GNOME Foundation, UI And Linux

David Huff writes: "Stephan Somogyi of ZDNews has written an article with an excellent take on the GNOME Foundation announcement entitled GNOME on the range " It's nice to a read a story that's focusing on the important part of the future of Linux UI (end user experience, consistency) and not the semi-annual GNOME/KDE resurging rash.

Comments

One user's experience

[mwdib]

I'm not a geek, but I manage them on TV. Well, at work actually.

When the technical staff convinced me to transition our shop from NT to Linux about two years ago, I had to begin learning Linux. As I said above, I'm not a programmer or a geek -- simply one of those (either despised or desired) "regular users" that Linux advocates (either regard as unimportant or want to assimilate).

So, my first experiences were with command line and AfterStep (which I found difficult to use) but then quickly moved to the emerging KDE and GNOME environments. GNOME, more than anything else, let me make the transition from Windows user to full-time Linux desktop user. I picked up enough along the way to prefer command-line to file manager, but -- since my orientation is not server management but is, indeed, paperwork, planning, project management, etc. -- the GUI is what lets me get my work done. Without GNOME (or KDE) I wouldn't be using Linux full time.

As a "desktop user" I see things a little differently: I need a better browser and a much better e-mail client. WordPerfect meets my "office" needs (although I see instabilities in Wine [we joke: "Corel WordPerfect . . . bringing the instability of Windows to the Linux desktop"]).

I think it's a matter of focus. Commercial operations that want the desktop users for Linux should pursue initiatives like the GNOME Foundation and support KDE. Those who are interested in other environments should continue on the course that has produced so much.

There are a few difficulties left on the desktop, but I notice that the Windows users who see me work on my GNOME Helix desktop are already amazed and are quite intrigued. I think there's more potential for Linux on the desktop than is generally realized by either the geek community or Windows apologists. A highly functional, customizable, tool-rich desktop will first impress and then entice those users. Desktop users are just as sick of clunky Windows interfaces and instabilities as techies -- many of them just don't realize it yet.

Liar Liar, Pants on Fire or (-1, Clueless FUD)

[Carnage4Life]

Simply because Open Source projects do not use it does not make CORBA a failure. This is the same as saying Java/COM/iMacs/Oracle databases etc. are failures because you haven't seen an Open Source project that uses them.

There are a large number of closed source, large scale (millions of lines of code) products that use CORBA that the average sysadmin/linux hacker/whatever will never see or get to use. As an example, the company I worked at this summer (i2 technologies ITWO) has a been generating millions of dollars in revenue with a CORBA based Supply Chain Management application for the past couple of years.

You see Corba is broken. but only a little. In order to use it you must build something else on top that actually talks to your apps.

Isn't that what the CORBA Component Model was designed to fix?

PS: I am a distributed computing junkie and am currently doing research into RMI/CORBA/DCOM and have found a bunch of interesting articles that break down these technologies for people who are wondering what exactly they are...here's an article that compares all three.


(-1 Troll)

This *is* an Open Source problem

[ghoti]

Please read this to the end before you flame me/moderate me to kingdom come.

I think open source is great, but it has this one very basic flaw: Geeks write programs for themselves, and hence, for geeks. And we all know that geeks don't care too much for easy-to-use interfaces, but more for powerful ones (see shells, vi, emacs, etc). So when open source people start writing programs with user interfaces, these will be very similar: powerful, but hard to use for the normal user. And inconsistent with anything the users already know (read: Windows).

Now I am not saying that Gnome (or KDE, for that matter) should copy Windows, but that it would be very beneficial if not only coders worked on such projects, but also people from GUI design (and I am sure that there are people with experience in this area reading /.) and HCI.

Now that open source is growing up (in the sense of: os software being used by non-geeks as well), this is a necessary step. And it brings world domination much closer, too ;-)

Corba is over a decade OLD. Re:What about KDE?

[Forge]

Do you realize that GNOME itself is the 1st successful software project based on Corba ?

Why should a technology not produce any good results for over 10 years and then suddenly become worthwhile when an open source project starts to use it ?

Not just any Open Source project either but one with lots of backing and funding from everywhere.

You see Corba is broken. but only a little. In order to use it you must build something else on top that actually talks to your apps. Gnome usees Bonobo. KDE used Kom. Despite being built on the same technology they couldn't communicate with each other. Not even when Gnome used the same ORB as KDE ( Mico ).

This is the power of the Hacker mentality at work. They took a broken twisted pile of junk and built a wonderful interface on top of that. Best of all being Corba makes it 100% buzzword compliant. Read this post to asses how much of a "buzzword" it is.

Wrong-headed thinking

[Reality Master 101]

What will make a desktop Linux? Interface, interface, interface.

Wrong! There seems to be a lot of this thinking in the Linux community -- that the only reason Windows is popular is because of a pretty interface (The "shiny things" theory).

Now, an easy-to-use interface is important, but what is far more important is APPLICATIONS. I simply don't understand why people don't get this. Work is not done with desktop shells, it's done with applications.

Why did Win 3.1 kick everyone's butt despite having a horrible interface compared to the Mac or OS/2? Because it had all the applications that everyone wanted.

There still is not one Linux end-user application that is better than the equivalent under Windows. Not one. And many are greatly inferior. [OT: I often wonder if this is the grand example of where cathedral-bazaar development has utterly failed. You would think there would be one good example of an end-user app that is clearly better, but there just isn't one.]

For Linux to have any chance of gaining a foothold in the "normal" world, it not only has to have equivalent apps, it has to have better apps by a long margin. People are just not going to switch for no reason.

--

On GNOME User Interface guidelines

[miguel]

The problem with creating a manual like the Mac User Interface
guidelines is that it requires a lot of effort just to write the
document.

Once the document has been written, applications must implement
various of the user inteface features. The lack of resources in the
free software world to produce this kind of documentation is the most
important problem.

One of the approaches we have taken in the GNOME project was to add a
pieces of the user interface consistency through the GNOME libraries.
Various pieces in the libraries are nothing but programming sugar, and
they achieve two things: simplifying program development and helping
to create same user interfaces.

GNOME contributors realize the importance of this and other issues in
user interfaces. Our approach so far has been to follow the
guidelines from existing systems and try to bring the best user
interface experience details into GNOME. Discussion usually happens
on the various forums about specific user interface improvements.

A year ago, the GNOME UI team was created to help coordinate the
development of user interface issues in GNOME: to write a manual, to
write guidelines, to point out problems in current applications, to
point out desired improvements in applications and so on.

The GNOME UI team has been very successful. Various of the UI changes
you have seen in the October GNOME release (last october) and in the
Bongo GNOME release (last may) were prompted by the UI team.

The UI team is lead by Jim Cape, who takes the input from participans
on the GNOME UI mailing list and presents the suggestions to
the actual developers.

Anyone can help improve GNOME and help the GNOME UI team. User
interface experts from Eazel and Helix have been working with the team
for some time now: both helping and implementing those ideas.

You are right: finding information about the UI team is not easy. I
would love to see changes in the GNOME website to more easily direct
developers to this important resource.

You can read more about the User Interface team here:
http://developer.gnome.org/gnome-ui/

Miguel.