use for the average user, but comparing this to Wind*ws seems a little odd. Back in the days of Win 3.1 and possibly up through Win 95, the environment was still pretty simple and the ease of use was also pretty good. However with 98, NT and now the upcoming 2K, these environments are very complicated for the average user to set up and re-configure when adding new HW or maybe a larger application. Look at how AOL's 5.0 completely hosed so many systems.
One more firm that wants to be part of the open source model is a great thing though. A little competition for Mandrake wouldn't hurt for the end consumer either. Although the article seemed a little press-releas-ish, it looks like they want to create a pretty complete environment.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
- What's the key combination to close a window?
- What's the key combination to save a file?
- Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
These question may have different answers for different Windows applications, but they have MANY more answers in Linux.
And Windows has another very important advantage regarding programmers: a unified API. It may be a difficult to learn API, sure, but at least it is _ONE SINGLE_ API to learn. In Linux, if you want to do changes in any of those Open Source programs, how many different toolkits must you learn? Motif, K, Qt, Gtk, Xaw, etc, etc...
Another plus for the Windows API: printing and the clipboard are about as transparent as they can be. How do you program printing in an X application? The most common way is use PostScript + GhostScript, the absolutely slowest way. Well, it's fast in a P3-500, but isn't the ability to run in 486-66's a Linux advantage?
Let me make one point clear, before a moderator sets me to (-1; Troll): I'm a Linux user. But I'm not a zealot. I would like to see the complete Windows API ported to Linux, with all its extensions. I have done extensive programming in both, they both suck, but the Windows API sucks less than any of the X-based APIs. Over that we could put a nice and consistent UI.
Before I forget, I tried writing this comment in a Kde editor and cut and paste it into Netscape 4.61. I couldn't do it. Maybe there's someone out there who thinks it's really easy, it's just my fault that I'm so dumb, but I have twenty years experience in programming, two of those years in Linux application development. If I cannot cut from a Kde editor and paste it in Netscape, how could a newbie do that?
I just have two questions:
Whens the IPO?
And how do you know my mother can use it?! You talking bout my mamma?!?!
...
I'm working around 90% as you do.
Ie. I start Acroread from wharf, and - like you - I know which file I wanna see.
So a lot of pgms have a tiny (!!) xyz-terms w/ a tiny script asking me for the filename, with "just ENTER" set to reasonable defaults.
Some of these defaults present a filelist,
*
*** but I do not have the __OVERHEAD__ of a filemanager ***,
I just have an "ls".
When you started in the 70s you know like I do, that saving resources is a good thing.
Even on a powerful machine.
We upgrade our hardware constantly,
but --- DOES ANYTHING RUN FASTER ???
It doesn't (w/ exceptions of course), because we add new OVERHEAD.
We do that because some of us like to click with pointing devices.
I don't.
I prefer keystrokes and I try to keep the system load as low as possible.
We're not so far away I think...
george./
There's no particular reason for this to represent a "duplication of effort," at least from the standpoint of the GNOME project. After all, they needed a better file manager. GMC has not been all that satisfactory.
What their application amounts to is one that unifies files and remote objects (via HTTP/FTP) together, and lets methods be invoked on them.
By using the Bonobo interface, they can pull in all sorts of GNOME objects. That's certainly not duplication.
It may be duplicative if you're a developer working on the Kconq file manager for KDE that has similar scope; it's not duplicative within the context of GNOME.
I'd say that this is the most important component to have some serious HCI people take a look at; that's the only hope of it being usable to the "Bubba" users. (No offense intended to other than Presidents of the United States :-) ...)
It's important that this get HCI attention in that if it succeeds, Nautilus would become the front-end for a whole lot of users to get at "system stuff."
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
It appears they're just writing a new file manager/explorer type application for GNOME and releasing it under the GPL. I don't see a way for them to make money doing this (after all, neither support nor documentation should be an issue for something like a file manager).
How do they expect to make money?
I speak as a person who has tried to use Linux for everyday use and went BACK to Windows...
.conf file and restart X. Or how about those people that can't get hardware working because Linux's precious kernel doesn't support it? -- but a module does!! Well how do you install the module? Recompile your kernel? You're kidding me, right?
.EXE file and following instructions on where it will be installed and watching it make icons so you can actually find the program to use it (which, I'd like to add, the install scripts don't give you a chance to tell it where to put anything in Linux).
If you made it easy to learn, then that is one thing, if you make it completely easy, that is yet another. It seems to be that noone in the Linux community (and I mean NOONE) is attempting to make a GOOD set of troubleshooting tools and a help system that is at least decent. 'man' only goes so far, and is rather pathetic all things considered. man will tell you everything in the world about the topic you asked about... LITERALLY. I've never seen a man page that explained what the topic was in any small amount of space. It rambles and rambles until you have no desire to do whatever you were trying to in the first place.
As for making the desktop easier to use, I'm all for it. How about support for fonts that actually look good without having to run in circles to get a font server running and then somehow tieing it into the desktop environment or window manager (something I've given up on several times). How about a configuration tool that actually works? linuxconf sure doesn't. Redhat's control-panel is a start but it is still lacking something... like maybe words telling you what button does what. Who was the genius who thought of that one? He must've been really impressed with Tooltips...
Back onto the topic of learning... Don't you realize that some people out here in the real world don't have time to sit and learn how to use console-based configuration utils that don't work in the end to set up a couple of NIC's that don't work after 2 weeks of trying? Or maybe you'd just like to tell those people that have video problems in X that they are idiots because they just have to change settings in this
I got another one for ya... How about those people that go out and get situated on Linux, and get it working correctly, and want some of this free software they keep hearing about. How are you going to explain to them that they will have to un-tar.gz it and then compile it themselves and THEN install it? But wait, there's more! Libraries are missing, out-of-date, or even worse - they're NEWER then the source needs to compile!! What then? Get the needed libraries, compile them, install them (if there aren't any more conflicts, that is) and then finally go back to compiling that program, and then installing it? That is a LOT of work for something equalled in Windows by clicking an
You want to complain about people unwilling to learn? I think you should recompile your brain's kernel so it's not so one-sided.
I before said that I left Linux for Windows... I will go back as soon as Linux is decent to use for everyday use (and maybe when I can run binaries from Windows under it natively rather then using something idiotic like VMWare or WINE).
- 8Complex
That means:
Full navigation with the keyboard
All window management functions accessible via the keyboard alone
A way of moving the mouse pointer and simulating mouse clicks with the keyboard - for that one time your mouse is broken but you still have to navigate the gui, no matter how slowly.
Proper keyboard focus control. 99% of the time you should not have to use the mouse to put the keyboard focus where it ought to be
*Integration* between keyboard and mouse scrolling in all text widgets and the like - none of this snapping to somewhere in the file you didn't expect to be just because you positioned first with the mouse, then moved with the cursor keys.
A lot of other things I've forgotten, but we all know what they are when they're not there
Even my mother can type!
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
There's a much better desktop and OS than this Eazel/Nautilus thing, one that my mother could definately use. Screenshot
_______
2B1ASK1
I completely agree, but why is this? Why do all X themes look butt ugly?
We've all seen these before, but compare them and think, "What is Aqua doing that GNOME is not?" Nothing! Both screenshots are simple desktop+explorer shots. Yet somehow the Aqua screen looks like da bomb and GNOME looks like shite.
cpeterso
Cool. Now check out Konqueror in action...
http://www.mosfet.org/kde2action/
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Read more about Andy Hertzfeld in this old wired article from when he was working at General Magic. My favorite line is:
Guess he is starting with a new platform after all.
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
Jeez, and I just submitted this, too... :-]
BTW, one of the employees on the project is Andy Hertzfeld. It will therefore NOT suck. (Andy is about the closest thing to a Linus the Mac OS has, other than Bill Atkinson and a select few others.)
For Mac users reading this, try this experiment. Find a copy of PepsiCaps. Run it in the OS X blue box. Marvel that a 15-year-old Mac application still works on today's machines, even if it does deviate slightly from the human interface guidelines.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I'll believe it when I see it. What "mere mortals" want is auto-everything. For auto-everything to work the system has to make assumptions, or rather the programmers behind the systems make assumptions. My experience is that they almost never make the same assumptions I would make, which always leads me to disable all the auto-everything stuff the system will let me disable.
Another thing "mere mortals" want is an all-graphics interface; everything point and click. Hmm, I can't see how something like:
rm `ls -l|awk '{print $3}'|grep "juser"`
could be graphical, not with the same flexibility and any kind of Unix without the pipe/redirect capabilities would be kinda stupid.
Another thing, admin tools (like linuxconf) require that you refrain from touching the config files by hand, or things will preety soon get out of sync.
So, it will take quite a piece of software to convince me it can be useful and enjoyable both for current Linux users and for "mere mortals"; if any software does convince me, though, it'll be amazing.
1. A bulletproof install. It must work, out of the box, no questions asked.
2.Hardware support for everything. Drivers need to be there for the hardware and they have to be installed automatically. Don't make the user guess what brand of video or sound card they have, 'cause generally, they don't know.
This would be great. Yet no PC operating system I've used yet has either of these features. Yet I have seen systems that come pre-installed, and come with a bullet-resistant install disk tailored for that system. However, upgrading your hardware might 'break' such an install disk.
3. Get rid of the UNIX model. Yeah, no more user IDs, passwords or any of that. It can be too confusing on your grandma to have more names and numbers to remember.
4. Get rid of GNU. Yeah, that's right, drop the command line utilities that you know and love, and lose all that power. If granny can't remember her password how's she supposed to remember arcane commands?
What's this "get rid of" stuff about? The built-in support for multiple users is incredibly useful in a household where more than one person uses the computer. eg: I can screw up my stuff without screwing up everyone elses. Of course, if granny lives alone she might want the option to allow it to automatically log her on. And the Gnu tools are great for some things that a GUI couldn't easily emulate. I do agree forcing someone to use them is not ideal. There should be an alternative.
5. The gui must be the OS. This means, goodbye X. Most of the newbies who ask me for help request help with setting up X (well, networking comes close). X must disappear, or it must become so much a part of Linux that it's just there, and it just works, no matter what video card, RAMDac, or whatever the user has on their machine.
I'm not especially attached to X, but making the GUI part of the kernel or even a built-in part of of the OS just seems like a bad idea to me. If you actually meant that it should be seemless, then yeah, this would be great. As far as it "just [working], no matter what video card..." -- well, keep dreaming & see response to 1 and 2. Video cards (and other hardware) change over the years, so the drivers need to change. The best way to keep your install bulletproof is to buy specifically supported hardware.
6. This GUI must be slicker than whale shit in an ice flow. Yeah, it must blow all other existing GUIs out of the water for ease of use, configurability, etc.
7. Did I mention that this stuff must work, right out of the box? It has to be so simple that the user can install it and configure it without a thought.
Amen!
What the world really needs is a new OS (perhaps based on the Linux kernel, perhaps not) that bundles ease of use and robustness in a single package.
I don't know that we need a whole new OS. There are more than just one OS with rock solid foundations to build a nice user interface on. No, linux, the kernel, does not need this GUI. What people, like our grandmothers, need is an easy-to-use, visually appealing user interface with a stable foundation. And that GUI needs Linux or a similar stable and open kernel beneath it.
numb
This is exactly the sort of thing that is needed for Linux to be accepted by the mainstream public.
;-)
For all our talk as Linux users about the "dumbing down of Linux" as an OS Linux really needs something like this.
For instance I could teach most of KDE or GNOME to my mother but what would she do if the print spool wouldn't clear after trying the Printer Control? Or what if she wanted someone else in the family to be able to use her system but not touch her stuff? Both of these tasks require administrative skills that she does not have and would most likely be unwilling to have to learn. Unfortunately for those of the Linux community there is no substitute for the Windows Control Panel. (yet)
Remember what people have said for years about software and business management - Programmers want an infintely wide interface, middle managers want an 8-bit interface because that's all they can handle, and upper management wants a 2 bit interface - Yes/No.
Most (I use the word loosely) users in America today can handle the 8-bit interface but due to the increased "dumbing-down" of our culture we're forcing people down to the level of a 2-bit interface. (Unfortunate but true.) Thus we're left with the situation that "Anything that is simpler for the user is the solution."
We may not like it but there it is and we do have to accept it until we can change it.
Also for those of you about to rally to the "We'll force them to learn!" flag - might I suggest you look at your own reactions when someone "forced" you to do something such as use an M$ product.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Because a lot us have better things to do with our time than figure out crufty interfaces. I've configured zillions of ascii-based configuration files. As the lounge singer said, "the thrill is gone, baby."
--
I guess that if they ever decide to go Windows, it would be called Weazel... ;-)
"The Internet, of course, is more than just a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs." - Time Magazine
Take a look at the nautilus screenshots here ...
http://www.ionet.net/~hestgray/nautilus/
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
1. Distribution contracts
2. Integrated XML using Gecko
3. Integrated Internet functions
4. Web bases software installation and updates
5. Hidden complexity, but still accessable to Geeks
6. Parallels with BeOS interface
Now, I much prefer BeOS over Linux, but this will be a step in the right direction for Linux being useable for the average person.
Please don't flame me about how Linux is already easy to use, because there are many rough edges.
Have a good one.
EverCode
I think this is great news. Although some people might not like the idea of a 'dumbing- down' of Linux, I think it's really good news as this will doubtless help convince other people that Linux really is one of the best choices (if not the best choice) around.
I tried to convince a friend of mine to switch to Linux a while ago, and he was dismayed at having to _type_ in the name of a file in the WM menu configurator instead of being able to browse for it. I consider it a trivial inconvenience, but to him it's still a big deal.
Let's face it folks, most people out there use Windows at least partly because they're lazy. (I didn't say all!) And from what we've heard about Windows 2000 I think it's clear that it's not all that unstable. Plus it's more user- friendly than any desktop we have . . . I still prefer Linux, but an easy- to use GUI would be welcome.
Unless it comes with a one button mouse.
- What's the key combination to print something in Windows?
- What's the key combination to close a window?
- What's the key combination to save a file?
- Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
Ask 10 people and you'll probably get at least 5 different answers, simply because every application is allowed to do things differently. This makes the learning curve exponentially greater because you need to learn the shortcuts for _every_ application!
As much as I hate the MacOS from a technical standpoint, it really does have everything else beat hands-down when it comes to simplicity and consistency. (Or at least it did -- Aqua looks pretty hideous...)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings about this.
1) It doesn't seem to be a fork on Gnome, but rather an extension of it (perhaps a set of modules for it?)
2) It is NOT being developed by Apple or AOL. These are a bunch of people who used to work for Apple and AOL, but neither company is itself directly involved.
3) I know a lot of people are just going to post without reading the article, so I might as well reiterate it here: yes, it's GPL'd.
4) Once again, this is NOT Apple doing this. But I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people from the now-defunct Human Interface team there are now working on it.
Now, my own views on the project: I hope it works out. GNOME and KDE are both making good progress towards bringing a good, usable GUI to Linux, but both still have a long way to go. A boost, particularly from people who've designed UI's professionally before, would be a great help.
I see a lot of posts on here that pretty much parrot the line: "this is what Linux really needs." That's a load of crap.
If you want Linux to succeed in a mass market where the majority of VCRs silently blink 12:00 into infinity, then it must have something truly compelling to offer over the competition. This means that Linux needs to be simplified to the extreme. Sticking some pretty eye-candy on top of X isn't going to do it. To wit:
In short, Linux needs to be something totally different from what it is.
I use GNU/Linux because it works for me. I've used various flavors of UNIX, MacOS, and MS Windows as a professional programmer, student, home computer user, and employee. I've set up, installed, configured, even built machines targeted at all three operating systems. I use GNU/Linux at home (while my wife uses MacOS). I don't expect everyone to have the technical knowledge that I do, nor have the desire to acquire that knowledge. I mean, look, I do this stuff for a living, it's my business to know, but my doctor doesn't do this stuff for a living, so I don't expect him to want to learn to operate a computer just to get his work done, and neither should you.
What the world really needs is a new OS (perhaps based on the Linux kernel, perhaps not) that bundles ease of use and robustness in a single package.
