Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Everaldo and Jimmac On Linux Art and Usability

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the getting-to-know dept.

Eugenia writes "Metin Amiroff of OSNews interviewed the well known artists of KDE and GNOME, Everaldo and Jimmac. They discuss their first steps into Linux, the applicationss they use and why Linux still doesn't have all the professional applications and support they need for their day to day work, their inspiration, the state of the Linux desktop visually and usability-wise, the SVG factor and their future plans for KDE and GNOME."

5 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Art / os by NIK282000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even though the art in an OS is far from vital, it makes the experience easier. Un like some OS's with bad graphics, its like watching surgery.

    --
    Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
    1. Re:Art / os by Tri0de · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Best quote from the story:
      "hardest thing is to create the drawing and this is something that no software can do for you."

      Amen

      I've got a couple of friends who are with great with computer graphics the way I was with photography: technical mastery but little artistic sensibility; I got Zone system and the Schwiempflug rule (converging fields of focus) down just like my buds have Quark/Photoslop whatever, but - somebody with artistic ability -that's a rarity,a bitch to teach and seldom combined with hacking ability

      --
      "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
  2. Re:Linux art varies greatly.. by irokitt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You bring up a good point, but recognize that Gnome is working on that with their interface policies. Free software tends to take a "make it work first, then make it look good" approach. What the community could really use is a few good artists that volunteer to make some of the ugly projects look good.

    One of my beefs is that some applications ship with ugly "basic" interfaces and expect users to look for skins to make it look better. In my mind, it should look good out of the box, and the skins should just make it look better.

    --
    If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
  3. Open Graphics Art Project by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 4, Insightful
    What the community could really use is a few good artists that volunteer to make some of the ugly projects look good

    There are many, many talented graphics artists in the world, but almost no one is asking for their help on these projects. Nor does the average programmer know where to go to find artists who are willing to help out.

    We need an Open Graphics Art Project to connect together open source programmers with open art artists.

    Same thing to a lesser extent with other professions like information architects (often found in the same person as a graphic artists, but not identical), usability/ergonomics, writing, game playability tuning, etc.

    Perhaps all it would take is the right web site to help these people find each other.

    --
    Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
  4. Most baseless comment by tyrione · · Score: 4, Insightful
    In the middle of the way,however, I found Linux, which also looked much more beautiful than Windows. Soon I installed the WindowMaker of Alfredo Kojima, which is a cloned and improved interface of NextStep.

    Like hell it is an improved interface of NeXTStep. It's a bastardization of NeXTStep without the Power of NeXTStep--no WindowServer.app--not to mention NeXTStep is a UI Design Paradigm still unequaled today in its consistency, productivity and ease-of-use. And MECCA (Openstep 4.0 Release Candidate 1) with the TabbedView Shelf that still hasn't resurfaced in OS X (hopefully one day) was an improvement over NeXTStep/Openstep but never saw the light of day, unless of course you happened to have worked at NeXT and/or you worked after the merger at Apple and either worked or hung out in Engineering.

    GNUstep is nowhere as elegant as NeXTStep and they know it, but you can't fault the developers since Steve hasn't ever nor will he ever open source any of that code.

    The moment KDE adds native Objective-C support by working with GNUstep folks than just maybe then we'll actually see Linux and Apple really bring a one-two punch to the Enterprise. How come? If both platforms support Cocoa's Portable Distributed Objects you can leverage existing PC hardware running Linux while bringing in PowerPC Hardware with OS X/X Server and suddenly any "holes" that the Windows World claims become even more fantastical, if not just blatantly bitter sweet moans of frustration.

    But no. We have people maddenly working on C# in hopes to make sure everyone can connect to .NET Services. I'm sure Microsoft doesn't mind since you still have to pay the piper, one way or another.