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Is It Windows 7, Or KDE 4?
An anonymous reader writes "Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? In this video, ZDNet takes to Sydney's streets to find out what people think of what they think is a Windows 7 demonstration. The results are surprising." Or maybe they're not surprising at all.
I got a 404 switching from the worthless mobile page of the article.
smwelll mye farrrrrts!!!@!!!#
... seriously guys... wtf
...I once again have to put up a new year as another one _not_ to recommend Linux on the desktop.
There is only one question that matters: Does it run well the software I use, or sufficiently familiar software that productivity is increased enough to justify the change?
Presentations like this show that Linux desktop advocates completely misunderstand business and consumer requirements. It may shock you, but Microsoft will on the contrary spend a lot of time finding out what their enterprise consumers want, and Vista was the exception to their general rule of integrating for consumers the toys they clamour for.
Linux's "scratch an itch" GNU foundations almost by definition make it unsuitable for mass desktop deployment. You don't choose a philosophy that deems goal X irrelevant and then expect the ultimate implementation of that philosophy to be the achievement of X. (On the contrary, many admins and programmers are also the geeks who develop Linux, so Linux is successful here.)
P.S. Why the disproportionate number of women and black men on all the Ubuntu merchandising pages? This sort of stupid appeal to political correctness died off in the early '90s (unless you're the BBC), and everyone who isn't in chronic denial knows that most Linux users are non-black men. It all adds to the horribly culty image of Linux as some cooperative dream rather than a tool to get a job done. I'm no WASP, but I am Spanish, and if I saw 50% Mexicans on the Ubuntu site to try to make me feel "welcome" (or, worse, to make liberals feel like they're giving me a helping hand) I'd be entirely put off. As it is, I look at the site and think, "How would I feel as a woman/black man?" and I'm put off downloading Ubuntu.
Advice for not looking like your page needs an "ebony and ivory" backing track:
1. Don't put a single token black man on every page;
2. Don't try to balance the ratio of women and men if it's blatant that your market isn't anywhere near 50/50;
3. Moreover, if you want to represent two typical users, don't choose one woman and one black man - it's obvious what you're doing;
4. If you're going to build this facade of "oh everyone from every background uses our product", at least don't fuck up entirely with images such as this one where the truth comes out in the guy trying to cop a desperate kiss of the woman. This man is the only one to actually represent the typical Linux fanboy, and he demonstrates what is - in the same politically correct world that requires (1) and (2) - sexual harassment.
Oh, and just to anticipate it:
5. Don't reply to this post with, "Oh, I didn't notice the people's gender/race. I'm sorry that you're so put off by people's gender/race! You must be sexist/racist." It requires 5 minutes in any sort of marketing position to know that anyone involved in such a photoshoot will notice the colour and gender of participants - if not to make the very sort of patronising faux pas that makes Ubuntu look like it's stuck in the '80s.
i have something hard she can get user friendly with
Right, because someone who posts anonymously would have the balls to wear a racist t-shirt.
What GP said is pretty much the rules of UI design devised many years ago by Microsoft and IBM. It's just the both never followed their own UI design rules. Actually M$ has quite strict internal UI design rules - yet they are to accommodate disabled, not to improve overall usability.
Apple generally follows style and common sense. Unlike M$/etc who are driven by business logic of max profit, Apple folks always try to make computer they would want to own themselves. That's why they experiment more - and invent more - than the rest of industry.
In that sense KDE4 is much closer to Mac OS X (while e.g. GNOME is closer to M$Windows). KDE folks develop (on their spare time) system which they themselves use on daily basis. There are no politics nor business pressure. That's why they are slow - but generally end result is much better than rest of the crop.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Most of the crappy humor Powerpoint presentations work pretty good in OpenOffice.
Unfortunately.
That's what she said.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild