File management (with GUI) is actually one of the most useful applications of drag and drop technique. Having two or more small file manager windows open and dragging and dropping files between them is very intuitive and comfortable. This, in my opinion at least, requires spatial file manager (like Nautilus, OS/2 Workplace Shell, Finder (in spatial mode), Gnustep GWorkpace.app (in spatial mode)) to be really usable. Gigantic MS Explorer windows are really not good enough for this type of task. You may want to say: "But that's what copy/cut-paste is for" but I have to say that copy-pasting files between file manager windows always feels uncomfortable, inelegant and most of all: inefficient (this is naturally just be my personal opinion, but still). I would also much rather just drag and drop text/pictures/whatever than copy/paste it.
I would like to see dnd techiques better supported in Linux desktop apps. It would be really nice if I could, for example, drag a picture from a web browser window into a mail client or word processor window... (didn't work with Epiphany and OpenOffice (gnome 2.8))
For people to migrate easily to OOo, it has to feel like a clone of MS Office. When its userbase will be significant enough, it will afford deviating from the norm.
Changing the UI afterwards will probably not work. Look at Gnome for example. It was first (in the 1.x days) mostly a "Windows clone" (start menu, Explorer-like filemanager, etc etc etc). These things were changed in the 2.x series. Mostly the changes (like new dialogs, better desktop/app launcher menus, spatial Nautilus in 2.6 etc) really improved usability a lot. Still there were (and probably still are) users who were most annoyed by these changes and probably many people switched to KDE which is more Windows and Gnome 1.x like system than Gnome 2.x.
My point is that once your users come to expect certain type of UI it is very difficult to introduce different UI afterwards. One thing that I have learned reading complaints about Gnome 2.x and also by observing some users moving from Windows 98 to Windows XP is this: Users hate changes. It does not matter how small or large the differences are. People are just going to complain: "Why did the developers have to change this? Why can't OO/Gnome/Windows/Foo version N work and look just like version N-1?"
At the moment it seems that FF is a bit more secure than IE. FF might however not be as secure as it possibly could be. Maybe FF developers should do security audits just like OpenBSD team does. I think audits and emphasis on overall code correctness would be a great competitive advantage against IE.
That's because developers don't want to pay for RHEL in order to build packages against it. Really, can you blame them?
No. I can't.
But you paid RedHat all that money. Tell them to get off their asses and package the software you want to use for that distribution you paid too much for.
I didn't pay anything and I am really glad I didn't. I am using Scientific Linux 4.0 (a distro built using RHEL4 srpms). I installed it because I had some compiler problems with Debian Sarge and Ubuntu. Their gcc version didn't compile Geant4 simulation toolkit properly and I didn't have time to fix things so I had to install something else and I just happened to choose Scientific Linux 4 (I figured that at least SL4 would have a compiler version that would work with Geant4). Now I have simulations and data analysis code on that system and it would be just too much trouble to format and install Debian, Geant4, ROOT data analysis framework and all the custom C++ scripts I have written during last few months. I won't switch to another distro before I have finished the project.
The package repository is indeed important. I think Debian's strict packaging guidelines and quality control have made first-class repository possible.
For several months I have tried using RHEL4 system and it has been quite frustrating. APT is there and RPM is actually quite good low-level package manager. However there are no software packages! It seems like nobody wants to build packages for RHEL. Several important things are missing: Totem video player, Evince document viewer, Gtkmm devel libs, Epiphany, AucTeX and Inkscape to name a few. As soon as I have a chance I will convert the box to Debian or BSD.
Yes... BSD + GNUStep would be extremely nice combination. I tried GNUStep a few weeks ago and it really is promising from technical point of view. However there is one really huge problem: lack of GNUStep software. No development/desktop environment is of any good if there are no native apps that run on it!
We can only hope that awesome ideas from NextStep/GNUStep are some day "assimilated" into GNOME.
The notion that spatial metaphor breaks down when user has lots of files is a myth. I have lots of files and spatial nautilus works just fine. I can even open folders like/usr/local/share/doc/something-someversion without any trouble at all. It should also be noted that when I navigate to that directory I have only one window open at any time (ctrl + double click or double click with mouse wheel are your friends). One of the most important tricks of using spatial filemanagers is to use the very feature that makes the thing spatial: set suitable view options, icon placement, emblems, background, window position and window size for the folders (or at least for the most important ones). Many people don't use the benefits of spatial mode at all. This just shows that many people find spatial nautilus difficult to use just because it is different from navigational filemanagers they are used to.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that gnome developers made a terrible mistake by not including "switch to legacy navigational mode" option in the nautilus preferences dialog in Gnome 2.6. This was fixed in 2.8.
As for the filechooser dialog I can't say I agree with you. I liked the new dialog from the very beginning (Gnome 2.6). I sometimes use legacy gtk1.2 apps and I have to say boy that old dialog is clunky and annoying. I basically never write filenames to the dialog. In my opinion it sort of like defeats the whole puprpose of having graphical UI. I am also very glad that gnome developers didn't include any way to "switch back." Think about the following scenario: Joe the Average opens preferences dialog, clicks some checkbox by mistake and suddenly all filechoosers are completely different! Then Mr. Average doesn't think: "What a cool config option!", he thinks "This shitty Linux thingy is broken."
The Gnome developers are often accused of having we-know-better-than-you attitude. In some cases they may indeed have such tendencies. However I have found that sometimes they indeed know better! I find spatial nautilus, new dialogs and simplified preferences panels very nice to use. Gnome 2.8 and 2.10 indeed provide me with the most efficient and pleasant graphical UI I have ever used (the only thing that might be better than spatial nautilus is OS/2 workplace shell).
First I must make a small correction: I have never been a Mac user. I have only tried MacOS 7.5 on an emulator and OS 8.3 on an iMac a few times. In fact I have used Unix and Unix-like systems (GNU/Linux, BSD, Tru64 (Digital Unix), Solaris) for about nine years. Before I tried any Unix-system I was an OS/2 user. In many ways OS/2 Workplace Shell was perhaps the best file manager I have used. Spatial Nautilus gets close but its template system for example just isn't even nearly as good as that of Warp 3.0 and 4.0. On the other hand GNOME beats OS/2 in terms of general usability like for example file chooser dialog.
Frankly I don't care much about how popular GNOME, KDE, Mac or Windows is. I use what works for me. Those who don't like spatial Nautilus are free to switch it to browser mode or use KDE, XFCE or whatever. As for intuitiveness I and several people that I have taught to use GNOME find new dialogs vastly more intuitive and usable than the old ones (unfortunately there are still some gtk1 applications, yuck). Also if popularity is really important why don't we just quit GNOME, KDE, Linux etc. projects and start using Windows instead...
Also we should remember that the article was talking about a poll on some website. For example I find it a bit difficult to believe that Debian is the leading Linux desktop distribution (I use Debian Sarge as my desktop and love it btw). I honestly believe that Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE etc are a lot more popular on the desktop largely because of their easy installation/administration tools and more current software.
Established conventions are just some guidelines, nothing more. GNOME developers just came up with better UI guidelines. Some people don't like these changes. If everyone just followed established conventions we would still be using DOS/Win3.1/CDE/OpenLook/(insert any obsolete ui of your choice here).
Now on the matter of KDE... I really like KDE technology. I would probably use Qt (or even KDE libs) for my own gui C++ apps. I have used Qt a bit and I really like it's API. I want to emphasize that I do not hate KDE. However I find its UI too cluttered and full of everything. I also find its dialogs cumbersome and unintuitive to use. I like the minimalistic style of GNOME (and MacOS).
As a side note: You might ask: "If you like Mac style UI design in GNOME so much, why don't you use a Mac?" MacOS X is an interesting system, but I think that I will not switch. I don't actually like Apple secrecy, patents and annoying marketspeak like http://www.apple.com/macmini/graphics.html.
Debian community is a lot more trustworthy "OS vendor" than Apple.
You unfortunately misunderstood my point. That was probably my fault since I wrote that post in a hurry. My point was merely that gnome hardly has monopoly of any kind in UI inconsistencies. Windows is generally considered as something that has been designed with end users in mind and this makes it a very good "reference point" so to speak... err write. I agree that UI problems in Windows don't justify GNOME (or KDE or whateverDE) to have those as well.
Windows is at best a mediocre UI so it indeed isn't a suitable "role model" for GNOME. Actually one must remember that all interfaces have their warts so GNOME people shouldn't blindly try to clone any DE (not even OSX).
I never wrote anything about UI consistency. I however agree that those toolbars could use some improvement with respect to consistency. That screenshot rather nicely demonstrated your point so I feel that I must now return the favor: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kaitanie/UI/Windows/Sc reenshots/FunnyScreenshot.jpg I found this screenshot during web browsing and it very nicely demonstrates UI inconsistencies in Windows. Look at the toolbars!
I used to think that graphical filemanagers all suck. I didn't like Windows Explorer, pre-spatial Nautilus, gmc or Konqueror. I used only command line for file management. The first time I tried spatial browsing was on MacOS System 7.5 running on Basilisk II Mac 68k emulator (this was a few years back) and after 15 minutes or so I found that it was something I actually enjoyed using. I thought: "This Finder thingy is insanely great. Why can't GNOME or KDE people do something like this?" And then, soon after GNOME 2.6 was released, I bought a new computer and installed Slackware 10 on it. Using spatial Nautilus and the entire GNOME 2.6 environment was absolutely wonderful! It was the best user experience I had ever had (I have used Windows, OpenLook, CDE, GNOME 1.x, KDE, FVWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, OS/2 Warp and Indigo Magic (on SGI O2 workstation running Irix)). Now I use GNOME 2.10 on Ubuntu and FreeBSD. I do most of my personal file management tasks using spatial Nautilus. I actually use command line only for file management related to system administration (bash + vi rule in those tasks). I have to wonder why I like GNOME 2.10 and spatial Nautilus so much?
One reason for this is that spatial nautilus is extremely simple and fast to use. For me using spatial file managers is very intuitive and natural. A good analysis on spatial filemanagers is found at: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars
Other parts of GNOME 2.10 are also very nice. I really like the way GNOME 2.10 handles filetypes and connecting them to certain applications. It is so intuitive and effortless to use that it puts the abomination known as Windows Filetypes dialog to shame!
GNOME dialogs are also awesome. The new open and save dialogs are finally usable (again: simple, fast, effortless, efficient). They are vastly superior to the pre Gtk 2.4 dialogs. As for other dialogs, they are also extremely nice and logical. Finally we have gotten over annoying "Yes/No or OK/Cancel -dialogs should be enough for anyone". Using verbs in dialogs (when it makes sense, that is) is a huge improvement!
In my opinion GNOME has become a lot better desktop environment than anything Microsoft has ever had. I used to hate gnome in the 1.x days because it was just like Windows 9x. If I wanted to use Windows-like environment I would probably use Windows.
I used to think that graphical filemanagers all suck. I didn't like Windows Explorer, pre-spatial Nautilus, gmc or Konqueror. I used only command line for file management. The first time I tried spatial browsing was on MacOS System 7.5 running on Basilisk II Mac 68k emulator (this was a few years back) and after 15 minutes or so I found that it was something I actually enjoyed using. I thought: "This Finder thingy is insanely great. Why can't GNOME or KDE people do something like this?" And then, soon after GNOME 2.6 was released, I bought a new computer and installed Slackware 10 on it. Using spatial Nautilus and the entire GNOME 2.6 environment was absolutely wonderful! It was the best user experience I had ever had (I have used Windows, OpenLook, CDE, GNOME 1.x, KDE, FVWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, OS/2 Warp and Indigo Magic (on SGI O2 workstation running Irix)). Now I use GNOME 2.10 on Ubuntu and FreeBSD. I do most of my personal file management tasks using spatial Nautilus. I actually use command line only for file management related to system administration (bash + vi rule in those tasks). I have to wonder why I like GNOME 2.10 and spatial Nautilus so much?
One reason for this is that spatial nautilus is extremely simple and fast to use. For me using spatial file managers is very intuitive and natural. A good analysis on spatial filemanagers is found
here.
Other parts of GNOME 2.10 are also very nice. I really like the way GNOME 2.10 handles filetypes and connecting them to certain applications. It is so intuitive and effortless to use that it puts the abomination known as Windows Filetypes dialog to shame!
GNOME dialogs are also awesome. The new open and save dialogs are finally usable (again: simple, fast, effortless, efficient). They are vastly superior to the pre Gtk 2.4 dialogs. As for other dialogs, they are also extremely nice and logical. Finally we have gotten over annoying "Yes/No or OK/Cancel -dialogs should be enough for anyone". Using verbs in dialogs (when it makes sense, that is) is a huge improvement!
Finally, to sum everything up: Great work GNOME developers! Keep up the good work!
If I remember correctly i960 processors were used in some SGI graphics systems (RealityEngine or InfiniteReality). I don't know it SGI uses i960s anymore.
As far as I know OpenFirmware isn't used in Alphas. They have SRM firmware which is also quite nice. There is/was also ARC/AlphaBIOS firmware that was used primarily on Alphas that were sold as Windows NT machines. Real operating systems (OpenVMS, Tru64, *BSD, Linux etc.) use SRM console firmware (Linux can also use AlphaBIOS to boot).
There is a better way. My alpha has two different firmwares: SRM for Tru64 (Digital Unix) and OpenVMS operating systems and ARC for Windows NT. I can switch from SRM to ARC using command: "set os_type nt" and then "init". If I want to go from ARC to SRM I just choose "switch to OpenVMS or Digital Unix console" or something like that from ARC menu and power-cycle the machine.
The Alpha architechture specification actually (if memory serves) does not define any console firmware. This means that the OS vendor can write his own firmware for his own OS.
I think it would be great if PCs had these features: 1) There could be multiple (at least two) firmware images stored in firmware chip 2) OS developers could develop their own firmware
Then if someone could port OpenBoot/OpenFirmware (used in Sun UltraSPARC and Apple Macintosh systems) to PCs...
I have 6+ years old AlphaServer 2000 5/250 (250 Mhz 21164 CPU with 4MB cache, 256MB RAM, 2GB hard drive) and I run the very latest Tru64 Unix 5.1B on it. There are absolutely no problems at all. I can run Netscape 6, XEmacs, C compiler (DEC/Compaq/HP compiler of course), LaTeX, OpenOffice, etc).
This system can have two CPUs. I think I will buy two 375 Mhz 21164A CPUs with 8MB cache/CPU (fastest CPUs for this model). Not that I need to upgrade but I think it might be fun.
AlphaServer with Tru64 Unix Pros:
- CPU and memory failover
- AdvFS filesystem
- clean architechture
- excellent SRM firmware
- OS and hardware are designed to work together
- very nice administration tools
- good documentation
Cons:
- can't play games
- AS2000 is big (weight: 50kg)
- Tru64 licenses (additional licenses for additional CPUs etc)
CDE is very nice environment if you know how to use and configure it. I use it on my Alpha and I haven't even installed gnome and kde that came with Tru64 Unix.
This whole "which DE is the best" type of discussion is indeed very subjective. My favourite desktop environment is the good old CDE. It does everything I need it to do. I also like its simplicity and stability. CDE doesn't have any eye candy but I can live with it.
I could ask for at least two things:
1. Better firmware would be quite good. Are they going to use that BIOS thing on x86-64? Something like SRM firmware or OpenFirmware (aka OpenBoot on Sun systems) would be extremely nice.
2. Alphas, Suns or other RISC/Unix machines are extremely well designed and built products. They are relatively bulletproof. On the other hand most of the x86 systems I have bought/encountered seem to have various reliability problems (and I don't mean those all too well known Windows related problems). My PC for example has a most annoying problem: Certain filesystems (ext2, ext3, FreeBSD's UFS) cause filesystem corruption. Fsck can't fix it. I don't think that this is a bug in those operating systems. They work quite well on other machines. One filesystem that is reliable on my PC is reiserfs. It has never caused filesystem corruption. Also Win98 FAT and FAT32 work well.
Fortunately I now have old AlphaServer 2000 5/250 at home. It is reasonably fast (250Mhz 21164 4MB cache) and extremely reliable. Tru64 Unix and Alpha hardware is a very nice combination and it has most of the tools I need (Netscape, C and Fortran compilers, Emacs, vi, LaTeX, Motif, CDE). My next project is to get two 375Mhz 21164A processors (fastest models for this machine as far as I know).
A couple of months ago I bought used Digital AlphaServer 2000 5/250. I am running Tru64 5.1B(former Digital Unix) on it. I really like Tru64. It is very reliable, efficient, has great administration tools and excellent documentation.
The best thing however is that Tru64 and Alpha hardware are very well integrated. OS can detect and configure hardware automatically. It can also (together with the great SRM firmware) monitor various components in case of a (very rare) hardware failure.
One of the worst things in x86 world is BIOS. It's limitations practically force operating systems not to use its services. On the Alpha however OS can rely on SRM console. This is a very nice thing. Two examples (AlphaServer 2000 has these nice features):
1. SMP CPU failover: AS2000 tests cpus when it is doing its hardware diagnostics and if it finds a cpu that is broken it simply disables this cpu (provided that there is another cpu to use as the primary cpu).
2. Memory failover: AS2000 can detect bad pages in RAM and disable them.
Most x86 systems don't have these features, Alpha and Sun systems have. Linux is not the primary problem here, clumsy x86 hardware is. I have read somewhere that Linux can do something like memory failover (something similar at least), but my point is that the hardware (and BIOS) should do it, not the operating system. X86 would be so much better if BIOS was replaced with OpenFirmware or something similar.
I agree. X86 should be dead by now. Why can't Intel or AMD build something like Alpha? It is very clean and efficient 64-bit architechture and it has been around from 1992.
Unix has a standard GUI called CDE. I use it on my Alpha. I must admit that CDE is quite old and it isn't the most beautiful desktop around but I think it works quite well.
Some of the good features of CDE are:
1. FrontPanel offers fast access to applications.
2. Application Manager is much better way to start programs than start-menu (and its clones).
3. Filemanager is a good basic filemanager without too much bloat. I don't want my filemanager to view images or web pages, play music etc. These features can be useful to many people, but I simply don't need them.
4. CDE is based on Motif which is the standard Unix widget set.
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File management (with GUI) is actually one of the most useful applications of drag and drop technique. Having two or more small file manager windows open and dragging and dropping files between them is very intuitive and comfortable. This, in my opinion at least, requires spatial file manager (like Nautilus, OS/2 Workplace Shell, Finder (in spatial mode), Gnustep GWorkpace.app (in spatial mode)) to be really usable. Gigantic MS Explorer windows are really not good enough for this type of task. You may want to say: "But that's what copy/cut-paste is for" but I have to say that copy-pasting files between file manager windows always feels uncomfortable, inelegant and most of all: inefficient (this is naturally just be my personal opinion, but still). I would also much rather just drag and drop text/pictures/whatever than copy/paste it.
I would like to see dnd techiques better supported in Linux desktop apps. It would be really nice if I could, for example, drag a picture from a web browser window into a mail client or word processor window... (didn't work with Epiphany and OpenOffice (gnome 2.8))
For people to migrate easily to OOo, it has to feel like a clone of MS Office. When its userbase will be significant enough, it will afford deviating from the norm.
Changing the UI afterwards will probably not work. Look at Gnome for example. It was first (in the 1.x days) mostly a "Windows clone" (start menu, Explorer-like filemanager, etc etc etc). These things were changed in the 2.x series. Mostly the changes (like new dialogs, better desktop/app launcher menus, spatial Nautilus in 2.6 etc) really improved usability a lot. Still there were (and probably still are) users who were most annoyed by these changes and probably many people switched to KDE which is more Windows and Gnome 1.x like system than Gnome 2.x.
My point is that once your users come to expect certain type of UI it is very difficult to introduce different UI afterwards. One thing that I have learned reading complaints about Gnome 2.x and also by observing some users moving from Windows 98 to Windows XP is this: Users hate changes. It does not matter how small or large the differences are. People are just going to complain: "Why did the developers have to change this? Why can't OO/Gnome/Windows/Foo version N work and look just like version N-1?"
At the moment it seems that FF is a bit more secure than IE. FF might however not be as secure as it possibly could be. Maybe FF developers should do security audits just like OpenBSD team does. I think audits and emphasis on overall code correctness would be a great competitive advantage against IE.
That's because developers don't want to pay for RHEL in order to build packages against it. Really, can you blame them?
No. I can't.
But you paid RedHat all that money. Tell them to get off their asses and package the software you want to use for that distribution you paid too much for.
I didn't pay anything and I am really glad I didn't. I am using Scientific Linux 4.0 (a distro built using RHEL4 srpms). I installed it because I had some compiler problems with Debian Sarge and Ubuntu. Their gcc version didn't compile Geant4 simulation toolkit properly and I didn't have time to fix things so I had to install something else and I just happened to choose Scientific Linux 4 (I figured that at least SL4 would have a compiler version that would work with Geant4). Now I have simulations and data analysis code on that system and it would be just too much trouble to format and install Debian, Geant4, ROOT data analysis framework and all the custom C++ scripts I have written during last few months. I won't switch to another distro before I have finished the project.
The package repository is indeed important. I think Debian's strict packaging guidelines and quality control have made first-class repository possible.
For several months I have tried using RHEL4 system and it has been quite frustrating. APT is there and RPM is actually quite good low-level package manager. However there are no software packages! It seems like nobody wants to build packages for RHEL. Several important things are missing: Totem video player, Evince document viewer, Gtkmm devel libs, Epiphany, AucTeX and Inkscape to name a few. As soon as I have a chance I will convert the box to Debian or BSD.
Yes... BSD + GNUStep would be extremely nice combination. I tried GNUStep a few weeks ago and it really is promising from technical point of view. However there is one really huge problem: lack of GNUStep software. No development/desktop environment is of any good if there are no native apps that run on it!
We can only hope that awesome ideas from NextStep/GNUStep are some day "assimilated" into GNOME.
I think that a troll like George W. Bush should be modded down.
In fact Windows 95 did not have spatial interface at all. Opening each folder in separate window does not a spatial interface make!
The notion that spatial metaphor breaks down when user has lots of files is a myth. I have lots of files and spatial nautilus works just fine. I can even open folders like /usr/local/share/doc/something-someversion without any trouble at all. It should also be noted that when I navigate to that directory I have only one window open at any time (ctrl + double click or double click with mouse wheel are your friends). One of the most important tricks of using spatial filemanagers is to use the very feature that makes the thing spatial: set suitable view options, icon placement, emblems, background, window position and window size for the folders (or at least for the most important ones). Many people don't use the benefits of spatial mode at all. This just shows that many people find spatial nautilus difficult to use just because it is different from navigational filemanagers they are used to.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that gnome developers made a terrible mistake by not including "switch to legacy navigational mode" option in the nautilus preferences dialog in Gnome 2.6. This was fixed in 2.8.
As for the filechooser dialog I can't say I agree with you. I liked the new dialog from the very beginning (Gnome 2.6). I sometimes use legacy gtk1.2 apps and I have to say boy that old dialog is clunky and annoying. I basically never write filenames to the dialog. In my opinion it sort of like defeats the whole puprpose of having graphical UI. I am also very glad that gnome developers didn't include any way to "switch back." Think about the following scenario: Joe the Average opens preferences dialog, clicks some checkbox by mistake and suddenly all filechoosers are completely different! Then Mr. Average doesn't think: "What a cool config option!", he thinks "This shitty Linux thingy is broken."
The Gnome developers are often accused of having we-know-better-than-you attitude. In some cases they may indeed have such tendencies. However I have found that sometimes they indeed know better! I find spatial nautilus, new dialogs and simplified preferences panels very nice to use. Gnome 2.8 and 2.10 indeed provide me with the most efficient and pleasant graphical UI I have ever used (the only thing that might be better than spatial nautilus is OS/2 workplace shell).
First I must make a small correction: I have never been a Mac user. I have only tried MacOS 7.5 on an emulator and OS 8.3 on an iMac a few times. In fact I have used Unix and Unix-like systems (GNU/Linux, BSD, Tru64 (Digital Unix), Solaris) for about nine years. Before I tried any Unix-system I was an OS/2 user. In many ways OS/2 Workplace Shell was perhaps the best file manager I have used. Spatial Nautilus gets close but its template system for example just isn't even nearly as good as that of Warp 3.0 and 4.0. On the other hand GNOME beats OS/2 in terms of general usability like for example file chooser dialog.
Frankly I don't care much about how popular GNOME, KDE, Mac or Windows is. I use what works for me. Those who don't like spatial Nautilus are free to switch it to browser mode or use KDE, XFCE or whatever. As for intuitiveness I and several people that I have taught to use GNOME find new dialogs vastly more intuitive and usable than the old ones (unfortunately there are still some gtk1 applications, yuck). Also if popularity is really important why don't we just quit GNOME, KDE, Linux etc. projects and start using Windows instead...
Also we should remember that the article was talking about a poll on some website. For example I find it a bit difficult to believe that Debian is the leading Linux desktop distribution (I use Debian Sarge as my desktop and love it btw). I honestly believe that Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE etc are a lot more popular on the desktop largely because of their easy installation/administration tools and more current software.
Established conventions are just some guidelines, nothing more. GNOME developers just came up with better UI guidelines. Some people don't like these changes. If everyone just followed established conventions we would still be using DOS/Win3.1/CDE/OpenLook/(insert any obsolete ui of your choice here).
Now on the matter of KDE... I really like KDE technology. I would probably use Qt (or even KDE libs) for my own gui C++ apps. I have used Qt a bit and I really like it's API. I want to emphasize that I do not hate KDE. However I find its UI too cluttered and full of everything. I also find its dialogs cumbersome and unintuitive to use. I like the minimalistic style of GNOME (and MacOS).
As a side note: You might ask: "If you like Mac style UI design in GNOME so much, why don't you use a Mac?" MacOS X is an interesting system, but I think that I will not switch. I don't actually like Apple secrecy, patents and annoying marketspeak like http://www.apple.com/macmini/graphics.html. Debian community is a lot more trustworthy "OS vendor" than Apple.
You unfortunately misunderstood my point. That was probably my fault since I wrote that post in a hurry. My point was merely that gnome hardly has monopoly of any kind in UI inconsistencies. Windows is generally considered as something that has been designed with end users in mind and this makes it a very good "reference point" so to speak... err write. I agree that UI problems in Windows don't justify GNOME (or KDE or whateverDE) to have those as well.
Windows is at best a mediocre UI so it indeed isn't a suitable "role model" for GNOME. Actually one must remember that all interfaces have their warts so GNOME people shouldn't blindly try to clone any DE (not even OSX).
I never wrote anything about UI consistency. I however agree that those toolbars could use some improvement with respect to consistency. That screenshot rather nicely demonstrated your point so I feel that I must now return the favor: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/kaitanie/UI/Windows/S
I found this screenshot during web browsing and it very nicely demonstrates UI inconsistencies in Windows. Look at the toolbars!
I used to think that graphical filemanagers all suck. I didn't like Windows Explorer, pre-spatial Nautilus, gmc or Konqueror. I used only command line for file management. The first time I tried spatial browsing was on MacOS System 7.5 running on Basilisk II Mac 68k emulator (this was a few years back) and after 15 minutes or so I found that it was something I actually enjoyed using. I thought: "This Finder thingy is insanely great. Why can't GNOME or KDE people do something like this?" And then, soon after GNOME 2.6 was released, I bought a new computer and installed Slackware 10 on it. Using spatial Nautilus and the entire GNOME 2.6 environment was absolutely wonderful! It was the best user experience I had ever had (I have used Windows, OpenLook, CDE, GNOME 1.x, KDE, FVWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, OS/2 Warp and Indigo Magic (on SGI O2 workstation running Irix)). Now I use GNOME 2.10 on Ubuntu and FreeBSD. I do most of my personal file management tasks using spatial Nautilus. I actually use command line only for file management related to system administration (bash + vi rule in those tasks). I have to wonder why I like GNOME 2.10 and spatial Nautilus so much?
