Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 2nd Dec 2007 22:44 UTC, submitted by Moochman
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
No it's not. If you read a little about HCI and interaction design you will come to know that.
I never cease to be astonished at this disease that some people seem to have caught, that there is some 'ordinary' user out there that means that certain features need to be slashed in case it confuses them to the detriment of all. I have seen no study allowing any scientific reproduction that back this up.
Alas, you will find no such user defined anywhere in any usability or HCI documentation. An awful lot of people seem to have convinced themselves that it exists for some reason. Any good usability book will tell you to identify your users, and you will have more than one group, and you have to allow for your users learning and being able to do more with your software over time, and then look at what they are actually doing and trying to do with your software.
Well, basically no. You will have to learn new things. Sure. But you shouldn't have to learn any jargon. New things != jargon...
I'm not entirely sure why people get obsessed with 'jargon' in computing. If I wander into a kitchen somewhere and expect to cook stuff, I'm not going to get very far not knowing what a knife, a blender or a frying pan is. I also need at least some knowledge about food hygiene.
The same holds true of computing. Yes, you need to understand what 'windows' are, what widgets, radio buttons and checkboxes generally are, what digital cameras are, what a USB port is, what a wireless connection is, what files and folders are........
How the software presents that to you is definitely important, but as for dumbing the whole thing down where you need to know nothing of this stuff, forget it. People are capable of learning jargon quite easily and do it every day, so let's not insult their intelligence.
A phrase from Einstein seems apt: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler". For some reason, you seem to think everything can be lumped into the former part of that sentence.