OSNews

Yes there was. There were Unix and even Linux desktops before KDE and Gnome came along, what with CDE, Motif applications and guidelines et al, and the accepted standard was left-to-right as it was on Windows. Many of those applications still exist and many people run them still under Linux systems. You see, some of us actually remember this stuff?

Now, what then happened was that some Gnome developers came along, looked at the Mac and said "Goodness, that's what we want to be. I'm moist!" and so the right-to-left button ordering was implemented with no regard for previous Unix desktop history or even with any evidence whatsoever that the change improves usability. There is still no such evidence. It was simply pulled out of the Mac's UI guidelines, shoved into Gnome's UI guidelines and implicitly accepted as fact. The Mac approach isn't better, nor is it wrong. It's just different, and that's what fails to sink in still. That's before you even bring locales into it..........

It's nice to see that Mark Shuttleworth is continuing in that fine tradition of Mac worship, and neatly painting over the really critical things such as attracting developers to Ubuntu, creating a software development target that developers will want to go for and allowing Ubuntu users to install software in a sane manner. But, whatever.


You think that was trolling? Bugger. Mind you, there are some people around here who either can't accept the truth, or worse, they think the Linux world and its Unix heritage started when Mark Shuttleworth started throwing CDs at people.

Edited 2008-09-12 20:29 UTC