One reason for this is that spatial nautilus is extremely simple and fast to use. For me using spatial file managers is very intuitive and natural. A good analysis on spatial filemanagers is found at: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/finder.ars
Other parts of GNOME 2.10 are also very nice. I really like the way GNOME 2.10 handles filetypes and connecting them to certain applications. It is so intuitive and effortless to use that it puts the abomination known as Windows Filetypes dialog to shame!
GNOME dialogs are also awesome. The new open and save dialogs are finally usable (again: simple, fast, effortless, efficient). They are vastly superior to the pre Gtk 2.4 dialogs. As for other dialogs, they are also extremely nice and logical. Finally we have gotten over annoying "Yes/No or OK/Cancel -dialogs should be enough for anyone". Using verbs in dialogs (when it makes sense, that is) is a huge improvement!
In my opinion GNOME has become a lot better desktop environment than anything Microsoft has ever had. I used to hate gnome in the 1.x days because it was just like Windows 9x. If I wanted to use Windows-like environment I would probably use Windows.
I used to think that graphical filemanagers all suck. I didn't like Windows Explorer, pre-spatial Nautilus, gmc or Konqueror. I used only command line for file management. The first time I tried spatial browsing was on MacOS System 7.5 running on Basilisk II Mac 68k emulator (this was a few years back) and after 15 minutes or so I found that it was something I actually enjoyed using. I thought: "This Finder thingy is insanely great. Why can't GNOME or KDE people do something like this?" And then, soon after GNOME 2.6 was released, I bought a new computer and installed Slackware 10 on it. Using spatial Nautilus and the entire GNOME 2.6 environment was absolutely wonderful! It was the best user experience I had ever had (I have used Windows, OpenLook, CDE, GNOME 1.x, KDE, FVWM, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, OS/2 Warp and Indigo Magic (on SGI O2 workstation running Irix)). Now I use GNOME 2.10 on Ubuntu and FreeBSD. I do most of my personal file management tasks using spatial Nautilus. I actually use command line only for file management related to system administration (bash + vi rule in those tasks). I have to wonder why I like GNOME 2.10 and spatial Nautilus so much?
One reason for this is that spatial nautilus is extremely simple and fast to use. For me using spatial file managers is very intuitive and natural. A good analysis on spatial filemanagers is found here.
Other parts of GNOME 2.10 are also very nice. I really like the way GNOME 2.10 handles filetypes and connecting them to certain applications. It is so intuitive and effortless to use that it puts the abomination known as Windows Filetypes dialog to shame!
GNOME dialogs are also awesome. The new open and save dialogs are finally usable (again: simple, fast, effortless, efficient). They are vastly superior to the pre Gtk 2.4 dialogs. As for other dialogs, they are also extremely nice and logical. Finally we have gotten over annoying "Yes/No or OK/Cancel -dialogs should be enough for anyone". Using verbs in dialogs (when it makes sense, that is) is a huge improvement!
Finally, to sum everything up: Great work GNOME developers! Keep up the good work!
If I remember correctly i960 processors were used
in some SGI graphics systems (RealityEngine or
InfiniteReality). I don't know it SGI uses i960s
anymore.
As far as I know OpenFirmware isn't used in Alphas. They have SRM firmware which is also quite nice. There is/was also ARC/AlphaBIOS firmware that was used primarily on Alphas that were sold as Windows NT machines. Real operating systems (OpenVMS, Tru64, *BSD, Linux etc.) use SRM console firmware (Linux can also use AlphaBIOS to boot).
There is a better way. My alpha has two different firmwares: SRM for Tru64 (Digital Unix) and OpenVMS operating systems and ARC for Windows NT. I can switch from SRM to ARC using command: "set os_type nt" and then "init". If I want to go from ARC to SRM I just choose "switch to OpenVMS or Digital Unix console" or something like that from ARC menu and power-cycle the machine.
The Alpha architechture specification actually (if memory serves) does not define any console firmware. This means that the OS vendor can write his own firmware for his own OS.
I think it would be great if PCs had these features:
1) There could be multiple (at least two) firmware images stored in firmware chip
2) OS developers could develop their own firmware
Then if someone could port OpenBoot/OpenFirmware (used in Sun UltraSPARC and Apple Macintosh systems) to PCs...
I have 6+ years old AlphaServer 2000 5/250 (250 Mhz 21164 CPU with 4MB cache, 256MB RAM, 2GB hard drive) and I run the very latest Tru64 Unix 5.1B on it. There are absolutely no problems at all. I can run Netscape 6, XEmacs, C compiler (DEC/Compaq/HP compiler of course), LaTeX, OpenOffice, etc).
This system can have two CPUs. I think I will buy two 375 Mhz 21164A CPUs with 8MB cache/CPU (fastest CPUs for this model). Not that I need to upgrade but I think it might be fun.
AlphaServer with Tru64 Unix Pros:
- CPU and memory failover
- AdvFS filesystem
- clean architechture
- excellent SRM firmware
- OS and hardware are designed to work together
- very nice administration tools
- good documentation
Cons:
- can't play games
- AS2000 is big (weight: 50kg)
- Tru64 licenses (additional licenses for additional CPUs etc)
What is wrong with CDE? It is simple and efficient. I use it on my Alpha and I am quite satisfied with it.
The best alternatives to CDE would be Indigo Magic (used on SGI Irix systems, perhaps the best desktop environment I have ever used) or Window Maker.
CDE is very nice environment if you know how to use and configure it. I use it on my Alpha and I haven't even installed gnome and kde that came with Tru64 Unix.
This whole "which DE is the best" type of discussion is indeed very subjective. My favourite desktop environment is the good old CDE. It does everything I need it to do. I also like its simplicity and stability. CDE doesn't have any eye candy but I can live with it.
I could ask for at least two things:
1. Better firmware would be quite good. Are they going to use that BIOS thing on x86-64? Something like SRM firmware or OpenFirmware (aka OpenBoot on Sun systems) would be extremely nice.
2. Alphas, Suns or other RISC/Unix machines are extremely well designed and built products. They are relatively bulletproof. On the other hand most of the x86 systems I have bought/encountered seem to have various reliability problems (and I don't mean those all too well known Windows related problems). My PC for example has a most annoying problem: Certain filesystems (ext2, ext3, FreeBSD's UFS) cause filesystem corruption. Fsck can't fix it. I don't think that this is a bug in those operating systems. They work quite well on other machines. One filesystem that is reliable on my PC is reiserfs. It has never caused filesystem corruption. Also Win98 FAT and FAT32 work well.
Fortunately I now have old AlphaServer 2000 5/250 at home. It is reasonably fast (250Mhz 21164 4MB cache) and extremely reliable. Tru64 Unix and Alpha hardware is a very nice combination and it has most of the tools I need (Netscape, C and Fortran compilers, Emacs, vi, LaTeX, Motif, CDE). My next project is to get two 375Mhz 21164A processors (fastest models for this machine as far as I know).
A couple of months ago I bought used Digital AlphaServer 2000 5/250. I am running Tru64 5.1B(former Digital Unix) on it. I really like Tru64. It is very reliable, efficient, has great administration tools and excellent documentation.
The best thing however is that Tru64 and Alpha hardware are very well integrated. OS can detect and configure hardware automatically. It can also (together with the great SRM firmware) monitor various components in case of a (very rare) hardware failure.
One of the worst things in x86 world is BIOS. It's limitations practically force operating systems not to use its services. On the Alpha however OS can rely on SRM console. This is a very nice thing. Two examples (AlphaServer 2000 has these nice features):
1. SMP CPU failover: AS2000 tests cpus when it is doing its hardware diagnostics and if it finds a cpu that is broken it simply disables this cpu (provided that there is another cpu to use as the primary cpu).
2. Memory failover: AS2000 can detect bad pages in RAM and disable them.
Most x86 systems don't have these features, Alpha and Sun systems have. Linux is not the primary problem here, clumsy x86 hardware is. I have read somewhere that Linux can do something like memory failover (something similar at least), but my point is that the hardware (and BIOS) should do it, not the operating system. X86 would be so much better if BIOS was replaced with OpenFirmware or something similar.
I agree. X86 should be dead by now. Why can't Intel or AMD build something like Alpha? It is very clean and efficient 64-bit architechture and it has been around from 1992.
Unix has a standard GUI called CDE. I use it on my Alpha. I must admit that CDE is quite old and it isn't the most beautiful desktop around but I think it works quite well.
Some of the good features of CDE are:
1. FrontPanel offers fast access to applications.
2. Application Manager is much better way to start programs than start-menu (and its clones).
3. Filemanager is a good basic filemanager without too much bloat. I don't want my filemanager to view images or web pages, play music etc. These features can be useful to many people, but I simply don't need them.
4. CDE is based on Motif which is the standard Unix widget set.