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Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?
jammag writes "The Linux desktop has seen major innovation of late, with KDE 4 launching new features, GNOME announcing a new desktop, and Ubuntu embarking on a redesign campaign. But Linux pundit Bruce Byfield asks, do average users really want any of these things? He points to instances of user backlash, and concludes 'Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them. The problem is, the days when users of free software were also its developers are long gone, but the habits of those days remain. The result is that developers function far too much in isolation from their user base.' Byfield suggests that the answer could be more user testing."
Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?
I think your title is a bit misleading. When you say "Linux" I think Linux kernel. Like the Linux operating system itself. What the blogger goes on to talk about are just GPL software projects that are intimately tied to Linux. That said, I could install slackware, damn small linux or any number of flavors of Linux that have none of the projects being discussed.
...
... ad infinitum. Even kernel development is done this way I believe. So you know people like Shuttleworth are trying hard to make this work. I think the last bit of criticism that's going to help them move forward is "You're innovating too much."
You can chat all you want about Gnome vs KDE and which one is bloating--trust me, that is not something I'm ever going to take a position on. I value my life too much.
I might have missed it but I didn't see anything about people wanting their changes to be seen. That's probably a big problem and you could spend days optimizing the kernel for a better experience but the average user doesn't see anything. Or you could add this awesome UI functionality to some windowing framework (compiz fusion?) and suddenly everyone's seeing it. Pretty obvious what some people might aim for
Lastly, I've noticed that some of the more mature products like to move in a even/odd fashion where one release is to stabilize things the next is to add new features the next to stabilize then new features
My work here is dung.
Do future linux users want any of these things?
The publisher of the article hold little or no arguments, nor does he refer to any change to the linux desktop in specific.
UI and workflow design and project management aren't glamorous or interesting so they don't get done. Cowboy coding only gets you so far.
All they want is something that will be stable and get the job done, in a consistent manner. Often times the bells and whistles for the sake of having htem just get in the way, and damages consistency making things confusing when they don't need to be.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
all the average user wants is to chat via live messenger, check their hotmail account, look at facebook, and check how badly their ebay listings are doing... they generally couldnt give any less of a toss about everything else that is going on
portfolio
Bad features die, good ones remain. The alternative is to shove crap into end users throats.
And when they don't like it continue shoving the way Microsoft did with MS Bob aka Clippy
from MS Office. The big difference here is innovation does not occur without failiure. Open
source can afford to make mistakes. Closed source companies have to add useless and failed
features to their products, otherwise the time spend has been wasted and investors may sue the company.
Most people -- except tech geeks -- do not want to learn a new way of doing things once they learn a particular way that suits their needs.
Moreover, learning takes time and money. If your company has 100,000 employees, then training them to use a new desktop can cost millions of dollars.
If GNOME developers want Linux to take a significant share of the consumer market, then they must ensure continuity with the past. Before they embark on the next super-duper upgrade of the desktop, they should spend some time in asking their grandmothers what they want in the next super-duper GNOME desktop. Grandma's advice could help a lot.
The essential problem with free software is that most of it is written to scratch someone's itch. Usually, the ones who start off coding to fix their problems are the developers. Over the last decade that I've used linux (and other f/oss) on my desktop, I've seen a radical shift in how the developers are influenced to do what a user wants. More so, I've seen the system favour the ones who have user focus rather than dictate from their ivory towers and yell back "sure, send me a patch & we'll talk about it". You did your bit and the others stepped on those to get where they want ... and with GPL in place they didn't really step on your toes.
Essentially, you didn't owe the user anything for real. The user paid in attention & respect. The developer did what the user wanted as long as he (or she) wanted the respect. Over that, it was just about fun when it was Y2K days.
It'd be vastly different if someone paid me for it. Well, yes ... someone does pay me to churn out F/OSS code, I deal with vastly differently from my other projects.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
When I think of Free Software, I generally think of the community were the developers are the users are the developers. "Open Source" still smacks of the buzzwordism of the late-90s, getting corps. to invest in opening code under the assumption that they'll be able to get free work out of some sort of "community" while lowering their development costs.
What's wrong with the developers working on what the developers are interested in? If I (the royal 'I' here), am not being paid for my time or more code, then "users" should just be glad that 'I' have decided to make the fruits of my labor available to them, too. Perhaps I just don't get this mentality that it's some sort of competition between 'Linux' and Microsoft and Apple, and that we have to compete for desktop marketshare for some stupid ass reason. I just don't really see it as that big of a deal. Maybe for a company like RedHat, it is, but that's not me.
The concept that the developers are 'innovating too much' and 'alienating the user base' just seems akin to someone crashing a frat party and then complaining that all they're allowed to drink is the Beast.
Being terribly annoyed with one of the Linux distro's GUI's because I just couldn't tell when I had something selected, and when not. Oh, I could tell the difference between the modes when changing them, but I was honestly unsure when I had it enabled and when not.
Anyway, what's needed is not so much user testing as developer listening. All the testing in the world won't get you anywhere if nobody is looking through it.
Oh yes, another self-righteous rant attacking the directions of free software projects just because they have the audacity to venture far beyond where windows stagnated a decade ago. The article's author doesn't say much besides criticizing projects such as KDE, GNOME and even Ubuntu for their ideas regarding the desktop. And he does a bad job at it, to boot. For example, the author criticizes KDE for the audacity of thinking about implementing social networking features into the desktop. Is that supposed to be a bad thing? I mean, what's the difference of having an application such as windows live messenger constantly running and implementing some sort of widget that performs the exact same task? At least with KDE their implementation follows standards which are open and it doesn't force plenty of ads down our throats. What's wrong with that sort of innovation? Absolutely nothing. And his criticism of GNOME is pathetic. I mean, he criticizes GNOME not for innovating but for rewriting it. He hasn't absolutely any detail to grasp on and in fact the only thing he can muster about GNOME is "its final form at this stage is anybody's guess". Is that what the author perceives as innovation? And more to the point, who exactly is the author to make authoritative judgments about what the users want or don't want? His he a psychic? In fact, where was the author on these past dozen years of the desktop windows? I mean, after all these years windows is incapable of offering extremely basic stuff such as the ability to set any window the user wishes for to be always on top. And what about the ability to scroll a window without changing the focus to it? And what about getting rid of that really annoying bug that, when a user launches an application, keeps the focus on the former application while the newly launched app is placed on top of every window on the desktop? Fixing those bugs would also count as too much innovation? The article isn't worth the read. Nothing to see here, move along.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
The best of the Apple experience is polished, user-oriented, and "insanely great" because it takes a Steve Jobs to set the vision and make every component answer to that design. That's hard to do in the FOSS world.
So I, for one, am glad Mark Shuttleworth is attempting to put some top-down focus on a user-oriented set of goals into the Ubuntu desktop. Linux has not lacked for technical innovations, it has lacked for a unified vision that elevates the end-user and a chief to get developers to sign on to that vision. Go Mark, go!
I'm prefacing this with the fact that I ran Linux as my only OS for a year (SuSE 9) then I switched back to Microsoft. Linux and GNU are a superior development process - inclusive and plural - but Microsoft right now has the superior ecosystem. When everyone uses it everything gets written for it especially entertainment wise. How does Free go about breaking this lock-in? I know for me if it wasn't for entertainment software I would be all over GNU. Wine steps in and fills that void somewhat but currently does not have enough compatibility to bring me over to the good side. I like Linux, I want to use it, but my games don't play in it and thats the only thing that keeps a closed OS on my desktop. Way back in the early '80s a machine was introduced called the Commodore 128. It was the successor to the Commodore 64 machine and it featured a full compatibility mode with the 64. The issue was that most 128 owners ran their machine in 64 mode therefore the 128 never caught on as no one would make software for it. I see Wine as having a flavor of that situation but since it is contained within a Open OS other applications can run concurrently so that pitfall is lessened. To me, Wine is the application that deserves focus in Linux development because it has the potential to break the dead-lock and provide the bridge from Pay to GNU.
Shh.
Where else have I seen this? Oh, yeah, *cough* Vista *cough*
As the scientotechnological state of the world advances, we will need more and more innovation to keep up our competitiveness, and GNU/Linux is no exemption; therefore: no it does not innovate too much; its innovation is a direct consequence of the state of science and technology in today's society.
It's more than hard; it's impossible. Consensus cannot be achieved in any group of decisions makers > 1. It's a problem that will never be solved completely--only to a percentage.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Isn't this just like the question: What would you prefer to do, kill babies for a living, or just eat them?
I strongly disagree with the idea of 'innovation' in a linux desktop. If they were that good, they'd come out with a distro named after a fruit, and have a logo using the fruit, possibly even with a bite out of it.
Unfortunately for Linux (which I'd love to see kick ass and take names), Shuttleworth is interested in consensus over quality too often. To do what you're saying, you need a hard-nosed, damn-near-messianic figure who is willing to fight tooth and nail to realize exactly what he wants. This is not really very compatible with open source to begin with, and Shuttleworth is not that guy anyway.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'd like to introduce you to Word 7, Vista, and Alien Arena. (Incompatible files, WTF, and no Help)
When you break compatibility with everything that currently exists just for the sake of being new and different, that isn't innovation. Unfortunately many times when this happens it ends up getting called innovation because nobody has the guts to call it what it really is. Oh, but we have to scrap the old design because it wasn't forward thinking enough. Then in two years time, scrap the new one for the same reasons.
Thus "innovation" get a bad name, particularly among those on the receiving end who never asked for it to begin with.
Then you get articles like this which assume that it is even possible to have too much innovation because of the false connection between innovation and breaking things.
Linux 10 years old. Still full of itself.
Wirefeed at 11.
What they need to put the most effort into are the biggest problems or they'll turn into a Microsoft product. All kinds of fancy features and new tricks are nice and all and you can't get away with having 0 of them but they need to fix the core complaints and problems to attract the most users.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them.
If it is being developed in the developer's free time then this should be expected, The software is effectively a hobby which the developer enjoys and users benefit from. Innovation is enjoyable, maintenance isn't, and users if they aren't paying should expect this. If they want reliable long term maintenance (or any other "boring" issues) they should consider playing for support, like in any normal business relationship,
If I (as a spare-time software developer) gets asked to do something I'm not interested in, I may not refuse, but it gets placed at the end of a priority sorted list, and it can stay there for a long time. However, If I can see that it is of use to a large amount of users I will usually do it, but it is as a favour and it shouldn't be expected (I get annoyed when I feel this is the case).
Why should a developer be expected to do something users want, if the developer has no interest in it, and the users aren't willing to pay or at least make a donation? It's not expected in other aspects of life, and so I don't understand why it is increasingly being expected in free software.
There are critics and pundits on any side (Mac OS X, Linux and Windows) but of all of them, Linux has the lowest position and therefore has the shortest distance to fall. This gives Linux a unique "coming from behind" perspective and gives it a unique ability to fail without serious consequence. We all see what happens when Windows fails (Vista?) but what happens when Linux fails? Little to nothing really.
The reasons for this fact are various but it is rather undeniable. So is all the innovation bad for Linux? Nope. If there is failure, then the portion of the failure is discarded and hopefully a lesson was learned. And the value of failure is also tremendous when it comes to Linux. Linux gets the value of all failures in all three OSes if the developers involved are observant. And recovery time from failure? Almost zero in the case of Linux. People just keep on keepin' on.
When you realize that a feature is a killer one, one good enough that you can't figure how you lived without it before? Think in simple things, like browser tabs, extensions or things like that. And maybe more important, what is a "killer feature" for you could not be for someone else (i.e. for me could be menussh and nagstamon under gnome, or firebug and some of other extensions that depend on them for firefox, as i said, could depend a lot on what you do).
But maybe more interesting could be thinking how would be things if there was no innovation. following the same reasoning.
Aaron Seigo thinks he is embarking on a bold new vision of the desktop, but so far, he's produced only developments that inhibit productivity. Making everything into desktop widgets (including social networking fads like facebook) isn't a bold new vision of the desktop environment... it's glitzy eye-candy. Seigo peppers every idea he has with colorful language like "new paradigms" but his ideas so far are hardly innovative. Desktop widgets? Already done. Animations? Compiz did it. Creating folder containments and extra desktop views? No one ever asked for it, nor apparently like it. He is a man with solutions in search of a problem.
The only thing that KDE4 has accomplished to date is to offer less features than 3.5, and make everything slower and a little more mouse dependent.
...but from what the summary tells me, TFA seems to cover something I've been complaining about for some time.
Free DE developers seem to concentrate on new whiz-bang features and seem to forget the basics.
Things like integrated font+layout+printing management/support.
Too often, WYSINWYG from screen to paper. And too often, in Free DEs, I'll get microscopic fonts on the screen from pages that display just fine with Windows or OS-X based programmes. And don't get me going on simple font management
These are just two and a half of the "basics" that the Free DEs should concentrate on before getting new obscure "plasmoids" (or whatever). It's as if FLOSS developers don't use KDE/GNOME/XFCE/etc. for their daily, huh, chores and only use GNOME/XFCE/KDE/etc. as some sort of "grown-up playground" and nothing more.
I am now at the point when I do not believe anyone that says they only use {(Linux distro)|(one of the BSDs)} as their desktop. I know I could not, and it's not just because of web content. Guys, I beg of you: please make sure all the basics necessities are covered, THEN go for the bells and whistles.
The only way to get to the next step in computer tech is to innovate like crazy - 99.99% of those innovations will fall flat... but that .01% that doesn't? THAT is the future.
No - don't slow down. If anything speed up!
It is just sad that Mark Shuttleworth has not done anything speacial for desktops environments. He use Gnome. Almost all what he does, is to rule the default configuration for Gnome settings. Default set of applications to be placed on menus and installed on system. Default Ubuntu theme and so on. But hey, Canonical did try to innovate new notification system. Too bad that it was shutdown by every usability expert. You could not include any actions on them, like when you got new IM or Email message. You could not just click it's "Read" action. You needed first open the application. When you got notification of new media device plugged, you could not just press it "Open it". You needed launch filemanager and then click device to be mounted and opened. And when you moved mouse over balloon, it was transparent. And you could have only one by time shown. Idea is that the notification does not drawn users attention from more important things what he is doing!
It is nice how notification system is not even for notification, it is just pushing you "Hah, you got new message, but I will not show it for you". KDE4's own notification system (knotify) is much better and even has actions. When user gets new email, he can just click the notification because it has already drawn the users attention for itself, so why not allow user to execute the notifications reason right away? At least knotify even allows different levels of notifications, like should user be notified of thing X or Y.
Seems that only Ubuntu fans are promoting Mark Shuttleworth as he would be invented whole good "Desktop Linux". It is just too sad that even on 1990's there was Corel and other distributions what made exactly the same thing as Ubuntu. The reason why they failed, was that Gnome and other open source software were not ready for normal users. MS and Apple was fighting and MS and Netscape was fighting and MS and IBM was fighting and no one didn't even hear about Linux desktops until 2002- it turned that great applications started to be used on Windows world as well.
If you are looking for a Steve Jobs equivalent in the Free Software or Open Source worlds, I think that is more Theo de Raadt than Mark Shuttleworth.
In the past few years we've seen Expose, Spotlight, Time Machine, Aero Glass, and Growl, QuickSilver, and other innovations.
None of those have been in linux.
From my point of view, Linux has been getting better, but I wouldn't call it innovative. I don't remember hearing about any relatively innovative things on the Linux desktop.
The best I can think of is Ubuntu shipping the new notification mechanism, but that sounds a bit like Growl for OS X to me. I give them points for shipping it so everyone has it and it's not an incremental add-on.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
The average user wants their computer to "just work" and be what their friends use.
This person would be happy with Windows 95 or probably even Mac OS 9 (if they remember not to hold down the mouse button, which freezes the system).
The average person uses Microsoft Word, IE or Firefox, Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird, a chat client, maybe Photoshop, and plays video games.
If something goes really wrong, they want Microsoft or the Geek squad to fix it, and don't seem to mind being sheared of a few hundred bucks a year.
They don't care about much else.
Linux desktops are doing the right thing in targeting the power users: these are the people who want cutting edge features. They are also willing to spend more time configuring their systems.
If you target the power users, the others will imitate them, but it will take some time.
In my experience, the best Linux promotion you can do is what HAL-PC used to do here in Houston, which is to invite people to bring in their computers and have an expert help install the Linux operating system.
Futurist Traditionalism
It occurs to me that the author failed to acknowledge the single most interesting recent development in the free desktop which also happened to be completely commercially driven and successful; the interfaces designed for the Acer Aspire and Asus EEE PC netbooks. They are totally unlike anything produced by Gnome, KDE or shipped by any of the well known distributors. They are certainly not what most people would want on a home desktop or a big laptop but when you use them as intended, on a device with a small screen and relatively limited expandability, they are very impressive. They do what a good GUI should do, that is they let the user enjoy the device's capabilities while letting them ignore/forget/not care about what lies underneath. I was quite impressed playing with these things in the local store and I downloaded Linpus Lite to try for real on a regular laptop and I could see that it is extremely well thought out and coherent and nice to use. The people with a strong need and desire to have OEMs ship their product in huge numbers produced something utterly different in concept and execution to KDE and Gnome and it worked well enough for them to ship millions. It's not just the different desktop concept that is interesting to me, more interesting is seeing how raw commercial incentive takes the same set of tools and drives in a completely different, almost opposite, direction and produces a very well defined and valid solution.
Having more features than the average user cares about hasn't hurt Windows or OSX.
The answer is almost certainly "no". When you're not in first place, it's almost impossible to "innovate too much", as long as you can keep things usable. People will find out about the cool new features that they will absolutely love, and the ones they don't care about...they won't notice.
But they want to be able to get work done, and feel like they've made a good decision giving up their current OS in order to use Linux. Microsoft trying to expand their user base to the entire known universe requires one approach. Trying to convince Microsoft users that they can do it faster, cheaper, easier, better requires a different approach.
That means: make it work with the hardware or forget about ever being widely used on desktops.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Linux is not at all about the average user. It's about having a choice and about having a professional OS.
Luckily, by having a choice, you can make it a consumer OS too. Or whatever you like.
Nobody forces anyone to use the new things. He can live in his primitive little world and stifle progress as long as he likes.
So if anything is wrong, it's that someone thinking everything is like in Windows, where you have only one choice, and everything has to be dumbed down, until you have to be dumb to be able to use it, is getting a voice in any media. The whole thing is a complete joke.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Better be careful - you wouldn't want to goad Microsoft into turning "Clippy Bob" into a Linux app.
Heh, I thought you said;
Closed source companies have to add useless and failed features to public domain projects, to confuse and muddy the waters, otherwise the investors may sue the company.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Just give me a list of articles and the comments to them, screw all of this fancy graphics and layout for comments.
Last I checked, Linux desktops were loaded with exciting new innovative features but failing on extremely basic tasks.
Perhaps the community should be asking whether it's more important that we add a fun new Swirl effect to switch to another desktop or if people would rather have a sane and complete GL API. Do we need the entire desktop to be rethought or should we simply settle for having a sane and unified sound solution?
I would have to agree in saying that the desktop linux community is getting way too ahead of itself if they think they're innovating themselves away from the mainstream. Read the NYTimes article on Ubuntu Linux and tell me whether or not they even mention innovation- They viewed it as a free but lower quality alternative to commercial systems that was very attractive but failed during basic maintenance tasks.
Why create an Earth-shattering new desktop-web interaction paradigm when users would probably rather have sane and cohesive documentation?
Here are some no-brainers, if you want to see linux improve:
* Now that OSS 4.1 is open source, drop ALSA. It is a proven failure. PulseAudio obfuscated the problem to the point of ruining audio in linux, specifically when low latency is required.
* Support forward-thinking projects like Wayland instead of putting another car on the fail-train that is X. X is architecturally inferior to WindowServer and Windows' display layer for desktop-oriented tasks. A simplified windowing system that puts graphics first and drops the cruft would go a long way in making linux seem modern and easy to maintain.
* Write documentation sometimes. Format it well an ship it with your projects!
Or, if you're really clever:
* Realize that open source != linux. Look at desktop-oriented free software sytstems like Haiku and imagine a world where Linux can be built into an excellent server (or mediocre workstation) and desktop users can have a system purpose built for their priorites! There is no rule that says that linux needs to be the only free system. With the magic of things like POSIX, we can write software that runs on either!
The strength of open source should be versatility, not futility.
Dream big.
Just because you made it different doesn't mean you made it better.
That goes double for UI.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Sounds like Jobs is the kinda person you think you need.
Open source usually suffers from a poor architect. Great effort from the massive programmers, but it's only as good as the leadership. eg using 'techie' words to name the UI does not attract the common lay user.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
Isn't the point of open source that you are willing to share the tools that you develop for yourself. Its more cooperativeness then selflessness. If you wanted something to do something specific maybe you should make it yourself or buy it.
BINGO!
You just nailed the flaw in the original article. The author seems to think that FOSS developers somehow need to remain responsive to anything beyond the particular itch they want to scratch. FOSS doesn't work that way. Developers do what they do. If their output is sufficiently interesting, distro-makers package, polish and bundle their work.
See what I did there? I allowed for diversity and division of labour in the FOSS ecosystem. Imagine that! Developers doing what they do best and distro-makers preparing that work for public consumption.
Do poorly-socialised package maintainers sometimes drive their users away? Damn straight. Are there flaws in Linux distros? You bet your boots. But if we're going to criticise them, couldn't we at least point our critiques in the right direction?
FOSS development, packaging and polishing is a decidedly human process, with all the inefficiencies, redundancies and illogical acts that all human processes entail. One can argue (though I never would) that commercial software designed and developed by customer-focused companies is inherently better. In my opinion it just trades one set of problems for another. (If I had to generalise, I'd say it's the difference between often useful but unpolished software and often useless but highly polished software. There are notable exceptions to each case, of course, but statistically, they are exceptions.)
At the end of the day, the FOSS ecosystem has differentiated roles and responsibilities, and the least we could do - if we really want things to improve - is to direct our criticisms to the right people. The folks at Ubuntu are devoted to the goal of making their distro 'Linux for human beings'. I know that when I bitched to them about certain shortcomings, I got a reasoned response from none other than the CTO himself. And given the improvements since that time, it's clear to me that they've taken such critiques to heart.
Linux distros are all decidedly imperfect. But they're a damn sight less imperfect than the alternatives.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
The problem is, the worst of the Apple experience is over-simplified, lacking in features and compatibility, and "is different just to be different" because it only has a Steve Jobs to set the vision and nobody with the ability to tell him to STFU and do it properly. That's not a problem in the F/OSS world, and I'm not willing to trade that just to have a more 'user-oriented' experience.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Yeah, hence "cat-herder" vs. dictator. I don't know anything about Shuttleworth's management effectiveness, but we agree that an actual Steve Jobs style could not work in FOSS.
But in FOSS-land, Shuttleworth seems to be in the best position to put out a distro unified behind making the end-user experience great, which is what Jobs clearly aims for in his products.
And personally I think Fedora is already shifting some of its focus towards more end-user happiness in response to Ubuntu, where Fedora developers once made manly sport of scoffing at end-user concerns. (Having said that, I'm obliged to point out that Fedora devs have made huge pre-Ubuntu contributions to stuff that "just works" for users, like NetworkManager. Ubuntu has a long way to catch up to contributing actual lines-of-code, but they are ahead in setting the direction and thus gaining users IMO.)
Mind you Mozilla is getting pretty bloated.
Mark Shuttleworth is effectively the user every free software developer wants, because he puts his money where his mouth is. Vision is one thing, being prepared to pay for it is better.
it's nothing but one big circle jerk.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
How is trying to imitate something else as much as you can - innovating?
The Linux desktop does change too much, yes. Whether that change is spelled "innovation" or not, however, is a matter of debate.
Then there's desktop GUIs like enlightenment where you effectively have two layers of developers. The graphical elements are implemented as themes over the top of the window manager. One of the problems with the 0.16 version is that while you don't actually have to be a software developer to write a theme you do have to be a bit more than a layout artist or web page designer. A few years ago some very useful desktop GUIs were produced by a variety of people (including Rob Malda the founder of this site) using enlightenment as the back end. I'm suprised that gnome and kde did not go very far in that direction and only have a limited range of things that can be changed to produce different desktop themes.
People don't know what they want; it's the job of the innovators to tell them. 20 years ago, nobody was "asking" for any of the features we have in a modern operating system. The operating system did more or less what they wanted or needed based on their understanding of what computers were all about. The innovators would think of some fancy new feature and people would just go 'hey wow, this is pretty cool' and that would a standard or necessary feature of all subsequent OSes. It fundamentally changes how we think about computers and how we use them. The new features are what adds excitement and drives the adoption rate. We could have had the "perfect" cell phone 15 years ago but the market would be saturated and stagnant. If the Linux desktop stops its innovation then it will just get steamrolled by all the "useless" features in Windows/MacOS.
The current meme among the developers is to defeature the desktop to pablum and rip out the ability to turn features back on for power users. When users complain about this as best they are able they are mocked and ignored.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Slightly tangential, but having sent several bug reports regarding ugly interfaces, I ponder tying them together in something like a constructive criticism blog; some random recent examples being an official KDE4 screenshot showing how "good" it looks, the default mythbuntu theme (yes, all these styles are a single theme), and some things which are just plain ugly.
Good idea / bad idea? Would anybody benefit from a collection of "what not to do"'s? Anybody interested in writing up some criticisms of their own?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Google adopted a unique graphics stack, unique IPC, a little-used libc, etc., installed a Java-based managed language system with unique UI classes, replaced the whole suite of UI applications, and sold a million Androids and will sell millions more on the 18 more handsets due this year. Contrast that with the incremental approach taken by Nokia in the 8XX devices with GTK-based Hildon. Or, contrast with Microsoft's approach of not getting rid of C++ as a language for the userland of Windows Mobile once they put C# and NETCF on it. Microsoft could have had an system very like Android 6 or 7 years ahead. They didn't innovate enough.
What that shows is that the desktop Linux userland is still in such an embryonic state that all prior approaches can, still, be replaced by something better. Android applications will likely be able to run on Linux desktops, soon, and some "smartbook" form-factor devices will run the Android UI as the sytem's principal UI framework.
Palm Pre innovates enough. Android innovates enough. There is a lot to be said for incrementally polishing and evolving the Linux desktop, but it hardly innovates too much.
I wrote parts of this stuff
http://www.bobbrooke.com/WritersCorner/paragraphswhentouse.htm
I hope Linux remains being a platform for "tinkerers" for a long time to come. Why go mainstream so fast? Let's keep building cool new features - from geeks for geeks.
If the average consumer can profit from it - good for him. But why put time and energy into compensating his "learning laziness"?
This is the argument: your users are stupid and they don't want what you want.
That's actually a false argument. Yes, you can dumb a product down to be very basic (windows), but the majority of the users will eventually realize that (move to OS X) and it will hurt you.
Never underestimate the sophistication of your users. Its not advanced features that turn them off, it is unfamiliarity. You can't make something more desirable by making it too simple, and there isn't a whole lot you can do to counter unfamiliarity.... It takes time. Meanwhile, people will claim that you are making too many innovations...ignore them.
What do you think would change at Apple if they released everything they have copyright over under a BSD style license? How about a GPL style license?
Or would that not be sufficient to make them 'FOSS'?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but the day GNOME/GTK devs announce building social networking right into the desktop/cloud/(next cool word), everyone will jump with joy and announce it as the greatest thing since sliced bread, wheel etc. its just because KDE seems to be the place where OSS is innovating, there are poison tongues wagging.
Bait? You bet its a bait. OSS media and columnists only want one desktop and what better way to do it then criticize everything that comes from one camp (KDE) but when $DEITY's own desktop does it (GNOME) it makes history!
Disgusting, to say the least.
No, I don't think there's too much innovation... but it is in the wrong places.
Why no innovate solutions to the long-running problems that have been there for years?
For example, the the demented belief that everything should be configured by editing poorly- or un-commented text files. Or the related godawful mess that linux pretends is "documentation".
Various people in this thread have brought up a wide variety of basic functions that linux has had deep issues with for years, but that work well enough tat the dedicated few can get around.
Any linux distrobution that is being aimed at the average user, as opposed to the existing linux crowd NEEDS to focus more on the basics. Especially the under-the-hood stuff that nobody really sees when it's working right, but is a catastrophic mess for a normal user when it goes wrong.
I'll dive right in because this story popped right after I've reinstalled my main console, and I had to reinstall exactly because of my desktop getting "innovated" so much it was crippled. Maybe all these complaints of mine have already been covered elsewhere. But Linux GUI desktop developers had better get their stuff together and start thinking about how to make the GUI desktop quickly navigable for the full range of everyday work. (Not just for simple tasks, and not the new interface idea the GUI developers invent each month after a round of 'shrooms.) Between the Gnome Project's obsession with castrating its core programs' options, and KDE's obsession with making a new KDE app for every single type of application yet not being able to get its desktop and window decorations to be intuitive, I'm looking back at svgalib days with fondness. Or maybe Windows 3.1 days. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe I used to have more time for this kind of involuntary "adventure" than I do now. Right-clicks and resizing task bars should not have to be treated as uncharted waters for a user at this point.
On my main console machine, I've had Kubuntu 8.10 for a few months, "upgraded" from 7.04. It was clear that 8.10 had damaged the configs unsalvagably - it still refused to mount USB drives so that the normal user could read them. I always had to remount manually on the command line. Yesterday I just wiped the whole OS off my machine (except for moving my old home directory out of the way) and installed Kubuntu 9.04 clean. We'll see how it goes. If this doesn't behave like something other than a damaged system within the next couple weeks, I'm switching to Xubuntu or something - at least it resizes and moves almost anything when you click on the edge, instead of having windows do one thing, tool bars do another, the "desktop" box another. I switched away from Ubuntu to Kubuntu because I couldn't stand Gnome apps censoring any option that didn't fit an 8-year-old kid's reading level. (Fortunately Gimp and Pidgin ignored the the rules. They were hard to learn for their own reasons anyway, so what did they care? At least they could be learned though - Pidgin only played moving-target once when it switched from Gaim.) Now I'm thinking of dumping Kubuntu because there are hundreds of options somewhere, but I can't find them. Xubuntu (what little I've used it) seems to behave very politely on my dual-boot laptop.
