The newest version of KDE Four Live, an openSUSE-based Live CD for testing KDE 4, was released three days ago, just nine days after the initial version that included Release Candidate 1 was released. KDE/openSUSE dev Stephan Binner announced the release on his blog, celebrating the strong public interest in the initial RC1-based Live CD - over 10000 downloads achieved in the first few days. Meanwhile, although mainstream reviews of RC1 are still scarce, Binner's blog announcement of the previous version contained this interesting tidbit: "It looks like whatever [version of KDE 4] will be released or presented at the event which was fixed by the sponsor to happen in January will be only used by very early adopters. Hopefully openSUSE 11.0 will be able to ship some KDE 4.1.x release or some very high KDE 4.0.x release (which saw some light features freeze lift)," he wrote. Readers are welcome to download the newest Live CD (Torrent) and test it for themselves. A Debian LiveCD is also available, but it still includes KDE4 Beta4 and not RC1.
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Member since:2005-07-06
It's not about stupid users. It's about users who have better things to do than learn about computers. It's about users who aren't familiar with all the techincal jargon programmers throw in their face. Etc etc.
It's this mythical 'ordinary user' again. You know what? It's the easiest thing in the world to say 'We're not going to do something because it would confuse ordinary users'. Actually defining what that ordinary user is, what they want to do, what they will want to do, what system administrators will want to do to support them and balancing that against people who actually use your software regularly, file bug reports and who come up with feature ideas is the difficult part.
The problem is that in order to use a desktop computer you have to get to know a little bit of jargon. Hopefully not a lot, but a little. You also have to get used to a computer being able to organise anything in any way you want. This is what makes an awful lot of the spatial and 'real life' metaphors bogus from a practical point of view.
Member since:2007-06-13
> It's this mythical 'ordinary user' again.
No it's not. If you read a little about HCI and interaction design you will come to know that.
> The problem is that in order to use a desktop computer
> you have to get to know a little bit of jargon.
Well, basically no. You will have to learn new things. Sure. But you shouldn't have to learn any jargon. New things != jargon...
> This is what makes an awful lot of the spatial and
> 'real life' metaphors bogus from a practical point of
> view.
If they are bogus, they are no good. Don't use them. Come up with something better...
Member since:2006-01-19
Users who have better things to do than learn about computers are only one sort of users.
There are loads of users who have better things to do than adjust their way of thinking to the #@µ%&°ing human interface designed by the oh so good interface designers. The interface must be easily adjustable to as many ways of thinking as possible, THEN it is a good interface.
That is why GNOME is next to unusable for me, it cannot adjust to my way of thinking, KDE can.
And yes, good default settings help beginners. But letting beginners explore a huge settings dialog is still a lot less steep of a learning curve, than letting them search the internet for key/value pairs of some registry system.
In my opinion GNOME is good for the 50 or 60 or even 90% of people who can adapt their thinking to the interface, but it is horrible to the rest of us (I just say "save as" dialog).
Member since:2005-06-29
"There are loads of users who have better things to do than adjust their way of thinking to the #@µ%&°ing human interface designed by the oh so good interface designers. The interface must be easily adjustable to as many ways of thinking as possible, THEN it is a good interface.
That is why GNOME is next to unusable for me, it cannot adjust to my way of thinking, KDE can."
Personally I'm comfortable with both Gnome and KDE. Granted that KDE is more familiar to Windows users, especially the "Save as" and "Open" dialogs. But both Gnome and KDE interface designs make sense to me.
Member since:2007-06-13
> Users who have better things to do than learn about
> computers are only one sort of users.
You are absolutely right.
> There are loads of users who have better things to do
> than adjust their way of thinking to the #@µ%&°ing
> human interface designed by the oh so good interface
> designers. The interface must be easily adjustable to
> as many ways of thinking as possible, THEN it is a good
> interface.
You are absolutely wrong. You don't seem to know what an interaction designer does. Who is going to use the interface is very important when designing. This should also account for users who are not the primary target to some extent.
> That is why GNOME is next to unusable for me, it
> cannot adjust to my way of thinking, KDE can.
So maybe KDE is your cup of tea then. Use it and be happy. I won't bother with the rest. Seems to be mostly GNOME bashing.
Anyways. Both KDE and GNOME are kind of vague on their target audience. And that's a shame.
Compare that to OS X where I can _guarantee_ you that there's a dedicated team of usability and interaction designers doing the grunt UI work. Most people enjoy using OS X (the iPod and iPhone too for that matter), and that's not a coincidence.
And NO. I'm not an Apple fan-boy. I've never owned an Apple product in my whole life and I don't ever plan to. I'm just saying the usability engineer/interaction designer vs programmer ratio at Apple is much higher than in KDE and GNOME.
If GNOME and KDE are to succeed at the "Desktop", the companies interested in that will have to make sure this ratio increases. (It seems harder to attract this sort of people to FOSS than hackers.) I know Red Hat has made some contributions to this. I don't think Canonical has. And I'm even less sure about others.
Member since:
2007-06-13
This post isn't about KDE vs GNOME or whatever, I couldn't care less. But I felt I had to answer this particular section of your post...
> And unlike GNOME, the KDE developers do not give off an
> air that all users are stupid and should think the way
> they do.
It's not about stupid users. It's about users who have better things to do than learn about computers. It's about users who aren't familiar with all the techincal jargon programmers throw in their face. Etc etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-computer_interaction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_Design
Programmers usually design interfaces for their own kind, even if they are to be used by other kinds of people. In short, programming should be done by programmers, the interface should be designed by interaction designers.
GNOME and KDE _BOTH_ have their warts and for both DE:s, most of the interface is designed by programmers.
Edited 2007-12-03 06:43