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The Definite Desktop Environment Comparison
Gentu writes "OSNews posted a very long and interesting comparison between the most popular desktop environments today: Windows XP Luna, Mac OS X Aqua, BeOS/Zeta and Unix's KDE and Gnome. Some of the points in the article can be thought to be 'subjective', but overall many good points are made and it seems that there is room for improvement for all DEs."
Is it just me, or did someone else find it kind of ironic that the first paragraph of a "definitive" survey talks about what wasn't covered?
I don't think you will ever have a DE that doesn't have some room for improvement. Its nice to see a comparison like this though.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
Clearly, this article is only right if it says my Desktop choice is the best. If it is, I will hail it as a well written thoughtful piece. If not, I will take potshots at the authors integrety, and claim he was paid off by the competition. I'm off to read it now...
Since when is KDE/GNOME an OS?
Since never. This is about desktop environments, not OSes. The others are listed by OS since there usually isn't much of an easy way to change desktop environments in those OSes.
I never been so broke that I couldn't leave town.
Sorry, but this is just plain wrong. My two main environments right now are MacOS X and KDE. I have never ever ever had KDE crash on me. MacOS X crashes a lot.
He criticizes Konqueror's stability. I agree. Konqeuror has crashed on me many many times, and it seems very buggy (at least the version I've used). This not the fault of KDE. Who cares? You can mix and match Mozilla/Konq/Galeon with KDE/Gnome/whatever. If you don't like a particular app, don't use it. It has nothing to do with the quality of the desktop environment.
Another problem is that Gnome and KDE are changing so quickly, so they're moving targets when you try to evaluate them. The version of Gnome I tried was waaaaaaaaaaay too slow on my machine. But that was 6 months ago! Things change quickly in the OSS world.
Find free books.
Another example of why more Mac users are on anti-depressants than the rest of us. She does a very good review and I find OS X to be more processor intensive and slower than XP, comparing OS X and Windows XP. I find no problems with XP and I must say, Windows XP is by far the most stable and best OS microsoft has ever released. But alas, a Windows vs. OS X war is one no one will ever win.
Let's see:
1) A very usable, nice-looking GUI
2) All the functionality of Unix/Linux
I know there is a 'emulate XP' effort for Linux, but there should really be one to emulate OS X. It gets rid of the two main failings of OS X:
1) Not open
2) Pricey
smd4985
Some things were a bit unfair, such as the slowness of OSX. Yeah, the desktop hardware sucks right now. But I'm not sure you should judge the environment on the fact that Macintoshes are on average about half as fast as Intel machines. That'll change in September with the 970 machines.
Also in usability, a lot depends upon what you are used to. Since most people are used to Windows that is unsurprisingly what most people value. Don't get me wrong. There is something to be said for that. But it then emphasizes status quo at the expense of innovation.
I think all OSes and environments have pluses and minuses. I prefer OSX but find many things that drive me batty. (Open/Save dialogs, the poor multithreading in the Finder, Column view) On the other hand I prefer the Apple approach of making things intuitive and simple rather than Microsoft's approach of hand holding and wizards.
I think both have their pluses and minuses. Certainly the fact that Windows runs on cheaper and faster hardware recommends it right now. However as an overall environment OSX has matured very nicely. I actually went and paid the price premium for a Mac for my home. (Using XP for my development at work) It is sad that most comparisons are as superficial and unhelpful as this one was.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MacOS X has probably the most in-your-face eye candy of all the DEs compared here.
... And don't get me started on shockingly bright colors. Both the start menu and the close button could stand to be a little more muted in Windows, while on OS X the only really bright non-blue parts are the window close-minimize-maximize widgets, which are shaded and not quite as bright. Everything else is a shade of white, which again is much less in-your-face. In other words, the Aqua theme focuses on white and light blue, while Luna just splashes a bright blue all over the screen. How exactly is Luna less pervasive than Aqua?
:-)
Aqua is more in-your-face than Luna? I just don't get that. In all honesty, I find the OS X interface to be far less glaring than XP's. The default Luna and Aqua themes are both focused on blue, but Aqua's blue is more muted and is far less noticeable during regular usage of the OS. Right now, on this OS X screen (and not counting application icons in the Dock), the only blue things are the Apple logo in the top left, the scroll bar, and the widgets for dropdown menus. On the XP machine beside me, the title bar of the Mozilla window is blue, the scrollbars are blue, the taskbar is blue, and the outline of the windows are blue. That's an order of magnitude more bright blue pixels on the screen
Let the flames commence.
-- shayborg
Yes, if you use any environment for long enough, it will become natural. But that doesn't give it high usability. Daily annoyances are the speech bubbles that keep popping up without rhyme or reason from the icon bars, the ever changing ways in which icons rearrange and present themselves in Explorer, the inconsistent and confusing presentation of the file system (sometimes the Desktop is at the root, sometimes "My Computer" is, sometimes it's the "C:\" drive), to an absolutely hare-brained arrangement of the control panel and administrative tools (just you try to locate the disk partitioning tools on XP home edition).
And if that is not enough, there are so many options and backwards compatibility settings and versions of programs that Windows doesn't even achieve the one thing he lauds it for: consistency. Programs follow conventions and looks from Windows 95 to XP, and the zillions of options mean that one XP desktop may behave completely differently from the next.
Among this set of choices, Macintosh OS X clearly is the usability winner, if not for any other reason, simply because Apple essentially started from scratch and removed a lot of useless junk.
And everyone who's ever tried to use it knows Windows' drag and drop support is sooooo consistent between applications!
If you read the article, Eugenia (the author), states that although KDE is extremely customizable, the menus and such are convaluted and make customizing rather difficult.
to quote the article: "However, this flexibility comes at a cost. The Kontrol Center of KDE is just bloated, plain and simple...I give KDE an 8 (and not a 9 or 10) because of these problems created by this flexibility, not because the flexibility is not there (it is)."
- Windows XP running under VPC on Max OS X is best. Gee, not a choice from the original article? How rude.
- BE OS, since it is no longer supported, runs best on the Wayback machine, so it runs best in my dreams..it merits second place. Every OS in my dreams is perfect, BTW.
- KDE and GNOME, since I can tweak them as much as I want, and they are actually sitting on some un-mentioned Linux OS, get third, and any issues with them are my own fault, since how they are set up is more up to me than any of the others
Some review, eh? Makes as much sense as comparing take-out with homemade, and frozen foods with greenhouse veggies. It's a load, folks, and only designed to start flame-wars and bring eyeballs to a webpage. Anyone thinking there is meat to that article is one deck short of a Carnival Cruise.OK, so it costs $97 for a copy of Jaguar from Amazon. You won't get any arguments from me that 10.0 and 10.1 were beta releases, but it's here for real now.
So, what should it cost? Seriously, I hear people complain but I don't hear the alternatives, except rants about dumping their hardware unit (most of the company).
Back when a IIci cost $6K, upgrades for life were taken for granted. But people spoke, they wanted cheaper hardware, so out went the pre-purchased upgrades.
So, what would you charge for it if you wrote it?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think KDE (and maybe GNOME too) now supports SVG icons. At least, I read that on dot.kde.org a long time ago. I assume it made its way into a release version.
I think subjective says it all for this article. I can't comment on the other DEs, as I have been using KDE more or less exclusivly for the past 3 to 4 years and I've not used gnome after my initial trial of it when I ditched windows, BUT....
After getting used to KDE I find that windows (98/2000) is unusable. The author seemed to be intimidated by the level of functionality of KDE. I strongly disagree with the criticism of konqueror, I find it to be the best file manager, file viewer, browser and more than any others I have used.
There are still issues with both KDE and konqueror, but 3.2 promises to fix many of these and the speed of development of KDE is truly astounding. They have gone from 2.0 to 3.1 in the same time span it took windows to go from 95 to 98, anyone who has used KDE over that period will know what I mean.
