Why do it? I am asked this question more often than I expected, even by existing Linux users who I expected to know as well as I the reasons for building a next-generation desktop Linux for the home user. So here are some of my reasons for thinking that we must spend the effort to create a better desktop on Linux than any existing version now has. Editor’s Note: Due to a technical glitch, the first segment of this article was ommitted for some readers. If you missed the “why” section, before, you can read it now.
Why?
- Microsoft has a virtual monopoly in the desktop operating system market and has famously abused that advantage. I don’t think paying $150-200 (US) for an operating system upgrade every couple of years or paying an effective “tax” on the purchase of a new computer to buy the operating system to go with it is acceptable. Especially when the available alternative needs only a little work to be just as valuable to the home user.
- The security and stability of Windows have been less than what we want for the mass of home machines currently connected to the Internet. Any time a large number of PCs can be attacked and potentially taken over, they represent a huge distributed denial of service (DDOS) weapon. Currently Windows is a vulnerable target which updates slowly. Linux is a harder target and can be made even more so to better protect not only the home user but also other users and businesses from those machines being taken over and used as a weapon.
- If you are already a Linux user, you want to attract the body of commercial software vendors to develop for your platform and developers follow the platform with the users. If you are a Linux user, why would you not want access to the tens of thousands of software packages available to Windows users now (i.e. Adobe Photoshop, games like Morrowind and Battlefield 1942, KidPix, and QuickBooks Pro)?
- In reality, the differences between the capabilities of the latest versions of Linux and Windows XP are far, far less than their similarities. A couple of years worth of work, if it is focused in the right areas, could close the gap and give users more choices.
- The cost of the operating system is an additional barrier to the availability of machines to low income people. Every small amount that can be removed from the overall price makes it available to more who could benefit from having a computer. Also, older machines are often still perfectly useful for many purposes but they need up-to-date operating systems rather than the aging copies of Windows 95 or 98 that came with the hardware. If the updated operating system is free and appeals to end users, that hardware becomes more appealing because it doesn’t require an investment of additional cash to bring it up to date.
- It upsets me to even have to address these issues but they are definitely out there. Some of the Linux population is composed of people who are simply bigoted and selfish. These two excerpts from online discussions about a tool to ease Linux configuration say a lot:
Make it easy for lazy people? Nahhh!
Use FreeBSD as an example and take it from there. This is for people who know the insides of their systems and not for superficial types who just want a slam-bang-thank-you-ma’am OS. FreeBSD requires a “relationship”, a commitment, and not just a one night stand. This is not for lazy asses. The market wants people who know what they are doing, not people who know how to use a GUI. If you want dancing clips, Einstein and doggies, stick to XP! Guess that’s what all the envy is about.
Ok, this is justified elitism if you ask me.
Ever since the lamers have come to discover us Linux/BSD users having fun in the corner, there have been many attempts to send our communities down the drain. I learned how to use Linux and BSD, the MAIN APPEAL of these operating systems is that they are 100% customizable! That includes the implications that MY SYSTEM IS MINE, and very little like the next guys! So, I had to adapt to this philosophy so can YOU! Don’t tell a thirty year old technology it needs to change because all of your loser buddies coming from windows do not realize if you bring over that crap from Windows, then Linux WILL no longer be better than Microsoft Windows!! You people are just stupid, and pissed that you cannot understand the material so you and some of your MCSE buddies or your lame CS degree figures you have clout in this market arena and start throwing ideas to corrupt a working system. Why the hell [from one of the BSD mailing lists] FreeBSD/OpenBSD needs a GUI based installer would be totally degrading the quality and functionality of the current installer. Some friggin newbie was crying because RedHat had a GNOME installer and some flavour of BSD didn’t. The GUI, ease of use does not, never has and never will equate to “better” or “advanced”. The functionality of the working code is what constitutes what is better. Not “How stupid a person can be, and still use this device”. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the stupid people, you all can rot in hell and suffer the restraints of Microsoft Windows for all I care. Don’t come here dragging your Microsoft problems with you, remember why you converted in the first place.
These two geniuses are referring to making a system easier to use for technical users, we didn’t get to hear their open-minded opinions about how making Linux easier to use for non-technical users would eternally destroy it but I can assure you that they (and others like them) believe that very thing. Making Linux more accessible has not destroyed it yet and it’s not going to. It started out as a better operating system and it’s going to stay better, the addition of additional layers of GUI which can be turned off or never installed in the first place for power users doesn’t damage Linux. On the other hand, if your only goal is to make sure that Linux stays a private club and you don’t want “just anybody” to be able to be a member, you don’t want to hear my opinion of your motives.
