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

He doesn't like anything, huh?

[masonbrown]

He slams the Mac constantly for not being enough like Windows. It's innovating in a different direction, and that's an issue. Now Linux is copying Windows too much, and that's an issue.

I think this guy just bashes everything to get people riled up and to have people read his articles.

Re:He doesn't like anything, huh?

[Naikrovek]

That's what 99.999% (five nines) of journalists do, man. That's all they do. Its all they want to do. They lay awake at night thinking of ways to do it more often than they do it now. They want 6 nines. They love it.

My former boss was a journalist in New Zealand. She would find someone to interview on some travesty in thier lives or whatever, and she'd drive up to their house, and pretend her car was broken down and ask to use the phone. Then the number would be "busy" so she'd start talking, and then have tea and then they'd spilled their guts and it all went into the news paper.

A specific example: she was assigned to get the dirt on a woman that had been raped by a politician. The victim wouldn't talk to journalists, so my boss pretended to pass out outsite the woman's place of employment. the woman (as any woman would do) rushed to help the stranger. she "revived" my boss and she eventually blabbed her mouth off about everything, which went straight into the paper, with a twist of opinion gleaned from the personality traits she gathered from her "rescuer."

My point: I never ever ever ever ever trust any journalist that ever utters an opinion under a journalistic premise. The so called journalist Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor" show is a good example of someone to not listen to. John Dvorak is another.

of course do what you want, but be wary of anyone trying to sell you something - be it a car or an idea.

Re:He doesn't like anything, huh?

[SideshowBob]

As a Macintosh software developer for over 12 years, and a former Apple employee, let me try to explain why you think the Macintosh UE (User Experience) "just works' and the Linux one does not.

It's because of a combination of things:

1) Apple produces a comprehensive set of UE guidelines for application developers to follow

2) Apple spends ungodly amounts of man-hours ensuring that *all* of the API stacks (Carbon, Cocoa, Java) adhere to the guidelines

3) 3rd party software developers actually follow the guidelines (imagine that!)

4) The users are not only aware of the guidelines, they are activists when it comes to getting on a developer for breaking them (sometimes fanatically so, let me assure you!)

Do any of those 4 things seem doable in the Linux arena? If one group produced a set of guidelines, there would instantly be groups coming up with a competing set of guidelines, groups claiming that such guidelines are anti-Free(tm), and groups of developers thinking that by breaking the guidelines it makes them look rebellious.

Could one of the API stacks in Linux adhere to a set of UE guidelines? Sure, for all I know the Gnome or KDE developers already have a set of guidelines for their APIs. The key is that in order to have consistency, *all* API stacks need to adhere to the *same* set of guidelines.

The only way to have a UE on Linux that is 'good' in the same way as an Apple OS has a good UE is for a single company (say, Redhat) to develop a set of guidelines for its platform, put in the work to make all the APIs adhere to their guidelines, and evangelize developers of the advantages of following the guidelines. And then, perhaps most importantly, users need to get on the bandwagon and actually give a sh*t about how well applications that they use follow the guidelines, and give developers hell for breaking them.

Re:Hypocrite

[Jason Earl]

Not to mention the fact that any differences from Windows are likely to get slammed by the users (and by pundits such as Dvorak) as being incompatible. Good, bad, or indifferent if Linux is going to take over the desktop it is going to have to be easy for the current group of Windows users to understand.

John shoots, John misses the mark

[Daniel Phillips]

Like a mainstream political party, Microsoft has firmly occupied the center, as that is way to maximize the allegiance of customers. John wants Linux to go off and be totally experimental and new - presumably so he can recapture that excitement of the early years of the PC revolution - but what happens is, as soon as you move away from center you lose appeal to those who don't like the direction you moved in. So John's recipe for Linux's success is really just a recipe for marginalization.

Another point he's missed so far is that Linux doesn't just move in one direction, it moves in many directions at once, so that you have a number of complete, well-developed environments each of which caters to certain tastes, all the way from text mode consoles to kde, which is more-or-less Linux for windows refugees, to experimental 3D environments. I suppose he would come back with the usual argument about how it doesn't make sense to divide effort across all those different projects, but then he'd just be ignoring one of Linux's great strengths, which is the sheer number of coders involved. In fact, trying to get them working obediently all on the same project at the same time would be shear insanity.

