Ask Slashdot: Unity/Gnome 3/Win8/iOS — Do We Really Hate All New GUIs?

Brad1138 writes "You see complaints about the 'next gen' GUI's all over the place, but do we really all hate them? Personally, I don't like them — I tried very hard to like Unity in Ubuntu 11.04/11.10 before giving up and switching to Mint (I am very happy there currently). But is it the vocal minority doing all the complaining, or is it the majority? Are we just too set in our ways?"

Comments

You're asking who?

[Nimloth]

What answer do you expect on Slashdot?

Re:You're asking who?

[Anonymous Coward]

What answer do you expect on Slashdot?

The submitter is probably looking for answers from people who use Linux. There are a few of those on Slashdot so it's probably a good place to ask.

Like the submitter, I have tried hard to like Unity but really can't do it. I can see how it might be a good idea for netbooks with small screens where you run all apps maximised but that's not how I work. I have a big multiscreen set up at work and a modest sized laptop screen at home. In both cases I like to work with multiple overlapping windows - which is not a mode where Unity shines.

The shared menu bar at the top doesn't work for me - I would prefer it to be in the app window, close to where my mouse is already. I also dislike the fact that the menu options aren't visible until you move your mouse over the bar.

I also prefer focus-follows-mouse - this just doesn't work with the shared menu bar as your focus changes while moving the pointer from app window to menu bar.

The complete lack of support for applets is a real pain point for me too. I like having SSHMenu available, I like having the CPU and network monitors and I like having shortcut icons on the panel where I choose to put them.

Things which I found easy to do with a single mouse click in GNOME2 now require multiple key presses or worse, mouse clicks and keypresses. I've been sticking with GNOME2 in the mean time and it frustrates me that that option is disappearing and available alternatives seem worse than what I have now.

Re:You're asking who?

[Aranwe Haldaloke]

I don't hate them. There you go.

FYI on Ubuntu 11.10 using gnome-shell

Re:You're asking who?

[maugle]

I use Unity, and I like it. I expect I will continue to like it until I try to run something I know I installed but can't remember the name of, because there doesn't seem to be any way to show an organized list of installed programs like in the old GNOME2 interface.

Re:You're asking who?

[Ethanol-fueled]

I will continue to like it until I try to run something I know I installed but can't remember the name of, because there doesn't seem to be any way to show an organized list of installed programs like in the old GNOME2 interface.

They want to steer you into the locked-down mobile paradigm where less is more. And war is peace. And some other generic but worrysome contradiction. Why bother even thinking about other things? They are not prerequisites to going to Facebook and Amazon. Facebook. Amazon.

Re:You're asking who?

[Zibodiz]

Click Dash, then "Sort" (I think, I'm currently booted to Windows to play a game =-P, so this is from memory), choose your category, then click the "show all" link above installed programs. It's possible, but man, it's a lot of extra clicks/time. The other thing that bothers me about Unity is that you never have a button for each window, just a button for each application. When you're working with images/coding/whatever, it's a real pain. But I'm gradually learning to live with it.

Re:You're asking who?

[wizkid]

Slashdot is always going to give you a tainted answer. slashdot'rs hate everything. If your curious about it tho, check out the downloads on Linux Mint. They've had record downloads, and are zooming up on Ubuntu at a record clip, according to most webstats. I switched to Linux mint instead of upgrading Ubuntu desktop, now it's on my laptop, workstation, and I'll probably try upgrading my company workstation to it when upgrade time comes along.

I still like ubuntu server! But I hate unity with a passion. Read what they plan on doing with Gnome 3! They're talking about putting gnome 2 stuff back on top of gnome shell, and making a hybrid Gnome desktop.

The Linux desktop Developers keep thinking that making the desktop simpler is the answer. And they're doing it by taking away options. Windows is busy putting options back into they're desktop. Someone needs to go beat the Gnome and Ubuntu developers with a clue stick.

Damn, now I'm sounding like a slashdot'r RATS!

Re:You're asking who?

[Blakey Rat]

The open source, anybody can contribute ideas, rapid release development methodology would be the perfect way to prototype new UI ideas and designs-- if the community weren't a bunch of whiny luddite complainers.

Re:You're asking who?

[Idbar]

No, he's not. That's just part of the question but as you showed, the slashdot reader is obviously biased. The headline clearly includes Win8 and iOS.

I'm assuming the question is if you want all the OS to become the average user OS where you click big buttons instead of the extreme power user where you preferably type most of your commands and tend to be more tech savvy.

And as the GP asked, I wonder as well, if this is the proper target audience for such question, particularly when I clearly hate limiting interfaces, but many people have found that iOS with all it's limitations to the user provides them with what they need.

Re:You're asking who?

[cynyr]

I still use xterm, but have moved on to gvim over vim. I expect that I will continue to use gvim and xterm for a very long time to come.

As for these new fangled DEs, I moved to XFCE4 some years back, and now can't stand not having XFCE's right click menu.

Re:You're asking who?

[im_thatoneguy]

Nope I think you have it completely backwards.

It's Open Source. So unless you're a developer your opinion is going to be derided, disregarded and dismissed.

If non-programmers want input on their products then they need to pay developers to prototype their ideas. A developer's idea of a great UI and innovative interface is:

> $ convert label.gif +matte \
\( +clone -shade 110x90 -normalize -negate +clone -compose Plus -composite \) \
\( -clone 0 -shade 110x50 -normalize -channel BG -fx 0 +channel -matte \) \
-delete 0 +swap -compose Multiply -composite button.gif

"So efficient!"

Re:You're asking who?

[Vegemeister]

Whom is deprecated, sugar britches.

Re:You're asking who?

[schroedingers_hat]

'Amazon is at war with Facebook. Amazon has always been at war with Facebook.'?

Re:You're asking who?

[drjones78]

Typing commands or using keyboard shortcuts or just in general maneuvering around like a power user are not things that are mutually exclusive with fancy GUI's and big buttons. Most desktops - gnome 3, osx, etc provide ample capability for both. Can't speak for unity, never tried it..

I think its an exciting time for desktop computer interfaces... its a good thing the desktop is branching out, and becoming something new.

Re:You're asking who?

[pmontra]

Yeah, it sounds like I broke my leg, it's a real pain but I'm learning to live with it. With a difference: broken legs heal themselves, these things don't.

Re:You're asking who?

[DMUTPeregrine]

Yesterday a friend asked my why I like command line so much. After all, GUIs make it easy to find commands you don't use often through the menus (unless it's a ribbon app) while you have to memorize command line commands. My answer: Yes, GUI is easier, for one file. I just renamed my music files to a name/directory structure of "artist/album/artist - album - disk - track - title". All 6000 of them. In under a minute. GUIs are better for single tasks. CLIs for batch jobs and automation.

Re:You're asking who?

[Will.Woodhull]

I do not use Unity and I will stay with Ubuntu 10.4 as long as I can. One of the reasons why I finally migrated from WinXP to Ubuntu was because the GUIs seemed more similar to me than the "new and improved" Windows GUI. I have also used a qwerty keyboard all my life and I will avoid any attempt to change that.

The GUI needs to do what I need it to do, and I would prefer for it to do that fairly efficiently. But even more important than its efficiency is that the GUI needs to get out of my way and stay out of my way. The overheads involved in learning a new interface are an unnecessary PITA. I do not have so many years left in my life that I want to waste time learning new ways of doing things when the old ways may not be as good, but are still good enough to get on with the work at hand.

Re:You're asking who?

[hairyfeet]

And allow me to chime in from the other side of the aisle since he also mentions Windows 8. my customers are just your ordinary folks, the kind MSFT expects to sell Win 8 to. Suzy the checkout girl, Brian who runs a backhoe, everyday Joes. Now to put what I am about to say in perspective I showed screencaps of Win 7 as well as ran the beta when it became available and the reaction across the board was one of curiosity, they wanted to know what it did and how it stacked up to XP since nobody really liked Vista. oh and if everyone wants to know what killed Visa for ordinary folks, Canel/allow? constantly drove them nuts!

But I'm now up to about 130 of these normal folks that I've shown the Win 8 screengrabs to and about 20 that actually watched a little of the video and they all to a man absolutely fucking HATE it and have made it quite clear they don't give a shit WHAT it does its a giant DO NOT WANT. In fact the closest I got to an "endorsement" was this exchange by a sweet little middle aged female customer "Oh that is a nice looking cell phone picture, is it that Android? I heard that is supposed to be quite nice....what do you mean Windows? Windows what? Well that is just stupid! Why would I want a cell phone on my computer?"

And from the mouth of an ordinary person comes truth. Instead of the curiosity I saw with Win 7 the biggest question they had for me was "But if I need another Windows 7 you'll be able to get me one, right?" which I would say is a sign that Ballmer's Folly does not look to be in a good position right from the start. I didn't even see this kind of hate for Vista this early, most like myself hoped they'd fix it. Hell the only nice thing I can say about Win 8 is maybe Ballmer will be forced to "pursue other interests" and someone decent can be brought in to right the ship.

So I feel for ya Linux guys, I really do. Its like all the DE designers drank the same poorly mixed Kool Aid and became Bizarro developers "Quick things am stable and users am happy! Must make big mess, throw out years of work, and make things am confusing! Users am unhappy now? We do good!"

Re:You're asking who?

[RubberMallet]

So... why not try KDE4? The latest KDE4.7.3 is pretty good - I would not recommend the Kubuntu spin on it... I've yet to see a "good" Kubuntu. It's not bad, but there are better choices - in particular I'm thinking of the upcoming openSUSE 12.1 (out in a few days). The KDe build there is pretty rock solid. Regardless... Ubuntu is not just Unity... or Gnome

Re:You're asking who?

[Chrisq]

Slashdot is always going to give you a tainted answer. slashdot'rs hate everything.

I hate people who say that

Re:You're asking who?

[NickFortune]

The open source,

Yes, it is.

anybody can contribute ideas

True enough.

rapid release development methodology would be the perfect way to prototype new UI ideas and designs

Can't argue with that.

if the community weren't a bunch of whiny luddite complainers.

Bit of a non-sequiteur there, though, I feel. The gratuitous insult doesn't really follow from the string of incoherent buzzwords.

Re:You're asking who?

[somersault]

My machine just installed what I'm assuming is Gnome Shell yesterday. At least after Googling, I found a configuration file that can change some stuff around, but it's still nowhere near as configurable as the old style Gnome panels. Why not let me right click on stuff to change settings?

Both Unity and Gnome shell have the same problem - they're not as configurable as they should be. I like a few things about both of them, but the layout of everything is just wrong from a usability point of view. Well, my only real problem with Gnome shell is actually the way it puts the clock in the center of the menu. It makes no sense. I will try to figure out how to change it later - but yet again I'm wondering about just using a different window manager altogether.

A lot of "next generation" GUIs actually feel like a step back to the 80s where you didn't have any option how you did things. The thing that makes Linux good has for me always been that you can switch your desktop (or any other part of the system) around to work however the hell you want. I guess we can still do that, but it just feels like a really bad precedent if the most common desktop distros UIs are even less configurable than the Windows task bar and OSX dock.

Re:You're asking who?

[Ofloo]

It's the way it works (layout) i don't like, neither gnome-shell or unity, to me there just the same thing, ..

Re:You're asking who?

[AnujMore]

Shouldn't the topic be "You're asking whom?"

Re:You're asking who?

[rastos1]

developer's idea of a great UI and innovative interface is:
$ convert label.gif ...

convert command from ImageMagick has over 200 command-line options (many of them taking an argument). How exactly would you like to present that as a GUI?

Re:You're asking who?

[UncHellMatt]

I hadn't upgraded for some time and (foolishly?) decided it was time. Unity was... Well, a disappointment. Not too long ago a friend who lives and breaths netbooks was having a strong dislike to Win7, and I suggested he try Ubuntu. It was faster than Win7, he was able to get drivers for everything, and he liked the desktop. I agreed with him entirely. However on a big screen or multi screen... Not so much.

Then I read some quotes by Mark Shuttleworth. For a minute I thought I was reading something by Bill Gates or the late Lord Steve Jobs: 'There is going to be a crowd that is just too cool to use something that looks really slick and there is nothing we can do for them'. My dear sir, it's not a matter of "cool", it's a matter of your desktop environment is crap. Now, I'm no power user. In fact, I'm more the "Walt the Janitor" of the computing world (or perhaps the Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor...) and really just use the best option for what I want to do, and in an ideal world how I want to do it. I don't use a flat screwdriver on a Phillips-head screw due to its looks, and I'm not exactly "too cool" to use something that looks "really slick". I like shiny, I like bells and whistles, and I like machines that go "PING". That said, Unity is complete shit IMO. I won't go into details on why I don't like it, and I'm sure of course that there are those here who would disagree with me on the reasons, but I just flat out have not found it an "enjoyable" desktop experience. As well, the statement by Shuttleworth: "I think the report actually meant that the launcher should be movable to other edges of the screen. I'm afraid that won't work with our broader design goals, so we won't implement that. We want the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button."

That quote right there was the nail in the coffin with me for using Unity. Yes, I know it's petty, yes I know that my reason is somewhat trite, but it just bothers me when someone says "This is how you should use your computer, and how it should look. No, you can't change that." I really did give Unity about 2 weeks of use, and got to the point where I was very comfortable using it, but it wasn't enjoyed comfort, it wasn't "ah, this is my desktop".

Credit where it is due, while I had some issues with performance, I was able to get around that (changing drivers for video card), as always with Ubuntu right from the get go I had zero problems with other devices, printers, etc. But now I'm using KDE.

Re:You're asking who?

[Nikker]

I have to admit having the fundamental change that Unity brought was bringing the GUI directly to the hardware. While X servers are good and useful not everyone needs or even wants it and if the results are improved performance then why not at least give the chance? The problem is why is an alternative OS being held back so much simply because of it's UI? The OSS community is about letting the software evolve at what ever pace it wants but major WMs are all firmly based around systems that have never evolved period. There has to be some sort of commenting system where you can comment on the UI from inside the UI and contribute that to the community for analysis included with context of the comment as through as the user allows, i.e Time,Kernel,Software,HardSpecs, etc. This will really help the progress of the evolution and also make it almost impossible for entrenched OS vendors to compete with not only new GUI models but as well popular GUI models, they will just spring up so fast and catch like wildfire.

People just 'try' Linux derived GUIs right now probably have a bunch of ideas, have no way of communicating them, give up and pop the CD/USB_HDD out of the drive. If you were able to make annotations from inside the GUI/WM and send it off with recommendations and requests with no sign in required there would be a much more substantial gain in propagation IMHO.

Re:You're asking who?

[asylumx]

I hate that I see what you did there...

Re:You're asking who?

[asylumx]

Wizard-style interface.

Re:You're asking who?

[gfxguy]

Interesting post, hairyfeet; good to be able to see a lot of people's reactions. I still use XP at home to play games, and haven't even had any experience with Vista OR Windows 7; seems like Windows 7 is the next XP - the one people will want to stick with for a long time.

For me, around the same time I upped to Ubuntu 11.04 I was offered a Mac at work. I'd only had very little experience with a hand-me-down iMac about 10 years ago, and was not particularly thrilled with it. This new Mac is a Mac Mini, though, and has OSX on it, and who's going to turn down a new computer? Especially when there is no alternative offer (like "or a new PC").

I gave both valiant tries... months long tries, so I think I gave them both a more than fair shake. I will agree with the AC (who had the second response shown as I started writing this). My monitors are BIG. My monitor at work is 32 inches. My monitor at home is a mere 24 inches. In neither case do I run applications full screen; it just doesn't make sense. I prefer (always have, always will) sloppy-focus (focus follows mouse). Windows doesn't do this by default, but the free TweakUI kit allows you to enable it; Unity even allows you to enable it. I learned quickly on Unity why the Mac UI is so dead set against it... that universal menu bar. So sloppy focus breaks the Unity paradigm, but they left the option there for the illusion of control, I suppose.

The Mac UI doesn't let you resize from anywhere but the one corner. Since my screen is so big and I often have multiple windows, that makes positioning and sizing things optimally (for me) really annoying. It also doesn't have snapping.

Unity, like the Mac UI, likes single instances of applications. On the Mac, if you had a "real" mouse, you can right click on the browser to open another window - otherwise the already opened window comes to focus. With Unity at home I do work with multiple desktops while logged in as multiple users (instead of using "switch user" which takes longer and is more than I need), so having a different user's window come to focus when opening a browser or something is really annoying.

Unity is better than Mac UI for me. They share a lot of common problems (like the unified menu bar and really trying hard to have single instances of programs running), but Unity still lets you set options that the Mac UI doesn't - like sloppy focus, resizing from any side/corner, and window snapping, even when they don't make sense (sloppy focus with a unified menu bar). Some of the problems are mitigated on the Mac when you use it the way they want you to use it... Resizing and positioning windows shouldn't be a problem if they always come back to the last position they had, for example. But that doesn't work when you DO have multiple instances of a terminal and web browser and the finder....

The bottom line, which we seem to be moving away from, is that more options and tweaking are good; even Unity offers themes that make it hard to grab borders, for example, but then you can always change themes to one with thicker borders... Mac UI gives up nothing - use it the way they want or don't.

Haven't tried Windows > XP, as mentioned, but if you can still TweakUI, then I imagine I'd still like it better than the Mac UI.

Of course, this is just me - and everybody is different and the question asks if we're just hating... if I'm hating, it's not just for the sake of hating. Every software cycle seems to remove options.

For the record, I recently changed to Xubuntu. Now I'm wondering why I don't just use Debian instead, perhaps the Mint distribution. When I have some spare time, I'll try out a few others.

Re:You're asking who?

[BrokenHalo]

I'm not entirely sure what direction the Gnome developers think they're heading, but wherever it is, they have lost me, at least until I can work out how the hell to use the latest versions.

I have been a big fan of Gnome since the '90s, and have put up with (or found workarounds for) occasional instances of asshattery where developers capriciously decided I didn't need this or that feature. Maybe I've just become stupid in my old age, but Gnome 3 has totally floored me. For now, at least, I just don't seem to be able to work out how to use it. I was much more productive with twm.

I never thought I would say this, but (after yet another brief flirtation with xfce and some of the other lightweight DEs) I have embraced KDE, which with a bit of tweaking seems to be working quite well for me this time.

Re:You're asking who?

[BrokenHalo]

I'll second that. I'm currently using KDE4.7.3 with Arch, and once I found out how to use the desktop as a place to drop files as well as widgets (in other words, use it as a real desktop), it's quite workable.

I'm not much of a distro-hopper; I've used used Slackware since it was SLS, with occasional and brief forays into RedHat, Mandrake and Debian and Ubuntu. Arch is comfortable for me, since it's a lot like Slackware, but Mint has been getting a lot of discussion lately, so I'm interested in giving their desktop implementation a go.

Re:You're asking who?

[Denogh]

'Amazon is at war with Facebook. Amazon has always been at war with Facebook.'?

No, MySpace is at war Amazon.

"We have always been at war with Amazon. Tom Anderson is watching you."

Re:You're asking who?

[walterbyrd]

I'm thinking of moving back 10.4, just for the boot speed, if nothing else.

Re:You're asking who?

[Captain Sarcastic]

... and making a hybrid Gnome desktop

Well, at least that's the polite term for it.

Re:You're asking who?

[turbidostato]

Who, whom, whose... Too many options; that's just bad design. I envision "he" in all those cases and that's all. It's surely what Joe Sixpack wants and needs, so that's what our policy will be.

Re:You're asking who?

[kdekorte]

I'm using gnome-shell, but I'm also using avant-window-navigator as my bottom panel and I have also disabled dynamic workspaces in gnome-shell. If I could I would disable the top left hot corner in gnome-shell. Being able to switch between workspaces with just my mouse is important to me. My main beef with gnome-shell is that when only using the mouse, switching workspaces is a pain in the ass especially with large displays. I think gnome-shell is a great window manager, due to its metacity roots, but the usability of it needs some attention. I think the developers should have to use it without their hands on the keyboard and it will be obvious where the problems are.

Re:You're asking who?

[LateArthurDent]

So... why not try KDE4? The latest KDE4.7.3 is pretty good - I would not recommend the Kubuntu spin on it... I've yet to see a "good" Kubuntu. It's not bad, but there are better choices - in particular I'm thinking of the upcoming openSUSE 12.1 (out in a few days). The KDe build there is pretty rock solid.

Regardless... Ubuntu is not just Unity... or Gnome

I have tried KDE. They made other stupid decisions when moving to 4. Like the applications menu. You click on a category and the menu stays the same size and the icons are replaced by the icons of the category you've selected. So now if you want to go back.

I have a large screen. Use that space.

Re:You're asking who?

[Blakey Rat]

But it's not. The point is that the whole open source methodology doesn't gain you anything if people don't fairly evaluate the changes in a data-centric way.

And people in the open source community don't. What they do instead is post "I hate this", and submit bugs that are basically "change this to exactly what it was one year ago".

There's also a huge misunderstanding of what usability development is *for*... it's not to make you more comfortable, or to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, or to invoke nostalgia, it's to make your work on the computer faster, more efficient, easier to learn, and less error-prone.

Do you want to know why the developers of these new open source UIs don't value input from the general public? Because 99.5% of that input is just complaining. There's so much "I hate this" noise that it's impossible to find the 0.5% with the brilliant ideas of how it can be improved.

So, in short, if you want to help UI developers get on with their jobs:

* If you're the type of person who hates change, stop downloading the new version with the changes! You'll be happy, the developers who won't have to listen to your griping will be happy, everybody's happy.

* If you feel you have genuinely useful input, before you submit it, do a little usability testing. Give the product to your brother, or mom, and ask them to complete the task. Do a quick and dirty survey on how many people support your idea over the default behavior. Then, when you have data to back up your assertion, go ahead and enter the bug. (And hey, be prepared to find out maybe your idea isn't so great after-all. That's ok too.)

* And if you get a clear "we're not going to do this" from the developers, then just walk away leave it be. You won't help the project by continually opening up the same bug over and over again.

Re:You're asking who?

[RubberMallet]

So... you go back... there is navigation for that, and it has been tweaked a bit in 4.7.3, but... I fail to see your point. You woudl rather have the screen taken up by endlessly cascading menus? Then use a DE that provides that like Fluxbox

Re:You're asking who?

[LateArthurDent]

You woudl rather have the screen taken up by endlessly cascading menus?

Yes. Therefore, I can see the whole menu even if I'm not in a particular category. I have that screen real-estate, so why not use it?

Then use a DE that provides that like Fluxbox

Right...I don't use KDE. I'm explaining one of the reasons why I dislike KDE and use other alternatives.

Re:You're asking who?

[RubberMallet]

Fire it up in VirtualBox. That's a great way to testdrive whatever distro flavor of the day is without leaving the comfort of whatever distro and DE you are comfortable with.

Re:You're asking who?

[jp10558]

it's to make your work on the computer faster, more efficient, easier to learn, and less error-prone.

The problem I see with all these new UIs is that they (at least in the short - medium term) do none of these.

1. Easier to learn isn't necessarily easier to use. And the people complaining have already learned the old way. So they don't care about easier to learn.

2. Less error prone - it's more error prone because you're stumbling through a new way of doing things, rather than flying through the well known methods.

3. Work on the computer is faster - same issue, what you used to do in 3 seconds now takes finding a manual, web page, or asking for help. Way slower.

4. It may make some things more efficient. Not that I've actually seen in any new UIs recently

Example, Outlook 2007 to print my e-mail was: click on print button in UI, hit print.

In Outlook 2010 it's realize there is no print button. Hmmm, file menu? Oh, no menus. Right, ribbon / tab file thingy - gahhh where did my e-mail go? Did I lose it? What e-mail are the choices I may be making apply to? Ok, deep breath. Where is anything? Oh, print in small print on the left. Ok, click that. Click print button? Didn't I already do that? Ok, click it. Now it prints out.

Even now that I know I have to do that, I've added 3 clicks and mousing around to do what used to be one click...

I think the issue here is that for many users the new UIs don't offer any benefits they can see. To me, it's equivalent to the US deciding they are going to change over to the UK driving on the left. What is the benefit to anyone?

UI designers need to realize that the two groups of users who are complaining are those who either:
a) Power users who know the current UI inside and out and can do anything they need to do and would rather spend time learning new stuff that, you know, lets them do new stuff rather that re-learn something that isn't broken to try and get back to where they are today.
b) Users who have memorized the pixels of the UI and App they need to use, and who *can't* figure out a changed UI and freak out and now want to know why their computer is broken in the update.

Maybe there is some user who is not in the above groups, and who likes change for the sake of change - but I have yet to meet them.

Re:You're asking who?

[T.E.D.]

oh and if everyone wants to know what killed Visa for ordinary folks, Canel/allow? constantly drove them nuts

Which means your "ordinary folks" were running as priveledged users (a big security no-no. We've known this since at least the 80's.).

So then I guess the big "innovation" in Win 7 that won everyone over was the installer creating separate user and admin accounts by default.

Cool. I've been wondering what it was.

Re:You're asking who?

[moorster]

That's strange because I got the exact opposite reaction from my friends, family and customers. Ordinary Joes could barely tell the difference between Windows XP and Windows 7. They both have tiny little icons, a round Windows logo in the lower left corner, and a big empty screen in the middle. But windows 8 really jumps out to them. Average people, and I'm talking 5-year-olds, non-techie college kids, cashiers, bank tellers, etc. seem to think that Win8 is intuitive, natural, easy to use, and some have even called it sexy. Granted, I haven't shown my BUILD tablet to thousands of people yet, just a handful.

Re:You're asking who?

[Sepodati]

Click on Dash icon, then "More Apps" then click on "Filter results" and choose your category.

Re:You're asking who?

[Blakey Rat]

Example, Outlook 2007 to print my e-mail was: click on print button in UI, hit print.

In Outlook 2010 it's realize there is no print button. Hmmm, file menu? Oh, no menus. Right, ribbon / tab file thingy - gahhh where did my e-mail go? Did I lose it? What e-mail are the choices I may be making apply to? Ok, deep breath. Where is anything? Oh, print in small print on the left. Ok, click that. Click print button? Didn't I already do that? Ok, click it. Now it prints out.

I'm guessing that's more due to Microsoft finally realizing, "what kind of idiot prints out emails, seriously??" and demoting the option. I could be wrong; maybe they're purposefully trying to make life difficult for you. But I doubt it.

I think the issue here is that for many users the new UIs don't offer any benefits they can see.

Then they don't have to use it. Nobody's holding a gun to their head.

That's all I'm saying: if you don't want to use the new UI, don't use it. Instead, what people are doing is using it, then spending hours griping about how different it is, which is stupid and helps nobody.

Re:You're asking who?

[hairyfeet]

You really should try Win 7, its actually quite nice. I fully expected to hate it like I did Vista but it was the complete opposite, I found they finally got the perfect mix of power user features and making it easy for grandma that it all just fit.

You have the integrated search everywhere which makes finding features you didn't even know existed, like how my dad is learning voice control by simply typing mic into control panel, the jumplist for Explorer keeps up with the last ten folders you were using which makes it a Godsend, I love that damned thing so much I feel like my hands are tied behind my back with I have to work in XP, memory usage is much better with smart prefetch making sure your favorite programs are already waiting in RAM, Readyboost is quite nice for netbooks although I've found it also is a nice addition to full desktops, libraries are fricking awesome, you can have folders all over a dozen drives and Windows will give you a central folder that will let you organize and control them all no matter where they are, real sweet, oh and finally yes they have a TweakUI for 7 only its called Windows Ultimate Tweaker. The first thing I do on a new 7 build is fire it off of my thumbstick and use it to kill those stupid fade in/out effects. Why MSFT loves that crap I don't know, it just irritates IMHO.

I have to agree though that the new UIs suck, as I said nobody wants Win 8, and I tried Unity and I could not stand it, and this is from someone who has used a dock on his Windows PCs for more than half a decade so I have NO problem with docks. But what idiot thought putting the stupid thing on the left side of the screen when we all have widescreens was a good idea? Vertical is NOT where widescreens have the most space! I guess is it for people that will never use more than one or two apps at a time which leaves me out. I have nearly 20 items I use a lot on my Rocketdock and being able to just slam my mouse straight up and hit the dock makes it a hell of a lot easier to use IMHO.

But hopefully the world will speak and they will listen. the Linux guys seems to be migrating to XFCE and LXDE, good for them, and as you said it looks like Win 7 will be the new XP and Win 8 the new Vista. Oh and for the guy below that said the users must have been running as admin? Nope its just that Vista would scream about ANY change. Need to change something in control panel? Cancel/allow. you want to uninstall a program? Cancel/allow. hell i had one machine where Vista would throw up about three cancel/allow dialogs when emptying temp crap into the trash! With Win 7 ONLY changes that will affect the system, such as new program installs, throw up the box. I personally went from a dozen 'ZOMG cancel allow?" boxes a day to maybe twice a week and those twice a week were where I would EXPECT Win 7 to ask me, not for dumb shit.

Re:You're asking who?

[7213]

" Like the applications menu. You click on a category and the menu stays the same size and the icons are replaced by the icons of the category you've selected."

You do know you can change this behavior don't you? Right click on the menu button "switch to classic menu style" bam!

I also hate that default slideing menu system, so I change it.

Thats one of the best features of KDE is it's customization.

Re:You're asking who?

[NickFortune]

But it's not. The point is that the whole open source methodology doesn't gain you anything if people don't fairly evaluate the changes in a data-centric way

Is that true though? I think the big win of Free Software is that massive redundancy and parallisation of the process, and the fact the Darwinian selection will tend to weed out the weaker projects over time. If your software isn't fun, easy to use, efficient and stable, people are going to migrate to something else. Free market forces make for one hell of a design review.

What they do instead is post "I hate this", and submit bugs that are basically "change this to exactly what it was one year ago".

Well, yes. Some of them do, certainly. The trouble is that the sort of rational, cerebral evaluation you seem to be advocating probably isn't practical for a project with 12 million users.

On the other hand, that doesn't really excuse going to opposite extreme and saying "well, no one on the mailing list objects - it must be good". Or "it works OK on tablets, and the Gnome dudes are really getting up my nose - so the users are bound to love it".

What we need is an evaluation process scaled to the size the contemporary communities, and I'm not suggesting that will be an easy problem to solve.

Still, offering Unity as an option for desktop Ubuntu rather than the default, and getting a release or two's feedback from people he didn't feel it was being forced upon them ... would probably have been a good start.

Do you want to know why the developers of these new open source UIs don't value input from the general public? Because 99.5% of that input is just complaining. There's so much "I hate this" noise that it's impossible to find the 0.5% with the brilliant ideas of how it can be improved.

Hmmm... trouble is Sturgeon's Law applies to everything, not just FOSS project feedback.

If you're the type of person who hates change, stop downloading the new version with the changes! You'll be happy, the developers who won't have to listen to your griping will be happy, everybody's happy.

That probably works better for single programs than it does for desktop environments, and certainly in the case of entire distributions. I mean, if you're happy to run without security updates, recent versions of non DE programs and all the rest, then fair enough. But most people aren't.

Tell you what, let's have a car anaolgy. Most people get used to driving their cars. They get to know the limitations of the vehicle, and the strengths, and the build habits around these features. Changing all that is not something undertaken lightly.

But with Unity, it seems to me that a whole load of people, a lot of them basically "sunday drivers" have gone in to get the oil changed, and found out that Canonical have moved the brake pedal in order to accomplish this.

And they may well have moved it to a more efficient place ... but I can't help feel they've gone about it in a deeply wrong way.

You won't help the project by continually opening up the same bug over and over again.

Hey, don't look at me, I don't even use Ubuntu. I run debian, have FVWM as my window manager, and I know enough to work around most of the minor annoyances that crop up.

But I still think a lot of projects are being needlessly heavy handed in rolling out new features.

Re:You're asking who?

[Oligonicella]

"But what idiot thought putting the stupid thing on the left side of the screen when we all have widescreens was a good idea?"

Actually, a better question is "What idiot didn't provide switching modes?"

I prefer my docking (apps or icons or whatever) crammed on my left side because I prefer visually squarish footprints. It's taste, but I can certainly see your point. The option for any side should be there.

Re:You're asking who?

[Oligonicella]

Cite please.

Re:You're asking who?

[Oligonicella]

I could be wrong, but I think Gimp has in excess of two hundred functions.

Re:You're asking who?

[Hognoxious]

Or to put it another way, command lines are good for doing things according to a rule or algorithm, e.g. find all files with an extension of jpg. gif or png with a size greater than X taken in the last N days and move them to folder Z.

If you want to do something more subjective, e.g. find all the pics of kittens or the music files that I like listening to in the car, then you probably want a GUI.

Re:You're asking who?

[Oligonicella]

I'm guessing that's more due to Microsoft finally realizing, "what kind of idiot prints out emails, seriously??" and demoting the option."

Any lawyer, business or lay person who needs to appear in court and wants said e-mail submitted into evidence where they do not take electronic submissions.

I could be wrong; maybe they're purposefully trying to make life difficult for you. But I doubt it.

Of course not. Neither are they considering me when they decide to change things "just 'cause" either.

Then they don't have to use it. Nobody's holding a gun to their head.

Please describe how he can do that with Outlook.

Re:You're asking who?

[Blakey Rat]

I don't want to actually reply except to point out that that is absolutely the WORST car analogy I've ever seen on this site.

Re:You're asking who?

[Blakey Rat]

Any lawyer, business or lay person who needs to appear in court and wants said e-mail submitted into evidence where they do not take electronic submissions.

Fucking shit, obviously SOME people need to print out emails. For those people, they need to find the new location of the Print button once and then they're golden. For the vast majority who don't, the screen real-estate previously dedicated to Print can be used for something they're more likely to need on a daily basis.

Do you really need me to describe how to not use Outlook? Here, I'll give you a simple list of steps:

1)

How's that?

Re:You're asking who?

[Zo0ok]

You seriously think that "less is more" is a worrysome, generic contradiction?
I think it is very often a very good principle, in very different aspects of life.

Re:You're asking who?

[Zo0ok]

I prefer to have space for my applications, not for my dock. So on widescreen I always put it left or right. On 4:3 I always put it top or bottom. I have a problem filling my dock anyways... I mean: shutdown-button, firefox, terminal, and the "menu" for all the stuff I only use occationally.

Re:You're asking who?

[vadim_t]

That would be absolutely hellish. To make that command in a wizard you'd have to click through 20 screens or so, and if that didn't work, do it all from the beginning again.

Not that it can't be done in a GUI, but a wizard interface is a horribly wrong way of doing this particular task.

Re:You're asking who?

[Billly Gates]

You know Hairy, I try to keep an open mind to everything. Nothing bothers me more than people with opinions based on stupid assumptions or whatever people said, to look cool or fit in. When the ribbons came out and people were screaming I thought hmm this could have some benefits as Office is complex in 100% of its functionality. It took a week to get used to it and see why R&D wanted it. I can preview changes and do things I had no idea I could do. It just took relearning.

Metro offers nothing beneficial ... on the desktop. At first I was excited with an open mind as this would work for lite typing on a phone or tiny sub netbook for mostly output related activities. On the desktop I must say OMG NO! I downloaded the preview and ran it in a VM and it was terrible! I think your customers hairy were thinking of it on a desktop rather than if you said, "hey would you buy a tablet with this?"

Windows 8 can be saved if it includes the desktop as well as Metro. You can't utilize it with a mouse. MS Office for Metro will blow on the desktop too as it will be touch and output oriented. I pray MS will develop the desktop more and have the start menu back. My prediction is Windows 9 will do just that and fix Windows 8, just like Windows 7 fixed Vista with the annoying UAC and constant hard drive thrashing and indexing.

Linux is so bad, I switched to Windows last March and never looked back. I am not a moron who is afraid of the terminal either. The gui is just not a gui but a shell focused on single apps. Unix had multitasking and multiuser support since its inception in 1969. Again, focused on output to cut screens. Most computer neophytes who still use IE 7 (hello grandma) would pull there hair out not being able to change the background, select another running app, or do what Windows 95 did 15 years earlier.

Worse, HTML 5 and the world wide web is going to be held hostage if Windows 8 tanks! Why? IE 8 will be entriched as users will refuse to upgrade and a repeate of IE 6 all over again. In 2019 we will still have html 4 for computers while phone will outdo it with fluid interactive graphics, fonts, video, and 3D stuff, all because Windows 7/IE 8 will be entriched by 20% of the population. If MS is smart and wont fix Windows 8 they can at least include IE 10 with Windows 7 SP 2 OEM edition. That was the only way IE 6 was killed by SP 3 of XP including IE 8.

Re:You're asking who?

[NickFortune]

I don't want to actually reply except to point out that that is absolutely the WORST car analogy I've ever seen on this site.

I guess it just goes to show - one man's informed criticism is another man's whiney complaint :)

Re:You're asking who?

[Bitmanhome]

Slashdot is always going to give you a tainted answer. slashdot'rs hate everything

Not true at all, this is mostly the standard human resistance to change. The problem is that Slashdotters are tech nuts, so we're always looking for the most powerful tech. Developers get bonus points for making a device simple despite its power, but it must be powerful. Gnome 3 and Unity are researching simplicity, but completely ignoring power in the process.

Software developers are the worst, commonly working with hundreds to thousands of files spread over dozens to hundreds of directories, and requiring a dozen or more tools to manage. No simplified tablet interface is going to work for them, ever.

Re:You're asking who?

[ConceptJunkie]

I didn't know the ISO English committee had approved the new standard.

Re:You're asking who?

[ConceptJunkie]

It seems to me the length of the release cycle is orthogonal to how much you want feedback to affect what you're doing. The thing is, Ubuntu still comes in several flavors, although I've finally given on the KDE version. It was usually usable, but never as easy to set up or bug-free as I remember OpenSuSE being. Of course that was before KDE 4, but KDE 4 has had plenty of time to get stable... if it's still not stable by now, there's no hope for it. (In fact, it seems to have gotten pretty good since about version 4.4 or so). Nevertheless, I've started using Linux Mint with LXDE and have traded some (albeit cool and useful) features for more stability and less hassle.

Re:You're asking who?

[DadLeopard]

The heck with typing commands! If that is what you want then a Commodore64 is what you long for, or DOS! I went from the Coleco Adam to the Atari1040STe, to Win95 and stayed with windows till 2007 when Ubuntu matured enough that I didn't have to constantly type in the CLI! My mind and memory just don't work in the manner conducive to working with CLI! I want to be able to do things using Drag and drop and mouse cllcks, and mostly only type to enter data or use the very few keyboard shortcuts that have actually stuck due to constant use! I do not want to pretend that I am using a touch screen with my keyboard and mouse! I like being able to see my up and download speeds at the bottom of my screen and CPU usage and temperature at the top along with the few applications that I routinely use, I hate digging through four or five levels of stupidity to find an application that I don't use so often, I like it on the drop down menu where I can spot it very fast! I like to be able to search synaptic package manager, and no their dumbed down app center doesn't really replace it!

Re:You're asking who?

[jp10558]

So you never need to refer to an e-mail away from your computer?

Let me describe to you how to lose your job

1) Not use e-mail / calendaring set by management.

Yes, some of us can dictate what software we use at work. Most of us cannot. And I would venture to say most of us cannot find a different job where we can dictate the software at work in the current economy - if we ever could.

I have many examples, but here's one from Thunderbird - which I use for e-mail at home. In v2 - when I wanted to search for an e-mail, I typed in the search box above the subjects and it worked like a find as you type filter. Really great - probably my favorite sort of search. And it was fast. (One thing Outlook does do right on Win7)

In v7 or whatever version they're up to (Mozilla says version numbers are irrelevant right? Another new design decision that's *clearly* better ) the find as you type filter either is so slow to be useless or just doesn't work as far as I can tell. The actual search opens in a new tab, so again takes you out of the context you're in, gives you a new and different sort of listing, and doesn't let you quickly click through a filtered e-mail list and view the content in the preview pane. Awesome

Re:You're asking who?

[Blakey Rat]

Let me describe to you how to lose your job

1) Not use e-mail / calendaring set by management.

So either cope or quit. Man-up. Whining doesn't help anybody.

Re:You're asking who?

[jp10558]

I'm not whining, I'm pointing out what to me was a bad UI change in a program I use daily. You know, the topic of this thread?

Re:You're asking who?

[hairyfeet]

I bet you don't have a lot of stuff in your docks though. I just counted and not counting the settings icon I currently have 14 items in my dock on one PC and 16 on my nettop. I have apps I use often, folders i use often, things I need everyday i put in the dock so when i need it I can just slam my mouse up and there it is. I have used my Rocketdocks so long I don't even need to look anymore, i know by muscle memory exactly which part of the top screen to hit to get what I want.

To me the thing stinks of "Fuck you desktops and laptops, all we care about is tablets and cell phones!" which is stupid as hell. not only do you have 400 million PCs about to be EOLed but frankly the vast majority of folks I've talked to really don't give a shit about their cell phones. they take the one that looks nice or comes free with the contract and then they "learn to deal with it" while they are on contract, only to shitcan it and get something else. With the exception of iFanbois there just isn't any loyalty there, it all comes down to the offers the carriers have.

Last year around this time I saw tons of folks with iPhones, now I see tons of folks with the little cheapo Atom netbooks and Android, why? Because one of the local carriers is offering the low end Android phone "for free" if you take their ass rape data plan, and they sell you the netbook for $12 a month. Carrier offers a "deal' they jump, its that simple. I think Canonical is burning a hell of a lot of bridges to try to force their way into a market where if some carrier doesn't offer them as the cheap/free device they are royally fucked. And I think Ballmer's Folly is likewise a big case of dumbshit and may finally (Pleasw Lord! He is worse than the Pepsi guy!) get Ballmer fired.

Its stupid, its catering to a market where they don't matter, it pisses off users more than it impresses, where is the upside here?

Re:You're asking who?

[CAIMLAS]

Having to support Windows Vista almost got me out of IT permanently. Fortunately, I hopped into a larger organization which was still using XP before it became too late, and hastily started helping make plans to jump straight to W7.

Hopefully I'll be entrenched enough in Linux and misc. Unix administration before Windows 8 comes down the pipe for it to matter for me.

Re:You're asking who?

[hairyfeet]

Sadly I have to agree with you Billy. Once I showed my users that you in fact have TWO menubars on Office 2K7 they fell in love with it as did I. If you don't know you can customize the "mini bar" to have the things you are using most when you are just reading or proofing a document, for me the biggest are the copy and replace dialogs, and then when they are creating the full ribbon with its previews makes coming up with nicer docs and using more features a HELL of a lot easier.

But Metro simply brings nothing to the table, it in fact reminds me of that scourge of noob land known as weatherbug. Its a bunch or irritating cell phone style desktop apps that will suck up resources only to be ignored because the vast majority will simply fire up their browser thus covering that shit up! Not to mention the giant ass security hole as the whole thing is tied to IE and ActiveX.

And sadly i have to agree on Linux as well. For all the comments labeling me some sort of "M$ Shill dirty poo poo head" I've wasted a good month or more of my life trying every user friendly distro i can find hoping to get one that was user friendly, didn't break when you update, and worked consistently. Instead all I found was unless you treat Linux like a browser in a box things quickly turned to shit. Its kinda sad when a long term user i talk to here has decided to give up Linux for BSD after 15 years simply because they are tired of spending so much time working on the thing.

Although one thing I think you are wrong about is IE, hell even the grannies coming to my shop have ditched it. That is why they are pushing it into Metro, hoping to stop the free fall. but it won't work, the stench of IE6 soured folks on the brand. the ONLY place I see still entrenched with IE is corporate, and that is because Firefox pulled a Goatse on the IT admins with their little 'Fuck testing, we're spinning the numbers boys!" stunt thus ensuring IT stays with IE so they can at least have a support roadmap. Somebody really needs to offer a "corporate Chromium based" that gives IT 1 year of support from release or even better 2 so they can test and plan.

But to quote a late southern rock band when it comes to Win 8 'The smell of death surrounds you" and the stench of uberfail hangs in the air. You KNOW why they are doing this, as do I. Ballmer has such a stiffie for Apple he wants to be in the cell phone and tablet markets and thinks by sticking the Windows name on his ARM offerings he can jump on, but ALL that will do is burn customers and cause massive returns when they buy their "Windows" tablet only to bring it home and find their Windows apps won't run. fucking stupid.

Re:You're asking who?

[segin]

I upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04, and kept the "Ubuntu Classic" desktop. Pretty much the GNOME 2 desktop + Ubuntu's little touches I've had since... 4.10? Upgraded to 11.10, and now the login UI has changed drastically, and forces me to Unity. At least, until I can figure out how to select a new login session type, then it's back to Ubuntu Classic for me (unless they've flat out taken it from me right under my feet.)

Or maybe one of the other desktop session types I have (had?) installed. KDE? XFCE? LXDE? Maybe I'll feel IRIX-y and go with MaXX. Or the generic GNOME2 session that's not the Ubuntu Classic desktop... oh, the options, if only this new login UI had some obvious drop-down like the old GDM prompt.

Oh, here's one! I could fork Ubuntu and name the fork after my ex, Virginia. Then rip off Microsoft nomenclature and call the login UI "GINA", for "Graphical Login and Authentication". Not to mention that "Gina" is short for "Virginia". Replace "MS" with "VA" - the state initalism for "Virginia" (the state). I'd end up with VAGINA. The "Virginia Linux Graphical Login and Authentication library". Or you could take that in a few other ways... I'll leave that to the reader to figure out :)

Re:You're asking who?

[unixisc]

I see your point, but when I used NeXTstep and whenever I use GNUSTEP, I'd be pretty used to those square docks on the right. Yeah, there is the option in those to line the docks on the bottom (or top), and that can be done. I do prefer that to OS-X shelf, that puts pretty large icons that ballon up when you mouse over them.

Of the UIs, I do like KDE 3.5, and would like to see what 4.7 is like. I didn't like GNOME at all, no matter what the version. Ideally, I'd like a choice b/w KDE & Etoille, whenever the latter is ready.

On Windows 8, I think they might have done better had they brought back the sidebar that they had in Vista, but made it optional, just like it was there. I don't see why the Windows button has to be disabled, just after 15 years of people getting used to it. Also, I like minimal clutter on my desktop. In Windows 7, while some things had improved over XP, such as having the Windows icon instead of 'Start' but the word 'start' being there ballooned while moused over, some other things have deteriorated. Like the other day, I was showing a presentation, which kept going into power saving mode unless I fiddled w/ it. Under XP, I'd simply have gone into the desktop properties and temporarily disabled them, but here, even that, as well as disabling the screensaver, didn't do the trick. I really hate laptops forcing the powersaving modes when they are plugged in.

One thing about 8 though - I've heard that it's a lot less resource intensive, which is good, but a pity that they're forcing this metro interface, as well as IE10 onto users.

It's change for the sake of change

[YodaToad]

The problem that I have with all the new GUIs that are coming out it seems like it's all just change for the sake of change.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Tyrannosaur]

no, silly! It's change for the sake of requiring the purchase of new hardware to run the new GUIs!

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Scareduck]

^^^THIS^^^

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[TheGratefulNet]

I started using windowing systems at DEC using DECwindows. my first wm was twm after trying and hating the motif wm. this was in the late 80's iirc. after leaving DEC, moved over to sun systems and grabbed twm and pretty much stayed there for 15 years or so. lately, I 'upgraded' to fvwm1.4 as my window mgr.

notice anything: there's no 'desktop' and I don't have any need for it. I'm quick to open a term window of some kind, do things in it and if a graphic app pops up, so be it; move its window, place it and use it.

drag to trash? really? people feel they need a desktop for that?

indicators work for me (new mail, battery, etc). no need for gnome or any proc-to-proc comms.

don't need my windows to 'shake' as I drag them across. opaque move has kept me happy for 20 yrs and its all the 'decoration' one really needs.

I guess I don't see the draw of a desktop once you have a very powerful cli shell (term windows) at your disposal.

my system is very fast with ghz-class cpus but with NO 'desktop' pile of daemons and procs that sit around and talk to each other behind my back ;) fvwm really does all you need in a windowing environment.

as long as I can disable their desktop stuff and simply start my own wm, I'm happy. think of all that free ram and cpu cycles I have, too.

unity? oh please! as a famous politician once said, 'go fuck yourself!'.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[LordLimecat]

Im pretty sure Canonical gets no money no matter which hardware you buy, and that the Windows 8 GUI is LESS gpu intensive than 7's.

So no, not THIS.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[starfishsystems]

Hear hear!

And while we're at it, I'd like to register my vote for application windows being placed where I configure them to go. Once upon a time, this would have been dead easy to set up with X Resources.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[DarwinSurvivor]

Riiiight, unity and gnome-shell were designed so you would have to buy new hardware. Sorry, please try again.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ArcherB]

no, silly! It's change for the sake of requiring the purchase of new hardware to run the new GUIs!

Close. The idea is to have the same interface on every device you buy.

Personally, I think that sux. See, I used to wish I could run Windows on my phone. Then, one day, I was able to vnc running on a phone... or ipad... or something small, I don't remember and was able to connect to my desktop. Again, I don't remember if it was Gnome, KDE or Windows, but I've tried them all and the results were the same. They all sucked! They sucked big time. It was impossible to bring up or pull down any menus. There was no right click, drag, or shift click. Scrolling using scroll bars or even accurate clicking was next to impossible. Well, let's just say it sucked. The problem is that the desktop OS was not made to run a four inch screen with a single touch or even multi-touch as an interface.

So, now, rather than making a desktop GUI fit on a phone, they are trying to fit the phone GUI fit on the desktop. The results are exactly what you would expect. Most of the right-click functionality is gone. In Unity or Gnome3, if you right click on the menu bar across the top, nothing happens. Gone is the right click and "Run As" dialog. Gone is the right click and "add to bar". Basically, the right click has been removed from much of the GUI functionality. Gone are the nested menus. Instead of "gnome-foot"/"start-button"/"K" -> System -> Whatever-You-Want-To-Run, you now have something like this:

Move the mouse to the left side of the screen and wait. Did anything happen? No? Move to the top left. OK, how about now? Do you see the program you want to run? I'm not sure what the icon looks like. Just mouse over everything and wait over each icon. It should tell what each app is. Is it there? No? OK, click on the top icon, click in the box, and start typing what you are looking for. Don't remember what it was called? It's like a CD Ripper but it's not called that? Hmmmm. I don't know what you'd type in. I know on the old system you would go to multimedia and look for it. Now-a-days... well, I guess you are just fucked. See, the developers that made your GUI didn't think that ABCDE was important enough to include on the main tool bar so you don't get to run it if you don't know what's it called.

Oh, but if you were on a phone, this would look awesome!

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[cshark]

In yet another attempt to target the non-existent "Joe Sixpack" class user, they've stripped the balls out of damn near every next gen gui there is. It's a really stupid idea. Some are worse than others. From what I've seen of Windows 8, it's not as bad as the Linuxi. Unity is Satan for the above mentioned reasons. They're simply targeting a class of user that does not exist, that will probably never exist. And even if Joe Sixpack did exist, chances are he's never going to use Linux. I mean, we're coming up on two DECADES of desktop Linux, and I really think it's time that we faced this very important reality. Joe Sixpack isn't coming to the Linux party; and he's not bringing any of his free asian beer. Period.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[cronot]

Well, I disagree. I think the motivations and some of the changes are quite nice, but they are badly misguided. Both Ubuntu and MS are making the mistake of trying to cram UI concepts not suitable to the environment they are going to be used:
- Metro UI: Awesome for tablets and touch interfaces in general - I'd go as far as saying it's the best UI concept on these cases, better even than iOS. But that concept just doesn't make any sense and it's counter-productive when you're interfacing with your device using a keyboard and mouse.
- Unity: Same thing, doesn't translate well to desktops, but it's worse because this UI doesn't really work well with touch interfaces either; it really was made for and works well only on a dying breed of devices: Netbooks.
- Gnome 3: I'll refrain from too much comment on this one because I haven't really used it yet, but from what I've seen, this is the one that's actually the saner of the other two in the sense that they are not trying to jam a square in a peg hole like the other two are doing - they are really trying to redefine traditional UI concepts on the desktop, and maybe other environments too. That's not to say that they're on the ball though: I think they've really gone way too radical there. What I'm really saying is that Gnome is the less bad of bunch.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Jane Q. Public]

Agreed. And one excellent example is OS X Lion. I have to wonder why it didn't make the list.

Lion represented a modest but decent upgrade in many respects. However, in their effort to bring the "benefits" of iOS to the desktop they rather dropped the ball.

Their new "Full Screen Mode" is great, I suppose, on an iPad. On a desktop system with two monitors, like my workstation, it is worse that useless because it fills one screen but blanks the other. I end up with less working space than I had when I began.

The new scrollbars are an interface disaster. You should never make scrollbars smaller and harder to see and use, but that's what they did. They are about half as wide as before, and gray instead of in color. Not only that, but by default they disappear after a few seconds, and you have to hover your mouse on the edge of the window to get it back. I'm sure that saves valuable space on a tiny screen but in a desktop work environment it's just plain bad design, and worse: a waste of time because you have to hover and wait for it all the time. In very long documents, people are used to looking at their scrollbar to keep track of where they are. With the default behavior, you can't do that anymore.

You can set the scrollbars to not disappear, but they're still narrow, gray, and hard to see.

They added a couple of gestures to the Magic Trackpad, but at the same time took a couple of my favorite gestures away.

For certain OS X applications, they changed the behavior to something far from the norm, by making documents auto-save, even when you don't want them to. Now, when you quit an app without saving changes (there are a great many scenarios that call for this), you may find that your changes were saved anyway, against your wishes. You can usually revert them back to the state you wanted, but that in itself is a maddeningly slow and unresponsive process, with a poor interface.

The Finder, which is the equivalent of Explorer in Windows or a file browser in Linux, is now not just significantly but aggravatingly slower than it was before. And another elementary interface blunder: the sidebar icons, which used to be in color, are now a washed-out shade of gray.

All in all, for the desktop, OS X Lion (10.7) is quite a bit less "user-friendly" than OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) was. All for the purposes of making their OS interfaces "more consistent". They should have worked harder to bring desktop functionality to their smaller devices, rather than dumbing down the desktop to the "lowest common denominator".

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Nutria]

the non-existent "Joe Sixpack" class user

Eh? Joe Sixpack and his family have been using the Windows "Start menu" paradigm at home and work for 15+ years.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[maccodemonkey]

"The problem that I have with all the new GUIs that are coming out it seems like it's all just change for the sake of change."

It's really for the sake of touch. Touch based input has a far less accurate hit area, resulting in all the buttons needing to be larger. In addition, notions like mouse over and right click don't really work on touch based devices, requiring new UIs.

The real problems seem to happen when developers try to force a UI designed for touch on mouse users (like Windows 8.) Windows 8 brings the frustrating touch UI of their handhelds to the desktop, while bringing the non touch optimized frustrating desktop applications back to the mobile users. Everyone loses. Except Microsoft.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[shadowfaxcrx]

You hit the nail square on the head. I think what's happening is that the suits are running the companies now rather than the nerds, and so we're seeing what happens with suits everywhere - they see something work once, and they try to force it to work everywhere. This is why we see one good product quickly find itself surrounded with 50,000 lesser clones of itself.

"Hey, Survivor was a big hit! Quick, make me a billion more "reality" shows!"

MS and others are looking at the wildly successful smart phone and assuming that it's entirely the OS that makes them successful. They're right, of course, but for the wrong reasons. The OS makes them successful because it makes something so freaking small very usable. Miniaturization adaptations used by iPhone/Android/etc are only slick on miniature things. Shove them onto a 25" widescreen that you don't want to be touching all the time, and the concept which was so loved on the phone is going to be hated on the big(ger) screen.

 

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Gnome3 and Unity have nothing to do with planned obsolescence, getting people to buy new hardware, etc. Gnome doesn't sell hardware, and they give away their SW for free. Unity is part of a Linux distro that again, doesn't sell hardware (though they're trying to court some HW vendors to use their SW on their HW), and also gives away their SW for free. Unity is being caused by one man's idea that the only way he's going to make money with his SW company is to abandon serious Linux users, and try to convince non-Linux users to use his distro by putting a supposedly easy-to-use UI on it, and then make money when they buy stuff from the Ubuntu Store or whatever. Gnome doesn't really have a profit motive, its developers are volunteers or work for various companies like Red Hat (who doesn't even have a desktop distro, only a server one), and they're just stupid, to relate to the quote above: they've drunk the one-UI-for-all-devices kool-aid, and genuinely think we all need to be using the exact same UI on cellphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, and multi-screen PCs in order to "reduce confusion", so they're trying to force everyone down that path.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SomeKDEUser]

Once upon a time, this would have been completely arcane with xressources. Now it is dead easy under KDE (right-click menu bar -> advanced -> special window settings). You can set not only the geometry but also how the application/window interacts with the desktop/taskbar/etc.

But hey. Keep thinking the past was better...

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SomeKDEUser]

OS X always had dismal window management compared to X Windows circa 1995. It is the part of the UI that systematically drives me nuts whenever I have to use a PC running OS X. The huge screens of macs somewhat mask the defects, but not nearly enough.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

Gone are the nested menus. Instead of "gnome-foot"/"start-button"/"K" -> System -> Whatever-You-Want-To-Run, you now have something like this:

Everything you wrote is spot-on, except the part here about the "K". KDE is the one heavyweight Linux DE that hasn't drunk the one-UI-for-every-device kool-aid. The "K" menu is still there in the latest 4.7 release, and it isn't going anywhere. Furthermore, there's actually multiple UIs you can select in KDE; the default one for desktop PCs is "plasma-desktop" (you can see it running with "ps"). But if you're running a netbook, there's a different one that's optimized for netbooks, called "plasma-netbook". There's more coming for other devices (namely tablets; I don't think we'll see KDE on any phones soon; the tablet one will be touch-oriented as you'd expect). Unlike the other morons, the KDE guys have a totally different philosophy: they believe that different devices should have different UIs, though they can use most of the same underlying libraries and other software services.

Say what you will about KDE and their 4.0 screw-up, nepomuk, etc., but in this area, they have exactly the right idea.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ArcherB]

Gone are the nested menus. Instead of "gnome-foot"/"start-button"/"K" -> System -> Whatever-You-Want-To-Run, you now have something like this:

Everything you wrote is spot-on, except the part here about the "K". KDE is the one heavyweight Linux DE that hasn't drunk the one-UI-for-every-device kool-aid. The "K" menu is still there in the latest 4.7 release, and it isn't going anywhere. Furthermore, there's actually multiple UIs you can select in KDE; the default one for desktop PCs is "plasma-desktop" (you can see it running with "ps"). But if you're running a netbook, there's a different one that's optimized for netbooks, called "plasma-netbook". There's more coming for other devices (namely tablets; I don't think we'll see KDE on any phones soon; the tablet one will be touch-oriented as you'd expect). Unlike the other morons, the KDE guys have a totally different philosophy: they believe that different devices should have different UIs, though they can use most of the same underlying libraries and other software services.

Say what you will about KDE and their 4.0 screw-up, nepomuk, etc., but in this area, they have exactly the right idea.

Spot on. I installed KDE on one of my Linux boxes and really liked it. I installed Trinity on another Linux box and may even like that more. We'll see how it stands up to more use.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

Actually, Canonical is trying to court some hardware makers to get Ubuntu/Unity included on their devices. I don't know how far that'll go, but they are trying, so obviously they think that with this dumbed-down new UI, they might achieve sales of HW that includes their SW, which would earn them revenue. They tried doing an arrangement like this with Dell a while back, I don't think it panned out, so they probably think things will be different with Unity (they won't).

Also, they probably think that this dumbed-down new UI will get other non-technical users to download and install Ubuntu on their PCs (more than used their previous non-Unity versions), and this will get them more revenue from the Ubuntu Store and other such add-ons. Of course, this is a pipe dream too; anyone who wants a dumbed-down UI is going to just buy a Mac (or soon, Win8), both preinstalled. People who want dumbed-down UIs don't download OSes from the internet and install them themselves.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[donaldm]

I mean, we're coming up on two DECADES of desktop Linux, and I really think it's time that we faced this very important reality. Joe Sixpack isn't coming to the Linux party; and he's not bringing any of his free asian beer. Period.

Until the Microsoft Tax is scraped desktop Linux usage in first world countries is going to be small although it is much greater than the 1% the ill informed journalists have being saying for the last 10 years. In fact the only way desktop Linux will become main-steam is if Government bodies mandate it and this is happening (you guessed it) in India, China and other Asian countries.

As for joe Sixpack being invited to the Linux party, well I for one did not invite him since he always likes to big name himself and usually throws up after the first round. I am also getting annoyed at cleaning up the toilet seat after he has gone. :)

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to disagree. This change is not undirected. It seems you're missing the key point:
If you look at the stated goals, the main theme is always "simplicity". But those UIs don't feel easy to use. Let alone efficient or useful. They feel limiting and slowing down.

Now I've said for years, that our second* error in UI design, was to oversimplify the goal of highest efficiency to highest simplicity. And that they key thing that got lost because of this, was that we stopped caring about achieving "more with that less". If it made it simpler, then suddenly "just less" was OK.
It is quite obvious that that results in a useless, limiting UI over time.

But why did we oversimplify it? Well, I blame the Dunning-Kruger effect, natural selection's pressure to be efficient with resources, and developers generally being rather socially insecure geeks (included me ;).
I watched the whole process for at least 15 years, and it basically always goes like this:
10 People complain about problems they have with the UI.
But the Dunning-Kruger effect results in louder complaints from the lower part of the Gaussian distribution curve of intelligence than from the higher part.
20 The developers listen to their users, and logically hear mostly complaints of it being "too hard". But instead of trusting their own knowledge of how to make something better, and only using the user input for correction and inspiration, they bow to users in fear of not being loved anymore (sorry for being so harsh, but it's true) and adapt the software by making it simpler, at the cost of it becoming less efficient. (Which ironically results in them not being loved anymore in the long run.)
30 Humans, being life-forms in a world of limited resources (time/energy/etc), adapt to this simpler UI by saving those mental resources.
40 BUT: Since this now lower level of brain use is not a single number but again a Gaussian distribution curve, we again have a lower area that again thinks this is too hard. (One of Murphy's laws: Nature just invents a better idiot. ;)
50 GOTO 10

Repeat this often enough, and you end up with
- Clippy / MS Bob
- The iPad / ClickWheel laptop ;)
- Ubuntu Unity / Gnome 3
- Basically any piece of GUI software designed since the Xerox Alto. (Or: Anything UI-like that's not like VIM/Emacs. ;)

* The first error, as seen in all CLI shells, VIM/Emacs, etc, was to not know / ignore the fact that "The user does not know what he wants, until he knows what he can get.". Example making it obvious: Add a Sidebar to VIM showing the currently available actions (where ": -> Command" is e.g. a state-changing action and in its state, "% -> For the whole text..." is a action.), and suddenly, your grandma can use it after understanding the basic principle.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Clarious]

As a laptop user, there are two problems prevent me from using a stand-alone WM instead of a full DE:
- Power management: To switch between profiles when the power is plugged in or not.
- Network connections: Wifi and broadband connections. iwconfig/ifconfig/wpa_supplicant can serve me, but too much of a hassle. And broadband connection is really a pain, the last time I tried to use wvdial, I can get a connection, but suffer random system hangs. After that I stick to GNOME2 till now.

Installing GNOME power manager/network manager pulls a whole mess of GNOME dependency in, it defeats the purpose of running a standalone WM.
Of course, if anyone can show me how to deal with those two, I would be appreciated. On my old laptop (which I use as a desktop, mostly), I put plain OpenBox on it and have no problem using it at all.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[CAIMLAS]

What it comes down to, I think, is fragmentation and specialization of the market. One size no longer fits all.

Think back to the early Macs. They were incredibly limited in basic functionality compared to today, and their UIs demonstrated it. They were the cutting edge of UI and general personal computing.

Flash foward. In the early 2000s you had Mac OSX, and it was lauded as the next great thing for UI. Windows Vista, and to some degree, Windows 7, mimicked some of its functionality. Android and IOS in the lat 2000s also contributed to the 'simplification' or shall I say 'consumerization' of the UI. Windows 8 looks like it's going to push the desktop more in that general same "simplification" direction, just as GNOME 3/Unity have already attempted to do. (I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were planning the same thing with OSX).

At the same time, you've got Windows Server's headless mode and the emergence of more scripting-oriented Windows operation, Linux is as strong as ever on the server (and broader IT focus), and there is still a great deal of people who prefer Windows 7 'simple' or 'classic' and the XP 'classic' look (whatever they're called).

The 'traditional' interfaces are what people who work prefer. Consumers like the new glam looks.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ShakaUVM]

>>The problem that I have with all the new GUIs that are coming out it seems like it's all just change for the sake of change.

I was going to make a post on here, but then the first post I read said what I was going to say.

For all the touted features these new GUIs have, the telling point is that they never focus on how they actually HELP YOU use the system faster / become more productive / etc.

Vista/Windows7 is just as bad on the Windows front, thank goodness for Classic Shell.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rakaur]

Are you retarded? Exposé? Spaces? Mission Control? All of those offer way better window management than anything in X, much less anything in 1995. Virtual desktops are the only thing that X offers for window management. I use Exposé every couple of minutes or so. I use MIssion Control every couple of minutes or so. Before Mission Control, I used Spaces just as frequently. When I use something running X, I use a noose and hang myself.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[chris mazuc]

companies like Red Hat (who doesn't even have a desktop distro, only a server one)

Not true..

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SomeKDEUser]

Exposé is a sad excuse to compensate for a dysfunctional dock. Multiple desktops have been available since forever. Things like "always on top", tiling, proper control of windows placement are still lacking. NeXT had better WM capabilities than OS X (ironically)!

The only thing retarded here is the names given to stuff which already existed. "places" FFS.

I have exposé under linux. It works very well. I never use it. Because a good window list and a non-braindead implementation of multiple desktops obviate the need for it. One recent improvement is KDE's activities: sets of applications themselves distributed on multiple destops, associated to their own collection of panels/widgets/powermanagement policies.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

This, from the company where the CEO doesn't think Linux needs a desktop?

http://www.techspot.com/news/34038-red-hat-ceo-sees-no-need-for-linux-desktop-today.html

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Anonymous Coward]

Close. The idea is to have the same interface on every device you buy.

It's like when I went to the auto parts store for a new drive shaft.

They gave me a propeller.

Me: But sir, I don't need a propeller for my car.
Salesman: Airplanes are newer than cars and they are awesome. The use propellers. You know you can propel a car with a propeller, right?
Me: A drive shaft would give me more acute control than a propeller.
Salesman: You'll thank me for making your car careen wildly with this propeller once you realize the cool factor.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[awshidahak]

IIRC there's a program called fbpanel that can handle the notification icons that you need (such as network and battery) All it is is just a panel, not a desktop. Works great with ratpoison and evilwm.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Darinbob]

As well as simplifying to the point where they are more difficult to use. Sort of like when GUIs were new and everyone proclaimed them for dummies because you couldn't do all the complicated stuff anymore that you could with command lines. The appropriate solution at that time was for a mix of command line and GUIs (which didn't always happen). This time the GUIs again feel like they're dumbing down a bit at the expanse of capabilities.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rwyoder]

I started using windowing systems at DEC using DECwindows. my first wm was twm after trying and hating the motif wm. this was in the late 80's iirc. after leaving DEC, moved over to sun systems and grabbed twm and pretty much stayed there for 15 years or so. lately, I 'upgraded' to fvwm1.4 as my window mgr.

Agreed! Fvwm was the last wm to actually introduce a useful new feature. I've always tried to use whatever wm was the default on the system, and every one has been nothing but a waste of my time adapting to a new system that provides nothing useful over the previous system. And don't even get me started on the re-inventions of the xterm that don't even have the features of the basic xterm.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[TennCasey]

You forgot to tell us to get off your lawn.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ganjadude]

What held people back the longest was the bad wifi support. it took until like 2 years ago for wifi to "just work" in most nix distros, sure you could get them to work but i mean even in win xp around sp2 or so wifi "just worked" I wont be one of those who sy "this is the year of nix on the desktop" but i will say it may be closer than ever now that the "important" stuff works, and by important, i mean to the masses.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[jbolden]

I've been using virtual desktop systems since OSX 10.0. I started using spaces. Spaces is low functionality and still apps are not spaces aware often screwing up where they put notification windows. That never happens on Unix / X apps.

I love virtual desktops, but there is no comparison between X's and Apple's. hyperspaces gives you an example of missing features from Apple's spaces that are on Unix desktops.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[jbolden]

Well put.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[lennier1]

This!!!

Unlike Gnome (and others) someone on the KDE team had enough brains left to actually implement the whole thing in a way where the users are able to choose which type of interface they want to use.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[l3v1]

The idea is to have the same interface on every device you buy.

The idea is to transition from personal computer to corporate computer, tailoring and shrinking the freedom we're used to on PCs. It might be far fetched, and hopefully we'll always have linux ( :) Casablanca, well, well), yet it still seems this train has started, from wherever you look at it.

Coming back to the ground, the Apple and MS and Gnome-dev ideas to consolidate small/big/touch/nontouch/etc interfaces is probably the craziest idea ever from a user's point of view (user is different than user you know, one of them being a tweeting-facebooker-automaton).

Well, we still have a few usable and useful DEs left out there, so at this point I don't much care what crazy fog Ubuntu and the rest are trying to get lost in.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[chammy]

Wicd is a great little wifi manager with no X library dependencies.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[drx]

Why does it seem that people agree that Gnome3, Unity and iOs are *exactly the same*??? They aren't! in fact, Gnome3 and Unity are the first time the Linux community develops UI ideas of their own.

And, "task bars", or "window lists" that everybody is loving so much, don't work well. They are okay if you have like 5 windows open. We should be happy that designers are taking on the Linux desktop and are trying to develop solutions.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Jane Q. Public]

But all of these comments, from my original comment down to here, are kind of off-topic because what I was saying was that the user interface was WORSE than in the previous version.

It doesn't matter where you pick your starting point. Worse is still worse.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Compaqt]

Re: scrollbars are you talking about Mac or its poor imitation Ubuntu?

One of the funniest things about this whole situation is where Shuttleworth & Co. try to make it out as they are trying to make computer use easier for "normal people" who've never used a computer before.

To which I have to ask: how is it easier when you hide stuff which was formerly visible? How does that help discoverability? The whole point behind the scrollbar was supposed to be that you could tell your position in the document at a glance.

Now you have to constantly mouse over to be able to do that? Fail.

And, on the one hand talking about how "hard" it is to get your mouse on the menubar, Fitts law, etc., and then on the other hand playing hide and seek with the scrollbar, and making it narrower?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SausageOfDoom]

And, "task bars", or "window lists" that everybody is loving so much, don't work well. They are okay if you have like 5 windows open

I have 4480px of horizontal screen space, and that's not counting virtual desktops. Task bars work just fine for me.

And that's the point - Unity/Gnome 3/Win8 all seem to be targeting the non-"power user" who just wants to browse the internet or write a letter, or spends all day in an IDE.

These new UIs may be lovely for those kind of users, but I need to get stuff done. If I've got 27 windows open at once, it's because I need them all open, and switching between them quickly is going to be important to me.

If your shiny new UI is going to make me click the terminal button on the task bar and scroll through a list of 14 different terminals to get to the one I want, we're not going to get on.

We should be happy that designers are taking on the Linux desktop and are trying to develop solutions.

But the designers are doing things which true UI experts - or even just someone who has taken a basic UI course - would know are plain wrong. Take Unity's mystery meat menus for example. You can't put people in charge of designing a UI when they clearly have no suitable qualifications or experience, and hope it to come out well.

As another poster said, if you are an open source developer, at least you are allowed to join in the conversation and contribute patches before you're shot down. Open source users are just getting left out in the cold.

Ultimately, millions of people are perfectly happy with task bars and menus working how they have been working for the past ~20 years, and it will be a cold day in hell before I let you turn my desktop into a bloody touch screen UI. Xubuntu for me.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[MrNiCeGUi]

Yeah, except that those solutions seem to have problems if you have more than 1 window open. Why should that make me happy? What exactly are they doing that's better or more efficient than those task bars and window list that you disdain so much? Why should I care?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Jane Q. Public]

"To which I have to ask: how is it easier when you hide stuff which was formerly visible? How does that help discoverability? The whole point behind the scrollbar was supposed to be that you could tell your position in the document at a glance."

Mod up. Precisely my point. You don't take interface principles that have been hard-won over years of good research into what works best, then just toss them out the window because of some random idea that "I like this better". Change for the sake of change, indeed.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SpooForBrains]

When I ran a Linux laptop, I used to use SCPM to deal with those problems. Well, I didn't deal with the power management issue at all but it should be possible.

Create a new profile, configure the network settings once, then use scpm to switch to that profile when necessary.

See: <a href="http://linux.eregion.de/tag/scpm/">this guy's blog</a> for an explanation.

I don't know if SCPM was only a SUSE thing, but it was fantastically useful.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[arglebargle_xiv]

don't need my windows to 'shake' as I drag them across.

Amen to that. Or explode into fragments when I close them and spend the next several seconds preventing me from doing anything as crudely-animated 3D blocks fly all over the screen. I felt like I was in a 14-year-old's video game rather than the interface for an OS. OK, so you've figured out (some of) OpenGL. Have a biscuit. Now can I have a practical interface to the OS?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[justforgetme]

bah... foolish Linux developers.
They can't even write up a resource hog!

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[serviscope_minor]

I probably can't answer your question completely, but...

If you run:
wpa_supplicant -C /tmp/hello

then run
wpa_gui -p /tmp/hello

Then you have a perfectly servicable GUI for wireless network connections. If you are running a complient tray program (I use stalonetray), then you get a nice tray icon as well.

As for wvdial: I can't help. It works for me (mobile comms, both 3G and GSM) with no trouble, but don't try to run it at the same time as a wireless network else the routing may not be appropriate :)

Finally, if you run wpa_dupplicant with the DBUS interface, then gnome's network manager should work, even if you are not using the gnome shell.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[georgesdev]

totally agree about your remote desktop on phone analogy.
new simpler uis from unity or gnome 3 are not all that bad though.
unity has lots of shortcuts:
I have "windows" 2 launching or switching to firefox

you say you can't get to the list of your multimedia apps. Here is how you do on unity:
"windows" a
then click on all applications and select multimedia.
Now a great thing on fedora with gnome 3:
"Alt" "Tab" lets you switch between apps grouped by type. I usually have 5 terminals, 4 skype windows, etc ... and it's a pain cycling through them in gnome 2, windows XP, etc ...

If the UI coders could just listen to users, they would create great UIs, innovating, keeping what people like, innovating again, etc ... at least the gnome and unity guys are innovating ...

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[sourcerror]

Maybe Gnome3 and Unity just wants to keep up with the Joneses.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Ofloo]

it's a desktop, .. it's supposed to be easy when you work on it, not when you're not sitting at home using your phone. or do you remote desktop from the kitchen just because it's easy looking on your phone?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ynp7]

I'm not sure why Unity was designed, but it's probably a similar reason to GNOME 3: GNOME 2 just wasn't crappy enough.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[cynyr]

how about which virtual desktop to start up on? (sorry tried KDE4 back at 4.0 and decided to stick with XFCE)

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[realityimpaired]

Gaming was the only thing that held me on Windows 7. When I gave up on computer games and moved on to different passtimes, I found I no longer needed Windows. I still have a Win7-based gaming laptop, for the odd time when I want to fire up Civ5 or Dragon Age, or whatever, but most of my computing is now done on a Linux-based ultraportable laptop.

For people who don't want to play video games, and really just want to type up a document or surf the web, Linux is a great option. And as people realize that Windows and OSX are treating them like children, they'll start to migrate over to Linux. But for people who actually want to play games, Linux isn't really an option right now. Wine works reasonably well for most games, but there's still some gamestopping glitches in some games, and features that simply don't work. Not to mention all the fun times that happen when you try getting an NVidia or ATi graphics card working properly in Linux, or when you do a system update and it nukes your system because the kernel version wasn't locked. It's not a problem on my ultraportable laptop because that has an Intel-based graphics processor and doesn't need extra drivers installed, but on a system with NV or ATi graphics, on which you plan to actually do some gaming? Most people aren't going to want to have to reinstall their graphics driver, from a CLI interface every time they do a system update because some library or kernel module that the graphics driver depends on got updated and now X won't start.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SomeKDEUser]

Yes, that also. kwin is perhaps the most underrated part of KDE: it is one of the very best WM around, even if you don't use the desktop.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ewanm89]

yes, what we really want is a different UI, but all the same functionality.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[exploder]

no, silly! It's change for the sake of requiring the purchase of new hardware to run the new GUIs!

Close. The idea is to have the same interface on every device you buy.

In the case of Unity, yeah. But I think a lot of, maybe most, GUI overhauls are just for the sake of change. Specifically for the sake of visible change, to justify the purchase of the latest version of some very expensive product (e.g. MS Office with the ribbons). In the case where it's a genuine improvement, I don't think so many people reject a new GUI (there will be a few of the getoffmylawn types, no matter what).

For instance, Windows 95's GUI was a legitimate and massive improvement over 3.1. While many of us were nervous about making Windows into THE OS instead of subordinate to DOS, I don't recall anyone at all clamoring for a return to the 3.1 interface.

It's a shame I have to think back that far for an example of a GUI overhaul that was unquestionably for the better. I've never used Macs, though, and I suspect there may be some more recent examples in that world.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[MareLooke]

Well, my 15year old 2MB S3 2D only card can't run it anymore, so I need new hardware! RAAAAGE! ;-)

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[mothlos]

The problem that I have with all the new GUIs that are coming out it seems like it's all just change for the sake of change.

For this to be correct would suggest that what we already had was just fine and having to help people interact with previous-gen UIs on a regular basis tells me that it very seriously isn't. Windows XP, OSX, and Gnome 2 (not to exclude others I have less experience supporting) all have a slew of bizarre behaviors and ungrokable configuration layouts. If you want a very solid example of why these systems all fail your average user, take file management and the number of icons which exist on most peoples desktops. There is seemingly no end of problems for HCI designers to tackle.

Another issue which has changed a lot is a fundamental change in input method which has finally become prominent for many users: touch-screens. One of the great challenges of a touch screen is that even though people complained about Macs only having a single mouse button, touch-screens have to fake mouse buttons using tricks of touch duration and force, which are very poor. This makes several paradigms in design more difficult, and in particular it is difficult to do the click-drag which is at the center of a great many activities performed previously. When you see the changes in UIs such as Unity, Gnome 3, and the various mobile GUIs you can see efforts in this area.

So, while I think I have a bit of a handle on some of the problems trying to be fixed, I do have gripes about how they are trying to fix them:

Sorted grids of icons are a terrible way of organizing data so that it can be found. Yes, I understand that you can fit more icons on the screen if you do a grid, but it means that I have to do far more mental acrobatics to find anything once I have more than a few icons, so the only real usage case (wanting to display many elements) is the worst when actually using it. I have found a very strong correlation between people who are effective computer users and those that change their file browser settings to a proper list view (proper meaning not what Windows calls 'list', but what Windows calls 'details').

Unsearchable, fixed categorization is just maddening. Helping people override Gnome 2's program menu is something I have done far too many times to be reasonable. If I am someone's Windows computer and go into Control Panel and the user hasn't switched to 'classic view' tells me that the person using the computer doesn't come in here much. Recently I wanted to disable the Windows 7 edge of screen window docking feature and found it in the 'Ease of Access' control panel under 'Make My Mouse Easier to Use' and to top it off, to disable a feature I had to add a check to a box, which is totally out of paradigm. Making a series of choices among fewer options may seem like a good idea to reduce confusion, but it all falls apart if users can't relate to the organizational structure you have invented and if a user wants to invent his or her own structure it should be easy to do.

Automatically generated lists of 'recent' or 'frequently used' resources (like applications and documents) are unreliable and highly problematic. I frequently hear the cries of users who become accustomed to accessing a resource via these lists and then freak out when they don't know any other way of finding that resource if it disappears from the list for some reason. If people aren't accessing resources from a reliable source which only changes when they intend it to, then this will be a problem.

The OSX dock is a terrible idea and it is creeping into other UIs where it is even worse. The idea is definitely engaging in that a user who wants to open a frequently used application should just click the launcher for that application whether it is open or not, so just 'pin' a reference to the application manager. The problem comes when we want to then separate the act of initiating a new instance of an application or selecting a currently running instance. Now we have to have hoveri

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[gfxguy]

Honest question, as I've not used KDE (yet), but does that hold true for the numerous applications that don't obey command line geometry requests (like google-chrome, firefox, thunderbird, eclipse....)?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[gfxguy]

Basically any piece of GUI software designed since the Xerox Alto. (Or: Anything UI-like that's not like VIM/Emacs. ;)

I agree to an extent, but also disagree... obviously we've gotten a lot of nice UI enhancements over the years. The problem is that they say "here's this new paradigm you are forced to now use, keep your comments to yourself" instead of "there's a new component we added that you should try; we think you'll like it, so try it out and let us know what you think."

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[the entropy]

I don't know what distro you're on, I personally use arch linux. They have an answer to both those problems(the power management solution is generic but the network management is an arch-only thing, I think):

Power management:
    1) http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpufreqd/ A nifty little tool that allows you to define profiles and switch to them depending on a few variables(with plugins to extend the built in variables). Handles things like AC on/off of course, but also cpu temperatures, battery percentage, etc...
    2) install acpid and modify /etc/handler.sh to react to specific acpi events(like ac on/off)

Network management: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netcfg The nice things about netcfg is that it's easy to use and cli-based. This means you can have wifi up and running from the terminal without fooling around with wpa_supplicant. This is really useful for me because my laptop has switchable graphics and I've been experimenting with automatically detecting which card has been selected from the bios and loading the appropriate drivers(it so happens that the catalyst and intel driver packages are mutually exclusive on arch). This leaves me without any graphics on boot quite a few times and it's nice to still have internet access when that happens.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SomeKDEUser]

this, I honestly don't know: I almost never logout/relaunch applications. firefox I know remembers its window size between launches. The rest, I have never tried.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Narishma]

Indeed, an ATI Rage with 4MB of ram should be a good upgrade for you.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[itsdapead]

Their new "Full Screen Mode" is great, I suppose, on an iPad. .

(Or an Air) Yes - that's the point - they should have called it "iPad mode" instead of "full screen" mode. Its for systems with small, single screens. If you have a multi-monitor setup, ignore full-screen mode and just maximize the window just like you did before Lion. In most apps, its a new feature that you don't have to use if you don't need it. There is a problem is with third-party apps that already had a full screen mode and which rushed to embrace Lion without thinking first - e.g. Parallels, in which "iPad mode" was not a substitute for full screen (they've fixed it now, to their credit).

The new scrollbars are an interface disaster. You should never make scrollbars smaller and harder to see and use

I think the idea there is that scrollbars are much less important than they used to be, now that people use scroll wheels or trackpad gestures to scroll rapidly.

For certain OS X applications, they changed the behavior to something far from the norm, by making documents auto-save, even when you don't want them to.

Well, the plan is that the new behavior will become the norm - which will be a bit of a culture shock, but the upside is automatic, OS-level versioning of documents. The payoff from that won't come until MS, Adobe et. al. (LibreOffice...?) have made this shift so that we can start to use it in the applications we work with day-to-day.

They should have worked harder to bring desktop functionality to their smaller devices, rather than dumbing down the desktop to the "lowest common denominator".

...but the whole take-home lesson from the iPad's success is that desktop functionality doesn't work on smaller devices: Windows tablet PCs that offered desktop functionality on a tablet had been going nowhere much, outside a few niche markets, for years. Lion has tended to add optional, tablet-esque ways of doing things without removing the original functionality. The Spaces/Expose changes are a matter of taste (I've tended to make more use of them since getting Lion and a Magic Trackpad) and adding OS-level automatic versioning and auto-save doesn't seem like a "lowest common denominator" to me. There seems to be a clear rationale behind most of the changes. They don't seem to have pulled out the rug the way Unity/Gnome 3 have.

Of course, its also possible that Apple will backtrack on some things if there is huge resistance - ISTR that there were a few Leopard features like transparent menu bars and the 3D dock that Apple made optional after user feedback.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[gfxguy]

Thanks for the response. The problem I have is that while an application may remember it's position and size, if I have multiple open it only remembers the last one, and if it can position itself to the last position, why don't the developers make it obey the --geometry option? How hard can it be if it already goes through the trouble of remembering it's last size/position?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[gbjbaanb]

it ain't just the GUIs. New programming languages, frameworks, etc - all change. Where they could be implemented by adding features to existing ones, thus preserving all the built-up knowledge and expertise, it seems the way of the last few years has been to say the old stuff is crap and we must replace it wholesale.

I heard the other day someone say that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master of something. I also know that all this stuff has the underlying attitude of "we must make it easy for new/inexperienced/untalented guys to use" - well, d'uh, everyone's inexperienced all the time if you continually scrap the stuff they've mastered.

Extend, not replace, always wins. Too bad this industry doesn't want to mature like other engineering disciplines.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[LateArthurDent]

Everything you wrote is spot-on, except the part here about the "K". KDE is the one heavyweight Linux DE that hasn't drunk the one-UI-for-every-device kool-aid. The "K" menu is still there in the latest 4.7 release, and it isn't going anywhere.

The "K" menu no longer expands to use my screen real-estate. I click on a category, and it replaces the menu with the stuff in that category, and requires me to scroll if I have more stuff than the menu size. Compare that to the menu in gnome 2 and kde 3.5.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[gbjbaanb]

the KDE 4.0 screw up is nothing compared to the Gnome 3.0 screw up.

But I like the concept, different GUIs for different form factors. Who'd have thought that'd be a good idea! :)

All software should be written this way, there's too much crap written for web, desktop and now phones trying to shoehorn the same code into all 3 forms.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[adri]

The wifi support is only as good as the money involved. :-)

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[swv3752]

"...Whitehurst claims that they can't make money on Linux desktops..."

I think that says it all. If you are going to put Linux on the desktop, why pay for it when there are many fine free options?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[cizoozic]

The suits were right on reality shows, though - they may be trash, but they are popular trash that makes lots of money. Once a channel gets a taste of that sweet reality profit margin, they never come back. See also History Channel and its new slogan, "History: make it every day!" as well as "The Learning Channel" --> "TLC" and of course the MTVs, which don't even try to mask it.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SiChemist]

Kubuntu is my favorite distribution. Despite the controversy over KDE 4.0 --I hated it, used hacked kde 3.5 (now the trinity project) for a while, the KDE devs have come through and around 4.3 it became usable again. The only complaint that I have is that you can't turn off some of the graphical bling. I access some desktops using NX and some of the graphical touches slow it down quite a bit.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[deets52]

I could not run the latest, greatest Ubuntu on my "not so old" laptop. I had to go back a version or two to get it stable. Now I know that it is not 100% the GUI - probably far from it - but I did have to upgrade or in my case "downgrade"

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[badboy_tw2002]

More than that, it doesn't even matter. 80% of what Joe needs to do is accomplished by "find the web browser", so it doesn't really matter what you run on the desktop as long as there's a big clear "Click here for internet" button. The other 20% Joe does on his iPhone.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[cizoozic]

Actually, Canonical is trying to court some hardware makers to get Ubuntu/Unity included on their devices. I don't know how far that'll go, but they are trying, so obviously they think that with this dumbed-down new UI, they might achieve sales of HW that includes their SW, which would earn them revenue.

...People who want dumbed-down UIs don't download OSes from the internet and install them themselves.

You're right and you're right. But even more generally,

People ... don't download OSes from the internet and install them themselves.

OSs downloaded from the internet are never going to be mainstream. I'm running OSX, iOS, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, Android, Ubuntu, and Windows 7 somewhere or another on my personal/family machines, but I'm not even going to pretend that "The 99%" are going to ever go out of their way to install an OS. Most actively reject all but the most forced or hidden automatic updating. Computing devices are disposable, so if Canonical wants market share, they absolutely need to court hardware vendors who obviously can't put [i]OS[X] on it and don't want to pay for Windows 8. They're really competing with Android, and their choices reflect this.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

The "K" menu no longer expands to use my screen real-estate. I click on a category, and it replaces the menu with the stuff in that category, and requires me to scroll if I have more stuff than the menu size. Compare that to the menu in gnome 2 and kde 3.5.

Not quite correct. You're obviously using the newer "Kickoff" menu. Right-click on the "K" icon, select "Switch to Classic Menu Style", and try it again.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

If they bothered to make their own version that was better than the fine free options, they could sell it (or support for it) to corporations that have tens of thousands of desktops for all their cubicle workers. They could also tie it into their server OSes (which they do make money with), claiming that your business will work better by having RH on both the servers and the desktops so they work together better. Isn't that exactly what MS does with their desktop and server lines?

Obviously, it's a much bigger risk and a bit of a long shot, but considering most of the work is already done (the kernel really isn't any different, there's already several GUI environments out there that just need a bit of tweaking, there's other fine free options as you said which are all GPL'ed so you can copy from them), it's not really that big of an investment, and they include these desktop GUIs with their server products anyway. Moreover, several of the key GNOME developers like Jon McCan't are Red Hat employees! So why do they employ these people to work on desktop GUIs and then whine that they can't make money on Linux desktops?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

Wow, that's pretty impressive. Thanks for the link!

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

They're really competing with Android, and their choices reflect this.

Exactly, and I think this is probably a losing proposition; Android has been around for a while, is stable and popular, used on millions of phones and other devices, and is backed by Google, a multi-billion dollar company that no one is worried about disappearing any time soon. Some tiny South African company (that's "betting the company") trying to compete against that doesn't seem like a success story in the making. If they were only competing against Apple (and their closed, Apple-branded devices) and Microsoft (which is also a multi-billion dollar company but whose products most people don't like that much--just look at the uptake rate of WP7), they might be onto something.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[wstrucke]

All of the suits want to pretend they're Steve Jobs

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[kesuki]

um -- error

"we're coming up on two DECADES of desktop Linux"

i know x started on unix, but it got to 'x 11 release 6' somehow so was linux a splinter group that was all we need is a cli, instead of fully functonal unix gui?

i admit i didn't know about linux until 1996 or 1997 but it always made me wonder about the x window system especially since it was already x11r6 by 1996... i know xerox had an earlier unix gui cause i saw it on youtube but still...

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[kesuki]

wal-mart even tried to embrace the linux pc, and i know how that ended, returns cause it was doa and couldn't run _____ program. boy has linux changed since then!

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[LateArthurDent]

Not quite correct. You're obviously using the newer "Kickoff" menu. Right-click on the "K" icon, select "Switch to Classic Menu Style", and try it again.

You can customize things? I've obviously spent far too long a time using gnome, looking for that option didn't even occur to me when I tried out KDE.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[shadowfaxcrx]

And I bet Win8 will be popular trash that will make a lot of money too. ;)

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[vAltyR]

notice anything: there's no 'desktop' and I don't have any need for it. I'm quick to open a term window of some kind, do things in it and if a graphic app pops up, so be it; move its window, place it and use it.

drag to trash? really? people feel they need a desktop for that?

This sounds a bit similar to Plan 9 from Bell Lab's window manager, rio. Brief explanation:

No desktop

Mouse3 (right click) brings up a menu for window controls

Mouse2 (middle click) brings up commands for editing text

Mouse1 (left click) selects text and switches between windows, as you'd expect.

New windows open up a terminal. Starting up a graphic application uses the window of the terminal in which it was started.

That's pretty much everything for using the windowing system. Oh yeah, and it's a file server, so it's network-transparent; the entire window system, or just a few windows can be exported and imported on a remote computer very easily. It's also easy to recurse; running rio within rio to act like a virtual machine. It's pretty cool stuff. Very different from what most people are used to, but cool nonetheless.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think the idea there is that scrollbars are much less important than they used to be, now that people use scroll wheels or trackpad gestures to scroll rapidly."

But rapid scrolling does not account for at least 3 other features of scrollbars: the ability to see the place in your document at a glance (this was severely impeded by narrowing the scrollbar and making it grey, so it is now much harder to see), the ability to scroll very large amounts with one motion, and the ability to scroll to precise positions in the document. All of these have been made more difficult by the recent changes.

"...but the whole take-home lesson from the iPad's success is that desktop functionality doesn't work on smaller devices: "

So? That just reinforces my point: neither do smaller-device interfaces work effectively for the desktop. I understand that they want more consistency, but trying to take one and shoehorn it into the other was probably not the best idea. Here's a radical idea for you: maybe include them both and let the user choose which they prefer.

I can appreciate the fact that a large part of Apple's revenue is now from mobile devices. However, they should not degrade the existing base of desktop environments merely to increase mobile sales.

"... and adding OS-level automatic versioning and auto-save doesn't seem like a 'lowest common denominator' to me."

I should not have included that part in my "lowest common denominator" comment. I don't know if that feature was already in mobile devices. But I don't care for it. It offers few if any advantages over well-practiced use, except that it might catch the occasional mistake that is caused by a file save when there should not have been one. On the other hand, as I stated before it is very annoying and actually impedes my work flow.... I often have to use CTRL-Z to revert changes to a file before quitting, or else must re-open the file and "revert" it to its former state later, when I didn't want the changes to be saved in the first place. In my work with graphics I often have to do that a lot (make changes and export them, but not change the original file). So as a feature, for me this one is far more trouble and time-consuming than it is worth.

I can see how it could be useful for those who use their machines in a more casual (e.g., not for daily work) manner, but for me it's a big step backward. Being able to turn off the autosave would be great.

In fact, from a developer's standpoint, the "upgrade" to Lion made a lot of blunders, from reducing their support of MacRuby, to waffling about their distribution of Xcode (and flubbing the first release) to the decidedly lower-end-market changes they made to Final Cut.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[JCholewa]

Heh, intense customization is kind of the point of KDE. I have no taskbar at all (except for very rare instances of minimized apps) -- my switching is through KDE's equivalent to the OS X Exposé (mouse to a corner, all windows appear). All my controls are along the left side (because monitors these days have a hell of a lot more horizontal real estate and sometimes less vertical real estate than they used to!), and I have all my virtual desktop and run dialog shortcuts optimized for easy right-hand-only use. Apps/Windows with similar functions are (sometimes automatically) moved to the same titlebar, but the titlebar is tabbed. Close button is on the right like in Win 3.x. My windows explode ("Fall Apart") when I close them, double-clicking on the titlebar shades so I can see what's behind in the rare circumstance that this is necessary, windows slide around when I change to a new desktop or switch to a different window. I've barely used the "K" menu in what feels like over half a decade due to that type-to-search run dialog thing. Lots of stuff like that.

If you use KDE as it looks by default, you might as well be using LXDE. That's a pretty good one, too, and it's customizable, just not as aggressively.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[PuZZleDucK]

After days of wrestling with Unity and random PPAs I finally have my panels back... and apart from the slower performance, fragmented/non-existing configurations and constant graphical glitches, I'm quite happy with it :P KDE would have been so much easier, thanks for reminding me :) I bailed on KDE4, but it's looking pretty good now.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[DarwinSurvivor]

Fair enough, but that wasn't the *reason* for gnome3/whatever, just an unfortunate side-affect of monolithic libraries and people wanting "shining" (I do like the functionality of gnome-shell, the shiny I could do without).

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rakaur]

Sounds like you're determined to be set in your ways and never try out a new workflow. When I got Lion I was hesitant of the changes with Mission Control but it was only because my old workflow didn't work anymore. Now I have a new one, and I'm more efficient that I was before. It just takes a few days of getting used to.

Exposé is a sad excuse to compensate for a dysfunctional dock. Multiple desktops have been available since forever. Things like "always on top", tiling, proper control of windows placement are still lacking. NeXT had better WM capabilities than OS X (ironically)!

The Dock is the Dock. I'm not its biggest fan, but I don't really use it much. I use Alfred (a modern QuickSilver clone) to do app launching and a lot of other tasks, and I never minimize windows. I don't want tiling, and I don't know what you mean by "proper control of windows [sic] placement" as, especially in Lion, windows appear exactly where they last were in the right Space. I personally hate "Always on Top," but whatever floats your boat.

The only thing retarded here is the names given to stuff which already existed. "places" FFS.

You're seriously going to quibble about names? Who cares? OS X calls them Spaces, most Unix DEs call them Workspaces, so what's the difference? We both know what virtual/multiple desktops are. And sure they've been around forever, but what's that matter either? Most of your arguments are off-topic points that have nothing to do with the features available.

I have exposé under linux. It works very well. I never use it. Because a good window list and a non-braindead implementation of multiple desktops obviate the need for it. One recent improvement is KDE's activities: sets of applications themselves distributed on multiple destops, associated to their own collection of panels/widgets/powermanagement policies.

I use Exposé daily. Not constantly, but usually at least a dozen times. What is "braindead" about OS X's multiple desktop implementation? It gives you multiple desktops. You can live-preview them, move them, drag windows between them. What's missing? It's way nicer than any Unix DE implementation I've ever used. Also not sure what you mean by "a good window list." A list of open windows sounds like a terrible way to manage windows to me. I don't care for the 'Windows' menu item and I don't care for panels/taskbars. They get far too cluttered and unmanageable. I've never found myself wanting to see a list of windows. In Lion I can activate Mission Control and see every single window I have open, with live-previewing. Not to mention if you mouse over a window in Mission Control and push the space bar, it enlarges just that window.

You can set what Space an app belongs to. If by "widgets" you mean stupid little things in the panels, in OS X you can have them in the menubar, but you don't get a new menubar for each Space. I wouldn't really want one. Why would I want to see the CPU utilization in only one Space? Of course, to each his own. Your way seems to be stuck in 1990, but if that's what you prefer that's okay. You shouldn't lambast OS X because it doesn't do things the way they were done in 1990.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rakaur]

I ended up writing all of this before I realized you're not using Lion, and thus your post is almost entirely irrelevant. Lion totally overhauled Spaces/Exposé and they do basically everything that "hyperspaces" app does. In fact, it's broken on Lion. Since I took the time to write it, for your viewing pleasure:

On Unix / X, I'm lucky to get notifications to work at all, let alone show up on the right desktop / monitor. No apps are "space-aware" in X, and every app uses a different notification mechanism. Apps don't need to be "space-aware" on OS X, that's the point. The only app I've ever had a problem with was Twitter, which was a bug in Twitter, not in OS X or Spaces. Every application using notifications on OS X uses Growl, and I've also never had a problem with it with regards to multiple desktops. If by "notification windows" you don't mean things like Growl and instead mean dialog windows, I've never had this problem. An app in another Space will pop up an alert/error in its own Space and bounce the Dock icon. Works like a charm.

Mission Control / Exposé / Spaces / whatever you want to call it on OS X is useful. I can organize windows, get to whatever window I need, specify which apps stay in which Space so that they can be task-oriented (which is exactly how I work, and I work well), see every single window I have open at a glance, zoom in on one by mousing over, etc, all the while everything is live instead of images.

The hyperspaces thing looks out of date. In Lion, you can basically do everything it offers. Different wallpapers, different hotkeys, etc. I've used solutions like that before, and they've all been buggy and flakey. Spaces doesn't work the same way in Lion as it did in [Snow] Leopard, so this tool is probably broken and/or irrelevant.

[Yeah, I just looked at the site, and the first thing they say is that it doesn't work in Lion. *plonk*]

I've never used a multiple desktop solution on X that offered anything besides "here's another desktop, with a separate task bar." Boring. If the solution involves digging around and installing a bunch of different solutions and figuring out which UI toolkit they use and thus which DE they work best with, which WM they work best with... it goes on and on. How is each configured? Dotrc files? System config files? A custom GUI? A gnomeconf thing? A KDE konf (or whatever) thing? Who knows! It's a new adventure with every one! And that goes on until I find one I prefer? I don't know about you, but my time has value, and if the solution that comes with the default environment isn't sufficient, then the environment itself isn't sufficient. I want my computer to work well. I want to enjoy using it. I don't want to tolerate it, and that's exactly what I have to do when I use Unix / X / Windows.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[SomeKDEUser]

The fact that you think widgets are those things on the panel shows how far behind OSX is. Hint: the desktop itself is a widget (in non-braindead implementations of the desktop paradigm).

      A window list is any object which gives you a listing of open windows/applications. The dock is one, the windows taskbar is one. They can have many shapes and properties. Some are appropriate for many open windows, some are better for the case of few open windows. The separation of applications in activity groups with their own sets of widgets is the only way of covering all use cases (until brain-machine interfaces). In fact, if you do presentations frequently, it is idiotic that you need to adjust power management each time.

      Bottom line, OS X is not a good DE. It is OK and extra shiny. But it is in no way the epitome of user interface design. And the WM sucks donkey balls (no always on top, no per-application user-defined rule sets, no per-application transparency, no magnetic borders, no auto-maximisation, no window shading, haphazard window placement, dodgy resizing, absurd placement and size limits on windows). The menu bar on top? would be a good idea it it could deal with a second screen in a not-stupid way. Don't get me started on Finder and the Dock.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[jbolden]

Lion has a different model. We can use that one as well.

instead mean dialog windows, I've never had this problem. An app in another Space will pop up an alert/error in its own Space and bounce the Dock icon. Works like a charm.

Not my experience at all. And things like "bring all to front" may not even expose the notification window.

As for the majority of your comment, you are intermixing: a network protocol and hardware abstraction layer (X), the windowing manager (not sure which ones you used), and the GUI (stuff like gconf). You original claim was about virtual desktop management on OSX vs. Unix. Virtual desktops on Unixes come well before there were any GUIs. Here is an example of configuring exactly what you are excited about from a window manager that is essentially unchanged for the last 18 years virtual desktops in window maker.

If you want to look at one that's more modern (only about 5 years old): x-monad tour.

Now the GUIs add additional levels. For example KDE has the notion of activity so you can tie applications dealing with specific data to windows. So for example a word processor opening files a particular directory can automatically different windows. That's beyond application configuration.

[configuration]... I want to enjoy using it. I don't want to tolerate it, and that's exactly what I have to do when I use Unix / X / Windows.

For enjoyment I don't think you can beat OSX. That is a different question than "most power". I may enjoy using OSX more, but OSX window managers don't hold a candle to modern tiling window managers, where each virtual desktop can have different window management behaviors. OSX barely even has behaviors that are configurable.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[hazydave]

For Microsoft, I think it's change for the sake of !PANIC!

They pretty much missed the big move to mobile devices. Apple pretty much lead the way, Android made it cool, and Micro... who?

Probably because their Windows Mobile (or whatever it was called last week) was terrible, and not compelling at all. So they shifted things to Windows 7 Phone, aka, the Zune Phone. And had the brilliant idea of posing it as the smartphone for people who don't like smartphones.

As a result, Microsoft is still falling in sales percentage, even with Win7Phone being out for just over a year now.

That's a big problem for Microsoft. Perhaps an epic, ELE problem. As more people embrace mobile devices as the center of their computing experience, the PC itself drops in importance. So does Microsoft, unless they're the guys powering the mobile devices. Which they're not right now. But it's worse than that... if mobile OS dominate enough, Microsoft could lose on the desktop, too. After all, if I spend 90% of my computing time on an iPhone, what's compelling about Windows. This is the obvious reason that Apple's slowing turning MacOS into iOS for the desktop. That's critical for Apple, anyway, given that, while they lose pro users, they're gaining consumers... folks riding in on the iPhone's coattails.

So what does Microsoft do? I think the Windows 8 plan is clear -- force-feed regular Windows user a tablet-friendly experience, while there are still Windows users around. This will taste like horrible medicine, but what are they going to do ... leave? This is also going to let Microsoft copy Apple again... they can sell Metro apps in the Zune store, get you locked into their ecosystem like Apple does, etc.

Once you have been assimilated, the Microsoft-powered tablets and phones will all-of-a-sudden seem reasonable, and you'll question that goofy, PalmOS-looking UI on the iPhone and Android.

Or not.. but I think that's Microsoft's strategy -- drag Windows into the phone/tablet world in order to make those phones and tablets sellable some day. Otherwise, people just keep moving away from MS. One big reason I think this is the current plan... I was in a discussion with some of the Windows 8 developers online. They have all kinds of studies and all that claim things in Windows 8, like the App Screen replacing the App Menu, are just more efficient for users. I pointed out that navigating the Start Menu in Windows today is very fast, particularly with a wheel mouse (which they didn't seem to have considered), particularly when stored by application class (eg, I have hundreds of applications, and may not recall the name, but I know it's for Multimedia... Video... Rendering... ah, TMPGenc Mastering Suite 5!)... it's all small motor movements. But searching the whole screen, across two or more monitors... that's relatively very slow, and there's no way to categorize it at present.

The answer is always: the Start Screen is better. And no, Windows 7 UI won't be an option. It currently is, in the Windows 8 betas, so maybe it's a subject for debate still at MS. Though it sounds to me that the decision has already been made, for the reasons outlined. Not for any possible improvements in use on the desktop.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[gullevek]

Yeah, I agree to all the points.

The first thing I did was to turn on the scrollbars always, now in most of the apps the original ones returned (eg Capture one has the normal big one back). So this is "ok"

But the icon change in finder is a HORRIBLE. This is a UI disaster beyond words. For example you mount a DMG, it looks exactly (!) like any other disk. You have no idea if this is a harddisk or a disk image. unmounting then takes longer because you have to read the whole title and not longer can rely on the icons itself. Also for all the other folder icons. No longer you can say "green is download folder", now you have to read, because all the gray icons look too similar.

But this "lets make it all gray" is a ongoing theme everywhere. The latest google UI updates is in a similar direction. They moved back a bit, eg in the documents list viewer, and kept the colored icons for the colored folders, but still. This "all in the same color" is just beyond stupid. I really have no idea why they have done that, it just makes no sens at all. Seems to me a change for the sake of a change. We didn't know what to change, so we just removed all the colors.

And yes, Finder got horrible slow, moving files with this new show all the files you want to move is just retarded, nobody cares, you never need that. The badge with how many files you move alone would be enough. Thanks to showing all this data finder uses now more CPU and much more memory (1.2GB for finder? really? wtf).

I hope there is some secret way to turn this off actually.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rakaur]

As for the majority of your comment, you are intermixing: a network protocol and hardware abstraction layer (X), the windowing manager (not sure which ones you used), and the GUI (stuff like gconf). You original claim was about virtual desktop management on OSX vs. Unix. Virtual desktops on Unixes come well before there were any GUIs. Here is an example of configuring exactly what you are excited about from a window manager that is essentially unchanged for the last 18 years virtual desktops in window maker [maketecheasier.com].

If you want to look at one that's more modern (only about 5 years old): x-monad tour [xmonad.org].

I've used WindowMaker, AfterStep, Enlightenment, Sawfish, XFCE4, KDE, Gnome... just about all of them. For me, none of them hold a candle to OS X.

I also think your use of "GUI" is... not right, or at least, not what most people would think. A desktop itself is a graphical interface, and thus a GUI, so how can you argue that multiple desktops came "before GUIs," when a desktop is a GUI itself? The Lisa and the Macintosh introduced the concept of the desktop with the first two consumer GUI computers.

For enjoyment I don't think you can beat OSX. That is a different question than "most power". I may enjoy using OSX more, but OSX window managers don't hold a candle to modern tiling window managers, where each virtual desktop can have different window management behaviors. OSX barely even has behaviors that are configurable.

That's your preference. You can't say that "OS X doesn't hold a candle to tiling window managers" and expect it to apply to anyone but you. To me, a tiling window manager is an arcane and insanely outdated by just about anything else.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rakaur]

The fact that you think widgets are those things on the panel shows how far behind OSX is. Hint: the desktop itself is a widget (in non-braindead implementations of the desktop paradigm).

The problem wasn't what I thought they were, the problem was that you didn't define what you thought they were. Lots of DEs have various things named "widgets." You were, and still are, ambiguous.

A window list is any object which gives you a listing of open windows/applications. The dock is one, the windows taskbar is one. They can have many shapes and properties. Some are appropriate for many open windows, some are better for the case of few open windows. The separation of applications in activity groups with their own sets of widgets is the only way of covering all use cases (until brain-machine interfaces). In fact, if you do presentations frequently, it is idiotic that you need to adjust power management each time.

Yes, that's what I figured you meant by window lists. I find no use for them. I don't use the Dock. I have it on autohide. I use Mission Control and Exposé to do all my window management, and it works great (for me). I still don't know what you mean by "widgets," so I don't follow you there. You seem to have a habit of typing a lot of words without actually saying anything. I also don't have a damn clue what you're talking about with regards to "power management." How on earth do you need to "adjust power management each time"? What exactly are you adjusting, and what are you defining as a "time"?

Bottom line, OS X is not a good DE. It is OK and extra shiny. But it is in no way the epitome of user interface design. And the WM sucks donkey balls (no always on top, no per-application user-defined rule sets, no per-application transparency, no magnetic borders, no auto-maximisation, no window shading, haphazard window placement, dodgy resizing, absurd placement and size limits on windows). The menu bar on top? would be a good idea it it could deal with a second screen in a not-stupid way. Don't get me started on Finder and the Dock.

No, the bottom line is that, in your opinion, OS X is not a good DE. Lots of people, including me, disagree with you. What is that you find so superior, then? I've used a lot of DEs and WMs, and nothing has ever come close to OS X. Let's go through your list of stupid little things and try to figure out what you're on about, shall we?

No always-on-top

Yes, that's true, but I'd be willing to bet you 99.9% of people don't give a shit. I know I don't. I find it endlessly annoying, actually.

No per-application user-defined rule sets

What? Rules for what? Position and sizes stay the same. Which Space they're located in is remembered. I don't know what you're talking about.

No per-application transparency

Yes, there is. I don't know where you got this notion. OS X has always done this.

No magnetic borders

I'm guessing you mean window snapping? Some apps do it, and it's a standard Cocoa feature; you can download small tweaks that enable it system-wide.

No auto-maximisation

I'm guessing you're referring to the Zoom button. By default, it makes the window the size of the content within it. I don't know why anyone would ever want to make a window take up more space than it needs, but all you have to do is hit Zoom twice.

No window shading

You mean the thing where it rolls up into the title bar? People seriously use that still? Why?

Haphazard window placement

What does this even mean? You can put windows wherever you want, and unless you set it otherwise, it will stay there and be restored there even between application restarts. Seems like something you added just to add, but which doesn't actually mean anythin

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[jbolden]

I also think your use of "GUI" is... not right, or at least, not what most people would think. A desktop itself is a graphical interface, and thus a GUI, so how can you argue that multiple desktops came "before GUIs," when a desktop is a GUI itself?

A GUI has a window manager but also has additional components, for example:

1. a framework most important frameworks provide for inversion of control -- i.e. OS gets messages and passes it to the application. This is called event management, from the end user's perspective they are using the OS and the Applications do stuff.
2. A graphical widget set. Some sort of consistent look and feel between applications.
3. An interface manager. That is a way for an application to hint at what size various windows should be, and more importantly have windows that are "on top" or float together.
4. Sound support Obviously multiple applications have a to share a single sound system. Someone has to administrate between them.
5. Application programming services. This is what GUIs compete on. and the debates about bloat vs. features happen here.

Window management predated GUIs. Arguably some of the graphical applications from the 1960s had something you could call window management, but none had GUIs. In the case of X, windows managers came immediately (X windows 1984, uwm 1985) but it would be fair to say the first major Unix GUI was CDE in 1993; and most Unix users weren't using a GUI until the early 2000s after the rise of Gnome and KDE.

As for the rest, let me remind you of your initial statement Are you retarded? Exposé? Spaces? Mission Control? All of those offer way better window management than anything in X, much less anything in 1995. Virtual desktops are the only thing that X offers for window management. And this accusation of brain damage was in response to SomeKDE's OS X always had dismal window management compared to X Windows circa 1995.

You made a statement of fact of who had which features when, and which features existed. An implication of your statement was that features like tiling do not exist, not that you don't personally like them. Your original statement, was simple factually false. This is not a question of opinion but a matter of fact. If your statement had been that window management under X is more sophisticated than window management under OSX but you like the quality of Apple's execution of a fairly simple virtual desktop model then you would be stating something truthfully. The window management that OSX provides is rather basic by OS standards today. The desktop virtualization is on par with what Unixes offered two decades ago. You may find it more pleasant to use, but you need to start distinguishing history for your personal taste.

Finally:

That's your preference. You can't say that "OS X doesn't hold a candle to tiling window managers" and expect it to apply to anyone but you.

You are actually misquoting me here, which specifically refutes your claim. OSX window managers don't hold a candle to modern tiling window managers, where each virtual desktop can have different window management behaviors In context I was giving you a specific feature advantage, an example of something that didn't exist in mission control and is common in modern Unix window managers. That is an objective matter of fact about a feature. That doesn't apply to me, that applies to reality.

Again, you really need to start distinguishing between your personal preferences and history. You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[rakaur]

Again, you really need to start distinguishing between your personal preferences and history. You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.

No, I don't. You're just a raving nutter. Your entire comment was just completely bonkers and I don't even know where to start, and so I'm not going to tear it apart one point at a time because, frankly, you're not worth my time to educate. I was actually alive when these things happened. I doubt either of you were.

I omitted the part in the "misquote" about "window management" because it doesn't matter. Regular people don't care what a window manager is, and regular people don't want tiled windows or for windows to behave differently in different spaces. Regular people like consistency, not the absolute trash that Unix and X thrust upon us decades ago. X Windows was written to run three things: xterm, xload, and xclock. It didn't even have a window manager; they were grafted on later as an afterthought, and it shows to this day. You simply have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you decouple "GUI" and "window manager" and the fact that you define a "GUI" the way you do makes it totally obvious you're just making it up as you go, as you please.

I don't need to differentiate anything, because the entire time I was arguing what my preferences were versus what yours (and whomever else was involved, I don't even care enough to read the usernames) are because it was actually you (or, again, whomever) that was arguing that your way was the best way and OS X sucks because it doesn't have the misfeatures that X did decades ago. When you say "OS X doesn't do things X did decades ago," you are right, but that does not mean that that is a bad thing. In fact, it is in pretty much any way I can imagine, an amazing thing. X is, and always has been absolute trash. Breaking away from what it offered and innovating is exactly what needed to be done, and it was. Because you are stuck in your decades-old workflow does not mean that anyone else gives a tap-dancing fuck.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[znerk]

Gnome doesn't sell hardware, and they give away their SW for free.

Yes... but they sell support, don't they? Confuse the hell out of your user base, increase your support call queues.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[znerk]

So, now, rather than making a desktop GUI fit on a phone, they are trying to fit the phone GUI fit on the desktop. The results are exactly what you would expect. Most of the right-click functionality is gone. In Unity or Gnome3, if you right click on the menu bar across the top, nothing happens. Gone is the right click and "Run As" dialog. Gone is the right click and "add to bar". Basically, the right click has been removed from much of the GUI functionality. Gone are the nested menus. Instead of "gnome-foot"/"start-button"/"K" -> System -> Whatever-You-Want-To-Run, you now have something like this:

The funniest part of this kick-in-the-pants: these are the same guys who ridiculed MacOS back in the day for only having one button on their mouse.

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[znerk]

Im pretty sure Canonical gets no money no matter which hardware you buy, and that the Windows 8 GUI is LESS gpu intensive than 7's.

So no, not THIS.

On the other hand, changing absolutely everything about the interface should generate a metric ton of support calls, eh?

Last I checked, Canonical makes money on support, not software (or hardware, for that matter).

Don't ask me now!

[Threni]

Ask me before you make the changes. Don't make the changes then say `try it..try and get used to it...this is better`.

Unity is not better. It was fine before. There are other areas of Ubuntu which could be improved first, and you should have made Unity an option, not the only choice.

I'm now sort of happy with Xubuntu but there's no point in pissing off loyal fans this way. It adds nothing but resentment and confusion.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[shish]

Ask me before you make the changes.

So that you can tell Henry Ford that you want a faster horse?

Re:Don't ask me now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those changes aren't "horses -> internal combustion" kind, they are more "steering wheel -> rudder stick"-like

Re:Don't ask me now!

[DeathFromSomewhere]

I really do sincerely wish I had mod points. Instead I'll give you a virtual *high-five*.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[imnotanumber]

Ask me before you make the changes.

So that you can tell Henry Ford that you want a faster horse?

No, those who want a faster horse get a motorbike.

The automobile was for those who wanted a faster horse carriage.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[fynydd]

it is definitely not the only choice, just the default. you don't even need to switch to a remix like xubuntu. sudo apt-get install gnome-shell awesome xfce4 twm whatever

Re:Don't ask me now!

[Kaenneth]

It's called a Motorcycle.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[ArcherB]

Ask me before you make the changes.

So that you can tell Henry Ford that you want a faster horse?

Analogy fail.

How's this:

Henry Ford moved the steering mechanism to the floor board and all drivers must steer with their feet. The Ford Motor Co. says that it is better because it frees up your hands to hold and read the newspaper while drinking your cocktail. It doesn't matter that I like the old steering wheel and work better with it. For has refused to include them in any new models, even if the driver requests one because Henry Ford has done the research and determined that steering with the feet is better, end of story.
Third party companies are offing modifications to the car to add a steering wheel like device to the car. XFCE Co has created handle bars that fit over where the old steering wheel used to be. FVWM offers a set of vice grips that will clamp on to rod that used to hold the steering wheel. Other companies have varying solutions to the wheel, but it is up to the driver to install and maintain whichever solution they go with.

Or, they can buy a Chevy.

Guess which one I chose.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[hedwards]

More or less. You can take an interface for a desktop and scale it to large screens and multiple screens without too much trouble. You can take a phone UI and scale it up into a netbook. What you can't do though is take a UI for a phone or tablet and expect for it to scale well to a desktop with multiple large monitors. In the same way that you can't expect a CLI to work well on a device that doesn't have a keyboard.

Allowing people to use a minimal set of UIs is good for efficiency, but you can't collapse them down to one interface unless you deal with the other side of things namely the screen size and input methods.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[Gerzel]

The problem is that they did ask, but they asked for new users of newer tablet style devices.

I see a lot of the problems arising is that designers right now are trying to make one size fits all interfaces that work for desktop, laptop and tablet interfaces and it just doesn't work that well.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[exomondo]

Ask me before you make the changes.

So that you can tell Henry Ford that you want a faster horse?

No, so i can tell MS that I don't want Microsoft Bob.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[Belial6]

The big winner will be the desktop environment that figures out how to abstract the proper elements into anchor points that phone/tablet/desktop/TVs can all connect there UI widgets to so that the UI can change, but all of the applications seamlessly shift their UI to match the device they get run on.

Re:Don't ask me now!

[AvitarX]

I predict this will be KDE and QT.

Plasma is all about that, and I'm pretty content with the netbook workspace on my HTPC, and the traditional one on my laptop (the netbook one has a few annoyances though).

I believe that Nokia put a lot of effort into making it easy to develop applications for mobile, and desktop at the same time when they were in charge of QT, and even now, KDE4 people appear to want similar.

Speaking for myself here

[Anonymous Coward]

But yeah, I REALLY dislike the dumbing down of GUIs, hiding everything behind big buttons to make it "touch-screen friendly" and just not considering the power user. I was fine with Netbook Editions of linux distros(even though I never used any for more than testing) but this is ridiculous. We have more screen space and screen resolution than ever before, and now it's all nice boxes with rounded corners? Sheesh.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[jisom]

Even google with their website is doing this. They have a new Gmail interface that has from compact to cozy to comfortable.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[Andrewkov]

Don't get me started on this.. their "new look" is straight out of the 90's. I switched back to the "old look" but now I am constantly nagged with popups to switch, and it's probably just a matter of time until the "old look" dissapears all together.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[DigiShaman]

Actually, I prefer a two tiered GUI. The first one is dead simple, even if it is somewhat limiting. The second is an "advanced" mode that expands out to more customizable and controllable settings. Though it does require more time in development from a design and philosophy standpoint. It's also why we don't see this kind of GUI implementation often.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[wvmarle]

I recently upgraded Ubuntu 10.4 to 11.10. Wow. Shock, horror: it suddenly started to look like EasyPeasy that I have on my EEE 701 (recently broken, unfortunately). I loved the idea on the EEEPC, albeit at the time with quite some rough edges - it really works fine that way on a small screen. And then actually EasyPeasy had the organisation better than Unity: cleaner, less clutter, yet less hidden behind too many clicks.

But on the big screen, it gets in the way. Three clicks to get an overview of the open windows - no simple window list at the bottom of the screen. I really had an issue switching windows, choosing the correct one. I like how they put the menu bar Apple-style on top, I also have an iBook and liked it there too. I know many people don't agree on this point. It's a preference.

It always tries to maximise my windows. That sucks even more: if only because it takes away control from me, and I have to correct this time and again by unmaximising the window.

So soon after switched to the classic Gnome, now Gnome3. Not too bad, it does the job, doesn't get in the way, very similar to Gnome2 really. Got my application menu back (much easier to search through than those huge screens from Unity), got my window lists back, I'm happy.

For a netbook or tablet with touch screen, well sure Unity may do really well. It seems to be designed for that. Too bad that Ubuntu's main market still seems to be desktops, so they piss off heaps of desktop users, and make many (like me) think about other distros in the market.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[eonlabs]

Agreed... there is a major purpose to a UI that is being neglected here. It is a tool for training new power users as much as it is an interface. Every key and mouse click necessary to navigate after the first one counts against it. In Office 2003 for example, I could configure an ideal collection of toolbars which could be opened from my main set in a single click each. They would then REMAIN OPEN while I navigated the rest of the document as I edited. Menus would indicate keyboard shortcuts next to the items in question, and additional tools were provided on an as needed basis and could be integrated into ANY toolbar. Modern Office has replaced these "extra" features with a cluttered bar that changes every time something else is clicked, can't be modified easily, and then not into a configuration that the user can choose. Only by pressing the alt key does any semblance of available keyboard shortcuts show up, and the ability to fully utilize a multi-monitor system is severely impaired (try editing a powerpoint with a reference slide from another document open).

My latest gripe is the obsession with clustering. I don't want my windows clustered by application. I frequently find I have several documents open, each associated with a web page and a pdf. I may want to cluster each document with a firefox window and a pdf window, but grouping by application is the worst way to cluster the documents I have open when I'm doing that.

Modern UI developments have a lot of ego. Users have a very wide range of preferences and the latest 'improvements' in UI have stripped the options that support that range of choice. And the reduction in fidelity comes at the increased memory and cpu cost of a reasonable modern video game. If it's going to take more resources to run my operating system than a game of Portal, I better enjoy working on it at least half as much.

When vista came out, I pulled down ubuntu. When 7 came out, ubuntu followed suit and I pulled down Mint instead. I've setup an old version of XP to make sure I'm ready for if and when Mint decides to jump into the black hole.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[exomondo]

We have more screen space and screen resolution than ever before

Screen resolutions are pretty much the same as they were 5 years (well even more than that) ago. 22" is still 1680x1050, 24" is still 1920x1200, 30" 2560x1600, etc...

Re:Speaking for myself here

[couchslug]

Touch screen UI fucks need to stay with touch screens and should be chased away from desktop computers with utter hostility.

They add nothing and need to fucking die.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[flimflammer]

Overall I don't mind the Gmail switch, but there is a lot of information needlessly hidden and filled with whitespace I think is retarded. For instance, you can't find out when an email was received while in the email without clicking the tiny little arrow next to the sender of that particular message. The area the time was normally listed instead only lists the date. I just don't get why you would take a time and date field, remove the time, and hide it somewhere else.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[LordKronos]

That new gmail interface sucks. I'm convinced that the issues is that all of their graphics designers are on strike. I suck at graphic design, but even I can do better than that.

Individual messages in conversations just blend together. I can't compose more than 1 reply at a time in a thread anymore. In long mail list threads, I often like to start multiple replies, but continue reading the thread before I submit anything or compose further. No more. And WTF are those button icons? That's supposed to mean "archive"? And is that a trash can or a card being inserted into a slot. And why is there a folder button AND a tag button when they are the same thing? Yes, I know the folder means to move the message, but that's not intuitive from the graphic, and if I have to stop for a second to think about each and every icon, that's just crap.

Please stop trying to make a consistent interface across all device (aka dumbing down to the least common denominator),

Re:Speaking for myself here

[flirno]

Yeah once I get sick of gmail I will move out of web email entirely. I'll probably go back to pegasus as it turns out it is still alive and kicking.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[jbolden]

I agree the best application GUI I ever saw for an app which wanted to support a range of users had 4 levels. The problem is that developers often don't choose what should be at each level thus forcing all users into the more advanced one. The old Office menus is a good example of this.

But I absolutely love the idea of interface levels of difficulty.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[jbolden]

I think you want an advanced window manager and not a GUI. There are a bunch but I'd try enlightenment Since you are an Ubuntu guy, OpenGEU might be a distribution (live CD available) you would like that is a nice transition. They use enlightenment but with a more minimal version of Gnome.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[jbolden]

Actually after I posted I noted OpenGEU is paused. There are a bunch of enlightenment choices, I don't know which is best for you. I'd just look. Bodhi, is a well respected one but that might be a step too far.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[HiThere]

It's not so much a dumbing down, though that *is* happening too. It's designing the GUIs for phones and tablets. Maybe they're fine for that, I wouldn't know. I have a desktop, and that's the machine I *want* to use. Tablet GUIs are terrible. It's not that they're new, it's that they are unfit for the purpose.

FWIW, even KDE4 is inferior, but at least it's useable. Gnome3 and Unity aren't. (Admittedly, I'm basing this on screen shots and what I've seen on other people's computers. Mine won't run those. But Debian testing installed Gnome3, and the Gnome2 reversion for systems without accelerated graphics was so butt-ugly that I switched to Debian stable, which still has Gnome2. Unfortunately each of the other window managers has something badly wrong with it, e.g., one of them, I think it's LXDE, doesn't recognize a left-handed mouse. It's got the control panel, in fact it's got two different ones. But they don't do anything. I checked the buglist and it was reported, and acknowledged, over a year ago. So that one's out. At least until they fix that.

I may end up running KDE4, but perhaps not. Pearson is reporting that KDE3 is nearing readiness for release. And KDE3 is far superior (for my use case) to any of the alternatives, even to Gnome2, which is the only one that is close. So for now I'm staying with Debian stable, and hoping.

But it's not that it's new that's the problem. A few years ago I switched between KDE & Gnome several times, depending on which one was better at the time. It's that the new GUIs are unfit for the purpose. THAT I despise.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[Dr_Barnowl]

Indeed, and the laptop screens seem to be going backwards because of the consumer display revolution. I remember having a 1600x1200 laptop display 10 years ago and being glad of it.

These days my laptop has a 1440x900 screen, my desktop panels at work are 1280x1024 (more to do with my employer being cheap... but the new widescreen panels they are buying are 1440x900 as well, I think).

As someone who wants as many vertical pixels as possible, I'm not happy....

Re:Speaking for myself here

[pmontra]

Not on laptops. 15" usually went down to 1366x768 (16:9) . My 5 years old 15" is 1680x1050 (16:10), 1400x900 was common. So, "we have less screen space and lower screen resolutions than before" would be more correct for GP to write.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[liquidlovemonster]

I can't help thinking that Tomy Toys is behind all these new, gui's, Think they're gonna pop out at any time as the next Apple.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[bhtooefr]

Should check out GEOS, recent versions do pretty much exactly that, although with more tiers, and with some customizability (if you're a newbie, but such and such advanced feature is critical, you can enable it).

Re:Speaking for myself here

[rjstanford]

We have more screen space and screen resolution than ever before

Screen resolutions are pretty much the same as they were 5 years (well even more than that) ago. 22" is still 1680x1050, 24" is still 1920x1200, 30" 2560x1600, etc...

However, more people than before have large, cheap monitors. Reasonable 27" screens can be purchased for a few hundred dollars, great ones for less than a thousand. That's new. That's then causing more people to have higher resolutions than they did 5 years ago.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[nedlohs]

But they're cheaper, so you have two or three of them...

Re:Speaking for myself here

[SiChemist]

I agree with you and I'll take it one step further: You're only a newbie when you first start using the system. After you learn how to use it, all this "simplification" is for nothing. Give me a system that has a bit of a learning curve, but is POWERFUL and once I learn it I will have the power at my fingertips and can use the system efficiently!

(I use KDE on Kubuntu.)

Re:Speaking for myself here

[Sepodati]

"number of clicks" is the worst usability metric ever, imo.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[AvitarX]

Why does everybody say Unity is touch friendly?

Doesn't the damned launch bar dock thingy auto-hide with so option for otherwise? Not touch friendly at all.

Re:Speaking for myself here

[wvmarle]

In this case the difference between throwing your mouse pointer in the right-top corner, and making two accurately aimed clicks. Big difference in usability. This to get the expose-like window overview, in where you can click the window you want to the foreground.

The alternative that I have in Gnome is also a window list at the bottom of the screen. A single aimed click to get back my window. That convenient overview is completely gone in Unity, simply no easy way to change windows. And that sucks.

People also hated...

[CannonballHead]

... KDE 4, Windows 7, Windows Vista... some people hate ALL GUIs.

Me? I like Windows 7. I find it nicer and faster than XP's interface, actually. I also like gnome better than KDE in general, but I preferred KDE 3x or 4x. I have not tried gnome3/unity yet, so can't comment there.

I sometimes wonder how long this debate has gone on. I'm guessing people hated Windows 95 when compared to 3.1 (or equivalent Mac OS version changes). People probably tried to show how a monitor was a disadvantage from the teletype; afterall, with teletypes you had a permanent hard copy and didn't risk losing it! ... (I have no source for this, I'm just speculating ;) )

I do think there are some things that don't make sense though - such as touch-screen-GUIs used on non-touch-screens, or the other way around.

Re:People also hated...

[epyT-R]

with aero enabled the blitting is faster, but I wouldn't say it responds faster than xp. it's a bit slower..and I"m comparing both with all animations disabled.

Re:People also hated...

[ohnocitizen]

Me? I like Windows ME. It has the fastest interface (measured in boot time to blue screen). I also like ratpoison. For a Linux window manager I enjoy fluxbox.

Re:People also hated...

[msobkow]

People hate change.

End of story.

Re:People also hated...

[rapidreload]

I like some of the new GUI in Win 7/Vista, but by God do I hate having to navigate through numerous windows to get to somewhere which only took two clicks in previous versions; and that's when I can find the damn location of whatever the fuck I'm looking for. At least shell hasn't changed its interactivity.

One thing I like about Windows 7 is that the search bar in the "Start" menu doesn't just find programs to launch, but also actions.

For example, people complain that it takes a lot of clicks to find out your IP address for a network interface in Windows Vista/7. I'm not sure about Vista, but I know that in Windows 7, I can do this:

1. Hit Windows Key -> type in: "ip address" (no quotes) and hit Enter. The action shown before hitting enter will be "View network connections".

2. The Network Connections window will show up. Double click on the interface you're after, and you'll see what you used to see in XP - the info for the interface (at which point click Details as you would in XP and you'll get all the pertinent info).

There are a whole bunch of actions coded into Windows 7, so just give it a go and see if it has the shortcut for the action you're after (it probably does). When someone tries to be a smartass and say "hey look, it seems like even Microsoft knows the command line is superior!" I just remind them that you don't get actions of this form in a Bash shell. GNOME Do does have some support, but given it's entirely integrated into the OS I expect Windows 7 has it all.

Re:People also hated...

[Gaygirlie]

Me? I like Windows 7.

Me too. Then again, I've found 7 quite pleasing to use in all of its aspects ever since I first got it. Sure, the theme could be better-looking, but overall the UI is very useable.

I also like gnome better than KDE in general, but I preferred KDE 3x or 4x.

I personally liked GNOME 2.x very much. I've always been partial to clean, uncluttered looks and feel, and that's why I've never felt at home on KDE. KDE has always tended to look 'prettier' but there's much more to being a good UI than just looks, and I suppose KDE's feel just doesn't suit me.

I do think there are some things that don't make sense though - such as touch-screen-GUIs used on non-touch-screens, or the other way around.

Again, I agree with you entirely. People tend to hate stuff without any logical reason behind it other than "it's different", but I personally don't like Unity/GNOME3/etc. simply because it feels it simply exists to offer eye-candy. I certainly haven't felt any more productive than with more traditional WMs and solutions. Sure, I do think I could get used to using those, but it's not that that I've ever claimed to have a problem with; it's that I don't get some sort of enjoyment from useless clutter or roundabout way of doing things that used to work with a single click before.

That said, I don't "hate" any of these UIs. I simply do not bother to waste my time on hating something like that. I'll just simply choose what fits me if I can, and make do with what I have when I can't.

Re:People also hated...

[emkyooess]

If I'm mousing, I'm MOUSING. If I'm keyboarding, I'm KEYBOARDING. It's usually terribly inefficient to go back and forth between the two. Keyboard shortcuts are weaker, and mousing is weaker.

Re:People also hated...

[Cratylus_DS]

I've been known to rant in an unhinged manner about the ribbon and unity. Thing is, I don't wish either of them off my computers. I just wish they were an option rather than something that is hard to avoid. I've been dismissed as a curmudgeon but honestly I'm just trying to get shit done, and it's a pain in the ass investing the time in learning new UI habits just because someone else thinks a new way of doing things is so cool that it should be default, if not outright unavoidable. Some of us aren't just dicking around with our computers. For the record I loved Win95 and NT 4.0 because the taskbar was a long overdue feature which...btw...you don't HAVE to use if you don't like it.

Re:People also hated...

[hedwards]

Windows 7 definitely has the best UI I've seen out of MS pretty much ever. At least as far as GUIs go. Things are well designed and seem to work well, I can pin commonly used apps to the taskbar, but still have access to a useful startmenu.

Re:People also hated...

[Sancho]

I liked Windows 7. I liked iOS when I first tried it. I haven't tried Metro, so I can't speculate.

I hate Unity. It just doesn't fit my workflow, and I can't make it fit my workflow.

I don't mind change when it doesn't get in my way. A slight learning curve is okay, but a steep one or something that simply won't work for me isn't.

Re:People also hated...

[rapidreload]

It's usually terribly inefficient to go back and forth between the two.

I really doubt it's as inefficient as you might think. It's just practice. Maybe you should take up PC gaming - FPS and strategy games are a great way to learn parallel keyboard/mouse management. :)

Re:People also hated...

[PrimaryConsult]

Except the start menu search box makes the mousing a lot less tedious. I *never* organized my start menu and cannot be bothered to do so. The XP way, you have to mouse over menus until you find what you want, sometimes (especially for system things) right clicking and choosing a menu option. Since every application is important enough to want its own folder (sometimes folder tree) you eventually have so many things that you either have columns or have to scroll (or need to start organizing the start menu, a huge timewaster).

The Windows 7 way, you can simply hit the windows key, start typing and you are now one click away from whatever you wanted, as long as it's *somewhere* in your start menu (or one of the many keywords that are attached to various control panel things). If you find yourself doing it a lot, it's trivially easy to pin whatever application you keep going for to the start menu or taskbar.

That, and the desktop slideshow were the two main features that got me off of Windows XP (64 bit) for my Windows partition.
For Linux I still use Debian with either Gnome 2, LXDE, or Trinity depending on the device. When you can bind a key to open a command prompt anywhere, menu efficiency is a non-issue.

Re:People also hated...

[ShakaUVM]

>>... KDE 4, Windows 7, Windows Vista... some people hate ALL GUIs.

That's too simplistic. Every time a new version comes out, I read over all the new features (so I know I'm not missing something) and then proceed to play with it, and see what I like and what I don't like. I like Pinned apps on Win7's taskbar mainly so that my applications are always in the same order. I hate process grouping on the taskbar, and hated it ever since it first came out 10 years ago. It's only useful if you have so many windows open you need the grouping - otherwise it's an extra click every time to switch windows. And you can't click on the window on the taskbar to minimize it, which is very useful when clicking on the taskbar to quickly pop windows up and down. In general, my metric for a usable UI is how much time I spend dealing with the UI vs. doing what I want to be doing. When Win7 made a lot of simple tasks require extra time (try finding an application on your XP programs menu - whose name you can't remember - vs. hunting through a massive alphabetized list on Win7), it earned a lot of negative points in my book.

The deal breaker for me was that while Windows provided the option to disable a lot of the shit I hated (process groups) and had hidden options available to re-enable other stuff I used (like the Quick Launch bar, which is faster than Shift-Clicking or Shift-Winkeying applications to open new windows), it didn't have any options available for disabling some of their most stupid decisions - no alphabetical list view for Control Panels, no up arrow in Windows Explorer (breadcrumbs break on the desktop or through symlinks), and their horrible, horrible start menu.

So I didn't buy Win7 for years, even though a few of the features (drag to the left and right to do easy splitscreening) I did like. Then I found Classic Shell, and Microsoft got Win7 sales for myself and all of the PCs in my company. They really ought to send those guys a thank you card.

Re:People also hated...

[Sipper]

It's not that people hate GUIs; most people would prefer them over a command line interface. The problem with major GUI changes is people have to re-learn step one all over again about how to navigate in order to work. [More details below.]

... KDE 4, Windows 7, Windows Vista... some people hate ALL GUIs.

Me? I like Windows 7. I find it nicer and faster than XP's interface, actually. I also like gnome better than KDE in general, but I preferred KDE 3x or 4x. I have not tried gnome3/unity yet, so can't comment there.

I sometimes wonder how long this debate has gone on. I'm guessing people hated Windows 95 when compared to 3.1 (or equivalent Mac OS version changes).

They did. The reason was essentially the same; the navigation was totally restructured, so it required knowledge that nobody had to begin with in order to use it. I didn't like the changeover, either; however I was eventually glad of it after I learned how to use it. Before then it was a pain because I was lost at my own computer, the same way everybody else was lost when they first started trying to use it.

People probably tried to show how a monitor was a disadvantage from the teletype; afterall, with teletypes you had a permanent hard copy and didn't risk losing it! ... (I have no source for this, I'm just speculating ;) )

I do think there are some things that don't make sense though - such as touch-screen-GUIs used on non-touch-screens, or the other way around.

I was around for the tail end of the teletype days, but I never heard many complaints concerning leaving them. The mainframe computers that had teletypes attached usually ran low on disk space, so most users' programs were routinely archived off to tape, and then for the most part they were lost. This was highly annoying for users to deal with, so most of them longed to have a computer at their desk, mainly so that this would stop happening and so they had control of their own work. To begin with this was with DOS, so the teletype -> minicomputer changeover wasn't terribly painful, because the interface was similar. When the GUI just started to appear (with the Macintosh), for the most part it was well received because it was easier to navigate through the system and find programs visually, rather than having to remember program names and type them at a command line. Also these steps from teletype -> DOS -> GUI were over many years, so people had time to adjust and the old systems were also still in place in the meantime. Meanwhile, the major transitions we're expected to deal with today like KDE 3 -> KDE 4 or Gnome 2 -> Gnome 3 generally don't come with the ability to keep the the old system installed to allow falling back to it if we don't like the new system. This is what really makes these transitions painful -- because people are forced to be lost at their computer, trying to re-learn how to use the new system, all while remembering how to use the old system that is now gone, so these memories are in their way.

So please -- cut users some slack. Try to understand their plight. Because you were there once, too -- you've just forgotten about it.

Re:People also hated...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'm not sure this is it.

Going back 10/15/20 years (I can't remember which it is), you used to get magazines like ComputerWorld (?) which were 500 pages long (of which 200 were purely ads), and they would have 52-page reviews showing countless screen shots of each new UI iteration that came out.

The audience at the time clearly thought that the new developments offered the potential for simpler, faster workflows. Today, there's much more resistance; everybody already thinks they have something that works 'pretty well', and maybe they're right. It may not be broken; don't waste our time by trying to 'fix' it. It wasn't always this way.

Re:People also hated...

[0123456]

I'm guessing people hated Windows 95 when compared to 3.1 (or equivalent Mac OS version changes).

Everyone I knew thought Windows 95 was great; even those who used Suns had to admit that it was better in many respects.

Because... drum roll please... IT WAS A BETTER UI THAN THOSE THAT PRECEDED IT.

People don't hate change, they hate SHIT THAT'S WORSE THAN WHAT THEY'VE GOT ALREADY.

Which part of this is so hard to understand? Why, instead of three clicks to start a program from a menu or two clicks to start it from a desktop icon, will be life be better if I have to move the mouse to the corner of the screen, wait for some stupid animation to bring up a full-screen overlay, hunt down some random icon which I hope is the right program or take my hand off the mouse to type in what I hope is the name of the program and then probably wait for some more stupid animations while it starts up? What problem is this solving? Why is this supposed to be better?

The Win95 interface was the best thing Microsoft ever did for computing, which is why pretty much everyone else has copied it. GUI design has mostly been downhill since then.

Re:People also hated...

[PGGreens]

I prefer the sheer elegance of Windows 3.1--a real work of art

Re:People also hated...

[bigstrat2003]

no alphabetical list view for Control Panels

What do you mean by that?

Re:People also hated...

[Belial6]

Once someone here on Slashdot pointed out that you can get the labels back on the taskbar for running applications I would agree. The lack of labels was the one thing I disliked about 7.

Re:People also hated...

[kangsterizer]

I like KDE4's GUI. It's not too weird like Gnome3/Unity/what-not.
W7 GUI is ok too.

Re:People also hated...

[ShakaUVM]

>>What do you mean by that?

It's not list alphabetical. It's zig-zag alphabetical, which is useless. In other words:
ABC
DEF
GHI
JKL

But if you change the size of the window, it is now:
ABCD
EFGH
IJKL
MNOP

So you go looking for a letter, it used to be in one place, and now is in a totally different place, and it's impossible to scan through them quickly.

Stupid design on Microsoft's part. They only allow sorting Control Panels by category and icon now, no longer allowing list or detail view.

Re:People also hated...

[steelfood]

I just remind them that you don't get actions of this form in a Bash shell.

Sounds like a case of aliasing or hard linking, which Bash supports.

I aliased "path" to be "echo $PATH". Whenever I type "path" in bash, I get the executable search path of the current user. I aliased "lpdiff" to print a diff of two files in a landscaped printer-friendly layout. There are plenty more.

Where your comparison has any merit is that Bash doesn't have aliases set up for you, unlike Windows 7, which appears to have many common commands set up as aliases. In Bash (and *NIX system in general) you have to set them all up yourself. I sort of agree, that it'd be nice if del and delete was aliased to rm, and dir was aliased to ls (it is in many configurations) out of the box, but to say that the ability doesn't exist is merely ignorant of the basic capabilities of Bash (oh, and I'm not talking about fancy Bash 4.0, but this feature has been in the Bourne Shell in fact, and really all POSIX shells have had something similar for many decades).

Now, regarding this "ip address" action itself, frankly, I would have been more impressed if "ip address" was linked to ipconfig, but that's just because when I type a command to get a text answer, I expect a text answer rather than a fancy dialog box containing the text answer somewhere, possibly, hopefully in the default tab. I wouldn't mind, say, if you typed in "properties C:\Windows" and it popped up the properties dialog box of the Windows directory in C:, but again, that's just me and my expectations.

Actually, I think it'd be awesome to have keywords linked to certain executables (being able to manipulate it would be a plus). That way, I can just type "ip" and get two or three options that would allow me to either manipulate or display my IP address and its associated information. Then again, any more than two or three options and users tune out, so maybe it shouldn't be easy for a 3rd party to manipulate them, or there should be some checks in place to make sure programs don't go keyword crazy, especially in the same way that they typically go desktop icon crazy.

Anyway, I digress. The little program search bar in Windows 7 is still a complete UI win, if only because (as I said in another post above) I can run commands off of it like it's a simple command prompt, and I don't have to go though a hundred folders in "Programs" to locate the one I want.

Re:People also hated...

[rapidreload]

I aliased "path" to be "echo $PATH". Whenever I type "path" in bash, I get the executable search path of the current user. I aliased "lpdiff" to print a diff of two files in a landscaped printer-friendly layout. There are plenty more.

That's cool. I had a simple alias called "n", which launched "nautilus ." so I could spawn a file manager from the command line to browse the current directory. That's about all I've done in the way of custom aliases though. :)

Still, with Windows 7 if you don't know quite where to go to do something, typing in the subject in the search bar will generally be enough. I had to give someone local admin rights to a computer, so I just typed in "admin" and the second option which appears was "Give administrative rights to a domain user". Very clear and specific as to what this action would do, and indeed it was exactly what I needed. No hunting around the (now very bloated) Control Panel anymore!

Re:People also hated...

[jbolden]

Well written piece. I definitely wouldn't use "minicomputer" for DOS and "dumb terminal" is the more common term for what you are calling "teletype".
I'd say the KDE 3 -> KDE 4 change is a lot smaller than the teletype -> DOS -> GUI change. It is not the same sort of transition.

Re:People also hated...

[Archangel Michael]

Its not that we hate "change" per se (we don't like it, that's for sure). It is that we don't like things taken away that we are used to having, all for the sake of gaining some extra marketing kudos or profit points or because some research said nobody uses that feature.

We do not mind change that actually "works" better. Change should always progress utility, not regress it. To use the car analogy, it is going from foot pedals, to rudder, to steering wheel improvements. Those were useful upgrades that changed how we steer, and were accepted. Now, go back to rudder to steer a car, or perhaps try and indycar style steering "wheel" instead. It doesn't work when you're trying to do a parallel parking job on a busy street.

It is doing a survey and coming to the conclusion that 64.36 % of all people NEVER parallel park and deciding that the steering wheel is the problem and changing it so that people can't use it for that anymore. THAT kind of change is where the problem is. Some of us can actually parallel park and a rudder or indycar steering device just won't cut it.

Change isn't the problem, it is change because someone figures out some statistic and decides to change everything based on it. All because they misunderstand the problem.

Re:People also hated...

[ElusiveJoe]

KDE 4, Windows 7, Windows Vista

I still hate it. It's good to have XFCE around.

Re:People also hated...

[Sipper]

Well written piece. I definitely wouldn't use "minicomputer" for DOS and "dumb terminal" is the more common term for what you are calling "teletype".
I'd say the KDE 3 -> KDE 4 change is a lot smaller than the teletype -> DOS -> GUI change. It is not the same sort of transition.

Heh heh. No, I really meant "teletype", not "dumb terminal", and they're not the same thing. Remember loooong ago when the "terminal" you typed on looked like a big typewriter? And when it wanted to display some text back to you, it literally typed that text onto trackfeed paper? That's a teletype machine; it had a serial interface that sent what you typed onto the paper, and when it was sent data back, that data was typed onto the same paper by the mainframe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype#Teleprinters_in_computing

A "dumb terminal" is something different, because it doesn't use paper as the display medium -- it uses a screen to do that instead. This was a huge improvement because it meant you could type to the computer and get back data from the computer, even when you were out of paper. ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_terminal#Historical

Now from here, you're correct that "minicomputer" was the wrong term -- the correct term was actually "microcomputer". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer It refers to the fact that the computer will fit on your desk, rather than require its own room full of support structure in order to operate. The term doesn't actually refer to anything concerning the operating system it runs. But at the time I wrote the reply post, I had forgotten that "minicomputer" was actually still a fairly large computer. :-P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer#The_minicomputer's_industrial_impact_and_heritage

Re:People also hated...

[xhrit]

I run Blackbox on Linux. And on Windows I run Xoblite, a Blackbox clone.

Re:People also hated...

[jbolden]

OK I get what you are saying on teletype. I think you have me on age. :) By the time I was computing teletypes were more rarely used and doubled as line printers. I never was in a teletype only environment. I do remember /// for backspace etc... but that was never a primary environment. Which of course brings me to my position that the transition was then:

teletype -> dumb terminal -> terminal app on PC -> rich-client application -> distributed client server
with associated user interfaces
command -> command -> curses / ansi -> curses / ansi or windows -> windows or web

And those are big changes.

Re:People also hated...

[pmontra]

Me too. My alias is .n to minimize the risk of inadvertently running Nautilus (so I thought) but I should try just "n" and see what happens.

Re:People also hated...

[Compaqt]

I would just move right over to KDE, but there's one thing I wish the K folks would do: support the Gnome "shortcuts" (the ones that show up on the left bottom in Nautilus and the FileOpen dialog).

Doesn't FreeDesktop have a standard for that or something?

Also the Documents, Pictures, Downloads, and other "special" folders. Call em stupid if you want, but it's a good categorization of your files: Downloads is stuff you got from the Internet: software, .debs, PDFs, tgz's etc. Documents is stuff you produced. Pictures is stuff your camera produced.

Re:People also hated...

[jez9999]

Me? I like Windows ME. It has the fastest interface (measured in boot time to blue screen). I also like ratpoison.

Yeah, that figures. They both give you a similar experience.

Re:People also hated...

[zippy590]

Actually most people liked Windows 95 a lot better than 3.1, I know I did.

Re:People also hated...

[Compaqt]

>GUI design has mostly been downhill since then.

Mostly agree about Win95 being pretty good.

There was one big problem though: the Start menu is organized according to Software Maker, and then program. After you've installed a good number of programs, it gets hard to find your stuff.

The one big improvement by Gnome/KDE/Freedesktop was organization by category. Genius. You can give an Ubuntu 10.04 computer to a 5 year old kid, and he can easily find and try all the games without bothering you. Your father (and grandfather) can find the "office apps" because they under ... Office.

Now they want to throw all that away.

Re:People also hated...

[Cato]

None of those UIs were anything like as big a change from their predecessors, compared to Win8 / Unity / Gnome Shell and iOS.

I have never had a big adverse reaction to UIs since Windows 3.0 and early KDE, but with the advent of Unity and Gnome 3, I'm making the jump from Ubuntu to Linux Mint 12, because Mint is making Gnome 3 look sufficiently like Gnome 2 (via some of its own extensions) and also will enable MATE (a fork of GNOME 2, though it's a little too recent to be usable yet.) See http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/243403/now_with_gnome_3_linux_mint_12_will_meet_users_halfway.html

I don't think I'm alone either - Linux Mint had a 40% increase in popularity in one month after Ubuntu went Unity: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851 (includes overview of the Linux Mint 12 plans for Gnome 3 and MATE).

Re:People also hated...

[YouDieAtTheEnd]

I sometimes wonder how long this debate has gone on.

It may seem strange now but Windows users used to celebrate and, dare I say, look forward to new releases of the OS. We still had that glimmering hope that if we had been very good little boys and girls we would maybe get the feature or fix we had been asking for. Around the release of Windows ME is when most of us threw up our hands in disgust and walked away but a few hung in still keeping the faith until they saw the Playmobile colours of XP. That tipping point comes whenever an OS sacrifices usefulness for more users. They have to turn the system into a child's toy so that burnt out soccer moms who 'just want to check Facebook/email/whatever' will shell out money for their product. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people shouldn't use computers for trivial things. I just believe that if you don't need the extra functionality of a full system you should stick to something more specialized like an iPad aka the smartphone for geezers. The thing that irritates me is that companies are trying to market their product to the lowest common denominator by watering it down, swathing it with bubble wrap, grinding off all the sharp corners, etc. This makes it a pain to use if you actually know what you're doing and chews up system resources even with every extraneous feature disabled. So really it's not change that bothers people but wasteful change.

Re:People also hated...

[gfxguy]

I love trying new things. I tried Unity for months before I decided I didn't like it. I'm always open to the idea that there's always room for improvement... unfortunately I gave Unity and Mac (at work) a months-long try before concluding that they slowed me down and pissed me off, despite how I tried to work within their "paradigm." I agree with the others... nice for small screens, terrible for desktops, and that's not a knee-jerk reaction to change.

Re:People also hated...

[AdamJS]

In this case, the change is quite silly. With Unity, they're trying to force a Touchscreen-oriented (very obvious at this point) interface onto a Desktop userbase, despite them being focused on drastically different nearly fundamentally incompatible input styles.

They're trying to use a Square peg to connect a round hole with a square hole, and unsurprisingly, one half of this process is fundamentally broken.

Re:People also hated...

[SiChemist]

When KDE 4.0 came out, people had legitimate complaints. It had significantly reduced functionality compared to its predecessor. Around KDE 4.3, it became usable again. The KDE devs handled that launch very badly, but I've forgiven them. :-) I use (and LIKE) the current version of KDE.

Re:People also hated...

[kesuki]

mac did not invent the gui http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYlYSzMqGR8
1974 xerox alto which probably wasn't the first gui, so much as the oldest remaining record of such a computer.
i mean by 1996 Xwindows was already at version X11R6. now it's at x11r7.6.

Re:People also hated...

[Sipper]

mac did not invent the gui http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYlYSzMqGR8
1974 xerox alto which probably wasn't the first gui, so much as the oldest remaining record of such a computer.

Why did you send me to a video that's verbally in an Asian language? There are better videos available. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn4vC80Pv6Q&feature=related

And I knew this, but the Xerox Alto never saw the light of day. Managers at Xerox didn't know what they had and didn't know what to do with it, because their main business was in photocopiers.

i mean by 1996 Xwindows was already at version X11R6. now it's at x11r7.6.

Back in the early days of Unix and before Linux existed, very few people could afford the expensive machine and a commercial copy of Unix to get access to Xwindows. And I'm not sure why you bring up Xwindows of today because AFAIK the majority of new development has moved over to Xorg.

Re:People also hated...

[excelsior_gr]

If it's not broken, don't fix it.

End of story.

Re:People also hated...

[Kakao]

And when the change makes things worse they fell they are right in hating changes.

Re:People also hated...

[Mr Z]

I think the reason I'm tolerating Windows 7 on my new work laptop as well as I am (and XP before it) is that I was able to set them both to a "classic" theme that looks a lot like Win95's. First thing I did with XP and first thing I did with 7 was to shut off all the distracting glitz.

Re:People also hated...

[21mhz]

I think you can do things fast in GNOME 3, but you have to relearn your ways around the desktop. I also dislike the new Alt-Tab. Who cares that those different web pages belong to one browser, to me they are different tasks and I used Alt-Tab to switch between tasks, not "applications". Even worse with terminal windows. WTF, we have been talking about moving on from app-centric desktop for years, and now GNOME is going backwards? I guess it's again their way or the highway: have your tasks laid out in the workspaces and switch through the home view, which is slower.

Re:People also hated...

[21mhz]

Funny but I always hated the mess that is the programs menu in Windows. Even in GNOME 2 and KDE 3, the hierarchy is a bit artificial: why do I need to remember which category Thunderbird is in?

I suppose people should create dock icons for stuff they use the most. The way to hunt for apps in GNOME 3 is not much slower, you still have those categories and, what's more, you can search just by typing.

Re:People also hated...

[21mhz]

The one big improvement by Gnome/KDE/Freedesktop was organization by category. Genius. You can give an Ubuntu 10.04 computer to a 5 year old kid, and he can easily find and try all the games without bothering you. Your father (and grandfather) can find the "office apps" because they under ... Office.

Now they want to throw all that away.

No they don't, at least not in GNOME 3. You can still list all your games in the application view.

Re:People also hated...

[Pope]

People hate change.

End of story.

No. People hate change that doesn't make their lives better.

Re:People also hated...

[znerk]

People hate change.

End of story.

People also hate waking up in a house fire. Doesn't mean whatever is hated isn't a Bad Thing.

You have to ask?

[xski]

> But is it the vocal minority doing all the complaining, or is it the majority?

Brother, its *always* the vocal minority doing all the complaining. The majority (aka 'the great unwashed masses') will generally take whatever is being shoved down their throats.

-x

Re:You have to ask?

[notamisfit]

The majority are still using Windows XP.

Re:You have to ask?

[Archangel Michael]

OWS in a nutshell

Re:You have to ask?

[znerk]

You asked for a citation of "The majority are still using Windows XP.

Admittedly, the linked article is 8 months old, but here's your citation.

Interestingly enough, the google query I used to find that returned a ton of links on how to get "XP Mode" running in Windows 7. I would dare to say that usage of Windows XP might be even more prevalent than the statistics suggest.

Yes

[afabbro]

...because we're using desktops, not tablets.

Re:Yes

[kesuki]

and why are we using tablets? because people like handwriting recognition? (worse than typos!) or voice recognition (think loud noisy environments the 4s is going to be used in) is so great? there was a reason xerox invented a gui in 1974. i remember dragon dictate from the past, and boy was it hard to train it kept making errors and you'd have to 'scratch that' all over time and time again. windows 95 gave end users something only mac users and old legendary unix admins had had before, a useful gui for the rest of us. tablets are dumbed down and pointless i bought an ebook reader for the battery life, but a tablet? with same horrible battery life? i think not.

"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's one thing we should learn from these ordeals, it's that people claiming to be "UI designers" should be shunned. Every commercial and open source project needs to limit the involvement of these people. They can make icons, but that's where it should end.

GNOME, Firefox, and Windows all had far more usable UIs when actual software developers were in charge of making the decisions. This isn't surprising, though. Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well. "UI designers", on the other hand, are more interested in creating software that looks "pretty", even if it's damn impossible to use productively. Usability does not come from gradients and curved corners.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Yunzil]

GNOME, Firefox, and Windows all had far more usable UIs when actual software developers were in charge of making the decisions.

...in your opinion.

Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well.

...even if it may be impossible for the average person to figure out how to use it?

Usability does not come from gradients and curved corners.

Nor does it necessarily come from horrible user interfaces or command line tools.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Netshroud]

Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well. "UI designers", on the other hand, are more interested in creating software that looks "pretty", even if it's damn impossible to use productively.

And that's why we need the UX people.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[MrBandersnatch]

You seem to have a 90s idea about what UI designers actually do. Good UI designers run sessions with actual users at the early design stages to determine if their ideas fly, they use HCI techniques (e.g. KLM/GOMS) to see if their interfaces bring about actual performance improvements, and they run usability tests, gathering both quantitative and qualitative data on the impacts of those changes how their user groups perceive those changes.

Its only THEN that designers who REALLY LIKE CURVED CORNERS come along and bugger-up everything because pretty software is so much easier to sell to clueless managers than pages of research findings and hard applied scientific methodology.

Seriously though, I do know what you are saying; I look at just how much functionality something like Windows Explorer has lost over the years in the name of usability improvements and can't help but realise that there's something seriously going wrong with software development methodologies, even though the "hard sell" for usability has finally paid off. While its easy to blame "clueless managers" etc, I can't help but suspect the real culprit has more to do with company politics and personalities and that's something that I don't believe any methodology can hope to fix....

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[jhantin]

Usability does not come from gradients and curved corners.

Graphic design and usability are two different disciplines. Anyone who wants a good introduction to usability could easily do worse than reading Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox column. (I hesitate to call it a blog for several reasons, not least because it predates the coining of the term!)

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well.

Can someone tell me when the prevailing opinion shifted from "programmers suck at UI design" to "programmers make the best UI's"?

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[anonymov]

Yeah, because software developers, unlike designers, think only about user's comfort and not, say, stuffing all hundred features on a single preferences page just to show them off and tick an item in their checklist.

I still rememeber how Windows taskbar buttons used to be shifted one pixel up from screen border so it was fucking frustrating when you couldn't just flick mouse down the screen when you needed to click something in the taskbar and had to adjust it upwards.

Usability should be left to someone who doesn't get sidetracked neither by "i gotta tweak this gradient first" nor "i'll just add this small feature and then i'll get started on screen layout"

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[LordLucless]

When graphic designers started sticking "UX Designer" on their resumes, and birthing abominations. Even developer-designed UI's are better than that.

Note that actual UX designers, who understand interface design, human-computer interaction and all that jazz are awesome. It's just that for every one of those I've seen, I've seen fifty photoshop monkeys with padded CVs.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[tuppe666]

If there's one thing we should learn from these ordeals, it's that people claiming to be "UI designers" should be shunned. Every commercial and open source project needs to limit the involvement of these people. They can make icons, but that's where it should end.

GNOME, Firefox, and Windows all had far more usable UIs when actual software developers were in charge of making the decisions. This isn't surprising, though. Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well. "UI designers", on the other hand, are more interested in creating software that looks "pretty", even if it's damn impossible to use productively. Usability does not come from gradients and curved corners.

What worries me about posts like yours is it implies that "pretty" and "productive" cannot be the same. It worries me even more when users imply that they really are more productive if their windows vanish as opposed to turn into paper planes!! I really doubt it. I worry because what I definitely want is a "pretty" desktop...with nice wallpaper...that changes every five minutes. Hell I love pretty. I do not want my Applications Hidden from me...I do not want only click-->6 enormous icons-->click--->Show More Icons-->Click. I do not benefit from a blank desktop...formally my file todo...like it was a desktop metaphor or something....I do not want an infinite number of desktops to house full screen apps....4 desktops is manageable. I still drag...and drop between applications!? Pretty I love...Pretty I want. What everyone can agree on is the Usability irrespective of is being well thought out on these new Desktop UI...Is pretty awful, especially when input is keyboard and mouse and the touch-less screen is 15" or larger.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[drsmithy]

GNOME, Firefox, and Windows all had far more usable UIs when actual software developers were in charge of making the decisions.

Yep, they sure did. I mean, who would use Windows 3.x and Windows 7 for a day each and prefer the interface of the former except a programmer ?

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[owlstead]

I'm sure that I like the browser interfaces much better now than before. Before we had much less screen estate, much more prominent "history" and "bookmarks", more modal pop-ups, the URL bar was at the wrong place, no smart URL bar (a clear winner if there ever was), less clear SSL information etc etc etc. If there is anything that shows improvement, its the new browser interfaces.

As for the power user, what I like to see further is some features taken from e.g. Eclipse: easy to change shortcuts, self arranging (offline) help, searchable preferences, copyable labels (any text element should have a context menu), smarter text areas (completion using ).

Good things about the latest versions of windows are the searchable programs. I really really like the new task manager of Win 8 as well, with a clear distinction between user applications and services and what more, using the full names. I cannot wait for usable way of putting the "start bar " in Ubuntu on the left side (of my left screen) either. Currently that's hardly doable.

Progress is being made :)

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor does it necessarily come from horrible user interfaces or command line tools.

I hear this stereotype that people with strong technical and logical skills will inherently favour designing opaque user interfaces. The only basis for it is that this kind of people are good at understanding interfaces and thus will find an interface usable that others will not. This necessitates user testing and feedback from more average specimines, but it does not mean that technical people have poor UI design abilities, quite the opposite in my opinion.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Mia'cova]

You're right but let me add something. In large software products (eg windows), this is generally the case at a granular level. There are people doing what you say at a feature-by-feature level. But there are also 'design' experts who specialize in the visual aspects of things. They'll notice if the colors don't mesh, if the typography is wrong, etc. Standard HCI style user studies won't make your software beautiful. It'd be like an artist going to a committee for input as they go about making a painting. You need the HCI for task-flow, discoverability, etc.. but you also need artists and UX 'designers' to develop your visual look and feel. Android + user testing doesn't result in iPhone asthetics.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[lennier]

Can someone tell me when the prevailing opinion shifted from "programmers suck at UI design" to "programmers make the best UI's"?

When the "UI designers" who'd been slamming the programmers finally released their alternative vision of the desktop, and the result was Unity, Gnome Shell, and iOS. That's when.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[kandresen]

> "UI designers", on the other hand, are more interested in creating software that looks "pretty", even if it's damn impossible to use productively

That should not be correct, it that is the case, then fire the guy! The objective of an UI designer is to make the UI intuitive and quick to use. We are talking about testing how fast people grasp the UI, how fast they can get certain things done. We are talking about making use cases, and see how those use cases are met. Eliminating clutter. Evaluating if is it easy or confusing to get from A to B.

Where this often go wrong is in the evaluation of who the users are. There should be use cases for each kind of user we expect should use the system. For an online shopping site that might be "unregistered users", "registered users", "inventory manager", "content editor", "translator", and so on. But when it comes to a "Desktop" application this become MUCH harder...

Try defining all the types of users of a Desktop... What does it mean? In real life, a carpenter or a metal worker would have a clearly different desktop than an office worker, but does those roles translate into computer different kinds of desktops in a computer? Should an accountant be considered a different kind of desktop user than a Java programmer? What about a gamer? Or a sales representative? Does the kind of desktop we have depend upon these distinctions? If not, what is it that does define distinct users of a "Desktop"?

I believe the problem here is that the "Desktop" in general was only an virtual illusion created to make people have a concept to easier associate things in the virtual world to the real world. We create archive folders, drop down indexes and so on. Virtual illusions to make us to associate with things we can take and feel. In several ways we are beyond this now too: we now have use cases for desktop as an assistant for example: get me file X in any of my folders, e-mail, document or whatever. Find me application Y. Read this text loud. Inform me when someone calls or sends a message. Call person Z for me. I mean - do you really want to select the phone application before asking the machine to make a call? - In other words, you do see that this is a newer role of a "desktop", right?

It is indeed confusing and complex, and I truly do not think a group of programmers would do better if they to design the interface by without input from others. I do think it will be UI designers that will eventually figure out of the confusion - maybe realizing that a cell phone is more or an mobile assistant than a desktop - I mean - you wont sit down with your phone and think of it as your desk anytime soon. The question is, how much of the old computer desktop today should resemble a desk, what should now be more as an assistant, and what else?

I can't say I have any modern favorite desktop; as for now I prefer Gnome2 or XFCE on Linux, the early interfaces on Mac OS X 10.4. Hopefully we get the right balance soon.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[exomondo]

Usability does not come from gradients and curved corners.

It's not necessarily diminished by those things either.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[kiwimate]

Err...I don't think you have actually met any real UI designers, ever, in your life, or even read about what they do. Or else you're thinking of people who calim to be "UI designers" and confusing them with people who actually do HCI. I suspect what you are actually talking about is a graphic designer; but that is very different from someone who designs user interfaces based on well known HCI principles.

It's about far more than making things look pretty (and actual software developers are NOT the experts in that field, either, by the way). It's about studying how to make things usable. I am not an HCI expert, but I work with one, and I know that when she starts a project she sits down with users, interviews them, spends time observing how they work, until she understands the processes they go through better than anyone. Then she works with the developers to implement something that's usable, that makes sense, based on scientific research principles about how people work.

Software developers are not interface designers. That's not their job. It's a different discipline, and when it's done properly it's magic. Software designers might or might not understand the workflows and the business processes. (Usually not, in anything but the simplest possible businesses.) None of this is a criticism of developers; it's recognition that they are experts in their field, and these projects work best when you get other experts in other fields working side by side with your developers.

It's actually kind of frightening you got modded up +5 insightful. You're saying the equivalent of claiming a server administrator is the best at development. He or she might be really good at writing scripts, but real enterprise level software development is not even on the same plane.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[gtada]

What? The typical user loathes interfaces "designed" by software engineers. See this article:

www.uxdesignedge.com/2010/03/dont-design-like-a-programmer/

Maybe you don't like Unity, but judging an entire group of professional designers by the worst example is stupid. That's like saying all programmers should be punished for Windows ME. Learn a bit about what they do, what they bring, etc. before you bash. Otherwise, STFU.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[steelfood]

UI designers taking over GUIs is a problem, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they should go away.

There's certainly a place where the GUI looks nice and is completely functional. UI "designers" make UIs pretty (I put designers in quotes because if they were real designers, they wouldn't sacrifice functionality for looks). Software developers make UIs useful. The UI designers should be in charge of making a functional thing look nice. The developers should be in charge of making something that looks nice functional.

It doesn't take a team of people to design a UI--only two. One needs to understand what looks nice and appeals to the recreational user. The other needs to understand what is functional and appeals to the productive user. The only other thing needed is a mediator (manager) who can resolve the disputes from an unbiased perspective.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[notknown86]

You lost me - who deserves the credit for the icons? and who do I blame for the "Usability"?

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[serviscope_minor]

Why do you care about the prevailing opinion. UI designers are probably good at designing UIs that best fit a bunch of random people (normal users?). Slasdot is not exactly filled with normal users. Taking myself as an example of a normal user, I don't like the things UI designers tend to come up with.

I use (g)vim (usability nightmare! how do you quit???), FVWM with no desktop and no menus (I start everything from the commandline and key bindings) and so on. Most people would not even be able to start a browser from my default setup, but I find it very productive. UI deisgners would never come up with something like it since it's terrible for most people.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The grandparent post is referring to UI designers who decide that you shouldn't be able to alt-tab through your windows, only through apps. The people who think it's a good idea to obfuscate the path name because that just confuses users. Also to point out the obvious, the post was engaging in something called hyperbole. Do a google search for it.

The vast majority of UI designers are rubbish at their job, just as the vast majority of programmers can't program.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[silanea]

It did not. The UI designers just managed to undercut the programmers.

Seriously, UIs designed by programmers may not be pretty, and they may not be all that intuitive for people coming from different domains, but at least they usually work and work as expected. UIs designed by Photoshop monkeys (that is "mere" UI designers as opposed to professionally trained UX experts) may be pretty and they might even be half-way intuitive, but they seldom work at all and in even fewer cases work as expected.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[silanea]

What worries me about posts like yours is it implies that "pretty" and "productive" cannot be the same. [...]

Well, so far I have seen few examples where "productive" was not compromised in favour of "pretty". Like you I crave aesthetically pleasing UIs that make me enjoy using them. But If I have to choose between pretty and productive, I choose productive, because pretty does not get stuff done.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[Kjella]

To put it this way, I still haven't run into a graphics designer that took "Here's all the items laid out exactly how they should be, you get to pick colors and icon designs but you can't change the layout" easily as an assignment. More often than not the work distribution is that you choose how it should work, I choose how it should look. At the very least they are going to have suggestions based simply on aesthetics.

My impression is that HCI designers are not so much concerned about superficial appearance, but mostly about workflows. Like say "You are a photographer with a camera full of pictures. What should your workflow be until you have a wedding album ready?" It's not so much about the graphics, more that the relevant functions, dialogs and workspaces are there at the right time in the right context. You interface both with the developer that makes sure all the functions are there and the graphics designer on how it all looks, but I wouldn't be surprised if the looks were still left to the graphics designer.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[rshol]

The first fallacy of HCI is they start with things like user surveys. Users always say they want contradictory things like "make the same interface work well on a desktop and a phone". Anybody can see these are mutually exclusive things, but users say that sort of thing all the time. Users can never tell you what they actually want/need until you give them what they ask for.

The second fallacy here is that HCI is somehow scientific. HCI types try to sound scientific, there are statistics and measurements, and even so called laws, but interface design is not scientific because its acceptance is based on individual preference. Its sort of like saying "We have statistically analyzed popular music and produced the ultimate song based on users requests and what they listened to before". So these UI's are the UI equivalent of the Monkees or Milli Vanilli.

Designing UI's based on telemetry, user studies or Fitt's "Law" does not insure a good UI, some common sense must be used as well. The New and Improved Windows 8 interface, for example, does not permit multiple overlapping windows and the browser does not run plugins. Those are considered features not bugs. Statistics will not fix stupid.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[rawtatoor]

I agree except for anything to do with magic. Developers are just a special class of user, so I really think the attitude you describe is harmful. UI designers tend to look down on "developers" because they make shitty guis ITNSHO; but those shitty guis are just designed for Ultra class computer users. I just made that up and you GUI designers better respect that. Their is a big spectrum of user and its kind of a joke to expect people to program systems they can't even work on without psychological or carpal damage. Unity works good for my Mom, you just need to realize it isnt usable for a certain class of users.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[maztuhblastah]

It's about far more than making things look pretty (and actual software developers are NOT the experts in that field, either, by the way). It's about studying how to make things usable. I am not an HCI expert, but I work with one, and I know that when she starts a project she sits down with users, interviews them, spends time observing how they work, until she understands the processes they go through better than anyone. Then she works with the developers to implement something that's usable, that makes sense, based on scientific research principles about how people work.

You hit the nail on the head. And you also demonstrated *why* the UIs for things like Unity sucked.

They did some of that for the Unity UI.

.

.

After they wrote it.

And then, when the results came back indicating serious flaws, they shipped it anyways. (Study is here if you're curious.)

And now, one year later, lo and behold, people are bitching about the same things. But yeah, Shuttleworth, I'm sure it's just that we're stick-in-the-mud "power users", right?

The entire Unity fiasco reeks of a group of self-proclaimed usability experts (who do none of what you described) mocking up something, building it, and then declaring "it's easier to use... and if you don't think so you just are stuck in your ways and hate change." It's change for the sake of change, pushed out a group of people who wished they could make the leap from designing pretty UIs in Photoshop to actually designing software that meets peoples needs. Only it seems their leap left them quite a bit short of the other side of the cliff.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[elsurexiste]

This.

I remember when my team wrote an app, and it was ugly as hell. At some point, the ugliness made it unusable. Then, we paid a UI designer for a lift up, and it worked marvelously. Everything was one or two clicks away, and we could work faster... it really changed the application.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[webheaded]

Yeah, I've seen the kind of shit programmers have made for interfaces. I think people have a knee jerk reaction to anything considered "artsy" or whatever here. I've seen enough terrible...terrible UI designs to know that just being a software engineer in NO way means you know how to design a good UI. I used a program my friend wrote and it honestly took every bit of intelligence I possess to figure out how the fuck anything got done. It was a good program but the interface was just...godawful. What we're seeing here with some of these things are just bad decisions by some people...not the proliferation of UI designers.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[znerk]

Software developers are mainly concerned with creating software that works, and that works well.

...even if it may be impossible for the average person to figure out how to use it?

I remember "the good old days", when users were able to remember how to press F1 if they couldn't figure out from looking at the screen what they needed to do to make it go.

I guess too many video games have come out since then, with the usability paradigm of "no manual should be needed".

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[znerk]

Except we can be pretty sure that, at least in the case of GNOME3 and Unity both, the design decisions were arbitrary and based upon no consequential user studies or HCI science at all. e.g. http://lwn.net/Articles/429575/

On the contrary, Canonical has cheerfully asked the users about each of their UI changes, starting with the ridiculous "move the minimize/maximize/close buttons to the other side of the window" change, all the way up to "see how people react to Unity in 11.04"... They just completely ignore the feedback they get from the users, and ram the changes down our throats anyway.

Ironically enough, Windows Vista/7 doing exactly the same thing was what caused a mass migration to Ubuntu in the first place - it was more familiar to previous users of Windows than the new Windows was.

Re:"UI designers" just can't design UIs.

[znerk]

So what you're both saying, then, is that function should supersede form.

Feel free to make it pretty, of course... but make it work first.

The prettiest cup in the world will not hold coffee if it has no bottom.

I actually value speed

[Tyrannosaur]

I want my things to be loaded as quickly as possible. I don't care about flashy desktop effects that make things slower.

Re:I actually value speed

[CruelKnave]

Hear, hear!

Re:I actually value speed

[Twinbee]

Don't forget about GUI latency in general - those barely noticeable sub-second delays that ruin an application through death by a thousand cuts. Visual Studio 10 springs to mind.

Re:I actually value speed

[tuppe666]

I want my things to be loaded as quickly as possible. I don't care about flashy desktop effects that make things slower.

I love flashy effects. for the i915 chipset(the crappy integrated intel one and above its changed how I work on the desktop(out of date metaphor) its gives the user better feedback. New Natural ways of working i.e. spinning a cube. You can switch special effects off on Linux(you still can just) for a few fps perhaps...there are benchmarks, but in practice I have never done so.

I may think if I was a cutting edge gamer; trying to squeeze out every last frame(Do these people still exist)...I would probably run a script to switch the glitz off while I was running the game. Seriously though though better drivers/card will I suspect make more difference..

Re:I actually value speed

[ohnocitizen]

I couldn't resist posting in this discussion, or I'd mod this +1. I'd love a desktop that had slick themes, a UI that got out of your way, an easy method for customizing menus, keybindings, window behavior, etc, and yet didn't place a huge burden on the cpu or ram. So far on Linux you can get some, but not all, of these.

Re:I actually value speed

[Mia'cova]

But if you take a different example, an iPhone, animations make their load-times much less noticeable. Instead of a sticky lagged feeling, the flashy effects are what gives it a responsive feel.

Re:I actually value speed

[JBMcB]

+1. There's a difference between useful feedback and eye candy. A window animation showing you where it minimized to = good. The start menu sliding open = bad. A simple icon animation indicating an app needs attention = good. Menus dissolving when deselected = bad.

Re:I actually value speed

[jader3rd]

I'm confused, VS 2010 doesn't have any flashy animations or anything. Plus, I find it to be faster than VS 2005/8. Now if you want to know why it might feel like it's getting slow after a while, it's because it's written by people who concider themselves to be the developers of developers. Programming Gods who can't be bothered with silly things like "memory leaks". So they allow for known legacy memory leaks to exist from one version to the next because they're afraid to break something if they fix them.

Re:I actually value speed

[Twinbee]

I was more thinking about things like switching tabs, or Ctrl+F to open the search window, or clicking a menu item, or pressing RMB just about anywhere. Maybe it's because VS10's GUI was created in WPF.

Re:I actually value speed

[Robert Zenz]

You're lucky...VS2008 has delays from 3 seconds up to 2 minutes on my work machine for no noticeable reason.

Re:I actually value speed

[Pentium100]

I disable the animations in Windows XP (I don't use 7, but if I did, I would make the UI look like 2k), because to me this feels faster. For example, I click the minimize button and the window immediately disappears. With animation, the minimize function takes feels longer because the animation takes some time.

Re:I actually value speed

[whoisisis]

I'm 23 too, and I use Fluxbox for the exact same reasons.

Not all of them

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally like kde 4 design though they need to work on reducing cpu usage / latency. In my opinion, it's the only one that does it right in that the interface for tablet/netbook and desktop are separated seamlessly and easy switched between the two. Programs do not need to be compiled to two different gui and users can pick which interface to use and don't have to bother with the other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjO5X1ADUrE is an example.

My main problem with "next gen" gui is that they are too forceful. They try to combine desktop and tablet/netbook into one gui and do so badly at it. Windows 8 that forces you to switch between the 2 different guis depending on the software you use is an example of bad design.

Where's KDE?

[nite_warrior]

I've been using KDE4 since the earlier versions, and I'm pleased with it. It even has options on how you want your workspace to be, if you want desktop icons, panels, widgets, etc. I haven't use Gnome 3 or Unity enough to comment on them, but KDE has been good to me and I have had no needs beyond it

change is needed

[elexis]

Until the recent surge of change, the ui of all desktop environments was stagnant. Change is needed to keep things fresh, just because you have found a good setup doesnt mean its the best. The biggest problem is the lack/difficulty of customisation for these new UI's. For example, I live the new Gnome3 look, and from a general use perspective I find it very efficient to use. However it always is a pain when I want to customise something.http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/11/09/015211/ask-slashdot-unitygnome-3win8ios-do-we-really-hate-all-new-guis?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed#

Re:change is needed

[znerk]

just because you have found a good setup doesnt mean its the best.

... it doesn't mean it sucks, either. Change for the sake of change is stagnating in a different direction - I'd rather be doing the things I purchased the computer to do in the first place than be trying to figure out my OS all over again every year.

Not necessarily.

[MrEricSir]

Not to defend any of the new-ish UIs, but the conventional UI model has always sucked. Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time. Same with launching programs or organizing my menus.

If we can abandon the model where the user has to fiddle with a bunch of unnecessary crap just to use their computer, that would be a step forward.

Thing is, I'm not sure any of the new UIs are quite there; they made radical changes but only minor usability improvements.

Re:Not necessarily.

[telekon]

The perfect UI for 90% of all use cases has existed for decades. I think In The Beginning Was The Command Line should be required reading for all of those "Intro to Computer Literacy" classes they tend to require of college freshmen (or did about 6 years ago when I was still taking classes). I can see GUIs for Photoshop or Final Cut or whatever, but the vast majority of my computer usage is spent in bash/zsh and vim. And I'm not even describing my coding/sysadmin work, this is home use. As far as GUIs go, I liked Enlightenment, and I'm pretty happy with Snow Leopard. Lion is shite, Windows has always been shite, and Unity pisses me off. GNOME 3 is probably the least shite of the new ones, but that's not saying much.

Re:Not necessarily.

[epyT-R]

so go use a speak'n'spell.. the rest of us need flexibility.. the cost of using powerful tools is that they incur a setup time.

Re:Not necessarily.

[MrEricSir]

By your logic, we should still be flipping switches and feeding in tape to boot our computers.

No thanks.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Hatta]

Then use a tiling window manager and launch everything with the CLI.

Re:Not necessarily.

[MozeeToby]

Try downloading a good window manager, I use Winsplit Revolution at work. Easily manage windows between two monitors, vertical and horizontal splits, even corner placements are a keystroke away. I can organize a dozen windows in seconds barely even thinking about it.

Re:Not necessarily.

[devent]

Hm strange, I'm never do that since I switched to Linux/KDE. Moving a window, I have multiple desktops, so one window in one desktop. New smaller windows (like file manager) are opened in a smart way, where the new window is not overlapping an already opened window. Then I have only one full screen window on a desktop and the smaller windows are opened in the size I put them last time, so no re-sizing.

For frequent used programs, I just put them on the panel (right click, and "Add to Panel"), for less frequent, I put them in the Favorites menu. New programs are put in categories (like office, games, utilities), so no organizing menus.

The windows/desktops and panel GUI is well known and I can do my work in it very easy. I somewhat like Gnome3 but it's still too much of a hassle to do anything in there.

Re:Not necessarily.

[tomhudson]

So use multiple monitors and maximize your windows - one per monitor. Problems solved and productivity jumps.

And for the small stuff, like email, that doesn't require a horking big display, run it off a separate laptop or smart device.

Re:Not necessarily.

[brusk]

Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time. Same with launching programs or organizing my menus.

I agree that a psychic interface would be great, but short of that how is the GUI supposed to know, for instance, that at Time A I want this text editor window to be small and the browser to be big (because I'm taking notes on a web page) while at Time B the opposite is preferable (because I'm writing a document and only want the browser open for reference)?

Re:Not necessarily.

[DigiShaman]

In your perfect little CLI world, the computer wouldn't nearly have the adoption rate as it does now. That means the industry as a whole doesn't grow. As such, we wouldn't have had the advancements in hardware that we enjoy today. The fact is, while the CLI may be great for scripted routines and vertical market solutions, it sucks absolute balls at scalability in feature sets. Not the CLI itself, but the learning curve. Also, having to pipe out a fucking paragraph just to get shit done is out-of-the-question for most people. To add to the confusion, mixing the CLI as the primary interface shell and non-standard application GUIs is even worse.

As a Windows user, I have to say that Apple got it right for the most part. A clean GUI with an optional terminal to CLI around in. I understand why Microsoft is having to play catch up, and that's only to maintain cross compatibility with their older product line and other 3rd party business applications.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing people complain about, even if they don't spell it out, is the replacement of stuff that works by stuff that "isn't quite there yet".

If it isn't there, it shouldn't be the default in any major distribution.

They're trying to push "progress" down everyone's throats, and it's probably because Linux policy is dictated by developers, not users. If I was a gnome developer, and I wanted to change something because I think it's for the better, I would certainly want to push it to mainstream ASAP, because that's how you get feedback, testing, and eventually "get there".

I am a developer. But for Gnome, KDE and all the WM out there, I'm just a user. I want it to work. Well. Without bugs. Every bug in a tool is one more white hair or one more ulcer to take care of. It's not my development focus, I really don't want to be fixing desktop bugs, especially when the previous version of that same desktop worked just fine.

I reckon it's not the same with Metro and Unity. They're not driven by developers. I'm not what they're driven by (Metro, probably Marketers, which can't be good). In any case, the problem is they're not driven by users. Not only that, users would also happily stagnate.

So. I don't have a solution. Just a little bit of insight into the problem, I hope.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Oligonicella]

"I understand why Microsoft is having to play catch up, ..."

Please. That's so '00's.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Nursie]

The same thing happened here yesterday, but I was a Gnome 2 user.

I found the new interface awful. There may well be some good ideas in there, BUT -

I like the task bar and make frequent use of it. Taking it away breaks part of the way I work.
I like the notification area and make frequent use of it. Declaring it deprecated and hiding it breaks part of the way I work.
I need to use a specific IM client. Giving empathy (not compatible with what I have to use) first class status and relegating all others to the (now hidden and deprecated) status bar is not useful and breaks part of the way I work.
I like putting small shortcut icons in my top bar, instead of being forced to leave it blank, breaking part of the way I work.

Maybe I should be looking at changing my 'workflow' at some point. Maybe. But for me the quickest way back to productivity was to ditch gnome entirely and go to XFCE.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Oligonicella]

"but the vast majority of my computer usage"

You do understand that you and I (IT guy that I was/am) are a *very* small percentage of the user base?

"And I'm not even describing my coding/sysadmin work, this is home use."

You're certainly not describing the home use of anywhere near a meaningful percentage of users either.

In the business world I of course used nothing but shells and flat text editors. On my home system, it makes no sense at all to confine myself that way.

Re:Not necessarily.

[donaldm]

Try downloading a good window manager, I use Winsplit Revolution at work. Easily manage windows between two monitors, vertical and horizontal splits, even corner placements are a keystroke away. I can organize a dozen windows in seconds barely even thinking about it.

Depends what you mean by "a good window manager". Basically what you have described is what I can already do (and have done) in Fedora under KDE. I don't mind admitting that when KDE 4.0 came out I persevered with it for about 2 weeks but my wife was pissed with it so I switched her to Gnome and a few days later I switched as well. Of course once KDE came out with 4.3 we switched back.

Actually a a good window manager is purely subjective. What one person likes another may dislike and prefer different Window manager which other people may not like in return. In many respects having a choice of window/session managers gives greater flexibility to the user and in this Linux distributions have well and truly succeeded.

Re:Not necessarily.

[shutdown -p now]

Not to defend any of the new-ish UIs, but the conventional UI model has always sucked. Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time.

True, but the problem with new UIs is that they attempt to solve the problems of existing solutions by pretending that use cases that made them exist are no longer relevant. E.g. manual window management is too tedious? Let's ditch windows and run everything full-screen!

Re:Not necessarily.

[hedwards]

I definitely notice myself getting things done more quickly from the command line. There are tasks where a GUI does make more sense, but most of the time it's because I don't use the application often enough to justify learning all the commands.

What's brilliant about the *NIX CLI is that you can throw together random combinations of utilities to do some pretty mindblowing stuff. Even just sed, grep and awk can do some pretty astonishing things if you take the time to learn them.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Grishnakh]

Not to defend any of the new-ish UIs, but the conventional UI model has always sucked. Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time. Same with launching programs or organizing my menus.

Sorry, I don't follow you at all here. Driving yourself to the grocery store is wasted time too, but most of us do it anyway because we can't afford chauffeurs, we don't have cars that drive themselves, and we can't afford butlers and personal chefs to go buy our food for us and prepare it for us when we're ready.

It'd be nice not to have to move a window or resize a window, but if I don't do it, how's it going to get done? The computer doesn't know where I want to put that window, or how large I want to make it. Maybe when we invent mind-reading UIs this will all be automatic, but until then it's you who has to tell the computer exactly where you want your windows and what dimensions you want. These stupid new dumbed-down UIs try to eliminate these things by simply making all windows full-screen, but that's utterly stupid because 1) some of us have multiple monitors and 2) many of us like to have multiple windows open at once, not fully overlapping, so that we can see many different things at once. There's no way for a computer to know what you're trying to do here.

You don't want to "waste time" launching programs? What do you propose, that the computer read your mind so it launches them for you? This makes no sense at all. If you want to run a program, you have to start it somehow. The computer doesn't know what program you want to run.

As for organizing menus, what the heck are you talking about? This sounds like a problem with Windows. I haven't felt the desire to organize a menu in ages, ever since I switched to Linux, where the menus have always been pre-organized by program type rather than just a big mess with every program in a category named after the vendor.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Blakey Rat]

The perfect UI for 90% of all use cases has existed for decades. I think In The Beginning Was The Command Line should be required reading for all of those "Intro to Computer Literacy" classes they tend to require of college freshmen (or did about 6 years ago when I was still taking classes).

You're trolling us, right?

Computers today (I dunno, maybe you're writing that Slashdot message from 1986) do things like organize photos, edit videos, surf the web, serve as media centers, composing WYSIWYG documents-- all things the CLI is godawful at dealing with. That's maybe 99% of what people use their computers for.

For the other 1%? Sure the CLI's fine. But who gives a fuck? We want an interface for the 99%.

Re:Not necessarily.

[rakaur]

In my experience, most regular people could replace their desktop computer with an iPad. My mom uses her $1100 iMac for email, browsing, and games like Bejeweled. A $500 iPad would definitely suffice for that, and would probably work better for most people. More abstraction, direct manipulation of the data, backups to the cloud step out of the geek box for what us tinkerers would want and check out what your mom or grandma would want. I would bet money my mom would let her PC sit on her desk and collect dust if she got an iPad. She can even use it to video chat with me a thousand miles away. That kind of shit is like magic for 60 somethings.

Re:Not necessarily.

[syousef]

The perfect UI for 90% of all use cases has existed for decades

I love command line tools, use unix utils and vi often and know some emacs, but that is complete horse shit. Command line utils are great for non-visual things. I do not like command line for composing documents (and LaTeX is the perfect example of the kind of SUCK you get trying), nor would I like to create 3D models. It can be done of course, but it's the wrong tool.

What you are saying is akin to a craftsman saying hand tools have existed for millenia and so power tools suck. It's just gibberish, and you need to grow up and learn to use the best tool available for each job.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Telvin_3d]

The command line is a limited and narrow way of interacting with files on the computer.

As someone who does graphic arts and video, having to deal with a CLI would come with a significant productivity cost. It would mean losing the ability to preview dozens (or hundreds) of clips and media samples without having to open each individually. I can select and move a dozen out of a selection of hundreds of arbitrarily named files with a few clicks of the mouse. The same effort would represent a significant amount of typing. For that matter, CLI and text interfaces are not particularly useful for even viewing lists of large volumes of files.

CLI is an efficient way of doing a small number of specialized tasks. For the minor number of users that spend their time doing only those tasks it is superior. For any task that has risen to prominence in the last decade, probably not.

Re:Not necessarily.

[kandresen]

That does not remove the fact that there is a use case for the type of user we are that is distinct from a regular user.

For example making a sales site and only making use cases for the people going to buy things does not remove the use case for one that need to maintain the inventory of the site...

Re:Not necessarily.

[CAIMLAS]

The most usable UIs I've used, in this regard, are tiling window managers:

* awesome, by far the best
* xmonad, a marginal second because
* ion, because he (as far as I can tell) started the idea in vogue, and did a good implementation. That, and he's a vitriolic asshole who deserves honorable mention.

They're usable almost solely with a keyboard, but a keyboard you do need. Throw a launcher on there, and it'd be the bee's knees for anything with a keyboard. I've used one of the above on 4" touchscreens up through multiple 30" monitors, and it scales quite well.

Re:Not necessarily.

[exomondo]

Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time.

If only the UI could read your mind and know exactly when and how to manipulate windows to your liking. Not everyone works in the same way or has the same display setup (different sizes, resolutions, number of displays) so being able to position and resize windows is a good thing in a multitasking environment.

Same with launching programs

Launching programs is wasted time? You want everything loaded all the time?

organizing my menus.

What's your one-size-fits-all solution menus that is perfect for 100% of people then?

If we can abandon the model where the user has to fiddle with a bunch of unnecessary crap just to use their computer, that would be a step forward.

What is this 'bunch of unnecessary crap' that the user has to 'fiddle' with 'just to use their computer'? I don't think i've ever seen such things.

Re:Not necessarily.

[epyT-R]

not at all. those switches were simple to operate, far simpler than even a speak'n'spell, but damned inconvenient.. just like this pathological pursuit of simplicity we're seeing now with unity et al.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

So use multiple monitors and maximize your windows - one per monitor. Problems solved and productivity jumps.

Please explain to my boss that I need more than a dozen monitors to be more productive. Yes, I use that many windows and often twice that at the same time, and no, they can not be tiled either. If I can't have overlapping windows in a sane way (i.e. no auto-raise focused window), I lose productivity. Cause I really do need dozens of simultaneous windows without the risk of forgetting any of them.

Re:Not necessarily.

[lee1]

This is all depressingly familiar. I've made comments very similar to the parent's and received a similar barrage of weirdly hostile, obscenity-laced responses. He happens to be correct. Those who disagree just never learned how to use a computer. LaTeX is great. Word processors suck. And the last time I edited some video, I did it from the command line.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your use of "sane" to mean "what I like" speaks to a deep-seated arrogance which casts all of your opinions in a suspicious light.

Re:Not necessarily.

[tomhudson]

... or maybe you need a decent script that can go through whatever is feeding all those windows and summarize only the cogent parts that really need your attention?

You know, something like a dashboard ...

Re:Not necessarily.

[lorenlal]

As someone who has supported users for years... On whatever F-ing interface they've had to use... 3270-Mainframe, Windows, AIX, Solaris (CLI or GUI), it all came down to one simple thing:

How do I do my job?

Frankly, it doesn't matter a damn what the interface is. For most business grunts, end users, whomever, it really doesn't matter what's in front of them because they'll learn how to use it. If it works, and if works *reliably* then the end users end up loving it. I've heard the phrase, "It's ugly as sin, but it works" and "It looks nice, but I can't use it" enough.

Re:Not necessarily.

[ediron2]

You do understand that you and I (IT guy that I was/am) are a *very* small percentage of the user base?

Heh, then why don't car companies design cars for little old ladies from Pasadena, and not for performance geeks. Hell, aside from backwater stretches in UT and MT, where in the US do most cars even need a speedometer that shows more than 80 MPH? Why do most office apps have deep functionality reserved for mail-merge, legal forms, dynamic embedding, cross functionality like functions in docs and database queries in spreadsheets, code-driven customizations, etc, if most of us never touch 90% of that crap? Why have all those extraneous buttons on my microwave? Why have advanced ANYTHING, since only a very small percentage of users care about even HALF of the functions on any such system or device.

I'll tell you why: My mom right-clicks for SOME functions. My sister doesn't care about 9/10ths of the UI, but is passionate about a few advanced features that niche neatly into her daily workflow. And ditto for everyone I know: each of us has a generic common usage footprint and a few unique specialties out of the advanced features that call for more depth or nuance than touch on a small tablet so far provides.

tl;dr: just because every function in an advanced-feature product is ignored by the majority of users by itself does not mean most people do NONE of that stuff.

PS: I never left Ub 10.10 as my primary workstation, and am migrating my working habits to a Mint VM. When I'm sure it does most of what I need, I'm gone -- It has taken Canonical/Ubuntu less than a year to push me from biggest fan to confused detractor and soon-to-be-ex-user. WTF, Shuttleworth?!

Re:Not necessarily.

[Belial6]

Most of those same people could also replace that $500 iPad with a $300 laptop and would suffice for your list tasks, and would probably work better than the iPad. It would also let her video chat with you thousands of miles away.

Honestly, the future personal computer is likely going eventually be a tablet connecting to bluetooth keyboards and mice/touchpads. This way you have a single machine that is a tablet when you are laying in bed, a desktop when you are sitting and doing serious work, and a laptop when you are out and about doing work that a tablet doesn't cut it for.

Existing tablets are just not powerful enough to replace real computers for most people. They are getting there fast though. The software is still not their yet either. They are great for what they do, but they are not good enough to replace a critical mass of the PCs... Yet.

Re:Not necessarily.

[steelfood]

Say what you will about Microsoft and Windows 7 (personally, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole and a hazmat suit), but they got the little search/run bar in the start menu right.

Want a program? Type in its name, pick from the list, done. Want to run a command? Type in the command line, done. It's the best of both worlds. Simple, elegant, and you can still do all the advanced CLI stuff with it.

There are probably better ways to manage windows. But removing them outright isn't it. Some people need simultaneous windows. Some people like setting things up exactly as they want them. One of my major peeves about Windows' windows was that every time you opened up a program, its position would change. Now, it's a good security feature in that it prevents "hidden" windows from nefariously running behind the main one. But there are better ways of doing it, e.g. having it pop up where the user put it last time, and then putting elsewhere the subsequent new instances that had never existed before.

But just because a part of the UI is a mess doesn't mean all of it is. And just because it's a mess for the basic user doesn't mean it's a mess for the intermediate or advanced user and vice versa. And somewhere is a middle ground that the default for all systems should be. Nobody's really there yet, and sadly, it seems fewer and fewer UI projects are trying for it.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Pentium100]

CLI has one big disadvantage - it is very difficult to figure out how to do something if you do not know it already (and do not or can not google it). To add to that, different systems use different commands for the same thing.

So, let's say I am a MSDOS user who installed Linux and want to do something. Ok, so I get the directory listing with "dir", though it does not display how much free space is left and want to delete a file. I type "del somefile" and bash does not recognize the command. So, what other command could there be for deleting a file. It turns out to be "rm", short for "remove", but the long version does not work and how am I supposed to know that the short version is "rm" and not, say, "rem"?
On the other hand, if this was a GUI and had a menu, then I would figure out that "rm" is probably short for "remove" and this is the equivalent of "delete".
Even if I type "help", it displays a bunch of commands, but "rm" is not among them.

Other devices have, well, GUIs. If I want to record something using a tape deck, I look for a button named "record" (or a word that means the same in other language) or "rec" or with an icon that most likely represents recording (arrow pointing to a tape for example). I may have to press "play" at the same time I press record. I do not have to type "record" or "rec" or "r" or "tape.record.start" or something else and guess what could the command be.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Hyperhaplo]

"It's ugly as sin, but it works"

That describes the mainframe interface really well.. and yes, it's damn ugly - especially compared to HTML / CSS - but it works. All of the time. Every day.

It can also be horrible to code in.. but then.. YMMV

Yes, we all hate the new until we get used to it.
On the other hand, look at Vista. Some things were just horrible..

My opinion is that Microsoft inflicted Vista on the world so that when Windows 7 came along everyone would say 'oh, that is so much better' .. in the same way if someone spent all day beating you up constantly, and then later came back and only lightly slapped you in the face constantly you'd think "oh, that is so much better".

Conditioning perhaps? Teaching the masses to accept the less bitter pill by making them eat the more bitter pill first? Hmm.

Meanwhile, from the information released so far about Windows 8 I am dreading having to use it. Luckily, it is going to be such a massive effort to change from Windows XP to Windows 7 that the next OS work will change to is likely to be Windows 9 or Linux or Mac -
Depending on just how badly Windows 8 tanks.
(special note: use of the word "upgrade" specifically and deliberately left out of this paragraph)

Re:Not necessarily.

[bemymonkey]

Ever thought about using a tiling application?

Re:Not necessarily.

[MPolo]

I think that the horrors of autoraise can only be understood by someone who has used focus follows mouse (click to raise) for a while. At least on an X-based system, it is really heaven. I am constantly running things in multiple windows and overlapping, and it makes me very happy and productive. But I have had time to learn to work with it. I now have the problem that I am almost paralyzed when I have to use Windows on a small monitor (especially the versions with application grouping in the status bar). However, I do know that my feelings on this are not universal.

More and more, though, we have developers deciding that their opinions are universal. OpenOffice is the big offender in this in the Linux world. They decided at some point to override the window manager, forcing raising on focus, which makes it pretty much impossible to work with severe OOo windows open. I have not yet come up with a good alternative, though. So I am forced to minimize all the OOo windows to prevent them from blocking out what I'm actually trying to do. To be more on topic, I managed to use Gnome 3 for about a day and a half before I gave up and went to XFCE.

Re:Not necessarily.

[0ld_d0g]

False equivalency.

For a sales site it is required that both types of users be able to use the site. No OS is *required* to be friendly to a certain type of user. In fact it would be beneficial to the non-tech end user if the computer was an appliance that just ran a fixed set of apps. OSX/iOS with a locked App Store is quite close to bringing this kind of device to the market soon.

Re:Not necessarily.

[pjt33]

Have you ever tried using a GUI to edit video? When I tried out every Linux video editing package I could find I ended up wondering why there wasn't a CLI-based one (obviously with a GUI for preview) because it would be so much easier to get consistency and involve far less worrying about whether your clips are snapping to the right place if you could type in which other clip you wanted to link to and with how much overlap.

Composing WYSIWYG documents is another bad example, because what everyone really wants is a WYWIWYG, and the best options for that are hand-coded HTML or LaTeX.

Re:Not necessarily.

[0ld_d0g]

You haven't told us why your use-case is more important than the others who want such a simple UI

Re:Not necessarily.

[DMUTPeregrine]

You sound like someone who would do well with Xmonad. It's a very minimal tiling window manager. I personally use it instead of kwin with kde4.

Re:Not necessarily.

[0ld_d0g]

Do you even know what a CLI is? A GUI can have fields to enter numerical values and it would STILL be a GUI.

Also HTML/CSS is probably the single worst content layout technology that I've ever used. Even a windows 3.1era magazine publishing tool is superior in every single way.

Re:Not necessarily.

[houghi]

I agree. I never understood the use of the desktop as an extra program. Never understood the icons. There are programs in the way to see those icons.

Also why only one start button with programs? Make several to get to your program. And why has Windows still no multiple desktops?

Re:Not necessarily.

[DigiShaman]

No, nothing so insidious. Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to have been. But somewhere along Vista's development, the project management team fucked up -big time- at Microsoft. It was so bad in fact, their marketing dept was forced into damage control. Do you remember Microsoft's Mojave Experiment? That was their apologetic Vista relaunch campaign. But you know what they say right? If you can't polish a turd, roll it in glitter. It's still shit though now matter how you cut it though. And they knew it!

Re:Not necessarily.

[Guy Harris]

False equivalency.

For a sales site it is required that both types of users be able to use the site. No OS is *required* to be friendly to a certain type of user. In fact it would be beneficial to the non-tech end user if the computer was an appliance that just ran a fixed set of apps. OSX/iOS with a locked App Store is quite close to bringing this kind of device to the market soon.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a fixed set of apps" or "locked App Store". The current App Stores are "locked" in that you need Apple's approval to sell an app on the App Store, and the iOS App Store is "locked" in that it's the only place you can get apps for an un-jailbroken machine running iOS, but they're not "locked" in the sense that the current set of apps on it is the only set of apps that will ever be sold on it. The set of apps you can run on a machine running Mac OS X or iOS is larger than the set of apps that come with Mac OS X or iOS, so the set of apps the machines come with is not a fixed set of apps that are the only apps that the machine will ever be able to run.

When I hear "appliance that just [runs] a fixed set of apps", I think of a machine that comes with the only apps it'll ever run; that's not what a machine running Mac OS X or iOS is. Apple does sell machines of that sort, such as the AirPort {Express,Extreme} (which don't run particularly user-visible apps) and the Apple TV (which currently has a fixed set of "apps", although the functions it can perform can be extended with software updates), but the Apple TV might, at some point, be another iOS platform supported by the App Store.

One might argue that a Chromebook is such an "appliance", but, well, there's this programming language out there called "JavaScript", and a whole bunch of places that upload JavaScript code, so even that is arguably not a fixed-function appliance.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Compaqt]

Question about that: does that mean if you launch one program, it gets the entire screen?

And if you launch another one, the first one becomes half the size, and they all take up 1/2 each?

3 programs: 1/3 space each? 4 -> 1/4 each, etc?

So what happens when you have 8 programs running? Or a browser with a lot of windows open?

Re:Not necessarily.

[Daniel Klugh]

I've commented on that before. He seems to think that the video chip, video memory and blitter ("2D accelerator" for you kids out there) live in the monitor. He gives that as a reason for the Mac's built-in monitor. The Macintosh didn't even HAVE video memory. (and certainly not a blitter)

Re:Not necessarily.

[Compaqt]

There's another thing too: not all apps work well maximized. In all of the worrying about "human factors" how did these devs forget something which people have known a long time: it's easier to read text which is smaller horizontally.

That's why newspapers are printed in columns.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Compaqt]

Same here. I usually have a few shortcuts to some screenshot apps because I need to make a lot of screenshots:

One for active window screenshot. One for select region screenshot. And one for a different Perl-based screenshot program.

Re:Not necessarily.

[polyp2000]

" it sucks absolute balls at scalability in feature sets. " WTF ?

Please could you explain exactly what this means and how it applies to the Command Line Interface ?

N ....

Re:Not necessarily.

[FireFury03]

Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time. Same with launching programs or organizing my menus.

If we can abandon the model where the user has to fiddle with a bunch of unnecessary crap just to use their computer, that would be a step forward.

Unless your computer is going to have a mind reader device attached to it, how else are you expecting to tell it how big you want the window and where you want it? Making all windows full-screen certainly isn't the answer because that is *always* wrong (I never full-screen my windows and I almost always work with multiple overlapping windows at once - forcing me to fullscreen everything and constantly switch between them would be more of a time waste than occasionally resizing and positioning a window.

Re:Not necessarily.

[mwvdlee]

There are applications that combine a GUI and CLI.
AutoCAD is a good example of that; top ~80% of the screen is a GUI including buttons and menu's for everything possible. Bottom ~20% is a textbox where you can everything with text commands. (As I understand it, the GUI was actually a shell around the text command engine in early versions of the AutoCAD GUI). The experienced AutoCAD user would be faster with the keyboard than the mouse. I've not used it in well over a decade, do I don't know the current situation.

Re:Not necessarily.

[macraig]

I share that frustration, and for a decade or more I've been using add-ons like Shove-It and HandyThing and others to try to automate some of that "window management". You'd think a so-called window manager would be doing that, huh? It's testimony to just how pervasive the tunnel vision is in the developer camps at Apple, Microsoft, and Canonical that they completely ignore the existence of such utilities and the fact that the only reason they exist is because they're solving problems that the not-so-aptly-named window managers are not. They've had a decade at least to take notice of the problems these addons solve and incorporate that, but the best we get is "Aero snap" and the like, which is still not solution enough.

Re:Not necessarily.

[knarf]

It'd be nice not to have to move a window or resize a window, but if I don't do it, how's it going to get done? The computer doesn't know where I want to put that window, or how large I want to make it.

The computer might not know where you'd place a window, or to what size you'd resize it, true. What it can make a good guess at is where that window would be placed best, and what size would be appropriate for it. This is the way many tiling window managers (Xmonad, dwm, ratpoison, etc) work, and it *does* work for many applications. The more flexible tiling window managers (Xmonad being a prime example) can be made to adapt their window placement logic to most scenarios.

You *do* have to let go of the urge to be in control of every last detail of window management for these types of window manager to be effective. For comparison, look at the difference between a word processor like ${whatever}Office and a document processor like LyX. In the former, you are assumed to take control over the exact formatting of your document, while in the latter the program does most of the formatting for you. In most cases the document processor will be far more efficient and produce better formatting than the word processor, but there are situations where the word processor is preferable. The same goes for window management. Some tiling window managers (Xmonad being one of them) can actually be made to stack windows as well for those corner cases where you want more control over window placement. It is a handy option to have at hand, even if you'll find that you hardly ever use it.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Lulu of the Lotus-Ea]

I would put it in exactly the opposite way. A GUI is an efficient way of doing a small number of specialized tasks. For more general requirements, a (good) CLI always wins... and wins by many orders of magnitude. That said, editing graphics and videos is absolutely one area where a GUI often wins. That's mostly because our interaction and understanding of those data formats is inherently visual, and most work with them is interactive. There's usually no systematic or programmatic way to describe what we want done... and in fact, what we want emerges out of interactions with the data.

On the other hand, for things that can be systematized--even on an ad hoc basis--a CLI might be hundreds or thousands of times easier. I preview pictures like everyone. I also often, for example, look for data and patterns in files. To do that, I can do things like (off the cuff):

        % find /home -name *.csv | grep "Date: 2011-1[01]" | cut -d, -f1,6 > interesting.data

If I happen to have a thousand files in various directories that match the name pattern, and many of them have records for dates in Oct-Nov 2011 with a field I care about, what exactly might I do in a GUI?! Spend hours and hours hunting for the files, opening each, copying the data, etc? I could, but that would suck. Or I could also certainly write a *program* in some language other than bash to walk the directories, open the files, etc. But that's much less interactive and more clumsy than just doing it with one command (albeit, some other programming languages let you express something similar with little more text than the bash line... however, those are still matters of typing the write text, not of clicking on icons and dragging a mouse around).

Now clearly for some frequently repeated tasks, makers of applications and operating systems add in special menus and toolbars to do complex tasks like the above line. But those menus, dialogs, etc. always wind up being less flexible than the command-line and missing future uses that are easy to express with commonplace command-line simple tools (like find, grep, cut, etc).

Re:Not necessarily.

[FireFury03]

The thing people complain about, even if they don't spell it out, is the replacement of stuff that works by stuff that "isn't quite there yet".

If it isn't there, it shouldn't be the default in any major distribution.

I could look at pretty much any GUI and pick out reasons why I'd consider it "not there yet". Yes, I'm including Windows 3, Win 95, OS X, Gnome 2, Enlightenment, Gnome 3, etc. They *all* "aren't quite there yet", so by your comment shouldn't have ever been in a major distribution. The thing is, after you've used a system for a while, you learn to work around the bits that don't quite work well and eventually you're so used to avoiding those problems that you don't even notice they are there. Then, you change to a new UI which has *different* problems and suddenly the workaround that you're used to using isn't needed any more and you're going to need to figure out and get used to some new workarounds, which takes time.

They're trying to push "progress" down everyone's throats, and it's probably because Linux policy is dictated by developers, not users.

I don't see open source policy that much different to the policies of large closed-source organisations. In FOSS projects, the decisions are largely made by the developers and in some cases, the bosses at the larger corporations (Canonical, RedHat, et al). In closed source projects such as Windows, OS X, etc. the decisions are largely made by the bosses. In both cases, the user is not really part of the decision making process - sure, the developers and bosses may do some usability studies involving end users (and this applies to both FOSS and closed commercial projects), but honestly, when was the last time you emailed Microsoft and asked for the Windows UI to do $feature and they actually implemented it for you in the next version? Just a quick look at Windows 8 should convince you that they don't really take the users into consideration when designing this stuff.

As for progress, IMHO progress is acknowledging that different users have different needs and producing a wide variety of UIs rather than trying to jam a single UI down everyone's throats irrespective of their needs. FWIW, I think that (for me) Gnome 3 is definitely progress - sure, they've jumped the shark in a few places (largely misfeatures that they have ripped off from OS X), but on the whole it isn't bad. I've switched all my machines to Gnome 3 now and consider it an improvement over anything else I've used (prior to Gnome 3 I had settled on E17 for a while... Gnome 2 was horrendous, it seemed that they had tried to copy Windows whilst removing the few things that Windows does right.)

Re:Not necessarily.

[pmontra]

I wonder if Unity developers use Unity to develop Unity and how they can handle it. Maybe they use only one maximized IDE window all the time, which makes sense given the way IDEs tend to fill up the screen with sidebars. Unfortunately that's not the way I work. Maximized windows and global menu are not for me, unless I'm using my netbook or my phone.

All their efforts are wasted for me and actually waste my time because I'm having to work around them and eventually look for another desktop. At least it seems they are helping Mint and Xfce.

Re:Not necessarily.

[syousef]

This is all depressingly familiar. I've made comments very similar to the parent's and received a similar barrage of weirdly hostile, obscenity-laced responses. He happens to be correct. Those who disagree just never learned how to use a computer. LaTeX is great. Word processors suck. And the last time I edited some video, I did it from the command line.

Well you can think what you want, but your words are typical of the arrogance I see all the time. You think it is so, therefore it must be so.

Word processors do not suck - they allow you to focus on both presentation and content at the same time. The LaTeX way of working insists that you separate these two things. To be honest it seems people who prefer it don't know how to multi-task well. There is a reason that word processors have taken off and LaTeX is obscure outside academia. It is awkward and cumbersome to use, requires a complex understanding of the underlying structure of your document, and makes things that are graphically easy to do into a mental challenge.

Likewise, you are in the minority when it comes to video editing. I'm not sure what kind of video editing you were doing that was command line based. MOST high end complex editing for film, TV etc. is done in a visual environment.

Command line manipulation makes almost no sense for visual manipulation. But if you're talking about mathematical transforms or executing a sequence of commands, it shines.

The incredibly stupid thing about this entire argument is that there is no reason you can't have BOTH. You can build a manipulation engine that takes text commands and then build a good graphical interface on top of it, then allow the user to interface with the tools as they choose. Good examples are spreadsheets and graphics software that include macro recorders. A user can do all the grunt work visually, producing a script which he can then manipulate and tweak as text. Additional actions can again be recorded and the scripts combined. One reason Photoshop excels over GIMP is that while both can be scripted, Photoshop has a macro recorder built into it. Despite the MS ties, Excel is extremely powerful if you learn to use it like that. Looking up the commands to move to the end of the spreadsheet when you can just use the visual action is just idiotic.

Re:Not necessarily.

[thegarbz]

I think the point the parent was making was that the user adoption wouldn't be the same. Support has existed for every interface, but it's often quite a different level of knowledge. Last support question I got for a Solaris box was trying to work out why an absurdly long backup command suddenly fails to work spitting out some weird error about /dev/whateveritwas not being accessible.

The last support I gave to a windows user was today when our receptionist couldn't figure out how to expand her desktop onto a second monitor rather than have it clone the desktop.

The reality is that these days we have monkeys on the keyboard doing tasks which a few years ago wouldn't have been imaginable to do without being some kind of guru nerd who treats emacs as a complete operating system.

For every "It's ugly as sin, but it works" and "It looks nice, but I can't use it" there's thousands of other people who sit silently using their simple pretty computers without complaints. It's this "simple" yet graphical world which drives development of interfaces.

Re:Not necessarily.

[silanea]

While I am with you on the 1% (which I probably belong to) the other 99% are not one homogeneous Borg collective. That is exactly the core matter in this whole debate: Can the new generation of interfaces - Unity, GNOME 3 and the others mentioned in the submission - really cater to all audiences, from the novice to casual to business to power user? That is the claim that the project leaders continue to make.

As others have said many times, all those interfaces are optimised for use on touch-centric devices with little screen real estate and few concurrently running applications. There they clearly offer benefits over the traditional GUI approach. But on my 27" display with several open windows per application and way more than just the default toolbar or on multi-monitor setups those interfaces just plain suck. So we do not need one interface for the 99%. We need a couple of interfaces for different use cases.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arikol]

People SAY they don't care about the look, but tests have shown that if we test the exact same interface uglified (made to look old and ugly) vs the same interface beautified, then the beautified interface scores higher for usability. People say that it worked better, even if it didn't.
It turns out that you have more than one component to "usability". We can call it "user experience" as a whole (which then includes the technical aspect, the usability, the looks, the feel including response times and physical feel of the hardware)

Now, I love my CLI (having a terminal available is great) and think that scripting can't be beat for some tasks. I also think that having a good and sturdy shortcut and text interface IN the GUI is a good thing (being able to start programs through quick commands such as a good search feature that can be invoked from the keyboard). Yet working graphically is still what our brain does best. Moving text blocks, selecting seen objects instead of remembering commands, etc. A very big part of our brain is dedicated to visual processing, which results in us being pretty good at it. Our tools, including computers, should work with that in mind.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arikol]

You've seen non-IT users who are used to Windows have a problem with Unity which does not try to emulate Windows95/XP, and be more comfortable with the "old" way which tries to emulate Windows95/XP.

What a shocker!

Re:Not necessarily.

[serviscope_minor]

More and more, though, we have developers deciding that their opinions are universal.

Don't get me started. Oh you did. OK, then...

OpenOffice is the big offender in this in the Linux world. They decided at some point to override the window manager

This is one of the cardinal sins. Another one relates to XWarpPointer. I also fine firefox to be a worse offender. One thing it does which I really hate.

I tend to run a large number of virtual desktops separated spatially according to task, so I can divide my time between several tasks. Each task tends to havde a browser window nearby with relevant docs, etc. Well, now when you download, it jumps to the one true download window, whereever that may be. Visually jarring, and very confusing. I've also had progrms (firefox?) issuing irritating XWarpPoiter commands.

Hey! I do real work! My life isn't centred around your web browser!

By the way: it is possible to make OpenOffice well behaved with help from a suitably flexible window manager. In FVWM (which you use), you can configure on a per-program basis pretty much exactly which window manipulation commands should be allowed or ignored. This makes OpenOffice tracbale on focus-follows-mouse setup. In FVWM, the command is:

Style "*Office*" EWMHIgnoreStackingOrderHints, IgnoreRestack, DontRaiseTransient, DontLowerTransient, DontStackTransientParent

This is one of the many reasons I love Linux and feel that it is *the* superior GUI.

Re:Not necessarily.

[jcupitt65]

Gnome3 supports focus-follows-mouse. You can enable it in the advanced settings thing. I also wish it was the default :/

Re:Not necessarily.

[TheDarkMaster]

It is because of people like you that the year of linux on the desktop will always be current year + 1...

Re:Not necessarily.

[HuguesT]

That describes Wordperfect to a T, yet in the end MS-Word won out.

I think most users prefer something that can be learned easily, look reasonably nice, and more or less does everything they need sort-of-OK, to something that works perfectly but is hard to learn (not to use).

Re:Not necessarily.

[0ld_d0g]

I did not mean to imply that such a device exists. Merely that its possible using existing tech to trivially lock iOS/OSX down such that its really hard to screw up the device. Such a feature would be in great demand in the corporate world.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1717416/apple-patent-reveals-restricted-enterprise-app-store-plans-rim-beware

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/01/apple-creates-customizable-access-to-the-app-store-for-enterprise.html

Also my personal preference is immaterial here. I was only talking about how 'grandma' users can best be accommodated. At a basic level I can imagine a PC/Laptop/iPad like device that has a slot like a SD card or something that holds your apps/data/preferences/settings etc. The OS will be part of the firmware of the device which you can update over the air.

Re:Not necessarily.

[CapuchinSeven]

Heh, then why don't car companies design cars for little old ladies from Pasadena

...er, because little old ladies from Pasadena aren't the majority of car users.

Re:Not necessarily.

[CapuchinSeven]

And the last time I edited some video, I did it from the command line.

OMG you're so much more hardcore than anyone else. If you think he's correct then wow, he just must be.

Re:Not necessarily.

[cynyr]

i don't know what the "unnecessary crap" is, but I'd bet it takes me an hour or so to get a windows computer back to how i like them(most like XFCE4 as possible). I need sloppy focused windows, and python for example.

Re:Not necessarily.

[1s44c]

"I understand why Microsoft is having to play catch up, ..."

Please. That's so '00's.

And strangely still true.

Re:Not necessarily.

[realityimpaired]

The time spent learning to do that from command line could be better spent getting stuff done. And for an awful lot of computer users, they'll never be able to internalize something like video editing from a command line, because they need to visualize it. They'll be much more productive if you give them a way to simply visualize what they're doing and drag/drop than they would be if you make them have to do math and calculations, then put it into a CLI, hope it works, and if not, go back, redo the calculations, and put it back into the CLI.

Re:Not necessarily.

[gfxguy]

Every moment I spend moving a window around or resizing it is frankly wasted time. Same with launching programs or organizing my menus.

What I would like to know is how you would design a system where you didn't have to move and resize windows at all. That's the paradigm that Mac, Unity, and mobile devices use - the app takes up the screen, then you just switch between apps, but it doesn't make sense on a larger desktop monitor.

So how does your ideal window manager deal with it without resizing and moving windows? Some "rational" default placement that rarely puts windows where I want them? Disallowing resizing? Forcing me to use the entire desktop for every single application? What?

How do you launch programs without launching them? Should every program run on startup? I hear your complaints, but I just don't see rational solutions to them. That may just be my own middle-aged lack of creativity, so I want to know what your ideal "experience" is (I won't even say "desktop," because perhaps you don't even like that paradigm).

Re:Not necessarily.

[gfxguy]

Actually a a good window manager is purely subjective. What one person likes another may dislike and prefer different Window manager which other people may not like in return. In many respects having a choice of window/session managers gives greater flexibility to the user and in this Linux distributions have well and truly succeeded.

That's why the paradigm of allowing the tweaking we've always had available with intelligent defaults still stands. These new window managers seem to want to destroy that paradigm by actually telling us they are better because they removed options that someone else has decided you shouldn't be using; "You'll like it better my way."

Re:Not necessarily.

[rwise2112]

Well I think if you forget a window you 'need', then you don't really need it!

Re:Not necessarily.

[gfxguy]

I find that you need dozens of windows a hard thing to wrap my head around, I can't possibly imagine why, but I'm not going to doubt you since the way I work is similar (just with maybe four or five windows - add email and browser and it's up to 6 or 7). Auto-raise is terrible; click to focus drives me crazy (because then it auto-raises), and using sloppy focus (focus follows mouse) means those unified menu bars simply won't work.

The thing is that the defenders of Unity (and Mac UI and I don't know about Windows anymore) think everybody is supposed to change their workflow to work within the new "paradigm" instead of having a flexible system that conforms to the way we use it. Who needs more than one mouse button, right? Who needs a manual transmission? Do it our way and you'll like it whether you realize you like it or not!

Re:Not necessarily.

[Hatta]

You can assign windows to virtual desktops and swap between layouts with hotkeys. Never have to leave the keyboard if you don't want to.

Re:Not necessarily.

[JDG1980]

I find that you need dozens of windows a hard thing to wrap my head around, I can't possibly imagine why, but I'm not going to doubt you since the way I work is similar (just with maybe four or five windows - add email and browser and it's up to 6 or 7).

I can't speak for the original poster, but I don't use tabbed browsing (and never will) so I routinely have over a dozen browser windows open at once.

Re:Not necessarily.

[jittles]

The perfect UI for 90% of all use cases has existed for decades. I think In The Beginning Was The Command Line

My boss would probably like you to have his baby. He thinks that everyone should only work inside of VIM and on the command-line. I think he's an idiot. I've watched him try to merge code bases w/ diff on the CLI. Then I fire up WinMerge or Beyond Compare, or any other GUI merge tool and show him how its done. He seriously asks people their favorite CLI editor in job interviews and if you don't say VI, he probably won't hire you. It's ridiculous. As if a programmer's skill is measured by their love of VI.

Anyway, I can't imagine what you are doing on the command-line at home most of the time. Doesn't sound like you do anything fun. Sure I use the CLI on my server at home, and a lot on my HTPC as well, but the GUI beats out the CLI on just about any FUN activity.

Re:Not necessarily.

[ahodgson]

Word and Word clones suck. There used to be better options. Wordperfect, before Windows, was awesome.

Re:Not necessarily.

[greed]

I've easily got 30-40 windows open at once. Console sessions on a dozen remote machines, several Web browsers with distractions and reference manuals, e-mail window, ticketing system, VMware GUI (only needed for Windows VMs, all the UNIX/Linux/BSD ones can be got to via SSH from a native terminal), a few Emacs "frames" (since they called text regions "windows" before the GUI term was well-known)....

What I don't have, though, is a need to see all of that at once. 2-3 desktops to keep things organized (business meta-management on 1, ticketing/bug fix on 2, build consoles on 3, and VMware on 4.)

I need at most 3-4 windows visible, and rarely all of them: the active command window, for example, I only need to see a few lines around the prompt. The window(s) with a man page open, that I need to see in its entirety. Basically, I need to see all of the windows I'm reading from, but very little of the one I'm writing to. (So focus-auto-raise, a la Mac, is a truly atrocious UI feature for the way I work.)

If all the new stuff is really this restrictive, I still have the source code for Motif and my .mwmrc file from 1993.

Re:Not necessarily.

[omnichad]

What exactly are you using to browse the web with?

Re:Not necessarily.

[elsurexiste]

We want an interface for the 99%.

Occupy CLI!

Re:Not necessarily.

[MrEricSir]

I never said I had a solution, I just said it's one problem the UIs are now starting to address after ~20 years of stagnant UI shell design.

Re:Not necessarily.

[noldrin]

And that is the biggest pain with these new UI's, How I do my job has stayed relatively consistent since 1995. Now people have to relearn their jobs, from office suites to general OS. And for what? A possible marginal increase of usability? This is after not only you've retrained somebody's computer knowledge, but retrained their spatial reflexes. The other issue is it's become far more complicated to support and train these users through traditional avenues. If it was just as computer nerds using computers, then yes, one could get away with redesigning basic interfaces as we'd figure out how to cope. But when you are working with the general public, incremental changes over time is what is needed.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Billly Gates]

Yep.

You could do everything with the CLI ... back in the 1980s.

I left Linux last March after the writting was on the wall with the GUIs. Linux can run CLI great as a server because a server does not edit videos, serf the web, or do document creation, more than it uh, serves users through getting files, processes queries, and other things that happen at the backend.

Some CS students need to learn the CLI and that is true. But in the process it is a niche as Windows fullfils everything else like typing papers for classes and doing entertainment and getting information from the internet.

THe Linux desktop died with KDE and GNome. May it rest in peace.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

Ever thought about using a tiling application?

What part of "and no, they can not be tiled either" did you fail to understand?

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

Well I think if you forget a window you 'need', then you don't really need it!

No, I really want to know when a window notifies me of an system alert or a talk or write request on a remote machine. Even if I see it two minutes later.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

I think that the horrors of autoraise can only be understood by someone who has used focus follows mouse (click to raise) for a while.

No click to raise here. The Z-order should not change just because I paste into a partially obscured window. Only by hitting the magic combo for raising the focused window (clicking the border, or ALT-F1 are common) should it be raised, the way I work.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

... or maybe you need a decent script that can go through whatever is feeding all those windows and summarize only the cogent parts that really need your attention?

You know, something like a dashboard ...

How will the dashboard know that a "write art" from a specific user in one window is significant, and that a kernel message about a raid failing is significant, but a "watch df /" changing from 63% to 62% full isn't - the point is that you don't know beforehand what happens in the windows, so you can't automate it.

Re:Not necessarily.

[lorenlal]

Yes, you're right. I got irritated by parent just taking the hammer to an extreme example of CLI. Most end users, even if they have to use a CLI, or terminal emulator, will never have to use the pipe.

I could've specified, and I probably should have. I should've countered that adoption is driven by usefulness, not prettiness... I'd concede that computing may not be as pervasive as it is today if it had crappier interfaces. I will say that I don't think that recent changes to these interfaces are designed to further adoption though. I honestly don't know why the suits and designers think that the same interface everywhere is appropriate. A phone isn't the same as a PC, and it's not the same as my TV. They serve different functions, and should be "easy to use" over "consistent."

Re:Not necessarily.

[bemymonkey]

Seeing!=Understanding

That said, your use-case seems a bit extreme... WTF are you doing? You should really be spreading that out over a few 2560x1600 displays... nothing like being able to see everything all at once.

Re:Not necessarily.

[exomondo]

Fair enough, but that's the way you like to work and IMO the ability to set it up that way is a good thing.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

What of Compiz's "Expo" feature or the gnome-3 behavior that shows all your windows when you mouse up to the menu? Any good for you?

Unfortunately, not. It's pull, not push - you have to actively do an action to see whether something has changed, beyond throwing a glance.
And when you have 80x30 or even 132x40 terminal windows, the thumbnail doesn't really tell you if a value has changed from 95% to 96%

Re:Not necessarily.

[tomhudson]

How will the dashboard know that a "write art" from a specific user in one window is significant, and that a kernel message about a raid failing is significant, but a "watch df /" changing from 63% to 62% full isn't - the point is that you don't know beforehand what happens in the windows, so you can't automate it.

Sure you can. Set it up so it parses the output and only shows you the important stuff, same as email filters. Or alternatively, have the output for each appear in its own little expandable widget in a single app.

Re:Not necessarily.

[jgrahn]

In your perfect little CLI world, the computer wouldn't nearly have the adoption rate as it does now. That means the industry as a whole doesn't grow. As such, we wouldn't have had the advancements in hardware that we enjoy today. The fact is, while the CLI may be great for scripted routines and vertical market solutions, it sucks absolute balls at scalability in feature sets. Not the CLI itself, but the learning curve. Also, having to pipe out a fucking paragraph just to get shit done is out-of-the-question for most people.

How do you know this, when almost noone -- except us current Unix users -- have even had a chance to try a decent CLI? Or any of the other successful Unix paradigms, for that matter.

To add to the confusion, mixing the CLI as the primary interface shell and non-standard application GUIs is even worse.

I guess you're referring to the pre-Gnome, pre-KDE X11 environment. I don't know -- I can see a revival for that simple model. Sure, Emacs doesn't have the same look & feel as xedit, but at least they aren't trying to control you or your system.

In fact, I'm not sure what Gnome or KDE or what's-it-name has to offer that is useful to me. I have a root menu, a simple window manager, and an xclock in a corner. What am I missing which needs to be integrated and centrally controlled by some project?

Re:Not necessarily.

[Mr Z]

Amen.

Where I work, we had a custom in-house electronic mail system and electronic access to many "transactions" (scheduling time off, reading the corporate news, filing expenses) that all ran over TN3270. Ugly, ugly, UGLY as sin. But everyone from secretaries to engineers to HR was able to be productive with it. You spent a couple days learning how to use it, and then you used it. Simple enough.

Some days, I wish I could get that system back. There are some "transactions" (the time-off system, in particular) that got replaced some truly horrid web interface. But even so, we all learned how to make that work too, and then STFU and GBTW.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Mr Z]

Or was it the fact that WordPerfect was written entirely in assembly language, and stubbornly refused to embrace Windows for far too long? Even once they moved to Windows, you could tell it was window-dressing on a DOS program. (WP6 needs its own printer drivers under Windows? WTF? That's what GDI was invented for.) A similar fate befell Lotus 1-2-3.

People went to Windows for many reasons. WYSIWYG, cut/paste between applications, multitasking. But I never thought of Win16 apps as "pretty." It really fit the category of "Ugly, but does more."

Re:Not necessarily.

[Mr Z]

Ever try to make an international phone call on a phone card in the 80s?

Re:Not necessarily.

[Mr Z]

Oh, and when I was in college, every one from the most stoned out art major to the nerdiest computer science geek all hung out on our campus UNIX system, using old school "dmail" and UNIX "talk". Everyone knew how to work Kermit, everyone knew how to log in to the serial network, everyone knew how to do basic stuff in the shell. And then there were the kids on IRC and MUDs.

Someone else said "They'll only do it for pay." I disagree. They'll do it for play too.

Re:Not necessarily.

[arth1]

Sure you can. Set it up so it parses the output and only shows you the important stuff

The point is that you don't know what the important stuff is until it has happened. There's no way to filter for what you have no idea what will be!

Re:Not necessarily.

[tomhudson]

... but you know what's NOT important, so just filter that out. As time goes on, and you update your filters, you'll find less and less unimportant stuff gets through, same as spam filters work.

Re:Not necessarily.

[epyT-R]

because they already have theirs in single use minimalist devices like pads and cellphones.

Re:Not necessarily.

[epyT-R]

sorry, here's the rest..

the basic issue is that the trend is to remove existing power and flexibility from workstations rather than simply offer the 'simple mode' as an alternative for small devices. this degrades the capabilities of workstations down to what is found on tablets and the like. some of us need that flexibility which is why we have the systems we have. while I can see why profit driven vendors might like to push us all to cloud dependent computing paradigms, this trend in OSS land surprises me. I thought the OSS crowd prefers more power at the cost of a bit of tweaking.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Pentium100]

And this is why GUI is better - no need to RTFM to do basic functions.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Minix]

Tested, you say? Read this and weep: http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-unity/

It states that the usability of Unity was tested on 15 people, where "Of the 15 participants recruited, 13 were Windows users, 1 was a Mac user, and 1 used both Windows and Mac. None of the participants was familiar with Ubuntu."

Re:Not necessarily.

[drinkypoo]

As for organizing menus, what the heck are you talking about? This sounds like a problem with Windows.

I've spent a lot of time in alacarte making new categories because the menus aren't hierarchical enough and when you have a lot of software installed they scroll on small displays. My desktop has 2x 1680x1080 but none of my notebooks have more than 768 lines.

Re:Not necessarily.

[0ld_d0g]

Um, so you're upset that people who volunteer their time on OSS projects want to attract the mainstream audience? Why exactly is this a problem?

Also, AFAIK, there is no single "OSS crowd". If you haven't noticed the entire software world is consolidating towards things that do not require any tweaking to reduce the ways in which an user could possibly break the system. Software should be accessible and usable to as many people as possible. I don't see anything wrong in that. Why shouldn't grandma-users not be able to easily upload and share pictures on flickr without any help (or whatever it is)? Creating appliance-computers is not entirely bad.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Finite9]

From a, err, purely objective standpoint, I think all of the negative reactions to the new GUI's are just hogwash. Go on... call me troll if you like, but I for one think Gnome3 is a big step forwards in UI design, that hasn't quite got everything right, but is certainly going in the right direction.

Im wary of Unity because it's a pure Gnome3 copy. Gnome has been developing v3 for ages, along comes Canonical, likes it, but not really, then tries to do their own version. Unity is so close to Gnome3's design it's comical. But they have one disadvantage. They are copying. Gnome3 is the innovator here. So, I don't want to have a buggy DE for several years, so im sticking with the innovator.

I _love_ Gnome3. Admittedly, I have a particular setup that not every one has, but I suspect mine is the majority: 13 - 15" widescreen laptops at 1500x900 or 1376x768 with optional extra LCD screen. I love having all my screen real estate for applications, and the "menu" (shell) in the background. I also love the fact I no longer have to sort folders for applications or worry about thee order. If you don't understand Gnome3's decisions, go read their blog which describes, in detail, their logic and reasoning behind the decisions!

Some people may have much larger screens that I and feel differently, but in that case, you need to specify why, instead of just bitching about your own scenario without going into details.

As for CLI, it has been proven time and again errr... quote needed :) that Graphical Interfaces are much more scalable and efficient at delivering and manipulating information than CLI for complex operations. Don't get me wrong, I spend a _lot_ of time in CLI, but some things sure get tedious when it's complicated or repetetive. In an ideal world, a GUI would be clean and usable, and hide complex operations behind a simple interface, but there would always be a cli equivalent with all the options for scripting. Some things are simply quicker to do in CLI that havin to launch a heavy gui, but you can't really say that one is the be all and end all. We need both.

I eagerly await future iterations of Gnome3!

Re:Not necessarily.

[TheDarkMaster]

Almost all Linux video editing packages with a GUI are crap (as most Linux GUI applications), is not a useful example. And this occurs most because the video developers do not care about the average non-developer user.

Re:Not necessarily.

[telekon]

Excel is extremely powerful

Sure, but certainly not more powerful than exporting to CSV and doing your calculations in Perl or Ruby.

GUI tools are great for people who never learned to use the CLI. But once you know how to use it, there's no need to submit to the bondage and discipline of a GUI.

Re:Not necessarily.

[rakaur]

The usability of that $300 laptop is a lot less than that of the $500 iPad. That's why it's worth more. My grandmother is not going to be able to use some $300 Linux- or Windows-based low-end shoddy laptop. She can and does use an iPad, though.

When I said "regular people" I defined what i meant: email, browsing, and games like Bejeweled. You definitely don't need a laptop for out and about work or a desktop for sitting and doing serious work, because under my definition, those things don't exist. Most of my family (and a whole hell of a lot of America) are people whose work does not involve computers, at least in the home. For these people, the computer is an appliance, and the iPad is much better suited to be an appliance than a laptop or a desktop (or a netbook, which are stupid and serve no purpose anyway).

As for the future of computing, who knows. Keyboards definitely have to stay around to get real work done today, but I see future interfaces being mostly touch based, not mouse based. Manipulating the computer directly with your body is just much more intuitive, and I wouldn't doubt if we see a "MacBook Touch" from Apple that involves a hardware keyboard and either a more powerful (that is, less restricted) version of iOS or a version of OS X with a touch UI layer, like Windows 8 is doing. For regular people I see the mouse going mostly away. You only need a pixel-perfect pointing tool when it's exactly that: a tool (Photoshop, CAD, etc.).

Re:Not necessarily.

[BigZee]

I'm not sure I'd use a word processor as an example of a GUI application. The first word processors I used were character based (although not true command line). They were incapable of showing text in a format appropriate for the attribute applied. That didn't stop them from producing documents that contained multiple fonts, italics, bold etc. They simply tagged anything that was non-standard so that you could see that they had an attribute applied. Now WYSIWYG was clearly a step forward but even a modern word process isn't really that much different to the character based processors I first used. Perhaps the only innovation present today that couldn't have been achieved would be to embed graphics and images. As with other similarly minded people I've seen responses to, I don't see this as an issue regarding your choice of interface. I like GUIs. One of the biggest benefits I first got from such an interface was the ability to have far more terminal windows than I'd been able to use with a real terminal. Even today, I don't think I work so differently from the day I first got Windows 3.11 on my desk. I like what a GUI gives. I'm also prepared to consider that new innovations could improve the way I do my work. Certainly I use more genuinely GUI tools than I did with 3.11. The main problem I see, as has been pointed out, that these new GUIs are somewhat revolutionary. Gnome 3 looks little like Gnome 2. You could not say the same thing when transitioning from Gnome 1 to Gnome 2. I happen to like Gnome which is one of the reasons I adopted Ubuntu. Given what I've read today, it seems I might finally be convinced to go toward KDE as it provides an interface I'm more likely to be comfortable with. I've only just started using Gnome 3 but it does seem to be geared toward closing off functionality. Why for example would you want more than one terminal window open? Sure, it can do it with a middle click but why should the default behavior be to only allow one window. I'm prepared to be convinced. Smartphone interfaces are something I'm impressed with and happy to use. I just don't do the same things on my phone as I do on my workstation.

Re:Not necessarily.

[seantide]

You edited video from the command line?

OK I'll bite, exactly what did you do?

I'll tell you what I did with a GUI video editor yesterday: I took two video streams, and composited one under the primary as background, and mixed in 3 different audio tracks sequence to events in the video. That was the easy part, the rest got tedious.

LaTeX is nice, but word processors do not suck. That's a absurd statement. Bad word processors suck, yes. But there are some very good ones out there, and they can do things you'll never do with a command line tool, LaTeX or not.

I frequently use Scrivener on the Mac... and then format with LaTeX. Neither of those programs can do the others job.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Belial6]

You are fooling yourself. YOU defined your mother's usage as:

My mom uses her $1100 iMac for email, browsing, and games like Bejeweled.

The is nothing about those tasks that cannot be done 100% on a sub $300 laptop and none of them are easier on an iPad. Email reading is equivalent on both, writing is easier on the laptop. Browsing is equivalent on both platforms as long as you are not trying to do things like post to forums, at which time it is easier on the laptop. Casual gaming is a wash. There are certain types of casual gaming that works better on the tablet, and certain types of casual gaming that works better on the laptop. On either platform casual games will be generated faster than any human could hope to play them all, so the specific game becomes largely irrelevant.

Having a real keyboard is going to be useful to people for the foreseeable future. Having a large monitor is going to be desirable for a long time to most people. The uses for them (even for your mom) are not going away anytime soon, and pretending like they are is just self delusion.

I wouldn't doubt if we see a "MacBook Touch" from Apple that involves a hardware keyboard and either a more powerful (that is, less restricted) version of iOS or a version of OS X with a touch UI layer

So, you agree, laptops are useful. You just think they are only useful if they are made by Apple.

P.S. Using inflammatory adjectives like "low-end" and "shoddy" only makes you look petty. The low end laptops are way more powerful than the high end iPad, and there is nothing "shoddy" with the vast majority of the laptops.

Re:Not necessarily.

[loneDreamer]

Actually, I just took a human computer interaction class at CMU and I was surprised to find out that CLI break EVERY rule of usability out there. EVERY cognitive research. Truly. Feedback is horrible, cognitive aspects nonexistent, explorability is VERY hard... I could go on and on! Though I understand that if you get past the steep learning curve and use it long enough so you manage to imprint all those commands in your head, yeah, it is more efficient. 99% of people wont get there. You did, but now that you got all that knowledge, god forbid someone changes anything! Which kind of explains your opinion too.

Re:Not necessarily.

[pigsflew]

He's talking usability cache misses.

With competent UI:
Need to do a thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Nope. Go to internet. Do it.
Need to do another thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Probably, yes. Do it.

Need to do a thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Nope. Go to Internet & Man pages.
Need to do another thing. Do I know how to do it? Nope. Can I guess how to do it? Almost certainly not. Back to the Internet & Man pages.

Each new feature in a CLI environment often requires a new tool, which requires a new learning curve, whereas in a competently designed UI, once you've learned the paradigm/layout, you can start guessing and generally be right.

Of course, there's an awful lot of incompetent UIs out there, where you try to guess, and get it wrong, every time. Then they're no better than CLIs.

(Of course, I'm playing devil's advocate here; I have Xubuntu on all my machines and use bash for just about everything.)

Re:Not necessarily.

[Hyperhaplo]

If you can't polish a turd, roll it in glitter.

Yes!

I am going to remember this. Wish I had this handy to quote ~4 days ago. Thank you so much.. this will be useful in the future.

Okay. I can see how it could happen... but geez.. that is one heck of a screwup.. and Windows 7 has issues which are on par... I guess time will tell. It does remind me of XP before SP2...

Perhaps we are just in the dark ages before "Windows 7 SP2".

Although.. people hated Vista with a vengeance.. much of that from the interface changes... and I can't see I like Windows 7 for similar reasons. I suppose, though, you can get used to anything.

Re:Not necessarily.

[rakaur]

The is nothing about those tasks that cannot be done 100% on a sub $300 laptop and none of them are easier on an iPad. Email reading is equivalent on both, writing is easier on the laptop. Browsing is equivalent on both platforms as long as you are not trying to do things like post to forums, at which time it is easier on the laptop. Casual gaming is a wash. There are certain types of casual gaming that works better on the tablet, and certain types of casual gaming that works better on the laptop. On either platform casual games will be generated faster than any human could hope to play them all, so the specific game becomes largely irrelevant.

I totally disagree. The iPad is simply easier to use than a low-end laptop, period. Maybe you don't think so, but the vast majority of end user polls say that regular people much prefer an appliance-type device like the iPad to a complicated device like a laptop.

P.S. Using inflammatory adjectives like "low-end" and "shoddy" only makes you look petty. The low end laptops are way more powerful than the high end iPad, and there is nothing "shoddy" with the vast majority of the laptops.

No. Apple makes high-end things. I was distinguishing them. A low-end laptop is going to have mediocre hardware (for a laptop, not for a tablet, which is apples to oranges), and it's going to be running a hard-to-use software system (from a regular person's point of view) like Linux or Windows. iOS is hands down easier to use than either of those interfaces for the tasks I defined.

So, you agree, laptops are useful. You just think they are only useful if they are made by Apple.

I prefer Apple's high-end hardware, build quality, and software. I never said laptops weren't useful. I prefer Apple laptops because they provide quality hardware and software that I prefer. My argument was that an iPad was easier to use, more intuitive, and would be more efficient at the tasks I defined. Just as I (and my mother, and a lot of people) find value in Apple's software and hardware over cheaper alternatives, I (and my mother, and a lot of people) find value in an iPad over a $300 low-end laptop. Can they both accomplish the same tasks? Yes. In my view, the iPad is easier to use for everyday people than a low-end laptop, and thus they are going to readily accomplish those tasks in a preferable manner. If you and your family prefers to struggle against poorly designed GUIs on a disappointingly-built machine, then by all means, save yourself a couple hundred bucks. My argument was that normal people value ease of use, and so they'll pay the extra couple hundred bucks.

Having a real keyboard is going to be useful to people for the foreseeable future. Having a large monitor is going to be desirable for a long time to most people. The uses for them (even for your mom) are not going away anytime soon, and pretending like they are is just self delusion.

I don't recall ever making this argument, but... okay.

Clearly what our discussion boils down to is that you believe using a $300 for the aforementioned tasks is easier or equally as easy as using an iPad. I disagree, and most regular (i.e.: non-techie people that wouldn't have as much difficulty using an iPad versus using a $300 laptop with a complex interface) people that I've had a similar discussion with agree with me. You are, of course, free to save yourself $200 since you hate Apple and don't mind using low-end machines. I prefer to have a better computing experience, and because I put value on that, the extra $200 is justified, for me (and tens of millions of iPad users).

P.S.: On a few visits to big box retailers like Best Buy, when I've been browsing the non-iOS tablets, the sales people inevitably tell me not to expect them to replace a laptop. They say people buy them expecting them to replace a laptop for their needs, and the vast majority ends up returning them. Then I ask if this is also the case with the iPad, and they again, inevitably, inform me that people expect to replace a laptop with the iPad, and they do not return them.

Re:Not necessarily.

[Belial6]

Low end laptops run the exact same software as high end laptops. For the tasks you describe, Windows, OSX, and Linux are all just easy as on the iPad. Obviously your mother agrees.

I never said I hate Apple. The fact that you think not declaring Apple products superior at every task means a person "hates Apple" puts you far into the fanboy realm.

Re:Not necessarily.

[rakaur]

Low end laptops run the exact same software as high end laptops. For the tasks you describe, Windows, OSX, and Linux are all just easy as on the iPad. Obviously your mother agrees.

It's amazing how I spent an entire comment saying the opposite of that, and you somehow came up with this? That's... wow. No, low end laptops run Windows or Linux, not OS X. Apple doesn't make low end laptops. No, tasks (at least the ones I defined) on Windows or Linux (or even OS X) are not as easy as on an iPad. I have no idea where you got the idea that my mother agrees with the opposite of that. I think you've probably just entirely stopped trying to make a rational argument and starting spitting out nonsense.

I never said I hate Apple. The fact that you think not declaring Apple products superior at every task means a person "hates Apple" puts you far into the fanboy realm.

I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but you can think whatever you want. You went out of your way on several occasions to try to say that Apple products are the same as a "low end laptop," which is just demonstrably false. This and other dismissals of Apple and its products clearly paints you as either anti-Apple or a staunch Linux/Android fanboy. This is Slashdot after all.

Re:Not necessarily.

[znerk]

Sorry, I don't follow you at all here. Driving yourself to the grocery store is wasted time too, but most of us do it anyway because we can't afford chauffeurs, we don't have cars that drive themselves, and we can't afford butlers and personal chefs to go buy our food for us and prepare it for us when we're ready.

2 words: pizza delivery :)

Re:Not necessarily.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Ever try zsh?

Gnome 2 desktop.

[bejiitas_wrath]

Linux Mint is moving to Gnome 3 so even that distribution will be going down that road of bloat. But I just configured Lxde to look exactly like Gnome 2 on Fedora and I am happy enough with that.

Re:Gnome 2 desktop.

[walterbyrd]

I'm using Lunbuntu 11.10. It's okay, but Ubuntu 10.04 started much faster. I am thinking of going back to Unbuntu 10.04 because it starts so much faster, and the interface is far superior.

"Touch" (Finger) "Mouse/Keyboard" interface

[Anonymous Coward]

1. All these guys want their OS distro on mobile/handheld devices.
2. In order to do that, you need a clumsy "finger paint" interface instead of the trusty precision of the paintbrush
3. all apps need to be changed so they behave like the clumsy finger paint interface
4. in order to do that, you need to force the clumsy finger pain interface on everyone
5. ???
6. Have most of the non-mobile/handheld users complaining about it, but don't listen.

KDE!!!

[zwede]

Been using it for 10 years. Yes, they had issues with 4.0 and 4.1 and I stuck with 3.5 until 4.2 came out. But from 4.2 and on I'm liking it. It does everything I want it to and looks pretty too.

Some don't like that the entire workspace is composed of widgets, but I think it's a great concept. I can customize my desktop to suit my style, and just about everything is adjustable/customizable.

Re:KDE!!!

[tick-tock-atona]

Exactly this. KDE 4 is a "next-gen" GUI done right, because thanks to the entire desktop comprising configurable widgets.

As well as the default Menu + Taskbar style (WinXP), you can have Dock + Menubar style (OS X) or Pinned Icons style (Win 7, Unity) or any combination of these.

Re:KDE!!!

[Belial6]

I haven't used it much, but it really does look right.

haters and lovers everywhere

[ThorGod]

For many people, in my experience, expressing hate more quickly passes the 'urge to talk about' than love. Plus, if you're pissed then you want to be heard. But, if you're happy, who cares who's talking? (Side note: the more visible something is, the more attention any changes will see. "New Coke", for example.)

I think that's what's going on with the latest GUIs. Change always has it's subtractors, and GUIs see *tons* of use.

Re:haters and lovers everywhere

[noobermin]

Try to convince the masses of the angry of that here. It'll be too disappointing to realize that they might not be a majority.

Try making them suck less.

[Renstar]

Give me one that doesn't suck and I won't hate it.

My current ire is directed toward Google for its new Gmail interface. What a joke.

Re:Try making them suck less.

[Renstar]

FoxIt PDF reader is another one. The UI in the newest version is one of the biggest pieces of shit I've seen. Five different colored skins took precedence over features that people actually wanted. Moreover, the skins didn't fit in with any typical window decorations, so the program was _always_ out of place.

Re:Try making them suck less.

[savuporo]

+1

The same happened to Reader interface.

KDE 3.x didnt suck, KDE 4 does. Gnome 2 didnt suck, Unity and G3 just don't work at all. Windows ? I do not honestly care as long as cygwin window looks the same and i can still run older versions of Visual Studio and have Firefox.

I do use a macbook as well, which is OK and mostly works, but icant make myself use an IOS interface on anything. Too much pain.

I think the best user interface on my desktop has to be my Rigol DS1502E.

Over simplification

[Dracos]

The /. crowd generally is more knowledgeable about computers and their interfaces. UI teams are dumbing down their interfaces to cater to the lowest common denominator of user. The simplification has reached a point where even median level functionality is not just hidden, but removed. The targeted users don't know any better (and likely never will), but we do.

These new interfaces are just too simple for us.

Re:Over simplification

[starfishsystems]

Moreover, useful configurability is stripped out so that the functions which could easily have been retained as configuration options are just plain gone. Occasionally that may be justified. More often, it's inexcusable.

Re:Over simplification

[Andrewkov]

Have you ever watched a lowest common denominator user try Office with a ribbon for the first time? They hate change for the sake of change as much as we do.

Re:Over simplification

[deathguppie]

I am just so glad someone finally came out and said it. We are smarter, more knowledgeable, (and probably better looking) than the average consumer. The real problem here is that none of these so called "UI" designers even bothered to to ask us what we thought before creating the new interfaces. We could have saved them time, money, their company's bottom line.. probably even the world. If they had just come here and asked us.

For instance, the logout button.. what a joke!
All you really need is a simple keyboard shortcut perhaps something like ;q! simple and to the point none of this searching around for some stupid icon.. now then let's take a look at window placement... again simple, just allow us to use css and javascript as the basis for the windowing system. Problem solved.. I'm sure many of you also have some great ideas so I'm going to let everyone else chime in here so I don't come up with all the great ideas by myself.

Re:Over simplification

[Keen Anthony]

I don't think UI teams are primarily focused on that lowest common denominator anymore. At one time, yes, but now I think there is a desire to provide sleek, minimalist desktops this era. Call it copying Apple if you want. Sleek interfaces that tell you just enough were a rave for a while. They were futuristic. They were artistic. I think the consumer adoption of smart phones and mobiles devices like tablets and modern handheld game consoles has made the modern computer user more capable of handling constantly flowing disparate information. I would bet that most Android owners who wouldn't identify as techies have as much a desire for more information flows as I do. Years ago in the '90s it was just new email notifications and new IMs, but now a typical "connected" consumer is streaming information flows from one or more social networks including perhaps several microblogging sites in addition to news headlines, weather events, SMS, and then traditional email.

I'm a Snow Leopard user. As much as I enjoy the elegance of OS X, I want more info. I'm a 20 open tabs browser kinda of person. I spend the vast majority of my time within a web browser. I would love a desktop that followed the widgets model as done on Android phones rather that as done on NeXTSTep/GNUStep. Maybe I'm still arguing for Lifestreams.

Re:Over simplification

[Pentium100]

I do not know how much resources would css based windowing system use, but if it used about the same as the current windowing system then it would be better. The normal user could leave the settings as is, while I culd make the OS look like Windows 3.11 or XP if I wanted. Hey, somebody would probably create "skins" to make the OS look like other OSs and most likely even some normal users would like the option of making Linux look like Windows because that's what they are used to.

Re:Over simplification

[Lawrence_Bird]

And XP was too complicated for the approximately 1/2 billion people using legal copies? I must have missed the world coming to a crashing end becasue people couldn't figure out how to do work on their pc because XP was too complicated! I'm sure win8 will address that so that the eekonomy will roar to life once again.

Re:Over simplification

[omnichad]

Most of the reason for that is that these users literally have to *learn* to use a program. The software is simply not intuitive, and so you have to learn/memorize the steps and buttons to click. If the software was intuitive (a lot of iOS springs to mind), the user can just pick it up and use it like a 3 year old can. Microsoft is trying so hard to make their stuff intuitive, but mostly failed with the ribbon.

Re:Over simplification

[znerk]

Canonical did ask the community what they thought of the changes - and then overruled the resounding response, as if they knew better what we wanted. It may have worked for Henry Ford, but he didn't have 50 other options chomping at the bit, just waiting for a chance to steal his users.

--
Please pardon the pun.

Failure to show benifits

[lanner]

Show me how these new UIs produce a benefit for the end user. That's it.

I'm a bitter KDE4 user. From everything I can tell, they did it to make the code "neater" and for window candy.

Good 'ol Grandma

[bunhed]

I still fail to see why anyone but Grandma would want a UI that even Grandma could run.

Re:Good 'ol Grandma

[tokul]

Don't insult intelligence of good 'ol Grandmas. Correct name is idiot and not Grandma.

Yup

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that I necessarily hate the new GUIs... Ok yea it is. Everything is going to touch screen because they believe tablets are going to take over the desktop. I'm still a desktop user, and I still want a desktop GUI. No Unity or Windows 8 for me, I'll use Xfce and Windows 7

Re:iOS

[pwolf]

I think iOS is terrible. I don't like the UI at all. I can see where people find it easy to use and all that but I can't stand it.

Re:Short answer: yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 UI did not nail it at all. The only saving grace is that it is simple, and you have to visit the appalling UI parts that suck less.

Parts that suck
The control panel.
Explorer
The network and sharing centre
The (start) menu system if you examine it and clean it up as you might in XP.

I am however glad you think they nailed it, because they decided they so nailed it they will eradicate it with ... metro.
And 5 minutes with Metro is enough to make you realise what a mess Windows 8 /ARM/X86/X64 / Legacy apps is going to be.

Good - for tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the next "big market" are tablets, smartphones, etc and everyone wants they share of it. But instead of developing a new platform they put tablet interfaces in computer desktops. And that is not a good idea. For example unity, big buttons are good for tablets because you hit them with your finger, but on desktops they eat too much screen space and offer no benefit. Also multitasking on these 'new interfaces' is really painful and on desktops it is a needed feature that has to be good.

Everyone is just going with this trend without thinking much about it. You really can't notice that a tablet interface on a desktop is nosense? Do a "tablet mode" or something but instead they try to convince us that the new interface is better when everybody hates it.

Re:Good - for tablets

[mmcuh]

I don't understand how it could be the next "big market" when you can't do any actual work with it, at least not any work that involves typing.

Re:Good - for tablets

[foniksonik]

The next big market is the one not already using PCs. Aka kids, grandmas, soccer moms and Luddites.

They've already got your money/attention ( or think they have it).

The Devil you know.

[LWATCDR]

The Devil you know is better than the angel you don't. You will always be faster and more efficient with a UI you know than one that you do not. I remember a friend looking at my Amiga back in 1985 and saying that DOS looked more "professional" than Workbench. Every time I move to a new system the first feeling I have is why doesn't it work the way I expect it too! I force myself to get over it and and move on.

Re:The Devil you know.

[cas2000]

unfortunately, gnome 3 isn't an "angel". it's just the same old devil with a mask and a lobotomy

i switched to Gnome 3 on my desktop machine at work several months ago. Gnome Shell is abysmal but it's almost OK in fallback mode.

I've stuck with Gnome 2 on all my desktop machines at home, mostly because fallback mode's panel is an inadequate substitute for the gnome 2 panel. You can't easily move or remove launcher icons, everything is in fixed locations. and it really really shits me to have my name on the screen all the time, and for it to be a menu - it took me hours before i even realised it was a menu at first, i thought it was supposed to be a helpful reminder in case i was too stupid to remember my own name, and even now i still don't know WTF the "Away" and "Online" menu items actually do, presumably they're for some kind of chat service - but which one? and HTF do i get them to go away, because i'm just not interested in that shit?

If and when fallback mode gets close to gnome2 and its panel, i'll probably upgrade at home too. or maybe i'll be forced to upgrade whether i like it or not - gnome3 has already hit debian unstable and i've had to hold a lot of packages from upgrading....eventually it'll get to the point where i have to choose between switching to gnome3 or not upgrading anything. that sucks.

really, all i wanted was gnome 2 with bugs fixed and maybe some minor improvements. i didn't want the way i interacted with my computers to be radically changed, there's no benefit at all to me in that. but fixing bugs isn't anywhere near as exciting as doing yet another complete rewrite from scratch ("this time we'll get it right"...yeah, sure)

Meh

[andydread]

I remember the move from the Program Manger to the Windows95 interface that so many people here seem to currently love. Back then people were bitching about how the new Windows95 interface sucked. Now we have some of us Linux geeks that are still clinging to that interface. I remember when Gnome 2 came out and all the bitching started again. "Where did all the customizations go" "This shit sux" bla blah. Then that settled down. Then came KDE 4.0 and the signal to noise ratio got all out of whack again. "Fuck this i'm moving to Gnome" was the mantra. Now we have Gnome3 and Unity....... Break out the popcorn.

Re:Meh

[calc]

I don't remember anyone complaining about Windows 95 interface, maybe that it was unstable, but not its interface. Windows 3's interface was so horrible I just used DOS instead.

Your user id is so high were you even born yet when Windows 95 came out? ;-)

Re:Meh

[andydread]

You are definitely a greyback here. :-) LOL I started using Linux back in the days of the SLS release. Struggled to get X running for weeks then moved to slackware. 1.1.59 was the first time i got X running and I was in heaven running TWM. Back then I downloaded linux on 30+ floppies over an AOL 9600bps connection right when AOL got "Limited Internet connectivity" They only offered gopher and ftp at the time. Then moved to FVWM then FVWM95. Those were the days.

Re:Meh

[wvmarle]

I have tried many - KDE, Gnome, E. Loved the Gnome1+E combination. Later Gnome2 with Metacity or Compiz or whatever it's called. Mandriva put it together, it worked well. Each change took some getting used to, but nevertheless it was OK. I generally stuck to Gnome over KDE, that's just a preference, wouldn't call KDE to suck or anything at all.

The only one so far (as in >20 years of computing and experimenting) that I have dumped in disgust is Unity. It has some nice ideas but overall it sucks. If ever I get my hands on a Linux-capable tablet I may try it again, but as the first part of that is unlikely it will probably never happen. Still running Ubuntu, but in Gnome3 mode.

Re:Meh

[calc]

lol, you predate me a bit, I didn't start using Linux until around Feb 1995.

Give gnome 3 a shot

[DrHappyAngry]

I've actually become a convert to gnome 3 after forcing myself to work in it for a day. A few minutes with a new UI isn't enough, you really have to spend a day working with it to really get a feel for it. It's actually really fast, and I'm fast with it. You just flick the mouse to the upper left, and you can do anything. It's definitely still rough around the edges, and far from perfect. It mainly needs more accessible configuration options, instead of having to have an extension for everything, but it will get there. Dual monitor support could be better too, but I know it will improve with time. I was a total hater until I really gave it a fair shot. I've used Unity for months on my netbook, and it's only usable on a small screen, though it does shine there. Plus Dash is terrible. Show me the Apps, not just the frequently used ones. If it were frequently used, I'd have put it on the dock and wouldn't be drilling through a menu in the first place.

Re:Give gnome 3 a shot

[unixisc]

What is the default web browser for Gnome3? Epiphany? Firefox? Something else?

Gnome 3

[Mathieu Lu]

This would probably be better as a poll.. but for what it's worth, I like Gnome 3.

I used fvwm for the past 10 years, always the same config file. I really disliked Gnome 2 (too much clutter, clunky). However, I was starting to have a few annoyances with fvwm and found myself wasting too much time on getting it to work right.

Gnome 3 (using Debian unstable/experimental packages) is great. I tweaked a few things, but even with the default conf I don't mind.. except maybe how alt-tab is broken, and sloppy mouse focus is not great, but I see they are working on it.

Re:I like Unity

[telekon]

Really? My first Linux install was Slack, and I constantly find myself missing the lesstif widgets + the *wm with the default Motif behaviour re focus etc.

Right GUI, Wrong Place

[CruelKnave]

I don't hate them. I just don't want a GUI on my PC that looks like it's supposed to be for a tablet or a phone.

It's time for a change; accept it

[RobinEggs]

I think the truth is that the basics of the GUI, at least as far as consumer operating systems go, are now almost 20 years old. There's been an incredible amount of change in the capabilities of the average computer, not to mention the possible interface options, since the first Mac hit the streets and it's perfectly right to see a lot of bold changes as tablets and fancy phones inspire a much needed review of the basics.

Now many of these new, individual products will suck but that doesn't mean anyone should disdain the necessary process of inventing the next era. Even if you really hate the new systems, at least pay attention to and be vocal about the pieces of them you liked. Your input won't be useful if you never say something positive; who wants to make a business strategy out of pleasing the un-pleasable?

Re:It's time for a change; accept it

[xhrit]

I think the truth is that the basics of the wheel, at least as far as consumer transportation systems go, are now almost 2000 years old. There's been an incredible amount of change in the capabilities of the average transportation system, I think its time that we put the effort into re-inventing the wheel.

Re:It's time for a change; accept it

[ADRA]

True advances in the quest for the 'best' user interfaces for a given job/device are important and will ultimately win the day. I can barely function without a scroll wheel on my mouse, and its one of the few amazing advances that came from Microsoft in my computer lifetime.

Lets not just abandon all thought of advancing the user interface, but be mindful that some changes will be to the benefit of all, and some are for specifically niche endeavors. Its easy to say a domain specific user interface is easy to create since each application can adapt their own UI for their own purposes. I wouldn't design a CAD program the same way I'd approach a music player since they all have their own fundamental ways of behavior.

The problem with this paradigm shines so clearly in OS user interfaces, because frankly everyone usually has to accept the same user interface that everyone else has to, so Joe who just watches videos and surfs web pages has to use the same user interface that Bob does, who is a game developer and routinely has 15 windows open each serving a specific purpose. The OS UI needs divisions. How to draw those divisions is difficult. The current solution to the problem seems to be in moving out of the desktop world all together. If you want a program, just go to the web for it. This of course causes problems itself (Hegemony of inter-related services makes interoperability a lot harder than say copy/paste/import/export). I like the fact that Microsoft's taking a bold new approach to this, but I'll only be happy if both environments alone are allowed to grow and foster independently.

Aiming for the lowest common denominator

[junk]

It's likely that the problem isn't with the UI but with the people who use it. The majority of people who have a personal/professional investment in the UI of a particular OS are not your average user. We're power users or developers or whatever you call people who make their Apples make noises and call it music. We tend to know how our computers work and can make them do things that outsiders look at as magical amazing feats. The designers of these new UIs had us as customers due to the tech under the UI and, in many cases, in spite of it.

With this new march of "progress," the target appears to be only the technically inexperienced. The UI is becoming the way you interact with your computer and not just something that makes the masses capable of doing their job while those of us who know how to use computers can work around them. When the UI becomes the only way to do things, then it's time for us to move on.

Win2k had my favorite Windows UI and I've made all future iterations work the same way.
I never liked Apple.
Xfce has all the interface I need to hold up a web browser, a chat client and a bunch of terminals.

I don't color. I don't take pictures. I don't play games. I write code. I read the interwebs. I conduct business. I am the 1%.

Re:Short answer: yes

[telekon]

Obvious troll is obvious

Re:iOS

[alamandrax]

Could you elaborate on what parts you can't stand or which UI concept in it you can't stand? Or have you already done so in your previous comments?

/genuine_question

Just get me my desktop!!!!

[phurrballphredd]

I have ran just about every GUI in existence since Windows 1.0, this includes Linux, Mac and SPARC. For me it boils down to the same thing regardless of the GUI... Can I work THE WAY I WANT TO?..... Those GUIs that allow me work the way I want, either out of the box or with some minor customizations, get to stay around for while. Those that don't get tossed. Simple as that. I think those that are changing GUIs today need to be mindful that users want to work the way they want to work and have little patience for jumping, what they perceive as hoops, just to get something done in manner they are accustomed.

Windows 8 is a cell phone 1 app at a time UI

[Joe_Dragon]

That does not fit on a big screen / multi screen multi tasking system.

And being touch based does not help as very few desktops / laptops have touch screens.

Re:Windows 8 is a cell phone 1 app at a time UI

[Mia'cova]

Except you don't typically use much of the metro UI on the desktop. You use a metro-style sidebar with hotkeys for various searches and config tasks (eg connecting to wifi) but that's about it. There's really not much reason to call up the start screen on the desktop. Maybe when there are a ton of metro apps I'll find some of the sidebar apps handy. You just have to remember, the win8 taskbar is an upgrade for multi-monitor (I have 3) power users as well. It has a taskbar on each screen and offers more customization. A lot of the OS stuff I rely on like the task manager, resource monitor, etc have also been drastically improved. It's pretty nice to use overall. The start screen doesn't actually get in the way. You can still get to my computer, control panel, libraries, etc without it. So overall, not really a huge loss. There's actually a new 'start-menu' like list that pops-up when you hover the bottom-left corner with some new stuff.

Oh, and even the metro UI can do multitask with a split screen UI for two apps at once :)

Re:Windows 8 is a cell phone 1 app at a time UI

[cbhacking]

Unless you use it in desktop mode, of course - you know, the way you've always used Windows since at least 95 and arguably forever? Yeah, that's still there. It's not even hidden.It's a big button that says "Desktop" on it. If you launch a Desktop app, it takes you to the Desktop directly - no need to click on the Desktop button.

Also, it's still full multi-tasking (Alt+Tab works as well as ever, although the default behavior for "Metro" apps is to suspend when not in the foreground), you can display multiple "Metro" apps on the screen at once by tiling, and Win8 actually supports more features on multi-monitor.

When I use Win8, it looks like Win7 with a fancier Explorer, a weird Start button, a strange-looking Start menu that's visible for the fraction of a second it takes me to type a program name and hit Enter, and a taskbar that shows up on both monitors with only the apps for that monitor visible on each.

Need for change...

[Junta]

Talk about an article just asking for rants. I'll chip in my rant...

I think the challenge is the UI paradigm preceding this generation is just too mature and way too many UI developers really have a hard time justifying their continued work. The MATE and Trinity projects forked out of an apparent strong desire to keep things as they are and have some confidence it won't magically bit-rot away, but they are far from 'glamorous' and really don't have much of substance to actually *do*, the job is pretty much already complete.

Now a whole generation of UI designers are largely pretending that computers *didn't* catch on every where and that some mythical large mass of people cannot cope with the UIs that all evidence suggests are working just fine. For a time they were sated with the genuine issue of UI design not scaling down to ~4" screens, but they are seized with the silly notion that there must be *one* UI to rule all form factors. MS decides their Metro UI is the answer for phones/tablets/desktops (despite not even making sufficient headway in the handset arena to prove that out even in the most likely case). Nearly every review of use of the Metro-UI in Windows 8 suggests a degree of awkwardness in the laptop and desktop case. Apple decides the iOS experience should dominate the OSX world (Apple is a bit of a special case, they can pretty much do *anything* and their loyal userbase will lap it up, it's more like a fashion brand and they probably see minimal difference in business results between the times they truly deliver an enriching experience and when they make missteps). Gnome 3 pisses away tons of screen real estate on oversized default titlebars to accommodate inprecise touch interaction regardless of context whilst also hiding their 'dock' for fear of wasting real estate.

  A large part of this is what I think is a bad assumption that tablets will just logically displace all laptops/desktops. iPad has seen commercial success (for reasons I think are more fanboy than a 'genuine' revolution) and now a ton of companies are wondering why they can't reproduce those results and get people off their laptops and assume something must be 'wrong' since tablets are *obviously* the way of the future.

Anyway, if you want the UI paradigm to continue as it has been, throw your weight behind MATE (or see if MGSE successfully decrapifies Gnome 3) or Trinity. Elect not to upgrade from Windows 7 if you prefer that (though you are at the mercy of MS in that scenario and you cannot force them to keep Windows 7 going). Alternatively prove me wrong by embracing KDE4, Gnome3, Metro, full-screen OSX apps as you get off my lawn.

Re:Need for change...

[JWallyR]

Apple decides the iOS experience should dominate the OSX world (Apple is a bit of a special case, they can pretty much do *anything* and their loyal userbase will lap it up, it's more like a fashion brand and they probably see minimal difference in business results between the times they truly deliver an enriching experience and when they make missteps).

Have you used a Mac or iOS device in the last 5 years?

There are plenty of very visible missteps in the Apple history books; the G4 cube for instance (although there are more "Top X things Apple did wrong" articles than you could shake a stick at). Apple appears to have learned from many of these mistakes and moved on. Your accusation that Mac OS X is changing in any material way to resemble iOS is particularly laughable... an App store being made available for Mac OS X doesn't indicate anything remotely on the scale of Microsoft building the next version of Windows around a touchscreen interface.

Then there's the typical "Apple customers are buying brand, not quality" that isn't really worth the time it takes to rebut. I buy Apple products because
1) Apple considers usability to be a priority, so I don't have to fight my computer to do things on it
2) Bang for buck- comparable hardware/software has only been available at comparable prices for the last 10 years (at least)
3) Service- On the rare instances in which I've had hardware issues, I have had parts replaced in and out of warranty with no hassle and often for free. I accidentally took my iPhone into the pool with me (left it in my swim trunk pockets like an idiot...), took it to the Apple store, was honest with them and they gave me a replacement, and all I had to do was sign a form documenting the exchange. Try that with Dell.

Re:Need for change...

[naich]

I think tablets ARE the way of the future - they do everything that about 90% of people use their home PCs for. I'd love to have one so I don't have to traipse off to the PC every time I want to use the web but while my PC works it's just a waste of money to fork out £££s to replace something that works perfectly well. But in the current climate, I'm not spending money on things I don't need. I'm sure I'm not the only one and I think this is the reason they aren't selling like they should.

Re:Need for change...

[jez9999]

90%'s not good enough. 100% is.

Tablets don't give me a proper keyboard. They don't give me a decent mouse. They don't give me a big enough screen. They don't give me good enough sound.

By the time you've added all the peripherals to counteract the disadvantages of a tablet, you pretty much have a desktop PC. The one remaining thing which is an advantage: portability. My smartphone is portable, and Good Enough for stuff I might use a tablet for (quick e-mails, quick web browsing, low-quality sound, etc.) A tablet is an expensive waste of money.

Re:Need for change...

[naich]

You are one of the 10% then. Most people use their PCs to look up the lottery numbers and make barely literate posts to Facebook.

Re:Need for change...

[GauteL]

"Anyway, if you want the UI paradigm to continue as it has been, throw your weight behind MATE"

Please don't. The project is doomed to failure as extremely few original GNOME developers are interested, and GNOME is much larger than just the user visible desktop. Sooner or later (if it hasn't already), MATE will start to fall massively behind on things like security updates, dependency support, etc.

If you are really upset about how GNOME 3 behaves, then write extensions for it (like MGSE). You may not like the current UI, but the Javascript core is incredibly extensible.

Re:Need for change...

[roman_mir]

and it's quite weird that these so called UI design 'experts' in software apps don't bother looking at the real world outside of computers.

You don't see an attempt to make interfaces of tea pots and of chairs to be the same.

I mean when was the last time somebody tried to fit the interface of a cupboard into a pillow?

Does this sound weird? It should sound weird and it is weird but in software people don't consider the weirdness of trying to make all applications for all purposes look and behave in the same manner.

There are fads though, so you end up with everything copying each other at all times.

Designers should consider the fact that different applications actually do different things and their interfaces need to cooperate with the USER, not with a fad.

Re:Need for change...

[Junta]

I don't think a fictitious portrayal of a tablet us reflects the real practicality. One, it's a prop and shown only briefly on screen. You don't feel the discomfort of supporting it without propping it up like naturally occurs with a laptop while seated or a sort of stand. You don't think about how much dictation is awkward in most people's interaction with systems. I would go nuts if the 8 people within earshot at work were constantly dictating to their computers. Voice interaction is great in the car, but limited applicability other than that. As to neural scan interface, maybe one day, but that's not even remotely a practical thing today (I'm aware of some 'toy' that does something like that, but it's not a practical thing by any means last I saw).

Re:Need for change...

[Junta]

Last I heard, the start menu is replaced with Metro. Even in 'legacy' view, the start button was the piece of real estate they nominated as 'go back to metro'.

Re:Need for change...

[Junta]

By some stretch it isn't keyboardless, as gobs of time people end up with the soft-keyboard up, providing no tactile feedback, no tangible cues as to where the keys are, and covering up the very screen you interact with.

I think if you find yourself with the keyboard up a lot of the time, you are not a good user for the tablet experience. If you are one of the consume-only people in the world, I suppose that works, but I'm personally failing to see why a tablet when a phone is pretty well serviceable for that.

Re:Need for change...

[Cro Magnon]

It's still easier to make barely literate posts on a laptop with a decent keyboard, than an iPad with a virtual one.

Re:Need for change...

[DCFusor]

Mod parent up - +50, man. Look at say bloomberg TV (on the net now - http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/) at the NSYE computer setups, or Bloomberg's own. The big multiscreen layouts with zero wasted pixels can't be beat for optimal transfer of info to humans, fast and accurately, and for the humans to input decisions that have to be fast and reliable. This is a use case I share (I'm a trader, but not in the "1%"). I also do physics research and use this same sort of setup to see all the data from a running experiment in real time, and control it - same idea. It's a good way for computers to actually increase productivity, not just be entertainment and bling.

Those self-same traders and journalists do use tablets and mini phones for other things - notes to self, drill down into something without disturbing the overview. At home, I just use yet another larger monitor for that. I need no eye candy - I want my opsys to load my app, and get the hell out of the way and not waste resources or my time -- I don't play with computers (much), I work on them. I figure anytime you see the opsys/desktop, you're wasting time and resources - I'm using every resource I can to do something productive, not just fish around in the bling to cure some boredom.

These new guis, for one size fits all, really suck compared to the old, reliable stuff I can have auto-hide and waste nothing for what I do. Yeah, I even use CLI a little - not much, as it wastes screen itself for a terminal window more often than not, and it's hard to remember all the incantations...nice in a pinch for specialized work, but not for most of what I do.

One old fart

[jbolden]

I'm an old fart, and I think iOS is terrific, best phone GUI I've ever had much better than BBOS. I think Windows 8 for phone or tablet might be cool. Speaking of which I think Microsoft Office's new GUI is a definite improvement, took me a while to get used to it.

I haven't played with Gnome 3, but used 2 quite a bit with RHES. Honestly I pretty much like all the Linux GUIs at this point they are all pretty good at most stuff and intuitive.

So no I don't hate the new. Generally things are getting better. I'd hate to have to go back to running DESQview to multitask because windows 3.0/3.1 couldn't multitaks DOS apps very well.

Troll question

[Ryxxui]

The only reason someone would ask this question is to watch the comments devolve hilariously. You/we have all been trolled hard.

Re:Troll question

[ThorGod]

Na, the freebsd desktop/server post earlier today was the troll post.

But I think slashdot kind of runs off these posts. It's a chance for us all to post screenshots and trade comments on each other's rigs. It's like an auto show with no chicks. Ever.

OS X rules

[ritzer]

So where is the confusion? Anyone remember NeXT? I'll stick with OS X, tried and true.

The new UI is not made for us

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we just too set in our ways?

I can't speak for everyone, but after years using Gnome 2 I switched to dwm. So Gnome 3 and Unity really suck. For us, that is. For the average user, who loves shiny 3d windows, huge icons, etc, the new way is better - they do not care how long it takes them to do anything with it, what matters is how shiny it is.
In a way I'm happy with what they did to Gnome 3 as it made me discover the superiority of tiling window managers.

Re:The new UI is not made for us

[Alex Belits]

I like shiny 3d windows -- I run Gnome 2 with Compiz, and I can assure everyone that Desktop Cube + 3D Windows + Sphere deformation mode is very shiny and very much 3D. It also allows me to bind "Rotate Left" and "Rotate Right" to side buttons on my mouse, so I can switch between 6 viewports on each of my three screens (each on a separate computer, with Synergy handling the input) by just moving mouse and pressing otherwise useless side buttons.

Guess what no longer works in Gnome 3, and is painfully slow on one of my computers in Ubuntu 11.10 with Unity? Compiz!

The issue is both objective and subjective

[brokeninside]

On the one hand, the interface that one finds intuitive is the interface that one has already been trained to use. Once experienced with one interface, any new interface takes effort to learn and, on that level, is less intuitive.

That said, some interfaces just feel more natural for most people. There are some interfaces that I've tried over the years that, even before I was experienced with them, just felt natural. Examples include OS/2's Workplace Shell, the Window Maker window manager, and iOS (on the iPad).

Re:I like Unity

[epyT-R]

I must question whether you're doing anything interesting with your computer besides browsing and playing media.. because that's all unity is good for.

I don't need much

[Greyfox]

I just want to keep 9 terminal sessions open, a web browser shaded and focus follows mouse without the window raising in the process. Doesn't really matter what window system I do that on, although I hear the new windows doesn't do focus follows mouse as well as XP does. I don't view them as excessive requirements, just how I like to work.

So where are these "good UI designers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where the fuck are these so-called "good UI designers"? Where is the software that they've created?

They sure as fuck aren't working on open source software. GNOME 3, Firefox, and Unity are perfect proof of this.

They sure as fuck aren't working on commercial software. This is evident through Chrome, post-Ribbon MS Office, Windows 8 and iOS.

They sure as fuck aren't working on enterprise software, either. Much of this software makes GNOME 3 pleasant to use.

So where the fuck are they? What projects or products have these "good UI designers" worked on?

Re:So where are these "good UI designers"?

[DarwinSurvivor]

What projects or products have these "good UI designers" worked on?

The Spacial Operating Environment of course!

Re:So where are these "good UI designers"?

[ADRA]

I have to say that Firefox quite usable as long as you turn off the retarded "tabs above address bar" option which is sadly default these days.

Re:So where are these "good UI designers"?

[Altrag]

They work for Hollywood studios to ensure that the computer systems in Avatar don't look like the crap we really use.

Re:So where are these "good UI designers"?

[roman_mir]

non-computer stuff.

Many cars, airplanes, kitchen appliances, hardware tools - that's where REAL UI designers work.

based on: Fast / Cheap / Good - pick 2 and the argument that people most of the time go for Fast and Cheap combination, you won't find enough profit motive for the companies to hire real UI designers and then to listen to them.

It's just not in the cards yet.

Re:So where are these "good UI designers"?

[Korin43]

So where the fuck are these so-called "good UI designers"? Where is the software that they've created?

They sure as fuck aren't working on open source software. GNOME 3, Firefox, and Unity are perfect proof of this.

They sure as fuck aren't working on commercial software. This is evident through Chrome, post-Ribbon MS Office, Windows 8 and iOS.

They sure as fuck aren't working on enterprise software, either. Much of this software makes GNOME 3 pleasant to use.

So where the fuck are they? What projects or products have these "good UI designers" worked on?

Or maybe they're actually doing research instead of just going along with whatever developers want, and while you don't like the interface, normal people do.

Re:So where are these "good UI designers"?

[gtada]

So let me get this straight: you don't think there are any good UI designers out there at all? Then does that mean that there isn't a single UI you like? If you hate everything and don't suggest any useful fixes or good examples, then your post is simply a useless rant.

I'll give you a few that I like:

Most of the Adobe Suite (gets better and better IMO)
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro (simple, doesn't get in the way)
Autodesk Maya (insanely complex program, well organized UI)
Solidworks (same comments as Maya)
Firefox (perfectly usable, don't see your beef with it)
Alchemy (minimal and effective)

I'd also point out that there are online apps with excellent UI's as well.

Here are a few I don't like:

Blender pre-2.5 (2.5+ looks like it is much improved after the help of a UI designer)
GIMP (brush system is ridiculous, default palette layout is intrusive)

There are many projects out there that would benefit greatly from a competent UI designer like Blender has.

We're human. There's always reason to complain...

[AugstWest]

I have spent years using Solaris, Redhat, Gentoo, Windows 2.0 through the present, etc. I've been at a computer pretty much 11-16 hours a day for the past 20+ years.

The last 5 have been on OSX, and I'm not going back to any of them. You can't make me.

I've been experimenting with Unity, and hate it quite passionately.

Re:Gnome 3 User

[Mathieu Lu]

You can re-enable nautilus using the gnome-tweak-tool.

I have to admit that I always disliked nautilus in gnome2 (visual clutter), so I was happy to see it disabled by default. I only re-enabled it on my HTPC so that my 4 year old kid can find her stuff easily.

lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[lkcl]

i installed KDE 4 for a friend's friend. it took me 3 days to set up, because their ISP is very unreliable, at the extreme end of a broadband connection and they get 15k/sec (not kidding).

it all installed: i ran it, logged them in... and could i understand what the fuck was going on? not a chance. it was incredibly embarrassing. i spent 15 minutes _failing_ to do something as simple as set their background image. first we couldn't find it - i had to log in at the console and use "find . | xargs grep {filename}". then we couldn't find how to even _change_ the background image. on standard desktops, it's right-mouse, click "set background". done.

they now are so angry with me over how i told them that linux is great, and windows will result in their bank account details being stolen (a virus destroyed the bootloader, which is why i was called in), that they are no longer speaking to me.

now - you tell me that it's a great idea that KDE spent an entire multi-million Euros EU grant merely copying the UI of the most vilified and failed version of windows, ever, known as "Vista", and then make yourself known to me some day face-to-face i'll punch your fucking lights out.

gnome - i've never installed gnome, so i don't know about it. but, personally i'm sticking to fvwm, and i'm going to install LXDE for people, from now on. it's basic, it works, it's a known paradigm, and it's quick.

eventually i'll get round to finishing pyjdwm https://sourceforge.net/projects/pyjdwm/ though, and the first version _will_ copy the "standard" paradigm. window. bar. cross. menu at bottom. maybe :)

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[wvmarle]

>

it all installed: i ran it, logged them in... and could i understand what the fuck was going on? not a chance. it was incredibly embarrassing. i spent 15 minutes _failing_ to do something as simple as set their background image. first we couldn't find it - i had to log in at the console and use "find . | xargs grep {filename}". then we couldn't find how to even _change_ the background image. on standard desktops, it's right-mouse, click "set background". done.>

So, if I understand your story well, you're trying to give your friend a computing solution that you have never even looked at before yourself? No wonder you're running into trouble.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

"then we couldn't find how to even _change_ the background image"

Seriously? Then please stop trying to use any computer, because they will all be too complicated for you.

In KDE4: Right click on that desktop. Pick "Desktop settings". Then click on one of the pretty pictures. Done.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[bigstrat2003]

they now are so angry with me over how i told them that linux is great, and windows will result in their bank account details being stolen (a virus destroyed the bootloader, which is why i was called in), that they are no longer speaking to me.

I would hardly call them a friend, in that case. If I completely fucked up something on a friend's computer, they might be really angry... but they would hardly stop speaking to me.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[gottabeme]

KDE 4 has made many mistakes. But setting the wallpaper?

Right-click desktop>Desktop Settings. "Wallpaper" is on the screen that immediately shows up.

And, um...'find . | xargs grep filename"? How about 'find . -name "filename"'? "man find"? Seems like you might like to do things the hard way...

Sounds like you're better off having that friend of a friend not speaking to you. Sounds like they have anger issues, overreact to things, and are ungrateful.

KDE 4 didn't copy Vista any more than KDE 3 copied Windows 95--in other words, sure, there are similarities, but it's not just a clone.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

So why are you trying to "improve" other peoples computers, if you don't even know how to setup the bloody backdrop? Supposed you know how to do it eith GNOME, why did you chose KDE, then? The problem is that you thought something that you have not even tried yourself could be adviseable for someone else. Sorry, but this is exactly the sort of crappy "expertize" everybody is fed up with. Man, think for yourself, try to learn from your mistakes instead of complaining about what is your own mistake.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[lkcl]

yes, i oversimplified. they are a friend of my mum's, who is regularly called in to advise on computers because her friend keeps forgetting i set up remote access in order to be able to help them out. "all they wanted" was internet access, to check email.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[lkcl]

KDE 4 has made many mistakes. But setting the wallpaper?

Right-click desktop>Desktop Settings. "Wallpaper" is on the screen that immediately shows up.

yeah, you'd think so - it wasn't there. the option - i kid you not - wasn't there. that was the very first thing that i tried - right-click, desktop settings - because it's the most intuitively obvious thing, right?

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[lkcl]

you've misunderstood the point. i love KDE 3.5. i expected KDE 4 to be as good. i trusted the KDE team to do a good job, especially after receiving a $EUR 10m Grant and spending several years to develop a new UI paradigm.

i _expected_ that new UI paradigm to be self-evident and self-explanatory. i.e. intuitive.

if it fails that _basic_ test for someone with a well-above-average IQ.... you understand now?

so you're agreeing with me - that to trust the KDE team to develop a useful UI is a mistake, yes?

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

If your friend won't talk to you because you tried and failed to help them, then either there is something else wrong with you that you failed to mention in your post or else your friendship was only based on free support. So either this post is an insult to you, or a consolation.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Sipper]

Just one section I need to comment on:

now - you tell me that it's a great idea that KDE spent an entire multi-million Euros EU grant merely copying the UI of the most vilified and failed version of windows, ever, known as "Vista", and then make yourself known to me some day face-to-face i'll punch your fucking lights out.

As a KDE 4 user I don't equate it with Vista (for better or for worse). However I will say that the early versions of KDE 4 were just plain terrible -- it was unfinished, was was missing icons, and it was quite unstable. Somewhere around KDE 4.2 was where it became stable and feature complete enough to be usable on a daily basis. So if you had installed one of those early versions, I don't blame you for having a hate for it. But I'll also point out an irony here, which is that it's likely that the reason you wanted to install KDE4 for your friend was because it was most likely to be "similar to Windows". ;-) So in that sense it's not at all a surprise that you consider it to be "like Vista". :-P

As for EU grant money being spent on KDE4, if true (as this is the first I'm aware of that) all I can say is that I appreciate the EU's donation and that I honestly think it went for a good cause. KDE4 is very nice today, although not quite where KDE 3.5 was at its peak -- I still can't find a way to see the print queue, for instance. And the fact that "Desktop Search" is turned on by default (Nepomuk and Strigi) means that by default performance is bad until you learn to turn these things off. And pulseaudio is a mixed bag -- some good, some not-so-good. All those things aside, I like KDE4, and would be willing to recommend it (as long as you're not looking for something lightweight, in which case I normally recommend XFCE).

As for punching someone's lights out -- dude -- this isn't worth that. I understand you had a bad experience, but please try to get over it -- it's quite unhealthy for you going around and punching people over discussing KDE. For now all I'll suggest is that for new people, try to stick to giving them a stable version of the OS, with known well-tested software -- and not the "bleeding edge" stuff that you might personally be more familiar with running yourself.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[master_p]

UIs need to be more object-oriented.

You want to change the background image? right click on desktop, select 'set background', and voila.

You want to change a window's caption font? right click on window, select font, select to apply for all windows, and voila.

You want to change your IP address? right click on the network icon, select adaptor, select 'change IP', select IP and voila.

You want to change keyboard settings? right click on computer, select keyboard, select settings, and apply.

Some of the options in a GUI are actually object oriented, but not all. Windows is better than Linux in this.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[SomeKDEUser]

Give credit where credit is due. Pulseaudio was an abomination foisted upon us by Ubuntu, and is therefore more GNOME's fault than KDE's...

And since 4.7 nepomuk has actually been working well for me (before that, there had been bouts of it working, but never very reliably)

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[jbernardo]

And pulseaudio is a mixed bag -- some good, some not-so-good.

Just a small comment - this is what I like less about KDE4, as pulseaudio always had problems on my netbooks, but fortunately it is optional. In Kubuntu all you need to do is "sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio*" and you're rid of it.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[makomk]

On my KDE install, that opens up a window with a bunch of wallpaper thumbnails you can select from, a button to open an external wallpaper image, and another button to download wallpaper from the Internet. It's really quite... thorough, and I'm pretty sure it's been like that since KDE 4.0.0 (which tended to break horribly if you did change your wallpaper, but that's another story and was fixed way back in 4.0.1 or .2 anyway)

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[makomk]

Interestingly, KDE 4 does actually let you configure pretty much all its options controlling how windows are decorated, managed and arranged from right-clicking on the title of one. There doesn't seem to be any way to change the font though.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[unixisc]

Did KDE 4.x lose the Kontrol Center as well? If not, use the 'KDE' button and then select Kontrol Center, then chick on the Desktop tab and then go to wallpaper

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[gottabeme]

That strongly suggests a problem with the distro's build of KDE, not a problem with KDE itself. Which distro did you use?

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[nedlohs]

first we couldn't find it - i had to log in at the console and use "find . | xargs grep {filename}".

Why would you be trying to find the mentions of {filename} that happen to be in the contents of other files?

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[unixisc]

The problems w/ Vista were over resource utilization and management, definitely not the user interface. Otherwise, Vista was an improvement on XP - hard drive capacity greater than 128GB got supported (granted, this was there in SP2 earlier, but if you got a brand new XP CD, you'd have had to look out for it), IPv6 support was added, wi-fi support was improved, in fact, My Network Neighborhood was improved in that you could see all the connections from your PC to your router to your ISP, and make out which segment wasn't working. I liked the sidebar as well, and had MS managed to keep its memory consumption low, it would have been just fine.

GP's experience - was that w/ 4.0, or 4.7, or something in b/w - just saying KDE 4 was somewhat nebulous? From everything I've read here, dislike of 4.0 was somewhat unanomous, while everyone who's used 4.7 more or less likes it, and the main damage to KDE was the result of people leaving it for Gnome, XFCE or others. Besides now, GP also has the option of Trinity, which is his 3.5.x, and he can go w/ that if KDE4.7 is unsuitable. Aside from that, XFCE is fine as well.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[flabordec]

Really? They stopped speaking to you because you could not change the wallpaper in their computer which did not even boot because a virus destroyed the boot loader? What are you, eight?

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Billly Gates]

No he listend to others on slashdot on how Windows sucks soooo bad and Linux is king and is supperior.

Forget the fact that Windows doesn't BSOD like crazy anymore since XP, and that with Vista/w7 it is more secure. To the user the GUI is a very big deal more than if it is a macro or a micro kernel nerd geek debate or I am l33t look at my Apache setup?

So if you criticize him for picking KDE than what about Unity or Gnome-shell? Gee can you change the background, a functionality since macs had from 1986? NOPE. Lol.

To a user that is low quality and makes Linux look as advanced as DOS. It is embarasing and Linux folks would rather protect their ego and pride by bashing people instead who say Windows is better as idiots.

I no longer run Linux anymore for this reason. I need to create documents for clients and do web design. Windows has the tools and is much better than it was. I need a gui that will let me multitask with a great work flow. Only MacOSX and Windows can do that. The new guis suck big time and I am sure I am not the only one who gave up on Linux on the desktop

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Sipper]

And pulseaudio is a mixed bag -- some good, some not-so-good.

Just a small comment - this is what I like less about KDE4, as pulseaudio always had problems on my netbooks, but fortunately it is optional. In Kubuntu all you need to do is "sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio*" and you're rid of it.

Yes, and this is what I do for most people that don't want to deal with Pulse; however this comes with some other unexpected issues, which is that now that audio is direct to ALSA, a lot more audio devices show up, and this leads to confusion about how to configure audio output in programs. And it's not exactly easy to configure ALSA itself.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Sipper]

Give credit where credit is due. Pulseaudio was an abomination foisted upon us by Ubuntu, and is therefore more GNOME's fault than KDE's...

Okay -- I'm fine with that.

And since 4.7 nepomuk has actually been working well for me (before that, there had been bouts of it working, but never very reliably)

Last I used it, Nepomuk/Strigi made a > 2 GB Vertuoso database on my Desktop system, and it caused horrible performance lag even for simple tasks. For instance, selecting a list of 100 files in Krusader or Dolphin would generate more than 30 seconds of delay where nothing could be done in-between. And when I finally turned these features off, the 2 GB database was left behind, and there was no option to remove it -- I had to go find it myself manually.

And what benefits do these features bring? I'm capable of using 'find' and I'd prefer that over an indexer running at random times to update a database of files -- especially when there's usually also a 'locate' process that does the same damn thing. Rating files? That only makes sense for music, so it's rarely useful IMHO. Anything else worth having a 2 GB database hanging around for?

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[SomeKDEUser]

About the selection: I call bullshit since at least a year. As for the DB: sure, if the user reactivates the feature, why should he wait for the system to be reindexed? 2 gigs is really small these days.

And the search is much faster than with find, and also uses the content of the files. And it indexes your mails. You may not need it, but it is clearly more powerful than find/locate nonetheless. I, for one, am very happy to use it to find attachment in my tons of emails/files.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[Sipper]

About the selection: I call bullshit since at least a year.

That's very disrespectful.

As for the DB: sure, if the user reactivates the feature, why should he wait for the system to be reindexed? 2 gigs is really small these days.

And the search is much faster than with find, and also uses the content of the files. And it indexes your mails. You may not need it, but it is clearly more powerful than find/locate nonetheless. I, for one, am very happy to use it to find attachment in my tons of emails/files.

2 gigs is small, eh? So yeah, "let them eat cake."
If you were trying to help motivate someone else in using KDE4 features, you've just completely failed.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[wvmarle]

Troll, learn to read.

I criticised him for installing for a friend a system that he had never tried out himself, and subsequently ran into serious problems that could have been prevented by giving the system a test run (and, in this case, choosing something else instead). It happened to be KDE but that's not the point.

Re:lost a friend over installation of KDE 4

[ustolemyname]

Mod up, grand parent has to be a troll.

If how to change the background on KDE4 doesn't make sense and isn't intuitive, nothing short of logging in and being prompted with the change background dialog will be in your grasp.

Unity reduces programming productivity

[tvlinux]

There should be TWO panels for programming, one for "active" programs and one for launching and support. I have many programs running at once for development: servers console in two shells, network tracing, the IDE and browser, email, skype,.... Unity get too full. there is only small arrow indicating active programs.

I usually do not run full windows. so having the menu away from the application is very confusing. Unity almost requires all apps to run full window. Not Good! I remember the last place the program I want was located, I just have to click on it. Less mouse movement

I want to see most of my options with just a simple click, slide click. With Unity, it is click, slide, click, type, slide click.

I upgraded to 11.10 and I had to install gnome, OK but gnome is very broken. If Ubuntu wants to make unity the default, OK, but they better allow and support gnome that is not broken.

Unity may be fine for beginners that only run one of 7 programs one at a time. ( redundant). But for programmers that need to look at many things at once is is bad.

I hope I have explained the reasons Unity is not good in logical terms, I hope Ubuntu understands FIX IT OR FLAKE OFF!!!

Re:Unity reduces programming productivity

[znerk]

Solve almost all of your UI issues:

ALT+F2, "gnome-terminal", enter.
"sudo apt-get install xfce4", enter.

Log out when this process completes.
At the login screen, select XFCE as your session.

Enjoy your newly functional (again) desktop environment.

They do everything I need, and pretty well

[jorenko]

The only feature I use regularly in gnome 3, unity, and win 7, is the app search bound to the super key. It accomplishes basically everything that I need from an OS GUI in all three. Once you throw in good alt-tab and window resizing/splitting too (which they all do well too) I'm all set.

Re:They do everything I need, and pretty well

[0123456]

The only feature I use regularly in gnome 3, unity, and win 7, is the app search bound to the super key. It accomplishes basically everything that I need from an OS GUI in all three.

Pfft. I've been using app search since the 1990s and it comes with a lot more features than any of those lame attempts to rip it off.

It's called /bin/sh.

I'm continually amused that twenty years ago the command line was EVIL yet today it's supposed to be this wonderful new innovation which allows us to work around the fact that all these new GUIs suck goatse ass.

for better or for worse,

[wierd_w]

The way I look at this issue, is that these UI's are being written, not because there is some outstanding need to implement such new features, but because the vendors that made them wanted to look like they were still innovative and agile.

Sticking with the same tried and true ui, and simply optimizing every bit of code that makes it work, to the point of perfectly polished code perfection is not what gets non computer experts excited about purchases. What does, is "the shiny!".

Thses days, I could clearly see a need for a very efficient and simple ui system for cross device remote purposes. The less the window manager has to do to present information, the better it would be for that purpose. However, that is not the direction that the ui is being pushed.

Realistically, in terms of functionality, you could build a useful ui using blitting tech from 20 years ago, and be just fine.

Instead, we are using more processing and memory cability to run solitaire than entire mega corps had in their computing labs from that period. (That dx10 certified gpu you have rendering aero for you, so that solitaire can present pixel shaded 3d cards to you is able to crank out more flops than a cray supercomputer from the 90s. Think about what that means, when it is a requirement to play solitaire.)

Clearly, the ui designers simply reject the KISS principle of engineering, and do so because "we can, and resources are cheap."

This is the biggest reason that I hate nearly all newer generation ui flavors.

Re:for better or for worse,

[Sarten-X]

Instead, we are using more processing and memory cability to run solitaire than entire mega corps had in their computing labs from that period. (That dx10 certified gpu you have rendering aero for you, so that solitaire can present pixel shaded 3d cards to you is able to crank out more flops than a cray supercomputer from the 90s. Think about what that means, when it is a requirement to play solitaire.)

As I understand it, the Apollo 11 guidance computer could process a maximum of 6x10^10 operations during the course of the whole mission. That's assuming only simple instructions were run, nonstop. In comparison, that many instructions can be run in under one second on even the slowest model of Intel Core i7. Think about what that means.

Re:for better or for worse,

[Sarten-X]

My comment was in no way intended to excuse the actions of bad programmers. I am a firm believer in minimal programming, but that wasn't really clear in my post.

Instead, please consider my example as a harrowing illustration of just how much we accomplished with so little, and questioning why we now accomplish so little with so much.

More processing power is used to watch Youtube videos than it took to land on the Moon. More instructions are used to compose and print a corporate memo to authorize moving an office chair than it took to send astronauts 380,000 kilometers away through space - and bring them back safely. In the past 40 years, we've gone from epic journeys of exploration to grinding raids to buy epic mounts.

This makes me sad.

Re:for better or for worse,

[wierd_w]

Oh! Please accept my most sincere apologies!

It looks like poe's law bit me in the ass pretty hard. I interpreted your prior post in the lines of "what was once very expensive and difficult we can now do so cheaply that it doesn't matter if I am wasteful."

Hence my sardonic reply.

Again, my sincere apologies.

Re:for better or for worse,

[Sarten-X]

I don't blame you. I blame the phone call that made me think "good enough" and hit submit.

Re:for better or for worse,

[supersloshy]

Clearly, the ui designers simply reject the KISS principle of engineering

I thought that was the entire point of simplifying UIs...?

Re:for better or for worse,

[ak3ldama]

Sticking with the same tried and true ui, and simply optimizing every bit of code that makes it work, to the point of perfectly polished code perfection is not what gets non computer experts excited about purchases. What does, is "the shiny!".

This is absolutely the truth...
Just the other day (and just now to check again) I was listening to an mp3 in Fedora 15. With totem it will take up 8% of cpu. This surely is while at a low mhz setting but in gnome3 i lost the gnome applet that shows your current speed. With mpg123 it takes about 3%. Does it have to be using that much cpu? That is with the visualization disabled. With it enabled it is closer to 30% cpu utilization. This is on an Athlon II x2 240 box with an ATI 4670 with the open source drivers. Which seems to be a pretty reasonable setup to run on with Linux these days.

Granted: my example is unfair since Gnome and totem aren't synonymous but they essentially are. Gnome/pulseaudio/totem are all tied together tightly. I suppose I could just buy a Phenom II x6 and quit complaining...

Re:for better or for worse,

[wierd_w]

Simplification has to different definitions, depending on who you ask.

1) uses less code, is more computationally efficient, is short, sweet, and to the point.

2) does all kinds of juggling behind the scenes to hide things that might confuse you, (because we think you are dumb) so that the total number of easily understood actions you can take are clearly and prominently displayed to you.

When I address the KISS principle, I am refering to definition #1. In terms of engineering (with exception to social engineering) only the first one really applies.

Re:for better or for worse,

[microTodd]

It makes me sad too, but remember that the users of the Apollo and moon landing systems were the ultimate in power users. Years of intense training. The actual system developers who personally knew every line of code available as help desk. You don't have that today.

don't lump gradients and curves together

[poppopret]

Gradients mean that contrast on one side is compromised. There is a good foreground/background color pair, and the rest of the gradient is necessarily worse.

Curves help the eye follow object edges. When multiple similar rectangular objects (windows, buttons, whatever) all have corners in the same area with some of them being aligned on one axis or the other, rounded corners dramatically help telling which edge goes with which object.

Gradients make you slower. Curves make you faster.

I want a tiling with good mouse support.

[tolomea]

I don't care about the desktop and I have all the other crap squished down into a single little task bar across the top of one of the screens. My remaining issue is window placement and the solution has to support the mouse well out of the box. I've got better things to do than learn new keyboard shortcuts and tinker with config files. Using terminator for my terminal interface got me a chunk of the way there. Looking around the next Gen UI's the only thing I like is Win7's maximise to left and right half of the screen operations.

maximized view in spanned monitors

[ushere]

i have a new nvidia video card that allows me 3 monitors - however the first two are 'spanned' giving me a work area of 3840 x 1080 (which is perfect for my video editing), HOWEVER:

when clicking the maximize symbol in the upper right hand corner the application window will spread across both monitors.

is it possible, or is there any software, that will allow me to set the size of a maximized window?

i also get all windows messages opening in the center of the two screens, very annoying and sometimes hard to read....

thanks for your time,

ushere

Re:maximized view in spanned monitors

[Mia'cova]

I don't have a fix for you but you're on the right track. I mean, the triple monitor configuration. I bought an ATI FirePro 2460 for work. It has some very special requirements (monitors must be identical) to allow you to configure three separate monitors. If they aren't identical, it will only support spanning/duplication. Luckily, in an office environment, it's a lot less trouble to order/trade to an identical hardware configuration. So good luck figuring yours out. I really love the extra space. It's really nice for development work when you want something like email/bug info + dev env + test at the same time to have the full context visible.

Re:maximized view in spanned monitors

[ushere]

i really think this sort of 'cheap' multi-monitor solution is going to take off (certainly in my field of nle video editing). pity that we seem to be racing ahead of the facilities that would REALLY make this even more appealing to the general public..... btw. i bought a zotac nvidia gtx550ti multiview card.

I miss Jef Raskin

[rbrander]

Switching to Win7 took some learning curve and sped up nothing. Switching from KDE to Gnome took some learning curve and sped up nothing.

But switching from WinNT to KDE took some learning curve and I really liked multiple desktops, cut/paste with the mouse alone. Switching from Win3 to Win95 gave me the right-click menu and that was one of the best ideas ever.

Learning the tablet touch OS was frustrating for two days and now I like it and tend to laugh as I mistakenly touch other screens.

Mostly, I miss Jef Raskin; his attitude does live on in some of Apple's work - Jef *studied* what worked and didn't; tested people's time to get something done with various UI strategies and could defend his designs as maximizing efficiency.

With Gnome 3 and Unity, I've seen no evidence that they used the scientific method and tested hypotheses with experiments about speed of work, complexity that could be handled, options given the user to solve various needs. They seemed to be "designed" the way architects design the "look" of buildings -as some kind of art project with no regard for the actual usefulness.

Not really

[rapidreload]

I like trying new GUIs, mainly because I'm open-minded enough to realize that tradition be damned - we aren't perfect, and sometimes interfaces we've come to accept aren't the most efficient at presenting and manipulating information with, no matter how long they've been around.

That said, Unity and GNOME 3 are rubbish because they're (mostly) inflexible and lack customization features. Windows 7 was a great improvement over XP because of the new features such as Aero Snap and Peak, BUT it also contained familiar attributes that were present in past versions of Windows, as well has having a ton of configuration options (you can even move the Superbar around to any edge of the screen you like - fuck you Unity).

I'm not sure what to think of Windows 8 yet, but I actually believe Microsoft won't screw this up purely because they have a lot more customers than Linux and can't afford to experiment as much without relying on a massive amount of user feedback. The GNOME 3 team seems to believe they are a revolutionary force in UI design despite there being a lot of complaints about basic, stupid decisions that shouldn't still be in even the latest 3.2 version. Perfect example: hiding the Shutdown command in the user menu, unless you hold down the Alt key before clicking on the menu. Yes extensions can fix this, but why the fuck do you not even have it changeable in the options, much less a default people are naturally expecting to find there?

Maybe I just hate that even WINDOWS BLOODY 7 is more configurable than GNOME 3 and Unity combined out of the box. GNOME 3 has a ton of extensions that surpass what you can get in Windows 7 however, but you have to install them, whereas Windows 7 has a lot of fiddly bits all ready for you. That's the main beef I have with these new GUIs, specifically the Linux ones anyway. The lack of user-friendly configuration (no, text files and recompiling the source to fix hard-coded settings are not acceptable).

They Don't Work

[bky1701]

The problem, to me, is not that the UI has changed. I'm generally OK with changes, even bad ones. I can deal with it.

What becomes an issue is when all the GUIs out there seem to have showstopping bugs. KDE4 is a great example. I haven't used it in about 6 months, because it was nearly too glitchy to use and the constant graphical errors were starting to make my head hurt. I'm sure someone will tell me "KDE 4 works now!", but that's a lie and you know it. KDE 4 "worked" when I was forced back to Windows because I could barely use Firefox without having a seizure or at least slamming my keyboard through my monitor. I didn't even use the first releases of KDE 4: they wouldn't run. I only went to 4 at all when programs began to require QT4.

Yes, my ATI drivers had a hand in this, but that's part of the problem itself: why do all new GUIs demand glossy, sugar-coated rendering at the cost of my processing power? Why do they do so especially when they are aware of the driver issues that their member base constantly faces? Most GUI projects only want to look "cool" and seem new, not actually provide a usable product. That is evident in the horrible (or even non-existent) support for software rendering. For the record, even KDE4's non-accelerated mode rendered incorrectly.

I used to be the biggest proponent of Linux around, but it is really difficult to advocate something when its quality is dropping so quickly, and you yourself are barely able to operate it. Linux-sphere developers don't care about the user anymore, they care about themselves and doing what they want. This is evident in how almost every Linux-oriented project is now run as a dictatorship. Do not question project leaders. They know best. It wasn't always that way, and it needs to go back. The reason we are seeing more forks of major projects than ever before is precisely because of that. "My way or the highway" invariably leads to forks.

Meanwhile, Windows still seems to have no issues. I hate that I am using it, but I actually have things I need to do. I can't rely on a system that is built on so many flawed systems and only gets worse with every release. It's time for Linux developers to pull their heads out of their asses and start working to actually make a usable product again, or others will start jumping ship, too.

Another example of all this is Blender. Blender was a love-it-or-hate-it GUI. Eventually, if you forced yourself to use it, you would love it and no longer want to use anything else. Getting to that point was more brutal than anything, but it was arguably worth it. So what did the developers do in the most recent version? Completely change the UI. Every hotkey changed, the menu layout completely flipped around, and in general all the things the users had gotten used to no longer being as they were. Worst part is, it is still impossible to put it even close to how it was. I'm not convinced this change was in any way for the good: it's still as hard to learn as ever, and of course, now EVERYONE has to learn it again. Why was this done? Who knows. Certainly not me. I frankly don't care, either, as I no longer use Blender, nor will I ever use it again. And, yet again, Maya and 3DS keep on.

Re:They Don't Work

[Mia'cova]

If I had mod points, you'd get them!

Re:They Don't Work

[syousef]

I have mod points but I've already posted on this thread. I think you're 100% right and can't believe that the insanity that has been going on for the last decade is still defended.

Case in point: I'm about to throw Firefox out of my frequently used software collection. Just sick of crap changes like awful bar, extensions breaking and things getting hidden that you need glitchy extensions to re-enable. I liked having http:/// at the front of my URLs thanks. I don't like having my history shown to all and sundry. Does my boss need to know I've been to the Sydney Morning Herald site because I type 'S' in a search window? Why remove the option to go back to a sane URL bar. Why does it take 6 months for the Venkeman Javascript Debugger to be restored to working order after a release? Why does printing not work (printing that flows over 1 page is clipped and that bug has been around literally for years!)? Why do we still have memory leaks and other issues while these changes are being made? (Developer's solution: Blame the extensions, even though they designed the extension framework to allow any such problems)

Re:They Don't Work

[bky1701]

"Either do better or STFU. The developers have no obligation to serve you, princess. [...] Maybe the problem is on your side? You could, you know, try a different DE."

Thank you for so flawlessly illustrating why Linux will no longer be a viable OS in 10 years. Insult the person pointing out the problem, claim it is their fault, tell them to fix it. Yet, people find it shocking that Linux isn't considered "user-friendly."

Re:They Don't Work

[rapidreload]

For what it's worth, you can restore Firefox's traditional URL behavior without using extra extensions by going into about:config and setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false (I also hate the new Firefox default setting of removing the headers from URLs, as if it makes the net too complicated or something). You can also fix your history showing in the AwesomeBar by going to Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> When using the location bar, suggest: .

On the other hand, I have an extension to return the traditional status bar at the bottom of the screen as well as provide a Properties to anything I right click (which was removed in Firefox 3 I believe), so believe me when I say I fucking hate the way things are going too.

Re:They Don't Work

[Kjella]

Why do they do so especially when they are aware of the driver issues that their member base constantly faces? Most GUI projects only want to look "cool" and seem new, not actually provide a usable product.

Well, I think it's easier to keep a unified front when things aren't working at all. You want X and I want Y but if we don't all pull in the same direction now it won't be usable to do neither X nor Y. Now that we're finally there where you can do X and Y, we get people on power trips that want to decide that everyone should use Y because Y is better. What these people seem to fail to understand is that if I should let myself be dictated by someone else, why not Redmond or Cupertino? They don't always listen to their users either, but voting with your wallet helps.

And I think that goes for the rest too, many aren't that interested in fixing other people's problems anymore. I am currently trying to clean up a library I wrote for an OSS release, and as I'm writing documentation and test cases as well as completing the functionality I didn't need and so didn't bother with and it turns out to be a lot more work than I thought. It worked for me in exactly the way I needed it to work, it'd be very easy to declare it doen and say WORKS4ME, any problems are your own. Same for them I guess, they work on their thing and your crappy drivers aren't their problem.

Re:They Don't Work

[Karellen]

Yes, my ATI drivers had a hand in this, but that's part of the problem itself: why do all new GUIs demand glossy, sugar-coated rendering at the cost of my processing power? [...] For the record, even KDE4's non-accelerated mode rendered incorrectly.

I used to be the biggest proponent of Linux around, but it is really difficult to advocate something when its quality is dropping so quickly, and you yourself are barely able to operate it.

If KDE4's non-accelerated mode is rendering incorrectly, then I suspect that that is a serious problem with your graphics card drivers, or maybe even your graphics card. Really. And if you're using an out-of-tree driver with serious problems, I don't see how you can claim that it's the quality of Linux that's the problem. The Linux devs have no influencing there at all.

Lots of people (e.g. all the KDE developers) have been using KDE4 all day, every day, for 4 years or so now. Don't you think they'd have the means, motive and opportunity to clean up such problems if they were experiencing them? The fact that they're not experiencing them (and, as an almost-worthless anecdote which I'll throw in anyway, neither am I) is a pretty good indication that the problems you're experiencing aren't in the KDE part of the stack which you share with them. Or in Qt. Rather, they're much more likely to be in the part of the stack which is unique to you - your drivers and graphics card.

Re:They Don't Work

[m50d]

You can't blame KDE when the ATI drivers don't work. The reason they work on windows is because that's the only place ATI tests them, but there's nothing the KDE project can do about that. I do agree that KDE4 had major bugs up until about 4.4 (though I used it before then, because KDE3 had its own unfixed bugs) and should never have been released before 4.2, but for those of us with actually working graphics drivers it's been great since 4.5 or so.

Re:They Don't Work

[swillden]

Linux-sphere developers don't care about the user anymore, they care about themselves and doing what they want. This is evident in how almost every Linux-oriented project is now run as a dictatorship. Do not question project leaders. They know best. It wasn't always that way, and it needs to go back.

Umm, no, it was always that way. If anything F/LOSS projects are more user-focused than they ever have been. I think that's the problem, actually. Back in the day, open source devs were focused on making something that worked for them -- which meant that it worked. Now, GNOME is focused on making the UI usable by the masses and in the process making it lame for everyone. KDE is trying to compete with Windows and OS X, to create an architecture that will leap ahead of them and be the the most powerful and flexible thing around... but they've bitten off so much that it's been really hard to get working properly.

Both teams are focused on trying to please Joe Sixpack, in different ways, rather than trying to build something they themselves like to use.

The reason we are seeing more forks of major projects than ever before is precisely because of that. "My way or the highway" invariably leads to forks.

What forks? I disagree that we're seeing more forks than we have in the past, and all of the major forks I can think of were a result of organization dysfunction, nothing to do with user focus or lack thereof.

Re:They Don't Work

[Imbrondir]

I have to strongly disagree regarding your blender comments.

I've tried to use blender for YEARS. On every new release I've downloaded it, played with it in my spare time for some hours. Every time I couldn't figure out how to do ANYTHING without googling around for even the most basic things. And it felt all very inconsistent. Finally in Blender 2.5 they made a complete UI makeover, and it's beautiful! Buttons are much more often where I hope them to be. When hover over the mouse I not only get the keyboard shortcut for it, but python API hints as well. How anyone can prefer the old UI is beyond me.

Re:They Don't Work

[bky1701]

You can have your new UI, but the minute the developers decide to completely prevent people from using an older-style UI, is the minute the project is mismanaged. Killing your existing user base on hope of getting a new one (or that the old will stick it out) is a bad move.

Re:They Don't Work

[kesuki]

please joe sixpack? last joe sixpack i knew only wanted a pc to pirate movies, since a virus hit his box, he does nothing on it, and just lets it run... i am unsure of what i should advise him to do, cause i know a linux distro he could run to do the same thing, only betterer because it's open source and not windows. and it seems like people don't know how to unplug a virused windows box.

am i the only one who doesn't hear voices telling them what to do or what? in the interim he's taken up netflix cause well he loves tv and movies and beer. i think he could give up beer, but tv and movies? nah i tried that it's bloody hard.

Re:They Don't Work

[Imbrondir]

To be honest I don't have the impression that your opinion is one of the majority. On the blogs and forums I frequent, the 2.5+ UI is seen as a step up. Pre-2.5 there were always massive complaints about the UI. With much reason if you ask me, as it looked like some programmer had vomited ugly buttons (or checkboxes? or radio buttons? hard to see the difference) randomly all over the place.

Now I guess one could in theory maintain 2 styles of UIs and make us both happy, but that could be a big undertaking by itself

Changing interfaces

[Sarten-X]

My complaint with interfaces like Unity is that they try hard to be good, but fail so badly. I recently (within the past week) sat down and tried using Unity from a live CD to play with a new machine I'm setting up. My goals were simple: Install VirtualBox, make a test VM, and identify the contents of a few old hard disks.

What I found was that from Ubuntu's main frame (I'm not even sure what it should be called... it's the interface where you pick what application to run, from ones that aren't listed on the side), I could install and launch any application I wanted, as long as I knew exactly what it was named, or where in the classification it was placed. I quickly gave up on directly looking at the contents of the drive, when a few minutes of clicking around showed me no sign that the disk was even recognized. I ended up using a terminal session to list the drive contents. Installing a new application meant hitting a button, and being presented with an entirely differently-designed interface, which I then had to figure out in order to use.

That's when I realized that Unity was not a good interface for me. I dislike Microsoft's vaunted Ribbons for the same reason: There is no consistency between levels of classification. People make hierarchies well. When a program has lots of commands, it's natural to organize them into a hierarchy. The Ribbon interface uses text labels for the top level of the hierarchy, unnamed segments for the next level, icons for the next, and an assortment of widgets (sometimes menus, sometimes option buttons, sometimes a color picker, sometimes a table grid thing) for the next, and so on. Consistency between levels is gone, and I see Unity doing the same thing. The top level is buttons, the next level is icons, the next level is a custom "find something to install" design, and so on.

Another problem (or an extension of the same, depending on how deeply you choose to view the issue) is that the interface changes drastically depending on what you're doing. Again, I use Ribbons as an example. I used to be able to tell my mother over the phone "Look along the top of the screen with all the buttons. Find the one that's a bold 'B'. Click that to make your text bold." Now, I have to first have her switch to the "Home" ribbon, hope that nothing's been customized to where the button's missing, then have her look for the bold "B". Explaining things that used to have their own window (like line spacing) is even worse, because I now have to try to describe the icons, rather than using English words.

A program should follow the `Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least. --The Tao Of Programming

Once upon a time, commands could be expected to be organized by what they did. If you were looking for a command to change the line spacing of a paragraph, you could look first in a "format" menu, because it's a formatting option. You could then look in a "paragraph" or "line" or even a "spacing" menu, because those are all reasonable categories for the task you want to accomplish. Now, to find the same option, you must look wherever it seemed aesthetically pleasing to put the option's icon, and in each place you look, you must learn how that particular interface is designed. It's tedious to find simple commands, but it sure looks pretty!

The final straw in my Unity experiment was that installing VirtualBox required clicking the disabled "use this source" button to install from the universe. After 15 minutes, I figured out that the button was disabled because I didn't have a working network connection. There was no error message. The intent is there, but the polish that made Ubuntu once a decent distro simply isn't up to the level I expect.

The de-revolution of the GUI

[RandomStr]

All GUI should, need to evolve, but some the recent attempts seem more like a de-evolution to me...

Netbooks, touch-screens and noob-users are an important part of the 'new' ecosystem, but these new approaches are only suitable for a small portion of the user base, and limits the core power-uses, and have no place in major distros.

The dream of having Linux on netbooks everywhere shouldn't be at the expense of the power-user.

If you want a unix based system that's easy to use and ticks the other boxes, get a Android or a iPxx device if you must. Linux doesn't need to go there; evolution is more importance than revolution...

I hate to say it but win8 and the metro interface is the right way to do it, easy on top, with the power interface below, both ends of the user spectrum catered for... But personally I think I'll disable metro, if I can...

Re:The de-revolution of the GUI

[Mia'cova]

I don't think you can disable it entirely. It's more that you probably just won't touch it very often. I've been using the dev-preview for a little while now. There are some app bugs and such that'll toss you into metro but it's pretty clear to see that a 'traditional keyboard and mouse desktop user' won't have to touch it once their desktop is happily configured.

My reasons..

[CFBMoo1]

I have two main reasons..

1> Don't change what isn't broken. My mother took forever to figure out XP and now she's stumbled through Windows 7. I really don't want to think what will happen with Windows 8. Don't say you can still get to the Windows 7 interface. It's not the same as running vanilla Windows 7 for a USER. (Key being the four letter word at the end.)

2> As I get older I find myself in the category of a USER more and more and I like keeping things consistent so I can focus on newer things myself. I don't like disruptions that have me relearning the way I do things just because somebody else thinks they can give me a better way. If I want an improvement I'll ask for it. I haven't needed anything major since the transition from Windows 3.1 to 95/98/XP/etc. This is why I won't be buying Windows 8, I don't like the direction they're heading with the interface. I do like their modularity idea I just wish they'd leave the desktop to the desktop and the phone interface to tablets and phones.

Re:Short answer: yes

[JBMcB]

+1 on Explorer. XP had it *almost* right. Then Vista/7 came out and it veered into insanity.

WHY IS EVERYTHING LISTED UNDER THE "DESKTOP" IN THE TREE? My Computer wasn't a great metaphor but it made sense - here's stuff on my computer. Now there's a whole list of stuff on the "desktop" that doesn't show up on my desktop.

Re:Bah

[MrLizardo]

I pretty much agree with 100% of that. Mac OS X 10.7 took a while to grow on me, as did GNOME 3. But now they just feel "right." I'm a really big fan of the way GNOME 3 deals with notifications and "applets." I'm not a fan of the iPod/iPhone but it doesn't have much to do with the UI. In fact, the only part of the UI I didn't like was solved in the latest release with the improvements to notifications.

Seen one, seen 'em all

[rueger]

In my experience there no significant difference between the various Windows, Mac OS, and Gnome KDE variants - desktop, icons, some kind of tool bars and launcher bars; drop down menus. At this point anyone who can use one can use another with minimal difficulty. It comes down to personal taste.

Some people love Unity - I hate it. I'd rather have a menu full of everything that I might need instead of the dumbed down Top Five BIG icons that Unity gives you. Maybe it works for some people, but not for me.

I guess at the end of the day my biggest measure of a UI is how quickly I can find the function, app, setting, or file that I need. On any system - Mac, Windows, Ubuntu - my first move is to set things up so that docs and downloads go to ONE place that is defined by me, not into whatever variation on "My Documents" the OS thinks that I need. Likewise I nuke most of the icons that get dropped onto the desktop and add what I want - Chrome, some kind of File Manager, LibreOffice or MS Office. Maybe a couple more.

Re:Seen one, seen 'em all

[rueger]

I used OS X for three years on a Powerbook as my primary machine, as well as on iMacs at orgs where I worked, and can honestly say that even though I tried mightily to like it, I was happy to toss it out and move back to Windows, then Ubuntu.

Try as I might, it always seemed more difficult to do things on the Mac. I kept running headlong into UI choices that were completely unintuitive to me, and often which didn't make any allowance for my habits or preferences.

In the end the "Apple is always right, and by definition whatever they decide is in your own best interests, so don't complain" attitude drove me away.

What I LOVE about Linux: I really dislike Unity, but it took less than two minutes to switch the machine back to Gnome - including Googling the solution.

invite us to switch; don't force us

[poppopret]

The wrongly-named "GNOME 3" should have been a new project. Don't force us to participate in your experiment. New ideas can be great, but normally they suck. We have work to do, and we can't be having our workflow fucked up because you thought the UI was no longer cool. If your project gains a reputation for being nice, then one by one we'll try it to see if we like it. You won't get complaints. If you drag us unwillingly into your experiment, we'll rightly be pissed off at you.

Usability Has Taken A Back Seat - Not a Tablet

[BrendaEM]

Both Unity and Gnome 3 have both taken steps that degraded usability for the sake of looks.

Gnome 3:
You can't log off, as if we were using a tablet and had unlimited resources.
Having more than one window open is hard.
The windows are not side aware because that's what you have in a tablet.
If it weren't for the hot corner, it would take one more mouseclick to do almost everything; now you must constantly take trips to the screen corner.
Clicking on a minimize/maximize button is faster than double-clicking on the menu bar.
There is no parent/child organization of programs by type; there is no organization period, so the user has to type in multiple searches.

Unity:
Ubuntu with Unity's footprint is almost twice that of Gnome 2, and for what?
Menubars are hidden for the sake of appearance.
Unity is subversive to Gnome, on which it depends; this is a suicide attempt.
Please, everyone do not use Unity, just because a marketing person puts it on a disk doesn't mean that you have to use it.

Both Unity and Gnome have taken steps to disempower the user for the sake of looks and constricting the users actions all to force a method of using the computer which is not sound.

Hand out the impeachments.

Re:Usability Has Taken A Back Seat - Not a Tablet

[unixisc]

I haven't used either, but from your description, both have serious faults.
Gnome 3

• Not logging off is a problem - even under XP, I have multiple users set up, w/ different profiles, different files, different functions
• Just one Window - that is a showstopper. In fact, how is it better than either Windows 3.1, or Mac System 7? Just the underlying OS supporting multitasking ain't enough, if the DE is going to cripple it? GNOME3 might as well have been an UI for WfW3.11
• Has Gnome 3 lost the concept of multiple workspaces/virtual desktops?
• Hot corner - sounds annoying
• Actually, doesn't make much difference to me. Under KDE, double clicking on the Title bar would just reduce the window to the title bar, which was bizarre behavior, so I tend to use the maximize/minimize buttons anyway
• This is one area where Gnome 2 had it right. You had Graphics, Office, Internet, Developer tools and so on

Unity

• Larger footprint - not a big deal, if there are other improvements
• Honestly, this is an annoying trend that started in Windows - first w/ IE8, then Firefox (where they made it optional before losing the status bar), and then spread it to other apps
• If Canonical was making a new UI, why base it on something like Gnome? GNUSTEP would have been a far better basis on which to try and design the new DE - and it could have rivalled (w/o necessarily looking like OS-X)

Not all new GUIs...

[thisnamestoolong]

...just the ones that suck. This new movement towards "tablet-friendly" UIs has created some very crappy UIs. No matter how comfortable you are with Unity/Gnome3/Win8, the layout WILL interfere with your productivity. They are simply not well suited to keyboard and mouse input. I have tried Unity and Gnome3, and I can't wait for a touch-screen tablet running a Gnome3 based distro; it would be absolutely, mind-numbingly awesome for that. For a desktop/laptop with a decent amount of screen real estate and a keyboard and mouse, however, they hugely impede productivity.

I am not against these changes because I fear change; I am always looking for new and interesting ways to interface with my computer. I just don't want the interface to get in the way. Is that too much to ask?

Re:Not all new GUIs...

[wvmarle]

Nothing wrong with tablet-friendly UI's - on tablets.

The problem is that they are put on desktops.

Basically the same problem the earlier tablets had, but then the other way around: they tried to mold the mouse-and-keyboard interface of Windows into a touch environment, and that went wrong. For whatever reason several OS vendors make the same mistake the other way around now.

When iOS and the first iPhone came out, one of the things many people here realised is that it worked so well because from the ground up it had been designed for a touch interface and small screens. The same accounts for Android. The two ways to interact (touch vs. mouse and keyboard) are just too different to merge into a single UI.

Unity

[Dennis Sheil]

I use a fairly up to date version of the latest Ubuntu, 11.10, as my desktop.

One thing I dislike is when they complicate things that used to be simple. It used to be if I wanted to switch to another workspace, I would move the mouse to the top of the screen and click which of the other workspaces I wanted. Simple.

Now to do that I have to move my mouse to the left side of the screen. Then a bar pops up on the left side of the screen, then I move to the workspace changer and click on it. It moves to workspace switcher mode. Then I move the mouse across the screen to the workspace I want and click. It complicates something that had been simple. In fact it's changed my behavior in a way I did not want it to - I used to run Firefox and Eclipse in separate workspaces, but as workspace switching is more of a hassle, I now have both open in one workspace.

Aside from things like that, Canonical decided it wanted to do things its own way and has been moving along with a Gnome fork. Which might be OK if it had enough resources. But it does not. for example, here is a bug that I encountered. Orange windows pop up all over your workspace while you're trying to work. It can be quite annoying, as the users comments suggest. It was reported over three weeks ago but a fix has not been released yet. Unity does not have a wide base of developers supporting it like Gnome or KDE do, almost all of the developers doing this type of work are working for Canonical.

Windows 8 will be great

[frinkster]

Windows 8 will be great - for the vast majority of people who use it.

Business users will take so long to migrate that Windows 9 will be out by the time they get there. My office hopes to complete the migration from XP to Windows 7 early next year.

Apple has seen steady sales growth for their Mac lineup. A large number of these sales go to people switching.

Tablet and other mobile devices continue to take market share, especially from low-end PCs. My sister barely touches her desktop computer now that she has an Android smartphone.

Linux on the desktop continues to grow - slowly, yes. But it is growing, anecdotally from people that want an OS upgrade but don't want to buy a retail copy of Windows (because of the cost, nothing else).

The vast majority of Windows 8 users will be new or inexperienced computer users. And it will be great for them. I think Microsoft is doing a very good job on this. The developer preview they put out needs a lot of refinement, but I believe it will get there.

As an aside, I think that the new application management concepts are going to end up being very successful. Mainstream developers got their first taste with Android and iOS, OS X Lion has them, and now Windows 8 will as well. Linux should not ignore this. The system knows far more about its current conditions than an application ever could and can really benefit from shutting down and restarting applications without the user realizing if the conditions are right for it.

Re:Windows 8 will be great

[JDG1980]

The vast majority of Windows 8 users will be new or inexperienced computer users. And it will be great for them.

No, they won't, and no it won't. The majority of Windows 8 users will have experience with previous versions of Windows, and the unnecessary changes will confuse the hell out of many of them.

There really aren't too many first-time computer users left, at least not in the First World.

Why constantly reinvent things?

[intnsred]

Airplanes today have basically the same controls on them -- joystick, foot pedals, etc -- that they did when the Wright Brothers invented the airplane early in the 20th century -- they haven't changed the UI in that amount of time.

Cars haven't basically changed since they removed the manual lever throttle and went with the gas pedal -- many decades of a standard UI.

Why can't we do that with computers? Stop reinventing the wheel!

Do normal people really care about KDE versus GNOME? Don't they just want a UI that works and isn't constantly changing things?

Look at Windows. What are the UI changes between Win95, Win2K, XP, etc. etc. Aren't they just cosmetic BS to make people say, "Gee whiz, they changed X, Y and Z -- isn't that cool?!" Were people really demanding that Microsoft keep rearranging the Control Panel?

What was wrong with the UI standard that every program will have a pull down menu, and on that menu will be a File menu, and in that File menu will be a Close/Exit option, and on every pull down menu will have a Help menu, etc, etc.

The problem with our UIs isn't the UI, it's a lack of standards and a bunch of clueless coders that keep reinventing the wheel and confusing the hell out of 90% of people for no good reason.

Re:I like Unity

[symbolset]

I just started back on Ubuntu, and am using Unity also. I don't hate it but adding ClassicMenuIndicator and the taskbar made me more comfortable. You have to customize anything you work with if you've been at the keyboard for over a year - it's just human nature to become comfortable with familiar tools and toys.

Re:iOS

[pkbarbiedoll]

I don't like having to move my mouse halfway across the country to use an application's menu. Double cursed if you have dual monitors.

Re:iOS

[Grishnakh]

As a longtime Linux and KDE user, I don't mind iOS at all actually. But only when I'm using an iPhone. I wouldn't want a minimalist interface like that on my PC or laptop. But on a handheld phone where I'm never doing more than one task at once, it's fine. The problem with all these stupid new UIs is that they're trying to force us all to use the same kind of interface on all our devices, and it doesn't work. It didn't work when MS was trying to get us to use a shrunken-down Win95 interface on handheld devices with styluses, and now that we've found we like touch- and gesture-based UIs on handheld devices, it doesn't work to have those UIs on desktop machines.

change for change's sake

[misfit815]

I was happy with Windows 2000. Then XP came along and some stuff got shifted around. Some of it made sense, some didn't. But it wasn't a big adjustment. Then came Vista and Windows 7 and the new Office with the ribbon thing. My reaction? Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org, which looked a whole lot more like what I was used to than the new stuff. And what matters to me is being able to find things where I expect them to be so that I'm not wasting time. So then I finally decided to upgrade from 10.04, took one look at Unity, and went to Debian and Xfce. I'm very happy with it (albeit after only 24 hours). I'm hoping the "less is more" design principal of Xfce keeps it from being the next interface I leave behind.

YES!

[Cyko_01]

N0W GET 0FF MY LAWN!

Re:YES!

[Robert Zenz]

Is your O-Key broken?

Re:YES!

[Cyko_01]

avoiding the lameness filter

Re:iOS

[joaommp]

Quite the answer I was aiming for, here. I have to agree with you.

Re:iOS

[mattventura]

Since when does iOS use a mouse?

Hate to admit it

[dupup]

I started out hating Unity mostly for not being Gnome2. For business reasons, I pretty much have to stick with Ubuntu for now, and I've been a big Ubuntu fan for its ease of use.

I hesitate to admit that I don't hate Unity as much anymore. It's now more of a vague dislike: miss the menu where I can find the app I want, find Unity's desire to maximize any window I touch annoying, and, most of all, the menu proxy is difficult to use in combination with focus-follows-mouse (menu changes on the way up to the top bar if I mouse over any other window).

I find I just don't hate it enough to maintain my used-Linux-for-15-years snobbery.

Re:Hate to admit it

[znerk]

Fix all your Unity woes, without worrying about whether Gnome2 (and its various forks) will stick around:

apt-get install xfce4

Next time you log in, select XFCE as your session (in the dropdown menu at the bottom of the login screen).
Much happiness will ensue, I promise.

As a side effect, you'll use less than half the memory for your new desktop environment than you did in Gnome2 (and even larger chunks, compared to Unity).

If you change your mind, you can change back to Unity at the login screen.

YES! Hate them.

[echusarcana]

...and it would be nice if someone listened to the hate coming their way for a change.

Re:iOS

[Edmund Blackadder]

iOS is great for touch devices. If someone put iOS on my desktop, it would drive me mad.

Re:iOS

[ifiwereasculptor]

iOS

mouse

There's your problem.

Why they change the UI

[McFortner]

Software vendors make money selling their software. But you can't sell somebody the same version of the OS that they already have, unless you are Apple, then you just move the OS version up by 1/10th and the iFanboys will buy it. Windows 7 came about because XP had nearly reached the saturation point. Windows 8 because 7 isn't giving people a reason to leave XP. The big problem is we really hit the level of maximum usability in your UI and now you have to make changes for the sake of making it different, so they rip out the functionality and claim it's "improving the experience". No thanks, I'll stick with what I have for as long as I can and hope that sanity returns when I eventually have no choice and have to update because of hardware issues.

Re:Why they change the UI

[unixisc]

There are a lot of things that can be improved in Windows, as well as other OSs, w/o changing the UI. IPv6 support is one. For the Linux/BSD products, device support is another. If M$ want to sell new UI's, why not develop a new theme/shell to install on XP, which will give it the look & feel of the new OS, and let users choose whether to buy it or not? Or make it a part of XP SP4. Or if they have to offer a new OS that takes people away from XP, at least offer the option of the old interface, while including the new features. At least that way, it won't suck as much. I'd definitely be interested in Windows 8, but iff they make the Metro interface optional, or offer the option of putting those applets in a Vista like Sidebar. Not otherwise. Right now, I use XP on my desktop & Linux on my laptop, and I wouldn't change to 8 on the former unless Metro is made optional.

I Like Unity

[Zamphatta]

I find Unity very usable and smooth. My previous experiences in GUI's are lots of Windows & some Mac's. Until this past July, I always used Linux in commandline. I set up Ubuntu (with Unity) on a laptop for my 80 year old Dad, and he finds it easy & useable too. I tried Gnome 3... but I found it the most cumbersome waste of time to get anything accomplished, that I quickly moved on to Xfce, which was good. I think Unity is my preference though. If I wanted to waste time customizing Gnome so it would be usable, then I would... but guess what? I'm busy. Too busy to mess with trying to make my GUI work out of the box... which isn't very out of the box. My big issue with Gnome is that it forces me to make several clicks just to do something I could do in one click on Unity. For example.... if I want to open my FTP program in Unity, I just go click on it in the side bar. In Gnome, I have to go up the corner of the screen to click on something so that I can click on the word "Applications" to get a screen of icons of all my apps, scroll down to find my FTP program and then click on it. Are you kidding me?? That's not worth my time, and neither is taking a lot of time to learn how to recode the whole GUI to make it work normal.

Mac OS X

[gnu-sucks]

While I can't comment on the latest GNOME and KDE interfaces, I can say that when Apple gave us Aqua and Mac OS X, it was a real breath of fresh air. With a few exceptions, every version has added new and useful features to the GUI that make my work more productive.

When I try and use a windows pc with 7 or vista, it is really painful. I still can't get over how they botched the task bar. So I will agree with y'all there that windows has taken a turn for the worst. The PC next to me has an icon in the task bar for firefox. Every time I click it I get a new window with an identical firefox icon in the taskbar. It's just maddening. I'm sure I can right-click and choose properties and click some other tab and then click options and then turn it off and press apply... but it's a shame to have to tweak something so obvious.

As for linux, I used to like xfce and blackbox. When I'm using linux as a desktop, I have totally different expectations. I don't expect drag-and-drop to work, I don't need a "Finder", and I usually am only interested in one or two specialized applications.

Overall, I believe the GUI should stay out of the way of the user. Think of a typical work day -- you're using applications. Concepts like the "taskbar" (or whatever it's called in KDE and GNOME) really are not programs the user uses except as a utility to switch applications and windows. Thus, they ought not be so prominently visible. Except when you need them. Hence auto-hide, which I find doesn't always work out on windows. Heck, for some users all they need is a giant "the internet" button.

I appreciate Apple's Mac OS X interface because it manages to stay out of the way and yet be incredibly useful and (excuse the use of this word if you develop AI) thoughtful.

Re:Mac OS X

[unixisc]

Given that NEXTSTEP was an awesome user interface, particularly given how it both made the entire filesystem visible to a user (w/o compromising any security) and had a fantastic object oriented desktop, Apple had a great background where to start from, once they were done porting XNU and Darwin to the PowerPC and x86 (from the 68040)

Re:iOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of people think Justine Bieber is awesome too. Shiny does not necessarily mean great.

XFCE rulez!

[jrbrtsn]

Don't waste your time with Gnome & KDE.

Re:XFCE rulez!

[znerk]

I used to consider the eyecandy in Gnome2 as the perfect addition to the desktop experience. I have since discovered that Compiz works just fine in XFCE, and uses less resources than a non-eyecandy Gnome2 session. It's a wonderful feeling, having a responsive desktop that feels almost like the one I've been using for years (which I switched to when Windows decided to not look/act/feel like the one I had been using for years).

Call me old-fashioned, but having stuff "just work" is a nice feeling - especially when my original purpose in turning on the computer is to "just do stuff", not "fight with my user interface to figure out how to get the things done that I bought the computer to do in the first place".

Yes

[Technomancer]

I am actually in process of removing the Gnome crap from my desktop Gentoo box.
My laptop was always running Openbox + LXpanel and finally I realized that I gnome-panel doesn't really have anything special.
I don't understand what the hell do I need this "desktop environment" for. I need a window manager, launcher and task switcher, do I really need a megaton of crappy software to do that? Not to mention that the whole "desktop" metaphor is beyond stupid, because I see desktop for about 5 seconds after logging in before I start first program.

Not all bad

[Xanny]

Some of the recent advances in GUI have been good. The OSX inspired pinning of applications to a unified taskbar where mouseovers show active instances is something I like, and it is now present in gnome3, unity, windows 7 / 8, and osx. I think you can get it in XFCE through some addons. Another thing I like is the menu global search they are all implementing. In the same way that google is the front page to going places on the internet through search, I feel in the long run it may not be a good idea to indoctrinate people into the idea of search being how you find everything rather than by the file system, but for the average joe it is a great abstraction of the system. Makes finding stuff a breeze if you know the name. Some other stuff, like making the GUIs take up large fractions of the screen (cough, unity) or have flashy FX (windows, osx) is all gloss with no purpose, and doesnt really belong in the GUI. I think the problem is that GUIs need to be designed by what is natural to the user, instead they are all just trying to copy the current most popular OS even if its GUI isnt remarkable.

Yes, I hate them

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Yes, I hate them. Call me a Luddite, and get off my lawn, but I think the basic concept of the windowed desktop GUI interface has been mature for a long time. This headlong rush to force a tablet interface onto desktop users is a mistake. It's bad enough that Windows 8 will be doing it, but the sad thing is, the way things are going with GNOME 3, Unity, etc., there'll be nowhere to run.

You can have my desktop PC when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Re:iOS

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Shit, and I'm out of mod points. + !

I must be new here

[Clsid]

It seems to be that I'm the only one that likes the new interface. I think it's not only a natural evolution but a most welcome addition. After using OS X for some time I felt that Linux was just getting stuck in the past. I had to chance to try Fedora 15 and was blown away by the new user interface paradigm that the Gnome 3 people brought to users. I'm still using that Fedora 15 system for my daily activities, and just planning to upgrade to see what new stuff they have come up with.

We all now people don't like change, but just like the ribbon interface, which is really good, meant that you had to relearn Office, the same thing is taking place in Linux and that's a good thing. The only assurance that Linux and related open source systems will always be relevant is their ability to adapt quickly to new things. People, especially the open source community, should embrace these changes, as it is this diversity which makes us stronger.

much simpler than all that

[holophrastic]

each new UI is designed to make things easier for users who have trouble with previous UIs. So everyone currently using them, and comfortable with them, get a lesser, albeit more pretty UI. So they complain, and rightfully so. All of the new users don't have anything to complain about because they aren't current users. They don't rejoice in advance because they still don't believe that the new UI will make it easier for them. And generally, they are correct.

The output-mostly revolution and its discontents

[Animats]

Phone screens and tablets are output-mostly devices. Their primary function is content delivery, not content creation. Inherent in the touchscreen concept is that pointing, dragging, and viewing work work well, but input is slow and difficult.

Exporting the output-mostly metaphor to desktop machines is painful for people who do any significant input or content creation. But that's what seems to be happening. This reflects what the average user is now doing with a computer - watching TV. A third of Internet traffic is now Netflix.

Incidentally, while the low end is struggling with point and drag UIs, the high end of 3D animation and engineering systems is finally getting that problem solved. 3D content creation systems have been painful for two decades. Finally, programs like Autodesk Inventor have managed to make 3D drawing and navigation fluid, without requiring vast numbers of hotkeys or multiple 2D views. You do, however, need something with a sharper point than a finger, like a mouse or tablet, to get work done in that space.

Nothing new

[nexttech]

Maybe, the problem is that none of the "new" GUI's are really all that new. I see little more then the current whack a mole interface that has plagued the whole GUI interface from the beginning. The only new interface I have heard of is Apple's Siri.

It's all about control

[Cherubim1]

The biggest problem with the mad rush of new dumbed-down smartphone interfaces is the loss of flexibility. More and more controls, functionality and features are being removed from user interfaces in a failed attempt to improve simplicity. These changes have created nothing but frustration for power users who like a sense of control over their desktop. That is the point - control is being taken AWAY from the end-user thus rendering them subject to the whims of the OS developer or hardware manufacturer. The end-user is considered hostile and untrustworthy and needs to be controlled. It stinks and I can't see it getting better with the security nightmare that is cloud computing.

Re:iOS

[arth1]

iOS is great for touch devices. If someone put iOS on my desktop, it would drive me mad.

Someone did. They called it Gnome 3, and yes, it's largely unusable except, perhaps, on a tablet for people who only run one app at a time, or who automatically think that new = better.

When something works and works well, there are usually good reasons not to change it. I am perfectly fine with my car having four wheels and a steering wheel - I think I'd resist if someone tried to sell me a car with a rotating sphere instead of wheels, and a sliders on the ceiling instead of a steering wheel. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to stick with what I know works, and need a lot of convincing arguments and demonstrations before I change.

Re:Short answer: yes

[PrimaryConsult]

The (start) menu system if you examine it and clean it up as you might in XP.

The problem is you're trying to clean it up. If you can break your habit of it, you'll realize that the combination of search+click, and pinning the few things that you access frequently enough are far, far superior.

I used to try and organize my start menu in XP, but it truly is an exercise in futility. If you use multiple computers at work and home, you spend so much time organizing that storing a folder with a bunch of .lnk's on your network share or memorizing command names for the run box becomes more efficient. It's madness.

What they get right, IMO.

[Greg Merchan]

From what I've seen in articles, videos, etc.:

Mac OS X Lion gets almost everything right, but there have always been little things in MacOS that annoy me to no end when I try to use it. If it was free software, I would have switched.

Windows 8 . . . I haven't noticed anything compelling. Probably fine for most people.

Unity is the only free software desktop that puts the menu bar in the right place by default. The indicators seem to be shaping up well.

Gnome 3 has the potential to be awesome, I think, because they are exploiting JavaScript for so much. That Linux Mint will be releasing extensions to make Gnome 3 like Gnome 2 is a testament to this. Show me that the menu bar can be put in the right place and I'll consider it. Put it there by default and I'll probably switch from Unity.

KDE Plasma looks like it has good widget, window, and file management, but I've only seen screenshots and may be imagining things work a certain way.

Wrong wrong wrong.

[Requiem18th]

This kind of "people hate everything" mentality is just a cop-out to ignore the very real problems with these GUIs.

My GUI dedicates mayor hotspot to Widget configuration, replaced the desktop with a Widget, and essentially tried to use widgets for everything, despite the fact that Widgets suck, they are crippled versions of mayor apps whose only purpose is being digital paper weights, which wouldn't be so bad except a decent desktop backgrounds outdoes them for me.

Gnome Shell has great promise but right now is a mass of usability blunders that fit neither desktops or tablets, and the real tragedy is that the devs are commited to their ways. At least KDE4 devs adapted folder views to restore the original functionality of the desktop*. Gnome guys revel in contradicting their current userbase.

My mayor gripes with Gnome 3 are not with Shell but the configurability of Gnome 3 itself. Do you remember that old saying about MS Office, that people only use 10% of it's features, but it's always a different 10%? Same happens with the desktop, I have had two non-power users request two perfectly reasonable changes to Gnome 3** my point is, you don't have to be a special case to want to change a setting and they are getting rid of almost all configuration.

Unity, Mostly the same, plus is really slow, this a Gnome Shell are hiding a lot of stuff from users and is perfectly reasonable stuff. One user requested help to find Solitaire game. Moving from Windows to Gnome 2, this user never had a problem finding the games section, not anymore in this new GUI.

And of course there is the problem of the icon docks being fixed to the left side. In about 15 years of desktop usage I have seen all sorts of users push the taskbar to all four sides of the monitor. This even in 1997 with Windows 95. When a modern desktop doesn't let you do what ordinary users casually did with Windows 95 YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

* What's the problem with folder views? Well the case of folder views is tragic, they ARE more powerful than the traditional desktop methaphor but also more complex, the original desktop can be used thoughtlessly, folder views don't. But folder views are less useful than dolphin windows. So you don't really have a reason folder views ever.

** Two user requests.
1) Disable password prompts, only doable through dconf-editor which is not included in Gnome 3 packages by default. You can achieve the same in Gnome 2 through dialogs alone.
2) The appearance dialog was murdered and replaced by a cheap impostor that doesn't even let you do the simplest thing, in this case display exactly the desktop wallpapers the user wanted. In Gnome 2 she deleted most of the default wallpapers from the appearance window and added some the walls folder inside the Pictures folder. In the new dialog default walls are set in stone, the alternative is the Pictures folder with is not where she stores her walls. As a bonus adding walls to this windows makes it seem like you are moving them to the Pictures folder.

Re:Wrong wrong wrong.

[Gaygirlie]

mayor

Major: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/major
Mayor: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mayor

This even in 1997 with Windows 95. When a modern desktop doesn't let you do what ordinary users casually did with Windows 95 YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.

That does not a compelling argument make. Sometimes leaving redundant features out is actually useful, and sometimes including some features doesn't make any sense at all. As such you cannot just make such an all-encompassing claim like that.

Re:Wrong wrong wrong.

[Requiem18th]

In this case, this is one of those cases where the burden of proof is on the other side. I'm talking about features that users actually use. Two good rules of thumb are:

1) Expose as much functionality as possible, let the users tune their desktops to their liking.

The OS X can be placed in any edge of the screen (except top I think), Same with the windows taskbar. And Gnome 2 panels, XFCE panels Plasma panels etc. In fact I'm pretty sure that Gnome-Shell panels supports multiple panels in any edge of the screen, because there is an extension that does just that, using the extension API. They just didn't want to offer the functionality to users.

2) Do what your competition does and improve on that. All the above mentioned desktops are different among themselves yet they all offer some of the same flexibility. Gnome-Shell/Gnome 3 doesn't, and its berated explicitly for this. At this point wondering why users complain is an insult.

Thanks for the pointing out that mayor misspelling.

Biggest problem I see...

[s0litaire]

... Is that these changes were imposed onto the community over a very short time-scale.
In the case of Unity, it first was introduced in 11.04 as the default (with gnome fall-back was an option) and as standard in 11.10 (Gnome fall-back removed). Their was a vocal group that had problems with Unity and felt it was not ready for prime-time and Conical was only rushing Unity out the door (so to speak) to keep up with Gnome 3 "Gnome-shell". Which has just as many haters as Unity!

I think if they slowed down the introduction by having it as an option instead of a default in 11.04 and then having it as default in 11.10 it would probably have let the community drift towards Unity once all the bugs were ironed out! then in 12.04 have it as the standard option with more public support!

Unity is bearable on my 15 inch laptop (but gets tiring after a while!) but I put up with it. My desktop is on Ubuntu10.10 and is probably last version of Ubuntu it will see!! Looking at Mint or another Flavour that keeps a Gnome 2 style interface.

Re:Biggest problem I see...

[kbg]

once all the bugs were ironed out!

Maybe the Unity developer should learn about some software engineering concepts like testing, QA and unit testing. Actually testing the product before releasing it to the public, is generally a good idea.

Web UI

[EmotionToilet]

After using OS X for many years now and still occasionally tinkering with Windows and Linux, I'm pretty much completely content with Snow Leopard or Lion. Add onto that the clean and easy UI you get with the iPad and iPhone and I'm sold. At this point in time I spend a majority of my computer usage on the internet and I'm more appalled with Web UI than I am with OS UI.

Marginal benefit is not enough to re-learn a GUI.

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans have not evolved to sit in chairs staring at computer screens all day, we just aren't made for it. People have done their best to make the system usable, and done a pretty good job. But in the end all GUI designs are going to be shitty in some way or other because we are human. We have just learned to deal with it, there will never be a perfect GUI.

Most people have spent a lot of time learning the GUIs we have now, and I mean a lot. It is one thing to know it academically but quite another to have it built in as reflex. So when software comes out with a new GUI the question is not whether it is better, it's a marginal cost/benefit question. Is the improvement the new GUI over the old one worth the hassle of re-learning the GUI? Usually no. We have settled on suboptimal designs, but the cost benefit ratio of switching doesn't add up.

It is like the QWERTY layout. We know that it is suboptimal and that better layout exist yet no one switches, why? It is not worth the effort. Gaining an extra 5% WPM is (for almost everyone) not worth the hassle of having to spend hours and hours learning to type all over again.

Dumed Down

[inkrypted]

To me it seems that the new interfaces do not give you as much control. Tweaking Gnome 3, Unity, or KDE4 seems harder than their predecessors and that lack of customization is what is alien to me. Linux is billed as a custom OS I guess that is why their are so many different flavors. When that is taken away you have basically you have something that resembles a Windows environment although I think it's actually easier to customize Windows that any of the desktops mentioned earlier. Perhaps I am jaded or maybe I am just not used to giving up control of my desktop.

Re:iOS

[geminidomino]

Not the OP, but I find that it's quite objectionable when employed on desktop/laptop computers, instead of just the over-priced, under-featured phones that it was designed for.

Of course, I can't really blame apple for that. Just the twats at Microsoft, Canonical, etc... who seem to want to put bad copies of it there.

Re:No it isn't

[epyT-R]

a. or they have thought about the consequences of such changes, and being obvious blatant negatives, don't take much time doing so.
b. or they've been surrounded by soap boxers trying to justify messing with what works without a sound reason for doing so.
c. or they're just tuning out repetition.

GUI Designers are to blame

[shaitand]

The current generation of GUI designers think they know better than the actual users. They will cite usability studies when completely disregarding the feedback of users. More and more these elitist 'artists' are given control of design. More and more the 'vocal minority' fallacy is used to dismiss those have the inclination and ability to provide feedback.

The problem with this mentality? Users interact with the study, not usability studies. Users care about how close the next button they need to click is or how hard it is to find it. They don't stop and consider whether an element 'logically belongs' to another element.

If they are putting tablet GUIs on my desktop, YES

[guidryp]

I have no problem with finger friendly GUIs on tablets/phones where they belong.

But just like Mouse interfaces suck with fingers, Finger GUIs suck with mouse.

Keep stupid fat finger interfaces off my desktop.

Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[tepples]

The shared menu bar at the top doesn't work for me - I would prefer it to be in the app window, close to where my mouse is already. I also dislike the fact that the menu options aren't visible until you move your mouse over the bar.

The problem isn't the global menu at the top; Mac OS has had that since 1987 when MultiFinder came out. The real problem is the second thing you stated: a mystery meat global menu.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[Ami Ganguli]

The global menu is the problem for a significant number of people.

I could learn to live with just about every other Unity change, but the global menu drives me bonkers. When my visual focus is on an app window on my second display, I expect to be able to go to that window in order to work with the app. I don't expect to have to click on the window first, then move my mouse to the other display in order to access a menu that (oddly ) isn't located anywhere near my application window.

I've never understood why Apple sticks with this setup. It made sense with the original Mac, which had a tiny screen and didn't really support multi-tasking. It's a huge usability problem for modern desktops with multiple, large displays.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[jo_ham]

It is one of the big UI issues with multi-monitor Mac setups, especially now that we have huge screens (it wasn't so bad for me in the old days with a 22" cinema and a 20" CRT next to each other - I used the CRT for holding palettes and other such stuff while using Motion/DVD SP etc), but if you're using that second (or more) screen as your active viewer, like typing a document or working on an image et, the fact that the app's menu bar (and all of the computer's info like time, network, UI widgets etc) are on the 'primary' display means you have to move.

It's pretty much a holdover from the old days, where the Mac was designed with the overlapping window model (rather than maximised apps). I think they are tentatively trying to change it by introducing Full Screen Apps, that are essentially like extra desktops (you slide the main desktop away and bring in the full screen app, and vice versa to flip between them), but this is not going to work for many people.

I'm not really sure what they can do about it - changing to a "menu on each window" model would be a brutal change, almost as much as this Unity switch in Ubuntu.

Perhaps put in the ability to flip between modes, depending on preference.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[Oligonicella]

changing to a "menu on each window" model would be a brutal change

How? Seriously. I don't use Apple, so I'm unfamiliar with the reasoning, but "brutal" seems extreme.

As for the general multi-screen problem, we have that on Windows as well. While games lead, application software (corp and not) lag in addressing current computer possibilities.

Yes. Flipping modes should always be an option when things change. I'll add that sometimes the change removes something useful. I was disappointed in Random House's removal of what to me was my primary word search mechanism. Not replaced or enhanced, just removed.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[LingNoi]

Try it on GIMP with the three windows open.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[mattsday]

It makes sense on a mac because the operating system decouples applications and windows. In other words, you can still manipulate an application even if it has no visible windows. Close and Quit are distinct functions.

I quite like this method as well as it provides a (relatively) consistent place to aim the mouse and the expectation that all programs will behave the same way. Windows confuses me these days. Some applications have no menu bar, others have lots of icons and so on. On a mac, you can click "Help" and type what you want to do and it's there - for every application.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[gullevek]

For me this is never a problem. On the other hand it is rare that I use the menu at all. Most the time I use the shortcuts.

And I prefer to have the menu away from the application. Does not waste space there.

Re:Global menu not the problem as much as MMN

[smisle]

yes, that is EXACTLY what is wrong with the global menu idea. I guess that since the Windows people hid their menus that everyone else feels like they have to do the same. It was stupid when windows did it, and it's still stupid. Menus are there for a reason. The only way you can get around it is by replacing it with something else - like the Chrome menu. They realized that you only really have enough options to fit in one menu anyway, so why stick with the file, edit, view, tools, help paradigm? Where this falls apart is when you have options that are ONLY avaliable in a menu that you can only access by pressing alt first.

New UIs not just polish

[FellowConspirator]

Major changes to a GUI are an expensive (time AND money) venture. They aren't changed without reason, and if it were just to change the proverbial drapes then all you'd need to do is develop a simple theming system once and you'd be done. Changes are being made because of a perception that there's something wrong, or that people are changing the way they use their computer - and they're right. Think how much more you use a browser and mail-contacts-calendaring uber-client now than you did 10 years again.

Chrome that provides feedback or contextual cues is good design. It's good design for physical hardware, and it's good for software. People are naturally very visual. Changing layouts and interactions to handle different modes of input (touch and gestures as opposed to keyboard or mouse movement), also very important.

What's happening now is that developers of GUIs are awakening to the fact that the elements of the UI define the ergonomics of interaction. Just like in the physical world, you can't turn screws with a hammer or pound nails with a screwdriver (you can, but not effectively). GUIs are no different. To make a GUI an efficient means of operating a computer, you need to consider the means of input, the ratio of input to output, and the most frequent operations so that you can remove as much overhead as possible from the interaction. The use of appropriate cues, consistency in the UI, and references to well understood symbols or real-world objects are effectively symbolic documentation and can be very efficient.

We have to try to improve what we have

[Marrow]

Nothing is perfect. While I love Linux and accept gnome, I really don't want them to be the pinnacle of computing design. In 50 years, are we really going to still be doing this? So yeah they need to try new things. Maybe they need to attract additional userbase to justify more development.
Let us not be the "old guys" who think that computers were never the same after they lost their favorite mainframe dumb terminal and REXX environment.

Some people like functions

[renegadesx]

I think its more that the new GUI's are less functional and oversimplified to the point where it becomes unusable. Remember Linus' rant regarding GNOME 2? The one where he famously said "if you treat your users as idiots, only idiots will use it"?

I think its the same sort of issue, most people had more tolerence for less options than Linus. He prefered KDE3 which despite was nice, was pretty bloated at the time. The new GUI's crossed the line for alot more people.

My issue with iOS is stuff like multitasking and options were made a headache because Jobs wanted one button, the walled garden apprach also limits what you can do with the device.

My issue with GNOME 3 is it removed basic principals like minimising and maximising windows (something I do quite a bit). My issue with Windows 8 is that too, despite I see its potential on tablets using Metro on a PC is terrible given you have to mimick finger swipes with your mouse. It makes no sense.

nothing beats a good bartender

[epine]

It's the classic trap of optimizing the solution domain instead of the problem domain. The center of the usability world is not the computer, but the human skills and limitations of the person interacting with the computer.

A computer ought to be like a good bartender, who just knows on the first look that you aren't going to start with a parasol sticking out of a maraschino cherry. It ought to greet me with an offer to try out a unique Slivovitz or the vintage Calvados rather than offering me the pitcher of Coors Lite for one buck less than yesterday as if I care.

There's a guy on Wikipedia with nearly 800,000 edits. Shouldn't the computer make certain assumptions about his work process rather than popping up an interface suitable to his grandmother? If I sit down at a computer I've never used before and plug in my iPod, shouldn't it notice that I've never listened to a three minute pop song since I bought the device, but I do have 16GB of hour long lectures in the areas of technology, psychology, politics, history, and economics? Should my 30 years of keyboard experience not be taken into account? Or my 100-500 Google searches per day, 300 days per year, for the most of the last decade?

The bartender should just know that I need tabs and desktops, or failing that, some reasonable way to spread out.

The ultimate human assistant is the one who knows exactly how much bandwidth you have available, and when and how to interrupt you with new information or a better approach.

The interface I deserve is the one designed for the F35 fighter pilots where they actually do give a shit about your cognitive limits and making it possible to reach them. The start menu is just another deck chair on a biplane. I'm sick of interfacing with the computer. Wake me up when the computer interfaces with me.

Re:nothing beats a good bartender

[Just Some Guy]

It ought to greet me with an offer to try out a unique Slivovitz or the vintage Calvados rather than offering me the pitcher of Coors Lite for one buck less than yesterday as if I care. [...] If I sit down at a computer I've never used before and plug in my iPod, shouldn't it notice that I've never listened to a three minute pop song since I bought the device, but I do have 16GB of hour long lectures in the areas of technology, psychology, politics, history, and economics?

I am so never taking you on a pub crawl.

Re:nothing beats a good bartender

[omnichad]

While that does sound smart, the likely result would be more like Clippy with the features of an online ad network attached to it.

Comparing Unity with Windows 7/8

[rajeev_king]

Comparing Unity with Windows 7/8 is a lame thought. Unity is badly conceived and it tries to impress the people who have hardly used computers.

 

The people who hate iOS forget....

[Shadowmist]

... that before it came out.. Tablets and most smartphones sucked. They were nothing but computers shrunk down and and most importantly interfaces that were built to be used with mice. It's an interface that failed abysmally when translated to screen and hand use. iOS works so well, that Android has been spending a good deal of time copying as much of it as Google could get away with.

Change is fine, just don't force it

[FyberOptic]

I don't hate new GUIs, particularly for mobile devices where it's still a relatively new area and companies are still learning how to do it best. But for desktops, where work actually gets done, I just see no reason to take away something that's worked perfectly for years. Microsoft nailed it with the start button/task bar/system tray interface. We've used it for over 15 years now, and it's been cloned countless times for its shear functionality. But for some reason, many Linux distros/software, particularly Ubuntu, thinks that cloning OSX is the way to go. You know, OSX, the operating system which literally hasn't changed its GUI in 30 years aside from adding a dock bar to it. A GUI which was designed to handle individual applications at a time due to hardware limitations. And a dock bar which, I might add, is one of the most uninformative task management devices ever created. It's fine for grandma to see if she has her email client open, but not for someone who wants to see how many web browsers, directories, or terminals they may have open, and displaying where or what those windows are currently doing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with Microsoft trying something new, in an effort to bridge the desktop and the mobile device. But I want the ability to disable it on my desktop machine. Right now you can't without breaking shit. But this is Microsoft, and they're pretty well known for configurability and backwards compatibility, so I have a feeling nobody is going to be forced to use it on the final product.

Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[Pfhorrest]

I've been clamoring for UI change since the 90s, when there were a lot of new ideas floating around. As a hobby I've been developing and tweaking a UI design (just on paper, not instantiated in anything) that takes Fitt's Law to heart (most functions to perform on an object are in a menu directly under your cursor when you click that object, the most important system-wide functions are in the corners akin to the Apple/Start/etc menus, and everything else lives along the edges of the screen), and works equally well with touchscreens and mice by having no functionality depend on hovering the cursor and having contextual menus that work without a second button. A command line is integrated right into the GUI for the power users, available at all times with a single click but tucked away when not in use. The overall design philosophy is that simple tasks are extremely simple to do, but much more powerful functionality is readily available just below the surface, easy to get to.

Those are the kinds of UI changes I would be interested in seeing. Or some of the things Jef Raskin was working on. Those are interesting, thoughtful, clever. But instead what we're getting is nothing but massives steps directly backwards into earlier eras of user interface simplicity (with the consequent loss of the power we bought with complexity). Things are becoming less functional, less consistent, all for the sake of appealing to the lowest common denominator, pushing computers into devices solely for consumption rather than creation, and taking controls away from the users for the sake of the manufacturers.

All of these things, and other trends, are completely antithetical to the personal computer revolution, which put power in the hands of users, allowing them to become creators themselves and learn and grow above the lowest common denominator. And it saddens me to see Apple, who used to be a leader in that revolution, leading this counter-revolution back to the dark ages of centralized, dumb, consumption devices, now more popular than ever.

Re:Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[TuringTest]

Do you have mockups of your design? your design constraints (no hovering, no right click) seem interesting.

Re:Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[Pfhorrest]

I have some very limited mockups which basically exist to delineate what objects go along what edges of the desktop, but they don't say much about the touchable-single-button part of the interface.

A short explanation of how it's intended to work is that a single click (or touch) on any object which is not a direct button (so, a file or folder, say) pops up a contextual menu (I'm considering a radial menu layout, but haven't settled on it) of actions you could perform on that item, similar to a traditional right-click. This is in lieu of any kind of menubars: all menubar functions are accessed through the menus of some objects or another, and there are some special objects (hiding in the corners, the second-fasted place to reach by Fitt's Law) to handle system-wide functions. Then from the contextual menu of an object, any function which you would normally want to do with a left-click, you can do with a click (or touch) on the (now-highlighted) object, e.g. drag it to move it, click it to open it. Notably, this preserves the double-click functionality: first click pops up the contextual menu, but another click on the same object opens it (no menu item pops up directly over the object), so a double-click still opens.

Lack of hover functionality doesn't really impede much compared to traditional GUIs. The only hover functionality I can think of is the higlighting of menu items as you hover over them, but nothing really activates until you click, so that's entirely cosmetic. It seems only newer web-based stuff really relies on hover at all, and that's going away now that touch interfaces are becoming common. So just being mindful not to rely on it, and only needing a single "button" like this, makes the system automatically touch-friendly while still giving the power of traditional mouse-driven interfaces.

Re:Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[TuringTest]

Sounds nice. Be aware of over-relying on the screen edges to take advantage of Fitt's Law, though. Those only work for mouse and trackball on small screens but they offer little advantage for touchpads, touchscreens or users with big screens. For those, nothing substitutes having targets that are big.

Actually the second fasted place for Fitt's Law is not the corner but the radial menu, and it also works well for touch interfaces; I think you should give them a try for your design if you can get over
their weird look.

Also don't subestimate the power of Hover to show tooltips; they make interfaces easier to scan and learn. If you want to support touchscreens make sure that the expanded context menus include the description that should be in the tooltip, and test all text labels with users to ascertain that they're descriptive.

Re:Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[Pfhorrest]

Sounds nice. Be aware of over-relying on the screen edges to take advantage of Fitt's Law, though. Those only work for mouse and trackball on small screens but they offer little advantage for touchpads, touchscreens or users with big screens. For those, nothing substitutes having targets that are big.

Agreed that there's little speed advantage to reaching corners or edges without a mouse on a small screen, as "throwing" the cursor in their general direction is less of a factor: but there is definitely still a speed advantage to locating them on an edge or in a corner, as opposed to somewhere anywhere in between. As I'm using corners and edges for broad items that you might want to get at at any time but are never the thing you're directly working on, that location advantage could be very useful.

The things I have around the edges of the screen are:
- Top edge, right side: "Accessories", a combination of system widgets, like you would find in the Windows taskbar tray or on the right side of a Mac menubar, and simple programs like clocks and calculators and other things you might find in something like the OSX "Dashboard". In the top-right corner is the general-purpose system control widget similar to the Apple menu or Start menu, though without the shortcut functionality of the Start menu or the old (pre-X) Apple menu. Directly below this area is a text area where system-wide information can be displayed; I'm not really clear what to put in here yet, but there is space for something given the rest of the design below...
- Top edge, left side: tasks/programs, running or not, similar to the left side of the OSX dock or Windows 7 taskbar. Directly in the center of the top edge (on the right side of this area) is the task manager object. Directly below this is where all progress bars live (tasks in progress), showing only one until clicked.
- Right edge, top side: devices, including hard disks, printers, scanners, etc, all represented as logical volumes. (e.g. copy a file to the printer to send it to the print queue, copy the image file out of the scanner to capture what's in the scanner bed, etc). In the middle of the right edge, at the bottom of this area, is a representation of the local network or workgroup, with all shared volumes visible inside it.
- Right edge, bottom side: "scraps", like a multi-item clipboard: a temporary storage space for bits of content or whole files, where cut or copied items go and where pasted items come from. At the bottom of this, in the lower-right corner, is the trash can / recycle bin / non-look-and-feel-patent-infringing-disposal-device-icon.
- Left edge, top side: The toolbar. This is where it gets a little weird by conventional UI standards: this UI is designed with document-centric computing in mind, inspired mostly by Apple's defunct OpenDoc project, and the whole left edge is dedicated to that. This top half is where content-creation tools, like a pen tool or brush tool or text tool or table tool or what have you, are available. At the top of it, in the top-left corner, is where the generic "cursor" tool lives.
- Left edge, bottom side: What OpenDoc called "stationary". Blank filetype templates used to create new documents; in lieu of File -> New Whatever in some specific program, just drag a new file into existence somewhere. In the middle of the left edge, at the top of this section, is the New Folder stationary, for creating empty new folders.
- Bottom edge, left side: aliases, shortcuts, bookmarks, whatever you want to call them, like the right-hand side of the OSX dock. In the lower left corner is the search widget, similar to OSX's Spotlight. Directly above this area is an address bar showing the filepath/url of the active window, and allowing you to type in a filepath/url to get directly to another resource if you like.
- Bottom edge, right side: scripts, like shell scripts or AppleScripts or Photoshop actions, stored sequences of interface commands. In the center of the bottom edge, on the left side of this

Re:Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[TuringTest]

You may also want to take a look at the square menu and this menu techniques compilation.

Re:Love new UIs; hate THESE new UIs

[AliasMarlowe]

FYI, Labview has used a square menu system for years for block-insertion and other item selections - cascading rectangular grids of icons (and/or text) which change as you mouse over the upper level grid. It's almost forced by the large number of choices at each menu level.

passive windows

[jbolden]

The new scrollbars are an interface disaster. You should never make scrollbars smaller and harder to see and use, but that's what they did. They are about half as wide as before, and gray instead of in color. Not only that, but by default they disappear after a few seconds, and you have to hover your mouse on the edge of the window to get it back. I'm sure that saves valuable space on a tiny screen but in a desktop work environment it's just plain bad design, and worse: a waste of time because you have to hover and wait for it all the time. In very long documents, people are used to looking at their scrollbar to keep track of where they are. With the default behavior, you can't do that anymore.

I think you are missing the point. Scrollbars are essentially a passive way of dealing with the window. It comes from a paradigm that the window is passive relative to the mouse. That doesn't have to be the case, think about all the activity that occurs in an IDE; or even the mouse overs in many web applications. What Apple is moving away from is passive windows.

For certain OS X applications, they changed the behavior to something far from the norm, by making documents auto-save, even when you don't want them to.

That's going to be the norm across the board. They are moving away from notion of explicit save and moving towards explicit version naming and automatic saves. The idea being that with SSD the user has an experience of all of their applications always being in a fully running state. There is no distinction between a running and a non running application.

which used to be in color, are now a washed-out shade of gray.

Apple has been moving towards less garish and more grey with every version. They are moving from "insanely great" to "subtle elegance". Apple doesn't have as much to prove. And the contrast with the garishness of the Aero works in their favor.

Re:passive windows

[Compaqt]

>They are moving from "insanely great" to "subtle elegance".

The thing is, there's enough critical mass with Apple now that whatever they do is acclaimed.

Bright primary colors for the close, minimize, and optimize buttons? Apple is Great

Go to a grey colorscheme? Apple is Great.

Not have copy/paste? Apple is Great. Have it? Apple is Great.

Re:passive windows

[Jane Q. Public]

"I think you are missing the point. Scrollbars are essentially a passive way of dealing with the window. It comes from a paradigm that the window is passive relative to the mouse. That doesn't have to be the case, think about all the activity that occurs in an IDE; or even the mouse overs in many web applications. What Apple is moving away from is passive windows."

I'm not missing the point at all. You are.

I am quite familiar with human interface principles, thank you very much, and I have made a point of studying the research that has gone into them during the last 10 years and before. What you are missing is that it is natural (thus the OS X setting for "natural scrolling") on a mobile interface that is responsive to your finger to behave as though it were a dynamic object held in your hand: it moves as your finger does. People naturally react to it that way.

However, in a desktop setting it is NOT "natural", at all. From a human interface standpoint, people are much more efficient with desktop interfaces when they treat them as though it is a STATIC object, and you are looking through a "window" at it. Therefore you don't move the object being viewed, but your window in relation to it.

This is all very basic human interface stuff, and the recent changes by Apple completely ignored them, to the detriment of their OS on the desktop.

"That's going to be the norm across the board. They are moving away from notion of explicit save and moving towards explicit version naming and automatic saves. The idea being that with SSD the user has an experience of all of their applications always being in a fully running state. There is no distinction between a running and a non running application."

I'm not disputing the trend; I'm just saying it's a stupid idea. As the whole topic of this conversation is supposed to be: change simply for the sake of change is not a good thing. This arguably doesn't improve anything, and in fact it has impeded my workflow. Not because I'm not used to it; I am by now. But simply because it's actually slower because of all the times you have to "revert" due to the OS trying to "help" you in ways you don't want. And their revert process is unnecessarily primitive and slow. The whole thing is actually a worse way to "help" users than Microsoft's infamous "Clippy". They should have left well enough alone, rather than making it worse based on internal opinion as opposed to proven interface design.

"Apple has been moving towards less garish and more grey with every version. They are moving from "insanely great" to "subtle elegance". Apple doesn't have as much to prove. And the contrast with the garishness of the Aero works in their favor."

Again, you miss the point: it isn't "elegant" if it flies in the face of absolutely elementary, basic interface principles: elements are supposed to be EASY to tell apart. Colors make it easy. Grayscale makes it hard. This is measurable by the time it takes the eye to track, and has been known for at least 30 years. When you gray things down, you reduce efficiency and increase the time it takes to complete tasks.

So, you can argue aesthetics all you want, but the point I was making is that from an actual usable human interface point of view, it's still terrible, no matter how "pretty" you think it is.

Re:passive windows

[jbolden]

Yep. There is a cult of mac. Mainly it comes from being responsive when the screw up and being better in a lot of areas. They have good judgement, but your Takbir analogy is justified.

Re:passive windows

[Compaqt]

The thing is, everybody seems to have bought into Apple Is Great, even the non-Mac guys. So they're furiously trying to copy them. But they'll never succeed. Here's why:

You know how, in high school the wannabes always tried to copy the cool kids, but failed miserably?
-When the cool kids had greased back hair, the wannabes had it a year too late, and the cool kids had already moved on.
-When the cool kids had acid wash jeans, wannabes copied that. By that time, cool kids had already moved on to faded jeans. Then they moved again to ripped jeans.
-Cool kids had Swatches. Wannabes copied that, but too late again.

Wannabes don't get it: It's not acid wash and Swatches that made cool kids cool. It's the cool kids that made those things cool. So it doesn't matter if wannabes wear a certain type of jean.

It doesn't matter if Android gets a touch interface, rounded corners, or whatever. Android's not cool because Android's not cool. And any "new stuff" that Android comes up with (like facial recognize unlock) is stupid until Apple does it, at which time it becomes cool.

Re:passive windows

[jbolden]

I agree with you regarding cool. That's exactly what happened with Android tablets. The kinds of customers who would drop $500-1000 on a tablet perceive Apple as a luxury brand and Motorola and Samsung as common. So at essentially the same price they will pick the Apple over the Android unless the Android is obviously better. It is an "unfair" competitive advantage that will help Apple for years.

The discussion about OSX having garish and loud features: bright buttons, genie effects... in 10.0-10.2 and having slowly moved to being subtle and understated in 10.7 while Microsoft has gone the other way (i.e. response to aero) is a good example. It shows the key issue about the cool kids, they work at being cool. They set the trend. So I agree with what you are saying. comic.

But it is not just. The issue with Apple is that Apple is deeply concerned about end user experience "don't make crap". Moreover the OSX/iOS community thinks of itself as a community that has community interests. And Apple sets the tone. For example for the last year or two Apple has been losing money on the Applecare warranty because customers expected it to cover breakage. So Apple has been covering breakage and losing money, rather than get the bad publicity of "I had an Apple and they suck, they don't honor their warranty..." that's the sort of thing Android vendors just won't do. They don't protect the brand. Apple works at being cool.

Apple end users (iOS or OSX) complain loudly when the software company is cutting corners. Flaws are made obvious.
Apple developers on iOS understand that Apple will take whatever action they think they have to, to protect the brand in terms of bans. Which means effectively all iOS developers work for Apple. Fundamentally the idea that you are part of a community that has community standards is something Android users and developers would strongly rebel against.

It is not just acid washed jeans. Mac users really do experience an upgrade in overall quality, that is effortless. They are often are not getting the best value for their money, but a pretty good value and they never get screwed huge. In return the developers (and Apple) get a customer base that isn't shopping for the best value but rather is open to them making a decent margin. I'd say a better analogy is business in Europe (Apple) vs. business in the USA (Android).

OSX Lion

[skirmish666]

My experiences with Snow Leopard vs Lion

Dropped:

• 2D array of spaces, replaced with 1D. Like remembering exactly how many screens away your work is when using multiple screens?
• Tiling all windows in one screen so you can easily pick out the app window you want to access, replaced with ability to see all windows of one app at a time. Like working with only one app?
• Ability to easily reorganise windows with one guesture, then a single click per window, replaced with a three step process per window. Say I have 10 windows I want to move, first move to the screen with the app window I want to move, then open mission control, then drag the app window to the screen you want it in.

Seriously, why Apple?

Different is OK, but it has to work.

[j1m 5n0w]

I have a netbook with Ubuntu 11.4. I didn't mind Unity at first, but then I quickly realized that a) it is designed to prevent me from working the way I want to and b) it's really buggy.

I won't elaborate on the second point. If you already know what I'm talking about, then fine, if not then it must either be working fine for you, or you aren't using Unity at all. Regarding the first point, though -- there seems to be someone out there with some sort of religion about not having two windows of the same application at once. Years back, there was a big controversy about Nautilus not opening a new window when you double-clicked on a directory. I didn't pay much attention because I don't use Nautilus. More recently, I've been using gedit quite a lot to write code (take that, vim and emacs users!), but every now and then I want to have two windows open so I can look at more than one file at once. Can't do it. If I try to open another gedit window, it just creates a new tab in the existing window. Maybe there's some way to turn this off, but it seems like a pretty bad default to have an application go out of its way to prevent a user from ever looking at two files at the same time. Fast forward to Ubuntu 11.4. Now, the application launcher thing on the left has some default launch buttons that can be deleted and replaced with the applications I actually use (good bye, word processor; hello, terminal). These launcher buttons have strange behavior though -- if the app is already running, they just highlight the window of the already opened app instead of opening a new window. I'm not convinced that's a good idea even for a word processor, but for terminals it's just unusable.

To be fair, it is possible to open multiple terminals if you don't use the launcher, but instead click on the magnifying glass with a plus in it, which (contrary to every GUI interface I've ever used before) isn't actually a zoom button, but rather is used to search for applications. Searching for terminal and launching it from there allows you to open more than one window.

I feel like the party line about Unity is that "It may be different from what you're used to, but Unity is a significantly better, more usable interface and it will be worth a short learning curve." In actuality, it seems like the real story is, "Working with multiple windows is too messy. We've fixed that bug by not allowing you to use multiple windows. If this upsets you, then you're not Ubuntu's target audience."

I haven't tried the newest Ubuntu. If it isn't any better, I think it might be time to start looking for a better distro.

Re:Different is OK, but it has to work.

[Lispy]

It's really easy to undock a tab in Gedit. Just drag it out of the original window onto a free spot on your desktop. Voila!

Re:iOS

[shitzu]

ios and menu?

I don't care

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

..and I don't want to know. I just want my minimize button and my window selector back!

Problem is gui designers...

[blahplusplus]

... are mostly clueless. I look at how GUI has developed on windows and there are days I wonder how those people got hired at microsoft.

A GUI should be simple, functional, expose what functions you commonly use and hide infrequently used aspects of the program. There are tonnes of modern day programs that could learn this lesson but you could see the start of it in I think it is Office 2000 ish (203?) where menu's would shorten and hide functions not used. Also for more advanced users you can edit the shortcut bar and add/remove functions/buttons you don't use to clean up the interface.

A great interface gets out of the way for basic users and allows more advanced users freedom of hiding/removing/editing functions they don't use from the program's interface.

If it ain't broke

[Culture20]

The current crop of UI designers seem like they want change for the sake of change. Possibly because they need to justify working on a UI for Canonical or Microsoft so that their department doesn't dwindle, or maybe they think a stagnant area of thought is useless (not so; has anyone tried designing a wheel that isn't round lately?). Maybe they need to keep trying to be different like teenagers try to stand out from a crowd.
All I know is they're taking something incredibly useful and trashing it, just like modern car radio interfaces. Do I really want to be looking at a digital touchscreen menu while I'm driving instead of hitting the radio-button furthest on the right or the one furthest on the left?

Yes

[mixmasta]

Actually I love the iOS and Metro phone and tablet interfaces... I don't mind them trying out new ideas for netbooks in netbook editions. But keep them THE FUCK OFF MY WORKSTATION.

Nope..

[0ld_d0g]

They have almost universally based it on UI studies, expectations of UI study participants, and other UI guidelines. Maybe you don't agree with the data, but for the most part there is data. If you have ever seen non techsavvy people struggle with using the computer you'd realize that what we have now *does not work*. The goal always is to create a UI that helps the largest chunk of the usually tech-illiterate population. Ofcource unless the software itself is intended for highly technical users.

geeks UNITE!!

[pbjones]

the days of what I would call a geek's interface on consumer computing is gone. Consumers don't care about disks and folders, and files. They want to do, and not think about the OS. Thus there maybe a niche market for a geek centred GUI? or would just a terminal window do? (I like terminal windows)

you've forgotten something...

[villain222]

In all of the fuss here. you've guys forgot the best gui yet. webOS. yeah, i said it. it brought it all together in one slick package (palm does it again). too bad HP had to have "big plans" for it. I feel Palm will rise again. Mobile/Touchscreen usability is where everyone is headed. eventually the desktop will be mostly touch. Command line is good for those who have time on there hands initially. but for the average Joe you need usability to get things going. HP is about to put webos on the selling block. Hopefully someone will scoop it up and slap in on top of there system. Android has got some good momentum. If they can add the usability of webos they could really deal a deathblow to the rest of the pack. Another big issue in gui and their usability is security. Security can be the most complicated thing and that's why the average joe should have almost nothing to do with it. Security in business and at home should be dealt with in 2 totally different ways. Unfortunately its not. Windows for example has the same security mechanisms in all version of its OS. They just to dumb things down for the average consumer and what you get is shitty security. the model has to be re-done. Users should be able to do what ever they need to, to get the desired result. anybody else can't. No online apps should ever be able to make a change to that system. just going to one site as an administrator account can totally screw things up without the user knowing (thanks a lot Command Line).

Parkinson's Law of Triviality strikes again?

[miawuascht]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law_of_Triviality . Everyone seems to be an expert in the field of UI, although the underlying concepts are not understood. This combined with people reluctant to change create a formidable setup for bitching about things without coming up with a better alternative.

Re:iOS

[FireFury03]

iOS is great for touch devices. If someone put iOS on my desktop, it would drive me mad.

Someone did. They called it Gnome 3, and yes, it's largely unusable except, perhaps, on a tablet for people who only run one app at a time, or who automatically think that new = better.

I'm not sure why you consider gnome 3 to be a "1 app at a time" DE - it supports overlapping windows, has a good application switcher, etc. Sure there are a few places where they have jumped the shark, but those largely seem to be misfeatures that have been ripped off from OS X, not iOS.

FVWM2 4ever

[Anonymous Coward]

The WM to rule them all! It is fast and was always worked without annoying features that make my machine slow for no reason. GNOME and KDE make me feel like I am using Windows, and that makes me a sad panda.

Re:iOS

[mwvdlee]

You shouldn't think of iOS as an OS (yes, the "OS" part in it's name is misleading) in the traditional sense; it's not supposed to let the user control the system.

I think we're mostly set in our ways

[aklinux]

We seem to say we want improvments, then we proceed to complain it's not like the old.

I am running Fedora 15 w/ Gnome 3. It took me a couple of days to settle into it. The developers wanted too clean a desktop for my taste :-) Then I figured out how to customize it for my tastes, and now I'm OK w/ it (got most of my clutter back). Isn't that why many of us use Linux? To have it our way?

I've noticed immigrants to this country do this as well. Move here from wherever, then proceed to complain that it's not like where they left. Well duh!!

I suppose it's just human nature. Unless we're the ones designing the changes (mine are always best!!), we always find something we don't like.

Re:I think we're mostly set in our ways

[Robert Zenz]

We seem to say we want improvments, then we proceed to complain it's not like the old.

Improvement does not necessarily involve radical/big changes.

It is the fault of Sci-Fi-ish movies

[SmallFurryCreature]

There are countless futuristic movies in which there is this fantastic intferface or sentient computer that makes ordinary tasks we never do seem so much more convenient. When have you really checked a detailed weather forecast before going out? I live in Holland, the weather will be grey and rainy with the wind blowing from all corners at once. Same with checking mail or arranging meetings. The sci-fi movie never happens. Or take the Star Trek computer. It seems so fluent that interface the TNG crew uses but have you noticed how what they do on the keyboard never has any relation to what is happening? That is because it ain't real but how many touchscreen fanboys wanted a computer with a touchscreen keyboard because of it?

Same thing with speech control, that sounds nice but needs to exist in a world where "help" is not a long google session.

The interface of tomorrow isn't happening because the tech of today just ain't there and PART of that tech is our own body. My voice is very different in the morning. If I had to use a voice command to turn the lights on, it would remain very dark. Coffee first but how do I get Mr Coffee to regonize my groggy voice?

The existing standard gui's on the desktop are very much based on the idea you have a surface on which you arrange windows containing applications or parts of an application. It ain't perfect but it works well enough since it means all each application developer has to do is present a rectangular box that either fits all screens (dialog) or can be resized. It is fairly easy... it is so easy in fact that on netbooks a LOT of windows and dialogs appear to far down and are cut off. They can't even get that right.

But Unity suddenly wants to throw this away and present an intelligent and smarter way of doing the same but different... and it doesn't quite work and most of us have years if not decades of experience doing it the standard way.

There may be room for a joystick driven car but if it crashes everytime I sneeze I am not going to unlearn my steering wheel skills.

Gnome and Unity are not just changes we do not want, their basic functionality was broken at the time of launch. Both crashed, had zero customization and removed widgets people had come to rely on. this would be like introducing a joystick controlled car that crashes when you sneeze with no windscreen no passenger seats no luggage space and an action radius of a half a mile. You can then bleat on about how good the joystick is, the hate for all the other stuff will kill your idea for ever.

Gnome 3 and Unity should have stayed as a research project for at least another year and only have launched for real when they were feature capable with the software they replaced.

As for Metro... am I the only one having flashbacks to active desktop? I am typing this in a fullscreen browser, like my toes, I haven't seen my desktop in years. Somewhere out there there must be people who run one app at a time, who have just 1 tab open in opera (mine are so small it takes totally mastery of subpixel clicking to get one) and when they are done they close everything to have the desktop re-appear.

It is not that we a stuck in the past with your basic window managers, it is that everything else has been tried AND deemed NOT to work. Try this one. Tell an Apple user that you do not think he is a complete faggot and fanboy and then ask him to honestly speak about the unified menu on a large screen setup. Handy no? Having to move your mouse for miles to get to the menu (people who use OSX just for photoshop and moved their menu to their touch pen thingy don't apply, you bought an expensive gadget AND spend ages to learn it to get away form the menu on the screen being out of easy reach.

Maybe like so many other things we have just gotten used to, the standard desktop gui just works. And if it isn't perfect then at least it is better then the usual attempts to fix it through half-finished code implementing barely thought out ideas that only apply in a few cases.

Ta

Re:It is the fault of Sci-Fi-ish movies

[LateArthurDent]

When have you really checked a detailed weather forecast before going out?

I'm a skydiver, so I live for detailed weather forecasts. "It's 78 degrees and sunny" sounds like perfect weather until you see the 30mph wind gusts or 3,000ft cloud ceiling.

On everything else, I'm with you, though. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

Re:It is the fault of Sci-Fi-ish movies

[Carnildo]

Try this one. Tell an Apple user that you do not think he is a complete faggot and fanboy and then ask him to honestly speak about the unified menu on a large screen setup. Handy no?

The nice thing about having the menu bar at the very top of the screen is that you can just fling your pointer up and it'll hit the menu bar -- there's no risk of overshooting it like you have on Windows. I find I can hit a top-level menu option much faster on Mac than on Windows or Linux, even though my Mac has the largest screen of any of my computers.

Efficiency, Psychology

[drx]

If you wouldn't care, you wouldn't hate it :)

It is not proven that Gnome3's or Unity's approach is perfect yet. However, the problems of the taskbar/windowlist is, that they are grouped by no order at all. Minimizing a window leaves no trail where to find it again, except the 0.3 second animation with shrinkboxes or some compiz effect. Users might remember that for some time, but not much.

Gnome 3's approach: When there is no way to minimize a window, it keeps its position. Keeping positions of objects is a powerful cognitive concept that Windows and KDE seem to have completely dismissed. And after pressing the funky key, users can see all the windows, not-overlapping, from a bird's-eye view and select much larger surfaces to access them. That is actually much more "efficient" that scanning a list of minimized windows that is arranged in a random order, or rather, in the order they happened to be opened.

Another good idea in Gnome3 is creating virtual desktops semantically instead of having a fixed number of them. So if a user is starting a new thing to work on, they can create a new desktop and fill it with the applications that they need for this task. This actually solves problems.

Removing many functions can be very "efficient", if efficiency is what "power users" are after, aka, doing things fast. Many great configuration options in for example KDE are totally pointless. I know I love changing stuff around a lot and have another checkbox to set some weird option, but since I changed to Gnome2.x, which was at the time laughed at for being dumbed down the same as Gnome3 is now, I am able to work much more, and more relaxed. My mind doesn't wander off by going through hundreds of tabbed config dialogs. I don't check the network traffic with an applet. I don't get a message popping up when a file finished being copied, along with a history of all file copy operations of the last month. Gnome is sparse. Which is great as long as it works well and you can be sure that the reason for a problem is not Gnome. In rich-option-environments, that, in addition, don't work well, you'll always feel anxious that some option you have changed might be the cause for the issue, and then try remembering which one that was.

Not directed against you, MrNiCeGUi: many people claiming to be "power users" and needing a lot of config options, are in fact wasting time and are just feeling to be productive by staring at pointless data diagrams or actually designing their own UI by moving stuff around, very likely making it measurably less efficient.

Hobbyists that love to fool around with their computers should be honest and say so, not stating "efficiency" as a reason. People who's job is to monitor computer activity, do maintenance or create work environments for others, might want and actually need loads of of options. But don't call that the peak of efficiency. It would for sure be more efficient if this work could be done with less configuration. In general, hating an interface without stating what it is used for, is quite useless.

BTW, iphone users also love their dumbed down touch interface because they feel more efficient with it. :) Of course a phone with a real keyboard is measurably more efficient, also the UI in my age old Palm Treo with PalmOS 5 can register dates and contact data much faster and more convenient than an iPhone. But it *feels* clunky because it looks like crap :) In the same way, powerusers might not feel like power users anymore when they have to do things that are commonly regarded as "consumer".

Re:Efficiency, Psychology

[MrNiCeGUi]

Windows are not grouped willy-nilly on the taskbar. They are grouped by the order in which they were opened, so there's a temporal flow to them. Your bird's eye view is useless when there are multiple document opened in a program and they are all similar looking, because you still have to mouseover and read their title.

You misunderstood the "caring" part. I just meant that I don't care to betatest or use Gnome, or Unity, Windows 8, or Lion, because their ideas are not demonstrably better and are, frankly, not worth my time. I've stopped at Snow Leopard, Windows 7 and I'm considering migrating my Ubuntu 10.4 install to Debian Mint. Interface designers seem to have simultaneously lost their marbles as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not complaining about power user needs not being met and in fact I was not claiming to be a power user anywhere in my previous post. I'm just annoyed that I can't leave someone with an Ubuntu install and be reasonably secure that I won't be hearing from them very soon. Because I used to do that and then Unity springs up and people call to tell me that everything's broken and those Linux people are stupid.

I don't patronize people by calling them "consumers" meaning that I really think they are stupid and that "power users" are smart. People mostly use computers to do things, not to use computers for their own sake. Doing things may mean simply reading the web and composing an email, or viewing photos, chatting online with their kids or grandkids, or designing a house for all I know. The interface shouldn't make things more difficult, undiscoverable, indescribable, illogical. People have said many bad things about the Ribbon interface (I mostly like it), but no one denied that at list that thing was trying to be discoverable and logical.

And, in a response to a post you made above that says that users make a big fuss about changes and than swallow the pill anyway, I bring you the recent example of Vista, where users stayed away in so effectively that even Microsoft had to acknowledge that they make a mistake.

In my country we have a saying: when two people tell you that you are drunk, you go home and sleep it off. The Gnome and Ubuntu/Unity developers are drunk, are being told that they are drunk, and they are challenging everybody with a broken bottle. This is going to end bad for all parties.

Re:Efficiency, Psychology

[drx]

Windows are not grouped willy-nilly on the taskbar. They are grouped by the order in which they were opened, so there's a temporal flow to them..

The order in which people opened their windows is very difficult to remember. And those who found out that they can move the taskbar buttons around are spending too much cognitive energy doing it :) The taskbar is a terrible interface, which does not mean there are no worse ones around.

Your bird's eye view is useless when there are multiple document opened in a program and they are all similar looking, because you still have to mouseover and read their title.

True, unless the title is also shown in the bird's eye view as well, which i believe compiz is doing. If drag and drop between bird's-eye windows would also work (like it does on MaxOS), it would be tremendously useful.

I like your example about Vista, which looks as if consumers suddenly exercised power by "voting with their wallets". The other interpretation is that Windows7 is also a piece of crap, its just better than Vista so in comparison one can more or less accept it. The same happened with Gnome 2. People hated its "simplicity", but compared to the starting out KDE4 it looked like the revelation. A lot of this is about what history has brought in front of users and what we have learned to use.

The desktop metaphor itself has lots of problems. Not surprising, it has been around for more than 30 years and was developed by Xerox for a computer to create graphics that should be printed on a laser printer. At the moment, designers seem to be bold enough to try something new. Even in FOSS. That is quite a new situation and as it seems the FOSS world is not prepared for it. Developers, users and designers need to work this out, or FOSS will become a "product" like commercial software.

The users' part in my opinion make a useful contribution. One part is to identify the problem that interfaces without text, based on gestures, have bad discoverability, like you did. Don Norman also points this out in this article: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/gesture_wars_20272.asp Users have to acquire the language to describe their tasks and interfaces, deeper than "i don't like it" or "cannot get my stuff done". Telling the developers and designers that they're drunk will not help, because they aren't crazy. Maybe Steve Jobs could pull that off, but the FOSS community should strive for a better work model.

So, while I agree that Unity is rough and Gnome3 is lacking stuff from Gnome2, hating is not the answer. Identifying the good ideas therein and analyzing what should be changed is better. IMHO.

Re:Efficiency, Psychology

[Pentagram]

It is not proven that Gnome3's or Unity's approach is perfect yet.

To say the least. But I've tried both for a few weeks each and they definitely make me less productive than Gnome 2.

However, the problems of the taskbar/windowlist is, that they are grouped by no order at all. Minimizing a window leaves no trail where to find it again, except the 0.3 second animation with shrinkboxes or some compiz effect. Users might remember that for some time, but not much.

You can see at a glance which windows are open by their icon (which admittedly only shows the program, not document), title, and you have a good cue of which window is which from its position (rightmost is most recently opened). There may be a better solution but this is excellent in minimising number of clicks (everything is one click away) and quite good on impact on short-term memory (not much demand to remember which windows are open).

Gnome 3's approach: When there is no way to minimize a window, it keeps its position. Keeping positions of objects is a powerful cognitive concept that Windows and KDE seem to have completely dismissed.

This pretty much fails when you have overlapping windows. It doesn't help that a window keeps its position if I can't see it. I find it's also useful to minimise a window to reduce visual distraction. I find in Gnome 3 I waste lots of effort manually shuffling my windows around so I can either hide them or so they're slightly overlapping so I can click on them without putting my cursor into the corner. Surely the opposite to what was intended.

And after pressing the funky key, users can see all the windows, not-overlapping, from a bird's-eye view and select much larger surfaces to access them. That is actually much more "efficient" that scanning a list of minimized windows

It's less efficient in the sense you have to click somewhere or press a key or move your mouse to see the windows. Changing mode to change windows and having all those windows flying around I find is more distraction to my workflow. Maybe our brains work differently? I'd be happy to have both options however as sometimes an expose-style window map is useful if you've "lost" a window.

Another good idea in Gnome3 is creating virtual desktops semantically instead of having a fixed number of them.

I think this is potentially a good idea that needs more polish. In Gnome 2 I can click on the desktop I want with one click from the taskbar but in Gnome Shell I need to go into the separate mode.

I think a lot more can be done with virtual desktops. It would be nice for example to have one project per desktop and then to be able to save that desktop (open programs, views, files) as a project, close it, and be able to reopen it at a later date, link it to a to-do list, etc.

Not directed against you, MrNiCeGUi: many people claiming to be "power users" and needing a lot of config options, are in fact wasting time and are just feeling to be productive by staring at pointless data diagrams or actually designing their own UI by moving stuff around, very likely making it measurably less efficient.

I agree to the extent that you can make something too configurable. Too many options make it hard to find what you want to change, make things too easy to break, too hard to test. However, you can also make things not configurable enough. People's brains work differently so like to work in a different way, people have different hardware and software setups (e.g. number of displays), and work on vastly different projects. I think Gnome 3 shell and Unity have gone significantly into the "too little configurability" camp. Gnome 2 was a very good balance by contrast.

Haters are just more vocal maybe?

[RoboJ1M]

Not me. I'm a vocal promoter of change and development in interfaces, even when it causes some (growing) pain.
We've been copying one idea that Bill Gates had in 1995 and it's terrible. Time for something new and improved.

Re:Haters are just more vocal maybe?

[arikol]

Thank you.

The problem as I see it is that the Linux GUIs are all trying to copy someone else's old stuff, without taking into consideration the flaws in those older systems (and indeed sometimes apparently without understanding the design rationale behind those systems/behaviours).
Gnome copies Windows, and Unity copies MacOS X. Both currently have problems because they copy the look, without understanding the feel. Unity, in particular, makes the user click way too often to access programs or files (the lens system needs serious fixing, and no user should need to understand the term "lens"), and the icon design.....not obvious, to say the least, and the dock has very strange behaviours re: installing and removing programs.
But at least Canonical is trying to do something, and fix things that really were broken. I hope they succeed.

And then MS (often accused of copying) makes a phone UI that clearly shows that copying others ideas and layout is not necessary, and that things can be done well in more than one way.

I Really Tried to like them

[Hai-Etlik]

I really did try to like Unity and GNOME 3. I gave both of them a chance, and there were certainly some things I liked about them. I could have accepted a lot of the changes they made and both of them, at first, seemed like things I could live with quite happily. But after a while they were just to restrictive and lacked features I'd come to rely on. Now I'm back on Debian with GNOME 2. I don't know what I'll do in the future but I'm considering XFCE, LXDE, and Enlightenment.

Re:Justine Bieber?!

[TaoPhoenix]

The kid has a sister?

Why upgrade?

[sdk4777]

I'm still running Ubuntu 10.04, it's supported until 2013. So I can keep using it with all security updates for another 2 years. After that, I'll have a look at the new LTS version. I'm sure that Unity (if it still exisits in the current form by then) will be much improved. Maybe some people really need to upgrade? I'm really interested in the reasons other than just because it's new. Ubuntu 10.04 works just fine for me, it runs everything I need to run, fast, stable, good looking and very usable.

Designing FOSS is an unsolved problem.

[drx]

> If your shiny new UI is going to make me click the terminal button on the task bar and scroll through a list of 14 different terminals to get to the one I want, we're not going to get on.

Interestingly, this is exactly what happens to me when I am using classic KDE or Gnome. At one point, the task bar is full of terminal windows that seem to be arbitrarily arranged (because i am supposed to remember the ORDER in which I have opened them) and suddenly they are all hidden behind one single button with the name "Terminal". The same with Windows, BTW. If that doesn't suck, then I don't know. :)

Gnome3 is not perfect, but at least it tries to address this problem by making window positions persistent and using a birds-eye view to remove the overlapping of windows. I really like this approach and am convinced that the task bar is bad for managing more than 7 windows.

The designers of the interfaces everybody hates now are not idiots, and if you think they didn't test any of the design changes with users, you are wrong. E.g., by testing with only a small group, the canonical design team clearly pointed out the problems with the Thunderbird interface that Mozilla doesn't seem to be able noticing. The problem with the "grand scheme" of UI design today is that it tries to balance "emotional response" with usability. I agree that this plainly sucks, but I doubt it was the motivation behind Gnome3.

Indeed, users do not have much to say about how they want their interfaces. At the same time, on contrary to developers, users are not at all organized, usually cannot really express what they need, start shitstorms over small UI changes, in most cases suggest hideous fixes that are worse than mystery meat, and, usually, after a few months, just use the new stuff without complaining and wait for the next change to rage again. (This is not directed against you, SaussageOfDoom, just the impression I got over many years. And I am not even a developer.)

But democracy is hard and a lot of effort. FOSS users need to form organizations just like developers, staffed with designers that have community credibility and collect feedback, create interactive mockups (not the typical "i tried to balance eye-candy with simplicity"-screenshots popular in the community that are nothing but skinning), do actual testing instead of guessing what's best, etc. And then developers will probably accept this as valuable input. I have never met a developer who would not react positively to a well thought-out design or re-design concept, or would at least be willing to start a meaningful discussion on base of that.

Re:Designing FOSS is an unsolved problem.

[Grishnakh]

Interestingly, this is exactly what happens to me when I am using classic KDE or Gnome. At one point, the task bar is full of terminal windows that seem to be arbitrarily arranged (because i am supposed to remember the ORDER in which I have opened them) and suddenly they are all hidden behind one single button with the name "Terminal".

If you only have one terminal button on the taskbar and multiple terminal windows, then you have KDE configured wrong (for you); there's an option to make it so that every instance of a program has its own button. I'm running KDE now and on this desktop I have 3 terminal windows currently open plus 6 other windows, and each one has its own button. With 9 buttons, KDE has split the task bar so that there's two rows of buttons, so I can still read what they are. Additionally, the terminal buttons (for Konsole) show the current working directory, so I know what each one is for. Finally, if you have a bunch of terminal sessions open, perhaps some to the same working directory, you can right-click on their tab in konsole, rename the session to something more meaningful, and that name will be used on the corresponding button on the taskbar.

Finally, if you have too many windows open, maybe it's time to think about moving some of them to a different virtual desktop. Keep all the windows pertaining to a certain activity on one desktop, and move others to another.

Re:Designing FOSS is an unsolved problem.

[SausageOfDoom]

Interestingly, this is exactly what happens to me when I am using classic KDE or Gnome. At one point, the task bar is full of terminal windows that seem to be arbitrarily arranged (because i am supposed to remember the ORDER in which I have opened them) and suddenly they are all hidden behind one single button with the name "Terminal". The same with Windows, BTW. If that doesn't suck, then I don't know. :)

Mine doesn't group - maybe it's a distro thing, or an option? I know what you're saying about the order of windows, but I tend to shift windows on similar topics to different virtual desktops, and if I do find the order confusing, I can drag them around, at least in ubuntu's gnome 2. Which is great, because I get the flexibility of having effectively both fixed positions and time-based ordering.

Regardless, I'm used to working how I work, I like it, and a lot of other people clearly feel the same. However, now if I want to continue to benefit from Ubuntu's latest software repositories, I either have to give up a few days/weeks productivity while I get used to a new way of working (one which seems inferior to me at the moment - I've given them a good try and just can't get on), or switch to xubuntu/lubuntu, and still lose features I use frequently.

I have no problem with progress, as long as it doesn't feel like change for its own sake, and as long as it doesn't force such radical changes on you with no option to customise it even half-way back. It seems we're being forced off Gnome 2 well before Unity or Gnome 3 are really ready to take over - we're definitely losing flexibility in how we use our desktops, and that seems a real shame.

The designers of the interfaces everybody hates now are not idiots, and if you think they didn't test any of the design changes with users, you are wrong

I'm sure they did test with users, but given the complaint to praise ratio with Unity, either Canonical are ignoring over half their audience, or they don't care that they're losing them to xubuntu/lubuntu/mint etc.

In the case of Ubuntu, I think the users feel that have more of a stake in the project - they have switched from a mainstream os, given Ubuntu a try, often become evangelists for the distro, and now Canonical seems to have decided that they want a radically different interface to chase after the common user, screw the opinions of their loyal core users. This makes Ubuntu users even more frustrated when they are ignored, and I'm guessing that's in no small part why we're seeing such vitriol over the switch to Unity, and so many people moving to other distros.

But it's not only Canonical - Microsoft have also clearly made decisions based on their internal strategy, screw the users. Just look at the ribbon fiasco with office (I'm still getting complaints from my clients who can't find anything), and now they're infecting the rest of Win8 with it - you just need to read the recent articles about the changes to the filer to realise that even when they do test users, they make the results say what they want.

I have never met a developer who would not react positively to a well thought-out design or re-design concept, or would at least be willing to start a meaningful discussion on base of that.

While I like your suggestions, sadly I've met plenty of developers who take constructive criticism as a personal insult and refuse to hear it, or are just so arrogant that they ignore any suggestions. Particularly in open source, where they feel they're giving their free time to work on what they, want how they want to.

There can be a CLI/GUI mix.

[master_p]

In one end, we have the CLI: powerful, but difficult and awkward to use.

In the other end, we have the GUI: easy to use, but not as powerful.

There can be a mix, you know: a GUI that helps the user built CLI commands using the mouse. The GUI will offer all the possible phrases on a pop up menu, and when the user touches the menu, new options relating the menu item can popup near it; for example, command line options.

The result of executing the command can be composed of objects that can manipulated graphically, using a combination of commands applied to them.

For example, suppose I am trying to list all text files in a directory: I place the mouse on top of the 'ls' menu item, and a bunch of command options appear. I select the necessary options, and then select one of the possible file extensions in the directory or known to the computer from previous attempts. Then I click on the applied command and a new window with text files appear.

Now, I can click on those text files and manipulate them with the mouse.

Re:There can be a CLI/GUI mix.

[telekon]

Have you ever used zenmap (formerly nmapfe)? This is how a LOT of *nix GUIs work. They wrap a command-line utility, use the GUI to compose the argv, execute, and pipe the output to a buffer in the GUI itself, with the option to export that buffer to a file.

It's simple, brilliant, and elegant.

Productivity

[ledow]

If it takes me longer to get used to an interface than the interface will save me during its lifetime, then it's pointless to use it. It doesn't matter who I am. Novice computer users may only run one or two programs, and those all from the desktop, but they will struggle if you change things. Advanced users might have 10 common programs and dozens of handy little programs and utilities and you can't put them all on the desktop. So the novice user will acclimatise at about the same pace to a new interface as an advanced user. First rule of UI: Don't piss off the established / advanced user, or cater only for them.

Similarly, if the interface costs me more in CPU, loading times, hunting-the-program times etc. then it's pointless. It's like defragging a modern laptop hard drive - the time I save in less seeks is VASTLY outweighed by the time it takes the damn thing to defrag. I really don't need or want fancy Aero-accelerated sidebars and clocks, thanks. No, honestly. No matter how cool they are they will get switched off as one of the first things I do.

Although there are obviously reasons for GUI's aimed at other uses, every machine I have is set up to do what I want as quickly as possible and no messing about. Fancy graphics are disabled. Stupid menu items are removed (Help on the Start Menu in XP? Just how often did ANYONE ever use that?). Timeouts for UI elements are set to their lowest (e.g. Start Menu flyouts in XP). Desktop elements that are unnecessary are removed (everything from screensavers to backgrounds to sounds to anything that tries to throw crap on my taskbar at all).

"Intelligent" menus that adjust to my usage are disabled (*I* can't predict what menu items I will need next, or most, so I'm *certain* that it can't either). Shortcut keys are used infinitely more than browsing through a menu for the right option (so even changing a keyboard shortcut to something new messes me up for almost all future versions of that UI - I still have to edit Opera's config so that Ctrl-N gives me a new tab and not a new window and it's been like that for about 5 versions now). Take note designers - no keyboard navigation from day one means I won't use it. If your desktop is too context-driven, keyboard navigation is impossible, nonsensical or too confusing.

Menu bars are flat colour. Window icons are simple and clean. Hell, give me a modern equivalent of the Windows 3.1 desktop (and by modern, I mean in what it can do, not what it looks like - I'm always scared of "Modern" themes and tend to stay on "Classic" themes for my entire usage of a computer) and I'll be more productive. "The desktop is a customisable programs window with subwindows" was always such a wonderful idea compared to "The desktop is a random dumping ground of whatever junk you or programs want".

I *will* happily spend some time customising a UI if you give me the option and most of those customisations will be to turn crap off. I don't want to do two clicks to get to a particular window of Office being open (Stupid task-bar "grouping" costs clicks and stops me finding the right file so I just Alt-Tab instead or turn it off). Is the Windows key or Ctrl-ESC REALLY the only option to open up the Start menu from the keyboard? How long would it take you to allow the user to customise that? Similarly, why isn't the Windows key the default to open menus in most Linuxes and why can't I even customise it to BE that key if I want?

What's quicker? Going into the Start menu using the mouse and waiting for menus to fly out and scroll down and search for the program I want, or just pressing the same keystrokes every time to get to it without having to explicitly suggest a keystroke for every program? (Hint: Start, P, I, O runs Opera for me unless I install another program starting with O into my Internet folder on my Start Menu - and YES - that categorisation is invaluable. From a clean desktop, I can start a handful of my programs quicker than they can load and sometimes quicker than the Start menu

Re:Productivity

[Murdoch5]

The UI to a program or operating system is completely independent of the underlying technology, so there's no reason I can't have a computer that looks like an Amiga workbench but can run all modern Windows programs, for example.

If you want a GUI that can move across every OS and will operate the same way on every OS then write it yourself.

The Windows 7 interface is no better. There is NO "classic" option, and that would take literally a day to create and could have been had for free if you'd just left things as they were.

Windows 7 does have a classic mode and it does disable the absolute pointless crap they added to the GUI. If your losing that much time using the desktop in Windows 7 then XP the problem isn't the GUI it's you not being able to adapt. I really doubt your so absolutely efficient at using your computer that even having to use a mouse to open a program is going to cost you so much time that it's a complete chore.

My Office is LibreOffice mainly because it doesn't do that "intelligent menu" crap and works for everything I need in work or at home.

I completely agree, the worst thing Microsoft office ever did was add that stupid ribbon, it actually does make office harder to use. Future more there is NO point to paying for software when you can get completely capable programs for free, this Includes Windows as Linux is more then capable on replacing it.

Re:Productivity

[omnichad]

I still have to edit Opera's config so that Ctrl-N gives me a new tab and not a new window and it's been like that for about 5 versions now

Why are you wanting that? CTRL+N has meant new document or new window for ages. All web browsers have standardized on CTRL+T for new tab. Can you really not just remember the letter T?

Re:Productivity

[ledow]

And it's this sort of ignorance that is the cause of most unusable UI's. (Besides the fact that I was using a tabbed browser that used Ctrl-N before any other browser even HAD the feature, let alone had "standardised" on a key for it, and that "Ctrl-C, Ctrl-N, Ctrl-V" can be typed with two fingers without leaving the bottom row to open up a new tab on an address).

I want it because I do, because of the way I work. And it really doesn't matter one jot to the application whatsoever. It doesn't care. It isn't running out of hotkeys. It doesn't need to affect a single other user or be the default. It isn't at all difficult to customise keys to your heart's content (hell, games were letting you redefine keys back in the days of the Spectrum, ffs). And the application really has no more work to recognise Ctrl-N than Ctrl-T if it's been programmed with the user in mind (i.e. letting me have whatever keymaps I want). And the browser I use lets me do that and thus DOESN'T get in my way.

Now think of all the foreign users for where Ctrl-T makes no sense whatsoever. Or the ones with different keymaps where certain combinations can really break the flow. But, no, Ctrl-T MUST be the only way to open a new tab besides the fact that the computer is just comparing against a number in its keymap. It's that sort of blinkered response that causes UI to become unusable over time. The ones that "standardise" on a different key to the one I've been using for years, or even one I *don't* want, aren't helping ME, the user.

Early word-processors copied the Lotus shortcuts because "all word-processors have standardized" on them at the time. When MS Office came along, it was handy to be able to select Lotus-compatible shortcuts, and it really was ZERO work for the programmers of MS Office. It actually CAUSED more work to make those things hard-coded and/or remove them in later versions for the now "standard" MS shortcut keys.

It's the entire point of my post: I can either re-train myself at great time / effort / expense / cost of mistakes on my own, or you can bloody make a customisable UI (that actually saves you more work than trying to break people's habits) that I can make one simple change and work as I've always done and NOT HURT ANYONE ELSE. One shortcut key isn't a problem - but the shortcut key, and the whole host of options, and the theme I use, and the removal of middle-click functionality that I don't use and gets in my way, and the disabling of mouse gestures, and... and... and....

You can either make it so the user can customise the UI, or pretend that you know better for every user, every workflow, every computer. You have to be an arrogant ass, or head of Apple, to suggest that the last is a good option.

Re:look for data in files - & Expert Mode

[TaoPhoenix]

Hi, I'll reply to you with what might be a middle ground in all this.

What GUI's excel at are being easier on the memory than command lines. Most of the examples of CLI FTW I have seen in this topic are for functions. So what's a GUI user to do? "Make an app/plugin for that!" Let me call up my first rough example - grep for Windows. (It does have about 3 screens too many but that's just design.)

What text do you want to find? (Toggles for Match Case and Whole Word Only)
Which Folders do you want to search in? (Toggle for Include Subfolders)
File Types to Include
Search

Oh look! There's a little note. "When you are familiar with the way Windows grep works you may wish to switch to Expert Mode. You can do this by selecting Expert Mode on the Options menu."

Well hello! "Thread Over". Every GUI then just needs an Expert Mode! There it is, all in three screens! But on those screens I can lay it all out visually, then hit "go".

Re:Shape of things to come?

[arikol]

I thought the DISAPPEARING part of the global menu was way more disconcerting and annoying. I got used to the global menu on the Mac within days of starting to use it, but in Unity the menu options disappear. That's not very usable ("royally stupid" would be another way of putting it)

Make it work before forcing it upon us

[frambris]

I can get used to things being different. But they need to work before I can use them. If you remove an api or functionality you need to provide some proxy or working fallback until the application developers have ported over the functionality to the new APIs. The systray is gone so gPodder minimize to nothingness and needs to be run again to show up. Crazy. It has come to this. I've actually considered switching to Mac because I need my workstation to just work. And it used to do that before Gnome 3 or Unity. I claim to my Fedora 14 at work and won't switch until they have fixed all issues.

All new GUIs? No!

[HnT]

Hello from OS X Lion - I like it and I consider myself a power user.

likewise

[Ofloo]

I'm like you i don't like unity and i don't like gnome shell, i'm thinking either moving to xfce eventually mint will follow either with gnome3 or unity, .. which to me is almost the same.

I love the irony

[crivens]

I love the irony of discussions on bad user interfaces on a site with a bad user interface!

Re:The output-mostly revolution and its discontent

[zippy590]

This distinction between content delivery and content creation is probably the best comment posted to this thread. Smart phones and tablets are for content consumers and will eventually replace desk top computers for most users. Desktops will continue to be used for content creation and be used, if not be more sophisticated users, at least better trained users. So they require a different desktop. The guy who came to replace your roof was most likely driving a pickup truck, not a two seater sports car.

Maybe I'm just a Unity cheerleader

[jprupp]

I got used to the Unity fairly quickly. The first thing I enjoyed about it was the efficient use of vertical space, a welcome change since I have a laptop with a widescreen display, like most people that bought their computer in the last three years. Also, the left bar feels (to me) like a more efficient way to move around open applications, with the added benefit that it allows launching the popular ones that I pinned there. I must admit that I preferred the Ubuntu menu in the top left corner as it was in Ubuntu 11.04, and I believe making it the first button of the left bar was not an improvement. Clicking on a button for an application that has multiple windows and having only those windows displayed for me to choose is an improvement over using alt-tab to switch amongst all application windows arranged in no particularly intuitive way.

Using the Super key to access the Ubuntu menu is (duh) much more intuitive than ALT+F1, I don't think I need to argue about this one!. Super + shortcut keys to access shortcuts from the left tab is nice as well.

But the best improvement of all, and that was introduced first in Windows Vista AFAIK, is that I can just press Super and then *type* the first few letters of the application name, and launch it with enter, optionally using arrows to select the right one first, or pointing the mouse. This is a HUGE improvement over the previous browsing-only menu.

Placing the application menus in the top is efficient use of screen space. Getting rid of the left bar when I need for a window is good. Not needing a title bar for maximized windows is then again more efficient.

The only drawback I find in the new interface is that browsing the applications is harder than with the previous one. Before clicking on the Ubuntu menu and just browsing around the available applications was dead easy. Now I have to perform some clicks to get there. I don't care much though since typing is *so* much better.

I find that the new Unity interface makes better use of the assumption that I have both a mouse and a keyboard. I like it much better than anything else I've tried.

YES

[roman_mir]

YES

As to why - they are inconsistent. They are change for the sake of change and so they get in the way of productivity. They are not well integrated, the apps within them are not well integrated at all. They are mostly ugly too.

They suck and yet we are stuck using them because to make it really better will take a paradigm shift that would be just massive, because it's about uniformity among visual components and layout implementation. It's about ease of use, ease of moving data between applications. It's about good use of space, not wasting space. It's about the interface actually trying to be good without forcing the user to have to adjust it.

As I said before - Windows 2000 and XP had this right. I just tried Windows 8, it blew my mind how horrendous it is. Good thing it wasn't on my computer, otherwise I would have thrown the whole thing into the garbage bin.

Yes

[Ptolom]

Yes, we hate them. Or at least I do. That's why I only use wmii on my computers.

KDE4...

[Junta]

The plasma desktop still acts 'weird' to me. They've restored much of the capability (adding plasmoids to the panel plasma, resize), but somehow it still doesn't feel as straightforward as the panels that preceded it (perhaps for one, when I change screen resolutions occasionally the panel plasma decided to retain the previous resolutions width). It certainly isn't touch happy, but I think a bit too 'gadget' happy.

At my age

[koan]

At my age there is a certain amount of "set in my ways" thinking that leads to discomfort when too much change occurs, in addition the GUI's are new, not as polished as they could be, and check me on this, they feel "dumbed down" or some how less useful for intensive projects like video editing, music making, writing or anything else that made large use of a mouse and keyboard.
I just don't feel as productive on them.
The options and level of accurate control seem diminished, but again that may be me being less the willing to adapt more than a failure of the GUI.

I love PC gaming can't stand consoles, I tired making some music on an iPad frankly it sucks, though in some aspects it makes an interesting controller, without even trying Windows 8 I'm sure that will suck, because it's a "skips a generation" thing IMO, WIn8 is the new Vista and I am happy with Win7 and won't change for another 10 years like I did with XP.
Don't get me started on the dumbing down of Apple products...

Why so many?

[Chemisor]

I need more than a dozen monitors to be more productive. Yes, I use that many windows and often twice that at the same time

Speaking as a UI designer, I really have a hard time understanding why you do that. If I were designing a window manager, I certainly would not expect a normal person to have 24 windows on the screen at once. Could you please enlighten us ignorant souls on what you have in them and why they all have to be visible simultaneously? This is a serious question, not just an attempt to bash your preferences. How about giving us a list containing each open window and what you have in each one? Then please explain why each one needs to be persistent. Why not just launch apps as you need them? Why do all these windows have to be overlapping and partially visible instead of fullscreen and switchable by Banner+#? If you do need to see more than one window at once, why don't you tile them instead of wasting your time manually positioning them "just right"? Do you primarily use the mouse to switch tasks, and if so, why, when using the keyboard is more efficient? Are you also a user with multiple virtual desktops? Could you please describe what you have on each one and why they can't be merged?

Re:Why so many?

[arth1]

Speaking as a UI designer, I really have a hard time understanding why you do that. If I were designing a window manager, I certainly would not expect a normal person to have 24 windows on the screen at once. Could you please enlighten us ignorant souls on what you have in them and why they all have to be visible simultaneously? This is a serious question, not just an attempt to bash your preferences.

I have a terminal window open on each of the systems I regularly work on, as well as any that are "problem children", where alerts sent to * are likely to occur.
Sometimes I monitor the process table or disk status - just what is eyeballed (or not) on each system differs.
Also, a couple of terminal windows on the local host, mostly for compiling and/or crosscompiling.
Then there are a few browser windows (you can't cut/paste between tabs without losing focus), a VMware session or two, an e-mail client, a couple of IM windows...

Yes, it all adds up.

But by using focus-follows-mouse, no auto-raise and no click-to-raise, I can overlap the windows the way I want them, and see the significant parts, as well as being able to cut and paste between them without the order changing and obscuring other things I need to see. I control both the windows size, placement and Z order, which makes it possible to work with a plethora of windows at the same time without losing sight of any of them.

We are set in our ways

[motang]

Honestly geeks are set in their ways. I am liking Unity because I had a similar setup with Dock on the left and one bar at the top, so it feels like a spiritual successor to my setup pre-Unity. On that note I am fan of Gnome Shell as I feel claustrophobic when I use it.

Re:iOS

[Gadget_Guy]

Could you elaborate on what parts you can't stand or which UI concept in it you can't stand?

I'm not the original poster, but I have issues with the OS too. I dislike the inconsistencies in the user interface. Button placement is all over the screen between the apps. Also, similar operations will be done in different ways depending on the app. For example, to delete an item, you can press an edit button, then turn a red dial to enable a delete button. (Sometimes the edit button is a box with an arrow coming out of it.) Or you can swipe across the entry in a list to "cross" it out. Or you can tick a checkbox and select a delete button at the bottom of the screen. Or you have to open the entry and click on a trash can icon. Or tap and hold the icon until everything starts wobbling and an X appears over the icon. And I'm not talking about third party apps here - they have their own quirks too. (Fair enough too. If Apple can't follow a user interface policy, why should other developers.)

I really hate how there is no visual indication for a lot of the user interface features. For example, scrollbars only appear when you start scrolling. You have to just randomly swipe your finger around a screen just to see if there are more options that are hidden off screen. I found out that I could use the horizontal swipe to delete something accidentally, because the Mail app scrolls from the IMAP folders screen to the messages in a folder from right to left. I used this as a cue that swiping back would return to the folders, but instead it started to delete a message (which requires a confirm, so nothing was lost). That was an example of the glitzy interface creating a false expectation of the user interface.

The more extreme problem with the unclear user interface is when an entire feature seems to be missing because you have no idea that the option exists without know the gesture. For example, how many new users could ever work out how to create folders on the app launcher? They would just assume that you could not do it.

Then there are a bunch of random silliness in the various apps, like how you can't create a folder to store bookmarks in Safari while creating a bookmark - it has to be done in the bookmark viewing screen before you create it. And why is creating a folder to categorize things so hard to do. I can't create photo albums and contact groups on the phone with the standard apps.

The zoom on Safari can be good, but quite often is painful. Filling in a web form zooms the screen to rediculous font sizes such that you cannot see the entire field that you are currently entering. I hate how Safari reuses tabs when a third party app launches a webpage and you have 8 tabs in use. And why can't it keep the tabs cached. I could load up 10 full slashdot stories on my old Nokia phone, then turn the radio off and read them all on a plane. The iPhone can hardly keep 2 pages cached, so there is no chance that I can read lots of articles on a plane trip.

The good news is that a lot of the problems that I have found have been gradually fixed over the various releases. I don't have the latest iOS yet since my computer with iTunes, so some of the things I have mentioned may be out of date. I am certainly looking forward to getting iOS 5, even if it does slow me down to a crawl on my old 3GS.

\. = Anit-new

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Most people on \. are dinosaurs from the pre-GUI command line loving era of software so anything new and bright hurts their eyes and they automatically hate it. Most \.ers think they know better then everyone else and so when some company invests millions and years in R&D and comes up with new GUI, they automatically assume their $0.02 worth is better advice. My litmus test for new GUI is that if you can't go back to a previous generation of OS or software because it is missing the efficiency and features of the new GUI, then it is a successful GUI. For instance, few people I know like using XP anymore after they have used Windows 7 for a few months, so, Win 7 GUI is successful. I am sure that once Windows 8 is released, people will find it hard to go back to Windows 7. Try and go back to Windows 95 or OS 9 and you will realize how far along Microsoft and Apple have come in GUI design. If you try a new GUI and find that you want to go back (give it a few weeks at least), then it is a failure. New GUI is about efficiency in workflow and use. While sometimes the workflow changes (and again most \.ers are adverse to learning anything new, muscle memory, LMAO, it take about week for your muscles to remember something new), if the new workflow requires more effort with little gain in efficiency, then it is a failure. GUI is not about color or chrome, it is about usability. Hating an OS because of color is an obtuse view of software design. If you complain about color or chrome or whatever and insist that battleship grey is the only color that should adorn a dialog window, then go back into your cave or maybe find a nice tar pit to snuggle up in.

I don't hate *all* new GUIs....

[GameboyRMH]

The latest versions of XFCE, LXDE and KDE are all decent. Pretty much everything else though, yeah it can go die in a fire.

Not to set

[Murdoch5]

I don't think were to set, but I would say the current released GUI designs just work. Changing what works just leaves users unhappy, that's what all these new GUI's are doing, there changing the happy desktop into a new system that just doesn't catch us. It doesn't mean were set but it does mean there making to many changes to quickly and it's not leaving the users with an effective experience.

choice

[e**(i pi)-1]

what is nice in linux that its possible to work with different windows managers. I use a minimal windows manager myself (blackbox) Sometimes, I switch to KDE, sometimes to Gnome, or explore Unity. Installation of a new windows manager is an apt-get away. I sometimes wish this would be possible in OS X.

People were bitching about OS X too

[Quila]

Back when it was new and OS 9 was the most, used, OS X took a beating in public opinion.

I remember people who refused to move to Windows 95 because 3.1 was just perfect.

Hell, I remember when Photoshop 4 changed a bit of the UI over 3.5 and people were pissed.

We just get set in our ways. Of course, the OS 9 guys did have some valid, objective points.

Yes.

[Lord_Byron]

Yes, precious, we hates them. We hates them forever! Nasty little interfaceses.

Re:iOS

[jo_ham]

I have found that iOS5 is actually pretty fast on my 3GS - it's nothing like the trainwreck of iOS4 on the 3G that made it unusable before the patches (and then just very slow after that).

Many of the points you raise are things I would agree with. I will also add my own - the requirement to go in and out of the settings app to turn wireless and/or bluetooth on and off. Sometimes I just want to knock the wifi off briefly and it would be nice to be able to put that slider on the lock screen, or the new notification centre - I know you can do this on Android, and I have been hoping Apple would address this in an update.

The new Reminders thing also has a glaring missing feature (or it's just unintuitive and I haven't found a reliable way to do it yet - like those "hidden" gestures) - I want to be able to set a reminder that appears on the notification screen indefinitely until I complete it and manually remove it. So far all I seem to be able to do is set ones with timers (so it will warn me at X time on Y date only), or set a permanent reminder, but this then doesn't show up on the notification screen - you have to go back into the app to see it! Not much of a reminder!

We don't have the new GUIs

[Fujisawa Sensei]

We hate GUIs that remove functionality; especially when its functionality we like.

What is this unity of which you speak?

[whoisisis]

When I started using Linux, I used WindowMaker as my window manager. It was a bit bloated, but it was fast and efficient.
I soon switched to Fluxbox, since it is much nicer and easier to customize and it does not get in your way.

With Fluxbox, there is nothing (no icons, and no annoying screen-estate eaters or blinking distractions) but a single menu always /just one mouse click away/
with your most used applications in it. You don't even have to move your mouse and hit (or miss) an icon first.
Desktop switching couldn't be faster, just press alt+fx or scroll with your mouse.
No annoying or time consuming animations to distract or delay you.

I love Fluxbox!

New GUIs get the job done.

[mynis01]

I prefer openbox myself, and use it on all my personal machines. Awesome is nice as well. But I've tried using Unity and Gnome3 and lo and behold, they still have a terminal. Install tmux on them and I'm ready to go. I mean all my graphical applications that I use (like lyx for documents and firefox for web related stuff) still work on the new GUIs, so what's all the controversy about? As long as the new user interfaces aren't all bugged, It's not going to change my opinion of them. I never really used gnome or KDE that much before, why should I care that they've become even more simplified?

"Intelligent" design vs. evolution

[coldsalmon]

The WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) interface has evolved over several decades, via failures and successes in the software ecosystem, to a point where it has become a fairly good way of interacting with a computer. Touchscreen/tablet interfaces have also gone through significant evolution and many failed iterations to get to where they are today. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would be able to challenge the collective wisdom of decades in a single generation. Just as most genetic mutations are harmful, so most changes to a mature UI will make things worse. This is not to say that innovation shouldn't happen, but that it's likely to happen in the same way that it has in the past: through slow and incremental changes based upon repeated failures and small successes. Sure there are path dependency problems here, but they aren't going to be solved by dashing off an untested product and expecting everyone to fall in love with it. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that Unity is terrible and it should go away.

Re:iOS

[Tarlus]

Thanks for posting this; it is the first thoughtful analysis I have seen on the UI flaws in iOS. I have read a lot of public discussions on the matter but they always quickly deteriorate to childish "iFan" vs "Fanroid" arguments (see Engadget) which never really highlight what exactly the considerable differences are between the two UI philosophies. I am an iOS user myself, and while I am comfortable using it, I can fully acknowledge and agree with all of the points and inconsistencies you raise about it.

Terrible like facebook. Also, fail to work.

[Teunis]

Unity (for instance) crashes my ION2 chipset based netbook hard.
and even if I can get it to work, it takes up so much real estate without going away (both screen + control) that the computer itself becomes unusable.

They've all - in the pursuit of being nice to some border edge of computers - managed to produce an interface far worse than anything produced before. Who are they getting for UI design - facebook?

(facebook easily has the worst user interface of any website I've ever worked with - and it gets continuously worse every revision)

While it does not excuse a bad interface

[AdamJS]

You should have tested whatever you were going to install _before_ going over there.

Also, why the hell didn't you download it beforehand on your own?

Forks

[AdamJS]

Doesn't the high amount of forked versions of these dictatorially-perverted projects mean that the process is working as it should?

I think with Blender, it was a case of being so radically hard for new users to get into, that their only options were outright alienating their existing base to allow for much better future growth, or stagnating in terms of demographic growth.

Re:Forks

[bky1701]

The process would be working as it should if there were a reasonable number of forks, if the old projects eventually merged back in, and if they forks themselves were better. This is unfortunately not the case. We just end up with more mismanaged projects, dividing up developer time, and making support more difficult. We pretty much used to have KDE and Gnome; now look what there is. Are any of them actually better?

Change is good, but...

[CoolCalmChris]

I haven't tried Gnome 3 or Win8 yet. iOS is okay, and Unity seems like a OSX/NeXT ripoff. I keep things simple...as few icons as possible and a plain black desktop is what I like to look at.

To answer the question- I don't hate new GUIs, I just don't use them.

Re:iOS

[Tarlus]

Agreed. I tinkered a bit with the launchpad in MacOS 10.7 (iOS-style application launcher) and it just feels so... silly. It's a little more intuitive if you have a touchpad or one of those flat, touch-sensitive Apple mice. But it's absolutely dreadful if you use any other type of mouse. I know that it's optional and that they're just trying to blur the gap between iPads/Pods/Phones and Macs, but who knows how far Apple plans to take this in future releases. I suspect it is in preparation for touchscreen Macs.

This is also what worries me about Windows 8. As nice as it probably will be on a tablet, I really am not fond of navigating the new Metro start screen using a mouse. I am keeping an open mind because it's premature to pass judgement based on the developer preview. They may yet make it more mouse-friendly or better yet, give users the option to have a classic start menu for their desktop computers.

Trite, illustrated

[Loundry]

"...should be required reading"? Check.
Freshly-graduated from college? Check.
What's good for me is good for everybody? Check.
What I don't prefer is excrement? Check.
Dismissive and angry in general? Check.

Yes, I bash (the shell, not the petulant behavior). Yes, I know regexes. Yes, I used E16. Yes, I was a zealot of class-A caliber. I see me in you. An angry, condescending, spiteful me. Slashdot is a back-slapping, high-fiving cesspool of that kind of me. It's why your very hackneyed post was modded up as "insightful": it validates very common anti-social, us-versus-them attitude that permeates this place. It's why my own post will be modded down as "flamebait", because I am refusing to validate this very same spiteful, self-satisfied group of people, as hungry for validation as I used to be. Am I better than that now? Somehow superior? No. Just less angry. More accepting of myself and different preferences in others. Less needy of punishing and feeling self-satisfied for having done so. More aware that happiness it the birthright and responsibility of every individual, and that computer UIs are a preference which exist solely to serve humanity's needs, and only after that are a technical (not moral) issue. Maybe when you see your two year-old child working an iPad you'll feel a little bit more merciful, but something tells me that parenthood is light-years away from your radar.

Personally, I like Gnome3

[PerlJedi]

I've been using for most of my personal (and professional) computing for a little less than 10 years at this point. I was rather unsure about gnome3 when I first saw it, but I've quickly grown accustom to it, and at this point would probably be annoyed if I tried to switch back. I'm not really vocal about it, in part because I've heard so many people trash talking it, but for me it just works. My experience may not be typical, but I have to imagine there are others who feel the same.

I like the way the new interfaces uses the "windows" key, for example. When I start my laptop up, first thing I do after logging in, is press the windows key and start opening programs. I like that where ever I am, if I press the windows key i see a nice display of all the windows I have open on my current desktop to select from. I like that whether I need to open a file, or launch a new application, if I press the windows key and start typing the name of the file/program, it is searching my computer for what I might be looking for, and showing me its best guess (kind of like a GUI version of command line auto-completion).

Another note: At least for me, it handles dual monitor support perfectly right out of the box. In previous versions, I've had to jump through hoops to get the dual monitor support to function correctly, and even then usually had to restart X after connecting the second monitor before it would work... with gnome3, it just plain works. If I'm already booted up, and I plug in an second monitor, just opening the "display" system setting makes it recognize, and begin using the second monitor. If I plug in the monitor before I boot, it just recognizes it out right. Beyond that, the 3D acceleration on my graphics card (ReadonHD 6750m) works without jumping through any hoops to install special drivers.

I'm not saying its all flowers and lollipops, there are a few things I don't like, and a few about which I'm on the fence, but all together, I think the advantages outweigh the negatives, at least for me they do.

Erosion and Stagnation

[ThomasLB]

Part of the reason I hate updates is, honestly, my geek skills erode with each new package. With DOS I was a god; with Windows 7 I'm just a n00b.

They're following the M$ model, clearly

[whitroth]

I had to deal with gnome 3 when I had to "upgrade" one of my user's system to FC 15, and *loathe* it: screens of icons that vanish unless you roll over them, transparency - it's all eye candy for the sake of eye candy. It also goes vehemently against the *Nix & F/OSS idea that you do things the way *you* want to do them, not the way M$ (or whoever) wants you to do them.

The concept that "screen real estate is valuable" seems to have passed them by. I'll put up with everything being fullscreened on my netbook, *NOT* on anything else.

And, of course, the idea that you might want to use your processing power for, um, doing things, or work, rather than spending so many cycles doing *nothing* other than running eye candy also passed them by.

                  mark, who runs all 600k IceWM at home

gimmicks

[davidork]

first post in a long time on /. but this is one topic that has been burning my ass for a while. I will admit kde4 at the core is still sort of KDE, but the current release of kde 4.x doesn't hold a candle to kde 3.5 KDE 4 originally was supposed to be a unifying update around a core library change (qt3>qt4) and tying a lot of subsystems together into neat little bundles. In reality they managed to switch to qt4, added a lot of "eyecandy" and broke/killed off about 40% of the functionality of kde 3.5 and clusterfucked everything else. Gnome 3 is a raging pain in the ass to use and is completely fucking broken IMO. gnome 2x wasn't terrible after a good bit of tweaking, I'm not sure what the fuck the plan was with gnome 3 (lets chase the touch gimmick and remove any power user functionality. maybe? The Linux DE for retards who should have just bought an ipad?) Currently I'm rather fond of XFCE. There are still menus, buttons,etc, fairly configurable. Its ugly (I'm sure you can make it pretty but i never much gave a fuck whether it was pretty or not) but It has a good convenience/power tradeoff and stays out of my way when I need to get things done. Windows 7 in comparison to XP I'll give it to Microsoft, for the most part windows 7 was a major upgrade in usability. There's a few dumb ass features that could have been left out (libraries? lets tie a bunch of folders together into libraries so people have no clue where the fuck their files actually are) but all in all windows 7 was an improvement. I have a feeling windows 8 is going to be a clusterfuck because of the shitty new UI, and the sad part is they're actually doing some pretty nice under the hood kernel work. OSX - for the most part pretty consistent, Apple has mastered the principal of least astonishment. I see that tablets/touch/fingerprintery shit is flying off the shelves, and a lot of people are happy with them. A lot of people realize they bought a tablet and wanted a laptop. The "consumerification" of the pc market in general I think is the cause. Hopefully at some point the suits and design committees will realize that yes you can make simplified devices and interfaces for the average joe jerkoff who's computer use is confined to facebook and watching porn but a lot of people still use computers to get work done and we can't be dicking about with broken "gimmickey" interfaces made for the least common denominator.

My rundown on various UIs.

[Lispy]

Quick rundown on my opinions on various UIs:

- Atari/Amiga: Straight, honest frontends with some fun and personal touches that made you smile even if something went bad (guru meditation, busybee, bombs etc.)
- NT4/Win2k: Industrial like interface, really efficient, has a few gaping issues such as lots of messy tabs and checkboxes.
- Win7: Ok to use but feels quite pale.
- OSX: Great looks, great apps but it somehow feels disconnected. Maybe I didn't have enough screentime but it always felt like somebody elses desktop to me.
- Gnome2: I used and liked this one. Nautlius was a work in progress and was never quite there but it was a sane approach on flexibility, HIG and nice looks. I think that's why the initial Ubuntu was successful.
- KDE3: I never really liked it, it felt like windows with strings attached.
- KDE4: Never used it. The reviews turned me off and I was solid in the GTK app camp.
- Gnome Shell: Unusable mess. Insanity. No shutdown button? Seriously? Broken taskswitching? Ugly spacing and default colors without an obvious way to change it? I'm outta here.
- Unity: Same as Gnomeshell except that the colorscheme is even worse and I can't even turn of or move the dock. It's supposed to be docky code but no effects and options. Great! A combined menubar? On Linux? That doesn't even work? File searching with strange suggestions? I could go on. No, sorry Mark, I'll try something different.

Right now I am running the PPA from the elementary OS guys and I must say I like what I see so far. A plain working toppanel, a neat dock and of course modularity as a integral part of the development. Something I appreciate a lot on a Linux system. (Don't like plesk? Use docky. Don't like the WM? Change it. Don't like the filemanager? Use something else. Want a systemwide searchengine? Install Synapse. etc.) Slingshot is a fashionable Applauncher but also gets the job done. Most decisions seem solid and reasonable to me. I am really hoping this project gets traction and continues. Otherwise I don't really know where to go. XFCE actually works, but it's 2011 and I want a working and a pretty desktop. I am staring at it all day!

Re:My rundown on various UIs.

[Lispy]

Oh, and I also really liked the WebOS UI. ;-/

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[account_deleted]

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conscious choice

[bingoUV]

There are 2 kinds of people who use computer GUIs :

1. Who carefully test various GUI options, and select the best
2. Who use whatever came out of the box

The former variety has spent time and energy to choose the GUI features. They are using a particular GUI not because it just happened to be there in the box they purchased. They use it after careful consideration of many alternatives. Now if this chosen GUI changes drastically, obviously this variety of GUI users will not blindly accept the changed GUI. This is because they hadn't accepted the original GUI blindly either, but rather after careful consideration of alternatives. They hate change because present situation is not an accident for them - it is carefully chosen software carved into a part of their life via diligent customizations. They may like the new GUI also, but unlikely if the change is too drastic. Because if they liked something of this nature, they wouldn't have chosen the drastically different earlier version of it.

On the other hand, people of the latter variety are seen as "adaptable" to change. But actually they are incapable / unwilling to research the alternatives and configure them according to their own taste. Adapting is their only choice.

Re:Short answer: yes

[unixisc]

Network & Sharing center is fantastic - when you open it, you see your entire network configuration, and what's broken. If it is your LAN, it tells you right there, and if it is something from your router to your CO, it'll indicate that as well. By contrast, going to Network connections under XP gives you squat.

Start menu - how is it different b/w XP and 7, other than Start not being spelt out?

Control panel - you can set it to classical view, so that it shows just like XP does.

Explorer - what is bad there? It's just a file manager, so I like the simplicity. I don't need my file manager and web browser to be the same. Opening IE when I clicked on a JPEG file in the event that the file association wasn't set to some image viewer, was simply annoying.

Laziness

[GWBasic]

It just comes down to this: Laziness. Everyone's spent a decade or so learning to use Mac, Windows, or some form of open-source UI. Most people just want to quickly adapt to a few new buttons here and there; as opposed to re-learning how to use their computer.

Gnome 3

[kshade]

I tried out Gnome 3 and while it has potential and good ideas it's lacking the flexibility of "classic" desktop environment like XFCE or even Gnome 2. Looking forward to things from it influencing more conservative DEs though.

A temporary fix!

[DadLeopard]

you can get most of that back by doing an apt-get install gnome-panel then log out and as you log back in click the gear on the log in screen and choose Ubuntu classic! If you still have your separate home partition that you last used the gnome desktop on most of your setting will take effect and your top and bottom panels will be back, you can have your applets back also!

What you mean "we?" We don't count.

[Minix]

From the previous Slashdot article about this debacle (the one where Shuttlesworth says "power users" are all wankers for not loving the Unity) one is directed to https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/882274/comments/36 and then http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-unity/ which states that the usability of Unity was tested on 15 people, where "Of the 15 participants recruited, 13 were Windows users, 1 was a Mac user, and 1 used both Windows and Mac. None of the participants was familiar with Ubuntu."

This is jumping the shark with *lasers*

Re:What you mean "we?" We don't count.

[Minix]

"Some day, you will be able to carry a phone, and dock it to a keyboard, mouse and display and use it as a full desktop with all your apps and data. Or use it as a tablet, in a different dock." - M.Shuttlesworth.

This is the 'vision.' With a simple dock, and a healthy dose of kool-aid, you will be able to turn a mouse into a finger, and a big wide screen with no touch capability at all into a touch-sensitive screen. The only thing missing is the part where a mouse behaves even slightly like a finger, and a display behaves even slightly like a touch screen.

Then, instead of relaxing your forearm on a desk and making small precise hand gestures with a mouse, you will be able to either use the mouse to drag the cursor (which you can hardly see) across large distances to precisely hit a sensitive area which you can also hardly see. OR, you will be able to wave your arms around wildly while gesturing at this vertical surface with your fingers ... except of course your forearm and upper arm muscles will quickly tire from all the effort.

We tried this in the lab, and the results are in: hand-waving is the way of the FUTURE!

Everyone I've shown Unity loves it

[FoolishOwl]

I've been at a complete loss why there's so much hate expressed online for newer UIs, and particularly for Unity. Of course it's not flawless. But everyone I've shown Unity to, at whatever level of experience, has loved it. I've seen inexperienced users quickly access and use system features that I've read reviews claiming were removed from Unity. My younger son prefers Unity; my teenaged son decided, after using Unity, that he wants to switch from OS X to Ubuntu.

You are not alone

[lsatenstein]

You are not alone.

I believe that programmers are not good designers of friendly and functional user interfaces. The interface should have been designed by an industrial engineer with skills in time-and-motion studies, as well as a good taste in graphics design.

How's about some others...

[nullspoon]

I'm a bit frustrated with a lot of the GUIs available right now as well. The new Gnome 3 wont let you use any of the new/cool effects without having a graphics 'powerhouse', not to mention it is slow and memory hungry. The new KDE 4 is really cool and I think very functional, but a bit memory hungry as well. Unity I just don't like. I searched around for a while and stumbled upon xfce, e17, and lxde. Lxde is really REALLY fast, and super small. Its also extremely customizable. However, its a bit too customizable for my liking. A bit too much setup work. I'd happily run it though. E17 is really shiny, and strangely small and fast in light of this. Finally Xfce is my favorite. Its the closest thing to gnome 2 I can get, and it is small and super fast. It even works with all of the gnome taskbar Widgets. Just a few other options for you there.

UI laws

[Quila]

Fitts' law: The fact that they're at the top means that no matter where you are on the screen they are very fast to access. They effectively have infinite height.

Motor memory: No matter where you are, what app you're in, the File or Edit menus will always be in the same place on the screen, making them faster to access.

OS X is also centered around being able to have many windows of an application open on the screen, and they all share a common menu bar instead of needlessly duplicating menus.

This is effectively the same as Photoshop with multiple photos open -- all your documents all around, one menu bar at the top. Only on the Mac all of the documents aren't restricted to the one main Photoshop window, which now doesn't exist, leaving you to focus on just the photos.

Good current example

[Quila]

Shove them onto a 25" widescreen that you don't want to be touching all the time, and the concept which was so loved on the phone is going to be hated on the big(ger) screen.

Witness: HP and Dell both produce large all-in-one competitors to the iMac with touch screens. Does anybody actually use that feature? Imagine if they had an OS that required the use of the touch feature. I see lots of arms getting very tired, users getting frustrated.

What about hating Lion?

[slashfoxi]

Don't forget to hate Lion with its stupid Launchpad and lack of Spaces/Expose like they used to work.

Re:No it isn't

[znerk]

The only advantage Gnome3 has over Gnome2 is the dynamic number of workspaces.

As far as I can tell, every other "innovation" is just working really hard at turning my non-touchscreen 23" LCD display into a tablet.