How?
The how is covered in dozens of points below. They cover areas of Linux that need lots of work to meet the needs of both new computer users and existing computer users who are only new to Linux. They also cover ways to better think about the task in order to get better results than what we have in the existing distributions which are all variations on a theme: KDE and GNOME on top of the Linux kernel w/ various GNU tools included in the package (though unlikely to be run by the typical home user).
Realize that the operating system is not a goal unto itself.
Users have programs they want to run and the operating system is nothing more than a means to an end. Other portions of the OS may support activities that the user will perform outside of any application (e.g. setting sound volume or backing up files) but these activities are still only conducted to facilitate the main goal of running their programs.
Corollary: The user does not care what operating system they run as long as it runs the applications they want to run. All other things being equal they will and should make choices based on support, price, ease of use, etc.
apt-get and rpm are not installation systems for real world software.
Uninstall needs to be easy and natural.
Guessing about what packages are needed is not helpful. Most people see a given piece of software as a unity. If it has options, they expect the installation software to explain those options and offer installation choices.
End users should not have to pick between more than 70 different distributions in order to know what to install.
There should be basically be Main Street (home desktop), Wall Street (business desktop), and Server distributions. Since it is completely impractical to force companies, groups, and even individuals to stop churning out new distributions as quickly as they can beg a cute logo out of a friend, these could each be like the Linux Standard Base (LSB) is now. Each one would be a complete set of minimal requirements. A set of applications, menu items, directory layouts, etc. that are specified quite rigorously. Distributions could enhance from there in specific areas that are already set aside for areas of improvement and innovation without confusing a new user who just wants to buy “Linux For Dummies” and sit down with his new “Linux” machine to start using it. If the user knows it’s a distribution based on “Main Street” he/she can count on finding certain things in certain places and being able to get started with minimal pain.
Unified base requirements could get a lot of distributions to consider the idea of joining together just as United Linux is doing now. You can say what you like about the motives behind United Linux but they are going to have advantages by doing security patches and upgrades only once (already a difficult thing to keep track of). After all, isn’t that what we all got by having GNU do the utilities for us and Linus build the Linux kernel? There was a base we could build on to get something that was actually useful. Let’s extend that base.
Basic system functions and settings should be a substrate supported by both KDE and Gnome (as well as any other GUIs that might come along).
That includes but is not limited to:
- The menu items on the “Start” menu
- File extension/application associations
- Mime type associations
- Clipboard handling
- Printing
- Control panel items
- Event sounds
- A way to display notification icons in the “system tray” and associate actions taken on them with actions in programs
- Registration of keyboard shortcuts that cut across all applications (i.e. Ctrl+Shift+I means “get the next instant message” no matter what application I happen to be running at that moment)
- A standardized notification mechanism the user can set up to connect to email, IM, etc.
- Standardized themes (both visual and audio)
- Drag and drop of file names and data that would otherwise be directed through the clipboard (i.e. as an alternate mechanism to the clipboard)
- A shared “trash can” where deleted files are placed. It should also have a shared mechanism for specifying where the deleted files came from and where they should be restored to if the user desires to do so.
- Program install/uninstall
All of the above must be documented and ideally available via APIs so that the desktops use them as well as install programs and languages like Perl, Python, and Java can make use of the functions to more fully integrate themselves into whatever GUI environment they are run under.
If the configuration method for a piece of software is “find this configuration file and edit it” then it might as well not have options.
Most users just won’t do it or couldn’t do it properly if they tried.
Whether it really is or not, the shell prompt is going to be viewed as evil by the vast majority of users. Many did not use MS-DOS and if they did, did not enjoy the experience. At this point you are better off avoiding it any way you can.
That doesn’t mean it has to be removed, just deprecated. Power users (and all users become power users given long enough) can start to make use of the power of the command line eventually.
Don’t let a program suffer from sprawl if you don’t have to.
Ask yourself if the application you are creating really needs items copied to multiple directories, followed by editing multiple files, followed by running multiple configuration programs.
A perfect example of this is configuration of a desktop Linux system. On Mandrake I have a configuration program that comes from Mandrake that lets me set up many things. But then there’s another one for KDE or GNOME (whichever I happen to be running) and amazingly neither of them really covers all the configuration I expect to be covered.
Pretty does count.
If you think it doesn’t look at people’s general distaste for all things Unix/Linux and their current love for the Mac OS X. The Mac OS is BSD with a pretty face. What we are shooting for, what we must shoot for, is Linux with a pretty face and not owned by just one company.
Corrolary: That means all fonts have to be anti-aliased. I hope that’s not a news bulletin, but the time for any other option is over.
