OSNews

There are things it must inherit from 9x/2k that in my mind make it unable to be so close to OS X. Just about everything was spot on in this though. I suppose it comes down to personal tastes. A behavior I like may not be one someone else does.

What....Windows wins at OSNews? Shocking....

I know...i read that windows won and i nearly had milk come out of my nose!

On the contrary, this seems to be the least definite comparison I have ever read.

Take for example, the section on speed and UI performance. The writer does not take a particular machine as a reference for testing, and instead compares experiences on a wide variety of machines. Absurd claims arise from this, such as "even the smallest Gnome application (e.g. calculator) is slower to load than the big and fat Blender." Gnome-calculator on a 533 Mhz Celeron might take longer to start than Blender on an SGI, but who cares?

It would take a very long comment to identify all of the absurd claims in this article. Overall, its entire basis of judging seems to be on the writer's likes and dislikes (such as I don't like C, thus Gnome has a bad programming framework).

I liked a lot of what Eugenia had to say in this article, but I feel it left out some important criticisms of Windows XP:

First, as mpt ( http://mpt.phrasewise.com/ ) so often points out, Windows XP (and prior versions) has a problem with dialog boxes. Simply put, most dialog boxes in Windows XP are poorly worded, long, have confusing or non-useful button labels, and have close buttons in the window title bar that are used as "Go Away You Stupid Alert" buttons. Comparing this behavior to the common alert behavior in OS X, I would have to say that Apple does much better in designing their dialog boxes. In addition, the Sheets concept introduced with OS X is quite useful and really a good improvement.

I also don't think you did a good job explaining how amateurish the default Windows XP Luna theme looks. The first time I saw it, I thought that Microsoft had replaced all of their theme designers with a bad GTK+ theme designer! Newer betas of Longhorn take this to an extreme, making the entire user interface some shade of blue. Perhaps MS is hoping that their OS will become a hyperintelligent shade of the color blue.

While you rightly mention that BeOS's font rendering is a little dated, Windows XP doesn't provide many options. There isn't a way to use font antialiasing at all without using subpixel AA, which doesn't work very well for CRT users. Without ClearType, most UI elements are delivered non-antialaised!

I can assure you, the Blender/Calculator thing was on the same machine, running Red Hat. The reason for Gnome's loading slowness was the number of libraries linked to (around 25 for any simple Gnome app and only 6 for Blender IIRC)!

Libraries used

galaxy@ulixys:/usr/local/bin > ldd gnome-calculator | wc -l
49
galaxy@ulixys:/usr/local/bin > ldd gcalctool | wc -l
49
galaxy@ulixys:/usr/local/bin >

I find this article to be ill-informed, anecdotal, and, well, pretty awful.

For example, Eugenia seems to find Konqueror extremely unstable, I use it about 12 hours a day, and I would be surprised if it has crashed 3 times on me in the last month.

I must say I have not noticed those toolbar bugs she mentions, but then again, I use Liquid.

She ventures guesses in areas she knows nothing about. "The Qt toolkit actually doesn't seem to have much of a good support for what Keramik is trying to do." is a telling sign of ignorance, for example.

In the usability review, she mentions Konqueror acts as a CVS frontend, and she feels overwhelmed by the functionality. Besides the obvious (If you don't want a cvs frontend why did you install it?), I have not seen any bugs in toolbar configuration, and the link she gave is to a KDE 3.0 review.

The single-click action is, IMVHO, a usability plus. Whenever someone uses it, he is hooked. After all, double-click is a pretty antinatural action. But, hey, if you prefer it to be clunky like XP, you can have that, too.

Also, she sprays the catchall unspecific word "bloat". I think any review using that word without giving any numbers or at least a rational description of the intended meaning belongs in the recycling bin.

In the "consistency/integration/flexibility" page, she simply doesn't even mention integration between apps in GNOME and/or KDE, simply integratio with the underlying OS. Perhaps the page should be renamed. Also, she brings up the tired horse of X performance, again showing ignorance of even the most basic architecture of the system.

BTW: if you want KDE to offer you a way to change resolution,color depth, get X 4.3 with the RandR extension.

I could go on for another page or two, but why bother? nThe article gets an E.

Because as a teacher, I never give an F.

Next time, get an editor, and a technical reviewer.



BTW: look definite in www.webster.com, I am not sure that is the word you actually wanted.

Heh, no wonder it takes more time to load then than the much bigger Blender...

In MacOS X...

When you need to get access to different controls via the keyboard you can tab between selection and text fields by default.

If you want to be able to tab to all UI elements like in Windows, just go to the System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Full Keyboard Access, and at the bottom of the window change the radio button from "Text boxes and lists only" to "Any control"

-Nathan

>I find this article to be ill-informed, anecdotal, and, well, pretty awful.

I wouldn't expect anything better from you anyway.

>(If you don't want a cvs frontend why did you install it?),

It came with the OS.

>and the link she gave is to a KDE 3.0 review.

That was just additional information which STILL applies for KDE 3.1. My current review was made with KDE 3.1.

<rant>
* UNETHICAL Windoze XP WARNING *
DRM INSIDE

To me ethics is also part of the choice for an OS (environment). and really XP s disqualified here.
(no this is not a troll)
</rant>

Appart this, I was surprised by the rating for BeOS
But now I'm sure we can get an even higher mark
not entirely, hmm...

I don't know if I agree with the speed of XP. I use it on an Athlon XP PC, and it can feel quite sluggish. While OS X on my 600 MHz G3 iMac was sluggish also, they are about the same, and XP can be even less responive with mulitple apps running. I'd say both are more responsive than KDE, but I 've found Gnome 2 to be the feel the fastest, and I haven't used BeOS.

Eugenia said:

> I wouldn't expect anything better from you anyway.

Well, my opinion is my opinion, and what I said is pretty easy to check, unlike most of this "definite review". Too bad you don't like it. I'm really sad about it NOT!

As for the CVS frontend coming with the OS... why did you instal the KDE SDK (that is where Cervisia comes)?. It is an optional package. Complaining about it being installed is, IMVHO, stupid.

It's like complaining that XP has a MP3 player after you install winamp.

Giving that link as an addendum to a comment in toolbar bugs is disingenuous at least. Did you actually see these alleged toolbar bugs in KDE 3.1, or are you just remembering them from KDE 3.0?

The bug is still there on the three distros I tried with KDE 3.1 on them: the text size buttons in particular.

@Eugenia: hmm, can't follow you, gcalctool starts for me almost immediately, while blender takes maybe half a second (Athlon XP 1700+/Gentoo)

Well I need to agree to Roberto here from the technical standpoint he is absolutely right. KDE has deserved some higher points than these given to it. I wonder why she didn't made use of the explainations of the bottom layer things that I explained nearly in detail in various threads here. These should be a good point to have a look at. Personally I would have placed the Desktops that way

1) WindowsXP
2) MacOSX

Because they contain a whole OS and not just the DE

3) KDE
4) BeOS

No offense but I think BeOS is not as good as Desktop as KDE because KDE offers functionality that bombs out WindowsXP in various places.

5) GNOME

GNOME as last place is ok imo. It reflects the reality.

I think that using IE for OS X to judge anything (as the author did) is unfair. It's like using AOL 2.0 to judge Windows XP (if pre-4.0 versions of AOL could even run on NT based machines). Mac OS X is responsive with applications that are properly coded. Mac OS X is simply experiencing the same growing pains that Windows 95 had and the next major revision of Windows will have (not Longhorn, but the next time that MS makes big changes).

>gcalctool starts for me almost immediately, while blender takes maybe half a second

On my Athlon XP 1600+ and Red Hat, is not the case.

Eugenia is one of the few reviewers that aren't biased. Like many othres, I use Windows XP simply becuase it's better than anything else I've used. All of you people whining about the evils of MS are simply being overzealous idiots.

I give the article an A+

>I think that using IE for OS X to judge anything (as the author did) is unfair.

Wrong! First of all, IE comes by DEFAULT with OSX. This makes it PART of the experience. Secondly, IE's example of menu bar freezing is just an example. Other applications do that as well, including Safari.

I find that I am most productive when using Classic Mode under XP moreso than any DE under *nix. Great Fonts + slim window manager (if that is what you call explorer?) is awesome!

Eugenia is the only one here that will give credit where credit is due ... Thank you Eugenia.

Wow. Couldn't agree more, C. Evans. Don't even know where to begin.

Gnome gets a 6.5 out of 10 for having poor icons??? And yet the guady play school / fisher price buttoned XP gets an 8?

And why are you complaining about Kicker not being able to resize like the Dock? It does do this, and I've been using this feature since 2.x, I believe.

In reality, though, one should use what one is most comfortable with. Complaining that KDE has so many features that the control center is bloated is downright silly. KDE is made by professionals and hobbyists, for professionals and hobbyists. People who have the time, patience, and desire to tinker with way too many settings.

And why BeOS is included is beyond me. A desktop that doesn't run on modern hardware (and for that matter, didn't even run on current hardware of the time) is not what I would call "still good"

But I'll just be labeled a troll, and possibly filed away as someone else who just "doesn't get it".

Bill

If you want to be able to tab to all UI elements like in Windows, just go to the System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Full Keyboard Access, and at the bottom of the window change the radio button from "Text boxes and lists only" to "Any control"


Perhaps the article should be updated to reflect this?

>Gnome gets a 6.5 out of 10 for having poor icons???

Of course not. But it ain't Miss World either [overall].

>And why BeOS is included is beyond me. A desktop that doesn't run on modern hardware

You are wrong. BeOS Max Edition runs *everywhere* and the few problems with compatibility are all straighten out with YellowTAB's Zeta, which is the NEW BeOS coming out in a FEW weeks! BeOS is far from dead. Be, Inc's BeOS is dead, but not Zeta. Also, I explain very well WHY BEOS is included. Read the first page again.

> And why are you complaining about Kicker not being able to resize like the Dock? It does do this, and I've been using this feature since 2.x, I believe.

Not what I am asking, no. The taskbar does NOT resize when more programs are get opened.

All phylosophical issues aside I find XP to be the best overall Desktop experience in term of usability and merely "getting stuff done".
OSX is just slow IMO (I use it at work sometimes and I find it unresponsive and I don't really care about how "pretty" it is).
KDE and Gnome are good environments but I think they suffer from the different ways apps behave, there is a general lack of consistency. If I install a new app I never know exactly how it will look and behave.
I never tried BeOS....

Once again I think these issues ares omewhat subjective and your mileage might vary but I found myself agreeing with most of Eugenia's points.

Ok, let's go over the bugs reported in that old article regarding toolbars:

Number 1 (the side by side toolbars) is not what you are referring to here, I suppose. I will admit I can't do that.

Number 2 (the save dialog bookmark) is just that you don't get what a save dialog bookmark is. Sure, it's not an intuitive feature. Ignore it, and you get a less featuerful dialog, but surely less confusing to you. I don't think any other OS gives you that feature anyway. Perhaps that should have been counted in the features page?

Niumber 3: Can't reproduce it. Oh, did you add the buttons in the toolbar you removed them from, the khtml toolbar? Or you added them in the navigation toolbar, where they don't work?

Number 4: personal perference, as you said.

5 and 6 are not toolbar related.

So, why is this link given as a detailed explanation of the problems with toolbars in KDE 3.1? I have no idea.

BTW: a clear inconsistency in the rating method: you discount points in KDE's flexibility score for the problems it causes. But you also discount points for those problems in the consistency, bugs, and usability scores. That hardly looks like a reasonable scoring mechanism.

I was following BeOS for various years in the pasth and lost overview to it then I investigated into Zeta BeOS and OpenBeOS for a few minutes some weeks ago but I don't see the connection between both can you explain more why there are 2 different approaches to bring BeOS back ?

And why isn't QNX included ?

> KDE and Gnome are good environments but I think they suffer
> from the different ways apps behave, there is a general lack
> of consistency. If I install a new app I never know exactly
> how it will look and behave.

Little info, only GNOME is affected by this and will be for another couple of years! Not KDE. KDE is absolutely consistent.

>And why isn't QNX included ?

I explained in the beginning of the article (I deleted the QNX partition a few months ago and I wanted to include OSes that I had readily available). IMO, QNX's UI wouldn't take big scores anyway (for different reasons...) and it is not as widly used (not even more than BeOS AFAIK)

Eugenia says it doesn't matter whose fault it is for the problems she describes with KDE, many of which I have not experienced personally.

I think it matters. I am running a CVS copy of KDE circa pre-3.1 and I don't have any of the bugs she described. If Konqueror was so crashy, I wouldn't use it as my permanent browser. I have not seen any of the rendering bugs she describes with Keramik. And so on. She does make good points, but many of the problems she describe just aren't from the KDE I know.

There is no real description of her test system, but I'm guessing she is using Red Hat which is notorious for its bad treatment of KDE. Why not use a better KDE distribution such as SuSE or Mandrake? Of course to be fair you would have to compile everything properly and do the same with GNOME.

And btw if you compare Qt apps with KDE apps, it's much worse when you compare some of the horrendous GTK+ apps like the GIMP with GNOME apps.

I read some of the responses and I am surprised at how some people have reacted.

Don't let the OS zealots bother you. I thought it was a fair article even thought my favorite OS did not win.

Good article. And OS News is a great site. Keep it up...

- Mark

> Newer betas of Longhorn take this to an extreme, making the entire user interface some shade of blue.

Well, M$ always liked blue...
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&...

This is a really biased article. Methodology is pretty awful.

BeOS scores right after OS X???? Give me a break. BeOS widgets are AWFUL. They don't follow _any_ of the UI methodologies.

It should have been done like this: http://www.xvsxp.com/

Please, next time consult this very basic article when judging UI: http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html

MacOS X pretty much wipes the floor with all other UIs. I wish I had some cash to buy a Mac for home.

Nick

This one wins them all
http://www.attrition.org/gallery/computing/errors/bsod_cnn.jpg
Though this fake is nice:
http://beklathon.homestead.com/files/BILL-GATES-bsod.jpg

>This is a really biased article.

I can assure you, it is not. I am a user of all these systems for years and I give them credit only when they deserve it.

>BeOS scores right after OS X???? Give me a break. BeOS widgets are AWFUL

First of all, here we compare BeOS Zeta, not BeOS 5. And even with Zeta/Dano's widget set, BeOS scores WORSE in that "look and feel" department than OSX, as you also feel appropriate.
But the *final rating* is a SUM of a LOT of different things, not just how things are looking to your eyes. Please re-read carefully the article.

If you want to be able to tab to all UI elements like in Windows, just go to the System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Full Keyboard Access, and at the bottom of the window change the radio button from "Text boxes and lists only" to "Any control"

You don't even have to do this to dismiss dialogues, just use command+<first letter of the option> like for example if you want to cancel use command+c

I agree that XP has great keyboard navigation but I also think that OSX keyboard navigation is great but different, and it does need bit of a getting used to.

While I didnt agree with everything she said, esp in the look&feel section, it was a good review. I am interested to see how the final release version of Zeta will fit into this.

WhiteRabbit

NC

Good article overall, but i do think it could have benefited a lot from more reasearch on all of OSes compared. I know you tried not to be biased, but the reality is EVERYONE is a slightly biased, even if the person does not realize it.

I also think you were a little too harsh on KDE/GNOME, many of the issues you mentioned are not the fault of the DE's themselves, rather X11 and other toolkits. You we re comparing DE's so when you compare KDE to some other DE you should assume that every app is a KDE/QT app, the KDE developers have no power to make Motif, X11 etc apps all look like a KDE app. They also can't mask X11's speed problems problems. I hope you're catching on to waht I mean. If you were comparing OSes I would understand this, but you are comparing DE's. Therefore, if you compare GNOME to KDE you are comparing ONLY GNOEM APPS, CONFIG UTILITIES ETC. with KDE's counterparts and nothign else.

Eugenia,

I'm not sure if we're on the same wavelength but UI 'prettiness' has very little to do with UI usability. Usability is what matters to users. It takes VERY long time to get the UI right and to make it flawless. Looks don't really have much to do with this (but they do help). It's all about the workflow and consistency. I have to say that I have not used Zeta but I have seen the screenshots of it and they repeat many of the UI mistakes that we've seen in many of the previous UI prototypes.

Nick

Dano's font rendering is good on paper, but in real life it just sucks. I find R5 much better in this regard.

A typical Dano backstep that you didn't mention is the new titlebars that the user can't shift-slide anymore.

XP and BeOS both include mnemonics (underlined keyboard shortcuts) that OS X lacks. This is one thing that I can't stand about MacOS.

BeOS and OS X use better message boxes than those common on Windows (Save|Don't Save|Cancel rather than Yes|No|Cancel)

BeOS Tracker and Windows Explorer have an address bar, the Finder doesn't and it hurts.

The OS X Finder and Explorer can show the Desktop folder in a window. Tracker doesn't allow the user to do this (just like previous versions of MacOS and OS/2 which also include this stupid limitation).

Consistency - BeOS has *no* HIG, how can it be the most consistent? You might want to check the links below and reconsider the 10 you gave it....
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/InterfaceConsistencyInPreferences
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/InterfaceConsistencyInSelections

A good example of *inconsistency* in OS X is Safari. For 20 years Command+W was used to close a window, but with Safari it closes tabs. This is a good UI choice that will help users prevent data-loss, but the legendary MacOS Consistency is now officially over (actually, Aqua took care of that a couple of years ago...)

Flexibility - WinXP is much more flexible than OS X and BeOS. There are at least twice as much preferences, and with third party tweaker utilities like X-Setup, it's more like tenfold (TinkerTool is very minimalist).

BeOS is indeed snappy, but even us "Bealots" ;-) admit that it has the slowest Mozilla port bar none (and this is the only modern browser available), and Tracker is nowhere near the speed of Explorer when it comes to folders with huge amounts of files.

XP is definitely an "improvement on multitasking/multithreading over the Win9x codebase", but for some odd reason, it is not as good as Win2k. Many a time have I encountered Start/taskbar freezes that take seconds off your productive time (even post-SP1). It never happened with Win2k.

KDE and Aqua are hard to compare, but I believe that Aqua is more optimized and slightly quicker, or maybe it's just Konqueror that spawns windows slower than the Finder...

Finally, I must say that I really enjoyed reading this comparison (keep up the good work Eugenia), and sorry if I repeated any of the previous comments.

>but UI 'prettiness' has very little to do with UI usability

Nick, are you SURE you read the whole article???? There is a *different* section for "looks" and a different for "usability"!! I don't understand what you are trying to say here! In my article all that stuff are all seperate.

I find it interesting that so many people complain about gtkmm when in fact it is the most pure C++ gui library out there. I think developers have been working with broken and/or incomplete environments for so long when they see real C++ code it scares the crap out of them.

Leave it to a bunch of nerds on a website to pick a fight at every opportunity.

OSes are NOT striving to meet some tangible goal. They aren't competing for an elusive technology. They are trying to zero in on an experience that pleases the most people possible. I tell you now - there will never be an OS that pleases everyone every time. Someone will always dislike what they are using.

Eugenia's review, in my opinion, was pretty fair. I've definitely been known to tell Eugenia directly that I think she's wrong. In this case, a) I happen to agree with her lineup, despite the fact that I really like Gnome, and b) I think no matter what the result, there would be 50 people, 35 telling her she and her article suck and 15 telling those people to shut up.

I use XP every day, many hours a day, and it virtually NEVER crashes. Maybe 3 times since I've installed it back when Devil's Own first was released. But some idiot always insists it crashes after 30 seconds of uptime for them. Experience is different for everyone, and for each person, perception is reality.

If you have an opinion, please -- offer it like an educated adult. Don't criticize her work or her opinion.

Of course the review was biased - all reviews are biased.

The good thing about Eugenias reviews is that she is honest about her biases, so you can take them into account

While I agree that Windows XP is better than the previous versions, I still feel like you failed to address a few functions of the OS/UI that truly make people nervious about using thier own computer.

One of the main areas I am talking about is package management (ie installing, uninstalling software and config files). Windows takes a pretty scary approach to this in that when you install an app, it pretty much dumps the app/support files wherever it damn well pleases. You don't normally see this, because it puts a "shortcut" in the start menu and that is your interaction with the program. However, should something go wrong, or should you need to untinstall the application, you are left to the whim of the windows installer app to clean up after you. I can't tell you how many times I have seen the message, "File foo.ini was used by this program, and may be used by other programs, actually, I am not really sure what it does, but you can possibly delete it", or something to that effect. One area where Mac OS X (and maybe BeOS, im not sure) shines is that the program you have are the actual executables, and any config files or preferences they have go in a well defined place in the system. If you want to delete an app, 99% of the time you just drag it to the trash. WYSIWYG at its finest.

Another area where Windows lags is Power Management. Perhaps its the use of power hungry-hot running x86 processors (maybe Centrino will help), but Windows laptops have a hell of a time sleeping and waking from sleep. They also frequently don't last for more than an hour and a half on the battery. You should be able to close your laptop and have it save its state, go to sleep and live for at least a few days. When you want to use it again, it should wake up immediately and restore itself.

Finally, Windows has a pretty ugly driver system. I understand that much of this has to do with the sheer amount of devices that windows has to work with, but driver packages are far from easy to understand. Some things work out of the box, some require you to "insert the windows CD", some install, but then leave your devices half working. I don't particularly think any OS out there now handles this the best, but it would be nice if you had a driver "folder" where you could just throw your driver files. If they were in there, they were active, if not then they aren't. Perhaps something like the MacOS 9 extension folder. Mac OS X has an OK system with kexts, but then again, most users don't know they exist, so when they have to install one, they are lost if something goes wrong.

A good example of *inconsistency* in OS X is Safari. For 20 years Command+W was used to close a window, but with Safari it closes tabs.

The official release beta of Safari has no tabs, and DOES close the window. You are talking about the leak build which they are internally testing.

Two quick points
Removing BeOS apps is as simple as removing their folder, config files go in ~/config

Also, BeOS has a driver folder where you can just drop drivers, with most devices other than video cards no reboot is necessarty, they just start working.

You said "all reviews are biased" and "[Eugenia] is honest about her biases".

Well, did you read the comment where eugenia said "I am not biased"? ;-)

Somone: This is a really biased article.

Eugenia: I can assure you, it is not.

That's comment 36, this very forum.

I also think you were a little too harsh on KDE/GNOME, many of the issues you mentioned are not the fault of the DE's themselves, rather X11 and other toolkits. You we re comparing DE's so when you compare KDE to some other DE you should assume that every app is a KDE/QT app, the KDE developers have no power to make Motif, X11 etc apps all look like a KDE app. They also can't mask X11's speed problems problems. I hope you're catching on to waht I mean. If you were comparing OSes I would understand this, but you are comparing DE's. Therefore, if you compare GNOME to KDE you are comparing ONLY GNOEM APPS, CONFIG UTILITIES ETC. with KDE's counterparts and nothign else.

Excellent point, Mario.

Roberto, I get the feeling you're trying to pick a fight. When Eugenia says she's "not biased," she means she doesn't start with a dislike of a particular UI and go in with preconceived notions.

When someone says that all reviews are "biased," they mean that each reviewer is offering their opinion. Everyone else gets that. We use the same word, but we mean different things.

I know you understand this difference, that's why I suspect you're mad and just trying to make other people look foolish. Sorry, buddy, it's not working.

I'd probably have rated OS X slightly higher but otherwise they're probably not far off from the ratings I'd give--with the caveat that my "users don't care about implementation" rant from a previous thread is something I still believe.

I find OS X to be pretty responsive on a system level; the chunkiness shows up more on a per-application level. The spinning beach ball of doom generally only affects one application. Windows 2000 and XP don't suffer from that, but my experience they replace it with the "mysterious system freeze"--every once in a (long) while the system just stops for several minutes. The other thing I've noticed with Windows (albeit only in Pre-XP, because my experience with XP isn't long enough to have seen if this has finally been fixed) is what I call "creeping crud syndrome." A perfectly well-maintained Windows 9x or NT/2000 system will, over time, get flakier and flakier, to the point where the system must be reinstalled to fix the problems. When I mention this to other Windows users, they all nod. This is a usability issue in the "long-term road test" sense--it's worth mentioning. (I haven't had that problem on my PowerBook with OS X, but to be fair we'll have to check back in this time next year to see if that's still the case.)

To the people crying "subjective review!"... eh. It's all subjective. There are common UI practices, but even some of the supposedly objective ones can be argued about. (Mac users will defend their fixed menu bars to the death by waving GOMS analyses at you, for instance. Yet a quantitative GOMS keystroke-level analysis "prove" that Vim is a better text editor than BBEdit.)

Thanks Eugenia, for that delicious article....as always never one to disappoint.
I particularly admired your honesty...and am very interested in GUI/UI/DE. I was wondering if you will be doing something similar on 3D-enviroments, as this is possibly the future of Desktop-Environments?

Well, I disagree with you.

I think "all reviews are biased" and "this review is not biased" are conrtdictory statements.

An opinion is not the same as a bias. A bias is a preconception, or a prejudice, or a personal preference, tainting an opinion, making the opinion unreliable.

As webster says, "a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment", or "prejudice".

Prejudice, bias != opinion.

Windows takes a pretty scary approach to this in that when you install an app, it pretty much dumps the app/support files wherever it damn well pleases.

Hmm, I have 1 out of 20+ Programs where I can't specify where to install it (Canon Printer Driver).

Have you EVER used Linux? Here you really can't say where things are installed, and I hate it.

@Euginia: GREAT ARTICLE!

Really, I was reading it and thought at 95% that you are right, and I have used BeOS, WinXP, Gnome and KDE (sorry I have no PowerPC .

My own opinion in short terms:
- Gnome launching programs slow, KDE even slower.
- Windows has great Keyboard accessibility and is so snappy. I personally think it's on par with BeOS - sometimes slower, sometimes faster. But compared to all other DEs, its like a Ferarri.

And I understand that every review is a little biased, but I know Euginia, and in previous articles she was often much more biased, so she really tried hard to give a fair review.


Keep up the good work!

Well I still have PIII 450 mhz 256ram I can assure you windows XP is slow! It's so bloated, windows 98 was flying on this machine, so was windows NT. Apart for the eyecandy and stability issue, I don't find it so different from the older windows versions but yet it's so much slower and bigger.

BeOS was just flying and it was relatively stable in a time windows was crashing every 3 minutes. Ok some apps crashed and took down tracker but that was more due to bad apps rather than BeOS.

I windows XP I still need to reboot to get software installed, that not a userfriendly experience is it. A good desktop should be responsive even with my hardware if not it's bloated.

However I do admit XP is the most stable OS I ever used

> I find it interesting that so many people complain about gtkmm when in fact it is the most pure C++ gui library out there.

You never coded in BeOS I see

rpm -ql program

dpkg -L program

Not very hard, IMHO.

Excalibur wrote:
> The official release beta of Safari has no tabs, and DOES
> close the window. You are talking about the leak build which
> they are internally testing.

What's a "release beta"? Apple have learned their lesson with the fiasco of Safari hosing people's home directories. Ever since this horrific bug was fixed, Safari has been off the public beta stage. b62 and b64 have only been sent to testers whom Apple know won't complain if hell breakes loose.

And for you info, the tabs are here to stay (with Command+W and all). Read the blog of Apple's Dave Hyatt for more details:
http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/archives/2003_03.html#0026...

I actually find that on my brother's Gateway Essential with a 500 MHz Celeron with 96 MBs of RAM that RH8 runs far nicer than Win98. Also I find at where I study that RH8 with GNOME you are able to surf the net alot quicker than on the very same machine (they have removable Hard drives) that Win 2000.

Before I start reading user comments, I want to thank Eugenia for writing an excellent review. It was fair, unbaised and basically spot on. Good work. Its a pleasure to read such thorough and well informed articles.

Now, time to sift through the comments and join the flame fest.

I find it to be refreshing, Eugenia does a good job telling us about her opinions and it seems she is very fair with her DE review. I personally like the KDE interface but I can see what she is saying about each one and yes I do think Windows has a superior interface design as well, For development I use QT and I use QT for a couple of reasons the most pressing one is its cross platform capabilities. All the problems I have with GNOME and OS X interfaces I think she hit the nail head on. Good Job Eugenia

Seriously, seriously, how can Euginia put Win XP above Mac OS X? I mean...seriously?!

Mac OS X mops the floor with Windows. As many people have said, the dialogs in Win XP blow. Win XP, IMHO, looks like ass. And WinXP on _my_ machine is slower than Mac OS X on my iBook. And, may I point out, Mac OS X is running on a 600mhz machine. Win XP is on a 1.6ghz machine.

Windows UI is also often inconsistant (Dialog boxes, again...). Also, why does skinning matter? Hello, you seem to be constantly harping how "It's not included in the OS!". SKINNING ISN'T INCLUDED! It's an _addition_!

Ack, this article wreaks.

Hey guys, relax. Not the first (and probably not the last) time Eugenia write controversy statements. Unless what she could claim, she has troubles to understand what "objective" means. Her notion of "comes as default matters more than everything else", personal color tastes and a definite inertia in her computing experience totally screw up her reviews.

A long time I noticed that. Better read the headlines here and the articles/reviews on some other sources.

Overall, I think this was an excellent article, fair and pretty much consistent with my experience (except re: crashes of Konq).

However, as Eugenia herself said, it is necessarily somewhat subjective IN CERTAIN aspects.

Unfortunately, I think this cannot be fixed, even though she brings up extremely important issues that need to be discussed a lot more.

Here, I'd just point out one: the whole "feature bloat", versus "clean default" argument best seen in the Gnome/KDE debate. Or as it was explored in greater depth in the exchange between Havoc and Mosfet. I'm afraid ultimately, there is no "right" and "wrong" here - either you like to have tons of options, or you like to have a "clean and spare" default. Sometimes I feel like Eugenia (and Havoc, and generally the "spare" camp) don't appreciate the fact that as Mosfet puts it, it doesn't have to be "too many options, confusing", but rather "tons of options WELL ORGANIZED will not be confusing". Eugenia seems to think that it is _impossible_ to combine the two, that at some point "no matter how well" you organize, you'll have confusion with too many options. I strongly disagree. I think it is a cop-out, and I think that Havoc simply is unable/unwilling to think hard enough to come up with organization solutions and takes the easy road of hiding options (deeply, so you have to dig down just to tweak rather _basic_ stuff). Hey, sorry if imagination fails you - but many inventions wouldn't even come about (such as tabbing) if everyone had Havoc's attitude that you "can't" organize. That's a lazy way of thinking. Havoc simply took organization features such as tabbing, drop-down menues, context menues etc., and STOPPED thinking further whatever year his outlook was formed (mid 90's). I bet if Havoc was working back in the 50's he'd never imagine the mouse. Sorry, just because you don't know how to organize, or cannot think in a revolutionary way doesn't mean it is IMPOSSIBLE. I think it is lame to deny people choices or bury them deeply. Defaults matter, and I prefer a feature-rich default.

Having said that, I do agree that the KDE feature organization is poor, and so in that sense Eugenia is right. But her (Gnomish, and Havoc) prescription is wrong - you stop to innovate UI ideas too quickly and settle for the easy solution of stripping away choice (and sending the pro user to dig deep). Obviously, there needs to be a balance, and it will be different for different people - so if you have just ONE default (by definition), you need to make sure it works for MOST people. And here, I feel Eugenia's camp underestimates users - people are much more flexible and able to learn, and are much less confused than you give them credit for.

Still, a very fair and good article.

I'm talking about the versions with tabs are not available to the public. They ones you are refering to are leaks. Meaning they are not written in stone. If you want to judge an internal build as law, thats you perogative there.

That was just an example. Fact remains that text is not very visible on the metal interface. With Safari or not.

Another example of why more Mac users are on anti-depressants than the rest of us.

Squidgee she does a very good review and I find OS X to be more processor intensive and slower than XP, comparing OS X and Windows XP. I find no problems with XP and I must say, Windows XP is by far the most stable and best OS microsoft has ever released. But alas, a Windows vs. OS X war is one no one will ever win.

A previous post called this article ancedotal. That's clearly not true.

As a developer, this article has given me food for thought. I'm bookmarking this with a view to addressing some of the issues. I'm glad to see there wasn't an element of flame like one sees in Petreleys articles, at any rate.

Free Software developers have a tendency to bury their heads in the sand like ostriches at the first sign of criticism, which I guess is necessary to a certain extent for them to keep their sanity.

I know Eugenia had to go for the "current" iteration of software, but I had a secret hope she'd include Win2K in the comparison - it was/is different enough from XP, yet current enough to make for an interesting comparison.

XP and OSX (mostly) are mature, meanwhile, Gnome and KDE are "a work in progress", and it shows. Linus said linux would not be desktop-ready until 2006, which means we are still 3 years away - a lot can change... of course, at that point Longhorn will be out, BeOS updated, and Gnome & KDE probaby still a work in progress (though usable, while today it is not ready to be a 100% Windows/Apple substitution for the masses).

But pretty easy on Windows. Case in point: Here we have an operating system where every single menubar an every application is along the top of the screen, and you pull down menus, even in old Win16 apps, and yet the MAIN SYSTEM MENU is along the BOTTOM of the screen and a menu shoots up from it! There's no reason at all for this. Once people get their minds contorted to deal with this inconsistency, they barely notice. But the same could be said for any inconsistency.

While I agree that a lot of usability is just "what you're used to" and thus Windows wins in every category, I think overlooking such blatant UI inconsistency is taking it rather easy on them.

And yes, this DOES mean you could deduct points from KDE and Gnome for the same thing, too.

Escape to cancel and command first letter of any other option (fer instance, command-d for "Don't Save"). Piece o' cake..

Very nice job. Nothing to complain about.

I'd have to say to the people in here, if your complaining about something, it's more then likely you that is messed up. Not the review, not the OS.

BeOS usability - For example, when having an input box, a text view, or a selectable text item, I want to be able to right click on it and have a cut/copy/paste menu. Agreed, a right click context menu would be nice, but the system wide Alt-Z, Alt-X, Alt-C and Alt-V still work as you'd expect.

"What Mac OS X lacks though is good keyboard navigation."
and
"Another thing I recently realized deeply is that Macs are way more keyboard-oriented than the rest platforms"

Make up your mind Eugenia.

I suggest you re-read what I write there. "keyboard navigation" and "keyboard oriented for other tasks" is not the same thing.

why are all you people saying that gnome is crap?

and Eugenia (who i respect i might add) Your saying gnome is ugly? Have you used gnome 2.2 with xft2 ? actually i suppose you probally have, the fonts are so purty ok? and the ugly icons can be fixed with icon themes now in 2.2. Heck they even include a theme manager that lets you install various kinds of themes. I like gnome. It definatly might not be as consistant as kde, or as complete, but it is pritty ok.

One thing I've noted about win XP is that is gets slower and slower if I don't reboot the machine, perhaps, twice a week (Win XP home Edition). Have you noticed that ? anyone ?

I basically agreed with most of what was written. A few comments:

First the flexability was IMHO very unfair.
Windows XP 7, MacOSX 7, KDE 8, BeOS 7, Gnome 7.5
I don't know BeOS but XP isn't even in the same ballpark as either X environment in terms of flexability. Network transparency is a huge feature in terms of flexability and didn't get mentioned. How do you use multiple video cards with a single window? How do you display Windows on an arbitrary group of nxm monitors using multiple video cards?

How about multiple language support. X applications have supported full character sets for over a decade and this technology is very mature.

Finally a dozen different widget sets may be horrible for consistency but it is wonderful for flexability.

___

There were minor points I disagreed with. I think speed of use is more important than speed of load. Take the mac interface from the 1980's it took forever to load apps but once loaded they were pretty fast. To this day Windows can be very unresponsive when it has network problems.

I do not know what you do for a living, but Im afraid reality is not what your doing on a regular basis.

Luna - crashes so much, much more than Windows 2000's shell. And its rediculous look feel by default blows. The look of WinXP and officeXP and the new office are totally inconsistent, which makes me think that their user interface group is so irrelevent they must still be looking at Apple's guidelines set forth many years ago.

Don't you get it yet, you dope, MS only changes the look every few years to make you rebuy bug fixes and SPY on you.

MS has the notion of skinning per se. (thats a corpoate idea of skinning), but you can only use their skins or something else you have to buy.

No matter - I completely wasted my time on this whole topic.

KDE and OSX should have been 10.

"Luna - crashes so much, much more than Windows 2000's shell. And its rediculous look feel by default blows. The look of WinXP and officeXP and the new office are totally inconsistent, which makes me think that their user interface group is so irrelevent they must still be looking at Apple's guidelines set forth many years ago."

The problem is, Luna cannot crash. It's not a program.

MacOS X doesn't have vector icons, it just uses really big bitmaps and scales them down

Sure when u run winXP on the most powerful comp available it wins, but personally, I'd love to see it be compared to any other OS when using 128megs ram, or/and a very slow processor like 400mhz, Windows XP would lose for sure

The specs of the machines I used are detailed in the article. Primarily, I run XP PRO on a lowly dual Celeron 533 Mhz with 256 MB of RAM.

Escape to cancel and command first letter of any other option (fer instance, command-d for "Don't Save"). Piece o' cake..

Hmm, very good thing. I liked this in windows because since MS started to hide these usefull indicators by default in Win2000 more and more programmer's "forget" about them completetly in dialog boxes

But how is this handled in MacOSX if 2 options start with the same letter? And is it possible to *fully* control the Mac with the keyboard only? This means some way to maximize/minimize windows, move windows, switch between tabs in option dialogs, etc....?

One Question Eugenia: Why is the BeOS (or what is being reconstituted as it)in here? I know your'e a fan of it and have used it extensively, but, the userbase must be a lot smaller than all the people that use Mac OS X and Linux (on the desktop). Correct me if im wrong.

The OS camp is basically heading toward Windows vs *nix (OSX, Unix, and Linux). I'm a programmer, so I've used and coded on OSX, XP, and several linux distros.

XP's blue aqua skin is just too cartoony. I reverted it back to the win95 look. It is still an architectural mess and susceptible to bit rot (I do a reinstall every couple of months).

I am deeply impressed with the immense progress that Linux has made since I started toying with it in 1999. The KDE-Gnome rivalry might be a little damaging, but if you have an os written by hobbyist, everyone will have their own idea how to make it their own.

I like Mac OS X the most. Applications install and remove easily (just remove the application file itself, and done, unless you do a package install). Everything is laid out cleanly. Quartz Extreme on a good GPU is beautiful. I do not like how apple is wrecking their previous gold standard for UI consistency, but Aqua seems like a better step in that direction.

Nothing's perfect.

Though you did try to look at all the characteristics, there are a few things I think you missed. I'm gonna mention KDE a lot because that's what I use.

- ALT-F2 in KDE. It's a run command dialog. I find this an easy and convienent way to open up any program and rarely use the K menu (start menu equivelent).

- Linux is (at current) still for reasonably technical people. If your biggest concern is 'it's pretty' then you probably shouldn't use it. Different DE's are really good for different people. I use a Mac at work, Windows at school, and KDE at home.

- It's easy enough to change your theme in KDE. I think it's just as easy as in Windows. Of course, you have to use KDE a bit before it becomes easy, but ditto with Mac, Windows...

- What about changing the default app for opening up a document? I think it's so incredibly easy in KDE, while I've seen friends spend far too much time trying to figure it out on Windows. Of course, that was 98. I haven't seen anyone do this on XP.

- Multiple desktops. I can barely get along without these at work. I take them for granted with KDE, being able to keep my work seperated and visible.

------------
Thanks for all the work you put into the article, but I'd be more able to believe a review compiled by several people. Or at least read over by one person who uses each DE _heavily_.

-RW

It's really not quite fair for Eugenia to judge KDE and GNOME on 'consistency' when you include other apps not written for its toolkit. Many people like myself use only KDE apps when using KDE, GTK when using, *box, Windowmaker, etc.

Also, since there are so many KDE apps, it's really quite easy to get away with running only KDE programs when using it. Based on a fair comparison, I think that the ranking should be KDE, BeOS, Windows (not all apps support theming even MS Office XP), Mac, GNOME.

KDE and Be apps all behave and look the same as each other.