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Dvorak: Linux too much like Windows
inode_buddha was among a handful of folks who submitted linkage to Dvorak's latest column where he talks about Linux being to much like Windows. It's not really a slam, just a challange to be more innovative and look beyond feature creep and UI concepts that are old and tired. Hard to disagree with most of it.
a familiar looking UI will help people move from 'doze to Linux
This guy has a point. Whenever I look at the linux 'revolution', I see a crowd of zealots running and everytime trying to cope-up with M$ runners.
Most of the new 'features' are copy of windows or Mac... WTF ? Can't you innovate something new ?
As for the people who think that they can lure more users just by giving similar look and feel, ponder-
Price isn't the only consideration for many many people out there. What you're doing here is trying to provide a cheap xerox copy of an original... would you like one ? No! If a person can shell out $99 for the original, he WILL ! A COPY is still an *imitaion*, no matter how thick a paper its printed on. You've got a good OS, invent new things... why lug around the same legacy ?
For example see BeOS, Amiga or even Mac... windows compatibility or windows look-n-feel was never their selling point (hell, not even the last point)!! Yet people loved them. By following windows, you're implicitely stating that 'Yes windows is "the rule", and we're trying to catch up'. Why don't you realise that windows/Mac don't the best UI/interface/architecture possible... there's always something better!
- mritunjai
The OSX GUI isn't much different than Windows. It's just more flashy. You've still got your basic windows, icons, menus, pointers, you've got a taskbar of sorts. Most applications are also layed out in a very similar way to your average win32 program,
--I mean really, how is it possible to have a GUI based system that doesn't look at least similar? function will determine form, look at cars, semi streamlined boxes on wheels. Minor differences but basically "car" shaped.
Reality is, 99% of most people think in "pictures", they DON'T think in terms of lines of text/symbols in a console, ergo, you'll get a windowish looking system as the most functional and easiest to understand and use for the most people. I mean what are the options? You have a choice of a box to type in or various boxes with buttons to mash. Use circles or parabolas or some free form weird drawn "border" to delineate the outside boundaries of the app on the desktop? Have your CLI console be round instead of rectangular?
Sure, pure voice control a la star drek computer would be neat, it's still a way's away for the time being.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Actually, "creeping featurism" is an actual term.
And here you thought you were being funny.
This now concludes our broadcast day.
As a wise man once said: The only intuitive interface is the nipple. All else is learned.
By the way, here's some research about that quote. Apparently some babies don't know what to do with a nipple. Maybe they tried to right-click it?
Then there's the real applications. Burning a CD from the command line isn't possible on Windows where with *nix most GUI cd burning programs don't actually know anything about burning cds. They just call cdrecord and it does all the work for it.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I think you'll find that "editing a video", depending of course on what you want to do, can be easy from the command line.
Now, try having to rotate 150 pictures using your gui - you'd get sick of it after having double-clicked, waited for photoshop (or whatever) to open it, navigated to the correct menu item, chosen your option, saved and closed, switched back to explorer, 3 or 4 times. Whereas you could just write:
And then walk away and have a cup of coffee, while your colleagues are still double-clicking away.
I've been thinking about this at great length for the past year or so. The W.I.M.P. interface is going to be with us for a while no matter what we think of it. It will evolve and get enhanced by other developments in input devices (eye tracking, speech recognition, humanoid virtual androids, etc..), but will probably largely remain the same. The real "innovations" (for lack of a less used word) are to be had in new approaches to using the computer to actually get work done.
:) But, the only input devices we have are still limiting. The closest thing I've seen to something useful for text input is "Dasher". Combine this with eye tracking and I think you have a great solution for portable computing with no need for KB, twiddler, or the like. The other thing I think we should be looking at is the possibility of CLIs actually learning what we do most and creating aliases based on those actions with notification that we have a new alias that we can use for those actions. The other possibility is textual access to that same DB that the normal users would have in the GUI. This DB would allow us to use our machines in CLI mode with automatic suggestions for related commands, data, services appearing in a "scratch" location on the CLI for the machine's "stream of consiousness". It would become symbiotic. As we learn about our machines, and our machines learn about us, we augment each other. And THAT is what we should be working towards: computers that augment us as individuals while being as transparent or intrusive as the user desires.
Unfortunately, I think Microsoft has us in a bad spot right now. I've heard rumours for a while that one of their big projects is some kind of storage/document management system. When you think about it, this makes sense for the business world as the "next big thing" because the suits don't care about data formats and don't WANT to learn about what type of data is compatible with other data. If my hunch is correct (based on the info I've seen in various spots on the net) they are planning to make a transparent, centralized (within an enterprise) mass data storage system that completely abstracts data from file formats. More then likely, the end result will be based on that DB centered filesystem we've been hearing about. So when a user creates data, whether it's graphic, text, audio, etc... it all goes into this DB with approapriate links drawn automatically between the different data. The user never has to think about file formats. They just create their data (which they will likely think of as "documents" with no type) and save it to their published "Folder". The filesystem/OS will take care of all the data type matching. Exchange and Windows XP for Pen Computing are the first glimpses at this kind of thing.
If we really want to get something new happening, we really have to start thinking about a few items:
1. Computers (even with W.I.M.P.) force people to interact in non-human ways.
2. To be truly efficient, every task that a computer could be used for requires different UI approaches to be "optmized" for that use. (Witness the turnkey systems out there for the button pushing monkeys to use)
3. You either have maximum flexibility and number of features at the cost of true ease of use, or you limit your user to make things easier to use. There is no compromise.
To tackle the first point: People have been working for so long on trying to make computers "user friendly" that they've added so many things that actually cripple the user. As Neal Stephenson pointed out in his essay, "In the Beginning There Was Command Line", many metaphors actually prevent the new device from being used to it's full potential. He had an example of a steam powered car that used reigns for steering because it was something people were familiar with. However, it's obvious to us now that the steering wheel (while a new concept) was actually the better interface. I think we need to question whether we really need to hold onto a lot of the metaphors in use today. Should we try and meet our machines halfway, especially since their eventual role will probably be to augment us in many ways? Or maybe we should come up with new, less limiting metaphors? I think it will all come down to how each individual uses their computer.
I know that I feel very limited by GUIs these days. It doesn't matter if it's Windows, Linux or MacOS. I've used them all and can easily move between all of them since they really aren't different at all anymore. However, I do get a lot more usability and flexibility from the CLI for the way I use my machines. Still... the CLI is limiting too. The time to integrate CLI and GUI into something more cohesive than just running an xterm in X, or CMD in Explorer has come. Why don't we have a CLI that has modern text editing facilities. There are many times when I wish I could do a text search through the text in my scrollback buffer. Or how about being able to "drag and drop" filenames to directories in a CLI window, instead of having both a GUI file manager and a CLI open? Or dragging a console command line out of a script you're editing to the desktop and having a new CLI window (or maybe a new tab if you have an MDI capable CLI) pop up with the line ready to execute by pressing enter. Or maybe a way to use the command history to create new scripts easily? Just arrow up to the commands you just used and tag them in the order you want them and have them output to a new script in your home dir. These are basically shortcuts that could make CLI life a lot easier. However, this still barely touches the real issue.
The real problem is that the computers (with ANY UI) still force users into limited ways of interacting and thinking. To manage your files, you have to think in hierarchical fashion even if that ISN'T the way that you work with real paper/books/printouts, etc... File management should be approached in a much different way than it is currently. (Most users I know never even touch their file managers unless they are going to read a floppy.) The "search" tools that many GUIs provide this to some extent, but it's only ephemeral. A search is not a permanent record of a state. The only "views" that we currently have in a GUI are limited to the way that a computer "tech" thinks, not a user. In fact, the very use of the word "file" may be an impediment to using a computer in the most efficient way.
