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.

Comments

GUI determines eyeball ergonomics

[zogger]

--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.

Re:Menus

[krmt]

What I would like to see, and this is off-topic, is XML menu specification. So you can download, install a program, and then install a menu item for it with whatever Window Manager you are using. It just needs a few fields. If someone wants to go with this idea and wants me to help(put my money where my mouth is) just e-mail me and I've got no problem.

Check out the debian menu system. It's not an XML spec, but the idea is that you have one program and it installs a menu using the debian system. The system then installs the menu item in every window manager on the system. It's here now and it works great. It's also user configurable.

Re:Creeping Featurism?

[Thenomain]

Actually, "creeping featurism" is an actual term.

And here you thought you were being funny.

Re:The same old command line?

[hayden]

The nomenclature may be different, but the similarities surprised me - I expect that lots of it was actually copied from unix,

It probably was. All MS's early coding was done on Xenix boxes cross compiled for the PC. But the similarity is purely cosmetic. The command interpreter was intended for suit types, not coders. Also it was written for an OS that could only do one thing at a time for one person only.

I can't think of anything I can do with a Bourne shell (admittedly a limited example) that I can't do with M$.

And by defining the example you neatly exclude the problem with the windows command line. cmd.exe is reasonably passable. It's not great but it works ok. The problem is the lack of everything else. The *nix command line was the way you used the box for the longest time and so there are so many useful commands that are missing on Windows. grep for instance.

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.

Re:For people switching...

[1u3hr]

Why type it up and hit send when you can speak into a mic and hit send?

Because:

• with some practice most people can type faster that they can talk
• everyone can read much faster than talking speed
• you can't skim through the bullshit and get to the point
• you can't search through an archive of voicemail (not easily yet)

Voicemail has been around longer than email, but it has hardly ever been used for more than "This is Jack, call me when you're back".