Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'

An anonymous reader writes "Without tip-toeing around the matter, Linus Torvalds made his preference in the GNOME vs. KDE matter quite clear on the GNOME-usability list: "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE." Also, "Gnome seems to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not doing something is not 'it's too complicated to do', but 'it would confuse users'.""

Comments

Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

If Torvalds posted that here, he'd be at -1, Troll in under ten seconds. Unless, of course, he signed it with his own name, at which point it would be at +5, Ass Kiss.

Re:Heh

[mspohr]

If the average Slashdot drone troll posted this here, it would be modded -1.

However, people respect Torvalds and respect his opinion. He's not your average person.

Re:Heh

[Delphiki]

However, people respect Torvalds and respect his opinion. He's not your average person.

What on earth has he done that would make people respect his opinion on GUIs? That's like respecting Stephen Hawking's ideas on interior decorating because he's such a great physicist.

Re:Heh

[mysticgoat]

Ha ha-- mod parent into -5 oblivion for being too funny for words, please.

I respect Torvalds' opinion because

1. I'm pretty sure that over the years Torvalds has become somewhat proficient in the use of GUIs, which is sufficient experience to come to an informed opinion about what's good or bad about their use;
2. I'm pretty sure that Torvalds knows how to think through the long term implications of design philosophies, such as whether to put rubber blades on the swiss army knife so users won't cut themselves;
3. I'm quite certain that somewhere along the way, Torvalds has learned to avoid stirring up unnecessary controversies since he seems to limit himself to only one or two a year;
4. Yet despite that last point, he said this not only once, but twice, in a forum where it really counts.

But to be balanced about it, I don't think much of Torvalds taste in automobiles and my GF thinks he chooses dorky clothes. Yet despite these criticisms, I do think that I will now favor KDE over Gnome. Because Linus is my hero and he is a champion of FOSS and all that's holy in the binary realms.

Re:Heh

[DrWhizBang]

1. I'm pretty sure that over the years Torvalds has become somewhat proficient in the use of GUIs, which is sufficient experience to come to an informed opinion about what's good or bad about their use;

I'm pretty sure that over the years Hawking has become proficient in the use of rooms, which is sufficient experience to come to an informed opinion of what's good or bad about their style.

2. I'm pretty sure that Torvalds knows how to think through the long term implications of design philosophies, such as whether to put rubber blades on the swiss army knife so users won't cut themselves;

I'm pretty sure Hawking knows how to think through the long term implications of decorating philosophies, such as whether to put lighter tones around recessed lighting so that shadows are balanced.

3. I'm quite certain that somewhere along the way, Torvalds has learned to avoid stirring up unnecessary controversies since he seems to limit himself to only one or two a year;

Hawking also has stirred up very little controversy, given his advanced take on physics. I don't understand what that has to do with his competency in interior decorating.

4. Yet despite that last point, he said this not only once, but twice, in a forum where it really counts.

(because all the world leaders are reading the "desktop architects" mailing list). Wow. Must be important that we all switch to KDE.

Were you trying to refute the parent post? The poster has a valid point - Linus Torvalds is not a usablilty expert any more than Steven Hawking is an interior designer.

Linus Torvalds is a brilliant man, but he has also been known to be opinionated, and to occasionally say things that stir people up. See the legendary Tanenbaum vs. Torvalds thread. (Please don't say Linus was correct in that exchange - it's really irrelevant. I mention it only as an example of Linus showing his opinionated engineer self.) However, Linus has learned over the years when to shut up, which is why you will noticed he only sent a few messages to that thread and then you stop seeing messages from him.

I really don't know why people try to cannonize Linus. He's just a guy.

Re:Heh

[Minna Kirai]

skill and UI design skill, I think you're missing the key point of this discussion.

Nope. Linus's qualifications as a UI designer shouldn't actually be under dispute- his ability as a UI critic is more important. It's easier to judge than to build. You don't have to be a director to tell if a film scene was good or bad.

Did Linus design a PUI, or even attempt to contribute to one? No. He simply pointed out that GNOME is much worse than KDE, Windows, or Mac.

One does very little to inform the other.

UI design and kernel design are both functional creative skills, which means they are at least 10,000 times more similar than astrophysics (an investigative science) and interior decorating (an artistic expression of taste).

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[cryptoguy]

A lot of people just use whatever the distribution installes by default.

Ah, the age-old battle

[metlin]

It depends on what you're using it for.

Are you a geek, who wants a productive interface? KDE is the way to go - actually, I prefer Windowmaker myself.

OTOH, are you an end user who wants a simplified UI? Gnome is the way to go.

Linus, obviously, is a geek and chooses the former. However, that does not make the choice universal.

That's the best part about Linux and Open Source in general, isn't it? The freedom to choose and use what suits you the best?

Re:Ah, the age-old battle

[JoeCommodore]

Isn't it the other way around?

If you are a geek who wants a simplified user interface use Gnome.

If you are a user who wants a more productive Interface use KDE.

----

My opinion, I find Gnome limiting in what I can do, I enjoy the KDE experience more. BUT as KDE has many more features some of them need to be refined/finished. On both more documentation would be nice.

In spite of those KDE is still my choice.

Re:Ah, the age-old battle

[IAmTheDave]

Are you a geek, who wants a productive interface? KDE is the way to go - actually, I prefer Windowmaker myself. OTOH, are you an end user who wants a simplified UI? Gnome is the way to go.

See, I disagree. As a bit of a power user - or at least not your average end user - most of what I do beyond normal desktop applications, surfing, and word processing involves a terminal window.

I suffer from mild OCD, and to me simplicity means calm, it means an enhanced ability to concentrate, and it means a better experience overall. KDE, to me, seems so incredibly cluttered and overreaching/overbearing that I shy away from it at every possible moment.

So again, this goes back to simply a matter of preference. Some like KDE, some like Gnome, some like E, but here's my problem. For Linus to get involved in this is just wrong. He can say he uses KDE, that's fine, but to put down Gnome as detrimental to society is base, ill-informed, and callus. If people don't like Gnome, fine, let them be. But this "disease" of which he speaks affects my mom and grandparents, and yeah, they sure as hell can find their way around a Gnome base installation better and faster than they can around KDE base installation.

So instead of Linus putting down Gnome, he should have simply stated what he used and left it at that. He practically started the entire "choice" movement, and to not encourage such choice is just not right... IMO of course.

Re:Ah, the age-old battle

[LnxAddct]

Heh, here is a great quote from Nat Friedman's response. "And probably some KDE developers are feature sluts who never saw a checkbox they didn't love, exposing users to all kinds of broken features." Its funny because its true. For all the simplicity Gnome strives for, KDE certainly does have some issues with the check boxes and only half-working functionality. Its ashame Linus started this little flame fest, this comes just after a very successfuly meeting of a whole bunch of developers from both camps who met up and discussed how to improve interfaces.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Ah, the age-old battle

[bill_kress]

> For Linus to get involved in this is just wrong.

I disagree. Everyone has an opinion, for us to put more weight on his opinion than anyone elses--that's wrong.

He's just human, well, except for the pissing lightning thing, but that doesn't make his opinion any better--just his aim.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Ravalox]

I respectfully disagree, I like KDE but there is absolutely a need for simplification in the linux world. I think Gnome was chosen for Ubuntu, for example, for very sound reasons. The notion that simplifying your interface being an idiot attractor is true, but that's not a bad thing. Idiots are people too, when we talk about our interfaces and what software we like we have to understand that we are perhaps an exlusive 8 percent of the world population, if that. There are a lot of people out there that haven't had the educational opportunities we enjoy. Giving them free software they can use seems like something we shouldn't sneer at.

Torvalds is 'out there'

[amightywind]

Linus is increasingly 'out there' in his hyperbolic statements. First the BitKeeper fiasco, now the start of a new Gnome/KDE flamewar. Ever read his daily postings on kernel trap? They are obnoxious. I am surprised the kernel effort holds together as well as it does. I personally take his statements on Gnome as anti-advice. He is becoming a most unsafe guardian. Can anyone imagine who would lead the kernel effort if Linus was shoved aside?

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[millahtime]

you are going to completely get moded down here. Not because you may not be right, but because Linus is worshiped here like a god. Many people here follow him like sheep.

On an interesting note, I have read that the development of Linux compares more to the development of Gnome than KDE so this is suprising.

Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Aboslutely. With Linus heading the Linux community and many people view him like a 'god' how big is his head these days?

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[webwalker]

I've been noting it over a about a three year period. His early humility that many found attractive in a leader has given way to the hubris typical of someone like RMS. (Smarts have nothing to do with it; they will only get you so far.)

I've used KDE and GNOME and presently use GNOME at home and at work because it meets my modest needs. Perhaps KDE has improved drastically since I used it in the SUSE 8 days; then it was so unstable I could cause it to crash by staring at the screen too hard. GNOME is more bloated than I'd like, and occasionally wonky if you are the type that wants to hole up in a dark closet, under a blanket and "play with yourself", reconfiguring your desktop repeatedly because you don't have any real work to do. If I leave the config alone, it is stable and doesn't give me any grief.

Perhaps I'll take the plunge and switch to KDE when the next Ubuntu rolls. But it would be a shock for my wife, who I have finally gotten broken in to GNOME. She operates in both the Windows and GNOME desktop environments, and doesn't have to (and doesn't WANT to) drop to the command line in either.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[110010001000]

Its called 'ego'. It occurs frequently when you are only surrounded by people who only tell you how great you are and worship at your feet. Typically what happens is that the person starts believing that, and becomes more and more obnoxious and less useful. You see this happening frequently in the tech world: look at people like Ellison, Ballmer, Jobs. They all think they are the saviour of tech and know the "one true way" to do things. Eventually they become comical shadows of the people they once were.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[jandrese]

Cripes guys, I must not be reading his statement the same way you are. To me, Linus said "Eh, I don't much like Gnome, they oversimplified it, when people ask I tell them I prefer KDE now", to everyone else it's some sort of prophetic revelation from God or something.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[Anonymous Coward]

Now who was getting arrogant again? Maybe you are right, maybe you are not. From the statements here on slashdot I certaintly can't derive it in anycase, not enough data. Maybe it is clearer in the kernel lists, but I havn't heard any complaints from there yet.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[slavemowgli]

As far as Linus is concerned (I won't comment on the KDE vs. Gnome thing)... well, I'm not sure which Linus you have looked at, but the idea that "early humility" changed to "hubris" over the course of a "three year period" is pretty bizarre. Linus has always had strong opinions on stuff, and he's never been afraid to voice them (remember his discussion with Tanenbaum about the merits of monolithic kernels in general and Linux in particular? That was in early 1992, almost 14 years ago.

Really, the only thing that has changed is how people perceive Linus. He used to be just another guy; nowadays, he's a celebrity of sorts, and he's going through all the same phases that all celebrities go through: first, there is a horde of fanboys who religiously follow everything he says, but at a certain point, it becomes en vogue to religiously bash him and everything he says instead. This is the transition you're observing (and, for that matter, that you seem to be part of), but it's important to realise that it has nothing to with Linus or his opinions as such. (I predict that later on, things will slowly return to normal after bashing him is not the "hot new thing" anymore; and then, he will be idolised again, until the whole cycle repeats itself.)

If you actually read what Linus says - not just on this topic, but in general -, you'll notice one thing: he himself doesn't care. What he *does* care about is technical superiority and the like, but not politics; as such, he never has been afraid to speak his opinion, and he isn't right now, either, and - maybe most important! - he doesn't expect people to take it as anything except for the opinion of one guy.

You should do the same thing. If Gnome works for you and your wife - fine! More power to you. And if Gnome does not work for Linus - fine! More power to him! It's OK to have a discussion about the technical merits (and if you read what Linus said, you'll find that he actually bases his opinions on technical merit pretty much all the time, and certainly in this issue, too), but the kind of celebrity-bashing you're exhibiting here is just as bad as the celebrity-adoring that you mourn in others. Make up your own mind based on what you need; and discuss technical merits, but leave it at that, and respect the fact that others don't agree with you.

Re:Torvalds is 'out there'

[Jesus 2.0]

If you actually read what Linus says - not just on this topic, but in general -, you'll notice one thing: he himself doesn't care. What he *does* care about is technical superiority and the like, but not politics; as such, he never has been afraid to speak his opinion, and he isn't right now, either, and - maybe most important! - he doesn't expect people to take it as anything except for the opinion of one guy.

Yeah, right.

A person who wasn't interested in politics, and who was merely speaking his opinion and expecting nothing but that it will be taken merely as one guy's opinion, would not say "Please, just tell people to use KDE."

Good reason to use GNOME, then

[munehiro]

I think Torvalds is the prototype of power-user.
A large part of gimmicks and interface nazism in today interfaces aims at the average or lower-than-average user. As a long time kde user switched to apple, I quickly realized that most of the use-cases I was used to were difficult to obtain with the OSX interface.

Is that a real problem? Dumb people want dumb interfaces. Smart people want smart interfaces. Give a dumb interface to a smart guy, and you obtain the Torvalds situation. Give a smart interface to a dumb guy and all you'll obtain is whining about its complexity.

Re:Good reason to use GNOME, then

[Karma Farmer]

You're confused. You assume that dumb interfaces are simple, and smart interfaces are complex. In fact, the opposite is almost always true.

Re:Good reason to use GNOME, then

[beforewisdom]

Is that a real problem? Dumb people want dumb interfaces. Smart people want smart interfaces. Give a dumb interface to a smart guy, and you obtain the Torvalds situation. Give a smart interface to a dumb guy and all you'll obtain is whining about its complexity.

I agree with the spirit of your paragraph, but I strongly object to the letter of it and I think it belies a major attitude problem which is holding OSS back.

It is not about "smart vs dumb", it is about convenience and wanting/not wanting to deal with a task someone doesn't find interesting.

Linus was making the point that he wanted his task to be convenient, not that he was intellectually incapable of doing it. In that regard he is like almost every other user out there. The question becomes whose convenience interface people program for.

Linus doesn't deal with the same level of users

[nlinecomputers]

I run my own computer business and supporting idiot users is something I must do everyday. I prefer KDE but I think many users can benefit from gnome. I think many can use a Mac easier then Windows. There is merit to having a GUI that is KISS.

My personal experience using Gnome and KDE...

[Vexler]

Gnome has always seemed to me to be a UI made to look excessively [fill in the blank]: Cute, shiny, hiding the ugly (but important) functional details underneath a glossy appearance. I started using Gnome initially when I didn't know about KDE. I switched over to KDE when I realized that KDE gives me more flexibility to customize the UI to my heart's desire, whereas Gnome is starting to look more like what Windows would have looked like had Bill Gates ported that UI to run on *nix platforms.

Torvalds no longer represents Linux as a whole.

[Scoria]

From his message:

it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion, but Linux has grown beyond the scope of "just" Linus Torvalds. The freedom of choice that we enjoy as users of the operating system is among its finest attributes.

Is it possible that Gnome and KDE are simply designed for different audiences? Newbies and other users may enjoy the more straightforward approach that the Gnome developers strive for. Slightly more advanced users such as Linus may prefer a different UI. (I kid, I kid!)

Inevitable

[BenjyD]

I was wondering how long it would take for this discussion to come up on Slashdot. It's noteworthy really only because Linus comes across as a 13 year old arsehole in almost all of his messages: if they hadn't been written by "The Linus Torvalds", I doubt people like Nat and Havoc would bother writing such well-thought-out replies to such unpleasant, ignorant flames.

Re:Inevitable

[Electrum]

Using "FUCKING IDIOT" in caps on a mailing list is fairly childish behaviour

Perhaps, but his point is dead-on. He says the same thing as Joel's Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth.

Re:Inevitable

[Sathias]

Using "FUCKING IDIOT" in caps on a mailing list is fairly childish behaviour, I think.

It does make me wonder what the /. reaction would be if someone else did that, say Steve Ballmer for instance.

Once again: Linus is not God!

[grasshoppa]

So stop taking what he says as gospel. Yes, he is incredibly intelligent. And yes, he has a very good grasp about what's going on most of the time.

However, this is the same guy that got upset at the Samba guy for reversing bitkeeper.

I'm not arguing with his statement, btw. I've always liked KDE better than gnome. What I am saying is let the poor man have his opinion without starting a flame war.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[adamjaskie]

"Users will vote with their own desktop."

Ugh. You mean one will 'win' in the end, and we will get "one desktop to rule them all, one desktop to find them"? No thanks. Give me choice. I, for one, use neither KDE nor Gnome.

Not really a cogent argument

[DrXym]

A clean and simple desktop isn't just for "idiots". Personally I like a desktop which puts 95% of the functionality that most users are ever likely to need in front of them and hides the rest. If I as a power user (which I am) absolutely positively need to do something not in the UI I can simply drop to the command line or even write my own power tools for the job.

KDE is too keen to put every single bloody option whether advanced or not straight in your face, rendering it a pain to find the simple settings. Not only that but the defaults are horrible including the single-click-to-launch paradigm. I spent a good while looking to change that behaviour, foolishly thinking it might set be somewhere desktop prefs which it isn't - it's in the mouse settings. On top of that, you only have to look at Konq or KMail and you'll see six or seven menu items in a row starting with Configure.

The one thing you can hand to KDE is that it is consistent, but it sorely needs to be streamlined. It's not hard to see why enterprise versions of Linux use GNOME - it's so much simpler and cleaner. I truly expect that supporting 100 KDE users would be significantly more work work than 100 GNOME users.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[molnarcs]

You are an expert in operating system kernels. Please keep to what you do best. Users will vote with their own desktop. There is no need for you to teach people what GUI and desktop to use.

Yeah, well, he didn't make an announcment or a press release you know... He voiced his opinion on a mailing list - and I think Linus is pretty good at that :)

Incidentally, I had exactly the same experience. I migrate users to free software, and we offer two choices: FreeBSD backend, Kubuntu desktop. Why? The same reasons he cites. In the past two years, we heard a lot of "usability" noise from GNOME devs, and imho they are all bogus. Why? Because people throw around words like "usability" too easily, leading to circular or unsubstantial arguments, while real usability studies are not conducted at all. I haven't read a serious usability study for a long time. (maybe this will change with openusability and all). And no, I don't consider a study conducted with people who are absolute computer illiterate (not knowing that the right mouse button is good for something) representative. They are a very specific subset of users, they are NOT the majority, and making design decisions based on experiments conducted on this very small subset of the userbase is WRONG. That is Linus' point. Is he politically correct? Of course not (" This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.")

My girlfriend is absolutely computer illiterate: she thinks (well, thought) that Office is the OS that runs on his laptop. Being lazy and all she often sits down to my computer (instead of opening her laptop) to browse the net. Sometimes she doesn't even notice that instead of firefox, she is using konqueror. There is a small set of functionality that users expect at specific areas of your screen: first buttons should be back and forward, they expect an input field for URLs at the top, maybe a google search bar... and that's it. If they are there, they are not really "confused" because there are additional buttons (kget, print, even cervisia) to the right side. They don't even notice it. It is the same with the file dialog: were users really bothered by the input field? I very much doubt that - and just like Linus, I was not aware of ctrl + L until someone told me here on ./. And in the past years, I hear one bogus "usability" claim from these so called "usability experts" after another (spatial nautilus anyone?) No evidence, no empirical study, just "we say so as usability experts" with some outlandish theory to back it up... so yeah, I think he is right on spot (and yeah, yeah, we know, diplomacy is not his forte).

It's about time?

[saskboy]

Someone important had to take a stand on this issue. Gates is probably wringing his hands today in worry, now that people can focus their efforts on KDE. Gnome isn't dead, but it's time to relegate it to the backroom distributions that want to use it, and present a unified front[end] for consumer distributions.

