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The GNOME-Microsoft Connection
ejbst25 writes: "I haven't seen it mentioned ... but check out this IBM site about GNOME and MS similiarities if you haven't seen it." There's no secret that for good or for ill, "acts like Microsoft" is the standard by which many desktops are judged. The GNOME project, derided by some as "too idealistic," is notably pragmatic on this point: "I didn't know much about spreadsheets, I just copied every single thing from [Microsoft] Excel," says Miguel of the look of the spreadsheet he's added to GNOME. It's a well-written article, and includes a list of handy links at the bottom if you're interested in programming GNOME aps. It raises the question, though, how long till GNOME or another open-source desktop is the recognized leader?
UNIX IS NOT FUCKING WINDOWS
I sure hope not... It's gonna catch a nasty cold if it is.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
- read his books, at least Tog On Interface
- THINK. What does all this mean? Why was he testing on smart, clued people who'd never seen a computer before? Is this really 'design for idiots' or is it actually 'finding what conclusions are typically drawn by an untutored user'?
- USE it.
I'd like to see more X apps use Mac/Win mouse text selection behavior, particularly Mac type drag and drop of selections with the little visual cues to what's happening. Not because this is 'like what I already know': I'm equally willing to learn other rules, but Tog-ized text selection behavior is just better thought out, and quicker to understand, due to smart assumptions about what happens when you do things.This is a way Tog can help immensely without even paying attention directly. I wonder, if the wish is for Tog to actively help out with UI, what is he expected to do? "Help make three-button X text handling more intuitive!" "Help make our Excel-type button bar more intuitive!" Sometimes the answer is "You can't."
I've personally had experience with advanced UI and seen what happens. It was a couple years ago, and I began using the now-abandoned-by-MS-pressure Apple internet suite, 'Cyberdog'. This was revolutionary in several ways- it was massively object-oriented, using OpenDoc (and many parts were released for it, too- few _containers_ tho) but what I am referring to is specifically the interface aspects of it, and what they meant.
Cyberdog let you abstract all sorts of internet resources into an iconlike object. Email addresses would, when doubleclicked, make a 'To:' email to the address, or could be dragged into text or a header field and write the required text- basically everytime you did something that seemed plausible, it did what you wanted. FTP site addresses could open on the desktop like a Finder window to a remote site, or could be dragged to browser windows etc etc. Web bookmarks, likewise- telnet never quite got debugged but tried to open a terminal window- and all of these could exist as a simple bookmark file anywhere on your HD, complete with distinctive icon- or it could be dragged into a container object, the Notebook, a yellow-lined window with a sort of tree-view structure where you could store _lots_ of these references, or indeed aliases to anything else on your HD you wanted.
The Notebook container could also be used as an object- and this is where the user interface started to become unexpectedly powerful.
You _could_ convince notebooks to hold links to other notebooks- but this isn't what I mean, it's more of a top-level organizing tool. Go back with me to the peak of Cyberdog community- people were interacting on a special Apple Usenet server where you could post binaries, including Cyberdog rich text. What that meant was this: you could drag images etc. into your message and they'd be displayed inline. You could make a rich-text stationery file to use. People developed interesting sigs with nicely crafted graphic elements. The bandwidth issue was confronted and basic guidelines evolved- all nice but relatively unimportant, until one day someone asked whether anyone had links to Cyberdog resources. No such resource existed. Within 48 hours, a huge resource had emerged from the community without effort or any significant intent to collaborate. It was a Notebook containing hundreds of K of links, and no one person had to do all the work. Here's how it happened.
Notebooks can be dragged into rich-text messages, you see. This one fact, combined with the existing behaviors of drag-and-drop and the ability to squirrel away internet links in all sorts of places with just an easy mouse drag-and-drop, created an environment where this Cyberdog resource _exploded_ into existence. One person, I forget who, answered the request by saying just "I don't have one, but here are some links" and dragging a few related links into a fresh Notebook- and dragging that onto his message and sending it out to the newsgroup. Suddenly everyone had a copy of the Notebook (see any parallels with the Linux 'many eyes make debugging shallow' concept?), and several people added what links _they_ had handy, and dragged their resulting notebooks onto their reply messages, and sent those to the newsgroup. Everyone got those, and several more people pitched in, adding still more links, and one person took all the notebooks and dragged the contents of all onto one notebook, and spent a couple minutes making a folder arrangement to organize the data a bit, and (you guessed it) posted the result to the newsgroup...
The interesting thing about this is not the scope of the resulting data- any one person could put in a few weeks of not-so-hard work and track down all that, or most of it. It's not even the fact that all this happened in days. It's the undeniable fact that all this happened _effortlessly_, it just sort of happened without anyone intending it. Parallel, OSS-like free collaboration over the Net happened _unthinkingly_ because of specific interface features of this particular software, and I was there to see it and recognize what was happening. I'll never forget that. UI can MAKE THINGS HAPPEN, even enable things that won't happen otherwise.
I'm posting this in Netscape. Bill Gates cut a deal with Jobs to endorse IE and kill the Cyberdog/OpenDoc projects. With OpenDoc killed, the companies trying to write parts for it couldn't survive and had to completely redesign their products or die- I don't know how many are left. It's said that one of the reasons OpenDoc was killed was that, despite its flaws (slow and unwieldy and beta-quality) it was a full-on attempt to entirely replace the Office Suite paradigm with a 'building blocks' object oriented paradigm- and Certain People couldn't allow that to happen. Apart from that, it _was_ different though curiously easy to understand and work with- it was always puzzling people until they 'got it', in a flash of intuition, and started to work with the new paradigm instead of against it. You were never in a mode, really- instead of being in 'PowerPoint Mode' you might be drawing a picture or writing a letter and then decide to drag in a movie or something, and suddenly your letter contained Multimedia, without your ever having to run a 'Multimedia App' per se. This freedom was hard for people to get used to- at any moment you could do whatever, and you don't _think_ in terms of that without a bit of enlightenment. What Office user would think of sending someone a chart which, when the recipient looked at it, would show current data live off the Internet- dynamic, in other words? What Outlook Express user would think of sending someone, not a note saying 'Please meet me on server XYZ' but a window containing a telnet link to that server, ready to log in from the message window?
All this existed _years_ ago. It existed in OpenDoc, in Cyberdog, it was all available to the sufficiently ingenious hacker, or indeed to Joe Average half the time (the more spectacular stuff, as always, would require a bit of effort). And it was killed, by Bill Gates and his people- because in many ways it was BETTER than Office- and, perhaps, because it was just too far ahead of its time. Sure, it still used text and radio buttons and pushbuttons and checkboxes- in fact one of the most successful OpenDoc parts ever made _was_ a button, 'Rapid-I Button', that contained its own little interface builder to help people link it to actions and events- but it was so far beyond Office that few people ever made the conceptual jump to realise, "Why couldn't I just have everything available to me all the time, but totally made up of component software so I have complete random access to whatever functionality I want, and never bother with anything I'm not actually using?"
I'd love to see a Slashdot poll on "Do you know what OpenDoc is/was?". There are some areas that are _so_ open to grow into, things which only Linux could do because only Linux is not completely run remotely by Microsoft. Damn it, Cyberdog/OpenDoc _existed_ and it was killed off because Jobs needed to cut a deal with Gates and endorse IE to start Apple's turnaround. I know it worked and am not arguing with Jobs' decision (except to loathe it forever), but it is wrong to allow Microsoft to define computing forever, wrong to allow them to shut off anything that might change the computing paradigm, and I might even suggest it is wrong to mimic them and further proliferate what they have wrought- except that what else is there? Monopoly power works.
Nothing lasts forever, and I can only echo Elvis Costello's bitter lyrics:
The whole point of a GUI is this: I start up an application I've never used before, and it works the way I expect it to; it looks familiar, little guess work, I can quickly begin using the application in the way it was intended. Keyboard, mouse, file access, printing, all the same. Mac has this, Windows has this. Linux? The user is at the mercy of the developer. The value of choice associated with the Linux desktop is a complete facade. If the app was written using the GTK, it will only interact with the Gnome desktop, Gnome File access, Gnome help browser, and it will only listen to the Gnome configuration. If it was written using QT, I'm most likely forced to interact with KDE File manager, KDE Help browser, KDE configuration etc... I have NO choice. And if it was not written in either? I'm screwed. Each new application is a whole new set of problems for the user.
It's funny that if people need a good example of an Intuitive and mouse friendly desktop, they need look no further than WindowMaker. In fact, the state of the Linux Desktop would be downright pathetic if it was not for the wonderful work coming out of the WindowMaker and GNUstep camps. (That config util is a work of art! And the file manager, sexy! Now there's the compelling reason I need to get my Mom to switch to Linux)
Perhaps if the Gnome and KDE developers had to eat their own dog food and not be allowed to use the command line for ANYTHING, we might start to see some of Linux's desktop problems solved; less theme support, and more functionality. I know that they don't, because of the little things; you can't search through list boxes, list views, and tree views by typing the first few letters of the thing you're looking for. Such a simple yet vital feature, completely overlooked. How about screen corners and edges for optimized mouse use? Hardly utilized (Gnome not at all, KDE a little) Sure, these things are trivial to implement, but that fact that these things were overlooked in the first place means that we've got a long way to go before we see a usable Linux Desktop.
...
(I don't mean to come down so hard on KDE and Gnome, they both have many great features. I just think that some basic, fundamental functionality has been overlooked. A single point of configuration for starters...)
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Xerox invents an interface, Apple improves it, IBM and NeXT sit down and creates variants on that, Microsoft takes the IBM CUA, tosses in some NeXTisms, and spends millions of dollars on interface testing to make it easy to use.
Guess what? Nobody's set up usability testing labs for KDE or Gnome yet, and depending on people comfortable using Unix to improve a UI is insane. We don't think like J. Random Luser, and we can't afford to hire a bunch of them to usability test. And remember logic and consistency are not always optimal for UIs -- see the jargon file entry for "miswart".
So even if the result is that we add nonoptimal features, it makes sense to copy Microsoft's UI for now -- it means we won't do anything to make it harder to use than Microsoft, and will at least have an easy learning curve for people switching.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Lessse -- Close button. Double-click on control menu. Control menu + Close. Alt+F4. Alt+Space then C. Right-click on taskbar + Close. Ctrl+W. Right-click on titlebar + Close. Task Manager.
That's nine ways to close a window in Windows, and there's probably one more. I have to admit that I've used all of them at one point or another. Which is not to say that we shouldn't have "simplicity", just that when it collides with "uniformity" or "elegance", or just "logical", one of the latter choices should probably win.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It doesn't matter if there are 100 of ways to do something. But a user shouldn't be presented all of them and all of the 4711 other features as toolbuttons and 100s of other GUI thingies. Until now, desktops has looked like rooms from the 16th cenury. Clouded with small widgets. Simplicity in look together with ortogonality in function will give a much more user-friendly user interface.
The MS user interfcae is clouded with new graphical features and toolbars. It is NOT user friendly. It is viewd as such only because of the _huge_ user base who can help newcomers learn the howto's and hownotto's. The Mac UI is very user friendly. Unfortunately, it is in fact expert hostile.
The realy hard thing is to develope a user interface that is both newbie, user, power user and expert friendly. And, very little research have been done about merging those requerements...
Happy hacking you UI hackers! And remember - simplicity in functionality is much more important than good-looking widgets!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
It's a really bad fix to be in. It's kind of like asking yourself, at what point in the last century did it become too late to replace the now-ubiquitous and not-very-wrist-friendly QWERTY keyboard layout with a better one (Dvorak or otherwise?)
Perhaps the answer might be to develop two completely different UI designs, one chosen at compile time. One for MSOffice veterans, and one for those who want something better. I really think it would be a shame to make people who have never used MSOffice basically learn the MSOffice interface (or a sufficiently MSOffice-like interface) to get up to speed on their new cutting-edge free-software office suite.
iSKUNK!
Limit user options, eliminate fat.
Aaargh! No, no, no! You can eliminate fat without eliminating choice for the user! If your goal is to lose 40 pounds, you can go on a sensible diet and lose 40 pounds of fat, or you can go on a fad diet and lose 10 pounds of fat and 30 pounds of muscle.
If you look at the camera market, you'll see that most cameras are simplistic one-button affairs. But complex cameras are still available where the user has every option available. The poster seems to be advocating making professional photographers use disposable Kodak boxes.
Sure, there are dozens of ways to close a window. Just last night I had a program freeze up on me. "alt-f->x" didn't close it. So I clicked the close button. It didn't work either. So I used xkill, that worked. The point is, if there was only one way to close the window, I would have had to shut down the computer. Hardly a user-friendly approach.
Some groups just have to sacrifice for the common good.
But Linux/Unix/X/Gnome/KDE is not a collectivist utopia. There is no benevolent dictator omniscient enough to know which products get the axe and which don't. Like it or not, users and developers are individuals. And like individuals they each have their own wants, desires and goals. Your ideas are no more important than theirs.
Funny thing is, those who announce "some groups just have to sacrifice for the common good" never offer themselves up as the sacrificial lamb, which always leads me to speculate that they think themselves worthier than everyone else.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Am I the only one who thinks that "copying" some of these GUI concepts is acceptable in the case where one "construct" (for lack of a better name) is noticably better than any other?
It seems that we have a fairly efficient contruct for every type of data necessary. Radio buttons and list boxes work well when one is to chose one choice out of many, checkboxes work great for simply toggling a yes/no value, and a button is. . . well, a button. These seem to work perfectly for every situtation I can conceive.
Someone posted in a patent article a while back that IBM owns a patent on pressing a "more" button to scroll to another page of text, and Microsoft owns one on scrollbars themselves. What would we do if we were unable to use either of these? There are certainly situations in which one solution is more effective than all the rest, and this is certainly one of them. It's a good thing that those are all held as defensive patents.
It seems pretty rare that these aren't suitable for the job. The only innovative control I've seen recently is IE 5's address bar (where auto-complete drops down), but that just seems to be a logical progression from the combo box.
I've also heard many people complain that "drop down and expand to the right" type menus - like the windows start menu, which pops up and selected categories are displayed to the right - are a poor way to handle such an event (many comments in the interview with the UI guy ranted about this). Then will someone tell me what's been proposed as an alternative to such?
Maybe I'm just too closed-minded, but I haven't seen much UI innovation recently and I think the Gnome - and any other desktop for that matter - is perfectly justified in copying.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Thing is, though, that the GNOME and KDE people are frequently copying *bad* things from Microsoft. Something may be completely trashed at the User Interface Hall of Shame--and rightfully so--and then it shows up in a Linux desktop environment.
I know that everyone has probably heard this a thousand times by now but...
You don't have to run the Gnome desktop to run Gnome apps. Gnome is more than just a desktop environment, but an suite of libraries and applications which (hopefully) make a programmer's job easier and tries to enforce some uniformness in user-interfaces. Same with KDE. There is *nothing* stopping anyone from using Gnome apps under KDE or any other WM or desktop.
As for copying the look, feel, and functionality of Excel or Word, etc.. I think that this is a good thing. These are very full-featured programs. Plus, if we want secretaries and our parents to someday use a free-unix, we'll need for them to make a painless transition. By 'cloning' these apps we're doing a great service to the free-software community. Plus, if there's ever a Linux port of Microsoft Office (as rumored), will people want to pay $500 or use the free(beer) clone?
Rant....
In Unix COM wasn't necessary? LOL. Well maybe. Just like it's prolly not neccesary to have computers to type up letters (what are pen & paper or typewriters for?). The point is it is FASTER and more EFFICIENT to use compoenent based models like COM. With COM you're basically calling functions to do stuff for you and you're working at a 'lower' level than piping output into new processes which in turn go and do their own bloated stuff. It's MUCH slower. With COM, you can reuse components. You can export a function that dials up the internet by creating the object, aquireing the interface pointer and function pointer then calling it. With ActiveX Scripting languages or programming languages like VB/C++ATL/J++ it's easy. With Unix, you'd create a new process to that involves chat pppd etc etc...all bloated stuff. You're creating a new process, you're running applications and then parsing the output as strings into something meaningful. Why do you think Unix lacks so much of the advanced UI modularity (Controls anyone?) componentization, IPC, interapp interoperability etc that Windows had? Cause it's hard. Cause there's no standard way to do things. Explain to me how I'll be able to copy an image into a clipboard from Gimp and then paste it into XPaint. Or howabout formatted HTML from netscape and then paste it (still formatted - including images and applets) into KEdit. You can't. There's no good mechanism, and usually what mechanism there are aren't standard. Windows has standards for clipboards, for IPC, for component sharing etc. They're defacto windows standards, but that's so much better than no standards at all. With ActiveX scripting languaes, Microsoft have basically created a scripting language that acts very much like the way javascript works in browsers. You've got a COMPONENT based scripting language (you create and call objects), unlike unix where you execute programs and parse their output (ugh). Ofcourse there's 'nice' languages like Perl which offer neat packages, but then, can I use Perl packages easily from TCL? No. In Windows, I can use any ActiveX Scripting language to script, because Microsoft's technologies are all componentised and 'reuse' on each other. As an example, ASP (Active Server Pages) uses ActiveX scripting, so I can script ASP pages with VBScript, JavaScript for PerlScript (or any other activex scripting language someone might write in the future). I can also use VBScript, JavaScript and PerlScript to write scripts in HTML files, or Windows Scripting files. Different languages, same object model. The kit to both write ActiveX Scripting languages of your own, and also implement the engine in your own applications is ofcourse free. There's also other key features of COM which make building HUGE operating systems like Windows 2000 and Office possible. Abstraction through COM interfaces. Microsoft can define some interfaces you have to implement if you want to, for example, add a shell extension tha adds a new Start->Search->Process menu on the start menu. All you need to do is create a COM object that implements those interfaces and register them in the right place in the registry and explorer will find them and add the menu dynamically for you. These same 'abstraction' ideas are used for ActiveX controls, Explorer Bands etc etc etc. That's how that guy managed to create an implmentation of Mozilla that would work in applications that 'embedd' internet explorer. You just go and implement the IWebBrowser interface! Oh well, enough rant. Final word. COMponentization is GOOD and needed for any large style OS or application. Especially if it involves user interfaces or you are concerned about binary reusability (not simply running small tools and parsing output).
I know the world has become a terrible place when Microsoft's GUI "innovations" are being used as the benchmark of quality. So far, Linux window managers have forgone innovation by providing emulating a well-established conventions, it is a failed endeavor. The result usually ends up being a poor copy of a poorly thought out design.
I believe there is reason to worry if the intention is to simply (more or less) reproduce the most popular elements, not the most useful ones.
However, if the ultimate goal is be better than preexisting designs, than perhaps the GNOME team, and others should invest their time in creating their, dare is say it.....own user interface, free of implementations of legacy features.
Is the goal to copy what already exists, fully aware of the design failures, just because it's safe and well tested? Just because it is a free alternative to what is already available? Perhaps, at least, they should spend some time investigating the original inspiration and concepts behind Microsoft's GUI, or else they risk diluting whatever thought was placed into the original work. Of which Microsoft has done little of.