If we take a more object based view. The data would make a slight transformation from "graphic image file" to simply; "Picture" regardless of the format. Text data would no longer be the mish-mash of formats that it currently is (ASCII text, "DOC", RTF, PDF). It would instead become "Letters", "Articles", "Recipes", "Source Code" "Personal Photos", "Promotional Pictures", etc...
Instead of the user arranging folders that contain all of these categories, the OS would already have a pre-ordered layout of filing by these categories. However, this would not be the normal folder structure that a filesystem uses, but it would be a database that manages the underlying filesystem. As new applications get installed, more categories for those apps get added if they don't already exist. When the user opens their personal information store, they would be presented with a list of the categories (with a bias towards the most often used types) to scan through. Once they select the ONE category they are interested in, all other categories dissapear from the list and a new interface is presented with the option to search for a specific document or select a "view". The "view" could be chronological, alphabetical, or relational. If they pick chronological, their choices can be Today, Yesterday, Within the Past Week/Month/Year, Specific Date. If they pick alphabetical, they get the options for Forward/Reverse order, or Specific Letter - Forward Reverse (Ablilities, Accidental, Actionable...). It they pick relational, they can select a specific document and it will present them with a "web" of all related documents on their system, network, or corporate enterprise. This is just a simple illustration of "what could be" for the typical end user. Let's take a look now at what could be for the advanced user.
A lot of times, I find myself with a strong desire to have access to my machines, but being limited by the other things I need to do in daily life. The concept of the wearable computer appeals more and more.
My second point is that depending on how you use your machine, certain UI/input device combos may be more efficient than a "one size fits all" approach. For instance a musician may want to use a computer with a KB, Mouse and a real mixing board input device for virtual studio work. Or an artist might want to use a tablet interface that allows them to draw on screen just as on paper. One of the things that Linux has going for it in this way is that you really could make dedicated distros for different types of work. This would be a great way to usurp Windows from certain arenas since MS would likely never take this appraoch as it would cost too much. But it needen't cost as much for Linux. The freedom it would allow for in UI design would be incredible. Imagine the new kinds of tools and approaches that could be created without being fettered by a "desktop" metaphor. This is where I think some extra specialized work needs to be done: hardware input devices. If we can get Linux to support as many input devices as possible, and combine that with very specific task focused distros (or a distro with "task plug-ins"), we could gain more acceptance in specialized fields.
The third factor is how much power to actually give the user. As we've all seen with the various W.I.M.P. interfaces out there, having more than one way to do something is great, but it gets in the way of user friendliness. I've seen plenty of people get EXTREMELY confused by seeing that they could minimize a window by clicking on the _ widget OR by left clicking on the application's window menu on the left side and selecting "Minimize", or by right clicking on the application's listing in the task menu and right clicking to select "Minimize", or... you get the picture. While it's nice to have all those options (especially as the user becomes more adept, it's likely to confuse the user). I still wonder why no one has taken notice of Nautilus' old (weak, but clueful) approach of having different modes: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. Someone need's to sit down and figure out what the easiest GUI thing for most users to do is and pick that ONE approach for a function. Then all of those simple approaches would become the "Beginner" settings. The "Intermediate" settings could incorporate other GUI based approaches that are less commonly used but might be preferred by a more intermeidate user. And the KB shortcuts (there should be one for every function in the GUI) are left to the "Advanced" user mode.
Instead of completely removing features to try and avoid confusing the user, the features should be categorized thoughout all apps and the OS environment into categories of some kind to limit what a beginning user is exposed to. Some people will never break past that, and that is fine. Others will want to explore and learn more. Either way... the real goal needs to be more humanization of the UIs, and more machination of the humans.
Un-news
couple of things:
there are so many useful commands that are missing on Windows. grep for instance.
Grep has nothing to do with the shell or its capabilities, grep is just an application.
Then there's the real applications. Burning a CD from the command line isn't possible on Windows where with *nix most GUI cd burning programs don't actually know anything about burning cds. They just call cdrecord and it does all the work for it.
What does that have to do with anything?
Why not fork?