John, if you're reading this, and I guess you will, what you have to realize is that you do get to escape your boring old desktop metaphor and try something different, like a Tivo, which doesn't look like a desktop at all, plus you get to keep working the same way you always did, if that's what you want. It's about choice, and that's what Linux has. How's that for something new?

Re:Hypocrite

[archeopterix]

2D UI has become pretty much perfected, there is almost no way to improve upon it.

If by "UI" you mean "widget set" then perhaps you are right. Sadly, most developers think that a cool widget set will get them there, so a typical program is a labyrinth of menus and a few dozen buttons with strange and undecipherable icons.

The interaction sucks. Users have to perform many unnecessary actions. Why do I have to press "OK", read the "field value missing" dialog box, close it, fill the damn field and repeat the whole thing? Don't tell me that graying out the "OK" button untill all the required fields (which should be clearly marked as such) are filled is "dumbing down". It's a shame that document editors still need the "Save" button (this is an old example), when the edited file could easily and transparently get saved in the background. Irreversible changes? Why should they be irreversible? The disk space taken by saving the whole undo buffer is microscopic compared to modern disk sizes. Well, perhaps "label version" should get there instead of the "save" button, so that i can conveniently roll back to an old version without hitting "undo" 100 times. These are just a general examples that can be found in almost every application. Specific application have even more inconvieniences.

We got used to this so much that we don't even notice how crappy the UI is, but it is crappy and it can get better.

Hmmmm... Is there a silent majority here?

[aussersterne]

It seems to me that over the last year or two, there has been a flood of commentary focusing on what Linux should become in order to be useful, helpful, nice, good value, etc. etc. etc.

And all the while, each time I read one of these stories, I am secretly thinking to myself that I am quite satisfied with Linux as it is now. Linux+KDE3+OpenOffice+Mozilla+GIMP gives me the most enjoyable, productive computing environment I've ever had -- and I've had a lot of computers over the years (I was a 128k Mac owner, $3500 for a tiny monochrome scren and a 400k floppy!)

I sometimes wonder if there isn't a silent majority of Linux users who aren't at all interested in Linux-chases-Windows or Linux-chases-MacOS or Linux-needs-XYZ and who instead are just using Linux on a day to day basis and being glad it's the system that it is.

I'd hate to see this silent majority gradually lose the system they love as Linux is transformed into a Windows clone by vendors and project leaders who give too much credence to the voices of pundits (many of whom probably don't use Linux as their primary desktop anyway).

My $0.02.

Re:Hypocrite

[DNS-and-BIND]

Yes...indeed. I remember one of the major critcisms of the linux desktop in '97-98 (think Redhat 3.0.3) was that "I can't find anything", and "Where's the start button? This thing is broken!"

he's a whore.

[twitter]

The whole point of the article seems to be to reasure windoze users that it's OK to never leave the start menue and precondition expectations for those who do so that they feel miserable when they do. He offers up Connectix Virtual PC as a representative of Linux, then tells us that it will prove that Linux sucks. Have a look at the, will you, then go back to sleep and keep sending your money he tells us.

Yes, the whole article is an ignorant slam. It's so stupid, that a starting point of constructive criticism is hard to find. He describes the whole free software world as a windoze deriviative born on x86 by "boring coders" and other uncreative types that lacks "features" of the only true software, Microsoft. That's the kind of insight you might expect from someone who's only experience with the free software world comes from having popped a CD into his machine for five minutes or so. Of course not one word is correct. True to the pure troll, he offers no useful alternatives to the things he does not like, except to stick with the M$ word of undefined features.

For those of you who might not be aware of this, the millions of free and open software coders of the world are much better researched than Dvorac. GNU/Linux has taken the best sofware concepts from all operating systems. It takes it's multi user security model from the Unix world. WIMPs came from Bell and Xerox Park, and many different GUI systems are available as free software. The most prominant and one of the most powerful is XFree86, a network aware base for many fine Window managers. Window managers of all descriptions and sources are available to run on top of X. You can get Virtual Reality and 3D desktops if you want them. Yes, it's true that you can make these window managers act just like M$ junk, but you can change that with a press of a theme button. Some prominant window managers come with a default that looks like M$ junk so new users can learn how to make the thing work at their own pace. You see, choice is what free software is all about. Developers and users are free to follow any fancy they have and it all works together. Most free software has been ported to other hardware and even different software platforms. I have not even mentioned the Berkely Software Distribution universe and it's derivatives in use by many including the very artsy Apple. Free software is also being adopted by the opposite end of the computer using specturm as well - the dull likes of IBM and Wall Street Bankers. You can take it and make it what you want, so anyone and everyone is now doing just that. They are are generally happy and wonder in time how they ever managed to get along in the coiceless and ever more rapicious propriatory software world.

Re:he's a whore.

[shellbeach]

I think you're so evangelical that you can't see beyond the propaganda. Try showing KDE to a standard windows user (i.e. not a geek who likes to tweak interfaces, but just an ordinary person who users computers to get things done) - you'll be amazed at their comments: "This is ugly. This is just like Windows. But why is it so slow? Why does every application start with a "g" or a "k"??"

Look, the guy really does have a point - KDE (and to a lesser extent GNOME) has always tried to copy windows and it's made it a far worse product as a result. It looks contrived, it's slow, and there's no good reason why anyone would want to use it instead of Windows, unless they cared about (a) opensource philosophy or (b) having to pay money for windows. Both KDE and GNOME are just as ugly and souless as Windows, and no amount of pro-Linux propaganda is going to miraculously fix this!

Compare this to Mac OS X - people use Macs even though they cost more and use monopolistic, proprietary hardware because the interface appeals to them. It means something to them, and that's even worth more than the extra costs involved in buying a Mac. Macintosh has always wanted to be seen as being different, as revolutionary, not recycling. If linux really wanted to succeed then it (read Linux-on-the-Desktop, read GNOME/KDE) would be best to develop its own style and glory in its uniqueness, not harp on about it's similarity to Windows! If people want to switch from Windows, they're not going to do it because it costs less. They're going to do it because Linux can offer more.

As a disclaimer, I should add that I use linux exclusively and yes, I'm happy in linux because I stick well clear of either KDE or GNOME and use some of the wonderful alternative interfaces that have been developed. There is good stuff out there, you're absolutely right. But this is so well hidden that a newbie will never find it - and this is Dvorak's point. The first thing a new linux user will see is the KDE desktop, and it's only if they're brave enough to experiment (fairly unlikely) that they will discover any of the software that makes linux a joy to use.

So please, don't start believing your own propaganda. If the first look at linux doesn't appeal to someone, perhaps you should pause and think - "hey, maybe there might be a reason for that", not automatically say "hmph! they don't like linux, they must be some stupid luser, what would they know!"

Re:Hypocrite

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The best user interface that I have yet found is still a command line.

When you figure out how to draw a picture with the command line, or edit a video, or make a 3D model, or even play checkers, let me know. Until then, graphical interfaces are here to stay.

Linux like Windows?! WTF?

[Balinares]

I'd hate to see this silent majority gradually lose the system they love as Linux is transformed into a Windows clone by vendors and project leaders who give too much credence to the voices of pundits

Erm, have you been using any Windows recently?

I am made to use Windows at work, and the interface is just plain freaking backwards.

STILL no virtual desktop, making it awkward to develop with an IDE in full screen mode while keeping some documentation open at the same time.

STILL no way to control, resize, or move a window at ALL if the app is busy (or frozen, for that matter)! I mean, it's, what, almost year 2003? On what is supposed to be a friendly OS?!

In terms of GUI convenience, KDE is a fucking order of magnitude ahead of Windows, man. Still much lagging behind MacOS X, but then, what isn't.

I don't know for Gnome, but KDE is freaking NOT being turned into a Windows clone. Take a look at the KDE framework, one day. That thing is fucking brilliant. Want to make it look and behave like Windows (without such retarded 'features' as the windows unmovable when busy)? Sure, you can. That's how my mother's account on my box works. And guess what, she can find her way around it out of the box. Want to make it completely different in the way YOU need it? Sure, you can. Want to lock features to make an easy to use but impossible to corrupt kiosk? Sure, you can!

What is it with people bleating that we shouldn't keep running after the Windows world? We've passed them MONTHS ago, people!

Now Linux as an OS still has some serious usability issues (primarily, there's no global software installation system that Just Works[*], that's the biggest showstopper right now), but in terms of GUI, the Windows world is severely lagging behind. I switched to Linux out of laziness, for crying out loud!

[*] I've tried to stir up discussion about that a couple time, but most of the Linux community seems to have an inertia you wouldn't believe. The answers were basically, "Shut up and use apt-get", "Shut up and use RPM", or "shut up and use configure; make; make install". Erm, hello? I can and do use any of those. But my mom and my (now ex, sigh) girlfriend can't. Now, why should it matter? Well, we want people to port their software to Linux, and that implies, giving them a way to make it easy to distribute their software in a global way. I've spent a while thinking about possible solutions to that most hairy problem, but I guess that's food for another thread. This post is long and ranty enough as it is.

Anyway. Rant over. Flame with moderation, thanks.

Re:Hypocrite

[mbogosian]

There is no way for a single consistent desktop to appease all power users and noobs alike.

There is: sensible defaults with varying levels of customization, and a clear but informative interface by which to perform that customization. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about (yes, it does exist):

For those of you who have used ximian's gnome distro with the sawfish window manager, you may have already experienced this. Ximian goes to great lengths to make desktop look & feel -- by which I mean the file browser (nautilus) and window manager (sawfish) -- a pretty simple experience for those just getting into it. The first time you log in, you're presented with a few choiced about what you want things to look like (sawfish & gnome themes), but behaviorally, you're given the defaults (reasonable and simple behaviors).

After that, most (at least everything even an advanced user would care about) of the behavioral / visual modifications can be done using one common interface: the gnome control center (please ignore KDE for the point of this discussion for a moment).

If you've ever used this interface to change the behavior of sawfish, you know what I'm talking about. Sawfish has several different screens (for different areas of its behavior & appearance) in the control center. In its "Meta" screen, one can even set the level of complexity regarding the other sawfish configuration screens. If I'm a novice (the default), I am only presented with a few options. More complex options are presented when I choose intermediate or expert.

To me, this is an outstanding way to provide simplicity as the default behavior with the configurability that power users demand. I hate window managers that don't allow me to remap modifier + mouse buttons to different behaviors. I've found a combination which I believe is much more efficient (and intuitive) for three-button mouse users as far as moving, resizing, etc. goes. If I'm not allowed to set this up, then that particular window manager (to me) is bunk.

This is one of the reasons I hate the RedHat 8.0 UI so much. The user interface is one of imposed simplicity. It's really difficult to find out how you can change metacity (if that's even possible). RedHat's new preferences interface is just as lobotomized. What's worse is that if you switch back to sawfish, all kinds of functionality (like logging out of an xession?!) breaks (thanks guys, real slick).

The problem is that power users are in the minority of desktop computer users. This is an unfortunate reality with which I still have not yet come to terms. The problem? Baby-boomers. There are so many people like my parents who are not technically proficient, who "just want the damn thing to work", but "don't want to have to understand or think about it". These are the people with the money, and these are the people to whom companies must market their products.

This is the reason why usability (real usability from the sense of the power user) takes second seat: FFM (Focus Follows Money). I hope sawfish continues to be integrated into the major distros (properly). I hope the technically proficient of the world will continue to donate their time and write free software that is usable by more than the common idiot. I hope that Windows will not define what is included and what is not in the desktop just because most of the desktop users are used to it.

But I'm not holding my breath, and I hate it.

Re:For people switching...

[Metzli]

That's true, but the average user probably considers Windows to be "free" anyway. When he/she bought a new PC, the odds are extremely high that it was shipped with some version of Windows. The average user buys a PC with Windows, never reinstalls his OS, and uses it to get things done. They rarely have to contact their hardware vendor, let alone Microsoft, so support and support costs are immaterial to them. They just want a machine that works and does so in a way that they understand.