If KDE has no idea about psychology then I have no psychology.
Ok...I can't say for sure about Gnome, but I take issue with
some of his KDE Problems
Specifically I take issues when he be dissing Konq
I have got to Say Konq is by far the best file manager I have ever used.
It is Extemely easy to use, and Configure, it is also has way more functionality then any other File Manager I have ever used.
quit simply it is DA SHIT!
Compaiting Konq to any other File Manager is like Comparing Google to HotBot.
but he had some good points about the rest of KDE
-The default K Menu Is confusing
-Window Redraw are slow
-the eye candy on the default theme needs to be toned down.
but what can you say....he found windows easier to use
Is his Default DE Windows because its easier to use?
or
Does he Find Windows easier to Use because its his default DE?
I know why I have KDE running....do you know why you run your Desktop Environment?
--meh--
Or could it be that OSNews.com is an amatuer site getting most of it's content from armchair experts? Hmmm, keep moving, it's easier to live in denial when you don't stop to look.
--windows xp/2000 pros:
:P I really *really* like the MacOS widget that resizes windows exactly as big as they need to be, no more no less. I wish windows and/or linux had this functionality...highly consistent interface from app to app.
:P
its a happy medium; it's GUI is not quite as dumbed down as a Mac (pre-OSX) that you'd *need* the mouse to do everything, but for grandma its plenty simple (so long as grandma doesn't have admin privs and messes with c:\windows). Keyboard shortcuts are fairly consistent across the board, default widgets are fairly well thought out (with one exxception, see macOS commments below). Fairly zippy wrt to speed/responsiveness. Reasonably stable. Bboatloads of apps available.
--win xp/2000 cons:
not Free. Not highly configurable GUI (at least, not without 3rd party apps). lots of dumbass developers who don't use default OS widgets and create confusion in the app's UI (see: Windows Media Player 9).
--MacOs pros:
Since my experience has been mostly in a biology lab where we have tons of legacy apps that run only on MacOS classic, this is where most of my Mac experience lies. Not that many pros, really
--MacOS cons:
ridiculously unstable, no protected memory, no preemptive multitasking. next to impossible keyboard navigation of filesystem, making mouse a necessity. System extensions are IMO worse than dll hell in windows, I support Mac and Windows computers in the lab and windows machines are by far easier to handle. I could go on and on bitching about MacOS classic....dunno about OSX, will try it some day when DNA Strider and OpenLab are ported to OSX and our lab upgrades our mac hardware
--GNNU/Linux systems pros (both GNOME and LINUX):
Free as in speech and beer. Highly configurable. boatloads of apps. more or less free community support.
--cons:
support is only free if your time is worthless. many things that you install yourself (i.e. did not come packaged with distro) almost never work out of the box and require mucking around with (also see first point). Inconsistent interface from app to app (emacs vs vi, anyone?) From my perspective, no hardware support for scientific hardware (e.g. high speed CCD cameras, digital frame grabbers, automatic confocal microscopes, high resolution image analysis, etc etc.....in other words, its a great system if you are a hacker but if you want to get REAL work done you'll spend too much time trying to get it to work. People would rather put up with a crappy OS and get things done.
Personally, from an end user's point of view I wouldn't mind if Linux developers developed only for RedHat Linux and RedHat decided to stick with either GNOME or KDe and stuck with it. At least then there would be no confusion and things would be consistent. I also wouldn't mind if they packaged their distro by picking one tool for one type of job and ditch all the redundant apps. While cutting down on choice, at least nonhacker people could get things to actually *work* and not have to muck around too much...
NO CARRIER
Actually, I think I'd give quite similar ratings to all of the desktops mentioned.
Bickering over small details aside, I think a pattern is immediately obvious, and it's one the "gung-ho Linux advocate" isn't going to like to admit: The best UI's have been designed as commercial efforts.
Despite the *many* complaints I have about Windows XP - the UI is pretty darn stable, and graphically pleasing to the eye. Everything that fades in or out does so in just the right amount of time to look "classy" instead of "cheezy". Accelerated graphics cards are fully utilized in almost all cases, since XP is the predominant product in use and all the manufacturers concentrate on video drivers that work well with it. Default font sizes and styles are well chosen, and provide a very workable desktop environment without requiring tweaking.
MacOSX, in a very similar vein, proves that these results can be achieved on top of a Unix environment. Of course, the deck is stacked in their favor, driver-wise, because there are FAR fewer graphics adapters to choose from that support Mac systems.
When it comes to KDE or Gnome, the refinement just isn't there. It feels more "clunky". In Gnome, especially, I've had a number of applications wreak havock with the UI. In the recent past, I've even managed to configure the desktop environment in such a way that the system was hanging upon shutdown of X until I deleted my desktop preferences/settings files and created fresh ones.
Even if KDE or Gnome was 100% bug-free, there's still the issue of how the color palettes get handled when a video card only does 256 colors. It looks amateur (and frankly, awful) when the color palette gets used up by an app in the foreground, and the background suddenly changes to some ugly black and purple colors. I can run 256 color mode all day long in WinXP or even OSX and not get that behavior.
Compare that with Interface Builder on MacOSX where the developer can lock text boxes, buttons etc onto any part of the screen For example it takes no time, or coding to place a button in the lower right hand corner of the window and have it always stay in the bottom right hand corner as the window resizes. Also the layout manager displays guidance lines which make it a snap to place your buttons with Apples usage guidelines.
It is though windows developers are expected to always have windows the same size that they use, where MacOSX developer will always be thinking about how the window behaves at all sizes.
Go out and get sailing!
The OS X iterface becomes totally invisible once you are used to it. You only notice it when you need it to do something for you. 99% of the time I don't even notice the brushed metal windows in Safari and iTunes! The XP interface constantly screams at you for attention.
That said, I am happy with what Microsoft did with the XP interface. It is not perfect but it is headed in the right direction.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
So far from reading the article, he seems to be extremely subjective. Not always in favor of Windows, but definitely in favor of how he's used to things being. This gives a clear advantage to the OS he's no doubt had the most experience with (windows). I'm still reading the review, so maybe he'll prove me wrong, but the usability section at least seems pretty biased. He detracts from BeOS because it uses a different meta key (CNTRL vs ALT) than he's used to. Perhaps if the study had been long enough to get used to these little difference and really find the strong/weak points of each OS, the reuslts could have been different. Right now it just seems the differences he finds are pretty superficial. Oh well, I'll go finish the article now.
if(!cool) exit(-1);
With XML and other future standards of data storage and organization, the OS is devolving into a commodity had by desire instead of function. The imagination of the altruistic programer and the true hacker for profit (rightly so) have enhanced all major 'GUI Environments'. People that have convinced you that default isn't good enough and taking advantage of open source commonalty in that sales pitch.
We will all have preferences in style, function and initial capability. As long as the information that preference in system can generate is cross compatible, the form and feedback can be left up to human desire instead of program requirements. In the end, the only reason we are stabbing our fingers around is to get some sort of understandable response back from a cold, inanimate object. If you can design an input system that limits that interaction and produces the same or more work, I'll be using it. That's why my #1 interface to a computer is the CLI.
As I always say, "Strive for Utopia, but deal with today".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Don't blame the UN, blame us. We whipped up the opposition to challenge Saddam and then at the last minute got cold feet and left them to be slaughtered. The truth is that US foreign policy has always preferred pliant dictators to unpredictable democracies. Bush Sr. thought he would be better off with a chastened Hussein than with a fragmented, chaotic power vacuum. Probably he was right, but to now blame all that on the UN is ridiculous historical revisionism.
However, this all-blue default color on XP is kind of 60's psychedelic, it gets on my eyes soon enough.
Dude, it's the BSoD. I know it seems profoundly clear under the influence but you will have your doubts later. Get some sleep.
