Slashdot Mirror
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!
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).
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
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.
Uh huh. And that's why Windows apps still don't use layout management?
How many times have you seen:
+ Fixed sized text boxes that are 5 lines long.
+ Controls that extend off the edge of the window.
+ Fixed sized windows and dialog boxes.
And no, layout management in Windows Forms doesn't count. Docking is *terrible*. Controls Don't cooperate with each other causing docked and anchored controls to overlap each other.
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.Uhh, the konqueror isn't just a web browser, it's also the KDE file manager.
What file manager do you use?
To have a great DE but a buggy file manager effectively renders the DE useless if you use the DE for any kind of file manipulation.
You say that KDE has never crashed on you but Konqueror has? What's the difference? Were you browsing the web, or a list of files at the time?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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
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."
Microsoft would spend their money better if they applied GUI improments in uniform way. The most annoying feature of XP is that the new fatter start menu doesn't stay open when you move diagonally to the right and accidently touch a desktop pixel. This was copied from Macs a while ago for pull-down sub-menus but no one thought: "Hey we should do the same thing if the window opens up instead of down!" I typically have the menu close on me going to the run menu when I don't want to 8-click through to get to something like calc, paint, or cmd. Even Gnome keeps the menus open and doesn't force you to mouse orthogonally.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.
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
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!
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.
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?
Did MS really write this OS?
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
Why would you ever shut your system down? That's like voluntarily killing your uptime!
Alan
It was far from Definitive. For the Unix side there should have been some light weight and middle wieght Window Managers such as:
Blackbox or Fluxbox
Window Maker
Enlightenment
Blackbox will do everything you need -- fast.
I am using KDE though because I like the in my face eye candy.
If a desktop is inseperable from the rest of the OS, there sould have been a catagory for baggage.
XP destop bring the following baggage that can not be left behind:
Spyware
Product activation
trojan EULA's for service packs
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
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.
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