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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.
... Believe me, buddy. I wouldn't be using linux right now if it wasn't quite as good as Windows. Windows came with this computer, and I'm not using it. That isn't because I'm some kind of linux religious freak. It's because I'm more productive on a linux box.
The same old command line? Somebody go tell this guy that linux (or any unix variant) doesn't have the same old command line as Windows. It's so obvious that they are different that I'm not going to type about it anymore
I'm getting the feeling that linux and windows are the same because they both run on computers. So they must be the same, right?
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I like my WindowMaker. It's not a Win95/XP clone like KDE and Gnome tried to be. But they aren't fully Win95/XP clone that they tried for either, they all moved on. Gnome has multiple panels, as does KDE(ok, they keep up with each other instead of diverting, to me that is kind of pointless), as does Windows. But with Gnome and KDE is makes more sense to use the multiple panels, with Windows there really isn't a reason except to make it look better.
I do agree with Dvorak that WIMPs is a bad idea, but I do think that it is one of the best concepts out there. Although I don't have icons except when I minimize a window. What I would like is a scrolling desktop(and a CPU that could even support it if I coded it). I want to watch my MPlayer Window _over_ the Mozilla Window, but if I move the mouse towards the scrollbar(where MPlayer is covering), the Moz window would move over or the Mplayer window would dynamically shrink, to transparency would occur allowing me to use the scrollbar without having to move the mplayer window.
Everyone thinks that 3-D Window Managers are next. I say 3-d accelerated Window Managers, but having a box with windows on each side _really_ doesn't cut it in my book. It's neat. It's neat to program. It's neat to play with. Gotta get back to work now, good-bye. Just because 3-d is a big gaming thing and not used for regular Windows does not make it "The Next Big Thing(tm)" in my book.
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.
What I also want to see is the death of X-Windows. It's served it's term, but it isn't getting any better. I want to see DirectFB succeed, but it needs to be multi-platform. I'm on FreeBSD so I can only run it under SDL ontop of X-Windows. But FreeBSD has something similar in the works set for probably 6.0 or whenever the person finishes it.
Communication and features between other type of hardware, specialized, would be great. And the framework to support it. Example, FingerWorks has some great products and great concepts. Once I get the money I'm going for their keyboard. I'd like to see a framework to make it work with any GTK, Gnome, KDE, GNUStep, and a generic library to add support for it to any program. That way have a custom gesture(when it is created) that will allow you to launch a program. I want to be able to hit numlock twice(Example) and type in 0805040206 and launch a program of my choice. For me, memorize 5 numbers, adding a '0' before it, and typing that in is much faster than moving the mouse, opening the menu, finding it, and clicking it. The generic framework, standardized would be best, would add the ability for, say, Mozilla to receive the two numlocks, to realize that it is a registered event handler, and to pass it off to the framework and do what is asked. Say, even passing it off to the 'server' so to speak to figure out what to do, although I think if it was implemented on a window manager level it would be best. That way you have a generic framework to work with as far as developers go, possibly a generic XML exporter of all your functions that you've specific(scanning the bar code, with your CueCat, of your favorite foot powder say, brings up userfriendly), and a generic XML importer to bring into the Window Manager. But having it Window Manager based, so that it fits in with Accessibility theory(I believe?). It _is_ a part of KDE Control Panel, it _is_ a part of Gnome Control Panel, it _is_ a part of that little WindowMaker configuration program. Easy for developers, easy for users, easy to switch between.
Sorry for the long post.
The fact is, any window environment must be similar to windows or users will get confused. New entrants must cater to the existing standard. Try building a new car with a different interface or maybe publish a book that reads up -> down. These items will fail. Look at the new BMW 7 series, all they did was add a dial that has extra functionality instead of a normal automatic shifter. Even though the traditional pedal acceleration and stop system remained. many buyers were completely put off by the idea.
Keeping Linux like windows is a good idea, getting rid of point and click makes no sense right now, but that doesn't mean in can't be done. With Linux people can write all types of crazy interfaces and environments, test them on a wide scale, and receive feedback. Apple and Microsoft can't afford to research 100 different window managers, but with Linux this is possible. The only problem with Linux is the developers, usually make decisions on the UI and look and feel. There needs to be a system in place where artists can make significant contributions to the DESIGN of open source software.
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Allright, that - in essence - what the article is all about. Yet, we know that the desktop metaphor is really the MINIMAL thing to implement before you can go on to other things. Because
1) users that were running Win/Max before don't want to change their way of working that profoundly
2) I for one think that the desktop metaphor will EVOLVE instead of just being killed and replaced completely
So, clearly with X/KDE/GNOME we are behind of MS/Apple by a more or less far shot. But I agree with the author, that - as some of us still are working on perfecting the desktop - we could work on possible "evolutions" and advancements.
One thing, for example, which will definitely be coming along in the not too far away future, is the "one-program" paradigm. The general idea behind is to
a) essentially have one "framework" interface for more or less all applications
b) really driving application-to-application interaction and data-transfer to a new level
c) employ new ways of browsing through data and software
d) making it possible to access the same data with multiple software modules while they are interacting with one another in a meaningful way
e) further degrade of the data-software boundary
So I guess we COULD put a lot of things together, if only OSS would focus more on the user side...
What is it with people and their seemingly insatiable need to reinvent the wheel? The irony is that Microsoft's OS's caught on as well as they did not because Bill Gates is an Evil Genius *chuckle* but because Gates was dumb enough to write operating systems for the lousy x86 hardware paradigm when it began--the historical fact is nobody else wanted to. (The fact is that the guy IBM originally picked to do their OS decided to play golf instead of meet with IBM representatives as scheduled by appointment, and Gates was second on their list and he was in at the time.) Literally, no one else wanted the job.
Flash forward to the mid-late 80's. No one who was "anything" in the personal computer scene at the time would be caught dead using an x86 clone or DOS--they used Macs and Amigas which were brilliant concepts at the time, the Amiga especially literally being ten years ahead of Gates and Windows and x86.
Ironically, especially in light of the recent DOJ hearings, the reason the Amiga died and the Mac became a butt for jokes and received permanent niche status had absolutely nothing to do with Gates and Microsoft and IBM. The reason for those events was internal--for Apple it was a short-sighted and greedy Steve Jobs who did not want to license Mac clones; with Commodore it was a greedy and short-sighted Mehdi Ali who did not want to license Amiga clones (I recall at the time hearing from a source I trusted who informed me that Commodore had actually gotten a cloning agreement penned with Tandy and Radio Shack, where the company would have sold its machines in its thousands of retail stores under a clone name, but that Commodore pulled out at the last minute.) Both Apple and Commodore felt they could make more money by being the sole distributors of their hardware--neither company foresaw the incredible boom that would hit the personal computer industry in the 90's.
So it just so happened that Gates was the guy who grew up writing OS's for the one, single hardware standard which was open to tons of competition within--the IBM-PC clone hardware marketplace. In it you had dozens of companies all competing with each other to sell systems and peripherals--today there are hundreds of such companies all devoted to a single standard--the one that allowed clones--x86. Some people to this day do not understand that it was the hardware engine that drove x86 to vast supremacy--certainly not Gate's software--which back in the late 80's absolutely sucked compared to other OS's at the time. But because so many companies were selling x86 hardware so much cheaper than companies like Apple or Commodore, it was the x86 clones that were bought (most of the time Apple and Commodore could not meet demand for their hardware, which is exactly why they should've liscensed clones early on.)
And everywhere an IBM-PC clone went, a Microsoft OS was sure to follow. It's pretty simple to understand how Microsoft got to where it is today even though it was selling one of the worst OS's in existence for several years. Gates has never made a secret of it--there's the famous Gates-Jobs memos in which Jobs asks Gates what he needs to do to get the Mac into the mainstream and Gates writes back "License clones." It was advice which Jobs declined (which he now admits he should've taken.)
That's why I think Dvorak's bored...he wants something "new"...yet the only thing *he* can think of is some *old* crap nobody ever really pursued years ago *chuckle*...;) There's some inkling in his opinion that an OS should not be "functional" but "something else"--whatever the "else" is, Dvorak doesn't say....
It seems to me that Dvorak is forgetting that most if not all of the "new" ideas as to what an OS should be and do have all been tried and the GUI is the best that anybody's been able to come up with. Maybe when the hardware gets here we can have 3D holograms on the desktop that will work in fundamentally different ways, but for right now and the foreseeable future we're stuck with a 2D display (even our "3D" is just simulated in a 2D display.) And the GUI seems to be everybody's consensus of "what's best" for an operating system interface (of course some people still prefer the command line, but that's not what Dvorak is talking about.)
Dvorak talks about "wintel roots" without realising that "Wintel roots" had roots of their own which came out of earlier computing projects--and accusing one company of "copying" another simply because it chose to adopt something as fundamental as a GUI is pretty ridiculous. It's like saying GM and Ford "copy each other" because they make cars with four wheels and rubber tires. Is it really that they "copied" each other, or more like the fact that these things are as fundamental to the design of a car (or computer OS) as doors are to houses? Of course, that I agree with the latter should come as no surprise.
The trend in Linux today toward workable GUIs that happen to "look like" Windows was not intentional, nor was it subconscious as Dvorak contends. Rather, Linux advocates and developers have always worked toward creating a better OS than Windows and a different OS than Windows. But the fact is there are only so many ways you can skin the GUI cat--only so many ways to make a GUI which is intelligible. Dvorak's "look and feel" arguments are pretty funny--I thought we'd gotten past that bit of nonsense years ago. It's like saying Goodyear should sue Firestone (or vice-versa) because the tires the other company makes "look and feel" the same *chuckle* The whole "look and feel" argument was atrocious from the beginning and it's gratifying to see it never got anywhere.
Here's the thing Dvorak forgets: so what if Linux versions "look and feel" somewhat like Windows? Who cares? The fact is it *isn't* Windows regardless of what it looks and feels like. If anything such superficial similarities might actually help spread the acceptance of Linux (if the community can ever get over the factional splintering of distributions--which is the one thing that could doom its ultimate success as a competitor to Windows--but that's another story.)
I guess Dvorak forgot the simple admonition that contains worlds of truth: don't judge a book by its cover.