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.

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.

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