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A User's First Look at GNOME 2.0
Gentu writes: "OSNews has just published a review of the Gnome 2.0 desktop environment and its verdict is not so positive. The author feels that the new version is limited in many ways and with a UI not well designed."
Maybe it's time to become the INNOVATORS, rather than copying the Win32 line of User Interfaces, which frankly, are getting stale.
Take a look at the visual inventiveness of Mac OS X for starters. There's a GUI that's worthy of the 21st Century.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Isn't this a problem with X itself, rather than the GUI?
This is one of those things that will keep Linux from the average user's desktops until it gets resolved. People love being able to paste stuff willy-nilly in Windows. Hey, Windows might be full of holes but at least it's easy to use.
I crashed GNOME in 30 seconds...
I am a great tested of crappy code and magically can get new releases of large GUI's to barf and die usually in less than a couply minutes of testing. How do i do it? Usually by thinking of things that the programmers did not bother to test or I was suspicious of.
When I first booted a fresh version of RedHat, virgin installed with GNOME selected and running, upon first waling up to it I got the thing to crawl over and barf in 30 seconds.
how... well in this instance I wanted to see if it could do the things a Mac could do (the Mac OS has hundreds of innovative file system technologies not ever normally found in Unix-like systems). I am not referring to Mac OS X at this moment by the way. So what i did was use a mouse to select a directory in GNOME and copy it two levels down into its child descendent and the retarded thing had no recursion detection, something the MAc had since 1984.
I laughed my ass off.
Then I asked 2 people that liked GNOME why it had no way to use GNOME standard tools to change screen resolution (somehting that Windows and Mac people do easily without resorting to awkward ugly tools)... the two appologists for GNOME admitted that GNAME was not really meant to be that useful and was not finished and I should wait for GNOME 2.0
now after all this time I get to play with GNOME 2.0 and its 3 times crappier than even the semi-crappy Mac OS X, but much crappier that I had hoped.
I think Linux people cant imagine a world where computers are easy for their own genetic mothers to use, or old doctors or old lawyers. All 3 groups allegedly IQ of over 110 in this case, yet averse to command line awkward hostile OSes.
Apple is relieved that GNOME 2,0 misses the mark.
I think it's because he is using a mandrake setup.
It has some really odd menu/icon stuff in gnome2, which i know isnt in the 'default' gnome2.
He should try a clean slate, on top of that -O3 wiht gcc 3.1 is just _not_ an good idea, yet =)
still reading?
> Maybe it's time to become the INNOVATORS,
> rather than copying the Win32 line of User
> Interfaces, which frankly, are getting stale.
How is it getting stale? Do you have any mind-blowing new ideas that counter well-established knowledge about the usefulness of GUI widgets as we know them today? Let me remind you that a good feature of a GUI is to be useful, not to be innovative.
> Take a look at the visual inventiveness of Mac
> OS X for starters. There's a GUI that's worthy
> of the 21st Century.
While the GUI of MacOS X might be "inventive", I find it extremely cumbersome to navigate, dreadfully slow, overly full of bells and whistles pointless animations, non-intuitive, obstructive et.c. In short: a real pain to use. While the animations might be funny to look at the first time, and the GUI looks very sleek, it generally reduces productivity. Most of the work devoted this GUI, is clearly meant to improve visual appearance, and not usefulness.
It appears obvious to me that people claiming the MacOS X GUI is intuitive have either not really tried it themselves, or never tried anything else. In the same manner, stating that "GNOME and KDE are more or less the same" shows that you haven't really tried both.
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- people who managed to tear off a taskbar by accident, and could not figure out how to put it back in place,
- people who managed to switch off a taskbar by accident (this evil M$ Word
...), and could not
figure out how to switch it on again,
- countless other examples
...
Many, perhaps most, users use their PC only occasionally, are not familiar with configuration options, cannot 'fix' even the most trivial issues, and would rather need a well thought out configuration that cannot be modified by any means.>> The new Gnome 2 environment starts up
>> much-much faster than Gnome 1.4 used to!
> Windowmaker loads in a fraction of a second
> on my 300mhz uniprocessor box.
I bet Tab Window Manager (aka. twm) starts even faster! It must obviousely be far better!
Note: comparing the startup speed of software with completely different sets of functionality makes no sense.
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Software usability and aesthetics matters. That is what keeps Apple in business and Jef Raskin on the history books.
I very much highly doubt that any free software will ever be able to have a "great" UI because the politics involved would be very large.
Because it is on some points totally wrong. For instance, the speed-issue and the "no central place for configuration issue". Everyone else reports a speed-increase, unlike this reviewer.
The central place is just wrong. The dialogs the reviewers seem to suggest is kept "all over the place" is in reality in ONE place. No, there is no unified control-panel GUI for GNOME 2.0, like gnomecc in GNOME 1.x or the KDE-panel. This was changed because almost everyone hated the unified dialog, and actually it has some pretty large usability issues as well.
In GNOME 2.0 the configuration dialogs are seperate windows, much like in Windows. But the dialogs are ALL reachable from a centralized place (Like Windows 2000 and 9x, unlike Windows XP)
Secondly. GNOME has taken a very far step towards KISS (Keep it simple stupid) unlike some comments on here seem to suggest. Some of the comments seem to be based on the review, and not from actual usage.
The reviewer tries to make himself out as a GUI-expert, something he doesn't seem to be at all.
There are ACTUAL GUI-experts and usability exports working on GNOME. Of course there are still lots of little mistakes and bloopers in the GUI. But some comments here, and from the reviewers seem to suggest that this isn't thought of AT ALL. Which isn't the case.
When it comes to Galeon running. The reviewer states that he does not have GNOME 1.x libs installed, which could be why Galeon (which currently is a GNOME 1.x app) won't run. Even if he does there were several issues with earlier versions of Galeon with GNOME 2.x, which can be solved by upgrading Galeon. The reviewer doesn't state what version of Galeon he uses. This is thus most likely a Galeon issue, rather than a GNOME 2.0 issue.
The reviewer does have some valid points though. Especially a shortage on help-files.. though it isn't as bad as the reviewer seems to make it out.
One of the worst parts though is the notion that in GNOME 1.x you could turn off Nautilus for speed, but in GNOME 2.x you're left with a naked desktop if you do.
First. Turning off Nautilus for speed should be rather unnecessary except for people really short on memory.
Second. Of course turning off Nautilus gives you a naked desktop. Nautilus is the desktop-manager. Turning it off removes the desktop (apart from the background-image). This also happened in GNOME 1.x, except some GNOME 1.x installations was totally screwed up in the way that it ran BOTH Nautilus and gmc (the old GNOME file-manager) at the same time. And thus if you turned off Nautilus, the old gmc-desktop was shown. This meant wasted memory because you ran two desktop-managers at the same time. I'm a bit disappointed that there is actually an option in the GUI to turn off Nautilus, which will be difficult for Newbies to actually turn ON again.. but that is a seperate issue. People desperate to get rid of Nautilus, could do it via gnome-session-properties, and actually, as of GNOME 2.0 I don't see the point apart from feeling 31337.
GMC was never ported to GNOME 2.0 and probably never will, because it frankly made much more sense to just fix Nautilus speed-wise. Which has been done, and will continue.
THERE ARE NO MENU EDITING CAPABILITIES
How in the *blue fuck* do you release a window manager without the ability to change the menus! That's AWFUL, and there is absolutely no excuse for this. Gnome 2.0 should not have been released.
Yeah yeah, the speed is great and Nautilus is now usable. But expect a lot of shaking-up for Gnome in the next 6 months, becuase the UI blows and the configs are impossible and you've seen all of the other [correct] posts about how the devolopers need a REAL ui expert.
Berto
UI designers laugh at lots of things, most of them completely irrelevant. In this case, the author is complaining about some baroque scheme for the theming UI. But theming is optional--you don't need it. People play around with themes when they are bored; it might even be bad if the theme configuration UI is too slick.
Gnome 2 does not come without its problems. I do not have sounds on my Gnome 2. I think that Gnome 2 assumes that you have Gnome 1.4 installed,
That's an issue with packaging, not Gnome2 itself. The same goes for many of the other grips that the author has.
The new version removes the flexibility found on Gnome 1.x and it does not introduce anything really new or spectacularly interesting in its UI design.
If the translation of this is "it has fewer options to confuse users and it didn't change its look or feel significantly so that people don't need retraining", then that sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Overall, I didn't see a single substantive or informed criticism in the article. There probably are plenty of things wrong with Gnome2, but we'll have to wait for a more careful write-up of those.
Also, you can't expect too much from any desktop that follows current paradigms. Windows and MacOS have plenty of warts and problems, too. Overall, in my experience, Gnome and KDE are no worse.
Well, I would tend to agree with you, but Apple loves to send out their lawyers everytime they even THINK some one is copying their GUI design (remember the AQUA theme fiasco?). I don't think any developers are willing to invest time and effort to incorporte "OS X-like" ideas into their work just to have Apple's lawyers tell them that they have to scrap the whole thing under threat of "look and feel" violations.
"I'm a humble person really,
I'm actually much greater than I think I am"
As a user who have about 3 years of Linux experience, what I need is just X, some window manager that let me have 10 virtual desktops and switch between them easily (quite a few does now), and some pretty widget libraries (gtk or qt does their jobs, although tk and others are okay too). So gnome (or kde) has never meant anything to me other than a lot of potentially useful libraries. The included applications are of little use. If the configuration is difficult to use, I configure my window manager only once, anyway.
GNU/Linux, BSD et al will simply never make it to the desktop. Both KDE and GNOME have constantly failed in designing a good GUI (in case you'd wonder, yes I've used them both, alongside with Win9x and MacOS 9 - the latter got the lead in usability, but that shouldn't be a surprise). Keep in mind that the guy who wrote this review is not even an average user. A real Joe user wouldn't even have bothered to write a review given the poor shape of the thing.
Designing a good GUI requires everything that a geek doesn't have: notions of ergonomy (this goes for graphics too - GNOME icons may look very cool, but their ergonomy is disastrous) and psychology, the ability to sit on behalf of the user, and most of all, not the slightest care about how it works behind the hood.
Before KDE/GNOME can reach the "usable" qualification, both need a team of GUI designers whom the programmers will *listen to*. The rare persons who have some qualifications in this respect are constantly being bashed by coders who say "That's not how it's supposed to work [in the code]". Said coders therefore don't understand that even if their code is well written and would deserve some note in software engineering courses, it fails at its primary mission: meeting the users' needs.
The second biggest problem is the existence of GNOME itself. While it was kind of justified given the licensing problems with Qt at first, it has been obsolete from the day when Qt got GPLed. But geeks have their pride. Too much pride. Result: code duplication, well designed toolkits of all sorts but still no consistent GUI on either side.
In 5 years, Microsoft went from the somewhat clunky but usable win3.x series to the very usable (even apart from the "but-it-comes-preloaded-everywhere" argument - that's one I don't buy, sorry) Win9x series. In 5 years, the MacOS GUI has evolved very little - an evidence that it was built from the ground up with usability in mind (MacOS X is another matter, but I bet the guy who made it is certainly not the one who did the Mac0S 9- GUI). In 5 years, what has most evolved in our two main contenders are the toolkits. Who cares?
I agree with you on some of your points, but others are pretty touch and go.
1) While multiple desktops are handy, saying that they're 'obviously' an advantage is abusing the term 'obvious'. Obvious to who? You? Me? The average X11 user? Joe Sixpack with his iMac? Your grandmother and her iBook? Adding an extra UI 'feature' like that (by default) is just confusing to the average person. The Mac tries to present a simple, friendly interface, and such a thing would be decidedly confusing to anyone that thinks Nascar is a sport. People that want it will find a way to get it. Such a UI enhancement is under development by independent developers right now.
2) Themes are not actually useful. Anything other than purely aesthetic themeability (ie. the theme changes nothing other than some colours) is bad, in terms of UI design. The reason why everyone copies Windows' UI is because it's familiar. Uniformity of interface is a BIG DEAL.
If you're just talking about colours, is it really that big a deal? I'm just reading my mail and ssh'ing to my mail server. I don't care what the window dressing looks like, that much.
3) You think that programmers only like hard-to-use, unapproachable, syntactically impenetrable languages? I would argue that Smalltalk is easy-to-use, approachable and occasionally 'English-like', and I don't have any problems with it. I've never used Applescript, but as an experienced programmer, I don't think you should be making generalizations like that.
4) I agree that modal panels are foolish, but Apple has sort of met the user half-way. Ideally, what Apple would do is USE that fancy alpha-blending UI, and drop a translucent panel down explaining the situation while it did the right thing. The panel wouldn't change the focus of anything, and the user could easily ignore the panel while it hung around, and work right through it. However, if you ever talk to an ordinary user, they hate having their machine do things without telling them. They LIKE feeling a bit involved. If you pop up 20 modal panels with an 'okay' button on them and nothing else, they'll get irritated, but they want to feel like they're in charge. If the machine starts going off without them, they start to resent it.
More or less, I agree with your assessment, like I said. I didn't see the parent, but I'd assume that it was trying to defend Aqua.
Aqua is a fine interface, and it's clear that a fair amount of design went into it. Personally, I think that THAT is the real lesson that we should take away from it. It doesn't do everything perfectly, fine, but at least it wasn't just thrown down by a programmer that was too lazy to actually read some interface books, which are what the Windows, KDE and GNOME interfaces feel like to me. I use (and like!) GNOME, but it's clear that almost none of it is thought out to any greater extent than 'Windows does it this way, and X11 does things this way. Let's go!'
and I compiled it with -03 and -march=i686 using gcc 3.1.1-CVS on my Mandrake Cooker
Using a buggy compiler on a buggy distribution to compile gnome, and then going on to rant about the result like this, I'll say he/she has an agenda here which I dare not mention.
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I'm not trying to start a flame war here. I just think that it's time for me to express my opinion on this matter.
I've been tinkering with gnome and kde since pre kde 1.0 days. I have always preferred gnome to kde. Not because I thought gnome was prettier, but because I could get the functionality that I wanted out of gnome and couldn't get it out of kde.
With the advent of kde3 and gnome2, I will be switching from gnome to kde. Is kde3 slower? It doesn't feel slower to me than gnome1.4. Is kde3 prettier? I think mosfet's liquid is stunning. Can I get kde3 to do what I'm used to doing in gnome1? Not 100% but closer (maybe 90%). Can I get gnome2 to do what I'm used to doing in gnome1? No. I'd say about 50%.
So, from a functionality point of view, gnome1 wins and kde3 is a close 2nd, with gnome2 a distant 3rd. From an aesthetic point of view, kde3 wins, and flip a coin between gnome1/2.
So I'm switching to kde. IMHO, gnome is just not going in a direction that I like.
Remember, this is my opinion. I'm not trying to incite a flame war. I'm just a lone user letting the gnome developers know that they just lost me.
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It appears obvious to me that people claiming the MacOS X GUI is intuitive have either not really tried it themselves, or never tried anything else.
As someone who uses Mac OS X extensively after much Windows and X experience, it appears obvious to me that anyone complaining about OS X's GUI was too attached to the horror that was OS 9. The animations can be turned off, later versions of the OS will be faster, and you're simply speaking nonsense about it being obstructive or non-intuitive.
Multiple desktops are such an obvious advantage that I can't believe they aren't as prevalent as overlapping windows. Its all about being able to categorize when I organize. I am amazed that this wouldn't be considered obvious.
Themes are useful to people who spend alot of time in front of their computer. Changing the appearance without breaking the pattern of functionality is stimulating. It prevents a form of "highway hypnosis". Its fun. Its pretty.
Your parent posts' keyboard shortcut concern is also of concern to me. Keyboard shortcuts are essential.
Ignored Various READMES
Ignored known gotchas
Doesn't exactly sound like a ready for the desktop product to me.
You're running up against the weight of history on the Mac GUI, which so far has proven pretty successful. Most of the common commands are accessible via keystroke and are the same in every program. Multiple desktops is not a huge requirement with Mac users, nor is the configurable look.
The one part I don't get is "Any experienced programmer would instantly fear 'an easy-to-use, approachable, English-like language'". Why? Because it's not arcane enough? Because people might actually understand what you're doing?
Go work on your own interface. Leave ours alone.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
did you manually upgrade all the desktop and widget libraries when you updated from windows 2000 to XP? No? You just inserted the cd and let the whole OS updater do it for you? If you tried to manually update all the different interdependant libraries on windows without reading any documentation, do you really think it would work? i think not.
This is exaclty how it happens with gnome too: if you arn't a power user (ie, if you can't read and follow the instructions in the release notes) wait for your os distribution (ximian, redhat, debian, madrake, what-have-you) to release an update.
Most of the "reviewers" problems would never have come up if he A) followed directions, or failing the ability to do that B) let his distribution (do the update)
if you want to live on the bleeding edge and update packages left and right inbetween distribution releases, be prepared to read the instructions or pay the price, its really not that hard.
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Most of these do exist. Command arrow moves that direction to the largest extent possible (beginning/end of line, beginning/end of document). Holding shift at the same time selects the text. Option does the same movement, but by the word. Many developers choose not to use these shortcuts, but that is hardly the fault of the GUI. (indeed, Apple has gone out of there way to make Cocoa easy to use and design to their standards).
Wrong again. You do not need Applescript. You only need to use an OSA (Open Scripting Architecture) compatible script. Applescript just happens to be Apple's branded solution that they (duh) ship with the machine and support.
This whole complaint translates to "It doesn't do things the way that I'm used to *wah**wah*"
Many of your complaints seem justifed to me, i.e. themes and multiple desktops, but I think that on the others you should learn more about the OS (and the conventions/metaphors behind it) before you complain. Different doesn't mean worse
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I admit, I havent seen Gnome 2.0 myself, so i'm not that qualified to comment, but i'm coming from a different angle.
Why be so quick to debunk criticism? We're all VERY quick to point at flaws in M$, and other evil empires' software.
As far as i'm concerned criticism is neccesary and healthy. It can be reviewed, considered, and if the result merits changes being made for the benefit of better software for us all, then I am all for it.
I for one am very keen to see Open Source software reach levels that surpass, in every aspect, commercial software. It's going to be a long journey, and if criticism is ignored, we'll never get there.
I don't believe the reviewer was 'having a go', just that they were genuinely dissapointed in a product they WANT to see succeed same as the rest of us.
There have already been many replies to this, but here's my two cents anyway.
Every single part of a GUI should be accessible via the keyboard, so that experienced users can be as effective as possible, using these.
I don't accept this blanket statement. While there is a case to be made for full keyboard access to the UI for movement-impaired users (see "Full Keyboard Access" under the keyboard prefs pane), I think the jury is very much out on the subject of whether the keyboard is a good interface at all. There's no question that too much keyboarding is related to repetive stress injury. Being even more dependent on the keyboard than we already are could very well turn out to be a bad thing, not a good thing.
Multiple desktops: it's obviousely an advantage to be able to have multiple workspaces running at once.
You say "obviously an advantage" when what you mean is "I like it." Some people like having multiple workspaces or desktops. Personally, I don't. I prefer overlapping windows, so I can see what I'm doing without having to shuffle things around. So this issue boils down to personal taste.
I don't think "I like it better another way" is a very valid user interface design critique. And before you respond with "they should have given me the option," please remember that a good user interface is not one that gives the user every possible option. Simplicity is a virtue.
Configurable look (themes)
We'll argue about this forever. The bottom line is that lots of people spent a lot of time designing the Aqua user interface. They designed it to be easy to use and visually appealing. What possible motivation would Apple have for implementing an interface that lets little Jason from down the street make all of this windows black and purple and change the "File" menu to read "Zeppelin Rules!"
As a person of strong aesthetic opinions, I consider Apple's refusal to include an API for modifying the interface to be a good deed, worthy of praise.
All the rest of the comments in your post have been responded to elsewhere more or less as I would here, so I'll just skip to the end at this point.
Everyone has their opinion about GUI's....personally I hate XP's new menu system...it doesn't make any sence...but you can figure it out if you spend a few minutes on it...same thing can be said for gnome or KDE or OSX.
This person hates Gnome 2.0 because it didn't get installed/upgraded correctly...perhaps they should've waited for a distro to install it for them before they braved the waters just so they can have a review of it.
Help files...will be provided by distros.
Menu editor...Mandrake and others have their own menu editors
sound problems...problem with your install
Galeon not working....problem with your install
You don't like the default setup...then change it stupid.
Most "bad" reviews of both kde 3.0 and now Gnome 2.0 seam to be from MacOSX or WinXP die hards. They install Gnome or KDE on their distro expecting it to work like the previous gnome or KDE they had on there. All of these people fail to understand how the system works. They see WM like they see Windows. WM will have a few rough edges...they will be fixed by distros.... WM are not OSes. They are pieces of clay for others to make molds out of...and they will.
Did you read the post?
The part about it depends on who your talking to.
Multiple desktops are not obvious to a newbie. The desktop is not obvious to a newbie.
If somebody is unfamiliar with a computer - then I would say that multiple desktops are not obvious to them.
I am amazed that you are amazed at that.
The common mistake that you're making here is figuring that it isn't possible to make an interface that requires little to no customization, and yet suits the needs of everyone. What needs do you have over an above the average user? Why isn't it possible to give all users that interface without taking something away? What does the power user require that is MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE from what the average user needs?
A big part of the problem with UIs is that we settle for too little. More design and more work on the part of the UI engineer could make a lot of problems go away.
For a better idea of what the devil I'm talking about, pick up Jef Raskin's book, "The Humane Interface".
Your comment echoes a number of standard arguments against the Aqua, and while I don't agree with all of them, there's no point in covering that territory again.
However, I think you missed a number of positive elements to the full OS X user experience that are missing from most other desktop environments, which might help to balance the evaluation somewhat.
First, we have the Dock, borrowed (though not without modification) from NeXTStep. Some people love it, some people tend to just ignore it, but personally, I find one feature it has to be *extremely* useful: dynamic icons for applications. The most commonly-seen example is the Mail app, which overlays a small red circle with the number of unread messages any time new mail arrives.
Second is my favorite "window dressing" feature of Aqua: the drop shadow applied to each window. It's a subtle thing, which I didn't realize the value of until I installed a hack that removed it -- suddenly, I lost what I had gradually come to rely on as a stable visual clue as to which window had focus.
Third is the standard design for toolbars in (Cocoa apps, anyway) that allows drag-and-drop addition or removal of commands, and a browser-like selection of displaying just the icons, just the text labels, or both. That means that since I like preserving screen real-estate, but still use a toolbar in some apps, I can switch things to only a text label, while my girlfriend, who uses OS X but isn't a hardcore techie, can leave all the icons in.
It's exactly these kinds of details that take real usability testing, good design, and *time* to do well. When you come right down to it, the biggest advantage that Windows and the MacOS have over open source desktop environments is years of little tweaks and polishing.
Personally, I think that the KDE crew is on the right path: start with a simple desktop environment similar to what people already expect, and just pound away on the little stuff until the whole interface looks good, works consistently, and offers users in widely different experience levels a worthwhile experience.