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Make Linux "Gorgeous," Says Ubuntu Leader
OSS_ilation writes "They say beauty is only skin deep, but when it comes to Linux and the free software movement, people like Mark Shuttleworth think looks have an important part to play. On his blog and an article on SearchOpenSource.com, Shuttleworth and a slew of open source end users say that the look and feel of open source is also a matter of wider acceptance among enterprise players who are used to Windows, yet crave Mac OS X and the functionality of Linux. 'If we want the world to embrace free software, we have to make it beautiful,' Shuttleworth said. "We have to make it gorgeous. We have to make it easy on the eye. We have to make it take your friend's breath away.' With the early success of Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Shuttleworth and company may be onto something."
A person who has never used a computer turns on three which are arranged in front of them... A Windows box, a Mac box and a Linux box... all look identical on the outside. They receive no prompting. Which do they begin to try to learn to use?
"... With the early success of Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Shuttleworth and company may be onto something."
Maybe that could have been phrased better... Mark Shuttleworth only looks after Ubuntu for now. Not really the best snippet to use for Slashdot.
Finally, someone who is addressing the root cause of why Linux continues to trail market leaders in desktop share. In addition to making it "beautiful", developers need to continue adding out-of-the-box widgets/features to prevent someone from ever needing to modify a script or enter a terminal window if they didn't want to. If they could address both of these 'issues', Linux would have a fighting chance against Windows desktops.
IMO - Microsoft doesn't dominate because it is better, it dominates because of great marketing and ease of use (even for groups such as the disabled). My grandmother can use XP Home, but if I have Linux up, she completely freezes. Sure, there's some grandmas that know perl scripting, but who wants to jump in and start compiling code just so they can play bridge with their friends over the net?
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Funny, this is, in my opinion, precisely the problem with Linux. Programmers are spending too much time designing shnuggly-wuggly GUI's and spend less time on drivers and other necessities for the OS.
It doesn't matter what they first go up to.
The point is that the "feel", and that means deep, cognitively focused ergonomics, matters more than eye candy.
Candy rots your teeth.
If something looks good and it communicates function and state well, then that's fine.
Remember: beauty is skin deep, but bitch goes right down to the bone.
Who found the department that this article come from to be hilariously wrong?
Uh, I went to Linux to escape Windows crashing, I don't ever recall Linux crashing on me. Why do they need to make it crash less?
What's needed is more people with artistic talent to realize they have an interest in great open source software.
Givent the easy availability of great commercial software like Zbrush, Maya, and Photoshop etc. versus Blender, GIMP, etc.
Most artists I know use the commercial software, and they either havent tried or don't see an advantage in the open source software. Therefore maybe they don't feel a need or interest to "give back". For operating systems and other stuff, geeks themselves build the tools, so they are available freely.
and when things don't Just Work (tm), make it Really Easy to Fix (tm). gui eye candy is nice and all, but it does no good if the underlying software is flakey and generally hard to use.
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design
an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a
man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers
of the product or service. The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or
the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible
consumer computer in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is
much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.
That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an
enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do
a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest
thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good
at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for
them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely
like it.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/2000/01/24/app6.ht
It won't happen because too many in the Linux community think command line is beautiful. What they in the linux community don't realize is the beauty of a Mac is worth the extra dollars. The beauty of Linux, well, Linux is worth the money for the functionality.
Asking about the beauty of Linux is like saying "The girl has a great personality."
...goes all the way to ring 0.
Imagine having a clean and clear desktop. Make things a little bigger for your mother. Make them a little smaller for the numbers nerd.
When you buy that ridiculously high resolution dell laptop, all the icons and text doesn't shrink to the size of warnings for health meds.
Yeah, I agree, make it visually beatiful, but you gotta make it functional too. Personally, at this point in time, I see too much eye-candy or features that 'look' nice, but the way it feels is crap. Ugh! Get the user experience right first before you start thinking about making it look nice, else all you are doing is pouring perfume on a steaming pile of poo.
I love the nasty yellowish ubuntu thing!
I actually looked at your job postings a week ago and would have applied but you would require me to relocate! Perhaps you would have better luck if you opened the search to all talent not just that living or willing to relocate near your headquarters. If that was an option I'd apply, not that I'm what you are looking for, but it would open up the landscape of possible candidates.
While Ubuntu is relatively polished and most of the stuff "just works", the default baby-shit-brown color scheme is hideous.
So, while I would agree that Linux needs some beautification, I don't trust anyone at Ubuntu to do it!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
As DHH from the Ruby on Rails project says: "Beauty leads to happiness. Happiness leads to productivity. Therefore beauty leads to productivity." That's a bit trite, but the principle has some truth to it. Similarly, a beautiful, clear UI that balances respect for the user's intelligence with an emphasis on simplicity means that as a community, FLOSS developers are taking other human beings seriously, taking themselves seriously, and care about the social impact of their work. Shuttleworth is dead on.
And, at least vis-a-vis MS, the FLOSS community is in a position to kick their condescending, wizard-riddled, FUD spinning, Aero-enabled asses right back to Redmond if we all take some initiative because of the massive mistakes MS has made in the past 4-5 years.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
He would probably think it's TV, and ask you where's the remote.
Sent from my desktop computer
To extend the analogy presented in those oh so trendy Apple adds featuring hip young Mac and old man PC, Linux is the man in Teva sandals with white socks, cheap pleated pants, tucked Hawaiian shirt and a fearsome ponytail/neckbeard combination.
Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and whi
"Make Ubuntu Boot on my system" says disgruntled..
Why can't you have well-designed ergonomics AND great eye-candy? Why deny that both serve a useful place at the table?
Another thing that's needed is something similar to Apple's original User Interface Guidelines, so that all of the applicatons on the platform are consistent from both a usability and visual standpoint.
Having consistent dialogs, button placements, menus, and so on tend to make a platform a LOT more accessible.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I think it looks very nice these days. Of course, being functional and stable is more important, but it doesn't hurt to look good too :-)
Hmmm, in most cases I find that those that can design useful and attractive UI's are not the same as those who can develop kernel drivers or other such things. I see no reason why those with design/UI skills can't continue to improve the look & feel of linux, while those with skills at dissassembling/developing drivers, kernel features, and other such things continue provide those skills.
Not to mention the fact that kernel drivers, in an ideal world, would be developed and provided (preferably with source) by the hardware manufacturers, who have very little do with with the GUI in any operating system.
In principal, I agree.
In practice, it's not what makes people switch. They will switch when there is an overwhelming need for something that is not provided by their current PC.
Otherwise, they don't switch.
Despite Apple's temporarily high visibility (pre vista media onslaught) these days, they know from experience getting people to switch even -if- you have a beautiful desktop and good advertising marketing budgets is tough.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
But why must Linux or FreeBSD or whatever appeal to the average person? We as open source developers don't have limitless time and resources to spend making our software usable by everyone, or EZ enough for grandma to use.
There is no problem having an OS primarly designed for experts to use (as Linux was originally). Why must compromises be made so that Linux can be prettier and easier?
Sometimes I think Linux/UNIX developers get suckered into a marketing/commercial mode of thinking, where somebody points out that the "product" will have more "popular appeal" if it (is prettier, easier, dumbed down). Well fsck that, Linux doesn't have to become a product, it does not need popular appeal. And unless you're getting paid to develop, think carefully about whose interests you're serving before you slave away for hours to make that interface EZ to use for anyone.
We're allowed to be selfish, we created this thing to begin with.
I'm not sure if I'd run a server on it, but with a built in x11 server and the vast majority of debian packages ported for install OSX already has this. The beauty of OSX and the functionality of OSX from a desktop point of view (sound works, flash works, peripherals work immediately and always) on generic pc hardware would be pretty nice however.
How is this a troll? He's almost totally right and a killer line in the end too. I'd add that performance matters, too. So an eye candy interface that takes noticeably a toll on *perceived* performance is not so advisable IMHO. But I don't call on keeping linux graphically simple and performant. Linux is not an uniform environment, can be a stark command line on the server, a light desktop on the old machine and some eye candy on the latest hardware. Let hackers and designers loose and keep the best ideas.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
--Bruno, van "Funkyzeit mit Bruno"
Towards the Singularity.
Too many people need to give up their egos, use GUI toolkits they don't like, and admit they don't know jack about what looks good and what doesn't.
People don't crave OS X because it's beautiful, but because it Just Works. The beauty of OS X is way beyond skin deep. To achieve it you need things like consistency, subtle cues that inform the user of what's happening, you need to remove clutter etc.
You need to think about every element of the UI not in isolation, but in relation to all the other elements. Mere eye candy just doesn't cut it. Shuttleworth sort of admits this in the blog entry, but bulldozes over it earlier on, when he says I'm not talking about inner beauty, not elegance, not ideological purity... pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty.
Sorry Mark, but you're starting at the wrong end here. You need inner beauty, in the shape of e.g. a consistent framework, and at the most fundamental level, just plain consideration of how the user interacts with the application, before you can start working on the skin.
And that is why Linux distributions as we know them will never compete with OS X. You'd need to toss X and its bazillion GUI toolkits, and replace them with something new. Then you'd need to organize a Human Interface Police, whose job it is to kick developers who don't follow the guidelines. And I suspect that won't go over well among the Linux developer community with its "free to do whatever the hell I like" mindset.
In short, he's proposing that Linux disks ship with:
Or maybe I'm overthinking this one.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
...is that it has to be applied regularly. New major version of the software, new config dialogs, new wizards, new documentation? Better start redoing a lot of polish. Also, let's not forget that a polished turd is nothing more than a polished turd. Polish is only something you need when you already have a solid product with rough edges. So while I think Linux could use a layer of polish in a few places, I hardly think it's a big driver. Yes, people will flock to Ubuntu over other distros with a little polish. But is that really what drives adoption of Linux as a whole? I think it's more hard questions like:
- Does Firefox work on most webpages?
- Does OpenOffice interoperate well with MS Office files?
- Does GIMP support 16-bit color/CMYK separation?
- Does Thunderbird interoperate well with our exchange server?
The really hard work is being done all the time by the people making fundamental improvements to their applications. What Ubuntu is doing with polish is more like maxing the performance for the Olympics. While it's important to get the most out of the foundation you have, it's the foundation that has to improve. Though I suppose this is a case where I'd like to eat my cake and have it too...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Of course you should have great ergonomics and eye candy.
Mark Shuttleworth said that the problem that Linux didn't look good enough.
That's not really entirely true, it looks OK. But the ergonomics still suck really hard for
many things. It works reasonably nastily.
Comparing to Windows isn't remotely good enough.
When it starts to be an ergonomic horse race between Mac OS X and Billionaire
Linux, then that's progress. We're about as far in that direction as Afghanistan is sending turbaned men to Mars.
In fact, a number of Mac users have complained, rightfully, that some more recent
MacOSX releases sacrifice ergonomics for eye candy.
And by "market leaders" you mean "Microsoft". Whether Linux trails Apple is subject to debate.
Nope. Microsoft dominates because it has a monopoly on the desktop. That means that just about every ISV and OEM has to consider Microsoft in their business plan. If you make hardware for PC's, you need to make Windows drivers. You don't need to make Linux drivers.
And is Gramma's PC a spam zombie? Being able to "use" a computer means different things to different people.
There is no real difference between using a pre-installed Ubuntu machine and a pre-installed XP machine.
The only difference in the platforms comes AFTER deployment. When Gramma wants to add a peripheral or install some software that her friend told her about (it has a cute monkey!).
Have you used Ubuntu recently? It easily matches XP for never needing to open a terminal window.
Again, no. Linux will not match Windows in the HOME MARKET until Linux is pre-installed by the OEM.
This is because the vast majority of people in the HOME MARKET do NOT install their own OS. They use whatever was pre-installed. They use it as it was pre-installed. They don't even update their anti-virus software. The PC is tool for them. Like their VCR or their TV. They plug the connection in and expect it to handle the feed.
Due to the pre-installed issue, Linux's next major advance will be in the corporate/government desktop segment. Not the home market.
Sooo, if Mark said that "pretty" is a feature, will we see less members of the I-hate-vista-because-a-lot-of-people-will-use-it-a nd-also-it-looks-nice-so-it's-even-worse-and-it-ha s-nothing-my-good- old-terminal-couldn't-do club?
Eventually one has to get a job in the real world, so it would be nice to have the same toys.
Thus, increased usage benefits.
If the OS is easy to use, it's a good chance that the UI is going to be beautiful.
Is Exposé beautiful? Yes, but it's function is to show the user what type of windows are open (yet hidden), and allow them to choose. The pretty interface for it stems from the function.
Don't create a GUI for the sake of being beautiful. Create a GUI that's easy to use, and the beauty would come automatically.
Users will use what they are used to already, if they can navigate the same way though Ubuntu/OSX as through their windows machines they've been using for 10 years then it doesn't matter to them...
If the OS of their choice happens to be free, look better graphically, be more stable and have more features then they're in luck and be welcomed into the open source community.
I'm working on a script that will install eyecandy with minimal user intervention. It's no where near done, but here's a link to what I have so far:
http://www.xugle.com/candy.sh
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
The problem with Linux isn't the lack of eye candy. In fact, GNOME and KDE have far more eye-candy than OS X does, IMO, and I say this as a Mac user. Have you seen the XGL effects in GNOME, for example? Or the Beryl desktop? These themes are very nicely done and their eye candy amount is very large, almost to the point of superfluous in some aspects (do we need effects for everything. My only problem with Linux eye candy is the bad fonts available (Bitstream Vera is far uglier than Lucida Grande or Tahoma, IMO) and bad font quality, but that is due to font copyrights and rendering patents, respectively, which is a fact of life when dealing with free software.
What Linux needs is not more eye candy. What Linux needs is innovative usability. A pretty interface is lovely, but it means nothing if it isn't easy to use. Nobody is going to switch to Linux if the interfaces are just Windows (or even OS X) clones. Linux needs to bring something new to the table. I'll use KDE and GNOME as examples. KDE's biggest problems, for example, is the excessive amount of options and toolbars. Don't get me wrong, I love toolbars, and I was one of the original complainers when Microsoft decided to convert toolbars and menus to ribbons in Office 2007. I think that Office 97 is the high-water mark for Office usability. Customizability is very important for using an application. However, there is a such thing as too many toolbars and too many options shown on the screen. This illustrates some of my issues with KDE. Most Cocoa applications (and some Carbon applications) handle this on OS X by only displaying the most important options on the toolbar, and by placing the rest in an Inspector dialog box (which is a holdover from the NEXTSTEP days). As for GNOME, it has done a tremendous job with usability and addressed many of the problems that I've had with KDE. However, GNOME can use some improvement as well. I wish GNOME were more responsive (it just feels a bit slower than KDE or even OS X).
There are some common complaints that I have with both desktops. Both need to stop trying to be like Windows and add some new UI elements. OS X doesn't try to be Windows (or even OS 9 in some aspects); it has original features (or NEXTSTEP-derived features) such as Inspectors, drawers, search in many applications, full drag-and-drop, and much more. These innovative features have made my life easier and have made using Windows or Linux much more difficult. KDE and GNOME should try implementing some innovative features that would make me never boot into OS X. Imagine a Spotlight-like tool that utilized regular expressions and/or more complex queries for finding files based on their extended metadata. Imagine something a bit more powerful, quicker, and useful than Inspectors on OS X (coming from a Windows and Linux background, it took me a while to get used to the Inspector idea, but I see how well it integrates with OS X. Large rows of toolbars is not OS X).
What most users want is for them to be able to do their tasks without the UI getting in the way. I find that OS X achieves this in most categories. But it can be better, especially in the question of toolbars vs. Inspectors vs. ribbons. KDE and GNOME can (and should) capitalize on this. If somebody can create something that has the quickness of toolbars (one-click) but easy for new users to understand (like ribbons or Inspectors), then I'll really consider trying out your GUI.
Sounds like it's time for Queer Eye for the Straight OS.
I recently had the opportunity to get to know Blender.
Does its feature set compare well with commercial packages? Yes, it does. Is the performance reasonable given high-end hardware? Yeah, not awful.
And yet I was able to safely declare the application at this time unusable by our art department, because they're not software engineers. Why should that matter? Hint: it shouldn't.
It's all about what concepts are taken for granted as part of the knowledge-base of the user -- and Blender is obviously built by engineers. For example, object transformation tools frequently use mathematical rather than descriptive (or industry-standard) terminology. I can see where the coder is coming from -- it's a transform involving such-and-such an algorithm, it must seem straight-forward to name it that way...I mean, heck, everybody knows what a such-and-such algorithm is, right?
Wrong.
I am educated in my discipline. I studied art at a variety of institutions and have a decade of experience in commercial design. I am used to labels like "knife tool" (from ElectricImage) or "reflect tool" (from Illustrator). I can't make heads or tails of the "fourier meta-transform fuckulation B-phase inhibitor" tool, like the labels seen in Blender.
Blender is an engineer's application -- suitable, I guess, for making really sadly misdesigned crap like Elephant's Dream which screams "engineer pretending to be an artist!" with every rendered frame.
The problem isn't only Blender.
Open source software engineers, or a distinct but visible subset thereof, are too egocentric to be software architects. Their interfaces remain mired in overly technical jargon, with options that should be drill-down options presented alongside top-layer options -- because engineers hate to think there are features "too advanced" for day to day use. It insults them. Burying fine controls is for wimps. Engineers want their brains respected by their software, so they'll all into coding it like it is.
The rest of us find using such applications awkward and plagued by nerditis.
The GIMP is maturing nicely, but it still isn't there. Blender has recently become much more powerful, but is still about as usable to a designer (ie, the profession for whom it is targeted) as a slide-rule.
I'm not trying to resurrect the spirit of Kai Krausse here or advocate the dumbing down of interfaces, but there is a happy medium between utilitarian low-level access bloat and a piece of software that fits in tune with the knowledge context its users have.
So...we tried out Blender and we're buying Maya.
These stories are free but worth money.
Please make that crap desktop called GNOME simply work. It's utterly broken and nothing works.
Beauty is important. That from someone who is a commandline freak. But ever since I switched to OSX, I've learnt that eye candy - well designed - can make a lot of difference. The polished look of OSX makes both windos and Linux look like amateur toys.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Those are certainly a ton of eye candy and they already run on Linux (but are not yet all out of beta, but that will soon come.) In fact, this old laptop I'm typing on is happily running AIGLX and Beryl and it has led more than one person to think that I hacked OS X x86 onto my laptop.
I'd think that the best thing to do to get Linux widely adopted would be:
1. Hammer the corporate and organizational angle very hard. People do a lot of work at home and if they use Linux at work or school, chances are that they'd use it at home too.
2. Get a few major game and app publishers to publish for Linux. For example, having a good, it's-all-legal-everywhere media player that can handle all types of media would be a definite advantage to Linux, so would having all of the web browser plugins that anybody would need.
3. Then get it preinstalled on first-tier OEM PCs for less than a comparable model with Windows.
Those three things would ensure that Linux would absolutely take off in market share if it ever will. Number 3 is really the key here as most of the issues with Linux stem from the fact that people must install and configure it themselves. If you have to install Windows from scratch, it's harder than Linux, but very few non-techies do that. So by putting Linux on the PC, everything works and you get an instantly perfectly-set-up unit. The games and apps are somewhat less of an issue.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
In the last 3 years, I haven't seen any ugly desktops from the major distros, such as RH or SuSE. They may not be beautiful, but they aren't ugly.
Make shit work! Let the user get shit done with no bullshit!
"Make Linux 'Gorgeous'" is delusional rambling of someone living in a Linux world bubble, where everything seems known and obvious: "well, it's already easy to use, but it's still not popular?!?! Well, shit, why is that? Oh, I know, it's not beautiful enough! Quick, more transparent terminals!"
Too often while installing Linux desktops, I am apalled at the crap that I have to go through to get it to work well.
Think of any single time that you opened up a terminal and went to tweak something in a config file to solve a problem! That single time is one time too many.
Why aren't more users using Linux? Because it's not EASY!
I don't know of any Linux distro that was designed with an ease-of-use make-shit-work no-bullshit vision from the ground up. Having intensively worked with Linux for a couple of years, I am not surprised, because once you know the details of running a Linux box, it's very easy to become complacent and very difficult to step back and reason about the true ease-of-use Linux experience.
If I were designing a Linux distro for a typical desktop user, I would spend all my time at war with all things Linux. I would write out on the wall every single stupid thing, every single expose-the-implementation config file, and then I would design a distro that saved the user from all that. I would consider every issue as a battle of the user trying to get things done and Linux getting in the way, and I would not be finished until the user trampled the defacto way of doing Linux things.
Strange comments coming from a guy who's distro has always been known for its dirt brown look.
The beauty about open source software is that it can be anything that the developers want to make it. Want to create the ultimate OS for computer experts and hackers? You got that. Want to create the most usable OS that ever existed? You got the underlying infrastructure, just build on top of it. Want to create the ultimate research OS for systems research? Just take out the file system, memory management algorithms, schedulers, etc. and make your own. That is the beauty of open source software. It can be developed for anyone for any task. I, for one, welcome these efforts to create usable open source desktops. If open source software improves to the point that it is just as usable as the commercial offerings without having to spend time configuring things, then that will be beneficial to all of us.
Does Thunderbird interoperate well with our exchange server?
Why would anybody want to do this? Take a full-featured office management server and strip it down to basic email because that's all the client can handle? Huh?
It has been said a million times before and likely to be said a million more. A unified GUI and look'n feel are really necessary for business and beginner users. They need to feel at home to use their tools. For many of us, using Linux is more about using Linux or not using Windows more than it is about getting things done. And so for us, it really and truly doesn't matter if everyone's desktop experience is different. We'll tweak it until it's what we want. But for the rest of the people, it has to be as static as MS Windows even if it means "less easy."
As it stands, we're all too familiar with the KDE vs. GNOME conflict. We have seen some inroads such as coming together to form a more unified API for installing software and setting up icons and the like. But right now, they're still two separate and distinct camps. (I chose GNOME long ago because QT was under a restrictive license, and then built momentum to stay with it when big money started to back it. I'm sure KDE is a lot better than it ever has been but I'm just accustomed to GNOME and am not at all unhappy with it, so it doesn't matter if KDE is better or not.)
SOMEBODY, and it really doesn't matter who, needs to surrender the GUI civil war. Whoever wins, the other half will eventually adjust and all will be just fine. Whatever the case, it will never mean an end to creativity and innovation, and there will still need to be some work in getting KNOME/GDE to look similar enough across all distros. (In my mind, I imagine a strict gui standard mode that takes on a name like LSGUI [Linux Standard Graphical User Interface] and a mode for tweaking and flexibility that we all love.) The needs of business users will be the key to getting Linux on the desktop. (Including simple network logins to Microsoft, Novell and other networks would also be really nice... There may already be an easy way, but I haven't seen or heard of it -- in any case, it needs to be visible and a part of the distro.)
Ever used OSX?
(To which your obvious reply would be: "Ever used Windows Vista?")
Instead of making it look "gorgeous", how about focusing on making Linux look "consistent"?
Windows and Mac OS sure didn't achieve their easily identifiable "looks" by promoting dozens of inconsistent GUI toolkits.
...then everyone will want one and it won't be cool any more.
Flame away, I'm wearing lead lined pants.
"We're about as far in that direction as Afghanistan is sending turbaned men to Mars."
Yeah, like the US has a program either...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I'm not interested in configuring every part of my system. To get all of my hardware, aspects of my desktop environment, etc. working I'm glad to have some easy to use, GUI-ified tools available with sensible defaults so I can just go into 'user mode' with these and concentrate on what I'm working on at a given time. Later I can go back and hack at stuff at a more low level if I really want to - edit config files manually or even make my own tools. It's good to know I can, which is what Linux is about.
For most things in my Linux system, I like to have the Linux-approved power user way and the easy way.
It only makes the platform stronger IMHO. For the expert and for grandma.
From my grandma to the lady I just set up at work today... many office workers receive their "free" computer training on the job, and over time, the OS they use at work is what they will feel most comfortable with, so will buy for home.
If a linux distro would be truly "breath taking" on par with what people think of OSX's gui, but still have the functionality of... well, Linux, and really push for business workstation installs (aka manufacturer preinstalls or custom builds and sales through sites like CDW), you'd see "novice" home installs follow.
When this office first opened up, a year ago, the CFO was interested in Linux just because it costs almost as much (if not more) in MS licenses as it does to purchase the hardware it runs on!
"We have to make it gorgeous. We have to make it easy on the eye. We have to make it take your friend's breath away"
Linux geeks, FYI, your CLI and text editor of choice isn't gorgeous, no matter what you may think.
Personally, I like the fact that Ubuntu finds my 802.11g card, it's just a shame I can't set up WPA without opening up some conf file in a text editor and/or figuring out the chicken-and-egg problem of downloading packages to make my network connection work.
The problem is it's too damn hard for the common Joe to install software, even with apt-get. Make it like Windows. Unify the basic libraries so a user can download and install a piece of software without thinking about it. Then you will have an OS. Until then, it's just wishful thinking. Too many disto's have destroyed Linux!! Everyone has their own way and that's spelled NO WAY! What a bummer!!!
Right on brother
I agree that appearance is important. Humans function better when they have pleasant environments. It's also true that Linux distros often really suck when it comes to basics of HCI and even simple artistic elements that would make things a lot more pleasant and usable.
But it really bugs me when people talk about aesthetics while the internal structure isn't sound. I'm happily using Dapper Drake, but it wasn't trivial to setup correctly with some of the hardware I wanted to use. But there's the recent slashdot article that mentions the upgrade nightmare when going from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft. And there are even more fundamental problems with Linux. The graphics system in Linux is held together with duct tape. It's just WAY too easy to break, and there is no kind of structure to it. There should be APIs and standard mechanisms for handling graphics devices in a general, but they just don't exist (and don't tell me about DRI -- it's only one step in the right direction). I'm told that there are many other facilities, like networking, that aren't a whole lot better.
Look at it this way: If Microsoft had gotten their shit together in the beginning and written a decent operating system, rather than cobbling DOS and some other crap together and sticking a GUI on top, then more of us would be using Windows. Instead, they shipped us crap, we figured that out, and we moved on to other systems. For a very long time, Mac OS (9 and before) was all surface, with an embarrassing OS under the hood. One of the few operating systems that was actually ENGINEERED well from the ground up was BeOS, but that didn't fair well against Microsoft's marketing.
The fact is, "Linux" lacks coherency. It's not "Linux." It's a Linux kernel, some GNU tools over there, X11 bolded on over here, GTK or Qt slapped on over yonder... No two groups actually get together and decide to come up with an elegant system. Instead, they compete with each other, end up working around each other's mistakes, and then leave it up to the distros to try to make it all work together. Ha.
I'll just tell you a dirty little secret from my experience with writing device drivers: The NT kernel's interfaces for handling devices like graphics cards, network devices, printers, and pretty much anything else you want to use, they put Linux to shame. NT may not perform as well, be as stable, or be as secure as Linux, but it's engineered with vastly more coherent internal structure. Linux is good code with poorly-designed interfaces, while Windows is lousy code with well-designed interfaces (actually, POSIX rocks, but I'm talking about kernel structure and device management).
No kidding. I don't think the US has even thought about the turban part.
Not enough TurbanWare makers in the districts of the appropriation committee congressdroids.
Linux is already gorgeous - it's based on Unix. And Unix is a recursive acronym for Unix Is Sexy. Have you seen her picture? She's kinda hot. See article here:
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Unix
Here's one problem indemic to the open source paradigm: Things like "beauty" or "ease of use" or "how you ought to do things" varies widely from one group to another. Getting everyone that develops an app for Linux to agree on one set of interface standards makes for a pretty steep uphill battle. Take a look at Gnome versus KDE: Where does an "Okay" button belong on a dialog box, left or right?
The opportunity that the open source community has is to leverage the capacity for development that has made FOSS a viable contender for hard drive space to develop something entirely new in computing. Projects like Open Office and the GIMP are great, offering alternatives to commercial software where options weren't available before. And development of those products should continue, but to what end? Sure, there's value in being able to provide a drop in, no training required replacement for the Microsoft software stack if it can be done with open standards and security. But if all you're doing is following the development of major software vendors, you're relying on them to set the pace of innovation. Even the venerated Linus Torvalds made Linux because he wanted to have a Unix-like system running on his commodity hardware (yeah, yeah, let the hatemail come).
So, tell me, where is the group that comes along and says, "Here's a new way of using a computer. Everyone come help us build it, it's gonna be great" ?? Why, after all these years, am I still forced to use the paradigm of paper-based documents (PDF, RTF, e-mail, web) to communicate most information, even if it never hits paper? Why do I have to gather information by reading text, line by line, down a page? Where's the visual depth to our digital world? Where's the alternative information delivery?
And I'm not calling for a bunch of new input or output devices that will change the way we work with a computer, though those are needed as well. Given what we have (mouse, keyboard, monitor), we ought to be able to come up with something better.
Take, for instance, the Civilization IV interface as a model for systems administration. Replace cities with servers, continents become networks, nations become domains, etc. Pan and zoom around your network, click on users to see what they're up to, double click on servers to look at their configuration and make edits to it, adjust automation, etc. etc. User apps have other opportunities for data navigation, communication, resource location, etc. But we've got to get ourselves off of the paper paradigm first. How do we do that?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Well It depends on people using it. I remember that when I escaped from Windows I was so happy that my desktop was clean and simple without distracting pictures and logos. I love functionality Gimp is perfect example BUT . Unfortunately this approach does not attract new people to help you out with your project or use your project.If you want to attract people things have to look polished What's even more important it has to be useful and beautiful :) just like amarok :) So what are the real reasons to make your app attractive ? On every 100 users there is a programmer to help you out with your project. That's just the way it is :) Of course if you are not too egocentric and you really want to share your code. (and your app is not the only choice) But on the end ...it really depend on people using it. I still love Lyx for writing but I'm sure my sister wouldn't want to touch it :)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Heck, one of my top five complaints about linux is the ugly interface that you get with a default installation, particularly the crummy fonts. When my Dell 3000cn dies or gets a fully working (not a workaround) Linux driver, and when they finally deal with the nasty fonts in a manner not requiring user intervention with MS fonts, I'll finally switch over. But for now, with a clean XP install and IE7/Moz2, I'm running clean.
I agree with one of your points, and it is one of the main problems I have seen with the several Linux distributions I have tried. I am writing this from my Ubuntu 6.06 laptop installation. I just recently removed Windows completely on favour of Ubuntu after it told me that "Windows cant prove the legality of this installation" and it did not allowed me to enter to MY computer even in the so called "safe mode" after I added 1GB of ram (WinXP).
The previous is to show you pissed off I *am* of Microsoft offerings... and my Windows XP is so legal I've got a sticker under my laptop with windows serial number for WinXP. Thats stupid behaviour.
But now, returning to Linux, at least to Ubuntu. Since I installed I have had so *many* problems specifically with one of the things you say, the software is flakey, it is terribly unstable. The hibernating function works half the time and the suspend does not work (you see a whole paragraph stating that it is "experimental").
My wireless card is *supposed* to be supported and although it IS detected (broadcom 4093) it does not work so I had to add a PCMCIA card, neither ALSA or ESD work 100%, they hang half the time consuming 99% of processor, Amarok sucks as it is terribly buggy, some random applications just "die" in the middle of use without any message (the window just *disappears*).
I pondered on upgrading to 6.10 but then I saw all the reviews and issues people has been having. If you go to Ubuntu forum you can see a poll where there among 1/3 of the users are having issues, 1/3 are having major problems and 1/3 say everything is alright hence upgrading is playing roulette and if you lose your system might become unusuable (with a probability of 33%).
I would give good money for a replacement of Windows, I would love it to be based on Linux but I need it to JUST WORK. I know OSX might be what I am looking for, unfortunately it is not available for my platform of choice (HP Pavilion notebook) so I cant get it.
I love linux, I work in it more than 8 hours a day (at work and at home) but I believe it strength is also it weakness, as someone else wrote on the Ubuntu slashdot story we need a distribution that enforces TERRIBLY STRONG QA policies for its packages, I do not care if it doesnot provides the bleeding edge useless 3D-cube-rotating effects but I like it to WORK.
I wont update to 6.10, I wont make a clean install neither (as someone else said, if you have to reinstall your OS each time it is updated then it is broken); i do not have time to spend "working for my operating system" I need an operating system that lets me do my work.
The ubuntu setup I have let me do this at 70%, Microsoft Windows is not an option (that fuckers telling me my installation is pirated when it came in my HP NOTEBOOK). I have come to understand what a friend of mine said once when I asked "which OS do you preffer?" and he told me he did not like any of them. Oh well lets wait other 10 years, we might get to somewhere.
Is anyone here as frustrated as I am? or is it really too much to ask what I want?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Google? GOOGLE?!
And here all I thought people cared about online was pr0n... Silly me...
The standard KDE GUI is similar enough to Windoze for most people to use out of the box. The real item that needs to be addressed is software installation. Users will not tolerate an OS where the applications are difficult to install much less find.
I know several people who asked that they go back to Windoze because they found finding software difficult to find and when they found it they found it very difficult to install. They certainly didn't want to compile the software. IT people have relatively little difficulty in this matter, however, before widespread adoption is to occur, ease if installation is necessary.
No viruses and rock solid stability are no use to someone if they can't install/run applications that provide the functionality needed.
Shop this one out guys. It's not in your field of expertise.
Really. It's not.
Really.
Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation
Windows dominates on the desktop because they have a monopoly and most PCs you buy include it. Most people don't know what an operating system is per se, and those who run Windows and know it can't tell you the version. If you install Linux for your granny, she'll be able to use it just fine and won't have to learn Perl. Did your granny install Windows?
;)
Does anyone really install Windows anymore? No. People get a PC with Windows and if it runs into serious trouble, they run their recovery disk, have a smart-guy reinstall Windows or buy a new PC which also has Windows. Expecting people to install Linux as a second OS to a computer designed from the ground up, more or less, to work with Windows is a TALL order. Breaking the MS monopoly will get Linux to the masses on the desktop in the USA. A modern preinstalled Linux distro is already easier to use. Think about it - no hassles with virus/adware crap to deal with, no tools needed to cleanse the registry, etc.
MAC have been unique because they bundle their OS with the custom hardware (more or less, I realize how they've recently begun to change some of that). And 99% of every other desktop PC comes with Windows. People use what they get. Folks who buy macs won't install Linux and folks who buy PCs won't install Linux. The ones that do are happy that Linux is becoming "better looking", but could have handled installing Mandrake or Red Hat 10 years ago without issue as well.
Most people most certainly do not use Windows because of Windows "technology". I'd say that OSX has the best GUI and Linux has the most features out of the box and the best security. Windows is, at the OS level and above, the least competent as far as technology goes and all things considered, the least easy to use as well considering the maintence involved. How many filesystems does Windows have, for example? Oh yeah, basically one worth using. How many does Linux have? Oh yeah, 4 or 5 that one can use easily without issue in virtually any distro.
You still have to run chkdsk in Windows, for example - for shame
If your granny can use Windows but not KDE, then something is wrong upstairs, no offense...
Just make it work with my linksys wireless card. I tried to switch to linux but after four days of trying various web tutorials on how to use ndiswrapper with both suse and ubuntu. I finally gave up.
Wait, we can't use a wearable Turbine to go to mars? ::Takes off Turbine Hat:: Crap.
just an analog boy living in a digital age.
Ubuntu is not functional for average pc user. Ubuntu can't run Java, Flash, or Play DVDs. You can't play games available at Best Buy, Circuit City, Compusa, Fry's, etc etc. All this must be accomplished from a FRESH INSTALL or Off-The-Shelf software.
Canonical needs to partner up with Sun, Adobe, and Cyberlink. And work with Wine developers and Transgaming to make a functional out of the box game emulator.
You can make Linux beautiful but it won't be functional until those basic needs are satisfied.
I'm glad that a lot of OSS developers don't have the same mindset as you. It sounds like you're saying, "Who the hell cares if Linux serves the needs of other people. As long as it serves my needs, everything else is wasted effort."
I've never seen it implied that you must. But if you want other people to use it, you're going to kinda have to make it easy enough for other people to use it. Maybe you're the type that doesn't care whether other people use your software or not. If so, then fine, write code that is as single-user (i.e. you) usable and obscure as you want, and don't sit around and scratch your head when you're the only one that uses it.
Fortunately, a lot of OSS developers have decided that as long as they're coding something that's useful to themselves, they might as well make it a little prettier so that it's usable (or even developable) to others as well, and eventually, we end up with software that grandma can use. Maybe you don't care, and if so, fine, don't care. But if you're the one who has to pay for grandma's copy of Windows just so she can send an e-mail, you start to appreciate all of the time and hard work those OSS developers have spent doing something that you're incapable of doing.
Wow, is that ever a gross misstatement. How pretty does pretty have to be before you consider it crossing the line from being "designed for experts to use" to being usable by "the average person"? What if the guy (or gal, or group) who wrote, oh I dunno, IDE disk drive drivers decided that he didn't need to simplify those gnarly function calls, and that every time you wanted to open a file on Linux, you had to make some low-level interrupt calls? I mean the fact that you can just call a function named something like open() was just a simplification to make your life easier, right? Wasn't it just a way of increasing that programming languages popular appeal? Does that mean that languages that implement an open() function are evil or just a waste of time?
I don't care how much of an expert you are, unless you're programming in assembler, you're standing on the shoulders of giants. And even if you are, you're probably still standing on the shoulders of a giant that wrote the editor you're using, the keyboard driver that's interpreting your keystrokes, the display driver that's showing you your code, and so on.
So yeah, I find it incredible arrogant to essentially say, "Hey, you all have programmed it well enough for me to use, so if you make it any easier for other people to use, you're really just wasting your time."
As for me, I'll gladly take whatever OSS developers give me in terms of ease of use, and I'll be extremely grateful for it, even if it's something I feel is pretty well developed already. And if grandma can use it too, all the better.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the memo that said that now that Linux is prettier, you can't still run it as a lean mean special-purpose machine. What compromises are you referring to? What exactly is it that you can't do now in Linux that you used to be able to? What nugget of "expert" functionality was it that was removed that had you all up in arms now? Last time I checked, I could get just as down and dirty with the low-level stuff as I always could. Yes, even in Ubuntu.
Its not the "gorgeous" that is the problem. I've always said that Linux will have arrived when someone will be able to (practically) use the Microsoft Office Quick Installation Guide for Windows to install their Office applications on their Linux machine.
1) Insert Office CD. Installer will automatically start
2) Select applications to be installed. (All applications should be supported)
3) Wait for a bit for the installation to complete
4) Enter product key
5) You're done
That's how it is on Mac. That's how it should be on Linux. If it were this way on Linux, you'd see people starting to migrate in much greater numbers. Microsoft Office is the single point of domination that has people ball-and-chained. If you solve that problem, people will start looking elsewhere. Macintosh users already know this... I don't know why Linux companies can't follow suit.
All we have to do is all agree what is gorgeous and what is not.
That aside, the real issue is still pre-installation. As long as you can't have a REAL choice to select your OS, it is all irrelevant. Or even better, that you are FORCED to make a selection.
Some_store: Hello, would you like the 100USD Windows or the gratis Linux with that?
Customer: What is the difference between the two?
Some_store: About 100USD.
Sure, many people will still use and select Windows, because that is what they know. In fact I asume that the majority will do that.
And again, what you thing is gorgeous will not be something I think is gorgeous. I hate both KDE and GNOME and XFCE is not yet there, so I use Windowmaker instead. As long as my distribution gives me that choice, I am happy.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Linux desktops (Gnome, KDE) are at least as good as MS in terms of beauty. The screensavers and built-in tools (GIMP, OpenOffice, etc) are excellent and some works of art, even. People who've been following Linux through me for 8 years gasped when I showed them Ubuntu recently.
Still, the niggling little things, the rough edges that long-time linux users take in stride (such as having to update libraries manually to get apps or updates to work) are horribly frustrating to the average user. Yes, utilities like apt have made things far easier than they ever were, but even those still fail about 15% of the time. The threshhold of mass adoption is not far off, but we still need to get to a "Install" => "OK" => "OK" => "Finish" level of ease-of-use.
IMHO, it's the usability gap and interoperability hurdle that's holding the OS back more than the eye candy.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Seriously. I've tried Linux on my laptop for over two years. For about a year, I actually did away with Windows entirely; most recently, I spent many months with Ubuntu 6. I also use linux on several servers (and will not be removing it), and have for many years now. I mention this only to demonstrate that I am far from a linux newb.
In spite of that, it was a frustrating experience. No matter what I did, things didn't "just work". If I wanted secure wireless on my laptop,I had to screw around with ndiswrapper. Until recently, every time the kernel updated, I had to remember to recompile my network and nvidia drivers. To enable proper widescreen resolution and wacom tablet support, I had to muck around with xorg.conf. It was, frankly, ridiculous. It's great to know about how your system works -- but when you want to use a desktop for day to day activity, you just should not f---ing have to. Period.
I can come up with dozens of individual little frustrations, but really it comes down to this: when I am trying to accomlish my day-to-day tasks, things should Just Work. At about the time of the failed Ubuntu patch (you may remember - the one that broke Xorg), I was ready to give up. When my wacom tablet hung up the laptop every time I disconnected it, that was the final straw. I reinstalled XP Pro OEM; and it was amazing. Everything... just... worked.
Sure, there are things I miss about the linux desktop -- integrated multiple desktops being the single biggest ; the way that Windows splits up its settings in 20 different places is a bit annoying too. But after some one-time configuration, I didn't have tweak, reconfigure, recompile, or reinstall anything. My desktop environment ceased requiring attention, and instead got the hell out of my way -- where it belongs.
When that same experience is possible without frustration on Linux, I'll switch back. UNtil then, I'll keep it on the servers, and run cygwin locally for the text parsing tools I need.
IMHO, it is the level of configuration, post install, that keeps novices from using *nix. The *AVERAGE* computer user (NOT the average slashdot user) wants things to work "out of the box". As long as developers of *nix distros and *nix applications insist on defaulting everything to dumb, near non-functional configurations, we can expect a low adoption rate. Developers need to design specifically with the *AVERAGE* computer user in mind and make it "just work out of the box". I know, much easier said than done. All I'm saying is that the target audience needs to be adjusted. Let the advanced *nix users get offended that X-program went ahead and configured itself. They'll just open the config file(s) and modify them (which they would have had to do anyways). Besides, if you need absolute control over every byte on your system you should be running something like Gentoo (which I will NOT be recommending to a first time *nix user).
Now, I don't mean that *nix distros and applications need to be "dumbed down". They simply just need to DEFAULT TO A WORKING STATE THE USER EXPECTS, then let the advanced users modify the configuration file(s) to make it do whatever they want it to. This is a fine line to walk, but if done correctly will alienate less people and will lead to greater adoption of *nix as a whole.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
I got a Mac OS 10.0 couple years back. My first reaction was: how do I disable all that bouncing dancing colorful crap, which took me a while to figure out since I hadn't used a Mac for the past 5 years. When I figured there was no way to disable the horrible anti-aliased fonts I SWITCHED to an OS that has sharp letters, not something blurry that makes my eyes water. Case in point: when you put eye candy in your OS, make it easy for people to disable. In WinXP you have to download TweakUI or somesuch to get rid of all the animations. I don't want to have to pursue bouncing icons so I can click them: it's annoying and distracting if I want to be doing something else.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I'm a visual designer who works on UIs with engineering teams, and use Linux, osx, and wind'ers interchangeably all day long. I personally feel that there's been some beatuful work done on Ubuntu, Mandriva, SUSE, as well as many other distro's over the last few years, phenomenal steps towards making the UI "purdy." Shuttlewoth's comments bother me to a large degree, in that this is a simplistic engineering-focused perspective on usability and adoption. "We've got good technology, now let's make it pretty so people will use it" is a complete crock , and shows a lack of understanding around the problem space.
From a UI design perspective, what's missing from the linux distros is restraint (simplicity?) and discipline of consistency. Freedom is great, choice is great, but in the context of this discussion, the FOSS people need to recognize that it just adds complexity, which scares away first-time users. What's under the hood is important, too, like drivers, et al, but linux is a nightmare from a UI perspective -- there are too many choices, too many possibilities, which really just hurts the "everyman" adoption. How many OSX windowing systems do first time users have to niggle with? How many parts of that system are broken or don't work? ever read linux error messages? that's a first place to start, geez..
The window for true desktop Linux has probably passed. General interest in Linux has been falling for the past couple of years.
y =linux_meme
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
Unless you're planning on creating a new ideomatic language and teaching it to the rest of the world, we're kind of stuck with that whole letter-word-sentence-paragraph thing. Which gives rise to the idea of a page or document or file or folder that encapsulates a bunch of them.
Most sites or interfaces that try to overlay reality with other metaphors fail, usually because the metaphor doesn't communicate (why is the home page the "Town Hall"?) and because most graphical systems aren't as dense as text. To take your example, do I want to navigate a virtual building trying to find Fred's desk, or is it faster to find Fred in an alphabetic list and click on it.
I actually expect search and metadata (aka Spotlight) to take us further than 3D spinning virtual worlds...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
for posting that. I was hoping someone would get in the thread and mention that.
For Ubuntu devs, an FYI. Browns, orange, and green _went out_ with the BRADY BUNCH. What's more, the UPS guys have trademarked the color brown, so you are just asking for a lawsuit here. So it would be wise to invent another color which will automagically make Ubuntu look 300% better.
Apple doesn't even use brown for the power cord, let alone the OS. Please please please copy apple here.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
If you're installing video capture cards, using terminals, know what 'focus under mouse', and using development tools...
.config management, any make installs, anything. Just Next, Next, Next, Next, Next, C:, Full Install, Next, CD-KEY, Next, etc. After that point, when I can start looking on Google for solutions, that is when stuff can fail and I don't start with a different OS. I tried Gentoo (wanted to be hardcore, heh), but the installer couldn't read from my network card. I tried RedHat, but XServer or whatever failed to load. I tried Mandrake but something else didn't work right. I tried Windows. Worked. No hitches. No misconfigurations. Nothing. That is the one thing Windows does right: anyone, anywhere, with any amount of experience can install it. Until Linux can do that, I won't be using it. And nor will many, many others who are developers like me, who see the computer as a tool, not a hobby - something to use, not something to fiddle with until it works.
YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED AUDIENCE FOR GUI UPGRADES.
Think about that for a moment. When someone says, "We need to make Ubuntu look better", is this change for you or for the MS user who's never done anything but install AIM and click "Okay" to every dialog box? Is it for you or is it for the person who spends a ton of time on Facebook looking at their friends' pictures and just as much time setting away messages on chat programs?
That being said, I hate Linux. I'm a programmer by nature. I've tried installing linux many times, but it never Just Works. Windows, however, does. Windows always got me to the point where I could open IE and start browsing for whatever I need without any hassle, any
I really believe if Linux continues to push the development of the 3D Desktops (XGL/AIGLX/Compiz/Beryl), Windows and Mac users will become interested. So far the 3D desktop looks great and provides a limited amount of expanded functionality, but more integration and improvement is needed. Some of these screenshots .. http://lunapark6.com/?p=2501 ...of Edgy are incredible, it makes me want to install Edgy. I really hope Ubuntu and Linux continues to push the boundaries of this area. The visuals really sells.
That's a great idea! Let's do it! Let's make Linux gorgeous. What's everyone waiting for? Come on let's get going!
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Let those who care customize their machines. But first make it simple and reliable so that the great unwashed can use it too. I don't tell my mom to buy a Mac because it is pretty. I recommend it because it is easy to use and least likely to cause her grielf and frustratration.
Skins and themes and eye-candy are for those care. Those who care will be more than happy to spend time customizing.
Linux users don't use MS Office. Mac users shouldn't, and Windows users..well. Linux won't make big until someone writes kick ass games for Linux. And those silly little games that PopCap/Gamehouse have. We have the productivity tools, we have the eye candy. KDE and Gnome are nice UI's. What we need is the real candy. Gems really. Stupid little gem games will bring Linux to the forefront of home computing. And if we can have top-notch 3-d games as well, no one would look back.
-Scottux
I can't believe it. I run Ubuntu and that is EXACTLY what I'm wearing today. Cheap pleated pants with a tucked Hawaiian shirt and a fearsome ponytail/neckbeard combination.
It's the font rendering!
Take a look at these before and after screenshots in the Ubuntu forum on How to quickly improve X11 font rendering. You can see what a difference there is in readability. I apologize if you need a membership to view these. I have seen patches and complicated instructions on how to configure fonts to not look fuzzy, but I have never found a distro that makes it look fantastic by default. The byte code interpreter for font rendering is always off by default because of copyright issues. There are ways to make fonts look as good or better then Windows and Mac OS X but distros never just do it.
Until a Linux distro ships with fonts that don't look like I have a layer of grease on my monitor, you can count me out.
Everyone I know that switched did it because of a coolness factor, OS eye candy or case design. Not one single one mentioned "It just works", "I am tired of anti-Virus programs and updates", etc. Those become the mantra's after they switched (most loudly stated when someone mentions that they cannot play windows game "X", lol).
As I mentioned elsewhere, I am installing Mandriva Linux 2007 on my (grade 9)nephiews PC this weekend because the eye candy blew him away. Not because it just works (but everything "just worked" on my install).
Ubuntu has done a stellar job: on standard hardware, the install is trivial, and afterwards you get a desktop environment with mainstream, easy-to-use applications. It's actually easier than either Windows or Macintosh since you don't even have to install the third party apps--it all "just works".
I know this will never be read, but let me be the first to call bullshit.
I am an admin; have been for a long time. Done windows, done linux, done big corporate unices, all in anger. So let's take it as read that in general while I'm not an ultimate geek, I know what it takes to make systems do what I need, and what other people want, for money.
I bought a little mac, for artistic (photographic) purposes. I spent quite a bit of time making it do things for me.
The interface is infuriating. If I could rip the dock out and shove it up Steve Jobs's wazoo, I would in a heartbeat. The window switching is moronic. I don't want to switch between apps; I want to switch between windows. The constant mystic changing of the top bar (don't click in the wrong place, or it decides you want something else there!) means that I have to stop, think, re-read every time I want something there. Complete workflow stopper. I can write bash scripts, awk, python, what-have-you that do impressive things. I can do it on this crapulent thing too, because it is unix! No, wait, it's not really unix, and the interface-related things have to be accessed somehow other, because they aren't part of the unix part. Great thinking. If I want to access THAT, I have to play with applescript. Why? Or if there are APIs for that in the commandline, I haven't found them.
The hardware? Inaccessible unless I pay Big Benjamin$ for the good machines, or fiddle around with dicey methods like the mac mini putty knife nonsense. People spooge over how fast the hardware is, but it's at best what can be put together by a thoughtful purchaser over a lazy weekend, and all the damn eyecandy makes me yearn for a greenscreen which doesn't suck down the RAM and CPU to oblivion.
I'm not going to go on, because I can feel my blood pressure rising, but the fundamental fact, with all the other crap on one side, is that os-Xtr3m3 does not have (or if it does, has it hidden somewhere in its bowels) a clean, unified automation system which allows one system-level access to what's going on. (Automator doesn't cut it unless there are undocumented APIs out the wazoo.) There is specifically a huge gap between the point-and-drool pretty frontend and the actual machine. You can't use osx at a level of arbitrary power without getting at least as ugly as linux, simply because it wasn't designed with that as a daily usage scenario in mind, period.
...is that it has to be applied regularly. New major version of the software, new config dialogs, new wizards, new documentation? Better start redoing a lot of the Polish. Also, let's not forget that a Polished turd is nothing more than a Polished turd. The Polish are something you only need when you already have a solid product with rough edges. So while I think Linux could use a layer of Polish in a few places, I hardly think it's a big driver. Yes, people will flock to Ubuntu over other distros with a little Polish. But is that really what drives adoption of Linux as a whole? I think it's more hard questions like:
- Does Firefox work on most webpages?
- Does OpenOffice interoperate well with MS Office files?
- Does GIMP support 16-bit color/CMYK separation?
- Does Thunderbird interoperate well with our exchange server?
The really hard work is being done all the time by the people making fundamental improvements to their applications. What Ubuntu is doing with the Polish is more like maxing the performance for the Olympics. While it's important to get the most out of the foundation you have, it's the foundation that has to improve. Though I suppose this is a case where I'd like to eat my cake and have it too...
I know most slashdotters don't procreate but, babyshit happens to be more of a yellowish-green.
OMG, like a Queer Eye for the Linux UI... where's my pony?!?
Mod parent up!
Seriously, you can argue against this point all you want but the facts are there. People use Windows because it's familiar and it's simple. Yes, each user is an administrator, but at least you don't have to prove to your computer that you own it before it lets you do something. Yes, it is more vulnerable to attack, but so would be any other OS if it had that many users. I can go on as long as you can... I just remember having to edit about 5 config files and compile a driver just to get my network card working in linux once. No way anyone not in the field is going to do that, and certainly no way I'm going to help them -- it was painful enough just for myself!
Have a look at Firefox. It didn't take off until #1 it looked like IE and #2 it had all the features of IE and then some. You guys might as well argue that everyone in the world should switch to lynx.
Just get off your soapbox and use the soap in it to clean up the interface... make it look less like a piece of fantastic plastic that some shmoe melted together and threw on a CD and give it something a bit more professional. Hire a damned artist or 20.
Free, by itself, just isn't good enough. Would you rather pick up a ratty old couch from the side of the road for free or get one brand new that will impress all your guests for a chunk of change?
It sounds like we're saying, "We can put more lipstick on our pig than you can on yours."
Underneath all the lipstick there's still a pig... But our *nix pig is prettier than your windoze pig.
...the immortal need to balance sizzle with steak. ;-)
;-)
However, I and my friends at irc.linuxfromscratch.org have known the answer to this question for a while now...a window manager which will turn even the most pitiful, helpless of newbs into the proverbial black-leather clad h4XX0r in the blink of an eye.
"What are you trying to tell me...That I can dodge bullets?"
"No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you run Enlightenment, you won't have to."
Subjectively there seems to be some truth to this. If you UI 'feels' right to you then you are happier and more productive.
It's like coffee. You can go for instant or a nicely brewed fresh cup with the same amount of caffeine but the sense of well being from the nicer cup might lead to you being more productive.
Ultimately the best things might be a combination of the right tools and processes, plus a big enough monitor and input devices and furniture that does not lead to joint pain.
For linux to catch on you really need to do away with all the tweaking of config files and all the config/make/make install.
:)
I speak as an ex linux fan who got tired of having to tweak a million things on every install so as to
- get the soundcard working (plod along forums XYZ to find out that you need a kernel recompile, what a joy)
- try one of 10 different hacks to get my logitech mediaplay to work under X (still haven't figured it out)
- upgrade kde to 3.5.5 in SuSE. You need a phd to sort out the dependencies (yes, that was recent history)
- be able to see & use the "network neighbourhood" (samba shares)
- have NTFS write support, anyone? For my external HDDs?
- etc. etc.
So after losing a couple of days at work (re)configuring my brand new linux pc, thinking I'll eventually get rid of the silly windoze environment again and get back to good-old linux, I got fed up.
So I stopped fiddling about, reassured myself that this is for people who've got time on their hands (like I used to when I was at uni), and popped a windows cd again. Took me 5 hours to get all my programs sorted and fully working (I do keep a fixed set of apps I install) along with all my hardware running smoothly.
The bottom line: Not everybody has the willingness/time to mother-hen an alternative OS. As much as I like linux, I'll stick to windows until a better time comes (I have time to waste or I don't need kernel recompilations). Things like gui slickness are details. Both KDE (my fav) and Gnome are doing really well on that aspect.
Or maybe I'm getting rusty. My real linux days finished with slackware (still my fav. distro) and suse about two years back, having used every single linux/unix distro there was, even irix/solaris (on SGI/Sun boxes
I'm no longer fed up with MS Windows: I go rid of them
You say "The really hard work is being done all the time by the people making fundamental improvements to their applications." as if making it beautiful is easy.
Well, if it's so damn easy, why are so few of these people not taking the (no doubt small amount of) time necessary to do it?
The answer is because it's bloody hard, and it takes just as much expertise to make an app or system beautiful as it does to make it work.
It seems to me that a lot of the people who are doing what you describe as "the really hard work" just don't want to admit that usability and beauty matter, and are hard -- because they're not good enough to do it. On the other hand, some do realise and admit to this, and go out and find people who are good at UI design and beauty and work with them to create fantastic apps. Their apps are the ones that people will rave about, that will persuade people to switch OS, that people will feel all nostalgic about once they're gone.
If you pride yourself on the quality of your app, you care about the technical quality and the aesthetic quality and the functional quality.
If you're missing any of that, you just don't have what it takes to create (or rather, to direct the creation of) something that people will love.
I'd be happy if Linux had fonts where one half of the letter was thicker than the other half.
I'm not exactly a novice when it comes to computers, but after deciding to try Kubuntu (Ubuntu didn't run well on the computer I was using) I decided it wasn't worth the hassle when I spent two days trying to mount a network drive hosted on a Windows machine and have it reconnect automatically whenever I log in.
While waiting for Apple to release the MacBook Pro with the Core 2 cpu I got fed up with my Windows box and bought a cheap PC with Linspire installed. I've got the two machine networked but when I try to transfer my files from Windows to the new box Explorer freezes. I'll get a couple of files or folders copied over then Explorer stops responding. I've tried to copy the files inside Linspire but I keep being asked for the password, when I entry the correct pw a new pw box pops up.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For about two months, I used Ubuntu, and it was the best distro I've used. However, it failed on far too many levels, and I ended up switching back to windows because I could get a windows installation working in about 2 hours, whereas it took me 2 days to get Ubuntu the way I liked it. Here are some things I'd like to see changed in all Linux distros, before anyone should think about eye-candy:
1. Installation - everyone here has already said it, but yes, it really needs to be looked at. Microsoft's centralized msi installers are nice. Appfolders are even nicer. At the very least, have an installer download and install the required libraries before installing. I hate looking through a package manager trying to find all 13 packages that I need to install for app X to work. I hate looking on the internet for packages that aren't in the repositories even more.
2. File system - why are we still using 1980's UNIX standards? How about \Users, \Applications, and \System? Keep it simple! For reverse compatibility, just include the old file system inside the \System directory, and look there when \etc isn't found.
3. Settings - How about severely recommending that all major applications put their settings in the same place. Maybe \Users\User Name\.Configs\AppName? This would make it SO easy to find the ini or conf file when you really need it.
4. Hardware - There really needs to be a new system for installing and managing devices and drivers. How about a system that will prompt you for the driver files and copy them to the \System\Drivers folder when new hardware is plugged in/detected, rather than letting a manufacturer's installer do it. That way, it makes everything look clean and simple. If the manufacturer needs to move more files, install other applications, do so when the driver is loaded, or include them for easy access on the driver cd/website.
Once these changes are made, THEN we can worry about making it all look pretty.
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
I'm on my second reinstall of Ubuntu on a machine at work. The first happened because a program froze the system hard. Upon reboot the x-server was borked for some reason. After some unsuccessful fiddling and attempting to reconfigure the thing I had to reinstall. The second time, against my better judgement, I had dapper upgrade to edgy after release. It froze the system hard during install making the system unbootable. Apparently I wasn't the only one with this problem. Second reinstall.
Didn't they have some x-server update in dapper that borked a bunch of folks systems as well?
I'm getting my son a new computer for Christmas. I was really struggling between a Mac mini and a generic Ubuntu box. Ubuntu made up my mind for me last week.
I'm thinking ubuntu needs to put the eye-candy on the back burner and focus on testing and stability first. What good is attracting a bunch of folks with eye candy only to turn them away soured on the apparent stability/quality of linux?
Here's a repost of my 2 or 3 whinges about a serious issue with Ubuntu that no-one on /. seems to care about. /. readers I can't believe not even a single person has posted regarding the whole Core 2 Duo/JMicron thing (and yes I did a discussion search).x -source-2.6.17/+bug/57502 8 3&page=2
Seriously out of all the millions of
For more information:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Core_2_Duo_Support
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/68612
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linu
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2856
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Make it gorgeous... give us color choices aside from orange! Xubuntu looks a lot better theme-wise than Ubuntu.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
In fact, don't just make the wifi drivers easy to use, make the wifi interface easy to use. Why do I have to do some crazy ass hack to make my WPA2 drivers work with my 64-bit laptop? And while we're at it throw in a good financing program. No, my bank is not compatible with GnuCash. I love Linux, but I can't spend hours on end troubleshooting and customizing everything when technology is moving as fast as it is. Of course I remember life before plug and play, and recall windows 3.1 not having a much better system at the time and requiring playing around with COM ports and IRQs and such. But the point is that Linux is not quite mature enough for the masses, close, but more like Windows 95 mature. ;P
I had run Linux a few years ago as a primary OS, so I was hardly a new user. Some things I had trouble with:
* No built-in DVD playing
* No built-in MP3 playing
* Streaming MP3 problems
* Various small and medium interface bugs (e.g. the power button in the upper right... the one that does logoff, etc. stopped working)
* BitTorrent worked at *very* slow speeds, basically unusable
I managed to find workarounds for some of these issues, but some of them took awhile, e.g. had to do port forwarding on my DSL modem for BitTorrent.
There's no threat to Windows or OS X from Linux at this point. However, I will say that Linux is waaay ahead of where it was from when I used it 2-3 years ago. Hardware detection is excellent, for example.
In other words, it's going to take a lot more than simply UI polish to get more market share.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHEcgTWAfvE
Very true. It's difficult enough for me as a fully-capable technical user to buy a computer with Linux preinstalled. I can't imagine how someone different might possibly avoid the Windows tax.
About 3 weeks ago, maybe four, I bought a new PC with Linux preinstalled. It's a PowerSpec I bought from Microcenter. I'd never heard of PowerSpec before but because the price was right, $250 with a $50 mailin rebate, I went ahead and got it. Later I found out the company that makes PowerSpecs is owned by the same company that owns Microcenter. And though not all carry them some Walmart stores have PCs with Linux installed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
...enterprise players who are used to Windows, yet crave Mac OS X and the functionality of Linux.
That doesn't describe *anyone* I know!
-Rich
I'd be happy if Linux had fonts where one half of the letter was thicker than the other half.
Not me; I always change the fonts to the thinnest helvetica sans that I can find.
But this does illustrate the basic problem with Shuttleworth's basic argument. There's an old saying that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." You and I have different font preferences, and there's no logical or practical way to choose between them. They're just aesthetic differences. Everything else has this problem, too.
The best that can ever be done along these lines is to give the user a simple, up-front way of picking one of a set of themes. Make this part of the installation process, and put it at an easy-to-find place in the runtime menus. Do a bit of market research to find a set of themes that people like. Include a few extras that look a lot like the MS and Apple default eye candy, plus a couple of space-efficient, bare-bones themes for us fans of ergonomics.
But the idea that you can just make it look pretty is hopelessly inaccurate. There's no way that humans can be made to agree on what's pretty, at least not when it comes to something as unnatural as a computer GUI.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Deep inside the Windows NT/XP kernel, it maintains an object namespace very similar to a Unix filesystem. You can use WinObj from sysinternals.com to navigate this object namespace. Notice that under the 'Global??' folder you will find the entries 'C:' and 'D:' and so on symbolic linked to the appropriate file system. Also, '\Device\*' in the object namespace is very much like '/dev/*' on Unix.
It is evident that drive letters under an NT kernel is just a DOS compatibility after-thought. The kernel doesn't have concepts of drive letters.
I once had a signature.
Yeah, that's all we fricking need. Some Linux distros are already to the point where they need several GB for their default base installations, making them damned near useless for those of us who are stuck using older hardware in some contexts.
Go ahead and make Linux pretty instead of function, Ubuntu folks. I simply won't use your distribution.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I think people using not Linux these days has nothing to do with how it looks, and everything to do with one problem: applications and drivers.
...etc.
Where's "iMovie" for Linux?
No, Kino doesn't count.
Can I get full-resolution printer drivers?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
If Adobe ported their entire product line to Linux, that alone would increase the feasibility of switching people to Linux to an incredible degree.
Adobe might port their line to Linux but I don't think it will be anytime soon. Adobe has a big following with Mac users yet they won't be releasing a universal or MacTel version of PhotoShop CS until they release the new version next spring, more than a year after MacTels came out. CrossOver can be used to run old Photoshops in Linux but that's slower than a native port I bet.
Either way, it doesn't hurt to make things prettier, so I'm not really arguing with Shuttleworth. However, i know people who would like to switch to Linux and just can't because there aren't FOSS alternatives to the apps they use. Oh, and porting more games wouldn't hurt either. I know people who stick with Windows just for the games.
I bet the single biggest thing that would increase Linux's market on the desktop would be to have Linux preinstalled on more PCs in stores. Someone buying a new PC will just want to plug it in and turn it on at home and use it. Not many people install their own OS.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It's been said before, but Linux also shoots itself in its collective foot with program naming. Sure, putting a G in front of its version of AIM, NotePad/TextEdit, etc. is cute...but it doesn't exactly telegraph their purpose to a new user.
PaintShopPro and PhotoShop are a quite a bit more intuitively named than GIMP. If you are a new user, the name Internet Explorer also helps reflect its intended purpose more than Konqueror, Opera, Epiphany, or Galeon. Ditto Windows Media Player, Real Player, PowerDVD, etc. vs. Helix, Xine, Ogle, Noatun, XMMS, or Totem.
My 76 year-old mother can learn how to use UBuntu just as easily as she can learn how to use Windows, but let's not forget some of these other stumbling blocks...which we may no longer be able to see since we are so familiar with the OS and its application suites. Sure, I still remember why it makes sense to drag a floppy disk icon to the trash on a Mac to eject it (I had one before hard disks when ghost disk images on the Mac desktop were valuable)...and never even questioned how counterintuitive this operation was until I tried to explain the procedure to a Windows user.
Forest. Trees. Step back.
You don't think it is related to the fact that it comes preinstalled on almost all PC's?
No, but you have to prove to Microsoft that your copy is legitimate every once in a while. By the way, the UAC feature of Windows Vista will require proving to the computer that you are the system administrator before being allowed to touch important system folders, just like in Linux.
I disagree. I don't think that Linux would ever reach the vulnerability level of Windows XP, regardless of its market share. The privilege separation system, among others, is an important security barrier that would prevent that from happening. This isn't Linux-specific. I think that the Vista UAC has an opportunity to significantly increase security in Windows, unless the users find a way to disable the "stupid admin password dialog" that is.
One sore spot is the lack of GUI inkjet printer utilities for printers other than HP. I've created a program called Stylus Toolbox that acts as a front-end to escputil, the command line Epson printer utility that comes with Gutenprint (formerly called GIMP-Print).
I created this because I have my wife using Ubuntu 6.06 and the one thing that she could never do was check to see the ink levels on our Epson Stylus C88 to see which cartridge needed to be changed or to clean the print heads if she starts to get banding when printing her photos and stuff.
Yea, I recently got a PC with Linspire Linux preinstalled and my printer is a Canon Pimax (sic) 3000 I have hooked up to my old PC using USB. I found a driver that may work for the printer but even if it does will it work with USB or will I have to use a parallel cable? And will it let me clean the heads, print test pages, and check ink levels? If not then I may have to set it up as a network printer using my old PC however it is dying.
FalconShould there be a Law?
My computer died, i need a new one.
Whats wrong with it you ask? Well, it keeps calling me a thief and is not working.
There are a few interpretations of "beauty" available here. The superficial one is, as the /. tag says, "eyecandy". I'd argue that this alone is useless. We've had all manner of shiny eyecandy in Linux for ages. If eyecandy alone were enough, Enlightenment would have taken over the world long ago. Even arguing the merits of a particular visual design isn't enough -- the Linux world needs to move beyond that into systems that both look good and have great interaction design.
Thats exactly where I find myself. Im interested in linux but its as if I've been playing the NES for years and someone has just tossed a PS3 controller into my hands.
If you can read this, it's already too late.
Okay, so if I could, I'd mod you up. Still, I feel like we've stagnated. Navigating a virtual building looking for Fred may not be a great thing, but how about a directory tool based on something like The Brain? It's about half way to true usability as a pardigm, but it's better than nothing.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
How about just making it fsckin' work?
/ 239258
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/28
This is an extremely astute appraisal of what is wrong with Linux. I am a very experienced computer user, grew up with an IBM PC with DOS 3.3 back in 1987 and have steadily progressed through the various good and bad (DOS 5) Microsoft releases. I have a computer science degree and worked in industry until I decided to leave the IT world for other pursuits. Now, I have experimented with Linux several times over the years and in January I installed Kubuntu. I used it right up until last week and I when I said fuck it and went back to Windows. It came after spending about an hour upgrading to the latest version of Firefox, then trying to get Flash and Java plug-ins to work. In Windows, if I visit a web page that uses Flash, Firefox will simply install Flash automatically, and away I go. Kubuntu, another story all together. I downloaded Flash, and followed a tutorial right to a T and it still didn't work. 30 minutes later, I'm pissed, and not any closer to getting it to work. Same with Java plug in. Also, I tried several times to get my PCMCIA wireless adapter to work, only to be met with frustration. Windows, I just slide it in and away I go. Linux absolutely has to fix these problems before I switch. I WANT to use Linux. I WANT to get rid of Windows, but I don't have the time any more to mess around with ridiculous command line tutorials and the sheer frustration of getting the smallest non-trivial thing to work. Now, I can see putting Linux on my parent's computer because basically, they need word processing, Web, e-mail, and music. Linux does all those things very well, and you can basically set it and forget it. I'm kind of in the middle. I know Windows like the back of my hand and can get it to do my bidding, most of the time. Sure, it's a pain in the ass, but hardly as frustrating as Linux was. I could give a crap whether Linux is pretty, but if they could make it so that doing those non-trivial tasks like installing plug ins, and little hardware issues easier, than I would switch tomorrow. Like anything, I'm sure if you know what you're doing, it's "easy" but until that learning curve is brought down, than Windows power users will never switch.
Fortunately, a lot of OSS developers have decided that as long as they're coding something that's useful to themselves, they might as well make it a little prettier so that it's usable (or even developable) to others as well, and eventually, we end up with software that grandma can use.
Well, that's a disputed point. Yes, software gets better for everyone as long as the goal remains the same, but at some point it diverges. The software I (and most OSS developers or slashdot visitors) would consider best isn't what my grandma would. Yes, there's plenty examples of software that's either been specificly "dumbed down" for grandmas or are so easy in operation they can be used by everyone, but I can also think of quite a few counterexamples. Software that is very good, but that isn't and probably never will end up as "software that grandma can use".
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's great, but I think a key issue is cross-platform standardization, like driver support!
No point in looking pretty if you can't even plug in your key adapters/components because the manufacturers don't bother to support Linux.. and then you have to find some generic alternative that might work if someone like Linuxant decides to support it..
What we NEED is a stable platform for developers (starting with a unified sound API) and for media to work out of the box without installing a bunch of unsupported packages. Forget about all the stupid eye candy until you get those things straightened out. We still haven't forgiven you for the naked people wallpaper.
Yeah like I really like how in windows app where hitting OK sometimes closes the present window and sometimes opens the child window.
How about how if you open your browser, a single click on a hyperlink follows to the links URL, but the file-manager that looks just like the browser needs to double-click the links (shortcuts)?
Here's a good one how about downloading an executable to a user's desktop, then right-clicking and run-as admin, ever try that it don't work, Windows says admin has insufficient privileges! Then you get sneeky and down-load it to a shared folder, and run-as, but that still doesn't work, you have to copy it into the shared folder, I've pleaded with every windows guru for 3 years to tell me how to do that, nobody knew! as far as I can tell I'm the only one! This is so unintuitive, admin is untrusted and to make a file shared, it has to be moved into a shared folder, and downloading into the shared folder doesn't count!
I don't want to to things the "new" windows way, I want some sanity, I want the old tried and true, rational, expandable Unix way!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I don't entirely disagree with your overall point, but the problem I have with this reasoning is that I use Linux, "consistent" usually means far less options, and I'm concerned that the options you happen to think are appropriate for some kind of plan to "market Linux to the masses" are unlikely to be what's optimal for me.
I think one of the major problems with this is that so many people are thinking of it as "Linux", when Linux really has little or nothing to do with the desktop that everyone sees.
It'd make much more sense to make KDE look consistent, and encourage people to use KDE, or make Gnome look consistent, and market that at people. Or maybe the groups in charge of KDE and Gnome might decide to combine the interfaces a bit more, and that could be marketed to people. Or maybe someone just builds some kind of super-distribution and gets lots of attention, and that distribution can be marketed at people. But it shouldn't be marketed as "Linux", because Linux is only a single component of a much larger system with many more obvious components, and the Linux part of the system is replaceable.
In particular, people don't have to tie themselves to Linux for this. They can tie themselves to any of the BSD's or to Solaris, just for starters, and still get a similar experience if they're running the same desktop. But trying to argue that "Linux should look consistent" will never work, because Linux is a kernel and it doesn't look like anything.
As a former Ubuntu user turned OS X convert, I have to say that it *is* an Ubuntu/OS X horse race, with Windows eating dust far in the rear. I prefer OS X, because it's definitely sexier, but GNOME gets the fundamentals very right.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
By coincidence I recently gave a copy of the latest (6.10) Ubantu to a hardware engineer at work who wanted to give Linux a spin. This is a guy who wants it to "just work" and not fiddle with scripts or anything. Today he told me that he ran into problems with his Sympatico internet connection. I was rather surprised - I had PPPoE working under Linux, a long time ago (Late 1999? I wrote a YaST script for a user mode implementation) albeit with a long more difficulty. Another HW guy at work was willing to try out Linux, so this time I gave him a SuSE 10.1 DVD to try instead. (This is what I run on my basement server and firewall) I will find out how he manages sometime later this week.
Stuff like that gives new users a very bad experience. First and foremost, stuff has to work out of the box. Secondly, there has to be solid, high quality software available that does what you want it to, and it has to install and upgrade with minimal effort and mucking about.
My rights don't need management.
I'm surprised that nobody seems to have pointed out the existence of many theme sites yet. You can make Linux look beautiful today!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Hardware detection is excellent, for example
goto BestBuy or similar, grab any piece of random hardware like a usb wifi stick, plug it in and watch what happens
thats right NOTHING no user feedback, no "new hardware detected driver" prompts nada
Windows at least will recognise just about anything and prompt for a driver disk, pop in the driver disc, click ok a few times and the hardware will work , no messing about in lsusb or modprobe never mind using weird command lines and editing config files in nonsensical locations (ie: dont call it
Linux needs to automate stuff and provide visual feedback on whats happening when it comes to devices, random Joe wants to get his new gadget he just bought off ebay or his local store and plug it and it justWork(tm) or at least give him feedback on what he needs to do to get it working, until then i agree that *nix needs a lot more than just a flashy skin
AIGLX and Beryl is definitely a good step forward but hardware support and the installation procedure (software/hardware) on anything but Windows is downright shite (call a spade a spade)
AJ
I have this friend who I have been been trying to convince to try out Linux.
She is quite skilled at working in Windows, knows the ins and out of it much better than I do (I haven't really been working in Window for some years now). When we have been talking about her trying out Linux she a few times mentioned that it is just too ugly. I guess that is no wonder when she is seeing screenshots from my minimalistic fluxbox gentoo X system here, I hate the for the X-system to be taking up unnecesary system resources, as long as it works I don't care much how it looks, the less fancy looking stuff there the better.
Anyhow so far I have not been able convince my friend to try out Linux, but looking at one of the links from Shuttleworth's blog to the Ubunty Artwork team I was thinking this might be a way to get her involved with Linux. She is extremely skilled at editing and working with images in jasc Pain Shop Pro (PSP). I think maybe she would be interested in doing some work on that team, but I am wondering if it would be acceptable that the work be done in PSP, being commercial software?
If she were to work on the Ubuntu project she would have to install Ubuntu on one of her computers, I don't think that will cause her many problems and if she then also works on that distro she might even start using it.
Anyhow would love any feedback from folks here on this.
A bit on the same subject (and then again not), anyone out there with experiences about runnning PSP in Linux through Wine or something like that?
XML causes global warming.
Interesting idea. It would certainly allow you to literally see at a glance the layout.
One comment: paper is linear, and hyperlinks have moved us somewhat beyond that already.
Eyecandy = Bloat
Slashdot always seems to miss the point when Open Source leaders talk about adding polish to their product. This is the leader for Ubuntu and he wouldn't make such a statement without realizing some of the other problems that Linux has before being desktop viable for the masses. So let's be rational about his motivations...
Could he simply be saying that Ubuntu would love for UI designers to be a part of their team?
This isn't an unreasonable assumption, nor a bad motive. Most of the posts with high mod rating don't make a graphics person feel very welcome, which is really defeating the purpose here. His basic statement is 'we at Ubuntu feel graphics are a respectable contribution for our community'. The Slashdot community could learn from this.
Personally, I think Linux acceptance will really come into its own when "Linux" means the same default user experience no matter what distro they are using. Think about it, Windows desktop users don't give a shit if their box is running AMD or Intel or if it is using FAT or NTFS, *Windows* to them is the interface that sits on top of all of that stuff. The only way *Linux* will evolve into a competor in that space is to realize that desktop users only care that their programs run fast enough (Linux already has that covered), that they can use popular tools and that they know where everything they need to use is in the UI.
This may be somewhat true but for Linux to be used widely as a desktop OS it has to be preinstalled at the store as most people don't install the OS they use, they just unpack the computer, plug it in, and use it. They install software but not operating systems.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh, yes, hyperlinking is a step in the right direction, but it seems that we took that step, and a few more tentative ones, then said, oh, we can stop here, because we're further than we were fifteen years ago.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
In your home directory sorted in whatever way makes sense to you - or on an NFS share used by a lot of people for collaborative work named after the project, division or whatever - not F: M: or whatever windows shared drive which may differ between desktop machines.
If you get something that isn't available with the distributions package manager it depends on what it is. Local stuff only to be used on that computer goes in /usr/local, optional stuff like java, openoffice and commercial software puts itself in /opt with it's own installer, stuff to be shared with other computers (which you probably won't be doing) goes in /usr/share. If it is stuff that only you will use it can also go in ~/bin to avoid having to install as root.
All distributions now look on the net for what you want and work out all dependencies. On Fedora "yum install packagename" or a GUI tool from the system menu, on Ubuntu and Debian "apt-get packagename" or a GUI tool from the system menu, on Mandriva a GUI tool from the system menu - Gentoo (not for newbies and it turns unix veterans into newbies again) "emerge packagename", and so on for other distributions - even package management on solaris. If the package is not on the list you can still get it, download it, read the instructions and install it - but you don't have to live on the cutting edge.
As for consistancy - it was called CDE - people liked choice more instead.
All that said - applications are the entire reason to use a computer, and if you have to learn to use a lot of different applications it may not be worth shifting to a different platform. You can get a lot of linux functionality with cygwin and ported versions of rsync, find, grep, awk, ssh, ImageMagik (batch processing of graphics files) etc. With X windows on your MS Windows machine you can use all linux applications on your screen with the actual programs running on a linux box you are networked to - that's how people with MS Windows at my workplace run interactive graphical software on a cluster.
In my workplace there were many people that just wanted to type reports and access remote machines - stability problems and MS Word formatting problems with embedded images drove them to linux. There are people that require specific applications that only run on MS Windows so they use Win2k or XP and X Windows. Linux is not MS Windows, has no registry (although g-conf is a misguided imitation done poorly and on a per user basis) has no C: drive and is different enough that your MSDOS specific knowlege will not apply - and the concept of doing everything with a GUI if difficult unless you are resticted to a few options or put incredible amounts of work in like apple. With a CLI you don't swear because the option you need to apply is greyed out because the developer didn't think of a paticular set of circumstances and then have to find and hack a text file anyway to get around it. A combination of CLI and GUI works well in a lot of circumstances and pipes let you do unexpected things quickly without having to buy/download a new program.
I first installed Fedora Core 4 about a year ago, though I still continue to use Windows most of the time. I thought it looked just fine compared to Windows. I think there are a few reasons home users and businesses don't use Linux, but eye candy isn't one of them.
First, home users. In my experience, they're concerned mainly about two things: compatibility and usability. They want to know that their printer, their digital camera, and the software they're used to using will be compatible with their OS. While I think the free software available in Linux is top notch and more than adequate for the home user, the hardware support is not. How many times have you heard about people who install Linux only to find out they can't print, or their wireless network card doesn't work. Not to mention the hoops you have to jump through to install drivers. And the first time they can't find "My Computer" or the C drive, or, for more experienced users, the command prompt, they will panic. If they have to type in the root password every thirty seconds, they might get a little frustrated too.
Now non-IT businesses are mostly held back by the cost of switching. The company I work for would be absolutely crippled if they had to switch to Linux overnight. All of their important documents (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Access database applications, many of which make heavy use of VB macros) are hopelessly tied to Windows. For example, all of their ISO 9000 documents, which are absolutely critical to their business, are in MS Office documents that wouldn't work with OO.org because of the macros, etc. The cost of converting would be enormous, in terms of the additional IT man-hours required, the lost productivity of people not able to access the information they need, and possibly the loss of customers. They do use some Linux servers for the intranet, and various databases, but all of the non-IS office computers run Windows.
I think the Linux community should focus on making Linux usable to the home user. Hardware support comparable to that of Windows and easy updating of software and drivers are the most important things. GUI eye candy just makes existing converts feel better about their OS. Macs have had a pretty GUI for a while now, and yet most people continue to use Windows. With the outrageous cost of Vista, I think Linux has a real shot at winning over more home users in the near future.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
I found myself staring at my blank monitor yesterday after booting the Edgy LiveCD on my very standard PC (SuSE runs fine on it and so do other Live Distros).
Tried everything till I ended up waiting for the boot process to finish, switched to a terminal, reconfigured xserver-xorg and restarted GDM.
HOW THE FLYING FRAG IS A NORMAL USER GOING TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS ONE THEN? I'M ASKING THE FRAGGING DEVELOPERS!
And this time I'm really mad at those idiots, because this wasn't the first time this happened, just have a look at the forums...
On another note:
I have a Ralink RT61 Wireless Card....THERE ARE OPEN-SOURCE DRIVERS OUT THERE FOR THE THING, YOU IDIOTS! But now, YOU had to go and FRAGG the stuff up. So you did with countless other drivers, even Intel drivers have stopped working. Now this is a disgrace, it really is.
I'm a freelance IT-Teacher, I've been teaching Linux Admins for the last 8 years and I know just every distribution under the sun, I make buckets of money with consultations but I would never recommend a Linux Distro like this for Desktop purposes.
So Mr. Shuttleworth, sit yourself down and develop a QA programm and whack the programmers heads, as long as you are shelling out money for the thing, you might as well get into control of it. If it means hurting some egos? Go with it, and hurt them real good.
If you have your hardware shit together, THEN and only then, can you start thinking about making the darn thing beautiful.
uh.. the depends on whether your using a right hand mouse or a left hand mouse
because your comment implys that older macs had a lot of problems, which is precisely the point i was making - jobs (untill at least recently) charged extra for his "good desing" but there were a lot of flaws.
Actually firefox has evolved from netscape. Netscape kicked IE's butt for the longest time. You actually have your history inverted, in terms of who played catchup. IE is only now about to catchup with firefox in terms of usability. If you consider the easy extension system firefox has, and include the extensions available, then IE still has a long way to go to catch up. But this doesn't matter, because in terms of market share, better doesn't matter. What matters is what is preinstalled.
Oh and don't upgrade your ram and hard drive and video card, or you won't be able to prove that you own a license to use WinXP on that computer, because you don't .
Nice use of double back-ticks and double apostrophes. I've caught myself doing that in MS Word at times after getting very accustomed to LaTeX.
TheStonepedo
ubuntu
I noticed, especially as of 6.10, that Kubuntu is just downright gorgeous. It has that trademark KDE bluish hue to it, while the windows and task bar have a very sleek and shiny look to them. This version of Kubuntu is the first distro (of any OS with a GUI) where I decided I liked the installation default scheme the most. Everything else I have ever used, (and this goes back to Win98 and Mac OS 7, and RedHat 7), I have tweaked dramatically to make it look the way I wanted.
/* No Comment */
The Linux community just doesn't get it, and probably never will. There are two big obsticles to desktop linux adoption:
1) Software - this is the biggest obsticle. People do not run an OS just to run the OS, no matter beautiful it may be. The point of the OS is to be a platform to run the apps. Without the apps the OS is useless. Apps are critical. And I am sorry to report that Linux trails msft *badly* on the desktop in this regard.
1) Hardware - I can not pick up a piece of x86 hardware and count on it to actually work with linux, even if it has a penguine emblem on the box. All kinds of hardware just do not work with Linux: win-modems, combination print/fax/scan/copy devices, wireless, and more.
Linux looks fine already, and Linux works great. But, on the desktop, Linux does not even begin to compare with windows when it comes to hardware and software compatibility. That is killing linux adoption, far more than anything else.
And don't tell me it's msft's fault. Nobody cares who is at fault. People want what they want.
If it matters, I'm a debian user. I'm using debian right now. But I don't kid myself about wide-spread desktop linux adoption.
Uhm... Wifi comes to mind, and it is an incredible pain in the ass to set up, work with, and troubleshoot under Linux. In real world software houses where the professionals work during the week, we know that eye candy is the topping on the cake. You don't usually say, wow, here's a flower and egg concoction... I think the frosting should be pink.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
- Does GIMP support 16-bit color/CMYK separation?
I used GIMP years ago some, but now I plan on getting more into photography and 16 bit color space is one of the things I've heard that PH has over GIMP, that GIMP doesn't support it. Someone else suggested I try Inkscape. As a vector graphics editor I don't know how well it is editing photos though.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Long time lurker, first time poster. ( so please be gentle )
/mount/windows dir. Success, my coworker can see his Win95 files!
The background:
A coworker was about to go on a business trip. He had a Company laptop which had been "surplused" (no longer on the asset list). This laptop had originally been delivered with Win2K, but had been downgraded to Win95 to conform to the then corporate standard.
The coworker requested the machine be re-upgraded to Win2K to make it more usable on the road (USB support, VPN capability, etc.). The IS department refused, then indicated that no "loaner" laptops would be available for his trip.
The coworker came to me and simply asked if I could do anything to make the laptop more usable, support a USB drive, easier ability to connect to a network, the simple things you do on the road.
I indicated I would see what I could do, promptly downloaded Ubuntu 6.10, and started working on the box.
The "HOST":
The recipient was to be a Compaq Armada E500 circa 2000. Celeron 650MHz, 256MB, 6GB HDD, CD-ROM, Floppy... As usual a single FAT32 partition utilizing the full 6GB.
The expectation:
Honestly, not much. I didn't even know if I could get Edgy to install, and if it did I didn't know if it would be particularly usable. I did know that if I could get it to load however I could provide the coworker with more functionality than the box provided as it then sat.
The install:
I hadn't done a Linux install since Debian Sarge was a pup, and my skills were rusty to say the least. I was also VERY pressed for time and did NOT have the time to properly sit down and RTFM.
The above said however I had been reading about how much easier vanilla Linux, and Ubuntu specifically, had become to install and thought I would be able to get through the install fairly quickly. I was wrong...
The "issues":
I've quoted issues, because they are mostly mine, both from rusty skills and lack of time to RTFM. The issues are I believe some of the same ones which would stop many enthusiasts at my level or below dead in their tracks during their first Linux install. Worse, some might never return.
Nothing was horribly broken. No horror stories of trashed boot loaders or lost kernels, just little things, and most needed just a little text in a dialog box to avoid the pitfall.
When the install was attempted I reached the partitioning screen and was greeted with the use all of disk, or part of disk prompt. As Win95 had to remain available I chose the part of disk option, and of course it failed with the Ubuntu needs a / and a swap partition message. This is one of those points where a little text, or a popup dialog would have saved a lot of time.
After remembering my earlier installs I told my coworker to clean up his disk, delete what he could and defrag. I then fired up Edgy again, ran gparted, shrank the FAT32 partition, created a / ext3 partition and a swap partition. Guess what? Edgy doesn't like that, the Edgy installer wants to create the / and swap partitions itself. Again, a little bit of text in a dialog would have went a long way!
I backed up the install, fired up gparted, deleted the ext3 and swap partitions I had created earlier, and tried again.
The result:
Success, a successful Edgy install! Woe is me, my coworker wants to be able to access his Win95 partition. A quick look on the Ubuntu forums indicates that Edgy should have detected the FAT32 partition, but it didn't. Fire up a shell, edit fstab, and create a
This one needs more than a little text or a dialog box! The online help points to a Gnome utility at System -> Administration -> Disks which isn't there. Thus I end up at the Ubuntu site and back in a shell to accomplish the above. And why didn't it add the FAT32 partition to fstab as read / write by default? (NTFS I could understand, but not a FAT32 partition)
Success! Edgy is loaded, my coworker can access his Win95 files, networking j
Does GIMP support 16-bit color/CMYK separation?
Still in the "coming" category unfortunately. It sounds like GEGL at last has some legs again, but... On the other hand if you want 16-bit color and CMYK you can use Krita [koffice.org] right now.
Is Krita good as a replacement for Photoshop?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Well but, hyperlinking is a major step forward, and it is easy compared to the graphical spatial layout (as described). It is easier to modify what you have, than to make a major transitional jump. It will happen, because the visual layout (as described) would really work. It would require a much more sophisticated set of libraries, though. And asci vs. unicode aside, text is text is pretty simple to work with...Directed graphs don't have such a foundation, yet, to build upon (that I know of, at least.) Wonders, would this qualify for a master's thesis (as a form of scientific visualization)?
Sigh, it's 'viruses'. And anyway the latinized pleural version would be 'viri'.
twice a year?
It's about uniformity and consistency. And until the individual, out-of-control egos of Linux app developers are neutralized to conform to strict UI standards, Linux will never have legs in the mass marketplace.
I'm too sexy for my kernel
Too sexy for my libc
Too sexy for my GUI
Customizability is very important for using an application. However, there is a such thing as too many toolbars and too many options shown on the screen. This illustrates some of my issues with KDE.
Those graphics demostrated something I don't like about Mac toolbars, the large size of the icons. As I plan on getting a MacBook Pro in a couple of weeks, switching from Windows, I hope the size are customizable. I prefer the smaller size as shown in the KDE example, just trim the number of them shown in the first KDE example. I'd also prefer if in customizing them if you could specify they be text instead of graphics. Also the Mac graphics show too much chrome.
FalconShould there be a Law?
As soon as the average power user from windows can install Linux with a few clicks of the mouse and then get in and install a few programs with no hassle,
One Linux distro has that now, Linspire. They have an online warehouse of software and you just click the install button then it will be downloaded and installed. There are no editing config files or anything like that. And to unistall you press another button and away it goes. At least that how it's all supposed to be, I recently got a new PC with Linspire preinstalled but I haven't really used it yet.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Lets take a parallel example...
Suppose the DMV said that the current automobile wasn't "user-friendly" enough, and that some changes had to be made in order to appeal to the masses.
The DMV starts encouraging automobile makers to start adding "appealing, easy to use, no training required features", such as a built-in tanning booth, an new windshield with an lcd screen built right into the window (you can watch tv AND look through at traffic at the SAME TIME!!!!).
After all this, the DMV starts stressing the "ease of use" of operating an automobile, and therefore starts dumbing down the Driver's Liscense exams, because the current exams just make driving too "difficult" or "hard" or "complex". The DMV fully understands that the average driver wants driving his car to be easy, and therefore the DMV gets right of way laws repealed, because it's too complex to think "abstractly about such complex and difficult things".
Oh shit, I forgot...People are supposed to get their shit the fuck together and learn how to drive the fucking car, be responsible for the actions, pay the fuck attention to the road, not make "user-dumbfucking-friendly" for them.
If they can't use the car to navigate the road then, honestly, has the useful purpose and utility of the car been lost?
Now, not to tell people that they can't use the computer, seeing how cars can kill people is misused, computers...ehh not so dangerous -- but I think people should strive to learn how to utilize the computer, and take full advantage of the computational and mathematical power it really has, not push that aside in efforts to make it look pretty.
Not to say that we can't have a sleek GUI and retain full functionality, but we need not forget just how powerful a computer really is.
---FourChannel---
Ok so you can't code worth a hoot. Are you any good at artistic stuff? Maybe your really great at organizing things logically. Maybe even those of us who are totally clueless about source code can finally find a way to contribute. I realize there are quite a few talented people doing this, but the effort could always use more.
As for the idea that there has to be a standardized desktop for all distros. This would totally wreck what I see as the most powerful asset of FOSS like Linux distros. The richness of the diversity in Linux distros IMHO is what I like the most about it, and I suspect such attributes may very well be crucial to its survival. To get a substantial market share distros need to be created that target user types with lower skill levels. The modular nature of Linux would mean that it could still be capable of being expanded as that skill level increases.
I do agree with the basic premise that a pretty and easy to use interface would probably do more to draw in new users that anything except maybe better compatibility with main stream (new & cheap) hardware. However I am not sure this is where most current Linux users and developers want to go. Most users, even those of moderate skills like belonging to what most of us consider a elite group and would not consider the inclusion of Joe sixpak and Grandmaw into this group a good thing. Star programmers and commercial developers might be interested if there were a reward/profit path, which is not impossible but is certainly not as clear a thing as Windows or OSX.
I do think that by producing an easy (remember Mandrakes example) and pretty (the Ubuntu Splash) that a distro can gain in market share, especially with new low skilled users. I also believe that such would actually be a good thing even for those using "elite" power distros simply due to the increase in interest from hardware vendors and commercial development houses.
Pretty is going to make a difference, especially in the coming 3D desktop. You can rail against it all you want, but with increases in processing power and display/quality size it will happen. The FOSS community should embrace the better uses of it and extend it in the same manner they have other technology. Linux has many benefits that I do not have to regurgitate to the readers here. The new desktop interfaces will be more not less about eye candy and artwork than ever. They will require new ideas about the organization of information and the ergonomics of accessing such. I see a lot of areas where non coders will be able contribute, will be NEEDED than ever before. Think about it.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
"THE Google please."
Which of the "Internets" is "The Google" on anyways?
Sorry I couldn't help myself.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
I guess with Novell going with Compiz since they employ the creator of Compiz and XGL, Ubuntu is going with Beryl (fork of Compiz).The lead of Beryl, Quinn Storm, uses Ubuntu so it's a nice fit.
In the latest Beryl blog (http://blog.beryl-project.org/?p=18) it mentions that the Beryl Project developers have been invited to the next Ubuntu Developers Summit:
Hopefully the open-source ATI Radeon driver gets better (less buggy and faster) and ATI releases a new driver supporting the GLX_texture_from_pixmap extension. NVidia already supports that extension although with their closed-source drivers (I think an open-source effort is currently in its infancy).You're so smart Shuttleworth...
Some years ago somebody did a national survey to determine what the most popular/best font was. They discovered that in each city it was whatever the font of the major local newspaper was.
People usually prefer whatever it is they're used to and will rationalize any way they can to justify that choice. The Windows DayGlo look and the more traditional Linux look are just two more examples of that.
Personally, I dislike skinnability in general. If I can save a tenth of a second by having a conventional interface where I can find things quickly I'm all for it. Functional things are beautiful in themselves and for me eye candy doesn't even come close to competing.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
OMG. I don't have mod points, but seriously, this is what I've been complaining about the whole time. If a linux distro worked like windows (which is a good way, btw), tons of people would switch. I'm not saying it has to be exact, but there are so many countless small annoyances for real computer users that most of them give up and just switch back to windows right away. Myself included.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Sorry, I know everyone is going to think this is a troll, but seriously:
If there was a FREE and FOSS OS that ran like windows, everyone would switch. It wouldn't even take more than a few months.
Mac OS is really pretty. I don't see people switching. Why? Because they don't know how to upload videos to youtube on a mac. Because they are used to MS office. Because windows came preinstalled on their first computer a decade ago, and they learned then how to do 98% of what they were ever going to do on a computer.
If a kick ass version of Linux with wine preinstalled ran 90% of the software out there today, including drivers, etc. The game would be over. If the distro was really polished vis a vis Mark's little blog, then it would happen even faster.
People want a FOSS windows clone.
Everyone else is just another minority, no matter how vocal.
I don't think linux will ever win the OS wars, but something like reactos might. That's a big if though, given how friendly I've seen the reactos community be to n00bs and random ideas.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
As long as there isn't any profound support for wind'ohwsgames like Half-life 2, Defcon, Battlefield and the like whom I love to play, I'm not going to switch a 100% overnight.
Don't get me wrong here. I love linux and Ubuntu and I'm an avid open source user when it comes to common desktop chores like surfing, mailing,... Heck, even image- (GIMP) and documentmanipulation (OOo) have won me over!
Same goes for everyone else: no support for that one specific app one just *craves* to use, they are not fully going to switch. No matter how shiny or shitty it looks.
Many times the will of hardware manufactures to create drivers for Windows is cited as THE reason why there is no or only weak support for devices in Linux. While of course this is A reason there are others. Microsoft helps hardware manufactures creating the drivers. As a manufacturer one can use the Windows Driver Kit or the Driver Development Kit which provides a manufacturer with the interface the driver has to implement, test tools, and so on. Similar DDKs exist for Mac OS. There is no such thing for Linux. And even if there was then quite likely it had to be different for the various Linux distributions and/or kernel versions. It's a pita to maintain a device driver for Linux.
I too have had an opportunity to get to know Blender (intimately!) and I think you're being a little hard on it. I'm not a 3D guy nor am I an engineer. I'm a broadcast designer. In the past, I've done the Art Director thang and delegated to the 3D Dept of whoever I was working for at the time. Recently, I had the opportunity to do the entire graphic line of a TV channel. After analyzing the situation, I realized that just After Effects was not going to cut it by itself and unfortunately the budget didn't allow outsourcing. So I picked up Blender.
Yeah, I admit, it wasn't the easiest learning curve, but, hell, any of the 3D packages out there have an equally steep (albeit different) learning curve. Just looking at the SoftImage interface made me vow to never do 3D! :) I spent an inordinate amount of time on the blenderartists forum searching out answers to specific problems (very helpful, that community, BTW), and in the end I delivered what I believe a quality product, meeting the deadline. I sweated blood, but I believe learning any 3D package in a crash-course situation would have been similar. I mean, it's 3D we're talking about here! Not TextEdit.
I'm not selling myself as a 3D artist now that I know Blender, because I still don't know Blender like I know, say, Photoshop or After Effects. I just think you're coming from a situation where you're already trained on, or used to, another package/interface. I say give Blender another chance. Maybe not for something mission-critical (like I did...DUH), but given time, I think you'll reconsider. Or maybe not.
Side-note: I wish someone WOULD resurrect the spirit of Kai Krause!
GIMP still sucks eggs though. :D
I am a new linux user.
I have installed Ubuntu (Dapper)
What I would really like my OS to do, is work when I put in a DVD-RW, create a DVD image and press the record button.
Not just say ERROR and nothing else.
And disk tools, nice and easy RAID and LVM management tools.
Then again, I've just learnt how to do echo "$DATETIME" > /something/acpi/alarm and have my PC turn itself back on for mythTV recordings! 8D
In fact... MYTHTV!!
It's a real love/hate relationship at the moment.
As opposed to Windows, which was more hate/acceptFate
Then again, roll on pretty. At least it's evolving quickly with new releases.
Regards,
J1M.
As long as beautiful doesn't mean low-contrast black and silver "I want my desktop to look like my Denon amplifier".
You can easily theme and modify Linux apps to LOOK beautiful. With enough effort and Xgl you can also have it ANIMATE beautifully. However removing all the bullshit that has crept into most distributions these days.. I still despair at half the apps (in GNOME no less!) not having working keyboard shortcuts. Why not make it ACT right first, and THEN pretty it up?
This industry for some reason seems more focussed on how fucking skinnable an OS needs to be, rather than real functionality and usability issues.
The problem is that Gnome and KDE have both have their own architectures. For example, KDE has kioslaves, Gnome has gnomevfs. Now, if you mount a share via gnomevfs, all Gnome apps can access it - and NO ONE ELSE. In Windows, ALL apps can use UNC paths (\\\\), ALL apps use the same file requester (except some 16-bit ones) etc.
Additionally, the Windows UI is generally more responsive than Gtk ones; Qt is pretty fast, but Gtk UIs tend to behave like slugs. Thunderbird or Evolution, for example, and trying to scroll through 800 emails, the emails list redraws itself so slowly that scrolling becomes an exercise in patience; in Windows, I can scroll smoothly. This seems to be because of very slow font rendering (I had the same scrolling problem when viewing the email contents, until I switched the font to Terminus; unfortunately, it seems to be impossible to use Terminus in the emails list).
Window redrawing, moving etc. works extremely well with AIGLX, but when the windows get resized, and the toolkit kicks in, things suddenly repaint slow as if everything gets repainted by putpixel() calls. And yes, this CAN be improved. Look at e17; they can repaint the WHOLE DAMN SCREEN and it is a thounsand times faster than Gtk, mainly because they do it much smarter and retain the drawcalls until a final flush is invoked, thus giving the system the chance to clip partially visible and kick out invisible and duplicate elements. Additionally, blending can be done correctly without worrying about the correct order in the app (the system takes care of the final sorting). In contrast, Gtk paints immediately, thus giving away the chance of said optimizations.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
There is a reason that you have the code you know? It's so as you can implement the features that you want, and not be depending on some guy who doesn't want to develop a nice GUI (but has developed many nice features). The problem is you don't want to develop it either, which is reasonable, but you should probably pay someone $50 for their closed software in that case.
And Linux selling businessman Mark Shuttleworth should only expect those he is paying (and I appreciate he is paying some people), or those who otherwise share his aims, to heed his call. The rest won't because making Linux beautiful is not an aim they share. Getting xyz done for themselves is their aim, and that has produced a lot of great, if somewhat hard to use software. So don't knock it.
i'm afraid. The difference between experts and so-called power users is the former know how the system works, and the latter have a vast amount of Pavlov-reactions which enables them to get many things done on one specific system.
:)
The problem is, these pavlov-reactions do not work on a different system. For a system to be better, it has to be different. And without being better, there is no reason to switch. So, these power users are either too hooked on their set of pavlov-reactions to switch, or they have no reason to switch. In other words, these people are seriously screwed
For a beginner, switching is no problem because you need to change only a few pavlov-reactions. After this, it's very easy to become a power user. And then, using a windows-box doesn't mean many small annoyances. It means many large annoyances. "Why the f*ck do i have to close the doc before i can move it? Where's the software manager and why doesn't it just show me everything that's available? How can i set the number of desktops higher than 1?" etc.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Making it beautiful is a good idea but don't forget the main things. Make it consistent and make it ergonomic.
:)
:)
For instance every single application that shows me a file or folder should allow me to right click on the object name and get a consistent popup menu which has been extended as required for that particular application. i.e. for files and folders the menu should always have "Copy", "Cut", "Paste" etc. If the app performs image processing the extended bit of the menu might have things such as "Greyscale" etc.
In a similar vein then every time I can see a file or folder I should be able to press F2 to edit the name of the selected object. Never mind the designers saying "but my app isn't about renaming stuff you should use the file manager for that". I'll decide how to use my computer thank you very much, you're showing me the object so let me have a set of basic functions across all apps. Ideally this sort of basic functionality should be built into the widget sets so programmers don't need to reinvent them each time.
Additionally let me use as few mouse/keyboard actions as possible to achieve something. Gnome suffers from a terrible "one thing at a time" mentality which really spoils the experience. e.g. In Sound Juicer when you're entering track names you have to press enter to start editing a file name, then edit the name, then press enter to "save" the edit. However this doesn't select the next track name for editing so you have to press the down arrow, then press enter again to start editing the next track name - that's two totally unnecessary key presses as the app should have already started editing the next track name when you pressed enter to "save" the last edit.
On a imilar note then there's Goobox. Why can't I enter the album, artist, date, track names etc. on the main form ? Why do I have to launch a second form to do this ? As the main form is essentially read only it seems rather pointless. All the editing functionality should be built into the main form. I really wish programmers would stop using multiple, almost identical forms when one well designed one will suffice.
Ho hum... I could go on like this all day but you'll be bored by now so I'll shut up
So by all means make it beautiful but please put some effort into making it ergonomic first ! The computer is supposed to do the work for the user.
P.S. At this point I Must say that the new version of Ubuntu is excellent, I only moan so much about it because I want ti to be perfect
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
"Some years ago somebody did a national survey to determine what the most popular/best font was. They discovered that in each city it was whatever the font of the major local newspaper was." can you post the link of the survey? I want to learn more about this. thanks.
and design followed by MS is pretty much crap compared to OSX. How to explain that then?
it amazes me how these types of issues turn into such debate. Many times the problems in the Linux world are due to the "utlra geek" mentality to over think the obvious. Making everything more complex than it needs to be. This article is obvious and if you have to debate it you are thinking way too much for your own good.
If Apple and Microsoft never happened, and the world had to depend on the mainframe, Unix world to bring computing to the desktop we'd probaly be 20 years behind where we are today. Folks would have to dabble with command line utilities to get things to work, serial and parallel connectors would probaly still be the norm. What an ugly nightmare.
After getting a new work laptop and having to have windows on it. I have to say I am missing my linux laptop. Linux is not far from being usable as a stupid user replacement. The software I have had the most problems replacing is amaroK. Apart from not liking coming back up from an S3 suspend it had every feature I wanted in a music player. And nothing else comes remotely close. Everything for windows is trying to be a clone for a commercial app. What linux needs is to provide the features that users want. The features that us IT guys want will always be there, there is plenty of us out there writing what we need. But we need to supply what stupid users want that is what will get linux mainstream acceptance. Ubuntu has gone a long way in that direction, but as always more needs to be done.
Sorry, did several searches but couldn't find a link.
It was done when the web was just taking off (it was concerned with readability in word processing, not web pages) and doesn't appear to have made it onto the modern web. I saw the reference in a university library book years ago. It was peripheral to my work so I didn't take much note of it at the time.
Don't think it would be as directly applicable now as more people are reading the web and TV and newspapers aren't as dominant.
Linux's muted look probably comes from the black and white displays that were all that was widely available when X-Windows was first released. The M$Windows DayGlo look probably comes from the limited palette of primary colors that were all that the display hardware supported when M$Windows was first released.
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Keep your options open!
I'm tired of Open Office looking like ass on my Mac.
Like anyone can even know that
He does make a point, however.
Most likely that person will go with the prettiest interface (most likely Mac OS X) initially, just because it's pleasing to the eye.
Who's to say, after trying out Mac OS X for a while, that they'll ever bother to try out Linux or Windows? Not to bash on OS X by any means (it's an AWESOME OS.. I love my old Powerbook G4), but the eyecandy value of the OS will capture the user's imagination moreso than "wow, this OS looks ergonomically pleasing and intuitively sound."
Naturally, if the OS COMPLETELY sucks that user may move onto another system, but if the user feels like it gets the job done, why would they switch to something that is quite different fromw what they may have become familiar with?
How do you think Windows became the most used OS? Because Microsoft positioned Windows to be the first OS people used, and for most people, Windows got the job done well enough that they didn't need to look for another solution.
As an user of GNOME desktop, I really regret seeing that right-clicking the same itens on different places pops-up different menus.
A wants feature A. writes feature A, gives it anyone who is interested.
B wants feature B. whines about how A doesn't write it.
You tell me who is the bigger problem facing Open Source?
Open source is simply not driven by the same dynamics as closed source.
In closed source, the more users (customers) you have the more the application gets developed.
In open source the more users (parasites) you have the more the application is distracted from development unless those users are willing to become developers.
Users are simply not what causes things to get done in the open source world in the way that they are in the closed source world. This has obvious impacts that many people are keen to deny.
You mean the easy extension system which is a direct rip off of activex? (which in turn is a rip off of another technology whose name I don't remember).
Bullshit, I hear this load of FUD a lot. Show me some numbers.
Everything I've ever read and personally experienced says that popular or not, Linux and its applications are, generally speaking, much harder to crack and exploit, and when they are, patches are rolled out almost instantaneously. Impossible to crack? No. But Microsoft's software (Windows, IE, IIS, etc.) is notoriously full of holes to the point of people just giving up and thinking that having adware and viruses on their systems is normal.
In the meantime, chew on this empirical observation. Microsoft's IIS isn't the market leader in web servers, Apache is. Yet for some weird reason, I constantly hear about IIS compromises and hardly ever see anything about Apache exploits.
Also, chew on this nugget of obviousness. When a security hole is found in an open-source OS or application, typically it's easy to find because the source code is right there for everyone to see. When a security hole is found in a closed-source OS or application, there's a pretty good chance that you'll never know as malicious hackers and crackers quietly go about exploiting it on your systems. Even if it's revealed, you're completely at the mercy of the developer, who may not even acknowledge that the hole exists as the world burns down, and who may or may not be inclined enough to rate it as a priority to fix.
Fine, keep encouraging people to use that other quaint little OS that we know is rife with vulnerabilities, and compounding the problems with exploits out there, and rationalizing it by saying that maybe things would be just as bad in a Linux world. As for me, I'll take my chances and try to get everyone I can to use Linux, and encourage OSS developers to continue making their software as user-friendly as possible.
The problem is that you will never have a chance to prove this point because you're too busy arguing over trivial facts like these.
OSS zealots, get your heads out of your asses and listen to the people that you want to use your software. Quit with the fucking excuses like "You don't think it is related to the fact that it comes preinstalled on almost all PC's?" and just bend over and do what it takes if you really want your software to take off.
What, are you afraid you'll get made fun of on Slashdot? News flash, the rest of the world already laughs at you. You're the Beta of computers.... you remember Betas? They were "better in all ways" than VCR. You don't see Beta zealots still clawing at the walls trying to get back on top. Why? Because they decided to put their time to better use.
You know, Open Source is called a community and not a charity for a reason. Because the software is developed by and (this is the important bit) for the community. Not for grandma, unless grandma is submitting patches or has a kindly grandson who is submitting patches. Really, complaining about how open source doesn't meet your needs is one of the most pointless pursuits I can imagine. Open Source is empowering, but only if you can be bothered to empower yourself. If your needs are not being met it's because you, and you alone, are not meeting them. If you want charity, try the Gates Foundation and their associated software vendor.
Well, you need text, sure as hell you do. But who said that it has to be arranged linearly?
The real challenge of interface design is not really finding substitution for text but rather figuring out the correct arrangement for it.
- Get rid of the light grey borders. They don't hug the frame, they don't hug the scrollable filebrowser, and they cause of a lot of visual noise.
- Get rid of the fugly Lives logo. If you think there needs to be more no-op clickable space, replace it with empty background -- empty borderless background. It distracts from the task at hand.
Once you've done those two things, the app will stop being an ugly monster. Whether it will become beautiful is another question.
My other body is also not wearing any.
At least there's a fairly broad consensus on what's ugly. A whole post in italics, for example.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
The only two reasons why I don't use Linux as my main operating system, is because 1 the driver support (and installing processes) is horrendous and 2 because of the lack of compatibility with main stream games. With KDE and GNOME, it already looks leaps and bounds over windows, but I could really care less about what it looks like. I've heard all the arguments from the kernel team about their reasons for the run around installations, and I understand why most companies won't develop for linux; but I think if the OSS people really want people to migrate over to linux, they should worry about usability first and foremost.
What is this "backslashdot" of which you speak?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Linux desperately needs The One Universal Linux Setup Wiki that has refined and continually updated knowledge on common problems and how to fix them, as well as common setup tasks. Now that we have powerful Wikis like Wikipedia/MediaWiki and TWiki, and Linux users are becoming far more Wiki-literate, isn't it time for this single Wiki? Even one that covers a key distro like Ubuntu, but has the ability to expand to cover others, would be a good start.
I know there are many Linux tips and wiki sites out there, and innumerable forums, but the idea here is to consolidate information and tips gleaned from these various sources, and ultimately to have people ask questions on the wiki (or a closely linked forum perhaps) and then update the wiki with answers that really work.
I've seen Wiki technology work really well in smaller domains within specific companies, and I think it is just waiting for someone to get this started...
i agree that the survey can not be considered relevant where the general population has switched from paper-based media to screen-based media. But I hoped that it could prove a little insight on the effects of habits/recognition over our perception of aesthethics. yep :) I think linux's -and in general "open source software's"- 'muted' look as you put it, is based on the function-based coder-style architecture of interfaces created by coders. Being a computer programmer myself in the days where interface design was not a very popular concept, to the programmer "what" a program/web site does and "how" it does it, mattered more than how it "looked" when doing it the way it does. [lots of 'it's in here, couldn't stop myself after a point, sorry.]
there are some functions, tasks that the program is designed to accomplish, and people used to release their programs when they were satisfied with the accomplishments. [and then those people invented something called 'skins' but i won't go there]
Nowadays everybody seems to realize the importance of "ergonomy" in user interfaces. Everyone has a definition for the word and they design accordingly but gradually, it seems that a general consensus about it is being achieved over the world.
Linux as a desktop was -and still is- the "geek's toy". You have to know "what is going on in there" to be able to grasp and use your computer effectively (as opposed to the comfort of knowing nothing about computers but, a few minutes after powering up your mac and being able to plug your iPod in or transferring your videos and creating a great video for youtube)
i think KDE is on the right track there. what with their work on their "corporate identity" and guidelines.
The real test is can your (or in this case my) mother use Linux.
1) Install Linux (in this case Fedora).
--fails if the OS doesn't come on the box there is no way my mother would install Linux
[we get around this step by installing it before she see it]
2) What's this login thing??
-- the one thing she has trouble with is logging in. "Why doesn't it just go like the old one. You've got to make it so it works right. This must be broken if I have to keep typing this username and password stuff."
[I've seen other setups where the login is skipped, but I also have to use the computer and I don't want her finding some stuff. The next computer I get, will be for me only and the current one will be setup to do the autologin for her user]
3) Where's Word? Where's Internet Explorer?
-- They're called Open Office and Firefox now.
That's the three big things. Really only #1 is a problem that won't be solved until Dell or some other major computer maker starts shipping working computers with Linux on them. Yes I know some places offer Linux installed. However from my personal exprience with Dell and Linux, they sold me a "complete" system with Linux on it and included a monitor that warned "connecting to a computer running the Linux operating system voids the warnity and could reslut in damage to the unit." Really that's not the way to encourage people to use Linux. At least they offered to take it back and send me a Windows box.
Once #1 is solved Linux will be well on its way to ruling the desktop. #2 has a simple enough work around and #3 just requires familarlity. Lack of eyecandy isn't really the problem.
Why is it so often the case that the knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion that there might be problems/shortcomings with Linux based OSs, is to bash Microsoft?
Citing problems with Windows does not justify the kinds of problems people have with Linux.
I've played with both, and if you think it is a "ripoff" then stay in your world and enjoy it. ActiveX sucks. But that is a personal impression, and developer's opinions will vary.
That's why in the last line I mentioned search. Or to continue the analogy, is it faster to wander around the building looking for Fred, or should I just page him over the intercom?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
What do you mean? Why do you state that I'm using an unlicensed copy when I know that this is false? How can you claim to know that with zero knowledge of me or my computers?
Microsoft software monitors your hardware. They say that if you upgrade enough, you are effectively running the software on a new machine, which you are not licensed to do. Thus, you have to pay for another license. You misread me if you thought I said that I personally know anything about your box. The operating system, on the other hand, has intimate knowledge of the box it is running on. I've had this happen to me, and I've seen other people living in the dorms who've experienced this, too.
... for future reference ;)
Could you please expand on the similarities between ActiveX and XPInstall beyond providing extensions to web browsers?
To all my Linux brothas and sistas, we don't need no fancy graphics pretendin to make our community betta!
So what is it we need?????
"BETTER DEVELOPMENT TOOLS!!"
Louder!! The Gods of Linux can't hear ya!
"B E T T E R... D E V E L O P M E N T... T O O L S !!"
One more time people!!!
"B E T T E R... D E V E L O P M E N T... T O O L S !!"
HALLELLUYA!!!!!!!! THE PENGUIN HAVE MERCY!!!
I actually expect search and metadata (aka Spotlight) to take us further than 3D spinning virtual worlds...
Why not integrate the two? Sure, it's faster to click on Fred's from an alphabetical list, but why confuse the access method with the organization? That is, one should be able to input (whether by text or speech or, hell, thought) "Fred" and go right to his desk; but beside him, should there be people with alphabetically proximal names? I hardly think that'd be useful!
Look up "barber shop" in the yellow pages. You'll find what you need alphabetically, then can head to it using the address given. But when you arrive on the site, where are the other barber shops? They would all have dissimilar names ("Tim's," "Joe's," etc.), but it makes sense to have them filed together. In irreal spaces, this is possible. In fact, the user should be able to decide how access method relates to organization (though a sane default scheme should of course be decided upon).
So I embrace the idea of physical metaphors; learning happens through metaphor, and a lot of our most basic mental constructs are based on our perceptions of physical reality. And as for scrolling through text on a page as being the only way to read electronically, I nearly laugh at your lack of creativity. You can't think of anything more convenient? Please remember that desktop environments very rarely utilize a third dimension, something that humans have no problem perceiving in two-dimensional representation (painting, movie, etc.). There is work out there do be done, yet. Kudos, Mark Shuttleworth.
You mean the marketshare numbers that show Linux with the same desktop share as OS X?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...