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."

Comments

Re:Very Misleading Title for the Topic

[selven]

I think high-quality free software like Ubuntu is better at the non-programming bits than proprietary software. Take language support, for example. Microsoft will never release a version in a language which is spoken in countries with a 99% piracy rate. Ubuntu, however, has a lot of options.

Re:Innovate is the wrong word

[wampus]

No, if I called someone an overly pedantic assclown I would be dissing them.

Consider yourself insulted.

Stevie B., is that you throwing chairs?

[rts008]

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.