Kubuntu 8.10 should never have happened. KDE 4.0 should never have happened. KDE 4.1 shouldn't have even happened. Plasma (KDE's new desktop interface) is too clever by half. It is extremely non-intuitive. I've dealt with Apple II Plus system monitor prompts through ProDOS with AppleWorks, through years of custom BBS menus in ANSI, then Windows 3.1 through 95, 2000, XP, and Vista, with a liberal helping full-screen DOS apps, OS/2, and old X display managers whose menus only appear when you hold down Ctrl or Alt. Yet I still can't figure out how to get the KDE 4 taskbar to form 2 rows of tasks instead of just growing enormous icons for no reason when I change the size.
Anything non-KDE inside KDE is, of course, not quite equal. Firefox has "nice" rounded GUI element emulation in Kubuntu 8.10 but hides things like window tabs under other things (like the web page) when I launch it directly from the menus - but has simpler buttons and works fine when I run it from a shell prompt inside Konsole! How come Firefox has a different skin from Konsole than directly from the KDE menus?!
P.S. while I'm ranting: Why does the KDE "Utilities" menu have an icon that looks like a console prompt, then Konsole isn't in that menu?! Konsole is hiding in System, among the control panels. And how come KDE 4 sometimes does the same thing with right click as left click? If I right-click, it's because I didn't like what the left click did and I'm looking for some other option! Argh!
and/or
fields, I couldn't manage to have the preview respect my paragraphs.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Or... users speak, some developers fork, and either the main developers listen or the fork succeeds. Open source often offers its complete revision history.
And there are very easy ways to see where Gnome is headed. They freaking plaster it all over their website!
I tested the Gnome Shell stuff and thought it was brilliant. It will take some work, but at the point it's at now, I have no worries whatsoever.
Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them.
That's because the man hours put into building free software are still dominated by software engineers.
Byfield suggests that the answer could be more user testing.
Sounds good to me, Bruce. Please do whatever testing you feel is necessary, document your results clearly, and submit them to the appropriate projects. Most open source projects would be very grateful for your efforts.
Note: I'm assuming that you are offering to help, Bruce, not just bitching about the outstanding work that others have freely given. I'm sure you would never look this incomprehensibly valuable gift-horse in the mouth.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Eye Candy is a waste of time to me. I have grown accustomed to Ubuntu 9.04 boredom. Other than occasional reboots after an update my laptop simply wakes up whenever I need it, accomplishes whatever I want to do while logged in, and goes back to sleep. No tinkering required... That being said... There is a unique level of choice available to Linux desktop users not available in competitors.
"FOSS", as by the age of your slashdot uid I'm sure you know, usually carries with it the implication of more than just an open license per-se. Apple can open the license of all their code ( a great thing), yet Steve Jobs can still dictate that no UI feature is committed that he doesn't approve of. Whereas Shuttleworth is never going to have command-and-control over enough of the user-visible FOSS projects that are glued together in the Ubuntu desktop to just call the shots like Jobs. Call Apple FOSS if you like, but a corporation's necessary "take it or fork it" approach to non-employee commits belies the historically organic and independent politics of the genre. At best we need a better meme, and COSS doesn't quite get there.
The answer is this: People who care about a given project, feature, etc. either work on it or pay someone to work on it.
Developers with no incentive but their own interests, satisfy their own interests. Developers given incentive to do otherwise would likely do otherwise.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
I'll tell you what I'd like. Linux Desktop, just as it is, except suspend/resume actually work, and my laptop battery lasts as long as it does with Windows. Developers should focus on making Linux function properly on the diverse hardware of its users. Trust me on this one: way more people would prefer that to some cool new interface, file system, or eye-candy.
Zealots -- like the parent -- are the problem with GNU/Linux. Notice the patronising way he attempts to ignore the point of the article with that tired old "Linux is just the kernel" argument, the way zealots try to divert from problems with their OS is so boring. Take the Ubuntu forums for example, There are 12,000 on there right now. 6,000 people are there to get help because Ubuntu has massive flaws in its hardware support and usability (even with Free drivers, like Intel's and drivers based on open specs, like ATI's). While the other 6,000 are there to flame people who tripped up on the flaws, because admitting there are problems disrupts their view of a utopian GNU/Society. What is achieved? Nothing, the two forces simply cancel each other out and no decent software ever comes out of it.
Apparently they get Freetards trying to get into Heaven all the time. Saint Peter's got a standard technique that gets them every time:
St Peter: What good works did you do to make you deserving of a place in Heaven?
Freetard: I helped people out on the Ubuntu forums, all day, from my mother's basement!
St Peter: Ubuntu eh? Tried that myself, it's wank, couldn't get my dual monitor setup working. It worked perfectly in Windows.
Freetard: Get what you pay for I guess. You should have tried Googling for the problem.
St Peter: I did.
Freetard: Maybe Linux is just too hard for you.
St Peter: That's a little unfriendly! Anyway, God tried it and he couldn't get dual-monitors working either.
Freetard: Yeah, well patience is a virtue.
St Peter: I've been waiting since '97!
Freetard (growing furious): Well I guess that some people prefer being spoon fed, while others enjoy to grow from challenges presented to them.
St Peter: So this is how you helped people then is it?
Freetard (confused): Well. Yeah, I suppose.
St Peter (reaches for the big red button that will open the trap-door the Freetard is stood upon): Yes, that's exactly what I thought. Goodbye.
Tragically everything the Freetard said above is quoted from the Ubuntu forums. The sad truth: people are getting exposed to GNU/Linux and hating it, I'll let the reader work out why that might be.
so fast?
Perhaps we have different concepts of time. I've been reading about Linux trying to breakout on the desktop for over a decade.
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
Nobody is forced to keep up with the most current incarnations of the desktop. Some like Gnome, some like KDE 3.5, others like Xfce, I happen to like KDE 4. Yes some features were missing when kde4 came out, but it's starting to be pretty good now. I wouldn't go back to kde3.5, ever. The problem is not so much the KDE developers, I blame the users that can't cope with change. There is a general fear of change in our society and it starting to really get on my nerves. I'm a believer that sometimes it's a good thing to start over fresh, rather than fixing, patching, adding, to old code.
That is a very valid viewpoint to hold. You can most certianly say "I don't owe the user shit." It is your software and you are nice enough to let others use it. Thus they can use it on your terms.
HOWEVER, when you do that you lose any and all right to claim that your software is "better" for the user or "what they should use." If they have objections to the way it works, you need to be graceful and say "Ya, my software doesn't do that well, I don't care to fix it so if something else works for you, go to it."
The problem is that there seem to be a number of OSS types that want to have their cake and eat it too. They evangelize an "OSS for everyone," position. You should use all OSS all the time, it is the One True Way(tm) and gives you better software because everyone collaborates. However, when a user then says "Hey this doesn't work as well as my commercial app," they get angry and say "You didn't pay me, I'll do what I want, fix it yourself if you don't like it."
Sorry, can't have it both ways. If it is a situation where you think your way is the best way and you want everyone to use it, then you've got to work to accommodate users. You need to make it do what they need as good or better than their old apps. On the flip side if you want to offer it with no support, you then need to offer it as is. Don't push it as being things it isn't and won't be.
This is a problem I've run in to with people trying to covert me to Linux. I tell them the things I want to do, but can't seem to. They then give me things that aren't real alternatives. When I say "This doesn't do what I need," I get told that I either "shouldn't do that" or that I "should write it myself." Sorry, those aren't legit options. If you want me to use your stuff, it needs to work for me. If you don't want to make it work for me, then don't push it as a solution for me.
What would work better is to do a better development environment from top to bottom for entertainment type software. Design a full featured API set that does everything a game/media player/etc needs. I'm talking 2D and 3D video, sound, music, input and so on. Basically something that does everything DirectX does, probably even a bit more. Make it real easy to develop for. Then, once that spec is solid, make a dynamite development tool for it, like Visual Studio but better. Have something that makes writing software easy for your API. Port that to Windows and Linux (heck MacOS too). Make sure that it does a good job of providing access to the native system, and that it provides as much as it can in easy cross platform objects. Finally, port the API to all the platforms. Make it a system addition, just like OpenGL is on Windows. All of it needs to be high speed, no slow interpreters or virtual machines.
At this point, you've got something to market to game companies and the like. They develop using this tool, and cross platform porting is trivial, maybe even zero effort. You give them an API that they want to use instead of DirectX, even if their target is Windows only. Of course if it is then easy to also make other versions, well many will do that as well.
That would be the real way to do it. Barring all that, at least do that same sort of thing on Linux itself. A good, unified API that ALL Linux distros use and that is the primary method for video and sound access. Tie that in with a slick visual, rapid, development tool to make software for it. None of this "Edit text files and compile with GCC," crap. None of this "10 different sound APIs, none of which work well." Make an easy development environment for entertainment software, and maybe more of it gets developed.
(Posting AC to avoid the hate mail)
I used to help with the Human Interface Engineering (and documentation) for a large OSS project and just like any other contributor, I didn't expect to be paid for my services even though I make a very nice living for myself doing that stuff for money. Coders code for fun, GUI geeks like me design user interfaces for fun.
The thing that irked me so much that I ended up leaving the project was that the coders simply weren't interested in improving the GUI. It wasn't exceptionally bad, but it could have been a lot better. They'd code in a new feature, tack a couple of widgets onto the interface so the user could control it and walk away. I'd look at it, play with it and tell the coders that the user actually has to perform 14 separate actions to use the feature when they should be able to do it more intuitively in only 3 actions ("...by modifying the following:...") and my suggestions would be subsequently ignored.
The issue in FOSS projects isn't about developers not listening to users, its about developers ignoring the peripheral contributors like document writers, GUI critics, forum mods, wiki contributors and the like. Even when the people who can make a software product more polished are there and contributing their skill for free, a lot of coders are still happy to just go off and do their own thing.
Frankly, it would be better for everyone if these coders DIDN'T make their work public since it only increases the number of FOSS software projects that are virtually useless to most people and gives FOSS a reputation as "too difficult to use". Don't get me wrong - I like having choices, but when I need to sort through a fifty junk projects to find one that does what I need it to, it makes me want to just go buy a Mac and let Steve take care of all that stuff fore me.
> No, the product seemed pleasant looking and very usable from my standpoint.
Yeah that's the problem, many OSS developers will just say "WORKSFORME", or not even bother marking it as "WORKSFORME", just go off and do something else "more important".
See: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50457
Or: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99905
Yes, what they do decide to work on is more important in some ways. But I daresay adding that little extra can be just as important if not more so in other ways.
Apple understands very well how the perception of "insanely great" can cover a multitude of problems under the hood.
There's a vast difference between the users perceiving your product as "oh well it works", "this is nice" and "hey this is sooooo coool! (must have ASAP!)".
Whereas KDE says:
"Kicker is currently unmaintained, you can look to your distribution for help, however."
Look to your distribution for help? A lot of people might just look to (or stay with) OSX/Windows for help instead. And tell the Linux Desktop Zealots who try to "convert them" that OSX "WORKSFORME", or Windows "WORKSFORME", and who the fuck cares that it's not OSS and it's an "evil proprietary OS".
As for innovate too much, a lot of what they do is not innovating at all. For example: "wobbly windows"?! How the heck does that help? If I want to play with stuff that wobbles, I load up World of Goo or something.
Without a good Human Interface Engineer or someone who understands that stuff with a lot of say, they'll end up producing tons of "innovations" are not actual innovations in UI. Stuff like initially attractive cutscenes in a game, that the users eventually try to skip because they end up being annoying or getting in the way.
Linux is a lot like Microsoft... in that there is a lot of tools/programs but they often don't fit together prettily. Linux does more than the job. but it's often not pretty or the UI is not entirely well thought out. When Microsoft tried to fix Win XP to compete with Mac and ended up creating Vista...
I've been 'ubuntu-specific linux since 2005... Kubuntu first and lately Xubuntu & Mint Fluxbox.
A simple example of things to work through: Ubuntu has upper and lower menu bars (why two?), and the main bar has 'applications' 'places' 'system' (why three?). Clean up that space. I pay too much for screen real estate to be used for 'frivolous' consumption. There is not a good design reason for those being there.
The other extreme is Apple. They use very good design personnel. Who understand Art and UI design. They make simple interface choices for a simple population - and then charges a huge pile for that simplicity and art. Their marketing department is to be admired for getting the simple population to wear the brand badge to be a bit elite ('I paid a bucket full for this contraption that only comes in white and it only does what the fancy designer told me I could do'). But I guess a lot of people continue to aspire to them.
So Linux must innovate. There must be a clear design path, a unified design path, for Linux to show prospective buyers. Is it fancy wobbly windows and raindrops? It's cool to show to non-users but everyday usage it gets turned off.
However User Testing is not the grail.. In the regular business world (automotive, consumer products) it's called 'market testing' and involves a room of 'average people' to review products. It rarely works to get a good design. People lie in these clinics: "should the car be a hybrid?" "Oh yes it should, and sprinkle water mist in your face to cool you down like a spring breeze"; but put those consumers on the dealer lot and they go for the gas guzzler "because it fits the kid's safety seats and I can haul the boat around twice a year, it's $10,000 cheaper than that silly hybrid over there, and gas will stay around $3 a gallon for the next few years, and it goes really fast. Did I say it went really fast?".
A focused designer and a company willing to take risks is needed. It's a mix between Robert Mondavi "Beauty" and Robert Lutz "Good Taste". People know good design when they see it (that nice house down the street) or use it (that nice tool on the workbench). It can be hard to design though (a lot of arm-chair designer-wanna-bes and executive oversight control in most organizations).
Shuttleworth is on the right path with Ubuntu, and Linux in general, that it needs to achieve "Style", "Beauty", "Grace", and "Good Taste". That will take a lot of innovation, which open source is best able to produce, and it will happen sooner than we all think.
Slashdot editors, please stop allowing this kind of opinionated trollbait to reach the front page.
It isn't news. It's nothing but navel gazing and whining from Windows refugees about how they don't want to feel forced to use their near non-existent intelligence.
If Windows refugees want a system that facilitates willful ignorance and stupidity, they need to simply go back to Windows, and the existing Linux community also needs to stop evangelising Linux to these sorts of dumb users.
Try and understand something, Linux community; Linux taking over the world, would mean Linux ultimately being used by a lot of the kind of people that you actually really don't want. The vast majority of human beings are absolute morons, as rants like TFA clearly show.
In many FOSS forums especially on Slashdot you see the Joe Sixpack strawman trotted out to either attack or defend. There's far more classes of users than just witless Joe Sixpack and savvy Tom Developer. There's plenty of people that are highly adept at using a computer but can't and will never program. There's also a lot of users that are adept at what they do often but have little computer knowledge outside of that particular domain. Looking at these users as Joe Sixpack who's never touched a computer before is shortsighted and counterproductive. The article bitching about social media widgets and whether or not people asked for them is inane. If some kid spends all their time on Facebook and Twitter and buys a netbook with Linux pre-installed they'll be far less likely to go back to Windows if their new computer works out of the box with the services they already use. A Facebook widget isn't likely to sell a computer as a part of the feature checklist on the box but it's something that will help endear the OS (as they experience it) to the user.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
"Free software is still driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them."
Yes... and that's exactly the reason why it is working so well.
...btw how is this so called problem different from MS redesigning Windows / Office UI ?
"For example, the author criticizes KDE for the audacity of thinking about implementing social networking features into the desktop."
Actually as far as I'm concerned the absolute last thing I want anyone to be implementing in my desktop is "social networking". Social networking should be an application that people who want to use social networking should run from the desktop or in a browser but in no way, shape or form should it be "integrated" in to my desktop. That would be a case of a developer making a choice for me he shouldn't be making.
I've used Linux as my primary desktop for more than ten years and KDE for many of those, I mostly loved KDE 3.x. It appears there are probably myriad reason for what happened in KDE 4.x, I blame Trolltech and Qt 4.x for forcing a major rewrite in particular, but all I can say is whatever happened it turned my stomach and helped finish me with Linux on the desktop. KDE 4.0 was to Linux what Vista was to Windows for me.
Certainly I made the foolish mistake of installing KDE while it was half assed and half baked, you know KDE 4.0, which wasn't supposed to be released to the public until it was ready.... which it wasn't, it wasn't even close. Maybe it sucks less now. KDE 4.0 and years of disgust with audio on Linux were the two driving reasons for me switching to a Mac for my desktop, and I've been way happy ever since. Its really nice to just have stuff that works and works consistently. I'm willing to pay extra to have Apple develop and test apps that work, and follow consistent UI guidelines. The OS X calendar kind of sucks, I don't exactly like the shell or cut and paste, and I could live without the Mac document model but damn its worth it to just have audio that always works, GUI conventions, and a really nice desktop standard and a really good set of apps.
After ten years of drinking the open source Kool-Aid I discovered its actually not so bad to pay people to develop software if they do a really good job of pandering to my needs and desires. The open source model does an awesome job of developing a kernel, a server, a software development platform and some apps like Firefox. Unfortunately when it comes to a modern, consistent, multimedia desktop I would have to say, so far, Linux is a fail. What's worse, just like with Linux audio, the Linux community seems to be completely lacking in the introspection or will to turn it around. Step 1 is to accept that there is a problem with the Linux desktop, and the crux of the problem is you have somewhere between two and a hundred different Linux desktops to choose from. What are the odds Apple would ship OS X with ten, or even two completely different desktops and sets of desktop apps. Zero, it would be a disaster.
@de_machina
Linux Desktop should be intended as "the desktop environment that runs on Linux".
I've been happily using Linux for every day tasks (mainly productivity, software development) since 2001.
I was using KDE which became quite stable and feature rich in the last few years. KDEv3 I mean.
That the great idea of KDEv4 arrived and Ubuntu, my distribution of choice, decided to trash KDEv3 away.
I moved to GNOME as my daily work was suffering from instability and lack of features that were already in place in KDEv3.
They called public releases what I would have called "technology preview".
GNOME; on the other side, was not offering the feature richness seen in KDEv3 so I first started to install KDE packages and them few weeks ago, I reverted to KDEv4.
In this sense the KDE innovated too much. They have put a number of subsequent releases in the wild, from 4.0.0 on, that were barely stable and unlikely to be usable. I remember it took weeks to have the KNetworkManager be able to attach again to my good old network!
So my answer is "yes, it looks to me as is those people were not using the Linux Desktop for real daily work but rather for fun, eye candies and to show it up to firends" (Look ma, I have plasma now!)
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Like I said on my blog[1], "Linux developers ARE innovative, just not in the right path".
I'm glad somebody else brought this up.
PS: I use Windows 7 RC now.
[1] http://ljuwaidah.blogspot.com/2009/04/linuxs-desktop-environments-are-failing.html
Laith Juwaidah http://www.ljuwaidah.org
"Last I checked, Linux desktops were loaded with exciting new innovative features but failing on extremely basic tasks."
That's exactly right. I have yet to administer a linux system where I did not have to hand-edit some file in the /etc hierarchy. Changing the boot order, so that the system had found the domain server before accepting logins (which otherwise failed - permanently - you had to reboot the system). Incorrectly configured CD/DVD drives. Write-protected files in /tmp that stop the boot process. USB-sticks recognized just fine - unless they were plugged in when the system is booted. The list of annoyances goes on and on. As a techie, I can solve them - but I shouldn't have to. For non-technies, they are show-stoppers.
On the optimistic side: since Ubuntu came out, things are improving - they are driving Linux in the right direction.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
"Byfield suggests that the answer could be more user testing." That's crazy talk.
Keep Doing Good.
Like the inferiority of Openoffice vs MsOffice. (even vs MsOffice2003 for god's sake). Or aMSN vs Messenger (esp. webcam support).
It's all about the apps. Any Linux app. that is not computer-related, is inferior to its commercial counterpart. (Excepting firefox and ffmpeg. May be a development model like mozilla's is needed to reverse the general stagnation)
I'm not very successful with women. Could it be that I'm just /too/ attractive? Hmm...
Personally, I am both drawn to all of the new and cool things, and repelled by all of the new things to learn and new bugs to deal with. I am currently running Kubuntu 8.04.2 on both of my laptops, after having tried 8.10 and 9.04. It seems like the release cycles and the ambition of the design teams are out of whack.
I am always psyked to see a new release, and i can always find a partition to try it out on. Problem is that my enthusiasm is rarely matched by the offering. Maybe once every 4 releases or so these days.
I am a huge fan of the 3D (compize) interfaces etc, but it seems that they are not ready for prime time, by which i mean i spend more time fiddling with configuration than using it.
So - Please keep the effort up, I am not complaining. I am more than happy to get an occasional truly stable release, even if it costs me a few futile stabs in the dark along the way.
Thanks to all involved!
I could care less if my UI is some brand-new redesigned thing, or something that looks just like Windows 95.
I want basic features that I've been used to on Windows.
When I'm playing a game, and I want to change the volume, pressing the volume control buttons on my keyboard should change the volume. Pressing the next song button better get my media player running in the background to the next song.
And if I get an instant message while playing a game, I certainly should be able to alt-tab away from the game to Pidgin to type a reply.
I can do none of these things when a program grabs control of the keyboard and mouse in Ubuntu. Some games I can release the mouse grab by dropping down the console (thank you Quake 3), but if a game doesn't let me do this (UT2004), then the system is perfectly happy to keep me locked into it until hell freezes over or I exit the game prematurely just to message my friend I'm in a game... or was.
And it's not even limited to games. If I have a drop-down menu open, such as Firefox's bookmarks menu, then same thing: the volume and media control keys don't work. I end up mashing the key several times wondering when it will catch up before I remember this frustrating glitch.
On top of all this, almost to add insult to injury, the screensaver will come on while playing certain games, even if you're actively pressing keys. At least there's a bug report for this-- er, a 3 year old bug report for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnome-screensaver/+bug/32457
Long answer follows:
It's not that the Linux Desktop ('LDT') is “too innovative”. Frankly, it seems quite the opposite.
That's not to say that the LDT hasn't innovated at all. Quite the contrary; in 10 years, it caught-up with the industry and in some ways surpassed it in terms of usability and performance. Today, an LDT on the same equipment will out-perform its Vista or Win7-RC equivalent on many tasks.
Has LDT over-shot the landing? Again, my answer is 'no', and because there's more to innovation than user-adoption rates.
TFP is close to the problem; that developers for LDT have a disconnect with their user-base. The greatest motivator of the LDT was this co-op of developers; inventing, innovating and improving. What it seems they did was innovate, invent and improve each other's work and little else. A fair analogy might be that LDT development has an “in-breeding” problem.
Here's my Top 5 Things LDT Needs to Improve list:
Sadly, even the most innovative and useful-looking packages only provide helpful information about half of the time; and that's only when the doc-base isn't already broken.
You'd think that LDT would learn vicarious lessons from Win32 in this regard, yet it seems to have fallen right in line with the bloat.
This is the Age of Broadband, why are we still downloading complete DVD images and not simply installing just what we need during installation?
This is aimed at the bigwigs of OSS; there's just as much money going around in partnerships as software, and finding retail partners is as easy as saying, 'No Windows Tax!' (getting major retailers to say "no" to big-windoz is another thing entirely)
After seeing a small display for OSS titles on CD-ROM dirt-cheap at Micro Center, I thought, "What's stopping LDT branding from doing the same thing?" If only these displays would step-up their game, make it more eye-catching to tell the world, "Hey! I can do just as much as that $150 title, and I'm supported by a user-base!"
Something else that occurs to me--but falls outside the scope of the list--is the handling of user-base support. Why is it always just a forum with a "search" feature? Aren't we talking about the semantic web here? Whether the ODS packages or independent plug-ins, I think that parsing the huge info-base of online discussions is bound to be the breakthrough of 2010.
Discuss...
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
And what about the ability to scroll a window without changing the focus to it?
Well...what about it? The majority of computer users don't understand what you are talking about anyway. Let's say you could explain to them what you meant. They'd just wonder why a simple, 1 second transaction, operated solely by mouse -- click, scroll, click -- is so difficult. You all sound positively prissy when you complain about it. Change the effing code yourselves -- which is supposed to be the great Linux advantage -- and stop your goddamn whining.
Unka Anonymous Troll
P.S. Captcha is Whiskey, which I admit, was an influence for this troll.
I don't know about KDE, but Ubuntu's version of Gnome has been making steady progress: no radical changes, but improvements over time. My (non-technical) family has not complained (and often barely noticed) when I have upgraded their machines.
Compared to Ubuntu, Windows and Macintosh both have been making more radical changes in theming, and even more significant changes in the interface itself. With Vista, for example, Microsoft changed networking dialog and the entire system preferences in confusing ways.
Ubuntu Gnome has been making steady progress: small, user-visible changes and significant improvements behind the scenes. That's the way desktops should evolve. Microsoft and Apple: take notice.
The mom and pops of this world only care about getting on the internet and emailing their kids or looking at a few photos and watching youtube. Give me sound and wireles out-of-the-box and i'll be happy. And contrary to what you might believe, it is NOT there yet. Check out the number of sound issues that a Thinkpad R series has on Ubunty Jaunty and you would know.
X is architecturally inferior to WindowServer and Windows' display layer for desktop-oriented tasks. A simplified windowing system that puts graphics first and drops the cruft would go a long way in making linux seem modern and easy to maintain.
The graphics subsystem in Windows is a frame buffer graphics library poorly retrofitted for asynchronous calls. X was designed from the start for asynchronous client/server communications and operation in a separate "window server". X got it right 20 years ago. After two decades and several rewrites, both Microsoft and Apple have finally arrived at an X-like architecture.
There are some parts of X that aren't being used much and where desktops like Gnome have their own systems (e.g., Gnome configuration data and DBUS communication). The solutions adopted by the desktops are generally still inferior to the original X mechanisms.
If anything should change, it's that people should take a good hard look at Gnome and KDE and get rid of some of their windows-inspired cruft and replace it with better X-based solutions. This may involve an overhaul of some X mechanisms (X properties and events probably aren't up to the demands of a modern desktop, but that's fixable), but the principles and approaches embodied by X are superior to the "single user desktop PC" view of Windows and its clones.
If the average user is, say, one of my parents, the answer is probably "no, they are not waiting for innovation". They'll likely appreciate it, but if they are left with a working desktop that doesn't limit them in doing what they want to do, they are happy. Windows XP still suffices for most people, that pretty much sums that up I'd say. The bigger problem is, I think, that those innovations distract from improving existing features to stability, and oftentimes new features are shipped before being mature. Ubuntu, for example, has been pretty bad at this, shipping PulseAudio before it was complete enough to be included in an operating system. The result is that my sound didn't work well at all in the first release PA was included in so I'm left with a desktop that has advanced features and nice innovations... on paper. In reality I have to fiddle around with it to make it work - if I can get it to work at all. Hooking up a monitor to my laptop also doesn't work quite as smoothly as it should (although with Ubuntu 9.04 it does actually work for the first time).
It takes time to get your software stable, mature. Innovating is nice but if you focus on one, you're probably going to spend no time on the other. Besides, the target audience for innovations isn't quite as large as the target audience that want a stable, working desktop.
I wouldn't consider Android's choice of a new and incompatible graphics toolkit to be "innovation". Android could have easily been built on top of existing approaches. What Google's choice did mean was faster time-to-market and lower overhead interacting with other developers. That's a mixed blessing because it may also hurt the mobile Linux market big time.
Also, Android is good for gimmicky web applications and E-mail clients, but anything involving native code is a PITA. That may well come back to haunt the platform in the long term.
I think that if Android is going to have a long-term future, it's probably going to get an X server one way or another: either the existing Android UI is going to be put on top of X, or it's going to get an X server like Weird X that allows regular Linux applications to run on it.
There are open source people that demand respect. For example Guido is called "benevolent dictator fro life". Other less liked examples from OpenBSD (Theo de Raadt), and glibc (Ulrich Drepper) Whether you like those people or not, you cannot deny the projects are not successful. At least you heard of them
All the talk of desktop, distro, follow-Windows-gui, don't-follow-windows-gui is NOT the reason that Linux has such a small marketshare. The real reason is the software. There may be Linux apps for just about everything, but Linux doesn't have many of the professional commercial apps (The Adobe stuff, CAD) or niche technical apps (specialised interface apps to industry tools) Linux doesn't have MS Office (bare with me for a sec before you get to OOo) and above all, Linux doesn't have games (yes, I know about transgaming). All the non-technical people don't want to know all that much about their computers. They just want to be able to use what they use at school or work (MS Office) and what their friends use (games) and not have to get into technical details about how to get this or that to run.
And then there's the tools. KDE at least has Kdevelop, but what exactly does Gnome have? Vim? Eclipse? Glade? Gnome needs a unified set of tools at the very least.
Also, Linux is going to, as a collective, have to compromise with the commercial world if they want commercial apps to have any base there. That means, yes, paying for licenses of commercial apps in sufficient numbers to make it worthwhile for the developers to develop for Linux. While I love my Ubuntu machine, I also realise that there are real people with real jobs at all the software houses and they depend, more often than not, on license payments so that they can live. It's a fact of life obviously, and we should accept it if we want Linux to grow. It's also a rocky road, given all the legal and political issues, but it's the way to go.
> He points to instances of user backlash, and concludes 'Free software is still
> driven by developers working on what interests or concerns them. The problem
> is, the days when users of free software were also its developers are long
> gone, but the habits of those days remain.
I am not a software developer.
However, I am a user of Free software.
It is my opinion that those persons who put in the time and effort to write the Free software (or to assist with testing, or the production of supporting documentation) are the persons who have a right to have an input in what direction that Free software is heading in, and what features it has.
I am thankful that so many software developers have produced such a rich and diverse wealth of Free software, and that by virtue of the GNU General Public License all that software continues to give all users and developers the 4 fundamental software freedoms.
I think ordinary users should not have a deciding voice in what direction Free software goes - I think that much more deservingly belongs to those whose hard work actually gives us that Free software.
You want the privilege of a vote? How about you putting in some time working on some of those applications you want?
Are you a MS shill?
Why even bring up MSDOS in a *nix article unless you are a troll or shill?
It's not relevant, so why bother unless you have a troll-axe to grind on?
Begone! Steve Ballmer. The flying chairs will just become a screensaver, and nothing else of importance will happen.
Automount has worked for me since Kubuntu 5.10, if I bothered to enable it...which I don't still with 9.04 Kubuntu...it's too easy to manually maount and avoid all of the 'autorun' exploits this way.
Begone, MS troll!
Autorun, automount is evil, and should be sidetracked/disabled.
It's too easy to automount as it is. The responsible developers should be summarily shot between the eyes as it is.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I dare you to name a language option offered by Ubuntu that Windows doesn't have. I'd be far more inclined to believe Windows has languages that Ubuntu doesn't.
British English, for one. I really would prefer that my son (he's almost three) be able to use a computer without being annoyed/confused by incorrect spellings. Ubuntu for him, then.
Apparently MS can't see how they'll be able to get British English spellings in Windows.
http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2008/07/11/8720420.aspx
I just switched to Ubuntu for my home computer last saturday, after 15 years of using pretty much every version of Windows. I'm not new to linux on the server-side, but very new on the desktop side.
After playing with it for a couple days, I don't see a single piece of innovation. The effects when moving the windows are neat. The package-management GUIs are useful. But that's it. There's nothing in there that isn't on other OSs. So I don't see where the innovation is.
On the other side, there are many little glitches, many little weird things that make Ubuntu (which IS the "linux Desktop" right now) not as good as Windows. Nothing important, nothing blocking, but annoyances that no other OS wouldn't fix.
For instance the fact you have to hit the "number lock" key every time you're on the "input your password" screen...there's most likely a fix for that, but then why (and how) would a basic user have to fix that ? There's more, like when you try to find out what's wrong with your sound card, or when your keyboard switches from your setting to another when you start some applications. And there's the copy-paste thing, where the copy part works great but the paste part needs you to figure out if the current app needs you to press the right or the middle button, or in a few cases ctrl-v.
The Linux Desktop is probably the greatest chance the world has to get away from MS and Apple one day, but right now, as a user, I have to say it's not ready. As 10+ years linux supporter I would love to say it is (even slightly) innovative, but it would be a lie. Right now, it can't really compete with other OSs, seeing how every app beahave in their own way. And you can't call that innovation. MS and Apple got this straight for a while now, probably because it's what matters to the user, even more than the fancy effects.
____
nico
Nico-Live
"Human Interface Engineer" sounds like a bullshit title...
It is a bullshit title, and is just politically correct now days for passing the buck in our "IP' based economy.
That is just a failing and 'passing the buck' for software codemonkeys.
DO YOUR FRIKKIN' JOBS!!!
Your attitude just justifies warrantless wiretapping, DRM, increased RIAA lawsuits, and all other nefarious 'IP'based concepts and regulations/laws.
Just take personal responsibility for your choices, you nutless wonder!
Have you no professional pride anymore, you spineless scumbags?
At one time, 'software and hardware engineers' were respected...those days have long passed. You are now known/equated with corporate lapdogs. You should be ashamed of yourselves as the scum that you have become in the name of short-term profits.
A pox on you all, but that is too good for you!
I have no sympathy for any of you lapdogs in this current economic downturn-you have made your bed, so sleep in it and be damned.
For those that haven't kowtowed to the current corporate BS, ignore this rant. For all others, I hope for at least some self-doubt and indigestion/heartburn!
I was trying to figure out what he is talking about. Specifically, which major desktop redisigns Gnome, KDE, and Ubuntu are planning.
For kde, the "social desktop" thing, is just a bunch of desktop tools for helping users enter the kde user/developer community. May be cool or not, I don't know, but it's not a redisign of the desktop.
For gnome, the new thing is the "gnome shell". The screencasts here: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Screencasts show that it looks pretty cool. I think it may even be useful. But again, from the user's perspective, it's not a radical redisign of the desktop. There are huge changes under the hood, and 3d-desktop effects are leveraged hopefully for something that is not just pretty but also useful.
About Ubuntu... I don't know what the guy is specifically talking about. The one thing I have seen so far is the new way that Ubuntu does notification icons. And I like it, I think it is much less intrusive than previous ways, and I just wish Thunderbird and Skype and other programs that do things "their own way" would also start using it.
What if he was a Mac OS X pundit, and asked this question of Mac OS X? "Does Apple innovate too much to be competitive in the desktop market?" What people really want is System 7, all this innovation and UNIX underpinning are just developers writing for developers. Why do we need an object oriented runtime library, and a constantly changing AP that supports concurrent processingI? Most Mac users were happy with one mouse button, why do they need their track pads to sense multiple points? Changes like this just confuse the user and make them learn new ways to do old tasks.
Clearly he has a point. It just isn't a very good one. The real problem with the linux desktop has been INSUFFICIENT innovation. And I don't mean replacing X. I mean designing software that makes computing ubiquitous, transparent, and accessible. Why I as a user should ever be concerned about files, drives, network connections, applications, processes, etc. you know all those metaphors programmers have invented for themselves, is beyond me.
What the linux desktop sucks at (and this is true for all WIMPy interfaces) is cross-task operations. When I'm working on a project that involves, text, drawings, tables, and some computations, using a system like Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X is an exercise in frustration. Each "task" as defined by the system's designers requires a different set of tools. By generating a report is only one task from my point of view as a user. As a result, I will end up using 4 or more tools, because no one tool has my work flow in mind.
There are interfaces that solve this problem, however, and they've been around since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of us still use them today. Now there is an experimental implementation of one for linux here you can run them in your web browser here and you can package up you can roll your own tools with this here. But all of these are still from the user's point of view in their infancy.
From a business perspective, yes. By business I mean it's adoption by Joe Soap.
is keeping anything mono-tainted out of all default installs. If users want to infect themselves with the Novel/Microsoft/Icaza virus, they should have to inflict that damage on themselves intentionally.
Just tell us what you want.
the authors care about the results of user testing and will spend time to change it. They have zero incentive to do so.
If it's to be popular Linux needs direction and someone who will incent people to do the scut work of testing it and making the 'boring stuff' work.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
Then how come everything has turned upside-down and Microsoft and Apple are now copying the Linux desktop instead of vice-versa?
Take a closer look at Windows 7 and Snow Leapord - almost every new UI design concept has been taken directly from KDE4.
>> "When you say "Linux" I think Linux kernel..."
That's how developers think. Linux users -- customers -- mean the everything that the distribution installs when they say "Linux".
The notion of employing user testing is patently obvious. It is a sign of the state of Linux -- 15 years or so in -- that suggesting such a thing can be controversial.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Seriously. I am not joking. They don't know what is good for them most of the time. Neither do developers, but by innovating and finding out what works, that's how improvements that do work are winnowed from the chaff.
Giving users what they want is often like giving your 4 year old what she wants for breakfast. She'll choose the donut and candy breakfast of champions every time. You have to show her what she really wants because she is 4, and you know of better and more wholesome things than she can even imagine to want. Once she's introduced to them, she'll be greatful because they really are better. Sometimes grownups know best.
I'm thinking of tools like the command line, emacs, and vi here. Users don't like them. They require some chewing, but once you learn to love em, they're much better for you. In the long run learning them will give you increased productivity not possible in the world of ooey gui candy. But even gui tools, follow the same pattern. Children ( novice adults ) don't like them at first if they're any good.
...
"He points to instances of user backlash"
Nowhere in the article are any concrete backlash issues raised. It's all opinion by the author. For people who want to get involved in beta testing, there's the support forums. For the rest of us we wait for the next stable release.
"developers function far too much in isolation from their user base"
The thing about Open Source is that no one is forcing you to upgrade. As for developers too isolation from their user base, that is an equally bogus issue. Personally, when evere I have had a problem with software, I contacted the lead developer directly and got a polite response. When was the last time the average Windows user got to talk to the Windows developers?
Using Linux is too often like having an uncooperative alien teleport into your workshop (er, 'room'). Sometimes he cares to tell you that there is a trap-door or hidden panel - where you can find something that'll tell how to identify and communicate with it.
Documentation is the difficulty. Sane, simple, pertinent, simple, recognizable, pertinent, accessible, simple documentation or help is always a trick or twenty away. It is usually in unannounced locations, in deep folds and corners. And, all too frequently, is 90% irrelevant, unnenecessary, jumbled together with everything plus a few kitchen sinks, and is often outdated or obsolete, or both (you have to guess which parts remain relevant).
Having to discern and nitpick your own solution from the chaotic morass that swamps you from the internet - when often you can't even really define the problem - is 'a bit of a bummer'. To put it mildly.
But the desktops / interfaces can definitively still improve. A lot, if my observations of novel users' difficulties is any indication. And, if something better is presented - present it, first ! Really ! And not just 'hints'. Go to the trouble of making dynamic illustrated how-to tutorials for the most common uses. Not _all_ uses. The obvious ones, first. Then the less obvious ones, if development can be so bothered.
But documentation is really a difficulty. Social, as well as technical. Wiki is helping, a bit. But collaborative documenting really needs stronger - more useful frameworks.
I have been a user of KDE since 2.0 running it on Solaris. Every release got better, giving user more tools, better control and an easier experience. When Gnome was dumbing down their interface, KDE stuck to the idea that users wanted control and I was one of those users.
Now we have 4.x. Major features are gone/not implemented, control is lost/not implemented and the tools are so different to the point that they can hardly be called the same app. (Konsole for one).
Innovation is important and it's the one thing that Desktop OSS is known for, but the stigma of making software that isn't really usable or having a development cycle that isn't reliable is well deserved. KDE is pulling a "Vista" with 4.X, but buggier and an even bigger difference between versions. Hell, it an entire philosophical shift.
I guess I don't share it. It's too bad, because I don't honestly expect KDE to survive it either.
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
This article brings up a good point, Does the GNU/Linux desktop try to inovate to much, well I don't think so. It's a simple break down when you compair Gnome and KDE at least for what they offer a normal user face value. On the KDE side you have a very sleek indepth overall style. On the Gnome side you have a very nice toned down working style.
On a personal note I don't like KDE, I' a Gnome fan and I've been for years. I don't see the place of having extra graphical effects on the desktop, It's one of the sole reasons I hate Windows (Among there other long list of faliure). If you take a look at what a normal user wants to see just ask your computer basic user sister or mom. In my case my girl friend and sister and brother all want the same thing and thats to "look good". Most users don't case what is under the hood running the show and hence why the Windows OS has been so sucessful. The rest of us actually do care what runs the system and so we take little notice to what UI would work for us. As far as I'm concerned I just need a functional desktop enviroment to get the job done and thats Gnome.
If you want to bring up the other long list of inovations you'd be wasting your time. Sure Gnome and KDE were doing things far before Microsoft ever touched them but does that matter. Inovation is a good thing and it can lead to great computer experiance but theres's no point agruing at lenght about it. In the end it's what works for you.
What the heck is "Linux Desktop" anyway? And what is the major difference between "Solaris Desktop" and "FreeBSD/PC-BSD Desktop"?
Ask your users what they want to be able to do. Make all of those things incredibly easy and confirm that your idea of easy is the same as their idea of easy via user testing. When you've got that down and all your users love you, apply the same amount of effort to everything else.
The second round will actually go much more smoothly because your users won't get hung up on the basics when they are trying to test out your more advanced features (since you already made the basics easy).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
this one occurred to me when setting ubuntu up for dad yesterday.
Why don't sub-folders in "My Places" expand within the menu? Seems like it should, being that you are in a menu.
he identifies that open developers only develop to either scratch their own itch or to develop cool things then says they'd be much better off doing boring things. Essentially there is no suggestion as to why they would do boring things. OS developers aren't a commodity they are simply entertaining themselves and if bug fixing isn'y entertaining then why would they bother.
And what about getting rid of that really annoying bug that, when a user launches an application, keeps the focus on the former application while the newly launched app is placed on top of every window on the desktop?
Actually, as a user of a dual-head setup, having the focus stolen from where I'm working by a program launching is annoying as hell. In my experience in the Windows environment, Outlook 2002 is one of the worst culprits. When receiving a lot of headers over IMAP (eg turning the computer on after a 3 day weekend with 500 or so new spam messages) it takes a couple of minutes to start up, and grabs the focus from whatever I'm trying to do every 30 seconds or so. Web browsers have a real problem with this too. I've set the homepage to about:blank because when I open a browser, the first thing I usually do is type a URL, not search google. But with google as a home page, I manage to type four or five letters into the URL input before google steals the focus. Google isn't alone on this, I can type my username and half my password before the last little gif loads on my bank's site, causing the last half of my password to overwrite the username.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There would be two challenges with this kind of effort:
The first is the technical aspect: building an application such that people can make this sort of change without getting elbow-deep in the code, providing a convenient framework for posting changes, etc. Some of this we more or less have already (i18n string substitution, separation of GUI layout from program code via things like Glade, etc.)
The second is the logistical support: a site or sites where all these submissions can be stored, administrators to filter out all the trolls and vandals, not to mention the flat-out bad ideas, and someone to provide leadership, helping to promote promising ideas over less promising ones.
One of the basic problems with this type of system is that it actually isn't "self regulating" or "self maintaining". Not everyone who uses the system is your friend. Not everyone who uses the system will fully research the available user-submitted options (more commonly, I think, people will try no more than a few of the most visible options) - so good work can be lost in the pile of submissions, while mediocrity "designed by committee" (or "mob" - a committee has more organization than a bunch of random submitters) may become prevalent.
Additionally (and this was part of the point of the article) - the quality of any solution isn't defined in a vacuum - for instance, if the user is already familiar with one UI design, that design has a certain advantage over another, competing design. If you learn where all the commands are located in the menus, and then everything gets moved, that's disruptive. Likewise if none of the documentation for the application applies to your version, that's rather unhelpful. This means it's often more helpful to have one design thoughtfully worked out and heavily promoted by the core team, rather than a cadre of competing designs.
Bow-ties are cool.
Open source developers primarily work for free, so they work on projects that interest them, either because the problem is interesting, they need or want the features being implemented or implementing the problem will gain them status within the community. That is to say they, like everyone else on this planet, work for personal gain even if it's not monetary in nature.
No amount of user testing is going to change this, because Linux isn't developed for the users, it's developed for the developers. If you want people to do boring stuff which they don't want and which isn't in any way impressive, then you have to motivate them in some other way. This generally means money, and most of the paid Linux programming jobs are on the server side of things.
Note there's nothing wrong with any of this, it's just reality and human nature, when people are doing stuff for fun, they tend to not want to do stuff that isn't fun. Why should they? I'd hazard a guess that a lot of open source developers make a living doing something else and whatever that is will have plenty of boring, tedious stuff which gets you no recognition or reward, why would people want to do more of that at home for free?
I'm not very successful with women. Could it be that I'm just /too/ attractive? Hmm...
I think it's more like someone who puts on way too much makeup or wears way too much cologne.
Yep, don't confuse the open source development model with the license.
Apple can open the license of all their code ( a great thing), yet Steve Jobs can still dictate that no UI feature is committed that he doesn't approve of.
And the software would still be free and open source, just developed differently.
A Steve Jobs for Linux would be the best possible way to come up with a Linux desktop worth using, yes.
But it can't and won't happen.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
The backend stuff isn't really where you need a hard-nose--and yes, all of those are fine people, but their projects are either of narrow scope (python, glibc) or largely targeted toward people just like them (OpenBSD).
The "Linux Desktop" pony-wishing necessitates a very wide function base (look at how much crap Ubuntu has to herd around) and, in addition, targets the Linux desktop toward people who are not just like them. Neither are good functions for building consensus.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
(Having said that, I'm obliged to point out that Fedora devs have made huge pre-Ubuntu contributions to stuff that "just works" for users, like NetworkManager. ...)
Did you mean to say "just doesn't work"? Or have you not used NetworkManager with DHCP on Ubuntu lately?
User: WTF did my connection just die?
Buried in the logs: NetworkMangler says "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't realize you were using that TCP connection, but I gave you a shiny new IP address. I hope you like it, because I'm going to keep giving you a new one every 12 hours." NetworkManager can FOAD.
I tried telling a few things that I thought made my life comfortable and the result was getting mean replies from the developers. ubuntu it was, indeed.
i've totally stopped visiting forums to discuss anything freely. I use whatever is given and basically tolerate the UI. And for things that i dont understand, I use Google.
One needs a lot of energy to fight off rabid naysayers and then get ignored by the core team and the leaders of the projects too.
UI is not a priority in openesource teams with high visibility. Something else is.
I wont say what, but its not the best thing to pursue.
Linux is already mainstream, it's being used everywhere... and I think that's good, people keep building interesting things on top of Linux, and I think it will always be like that, from geeks by geeks.
Case in point: Bug 332949, the update-notifier 'upgrade' in Jaunty which most users agree is functionality they want which was working, but Mark Shuttleworth thought he'd change because he could.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Extended attributes are universal now. but the usage is still low.
Attributes can be used to track the usage of a file, for example, a pdf file, word file. and all the settings the user last set can be stored as attributes and next time it got open the user can continue the work.
If copy of a file, or move a file reserve the attributes, that means a lot better world.
There are many use of attributes, and it can allow users to be creative. We just need a few tools and examples.
If you go and ask an end user (and by end user i mean your average joe in the street, ie NOT a geek) what they want and ask them to draw up the specifications for their idea of the perfect linux OS most likely about 90% of them will go and design you windows (or mac) because that is all they hav ever seen. I for one dont see why after all these years of development the linux distro developers should suddenly start jumping to the tune of the end user. There is a degree of listening to what the end user would like to see and maybe implementing that, but frankly isnt it time that people started learning how to use a different operating system rather that expecting linux to change itself into a free version of windows so that they dont have to bother learning how to use it.
I do tech support for the family and there are 5 grandmothers that I know that are using Linux and when I showed them my two laptops with Gnome and KDE, they all chose KDE.
I've been a linux user off/on for about 14 years. Have used KDE as desktop environment of choice since version 2.0, previously a Windowmaker junkie.
I've tried KDE4 a couple of times and irresepective of all the architecture changes, my immediate reaction was something like this:
KDE 3.x was solid, from an end user's perspective. 4.x is arse.
For "getting shit done" KDE3 was pretty hard to beat. ioslaves are the shit, and the interface was fairly clean and usable. As far as 4.x goes, I just don't see anything that helps me "get shit done" in a more efficient manner.
For those who are about to retort "ahh but you need to give it some time to learn the new features" - i shouldn't have to. They shouldn't be so vague and not immediately obvious that a Linux user of 14 years doesn't see/notice them, and only sees the downsides...
Windows 7 vs previous versions - interface is a dramatic, intuitive, immediately noticable improvement. KDE 4.x is a joke. I'm going back to Windowmaker and getting into GNUstep programming I think...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
With regard to your sig...
Does it count as trading liberty for safety when it's the gov't taking over private corporations to save the economy?
No. It doesn't count. However, that's because it makes me think we may have already traded our liberties away.
They call us sheeple, I wonder why?
I refuse to use KDE4, and still use KDE3 on my main Ubuntu box.
KDE4 is a bloated silly bunch of nonsense. If the KDE4 developers designed cars, they'd flip the positions of the accelerator and brake pedals on each model to be "innovative".
I think that the biggest problem Linux has currently is its need completely redesign its applications so often. It's not that innovation isn't the answer. The problem I find is that all too often they throw the baby out with the bath water. In order to keep on the innovation band wagon I see far too many projects throw tried and tested functionality out saying 'we'll add that back into the new version later'. KDE4 is just the most visible culprit right now. Projects like Amarok 2 are guilty of it as well. Don't get me wrong I love Linux. I use Linux in every place possible. FC10 is my Desktop at work. Ubuntu 9.04 runs on my Netbook (and runs well I might add). MythDora is my media center hub w/ Boxee integrated. My main desktop runs Arch Linux. But I digress. Linux to me is the ultimate desktop for it's advanced and flexibility, nobody else can claim that. It's also the most stable platform to run a server on bar none. However I think we like a lot of geeks suffer from the 'look before you leap' senario. We come up with an idea or see a new way of doing something and immediately rush it into the redesign of an application. Now for technically minded people that's not a big deal, we can work around a programs quirks and still enjoy it. But in order for Linux to be used by the public we need to have a more stable base line. Microsoft wins the OS wars not because they're on the bleeding edge but because they're not. They wait and let everyone else try out new ideas... then they 'borrow' them. They're successful because there's always that common tie in in Windows. No matter what they do to that OS it still has the windows 'feel' so the average joe can navigate it. That's what we're missing.