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What Might UserLinux Look Like?
Lucky writes "This story at Linuxworld talks about some of the potential features of UserLinux, as well as Bruce Peren's proposed community desktop project and its potential features. There's some exclusive commentary by Perens there, too."
psst...am i the only one who can't find any infromation on it?
Hi there
I saw a good tag the other day..
Linux: the world's best text-adventure game
could it be? first post?
It should look like Windows.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
as what might linux users look like, and the trolls just moaned in extacy...
If there were a problem with Linux distributions per se it wouldn't be with the Desktop, that's fine in most distributions, it would be in the diverse configuration file locations, they all seem to have differing ideals here, perhaps a more powerful and consented POSIX definition would be an advantage, rather than the current continued divergence. Apt,portage or rpm etc. working on any distribution would be my idea of UserLinux.
With RedHat "giving up" on regular users, is the goal of this project simply to TRY in the hopes of pouding Microsoft into submission?
Or, does this project mean to suceed?
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
Ja - just like some of the people I work for nicknamed L-Users
LostboyTNT MercyHosting.Com
Server-Status.Com
50Bux.Com
TLDR.Com
Yet Another Linux Distro ... But I suppose more choice is good.
...
My list has two overwhelming requirements for the Linux desktop. First it has to be easy to use. It should pass the "Grandma test"
Choose the the grandma well, or fit her Sonotone with a hidden HF receiver so you can discreetly tell her what to do.
So, the customers involved in UserLinux will be paying for the engineering of creating a Free Software system, rather than for boxes, "seats", or user licenses.
Oh okay, I didn't realize it was a YALD that was also doomed to fail even before seeing the light of day. Nevermind
[Moderators: this is not a flamebait. Think about it, how many such schemes have ever worked ?]
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I thought that it was interesting to note that, out of the entire article, the only software that the author would like in his "ideal" desktop that I use myself is apt. (Which arguably has nothing to do with the user experience, anyway -- as long as package management is done right, the user shouldn't care.)
This is, of course, the reason why none of these "perfect desktop" distributions will take off. I consider myself a pretty typical home Linux user, and I have completely different needs than addressed in the article. Picking a set of apps and decreeing them to be components of this ideal distribution might work in some instances -- for instance, in order to have uniformity through an entire organization -- but I can't see it working out for home users.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I admire Perens ambition and passion for the open source movement, and always respect his educated opinion, but I really don't like the "UserLinux" idea. Working in the enterprise world myself for about 4 years, it has been my experience that management is more willing to use Linux when it is backed by a well-known and "secure" name. Customized jobs cost a lot of money, and most enterprise decision makers are more inclined to lean towards comprehensive distributions and assign the task of making it workable to their already over-tasked IT staff.
I don't think that the community needs to collectively focus their attention on one single distro. I just think that one single distro needs to rise above the rest and earn market acceptance as a solid desktop. The strength of Linux is that I can use a different distro suited to a particular task. If I need a quick solution for IDS, but don't have some powerful hardware, I can quickly setup snort and Acid on a Debain box and get it going. If I need a quick packet filtering firewall with easy to manage tools (for the IT staff here that isn't very Linux knowledgeble) I can setup Redhat 9 in about an hour and a half.
Somewhere in the near future we need a desktop distro that is every bit as good as Windows is when it comes to the desktop. Then I can say "when I need a quick desktop for someone that just needs web access, eDirectory, and Lotus Notes out of the box, I can use insert distro here."
I see 8 comments on this article and the server has ALREADY crashed.
* LINUXWORLD EXCLUSIVE * What Would UserLinux Look Like?
Bruce Perens tells LinuxWorld's desktop editor what he has in mind with UserLinux
November 17, 2003
Summary
Mark R. Hinkle, LinuxWorld's Desktop Technologies Editor, muses on what his his ideal incarnation of a Linux desktop would be. Bruce Perens, whose idea it was, chips in with detailed comments.
By Mark R. Hinkle Bruce Perens
Page 1 of 1
Last Monday at the Desktop Linux Consortium Conference at Boston University's Tyngsboro, Massachusetts Campus there was a lot of talk about a "UserLinux" distribution. The topic was sparked by remarks by Bruce Perens who voiced a need for a distribution that was designed to meet community needs for a desktop operating system based on the Linux community favorite Debian distribution.
I contacted Bruce who has been kind enough to interject some comments to my own text. They are marked [thus].
The thought of UserLinux sparked my thinking. The thing I like about Linux is that it's infinitely customizable to meet the needs of almost any situation. However, for it to be a viable desktop for the masses there seems to me that there has to be some common features that a large number of Linux desktop users would appreciate. I thought about this quite a bit and started my list of what it would take for Linux to be my "ideal" environment rather than my preferred environment. I'd be interested to see what the community considers the most important features.
[Bruce Perens writes: I should point out that UserLinux also has a server mission. Our first customer group has both server and desktop needs. But the server is a solved problem, at least mostly, so we know a lot of work needs to go into the desktop.
Also, the most important thing about UserLinux is that it is an attempt to change the economic paradigm of the Linux distribution. We feel that creating a Linux distribution doesn't work as a profit-center, and that it is better viewed as a cost-sharing exercise. So, the customers involved in UserLinux will be paying for the engineering of creating a Free Software system, rather than for boxes, "seats", or user licenses. The system will be certified to various standards and vendor requirements with their funding, and the result will be given away. The customers get all of the copies they need with no incremental cost per seat added. They will have to pay for service.]
My list has two overwhelming requirements for the Linux desktop. First it has to be easy to use. It should pass the "Grandma test" which is when placed in front of the average grandma she would find it intuitive and easy to use. Second it should include a set of tools that allow the user to accomplish their most important tasks. I generated my list of tools and what I feel are my most important for my needs. I would encourage you the prospective users of such a system to add your feedback.
Productivity Tools
Browser I think Mozilla is a great option for browsers. I like the tab-based browsing and pop up blocker. If not Mozilla than maybe some of the projects spawned from Mozilla aimed at speedier performance without the frills like Firebird.
[Bruce Perens writes: I'd like to hear if Konqueror has something to offer that is not matched by these choices.]
Office Suite I use Open Office and Star Office and I think they are good. For some of my more ambitious projects I do use Microsoft Word but I find myself using Microsoft less. I particularly like the ability to export files to PDF format preserving the look and feel of my files across platforms. If these suites could handle better more complex formatting I think they would easily displace their competitors that costs many hundreds of dollars.
[Bruce Perens writes: I like OpenOffice and hope that I can facilitate the creation of a broader development community outside of Sun.]
E-mail/PIM Outlook made the integrated PIM and email client the vogue in business. I like the idea but I think that Mic
I miss read the title. I thought it said "What Linux Users look like.
I'll pass.
login:
password:
Welcome to UserLand! We've Missed You!
%
Just visualize the windows and filesystem structure in your head.
I see a lot of talk (whining/b1tching.. take your pick) about "reinventing the wheel" when it comes to new desktop environments - that make it easier for John and Jane Doe to use linux. --- This is counterproductive, it's not "reinventing the wheel" to write a new window system because you think the previous ones "suck" as far as the average user is concerned. If Motif/Lesstif were really enough, would Gnome, KDE, etc even exist? NO
The UserLinux initiative is an excellent chance for us to penetrate into the mainstream desktop market and start making software houses recognize and implement for linux - because their target audience can finally use the system.
The list posted in the article looks to be a rather [complete] connonical set of programs. --- This has been just a few, incomplete, thoughts ---
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
One thing the artical failed to mention was browser plugins. I still have a difficult time getting Java and Xine to work with Mozilla on some distros. Following the install procedure sometimes work, but most times it doesn't, and when it doesn't, the hack is different for every system. I know alot of this is the responsibility of the plugin creator, but a standard platform would make it easier for them LSB just doesn't seem to be the fix we hoped it would.
How about they make it not ugly?
Linux could do with a few less 37337 coders and a few more artists and graphic designers, people who have an understanding of what colors work together, and most importantly what proportions are pleasing to the eye. The thing I like least about linux is how so many little aesthetic things are off. Dialog box fonts are a little too big for the dialog box, the borders between windows are too narrow, nothing matches like it should.
What Might UserLinux Look Like?
Well, if the link's any indication, UserLink will look very rectangular. And white. Did I mention white?
And who's Bruce Peren? Nice to see a new name bursting onto the Linux scene!
The coolest voice ever.
Sorry to beat a dead cow but, We need a re-write of X or something completly new. Not just more pretty icons and windows.
We also need better hardware support , easier hardware and software installation.
More often than not what the (geek) community considers the most important might not be in tandem with what the masses think. So for linux to be a viable desktop for the masses, we need a little mind storming. Going with the obvious of aping MS Windows definitely should be resisted, but fresh thoughts with the masses in consideration would certainly help make postive moves.
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Ah, the 404Error interface skin. Simple and elegant.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Yes, the lack of an Open Source tax program with the stature of GNUCash is one reason that old LoseME laptop still kicks around.
Does GNUCash use an RDBMS on the back-end? It would be cool to have everything in SQLite, so that you could write arbitrary queries against it.
So many cool ideas, finite lifespan.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Typical Linux Geek thinking ease-of-use = dumbing down and that a good interface means pretty icons.
Ease of use means making the computer work the way PEOPLE think, not forcing people to work the way COMPUTERS think.
Linux geeks and other developers, who have been conditioned to think like the computer because of the work they do, have the mistaken notion that advanced computer user means a user who has learned to force the natural human way of doing things into the artificial machine way a computer does things.
Any interface that doesn't force this paradigm is "dumbed down."
The truth is, the Linux geek has simply been conditioned to do things the difficult way, not the natural way. Designing the interface to do things the natural way is not dumbing it down, it's making the Linux Geek's paradigm obsolete. Of course, the Linux Geek doesn't like this, so in a fit of human ego, he looks his nose down on anything that points out the stupidity of his position (working the way the computer demands; being the tool of the computer), and calls it "dumbing down."
Not necessarily the drivers, but printing from differnet applications all have differnet dialogs and printoing subsystems. I LOVE the KDE printer dialog, and CUPS front end. The GNOME equivelent is ok. The Print dialog in Mozilla and other non-KDE/Gnome apps is frustrating at best if you are a new user.
I have been slowly switching one of my clients over to Linux desktops, but the printing situation made the move stall. I settled for XP with Open Office, Firebird and Thunderbird as the base.
Though to give yuou an idea of the level of user I am dealing with they all still think they are using new versions of IE, Outlook and Office (they all swore they would only use MS products). The management approved of the alternatives, the users are none the wiser at this point.
When is printing going to be unified?
it needs a f*cking vpn client. one that works like windows. in windows all you need to know is the name of the server.
how can you expect people to switch when they can't get simple work done? this is basic interoperability that the linux desktop can't come close to.
because, for all the re-invention of the Linux desktop, Windows still has a 95% market share.
Mandrake/KDE with all the geekier stuff left out.
Is there some controversy over this or something? It's pretty straightforward to set up a "grandma box" these days.
KFG
Windows has not always been easy to use, yet everyone uses it. Ease of use, to put it simply, lets people do their work and be productive without much thought to how to do it. It lets people who don't have time to read the manuals or really learn much about the system do what they have to do. Linux is pretty easy already as far as OSes go and all I think that has to be done is to configure it for the user (and let them use gui instead of command line).
Answer: no installation problem because the user doesn't have to install it! Almost no one installs XP themselves.
Get a hardware partner. Sell boxes that have components selected that work optimally with Linux, pre-install and pre-configure the software, and make the desktop so beautiful (by appropriate choice of themes) that people who see the machine in stores have to have one.
(Note: this is not strictly a pro-MS or pro-Linux comment)
Why don't we simple do what Microsoft currently does? Windows doesn't come with an IRC client, lot's of text editors, an office suite (usually) and all of the other things most distros throw in.
Why not give the average desktop user what an average desktop user expects? A simple OS, with an easy to use text-editor (like gedit?), one web browser, and a selection of inane games.
Slap the Office software, and all of the fancy extras on another CD and the user can install of that AFTER setting up the linux system? I think most new people to linux get confused because of too much choice (if there is such a thing)--and prefer a semi-barebones that windows is (or used to be, I am not currently aware of what XP comes with).
Most windows > Linux users want what windows had, but better:
* Solitaire and/or minesweeper (plenty of clones out there!)
* notepad-alike (gedit/bluefish?)
* web browser (firebird?)
* GRAPHICAL email client (thunderbird?)
* Screensavers
* Simple paint program (xpaint?)
They expect to install Office software and various productivity cronies later on in the game, once they are familiar with their spanky new system.
C17H21NO4
It's great that there is going to be another choice distro, but in all honesty, it really doesn't matter. What matters is getting companies like Adobe to port Photoshop and there other products, and Apple to port Quicktime and iTunes, and Game companies to port games, etc. Without these things (not saying that iTunes is most important), Linux on the desktop will never succeed. I do think though Abobe will port Photoshop to Linux within a version or two, since Hollywood is a big user of Linux. However, to get a good grab at the marketshare(this may not be the main point of the project, but what's the point if no one uses it) there has to be commercial games. No doubt about it. I know plenty of people who refuse to use Linux because of the lack of games. Once these key things fall into place, Linux on the desktop will take off.
The keyboard, mouse, and video screen are not "natural." There is no easy interface that makes it natural, either. MS-Windows seems easy to a lot of people because it is what they are used to.
ANYthing that stands between a user and the power of the computer is a "dumbing down." That is what most geeks refer to when talking about the MS-Windows interface.
Until computers are able to interact with humans using a human interface (speech, AI to grok information, and user agents to make intelligent responses to that speech), there will be something unnatural about human/computer interaction.
Until then, we will be making compromises between power and "ease-of-use." The question becomes, how much power are you willing to sacrifice?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It'd trash my Windows partition today if I had Paint Shop Pro for Linux.
I don't expect much from people, but simple courtesy goes a long way.
Next time you have a bad day, or your wife tells you you're ugly, or whatever, listen to your Mom and don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say.
Would someone please explain what UserlInux might BE, and why I should care?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
In otherwords, everything that doesn't look like Linux.
It would be nice if we got another highly integrated, legacy free OS such as BeOS out there. Light, agile, and better at what you want to do (multimedia, productivity, internet) without bloating you down with crazy unneeded services (Windows) or paralyzing variety (Linux). One high quality application for each task, no more no less.
Is it that difficult with all the variety of Linux for someone to make a distribution that, if you didn't know better, was exactly like BeOS?
I personally have not had the ability to read any articles about this proposed Linux distro yet but, after looking at the comments I feel a general idea for what is being presented. So first and foremost I'd like to say that your target audience is the main concern, ie if you plan on appealing to high school students the question is what do most of them do on a computer and how do they do it. You ask how because it's part of their familiarity with the machine. For instance they may listen to downloaded mp3's using Windows Media Player. They recognize the windows icon and that they double click it and are moved to an interface for which they are also familiar in how to open and play their favorite song or a new one they just downloaded. The question is how do you mimic this familiar experiance without overstepping copyright bounds and the familiarity is important because I have even seen students go to an Apple computer which has many of the same exact programs but since the directory architecture and single mouse button interface is different they don't know how to access their favorite song and get frustrated and turned away from the experiance of a new Operating System. All I'm saying is it's a difficult battle but one that can be won in the flexibility of open source.
......and, some zeroes.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What might a Linux user look like?
The Linux desktop (as it exists today) is at best OK. It is riddled with inconsistencies and the kde/gnome toolsets are just one simple example.
What I'd like to see would be a site dedicated to collecting feedback on what Linux users (old and new alike) would like to see created or improved. We really are full of comments, but its a little disappointing that as a user group (slashdot-computer nuts) we have no useful outlets. Its pretty funny really considering in a lot of ways we probably represent a large segment of network service providers (and scripters and programers and webdesigners and..). Is that ironic?
Quack, quack.
an x alternative or a better x.
an easy, working version of wine.
More free games like kq.
A media player that can play everything (xine and mplayer both?).
If Bruce Perens really cared about the end-user experience of linux, why the hell didn't he make a serious push for Debian to have a graphical installer when he headed the project?
Where was Bruce? Oh where was Bruce?
If he so cared about so much about Debian not having desktop marketshare, why didn't he use his position as Debian project leader to speak out against the elitist, anti-end user attitudes that have come to define Debian as a community and a distribution?
Where was Bruce? Oh where was Bruce?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Motif looked ugly, wasn't very cross platfrom, and didn't support the wide variety of languages that GTK and QT do.
What will UserLinux do that we don't already have (yes, that's question, not a statement)? We already have a Free Software, user focused Linux distribution that ships with all the user apps mentioned in the article. Its called Fedora and is based on one of the most popular distro around (according to Netcraft and IDC). What will UserLinux do that Fedora doesn't?
I think the free OS industry is in a perfect position to create a user interface that is no bound by having to look like anything.
Windows has to keep the same basic look from year to year, or they have a lot of confused users.
Apple is bound by the same strings. although the jump from classic to OSX was a big one, much of the same logic applied to the GUI.
*NIX GUIs are not bound by the same things. There is no "standard interface" other than a terminal.
Why hasn't someone invented a GUI yet that is designed by people with some ergonomic sence?
Optimally the GUI would be very configurable, as well as being appealing to the eyes, and efficient in every sence of the word.
Pretty Pictures!
Way to cut and paste somebody else's Score 5 post. At least you're learning how to cut and paste for real now, unlike your post from a few minutes ago that was a sloppy cut-and-paste of somebody's blog. I would show you the advanced cut-and-paste technique using the middle mouse button, but my middle finger is busy showing you something else right now.
I understand all the attention that open office gets. However, for at least the spreadsheet it is utterly inadequate for any real work.
Thus I think if you are going to talk specific programs, then gnumeric must feature.
Maybe used at the backend, with a sort of universal front. So that you cannot tell you are using a separate program.
imagination is more important than knowledge --Albert Einstein-
Every saturday, I work with kids at the Liberty City Learning Center, a technology center in Miami that has a Linux lab. If there is something that I have learned from watching these kids is that they take with the same proficiency to any interface, whether it is GNOME or KDE or Windows. The important thing is consistency and someone to guide them a bit initially. They explore and learn. They have no fear. I have had kids as young as 4 and years old. It was incredible to see them dragging and dropping things in "Potato Guy". Because I can encourage them to do anything they want without fear of "breaking anything", they learn very quickly. The director of the center, Sam Mason, made the transition to Linux from Windows without issues. What's remarkable about this? He is well into his seventies. In summary, most discussions about easy of use are clouded by the agendas of those making the arguments. I have had very little exposure to the Mackintosh. This means that whenever I have to work on one, I have a hard time initially. Not very they are difficult, but because my behavioral expectations are a little different.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
'dumbed down' means that it's simpler, that's not necessarely bad(and what you call it when you leave most of the functions that you don't usually use out of the usual menus if not 'dumbing down' even if it means at the same time making it more 'natural'?). by the way, computers don't think. they just perform predefined functions like any machine does. the geek way of doing configuring things _is_ the natural, traditional way of using machinery(you don't treat it as a magic box that does your thinking and bidding for you, that's freakishy unnatural unless you also believe that magic fairies flush your toilet).
btw, instead of trolling. how about you provide us with massive insight of how user interfaces should work then? speaking head? sorry can't do an ai slave for every user yet that would do what the user meant instead of what the user made it to do. one can do interfaces that mimick that functionality but apart from very field they're pretty much of a burden.
the windows programs aren't exactly hot on this front either.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The Linux Standards Base already deals with file locations and packaging formats. The main problem is that it isn't comprehensive enough. There's still no way you can reliably determine where the IP address for your network card lives across distros.
Something else that'd increase desktop Linux: accurate, up to date documentation. Man pages are hopelessly out of date (read man resolv.conf and find out that most machines should be running local copues of Bind, or the various setting up a SLIP PPP connector on kernel 2.0 docs on TLDP).
9 out of ten, those people that bitch and complain about X simply do not understand it.
If substantial numbers of people don't understand X, doesn't that indicate the need to make X more user-friendly?
It shouldn't matter if those nine out of ten are plain vanilla non-technical people, either -- if we want to get X more used, it's got to be easy for anyone to use.
-kgj
-kgj
Linux is fantastic if you're an uber geek but for the masses it's just far too complicated and difficult to set up, maintain and use on a day to day basis. Mac OS X has proven that you can have a rock solid UNIX core with an interface that even newbies can pick up very quickly. It's also extremely easy for novice users to to install/remove applications and set up those programs to work as they want to without having to drop in to the command line. That's what I want from a Linux distribution. The author provides some great points and I hope the Linux community embraces this project and helps make it a reality.
The problem came when I tried to go back, and use apt again. The entire apt system maintained its own list of installed packages with no awareness of what was actually on the system, so as soon as it fell out of sink, the entire apt manageer collapsed. My experience on Redhat and Mandrake were similar.
It doesn't have to be like this! It is possible to find out what's on a system. Does a package require python>=2.1? Parse python -V and get an answer you can trust. Do you need a library, get its version with /etc/ld.so.conf` /lib /usr/lib;do ls $i/ libraryName .so*;done 2>/dev/null | grep -v @ | sed 's/.*\.so\.//g' | sed 's/\*//g'
for i in `cat
There's nothing about your system that can't be tracked down by a little intelligent scriptwork. If package managers worked like that, then you'd be able to ignore them on occasion or even break small pieces and the rest wouldn't come tumbling down.
Is anybody working on this? Is anybody interested in working on this?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
To give blowjob to Prince Charles
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
like crap?
I totally disagree that it should look like Windows!
d ows
Making distributions that look and feel like Windows not only shows a lack or originality but only stands to confuse and frustrate "new" windows users in the end when something does not execute as they would expect them too only because they were lead to believe that thier experience would be "like windows"
I recently posted a rant about this on my personal website here:
http://www.phatvibez.net/commentary.php?ID=notWin
--- Brad (http://www.LinuxReview.net)
For real. I finally broke down and bought Suse 9.0 and will never look back. After MANY years of linux distributions Suse is the first one to offer a complete desktop solution that is manageable, easy to install and loaded in a somewhat "high end" environment with ReiserFS, Modern KDE setup, recent kernel and a well tuned system.
:)
Give it a shot. I had Fedora after Redhat 9.0 and have used everything from Yggdrasil, Suse, Mandrake, Redhat 4.3 through 9.0, Gentoo and others. Nothing compares. I've even used Debian and well, for a workstation, laptop and useability factor (especially on the wife) Suse takes the cake.
Thats my 2 cents
Just curious, I'm married. And happy. And hetero.
Bye. *flees leaving a smoke trail*
to criticize Bruce Perens..I mean, he's da man, but it seems to me talking cycles away from improving much of what we have to create a new distro is to prolong our reluctance of adoption in the desktop arena.
Is that a windup or wot, a great big fat advert stuck in the middle of the page for micro$haft.
I thought it was a Linux website.
Wot next a similar advert for Sco...
how about we get the backspace key working before we worry about the desktop.
*ducks*
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Even better, give several of varying depth.
Linux will never be mainstream for home users, UNTIL.....
.rpm or a .deb whatever, and click on it, it installs, without asking them where some header files are, or telling them it needs 14 freaking other packages to resolve it's dependancy issues, it will always be for developers, Hobbiest users, and in the server room. that's it.
People don't have to Fsking compile programs.
Come on, Until Linux gets to the point where anyone can download a
Linux needs to have a set of libs that automatically get installed, so people don't have to mess with this stuff. I don't think I've ever run into this on windows. Don't get me worng, I love Linux, It's my server/firewall/router for my home setup, and I keep jumping back & forth between it and windows for my desktop, It's SO close. and I can't wait till it's just right. But right now. It's not for me. And alot of other users.
Face it, people like their machines dumbed down, Microsoft knows this. Computing shouldn't be stressfull. Mainstream wants easy.
I hope UserLinux can bridge this gap.
Well, if you ignore up2date, I would like to point something out here. As I understand it, apt in Debian does *not* install things. Apt calls dpkg to install packages, and dpkg does not handle dependencies. Sure, it'll tell you what you need, but it doesn't install them for you (wow, like rpm!). However, if you put apt in the equation, apt determines what packages need to be installed and then downloads them, then calls dpkg to install them. So in all actually, rpm needs a front-end like apt ... wait, doesn't that already exist? apt? up2date? apt2rpm? There are quite a few, if I'm not mistaken. Sure, it doesn't do it automatically, but ... c'mon. It's not *that* hard to either install them using rpm by itself, or to use a front-end to it.
>> Is there any single more common user complaint than "I can't print?"
I can't get a date?
Ooh, I understand: "I can't print" really is a more common worry. That's why people can't date.
I think the instincts that have driven you to create a new distribution are very much correct. But let me reiterate a few things that I as a user think are important:
A community distribution that serves as an active and clear implementation of an evolving LSB that both software and hardware manufacturers can focus on.
A community distribution that honors the lofty goals that those working on Linux set out to accomplish. This means no-pear seat licensing, in fact, no onerous licensing terms of any sort. Red Hat or SUSE are to expensive for the developing world and even for small non-profits in the US, simply because they added cost of their yearly support agreements is beyond what they can pay. For the record, I am currently using Mandrake as I can freely redistribute it and the keep their security updates on a distributed network of FTP servers, the way that Linux was traditionally distributed. In summary, it is paramount to have a distribution that commits to keeping security updates for at least three years.
Bruce, don't start anew. Linux is all about standing on the shoulders of giants. So if you can adapt Anaconda or Mandrake's installer to your distribution, all the better. These are good and tested tools. The same goes for configuration tools. Borrow as much as you can. Ark Linux also looks very promising and very integrated.
Software installation is not difficult if you have the correct repositories. Preconfigure this for the user and provide a tutorial that shows them how to add new software. Adjust expectations by telling him that all software will be now available just a click away. URPMI and apt-get are great tools. Make them look pretty a la Lindows and the problem is solved.
The desktop is far more complex than it is made out to be. It's not just about email, office software and mp3 playing. It's about accounting and instant-messaging and multimedia. Let's popularize the ogg format a hell of a lot more. Let's include in the distribution's web site a list of radio sites that broadcast in ogg ( i have such a list). Let's work on getting Realplay to really open up its format as they said they would do with their Helix player. All of these things need to happen.
Finally, I think your distribution should link a lot more closely with Linux true power base: the LUGs. Work with them, talk to them, make it easy for them to promote it. Make it easy for them to be involved. A Pan-lug UserLinux forum would be a great thing. I am looking forward to the day when we can differentiate at a higher level of system design. Distribution differences, particularly on the desktop, are getting old. If you are a successful, you may lead other distributions to join forces with you. At least, I would that the smaller ones, ArkLinux, VectorLinux, Yoper and even Mandrake would.
Suerte.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
What would really be nice is some kind of graphical kernel management/configuration program.
:)
To accomplish this, the distro would need is a standard kernel with as many modules as possible (this is what many other desktop distros do already).
What this distro could do better is that the modules and the base kernel could be updated via apt (or whatever mechanism it is going to use). That way, if a kernel module is updated or has a security hole (heavens, no!), it could be auto-upgraded.
On top of this would be a slick gui interface to allow configuration of each module as necessary. Of course, it wont use scary words like "kernel" or "module," but maybe something like "system settings."
Yeah, yeah, I should work on this myself. Between my senior year in college and reading Slashdot, what time do I have?
I do a lot of installs (both Linux and MS) and I bare bones them 99% of the time so I can at least control parts of the proceedure. After I get the basic box running, THEN I get the necessities/extras installed. This process is easier with Linux since most of the installers give you the option of just let it boot and show me a login and that's about it. This reason above all others is why I don't like the default XP and Mandrake installs. IT's too much stuff, too many parts, it was the major reason I got into using Debian, so I could put on what I wanted/needed to do so I could use that paticular box for the function I visualized for it.
~corporate tool, but employed~
(repost at 0) I do use Microsoft Word but I find myself using photos of cmdrtaco's chopped up penis and michael's tiny balls for clipart
Black hair brown eyes, 5'7",115lb, female
That's what *this* LinuxUser looks like !
To really get it to take off we need the equivalent of _Certified for Windoze_ program. Ideally the certification would become a must have tick for corporate purchasing staff and non-compliance would result in adverse reviews in the computer sections of mainstream media.
I envisage something like the 5 star ratings for energy efficiency - all 5 stars if everything in the system supports open source with published interfaces, less a star for each undocumented feature (or half a starif they partiallyof support it or you need a closed source driver).
To get the Open Source Tick would require at least 4 stars.
Your typical unix person would think that fewer options in the menu is less powerful. But if every time a user goes to a menu with far more options and it takes them 3 seconds longer to make a selection, that too is a sacrifice of power.
I have always found it odd that geeks claim to be power users, yet they tend often to be the most inefficient users of the system and take the longest to do things.
--
Ergonomica Auctoria Illico!
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
No, because X is a transparent technology or at least it should be. The average user should only need to interact with the X server to change his graphical resolution and depth....
All good points. Thanks for the clarification.
-kgj
-kgj
X is a low-level component; it's the implementation of GUI mode. You almost always interact with things that use X, rather than with X itself - for instance, instead of drawing window frames and resizing windows for you, X has the concept of a window manager, which is a separate program to draw window frames and handle resizing/etc.
/.), you don't really need to understand X, any more than you need to understand the finer points of ext2 in order to manipulate files.
I'm sure 9/10 Mac users don't understand Quartz, and I certainly don't understand X or the equivalently low-level bits of the Windows GUI (I said MFC in the subject line, but as I understand it, MFC is more like a toolkit like Gtk or Qt - I don't know whether the Windows GUI even has a name, since it's so tightly attached to the rest of Windows).
Unless you're programming to the X protocol (or complaining about its perceived shortcomings, which seems to be a popular activity in any X-related story on
The only bits of X you might need to understand for "normal use" are the areas where it touches the user experience, like the clipboard, the fact that you can remap keys, possibly the concept of a window manager, and perhaps the fact that there is a program called an X server which provides your GUI.
In a "consumer" Linux distro, ideally you'd interact with X settings via something like the KDE Control Centre, or the GNOME or other desktop equivalent. Obviously, it's still nice to have plain-text config files behind the scenes, so if something breaks seriously, it's possible for an experienced user to fix it - a Windows-like "you have a GUI or you have nothing" approach is equally good for inexperienced users, but if it breaks, experienced users don't have that chance to fix it.
What's really needed IMO is consistency. Dialog boxes, for example should have the same style across applications &c. - and that doesn't just mean the font size, or even the font; it means having a similar layout (where appropriate), with buttons in a similar order, the same default focus, similar keyboard controls, similar positioning. And the same principle applies right across the GUI, from having the menus arranged in a similar fashion with common menu options in similar places, to similar behaviour of toolbars and palettes, and so on and so on.
The trouble with this is control. This sort of consistency would mean developers willingly going with someone else's design principles and UI guidelines, and too many developers seem too keen on doing their own thing to let this happen, whether from a desire to make their app stand out, thinking (rightly or wrongly) that the usual principles don't apply to their app, incompetence, or just sheer stubbornness.
Not everyone has graphical skills or UI design skills, so IMO we need a way of working where developers who want to can do so without needing those sorts of skills, but without inflicting that lack on their users. I think this is one of the fundamental problems that the free software community needs to address. GUI toolkits are a step in this direction, but clearly don't go far enough.
Maybe we should consider some fundamental reorganisation. With everything split by application, each has its own way of doing things; what if there was some other way of doing things? What if application developers yielded ultimate control of their GUI to a separate project of some kind? I've no idea how this might be done technically, and even less idea how developers could be brought on board, but IMO it's the only way to achieve the sort of consistency, predictability, and least astonishment that more centrally-controlled systems have.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I'll be off Slashdot for a few hours now, time to give Stanley his bath and put him to bed.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Before I ever saw a computer, it was apparent to me, my parents, and most of all my peers, that I learned and interacted with the world differently than most people. Other geeks I know (in whatever field) have related similar experiences. I become comfortable and fluent with systems much more quickly when I can poke and prod at the guts and see how they work; systems which try to think for me or present a so-called "intuitive" interface make the wrong decisions so often I give up in frustration. The time I spend creating a mental map of a system's behaviour is usually made up for in time saved in using that system efficiently.
Even among non-geeks, I know people whose preferred mode of interacting and learning differs (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic for example). A sculptor friend, for example, complains regularly about how non-intuitive CAD and CG programs are to him.
You assume that we've conditioned ourselves to think like computers. Instead, I think we become successful with programming because computers are more intuitive to us from the very beginning (and human behaviour often less so). Why this is the case (mild aspergers syndrome? natural fluency at symbolic processing? who knows?) is a question for the cognitive psychologists, and one which I suspect won't be answered for some time.
Oh, and I don't know about anyone else, but I think that more interface choices is a *good* thing. Find what works for you. Just don't expect me to make the same choice. Oh, and please, don't be so arrogant as to assume I think as you do and my preference for "the linux geek's paradigm" must therefore be ego or cognitive dissonance.
Yes, but did they achive 95% because of the GUI itself? Or is it because of the level, or ease, of interaction? I believe that a command-line based OS could get 95% market share, if it was easy to use. Microsoft didn't make DOS easier, they just created a easy interface for it.
It's really not necessary to be so dramatic.
I wrote a character-mode installer that fit on one floppy, and was the best installer in 1996! It's not 1996 any longer. I think character mode would still be OK if it were easy, and that's where the new Debian installer is heading. It partitions your disk if you want it to, and so on. But it is built so that it can get a GUI front-end too. I think the developers are going for functionality before eye-candy.
I don't like developers who bear contempt for newbies. But the place to handle them is somewhere other than where the developers are attempting to do their work. This is why you need a layer over Debian.
Thanks,
Bruce
This method will give a fairly accurate portrayal, a simulation if you will, of the new UserLinux. .
/
Windows XP:
1. start-->run, type cmd.exe and hit enter
2, squint your eyes
Mac OSX:
1. Restart system and hold Command+S during boot
2. type root pass and remount -uw
Linux:
1. Install Debian
The key here is that they are attempting to put something together that our naive end users will be able to dig and thus buy - pushing the precentage of desktops more on an even keel with you know who. This can't be bad for the Linux world domination conspiracy -er- Linux users... :)
:)
One of the major complaints I hear is about differing interpretations of the file system hierarchy. While I think standardization is good, I also believe developers should have a certain amount of flexibility - which the standard allows. The key here, I think, is for the distributions to honor the locations that the developers established for their files - so compatability crosses all boundaries and documentation can be maintained by the developer on the particulars of his application - instead of the distributor. In cases where the application creates problems due to inappropriate placement - the issue needs to be raised to the developer to correct his implementation; distributors would have the option not to include the application/system if it was too disruptive - but that is all (more than this and the distributor can cause more problems than he intends to fix). Developers need to understand the standard; distribution creators need to cede the responsibility for application locations to the developers - with the right to veto bad locations from entering their distro until corrections are made by the developer. This way, no matter which distribution you are using, foo.ini is located in the same place every time.
Related to this, and probably more frustrating for end users, is when application developers make assumptions about libraries and other applications that exist on the system during the build. For hard core *nix system administrators this is no big issue - something they have been dealing with for years; however, for a general purpose workstation this has to be idiot proof. Coupled with standard locations includes being able to check those locations for particular files, and if not found, have the confidence to load them for the user, rather than simply complaining and dropping back to the command line. Again, the onus is on the developer to include all parts necessary to work with his tool (perhaps even going so far as loading a different library in an alternate location [sub directory in standardized path location] - then changing an environmental variable used exclusively by the application to locate it without disturbing an existing library or any applications that depend upon it - lets definitely do it smarter than Microsoft DLL hell)
These two items coupled together would make installation and maintenance across all distributions easy - and dependent on the documentation and careful work of the developer community - instead of left at the whim of the distribution agents - who are not on the same sheet of music. If developer X creates app Y and puts it in location Z - then Z should be where everyone finds Y when they look on their system.
Finally, I think easy to use tools for administering very clearly standardized core items (the rc.d run level scripts, crontab management, X configurations etc...) should leverage existing text based configuration files. Lets not get into the trap of reimplementing the Microsoft registry - as a single point of failure. Up to this point these types of tools have been adhoc; someone needs to take the ball and run with it to create something that is clearly superior and usable for all distributions that intend to target the niave user (hmmm - sounds like a good open source project to me - maybe a python Tk gui with a builtin command language parser for power users...
These are the core items I think are critical to a successful linux desktop to compete with Microsoft's dynasty.
One additional frill I would suggest:
Implementation of a better 'Annotea' W3C
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The top feature I would like to see added to Debian is an APT-based tool, designed to be integrated into web pages. The idea is that users can read a web page, decide they want a package, and click on the package; it will then be installed. I call this "ClickApt", a version of APT that can install a package with just a single click:
0) ClickApt makes sure that sources.list already has a source for this package. If it is not already there, ClickApt adds a source to sources.list.
1) If there are any dependencies, they will be installed. The dependencies will not, by default, be enumerated; users get a list of how many files and how many MB will be downloaded, and a progress bar.
2) ClickApt should check package signatures, and official Debian packages should simply be installed without any "Are you sure?" nattering. Unsigned, unknown packages should get a warning box and an "Are you sure?". ClickApt should also refuse to touch core system packages; if someone is persuaded to click on a web link and it wants to overwrite critical stuff, that should fail. A sysadmin can always use apt-get if ClickApt isn't willing to do something that actually needs to be done.
3) ClickApt should be customizable, for experts. A "More Details..." button on the download dialog will show all the packages being downloaded and their versions.
4) ClickApt should also have a system upgrading mode, that acts like "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade". It should also work with a single click.
Lindows has a system something like this, but not based on APT. Lindows users browse through a web-based "warehouse" and click on applications they would like to have on their computers, and it Just Works. Lindows.com charges a minimum of $50 per year for people to use it, and people seem to be paying. There is no reason why Debian and UserLinux shouldn't have an equally easy-to-use tool that is based on APT.
With ClickApt, Debian package installation and updating would pass the "Grandma test" mentioned in the article.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
One of linux's biggest strengths, is also one of it's weaknesses when it comes to "grandma" users. You don't need any passwords in Windows (on a stand alone home PC) let alone two.
Sure that's an education issue, but even when you do get through, that they are needed you know they'll be password1 and password2.
ALso, I do agree with this post, but this then lets someone else set the root password, easily changed yes, but will "grandma"?
Solitaire, Lots of it!
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
All very good points. Thanks for the extended explanation.
-kgj
-kgj
People don't use X. Not directly, anyway, any more than they use the frame or suspension of their car. It's an underpinning that is itself used by a close-to-the-user app (or set of apps), such as Metacity, Enlightenment, FVWM, Gnome, KDE, etc.
Good points. Thanks for the clarification.
As for why my post got modded Insightful -- when it really isn't, in retrospect -- I can only blame the moderators.
-kgj
-kgj
I think a good way to try and encompass all the input of such a large community would be to have something like the 'wiki' concept except a little more visual. Even in text tho a wiki could do fine! Think DesktopLayout StartMenu ConfigTree ProgramList GamesList you start there and let the WikiLanguage grow around the desktop environment that we the community create and edit as a whole. I know I have a few pet hates and would include a couple of bullet points under many of the items.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
A user oriented distribution of linux would need some basic re-thinking of existing linux distributions.
