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Miguel de Icaza On Usability and Openness
doperative points out comments from Miguel de Icaza on the struggle for usability in many software products:
"De Icaza uses OpenSUSE as his main desktop (with the GNOME interface, of course), says he likes Linux better than Windows, and says the Linux kernel is also 'superior' to the MacOS kernel. 'Having the source code for the system is fabulous. Being able to extend the system is fabulous,' he says. But he notes that proprietary systems have advantages — such as video and audio systems that rarely break. 'I spent so many years battling with Linux and something new is broken every time,' he says. 'We as an open source community, we don't seem to get our act together when it comes to understanding the needs of end users on the desktop.'"
Sound and video is broken on open systems because of the RIAA/MPAA and Microsoft with their protected pathways, encryption, patented interconnects and tilt bits.
Closed source audio can break too. My last motherboard had onboard RealTek audio. Worked perfectly in Linux. Under XP, it crackled endlessly. Ended up buying a discrete sound card.
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I use both Linux and Windows at home and the office. The reason is simple - for back end stuff where I need to write custom stuff, hack data about and get it to do stuff then Linux or occassionally *BSD is king. For front end usage where I want a clean slick and above all consistent interface I'll often use Windows. Partly because I need to interoperate with other people, but mainly because it offers a better and easier working environment. Linux on the desktop is good if you are doing teechnical stuff, like writing an encoding system for digital amateur radio (my current pet project). For using the computer more as a commodity tool for email/word processing/video watching etc Windows still is better presented and more importantly doesnt break grotesquely with every new update that appears like Ubuntu does (and yes I'm looking at 9.10) Until Linux, or more strictly I suppose GNOME/KDE etc get over this then I suspect that further adoption of linux on the desktop will stall.
...yeah, msoffice for just a resume.
There were consumer word processors that predated msword that were quite adequate for that sort of thing.
Never mind 2011. If you were some sort of advanced corporate user that had to play nice with the rest of their Borg collective (company), then your remarks would make a bit more sense. WP style overkill is simply not needed in many cases.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I mean, what would you have expected De Icaza to say his preferred OS was? Yeah, the fact he said it was Linux didn't exactly shock me....
But his other statement is equally "non news". Yep, "proprietary systems" (commercial OS offerings) are far better at supporting random hardware. Linux will NEVER really win that particular battle, because too many companies release a new product (such as a video card) where the driver software is just as critical a component as the chips soldered onto the board at giving the advertised video performance. The video performance is what people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for. Otherwise, everyone would just be happy with whatever on-board video was provided with their motherboard, or whichever card was the cheapest. When you as a video card maker are in this situation? You're going to be struggling enough to make it perform reliably, as-intended, with just ONE operating system. The motivation to go through all that work again for a free OS like Linux just isn't really there. #1, Linux won't have the number of 3D game titles that actually make good use of such a card. But #2, you don't want to risk releasing the source code to those proprietary drivers that make that new card go, because doing so would be like inviting all your competitors into your factories to take video and photographs, or make copies of all your engineers' design notes. So any Linux drivers provided will have to be binaries only, leading to a lot of hassles providing ones that work with various distros and Linux releases. And don't forget #3 - when you re-release the SAME card with re-worked drivers for Mac OS X, you get to sell the thing at close to full retail price for far longer than you'll ever fetch that price with the Windows crowd. Do you think the Linux community would pay those prices for a "Linux edition" of a given Windows graphics card, just because good Linux drivers were offered? (Maybe a few die-hards would, but just as many would get indignant about having to pay inflated prices for a card with drivers they don't even get the source to.)
Understanding the needs of desktop users is perpetually hampered by a large component of Linux culture. The "by nerds for nerds" attitude. Historically this was a great asset when targeting the server and unix workstation markets, users in these areas were typically nerds. However going after the public in general (the mythical year of the Linux desktop) requires a different attitude. To be specific one Linux distribution would need a different attitude, not all of the Linux distributions. Having different distributions focus on radically different communities would seem to be the way to go.
... that certain components (for example, audio) take a long time to figure out how to make work, and end users tend to get impatient about such things. That doesn't mean no progress is being made, or even that good progress isn't being made.
I've used Linux since about 2000-2001, and I'm not really an expert. From my perspective, Linux of today is leaps and bounds over what it was then in terms of user friendliness, configurability, etc. And in terms of multimedia, well... it's somewhat usable but not there yet. But it gets closer constantly. That doesn't mean it isn't frustrating, and I still cuss out pulseaudio (and eventually uninstall it) every time I try to get it to do things that seem intuitively obvious to me... but each time I've used it I notice improvements, and I'm pretty confident that one day it will just work... at which point there will be something ELSE that everyone complains about.
Because Linux developers don't have direct access to proprietary information, progress on proprietary-heavy aspects of an operating system (like audio, and video, etc.) is unfortunately slower than other areas. Nothing can get around that other than companies open sourcing their drivers and putting patents in the public domain (which is a longer way of saying "nothing can get around that.") But the progress is still both remarkable and laudable. Though I still reserve the right to cuss out the parts of Linux that don't work when I want them to. It's nothing personal, guys, it's just a pain in the ass.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
You know Miguel works for the GNOME project, right?!
Joking aside, it's perfectly possible thanks to open source's inherently modular structure. Someone makes an idiot-proof GUI, distro X bundles it as the default and only option. Someone makes a uberhacker GUI, distro Y bundles it as the default and only option. Distro Z prides itself on being able to switch from newbie to expert and back again in less than three seconds.
IMHO, GNOME tries too hard to lower itself to the lowest common denominator jack of all trades - look at the recent decision to remove the "minimise" button from the taskbar because it's apparently not useful and not optimised for touchscreens. But neither is the rest of GNOME, or all the apps it's going to run. Sorry, if it's touchscreen users you're after then I'm sure GTK is perfectly capable of having a new UI constructed from the same frameworks.
Similarly, KDE often gets flak for having too many confusing options. It's personally the UI I prefer (after I've spent forever configuring it) in *nix but it's not without its own share of problems either, and much like GNOME they seem to have some project heads who are entirely convinced that theirs is the One True Way of doing it. KDE remains more usable to me because of its configuration flexibility though, but it can be baffling if you don't already know your way around, and they make fewer stupid choices than GNOME.
The problem with both KDE and GNOME's approaches (and windows as well for that matter) is people who are convinced that one tool can be everything to everybody (this goes for almost every DE I've seen in the PC world), and that the inherent differences between, say, a 5" touchscreen and a 60" TV warrant completely different approaches. So to answer your question: yes, Linux can (and does) cater to computer novices (I'm not aware of anyone needing to use the CLI in ubuntu for example, but I could be wrong) and still leave all the juicy stuff available to geeks like me. I'm no fan of apple, but when they released a phone they were smart enough to realise it would need a brand new interface, not a badly screwed fork of their desktop OS as MS did with WinCE. This supposedly revolutionary idea has netted them billions because it's the only approach that makes sense. Tightly coupled with the need to have differentiated UI's for different purposes is the attitude some people take is that theirs is the only way to do something, anyone not doing it their way must be stupid. This is tragically false - everyone has a different way of working, and what works for one person doesn't work for another. For instance, I can't live without focus-follows-mouse, despite the fact it took a lot of effort to get working in windows 7, but almost everyone else hates it. Some people just don't want the options to be there because they don't think they're important, and this stops people from finding tricks and tweaks that may help them work better; some bury the config panels with boxes and the user often doesn't have a clue what options to start with.
Off my high horse now. All YMMV, IANAL, IMHO, etc. I just think all these "there is one best way" arguments are detrimental to the computer experience as a whole.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
But he notes that proprietary systems have advantages — such as video and audio systems that rarely break. 'I spent so many years battling with Linux and something new is broken every time,' he says. 'We as an open source community, we don't seem to get our act together when it comes to understanding the needs of end users on the desktop.'"
Is it because the open source community fails to get its "act" together? Or the audio and video codecs are encumbered with so many dubious patents and intellectual property claims. And the closed source vendors are using that to create walled gardens?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You know, I'm pretty fed up with OSS attitude toward usability. Apparently you just don't get it.
There needs to be a way to use the software on my machine that doesn't require me to open a MAN page and edit a config file. There's a simple reason for this; people do not have TIME to do these things. The utopian world of thousands of sweaty, Cheetos-encrusted Metallica T-Shirt-wearing geeks the world over writing code that will break the Microsoft monopoly is permanently doomed to failure because you all think that design is making a Mac OSX Metacity theme.
User Interface design has nothing to do with making things "pretty"-- it has to do with making things usable. This is something where nearly all F/OSS fails. Miserably. Making software that does work cleverly is good. Making it intuitive and powerful is excellent. That's not dumbing it down; you'll find that making a user interface that works well, and designing software to do things right, quickly, is significantly harder than writing good, clean code. Shifting the blame of not being able to design an interface well to users being "stupid" is shameful-- don't blame your inadequacies on anyone but yourself.
There will never be a year of the Linux desktop because geeks will never get that.
I'd say it's perfectly possible. I used to be a tinkerer-type, but I just don't have the time anymore. I don't use Linux anymore because I had to choose between "tinkering with my computer" and "doing what I wanted to do in the first place". So I will demote myself from "technically inclined" to "average user who wants his machine to work"
And here's all I need - I need to install Ubuntu, and it just works. Video cards, sound cards, all the peripherals. I wish I had time to tinker with config files and settings - I really do - but I don't. It needs to Just Work Out Of The Box. All the power user settings aren't scaring people away, but the requirement that you need to know how all the internals work so I can check my email. To use the classical car analogy, I don't mind being able to pop the hood and tinker with my car - I just also need the ability to get in, turn the ignition, and drive somewhere hassle-free.
And people like you in the FOSS community are missing the point, again. I'm a user. I don't care whose fault it is. I just want my webcam to work, and not have to scour the internet to find out why I get only choppy video at crappy resolutions in Linux, but HD smooth video in Windows. Finding smug little "well it works for me" replies just makes me want to give up. And when Ubuntu freezes on me utterly, all those claims about Linux's much acclaimed stability just seem hollow - a screen freeze is like a BSOD for the budget conscious. I've been using Linux as my desktop for the last decade, I'm no newbie. But why waste my time debugging basic functionality when I can spend a hundred bucks and just have a PC that works?
1) Use Debian.
2) Never seen this with any OpenGL software.
3) Tried Scribus?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I've got 855GM Integrated Graphics on my laptop. It has always worked well on Windows and never on Linux despite the drivers being open sourced and the hardware specs being available. I'm using Lucid, but it's still a problem today See Lucidi8xxFreezes for a list of the workarounds.
The truth is that even with hardware specs, it takes people with both the required skill and motivation to make things work and keep them working.
Yep, "proprietary systems" (commercial OS offerings) are far better at supporting random hardware. Linux will NEVER really win that particular battle, because too many companies release a new product (such as a video card) where the driver software is just as critical a component as the chips soldered onto the board at giving the advertised video performance.
In my past experience ( ~15 years of penguin usage ), the situation isn't so black and white.
What you say is typical for graphic cards : there are only a couple of big companies in the market, churning new hardware and software on a regular basis, and putting lot of resources to make suitable drivers for windows.
On Linux you're left with either sub-par open-source drivers (which some time have to be reverse engineered [Nouveau], although some company have started to release infos or even actively support the development of drivers [Intel & AMD]) or with B.L.O.Bs which may be slightly outdated or buggy (Nvidia doesn't support latest Xorg technologies, ATI used to be pretty shitty before AMD's acquisition).
BUT...
Then there's all the rest. All the cheap devices. All the asian nonames using weird variation of lesser big-brand chips.
Network card, webcams, scanners, low-cost & onbaord sound, etc.
The first weeks, windows support is the greatest, because the obscure asian company has created some drivers for it (although the drivers are buggy and pose problems down the line after a few weeks of Windows usage).
Then Linux slowly catches up, and the last months quite easily. As said, most of the obscure hardware just uses weird variation of the same few dead-cheap chips. As Linux is opensource, a lot of code share can be done, lots of common feature can be abstracted, etc. For most of the gizmos, adding a new gadget, is simply writting a thing layer which then re-uses the same basics as other drivers talking to similar but slightly different variation of the chip.
If a new generation of Linux kernel is out, the driver code is easily ported.
Meanwhile, each time a new version of windows is out, you can pretty much throw away most of your USB gadgets, and only keep your GFX card (and maybe soundcard. If you're lucky. It still nearly impossible to find good decent non buggy drivers for pre X-Fi cards from Creative). Because most of the time, the original no-name asian brand has completely dropped support for this piece. Or even went belly up and doesn't exist anymore.
Case in point :
- HP5400c colour scanner. Works with SANE since ages. Was never updated beyond WinXP for Windows.
- Several on-board sound chips (like some Realtek and VIA AC'97 which were popular on first generation Ahtlon 64 mo-bos). Like flawlessly under Linux, because they are just slighlty unusual variant of the same basic design. Under windows ? Sorry, the latest drivers you'll find are for Windows XP.
- Pre-X-Fi creative cards, like Audigy and SB Live! Work with all features under Linux (including HWMix). Vista/Seven drivers are broken, community drivers are XP only, it took some brazillan guy to patch and repack something vaguely useful.
etc.
In short ? If it's not a Radeon or GeForce, chance are that your piece of hardware will better survive to a Linux version upgrade as to a Windows upgrade.
If you want to give a second life to some hardware (as a simple server, or whatever). you're better of either using Linux or stay with an old version of Windows.
you don't want to risk releasing the source code to those proprietary drivers that make that new card go, because doing so would be like inviting all your competitors into your factories to take video and photographs, or make copies of all your engineers' design notes.
Not exactly. As reported by companies which are more open about the process and like helping the OSS movement (like AMD), the main problem aren't competitors (they use slightly different approaches and the drivers are 200% optimised for sp
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Sorry Miguel, but the subject says it all.
Perhaps you should give kde 3.5.x a whirl and find out what an actual pleasant UI is like.
<shrug> I switched from KDE to Gnome and I love it. I'm not real clear what KDE has to offer that's better...
Bow-ties are cool.
It is only "established" in the eyes of ideologues like you.
I thought the discussion was about mainstream adoption of open source software.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's not "his personal problem" with open source. It's A LOT of people's problem with open source. Plus, anytime someone actually dares to say some interface is, shall we say, less than optimal, someone like you comes out of the woodwork to say "don't you dare tell me what to spend my time on! If you want it fixed, why don't you lead the effort to fix it yourself!"
Therein lies the problem. You want desperately for Linux to succeed, but you don't want to actually spend the time and effort working on the things that ordinary users care about.