Seriously, this article was a Windoze love in. How can anyone who likes XP diss KDE and QT as "clunky"? Oh wait, he snears at all the interfaces but BeOS, which he does not use, and XP which he praises to the stars: Best interface, "most logical" and then he describes how prety he thinks it is. If that's not enough to make you sick try this:
The best usability I get is from Windows XP. This is the only reason I keep WinXP still as my main operating system. ... I found that the best DE on integration (see: the DE that requires you LESS to open a terminal window) is Windows, hands down. Everything can be configured with a GUI and when there is not a preference panel for something, there is always the registry, even when you want to enable the most weird hacks on applications found or your system. ... Windows XP would be my second best regarding UI responsiveness. It is already very responsive, a huge (and I mean HUGE) improvement on multitasking/multithreading over the Win9x codebase, but it is not as good as in BeOS. The user can get a lot of freezing ... I found Windows XP and MacOSX to be the most stable environments ... Technology: Windows and X11 don't have many of these cool features, in fact X11 is the least powerful of all. [then give XP highest numerical rating!] ... For Windows, well, MFCs, .NET and Win32 are really powerful APIs which let you do the same thing in many different ways ... Final Rating: Windows XP 8.55 MacOSX 8.33 BeOS 8.22 KDE 6.72 Gnome 6.61
Shallow useless gloss. All the virtues of all other systems are cited as faults and all of XPs faults are smothed over or even listed as virtues in the most disgusting and self contradictory manner possible. What distro did he use to get all of those awful KDE and Gnome crashes? Why is it that my experiences don't match his? Hmmmm. If he likes BeOS so advanced, why does it not score highest? Why include it at all? "I include the BeOS in this comparison not because I consider it an OS with a bright future ..." Oh, I know, because not many people are familiar with it or will bother to try it so he thinks he can troll at will. Has this dope ever worked with another OS as his "main system"? Has he ever gotten away from the default settings in KDE or Gnome or done anything to match those leet windoze registry hacks he brags about? Poop, X can be tortured into anything but something makes me think he would have praised M$'s offerings regardless of what they were. What a whore.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Basically, this guy's review is essentially a reiteration of common pre-conceptions: "XP is usable", "OS X is technically superior", and "Gnome/KDE is just third rate". Well, that's not news. It's also wrong.
Most people I've asked agree with that "common pre-conception" .. I guess it's common because most people feel it's true. I've used all four and I agree. OS X is the best, and Cocoa is the cleanest most elegant system (based on NeXT) that has ever existed. Win XP looks nice but not "beautiful". Just like the difference between an iPod and "brand-X" MP3 player. Gnome and KDE get the job done but are full of inconsistencies and "ugliness" and places where the limitations of X11 peek through.
No, dialog boxes are defined in dialog coordinates, which are relative values that are translated to pixels based on the current screen resolution and font size. I agree, this is not layout management, but it's sure as hell not hardcoded pixel coordinates.
Microsoft doesn't believe in layout management mainly because their programming styles haven't really changed since Windows 3.0, or at least Windows 95. Their style is mostly fixed, non-resizeable modal dialogs (which they should be flogged for - overuse of modal dialogs is evil evil evil), so they don't really need it anyway. Truth be told, aside from the resizing, I'd rather design dialogs in the Dialog Editor (or whatever they call it now) than on the fly with Tk/wxWindows/whatever. Yes, I've done it in all three.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
Agreed... but I like looking at my Gnome desktop. I pretty much felt like this was a half-ass review written over an evening in some guys basement. "See I can boot BeOS, and I have WinXP on my new game machine, and my mom just got this cool new iMac from work, and, oh yeah, I got a linux box over here too... Hey let's compare the DE's!"
That said, I'm a Gnome user, I mostly love it, I sometimes hate it, but I cant stand to develop on anything else. I suppose the fact that Gnome got the lowest overall score may have colored my opinion somewhat.
Whatever the case, use what ya like. But this article was pretty uninformative.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
How are you supposed to know where in the window it will drop if you don't open the window?
DCMonkey
this is a list of personal impressions without any real reference or affirmation, it is really FUD based on what this person is more used to.
Personaly i find a pain the double click of window and I am usin kde with SUSE from SUSE 6.1 and I have
always found KDE to be as stable or more stable than window XP and I really hate when window freeze doing
some application SUSE do not notice. I agree that the options on KDE are quite a lot
The author did pick up on a MacOS characteristic that I have not seen widely discussed and is likely to influence most user experience: the slowness of immediate feedback. Good on her. On the other hand, I am struck that the author does not recognize the visual precedent of the default XP theme, which appears to be plastic children's toys.
As to achieving a productive and pleasant GUI user experience on Linux... Knowlegeable people who would never in a million years attempt design of an operating system internal without careful thought and study seem to be convinced that they can dream up a GUI without either. If one is convinced there is no commonality in UI experience--that it is all a matter of taste--then why not the designer's taste? In practice, though, there are commonalities in user experience. I believe it is important, here, to pay attention to the ancient distinction between architecture and building; if it's architecture worth living in, it is built with attention to the people who live in it, not just the designer and builders.
Actually he seems to think anything but BeOS is slow and sloppy. While having Microsoft as a second, I don't see how this is M$-tainted i particular.
What makes this article truly worthless is the absolute lack of in-depth analysis. It just says "KDE is ugly. Yeah you got themes, but who would ever bother to press two buttons to get things done?!?!". Something similar to that anyway.
This guy is not near technical enough to rate any desktop environment. He just takes a glance at the defaults, says what he thinks, and comments that it might be possible to improve this. And he does this for the lot.
So I agree and disagree. Worthless? yes. M$-tainted? No. Just plain stupid.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Supporting evidence:
"Despite the *many* complaints I have about Windows XP - the UI is pretty darn stable,"
I don't know how an UI can be "stable", an UI is just the way the user interacts with something. You're thinking of the underlying OS, which was not what was being reviewed here. So this seems invalid.
Everything that fades in or out does so in just the right amount of time to look "classy" instead of "cheezy".
Well this is pretty subjective. The fading in and out just looks cheesy to me, I'd certainly never consider XP classy. But perhaps you like it. Nonetheless, not an argument that supports the claim.
Accelerated graphics cards are fully utilized in almost all cases
Again, nothing to do with the DE.
Default font sizes and styles are well chosen
Examples of where this isn't the case? Yeah yeah, I know up until recently Linux fonts sucked, but that's basically fixed now in any modern distro.
When it comes to KDE or Gnome... [snip
More subjective opinions, followed by what would seem to be a bug (rare one, i've never heard of it until now). You don't even say whether you were talking about GNOME1 or 2 (big difference).
Even if KDE or Gnome was 100% bug-free, there's still the issue of how the color palettes get handled when a video card only does 256 colors.
Which again, has nothing to do with how well "designed" the DE is, that's an X issue, or more likely a driver issue.
You're confusing many, many different things together, and haven't supported your original claim at all. Sure, there are bugs. There are bugs in every OS. I don't see what relation these points have to usability.
So the UI is stable. I dont see how that helps the kernel, but this is another matter. The fact the the Win32-platform has the worst architecture ever (reboots anyone?) is another discussion as well. This goes for the dekstop environment. I think it looks bloated. Guess it a matter of opinion.
So you say X is lousy because you couldnt configure it properly? Some hardware is troublesome. That goes for all OSes or desktop-environments.
Yeah. Thats why we love X, KDE and Gnome: the ability to configure it to our (in this case) minimalistic needs.
In conclusion: The XP-interface and architecture is made for people who dont like to do anything advanced at all (there goes my Karma!). If the reviewer likes things simple XP is good in the review.
If, however, the reviewer chooses to live experimentally, XP will be the worst nanny ever. So XP will be bad.
Conclusion in conclusion in blah...:
XP will magically appeal to some, and magically not appeal to others. Just like any other UI. But to claim that XP is the best from piss-poor material like this is just ridicolous.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Cos you know in Red Hat, subpixel AA is in the fonts control panel. Change it. Close the window. Away you go.
Ignoring the fact that for real world usefulness and platform stability (by which i'm talking about standards, not MTBF) an open network transparent protocol is far superior, X will soon be getting these features anyway.
The reason it takes so long? Doing it well is hard. Double-buffering everything consumes vast amounts of resources. The reason X11/GDI have such complex geometric calculation APIs is to cut down the amount of drawing to the minimum. Now you could say, "but computers are so much more powerful today than they were back then". And you'd have a point. But of course with that increase in power, we've also increased colour depth, screen resolutions, and number of apps running at once, so you still end up blowing all your resources on double-buffering.
There are various techniques to improve this situation, ie bring flicker-free semi-transparent graphical goodies to X but without blowing a hole in memory usage, and they are being worked on. Until then rather contrived examples of things you can do, but in reality never actually do, do not make a good argument against X.
The REAL stupidity is that they included the defunct BeOS, but omitted what is - IMHO - the best OS UI yet invented, Mac OS 9.
Annoyingly pointless.
That was classic intercourse!
Everything that fades in or out does so in just the right amount of time
to look "classy" instead of "cheezy"
Oh, really? Try logging out on a multi-user installation of XP. When you
bring up the dialog to log out (with its Log off, Shutdown, Restart etc
options), the screen gently fades to black-and-white. Yes, very nice.
Now, having selected `log off user $USERNAME', you click OK. The screen
_instantly_ comes back into colour. No gentle fading at all. That's just
sloppy.
With all the freedom of choice X11 has offered me, I have been thinking about what my ideal user interface would be. For me, efficiency is the deciding factor, and looks come second (by which I mean they _do_ matter).
I have pretty much settled on WindowMaker as my winning^H^H^H^Hdow manager. I still try other wms now and then, but usually I go back to Window Maker before the day is over. It's the dock that makes WIndow Maker so good (but why for goodness' sake must we double click???). Double click a dock icon to bring all the applications windows forward or start the app if it wasn't running yet. One hotkey lets you hide all windows belonging to an application; an excellent way to keep the desktop organized. I move the icons for less frequently used applications, as well as icons I don't want to see to the paperclip and set it to autocollapse.
One feature that would increase efficiency is something I have seen in KDE's BeOS theme. Window titles do not span the entire width of the window, and when moved over another window title, rearrange their position so that they basically become tabs which can be used to select among several windows in the same position. This makes sure window titles are always (at least partially) visible (so you don't miss alerts sent to you by changing window titles) and windows never get completely occluded by other windows.
If there is any window manager that sports both a dock and tabbable windows, and for the reast is lean and fast, please let me know as I am probably going to love it.
---
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest
of your life."
-- Michael Sinz
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Well that's a neat little story, but the users don't come from some land where there are no DEs to think about. The Windows DE has been carefully tested on all levels of user, and, apparently, what you get is deemed to be the most acceptable. Now, you can go off on some paranoid theory about Bill inflicting some horrible DE paradigm on the world, but that would be silly commercially, wouldn't it?
In other words, Windows is easy to use, and slick, because it makes commercial sense to be that way. If you start selling cars with the foot pedals in a different order to C B A (it has been done), let me know how you go, I'll gladly insure you. For a price.
I think all this fuss about DEs is overrated - most important work is done by typing text into boxes. Like this. (apologies in advance to any graphical people out there.)
The translation
I'm not going to go on, all of Eugenia articles are like this. Stating opinions as if they were facts does not make them facts. "The buttons are overwhelming" is not the same as "the temparature of the solution was 26 degrees". None of this is helpful - I (as a random member of the computing community) do not care what Eugenia's preferences for colour, widget style and theme are. I care whether these environments can be made to work the way I want them to. I (as the adminstrator for other desktops) care whether these environments have the ability to make my users happier; if their particular preferences can be accommodated.
