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Linux's Difficulty with Names
JohnTyler writes "This article at XYZ Computing takes a look at Linux's strange naming practices. When compared to their Window's equivalents, the names of many Linux programs are difficult to recognize and even tougher to remember. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is actually an important usability issue. Just think, if you had to do a bit of graphic design which would be easier to pick out of the menu, GIMP or Photoshop? Or if you wanted to play a song, Media Player or xine?" The article is a bit thin, but it raises an excellent point.
ls, rm, df, du, etc . . . did any of the engineers at Bell Labs type 10-fingered?
But then again, you click the "Start Button" to shut down in Windows :)
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
This is really more of a software designer's issue than a strictly Linux one. As we speak, I am looking for my copy of Daemon Tools on my computer, but I can't find it because it's named in the start menu by the software's manufacturer, not the name of the program. This is the case for many windows apps and I view it as a similar problem.
I suppose Outlook Express is the ideal name for an email client...as is Outlook. Acrobat is the perfect .pdf viewer or creator. Excel instantly draws to mind spreadsheets [now, but 20 years ago?]. I could go on, but why bother.
The article is just more crap slinging between two apes vying for dominance.
That's why you need a Linux command quick reference sheet:
http://www.suso.org/infosheets/
the article appeared at XYZ (!) Computing.
I suggest GIMP be renamed "Baby Guts" and xine be renamed "Smuckers."
Most of the command-line stuff is just shortened abbreviations of things. You can also always just make a "shortcut" that's named whatever you want if you need arbitrary names for things. It doesn't really raise a good point at all, things have names made by the people who made them.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I realize there is tons of software out there for Windows, but *nix systems seem to have so much more that they have to resort to unique naming schemes to differentiate their products. You can only make so many iterations of the words "Media", "Writer", "Player", "Office", etc. Can it make things difficult for consumers? Sure, but I think it's a necessary evil.
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Photoshop" sounds like an application for buying photographs. The writer only knows it's a graphics editor because he has read or heard it somewhere. Contrary to a myth promoted by Microsoft and others, you simply can't use a computer without having to learn anything.
Also, FWIW, and unlike any version of Windows I've ever seen, the GNOME "start" menu breaks things down by category, so you can look in the "Graphics" or "Sound and Video" submenus if you have a general idea about what you're looking for. The last Windows I sat down in front of offered me an almost flat menu of two complete columns on a high-resolution screen, and since I rarely use Windows I didn't know what more than a handful of the applications were.
Worse, in those rare instances where things were put into sub-menus, you had to look under the vendor's name to find the product. So you not only had to know that "Photoshop" means "graphics editor", you also had to know that it's published by someone named "Adobe".
Idiot-level apologetics.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
These aren't Linux names, they're part of GNU. Linux is just the kernel.
touch...
mv...
finger..
touch..
mount...
mv...
finger...
unmount...
sleep...
Seriously, I agree. I think that is why I like giving SUSE to my friends/family. Telling my elder family to click on "Image Editor" is much easier than telling them to click on "GIMP."
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
You know, I'd always thought of this in a similar way: file extensions. .mov (by default), Windows .avi. .snd vs. .wav .pict vs. .bmp
If you look on the Mac, when it used extensions, they seemed to always make more sense than Windows extenions.
Here are some examples:
A movie file - Mac:
Sound file (older Macs) -
Picture file -
see where it kets you... for example Killustrator was forced to rename itself because adobe managed to convince a court that it's trademark on Adobe Illustrator was being infringed...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yeah, right, and get sued out of existence...
Hmm, or wonderful media exposure at least? Lindows --> MS Lawsuit Threats --> Media Exposure --> Changes Name to Linspire but reaps the rewards of all the attention...
Goes to show the old saying that any publicity is good publicity.
Most of these applications are listed as in the K-menu in the box I'm using are listed by function first. For example: Web Browser (Firefox) and Advanced Text Editor (Kate). That eliminates pretty much all the confusion there, doesn't it?
The article is a bit thin, but it raises an excellent point.
Does this mean you actually RTFA?
To someone who knows nothing, PhtoShop sounds like a place to buy/print photos. And Windows Medial Player sounds like a game of newpaper/TV congomerates :)
To the Unix cogniscenti, cp, du are nothing more than CoPy, Disk Usage, etc. It is a question of something learned.
There are some great programers out there but they can use a cource in marketing when it comes to names. One example i use is Hamachi a great linux and windows VPN client but its named after a fish...
All of those apps have one thing that Linux apps don't. Marketing.
This problem reminds me of the prescription medicine naming issue. There are only so many ways to say that a certain drug is for the heart. This is a huge problem and a cause of pharmacy medical mixups all over the world.
The same problem exists with software. Sure it would be nice if a photo editing app has the name Photo in it, but sooner or later you're going to run out of names. And this problem isn't limited to Linux--how exactly does "Excel" imply spreadsheet?
I will agree that Linux names are a bit on the wilder side and less professional sounding. But the problem isn't really as bad as it made it sound. What type of program the GIMP is can be indicated by its icon or where the user found it in the menu hierarchy.
Seriously, we need to devote more time to build software that does what it's meant to do well. I'm sure people will use a killer app if it was called "U Nasty" if it did what the users wanted.
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age." -Robert Frost
acroread.exe and winword.exe are meaningless names, too; and yet thats what the Windows executable are called. The name of the file is an irrelevance. If the GIMP appears as 'gimp' instead of 'Image Editor' in the Desktop menus and icons, that's really is stupid, but it's fine to call the executable that.
up2date is a silly name, but as long as it appears in the menu as 'Add/Remove Programs', that's hardly relevant, is it?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I'm sorry to break it to you but I don't use names to recognise programs. I use Icons. When using windows I almost always look for the icon, then to the word. Same thing applies, to Gnome, or OSX.
This problem reminds me of a problem had with different generations of CAD users. Old schoolers (me) know all the command line commands and love them. New users only recognise the icons.
Didn't somebody have to change the name of their project because it sounded too much like an existing product? I agree that naming is very important. Why does it have to be OpenOfficeDotOrg? I don't understand how M$ got the name Open Office shut down. Other products use the word office, example: WordPerfect Office.
If you wanted to play a video, would it be easier to pick out RealPlayer or the Videolan Client? If you wanted to browse your personal directory, would it be easier to pick out C:\Documents and settings\username or /home/username? If you wanted to send/receive some email - Outlook Express or KMail? Hell, if you wanted to shut down your computer - Start->Shutdown or /sbin/poweroff?
See? It kinda swings both ways...
Furthermore, I realise that this is aimed at people who have absolutely no experience in either computers in general and at least linux specifically, but a name like "xine" should not be an impediment to progress. For instance, any distro worth anything ought to be set up with some useful file associations. Most people play a movie or mp3 by clicking on /it/ rather than opening a player and then opening the file within it.
"This article at XYZ Computing takes a look at Slashdot's strange naming practices. When compared to their Web 2.0's equivalents, the names of many Slashdot URLs are difficult to recognize and even tougher to say. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is actually an important usability issue. Just think, if you had to do a bit of news which would be easier to tell your friend on the phone, digg.com slash technology or linux dot slash dot dot org slash, no not linux dot slash dot dot org, i said linux fullstop ess ell aye ess haych dee oh tee fullstop oh arr gee?
The article is a bit thin, but it raises an excellent point.
liqbase
Names don't matter, it is all about training and then familiarity.
What's more intuitive, "Matt", or "Coffee Boy"?
Oh, and what does Exel and Outlook do? Does Outlook Express do it any faster?
As a technical discussion, names as handles to objects or ideas don't matter (excluding downright misleading names, like a boy named Sue): it gets down to user training. To write that "Whatever the reason, desktop Linux's usability is hindered by its naming practices" is just silly: in a work enviornment, users will use what they are trained on. At home, Grandma is going to use whatever will let her get her polaroids out of her new camera.
And Windows isn't particularly easy to use; rather, everybody has had some exposure to it.
As for your examples... once you know what they stand for ("list","remove","disk free", etc.), those commands are a hell of a lot quicker to type (and less prone to error) than spelling the words out.
First, nothing to do with Linux directly. This is just the silly names all programmers come up with for their programs - a marketing department just renames it to something equally silly but with buzzword power.
The real issue is in the desktop environment - The menus to get to the program should separate things into categories that make sense - major DEs already tend to have this concept. The only problem then lies in finding and installing these programs.
When introducing new users to the linux systems at work I always end up explaining that the programs are named by clueless geeks who *think* they are funny (gnu, less, etc.). Please just ignore the stupid names and enjoy the power of the tools.
From the aricle: There are a number of things preventing Windows users from moving en masse to Linux. While the naming of applications is probably not a make-or-break issue when considering a new operating system, it is a legitimate consideration. This is the case because many of the names chosen for Linux programs are downright confusing, and the last thing desktop Linux needs right now is to make the transition from Windows or the acquisition of new users any harder than it has to be.
Windows users are not switching to Linux because they cannot for the most part open a catalog and buy a Linux-loaded machine. MS still dominates the home PC market. Also, Linux is used more as server software than personal software and the uninformaed tend to look at it only in those terms. And frankly, perhaps it's for the best that Linux not try to follow Windows in any fashion. If someone wants to make a GUI interface to Linux, fine, but to build it along the lines of the current Windows model is asking for trouble. Linux should be breaking new ground, not following along with the crowd.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
If Adobe releases a free + opensource version of Illustrator/Photoshop, Linux community will be willing to rename GIMP to something easier. :-)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
The point is ridiculous - distros could just set up a menu with aliases like 'graphics editor' or 'drawing program' or 'media player' or whatever.
I'm tired of this 'all users are idiots' attitude.
could it be?
Hey look at me I name things recursively because I'm fucking retarded.
You click the Start button to START the Shutdown process.
I suppose if you know nothing about computers, it seems odd.
But it makes sense if you think about it.
go ahead, take naming advice from "XYZ Computing", ffs.
Seriously, what is GIMP, besides "GNU Image Manipulation Program"?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Desktop Linux's usability is only hindered by it's naming practices for those who can't wait the extra second to hold their mouse over a program and read it's description. Besides that, most Linux programs when installed get filed under the relevant group in the Launcher, so there's really no excuse for further idiocy by going "K...Multimedia...xine? What the hell is that?"
If downloading programs, then the situation changes. They can read the program description almost immediately following the game and know what it does. If it's a clever acronym like GIMP, they'll figure it out before then. If it's a word-of-mouth thing, a Google search for the program name will reveal all the information they need.
I don't think the Linux community discourages new users. I think they discourage idiots who lack basic reading comprehension and/or surrender their credit card and SSN to their long-lost uncle in Nigeria, but not a geniune new user who can read the program description. I think that kind of discouragement is a good thing.
The reason why most Linux apps have strange names is simple. The people coding these apps have more personnally invested in the project than those working at MS. I know I wouldn't spend months of my time coding up an app, and then christen it with a bland name like "Windows Media Player". Plus, there are no marketing stooges around to force them to change the name to something an end luser could easily understand.
Although it could be debated as to which platform has confusing names, i.e. what is Excel, what is Visio, what is Access, what is Outlook, ad nauseam, I actualy have a contrarian view for you.
Why give applications boring vanilla names like photoshop, media player, etc.?
With the names that are given to many linux applications it could be argued that someone new to the platform would be lost, but I say they will be lost anyway and when they do learn about the applications that meet their needs the interesting names will leave an impression which will differentiate them from the applications on competing platforms that have common names.
I would also argue that vanilla naming creates its own confusion. How many people think Internet Explorer IS the internet?
I say we stick with the fun names.
burnin
It's the result of patent/trademark problems.
K-illustrator got renamed.
X11Amp got renamed.
There are others....
BTW, WinAmp is not exactly an obvious thing, either.
www.wavefront-av.com
Safari? A Web browser?
ILife? A...ummm...well, a way of living?
Please. Winamp: do you think someone starting typing "CD Player, Audio Player, Mp3 Player..." in a DOS shell on windows until they found Winamp? People aren't going to stop or start using a desktop based on this, especially when "k3b" is directly under the "CD/DVD Burning" submenu on SUSE/KDE.
This is a non-issue.
DT
I think it's a difference in attitude. Take "Media Player" for example. The very name implies that there's only this one media player, no others. Linux tends to distinguish the application from the type of application, eg. xine is a media player, one of several you can use. People may not know the names of the various software of each type, but that's a brand-recognition issue not a fundamental problem with seperating the name of a particular product from the type of product.
We don't have a car manufacturer "Automobile" making the "Sedan". We have Ford, Chrysler, BMW, Honda et. al. each making several models of sedan-type automobiles (and many models of types of automobiles other than sedans). People don't have any problem with cars with names like "Infiniti Q45" or "Ford Cobalt", so the concept of "the name isn't the type" can't be that alien.
Giving descriptive names to programs also limits what they can do, or get non-intuitive results when do more than what the name says (like pressing the start button to end working, or running the kill command to revive a task)
Anyway, where is the hard to remember part in commands like fsck, gawk or grep? How can you forget things like unzip, strip and touch? Whats more descriptive to program function than name like apache, samba or gimp? Using linux implies more than just using a computer, but adopting a bit a whole culture. That is bad or good? As always, it depends on the case.
Back in the 80's, we were on teletypes (tty) with greenbar and the fast modems where using 75-150 baud modems. While I coded in the 70,s it was on punchcards, but I do know that other system were using less than 75 baud modems. Basically, each letter came at a high cost both in paper and in bandwidth. So, the commands were kept small and simple.
Look, if it really bugs you, then create your own commands, perhaps with alias or symlinks. But to think that commands were done due to lack of typing is silly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The examples given are from different companies and design teams, so it's hard to generalize them. Overall, however, popular Windows software tends to be made by companies who put a lot of thought into the naming of their product, since it will help determine how popular that product is. Many linux programming teams either go too general or try getting clever with the name ("Which greek god relates to what this program is doing?").
The problem with getting too clever is that without a strong advertising push or word-of-mouth push (Firefox), people really don't know what your program does. The problem with going too generic is that the program isn't memorable.
There's a few programs that get it right by choosing a name that's both descriptive and clever (Photoshop, Winamp, OpenOffice, etc). Point is, either get a big ad budget or take some extra time choosing a name. Of course, if your target audience isn't the general public (read: ethereal), then it doesn't really matter since computer experts will recognize software based on how good it is.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
You've been warned, since parent didn't.
It seems that it's "System" --> "Log out" now. Ah, well, it's been a while since I used Gnome.
You're right that many people will probably regard this as splitting hairs, and this in itself is a pretty big issue. Names (from "top-level" names like application titles down to the names of lowly index variables) are critically important in usability, as is documentation.
Yet try as I might, with the notable exception of Python, I've never been able to pick up an open-source product of any complexity that I'm not familiar with, without buying an O'Reilly book or something of the like. Flame me if you will for "not trying hard enough," but it seems to me like having to try hard goes against the definition of usability in some ways. This makes for a pretty big hidden cost.
Open-source projects are the products of engineers working on something they feel is personally important, and it's perhaps unsurprising that communication with the end user (at least on the level of completeness and polish that larger companies need to demonstrate) is not given much priority. But the end users are what will drive the victory or loss of Linux on the desktop, and I think they are already voting with their mice.
And say what you want about Microsoft - but the level of effort they put into this front (from the easy-to-understand language in setup to the MSDN) is way ahead of what I've seen from the Linux world. I think they are the ones to be applauded in this case.
The "point" is a little overdone. There really isn't much to prevent a distribution from substituting "picture editor" for "gimp", "web browser" for "konqueror" or for that matter "media player" for "xine". Unless they start poking around in the plumbing, users would never have to bother with the "real" name.
But then, hey, where does the process stop? Isn't Red Hat a darn silly and inexpressive name compared to Windows? Doesn't seemed to have stopped Red Hat from becoming the best-known Linux brand and dominating the market.
There are many more pressing reasons why Linux has a relatively low market share on the desktop. Since Windows works perfectly well for most folks and they don't need to switch, desktop Linux needs to come up with some compelling and sexy reasons to induce them to switch. It has yet to do so, imho. But then perhaps "killer app" is a typically obscure Linux name. Call it "Battlefield 2" or "Half-Life" (and get it to work) and Linux would be hoovering up the new users.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Now lets see all the Windows users look at processes running, and let them all go
"Ah! alg.exe csrss.exe ctfmon.exe dllhost.exe explorer.exe internat.exe kernel32.dll lsass.exe mdm.exe msmsgs.exe mstask.exe regsvc.exe rundll32.exe services.exe smss.exe spoolsv.exe svchost.exe system winlogon.exe winmgmt.exe wisptis.exe wmiexe.exe wmiprvse.exe wscntfy.exe wuauclt.exe are running - I know EXACTLY what all that is doing."
Linux processes/apps are named from convention and are all documented. The less said about the alternative (and comparing with) the better.
The biggest offender of late is KDE. Must EVERYTHING be named Ksomething? Good God... what is a Konqueor ? What will Kompare do ? Will Kannibale eat my computer? Will K9copy reproduce my dog? Some are predictable but they all begin with that friggin' K. Enough already. It's too Kute and as pedestrian as Karls Kuntry Kitchen.
-- TT
TT
What is this I see? Open-source community thinking about why they aren't taken more seriously? Me thinks that if tomorrow I should spot a post admitting that Linux developers also don't know a thing about designing a usable GUI, the end of the world is definitely near.
I realize that this will likely be modded down to hell, but I could really care less if it makes even one developer stop and think. The real problem with the entire Linux movement is a total lack of even the basic understanding of human psychology. Just like they still think that a file is the solution to everything.
We're not machines with RAM and hard drives. Our memory is highly associative, meaning that most of the things we remember are associated to other things. The only "hard-wired" things are those which are used on continuous basis, which I suppose explains why the developers don't notice these problems. For everything else, the less links there are, the harder it is to recall something, which is why naming software using names that say absolutely nothing about what the software is for creates such a mess.
I read somewhere (an article by Thompson or Ritchie, or both), that they purposely created command names that were not descriptive of their function. If I remember correctly, it was in order to enforce weak typing. So having non-descriptive application names is in the same conceptual thread as keeping command names non-descriptive. Personally, I wish I was younger to be able to remember all this stuff better.
And "longhorn" isn't a strange name for an OS?? I'll bet the next version will be MS Windows WE (Well Endowed)
Looking at my GNOME menu:
Applications -> Graphics -> GIMP Image Editor
Applications -> Sound & Video -> Totem Movie Player
Seems quite easy to find the right application to me...
And as a bonus, the names are original for once.
is someone mentioning the point that the "Free(insert appname here)" and "Open(insert app name here)" Open Source naming standard is growing a bit (dare we say) stale?
This guy is way out there
"actually", "source", "general", "programmers", "course".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned how the majority of Gnome and KDE apps either start with G-something or K-something. The novelty wears off really quickly.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
Did I need <humor> tags?
BTW, aliasing is just a great way to get yourself (or somebody else) in trouble -- it's a useful tool for the experienced, but it can cause no end of grief in the hands of a neophyte. I remember from firsthand experience (no urban myth) the time a fellow employee with root access decided to see if the 'del' command had any help. Just our luck, a 'helpful' sysadmin had alias'ed "del=rm". Do you know what happened when my associate typed "del /? "
And don't tell me "nothing" (which is essentially what should've happened). Hint: the server was down in less than 300ms.
OK, I'm pretty much a Linux noob so this may not grind anyone else's gears here, but it drives me crazy when Linux program names are not capitalized. xmms, xine, apt, synaptic... Half the time I don't even realize I'm reading about a program until I go back and reread it and realize "Oh, apt is a program's name!" Just another barrier to entry for interested bystanders like myself.
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
How meaningful is a Ford Focus? Even in English?
More to the point, why do I find that virtually all Open Source software depends on all manner of bizarre sound related software, even if I dont have a sound card in my PC?
And why does multi-media mean only one medium (sound)?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The article is transparent. There is no substance to it.
but it raises an excellent point.
I've no idea what that point is. I think it may be that he believes that the only way that people know which program to use is if it is spelled out in full:
"MicroSoft Windows Web Browser"
"MicroSoft Windows program to play music and video files"
"Adobe program to manipulate photos, images and pictures"
If that's all you want, create a menu item that takes up half the screen:
"GNU Image Manipulation Program"
Sorry, I guess that was not the point he was trying to make, was it?
The author seems to be lacking in depth of experience, implying that GIMP, Opera and FireFox are "Linux applications" only.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
No it doesn't. Is it saying 'Linux' (?) should start giving things super-generic names? Well that's a great idea. Let's call things 'Media Player'. But who gets to decide which media player gets named the definitive 'Media Player'? And they may not realise that most obvious super generic names are already trademarked by someone.
I don't see anything wrong with Gnu (General?) Image Manipulation Program. Rather effective description if you ask me.
It's not like the windows world isn't full of stupid Win* names is it? Winamp? WTF? It's a pretty tenuous link that you're supposed to guess that 'Amp' means an MP3 player.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Outlook, Access, Excel...real intuitive names there. If you want to throw in third party vendors like the original did with Photoshop, you have a whole host of products that do different things with similar names - i.e., Quicken or Quick Time.
Linux names are acronyms. Acronyms are easier to type and remember. Just as a wouldn't want Linux to be renamed Runs Computer, I do not want software to be renamed from a four letter command such as gimp to Image Manipulator because someone cannot be bothered to learn its name. If they cannot be bothered to learn the name, then they are welcome to go use the programs that are named something they can remember.
The whole world does not revolve around the lowest common denominator. Let's stop pretending that it does, shall we?
The KDE guys need to Kut the Krap with the names already.
sulli
RTFJ.
Yes, I remember acoustic modems, paper tty's (with a paper-tape punch attached - woo, hoo!).
I used to be a geek - then I acquired a sense of humor and achieved maximum nerdosity.
What's easier to type? "gimp" or "Photoshop"? "xine" oder "Media Player"? If you're talking about menus: we have icons now. Welcome to the 1980s.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
no, you are not allowed to peek at those links either... ;)
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Coming up with a good name is really damn hard, just ask the Firefox people. Common, easy to understand words such as "Word" or "Illustrator" are already taken, and you're asking for a lawsuit if you try to use them.
You can try being clever, like the Lindows and KIllustrator people did, and you can still get sued. You can try to come up with nonsense names or geeky in-jokes, but then normal people are going to be like "WTF?" and your software will never penetrate the market.
You can concatenate corporate-sounding prefixes, roots, and suffixes, and sound like a buzzword hype drone, er I mean Buzzhypdro(TM) Generator, which will get converted into an acronym, which will be trademarked by some obscure company in a completely different industry who will try to sue you even though they're in a completely different industry.
And then when your acronym becomes accepted it'll get co-opted by commercial software projects that will treat yours like it's an extensible, embraceable standard, and then they'll sue you to relinquish your own name so they can use it in their marketing literature.
Someone should start a "Voldemort" project for coming up with pseudo-random placeholder names for "projects that must not be named".
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
We have to stop with the logic and good reasoning when dealing with real-world usability issues. ;)
You are Joe Schmoe newbie. What are your possible thought processes?
"I am going to download that Photoshop-type program. Damn what was it called?"
"Hey man, I've been using this kick-ass program for manipulating images. Damn, I forgot where it went and what it's called."
These scenarios are easily circumvented and, frankly, trivial for an organization that is willing to migrate desktops to Linux. But for widespread desktop acceptance this could be a problem. Think of technology reviewers for magazines and online mags. For them, what won't matter is the logic in the *NIX GUI way of doing things but how crazy the names are. Not that we should give two turds about these people at the end of the day, but if you want widespread Linux use, maybe something to think about.
"But then again, you click the "Start Button" to shut down in Windows :)"
[KsCD]
Extras-->Quit.
[Konqueror]
Location-->Quit.
[K3B]
File-->Quit.
And let's not get into the issue of consistency.
Thats the big problem with GNU naming conventions. There is too much attention in making the names cute and not enough attention in making them recognizable. Windows at least dumbs down their naming conventions to make them (relatively) easy to figure out.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
You've completely missed the point.
If you're a 4th century roman citizen, you are going to have a tough time with a tank. A modern American might have a tough time too, but they are more likely to have been exposed to cars and computers and whatnot and have a greater chance to pick it up quicker than the roman citizen. Both of them will still have to be trained.
That's your point, but that's NOT the point of the article!
Take that same roman citizen, and train them in the use of a BMW. Now ask them which one they will remember more easily after they are forced to walk around without either for 2 months. Chances are they'll remember more about driving a BMW.
The point is not so much useability as it is reusability. I consider myself a pretty intelligent computer user, but I have to constantly go back to manuals and look things up to remember commands and programs. GIMP doesn't immediately invoke any devices in my memory to recall that application on demand at a later date. Photoshop instantly makes me think of images. 5 seconds later I find out it's for photo editing. I can stick that in my long term memory and remember it for later much more easily. This is how the average user thinks.
Linux geeks are going to be spending 99% of their time memorizing programs and commands that they use every day and they have to realize not everyone is going to see the world the same way they do. Shortening the word copy to cp helps the advanced linux user save typing but for less advanced users it's easier to remember the word COPY because it makes sense to a wider range of people.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Call it flamebait if you will, but for the average user Linux doesn't even exist. It doesn't matter if it is called Linux "Alterna-OS" or some other crap, they know what shipped on the computer and don't have the time or inclination to learn anything else. Sure, the geeks love it, but why would the average person like it? Does it do more than already-installed (windows/media player/office/etc) or does it just do the same thing? See, if all it does is the same thing then Linux has NO VALUE preposition whatsover to the average joe they will only switch when alternative software has more usefulness and is not merely a clone.
I ask you, why should you care about vi when you have notepad (which does the same job with less confusing commands)? Making Xine or Helix useable requires setup and configuration of codecs, whereas it just works under windows!
For Linux to gain ground it needs to add utility without adding futility. No one is going to accept that it more trouble to get the thing to work the same way, and they would barely consider it if the improvements are only marginal. As far as features, Windows is better to average joe. It reasonably works out of the box, and there is nothing to screw up in the configuration. When Linux works like that then it will compete with Windows, but if the software included with Linux surpassed it that would be the end for Redmond. There is no way a "normal" user is going to put up with the bullshit involved with setting a Linux box up, so these Linux people should shut up about their desktop until it works or even happens and stay on the servers.
All that being said, I love Linux as far as the performance... It turns "dated" machines into useable machines, and for those that are running on a budget it may still have a place. For servers, I don't think there is a better choice you can make. But again, the Linux people need to stop thinking they have a desktop offering -- they have a toolbox of many tools but they do not have a leatherman. Desktops need to be useable by the computer challenged to qualify as an offering, and anything too complex is just missing the mark. Do you think the normal person would know much about partitions, screen mode depth and resolution, or even the goofy device names for mice or screens? These things make the whole proposition unrealistic.
-Mind
Why did they use a camera to take a screenshot of the desktop? This reminds me of a blonde joke where there is a photocopier used to take a screenshot, lol.
the naming schemes are a little hard to remember.... the tough thing is that most people don't want to take the time to remember how to use an OS when windows is so simple. I bet if some experienced windows users were giving a box of *nix with easy to remember things, they could learn it. I'm not saying I use it, but ive run into this problem w/ many people... "I use Internet Explorer" ..... "Oh man, don't use that, use Firefox. What do you think most people end up doing?
When I've taught introductory Unix classes, I simply tell the students to remember that *nix commands are simple to remember if you remember a couple of "rules":
1. *nix hates vowels.
2. Use as few consonants as necessary to get the point across.
See? It's simple. "Remove" becomes "rm". "Move" becomes "mv". "Remove directory" becomes "rmdir". (Hey! Who snuck that vowel in there?)
Geoff
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Or are they Marketroids?
;-)
Gotta name xine something like "Splenda", not one of those complex, obscure techie names like "Tivo" or DVD!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
This means literally "Names are just sound and smoke" and the deeper meaning is "Names arent important". Well, I don't think that names are a problem because of the following reasons:
- Usually a menu tree isn't flat but categorized. If I open my Debian menu I find a section for graphics and so I assume that the programs in this section have something to do with graphics.
- If I install a package I'm doing it because I want to use it. And at that point I can learn easily that GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program and so I can hardly forget that this is the program to use if I want to edit my digital camera photos.
- Many times I observed that people are not reading the menus, they just have learned that the app they want to use is on the 4th last entry in that submenu and they click there without even reading. Difficult if the menu structure changes, but people can adapt to this as well
Ok, if you're using a shell then you need to remember the names, but who prevents you from defining anDoes the Linux community really have to listen to every 08/15 users complaints?
i ng-and-not-understanding-it.
Hell, why don't these people stick to Windows instead of molesting non-08/15 users on Linux Users Groups with their I-wan't-to-proove-that-Linux-sucks-ass-by-install
Some people can't handle choice and transparency. Stop putting your energy into them and tell them to stick with Windows instead.
End of story. Everyone can get on with his life.
But your attitude is EXACTLY what is holding Linux apps back from popular adoption.
.pdf viewer or creator. Excel instantly draws to mind spreadsheets [now, but 20 years ago?]. I could go on, but why bother.
I suppose Outlook Express is the ideal name for an email client...as is Outlook. Acrobat is the perfect
The name of an app is not meant to be Literal!! It's meant to make you want to own it! If you had a choice between two toilets, the Open GNUFeces gtkSepticPort, or a CrapThrasher 3000, is there any question which you would select? Calling a graphics program The GIMP (yeah, I know it's meant to be a snarky acronym; newsflash: after the age of 16, nobody cares.) is like naming your son Susan. In fact, I've introduced the GIMP to new users (all of whom look like they'd rather be anyplace in the world than in that room at the time) with a, "Hey, look, with a name like The GIMP, it's got to be good, right? Right??"
For serious 'flagship' Linux applications, allowing the "coding community" to name them is right in line with allowing the "marketing community" to write them. It screams "Hobbyist," which is fine, if that's all you want it to be. In the early '90's, when nobody knew any better, it was not unusual for an organization's HTML jockey to also be responsible for creating the site's look and writing its content. Then, the medium matured, rapidly. When I see the names for a lot of these (very, very fine and well-coded) linux apps, I get the urge to crank Nine Inch Nails, order a double-mocha-latte, and re-read SnowCrash...
...Linux was actually an Operating system. It's not. For the ten millionth time:
Linux is a kernel
GNU/Linux is a bundling of the kernel with GNU tools to make an OS distribution (aka "distro)
Debian, Redhat, Mandriva, Gentoo, SuSE are all various distros packaged by different companies/projects
The submitter would have been more accurate had he talked about the nameing of various open source projects that get bundled into GNU/Linux distributions. And thus is the whole problem born. Whenever someone applies Windows thinking to *NIX-like open source/free software projects, it's like trying to draw while looking in a rearview mirror with a telescope pointed at a target 500 yards away. Dump the Windows mindset and *NIX-like packages make a LOT more sense than Windows no matter what they're called. (Think about how RedHat hides the names of the packages and provides links for "Web Browser, Mail Program, Word Processor" and the like. I used to be tainted by trying to apply Windows thinking to GNU/Linux when I first converted full time in 1997. All that resulted in was me fighting myself trying to understand something that is completely different. It almost made me quit and go back to Windows thinking the GNU/Linux sucked. But then, a few people just clearly pointed out to me that I needed to drop all my old Windows based assumptions and it all became very easy. Over the years I've learned just how much more flexible and innovative things are in the *NIX world and there is nothing that could pull me back. One of those things is that I'm glad to be rid of name brand associations that are based on nothing more than image rather than real functionality. So people can take the feelings they have about naming of programs and drop them at the door when they come to this side of the computer world because they're not needed.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
We love strage names and not only for the software
h - t - t - p - : - slash - slash - slash - dot - dot - org
I don't even know how to PRONOUNCE "xine". That's a significant obstacle to users learn to associate a name with anything.
apropos $TASK
Who needs to know bc from mc?
----
but most (98%) of the "later" products !
And, most project/product web pages don't state
clearly what the product is or does.
I read slashdot/newsforge/linuxtoday/ etc and
get a headache at the meaningless snowfall of buzzwords.
At least LWN gives a short descriptive phrase on occasion.
I gave up looking at most of them 8 years or so ago.
Now, I rely only on recomendations from reliable
sources.
W..............
I was one of three people to survive that learning experience. The bodies of the dead were cast back to the pit of despair, wherein live the unemployed.
Squid or Python or FCKeditor or Sylpheed. What's in a name? Hopefully some semblance of professionalism. Sorry, but trying to convince my boss that Sylpheed is a valid alternative to product ABC isn't helped by the project's product name.
I understand that some people just don't care, or that the project fouder/maintainers pick a name that makes sense to them, or just sounds cool, but in some organizations "political correctness" and fear of offending other users (not that I believe these *should* factor into any decisions, but I've seen it from personal experience) can have an effect on decisions!
-chargen
let's see, a program for tracing the route of packets:
windows: tracert. unix: traceroute
finding out the interface information
windows: winipcfg/ipcfg (depending on version) unix: ifconfig
clearing the screen
windows: cls (only intuitive if you remember microsoft basic) unix: clear
comparing files
windows: fc unix: diff
getting a shell from GUI
windows: command/cmd (again, depending on version) unix: xterm
yep. MUCH more intuitive
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
An excellent point to talk about is that program centric environments, like Windows, KDE, Gnome and most of what we see today are really bad for users.
Document Centric environments are much, much better! Then, you don't have to think about names of programs because there are no programs.
Read about Apple's Lisa to know more.
Pupeno
I never liked either of the systems win nor linux, both have pros and cons. Here is a link to a pic that shows the way I've been organizing things. It is a bit of a pain in the ass to setup but it's worked great for me for years, but then again I'm used to it. Let me know what you think. http://www.lachtronix.polcantek.com/strmnu.html
I can see it now: GIMP Photoshop Edition, IPChains Security Edition, Firefox Popup Remover!
Linux naming conventions are the hardest thing for any new person to get used to, and it halters many from getting involved in the open source community because they don't understand the conventions. Personally I think it's one of the things holding back the linux OS from being widely recognized. Honestly Linux will never get past the small percentage until the developers start looking at how people remember names, and realize that it requires at least two sylables to do that. All of this goes into my argue why Open Source has thusl been a failure this far. Naming conventions are the biggest difficulty. Have no real standard is the second one. If the Linux community really wants to have any real significant part of the world of software, it needs to stop pandering to the geeks, because the geeks will use anything that is done properly, and done well. Linux already has that advantage over Windows, and thusly needs the rest of my argument to clear up before it's a viable alternative for everyone else. It's time Linux started growing up, and developed some standard developers. Who's going to be the one to start the process? Before anyone gets their panties in a bundle over my comments, I've used Slackware since 7.2, and now currently have Slackware in the form of Vector Linux. I'm and avid Mac user, and have also used FreeBSD. So I do know a little bit about this topic, as I had the same difficulties when I first started with stupid naming conventions, and non-sylable names.
Yes, I said it.
If you don't need names, then why is the name under the icon whether in Windows, Gnu, or Mac?
Take that stupid "minimize everything" icon in Windows. WTF is that supposed to be a picture of?
We got past hieroglyphics about 5,000 years ago, son. If you can read, why do you need an icon?
Oh yeah, I forgot, this is the internet and everybody on it is illiterate (witness "did you loose your keys?" or cn u c me?")
I have been harping on this for years. For some reason software devs love to encode the names of their apps in some archaic symbology. I still do not understand this. While Excel and Premier do not give you an automatic clue as to what they are, at least they "sound" user friendly. I there is an honest interest into getting linux into more homes, this has got to stop. Same with the terrible documentation that surrounds many of these same packages. We have got to stop writing this stuff with the geek brain in mind, but others as well. Asking a non-tech user what libconf is, is just like asking them what a dll is. It just happens that Windows shields the user as much as possible from this. And before you all go flame me, remember that geeks like us buy much less of this compared to average Joe home user.
My
When the letter 'x' starts a word it is pronounced similar to the letter 'z'. When the letter 'e' ends a word it is silent and makes the precedeing vowel long, so it would be 'zine' ryhming with 'sign' and 'line'.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
2) Rest finger on key until key sinks
3) Repeat.
Yeah, I remember!
"Outlook" might not be a name that screams "I'm a mail client", but at least people know how to spell and pronounce it.
Xine... is it Ex-ine or Zine or Zeene, like Xena? Konquerer... why the K?
Hey you might not like Outlook, but at least they don't call it "Owtlook" or "Outlooq"
XYZ is Slashdot's new Roland Piquepaille. They rotate friends for the free web traffic thing... Not that there is anything wrong with that...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This article seems heavily slanted toward an "everyone uses Microsoft software and GNU/Linux naming conventions should match" point of view. Many of the listed Windows programs don't have the slightest bearing on their function, and many GNU/Linux programs were missing.
Web Browser
Windows: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera
Linux: Konqueror, Opera, Epiphany, Galeon, Firefox
There is more than one web browser available, even for Windows. Internet Explorer could lead one to believe they should use it to view files on the internet through the same interface they see when they use Explorer to view the files on the local hard drive.
Graphics Editing
Windows: Photoshop, Illustrator
Linux: GIMP
As has been mentioned, Photoshop sounds like a place to buy photos, or a photograph editor. What if I just want to create a graphic?
Movie Playback
Windows: Windows Media Player
Linux: Helix, Xine, MPlayer
MPlayer is pretty obvious if you ask me.
DVD Playback:
Windows: WinDVD, Windows Media Player
Linux: Ogle, Xine, Totem
Simple Text Editing
Windows: Notepad, Wordpad, TextPad
Linux: Gedit, Kate, VI, Gvim, Emacs, OpenOffice.org Writer
I think Writer should be allowed as it does perform the function of editing text.
Instant Messaging
Windows: Trillian, Yahoo Instant Messenger
Linux: Gaim, Kopete, Yahoo Instant Messenger
We should do an apples to apples comparison here. Neither side seems very intuitive unless using the client supplied by the instant messenging service.
Music Playback:
Windows: Windows Media Player, Itunes, WinAmp
Linux: XMMS, Noatun, MPlayer, Xine
Again, MPlayer is pretty obvious.
CD Ripping:
Windows: Itunes, Windows Media Player
Linux: Grip, Gnome Toaster, Sound Juicer
I don't understand how WMP is more intuitive than Grip? And Itunes? Doesn't say "This program is for ripping CDs" to me. (I have to be honest, I didn't know WMP could rip CDs)
CD Burning :)
Windows: Roxio Easy CD Creator, Nero
Linux: K3b, Gnome Toaster, XCDRoast, Nero
Nero? Didn't he play a fiddle or something? I'll give them the Easy CD Creator though.
Corrected list
Linux entries are read off directly from my GNOME menu
==============
Web Browser
Windows: IE
Linux: Firefox Web Browser
Graphics Editing
Windows: Photoshop, Illustrator
Linux: GNU Image Manipulation Program, Inkscape Vector Illustrator
Movie Playback
Windows: Windows Media Player
Linux: Totem Movie Player
DVD Playback:
Windows: WinDVD, Windows Media Player
Linux: DVD Player, Totem Movie Player
Simple Text Editing
Windows: Notepad, Wordpad, TextPad
Linux: Text Editor
Instant Messaging
Windows: AOL Instant Messenger
Linux: Instant Messenger
Music Playback:
Windows: Windows Media Player, Itunes, WinAmp
Linux: Music Player
CD Ripping:
Windows: Itunes, Windows Media Player
Linux: Soundjuicer CD Ripper
CD Burning
Windows: Roxio Easy CD Creator, Nero
Linux: CD/DVD Creator
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
It seems as though the underlying motivation is based on the desire to attract users. Windows is more apparently a commercial endeavor and its various applications, although sometimes having irrational names (Outlook), are often coherent words. Linux naming may be motivated by a desire to intimidate novice users, where even more logical names can be seen as incoherent string of characters.
From an empirical perspective, all people who I have introduced Linux to have hit multiple roadblocks with naming & icon issues. "Gee, couldn't they have picked a name less offensive than gimp ? why in the world ... ?" "why is the button shaped like a foot ? All I want to do is start something.. foot means nothing to me." "The icon for that is a penguin. Is that a game? I'm not supposed to play games at work." I am personally ok with things as they are, but we are not considering just ourselves, are we ? The goal of pleasing a larger userbase than what we have now is to introduce the topic of marketing.
I personally have settled on a minimalist desktop/no g/k desktop. The beauty and flexibility of Linux lets me change my desktop framework at whim to a variety of work oriented layouts. No one will ever be able to take those options away from me.
However, there exists the objective of growing a bigger usebase and mindshare. I am glad some desktop developers have taken the direction of naming things more sensibly. There are new (as in never used a computer before) users and other OS users. Windows has the biggest base to target, so lets go for that. To steal developers and users, I think making things named & iconed very similarly would be of great benefit for attaining this goal.
There is the risk of incurring lawsuits from monopolies. But that is what monopolies to to maintain that status; it is inavoidable. Or another way of saying it is if certian projects are incurring lawsuits from monopolies, then a threat has been touched on & progress is being made. I would argue that the terms 'keyboard' 'speaker' 'camera' 'email' 'image' 'picture' 'game' are a generic terms and the words and iconic descriptions of them cannot be copyrighted.
This reminds me of a local activist group that calls its yearly party their "Annual Social Event." Is that the kind of name the guy wants to see?
It has a lot to do with the fact that open source geeks can't afford trademark lawyers. A name like "gwksprt" may be horrible, but at least you're unlikely to be sued over it.
I think HP also offered HP-UX for it, didn't they?
First of all, the name 'GIMP' is very unique.
> Reply from: WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003)
>
> gimp
> n : disability of walking due to crippling of the legs or feet
> [syn: lameness, limping, gimpiness, gameness,
> claudication]
It is EXCELLENT to remember. How many application names are there which contain 'photo' in their names? And what does 'shop' have to do with a graphical editor??? The name is even misleading. It is done by a soul-less marketing strategist.
Secondly, if you cannot remember GIMP among up to 20 programs in your KDE/Graphics menu, accompanied by a nice icon and a short description, you are probably so brainless that you cannot even find the power button of your PC. Let Microsoft stick to support the brainless among the users. That's their fair share of the market.
Third: people involved in such discussions are ALWAYS those who have never done anything useful for the open-source community -- and who will never do. Check it for yourself. It is almost a law of nature.
I do not at all agree with that article. If perfectly descriptive names were important, all word processors would be called "Word Processor", and even that is pretty vague--what kind of processing? But they are not. And they do not need to be. And it is not a usability issue that they are not. Without any prior knowledge, if someone handed me an application called "Word", I would expect it to be a dictionary.
It isn't.
IMO I believe that your basic inexperienced user will focus more on how the menu is organized and icon placement rather than the name.
GNOME organizes programs by subject, and can be customized to a more organized set. Windows simply lists the programs (sometimes in order of when it was installed, not by alphabet). At times you just can't find it because it's rarely used - you have to do a little more work to find it. Other than the increased memory usage and wasted "graphic effects" on the xp start menu I do have to applaud about the browser and mail location, along with the list of most commonly used programs.
I'm not going to go into the names issue. If an computer illiterate user had a choice between "Outlook" and "Thunderbird" or "Excel" and "Calc" which would they choose? I'm sure it would be different for different people, but you get what i'm saying.
(and wtf is with the name eXPerience? i'd find "Windows Excel" an OS that goes beyond bounaries - by definition - more appealing.)
Since i've given enough examples - i shall shut up.
This article is based (near as I can tell) on one person's comment about stupid names. Great, so there's one idiot in the world who doesn't realize that Firefox on Linux is the same as Firefox on Windows.
Personally (yes, I am a geek) I've never had any problems with the names. apropos normally gets the job done nice and quick. Ok, that'll ellicit "But you're a geek, think of the normal people !!!1!!" Let me rephrase.
Having sucessfully installed Linux on a few (non-geek's) systems, I can say they've never had any problems. They're not the stupidest, I'll give you that, teaching someone in college might be harder then teaching Grandma Jane, but they were just regular users of their Windows machine, not really utilizing them to their full potential. They took to it rather quick. Yes, these weren't full command line only machines (as I prefer), so the similarities between Windows and Gnome/KDE did all the work.
No one uses any computer with non learning, much as Bill would like to have you think otherwise. So I showed them the basics. "Ok, you know the Start button? That's now here, the picture of the hat." Then I'd explain the most used programs (come on, who didn't have to say "Grandma, click here for the internet"?). "We use Firefox for the web, and thunderbird for email. Gaim is there for IM, and OpenOffice (click here) is just like Microsoft Office." Next came the Linux-specific crap. "To figure out a command, use 'man '. And to find what you're looking for, try apropos and grep."
Some of you may say "oh, they're a geek if they understood that", but I assure you, if you stay, and talk with them about the change they just made in their lifestyle, everyone can pick it up. Just sit, and answer any questions they have, its that simple. Oh, gee, exactly like what I do when I install Windows for someone for the first time. Hmm... perhaps because each are different operating systems, with their own learning curve and commands? Just... might... be...
Now, to say that Linux commands/programs are confusing, where Windows commands/programs aren't... boggles me. Linux breaks things down into nice categories by default. So my friend wanted a cd player, went to sound and video, and found, miracle of miracles, a cd player. Didn't have to ask me. People new to Windows have to figure out to use Windows Media Player.
Windows, assuming you didn't use it in the last ten programs, makes you search through a list of everything installed on the start menu. Which, since the programmer decides what to put it under (ok, no flaming, I know you can change it, but would a 80-year old woman who just clicks "next"?) it could be the name of the software suite, the company name, the program name, even the programmer's dog's name!
Who's to say "Illustrator" and "Photoshop" are such good names? The former literally would be something to illustrate books, and the latter would be software to buy pictures. Hold on, notepad AND wordpad for text editing? I guess one must be for notes, and the other for individual words. AOL Instant Messanger... interesting, that won't work with my Yahoo account, how do I get that to work? WinAmp to play music (ok, some of my favorite windows software, granted) that should be an amplifier of the Win? No... software to amplify sounds for windows? Sorta... but no... Wait a SEC! Windows Media Player to rip CDs?! I thought it played music, not copied it. Roxio blah blah blah for CD burning. The odds of someone having that specific program on their computer depend on who they bought the computer from. I have problems saying that's something on a typical installation. Nero, that program should squander my money in lavish parties, have sex with young boys and ruin the empire, erm, my system.
Hey, the guy turns around on page two (if you got that far) to say that "Linux names may seem confusing but actually are not." Good he points out what GIMP stands for. Not a program to beat up handicapped children by Rockstar, but a sensibly named image editing program. Ho
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
The poster is saying "My familiar name associations make more sense to me than these unfamiliar ones." While that may be true, it doesn't make the ones he knows any better, or those that he doesn't any worse. They are only different.
Believe or not as you see fit; given my choice, I think I shall trust my memory over your ballocks.
Yea, all you have to do is type "man alg.exe" and-- er oh wait, nevermind.
FLR
But not rhyming with magazine?
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Wow, you crack a joke about the Windows Start button and you immediately get a series of bent out of shape slashdotters giving you a hard time.
:)
Somebody seems to be sensitive about the Windows UI, you don't suppose the Windows developers are spending way too much time on slashdot? Then again its probably just the Vista test group making sure the latest build renders ol' slashdot, or astroturfers practicing their trade.
I don't know if it's still the case, but back in the prehistoric OS 6.0.4 days, in order to eject a floppy disk, you dropped its icon into the trash can. Lots of fun training n00bs on that little wrinkle! The floppy drive, you see, didn't have an eject button, in order to prevent the user from ejecting a disk that was in use by the computer.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
So, what about.. MacPaint? MacWrite? iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD? Ask the Summerians - Names count. Plus, I've had a few clients refuse to use GIMP due to the percieved insulting name
Upfront admission: I am a Microsoft engineer.
I toyed around with Linux a couple years back, was able to successfully install some version of RedHat on an old Toshiba laptop. Once I got it going, I thought, "Okay, what do I do now?" I never looked at it again.
A fair part of that was because the Linux command line is not intuitive. I'm not talking, "I know Windows command line, not Linux, so I don't know what I'm doing." My experience has been that I'm pretty good at figuring things out, and not ashamed to use reference materials. I didn't even know where to start with Linux.
Now that a couple years have passed, and I've got a couple more years' experience under my belt, I intend to take another crack at it. As soon as I get time, of course.
An intuitive interface, GUI or command line, is paramount to getting non-users to become users.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
No.
However, shutdown -s -t 02 will work.
With my debian box, I surely can, let me tell you the magic command:
updatedb; locate; talk; date; cd; strip; look; touch; finger; unzip; uptime; gawk; head; apt-get install condom; mount; fsck; gasp; more; yes; yes; yes; more; umount; apt-get remove --purge condom; make clean; sleep
feels good right?
The True FOSS Skype Replacement
Perhaps the gentleman who created the alias did something more evil than I thought, or perhaps AIX 1.9.24 had a bug. Either way, there's a reason I specified that "nothing" wasn't the correct answer to my question.
Unix has had strange names (grep, yacc, awk) since before I started using it in 1977, so why is this news now? Wouldn't we all be better off bashing Sony some more until it's a bloodstained rag of roadkill on the Information Superhighway?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
As a technical discussion, names as handles to objects or ideas don't matter (excluding downright misleading names, like a boy named Sue): it gets down to user training.
Yes, but user training costs money. The KISS principle should be applied to names too. You also ignore the fact that cute names, rather than descriptive names, give some people an amateurish impression. Such names can reinforce the "by nerds for nerds" stereotype.
At home, Grandma is going to use whatever will let her get her polaroids out of her new camera.
When confronted with two icons, one saying "photoshop" and the other saying "gimp", which one is grandma more likely to recall or deduce is for photos? Naming is one element of a user interface and user interfaces do matter.
Going by "common" pronunciations is useless with English. If that were the case, the word "ghoti" wouldn't be pronounceable in English as "fish".
Thankfully I find mplayer to be the better package--and no mysteries as to how to pronounce it, either.
$ apt-cache search dvd player
kaffeine - versatile media player for KDE 3
totem - A simple media player for the Gnome desktop (dummy package)
- gxine - the xine video player, GTK+/Gnome user interface
mplayer-k6 - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux
$ apt-cache search instant messenger
gaim - multi-protocol instant messaging client
kopete - instant messenger for KDE
kmerlin - Instant messaging (IM) client for the MSN messenger network
centericq - A text-mode multi-protocol instant messenger client
Seems pretty straight-forward to me....
Look at the problems FireFox had finding a name that wasn't already in use for something.
www.sjbaker.org
When the letter 'e' ends a word it is silent and makes the precedeing vowel long, so it would be 'zine' ryhming with 'sign' and 'line'.
magazine?
benzine?
thorazine?
chlorine?
caffeine?
and those are just the first five that come to mind. but, in fact, i'm gonna guess that just about every english word that ends with "zine" is pronounced "ZEEN." Most of these are drugs and chemicals.
moral: enlish is a bitch, and hard rules hard to come by.
This applies to slashdot also.
When I get the emailed list of today's slashdot articles, how do you think this one will be listed?
As "Linux's Difficulty with Names"?
No, that's too easy, it will be "from the more-important-than-you-think dept."
Stupid!
Let's do the comparison one more time using the names in my Ubuntu Breezy menus vs. the EXE names on Windows. Fair is fair, right?
Web Browser
Windows: iexpore, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox
Linux: Opera Web Browser, Mozilla Web Browser, Firefox Web Browser
Graphics Editing
Windows: photoshop (a place to buy photos?), illustrator
Linux: GIMP Image Editor
Movie Playback
Windows: wmp
Linux: Totem Movie Player, MPlayer, Xine, VLC Media Player
DVD Playback:
Windows: WinDVD (what titles can I win?), wmp
Linux: Totem Movie Player, Xine, VLC Media Player
Simple Text Editing
Windows: Notepad, Wordpad, TextPad
Linux: Text Editor
Instant Messaging
Windows: AIM
Linux: Gaim Internet Messenger
Music Playback:
Windows: wmp, Itunes (you tunes we all tunes to Itunes), WinAmp (I don't want Windows louder)
Linux: Beep Media Player, Rhythmbox Music Player
CD Ripping:
Windows: Itunes, wmp
Linux: Sound Juicer CD Ripper
CD Burning
Windows: Roxio, Nero
Linux: Gnome Toaster, Serpentine Audio CD Creator, Nero
It's pretty clear that Windows needs some consistency work before it will reach the level of polish and ease of use found in today's modern Linux distros. Anybody can write a story that manipulates the details in their favor.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
I love GIMP, and it's a great image editor, but the acronym ("gimp" instead of "G.I.M.P") leaks something to be desired, doesn't it?
Like 'Cinematic', but with an 'X' (not 'Z') at the beginning, and without the 'matic' at the end.
'Ksi-nay', more or less.
...that Windows assumes you're an idiot, and Linux doesn't.
Don't agree with me? Who here has ever told someone to click on "the big blue E"?
FLR
If this guy made toilet paper, he'd call it "Butt Wiper".
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Yeah, it's really obvious how to pronounce words that start with "mpl".
There was no backspace key, and you didn't see what command you typed in until AFTER you hit the enter key. So to keep things easy, you end up with 2 to 4 letter commands. ls, ed, df, dd, etc... Clearly "grep" came along later: [a-b^!]\\s\((a|b).* )!!!
Like in 'magazine'?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I just did what I thought is the unthinkable... I moved my personal home workstation to Ubuntu 5.1 and have been using it for about 2+ weeks now... I still have a Win2003 server in the house acting as a dhcp/wins/dns box (and for file/print sharing) and my daily work duties in software pre-sales puts me in front of win2003 and 'nix boxes daily... Most of what I have been experiencing at home have to do with things burned into my auto-pilot by Microsoft I have a feeling... I just am having a hard time getting over the whole (but I usually do it this way problem) and have found myself rebooting back into XP a few times to do a certain thing that just needs to be done NOW... some things i have not totally tweaked/configged (samba for instance) and it just is a 'do it once, learn it and move on' procedure that must be done... I for one like using Ubuntu/Vmware and Firefox to do my stuff now... I am just keeping my dual boot this way until I have spent a full month doing my daily work/home duties before ridding myself (or just moving) XP to a less than front and center place in my day...
sig goes here!
Okay, great! So "Gnome" is pronounced "Nome," because when a "gn" starts a word, the "g" is silent. Right?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Granny isn't going to be able to read the icon font for either.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I've noticed this same problem myself. What I do is enable KDE's option to include descriptions next to program names. That way when someone is looking for a particular type of program they'll have a much greater chance of finding it.
I don't know if Gnome includes anything like that, but it doesn't really matter to us since we use KDE.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
first, this "names" this article speaks about is about names that are given to open source projects and not to linux! linux is the kernel and the startup/shutdown scripts... and maybe some other pieces, but that's it... besides the kernel and userspace apps (udev,...) there is nothing exclusively linux-like with this "names".
this XYZ computing (maybe this company tries to compensate something with this article... their name for example) article however raises something else speaking of usability and this things...
in X (http://www.freedesktop.org/), there exists a mime-database and a desktop-file-database. every application comes with .desktop files that provide info what this app is for. if your window manager or desktop environement is able to use this info, you do not need to remember any names of apps.
for example /usr/share/applications/gimp.desktop
the Category says, in what submenu this entry should to. the GenericName specifies a name (in the locale the user works in) that explains what this is (Image Editor) and the Comment explains it more detailled. ... and guess what: the MimeType even specifies, what MIME this app can work with.
in most situations you do not need to care what app is opening a file... and if you try to open a file in a file manager that is aware of the mime-db and .desktop files, then it will offer you already all installed image editors / image viewers available... after once trying them, you know their names... voilà!
... and once you learn what the names mean, you start to like this logical naming. for example:
gimp: general image manipulation programm
this is probably the best and most logical name for such kind of application *g*
In our newfound GUI world, menu conventions are more important for wide acceptance.
When I install Firefox or OpenOffice in the *nix world, do I get a consistentantly added menu structure somewhere, anywhere? Of course not!
Hell, on Windows, OpenOffice adds exactly the menus I would expect, where I would expect them for the currently running window manager.
This is something that both Bill and Steve get a BIG leg up on the *nix world. You want to run on their OS, here is how you conform. Resistance is futile.
How hard would it be for all the Linux window managers to conform to an XML based menu system, that would consume the XML based application menu supplied by each application?
Gnome/KDE/whatever only have to write one consumer. Each can do what it needs to within its space.
Each application has to write one definition to get a consistent look/feel/structure across many *nix window managers, today and future.
I think the jury is in on consistent visual clues aiding in computer usage. If I can find the program using a consistent graphical menuing system, I can track down the program whatever its name!
A decade of reading, my very first post!!!
except it doesn't rhyme with 'sign' and 'line'. it rhymes with 'scene' and 'lean'
http://xinehq.de/index.php/faq#PRONOUNCE
I'm sure you saw a horse with two heads. I'm even sure you sucked on the smaller one.
...there was a program that ran on Windows, that changed the world. Despite being named for it's creator's goofy nickname, people figured out pretty quickly that they could use it to find and download music free of charge. It was hugely popular until it crumbled beneath the weight of legal pressure, but it's impact is still felt.
What was the program? Napster.
If the software is easy enough to use and allows people to do something new and fun, they'll figure it out.
Per ardua ad astra.
My exact reasoning behind either commenting (mouse-over text) the aliases for the icons on my mother's desktop, or naming the aliases something like 'internet' or 'email' rather than 'Mozilla Firefox' or 'Mozilla Thunderbird'.
I had college once, but I drank some fluids and got a lot of rest and eventually it was cured.
And I used to thought that gnu/linux apps names were chosen using some kind of "hack" , after all gnu = gnus not unix! , or RMS just wanted something with big horns so he could punch people?
def greetings(x): return {'friend': 'Howdy', 'enemy': 'Dye [sic]'}.get(x, 'g0 4w4y, l4m0r')
The PDP's implementation of CCL (concise command language) let you abbreviate to the shortest non-ambigous string. Later DEC renamed CCL to DCL (DEC command language) and VAX/VMS shipped with DCL (although without all the fancy F$lexicals at first). Somewhere around VMS 4, I think, the TPARSE routines were rewritten and abbreviation was limited to a minimum of four characters, which caused my highly trained fingers to betray me repeatedly.
Having trained end-users in both, I can say that VMS was much easier to learn and understand than *nix for native english-speakers. If you have no english, or english as a second language, *nix is less typing and you have to memorize everything anyway.
The sad part is I still remember RSX Indirect and MCR, the predecessors to CCL. That backwards PIP syntax was a bitch.
$ unmount
bash: unmount: command not found
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
iTunes
iChat
iMail
iWork
iLife
iPhoto
iMovie
iDVD
Almost everyone who has a Linux Distro knows what is on their system... More people who run Windows and MAC havnt got a clue what is on the big thing under the desk...
Using names that actually describe what an app is without a stupid / clever / cool sounding acronym? Come on... this would cleary violate the For-Us-Geeks, By-Us-Geeks (FUGBUG) usability standards set forth by the OSS community. If it's not based on state of the art user interface technology, circa 1976, is just doesn't work in OSS.
8 Years ago, Microsoft made a groupware/mail client for Exchange Server called, Exchange Client. With Office 95, they decided to add limited POP3 support (and IMAP at the time, or IMAP in Outlook 97 or 98, I forget) and bundle it with office. Outlook was a result of a turf war between the Office people, wanting to get control of contact information to make their bundle of applications more powerful, and the Exchange people that wanted their MAPI client to be exchange specific.
Meanwhile, the Internet team that did IE wanted a free mail client, and didn't seem able to get along with the other groups. Given that the Internet got HOT and they were the hot division, even without making money, it makes sense that the Exchange group wasn't thrilled at their crown jewels being used for free stuff, and the Office Group didn't want to play nice either.
So they bought someone's basic email system, hacked it to look more like Outlook, bundled more COM components (making it mostly scripting-compatible with Outlook) and called it Outlook Express?
Why? Because people that used Outlook knew that it was the BEST office email application (because of the calendar/address book and other support), so they extended the Outlook "brand" by borrowing the name, not borrowing the code.
What happened to Outlook? Well, just as the Exchange team feared, more focus was on the IMAP/standards approach and less focus was on the MAPI side... You can now replace most of the Exchange functionality with open standard solutions.
Great for users... greats for Office sales (upgrading Office becomes a part of the reason to upgrade Office... lots of NICE collaboration features), and Exchange needs to compete on the server side.
When your client was MUCH better than anyone else's, you could put functionality in the client to sell the server piece. When everyone can use YOUR client, you have to compete on the server side. As a result, Exchange's BIGGEST selling point is the integration with AD and SQL Server (through AD), etc.
Alex
Well, someone said something like that having to do with computers.
Anyhow, they started implementing every 2 character command they could think of, they just didn't start with aa and work straight through to zz.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The names listed in your Gnome menu are not the names of the applications. A while back the Gnome devs recognized that Linux applications have stupid unintuitive names so they decided to give the core programs used in Gnome easy to identify aliases. It's not called "Firefox Web Browser", it's called Firefox. "Totem Movie Player" is an alias for Totem. "Text Editor" is an alias for gedit. There is no Linux app called "Instant Messenger", it's Gaim or Gabber. Go down your list of Linux names and what you find almost every time is an instance where the Gnome devs thought that the real name of the application was too stupid and non-intuitive to be listed by name, so they created an alias for it. This is the entire point of the original article: most Linux applications have stupid names.
By "familiarity", you mean "training". Re-read your inane post above using "training" instead and you will cough up your heart and die, as your heart is as black as coal.
Just think, if you had to do a bit of graphic design which would be easier to pick out of the menu, GIMP or Photoshop?
So if you wanted to do a bit of graphic design, and wanted to use GIMP, then it would be pretty easy to pick GIMP out of a menu, wouldn't it?
Register the editry.
Just because Linux names are acronyms, doesn't mean their any easier to remember. Wth does GIMP stand for? GNU? VLC? GNOME?
Hell, some people don't even know what IBM (International Business Machines), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or EU (European Union) stand for. If Joe Average can't remember such common public acronyms, what makes you think they're going to bother remembering Linux acronyms?
Nowadays, it's called 'M' by some. It's still a disease.
Yeah, if there had been a question you would have said RTFM. Since you didn't say that, there must not have been a question.
I've never understood why people respond to a question with RTFM under the theory that they don't have time to answer a question that is covered elsewhere. If you're time is so fucking precious why don't you just keep your fucking trap shut?
Sure GIMP is not the name that jumps out at you as some kind of visual editor... but the programmer didn't name it for that reason. He named it that either because it was a cool acronym for something that did make sense or he has some special place in his heart for a certain Pulp Fiction scene. (or both)
Either way it would be way easier to deal with if you just allowed me to hover over the damn thing with my mouse and have a handy little meta-data box jump up and say...
"GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring."
It comes part and parcel with having a choice of applications. When you're locked in, there's only on choice anyway, so there's not so much competition in the namespace.
When everybody can deploy an application, a funny thing happens: they do. Is it any wonder the namespaces are so awkward and crowded?
Personally, this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make for freedom.
Then again, that same freedom let's you rename pretty much any software application to something better, ala Linspire.
Names don't need to be descriptive...
--
My brain is on holiday in Tibet and may not be held responsible for the crimes of my body.
You're right, a lot of people think that. And the ones who think that are correct, in many important respects.
That is, their only exposure to the net is through that single interface. IE == the internet in the same way that Outlook == my email.
The means by which human beings categorize their world linguistically is mainly through their understanding of what their five senses tell them. For instance, scientists now tell us that time is relative, that there's no such thing as simultaneity. And most of us believe them, even though this is a thoroughly unintuitive concept. But no language encodes relativistic notions into its grammar.
Why is that? There are two reasons: 1) I can't see, with my own two eyeballs governed by my own primate cerebellum, that light travels the same speed in any inertial reference frame; and 2) such knowledge is not primally important to a human: usually the knowledge won't help me get laid or avoid being killed.
Now apply the last paragraph to its analog in this thread. First, your typical Aunt Tilla IE user can't see the inner workings of the internet; in fact, the web was designed so that, for the most part, she wouldn't have to. The only part of it she can see is what IE shows her. Second, that knowledge is usually unimportant to her. If something goes wrong, she can call tech support or her 13-year-old grandchild to help her out.
Why should she spend the time to learn about the tcp/ip suite, bgp, autonomous systems, the difference between cat-5 and cat-6 cable? She uses her television set quite successfully without understanding the physics of radio-wave transmission, the inner politics of NBC, or cathode ray tubes. It's the beauty of abstraction, baby!
I'm feeling this guy werent that objective.. I'm kinda feeling he could have done better with getting the examples. I know there's not that bad in Linux, and many of the popular Windows applications now a days is worse..
The biggest case in point is windows. We take for granted we know what it is but go to any 3rd world country or any tribe and ask them what windows is and they'll look at you as if you have two heads. Or just ask anyone without exposure to a computer yet what windows is and they'll probably tell you "its those things in my house that lets me see outside and I can open up to get air"
So what I'm trying to say is both os' have both good and bad names but if the program is GOOD(as in gets the job done) no one is gonna give an f about how well the program is named.
It's the marketing people -- something MS has always done well and OSS has hardly done at all. It's the same problem with Domino, or should we call it "Lotus Notes." In the mule-choking Domino book I bought they even admit that nomenclature is a problem.
/. then nothing much will change.
/. in the sky....
Our corporation was doing pre-project testing to upgrade/migrate our email system. We were looking at Domino, Exchange and OSS. I setup all three and presented. I wanted Squirrel Mail. I made the huge mistake of leaving the default webpage intact which plainly displayed both the name and the picture of the cute little squirrel. Upper management nearly fell out of their chairs. Forget the PHP stuff I showed off, the LDAPing into our existing Active Directory, the money-saving, the history, the name it. That name and picture killed it.
Say what you will, but Bullet Tooth Tony always rings true ("Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity"), and the people in power are more likely than not to be stupid about technology. We ended up purchasing and migrating to Exchange. Why? Because MS had marketed it well in all those colorful "CIO" magazines, the name stuck, it had nice bright colors just like my kid's crayons and it all flowed well and had for years -- I'm talking about marketing.
To the contrary, the more research I did into OSS solutions for email the more frustrated I personally became. "Sendmail is ok, but Jim's Mail is much better and here's why," and then "Jim's Mail was good, but Ted's mail improves on things this way." On and on and on -- it seems OSS is too polluted with each and every dude trying to rebuild the wheel forgetting the fact that the people with the really nice cars and corner offices only know of "Cartman" from that whacky cartoon and I would only use "Bitchx" in a big meeting if I plan on turning in my resignation (do I have to explain women COs and PCness?).
Much of the OSS community simply has too much of -- as Lucas put it trying to produce 1977 Star Wars -- "a hippy mentality." They come at the man with an attitude and dare anyone to get all up their face over silly and whacky names and over the fact that they've re-invented the wheel over and over and over.
At the end of the day, COs don't mind tossing change (and it is change by comparison) at a "name brand" product like Exchange. Forget the fact that MS itself thumbed its nose at age-old SMTP commands barfing out Cisco PIX. Forget the fact that they stole and copied things Sendmail does without giving credit. Forget all of that. They know how to talk to the big man with the hot secretary and they know how to market. Until OSS gets this point and stops imagining that these guys -- who spend as much money on a suit as you do your annual PC budget -- read
The irony is, is that I actually had to use OSS and Sendmail to do the complicated routing to migrate 1000s of users over to Exchange. Once all was done, I euthanized the Linux box and sent it to that great
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
>>Linux: Beep Media Player>Linux: GIMP Image Editor>Xine>Gnome Toaster
Huh? What do I want to taost gnomes for? They aren't even real.
--
Two can play at this game, but my guess is you'll miss my point entirely.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Jesus. It take a "special" kind of person to be confused by 'Text Editor (KWrite)' as the entry in my KMenu reads. This is a step up from Windows, where more often then not, after a few months of default (next,next,next) installs the "start" menu becomes cluttered by cryptic entries grouped by publisher (who the fuck cares about the name of the publisher??? Sure, maybe publishers would like you to care - but here's the thing, WE DON'T!).
I dunno what the situation is on GNOME, since frankly I stopped using GNOME long ago as it's clearly designed by condescending assholes, but KDE on Linux/BSD SURPASSED windows naming quite some time ago.
step up to the command line and
finger Mary, finger the GIMP, then grep the GIMP and pipe the GIMP for Mary.
Tell them to touch Mary if she doesn't exist, then grep and pipe Mary for her files.
I guess a poke here and there can still be done...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Am I the only one who hears it as "Kill us, traitor"?
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
Disagreeing with me is fine - hell, given the number of mistakes I make in a given day, it's expected. Still, I'd rather recieve an education than an insult.
Ahhh . . . the short week between Christmas and New Year's Day . . . about 30% of the work force is present today, and we're doing 0.00001% of the work . . . no wonder I'm bored!
type the beginning of a file name, hit tab to complete, hit enter and it is immediately invoked with the default program. Type CD (space) and it will autocomplete any path one directory name at a time. I haven't seen any program that won't run from the command line. Care to list them?
See, this is why we should kill all old people like me. I remember this story from way back. I mean, not like last month, but from several *years* ago. *nix systmes, and Linux in particular, have goofy naming conventions for many of their application programs? No shit. It can be an obstacle to some users? Effing *duh*.
But I was under the impression that the major distros that were concerned about usability had already solved this by putting little descriptions in parentheses next to the names of the programs in the Start/KDE/Gnome/DoStuff menu.
So. The solution to make sure we never have any more duplicate articles, nor never have that annoying feeling of de ja vu is just to kill all the old people so that the young can continue to carry on the same ancient conversations on over and over again and never have the fear of it getting boring or repetitious. The only thing they'll have to fear is age.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
My first point: This is a natural extension of the roots of each operating system. Windows was always intended to be point and click, and unix always was, until very recently, a command based os.
My second point: the most inane of articles provoke the most inane of yes-it-is-no-it-isn't debates.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
As the example names show, Linux (and Unix) people have dysfunctional communication skills, and their "product" names reflect this. Normal people have known this all along, but it's pretty funny (albeit fitting) that Slashdot seems to think this is "news". The world already knows that geeks are the worst communicators around.
I installed Cyberduck on my mom's Mac for FTP access to her website. I like the application -- it's got an easy drag-n-drop interface, it supports SFTP, it's free and open source. But the best feature is that its' dock icon is a big rubber duck. So when my mom calls and says "How do I edit my web page again?" I can say "Okay... now drag that file from your desktop to the duck." She has made the mental link that the duck will take the files in its bill and fly to the web server, where everyone can see it. She can understand the less metaphoric version, but it's the colorful explanation that makes her remember what to do.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Granted, that may have been under Win98 or even Win95 (both of which had DOS modes which I wasn't using at the time). XP has been a pretty good performer for me, and I haven't seen too many of those idiosyncratic behaviors which used to put me off of MS-Windows.
Nowadays, my preference for LINUX is just that - a personal preference. Not too long ago, I could've given you a laundry list of things to hate about Windows, but I have to give the crew from Redmond their due - they've really come a long way since MS-DOS 2.1 (my first experience with MS software).
I don't have a single windows machine at home, but at work, hovering over the MS program icons reveals, oh so unintiutively, verbatim:
-Internet Explorer--Finds and displays information and Web sites on the Internet.
-Microsoft Word--Create and edit text and graphics in letters, reports, Web pages, or email messages by using Microsoft Word.
-Microsoft Excel--Perform calculations, analyze information, and manage lists in spreadsheets or Web pages by using Microsoft Excel.
-Windows Media Player--Plays your digital media including music, videos, CDs, DVDs, and Internet Radio.
-Microsoft Access--Create databases and programs to track and manage your information by using Microsoft Access.
-Microsoft Visio--Create, edit and share diagrams by using Microsoft Visio.
-Microsoft Powerpoint--Create and edit presentations for slide shows, meetings, and Web pages by using Microsoft PowerPoint.
-Microsoft Outlook [Express]--Sends and receives e-mail and newsgroup messages.
Perhaps it was those pesky IT types that went in to set those tooltips, but, either way, it ain't rocket surgery.
Again, thank you for reaffirming my faith in /.'ers in general.
Don't the phrases 'Article a bit thin' and 'xyz computing' go hand in hand? That's called a tautology....Thanks for the warning about the xyz computing article.
Definately writing this without reading the forgotten article....
Canonical Anonymous Coward
Can a sig be more clever than it's creator?
The Linux community is exclusive (for good reason); the language (i.e. naming convention) helps perpetuate that. Anyone running Linux and hoping to find applications with foolproof names like Notepad, Windows Media Player, and Internet Explorer has a lot biggers issues on the horizon than just finding the application.
As a person who is trying to get into Linux, I'm glad someone brought this issue up.
Coming fresh from a Windows environment to Linux, one of the first things you notice is the plethora of ridiculous and sometimes mystifing program and command names. I realize that to a programmer, code junkie, or any other overly technically inclined individual, the inside joke with the prefixes of G and K everywhere is chuckle-worthy. To everyone else, it seems like either a silly joke or deliberate obfuscation. To a new user, you feel like you're too stupid to get what the point of naming something 'Gaim', 'Xine' or 'LiVES' is. The worst offender (and shining case point) is GIMP.
This is not to say that this problem is universal with Linux software. There are plenty of examples of well-named, easy to remember, and relevant names in the Linux library. OpenOffice, MP3c, and Muse are all well named programs that have some relationship to the work they perform.
My point in all this is to say that if Linux is ever going to become mainstream (and by mainstream, I mean my mother and little sister use it): it's simply got to grow out of the Alpha Geek culture it was created in. I firmly believe the biggest problems with Linux right now is the lack of a truly slick GUI and the God-awful naming conventions. These two issues conspire to make Linux look like an out of control Ham Radio project to the average user. Regardless of the disdain that some people on /. have for average users, they are the people Linux will have to cater to if it will ever be anything more than a robust server platform and a hacker playground. It's a exercise in futility to attempt and point out the disassociative names used in Windows programs because more than a few of them already have become so popular that they have become synonyms of the functions they perform. Linux doesn't have that luxury. The attitude that these kinds of issues are only problems to people who haven't 'learned' Linux will keep Linux on the back burner.
Too bad I've got such horrible Karma, I doubt anyone will ever see this.
Lots of people use the WiMP, why would they have a problem with the GIMP? An earlier post noted how convoluted the Windows Start menu can get if left to its own devices. This is an excellent point, and both platforms have their incongruities with common sense. Software names almost never signify what they do. The bottom line is that users must develop a familiarity with their operating environment and the tools within it. Period.
I think that something that this article seriously misses is that FOSS groups usually do not have the money/ resources to check for existing name trademarks (especially in multiple countries) and they also lack the money/ resources to purchase used names. There are plenty of marketing/ product companies that hold on to names until a buyer comes along. Companies like Microsoft, Adobe, etc have the people and resources to check for existing trademarks, copyrights, etc or buy exixting ones off of other companies. Just look at the troubles FireFox had and that was with the backing of a major FOSS player like Mozilla. Add on top of that the cost of purchasing the domain name for a popular/ more intuitive product name and it becomes obvious why so many FOSS groups choose unusual names. These people are programmers and technophiles, not lawyers and marketroids and most projects have no budget at all.
JM2C
Huh?
Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox vs. Opera, Mozilla, Firefox
Photoshop, Illustrator vs. GIMP (an app to edit photos of gimps?)
Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic vs. Totem, Mplayer, Xine, VLC
WinDVD, Windows Media Player, CyberDVD, Media Player Classic vs. Totem (totem pole?), Xine (how is this pronounced, anyway?), VLC
Windows: Notepad, Wordpad, Textpad vs. Linux: vi, Emacs, Pico
Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Trillian vs. GAIM
Windows Media Player, iTunes, Winamp vs. Beep (it only plays beeps?), Rhythmbox
iTunes, Windows Media Player vs. Sound Juicer, CDParanoia
Easy CD Creator, Nero Burning Rom vs. Toaster, Serpentine, Nero
"Sufferin' succotash."
As Linux Torvaldz once said (more or less), if you build if for idiots only idiots will use it, ahem Windows ahem. If you can't remember the name of a piece of software, then you must fall into the aforementioned category, in which case you should install Windows. People who are dumb enough to pay for software in which a comparable open source alternative exists without searching for it are those who can't find/remember the name of a piece of software ipso facto let the rabble continue to be restrained by the less than schlocky operating system commonly known as windows.
Exposure and familiarity are what aid accessibility, which in my mind is one of the issues for the average home computer user in choosing what platform to practice. Who is the target for Linux? If it's really everyone, then it might be that some of the naming schema need to change and take that into account. If it's going to continue to be for the more trained, inquisitive and overall learned user, then it's not nearly so much of a problem, but when I think about why more people use other platforms, that is one of the salient points...far from THE only or THE major issue, but certainly one. Are we helping bring Linux type platforms to more users across the knowledge spectrum or are we unthinkingly hindering them?
"Right out of HS in 1959, I attended the Barns School of Business to learn "computer programming", which was really just using jumper cords to connect holes in a patch board to a neutral bus board on the IBM 402 Tabulator. We used the 540 Gang Punch to enter data onto punch cards for sorting in the 402 Tabulator. The purpose of "programming" was to sort punch cards so the tabulator could tabulate them and sent the results to a printer. But, I looked too young and couldn't convince employers to hire me."
Pfft. You kids these days. Try drum memory and mercury delay lines. And snow haven't even been invented yet.
BTW, with the filesystem root gone, there was a data loss - that day's sales (it was a telemarketing firm). The system was poorly configured - there was only *one* partition, the root partition (well, swap, but there's not a lot of data to be recovered there).
And in truth, while the after-action report seemed both specific and complete, I have often wondered what else was going on to permit the kind of devastation we saw from a single mistake.
Bottom line - the cryptic, two- and three-letter commands which typify UNIX are best left unchanged. Redesigning the system to use 'dir' instead of 'ls' (for example) would break literally millions of executables and scripts. Aliasing UNIX commands to their MS-DOS counterparts should only be done by and for professionals who understand the underlying UNIX commands, not so that personnel with only MS-DOS experience can use the system.
Those who disagree are certainly free to get the source of the LINUX OS and put their theory into practice.
PornView
MP3.com sold to Vivendi/Universal for big duckets, now he's got DVD Jon working on this piece of glob-ware.
MP3.com was a golden goose..I fail to see anything politically incorrect with the names squid or python.. and I've seen them used in many commercial and even educational institutions without any issues.. FCKeditor, well... perhaps...
This criticism of names for Linux apps is right on in my opinion (I'm looking at you, KDE developers). That said, the least informative name ever has to be Adobe Acrobat, confused even further by the difference between Acrobat and Acrobat Reader.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
I have a bookmark set up as "tld %s", pointing to "http://www.iana.org/root-whois/%s.htm".
"Good news, everyone!"
Not without a registry tweak, (although I think one of the new powertoys has a twiddle-box somewhere now). To be fair, bash and tcsh both also need variables set to enable this.
The article misses an important point; When a user installs an application (as they have to do, in cases such as Nero or iTunes when the app doesn't come preinstalled) the user already knows what it does. So when Grandma installs Nero, she knows that it will put her brand new pictures on that newfangled cd device.
I've never seen it myself, but if it does occur simply put start before the stuff.
All of the following work (assuming txt associated with notepad):
demo.txt
notepad demo.txt
start demo.txt
start notepad demo.txt
-- You're too stupid to be an atheist.
Unix started as a cut-down (ha ha) version of Multics, and the command naming weirdness is probably a result of that. See, at the time, the job control language for big iron was short and sometimes awfully cryptic. So the Multicians provided commands that were very easy to understand, like "change_working_directory." You didn't need to look in the manual to know what that command did.
But of course, they also realized it would be a pain for power users to have to type those long names out every time they used the command (no command autocompletion in those days, and besides many people communicated with the mainframe using a teletype printer, like the old Decwriter II). So the Multicians also came up with abbreviations for each command, like "cwd" for "change_working_directory," and the deal was that you could use either the full command name or the abbreviation as you pleased.
So far, so good. But when Unix was written, they only took over the abbreviations. Don't know why. And the problem is that the abbreviations were only meant to be used by power users. Newbies were supposed to be using the full commands. So the abbreviations were designed to be fast to type -- short, distinctive -- and not at all with the idea of it being easy to infer what they did. You shouldn't be using the abbreviation if you aren't sure what the command does, not on Multics.
So chalk this weirdness up to historical accident, I'd say. No one knew at the time that Unix would take over the world, especially since Multics itself never became much more than a fascinating research curiosity.
And in my day, we were forced to enter commands in Morse. That's right ... MORSE. Even if you were good and had a decent keyer, 20 words per minute was about the top end.
Wanna change directories? dah di dah dit / dah di dit. Sure it was slow, but we *liked* it. Really gives you time to think about a command. Wasn't nobody recursively deleting a directory full of important files, no sir! Half the time you got to the end of a command, you'd forget what you intended to do. NOW THAT IS SECURE COMPUTING.
Bring back Morse, I say. And you young 'uns quit grumping about your newfangled typing commands. You don't know how good you have it.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Why is everyone so confused about PhotoShop, proposing that it implies buying photos?
Didn't the concept of workshop or woodshop or metalshop come to anyone's mind? When I hear of any kind of object-shop, that implies a place of manipulating/working on that object. At least that is the convention in the US culture. object-store would mean a place that sells it, vs. object-shop would mean a place that works on it. I think that the word "shop" does have more of a buying/selling connotation in British English, though.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
photoshop, outlook, powerpoint, excel and the gimp means nothing.
It's just a name, and 80% of word population doesnt speak english.
This idea is basically "these names are bad, because I don't want to learn them." See also, "the command line is bad, because I don't want to learn it." This doesn't mean that the user is stupid, only that they are lazy.
These operating systems and software tools are designed by and for people who like to learn, people who value knowledge. They respect others who value knowledge. Now you have users coming through the doors who want the power that the tools can give, but who sneer with contempt at the suggestion that they might want to learn command-line syntax or what su or dd mean. These users want to be accomodated, but they're also very touchy about the obvious--you can't let on that you think they're intellectualy lazy, much less outright dim.
There is really no way to peacefully resolve that delimma. It isn't just a matter of renaming a few programs or writing a few more tutorials. The mindsets are just incompatible. We should be trying to convince the new users that learning about the computer tools they want to use isn't a waste of time, not trying to convince the OS/software writers/maintainers to dumb down their wares to accomodate the willfully ignorant. It may be true that they won't be convinced, ever, that the command line is their friend, or that learning a few command and program names won't kill them, but that doesn't mean we should start dumbing everything down. Even the most arrogant open-source geek at least values and respects knowledge, which is just healthier overall than deliberate, cultivated ignorance, however affable the ignoramus might seem.
I mean, it probably would've been a success if they had called it the iMP3 Player.
As pointed out previously though, most Windows apps still have 8.3 compatible executable names underneath the Window manager in exactly the same way GNU/Linux distros do. "Internet Explorer" is longer than 8.3, so it almost certainly isn't the real name.
;)
Apples and Oranges, grandparent was the first post to compare like with like, and in general GNOME window manager (and KDE) both have better organised menus, and clearer names for programs than Microsoft Windows does.
The real name matters when it crashes, and the end user hits "ctrl+alt+delete", and the real names (not the menu items) are presented in some views (on both KDE and Microsoft Windows), so the hiding of real names (whichever system is involved) can create a barrier to the end user.
On my system the real name of the browser process appears to be "mozilla-firefox", so that should be pretty obvious if the end user needs to kill it. Anyone with Microsoft Windows want to compare process names?
there is no job control, and no concept of controlling terminal whatsoever.
Most command line tools are less functional than their GUI counterparts, which is about the opposite of what happens in unixland.
I always pronounce it to rhyme with 'cine' as in 'cinema'.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
awwww, come on!
without the names it would only be half the fun!
OK so I have an email client. What should I call it? KMail (taken), Mail ? Taken from day one. The number of names is fairly limited, and the number that are registered in the real world for real products is large. The era of easy naming of applications is long gone. The most we can hope for these days is for descriptive menu items / desktop link names rather than application names: "ASDF an email client".
I didn't think much of the TFA or why this is an issue. Surely the application installer can insert the appropriate menu item or link name. It isn't even a new idea just look at gnome or say kde where firefox is shown as "Web Browser (Firefox)" in the Internet menu (Slack 10.2). Perfectly clear.
Bitter and proud of it.
I just can't understand why they don't use the Microsoft naming practices. Like dxmasf, msstdfmt or wzcdlg for example. How explanatory and easy to use are these names. Instead of ls they could use msslzscpq for easiness and confort of developers and users.
catchy names bears the risk of getting sued. Sometimes by people who stole the name and register it or by ones who holdes simular names but you didn't had the time to find out beforehand.
I wonder what if Unix had fast teletypes at the time and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs took the jobs of Thompson and Ritchie?
/Home/Bill/MyDocuments. Type Something, please > change directory to /Programs and Libraries/SharedLibraries/GnuCompilerCollection
/Programs and Libraries/SharedLibraries/GnuCompilerCollection? Type Something, please > y
/Programs and Libraries/SharedLibraries/GnuCompilerCollection
/Programs and Libraries/SharedLibraries/GnuCompilerCollection. Type Something, please > ls
/Programs and Libraries/SharedLibraries/GnuCompilerCollection. Type Something, please > man(BackSpace)(BackSpace)(BackSpace) help
you are currently at
are you sure you want to go to
please, answer yes or no > y
please, it's a simple, straightforward question: yes or no? > yes
changing directory to
you are currently at
Hi, i'm clippy. It seems you are trying to invoke some command which doesn't exist. Would you like me to help? please, answer yes or no > n
please, it's a simple, straightforward question: yes or no? > no, damnit!
please, it's a simple, straightforward question: yes or no? > no
Maybe next time i can be of better help. Bye
you are currently at
Hi, i'm clippy. Would you like me to help? please, answer yes or no >
.
.
.
I don't feel like it...
...and she'll probably be insulted that her computer is calling her a "gimp."
Shame on Google.
When I first made contact with the command lines in both Windows and Unix, I was quite frankly shocked at how poorly either of them compared to DCL (Digital Command Language) under the VMS operating system.
Coming from VMS, I found the Unix command line syntax incredibly unintuitive, inconsistent, and just plain inconvenient. I know that the reason for this is that the various parts of it were designed and implemeted by different people at different times for different reasons. But the end result is just messy.
Under Windows, I found the command syntax more reasonable and sometimes even sensible. But here the problem was another one. Things that I naively thought were available on every platform, simply weren't there when I looked for them. Trying to replicate what would have been very easy in a DCL batch file under VMS, was either impossible or required lots of clever or complicated tricks.
It is of course easy to say that the system you know well always feels more senisble than a new one that you are trying to learn, and that is certainly true. But even so, I still think that the consistency and sheer good design of DCL did put it in another division than either Unix or Windows.
Anyway, if you're like me and still miss VMS though you now work under Windows or Linux, please feel free to have a look at my open source project Glindra. It is a set of command line utilities that run under Windows or Linux, and try to recreate the flavor of the VMS commands dir, copy, rename, delete and purge. They support file version numbers and the *** directory wildcard (meaning all subdirectories), much like VMS.
Other aspects, such as option names that can be truncated as long as they are unique, and suboptions within parentheses, are also inspired by VMS.
You can browse the documentation at doc.glindra.org to decide if you want to download and try them out.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
"CrapThrasher 3000" would be a great name for a band.
Hahaha, you are a funny bunch, discussing "stuff that matters" only for the english-speaking part of the planet.
Should we therefore quit using computers altogether, for reasons of nicht-usability?
Here's how my Applications folder reads (just from C to G):
Calculator.app
Camino.app
Chess.app
Dashboard.app
Dictionary.app
DVD Player.app
EasyFind.app
Extensis Suitcase X1
Firefox.app
Font Book.app
GarageBand.app
Google Earth.app
None of those is the actual binary. (Those listed with
So, whether I'm viewing the Application folder in the Finder, listing /Applications in a BASH et al terminal, hovering over an app's icon in the Dock, or looking at the app's binary file I see one name: Adobe Photoshop CS is Adobe Photoshop CS no matter where I choose to look for it.
The potato it is uninformed.
http://www.journalismcareers.com/gfx/apostrophepos ter.jpg
Forget Microsoft for a second. Application names of most Open Source software sucks. Yeah that recursive acronym may be very clever, but its useless to anyone who's just searching for the app they want.
Who is this mythical anyone?
I really don't understand the problem. Let's say I need to convert some AIFFs to GSM audio. Five seconds of googling and I've found a program called SOX, that'll do what I need.
What did you want that program to be called?
Or, I need to convert a TrueType font to an OpenType font. I found a program called pfaedit. It turns out it was renamed to fontforge. Whatever it is called, I found it less time than it took to write this sentence.
Both of those programs, I used months ago and I still remember their names.
What's the big fucking deal?
What do you people expect from a name?
Most importantly, when has the name of a program every stopped you from solving a problem?
Why do I care if some imbecile can't figure out what GIMP does? Why should the GIMP developers, who are probably all volunteers? In fact, why do I care if Joe Sixpack, grandpa or the village idiot uses Linux (or any other OS) in the first place? The whole premise of this conversation is flawed.
I'd love to compare what processes are running on my hobby Linux box, but I have no idea how to do it!
I don't respond to AC's.
This is definately a MAJOR issue. I have been using linux for years, and still have issues remembering the commands. New users would quickly adopt Linux for the desktop if the naming conventions made sense and were simpler to work with even in GUI. It seems the only ones who disagree that linux app naming conventions are tedious at best, are those who have been using it (UNIX) since the 60's & 70's. I even know Red Hat Certified techs who carry a command reference with them.
I don't really see why programs have to be named any differently, why can't kde/gnome already have directory structures in it's menu that is more intuative.
like
menu ->
====================
Web Browser -> Konqueror, Opera, Epiphany, Galeon, Firefox
Graphics Editing -> GIMP
Movie Playback -> Helix, Xine
DVD Playback -> Ogle, Xine, Totem
Simple Text Editing -> Gedit, Kate
Instant Messaging -> Gaim, Kopete
Music Playback -> XMMS, Noatun, MPlayer, Xine
CD Ripping -> Grip, Gnome Toaster, Sound Juicer
CD Burning -> K3b, Gnome Toaster, XCDRoast
there, that doesn't seem too hard....
perhaps they can even be biased, and put a * next to thier preferred ones,
in a case where it is assumed for first time users.
It hardly matters. My grandmother only knows that she has MSN. Beyond that, and eBay, everything else is a mystery.
To test the new printer they had gotten over the holidays, I used Google image search to get random pictures of giraffes, and my aunt and grandmother were astounded; "How did you find those that fast?"
I don't expect the naming conventions of any of these programs sound any stranger than the others to those who don't know any better. I mean, eBay?
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
I'd say gnumeric.
And what's so obvious about 'Acess' compared to, say, mySQL ?
Then there's 'Powerpoint', wtf does that have to do with making presentations?
Granted, many of the unix app names are no better, but I don't see that they're any worse.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Then Kreation would win! We can't have that!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
As others have pointed out, when you use Linux, you have options. There are many web browsers, and you can choose the one that you like best. There are many email clients. There are many text editors.
On Windows, there are also (now) several applications available for each task, but the ones which haven't been ported to Windows like to pretend that they are the only possible choice in their field, and tend to be named accordingly. I'm thinking especially of all the shitty third-party photo-editing software that you get bundled with the Windows drivers for various digital cameras, scanners, etc. They're all called Photo- or Image- something, usually with "Pro" or "Plus" appended for good measure, because it makes them sound better. Good luck telling them apart.
If you are a grandma-level user, and you like to believe that the icon with an e you click on is the only tool in the world for surfing the web (OK, let's not get ahead of ourselves, for "getting on the internet"), then you will be just as happy with the default web browser on whatever grandma-proof Linux distro your grandchild installed on your computer. Since you probably never changed or customised anything on your Windows system because you were scared that changing the background picture would break something, you will never know or care what actual programs launch when you click on "text editor", "word processor", "email", "image editor", "picture viewer", "movie player", etc. If something goes wrong, if the person on the phone helping you out knows enough about Linux to be able to help you, they should be smart enough to know how you can tell them what program you are actually using -- and an unambiguous name which sounds nothing like the names of all the other possibilities will be a help, not a hindrance, in communication.
As for people who are actually aware that there are multiple programs available for each task -- it is a lot easier to distinguish between Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, Mozilla and Galeon than it would be between Web Browser Pro, Web Surfer Pro, Internet Surfer Plus, Super Web Browser 2000, Super Web Surf, and similar generic names.
People have no problem with car names, clothing brands, food names and drink names, even though car names are usually random combinations of real-person-surname + arbitrary word, fashion houses are named after people, and food and drink names are usually total gibberish. It's just a question of familiarity. I know what Pringles are; I don't need them to be called "Flavoured Reconstituted Potato Oval Snacks" to constantly remind me.
If I were to arrive in a foreign country full of unfamiliar food brands, I would probably be a bit lost at first, but I should be capable of finding what I wanted by going to the appropriate sections of the supermarket, reading the descriptions on the packaging, and trying out different brands of the same thing to determine what was good and what was bad. It would be ridiculous of me to complain that the food is not actually named "Good Quality, Expensive Mayonnaise", "Mediocre Mayonnaise", "Awful Fake Mayonnaise", etc. to make it easier for me to remember which is which.
Statements such as these:
Names don't matter, it is all about training and then familiarity
it gets down to user training
are not just "not insightful", they are so 180 degrees, 100% wrong the fact that they would even be modded as anything close to "insightful" brings more disrepute than usual to slashdot.
Ok, now that I've raised the alarm, let me justify it.
First of all, USABILITY MATTERS. This is no longer 1986, or 1994 for that matter. We know now that the usability of a system is a key to its successful deployment.
Second, the opposite of usability is "that which needs training or re-learning when it shouldn't."
A pilot needs training to fly a 747. However, Boeing works damned hard and invests millions of dollars to make the systems as intuitive and usable as possible nevertheless, as this will lead to:
- fewer accidents
- fewer training and re-training costs for the airlines, their customers
- better day to day operation
Nobody at boeing says "the pilots are professionals. let's name the #3 engine Hi pressure bleed air valve malfunction switch "Xooomer". for that matter, let's give their FMS a CLI, since a well trained pilot can be faster with this than with a modal, menu-based FMS."These basic, BASIC principles of design are well known in virtually all fields of engineering. And, I (following in the footsteps of tongue-in-cheek works like the unix haters handbook) have been banging this drum in the linux world since at least 1995. And yet, just as it seems that a little light is shining through, in the form of a slashdot headline that actually says (gasp) intelligent things about usability, we open up the comments to find the same old nonsense from users that "it's not a usability problem, it's a training issue" being modded +5 insightful, which basically tells me that a lot of people still aren't getting it.
Pity.
Mark parent down. Severely down. Please.
You state it yourself -- a shop is a place.
The reason why people get confused about 'photo-shop' is simple: the term was already defined as something else long before Adobe came around. Back in the day, 'photo shop' can meant an office/store where graphics professionals produce/modify/create images.
It wouldn't be much unlike causing confusion by naming a piece of software 'hobby shop.' The phrase is already in common use, having already been defined as a place in which a person can buy/sell goods related to one's hobby. Naming a piece of software 'hobby shop' would cause confusion among everybody else to whom 'hobby shop' has nothing to do with your software.
So it comes down to a name trying to re-define a term already in common use; calling a dry desert a 'sea' causes similar problems. "Sea of Tranquility -- You mean there's no water?!?" To someone who doesn't know where the Sea of Tranquility is, this can be the source of major confusion.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Yes but there's much more that can and is done. Most of it is automated, so you never have to fool with it but all of it is easily changed. That's what happens when you write software for customers and users instead of products for consumers. You don't know how good you have it till you try to go back and do something with a newer Windoze box.
Two important things that KDE gets right is sub categorization and mime type. The default debian Kmenu categorizes programs by function, editors, office, graphics, multimedia. Konqueror has excellent mime type recognition so a right mouse click pulls up "open with" two or three appropriate applications and an "actions" menu that's also full of choices appropriate for any known file type. Debian automatically updates those types when you install new programs and the "open with" item lets you override that choice and use any program you have installed. Of course good documentation is also very important, so the user can know what they are looking at. Debian has man pages, info pages and both gnome and kde help centers for starters, and even more in /usr/share/docs.
Microsoft compares poorly in all of the above due to the nature of non free software. In the non free software world, users are considered resources to be exploited rather than friends to be helped. Applications greedily advertise their publisher in their crappy start menu and seize default mime types without asking. It's downright creepy the way things work there. When I want to manipulate an image on a windoze box, I might double click on it with their file browser. It will simply view the image. If I've been a good boy, I might have modified my "open with" menu item. If not, I have to crawl through "accessories", and various weird names like Adobe, Correl or Jass before I even come close. The first two or three programs I try will be frustrating. A good one won't be in the Office sub menu and image manipulators don't get much crappier than Paint. In the free software world, I get a menu item called "Graphics" that has two or three image manipulators, three or four image viewers as well as several specialty applications for formats like SVG.
All window managers have reasonable menu devisions, but that's just the beginning. The whole is much greater than the sum of the parts and each part is just another piece of free softwar goodness.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Of course, who could forget, Windows' infamous Roman Emperor creation and management software?
First of all, USABILITY MATTERS. This is no longer 1986, or 1994 for that matter. We know now that the usability of a system is a key to its successful deployment.
AMEN. I would go a step further and say that most technological revolutions are effectuated more so by usability breakthroughs than pure technology. The rise of the Internet was precipitated by the web browser. The widespread availibility of a graphical interface drove the adoption of personal computers. MP3's weren't even on the RIAA's radar before Napster made finding and downloading them easy.
Usability and accessibility are FAR more important that most geeks realize, probably because most of them want to use their knowledge of technology as a social lever, rather than as a boon to others.
"Power tools for power fools". I had a job as a programmer at a strange little shop when I was in college. This was the place that didn't do backups because the disks were mirrored and the machines were fault tolerant (this came right from the top, the president of the company). Oh, and everyone ran as root because it was easier that way. I remember the day that the president, having elbowed one of the operators out of the way, was sitting at a terminal and typed in "rm *" in the directory with all of the key data in it instead of the directory he thought he was in. He hit "CTRL-C" pretty fast and didn't lose too much but the sheer look of horror on his face was just wonderful. We started doing backups shortly thereafter.
Application naming practices are just one of the many aspects of the Linux/X UI that need to be optimized and standardized, and then carefully tested to examine which features work best and which ones need to be dropped or replaced with something that works.
/bin? /usr/bin? /sbin? /usr/sbin? Or one of the bazillion other possible locations?). And, most importantly, current, frequently-updated, and accurate documentation.
... Speaking of useability, it took me about 5 tries to post this, counting the times Slashdot timed-out. First it 'lost' my login info, re-loading the page and asking me to log in but not showing a login button. The second time it came up with a page that had one of those "type in the word in this box" things, but with way too much anti-bot junk slathered all over it for me to even read the word. Third and fourth times the page wouldn't even load. I guess Slashdot was Slashdotted.
I'm all for 'Linux on the desktop' but even more for that desktop being usable. No, I'm not saying Linux needs to be 'dumbed-down for the masses', just that it serious UI issues that should be addressed. Unfortunately, those kind of studies require both a major time investment, as well as a monetary investment not usually accessable to OSS projects.
And I know Windows has UI problems too. But that's a poor excuse for not fixing the known problems with the Linux/X UI.
To actually give this post some content, here are other Linux/X UI problems: lack of: interface standardization, menu standardization(both application drop-down menus as well as windowing-system launcher menus), meaningful error messages that actually describe the real problem as well as possible solutions, application location standardization (is *prog* in
I know that certain distributions correct most of these problems, and that for example anyone choosing Gentoo over Suse can expect to deal with a 'weaker' UI.
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
A major point that seems to be missing from the discussion here is that many Open Source projects grow organically. Early precursors to successful Free and Open Source (FOSS from now on) projects often look like utter rubbish at version 0.1, just like all of their legions of unsuccessful competitors.
...) with a hundred other projects that are equally compelling at that stage. Worse still, each project stakes out a little area around it (if there's a halfway-used "PhotoEdit", you probably don't want ("PhotoEditor", "FotoEdit", etc). By the time you're the front-runner, it's much harder to change.
In other words, if you were the equivalent of starting a project like GIMP or xine or whatever, you'll be competing for "obvious names" (PhotoEdit, MediaPlayer,
That's not even mentioning the large numbers of marginal payware, freeware and shareware projects out there also chewing up namespace like there's no tomorrow. And some of these guys have lawyers...
ln -s
Even when names are appropriate, they can still be misinterpreted. My coworker's son calls Internet Explorer "E-enter". Because he selects the big "e" with the mouse and hits 'enter' to launch it.
So there's mud in your eye, Mr. Article Author.
Might have something to do with the fact that if the developer were to name their project/software a name that resembled a commercial application, they'd probably get a C&D and/or copyright infringement lawsuit thrown at them (even if the name was considered generic, common language...)
Perfect example, what do you think Microsoft would do if someone created a new word processor, called it "Word" and made it look even remotely like Microsoft's Word program? Yeah, 'Word' is a generic term, but that wouldn't stop Microsoft from at least trying, I bet.
Brielle
MS's command line doesn't seem to autocomplete the commands themselves though.
GINP instead of GIMP
GINP (Gimp Is Not Photoshop)
Linux has a big problem with "stupid-cute" names that can make people throw up in their mouth a little bit.
The endless "K-" names in KDE, "gimp", and other deliberately goofy names are extremely annoying to a certain subset of people (like me).
If those names don't annoy you, then you're lucky -- you're insensitive to "stupid-cute" nausea.
If you're not affected, then I can give you a rough idea of what it's like to suffer from this kind of nausea: Imagine that the desktop and windows are all set to obnoxiously ugly colors, and you don't have the ability to change them. The system is still usable, but it's very aesthetically displeasing to you ALL DAY EVERY DAY.
Good software marketers know about us nausea sufferers, and they take care to make sure that their products don't trigger our nausea. Look at Microsoft's product names: "Windows", "Office", "Word", "Access", "Excel". It's no coincidence that all those names are simple, non-cute, and professional sounding.
If that were the case, the word "ghoti" wouldn't be pronounceable in English as "fish".
ghoti isn't pronounceable as fish, that word ignores that there are patterns, particularly etymological ones, if not strict rules, to how we pronounce English.
Words with irregular spellings are usually irregular for a historical reason not because someone through some digraphs together to be cute.
For heaven's sake, GIMP means GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's a hell of a lot more intuitive than photoshop, the snarky acronym aside. Complaining about that name is like complaining that nobody would know that they could get money from an ATM. If people got GIMP on all their new computers they would quickly begin to recognize what it was the same way they now recognize "photoshop" which, as others have pointed out, sounds like a place to buy photos. Only professional photo developers understood the name "photoshop" at the beginning. And on top of it, it is usually listed as "Adobe Photoshop" so indeed, to find this image manipulation program on your computer you need to remember the name of a material for making bricks as well as a place for buying photographs. Whereas if you use the GIMP you are 90% of the way there just by knowing that you need a Program to Manipulate Images.
The title being "Linux's Difficulty with Names" suggests that in some way there is a difficulty with the names. I can't say I am a TOP-NOTCH expert but to me this seems more like sensational journalism than anything of value. If you ask "What's with the names of linux applications?" then why not go ahead and ask "What's with the names of kids in africa?"
Aside from the title itself, reading the article gives me a ferverous impression that this character DOES infact like to "judge a book by its cover" because, as it semes, he doesn't care what the program does, rather, what the program is called.
Another thing anyone can tell right off the bat, since it's first on the list, is the Browsers.. let's take a look:
Web Browser
Windows: Internet Explorer
Linux: Konqueror, Opera, Epiphany, Galeon, Firefox
I guess what he is implying is that, in some way, somehow, Windows does not contain Firefox nor Opera.
Honestly, what kind of a news post is this? Who the hell cares what a program is called. "Microsoft Excel" doesn't tell me ANYTHING, and yet, I don't see him blabbing on about "Windows name conventions (or lack thereof)". If a program is what I need to get something done, I will use it. The next superset of C that comes out, I think we have to rename it to "Mid-level Programming Language That requires Skill and Book Reading" in order to please assholes like this guy. Now if you'll excuse me I am off to program a few text programs called ABC and XYZ.
Qwghlm is not a member country of WIPO.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I can find good software from both platform whose names does not indicate what the software does. The naming of a sofwatre is solely determine by its creator. What does it got to do as a platform?
One of the first things I noticed when I switched to Linux was there were a lot of new apps. I had tried some open software in Windows to "make transition easier", but I still couldn't recognize most software. But the K-Menu has an option to show the program description and then the name so it didn't take long to get used to the names.
So naming isn't that much of an issue really, but I would venture to say it's exactly the opposite. For example, when I first switched I talked with my friends of all the new Linux software I was discovering. I kept saying Kopete is an amazing messenger and amaroK was the future of media players. One of my friends decided to try Linux because she liked all the funny names. There's something appealing about the way Kopete, Kubuntu, SuSE, amaroK and many others sound.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
On my system, in the Gnome "Applications" menu, I see a shortcut called "Audio Player" under a submenu called "Sound & Video" which launches xmms. Clearly some work had been done by the distro maintainers to clear up any possible confusion, though it may lead a veteran user coming from another distro to wonder which audio player, until they click it. And if I'm looking for an image editor, I look in the "Graphics" submenu and click "GIMP Image Editor". Sure, it says "GIMP", but it also says "Image Editor". I doubt that'll cause a lot of heartache for new users.
Of course, on a plain Windows+Office install, I click "Start", and browsing through the menus I see highly descriptive names such as Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Outlook Express (which is very different from Outlook). A newcomer to Windows isn't going to have any idea what these do.
... Excel, Outlook, ICQ, PowerPoint, Entourage, Dreamweaver and Acrobat.
Errrm,... nevermind.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Edit [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor]
Value Name: CompletionChar Data Type: REG_DWORD
Data: 09 = (TAB Key)
but they are a problem. We should probably never change the current binary names, but we should try harder to hide that from normal users. Even though there are some places where there are descriptive names available, there are other places where you have to know the binary name. Like setting up your mime application mappings, for example, requires you to know not only the common name and usage of the program you're looking for, it also requires you to know the crazy binary nomenclature.
a bigger problem is coherent workflows. think about how well macs deal with digital cameras these days... linux should work that well for everything. Now if we just had a few million, or so, to spend on a human interface design team.
What I run into often is this.. You want someone on the phone to open explorer, so then you have to specify "not Internet explorer". They should have left the name "file manager" from 3.x days. I know they intended some merge thing between the browser and the file manager, but sheesh they made that confusing, I think that is why they came up with the "My Computer" folder.. so they wouldn't have to say "not Internet explorer" on their support calls.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Of course, Linux names (and Unix ones before that) tend to pale in comparison to some of the beauties Microsoft has perpetrated.
One thinks - or tries not to think - of poor Bob ...
Then we have the infamous MS WinCE, which combined with its copartners NT and ME produced Microsoft's most solid OS, MS Windows CE/ME/NT
Which would be merely historical if it wasn't for the unfortunate coalescing of the sound of Microsoft's latest and greatest Beta with the solitary vice. Pronounce "e" in "beta" as the "ei" in "weight", run Vista hard up against it, and - do you vistabete?
I wish I knew Microsoft chose to identify with the solitary vice. Perhaps they've already gone blind. Oh well, different strokes for diggerent folks. ;)
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
Sure that 's intuitive - if you're a Classics major, and thus a Humanities ubergeek. Most end users aren't anything of the sort.
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
While it may not be relevent to the main argument being made, I think it should be noted that many methods of launching applications in many popular UIs now involve icons. It isn't always clear what a program does by looking at its icon ( look at Adium [ mac IM client ] ), but in many cases they are a big clue. ( iPhotos icon ) Many open source applications, especially the ones that are bundled with a desktop environment, such as gnome or kde, do, in some manor reflect what the application does. Gedit's icon for example, ( last time i checked ) is a peice of paper and a pencil. I might be odd, but nothing screams text editor like a peice of paper and a pencil. [ I made a really nasty typo spelling pecil ( ack. I did it again. ) REALLY glad I used the preview button... ] -- kyle
If con is the opposite of pro. Then isn't congress the opposite of progress?
Tell me about it, I hate having to boot Windows, and this is one of those reasons why I am not there often.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
You're kidding right? As someone who actually teaches 3rd world students who have never seen a single advertisement for anything quite as exotic as software, I can tell you they have as much of an idea what gnumeric means as excell. They don't have a frickin clue what a gnumber is anymore than they know what a spreadsheet is or does. The best spreadsheet name is Openoffice's calc. Granted, they are confused when they don't see a picture of a calculator, but they have the idea that its somehow going to be used to calculate something
Companies has the possibility to buy a name or just use it and sending lawyers. Internet Explorer, Alta Vista are just two I recall, but I've read about many before.
I money we trust - or at least money makes the rules.
But an open source project has no money to buy a catchy name.
Most catchy names are already copyrighted by some company anyway.
Of course K* and G* for KDE/Gnome are really stupid.
Sometimes a short name is the best like unix command ls, rm, mv. You will use them so often that you can't see other meaning of it in other context.
Just my 2 cents.
no the point of the original article is that Linux applications have stupid names *and that's a problem*. but grandparent post makes the point that Linux stupid application names *aren't a problem* because of superior GUI design.
i don't use Linux much so i can't say, myself.
That's its current value.
Take some famous internet search engines: Google and MSN. If I would hear about them today the first time I would not remember tham in 15 minutes. Bad name choices?
My point is, you create a brand so users remember it wherever they see it or connect it automatically with certain areas. For example like google = searching, or tesa = putting stuff together (German readers will get that association, dont know if it's a US brand too). I think the name doesn't matter that much once it is well known. Of course a cool name can make introduction easier (IANAMD = I am not a marketing drone) but I think a name is not as important as the functionlity or let's say the image of a piece of software. Saying this I associate 'GIMP' with a good Linux software immediately, would it be 'Paintbox' I wouldn't use it more or less often.
God nytt år!
try:
ps (or ps -A for all processes (ie from other users on the same server).
Example feedback from a logged in terminal (running nothing really):
PID TTY TIME CMD
92656 pts/0 0:00 ps
107760 pts/0 0:00 -ksh
Touched By His Noodley Appendage.
Ok, Mr Troll. Here's some food :-)
:-) ... and if you know and care what +x is you probably
... and many that only
/tmp directory and it is pretty :-)
.. Also many
... or install a nice rootkit or trojan phone home
:-)
:-)
> And if I do a search of my linux box for files with +x,
Strange, on my box there are no files named *.+x
(
are just making some fun in your next comments)
> I find a whole load, many with the same name which do
> different things (grep versions...)
Which is bad because of what ?
You probably just don't know or care about the differences,
but others might to.
>
> work if i launch them from a set directory.
You are right.
Think of the dangerous "rm" which does completely
different things depending on your set directory.
Run it form your
harmless, run it from your home directory and it
is a dangerous beast
>
> components of applications and scripts that if I just
> run em, will break stuff.
Like "rm", "fdisk" or "shutdown" ?
> Now. lets take a look at the install mechanisms.
> You usually install windows programs from a CD,
> which autoruns if you are a beginner,
spyware ?
> or download them from a website. Both make pretty
> icons with sensible names.
Like "setup.exe"? or "fb32005.msi"?
Some of us prefer "OpenOffice-2.0.1.rpm" or "Firefox.deb"
> For windows components,
> you download them from the MS website, which has
> in-depth descriptions.
Like this?
------
Q304229: Recommended Update
This update addresses the "16-Bit OLE Servers Started from 16-Bit Programs Create Extra VDMs in Terminal Server Sessions" issue in Windows 2000.
------
> Linux is written by computer programmers,
> not computer end users, and it still suffers for it.
Funny, i always thought that it might be a clever idea
to have computer programs written by computer programmers.
Windows is written by whom?
Plumbers? Dishwashers? Undertakers? Disc jockeys?
I truly hope they add a few computer programmers
The article has a badly made point...excel has no relation to spreadsheet or numeracy as far as I can tell!
/h --h /? I mean come on, surely it can't be that hard to pick one and stick with it?
But its not the desktop apps that are the problem (they have icons and are nicely categorized (something Windows would do well to copy)) its the command line apps.
Not only are their names often confusing or far too short, their operation is inconsistant...-h
This a bigger problem than it would be in windows because as soon you scratch the surface of linux you NEED to use the bizarre command line apps.
I notice this every time I use linux, I can work my way though the muddle, but I hate to think what a new user would think if when comparing it to Windows.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
I don't see how BMW is any better at suggesting the act of driving than GIMP is at suggesting the act of drawing pictures.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Much like 'Netscape' was pronounced 'Mozilla'.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Quite easy for those unconfortable with different names: NICKNAME / Alias.
There are 2 ways to do so:
Text mode: alias mynewname="OldBadName"
--add it to ~/.bashrc & ~/.profile
Graphic Mode - for mouse pushers: Redefine your menu entirely. On KDE, right-click "K", pick "Menu Editor" and change as wish. Rename Xine as "Media Player", redefine GIMP as "Photoshop" or "Image Editor".
--Even better, go to "Configure Panel", Layout, tab "Menus" and choose mode "Description (name)".
Quite simple, once you know how-to. The NetAdm can do once on whole linux network, so "wimmigrated" users dont suffer the pains of learning new names...
None of the two. I would search for something called "Bildbearbeitungsprogramm". This whole question is only relevant if you're a native english speaker and therefore superfluous.
While I agree with another poster that Ubuntu puts a bit more care than other distros into making sure its menu items get their descriptive function added to their name (e.g., "Firefox Web Browser" instead of just "Firefox"), there is some wiggle room here. While my dad won't know what Evince is from the name, he wouldn't really need to; he'd just open a PDF and it'd be there. By the same token, people are only familiar with Outlook being a mail/contacts/datebook program because it comes with Office.
When it comes down to it, programs have to be named intelligently, put into menus intelligently and, yes, people have to get used to the fact that they're not using Windows. It is a different system, with different programs. All we can do is build great programs like Evolution (or KMail) that make the transition easy.
So you think no one is capable of mentally making the transition from a place where you do something to a program where you do something?
Right, so a program called 'photo shop' would do...what? Anyone? Beuler? That's right--produce/modify/create images! So if I were to create a program called Greeting Card Studio, people would be absolutely dumbfounded by it because it's cemented in their mind as a physical building where people design greeting cards? I don't think so.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
as in "Pimp My Picture" ?
cd f:\ ...just doesn't work for me. I can only change to a directory in c:\
After reading all these comments, I would like to ask everyone on both sides of the debate to ask themselves one question:
"How would the presentation of Linux be any different if Richard Stallman had the creativity to choose B instead of G?"
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
GNU/Marketing?
... with some of these points, I don't really see why some (such as the internet browsers) are so hard to remember, they have distinctive names, even if they don't have "web" or "internet" in the title, but the media players...
M$ Access == Database???
...
M$ Outlook == Email???
M$ Excel == Spreadsheets???
M$ Windows == Operating System???
Peachtree == accounting software???
Nero == CD Buring software???
ACT! == CRM solution???
The list goes on
Get off it!
Hi there!
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- fast-paced but great communication and great people
- pay, benefits and stock options all super competitive
Check out my profile on slashdot and email me if interested. I work in HR at MobiTV. Thanks! Tiff
tfelicienne at mobitv dot com
your correct. its about the engineer (in linux) who names thier creatoins, vs. THE MARKETERS (in winx) who not only Advertise but Pay companies to put links in the web pages to veiw cetain "advertisements".. im0 its just a matter of intelligence...(are you a lemming or a wolf?)... i would (from a visual point of view) prefer that "xmms" was named "tuner" or even something remotely connected w/music, and you get the point, its just a ramble now..but the thread started out great, in the hopes of you (yes you) future creators of NAMES and associations w/everything should have SOME relevance... yes, newkies back...
happy trials
I guess we know many culprits under linux, but the actual names in xp are just as bad.
Let's see:
win (ie not lose), what would this do ?
acrord32.exe (version 3.2 of ?)
twunk16.exe (superseded by twunk32.exe ? )
hh.exe ?
devenum.exe (calculator ?)
cacls.exe (calulators ?)
carpserv.exe (serves up the dreaded fish carp ?)
cisvc.exe ? clbcatex.exe ? comp.exe (?starts the computer?)
dplaysvr.exe (digital player server)
drwatson (worse drwtsn32.exe)
fastopen.exe (much faster than the normal open command ?)
fltmc.exe (flight mc a music dj program ?)
label.exe (make printed cd labels ?)
mplay32.exe (multipoint layer v3.2 ?)
msswchx.exe (?)
Better stop now, fun is oozing out. I guess this goes to show how ms do not really trust long file names, when they won't even use it for their own applications....
Just type f: to change drive.
echo "This is not a lame sig generated through a pipe." | cat - >
Or if you a kernel windows or linux or match 3.0? .. (it's a joke).
You could see what you typed on a teletype. The rotating cylinder dropped after printing each letter so you could see it. All systems, including Unix, echoed each letter as it was typed.
There was a "backspace" though it was labelled delete or rubout. It's original purpose was to punch out all the holes in the teletype tape (there was a second button on the punch itself to back up, then you typed the rubout). However it sent a code to the computer so the computer could do anything, and Unix and almost all other systems used it to indicate that a character should be removed from the end of the current input line. Of course you could not erase the paper, the best ones sent the right number of backspaces, typed a # to erase the character, then went back to the clear area. I think Unix tended to type a backslash, each of the removed characters backwards, then another backslash. Unix actually had a lot more editing, such as the ability to cancel an entire line without backspacing the whole thing, and to delete words (with ^W?) than VMS or other systems I worked with.