This is a very good illustration of the attitude I describe in my original post: "Ironically, it seems a lot of the remaining programmers try to make things better than the standards, instead of following them, ignoring the fact that a new standard is better than the old one only if it actually becomes a standard.""
And ironically this totally conflicts with all the people who complain that open source never innovates. When you copy your competition's "good old tried before" interface, people complain that open source only copies other stuff and don't innovate. When you *do* come up with a new interface, people complain that open source developers create confusing interfaces. *sigh*
"That's exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about."
No it isn't. You seem to not know about something, so I inform you about it. And that's it! People in the Windows community would tell me the very same thing if I can't figure out how to use a particular Windows app!
And learning this is a matter of 5 seconds. You read the text in 5 seconds, and you know it. This isn't "relearning everything" like you say.
"10000 users times 1 hour gives about five man years lost to bad usability. For simple actions. In one application."
Back in the days when office people were first introduced to computers, they had to spend time learning it too. Let's say they needed a week to learn the computer. 100 users x 1 week = 100 man weeks of productivity lost. Does that mean they should have stayed with pen & paper instead?
The right mouse button approach in Gimp has a very real usability advantage. Instead of moving your mouse *every single time* to the top, you can rightclick on *anywhere* in the image to get the menu. This is faster - see Fitt's Law. Not only that, each menu can be torn off, so you have keep often used menus around which you can access in 1 click.
I've used both Paint Shop Pro and Gimp for a long time now and I much prefer Gimp's interface. It's faster to work in Gimp than PSP. And no, I'm not a Unix elitist or whatever you want to call me. I started with Windows 95 and later switched to Linux. I've used both PSP and Gimp for more than just a few hours and I can honestly say Gimp's interface works better and faster for me.
"I had a deadline, one day's work on a Word document I had been emailed. OpenOffice 1.0 which I had faithfully installed would crash on opening it. Now I wanted to upgrade but it would take days and money to download 80MB for OOo1.1 on my 64Kbps. So, I installed OpenOffice 1.1 on my VPS halfway around the world and tried over X (ouch,laggy) I was able to open it but it was too laggy"
This is a bug, you should report it. OpenOffice does not crash at startup for me or any of the other computers I've installed it on. Your configuration is unique, you should inform the authors so they can fix it.
This problem has got nothing to do with "OSS developers not caring about usability" or whatever, and everything to do with bugs. There are plenty of commercial software that crash at startup too. Again, report this problem to the authors.
"To me the Gimp interface compared to Photoshop sucks, it takes much longer to do things and there is not as much visual integration with docking pallettes that help you do things half automatically"
That's because you've used Photoshop for a long time and you naturally expect all image editing programs to look the same. To me, Paint Shop Pro's interface sucks compared to Gimp's. When I first started using Gimp, it was confusing. But when I first started using Paint Shop Pro, it was confusing too! Now I've gotten used to both Paint Shop Pro and Gimp's interfaces, and I have to say I *much* prefer Gimp over Paint Shop Pro. It's much easier to use Gimp's tool windows and switching between documents.
"whereas with Gimp it's half-done contextual menu idea always has you searching a single menu tree, until you break parts of it off every time."
1. Didn't you know you can tear off any menu you want? Click on that stippled line on top of each menu. I use this feature very often and it absolutely rocks and allows me to access menu items much faster than Paint Shop Pro.
2. Gimp 1.3 has a global menu bar.
"This may sound funny but if you look at eazel you can see that it is extremely difficult to get interface design and user experience professionals to work on linux and not go bankrupt!"
And why do you blame Linux for this? Your argument is flawed. The reason Eazel went bankrupt is because 1) their business strategy was flawed 2) the Linux desktop market was still small. Heck, every operating system besides Windows has the same problem! The company behind BeOS, which is praised by many people, also went bankrupt. Does that mean it's extremely difficult to get interface design and user experience professionals to work on BeOS and not go bankrupt, and that it's all BeOS's fault? Not to mention that you completely ignore the fact that companies like Ximian are still alive and doing well, and that Sun contributed many usability experts and studies to the GNOME project. If you've ever talked to the authors of apps like gedit or Epiphany then you know that they put *a lot* of priority in usability.
"What do you think?"