This brings me to what these sorts of reviews should focus on... absolutes only. e.g.
features of WinXP: themeable, log multiple users on simultaneously, clean fonts, ability to choose classic style or luna
features of KDE: virtual desktops, themeable, transparent menus, adjustable levels of eye candy, full featured keyboard shortcut editors
etc.
Writing those lists just now I noticed how hard it is to keep my own opinions out of it, but it can be done and a journalist should certainly be doing that. If a personal opinion were required, it would be preferable that a third party was used as the source of opinions as we are more likely to hear a balanced view than the rantings of one particular user.
In such a subjective area - more care must be taken to remain objective. It is not sufficient to simply write at the top of the article "I realise this is subjective but...."; I'm sure what she meant, as a professional journalist, was "I realise this is subjective so I have taken the following steps to minimize any influence my own opinions may have on this review"
This is a difficult task, articles such as these must by definition include some element of opinion; comments like "The menus were slow to respond" are acceptable even though "slow" is a subjective term; but one I would be willing to allow under the assumption that an experienced computer used could assign fuzzy terms like "slow" and "fast" with the same skill that we can all use terms like "hot" and "cold". This is not an excuse to decend into the completely unquantifiable "I want my UI pixel perfect".
All these environments will gain equally from a more balanced review process and as such we will all gain.
</rant>
Carpe Daemon
Though I understand the need for something like a taskbar, the way Apple and MS have implemented it is completey wrong. It's too space-consuming, ugly, and especially in Windows, barely functional. WindowMaker's dock handles this in a much cleaner and intuitive fashion, and I can't overstate how much easier multiple desktops make life-an idea neither Apple or MS have caught on to yet.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Worst review I've ever read; the reviewer is obviously out of their league, writing completely off the cuff. Its hard to tell if there was any proper balancing done.. what machines weere used for each OS? But more to point.. they seam to just like some thigns about an OS, so the whole shbang must be good..
:P
ie: Why even go into mentijoning MFC? Its not really necessary. But by going in and saying MFC is good and useful and well designe.d. obviously ha sno clue about design.
Aqua frameworks.. you mean using Objective C, a language no one wants to touch?
Sure, Windows apps measure up to standard.. Windows *is* the standard afterall. So thats a meaningless and stupid comment. And Windows is well designed and laid out? Despite the fact every single usability test as turne dout negative?
This shows an obvious "I've used it, I'm famliiar with it, it must be logical" bias; it is *not* well designed, but it *is* standard.. so you know how to use it. That doesn't make it good.
God, thats a truly awful review that just annoyed me for the rest of the day.
Windows has its points, but make them fair or we'll just puke
Are all users of computers technical? Should they be? Would a technically-inclined individual's response to a GUI be apropos to how your grandmother would interact with a computer?
How the default configuration behaves is very important, and is exactly the way many people will see most of the features in a GUI.
Do you have a
Preference for the familiar is pretty much true for all computer users. Even for us geeks, our preference for bsd v linux, bash v tcsh, vi v emacs, or gnome v kde depends more on what we're used to than any supposedly objective criteria.
Me: linux, bash, vi, gnome. Naturally I'm right about what's best for me, so it must be best for you, too... Gee, maybe I should be an interface reviewer too!
Actually, it's retarded to measure computer performance by either efficiency or clock-speed, or some calculated measure. If you want to compare how well two different processors can perform, you use FLOPS (floating point operations per second), or in the modern era GFLOPS (giga FLOPS).
Furthermore, as any intelligent analysis will show you -- namely, a benchmark -- different CPU's are better at performing different tasks.
You should also note that if you really want the best processors, AMD, Intel, Motorolla, and even MIPS may all be the wrong place to look. Processors being developed for gaming systems -- such as the PS2, which has 6 GFLOPS/sec performance -- are by far superior, and selling at alower price. This, however, will only be useful to the computer world if GCC develops options to compile for such processors.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen