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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'.""
I stopped using either a while back, because both of them required too many mouse clicks and interface searching to get them to do what I wanted, and to clone the setup from place to place. Give me an ASCII configuration file that I can just copy any day. No, it's not "user friendly," but it's Geek friendly. I can read the docs.
I've even started setting up new accounts on my machines using FVWM with a sane default configuration. People tend not to futz with their configurations too much anyway, and the startup time and resource usage is just much less without the overhead of KDE. And, what's more, these are all grad students in Physics, and I *want* them to get facile with Unix. They really ought to know enough Perl to read and write files and manipulate numbers, and know a little programming. Having to figure out text configuration files would be a good exercise, as whiny as it may make them....
Not for everybody, but certainly for me. As a geek, I much prefer FVWM to the overhead of Gnome or even KDE.
-Rob
Actually, Gnome works "well enough" these days. It does what I want it to do. This is on Ubuntu. KDE is arguably better, but I don't care much at this point, since Gnome is the better maintained one on Ubuntu.
:-).
I'd love to have Konqueror as a file manager, but also this is in lesser extent than previously. Gnome just doesn't suck anymore
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
The goal is simplicity in all things. Someone shouldn't have to think about what is going on, it should be obvious.
The most interesting thing about that book is that the author applies the same principles he espouses for websites to the book. The book is very easily digestible. So, if it works for the web and it works for the book... what else can it apply to? If you follow this train of thought to its logical conclusion you'll realize it applies to lots and lots of things: your code, desktops, phone VRUs, brochures, etc.
Linus is a smart guy and I respect him, but the goal is simple.
Interesting. 'Interface nazis' (oh look, it's Godwin's Law already) brought consistency to the Mac platform and the Windows platform, and to be honest, that encouraged a lot of success there. Yes there were other issues, but consistency shouldn't be ignored. Additionally, GNOME is getting a lot of play on Ubuntu and Fedora desktops. Consistency breeds ubiquity?
One other thought: maybe this can be a strength of Linux. GNOME takes the intro/simple desktop crowd, KDE takes the ultra-config-alicious crowd. We can start saying things like "Start out with GNOME, but if you feel like a little more control, just check the KDE box when you log in."
Gnome's problem is that, well, they don't have a usable interface design to stick with in the first place. This goes back as far as 2000 - "systems administrators still struggle to install applications on Linux and that antiquated versions of Gnome, a graphical-oriented user interface for the operating system, continue to ship with different distributions of Linux" "http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/st ory/0,10801,54030,00.html"
I was pleasantly surprised to see KDE developpers rally to GNOME's cause, or at least, advocate the use of GNOME for those for whom it works, regardless of their own opinion. Both DEs are there to stay and the sooner people accept this, the sooner we can build a strong integration layer and move on toward world domination. (Which is why the GNOME people really should get rid of Ximian and its DE fundamentalists if they want to make any progress, by the way -- at least until Ximian gets out of their corporate-love funk and re-learn the OSS virtues of collaboration...)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I agree with you. To an extent.
KDE leaves a lot to be desired for an average user, but Gnome lacks some of the things the power user wants.
This is an age old debate that will carry on until someone successfully does both. Apple's have a very well-thought interface, but it is tougher to get "down and dirty" with it. Windows is a little "Grundgier", and then for ultimate control over your interface, you have Linux.
But to a non-Linux user, both Gnome and KDE are intimidating.
Why can't there be a fair compromise. A simple, easy to use interface that behaves just how you would expect it to... and has the power to do anything you could want? It's not an impossibility, and I think it's something that both KDE and Gnome aren't aiming for. Neither is MS or Apple.
Anyone care to accept this task?
Deja Vu
n. 1. The sensation that you've read this very article before.
I've recently switched to a Mac, and I find the UI rather fine. Indeed, I've started using Mail.app, having never found a GUI mailer I liked (I used MH for about fifteen years, then five years of Mutt).
My seven year old also likes Macs. She's found switching the dock to the left and changing her wallpaper easy, and she's very fond of Dashboard.
I think it's quite possible to have a GUI that suits all needs.
ian
Do it. There's a lot of interesting answers. Most interestingly, it seems that the problems which Linus (and popular opinion) ascribes to Gnome user interface design decisons are actually considered bugs by Gnome developers. It seems that, when giving the choice of working on sensible defaults or in advanced configuration options, Gnome devels prefer the first, so that sometimes applications misses the advanced configuration; but they're not actually opposed to them (provided that they have a nice UI, separated from the basic options). It's a matter of priorities.
So Gnome is not about "dumb users", it's about focusing on an usable system out-of-the-box. If you like customizing your WM, you'll probably hate Gnome, because it's not their focus. I hate WM customization, so I like Gnome better than KDE (and ratpoison better than Gnome). OTOH, I love customizing my programming environment, so I like Emacs better tham vim or gedit. Differente things for different people, really.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
I'm a geek who likes productivity and I use Gnome. It's nicer looking, and cleaner. Which is not to say that it's lack of customization doesn't piss me off, and I've tried moving to KDE a few times, but KDEs look & feel is just... icky. Lack of consistent artwork, busy interfaces, lots of popuppy balloony things (the animated tooltips on the Kicker drive me insane - I want the tooltips, but I want small simple ones, not enormous ones with special effects). When someone manages to ship Gnome with the power of KDE, or KDE with the consistency and cleanliness of Gnome, please call me. I still use a few KDE applications - Amarok is way better than Rythmbox, and I switch between KDevelop and Anjuta depending on what I'm doing.
Well this could be the other argument: "Gnome is for idiots, KDE is too, for that matter any windowing system is designed with idiots in mind. They are just dumbed down. My choice is CLI, there are so many programs written for it and it is not intuitive at all, just like a system interface should be."
Laugh, but when I built my first Linux system I got by for almost two years with just the CLI because X wasn't stable enough in those days to run on my crappy Compaq hardware.
ircII epic, a cmdline IM client whose name I can't recall, pine, and MCL. Yeah, I spent most of my time on the internet playing MUDs and chatting on IRC. But I was more then happy with my CLI only Linux box. I didn't even need to boot into Windows to do my banking -- because back in those days my credit union had a dial-in system. They supplied front end software but you could easily access it through minicom if you wanted to.
In fact, other then Firefox and a Word Processor I could almost get by with a CLI only environment in this day and age.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Linus is posting exactly the same as he always had: He says what he thinks, and doesn't pull any punches when doing so. If you think this is "new" behaviour for Linus, you haven't been around long enough. You might want to read this little exchange from 1992:
p pa.html
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/a
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
I like Gnome. A lot. I like not having to be tied into the KDE window manager. I like all sorts of its nifty functionality.
Except, as noted, when said functionality goes away.
This has been happening for *years*. With every new incarnation of Gnome, I wonder what feature is either gone, or disabled by default. Now, granted, disabled-by-default isn't a bad thing, per-se. If you're a savvy user, it's expected that you'll be able to figure out how to enable it. But sometimes, it ain't that easy -- especially when the menu options aren't all that intuitive.
I mean, what the hell's up with their whole funky "system paradigm" in Nautilus? "Intuitive," my ass. How about a simple hierarchy like most every GUI OS sine the Mac, fer Pete's sake?
Argh. It ain't enough to make me switch to KDE -- I *like* Enlightenment, dammit -- but I certainly see where Linus is coming from, and agree wholeheartedly.
I'm sorry, Miguel, Havoc, etc., but in your attempt to figure out how to appeal to the lowest common denominator, you're pushing away "real" users -- the ones who started using Gnome in the first place, 'cause it didn't try to wrap them up in KDE-cotton.
Sure, advanced users like Mr Torvalds probably are better served by a desktop environmnent like KDE. Here they can configure things that "idiot" doesn't care about or even know exists.
The problem is, that there are more "idiot" users out there in the business world than there are Linus Torvaldses. If we design for the Linus Torvaldses of the world, Linux will get a very small user base and that will make Linux less interesting to companies porting software and drivers for the Linux platform.
The elite user is also perfectly capable of replacing a simple Gnome deskop with another more advanced one (e.g. KDE). However, the "idiots" will not be able to replace KDE with Gnome. That's why Gnome is better.
When it comes to GUI design the "it will confuse the user" point of view, is just as valid as the "it is too complex to do" point of view. Not realizing that, is a very common mistake by people with an engineering or computer science background.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
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.
You are bucking against human nature. Linus is an authority figure, and whatever he says will instantly be heavily-laden with the appeal to authority. People are easily influenced by authority. How else should they make their decisions? By relying on their own incomplete experience? By trusting their own faulty judgement? By following their peers who are tainted with the same faults? Obeying some impersonal authority figure seems just as good if not better than any of those other choices, and the fact that authority figures are obeyed proves this.
I'm not stating that authority figures *should* be obeyed, only that they are by the virtue of the "bugs" in the human mind. Nor am I attempting to make a misanthropic argument. I'm just trying to point out that we are all influenced by authority, and that it's probably more powerful than you realize.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Diplomacy is not Linus' forte - and it never was, and we know that. Just so it happens that his opinion does not coincide with folks who invested a lot of emotion in supporting GNOME... and now, suddenly, he "comes across as a 13 year old". Sure.
On the other hand, Havoc later admitted that some missing functionality was NOT a usability decision. But whenever it comes down to defending some very questionable choices, I always hear these bogus "usability" arguments: it is less confusing this way, less bloated, $insert_bogus_usability_argument_here. And that is precisely Linus' gripe. Kurt Pfeife (I hear now: but he is obviously biased because he is a KDE guy - but shut up and listen to the argument) summed it up well:
Computers are about empowering users. Now there is a difficulty here - you want to enable your users to do more, and do it easily. And that is what makes UI design an art: how can you provide more without confusing the user? GNOME's answer is simple (again, this is Linus' point): take functionality away, or don't provide it at all. A very easy way to cut the gordian knot, but it is not the right way imho. The right way is to do proper research (not on a very limited set of computer illiterate users, who don't know that the right mouse button is there for a reason - results won't be representative at all) - and organize your functionality. That is what the last two paragraphs are about, that is Linus' point, whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not. Calling him names or ridiculing him is kinda ironic: you accuse him as coming across as a 13 year old, yet this is what you do in your own post. You don't reflect on the points raised by Linus. You probably didn't even read the entire thread (otherwise you'll see that Havoc's post comes off as a kind of confession - yeah it was not a usability question at all, and that is where Linus' criticism is mainly targeted at). And apparently you are +5 insightful. Way to go folks!But if you use the -kde -qt flag it will only compile KDE support if it is absolutely necessary?
Nice choice using rat poison, I hate to have to move my hand from the keyboard.
Personally I think that what computers should really have is two mouse cursors one for each hand, with each mouse having half a keyboard on it, that way you wouldn't have to move your hand from the keyboard, and you could to two things at once! Which would come in very handy when you are use something like gimp, you could be drawing with one hand and the other could select different color from the palette at the same time.
Linus is absolutly right about Gnome being dominated by 'interface nazis', but thats also exactly the reason why I like Gnome. As oposed to most other OpenSource software Gnome isn't build by stacking layers of layers of hacks on top each other, but instead Gnome developers often take a step back and redo stuff the right way, not just the way people got used to. Sure thats always causing a lot of flameswars and discussion, but its also a necessary thing if you want to end up with something that is actually a good interface and not just one which you have getting used to. So, yep, switching from Gnome1.4 to Gnome2, from Sawfish to Metacity, from old filedialog to new and soon from Galeon to Epiphany was quite painfull at times, but at the end of the day, I got almost all features back that I need and a whole lot of useless stuff cleaned up.
Of course it might be nice if some of the new stuff would be introduces a bit more gently and probally more backward compatible, at least for the time when the new stuff isn't 100% ready for prime time, but the stuff that gets done is almost always worth doing. Oh well, and I would like if they would finally drop Nautilus and use something that isn't just broken-by-design, but maybe that will happen one day anyway...
Those that want all the bells and whistles and configurability should simply use KDE, which really looks and feels for most part like a standard Windows interface on steroids, for me however all that configurabilty is simply useless most of the time, I prefer something that 'works at default' and doesn't offload the creation of a usable interface to the user.
How on earth can this be considered intuitive? How would a first-time user know about this? (Notice that even Linus didn't)
I hate to say it, but I'm with the Gnomes on this one.
If it is the Gnome team's goal to have people who are not computer enthusiasts, just computer users, use Gnome then making things simple is the rational way to go.
A power user like Linus Torvalds can take care of himself.
Ordinary users who aren't interested in computers, who just want to use them, will be turned off by making things unnecessarily complex.
When is a desktop unnecessarily complex? When another existing desktop can get the same job done without forcing the user to learn or do more.
Thanks, arkanes, for posting this; it's clarified my thinking on this issue a bit. I love GNOME, but there's no real customization[1]. I hate KDE, but there are a million options. What's the source of my love of GNOME and my hate for KDE?
KDE feels wrong.
That makes either zero sense or a sixth sense, but there's something in KDE that drives me nuts. It's as if KDE is playing a supersonic buzz that I can't hear consciously. Whenever I use it, it feel like things are happening just outside of my conscious perception. I want to ask the interface, "What are you doing? Aren't you supposed to be just sitting there?"
That is exactly how I felt when I used KDE. What is the Katrix?
When Patrick removed GNOME from Slackware, I decided to try KDE; I wanted an option in case I decided not to keep GNOME current manually. KDE's bazillions of options were, at first, thrilling, but I eventually left because it just felt wrong. (I went back to the emacs of windows managers, fvwm. My personal customizations aren't as good-looking as GNOME, but now my desktop does exactly what I tell it, exactly when I tell it.)
[1] I think someone's already mentioned that there's a GNOME trend against --geek_opts going back to at least the metacity/sawfish switch... why not just have an advanced options option, like gtk-gnutella or All-In-One Sidebar?
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
While there should definately 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.
Three words - Metacity edge flipping (or more appropriately, the lack thereof). Edge flipping is an incredibly popular feature with experienced users, and while I agree that it should be off by default because it can be confusing, that is NOT an excuse to turn the window manager into crippleware by completely removing that feature. (The only other options are to give up some UI consistency with the rest of Gnome by using xfwm4 and possibly introducing significant compatibility issues such as by using sawfish. Another option was brightside, but it was always a hack designed to work around missing functionality in Metacity that should be there.)
Sadly, my favorite IM client Gaim has also given in to the crippleware mentality... Numerous features are not only hidden or off by default in Gaim 2 (which I could completely understand), but they have been completely removed.
I still use GNOME for now - I'm still angry with the KDE developers' cavalier attitude towards the GPL (remember, KDE was not legal until TrollTech changed the Qt license - the KDE developers could have acknowledged the problem and fixed it by adding an exception for Qt to their license, which I believe is allowed by the GPL if all contributors consent to it, but instead they chose to ignore the issue for over a year.), plus I think GNOME looks better for now. Unfortunately, I may need to change soon because GNOME has been becoming less and less useful to me as the years have gone by.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As far as the whole KDE vs. GNOME thing, I was using KDE for the longest time because it had all those option and all the flash. But when I installed Ubuntu, started to login more often with GNOME and eventually switched compeletely to GNOME. The problem the way I see it is this. KDE seems to try to look and act like Windows - because it wants to cater to the people who switched over from Windows and doesn't want to confuse them. Windows interface though is broken if you ask most HCI people. GNOME is trying to do the right thing and follow the best HCI practices. These, at first might confuse people, but after a little getting used to they will find themselves being more productive.
The best UI(Desktop) if you ask me is Mac's OS X. It is the most consistent and the most minimalistic. Apple has invested more than anyone in their interface design and it pays off, also it show what a good interface should be. I think GNOME is closer to Mac OS X than KDE.
But on the same note I am not a UI religious fanaticl. If KDE 4.0 comes out with an imporoved look and works better and can be made more minimal I would use KDE (or whatever comes along that gets the job done faster).
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you GUI fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of 3 Ghz white box loaded with KDE for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one directory on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running tsch, which by all standards should be a lot slower than KDE, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Pico is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Linux distros, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a GUI that has run faster than its shell counterpart, despite the vast number of volunteers working on GUI/Linux. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs a shell faster than this 3 Ghz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the GUI distros are superior interfaces.
GUI addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a GUI over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.