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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."
Little room for improvments. HA! That's a laugh!
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?
If the dock were more customizable, the ability to have single-left-clickable appleting from the dock, and a few other minor gripes, I'd be happy. As it is, I hide the dock for as long as possible, unless I absolutely need it.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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
fancy schmancy windows, startmenus and clippies?
DosShell is all I need.
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 I just can't agree that OS X's GUI is more "in your face eye candy" than Windows' is. This criticism from people is something I will never understand. For me (and I'll admit to being a Mac person), the whole article showed a Windows bias.
Granted, some people are just turned off by the genie effect and the pulsating of default buttons. But, for crying out loud, The XP GUI is the most garish set of colors. It looks like the artwork of the mentally ill.
The old Windows GUI was a bit staid, but at least looked business-like. How this mad, psychedelic fantasy of color can continue to sit on the desktops of businesses everywhere is beyond me. It's unprofessional!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
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.
Could it be that XP won because MS dumps millions into research and development of interfaces? Nah thats not it. Nothing to see, keep on moving.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
No consideration is given to the cost of any of the OS's? What percent does one pay for the OS vs. the hardware now? That ratio goes up every year with Windows. What's it is now for Windows XP Professional box? 30%?
Flexibility for Linux (KDE/Gnome) a 7? What is more flexible than an open source operating system?
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
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.
The article claims that Mac OS X has vector (resolution independant) icons. This is incorrect. Mac OS X uses 128 x 128 pixel icons, which are scaled to the requested size.
The only desktop environment i can think of with vector based icons is SGI's "Indigo Magic" or "IRIX Interactive Desktop".
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.
Not that I'm in love with microsoft, but I'm getting a certain "OMG, she picked windows!" *stunned silence* vibe from this thread.
-Exit
From the article:
The best usability I get is from Windows XP... The user environment does what I expect it to do at any time. 95% of the applications carry out user-interactivity actions exactly like another Windows app would do it... It is just the 'standard', we like it or not.
Ok, this bugs me. The author is basing usability on what he's used to, not necessarily what is most usable. I can't dispute the fact that Windows apps tend to be consistent -- consistency is one of the most important components of usability). But if something is consistently crappy, it's still crappy. Just because someone is trained on one interface and is used to it doesn't make it highly usable from an objective point of view.
It reminds me of a story about a lady who always cut the ends off of the ham before she baked it. One day her kid asked her why she did it. She answered, "because that's the way my mother always did it." She got curious about it though, so she called her mother. Her mother said that she cut off the ends of the ham because that's the way she used to do it. So the lady called her mother's mother, who told her that she cut off the ends of the ham because it wouldn't fit in the pan otherwise.
All that to say that just because you're used to something doesn't mean it is the best way to do it.
47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
It's a myth that Mac OS X has any advantage here over either X11 or Windows. X11 has support for all those features, including VSYNC (which has been in there since the mid-1980's). X11, in fact, has support for pretty much exactly the Mac OS X graphics model through DisplayPostscript.
The reason why these features are not used much in Gnome and KDE (or XP, for that matter) are partly historical and partly technical. Technically, it is not clear whether they are even desirable at this point. In particular, while the Mac does a few things like dragging windows around really well, on most normal graphics tasks, it is quite slow and consumes a lot of resources.
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.
I've used both extensively, and KDE wipes the floor with XP. You say I'm lying? Let's do a feature comparison then, shall we?
.NET style.
t ml
1. Which DE comes with tabbed browsing and popup window suppression in its web browser?
KDE
2. Which DE has a file manager that lets you right click on a directory and open up a terminal right in that directory?
KDE
3. Which DE has multiple desktop abilities out of the box?
KDE
4. Which DE comes with an office suite?
KDE
5. Which DE comes with a download manager?
KDE (3.1 comes with kget which integrates with konqueror)
6. Which DE comes with source code and its own professional IDE -- all for free?
KDE
7. Which DE pisses you off with product activation?
XP
'nuff said
Oh, and don't use Keramik, it sucks, use something like the new
Screenshot of my desktop:
http://www.insanebaboon.netfirms.com/desktop2.h
- 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)
OK, I'm not here to advertise for KDE, and I am in no way affiliated with KDE. With that said, I love KDE 3.1
KDE 3 was nice, but it still lacked some things. With 3.1, I feel like I'm in a clean, visually appealing, fast(yes fast in X) desktop environment. Some people say that the visual appearance of a desktop environment is not important, but considering that I have to look at it for at least 1/2 of my day, I'd prefer it looked inviting. I'd like to hear what other people have to say about this or Gnome.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
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--
--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.
what's up with them in windows?
combo boxes STILL suck.
the rows of tabs that flip and change position are the single most unnerving UI element ever conceived. you click one element and the entire geography of the context you're in flips. what was stable a millisecond ago is now reorded.
it's like a battle axe poised against the very wiring of your short term memory.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
While I'm not a software developer, I was under the impression that almost all of these complaints about fixed sized dialog boxes, windows, and controls extending off the edges of the screen were due to poor programming practices.
I fail to see how they're really the fault of Windows itself. (Granted, they could probably incorporate some sort of bounds checking or limitations, so such poor coding would be disallowed.) Still, I think it's more of a case of them giving developers all the tools they need to generate fixed *or* variable size boxes and controls - and said developers making poor decisions.
I remember, for example, in older verisons of the Cakewalk MIDI sequencer, selecting "use large fonts" under your video settings in Windows '9x would cause text not to fit inside the grids drawn on the screen. That was corrected eventually in later updates to the software.
What do you think those applications do? Are they easy to use? Wouldn't just about every user be able to figure out what they are and how you use them?
With Linux Notepad is called VI and in the 4 years I've used Linux I still haven't figured out how to use it. So the first thing I do is install Nano, which I know to do because I've installed Debian (which I uninstalled because the tulip driver that came with it at the time was not compatible with my Linksys ethernet card, which requires the tulip driver, but like a different tulip driver). Of course I need to install Ncurses first because Nano wont install without it. But my system comes with Ncurses, its fairly common. But its the wrong version. So before I edit I install both.
Seems like a lot of work just because the average distribution doesn't think like a light load computer user.
Simple, useful applications like Nano (based on my old good friend, Pico!) are fairly common. It shouldn't be THAT difficult to put together a short list of basic applications that would define the base Linux operating system. Name them SANELY (Nano sounds cute, but it needs to sound something like what it is). Include command line applications and X applications. KISS, but cover your bases. Not with extra apps, just look at Windows if you need to know what your average new user needs. Plan on something going wrong, "you don't need Nano, VidConfigureX will configure that for you!" just doesn't cut it.
Linux configuration is getting pretty close to standardized, why does every distribution contain a custom tool set? I'd like to learn this once and I cant see a good technical reason that I can't. Make one skinnable, so distros can make it fit nicely into their vision, but make it consistent.
Adopt a single installation scheme. Everyone knows VISE and it does the trick. Custom packaging is great, their will always be someone smarter out their with a better way. But I'm a big fan of the Loki installer, because it works and because it looks good and makes me feel like I know what's going on. Those things are important.
I don't think any single thing I've mentioned doesn't already exist. I just doesn't exist in any one place. That's ironic because where talking about market penetration without even talking advantage of what we've already got.
Give me a basic distro with what I've mentioned above. Add a package management system like portage and unite Gnome and KDE and you've got a desktop revolution.
Until then its just boys and toys.
Quack, quack.
From your post...
"The XP GUI is the most garish set of colors. It looks like the artwork of the mentally ill."
As someone who is mentally ill, I find your statement insulting. Even without my medication I could do a much better job than the color scheme of XP.
Note: Before I'm attacked for joking about mental illness, check the site below my name. I've personally been through the hell of mental treason. Therefore, I'm allowed to use my condition to insult Microsoft. Thank you.
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Anyone who has visited OSNews more than twice knows that Eugenia has an unhealthy infatuation with Windows XP (it used to be with BeOS, but perhaps she has finally come to grips with the fact that BeOS is dead).
I usually skip over any "definitive" or "unbiased" OS reviews from Eugenia since the outcome is always: Linux sucks; OS X is okay but still sucks; XP has some minor flaws, but they pale in comparison to how absolutely dreamy XP is.
Anyway, I found the article ill-informed and very biased and a far cry from definitive (more like diminutive). It must have been a slow news day at OSNews.
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.
The article started being incorrect with the friggen *title.*
But at least it followed its own advice and maintained consistency from there on out.
So at least it has *that* going for it.
KFG
Look and Feel: Windows XP 8.0, MacOSX 9.0, KDE 6.5, BeOS 7.0, Gnome 6.5.
Usability: Windows XP 9, MacOSX 8.5, KDE 6.5, BeOS 8.5, Gnome 7.
Consistency, Integration, Flexibility: Windows XP 7, MacOSX 7, KDE 8, BeOS 7, Gnome 7.5.
Speed, Stability and Bugs: Windows XP 9.5, MacOSX 9, KDE 7, BeOS 7.5, Gnome 8.
Technology, Programming Framework: Windows XP 8, MacOSX 10, KDE 7.5, BeOS 8.5, Gnome 7.5.
Final Rating:
Windows XP 8.55
MacOSX 8.33
BeOS 8.22
KDE 6.72
Gnome 6.61
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.
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?
Why would you ever shut your system down? That's like voluntarily killing your uptime!
Alan
... actually I stopped reading when he started complaining about the lack of keyboard support in OS X. This person apparently has not spent enough time on the platform to learn about full keyboard access. His ramblings about ALT keys and so on leave me thinking ... what? I'm trusting this person to tell me what a useable system is? When he apparently hasn't used OS X for more than a day or two? When his main reason for liking Windows is that he's used to it? No thanks.
simon
home page
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.
There are some interesting things happening with window managers, which cannot happen on other platforms due to Xs lack of interface policy. It would have been interesting if the author had looked at the following:
FluxBox
Ion
PekWM
TreeWM
WindowLab
Next time maybe...
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.
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.
'nuff said
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
If you don't like it, change it. No commercial software is required.
I'm running a sci-fi-esque shiny black theme right now, and it works perfectly. It even replaced the huge Start menu button with one that's much more manageable.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Any desktop enviroment that does not let you push (lower) a window down on the window stack is fundamentally crippled.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
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
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