I think you have the wrong view of what's going on. The situation is not simply "OSS developers don't care about usability. Kick them and hire usability experts and everything will magically improve quickly". I suggest that you go read mailing lists like the GNOME Usability Project's more often to understand that: 1) A lot of OSS developers *do* care about usability. 2) A lot of them (yes including volunteer ones) do care about users - provided that those users are polite and helpful. 3) Usability is not an easy thing, nor a one-size-fits-all. Every "improvement" suggested by usability experts may raise a lot of critism by people who don't agree. 4) They're working very hard to improve usability, though there's still lots of work left to be done. 5) Rome isn't built in one day but the situation *is* improving. If you compare today's Linux desktop with that of 2 years ago you'll see huge improvements. 6) Not every OSS developer is like this. But then again, not every human is the same. Elitist Windows developers also exist. Don't try to generalize things, that will only piss off people.
Anybody who points out a difficult problem and flame down the authors and care more about flaming down the authors than having the problem fixed is a troll.
"Once things get beyond a certain threshold I will be more than happy to spend time on it, until then, I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to find the 20 different people responsible for this or that piece of software and then contact them in whatever way they prefer to be communicated with."
In other words, you'd rather want the software to stay crappy so you can continue to flame OSS down?
Don't pretend Windows is perfect. It isn't. I know tons of Windows software that have similar issues. I know tons of people in the Windows community who are elitist. And do I hear people complaining about them? No. It's always Linux that's bad. Always.
This sounds like a bug. Have you tried filling a bug report instead of ranting at Slashdot? Or tried to politely persuade the MC developers to treat the Esc key correctly?
How's OpenOffice not usable? It's interface is almost exactly the same as MS Office. How's Mozilla not usable? It's interface is very similar to IE's. Heck, OpenOffice is based on StarOffice, which was commercial software. The interface hasn't changed that much. Just because it's open source now, it's usability magically became worse? That makes no sense.
You say usability of OSS software often sucks. Yeah let's forget about many of the good apps out there. Mozilla Firefox, Epiphany, gedit (or "Web Browser" and "Text Editor" as the menu items are called, in case you want to complain about naming), FileZilla, Evolution, Red Carpet, just to name a few. Let's face it: bad user interfaces are *everywhere*, not just among open source software! Have you never downloaded a Windows freeware app or something? And I know lots of commercial software with horible user interfaces.
And the only reason why you say Gimp's UI sucks is because you've never used it before and has only used it for a while. Back in my early days, I only knew how to use MS Paint. Then I download Paint Shop Pro. And guess what - I had lots of trouble working with it! I couldn't figure out how to do trivial things that can be done easily in MS Paint. After several months of playing around with it, I finally felt more comfortable with it. Then came Linux and Gimp. At first, I found Gimp very confusing, just like when I started with Paint Shop Pro! After several months of working with it, I felt more and more comfortable. And soon Gimp became my preferred image editing program. Yes you read what I wrote: I prefer it over PSP! Now I'm using Gimp 1.3, which has a GUI that's much more easy, efficient, powerful, and polished. I found Gimp 1.2 floating tool windows a little annoying (though not nearly as annoying as PSP's window-in-window tool windows!!). Gimp 1.3 got rid of that final complaint I had, and gave me even more than that. Gimp 1.3 even allows you to set the Utility window manager hints for tool windows, which means tool windows won't show up in the taskbar, but will get raised if you click on the Gimp main palette. Gimp 1.3 also gives me a global menu bar, which I don't really need (rightclicks works just as well, if not better) but is still nice. Gimp's MDI approach gives me some very real advantages. I can Alt-Tab between documents. And I can switch between documents in one click (click on taskbar button) instead of two (Window menu-> select menu item).
Gimp is a good program, period. Well you bought Photoshop, good for you. Gimp fulfills my graphics needs, for free, and it better than Paint Sho Pro, a commercial app.
About a year ago I introduced my non-techie friend to Linux. I installed Linux for him so no, he didn't get into any configuration problems. It's just like getting Windows preinstalled. He calls Linux "very userfriendly, stable and easy". He says that Gimp is a "good and powerful program", even though he did think the UI is a little weird. But got used to the UI very quickly and is now very productive with it. Recently I installed Gimp 1.3 for him and he was very impressed.
"Now, I'm not stupid! I'd like to point that out. I've used computers every day for 17 years and I couldn't figure something out!"
And I've used computers for 7 years and I could figure it out? And my non-techie friend too? Something's very wrong here.
"OpenOffice, Evolution and Mozilla have completely different interfaces from each other",
What "completely different interfaces"? You have a main window, with a menu bar, toolbars, status bars, and the main content. Buttons still look like buttons and text boxes still look like text boxes. Menus still look like menus and the cursors are the same. Even the colors are the same. (The icons are not the same but I don't hear anybody complaining about that Internet Explorer's icon style is different from Wordpad's.) If I put any of my friends behind my computer they can immediately figure
And what exactly isn't "user friendly" for the common office drone?
- To write a document, click on the OpenOffice.org Writer icon. - To send email, click on the Evolution Email icon. - To browse the web, click on the Mozilla Web Browser icon. - To do anything else, click on whatever icons the company installed for you.
Common office drones don't install software (heck, they're not even allowed to). They don't spend time configuring things because everything is already configured. They don't have to use the commandline.
People always say "no Linux is not userfriendly enough" but they never say what EXACTLY is wrong! It's exactly because of this kind of trollish attitude that critics aren't being taken seriously anymore.
Dude, do you have no social skills or something? If you want a [b]volunteer[/b] to do something for you then the last thing you do is to be rude to him!!
Fedora Core 1. I have an Epson Stylus Color (USB). 1. Plug in printer power. 2. Connect printer to computer. 3. Turn printer on. 4. Turn computer on. 5. Kudzu autodetects printer at boot. 6. Type Enter. Done.
Yeah right. So GNOME and KDE will suddenly decide to drop GTK and QT and rewrite everything from scratch using the Y toolkit? Yeah right.
Contrary to popular believe, not all Windows app uses the standard Windows toolkit. MFC vs VCL vs Win32 API vs CLX vs.NET vs MS Office's vs pretty much all Norton products vs ZoneAlarm vs Photoshop (notice the weird tabs?) vs [insert hundreds of Windows app here]. Yet I don't hear people complaining about them.
And most average users can't tell the difference anyway. So one button has a gradient and the other doesn't. So one box has a 2 lines border while the other doesn't. Big deal. They still look like buttons and boxes. My nearly-computer-illiterate dad can't tell the difference between a GTK and a QT app (using their default themes). A button is a button, period. And recent distributions like RedHat 8+ or Mandrake 9+ use unified themes which make the difference almost completely disappear.
"Okay, every time we talk about fixing it and proposing ideas,"
Uhm no, you get flamed because people don't propose (sane) ideas. People only complain, people insult developers personally, people insult the software, people say things like "REPLACE IT!!!". None of them are ideas.
What really saddens me is that people think they are contributing ideas while in reality they are only insulting other people/things, and they don't even realize that.
"Think of the apps out there that have an "advanced interface" button."
Advanced buttons/menus/modes/whatever don't work. Users overestimate themselves and set each application into advanced mode or click on the Advanced button and either get confused or mess things up. It's also a support nightmare ("Turn on option X", "I don't see option X", "Oh, you aren't in advanced mode?"). Sawfish had beginner/intermediate/advanced modes. Nautilus had beginner/intermediate/advanced modes. Everybody (including beginners) overestimate themselves and set advanced mode. Windows has "Advanced..." buttons but people, even beginners, click on them anyway and screw up their entire system. This has been proven in practice many times.
Not only that, some people don't even want to see "Advanced.." buttons. No, they don't want an option to hide those buttons either. They want everything to be as simple as possible and Just Work(tm). On the other side, you have people who want hundreds of options and a GUI for each and every option. Those people don't want "Advanced.." butons either, they want every option in the GUI by default.
Conclusion: they are mutually exclusive. One size does not, and will never, fit all. That's why choice exist in the first place! One size cannot fit all!
"Why the hell aren't they one desktop project that is both uber-customizable yet focusing on KISS usability issues?"
Do you even know what KISS means? Keep It Simple and Stupid! Uber-customizability and uber-simplicity are two mutually exclusive things. It's like trying to make hot ice!
"And what will you do in the case, when you want to change some option in GNOME, only to find out that you can't do it?"
Think a step further. Why do you want to change it? If you want to change it then there's probably something wrong with the default configuration, or you want to unbreak something. The obvious solution is to either fix the bug, or provide a better default configuration.
And this, my friend, is the GNOME philosophy. GNOME is not KDE. It has different goals and is targeted towards a different audience. Saying KDE is better than GNOME is like saying apples are better than oranges.
"Wasn't GNOME itself founded for political reasons?"
Just because it was doesn't mean it still is. If GNOME *only* exists because of political reasons then it must have died a long time ago because QT is now GPL'ed. Yet it still exists. That means GNOME's existance is definitely not entirely political.
And GNOME's goals are differen than KDE's. Comparing the one to the other and say A must die because B is "better" is like saying oranges must die because apples are better.
"Isn't it still considered technically inferior to the project it was created to compete/fight against?"
No. It's technically different, not inferior.
"And doesn't it owe much of its success to Miguel's and Nat's marketing and takeovers?"
GNOME was popular long before Ximian/HelixCode was founded.
"And aren't those GNOME leaders also on the board of a commercial company these days?"
So? Everybody these days keeps complaining that Linux needs more commercial software.
Then don't enable the GUI. It's that simple. All that's left is a window with *only* the video in it, without annoying controls -- simple, intuitive, to-the-point.
It's called mplayer. Extremely fast, extremely light and unbloated, and Just Works(tm). No need to download DivX/QuickTime/whatever codecs - it Just Works(tm). Even WMP can't compare to that.
Fast forward? Press the Right arrow key, or the Up arrow key. Full screen? Press F. Pause? Press space (just like in WMP 6.4) or P. All very simple, all very, very intuitive. Unlike WMP, where you have to get out of full screen, move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse, and then try to point a menu item to do anything.
Mplayer is far better and easier to use than WMP. I even made it my prefferred media player on Win32.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very good illustration of the attitude I describe in my original post: "Ironically, it seems a lot of the remaining programmers try to make things better than the standards, instead of following them, ignoring the fact that a new standard is better than the old one only if it actually becomes a standard.""
And ironically this totally conflicts with all the people who complain that open source never innovates. When you copy your competition's "good old tried before" interface, people complain that open source only copies other stuff and don't innovate. When you *do* come up with a new interface, people complain that open source developers create confusing interfaces. *sigh*
"That's exactly the kind of attitude I'm talking about."
No it isn't. You seem to not know about something, so I inform you about it. And that's it! People in the Windows community would tell me the very same thing if I can't figure out how to use a particular Windows app!
And learning this is a matter of 5 seconds. You read the text in 5 seconds, and you know it. This isn't "relearning everything" like you say.
"10000 users times 1 hour gives about five man years lost to bad usability. For simple actions. In one application."
Back in the days when office people were first introduced to computers, they had to spend time learning it too. Let's say they needed a week to learn the computer. 100 users x 1 week = 100 man weeks of productivity lost. Does that mean they should have stayed with pen & paper instead?
The right mouse button approach in Gimp has a very real usability advantage. Instead of moving your mouse *every single time* to the top, you can rightclick on *anywhere* in the image to get the menu. This is faster - see Fitt's Law. Not only that, each menu can be torn off, so you have keep often used menus around which you can access in 1 click.
I've used both Paint Shop Pro and Gimp for a long time now and I much prefer Gimp's interface. It's faster to work in Gimp than PSP.
And no, I'm not a Unix elitist or whatever you want to call me. I started with Windows 95 and later switched to Linux. I've used both PSP and Gimp for more than just a few hours and I can honestly say Gimp's interface works better and faster for me.
"I had a deadline, one day's work on a Word document I had been emailed. OpenOffice 1.0 which I had faithfully installed would crash on opening it. Now I wanted to upgrade but it would take days and money to download 80MB for OOo1.1 on my 64Kbps. So, I installed OpenOffice 1.1 on my VPS halfway around the world and tried over X (ouch,laggy) I was able to open it but it was too laggy"
This is a bug, you should report it. OpenOffice does not crash at startup for me or any of the other computers I've installed it on. Your configuration is unique, you should inform the authors so they can fix it.
This problem has got nothing to do with "OSS developers not caring about usability" or whatever, and everything to do with bugs. There are plenty of commercial software that crash at startup too. Again, report this problem to the authors.
"To me the Gimp interface compared to Photoshop sucks, it takes much longer to do things and there is not as much visual integration with docking pallettes that help you do things half automatically"
That's because you've used Photoshop for a long time and you naturally expect all image editing programs to look the same.
To me, Paint Shop Pro's interface sucks compared to Gimp's. When I first started using Gimp, it was confusing. But when I first started using Paint Shop Pro, it was confusing too!
Now I've gotten used to both Paint Shop Pro and Gimp's interfaces, and I have to say I *much* prefer Gimp over Paint Shop Pro. It's much easier to use Gimp's tool windows and switching between documents.
"whereas with Gimp it's half-done contextual menu idea always has you searching a single menu tree, until you break parts of it off every time."
1. Didn't you know you can tear off any menu you want? Click on that stippled line on top of each menu. I use this feature very often and it absolutely rocks and allows me to access menu items much faster than Paint Shop Pro.
2. Gimp 1.3 has a global menu bar.
"This may sound funny but if you look at eazel you can see that it is extremely difficult to get interface design and user experience professionals to work on linux and not go bankrupt!"
And why do you blame Linux for this? Your argument is flawed. The reason Eazel went bankrupt is because 1) their business strategy was flawed 2) the Linux desktop market was still small.
Heck, every operating system besides Windows has the same problem! The company behind BeOS, which is praised by many people, also went bankrupt. Does that mean it's extremely difficult to get interface design and user experience professionals to work on BeOS and not go bankrupt, and that it's all BeOS's fault?
Not to mention that you completely ignore the fact that companies like Ximian are still alive and doing well, and that Sun contributed many usability experts and studies to the GNOME project. If you've ever talked to the authors of apps like gedit or Epiphany then you know that they put *a lot* of priority in usability.
"What do you think?"
I think you have the wrong view of what's going on. The situation is not simply "OSS developers don't care about usability. Kick them and hire usability experts and everything will magically improve quickly". I suggest that you go read mailing lists like the GNOME Usability Project's more often to understand that:
1) A lot of OSS developers *do* care about usability.
2) A lot of them (yes including volunteer ones) do care about users - provided that those users are polite and helpful.
3) Usability is not an easy thing, nor a one-size-fits-all. Every "improvement" suggested by usability experts may raise a lot of critism by people who don't agree.
4) They're working very hard to improve usability, though there's still lots of work left to be done.
5) Rome isn't built in one day but the situation *is* improving. If you compare today's Linux desktop with that of 2 years ago you'll see huge improvements.
6) Not every OSS developer is like this. But then again, not every human is the same. Elitist Windows developers also exist. Don't try to generalize things, that will only piss off people.
"But when I first saw it, I had no idea even on where to start to explore the application."
The first time you start Gimp, it shows a Tips window telling you that most actions are done using the right mouse button.
Anybody who points out a difficult problem and flame down the authors and care more about flaming down the authors than having the problem fixed is a troll.
"Once things get beyond a certain threshold I will be more than happy to spend time on it, until then, I'm sorry, but I don't have the time to find the 20 different people responsible for this or that piece of software and then contact them in whatever way they prefer to be communicated with."
In other words, you'd rather want the software to stay crappy so you can continue to flame OSS down?
Don't pretend Windows is perfect. It isn't. I know tons of Windows software that have similar issues. I know tons of people in the Windows community who are elitist. And do I hear people complaining about them? No. It's always Linux that's bad. Always.
This sounds like a bug. Have you tried filling a bug report instead of ranting at Slashdot? Or tried to politely persuade the MC developers to treat the Esc key correctly?
And F10 is the key to quit.
Yeah and the thousands of other users say OpenOffice is a very good program? Heck, even computer magazines say OpenOffice is a good program.
You can't please everybody. Just because you're one of the few who say OpenOffice's UI sucks doesn't mean OpenOffice really sucks.
How's OpenOffice not usable? It's interface is almost exactly the same as MS Office. How's Mozilla not usable? It's interface is very similar to IE's.
Heck, OpenOffice is based on StarOffice, which was commercial software. The interface hasn't changed that much. Just because it's open source now, it's usability magically became worse? That makes no sense.
You say usability of OSS software often sucks. Yeah let's forget about many of the good apps out there. Mozilla Firefox, Epiphany, gedit (or "Web Browser" and "Text Editor" as the menu items are called, in case you want to complain about naming), FileZilla, Evolution, Red Carpet, just to name a few.
Let's face it: bad user interfaces are *everywhere*, not just among open source software!
Have you never downloaded a Windows freeware app or something? And I know lots of commercial software with horible user interfaces.
And the only reason why you say Gimp's UI sucks is because you've never used it before and has only used it for a while. Back in my early days, I only knew how to use MS Paint. Then I download Paint Shop Pro. And guess what - I had lots of trouble working with it! I couldn't figure out how to do trivial things that can be done easily in MS Paint. After several months of playing around with it, I finally felt more comfortable with it.
Then came Linux and Gimp. At first, I found Gimp very confusing, just like when I started with Paint Shop Pro! After several months of working with it, I felt more and more comfortable. And soon Gimp became my preferred image editing program. Yes you read what I wrote: I prefer it over PSP!
Now I'm using Gimp 1.3, which has a GUI that's much more easy, efficient, powerful, and polished. I found Gimp 1.2 floating tool windows a little annoying (though not nearly as annoying as PSP's window-in-window tool windows!!). Gimp 1.3 got rid of that final complaint I had, and gave me even more than that. Gimp 1.3 even allows you to set the Utility window manager hints for tool windows, which means tool windows won't show up in the taskbar, but will get raised if you click on the Gimp main palette. Gimp 1.3 also gives me a global menu bar, which I don't really need (rightclicks works just as well, if not better) but is still nice.
Gimp's MDI approach gives me some very real advantages. I can Alt-Tab between documents. And I can switch between documents in one click (click on taskbar button) instead of two (Window menu-> select menu item).
Gimp is a good program, period. Well you bought Photoshop, good for you. Gimp fulfills my graphics needs, for free, and it better than Paint Sho Pro, a commercial app.
About a year ago I introduced my non-techie friend to Linux. I installed Linux for him so no, he didn't get into any configuration problems. It's just like getting Windows preinstalled. He calls Linux "very userfriendly, stable and easy". He says that Gimp is a "good and powerful program", even though he did think the UI is a little weird. But got used to the UI very quickly and is now very productive with it. Recently I installed Gimp 1.3 for him and he was very impressed.
"Now, I'm not stupid! I'd like to point that out. I've used computers every day for 17 years and I couldn't figure something out!"
And I've used computers for 7 years and I could figure it out? And my non-techie friend too? Something's very wrong here.
"OpenOffice, Evolution and Mozilla have completely different interfaces from each other",
What "completely different interfaces"? You have a main window, with a menu bar, toolbars, status bars, and the main content. Buttons still look like buttons and text boxes still look like text boxes. Menus still look like menus and the cursors are the same. Even the colors are the same. (The icons are not the same but I don't hear anybody complaining about that Internet Explorer's icon style is different from Wordpad's.)
If I put any of my friends behind my computer they can immediately figure
And what exactly isn't "user friendly" for the common office drone?
- To write a document, click on the OpenOffice.org Writer icon.
- To send email, click on the Evolution Email icon.
- To browse the web, click on the Mozilla Web Browser icon.
- To do anything else, click on whatever icons the company installed for you.
Common office drones don't install software (heck, they're not even allowed to). They don't spend time configuring things because everything is already configured. They don't have to use the commandline.
People always say "no Linux is not userfriendly enough" but they never say what EXACTLY is wrong! It's exactly because of this kind of trollish attitude that critics aren't being taken seriously anymore.
Dude, do you have no social skills or something? If you want a [b]volunteer[/b] to do something for you then the last thing you do is to be rude to him!!
Fedora Core 1. I have an Epson Stylus Color (USB).
1. Plug in printer power.
2. Connect printer to computer.
3. Turn printer on.
4. Turn computer on.
5. Kudzu autodetects printer at boot.
6. Type Enter. Done.
X isn't "emulated". X is a protocol. You *can* write an X server that runs on top of Y or Windows or MacOS X or whatever.
Yeah right. So GNOME and KDE will suddenly decide to drop GTK and QT and rewrite everything from scratch using the Y toolkit? Yeah right.
.NET vs MS Office's vs pretty much all Norton products vs ZoneAlarm vs Photoshop (notice the weird tabs?) vs [insert hundreds of Windows app here]. Yet I don't hear people complaining about them.
Contrary to popular believe, not all Windows app uses the standard Windows toolkit. MFC vs VCL vs Win32 API vs CLX vs
And most average users can't tell the difference anyway. So one button has a gradient and the other doesn't. So one box has a 2 lines border while the other doesn't. Big deal. They still look like buttons and boxes. My nearly-computer-illiterate dad can't tell the difference between a GTK and a QT app (using their default themes). A button is a button, period.
And recent distributions like RedHat 8+ or Mandrake 9+ use unified themes which make the difference almost completely disappear.
"Okay, every time we talk about fixing it and proposing ideas,"
Uhm no, you get flamed because people don't propose (sane) ideas. People only complain, people insult developers personally, people insult the software, people say things like "REPLACE IT!!!". None of them are ideas.
What really saddens me is that people think they are contributing ideas while in reality they are only insulting other people/things, and they don't even realize that.
"If GNOME takes the KISS principle too far they are just going to drive the power users to another alternative."
So? Power users aren't GNOME's target audience. That's the whole point!
"Think of the apps out there that have an "advanced interface" button."
Advanced buttons/menus/modes/whatever don't work. Users overestimate themselves and set each application into advanced mode or click on the Advanced button and either get confused or mess things up. It's also a support nightmare ("Turn on option X", "I don't see option X", "Oh, you aren't in advanced mode?").
Sawfish had beginner/intermediate/advanced modes. Nautilus had beginner/intermediate/advanced modes. Everybody (including beginners) overestimate themselves and set advanced mode. Windows has "Advanced..." buttons but people, even beginners, click on them anyway and screw up their entire system. This has been proven in practice many times.
Not only that, some people don't even want to see "Advanced.." buttons. No, they don't want an option to hide those buttons either. They want everything to be as simple as possible and Just Work(tm).
On the other side, you have people who want hundreds of options and a GUI for each and every option. Those people don't want "Advanced.." butons either, they want every option in the GUI by default.
Conclusion: they are mutually exclusive. One size does not, and will never, fit all. That's why choice exist in the first place! One size cannot fit all!
"Why the hell aren't they one desktop project that is both uber-customizable yet focusing on KISS usability issues?"
Do you even know what KISS means? Keep It Simple and Stupid! Uber-customizability and uber-simplicity are two mutually exclusive things. It's like trying to make hot ice!
The Edit menu is not invisible!!!
So? Every time someone critisizes Microsoft, the MS zealots troll about Linux even though Linux wasn't even mentioned.
"Does Nautilus have a shortage of developers"
Yes.
"And what will you do in the case, when you want to change some option in GNOME, only to find out that you can't do it?"
Think a step further. Why do you want to change it? If you want to change it then there's probably something wrong with the default configuration, or you want to unbreak something. The obvious solution is to either fix the bug, or provide a better default configuration.
And this, my friend, is the GNOME philosophy.
GNOME is not KDE. It has different goals and is targeted towards a different audience. Saying KDE is better than GNOME is like saying apples are better than oranges.
"Wasn't GNOME itself founded for political reasons?"
Just because it was doesn't mean it still is. If GNOME *only* exists because of political reasons then it must have died a long time ago because QT is now GPL'ed. Yet it still exists. That means GNOME's existance is definitely not entirely political.
And GNOME's goals are differen than KDE's. Comparing the one to the other and say A must die because B is "better" is like saying oranges must die because apples are better.
"Isn't it still considered technically inferior to the project it was created to compete/fight against?"
No. It's technically different, not inferior.
"And doesn't it owe much of its success to Miguel's and Nat's marketing and takeovers?"
GNOME was popular long before Ximian/HelixCode was founded.
"And aren't those GNOME leaders also on the board of a commercial company these days?"
So? Everybody these days keeps complaining that Linux needs more commercial software.
Then don't enable the GUI. It's that simple.
All that's left is a window with *only* the video in it, without annoying controls -- simple, intuitive, to-the-point.
It's called mplayer. Extremely fast, extremely light and unbloated, and Just Works(tm). No need to download DivX/QuickTime/whatever codecs - it Just Works(tm). Even WMP can't compare to that.
Fast forward? Press the Right arrow key, or the Up arrow key.
Full screen? Press F.
Pause? Press space (just like in WMP 6.4) or P.
All very simple, all very, very intuitive. Unlike WMP, where you have to get out of full screen, move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse, and then try to point a menu item to do anything.
Mplayer is far better and easier to use than WMP. I even made it my prefferred media player on Win32.