Don't copy it because it exists, copy it because it is a solid design.
Throwing in things without having justification or an overall idea of how it will improve the rest of the system is stupid. Giving the user choice is good, but choice is meaningless without direction. New features should be added not after deciding a programming schedule, but after careful consideration of the pros and cons with a stong emphasis on the effect it will have over the rest of the UI and if it is worth it.
For example, upon viewing the demo of Aqua the leader of the GNOME team said that "the next revision will have [real] transparency". Uhhh.....ok, but why? How will this benefit the user? Is it just a bit of useless eye candy, or does it have a purpose? Will its presence be simply for the sake of having it because someone else does too?
The key is to introduce a compatibility between the two desktops that allows them to interoperate as close to seamlessly as possible. This means:
I'm sure I'm leaving things out. Does anybody else see a need here, or am I just spouting nonsense?
Amen. These folks are just like the kid who copies an essay and isn't smart enough to realize when he's copying something relevant or not. Microsoft interfaces are a conglomeration of features, some good and some horrible, with pretty graphics on top. Heck, Windows Notepad doesn't even support the Ctrl+S shortcut for Save. Ask for help and you get presented with weird choices about what size database you'd like to build. Uninstallers are frequently added to the start menu right next to applications, as if you need constant access to them. The Start menu itself is a mess because navigating nested pull-right menus is awkward, so why is it the cornerstone of the whole GUI? Why do apps have toolbars filled with icons that don't represent anything remotely obvious? Is it better to have to hover the cursor over weird pictures--to get tooltips--than to navigate textual menus? And so on and so on. Bring on some UI designers with some sense.
Timothy!
/. all night!
Go to bed! This is not a request, mister. Because of you, I'm going to be spending the next hour reading/posting to Slashdot, instead of sleeping. I really should be sleeping. I have to hear the disappointing results of a IS meeting in the morning, and I am far better equipped to do so if I'm not up reading
So for God's sake Timothy, and the sake of all those employed individuals operating on EST, please go to bed!
.sig: Now legally binding!
I have friends that have been hired by MSFT and they've described the component based architecture and the reasoning behind COM, COM+ and DCOM, and it was rather interesting. I was also surprised at how long it was taking *nix developers to create significant component based applications especially since most of COM (at least originally) was copied from or inspired by CORBA.
I only hope more of us can put aside our religous differences and make comments like this
- The birth of GNOME happened about two and a half years ago," explains de Icaza, "when Microsoft showed me a component-based application [Internet Explorer] which, instead of a huge bloated single-component application, was a huge application bloated with small components. Unix had no component system, the project [to develop one having fallen] down until Qt appeared. But Qt needed a proprietary toolkit, so the freedom was not really there."
which indicate that instead of assuming MSFT or Sun or whoever is this week's enemy of Open Source Software is the devil and keeping away from everything and anything they do we should learn from them and use their good ideas the same way they use ours. Software development should be a massive symbiotic relationship instead of the the them vs. us mentality most OSS developers take with it. Remember a couple of them are also OSS developers as well and hack Linux in their spare time. This post to the Darwin Development mailing list brings up that interesting fact by indicating that MSFT may own a lot of the kernel due to all those non-compete clauses signed by MSFT developers.PS: Basically the message of this rambling post is that we should Open Our Minds as well as our source code.
Enough braindead thinking.
Unix is not Windows. Unix is not Windows. UNIX IS NOT FUCKING WINDOWS!
There is a vast community of people working to make MS Windows and the other 400 or so assorted MS products better every day, and they're bound together by money, the most powerful social force imaginable. We're talking MCPs, MCSEs, developers, tech support networks, curriculum resale networks, documentation constructs, EVERYTHING. Plus highly centralized news and documentation delivery machines.
Open source unix development doesn't have that same financial weight behind it. In certain areas yes, but not nearly with the same reach as the MS machine.
And wouldn't things be so much easier if we'd stop talking about the difficult-to-define Linux Community and start talking about the computing enthusiast/developer community as a whole? As in, people who use computers to know how they work and synthesize new solutions from them? As in, not end users?
A vast majority of end-users rarely discover the other button on the mouse. They will NEVER NEVER NEVER be interested in all the wondrous things that Unix can do, no matter how gracefully they are introduced into the system of software they have at their disposal.
And let's shut the fuck up about "bad interfaces". If I have to read another "Gnome has a bad rehashed interface" line or "KDE looks too much like windows" bitch, I will murder.
GNOME and KDE are NOT PROGRAMS. They are collections of programs and libraries and APIs and engines and object managers that enable certain UI niceties like toolbars, common themings, mail delivery, window management, and a BILLION different things. If you're going to complain about something, complain about 'panel' or 'kwm' or 'ghex' or 'gmc' or the stock GTK color selector or gnumeric's plugin menu or the refresh rate of some kgame. Not "It totally works the same as windows so it sucks." If it works it works.
Complain about the behavior of a particular widget, or the mechanism for installing new software, or how themes are packaged or SOMETHING. Don't just bitch to be a little zealot.
Oh and get with the times. 32MB of ram on a win32 box is painful. 32MB of ram on an X11 box is just as miserable. If you don't like 'bloated' software, then stick with console. No-ones making you choose. But unless you have a better idea of how the basic architecture of X and GTK and QT should work to be more memory-efficient or what have you, then be quiet.
This is the most unfocused filth I have ever written. It sucks but I am out of time. I hope you find it irritating.
-troll taker
OK, now we say that everybody's copying on Micro$oft... Don't forget that they've copied most their stuff from someone else. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You can't (and shouldn't) always reinvent the wheel.
This is how it goes. A invents something, B starts doing the same, as well as C... then Micro$oft copies it, then when GNOME does the same, they've been copying microsoft. That's simply because they're the ones you see the most.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
OK, lots of things come to mind here.
First of all, how long before Gnome or some other OSS interface get recognised as the 'leader in the field?' Likely never, and good riddance! Someone pointed out that OSS doesn't have the research backing to really evolve a good interface. Someone else asked why should we even consider (or hope for) a 'winner'?
More to the point, why is the open source movement, a group supposedly excited about individualism and so forth, be so hyped about winning and (implicitly) taking over the world?
Lots of other good comments have already been made, but no one has specificly addressed one that's been nagging me lately. Consider this if you will:
I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that a useful and intuitive GUI is ***impossible***.
Impossible. Not Possible. Undoable. Forget it. Wasted effort.
Why would I say such a heretical thing? A few weeks ago, I watched a cyber-illiterate couple struggle with their brand new computer, running Win98. After a few days, I realised a few things.
1) No matter how pretty the interface, the guts of the system are still files in a hereditary hierarchy. (i.e. directories, subdirectories, and eventually files)
2) The GUI can disguise, but not _change_ the fact in (1).
3) The GUI, by making the file system structure less apparent, makes understanding the computer itself HARDER, not easier!
Summary: Because of (3) (which comes from (1) and (2)), the GUI is doomed to fall vastly short of what it should be (and in many ways be a hinderance) until A WHOLE NEW DATA PARADIGM IS CREATED!
I used Windows as an example, but Unix (and company), with its similar file structure, inherently suffers the same faults with any attempt at imposing a GUI on it, as long as that GUI works to hide or minimise the inherent file structure.
In other words, Gnome, Enlighten, KDE, Windows, BeOS, CDE, and so forth all FAIL in major ways, at what they were created to do! Worse, no amount of redesign or patching will fix that failure.
So maybe it's time to quit trying to make Gnome (or whatever) the king of a crumbling castle, and rewrite computing from the ground on up. No preconceived notions, no borrowing from everyone else (which is normally the most efficient way to develop things), but something as revolutionary as the original idea at Xerox, of a graphical environment.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
What are the principles by which a desktop can be good to regular users? I'm speaking from personal prejudice only.