From the Reuters article on the same topic, it seems that they are focusing on how M$ gives out their APIs!!! Apparently the EU competition chief, Mario Monti, thinks that they do "it in a way which permits only Microsoft products to be fully interoperable. Microsoft's competitors, which do not have access to the interfaces, would therefore be put at a significant competitive disadvantage"
Certainly. After all, Microsoft's competitors generally don't have the intelligence to click on a URL. http://msdn.microsoft.com
Obviously. All Microsofts competitors are stupid. They have no idea whatsoever. Only Microsoft knows how to code. Heck, they're probably all dyslexic and can't read.
Point out one API which "permits only Microsoft products to be fully interoperable" and I'll show you where you're wrong - or I'll show you where it's documented. Any takers?
My grandma could do that in her sleep, and she's dead! Company A did nothing special. Besides, there was a paper written at an obscure university ten years ago which made reference to something like what is described
Hmmmm... 1: It's the "obscure university" that Alan Turing was a professor at. 2: It's the "obscure university" that built the world's first stored-program computer (the Manchester Mark I/"Baby") 3: It's either very similar or identical technology. 4: They've built the chips. They have prototypes. 5: Funny how everyone jumps up and down in defence of IBM, when they quite happily quote unrelated tech after unrelated tech to prove that Microsoft doesn't innovate...
This was probably quite difficult to implement, but isn't exactly conceptually brilliant. Modern computers already run at different clock rates internally. Your disk I/O bus runs at one speed, your video processor runs at another speed and the CPU still spends a lot of time waiting for stuff to come down the system bus from memory.
It's even less conceptually brilliant, when you see what people elsewhere have been working on - namely wavepipelined architectures.
Funny... people just keep on reinventing the wheel... fire... and then they patent it to hell.
IIRC, the guys at Manchester University were working on this back in 1989/1990 (or at least they were when I went on a tour of the place...). Back then, it was just called the "wave pipelined RISC chip" - these days, it's the "Amulet". Check it out. It's based on ye olde ARM processor architecture - but the implementation is completely asynchronous -- that is, each individual logic element is clocked separately.
Sure, it's still experimental... sure, it's slower than other chips - but it also predates IBM's announcement by about 11 years. Just goes to show - academia ain't entirely useless;-)
You are not a Linux GUI Czar.. You are, as has evidence has shown, a shill for MS.
Pity you don't have the stones to:
(a) provide evidence (b) provide your name
... though I'm willing to bet that you're Joe Barr.
If you can do better, do it. But if I want the job, why shouldn't I have it? Worried I'd destroy Linux from within by pointing out its flaws and trying to make it a better experience for its users? sheesh... hard crowd.
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
No, it's not. Whatever you do folks, don't get complacent. Linux is NOT ready for the average user yet.
Roadmap:
1. Forget skins. They're bullshit. Concentrate on UI design - flash can come later.
2. Make your UI consistent across apps. Someone needs to come up with a "Linux UI style guide" - preferably have some kind of library that does standard keybindings and mouse handling - eg. for context menus. These things vary so wildly between apps right now (heck, even cut & paste varies wildly between apps right now) that it makes using the computer a jarring experience.
3. Design GUI apps for the GUI - that is, don't think in terms of command-line apps. Too many GUI apps (heck, look at KDE & the basic bits you get with Corel Linux) look and feel like someone decided to switch to a command-line app at the last moment. Developers - try coding the GUI first, and then work on the internals - not the other way around. The GUI should NOT be tacked on at the end.
4. Do usability tests on your granny. If she can't get it (and if she can, she musn't be related to Ada Lovelace), then you're doing it wrong. Take notes, and go back to the drawing board.
5. Try running Linux without editing a text file for configuration / using the keyboard for anything except data entry. If you can't, it's not ready yet.
6. Provide: a. Duhhhh-level install. That is - you insert the disk, you hit OK, it does it. b. User interviews (find out their needs and provide them a list of options based on them) for the medium level install. c. Techy level install - that is, you let them customize to the nth degree. d. Provide a,b,c in all your apps.
7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
8. If it looks like an idiot could use your app, you've not made it easy enough. You've designed it for a pretty smart idiot.
Simon [... wonders if anyone would be willing to take me on as Linux GUI Czar.. hmmmm... have to look into that]
Me, I don't see where breaking them up really solves anything. If you want real competition, then require that the licensed libraries that are made available to developers be the same libraries that M$ itself uses! Then, companies can compete, because they can integrate their software to the OS the same way that M$ does. Furthermore, 3rd parties will be able to fix long-standing bugs in the M$ code (or work around them), etc. At worst, at least there'd be a more-stable version of Windows produced.
As someone who used to work on the Visual Studio team, I've got to wonder what these magic libraries supposedly are that Microsoft gets to use and nobody else does. Got any examples? Or are you just blowing FUD and smoke in the hope that everyone will just nod and agree?
Wouldn't mind seeing some concrete examples of your cases (1) and (2) either...
OTOH IMNSHO you see projects like KDE and Gnome who seem to buy into the hype and develop more like the traditional Windows model... features and bloat are more important than making it work like a rock
Of course, if you make it work like a rock that means that you get something which:
1. has a crude user interface. 2. is hard for the elderly to pick up & use easily. 3. isn't much use when what you really need is a wrench...
It's sad really that many of the young developers have no respect for the "Unix way" (make things small that work and are able to work with other small working programs...ie. grep foo *.c | less )and are falling into the "Windows way" (more features/bloat make it do everything that we can think of..) trap that they think is so evil.
The code works this way inside the Windows program, if its been developed by anyone with any nouse. And if they did it right, they'll have done it all as COM objects, which means that you get the same Unix benefits (pluggable program components that can be used separately) without the limitations (piping and chaining bazillions of apps through a command processor to get anything done).
Contrary to popular belief, grep foo *.c | less isn't all that easy to type with your mouse.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - KDE and GNOME suffer from being too close to the Unix paradigm as they stand (both appear to be most at their user friendly when used as hosts for xterm). They don't cut it - but they're the best that's out there.
The scary thing is, you think they're going to far when it's obvious and apparent to others that they don't go far enough.
The author clearly has some facts just plain wrong.
He claims Andreesen used the Mosaic code to "float netscape". Wrong. The Mosaic code was, in fact, the most valuable piece of code around at the time. It was licensed - to Microsoft. They then gave it away making it totally worthless to the people who invented the graphical browser.
Netscape rewrote the browser de novo.
Which is why c. 1996, Netscape Communications Corp. paid the NCSA a large chunk of change, and why Netscape v1.0 had a number of identical bugs to Mosaic, I guess...
Of course, it could just have been that Andreesen was feeling generous, and that he also made exactly the same programming errors twice.
I have more karma than I need, far more, so I can afford to lose one or two points to get this off my chest.
Boo hoo hoo, people who come to America to get jobs at below-market wages (the usual H situation) have trouble! What a tragedy!
If H1 visa holders don't like it... I'm sure all the people who are suffering in Dilbertian conditons, because there exists too much foreign labor pressure to leverage change, will be HAPPY to see them go!
Actually, just FYI, the INS will not approve visa applications where the proposed salary of the foreign worker is less than market value - and in some cases, has to be greater than the average salary for employees in that industry. You can't hire someone from another country to skimp on salaries - in fact you normally end up paying a lot more.
The Win32 API is a moving target. Microsoft will attempt to break WINE compatibility with every new release of Windows. History shows this is true! "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus doesn't run" sound familiar? Now imagine what they could do to a competing API... Just change a couple specs - presto.
The Win32 API is not a moving target. It has remained a stationary target for at least 5 years. Is it completely inconceivable that someone could have gotten WINE up to the state where it can run FIVE YEAR OLD APPS by now? How many apps do you see written for Windows that are completely broken today? That won't work any more? Not many, I can tell you. The APIs have to remain stable and consistent for backwards compatibility reasons. Microsoft is so chained and bound hand and foot by its need to remain backwards compatible with 99.999% of the software already on the market that the new stuff literally suffers because of it.
When Windows 3.1 is fully emulated, I'll be happy. People, it shouldn't have taken 10 years.
I never asked for 90% of the things that Office purports to do. Am I being unreasonable to want software that doesn't tip over five times a day?
Office is the only software that Microsoft produces which caters to 10% of its target market all of the time - rather than putting in features for the 90% case.
Why?
Because it's the only product they make where everyone in their target market requires a completely different set of features - any given person will probably only use 10% of the functionality available. However, take any of it out, and they're cutting out a massive chunk of the market.
Also, with the new installer, things should be more stable - because it forces better encapsulation of the underlying code (because you can install it in nice feature-sized chunks).
As for tipping over over five times a day? What the hell are you doing to that poor thing? I've never seen Office crash once never mind five times in a single day!
Should have mentioned... I was providing some specifics in response to this comment from the original poster:
1) Most importantly, no facts, just vague generalities.
I don't see a single tangible suggestion in this thing. What good does saying Open Source user interfaces suck, if you cannot say "Doing X in program Y is too complicated for the average user, it should be done like A and B." And don't forget to just say, "Fix it."
(installed by three computer engineers; one a Linux user since before it was a buzzword (Patch Level 0.98 if you must know; that was July 1993 or so); one an applications developer with 18 years development experience on a whole slew of OSes, and lots of UI design and development experience; and a computer engineer with 10 years experience, plus a degree is psychology + a minor in ergonomics/human user interaction).
I'm the one with the 18 years experience by the way:)
A friend of mine has installed Corel Linux 1.0 (he downloaded the standard downloadable distro), and I played around with it today. He did the "Doofus" install - that is, he just stuck the CD in, and said "Uh-huh" to all the questions it asked. It was installed on a Dell Optiplex GXM 5133 machine... and it sucks. Or maybe it's just KDE that sucks.
Within 5 minutes of playing with it, I managed to get the whole OS (seemingly) hung with a complete lockup except for the mouse. Now sure, I could probably have telnetted into it and unlocked it, but I'm afraid that I couldn't get the network working over DHCP (see later). What was I running to do this? Well, we had been running notepad, but I had one "KDE Explorer" (nee Windows Explorer) window open. I can't remember if I'd tried to open the floppy drive, or the CD-ROM drive, but that shouldn't kill everything. Even the keyboard LEDs wouldn't toggle. And of course, CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't do ANYTHING. Couldn't reset it. Couldn't get a console window. ARGHGHHGHGHGHGHHGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe this should be expected (after all, it's a Corel product), but personally I find that kind of worrying. I do have to wonder how much of this was KDE and how much of it was Corel's fault.
Speaking of KDE - lots and lots of performance issues were there - it kept being REALLLLLLY slow the first time it'd show a dialog - it would visibly rearrange them on the screen. I'm guessing that it was written in something like TCL/TK, and that's why dialog resizing was so slow. Windows - on the same machine - had a perf approximately 5 times faster, if not more so, for its windowing/resizing.
Speaking of which, on moving the "Taskbar" to the top of the screen, and opening Netscape, Netscape opened up UNDERNEATH THE TASKBAR. If I put the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, Netscape would resize out of the way. But at the top of the screen? It was screwed - opening a window shouldn't do that. I had to move the taskbar to fix it.
Speaking of which, a couple of UI issues: Telling it to "Refresh Desktop" (to move the icons out from UNDERNEATH THE TASKBAR AFTER I'D MOVED IT...) did so quite happily - the full-screen flashed, but it did it.
Telling it to, however, "Arrange Icons" (surely the same thing?) instead caused it to throw up a big nasty DESTRUCTIVE OPERATION WARNING Dialog Box asking me "Am I sure that I want to rearrange the Icons?" Yes/No?
What the HELL is that about? And why not the same thing for Refresh Desktop, which appears to do the SAME THING? Huh?
Speaking of UI inconsistencies.... yes, why I hit "APPLY" in a dialog box, I want it to apply NOW. I do NOT want it to ask me "Do you want to apply changes Now?" - because I just told it to. At least you can turn this off for Deleting files in Windows.
Context menus are missing on edit boxes - but for some reason, they work happily on the desktop. WHY ONE BUT NOT THE OTHER? THIS IS INSANE. IT'S TOTALLY INCONSISTENT.
Speaking of which, Right-Mousing on the desktop left the focus on the desktop - with the control panel I had open still left looking active (including the selected text in the box, and a flashing caret)... sorry, if the window's not active, I want to KNOW about it.
Also, selecting text in a box and typing does NOT delete the extant text in the box - which is also totally counter intuitive - pasting removes what was there if anything's selected, so should typing. That's how it works on EVERYTHING else.
In the control panel, when trying to set up networking, I hit Apply. It asked me Y/N. I said Yes. I said "Close". It closed the *panel* I was working in. I ended up hitting CLOSE 4 TIMES before I could get it to work. And then I had to CLOSE THE APP. If Apply does exactly the SAME THING as the OK/CLOSE button, but the difference is that it asks you if you want to do it or not before it commits changes, WHY THE HELL IS IT THERE? THERE'S NO BENEFIT TO IT BEING THERE WHATSOEVER.
Also, shouldn't DHCP/BOOTP find a DNS server for you? In which case, shouldn't the "ADD DNS" dialog box be DISABLED when you're in DHCP mode? And also, why are the DNS settings boxes (IP, Default Gateway, etc) ALWAYS DISABLED WHATEVER YOU DO? Are they just there for show? This is S*(&!@(*#& INSANE! THERE ARE CONTROLS ON THE DIALOGS WHICH DON'T DO ANYTHING!!!
So in conclusion, Corel Linux/KDE (after a 5 minute look at it) is pretty impressive. It brings Linux kicking and screaming into the GUI world - and it shows. Now don't get me wrong; I'm not coming at this from the point of view of someone who won't take the time to learn the system, but for all of Microsoft's faults, Windows is pretty damn good. In comparison:
Microsoft Windows has some pretty annoying flaws. It causes a lot of people to get angry because of these. Corel Linux, because it's running on Linux/KDE, makes people twice as angry, with twice the hassles!
Seriously - Corel Linux is pretty good. However, it still sucks. The KDE/Corel guys should get some people who understand user interface design, and create a CONSISTENT UI. Because at the moment, it doesn't cut it.
Never mind the fact that by the time we left for coffee, we still hadn't worked out how to get the network to work over DHCP.
---
Addendum:
My girlfriend (who has been using Linux since 1993 (pl98))has just tried to install Corel Linux on her machine.
We put the boot floppy in. We put the CD in. We restarted the machine. It came up, detected the hardware, flashed, showed the wallpaper again, open the CD-ROM tray and shut it again (almost like giving us the finger), and restarted.
And did the WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.
Eventually, after this many reboots (my friend Wes had only had to have one on his Dell), we tried removing the bootfloppy. The machine promptly booted into Windows 98 (which Shana uses to play Dungeon Keeper). Now, either this machine was possessed by the spirit of Bill Gates himself (and thus wouldn't let Corel Linux pry it free from Windows), or something's rotten in Denmark.
The machine in question runs Mandrake Linux *fine*. But the Corel Linux install wouldn't even say what was wrong. It was just braindeadedly rebooting and rebooting and rebooting with nary an error message in sight. This is, by the way, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shana (pronounced Shaynna) would like to say at this point "Bring back the Linux Quarterly!!!".
----
I think basically what we have here is a case of "Attack of the Cargo Cult GUI Designers"... basically, they see what other OS's have, and implement the same. But badly. Very very badly. How would you like to be running an extremely (comparatively) unstable version of an amalgum of Windows 3.1/Windows 95 and FVWM, but one that has just enough (but not quite) implemented to make it *just* usable - that is, if you didn't use it much and in general gave up and just used the command line instead - but on the whole is horribly inconsistent?
Simon (the last sentence should have been sanitized for your convenience... but I was too busy)
A significant example of this is the Swing classes. They use the variable delegate extensively in their code, and delegate is a keyword in J++. Consequently, if you need to extend/modify some of the swing libaries, you are SOL.
And you might be correct, too, if you couldn't switch off the MS extensions with a single checkbox on your project settings.
Sheesh. Some people. What is this? Cargo cult programming?
Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area. This is why the major radio stations in a city have to have 50,000 watt transmitters in order to send a fairly weak signal out to the suburbs.
Specifically, it drops off following the formula:
1/(4 * PI * R^2), where R is the distance from the source. There's some other constants in there too, but they're not that important.
(to be honest, neither is the 4*PI bit).
There's a more important reason why "Tesla field" energy distribution wouldn't work though - namely interference. I don't think many computers could be happily powered off it...
In reading the article, it seems as if there's little difference between this and what Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator do upon installation. Perhaps there's more to it, or perhaps there's an M$ plant for the story, but really... just click no.:)
Neither Netscape nor IE's installers start messing with your POWER MANAGEMENT settings though. I mean, what the HELL are they doing in there? We're talking a SERIOUS amount of crap.
What's funny is that they waited so long to tell anyone about it - this story's been out for AGES - since October, in fact. It was also on MSNBC (which has a content-sharing agreement with BugNet) back then.
I would also really like to see an intelligent attempt at command line completion. I recently discovered that NT's cmd.exe supports it, so I turned the feature on and tried it. I tried cd'ing into a directory but didn't give enough letters to make it unique, and it cd'd me into the first match. I was hoping it would give me a list like bash does, but nope, first match. Oh well...
Nice try, but that's not the behavior of the command line at all - it doesn't just "Cd you into the first match"... it shows you the first match, after which you can hit TAB again to show the next match, or hit SHIFT+TAB to show the previous one. Sheesh.
I'd say it's Microsoft's problem if they put up a page which won't render properly on one the most popular browsers. Although I agree that Netscape is pretty much a piece of junk.
This is the same argument which makes Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" policy perfectly valid and acceptable.
Choose your poison: Follow standards, or have core standards with branches coming off them. But don't be a hypocrit and expect to have both whenever Microsoft would choose the one you didn't.
2k is supposed to have some provisions for not allowing other random progs to overwite dll in system/system32 (which would be nice) - every random Joe Blow app should *NOT* replace system-wide dll s. Ever. Even MS Office (are you listening, chief of software architecture??
Actually, an edict was handed down at MS saying exactly what you're saying - system DLLs are now only to be updated in service packs - not in apps.
doesn't anyone remember The Great Linux Revolt of '98 for the Win98 launch? That was cool and got plenty of media attention.
Er... no. I don't think they do. Mind you, they probably don't remember the Win98 launch either - and the Linux Revolt of 98 will thus be remembered even less than if it had happened in any way of significance at all.
Basically, people don't care. Today's news is today's news. Tomorrow's news is Today's news tomorrow. Today's news is forgotten tomorrow, except by a select few.
To become one with the supreme Jungian uber-consciousness, one requires mindshare. Which requires much higher saturation than one geeky fan-boy weenie roast.
I believe good code has an average of 1 bug for every 1000 lines. Windows 2000 has how many lines? 30-40 Million (I'm guessing here) So we're looking at 30-40 thousands bugs. And that's if it's good code and not rushed out the door, sort of tested stuff.
Sure there will be bugs. Sure, there may be that many. But you're trying to tell me that a fully-loaded Linux system with all the apps won't have the same number of bugs? Gimme a break.
I rely on people like my buddy Geo to take a look at the code. While I'm not a coder, I know people who are and have looked at it.
Well, perhaps your buddy Geo would care to testify in court as to the existance of "secret, hidden APIs" - after all, he should step forwards while MS is under the microsope - it'd let us destroy Microsoft once and for all, right!?
You didn't seem to address my point of shoddy QA, or the NT SP 3/4/5/6 issue.
Correct. I've never had a problem installing a service pack; others have. So I don't feel qualified to comment on that one.
And with regards to versioning of DLLs, you mean it took Microsoft almost 6 YEARS to tell people "hey, your versioning is off, you aughta fix that". I mean, why bother with a WHQL or the "Made for Windows95" program at all? I've seen WHQL testing. You'd think they would take a look at the driver and make sure the installer doesn't squash other drivers in the process.
The reason the WHQL guys don't test the installers for drivers? Well, this is perhaps because WHQL is the Windows Hardware Quality Lab - they're only concerned with the hardware, and testing Windows (not other apps) with it to make sure it works.
And if the app has the MS seal of approval (Made for Win95), its installer does things right - it's all the apps that don't have that seal of approval that I'd be worried about. Besides - they've been telling people all along what to do to get it right. Now, instead of telling them what to do, they're only allowing them to do certain things. Win2K prevents programs from installing files into the system directory, for example, unless it uses a standard MSI install package, with complete rollback information... kinda handy.
Very amusing to see the progress bar tick backwards when you decide to uninstall too:)
Slashdot Mirror
From the Reuters article on the same topic, it seems that they are focusing on how M$ gives out their APIs!!!
Apparently the EU competition chief, Mario Monti, thinks that they do "it in a way which permits only Microsoft products to be fully interoperable. Microsoft's competitors, which do not have access to the interfaces, would therefore be put at a significant competitive disadvantage"
Certainly. After all, Microsoft's competitors generally don't have the intelligence to click on a URL. http://msdn.microsoft.com
Obviously. All Microsofts competitors are stupid. They have no idea whatsoever. Only Microsoft knows how to code. Heck, they're probably all dyslexic and can't read.
Point out one API which "permits only Microsoft products to be fully interoperable" and I'll show you where you're wrong - or I'll show you where it's documented. Any takers?
Simon
My grandma could do that in her sleep, and she's dead! Company A did nothing special. Besides, there was a paper written at an obscure university ten years ago which made reference to something like what is described
Hmmmm...
1: It's the "obscure university" that Alan Turing was a professor at.
2: It's the "obscure university" that built the world's first stored-program computer (the Manchester Mark I/"Baby")
3: It's either very similar or identical technology.
4: They've built the chips. They have prototypes.
5: Funny how everyone jumps up and down in defence of IBM, when they quite happily quote unrelated tech after unrelated tech to prove that Microsoft doesn't innovate...
Simon
This was probably quite difficult to implement, but isn't exactly conceptually brilliant. Modern computers already run at different clock rates internally. Your disk I/O bus runs at one speed, your video processor runs at another speed and the CPU still spends a lot of time waiting for stuff to come down the system bus from memory.
;-)
It's even less conceptually brilliant, when you see what people elsewhere have been working on - namely wavepipelined architectures.
Funny... people just keep on reinventing the wheel... fire... and then they patent it to hell.
IIRC, the guys at Manchester University were working on this back in 1989/1990 (or at least they were when I went on a tour of the place...). Back then, it was just called the "wave pipelined RISC chip" - these days, it's the "Amulet". Check it out. It's based on ye olde ARM processor architecture - but the implementation is completely asynchronous -- that is, each individual logic element is clocked separately.
Sure, it's still experimental... sure, it's slower than other chips - but it also predates IBM's announcement by about 11 years. Just goes to show - academia ain't entirely useless
Links
Architectural Overview at Berkeley
The Amulet Asynchronous Logic Group at Manchester University
Who needs clocks? Bah!
Simon
You are not a Linux GUI Czar.. You are, as has evidence has shown, a shill for MS.
Pity you don't have the stones to:
(a) provide evidence
(b) provide your name
... though I'm willing to bet that you're Joe Barr.
If you can do better, do it. But if I want the job, why shouldn't I have it? Worried I'd destroy Linux from within by pointing out its flaws and trying to make it a better experience for its users? sheesh... hard crowd.
Simon
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
No, it's not. Whatever you do folks, don't get complacent. Linux is NOT ready for the average user yet.
Roadmap:
1. Forget skins. They're bullshit. Concentrate on UI design - flash can come later.
2. Make your UI consistent across apps. Someone needs to come up with a "Linux UI style guide" - preferably have some kind of library that does standard keybindings and mouse handling - eg. for context menus. These things vary so wildly between apps right now (heck, even cut & paste varies wildly between apps right now) that it makes using the computer a jarring experience.
3. Design GUI apps for the GUI - that is, don't think in terms of command-line apps. Too many GUI apps (heck, look at KDE & the basic bits you get with Corel Linux) look and feel like someone decided to switch to a command-line app at the last moment. Developers - try coding the GUI first, and then work on the internals - not the other way around. The GUI should NOT be tacked on at the end.
4. Do usability tests on your granny. If she can't get it (and if she can, she musn't be related to Ada Lovelace), then you're doing it wrong. Take notes, and go back to the drawing board.
5. Try running Linux without editing a text file for configuration / using the keyboard for anything except data entry. If you can't, it's not ready yet.
6. Provide:
a. Duhhhh-level install. That is - you insert the disk, you hit OK, it does it.
b. User interviews (find out their needs and provide them a list of options based on them) for the medium level install.
c. Techy level install - that is, you let them customize to the nth degree.
d. Provide a,b,c in all your apps.
7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
8. If it looks like an idiot could use your app, you've not made it easy enough. You've designed it for a pretty smart idiot.
Simon
[... wonders if anyone would be willing to take me on as Linux GUI Czar.. hmmmm... have to look into that]
Me, I don't see where breaking them up really solves anything. If you want real competition, then require that the licensed libraries that are made available to developers be the same libraries that M$ itself uses! Then, companies can compete, because they can integrate their software to the OS the same way that M$ does. Furthermore, 3rd parties will be able to fix long-standing bugs in the M$ code (or work around them), etc. At worst, at least there'd be a more-stable version of Windows produced.
As someone who used to work on the Visual Studio team, I've got to wonder what these magic libraries supposedly are that Microsoft gets to use and nobody else does. Got any examples? Or are you just blowing FUD and smoke in the hope that everyone will just nod and agree?
Wouldn't mind seeing some concrete examples of your cases (1) and (2) either...
Simon
OTOH IMNSHO you see projects like KDE and Gnome who seem to buy into the hype and develop more like the traditional Windows model... features and bloat are more important than making it work like a rock
Of course, if you make it work like a rock that means that you get something which:
1. has a crude user interface.
2. is hard for the elderly to pick up & use easily.
3. isn't much use when what you really need is a wrench...
It's sad really that many of the young developers have no respect for the "Unix way" (make things small that work and are able to work with other small working programs...ie. grep foo *.c | less )and are falling into the "Windows way" (more features/bloat make it do everything that we can think of..) trap that they think is so evil.
The code works this way inside the Windows program, if its been developed by anyone with any nouse. And if they did it right, they'll have done it all as COM objects, which means that you get the same Unix benefits (pluggable program components that can be used separately) without the limitations (piping and chaining bazillions of apps through a command processor to get anything done).
Contrary to popular belief,
grep foo *.c | less
isn't all that easy to type with your mouse.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - KDE and GNOME suffer from being too close to the Unix paradigm as they stand (both appear to be most at their user friendly when used as hosts for xterm). They don't cut it - but they're the best that's out there.
The scary thing is, you think they're going to far when it's obvious and apparent to others that they don't go far enough.
Simon
The author clearly has some facts just plain wrong.
He claims Andreesen used the Mosaic code to "float netscape". Wrong. The Mosaic code was, in fact, the most valuable piece of code around at the time. It was licensed - to Microsoft. They then gave it away making it totally worthless to the people who invented the graphical browser.
Netscape rewrote the browser de novo.
Which is why c. 1996, Netscape Communications Corp. paid the NCSA a large chunk of change, and why Netscape v1.0 had a number of identical bugs to Mosaic, I guess...
Of course, it could just have been that Andreesen was feeling generous, and that he also made exactly the same programming errors twice.
Simon
I have more karma than I need, far more, so I can afford to lose one or two points to get this off my chest.
Boo hoo hoo, people who come to America to get jobs at below-market wages (the usual H situation) have trouble! What a tragedy!
If H1 visa holders don't like it... I'm sure all the people who are suffering in Dilbertian conditons, because there exists too much foreign labor pressure to leverage change, will be HAPPY to see them go!
Actually, just FYI, the INS will not approve visa applications where the proposed salary of the foreign worker is less than market value - and in some cases, has to be greater than the average salary for employees in that industry. You can't hire someone from another country to skimp on salaries - in fact you normally end up paying a lot more.
Just goes to show - you don't know jack.
Simon
it's hilarious and informative.
The Win32 API is a moving target. Microsoft will attempt to break WINE compatibility with every new release of Windows. History shows this is true! "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus doesn't run" sound familiar? Now imagine what they could do to a competing API... Just change a couple specs - presto.
The Win32 API is not a moving target. It has remained a stationary target for at least 5 years. Is it completely inconceivable that someone could have gotten WINE up to the state where it can run FIVE YEAR OLD APPS by now? How many apps do you see written for Windows that are completely broken today? That won't work any more? Not many, I can tell you. The APIs have to remain stable and consistent for backwards compatibility reasons. Microsoft is so chained and bound hand and foot by its need to remain backwards compatible with 99.999% of the software already on the market that the new stuff literally suffers because of it.
When Windows 3.1 is fully emulated, I'll be happy. People, it shouldn't have taken 10 years.
Simon
I never asked for 90% of the things that Office purports to do. Am I being unreasonable to want software that doesn't tip over five times a day?
Office is the only software that Microsoft produces which caters to 10% of its target market all of the time - rather than putting in features for the 90% case.
Why?
Because it's the only product they make where everyone in their target market requires a completely different set of features - any given person will probably only use 10% of the functionality available. However, take any of it out, and they're cutting out a massive chunk of the market.
Also, with the new installer, things should be more stable - because it forces better encapsulation of the underlying code (because you can install it in nice feature-sized chunks).
As for tipping over over five times a day? What the hell are you doing to that poor thing? I've never seen Office crash once never mind five times in a single day!
Simon
Should have mentioned... I was providing some specifics in response to this comment from the original poster:
1) Most importantly, no facts, just vague generalities.
I don't see a single tangible suggestion in this thing. What good does saying Open Source user interfaces suck, if you cannot say "Doing X in program Y is too complicated for the average user, it should be done like A and B." And don't forget to just say, "Fix it."
Simon
Here's mine
:)
... basically, they see what other OS's have, and implement the same. But badly. Very very badly. How would you like to be running an extremely (comparatively) unstable version of an amalgum of Windows 3.1/Windows 95 and FVWM, but one that has just enough (but not quite) implemented to make it *just* usable - that is, if you didn't use it much and in general gave up and just used the command line instead - but on the whole is horribly inconsistent?
(installed by three computer engineers; one a Linux user since before it was a buzzword (Patch Level 0.98 if you must know; that was July 1993 or so); one an applications developer with 18 years development experience on a whole slew of OSes, and lots of UI design and development experience; and a computer engineer with 10 years experience, plus a degree is psychology + a minor in ergonomics/human user interaction).
I'm the one with the 18 years experience by the way
A friend of mine has installed Corel Linux
1.0 (he downloaded the standard downloadable distro), and I played around with it today. He did the "Doofus" install - that is, he just stuck the CD in, and said "Uh-huh" to all the questions it asked. It was installed on a Dell Optiplex GXM 5133 machine... and it sucks. Or maybe it's just KDE that sucks.
Within 5 minutes of playing with it, I managed to get the whole OS (seemingly) hung with a complete lockup except for the mouse. Now sure, I could probably have telnetted into it and unlocked it, but I'm afraid that I couldn't get the network working over DHCP (see later). What was I running to do this? Well, we had been running notepad, but I had one "KDE Explorer" (nee Windows Explorer) window open. I can't remember if I'd tried to open the floppy drive, or the CD-ROM drive, but that shouldn't kill everything. Even the keyboard LEDs wouldn't toggle. And of course, CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't do ANYTHING. Couldn't reset it. Couldn't get a console window. ARGHGHHGHGHGHGHHGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe this should be expected (after all, it's a Corel product), but personally I find that kind of worrying. I do have to wonder how much of this was KDE and how much of it was Corel's fault.
Speaking of KDE - lots and lots of performance issues were there - it kept being REALLLLLLY slow the first time it'd show a dialog - it would visibly rearrange them on the screen. I'm guessing that it was written in something like TCL/TK, and that's why dialog resizing was so slow. Windows - on the same machine - had a perf approximately 5 times faster, if not more so, for its windowing/resizing.
Speaking of which, on moving the "Taskbar" to the top of the screen, and opening Netscape, Netscape opened up UNDERNEATH THE TASKBAR. If I put the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, Netscape would resize out of the way. But at the top of the screen? It was screwed - opening a window shouldn't do that. I had to move the taskbar to fix it.
Speaking of which, a couple of UI issues:
Telling it to "Refresh Desktop" (to move the icons out from UNDERNEATH THE TASKBAR AFTER I'D MOVED IT...) did so quite happily - the full-screen flashed, but it did it.
Telling it to, however, "Arrange Icons" (surely the same thing?) instead caused it to throw up a big nasty DESTRUCTIVE OPERATION WARNING Dialog Box asking me "Am I sure that I want to rearrange the Icons?" Yes/No?
What the HELL is that about? And why not the same thing for Refresh Desktop, which appears to do the SAME THING? Huh?
Speaking of UI inconsistencies.... yes, why I hit "APPLY" in a dialog box, I want it to apply NOW. I do NOT want it to ask me "Do you want to apply changes Now?" - because I just told it to. At least you can turn this off for Deleting files in Windows.
Context menus are missing on edit boxes - but for some reason, they work happily on the desktop. WHY ONE BUT NOT THE OTHER? THIS IS INSANE. IT'S TOTALLY INCONSISTENT.
Speaking of which, Right-Mousing on the desktop left the focus on the desktop - with the control panel I had open still left looking active (including the selected text in the box, and a flashing caret)... sorry, if the window's not active, I want to KNOW about it.
Also, selecting text in a box and typing does NOT delete the extant text in the box - which is also totally counter intuitive - pasting removes what was there if anything's selected, so should typing. That's how it works on EVERYTHING else.
In the control panel, when trying to set up networking, I hit Apply. It asked me Y/N. I said Yes. I said "Close". It closed the *panel* I was working in. I ended up hitting CLOSE 4 TIMES before I could get it to work. And then I had to CLOSE THE APP. If Apply does exactly the SAME THING as the OK/CLOSE button, but the difference is that it asks you if you want to do it or not before it commits changes, WHY THE HELL IS IT THERE? THERE'S NO BENEFIT TO IT BEING THERE WHATSOEVER.
Also, shouldn't DHCP/BOOTP find a DNS server for you? In which case, shouldn't the "ADD DNS" dialog box be DISABLED when you're in DHCP mode? And also, why are the DNS settings boxes (IP, Default Gateway, etc) ALWAYS DISABLED WHATEVER YOU DO? Are they just there for show?
This is S*(&!@(*#& INSANE! THERE ARE CONTROLS ON THE DIALOGS WHICH DON'T DO ANYTHING!!!
So in conclusion, Corel Linux/KDE (after a 5 minute look at it) is pretty impressive. It brings Linux kicking and screaming into the GUI world - and it shows. Now don't get me wrong; I'm not coming at this from the point of view of someone who won't take the time to learn the system, but for all of Microsoft's faults, Windows is
pretty damn good. In comparison:
Microsoft Windows has some pretty annoying flaws. It causes a lot of people to get angry because of these. Corel Linux, because it's running on Linux/KDE, makes people twice as angry, with twice the hassles!
Seriously - Corel Linux is pretty good. However, it still sucks. The KDE/Corel guys should get some people who understand user interface design, and create a CONSISTENT UI. Because at the moment, it doesn't cut it.
Never mind the fact that by the time we left for coffee, we still hadn't worked out how to get the network to work over DHCP.
---
Addendum:
My girlfriend (who has been using Linux since 1993 (pl98))has just tried to install Corel Linux on her machine.
We put the boot floppy in. We put the CD in. We restarted the machine. It came up, detected the hardware, flashed, showed the wallpaper again, open the CD-ROM tray and shut it again (almost like giving us the finger), and restarted.
And did the WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN.
Eventually, after this many reboots (my friend Wes had only had to have one on his Dell), we tried removing the bootfloppy. The machine promptly booted into Windows 98 (which Shana uses to play Dungeon Keeper). Now, either this machine was possessed by the spirit of Bill Gates himself (and thus wouldn't let Corel Linux pry it free
from Windows), or something's rotten in Denmark.
The machine in question runs Mandrake Linux *fine*. But the Corel Linux install wouldn't even say what was wrong. It was just braindeadedly rebooting and rebooting and rebooting with nary an error message in sight. This is, by the way, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY LAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shana (pronounced Shaynna) would like to say at this point "Bring back the Linux Quarterly!!!".
----
I think basically what we have here is a case of "Attack of the Cargo Cult GUI Designers"
Simon
(the last sentence should have been sanitized for your convenience... but I was too busy)
A significant example of this is the Swing classes. They use the variable delegate extensively in their code, and delegate is a keyword in J++. Consequently, if you need to extend/modify some of the swing libaries, you are SOL.
And you might be correct, too, if you couldn't switch off the MS extensions with a single checkbox on your project settings.
Sheesh. Some people. What is this? Cargo cult programming?
Simon
Thirdly, broadcast power DIDN'T WORK. What Tesla ended up inventing was radio, though that's not what he was trying for. It won't EVER work, because the power of the broadcast signal drops off exponentially as the distance from the transmitter increases. Basically, the same energy gets spread over an ever-increasing area. This is why the major radio stations in a city have to have 50,000 watt transmitters in order to send a fairly weak signal out to the suburbs.
Specifically, it drops off following the formula:
1/(4 * PI * R^2), where R is the distance from the source. There's some other constants in there too, but they're not that important.
(to be honest, neither is the 4*PI bit).
There's a more important reason why "Tesla field" energy distribution wouldn't work though - namely interference. I don't think many computers could be happily powered off it...
Simon
In reading the article, it seems as if there's little difference between this and what Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator do upon installation. Perhaps there's more to it, or perhaps there's an M$ plant for the story, but really... just click no. :)
Neither Netscape nor IE's installers start messing with your POWER MANAGEMENT settings though. I mean, what the HELL are they doing in there? We're talking a SERIOUS amount of crap.
Sheesh.
Simon
What's funny is that they waited so long to tell anyone about it - this story's been out for AGES - since October, in fact. It was also on MSNBC (which has a content-sharing agreement with BugNet) back then.
Hmmm...
http://www.bugnet.com/alerts/buga lert_102099.html
I would also really like to see an intelligent attempt at command line completion. I recently discovered that NT's cmd.exe supports it, so I turned the feature on and tried it. I tried cd'ing into a directory but didn't give enough letters to make it unique, and it cd'd me into the first match. I was hoping it would give me a list like bash does, but nope, first match. Oh well...
Nice try, but that's not the behavior of the command line at all - it doesn't just "Cd you into the first match"... it shows you the first match, after which you can hit TAB again to show the next match, or hit SHIFT+TAB to show the previous one. Sheesh.
Simon
...and a giant set of programmes that each overwrite previous programmes shared libraries instead of...well...sharing them. (.DLLs)
Which is prevented by Windows 2000 from happening - it won't let anything other than a Microsoft Service Pack do that.
Simon
I'd say it's Microsoft's problem if they put up a page which won't render properly on one the most popular browsers. Although I agree that Netscape is pretty much a piece of junk.
This is the same argument which makes Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" policy perfectly valid and acceptable.
Choose your poison: Follow standards, or have core standards with branches coming off them. But don't be a hypocrit and expect to have both whenever Microsoft would choose the one you didn't.
Simon
2k is supposed to have some provisions for not allowing other random progs to overwite dll in system/system32 (which would be nice) - every random Joe Blow app should *NOT* replace system-wide dll s. Ever. Even MS Office (are you listening, chief of software architecture??
Actually, an edict was handed down at MS saying exactly what you're saying - system DLLs are now only to be updated in service packs - not in apps.
Fingers crossed that it stays that way...
Si
doesn't anyone remember The Great Linux Revolt of '98 for the Win98 launch? That was cool and got plenty of media attention.
Er... no. I don't think they do. Mind you, they probably don't remember the Win98 launch either - and the Linux Revolt of 98 will thus be remembered even less than if it had happened in any way of significance at all.
Basically, people don't care. Today's news is today's news. Tomorrow's news is Today's news tomorrow. Today's news is forgotten tomorrow, except by a select few.
To become one with the supreme Jungian uber-consciousness, one requires mindshare. Which requires much higher saturation than one geeky fan-boy weenie roast.
Simon
I believe good code has an average of 1 bug for every 1000 lines. Windows 2000 has how many lines? 30-40 Million (I'm guessing here) So we're looking at 30-40 thousands bugs. And that's if it's good code and not rushed out the door, sort of tested stuff.
Sure there will be bugs. Sure, there may be that many. But you're trying to tell me that a fully-loaded Linux system with all the apps won't have the same number of bugs? Gimme a break.
Simon
I rely on people like my buddy Geo to take a look at the code. While I'm not a coder, I know people who are and have looked at it.
:)
Well, perhaps your buddy Geo would care to testify in court as to the existance of "secret, hidden APIs" - after all, he should step forwards while MS is under the microsope - it'd let us destroy Microsoft once and for all, right!?
You didn't seem to address my point of shoddy QA, or the NT SP 3/4/5/6 issue.
Correct. I've never had a problem installing a service pack; others have. So I don't feel qualified to comment on that one.
And with regards to versioning of DLLs, you mean it took Microsoft almost 6 YEARS to tell people "hey, your versioning is off, you aughta fix that". I mean, why bother with a WHQL or the "Made for Windows95" program at all? I've seen WHQL testing. You'd think they would take a look at the driver and make sure the installer doesn't squash other drivers in the process.
The reason the WHQL guys don't test the installers for drivers? Well, this is perhaps because WHQL is the Windows Hardware Quality Lab - they're only concerned with the hardware, and testing Windows (not other apps) with it to make sure it works.
And if the app has the MS seal of approval (Made for Win95), its installer does things right - it's all the apps that don't have that seal of approval that I'd be worried about. Besides - they've been telling people all along what to do to get it right. Now, instead of telling them what to do, they're only allowing them to do certain things. Win2K prevents programs from installing files into the system directory, for example, unless it uses a standard MSI install package, with complete rollback information... kinda handy.
Very amusing to see the progress bar tick backwards when you decide to uninstall too
Simon