Kernel configuration/rebuilds should tie into the boot loader so that a kernel/system failure would allow for a boot into a known good configuration, one specified at initial ship date. You should always be able to boot into a reliable kernel for your hardware, even if very little is installed in it.
The user should never have to see a boot loader config. Upgrades to kernels should include a boot-loader update and install.
Initial system installs should be graphical, should run out of the box on 99.9% of all current hardware, and should allow for a "one click" install. This would mean a very simple, basic install with minimal fluff. The install time messages should be clear, communicate essential information, and allow going back to correct mistakes.
After-install modules should allow the user to update configurations. Example - I don't know the IP information right now, so skip that at install and run a wizard later, after I've spoken to my admin.
Installed packages, like StarOffice, should come completely integrated into the OS. Not only should they be completely installed, but they should have all the default configuration already done. The user should be able to launch from the desktop just by opening the app, and not configuration is needed. Add-on packages or plugins should already be installed for the most common needs. Examples are browser plugins, pdf readers, etc.
Windows emulation should be installed and integrated by default. The user should NOT have to know anything about installing an emulator or configuring it.
Printing, lots of printer drivers, most common configurations should all be installed and driven by a point/click wizard. Same for instant messaging.
The system should ship with an installed wizard for AOL, Earthlink, etc. that requires almost no user interaction to get running.
Automatic updates should exist, and should be pushed to the user system if the user chooses to subscribe.
It's not enough to be windows compatible or similar to windows. We need to be better than windows, easier to use, easier to configure, more productive. Until linux offers users substantive reasons to change, they won't. Free is not enough of a reason, or they'd be here by now. Free and easy is closer to a reason. Free, easy and better is a big enough reason.
Dramtic Post? I'm writing a public license that enforces usability. Me posting a rant on Slashdot is merely a bit of cute banter.
My point in general is that given Debian's history of avoiding a graphical installer and given your substantial role in Debian history as it's leader, I very much question your opinion of linux being "ready for the desktop", as I question why you should be put in any kind of leadership role of a process that targets non-technical users.
As for the points in general about linux and UI:
If you don't take the UI/user interaction issues when the plans for the technical stuff is being laid out, you will always end up with an extremely non-integrated, inconsistant, and confusing UI. We usability folks have been screaming at programmers for the last 20 years to bring in UI people in the early stages of designing the technical stuff, but they (esp. the linux people) have in no way listened.
As the linux folks have continually perpetuated the unix myth that user interaction can be slapped on modularly at the last second, the user experience of linux has continued to suck. And this has been going on for well over 10 years. As long as the unix geeks who dominate desktop linux development try to layer away user interaction problems and think of GUI's as nothing more than "Eye Candy" and in no way function, I guarentee the user experience of linux will suck for another 10.
If Linus Torvalds had wanted linux to be on the desktop, in 1993 he would have got his Finnish butt to the nearest school in Scandinavia with a HCI department and would have allowed usability folks substantial input on the design of the first kernel.
As for the subject of developer attitude, ultimately, developers who have contempt for newbies will bring that contempt in one way or another into their work, and in one way or another it will affect the user experience. Therefore, on technical grounds any developer who has contempt for newbies should be locked out of the desktop to protect end-users. The proper way to handle such folks is to handle them back to the server closet where they belong.
One could also make the moral argument that developers who have contempt for newbies have entirely no right to the desktop. You could even take this one step further and say that any action taken against such developers (e.g. licenses, patents on innovative UI stuff, project wars, etc) is morally justified.
Enough. I've got a paper to write.
--
Ergonomica Auctoria Illico!
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Drug addicts are called 'users'. Customers are called 'customers', or 'Sir' or 'Ma-am'. If we can just manage to stop insulting them every time we refer to them, we're probably half way towards gaining some kind of acceptance already.
It's an insipient problem, and one that infects even the largest of marketing departments. Australia's largest ISP for example calls it's customers 'users', to their faces. They even have this big DSL-in-a-box campaign with a DSL modem and all the stuff you need in a nice shrink-wrapped box on the shop shelves. The big promo version of the box has an oh-so-politically-correct Australian-guy/Asian-girl couple hugging, with the postscript "John and Tam, Ozemail users". I mean, what are these marketeers on?
How about we deal with giving the customers a little respect first, and deal with shoving our favourite OS down their throats just a little bit later on?
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
And for those with short attention spans. Remember when Red Hat tried to play the "consistency" game? The KDE group practically tore them a new one. Don't believe me? Google for that time period.
"Maybe we should consider some fundamental reorganisation. With everything split by application, each has its own way of doing things; what if there was some other way of doing things? What if application developers yielded ultimate control of their GUI to a separate project of some kind?"
It's called XUL. GLADE is something similiar. With some good front-end tools a reasonable compentent "designer" can worry about the interface, and the programmer could worry about everything else (kind of like the seperation going on in the web community).
The free community has already "addressed" the problem. Acceptance however is a different matter (remember the broha when Mozilla was being worked on, and how stupid all this was "We want a basic browser"?)
are definitely a big factor. I could look at xmms and think... wtf? Konqueror? KDE? The names need to be more verbose and look professional. Windows, Office, Photoshop, all very good names. A lot of the acronym stylings of linux have to go.
Good examples:
Internet Explorer - I know EXACTLY what this will do.
Microsoft Office - I've got a pretty good idea what happens in this one.
Notepad/wordpad - again, a nobrainer.
Windows - There's windows you can use.
All these names don't sound intimidating (Linux sounds a bit intimidating, imho, and the pronunciation aspect of it doesn't help the cause)
Also, Linux is simply ugly, and the commandline interface has been abandonded by the mainstream user for at least a decade.
And before I accept your point about the GUI not working as an add-on, I'd like to hear what systems you like.
One could also make the moral argument that developers who have contempt for newbies have entirely no right to the desktop. You could even take this one step further and say that any action taken against such developers (e.g. licenses, patents on innovative UI stuff, project wars, etc) is morally justified.
That's just silly. If you don't like their work, you have the right to not use it. Find or create an alternative that is more to your liking. The thought of punishing a free software developer because they don't meet your personal standards is simply offensive.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The situation I was decribing hit me in Debian. As best I can tell, I'm stuck with managing my own gaim compiles, or figuring out how to remove every last trace of the local install.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
If I had mod points, it will go to the parent. Some people will be offended by it because it bruises their ego, but it's the hard truth.
I know what you'r getting at, and if i was too look at my point of view i would say you'r right. But we have this gift that allows us to look at other peoples... The only reason these things seem obvious to you is because you've used them, and you've been using computers for years no or something like that.
My mohther, has never used a computer except for on and off times when something on the tv or in a magazine will suck her in and tell her to look at a particular site. Having said that, my mother really donsnt have a good idea bout the internet! She knows you can find stuff out on it, and talk on it, but doesnt know what it is!
Having said that, she's a newbie, and as such when you use a computer you'r going to have to be able to learn some deffinitions, and what words might mean outside of the computer dont mean the same thing in side the computer... like the time when a program came up and it said "you have performed an illegal operation" and my mum thought i was in BIG trouble, in terms of cops and robbers.
The thing is, the same as computer newbies have to learn some terms, so do linux newbies...
However, i do agree that simplier names are going to help those, not so new people to computing make the transition to linux. It'd would be welcome to many people i would think.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
This is further proof that Rob "Imma Asshat" Malda has given slashdot over to the trolls.
Speaking of trolls and asshats, when is the last anyone has seen of Mikey Sims? Has he gone the way of John Catz?
I don't think there really is much contempt for newbies--they are just much more difficult to deal with. Writing software for yourself is what most people like doing, and its natural for people like yourself to also like the software that fits this criteria. This is how free software started, it is the essence of free software so to speak. So to write software for people who aren't like yourself takes more effort to see the software from another person's perspective, and this does take much of the joy from computer. I mean, who likes writing documentation? Who wants to read long boring mumbo-jumbo by HCI wankers--it's not even a real science! So if your mythical "average user" doesn't have the best possible user experience to begin with, thats not contempt, thats laziness.
They gain easy karma so they can take out their petty frustrations on slashdot at +2.
Sigh.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I have only been using Linux exclusivly for about a year. I guess I would say that I am typical for the granny test. Well almost typical, I am only 23 and not female, but other than that, I am a typical home computer user. I use office suites, email programs, browse the internet, watch movies, burn cd's, and keep my finances in order on my pc.
/mnt/cdrom where RH uses something different. Well it did when I last used it, its been about 8 months. I would also like to see a universal package installer. I like the idea of .deb's because they handle pretty much everything. KRPM also looks to make sure dependancies are filled. It would be nice to have a program handle both package formats.
My first complaint is there is a lack of documents that are easily used by the home user. Man is ok, but I haven't really found a good gui for searching for help by topic. That would have been nice. I usually have to search the net to find out what program I have to use to do a certain thing. It would be nice to search for 3d animation, and if a program was installed, have a link pop up to the help file from that program. If more are installed...have multiple links. I guess that comes from using MS for a long time.
Dependancies are a killer. SuSE (its what I use) seems to handle this pretty well. I have yet to install anything over the net. I dont have much need to, I have everything I need. I have noticed that they file systems are big time different. I have used RH , and SuSE. The mount points are different for my removable media. Since I am not a programmer, I can only assume that there is some variable that I can use in a script to detect the usual mount point for say... my cdrom. That isn't much of a deal to me, I can get around well enough to figure the stuff out. But to a new user....I bet it could get confusing, especially if they switch from one distro to another. Suse uses
Hardware support is a major issue. I guess we can only blame the vendors for not releasing the proper information to develop those.
The config system for the different WM's and Desktops are completely different. I personally like that, but it would drive my old man nuts. Many of the windows home users that I deal with are used to learning the exact steps to do something, not the concept of how to do it. IE. "to open my add printers dialog, I go to START -> Settings -> Printers -> enter. If it wasn't there...I wouldn't know to look in the control panel." The different distro and WM's place things in different locations and have the config UI's in different places. Most MS users dont even know that you can use the command prompt. Before you flame me, I said users, not admins.
I think a database of available packages for download by distrobution would also be nice. Add a gui for apt, or apt getrpm (is that correct?) with a menu option to add, modify, or remove a source from the list and it would help. Make that same list available to your package manager so it can dl any dependancies that your system doesn't have when it checks and it makes life all happy and stuff.
Some of the stuff I have mentioned is probably being looked at or being solved by the LSB.
Ohhh...one more thing...
It would be nice to have a find button on "add attachments" for the email programs. I dont know how many times I have had to instruct people on how to find the file before they attach it. It would also lower the need for knowing the file system layout of your system. I think it would also solve some of the confusion for the "where is my c:\ prompt" people that are still trying to learn linux. It really isn't that hard to figure out, but if you want someone to migrate from something they are already familiar with...you have to make it really easy for them.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Ok Apple did it right, bringing a *nix to the masses. Now I don't have much experience with OSX but from what i seem it is a very intutive UI. The underlying unixish parts of it are completely hidden (not that you can't get to them). Apple can do this because they have a marketshare and they have 100% control of what goes into their OS and UI. Linux by its very opensource nature can never have a standard user distro, because no one company/group/person/myself can control it. we can set standards up the wazoo but one developer has to say those standards are nice but I think I want to do it this way, and guess what, no one can tell him otherwise and if his app is good and usefull people will use it despite its lack of consistency.
Even if a standard distro is established with ultimate user features its only another distro and just adds to the clutter of what is linux, and that is exactly what linux should be.
By definition Linux is only the kernel. Which is standard except for custom hacks which don't seem to propagate to far. the rest, X-windows, gnome, apache, open office, and rpm are all applications. The problem is that the average grandma doesn't know this and when she "sees" linux she sees gnome (or some window manager) running on top of X and she sees openoffice and mozilla and to her that is Linux to grandma, as the start button and Microsoft Office is windows to her. The user will measure performance of an OS by these standard applications that will most likely be running on their OS. They are not going to care about memory management, scheduling, etc as long as it works decently without crashing, which for most users windows, OSX, and linux will do.
So where does my disorganized rant leave us? I dont know, but these are all hurdles for a community based OS/application suite face to becoming a standard.
Josiah
I tend to the belief that a desktop O/S should be built from the ground up to meet the needs of non-technical/non-specialist users and that the user experience cannot be divorced from the core functionality of an O/S. I do not want to see layers over Debian, I want to see solutions within Debian itself.
the answer is postscript. Nearly everybody uses it or a bastardized dialect (whether you realize it or not). You create it, then get it to the machine with the network printer or print server (somehow). If there needs to be further translatation to a different printer language, you do it at the LAST possible moment (like right before sending it down the USB port, lets say).
The problem is there are TONS of mutually incompatible ways and means to get your job from here to the printer that have developed over the years.
We need to just stick with one. I vote for the easy-to-grasp IPP.
How does Windows 2000 printer search work... is that an Active Directory variant of a LDAP search? Because that should become standardized too.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
What? No screenshots? j/k I still don't see a huge issue in what is wrong with linux today.
I have had less issues with Mandrake than debian (unstable, using the default installer, Knoppix ;-) but very few in either case.
Redhat I gave up on, I did use Redhat 5.0>7.2, and tried 9.0/9.1/Fedora--- Mandrakes implementation stomps on Redhats. Repeatedly.
I have good wishes for Fedora now that apt is supported... But Core 1 blew for me.
The joy of typing urpmi somelibraryimlookingfor.so and having it pull the package(s) is extreme...
(building something not in contrib for example, from a tarball)
(As to the "default installer" bit, if more people use Knoppix to install Debian than Debians installer, that actually makes knx-hdinstall the defacto default installer I guess)
I keep right clicking AND NOTHING USEFULL HAPPENS.
Intuitive is a matter of past experience.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
beat that, bitch.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I don't care what it looks like, or how long it takes to set up, as long as I don't have to pay for it.
I'm a geek, and geeks shouldn't have to pay for any software at all.
I understand most (95%+) don't have constant contact with Mac OS X, much less play with the developer tools...
But what you just described is how Mac OS X's Interface Builder works! The widgets, guidelines, interface paradigms, and look and feel are encouraged and enforced by the UI; the menubar, window layout, widget placement, texturing, widget types, etc,
It's not perfect; developers can still intentionally (or unintentionally) violate the HIGuidelines, but it's a lot harder than any other IDE I've ever seen.
GPL Deconstructed
I agree; confusing the issue with a lot of choices is just as bad as removing the choices altogether.
As I said, it's a balancing act.
But, I disagree that Unix power users are the least efficient. I can do things within Unix much faster than my MS-Windows friends from their "user-friendly" GUI.
And, worse yet, the recent versions of MS-Windows *hide* once-visible options. The interface is *different* almost every time I access it! That makes me less efficient even than too many options, as I have to look for the proper selection every time I want to use it!
The problem is intrinsic to the medium, and is often more a matter of training and personal preference than any really objective "usability." Some studies have been conducted that indicate certain methods and approaches are better than others; but mostly, predictiblity helps more than reducing the number of choices.
But I will argue that until we reach a point where computers are unobtrusive, there is nothing "natural" about them.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Back in Winter of 2001 I was volunteering for themse.org and as a part of that volunteer work a few staff members and such got to goto LinuxWorld in NYC...
Well, it was the last day of the damn event and I was looking for a cab to the airport (from the Javits Center) and so was Bruce... I didn't propose to "share" a cab or anything with the guy, but this limo driver I was talking to said it's cheaper for 2 people to share a limo than a single person in a taxi. So he saw Bruce and asked him if he was going to the airport.
He said yes, and explained what he was trying to do... so Bruce and I were walking towards the Limo when he starts throwing a fit about me, a 19 year old linux community volunteer, having to share the limo with him. He was rude, and downright stuck up. He marched off and got in a cab.
Well, that was ok, because some guy from Caldera was willing to share a limo fare with me to the airport. He was the VP of technology or something.. not sure.. but we had a nice little conversation.
Anyway, to make a long story short, this Bruce Perens guy is a dick and a half...
Sig rhymes with Fig
It's called html. From what I've been able to see, info was intended to do some of what html does. Badly.
If one is working from the console and doesn't want to start a GUI (or there isn't one), lynx works quite well.
The place for info? Print out all the info files and dump them on SCO HQ from an altitude of 20km. They'll be much more useful that way.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I am no expert, but reading the development docs for kde, much of the user interface is built dynamically from an XML file
When something breaks, which happens frequently, the end user is faced with error messages from a layer they didn't know existed. The "front end" typically has no idea to what to do about such errors. Figuring out what happened in such situations is usually quite difficult, and well beyond the ability of the user receiving the message.
The basic problem is that the UNIX command line interface assumes the input of large numbers of correct commands, and returns very little machine-readable information. That's not a fundamental problem with a command/response interface; consider HTTP, SMTP and FTP, with well-understood numbered return codes. It's a legacy of the UNIX teletype interface. It's a terrible interface for something that resembles a client/server system.
The UNIX crowd will never get this right. It takes a complete rethink, like the original Mac interface or HTTP, to get it right. The UNIX world can't even get rid of all those stupid files in /etc.
Odd, I have the opposite experience every time going back to an XP desktop from Fluxbox or XFCE4. Windows feels like such a primitive, poorly prioritized brick of a UI the experience is painful. If that's what you're clamouring for, count me out.
We have raised the bar when it comes to pointless Linux journalisim, have we?
I want my 2 Minutes back.
"I think Mozilla is a great option for browsers."
"I use Open Office and Star Office and I think they are good."
"You shouldn't have to push that button.", etc.
Looks like filling another Webpage was due with "LinuxWorld". Oh, sorry, LinuxWorld *Exklusive*. Heavens Crikey, the Daily Sun would have more to say on Linux usability than that waste of time.
Anyway, I want my 2 minutes back.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The problem with large projects is that they require different skill sets that are usually not present in one single person. Someone might be a good coder, someone else understands a specific (business) problem and a third person is skilled in streamlining the UI. There is a real challenge in getting people whose expertise is something other than programming to participate in community projects of this kind.
Case in point: At the moment I'm forced to use Windows by (among others) an accounting program. I do not know of any Linux based programs that I could use for accounting in Finland, where I live. In order to make one, one would need skills in the local accounting standards (economical), in the Finnish legal system governing taxes etc. (legal) as well as UI design (psychological and esthetical) and programming (technical). It is extremely unlikely that any one person would master all these skills, and have time to spare to code free software.
Your second point about licenses not helping in this problem is most probably correct, though.
And before I accept your point about the GUI not working as an add-on, I'd like to hear what systems you like.
Here I would like to offer another example. I was once working as a trainee for a company making CAD software used in piping. There was a function to make a pipe transparent on one section. Technically it worked by making a 3D box that was clipped out from the model before rendering, thus making the pipe and everything else transparent where the box was. The original UI was just a front end to this OpenGL code and the user was required to give the box anchor, width, height and 3D rotation. It turned out that no user understood about this box and couldn't use it (to use it you would have to think about it like the developer sees it: OpenGL calls, rather than how a user sees it: "I want to see through this pipe). A solution was to allow the user to just click the pipe that was to be cut (at the position to start cutting) and another click to show how far to cut it. This redesign, of course, required a redesign of the code - which goes to prove that UI design should be done at an early stage if you want a good product.
Some of the UI gurus advocate the extreme version of this with the workflow: design the UI first, write the manual second, and implement it last. This of course depends on what you are building. I assume you have looked into the UI literature if you are into making things more usable. If you haven't come across them yet, Nielsen and Norman provide some interesting text on the subjects discussed above. A lot of Normans texts are available here.
.. johnny lee miller ..
angelina jolie ..
h4x0r th3 g1bs0N!!!
Many people argue that one of Linux's greatest strengths is its flexibility and diversity. You can choose from a couple hundred different distributions (or create your own) and pretty much customize your system the way you like it. In fact, this is only half right: A flexible and diverse base install directly implies a rigid and centralized upgrade and application install process for most users.
:)
As a user, once you pick up your distro from one of the stalls of the vibrant and diverse 'bazaar', that stall now becomes your 'cathedral'. You like that shiny new app in that stall over there? Better head to your cathedral to check whether your high priests have compiled a version for you. Is that an available upgrade that you see two stalls over? Better pray that your one true distro has decided to upgrade as well. Did your high priests just take off their ceremonial red hats, don their fedoras and close your cathedral down? Too bad you'll have to find another cathedral to pray at. Sure you can try to learn the incantations and join the priesthood, or even build your own cathedral, but not everyone has the strength of will to take a vow of poverty and give up sex
Ok, ok, so I went a little overboard with the metaphor, but you get the idea. I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that users, like developers, prefer the freedom of the bazaar. It seems to me users won't get this freedom unless developers are willing to give up some of theirs.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
> As long as the unix geeks who dominate desktop linux development try to layer away user interaction problems and think of GUI's as nothing more than "Eye Candy" and in no way function, I guarentee the user experience of linux will suck for another 10.
in your eyes it will
who *exactly* should 'dominate' (desktop) linux development then, if not unix geeks?
HCI people?
who then..um..
*pay* unix geeks to do the coding?
*ask* them to do the coding?
*Demand* that they do the coding?
wait a minute...I'm seeing a vision....Jakob Nielsen and Linus's desktop linux show
If you keep 'screaming at programmers' I guarantee you'll continue to be ignored.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Note the dot before the username? You bit :-)
The real Bruce Perens has a UID of 3872. Everyone else is an impostor.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I should be able to plug in most hotpluggable devices and see an icon for them so I can format the drive, rename/copy/delete files, etc. I think most end-users today would consider opening a terminal window and issuing a mount command as root to be too much hassle. Doing this on someone else's machine might not even be possible.
I'm mainly thinking of devices like keychain drives (memory sticks with USB connectors on them), firewire and USB hard drives, and digital cameras. The software to do this and get a usable icon on the desktop should be already installed and ready for use.
I don't know of any patent issues that would prevent this from being possible using exclusively free software. I tried setting this up with Red Hat 9 GNU/Linux and it was a disappointment because every so-called "solution" I came across would not scale up (adding entries to a device list hardcoded to particular /dev/ devices, or not being able to handle automatic mounting when the device is physically inserted and automatic unmounting when the device is physically removed).
Digital Citizen
As a Linux newbie I found Knoppix quite refreshing - there's only one (GUI) way to achieve each particular task (eg configuring a modem) so I didn't get lost in a maze of twisty tunnels all alike while trying to do something I'd done before.
Somebody needs to sit down and say - this package defines the default user interface. Then we flag up every deviation FROM that UI.
I guess this is the same as writing an HI spec, but is possibly a little easier. I suggest that for a desktop Linux the UI is probably going to be set by the office package, so I'm guessing OO takes the lead here (I have't used KOffice or whatever).
Now I could earn a flamebait mod by saying that the obvious UI to use is the one that has already had millions of dollars in usability clinics spent on it - but I won't. In my experience people will rapidly get used to even the most perverse UI differences between packages (who else still hits F7 for a print preview? thank you wordperfect) so long as there aren't too many of them.
As a non-confrontational example - look at Midnight Commander vs Norton Commander. MC is very close, but every niggling difference, well, niggles. (sorry, no specific example comes to hand).
strikes again.
Sorry mate, the UI in windows has remained more consistent from w95 to w98 to nt4 to xp across ALL mainstream packages than even just the obvious UI issues I can see in Knoppix 3.2, to pick on the most consistent distro I've played with.
People can cope with differences in UI across different packages that they use a lot, what (literally) tires them is that the UI is different for every little utility.
Accept it geeks, your idea of the perfect UI is not the same as everyone elses, and sadly, just like we moved the clutch out to the left in cars, conformity may be a better option in the long run.
Such a distribution would need extremely easy and bullet-proof administration. Not a single one of the available distributions has that.
With easy I mean there is good, clean, simple frontend, that uses a clean, traditional-text-based backend for storage, so I as an admin am also happy.
RH9 eg is real mess to administer (recently I needed to set a static route - none of these fancy GUI-tools were installed, as it's a proxy - the text-files accomplishing that are not documented properly)
The systems STILL are too complex. UserLinux should focus on eliminating that.
If Linus Torvalds had wanted linux to be on the desktop, in 1993 he would have got his Finnish butt to the nearest school in Scandinavia with a HCI department and would have allowed usability folks substantial input on the design of the first kernel.
User interfaces are important but this is just utter nonsense. In what possible way is it the kernel's job to care about these things?
the rpm tool is the equivalent of dpkg tool.
It provides all the functionalities the provided by the dpkg tool.
On top of rpm, Mandrake has provided a fantastic tool called urpmi. It handles dependencies resolution (and does far more like cluster upgrade management)
smoothly. I have been using it daily for years now, and let me tell you that I don't miss apt or debian at all, and I am not a "new linux user".
So Mr article writer, before talking about something, be sure you know what you are talking about...
Zero Install (see sig) will do what you want. Distributions don't fight over file locations, because everything is namespaced using DNS. Anyone can run anything in Zero Install on any distribution.
When I saw this story I was shocked, in a good way. At this end we see someone pushing to make linux better for the end user on the desktop enviroment. At the same time though we see SuSe being bought by Caldera, and possibly not providing the free downloads of their distribution, and Red Hat said recently they might pull their free downloads as well. I feel we might be on the verge of a major split in the evolution of Linux, one side pushing towards the enterprise making linux commercialized (if thats a word). And the other trying to push it to the desktop...
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
The goal of AI services would be that linux would understand itself and how all the programs and hardware act, can do some reasoning and enable things like automatic configuration, automatic software search/installation/interworking, agent-assisted development and solution of user-initiated goals, development of personal assistants, and in general making linux something a magnitude beyond other operating systems. In fact parsing and syntactic recognition of written and spoken natural language is here today, but for now still requires experts to spend time creating a domain-specific system.
I have a feeling that the three projects above taken in order could launch linux and open source in general into a totally different strata compared to other software. Just setting up a single website as a clearinghouse for gathering and organizing ideas would be a major step. With such a tool then many people's work could be coordinated within a common map, and the next step (rebuilding the linux user experience, through GUI unification and also using the smarts of experts in this field) is possible.
At the same time a serious effort (step 3) can be made to acheive a linux desktop-centric set of complementary AI services. Here are some goals I can see might make it to the front page:
- We need a place where we can get experts in AI to provide insight. A little goes a long way.
- We need to build a knowledge representation of the world of user computing, from file copying to driver installation problems to word processing. This is one of the resources that will enable machine reasoning to make complicated computers easy to use.
- We need to provide a software framework for various artificial intelligence and natural language processing software tools to plug into.
- We need to find a way to introduce large numbers of non-linux-nerds (designers, technical writers, psychologists, PhDs, manufacturers) into the dialogue for concrete projects. For example a widget manufacturer could provide funding to a small group that would create entries in the knowledge base and so on for their product if it would guarantee plug-and-play compatibility with the reasoning software. - We need a pilot project which will help solidify things we need to have done, for example we could try to incorporate NLP into the shell. A project oriented to the general public might be an onscreen "notebook". Maybe we should be using Squeak? Think about how we can get rid of the infinite number of control panels and buttons, and move toward an interface that would make it fun or easy to use.
- We need to create modular scripts that solve certain user cases and yet can be applied to many different situations. Open source desktop intelligence.
- We need to provide ways allow reasoning engines to be able to do things for the user.
It may sound like this is "silly science" but this is not at all impossible. First, the minimum technology is there already, and what isn't. Second,
Bruce... you should know better than that. ;)
OS/2 has a slash in it.
OS X does not. It's short for "Mac OS X". And no, "Mac OS X" is NEVER un-shortened to "Macintosh OS X" (except by people who don't know better).
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Actually, the kernel should care about usability. The pre-emption and low-latency patches wouldn't have existed but for improving usability (their goal is to always provide feedback to the user, they don't actually speed things up). There are lots of UI problems that have to be solved in the kernel first. For example: why doesn't the kernel notify the gui that a usb mass storage device has been connected, and now might be a good time to display it on the desktop? Windows does this, mac os x does this. Linux doesn't.
...is the Suse 8.2 FTP installation. Ok, you want to install SuSe? Pick a network module.
WTF????? Windows has had network card autodetection for CENTURIES*. Why in 20MB it couldn't work it out for itself is beyond me; surely a few hundred bytes of extra code wouldn't hurt.
*It had it last century, and it has is this century. Ok, elapsed time is probably less than a decade, but it sounds more impressive this way.
Oh dear, please tell me Bruce didn't just spout that old chestnut of "if something isn't there in open source, you can go code it".
I'm a mediocre C programmer and there are plenty of people who aren't programmers - the fact that I (let alone them) can just dip in and start programming some wizzy new bit of functionality is absurd.
In reality it takes 3 months of 9-5 work to become fully up to speed with the way something works, it's nuiaces, issues, problems, general fudges and other "gotchas". You can't just sit down, fire up VIM and hack yourself up a new feature.
The truth of the matter is that if he want someone to add something he either
- Makes a lot of noise in the right places and hopes someone decides to implement it
- Pays someone to implement it
and even with point 1, if the programmer doesn't ask you for feedback, the chances of you getting exactly what you what is slim.Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
just to nitpick, SuSE was bought by Novell, not SCO (aka caldera)
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Who cares about the Grandma test? Grandma will use whatever is put in front of her to play Solitaire and visit AreYouKnittingOrNot.com. The more stringent test is not the "Grandma Test" it's the "Power User" test. It's not whether the proverbial "newbie" can use the desktop environment/OS, because "newbies" come fresh and clean and will take whatever garbage is handed to them because they are clueless. Power Users on the other hand already are savvy, and have strict expectations and skills they have developed over the years that they will not give up. We can stop fooling ourselves with the "Grandma Test" right now. DOS would pass the Grandma Test (probably would be even BETTER: slap up a text menu to frequently used programs END OF STORY).
I read the whole article and they completely miss the point. They go on and on about all the apps that are available for Linux. WE KNOW. Nobody (at least not I!) is arguing that there isn't sufficient office application alternatives on Linux. It is condescending to the Power User to say that the only reason they don't use Linux is because of the apps. The real truth that the "community" has to suck down is that good UI is not made by committee, and "choice" is NOT always necessarily better. The greatest challenge the open source community needs to face when tackling the desktop problem is of FOCUS and COHESION. It is better to present a uniform and predictable but mediocre interface, than an alternately sucks-balls, and great interface, that is all over the map. Along with that are the "naughty pieces" of conceptual bleed-over/impedence mismatch that bleed through the interface. Things like how the file system is organized, why there are hundreds of config files all in a different format, why there are tons of apps, all with subsets of each others functionality that are not 100% complete. Why there are 10 different ways to do the same thing, 5 of which are obsolete, and 3 of which require you to run on the upgrade-libraries treadmill for a couple of days. Sure you can slap layer and layer of abstraction and UI over this, but clueful users will eventually start realizing these things, when they start to tear and crack.
Open Office is fucking great, but if you don't give them a cohesive desktop environment that meets expectations they will just run Open Office on Windows.
I have to give credit to KDE for making this sort of integration more seemless than other environments I've used. It feels more than others that you are using a "desktop environment" than just a motley crew of random dissident programs picked out of the ghetto and chained together.
Then again I had to wake up too fucking early this morning and I might be a tad bitter.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Mainly because it crashes anytime I try and access it. I'm sure it's just *spiffing* when it works, though.
Standards and specifications are not as much about achieving a universally-accepted level of "correctness" as they are about clearly transmitting an idea from one person to another.
Standards and specifications should not be ignored just because one disagrees with them philosophically. Conformance to standards, even those that are not as elegant and beautiful as we might hope for, increases interoperability and ease of use (the "do the least surprising thing" rule). The LSB is, of course, a political beast that tries to respect the competing philosophies of those that are writing it.
If Arker wants to compile a distribution that does not conform to the LSB, I've got no objections. If Arker complains that he can't make an LSB-conforming distribution because the standards are "wrong," that's just silly.
I think that if you would like to solve the problems you're complaining about, the best path is for you to code.
UI folks shouldn't have to become programmers to get UI problems solved. I would much rather continue my HCI education and put all my energy in studying newer and better ways for people to get their work done with computers than learn a bunch of crud about AutoConf and Makefiles. There are people far more experienced than me who have decades of experience at making computers less confusing for end users, who spend 40-60 hours a week intensively studying things like cognitive psychology and HCI. Why the hell should those people have to spend the next ten years of their life learning how to program to change a confusing button or ameliorate a cluttered screen?
That's just silly. If you don't like their work, you have the right to not use it. Find or create an alternative that is more to your liking. The thought of punishing a free software developer because they don't meet your personal standards is simply offensive.
A secretary does not have any right not to choose Debian.
A schoolchild does not have any right not to choose Debian.
There are certain settings where people are naturally forced to use a platform and don't have any say in the choice about whether to use the system. This is not about me. This is about them. If no one else will fight on their behalf, then I will.
You Debian people also keep using the word "your personal this" or "your personal that". I'm not talking about my personal standards. I'm talking about basic standards that have been laid down by the Human Computer Interaction community for the last 20 damn years.
If a free software developer only writes stuff for himself, everyone else be damned, great. I have no problem with that. But when a free software developer does not meet these basic standards set down by the discipline that makes computers easier to use, and when he targets grandma anyways and lobbies for his unusable crap to be installed on government computers, then such a person must be appropriately dealt with. I consider such a person to be as harmful to the end user as Microsoft.
It's not that I don't believe in Freedom; it's that I believe a user's greatest Freedom is The Freedom To Get Stuff Done With A Minimum Of Fuss.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
who *exactly* should 'dominate' (desktop) linux development then, if not unix geeks?
HCI people
Don't see why not.
wait a minute...I'm seeing a vision....Jakob Nielsen and Linus's desktop linux show
Excellent idea. Jakob's contributions are as important as Linus'.
If you keep 'screaming at programmers' I guarantee you'll continue to be ignored.
We'd get ignored no matter how we put it. Your point is?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Mac OS X
First, I want a Linux that is pleasing in appearance right from the box, next I want it easy to use with icons that come close to meaning something. I like KDE for it's consistancy and generally straight forward interface.
Before it is ever even launched, I will have an opinion of it. My feelings aboout a distribution start when I install it. If that is difficult, it is already close to striking out. I know it needs to ask a few questions but those questions need to be verbose and senseable. A paragraph explaining them would be awesome.
Next, I would like only one application for each use installed straight from the box, if I want more I can add them later. Please don't load me up with things I'll never use. I do not want a ton of games and I don't want a thousand developer tools. Don't try to impress me with things like mouse odeometers - they are a total waste!
Give me a link to a software repository on the web that will allow me to install what I want, when I want it without much more than a single click. Make it just as easy to uninstall too.
Since I am comfortable with Microsoft Windows, I'll want a brief tutorial that teaches me to only click once rather than twice to launch things and shows me those subtle differences between Microsoft Windows and X-Windows then, to make me feel better about Linux, show me a few tricks that are done better in my new operating system than they are in Microsoft Windows. Teach me the basics of file and system maintence while you are at it, I never really "got it" in MS Windows and that caused me some problems as my computer got older (or, at least I think that is what happened).
I'll need some help once in a while and I don't want to have to figure out where to go to get it. Why not build in a client that will take me to a web site of questions and answers and also has a dedicated IRC client that takes me directly to an IRC channel where other people may be online to help me answer my question?
Finally, I know if I do not operate as root my chances of really screwing things up is small but you know stuff happens, sometimes it isn't even my fault! How about a rescue re-install utility that doesn't mess with my user space but reinstalls the vital system files and restores my settings so I stand a chance of getting my system back with my data if somethng really bad happens? This should probably be the original CD-ROM and a bootable rescue floppy. I'm smart enough to know that I sould always back up my data but it is something I never seem to do. At least with something like this I'd have a fighting chance.
A. user
This is perhaps something OSDL could sponsor?
Well I'll toss in my 2 cents,
/usr/doc but I don't expect most beginners to know that.
I don't like MAN or INFO, I wish all documentation was in searchable HTML format. These were both made for the command line (yes I know about the X based viewers), but don't do much for a graphical desktop. Full searchable HTML documentation with pictures and diagrams; fully integrated with the desktop environment. Each app can have it's own HELP menu, each system utility can have help under the KDE (or Gnome) system help menu. Really this stuff should be centralized, I hate having to hunt all over for readme's and doc files. I know I can find most stuff under
Blender And Linux Fan
"UI folks shouldn't have to become programmers to get UI problems solved. "
And neither should programmers become UI experts, to solve the same. Looks like were back to square one, unless you're really advocating that one group does all the work while the other does all the talking?
"It's not that I don't believe in Freedom; it's that I believe a user's greatest Freedom is The Freedom To Get Stuff Done With A Minimum Of Fuss."
And is your "mythical" user willing to pay the price for that freedom? Or have you like others been conditioned to believe that freedom is free?
Repeat after me - It's not RPM's fault, it is the fault of the packagers!
The problem with ANY packaging system that allows for dependancies is the JACKASS PACKAGE CREATOR who defines his dependancies as
libfoo.1.2.3.so.pl1.thursday.3oclock.mine.mine
as opposed to
libfoo.1.so
Debian fix this by being very controlled in what they let in - overly anal-retentive packages get bounced, and packages that depend upon packages not in the standard must clearly state WHAT they need and where to get it.
Redhat itself does a fair job of this, but with everybody and their dog creating RPMS higglty-pigglty, the third party RPMs suck.
Once again, repeat after me, class:
No packaging system will solve the problem of incompetent people creating packages
Also - with regards to the MAN vs. INFO issue - what about having a simple web server, bound to 127.0.0.1:<mumble> that would respond to INFO and MAN requests, returning HTML. Then a user could use ANYTHING from Lynx to Mozilla to view help, and you could get all the benefits of cross-linking. Ideally, this server could run from inetd, stand-alone, or as a CGI under Apache.
www.eFax.com are spammers
OS X.
Linux & FreeBSD on the Server, X on the client, life is good.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Well, I see that you have done a little work on Chandler. I think that if you would like to solve the problems you're complaining about, the best path is for you to code. I don't yet believe that a public license that "enforces usability" is going to be much help.
Do you think that non-code contributions to OSS projects are somehow inherently inferior to good old fashioned raw code?
If you just stick to a graphical installer, that is geared toward brain-dead users, and install by default just KDE + K compliant apps then you have a 'user Linux'.
Not saying KDE is best, or worse, but its consistent and similar to what a windows user is used too.
There is no need to discuss 'what to put in'.. 99% of what a user needs is part of KDE.. and its al the same..
Also would cut down on this horrendous bloat most distros have become.. 1.2 gb for a default workstation.. WTF is that about.... users don't need all that crap..
Choice IS a bad thing in the beginning.. Once they know their way around THEN they can make intelligent choices...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In total, it took me a couple of hours from apt-get through converting about 9 years of transactions to it being my accounting system of record.
As part of my switch from quicken to gnu cash, I started using turbo tax on the web. If there are extra things that the installed application can do, I haven't missed any of them. It works in Mozilla, and remembers where you left off if anything happens to the network. I guess there could be some security concerns, but I don't imagine that it's any worse than electronic filing. Now the only thing I use windows for is.... I can't remember. It's been months since I booted into it.
The system that is used in windows to draw the graphical UI is called the GDI (Graphical Device Interface?) iirc.
extreme version of this with the workflow: design the UI first, write the manual second, and implement it last
Its not really all that extreme at all. You'd be suprised at how common this approach is, and how well it works!
When you say "writing the manual", I substituted in "writing use cases", which translates pretty well in my opinion. If properly written, anyone (a user, developer, etc) should be able to pick up the use case entitled "Cut Pipe Segment", read it, and know exactly how to cut a pipe segment in the application, how cutting it will look, how cutting it will affect other things in the application, and what limitations there are on cutting it.
Having said that, UI design and use case writing are both a part of requirements gathering, something that should definately be done before any coding is done!
The
probably like Windows... just make it work better, you know, less crashy, less DRMy, less virusy.
Linux could do with a few less 37337 coders and a few more artists and graphic designers, people who have an understanding of what colors work together, and most importantly what proportions are pleasing to the eye.
Usability is far more important to me than whether or not a certain font might be a point size too big, or that the color scheme is "correct". So, for both coders and graphic types: make sure it's usable, THEN make it pretty.
It seems to me that the thrust of this article is that Linux isn't there yet for the desktop and with a bunch of work, maybe it will be where Apple and Microsoft are now. Maybe a yar or more? But in the meantime, Apple and Microsoft, who already have professional quality desktop systems, integration, ease of use, etc. wil have advanced the state of desktop computing and, once again, Linux will be viewed by the masses, and especially non technical users, as inadequate when compared to the commercial alternatives.
This fervor about desktop Linux is driven by hatred for Microsoft and not user need. You can list all of the problems that MS desktops have, but many are the result of success. Don't kid yourself and think that there are no Linux security holes. They exist, but hackers choose not to exploit them, and even when they do, because Linux has such a small installed base, the attacks cause little disruption.
In the end, most users see the desktop PC as a tool, don't mind paying a reasonable price to use it, and could care less about the religuous wars that rage between Gnome and KDE, Debian and Fedora, GPL and apache, Linux and UNIX.
There's a lot I don't like about MS and Windows. I also run Linux, But I find that, as much as most of you zealots don't want to hear it, Windows is just a better desktop. Linux is a better server. Put your efforts where we need them, on the back end. leave the desktop alone. When the back ends are all Linux, the desktop will have to play nice and follow the rules.
Maybe your family should spend a little more time on birth control rather than Linux.
>> who *exactly* should 'dominate' (desktop) linux development then, if not unix geeks?
:
> HCI people
> Don't see why not.
because they dont code, because they're expensive, because the thing that's 'holding' linux back isn't the usability or otherwise of the desktop interfaces (some of which run on linux, some of of which run on other Oss/ kernels)
> Jakob's contributions are as important as Linus'[s]
To the development of the linux kernel? phooo.
to the usability of the (CDE?) Sun desktop (droppped in favour of GNOME) ?????
I'm not under-rating Jakob, but he deosn't come cheap - who pays for his time?
I'm also, really, really, not arguing against HCI people. But if you want to make a difference, grab the and hack on them.
Don't write papers, or bring morals into it. Don't like it, change it, make it better. Aqua is 'fully HCI compliant', and I hate it. I can't change it.
With OSS software, I can. So can you. Do it.
>We'd get ignored no matter how we put it. Your point is?
That backseat drivers' views on 'Linux' (the kernel? the ''desktop''? what exactly does that have to do with Linux, btw?) are probably ignored for a reason
I'll repeat what Bruce Perens said - what *do* you like?
What Free/ free/ cheap desktop OS paradigms should we follow, and what exactly do these have to do with (your original point, and the one that made me respond)
'One could also make the moral argument that developers who have contempt for newbies have entirely no right to the desktop. You could even take this one step further and say that any action taken against such developers (e.g. licenses, patents on innovative UI stuff, project wars, etc) is morally justified.'
One could reply to this that 'moral's have nothing to do with your thoughts on the 'Linux desktop' (which one? so many to chose from...) and that you should get back to 'your paper'
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Email and pims that work like Outlook. Browsers. Office suites.
Yawn...
Why doesn't Perens give us something that Microsoft, Apple and every other Linux distribution don't already give us?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Imagine if an application has a function "Frob". Nobody ever thought of this function before, so it could not possibly be in any standard. But there must be a key that does it, so the app designer decides on a default of Alt+F. Now lets say somebody "customizes" things so Alt+F does forward-search. Oops, we have either lost the ability to "Frob" (possibly making the application useless) or we have moved it to a key that only somebody who deeply understands the customization system could find, or we have ignored the customization for at least one program and make the UI inconsistent. There are NO other possibilities.
Such ideas sound good in abstract but do not work in practice, and make it literally impossible to make new and innovative software, and make debugging the UI very very difficult and often impossible.
The system we have now works: copy ideas people like from one program to another. In case you did not notice, windows and Linux both use ctrl+c/v to copy and paste, and Mac uses command+c/v. This is not a coincidence, and not the result of independent developers arriving at the same results independently.
How about storing Applications in a single, sensible, standard place?
/bin, /sbin /opt/bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, and all the rest. They all have slightly varying meanings, which most users don't care about at all.
/apps. In there, have the Applications that users will want to use. This gives newbies a single, centralized location to look and discover the wide array of applications at their fingertips (recognizable by thier colorful, informative icons and names that aren't acronyms). Whenever you go there in your file browser, you can double-click any application and its window(s) come up. When you're in the CLI, you can call an app like any executable, and it will launch it's window just the same. Applications that have no dependencies (really, the majority of them) can be dragged and dropped into /apps. Those that don't can use installers or tarballs to do what they need to. For bonus points, adopt the package system from OS X (nee NeXTSTEP) and live life the way it should be, with drag-and-drop installs for 99% of apps. This isn't a pipe dream: I do it every day.
/applications, the problems that plague application installation simply vanish.
Right now there's
Take a page from OS X, and attack from two angles:
1) differentiate Applications from executables. Apps use the GUI, executables the CLI.
2) make a directory called
Instead of doing this, Linux is falling into the same trap that Windows is mired in; it puts a big hierarchal list in the 'Start Button' (or whatever your distro calls it) and expects people to navigate through that. I can think of little that is more annoying that attempting this. Digging three levels deep to find a calculator is a chore. Finding where the distro hides Mozilla is a pain. Determining how to add and remove things from the menu is harder than Windows, where a drag and drop or a right-click will do.
We don't need any of that cruft; simply make a new root-level directory and fire away.
As an aside, this is why Linux people tend to think UIs are bad: because the UIs that you use everyday are. This is a perfect example of hiding complexity that doesn't need to exist. If all the apps are in
- The Amazina Llama
I'm sure most of you have seen this before, but here it is again.
Then why isn't someone making a Mac OS X free and for x86 instead of churning out distro after distro of the same jumbled mess?
I say get on it and we'll see what comes of it.
I've been thinking about this. The only way I can think of to get more artists and graphic designers to use Linux is for the 31337 coders to create and improve programs that artists and graphic designers use.
This is happening, slowly. I can draw well, and I've had my eye on Sodipodi for a while. I'm probably not the only one.
This range of programs would probably be all kinds of media programs that don't take excessive programming knowledge to put to use. Video, audio, and graphics programs.
I was talking to my graphic design friend the other day about unix things like LaTeX and he was at least mildly interested.
I imagine that some of the artist types we want to see use and then improve linux would like Sodipodi, for example.
It's a question of carrots. If you want linux to look / feel nicer, go work on a program that an artist would use.
Jag pratar lite svenska.
I'd like to see something like a docbook variant that would allow man, info style, and html all to be documented in the same place (not necessarily the same file) and with a kind of "gendoc" command that would produce a man page, info for those who like it, and html all from the same source.
And I'll admit I've always found the info comment about how man is obsolete and all to be rather condescending (in the most icky sort of way) - especially when the info files that took the place of the man pages are often next to impossible to navigate.
Little things like keyboard shortcuts can be changed easily.
All you need is have a layer between them and the application.
KDE does this.
You can choose: MacOSX style, Win95 style... and it's not just the theme! It also changes BEHAVIOR
We really NEED one desktop that can be super modular and rely on the same abstractions for compatibility.
Er... basically to say what I was thinking clearer: We need a common abstraction layer for all desktops.
Light desktops might ignore some of the aspects, and full-on desktops might add their own extensions... but that's what open standards and no royalties are for.
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
It's better in at least one way. It can work like hypertext. We already have html to do this, and I much prefer lynx to info, but still, that's a lot better than man for some things.
Let's take an example -- gcc. Almost everything to gcc can be found through the info-page. I doubt it can be used as a tutorial, though perhaps it can, but it definitely, absolutely beats a similar man-page. Imagine scrolling through something like the iptables manpage -- except several times bigger. Maybe tens of times bigger.
Traditionally, this is done by breaking it into separate files, a la perl. 'man perl' gives you a list of all the perl manpages and what they are for. To use them, you either have to be using something like yelp or you have to quit man and start it again to look up the other manpage. And you've got to do it by name, not by using arrow keys and enter.
What really needs to happen is a modern standard. Probably xml-based. I know there are things like Docbook-xml, but that doesn't have a frontend, it just converts to things like man. In fact, I'd stick to my concept of using raw XML for everything with a custom tagset and some stylesheets.
The only reason I still use them is that they are sometimes more comprehensive than what's in /usr/doc or /usr/share/doc, and they are always stored locally, rather than googling for it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I know KDE has done some things better than GNOME, and GNOME has done some things better than KDE.
Still, it's not right. I use GNOME because some of KDE's "user-friendliness" pisses me off. And yet, there is no reason why a desktop has to be so big. It is getting better, though, and I'm hopeful -- after all, I think there's no reason Mozilla should be as big as it is, but out of all of that, they eventually gave us Firebird.
Multiple competing products is good to force ahead development. However, I doubt Linux development would stagnate if Microsoft died a well-deserved death. Rather, it would increase, because it is still competing with the old version of itself (you've got to convince people to upgrade in open source, not coerce them), and there would be more developers available for a single project than there would be for two projects. Not to mention the volumes less code that would be written.
The way I've always gone about trying to write a new program is either to hack at something that's already there, usually in a very ugly way, because I need it done yesterday, or to start over, borrowing the old code. The idea is to start over the basic structure, with the old code close at hand, so that with every idea to do something, I make sure I understand how the old version did it, and then if there's anything portable enough, I copy it over.
I think that it's possible that GNOME and KDE could be merged that way. I move to use GTK+ as the toolkit, due to slightly more open licensing, but maybe we want to write a new one anyway. I don't want to try to start such a thing unless people give me positive feedback (and I'm not expecting anything -- it "ain't broke" that bad). But I can imagine starting over, pulling code from both GNOME and KDE, and rapidly making something new.
The problem is, I'd need an immense amount of support on this, or it would only exacerbate the problem -- instead of 1 desktop, there'd be 3.
Maybe if they were more modular, it'd be better. I like GNOME panels, and I like the GNOME pager, but I like fluxbox (if only it would support layers), and I don't like nautilus. Hard to get around the multiple toolkit problem, though, unless there were a commonly used third toolkit as a frontend to GTK and QT so one would be a drop-in replacement (imagine KDevelop on GTK or Gnumeric on QT).
Of course, this is only one of several gargantuan problems I want to solve. Others include a new language, based partly on ruby, that compiles to C.
I'm too visionary for my own damn good.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
But on the other hand I will still be on windows because I need high end video editing.
Have you checked out Cinelerra? I've been eyeing it for a while but haven't gathered the gumption to try using it yet.
directX should die, it's holding lin games back
Huh? I haven't seen anything intrinsic to DirectX that would hold back third-party implementations of it; it's just yet another object-oriented (sort of) pile of graphics, sound and whatnot APIs. I think it's more likely the sheer size and complexity of the Win32 standard platform that holds up porting; who wants to go through their code rooting out all those pesky API calls and proprietary libraries when just coding for Windows is going to get them 90% of the users?
I've been working on the media player detection and control code for VegasWebcast.com, and let me tell you, dealing with browser and platform differences at the same time as trying to dance around plugin/ActiveX versioning issues, browser and media player implementation bugs, and other sources of pain is an adventure.
Crap! It's the Acacia Technologies lawyers! RUN!!!
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
The only two requirements you specified above that are not met are the requirements for a GUI to step through configuring and the requirement for the source to be packaged with the dependencies in a single file.
/usr/bin/sendmail. Checking a particular file based on the PATH and the predicted PATH is far too clumsy -- PATH can change if a program farts, and it's very unlikely that installing only /usr/bin/sendmail will work.
Gentoo has ebuilds, which are small text files and are all downloaded and stored on the local machine, and contain dependencies and the basic installation script. Then there are the source tarballs, which I believe are deliberately kept separate to prevent Gentoo from being required to mirror tarballs it doesn't want to. Most of the tarballs are mirrored, but you can actually use the original source tarball, as downloaded by wget from the original homepage.
The idea to package source with everything else in a single file is nice for third-party packages -- things people try to get in the package system but which either get rejected or stalled. Right now, your only choice is to download an ebuild file, move it to the right place (if you want to autmatically update it if/when it gets accepted), and tell Portage to install it -- at which point it automatically fetches the source tarball.
Dependencies are actually on packages and virtuals, rather than files. I think file dependencies would be nice, but if something provides support for sendmail, it should be a sendmail somewhere in PATH, which may even be upgraded during the course of the install, and not necessarily
The only real downside I see here is that your typical user wants their program NOW. In order to accomodate them, you need something more like apt-get -- which seems like it works very well. However, your typical user buys their computer from a large company anyway. If that company were to preinstall a Gentoo set up to install binary packages from said company. That gives them all the freedom of Gentoo with all the "right now" speed of Debian and all the "long-term" speed of Gentoo. After all, if a user never customizes their box, it probably has all the same hardware as everyone else's, meaning the same -march flag.
The only other thing, which would be nice, is a --interactive or --automatic flag for emerge. If I install a kernel "automatically", it should configure itself and install itself. But all Gentoo kernels make you configure and compile them yourselves, so the "interactive" flag should let the user go through the configure step manually.
It would be an added bonus if PORTAGE_TMPDIR functioned as a cache -- as the partition fills up, or as the folder gets beyond a certain size, the temporary files for a particular package are cleaned out. Otherwise, when reinstalling a package, it wouldn't be necessary to re-download and re-unpack -- which doesn't matter for some packages, and would hurt others, but would be a huge help with the over 19,000 file kernel source tree.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If a toolkit were done well, it would allow keystrokes, layout, colors, and such to be at least similar across apps -- and globally changeable. My favorite thing about Gentoo was that rather than tell each individual app on a server that I didn't want X support, I just told the package management system that I didn't want X support. But there's a much better solution here -- for example, fonts, colors, and many other things are dependent on themes. The typical coder doesn't touch themes.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Not to split hairs, but the Linux kernel notifies userland when it detects USB mass storage devices. (Run dmesg after you plug in the device, or look in /proc)
The problem is that the GUI isn't monitor the the kernel's output in this case.
The pre-emption and low-latency patches certainly improve usability, and they also help for real time applications.
The reason that the Linux kernel doesn't specificly talk to your GUI is that it's quite likely that the system doesn't have a GUI. Think about embedded systems and dedicated servers. The nice thing about Linux is that these sorts of policies are not decided by the kernel, but are instead decided by the person administering the system. (Or by the people building a desktop linux distribution.) Of course, this causes problems with standardization.
It's about sluggish research, not wrong research. Most people I know who've enabled the "old look" for WinXP have been looking at the win2k GUI (or WinNT, take your pick) for so long (perhaps they've even made love to it) and are so resistant to change that they would not have upgraded if they had to use a new GUI, no matter how beautiful it was.
I doubt even having each window be transluscent and putting naked people on the desktop would convince such people.
I suspect it's more that Microsoft is way too slow to react to things in meaningful ways (e.g. not madly threatening and legislating in a very SCO-like fashion). They can spend billions on marketing research, and I'm sure they spend millions, so this is all based on that research.
Besides, Windows is all about being able to be used by colorblind, dyslexic interns out of the box, and being impossible to customize beyond out of the box.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In fact, at least two "exciting new features" of Mac OS X and Win XP were taken from Enlightenment. The stable version. Which hasn't been updated for years before OS X or XP. Examples: Eye candy such as transluscency -- when I drag a window in E, it is transluscent, and it becomes solid when I drop it. I am not sure if it had dropshadows, those are going to be implemented. It also had something which looks very much like OS X's new ... whatever it is you call that bar at the bottom. Enlightenment had something that looked very much like that, though somewhat less smooth in appearence (the icons didn't bounce when you clicked on them). I'm not sure if it had the concept of an icon in that area for a program not yet open (that would open when you clicked on it). However, that was implemented in WindowMaker, which has also existed long before Mac OS X, although in WindowMaker it's huge blocks that you stack down the right side of your screen -- ugly, but I dare say Apple plagarized it. And XP adds the ability to group programs -- which was in GNOME long before XP, and was probably also in KDE.
.bat file, but it's as much easier to write a .sh file than a .bat file as it is to write a webserver in C instead of in bash.
And in case you haven't noticed, GNOME is pretty Frankenstein already. If I want to get a window out of the way, I can shade it (Mac OS 9 style) or minimize it (Windows style) or switch to another desktop (Linux style). There's a bar across the top that is just like the Mac OS 9 menu bar, except for two critical differences -- it doesn't change when you open an app, the app gets its own menu bar, and it also has a Windows Quick-Launch-style bar. Across the bottom is a Show Desktop button as well as a place to minimize windows to (whatever it's called, I think it's a pager) and a workspace switcher.
I believe this is even compatible with FluxBox and WindowMaker, adding the ability to group windows together with tabs or to make icons that either open a window or bring it to the foreground.
Both panels (across the top and bottom) can be customized ludicrously. Aside from just dragging things around, adding and removing things, there's also plenty of rarely-seen or used features, such as the ability to make the whole panel manually hidden (via arrow buttons on the right and left -- it shrinks down to the size of that button). I think I saw this on some very old Macs.
Finally, there's the commandline -- and what a commandline! AFAIK, Macs didn't have one at all until OS X, which blatantly plagarized our lovely setup here (even to the point of implementing an X server), and the Windows commandline is not even close. Ok, tools have been written that allow you to be able to write any program in a
And if that wasn't enough, this is only GNOME. KDE has a lot of other nice features (like a Quick-Launch bar with icons that get huge when you mouse over them, like in OS X, but it was in KDE first) and there's always Enlightenment, Fluxbox (and blackbox, and openbox, and probably even yabox (yet another box)), WindowMaker, twm, many other obscure ones, and good old xterm (run any program that you can start from the commandline, without decorations (and thus no way of resizing)).
And you say we've been trying to "innovate" and "reinvent" the UI wheel. Well, with every feature I can find, we either "chose Mac's or Windows'" or truly "innovated" -- and then everyone else stole from us. IMHO, it's a close race between Aqua and GNOME -- Aqua looks so much prettier and sexier, yet GNOME has just about all the same features -- and virtual desktops too.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
By any definition, even "feels like MS-Windows" or "feels like an old Mac", GNOME wins. It only loses in two ways -- 1) it is not KDE, and some people will point out features of KDE that I have never seen or used that are not in GNOME and 2) it has very little (if any) in-your-face, unsolicited help.
I don't even like it when something asks me if I'm sure I want to delete something. I realize the need for that, but I'd rather see an option when you first boot up to show you a tutorial on "how to use a computer" rather than assuming you know nothing until you check the "don't show me this again" button here, there, and everywhere.
Of course, there's also hiding choice, which I've only seen Firebird done right. See, power users want choice, and bitch if they can't choose something they want to (assuming they don't like the default) and everyone else bitches if they are given too many choices they don't understand. Even with all the help, my mom would probably never be able to compile a kernel, and would literally never vary from "If unsure, say N". MozillaFirebird, at least, asks you once things like "Do you want to continue, even though we were on an https site and we're going to an http site?" or "Do you want to continue, even though this form was sent with out https?" (in much more user-friendly terms). Most users will just click "continue" wihtout reading it, or if they do read it, they'll think "Of course I want to continue!". In that case, it will never bother them again. Power freaks will check the little box that says "Always ask me this question".
I don't see anything as "dumbing down" if it allows both people to use it -- the uber-geek and the newbie. I know uber-geeks who use GNOME, though most would use something else because they prefer performance over a lot of features. What I don't like is Windows. About the only things you can customize are somewhat dangerous -- for example, you can't drag the pager around (or remove it), but you can drag the status bar around (put it on the side, or the top) entirely by accident. This can be done in GNOME also, but I can also do lots of other things, but usually these features, though not hidden, are not in-your-face.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I agree that big menus suck. That's why you make submenus. There's a logical limit to this, both in terms of efficiency of the old hat just trying to get at their feature without going through dozens of layers and in terms of how much of an attention span the user has.
Two solutions here, though.
One, have submenus, and have _understandable_ options. Having "quit" be under "file" in a browser makes no sense. Think about it. File is not synonymous with "main commands for this program." File->Save makes sense -- you are saving the current file. File->New Window or File->Close Current Tab makes absolutely no sense at all in the context of file.
One way I've seen this done well is the Radial Context plugin for Mozilla and Firebird. It's basically mouse guestures with a GUI. If you know what you're doing, you can easily get to the feature you need. In fact, the guestures, once you know them, function like a single menu, yet the actual menu is separated into submenus, so that if you don't know what you're doing, you actually have a hardcoded maximum of 8 possible items in each [sub]menu.
Two, have only the needed features. This is up for grabs. In a web browser, some people actually need a "view source" option. That should be a plugin, though. And some people need one of a lot of the features in Firebird. It's improved from Mozilla, but there's still too many for it to be easy -- unless you already know how to browse, in which case, it's close enough to Mozilla/Netscape/IE for you to just jump on board and start surfing.
An example of this "limiting of features" done well (SUPERBLY well) is GTKam, the GTK frontent to gphoto2. I click a little icon somewhere, and the program comes up. It has two panes -- one showing a list of the cameras you have, and another showing a cascading folder view of the files inside. The toolbar has four buttons -- a checkbox for "View Thumbnails", a button to zoom in, a button to zoom to 100%, and a button to zoom out. There are five menus, most of them familiar -- File, View, Select, Camera, and Help.
Let me make my point brutally clear:
File/
Save Photos/
Selected
All
Delete Photos/
Selected
All
View/
View Thumbnails
Zoom In
Zoom 100
Zoom Out
Select/
All
Inverse
None
Camera/
Add Camera...
Help/
Debug
About
The only one of these that is neither a single action nore entirely self-explanatory is the Add Camera option. It opens up a window with:
Model (drop down menu) with a Detect button next to it
Port (drop down menu, defaults to USB
the standard Ok/Apply/Cancel buttons
a button for "Enhanced", which adds:
Speed (drop down menu, defaults to "best")
A checkbox for "Allow multiple frontends"
I plugged in a USB camera and opened this program. I went to "Add Camera" and clicked "detect", and it found my camera. I then clicked "ok" and it showed me a list of the files on my camera, which I could browse, with thumbnails next to each filename. I went to File->Save Photos->Save All and selected a directory to save them in, then clicked "save". It downloaded the files from the camera to that folder. Done.
My mom has this strategy of looking through all the options for something that looks like something she needs. If all programs were this simple, she would instead start reading and trying to understand every single option, because there wouldn't be a hell of a lot to understand!
In some places, you have to support ordinary users (done best by providing them with a familiar interface, so if they do what they always did on Win/Mac, they will end up with the same results) and yet you can't take this simplistic of an approach or power users suffer. However, the only way this camera software could have been better or simpler for me is if it mounted the camera (automatically) and allowed Nautilus to draw thumbnails and such. Some things are
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
OpenGL is needed for viable 3D graphics and good use of a graphics card. It's overkill for (and cannot, and _should_ not) provide some features of things like, say, GTK. Notice that Word was not written with DirectX.
Also, X does what it does very well, it's not too buggy, not too leaky -- it runs on most of my boxes for about 2-3 weeks before I come up with a reason to restart them, unless it's from an OpenGL gmae -- which typically grabs kb/mouse, meaning that it's the game crashing, not X, and in fact if I ssh in, I can likely kill the game and get my X back.
And btw, X is modular. It's got lots of modular drivers and such. It's not as modular as it could be, but people are working on that.
And guess how a userland program talks to the kernel? Or how userland programs talk to each other? In fact, the reason I use Linux instead of HURD is that Linux is more mature and supports more hardware/software. I believe that true modularity involves separating unrelated things -- and that's not just in code.
For example, if supporting video cards is unrelated to drawing a particular window, which is unrelated to the code behind that window, it might make sense to implement those all as separate processes -- if only so that they work better on SMP, but it definitely helps extensibility. For example, your X would need a plugin to support things like VPN. Our X knows nothing about VPN or ssh, and yet both ssh and VPN support running X programs or even entire X sessions remotely. All X knows is that a program is telling it to draw something.
Others have commented on all your incompatibility besides GUI administration tools -- and I would argue that plug'n'pray can work better with Linux, it depends on your hardware. I can plug in a mac USB keyboard on Linux, for example, and have it work right away, without going through the "Add New Hardware Wizard" -- even if said Wizard came up right away, unbidden, and got in my face and started asking questions. Ditto for my Logitech mouse and external Lite-On DVD/CD-RW combo.
In fact, I think you need a good dose of KNOPPIX. Go download Knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix, or use google) and boot off that. Without ever using a hard drive, it autodetects and configures all your hardware _during_boot_. Most of the time, it works perfectly, much better than the Windows install disk.
BTW, OS X supports "legacy" applications through an emulator. It also supports X applications.
And a WINE plugin is a plugin. WINE already works, now, by itself, without having to inform anything else of its existance. It can be registered with the kernel or the GUI, but that's purely for convenience -- it can work on its own.
Now repeat after me: "I will not design monolithic systems that pretend to be modular with buzzwords like 'plugin'. I will not design monolithic systems that pretend to be modular with buzzwords like 'plugin'. I will not...."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!