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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!
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.
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
You are taking things out of context. "keyboard navigation" and "keyboard oriented for other tasks" is not the same thing.
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.
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
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!
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.
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