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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.
Dvorak too much like crotchety columnist trolling for publicity
Dvorak raises a point i've tried rather ungracefully to make over the past four years. There are very serious inherent flaws in how the open-source community approaches GUI development. Here's a brief rundown.
1) Everyone assumes the basic Windows 95 GUI design is good. No one stopped to ask whether replicating a WIndows 95 look and feel was a good thing or not. As anyone who used a computer other than a PC prior to 1995 can tell you, Windows 95 is among the worst desktop designs ever concieved. Nonetheless, both GNOME and KDE continue to strive to mimic its basic function and appearance.
2) By copying someone else's design, youre relegating your work to a "second place" not-quite-as-good-as-the-original monicker. Programmers are pragmatists. For every hundred of them, only one will be interested in building something new, and even then, they'll probably lose interest within a few days. Since programmers are pragmatists, they want to build something they know already works. By continually playing catchup to OS X, Win95/98/XP and others (and refusing to jump ahead of them) you're effectively resigning yourself to 2nd place instead of using your talents and intelligence to take the lead.
3) Bad designs make for bad habits. Its _extremely_ difficult to break people of their habits. You could recieve the blueprints for a new GUI from God himself, and people would still complain that it doesnt work like Win95. Not because Win95 is good (its not) but simply because they're used to it. Too many people are terrified of confronting users with a new idea. Everyone wants to swim in the pool, but no ones willing to jump in first. Its this sort of thinking that causes development to stagnate, as we continually paint ourselves into a corner where nothing short of revolution will fix it. The stagnation covers everything, from the users to the coders themselves. Users are just as hesitant to embrace new ideas as programmers are in implementing them.
The ideas are THERE. There are tons of them waiting to be picked up and looked at, and their merits talked about. The biggest hurdle to moving things forward is simply getting people to believe in the possibility that there may actually be something undiscovered which if it were actually made, could change everything.
The way things are right now, its just not working for us. Its as simple as that. By pointing out these things, i'm not taking a crap on the efforts of KDE and GNOME, and other efforts. All i'm saying is, we need to take what we know and move in new directions with it. We need to be open to building new things, and building new ideas. We all have to be willing to listen, but we have to be willing to do something about it as well.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag