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?

Comments

Desktop Compatibility

[Cardinal]

It will be a dark day if Gnome or KDE ever comes out as the recognized leader. Both projects have put forth an enormous amount of effort into their desktops, applications, their component models, libraries, and so on. Declaring one the winner is simply a waste of effort.

The key is to introduce a compatibility between the two desktops that allows them to interoperate as close to seamlessly as possible. This means:

1. Document formats: KDE has an office suite, Gnome has an office suite. Am I the only person that realizes they have every reason to be compatible formats? The last thing I would ever want to see happen is one Linux user's choice of an office suite impact what another user's choice may be. Common documents (Text documents, Spreadsheets, maybe even presentations) that are at least transparently convertable back and forth eliminate one bad reason to choose a desktop.
   
2. Dekstop icons: This, I believe, has already been covered. The .desktop files that are used on by each desktop's file manager (And menu system, I believe..) should be identical. If they're not, you're asking application writers to maintain two seperate sets of desktop convinience files. This is just silly.
   
3. Drag & Drop: I've never been quite sure where I see this one fitting in. From my perspective, I don't really see the need to be able to DnD between two file managers, becaues I see little need for running two file managers simultaneously. I think it's sufficent that they're speaking the same language (Xdnd, or whatever is appropriate) for the sake of keeping coding apps simple. And, from the application coder's perspective, they can accept DnD's from either desktop using the same or similar API. Always a good thing.
   
4. Themes: Compatibility here isn't terribly important. Eye candy is eye candy, it doesn't need to be universally applicable.
   
5. Window manager behavior: Both desktops will have newly redesigned window managers in their 2.0 reves (KWin and Sawmill), and both should behave relatively similar. The Window Manager Specification is in the works for this exact reason, to get window managers all making the same assumptions (Or rather, not making different assumptions) about how X and X applications will behave. As soon as a window manager or an application guesses at how the other will behave, things will go wrong.
   

I'm sure I'm leaving things out. Does anybody else see a need here, or am I just spouting nonsense? :)

Re:This is sadly true.

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

Does the new guy ever sleep?

[technos]

Timothy!

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 /. all night!

So for God's sake Timothy, and the sake of all those employed individuals operating on EST, please go to bed!

Articles like this...

[Carnage4Life]

...remind me of how many good technologies and modifications to other's innovations MSFT has come up with. Sometimes I forget that the company does have some great developers and has come up with some interesting technologies sadly the senior management, marketing department and legal department cause most of the press.

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.

Re:Articles like this...

[Alex Belits]

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.

In Unix it wasn't necessary -- passing bunches of text (possibly compressed) or tar archives between programs accomplishes the same task better unless the goal is to make a user interface-based program, and even for user interface it can be easier to run a program in a window than to use some overcomplicated "object architecture" (ex: Ghostscript-based viewers). This is the same reason why people who use lex and yacc didn't need XML to perform things that are now touted as "innovations" (XML for them is just one of formats that can be parsed with no noticeable effort), and the same reason why people who can write portable C code don't see point in Java.

Most of mentioned things were born only to avoid opening pieces of source for interfaces to third-party developers, and enforce the dependency on the company that made them. In Unix software, and especially open source Unix software objects/components architecture is necessary only for tasks that can be accomplished easier with it -- maybe it is so with heavy-GUI programs.

Community? Plans? Need? Development? Copying?

[Jikes]

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.

Who's copying who...

[jmv]

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.

Long ramble. Interesting, perhaps?

[swordgeek]

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.

linux desktops need more originality

[zeno_lee]

Being original doesn't mean you have to start from scratch. Copying Microsoft, Apple, Zerox, etc, is one thing, but taking the best out of those and making something new is another. Hey, the true breakthrough, and this applies to anything, including arts, sciences, and literature, is rehashing previously used ideas into a groundbeaking idea. It doesn't have to be completely revolutionary, only enough to fill the void in comfortable user experience.
What are the principles by which a desktop can be good to regular users? I'm speaking from personal prejudice only.

• Simplicity Limit user options, eliminate fat. Don't give users 10 ways to close a window, for example. I've always been annoyed by the fact that you can close a window that many ways. Another example: On a GNOME/Enlightenment desktop; there are too many ways to launch a GUI program.

• Uniformity Part of the reason why MS has dominated on the desktop, is how ubiquitous it's look and feel has been since windows 95. Linux needs to engender unity, in one way or another between competing desktops. Despite minor differences, opensource groups should work behind a common philosophy. Some groups just have to sacrifice for the common good.

• Elegance This is alot less tangent. Why does a Mac desktop look that much more elegant than a Windows desktop? It has to do with aesthetics. I guess we need more artists involved on this one.