Imagine if the Windows Start button looked different on all distributions of Windows since 95? [The XP changes don't count, much]. Consmers need a "look" that says, "This is a linux computer and I like that". They don't need to be looking at a computer and wondering, "Is this Guhnome, or KDE... I want a doughnut."

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are an expert in telling people what they are expert in, what they should be doing, and what they should not be doing?

Extremely smart people tend to be multitalented. At the very least, you have no reason to say "You are an expert in operating system kernels. Please keep to what you do best."

You may either:
1. Refute Linus' rationale concerning Gnome vs. KDE;
2. Refute Linus' qualifications to discuss desktop interfaces (which you have NOT);
3. Keep silent and appear rational; or
4. Affirm your statement and appear to be an irrational sophist.

To use your logic, you are an expert in demonstrably ugly and confusing flowcharts. Please keep to what you do "best."

Re:Havoc's Response

[Stalyn]

In order to turn off the ugly minimizing animation that comes with metacity you actually have edit the code and cut out the relevant part*. People have submitted patches to make this an option but all have been refused. Linus is right. Gnome developers don't care about their users. I still use Gnome cause I like the look and feel but if you want to change certain parts you basically have to either edit the code or use their system registry editor. In a twisted sense, Gnome is for power users.

*There might be an option to turn this off in the system registry but it also turns off other features. For example a window now turns into a wireframe when you drag it.

Re:In defense of Gnome

[RootsLINUX]

You can use Konquerer as your file manager while in Gnome. I use it for my Debian machine running fluxbox. The reason why I prefer Gnome over KDE these days is because KDE installs all this useless crap that I don't want on my machine. Seriously, some of their micro-apps are just pointless and a waste of space. Best example: "keyes". Who wants to run a program where two eyeballs are constantly following my mouse around the screen? Seriously...

Re:Dude, FVWM

[SCHecklerX]

The problem, of course, is that many apps these days require the gnome libs to run. Look at firefox as an example. Pretty much any GTK2 app will want gnome-settings-daemon running. I personally use Windowmaker with ROX, but I still have to have the gnome daemons running to ensure that fonts and such are rendering properly. This combined with rox now using a window for its pinboard (this is apparently the new standard way to do things ... KDE does it too) instead of the root window is annoying. Now I can't have a screen saver or movie running on the root while I work, nor can I easily pin up a windowmaker menu, since releasing the button now makes the menu disappear (I know, don't use a pinboard).

I'd be happy if all of the 'framework' crap just went away and developers would just use standard communication methods between programs. XDnD and XDS are plenty for me, and don't require a friggin' background process.

Re:Bye bye, freedom of choice!

[dorkygeek]

No, he did not want to switch users to KDE. His sentence was solely of rhetoric nature, to show Gnome developers how useless Gnome got during the last releases. Instead of shutting down Gnome, he'd like the development path to take a turn, toward a more configurable desktop.

OSX is proof they are flexible.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. Going from OS9 to OSX was a huge change, one of the largest in the industry. Apple does have specific design guidelines that they would like people to follow when developing apps, but you are not constrained to having to follow them at all.

I would say OSX is the culmination of power and simplicity both rolled into one OS right now. If you feel it is too simple, you can open it right up, or dumb it down completely if you feel there is too much exposed. It's really a point i'd like to see all *nix based OS's to arrive at some day.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[WindBourne]

First, just because somebody is an expert in one thing does not mean that they do not excell in something else.

Second, Linus expressed an opinion on the GNOME list. Linus writes in on both GNOME and KDE. There are 2 types of people that post to BOTH lists;

1. The first cares about OSS and does lots of work
2. The 2'nd is a troll, normally paid from a very large competitor.

Finally, that Linus posted to GNOME in a discussion. He was not teaching. He was holding a discussion with other developers. His postings almost certainly have been taken out of context here on /..

Re:In defense of Gnome

[delete]

The parent makes an interesting about the importance of how well a desktop is maintained on a given distribution. While one may say that either Gnome or KDE is a better, the end-user experience for many users is largely dependent on the integration and packaging done by a particular distribution. As an extreme example, consider the largely unusable KDE packages that Redhat shipped two years ago. Personally I've found that a "polished" and well-integrated version of a given desktop (e.g. Ubuntu on Gnome, KDE on SuSE) is always superior to a poorly maintained desktop, no matter how HCI-compliant or feature-packed that desktop may be.

For many people, the choice of whether to use KDE or Gnome will be automatically dictated by the distribution that they happen to choose. After all, most people aren't particularly concerned with pseudo-religious debates concerning Gtk v Qt or C v C++, especially since we seem to have so many zealots in the real world these days.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Fordiman]

Possibly. Me? I'd like to see KDE functionality with the _ability_ to simplify like gnome (maybe using something similar to xine's settings system.. beginner to master of the known..)

I'd also like to see the Starterbar gDesklet handle KDE's quicklauncher. But dreams are dreams. I'll have to code the damn thing myself.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[jcr]

You are an expert in operating system kernels.

Not hardly. He's an expert in one operating system kernel. Check his exchange with Shapiro about EROS to see Torvalds out of his depth.

-jcr

I use KDE, but GTK is a very important toolkit

[Theovon]

As a desktop environment, I prefer KDE, but when I develop GUIs, I use GTK. Actually, I use wxWidgets, which under Linux, uses GTK. The reason they wrap GTK for Linux is licensing.

When it comes to the Linux kernel, I am a firm believer in open source. Hardware should have open interfaces. This isn't idealism. The kernel needs to be STABLE, and the best way to ensure that is to have drivers open source. This makes the kernel portable and upgradable.

But when it comes to userland, where the kernel is able to isolate a process so that it can't damage anything else, there's less need to be so concerned. Plus, one of the things that's going to bring more open source software to Linux is the adoption of Linux by companies that produce closed-source applications. Oracle for Linux is important because more people will use Linux.

The issue with KDE is the Qt license. It's pure GPL. That means you can't write a Qt-based application without your entire application having to be under GPL. That isn't always favorable. So the wxWidgets people, wanting to be somewhat looser with their licensing, chose GTK, because it uses the LGPL license.

Re:Check out Jeff Waugh's reply

[10Ghz]

Personally, I think Linus ought to know better by now than put out a self-centered post like that. There are more users in the world than just geeks.

He had an opinion on the subject-matter, and he stated it. You are free to disagree with his opinion, but does that mean that he shouldn't voice his opinion? And I don't really see what the fuzz is about. There are quite a few people around the net who are irritated by the removal of features in Gnome. Apparently Linus is one of them. There are also lots of people who prefer KDE, and apparently Linus is one of them.

Aside from being an moral-booster for the KDE-guys, I fail to see the drama in this case. Linus doesn't like GNOME. And he told why he doesn't like GNOME, and his reasons are valid. He's not ordering people to use KDE. He simply said that he recommends KDE over GNOME, and he stated his reasons for doing so. Does this mean that the GNOME-guys are going to pack their bags and start using KDE instead? No. GNOME doesn't need Linus's endorsement to survive.

Like I said, I fail to see the drama here. Is Linus being "self-centered" when he said that "I prefer KDE over GNOME"? That's his personal opinion, and they are all in a way "self-centered", and there's nothing wrong with that. Surely he's entitled to his opinion?

Gnome wins

[blair1q]

Linus is making the biggest mistake all geeks make (myself included, but I learn, he might).

People don't want you to give them lots of features that get in their way.

They want you to give them something intuitive that does the basic things they need done first.

I've used Gnome. It's a very satisfactory system. It'll sell, if you let it. Anything that makes the user think, won't. Because it's just the user-interface model. It's not what they want to think about. They want it to disappear, like a steering wheel or an automatic door.

Re:Gnome wins

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Linus is making the biggest mistake all geeks make (myself included, but I learn, he might).

People don't want you to give them lots of features that get in their way.

They want you to give them something intuitive that does the basic things they need done first.

As a lead developer of Audacity, I have to disagree. Yes, users want a simplified interface that doesn't get in their way. They want the most basic things to be as easy as possible. But once they've done those basic things, they want to do something else. They want more functionality. For any given user, that added functionality is pretty simple - but every user is different. There's not a single feature in Audacity that we could remove that wouldn't upset thousands of users - and not just power users - ordinary users who really just need that one feature!

Making an interface simple is good. Removing functionality isn't.

Re:Gnome wins

[blair1q]

"Advanced button"???

Sheesh.

Call it "MP3 Export Options".

Please.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[Jason Hood]

So let me guess, you are a gnome user =)

Linus is a programmer, a very good one. He has simply pointed out the corner that gnome has painted themselves into by not utilizing true OO principles and modern design patterns. This a fact, not an opinion and is evident to any modern programmer. Gnome needs a paradigm shift to survive the long term. The KDE developers have put great effort into the KDE framework and it has paid off big time. Unfortunately, this meant the have ignored usability concerns. But usability is far easier to correct than poor frameworks and the lack of truely reusable code.

I use gnome on my desktop at home and KDE at work. But its common sense as to which platform has the better implementation.

Re:Perl?

[rknop]

I know and use many programming languages, but Perl is not something that anyone outside of a programming professional "ought to know". If anything, it's the opposite: they ought to stay away from it, and learn a language with a halfway sane syntax and semantics, as opposed to a warmed-over Unixy shell scripting language that went through a brief period of overuse during the dotcom bubble.

Hey, you love your language, I'll love mine.

The truth is that I don't care if they know Perl or something else. I'm not asking professional-level programming here. I'm asking them to Get Shit Done with Unix. Read files, write files, multiply a column of numbers by something else, plot something. It's the sort of stuff I used to do in C back when I was in grad school, but is easier to do in Perl. Perl is a great language for Getting Shit Done for many of us, even if it doesn't satisfy somebody's anal-retentive definition of Proper.

-Rob

Re:In defense of Gnome

[kfg]

I'm recovering from a HD crash a couple of days ago (5 year old IBM Deathstar. Didn't even give a death rattle. Bearing just gave out a squeak and that was all for it. Right in the middle of a backup, just to rub it in). I'm a firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," so most of my software is years old as well.

Well, things are definately broke now, so I figured it was a good time to play.

So I installed Breezy Badger. It's my first look at Ubuntu and what has become of Gnome these days.

I spent the first half hour figuring out how to get something other 640x480 resolution, then about 10 minutes or so looking for how to turn off windows animations, which it turns out you can't do without going under the hood. Something about their "philosophy."

And this is the award winning, "User Friendly" distro? Treating your users like idiots, but making them have "guru" skills just to play an mp3 is "friendly"? Good thing the average user only plays vorbis files, eh?

Fuck their "philosophy." Gnome not only does not do what I want it to do but appears to go out of its way to set up roadblocks to keep me from doing it.

But at least it runs "go out for coffee" slow, so I've got that going for me.

I think I'll try Slack and Ratpoison next. You can at least get things done that way.

KFG

Gnomes biggest Sin? Win-Registry style design

[geohump]

Gnome has three problems all centered around how it manages its applications:
#1 All applications store their configuration data together in one place
#2 Configuration data is not human readable or editable.
#3 Configuration data is not designed to be easily read and manipulated by other UNIX tools (All Data is an XML markup format and can only be manipulated by tools which are schema aware and schema compliant)

This duplicates all of the worst design characteristics of the Windows Registry system.

The gnome design approach is deeply and fundamentally flawed.

The biggest problem with gnome is its design "decision" to copy the
Windows Registry paradigm. "decision" is in quotes because I am guessing that the Gnome designers just automatically used that type of design after being exposed to windows.

Every Gnome app is broken. Why:

Because every Gnome app must register all of its configuration and
setting information in the gnome "registration system" which is primarily
a functional copy of the worst design decision Microsoft ever made.

(Or their best one since it forces many home users to buy a new computer
every three years, cause "this one is slowing down too much")

The Windows registry system forces all application thru the same choke
point containing a data set the grows rapidly and continuously over time.

As the data set (Registry info) becomes larger and larger the speed of
access to the registry gets slower and slower, finally dragging the system to
its knees.

At this point, unless the user has professional help advising them to reformat
and re-install everything, a task which most fear deeply and reasonably
avoid, many users will go out and buy a new Windows
PC and start the same cycle all over again.

What has this to do with Gnome?

Simple. Gnome has the same problem and they got there by ignoring the
most basic design principles of UNIX put forth by the creators of UNIX in
1978 in the July/August edition of the Bell System Technical Journal.

These design principles can be summarized by one statement:
Keep It Simple Stupid.

Every book or article published about the UNIX design philosophy all say
the same thing and yet, GNOME broke those rules.

How to fix it:
Decentralize config info collections
use human readable/editable text in config files
make sure that the config data can be manipulated by traditional Unix tools
when used as filters.

Until these changes are made Gnome is a more a Windows system than a *NIX
tool.

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeccccccchhhhhhhhhhh.

Think of the poor students!

[alienmole]

Hey, you love your language, I'll love mine.

That's kind of the point. You'd apparently like to push your language love onto poor unsuspecting physics students. I'm saying that Perl is not an appropriate choice of language for a physics student. I'm not saying that "I love my language". I'm saying that of the many languages I've programmed in, including Perl, Perl is one of the last ones I'd foist on someone else who's not a programming professional.

Re:Think of the poor students!

[BlueStraggler]

Perl is one of the last ones I'd foist on someone else who's not a programming professional.

Physicists are programming professionals. They deal with data sets, analysis problems, and hardware configurations that are way beyond the cutting edge. They build their own supercomputing clusters, write their own grid processing systems, build advanced data analysis frameworks, and fork their own Linux distros. At the physics lab where I worked for 15 years, if a physics grad student was incapable of learning a little Perl (and C, C++, Fortran, Java, TeX, and a couple of shells, and maybe some Python and Ruby) they didn't get their degree.

When launching a new physics project, it was a very serious concern which programming languages you chose to do your software development in. If you were conservative and went with a legacy language like Fortran because of all the pre-existing analysis software available, you had trouble attracting grad students to the project, because they wanted more marketable languages on their resumes. The reason is because if they decided to get out of physics one day, their strongest job prospects are in computing and data analysis.

My major complaint with the new gnome file dialog

[Dan Ost]

All I want to know is how do I make the new Gnome file dialog let me traverse directories that start with a dot. I recently was forced to switch to evolution for email and have since been forced to make symbolic links to all my dot-directories in order to make use of them.

Is there a better way?

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Curien]

God, you have an inflated sense of self-worth. Let me fill you in on a little secret: knowing how to survive by hunting/gathering on the savannah, build a house, or build a car from scratch are much more "elite" skills than being able to write papers about long-term effects of Charles VIII's invasion of Italy in 1494 or even the ability to write your own window manager.

Re:Torvalds is right. Avoid GNOME use KDE!

[Pxtl]

Honestly, I think the best approach would be to follow an approach similar to apple and MS before MS jumped on the VM bandwagon. Running a VM is a huge and unnecessary overhead, since developing in C# isnt' really that much easier than any other OO language if you're using a solid safe library.

Just use C++ - and have strict code conventions. No arrays except for optimized internal loops - only safe vectors. No unmanaged "new"s - only refcounted or auto_ptrs for heap objects. With auto_ptrs, no pointers - only weak references. Pick a common C++ library to use for common problems that aren't in the standard library (eg. XML serialization).

Then you can take advantage of OSS and do platform-specific compiles and get optimal speeds, but also get the safety and ease provided by VMs.

Then, pick a standard scripting platform. Think lightweight - monsters like Python and even worse Mono/.NET have too much overhead. Something more like TCL or Lua. Use that platform for scripted interactions, serialization, and quick config tools. Sure, it would be slower than C#, but if you need speed you should be coding natively anyways.

Switching to a VM means you always have a bloated VM running, and that keeps your platform off of lighter hardware when there's no reason to be. Except for introspection, C++ has most of the tools available to these VM-langauges at a fraction of the speed/memory cost. VMs fill a space between native apps and scripting languages that generally isn't necessary for desktop apps.

The only real advantage I see to standardising on .NET/Mono is language-agnosticism, since multiple languages can target the platform.

Re:Linus, Thank You for Sharing

[badriram]

So if the same comment was written by someone else it is troll.... Why is that? Judge a comment by it content and context, not by who ever wrote it. How do you know the thought process that went in when a "Troll" writes it compared to Linus. For all you know they had the exact same reasons to write this, and probably both were mentioning to improve it. Your comment smacks of elitism if nothing else.

But i do agree his post seems be completely taken out of context.

Ps. not beating up on linus, just using him as an example....

Re:He Should Have Said....

[Directrix1]

How do we even know that this really is Linus Torvalds to begin with? An email to a mailing list could EASILY be spoofed. And just to throw in my oppinion, I'm a programmer and "Linux Power User", if I really wanted balls to the wall configurability, I just drop down to a terminal. For every single other instance in the universe Gnome works, works well, and is not cluttered by crap I might use once every 10,000 years. It does have some short comings, but they appear to be getting addressed so I frankly don't give a crap what this guy says. And now I can't wait for the next scheduled release.

Re:Interfaces should target dummies by default

[naelurec]

Problem with focusing exclusively on the "dumb users" as you put it, is the fact you limit the flexibility and scope of the system. As many have pointed out, simple configuration changes on Gnome could require registry hacks or worse, modification to souce code and a recompile of the system. Ouch.

Ideally these "dumb users" after using a given environment will expand their knowledge and no longer fit the mold of the "dumb user". Sadly, without an environment that can grow with them, they are stuck.

Solution? First, don't take a lowest-common-denominator perspective. Build a system that empowers those with the skills to expand and enhance the system by providing a rich API. Second, encourage an initial, simplified experience that allows neophytes to be productive quickly but strategicly place those advance features in such a way that the user can slowly learn and become more productive with the system.

Thats why I think KDE is a better overall system. It provides enough familiarity with desktop environment concepts people already learned to be productive quickly but also provides features to help users become more and more productive with their system (attaching scripts to the right-click menu, dcop, ioslaves, development enviornments, pykde, etc..).

I agree, but

[beforewisdom]

I agree with the philosophy that is wrong to clutter an interface with every possible option.

It intimidates ordinary people and drives them away. It also irritates power users who do not use those options all of the time, but who have to step around them when they put in an "all of the time location".

For example, I love the KDE, but I never saw why it was necessary to have the option to add a device on my context menu for my mouse. That is something I do once in a blue moon. The context menu is for things people do all of the time.

Is there a happy medium? Can power user options be exposed and easy, while at the same time keeping them out of everyone's face on a day to day level?

Re:"Dumbed down interfaces"

[labratuk]

So you're supposed to try every meta-key/click combo on every widget to find out what features an app has?

Intuitive.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Cromac]

Just because 1% of the worlds population has a four year degree doesn't mean only 1% of the population is capable of earning it. Getting a BA isn't exactly a difficult task, paying for one is harder for most people than earning it.

Only about 1 in 1000 people who start martial arts earn a black belt that's 0.1% and since most people don't even try martial arts it having a black belt far more "elite" than a 4 year degree right? Wow, I didn't relealize how l33t I really was!

Re:My Opinion

[Taevin]

I thought that was a good thing? The 100% free software (as in beer) folks aside, isn't a situation where a company sells a product but gives away their software (under the GPL no less) for use in open source programs a good thing?

Re:Perl?

[Minna Kirai]

Perl is interesting because it was developed by a linguist and modelled after human languages

That's a myth- a retroactive redefinition of the origin. Perl's design was taken as a union of the styles of sh, C, and awk. The only way to base it less on human speech would be to mix some Lisp in there.

The fact that Perl programs can whimsically shift between so many different approaches to describing a program is part of the reason it's risky to suggest to low-intensity developers.

rather than by a Math geek modelled after a strict theoretical model

That much is true. A language based even roughly on math principles will have some coherency to it. Perl's willingness to combine all varieties of syntax (including, as you point out, some created solely for perverse amusement) can easily be seen as more of a flaw than a charming advantage.

Re:Sod Gnome & KDE

[cloudmaster]

Just out of curiosity, what do you do with your computer where animated backgrounds and eye candy are the most important features - more important that ease of use, stability, or generally predictable behavior?

BTW, the Gnome menu's not hard to edit unless you're afraid of a text editor. ;)

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[markhb]

While there should definately [sic] be effort put into making something simpler for new users to use, it should NOT ever be used as an excuse to remove functionality beneficial to those who have more experience.

I find it interesting that others on this board will use a nearly exact opposite of that argument in the form of "If you don't use it, it's bloat!"

Re:Havoc's Response

[starnix]

There was a feature similar to that in Nautilus when it first came out. No one used it so it was taken out.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[pajor]

To Quote Linus:

No.

That's not what I'm talking about at all.

When user interfaces means that something CANNOT BE DONE, it's not about
"usable design" any more. At that point, it's about UNusable design.

Any Gnome people who argue that it's about "usability" have their heads up
their asses so far that it's not funny. I've argued with them about this
before, and I know others have too, and mostly given up.

"Usability" is an issue only if you can do something at all. But if you
can't do the thing at all, it's pointless to talk about usability: the
thing is BY DEFINITION not usable if it cannot be used for a specific
task.

Then a person that claims that it's usable for something else is a FUCKING
IDIOT.

And in that FUCKING IDIOT vein:

> The majority of end-users want a simple printer dialog.

This is a great example of being a F.I.

There is no such thing as a "majority of end users" in general. For
example, maybe _I_ am in what you _claim_ to be a majority, in that I
want a simple printer dialog - because I have a simple printer, and
even simpler printer needs.

So a simple printer dialog doesn't bother me, and as such you can count me
in your "majority".

But I can guarantee you one thing: the _vast_ majority of people are part
of a specific minority when it comes to something. This is somethign that
the F.I. "interface designers" in the Gnome sense seems to continually
overlook.

For example, maybe I don't care about printers. But I _do_ care about my
mouse. If I can't control the left/middle/right button actions, I get
really upset. Again, the "majority" of people may not care, so by your
majority argument, the mouse setup should be so simple that the majority
of people can never get confused. But I _do_ care.

In other words: your "majority" argument is total and utter BULLSHIT. It
can be true for any particular feature, but it's simply not true in
general.

To put it in mathematical terms: "The Intersection of all Majorities is
the empty set", or its corollary: "The Union of even the smallest
minorities is the universal set".

It's a total logical fallacy to think that the intersection of two
majorities would still be a majority. It is pretty damn rare, in fact,
because these things are absolutely not correlated.

And the technical term for somebody who claims to do user interface design
and not understand this fact is a "FUCKING IDIOT".

And this has _nothing_ to do with "technical users". Even totally
non-technical users care about something. In fact, it might be their
printer, and having a way to set the paper type and resolution by hand.

Another way of saying this: we're _all_ "special" some way. We're damn
quirky, even the nontechnical among us.

But hey, just continue to remove all that confusing functionality from
Gnome. I don't care. I voted with my feet.

                Linus

Re:KDE has superior apps, more energetic users &am

[kimvette]

That something does not render the same in other browsers as it does in MSIE does not mean the other browsers are broken; it's more likely that MSIE is broken, and as soon as MSIE 7.0 gains dominance in the Windows market, your site will break since MSIE 7.0 will render sites more closely to the way Konqueror does than to the current MSIE, especially if you are using higher-level DTDs. Microsoft knows their browser is broken and they have a lot of work to meet web standards, so if you're coding for MSIE quirks to get things to render correctly, you might find your site breaking in the near future. MSIE 7 will supposedly be detecting for the use of older quirks but if you are using a higher DTD all bets may be off.

Re:Right but wrong

[richlv]

now that somebody has mentioned gimp, i will write my little rant here.
gimp is the gtk app i use the most. i immediately noticed changed open/save window. it seemed pretty nice overall, but lack of address bar was driving me nuts.
then somebody mentioned that typing "/" would allow to enter path directly. this was pretty nice, but there are two things that make this dialogue so irritating i prefer clicking instead of writing.
first, if i start typing with ~, this doesn't work.
second, if autocomplete kicks in, it works _completely different from any other app_ and BLOODY AWKWARDS.

i have screamed at my monitor how much i hate it.
let's say, i have a directory "/mnt/net" i want to get to by typing it. what i get is "/mnt/net/t/net". wtf ?

turns out, if autocomplete kicks in and it has only one suggestion, my further typing _is not_ replacing the suggestion, it is appended to it. if this is not a bug, somebody has seriously screwed up.

basically, if i type a path in, i type it pretty fast. current implementation basically forces me to pause after each bloody character to see wether i will be able to continue my writing or something has been autocompleted.

this implementation has so many problems i am surprised it was pushed in this state, especially given all these usability zealots :)

see http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-Dece mber/msg00028.html for some examples (including starting with ~)

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Philip K Dickhead]

At different times in my life.

Timelines were roughly:
KDE 1.0/E pre .07, .13 1997
Gnome 1.2 1999
KDE 3.0 2002
Gnome 2.x 2004

Gnome 2 KILLED me. Really awful and stunted, when it came out. I hadn't looked at KDE in about 3 years, and was very surprised at what was done - especially KIO slaves, etc. I ran my app/pen platform on OpenBSD and Debian w/ KDE 3.x, including betas.

Now, I work for the 'other side'. I have limited time to check out X front ends, but when I fire up Ubuntu, I can see where Gnome was heading when it went 2. The teams UI guidelines are minimalistic. In the early stages this meant 'crippled.'

In rough terms, I think Gnome is aiming to be the OSX to KDEs Windows. Windows is striving to be OSX, now!

Fat Chance.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[Octorian]

If you oversimply the GUI interface, then you are limiting yourself to basically two user groups: "grandma" and "the ubergeek who can drop to the shell and do it all there"

The problem is that for MANY windows users (who actually know how to use Windows), this paradigm is *useless*. They need a useful and configurable GUI that actually exposes all the options, and would be able to FIGURE IT OUT. (while "dropping to the shell and poking at config files" would probably still baffle them)

Re:"Dumbed down interfaces"

[theurge14]

What's clear to you may not be clear to me. Having 300 icons on a toolbar with menus that go 5-6 levels deep for common tasks (Microsoft Outlook) isn't my idea of a productive interface. Make the common tasks easy to find, and if any power users want the power options, they should be power users enough to know how to go looking for them, be it a customized toolbar or a alternate keypress.

But hey, if you don't like it, do what Linus says!

Re:Humans linguists should stick to human language

[johnnyb]

"Do you think that the "modelling after human languages" thing was a success?"

Yes, but not in the way that you are thinking. It was a success, not because it is easier or harder to learn, but because I can be more expressive in Perl than in other languages.

One of the great things that I love about Perl is that you can rearrange statements. I can say:

if($x) {
    blahblahblah()
}

or I can say

blahblahblah() if $x;

In the former, I am emphasizing (to myself and other programmers after me) that the condition is more important, while in the latter I am emphasizing the action as having the importance.

Likewise, moving often-used idioms into the core language is a feature of human languages that he imported into Perl. While most programming languages would opt for several features of Perl to be libraries (like RegEx), Perl has it as a part of the syntax of the language itself. Importing the core idioms of a population into a language is something that real languages do.

Having both "if" and "unless" is a very human-language thing to do, and it makes it more obvious what you are trying to do in your program than a bunch of "if(! )"s.

The beauty of Perl is that programming in Perl is much more expressive than programming in other languages. The point is not to be "easier for noobs", but for the meaning in the program to be better conveyed to other programmers who are fluent in the language.

Having a pronoun is also very linguistic.

A more specific list of human-language features of Perl is here:

http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/perl/linguistic s.html

Re:KDE vs. Gnome. Ready...FIGHT!

[leereyno]

Yes but 25% of Americans have such a degree, and something like 5% have a masters level degree.

The reason is that most of the world lives in abject poverty where education, if it exists at all, is extremely limited. So it should come as no surprise that only 1% of the population has such a degree, given that 80% of the population never makes it past the equivalent of 4th grade.

But then you're not competing with those guys, you're competing with the other 25% who have a degree like yours.

He is not the Messiah

[goon]

'... Brian: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
Woman: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity! ...' [0]

The only statements Linus make that I listen to or really care about is ones concerning the kernel.[1] Everything else I temper with the knowledge that Linus like all of us have personal preferences. His prefereces are not mine. So while I might read about them I certainly don?t waste sleep over them.

'... I think it was, "Blessed are the cheesemakers." ...' [1]

But thats not to say we shouldn?t question them. The Gnome Vs KDE debate has raged ever since KDE has used Qt. And for good reason. If we frame the debate slightly differently say wrt to freedom. You can see there is always going to be a clash between software having the latest functionality, usability and niceness with restrictions and the freedom of doing anything you want without restrictions.

'..."He's not the messiah; he's a very naughty boy." ...' [2]

The error of choice Linus makes (his own to make) is that he wants the pragmatic solution to a problem. This is his strength in developing the kernel. It is also his weakness. If taken at a personal level there is nothing wrong with it.

'... He has given us... his shoe! ...' [3]

When you get the followers picking up their thongs and shouting in agreement and aping their leader this a problem.

'... You've got to think for yourself! You are all individuals! ...' [4]

So say after me kiddies, You are all different! Make your own choose when it comes to desktops. Dont listen to Linus, Choose your own.

Reference
[0] Wikiquote, `Monty Python Life of Brian quotes:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life _of_Brian
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[1] The Linux Kernel Archives, `Kernel HQ the origin of everything wrt the Linux Kernel. Where it is dicussed, disseminated to death. Where Linus really is the the Messiah sometimes & a naughty boy most of the times.`:
http://www.kernel.org
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[2] Wikiquote, Life of Brian, Ibid.
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[3] Wikiquote, Life of Brian, Ibid.
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]
[4] Wikiquote, Life of Brian, Ibid.
[Accessed Wednesday, 14 December 2005]

Good for him...

[chaboud]

My respect for Linus just went up significantly.

He's right about this, and it's good to see that at least one person (and it just happens to be the man at the top) understands that UI simplicity to the point of feature removal is function following form.

It's also nice to see someone dogging the majority user argument. The only argument I regularly encounter that is more idiotic than the majority user argument is the 90% of users argument when discussing features (a factitious variant of the majority user argument). Unless that fabricated 10% is the same 10% every time the other 90% is made up, you'll end up with every user having a problem.

...the best example, GTK

[XO]

And the best example, GTK 2 file dialog. It's been turned into a crippled piece of un-usable garbage, that no longer accepts keyboard input (unless you know the secret shortcut key that they don't tell anyone), and they actually had to add seperate "Open Location" functions (which hardly work) to the Gnome software, because even if you do use the special super secret shortcut key, you can't type in a URL anymore.

  (and of course, Open Location crashes regularly in Linux, and 100% of the time in Windows)

  Good job, Gnome!

Re:KDE has superior apps, more energetic users &am

[FooBarWidget]

I'd say: who the hell cares? I don't care about this stupid GNOME-vs-KDE war that's artificially being kept alive by Slashdot. I use KDE apps in GNOME and vice-versa.

Um...

[StarKruzr]

Hunting and gathering on the savannah is more elite than knowing how to communicate, and more elite than being a good programmer?

*WHY*? Because it's more in keeping with popular anti-Western, anti-intellectual, BACK-TO-ROUSSEAU'S-MAN-OMG bullshit?

A 4-year degree certifies that you have learned how to think about a subject in a certain kind of considered manner. It is DEFINITELY worth something.

And who the hell knows how to "build a car from scratch" without an engineering degree? What the hell does "scratch" even mean in this context? Iron ore? Rubber trees? Petroleum?

bullshit alert

[lubricated]

those are great made up statistics, without a source they may as well be made up.

Not so elite

[Dire Bonobo]

> I remember seeing a poster in college stating that about 1% of the
> world's population has a four year degree. That impressed me. I
> realized that I was becoming part of an elite.

Lesson #1: don't be so easily impressed.

Lesson #2: always question the raw numbers behind statistics.

Getting a four-year degree is dead common in the US - about a third of people aged 25-29 in the US have finished a four-year degree (scroll down to "College Completion").

Apropos to the subject, though, just because someone can learn to use a complex piece of software doesn't mean they want to. For plenty of people, a computer is no more than a tool; they want it to perform a few functions without giving them a lot of hassle, and they couldn't give a damn why or how it does that.

And that's fine.

Most of you don't understand the cars you drive in anything more than an abstract sense, or the planes you fly in, or the processes required to get you the food you eat, or the shoes you wear, or the chemistry involved in your antiperspirant, or any of a million other things that we simply don't have the time or mental energy to learn the detailed working of due to the specialized nature of modern society. Most of those things are just black-box tools---they just work.

And computers are one of those black-box tools for most people.

Accept that fact, or not - I don't care, and neither do they. But pointing out that most people have more important things to spend their time and energy on than computers is hardly "trolling". It's a necessary consideration if you want to make computers that most people will have any interest in using.