Before I begin my rant, I would like to make it known that I'm an avid Linux user and only use Windows to play games. I was helping a friend of mine install RedHat 6.0 yesterday. After all was installed with nary a problem, he asked how to configure some stuff, so I told him about linuxconf (I prefer editing text files myself). The first response from him was a horrified "what a disgusting interface!". He was describing the click-tree type doohickey in which you click a labeled box with an X in it and it unfolds to reveal other options. And yes, it was, to my embarassment, just an ugly bugger of a UI. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't that dificult to get around (it's your standard click-tree doohickey thing), but the use of spacing made it look very overwhelming. Anyway, to my point: We need more artists (or non-color blind people) working on our UI's! While I have gotten used to it over time, using any X desktop requires me to forget any sense of visual aesthetic. The "problem" actually lies within the widget set and window manager. But GTK (as well as any other window manager)is themeable you say! True, there is hope in that... unfortunately, while some themes are decent looking, most look quite amateurish (while they ARE done by amateurs, some are just horrid). Ok, I don't mean to insult everyone out there who is actually contributing rather than complaining like me. And yes, there's that whole "beauty in the eye of the beholder" argument... but some of those themes I see on themes.org are just obnoxiously foul! Some of the more popular ones are pretty good, but none are especially "I could sell this for money" quality. The problem is is that if Linux is to really be an enjoyable "user experience" (and become a desktop OS), it has to look and feel consistant rather than a frakenstein of rejected looking widgets and graphics. Yes, Linux is especially functional and I love that, but it's not a very "sexy" experience. As much as I detest Windows, the impression that working with Windows leaves me is that has a well crafted (though not neccessarily well designed)interface -- it's consistant and doesn't look bad. I think the Linux community could do a lot better regarding the visual aesthtics of X. Maybe RedHat could hire a few artists with that IPO money and crank out some cool professional quality themes. It seems to me that Linux can not only have better performance, stability, and other practical aspects than "other OSes", but it can look cooler too. note: yes, I know that Linux per se is just a kernel and I really mean the windowing system on which runs on a distribution of software which uses the Linux kernel yadda yadda yadda.
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remove the last slash from the url. http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning_print.html not http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning_print.html/
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Before I begin my rant, I would like to make it known that I'm an avid Linux user and only use Windows to play games. I was helping a friend of mine install RedHat 6.0 yesterday. After all was installed with nary a problem, he asked how to configure some stuff, so I told him about linuxconf (I prefer editing text files myself). The first response from him was a horrified "what a disgusting interface!". He was describing the click-tree type doohickey in which you click a labeled box with an X in it and it unfolds to reveal other options. And yes, it was, to my embarassment, just an ugly bugger of a UI. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't that dificult to get around (it's your standard click-tree doohickey thing), but the use of spacing made it look very overwhelming. Anyway, to my point: We need more artists (or non-color blind people) working on our UI's! While I have gotten used to it over time, using any X desktop requires me to forget any sense of visual aesthetic. The "problem" actually lies within the widget set and window manager. But GTK (as well as any other window manager)is themeable you say! True, there is hope in that... unfortunately, while some themes are decent looking, most look quite amateurish (while they ARE done by amateurs, some are just horrid). Ok, I don't mean to insult everyone out there who is actually contributing rather than complaining like me. And yes, there's that whole "beauty in the eye of the beholder" argument... but some of those themes I see on themes.org are just obnoxiously foul! Some of the more popular ones are pretty good, but none are especially "I could sell this for money" quality. The problem is is that if Linux is to really be an enjoyable "user experience" (and become a desktop OS), it has to look and feel consistant rather than a frakenstein of rejected looking widgets and graphics. Yes, Linux is especially functional and I love that, but it's not a very "sexy" experience. As much as I detest Windows, the impression that working with Windows leaves me is that has a well crafted (though not neccessarily well designed)interface -- it's consistant and doesn't look bad. I think the Linux community could do a lot better regarding the visual aesthtics of X. Maybe RedHat could hire a few artists with that IPO money and crank out some cool professional quality themes. It seems to me that Linux can not only have better performance, stability, and other practical aspects than "other OSes", but it can look cooler too. note: yes, I know that Linux per se is just a kernel and I really mean the windowing system on which runs on a distribution of software which uses the Linux kernel yadda yadda yadda.
remove the last slash from the url. http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning_print.html not http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning_print.html/