Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 18th May 2009 19:06 UTC
We all know them. We all hate them. They are generally overdone, completely biased, or so vague they border on the edge of pointlessness (or toppled over said edge). Yes, I'm talking about those "Is Linux ready for the desktop" articles. Still, this one is different.
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Member since:
2006-05-10
Actually I *do* use BeOS (or rather, its derivate Zeta) for day to day work. However I do agree that it is not recommended for everybody, as it requires some tech-savviness (and to be okay with working with a heavily outdated office suite, though thanks for Google Docs).
The above proposal to really "start something new" could be applied to the already running Haiku project (formerly OpenBeOS), I believe the larger body of contributors could speed development up quite a bit. But I don't think this is the best solution.
Linux has a stable and versatile kernel. I don't think it would be wise abandoning it. Perhaps some of the architecture around it could be modified, but this would require a forum of Linux experts to agree on a roadmap to structural change. This would take many years. I do believe it would be wise to rethink the architecture, but let this be a process running in the background.
Trying to categorise the article (see URL in original article), I see four main categories:
- stability & speed
- GUI / usability
- missing features
- organizational defects
In fact, it seems that slowness in boot, UI, software loading, shutdown, etc. is the main issue of Mr. Tashkinov (the author). He further mentions a number of usability issues (easy installing, configuration via a GUI, audio settings, server setup). The missing features (mainly hardware suport) in my opinion merely stems from a lack of both support from the hardware developer and other priorities for the developers. Organizational defects should be addressed in the forum I mentioned earlier.
As a cognitive ergonomist, I would like to say just a little about the GUI configuration issue. By now, usability designers have come to the conclusion that not everything can be done by GUI. That would make most interfaces completely clogged up with buttons, switches and whatnot. For advanced users, command line input still should be available. Perhaps Mr. Tashkinov does mean that some applications should also be provided a (simple) UI, but let's make sure we don't overdo it.