It's high time some of you stopped deluding yourselves into thinking that GNU/Linux is the be-all and end-all of Operating Systems.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
No, not so much a flame as a caveat. One Eazel employee told, at a recent bay area Linux gathering, of how harsh the management is about prospective employees.
And several prominent Bay Area Linux people with heavy GUI backgrounds (like myself) were snubbed by Eazel to hire much less expensive neophyte programmers. Yeah, I was one of them, but I don't care as I found a great-paying and good job elsewhere. I was much more surprised when several other friends with good credentials were ALSO snubbed.
Basically, they'd be willing to pay a premium for a big name, but I sincerely doubt the employees will be treated well.
My vote on Eazel: nice concept, wrong company.
_Deirdre
...but it's going to take a lot of work. We need apps that my mom can use, and lots of them. Financial apps, word processing and spreadsheet apps, and a good web browser (Unix Netscape just sucks today).
Some of the pieces are already being worked on, and a few already exist. You might say StarOffice is good enough for mom to use, despite the fact that it doesn't always import MS formats properly. The financial apps are pretty poor right now. All the Free ones listed on freshmeat are so feature-poor, it's hard to use them for anything but the simplest checkbook balancing. When/If Intuit ports Quicken to Linux, things will be different.
As for the web browser, this is probably the "killer app" for most people. Ask anyone what program they use most every day, and they will probably answer NS/IE. The problem is that web browsing on Linux sucks. Unix Netscape on the whole is just crap. Its more unstable than Win32 Netscape, and X just makes the fonts look like shit. The text is unreadable and ugly. Furthermore, plugin and Java support in NS on Linux is abysmal. This is a serious problem. Mozilla looks to change all that, by providing a high quality, standard web browser implementation cross-platform. That would be quite a feat! Unfortunately, that's also quite a ways off.
In sum, I think efforts like these are nice, but I really believe that it's a little early to be making things mom can use. In many ways, right now we don't even have stuff WE can use.
This is the best thing that could have happened to Linux. The problem with other desktop environments to date is that they're being developed by people bent on one-upping windows. They may not even realize it, but they're taking all the user interface decisions that Microsoft has made--many of them fundamentally wrong--and are duplicating them. For example, human interface designers have been been very vocal about the problems of "nested expand-to-the-right" pull down menus (a la the Start menu). And yet this a fundamental feature of KDE (not to pick on it too hard).
What Linux needs is some fresh air; some people who are more than just coders looking for a project, and who have their own ideas they want to bring to life. There has been much research and are many available books and papers on interface design that don't follow the Mac/Windows paradigms that we've been seeing on personal computers for sixteen years now.
Something to note here is that there are some real gurus behind this effort. This is much different than two college students with little historical perspective trying to outdo Microsoft in a "me too!" sort of way.
Heh. Getting my mother to use Linux wouldn't be that difficult. My fiancee is another matter entirely. She's about as computer literate as a house plant. Which is why I hope they suceed. I'd like to be able to discuss Unix and Linux issues without her eyes glazing over.
That said, making Linux an easier pill for John Q. Public to take requires more than a GUI.
It's going to require a "Plug and Play" ability for peripherials...or at least better automatic detection and mounting. The latter is mostly an issue of better driver support. The former is a much more drastic change.
It's also going to require a increased ability to set things up from the desktop graphic tools. Don't get me wrong. I'm a command line evangelist. As a systems admin, the command line tools give me a better insight to how the system works. John Q. Public, OTOH, really doesn't give a flying fsck how the system works. John Q. Public wants to run his Quicken 2000, Office 2000 (two products that, if ported, would make a lot of converts), games and web surf for cheap airline tickets and pr0n. What he doesn't want to do is kernel tuning, add patches (or service packs), manually add zip disks, etc. A computer is a tool. If the average user can't figure out how to use our tool or gets continually frustrated, he'll buy one that he can use a lot easier...Macs and Win 9x.
What we really ought to be doing is not beta testing with other techies, but beta testing with people like my fiancee. Those that have no clue and really don't want one. If it passes that test, then it will be ready for prime time as a home computer OS.