Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 30th Mar 2007 20:44 UTC, submitted by theosib
The founder of the Open Graphics Project writes: "Good design and usability are very important. I haven't paid enough attention to the discussions between Linus and GNOME developers, so I can't address it directly. But what I can say is that a learning curve is not a bad thing. While it's good to think about the total novice, it's even more important to have consistent and logical mechanisms. This way, if someone has to learn something new to use the computer, they have to learn it only once. This is why I think it's good that Apple and Microsoft have UI development guides that encourage developers to make their apps act consistently with other apps in areas where their functionalities conceptually overlap. And this is where I start to get disappointed with GNU/X11/Linux systems."
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Member since:
2005-07-23
And as for this "application files should be in one place" thing, I have one question: Why?
In Linux, the package manager will look after them for you. I can't remember the last time I went trawling through /usr looking for some obscure app file - why would I need to?
In Windows, you have to be able to get at them, because Windows totally fails at providing any sort of install/uninstall framework, so stuff gets left all through your system that you have to clean up yourself. Or something decides to save it's data under it's Program Files folder, so you need to find it to back it up.
This also leaves apps to decide where they put things like executables. So when you get the "Open With" dialog, and the app you want isn't on the list, you have to go searching through Program Files. Wouldn't be so bad, but last time I did this I was trying to open a VS7 project in VS8. Where does VS8 keep it's main executable? Obviously it's under it's Program Files folder _somewhere_, but nowhere totally obvious. In the end I abandoned it and opened the file from inside VS, but there was still this niggling doubt saying "on my linux box I wouldn't have had to know, it would have been in the path. easy."