Jargon is our enemy.
Look at what you are writing. Think about anything the end-user may see. If it talks about computer languages, operating system parts, or tools that were originally intended for sys admins or developers then it may as well be a collection of random words stuck into the sentences like MadLibs.
Here is an actual example of a screen I was presented with when I installed Gnome on a machine running Debian Linux. Keep in mind that while I have virtually no experience with Linux, I am a professional software developer and have been doing PC development under Windows and DOS since 1987. I still had to read it a couple of times to get the gist of what it was telling me.
If you actually know what defoma, libpango, a symbolic link, and dpkg-reconfigure are, award yourself some special gold stars. Either way, pretend you don’t (substituting the words lumptylump for defoma, ruppa for pango, and uwig for dkpg might help) and re-read that screen. It’s one of the purest, most unadorned examples of stupid nonsense I’ve ever been treated to, and it is exactly what you cannot thrust in a user’s face.
Games are more important than you realize.
MS-DOS hung on much longer than expected (including Microsoft’s expectations). One of the reasons for that was games stayed on MS-DOS. After DirectX was organized and it conformed to the needs of developers (rather than some of Microsoft’s earlier attempts which largely conformed to the needs of Microsoft) it began the move of games to Windows. Users came with it.
If there is anything the SDL and OpenGL do not do or do not do well, let’s make sure they do it. There needs to be a major program underway to make it easy to have Linux be a painless platform to develop for at the same time the Windows version of a game is being built.
If Linux does not support the hardware they want, users will not support Linux.
That means all hardware. Scanners, printers, joysticks and other gaming devices, video cards (esp. those with 3d capabilities), USB, USB 2.0, Firewire, digital capture cards, web cameras, keyboards (including those ones with all the extra buttons for media control, etc.), digital cameras, pen tablets, mice, etc., etc., etc.
The peripherals all exist, again not because having them is a goal unto itself, but because they facilitate running some program the user actually cares about.
Hardware manufacturers cannot support an operating system if they cannot be sure what they have to support. That’s why sound, printing, etc. all need driver standards they can work with and for those standards to be completely adopted so they can be sure that implementing one and only one driver will get them support for all Linux distributions.
Linux sound support is unacceptably fragmented.
Every program should be able to use the sound playback device as though it were the only application attempting to use it. The results of that should be mixed between all inputs.
There should be no other option. The idea that starting up a sound server is something optional is insane. You have to have one, it’s as basic as having X to arbitrate the use of the screen.
The plethora of sound solutions should disappear. There has to be one final arbiter of sound for all applications that need to use it. If there is a leading solution now, we should adopt it and add in anything it is missing from some of the secondary systems. That means that the next version of XMMS or KDE doesn’t support aRts, eSound, and OSS. Nor do they each pick just one separately. This only works if only one is picked and everybody agrees on which one it is.
Ask yourself, “What brand should a Linux desktop show?”
This is a question that was raised recently by RedHat as they attempted to unify the two most popular Linux desktops (KDE and GNOME) so they would look and behave more alike.
BTW, the answer is… Linux. The brand of the operating system that the user is running and identifies with. “I am a Linux user.” “I have Linux on my machine at home.” “Does this program run on my computer? I run Linux.”
Note: I didn’t say KDE, GNOME, or the name of any distributions like RedHat or Mandrake. The brand that the user needs to identify with is Linux, don’t confuse him by making it anything else. If you aren’t comfortable with the penguin as a mascot, avoid him and just focus on the name or things which are task centric rather than brand specific. For example, the KDE desktop does not need a little K with a gear behind it on their desktop menu. Something more appropriate would be “Start” (ala Windows), “Programs”, or even “Linux”.
Is any Linux distribution you have ever run set up to help a true beginning user? That is, one who has taken home his/her first computer and the white box shop he/she purchased it from slapped a Linux distribution on there because it was free and they could include a complete set of discs and promise free productivity software like OpenOffice.
Ever sat down to think about what a computer experience needs to be for a user like that? For one thing, the computer has to ask a lot of questions and do so in simple words that anyone with a grade school education can understand. For example, when I stick an audio CD into my machine for the first time how should a home edition of Linux behave? My belief is that it should ask the user whether he/she wants to play the CD or pull the music off of the CD to be played later. Likewise, in a home environment I think “My Music”, “My Pictures”, “My Documents”, etc. should be prominent right on the desktop for the user to find.
Remember that beginning users are more comfortable learning one way to do any given thing, whether it is ripping a CD or closing a program. They can learn more than that as they become a power user but you also have to remember that the power user of the word processor isn’t automatically a power user for downloading pictures off of a camera. If wizards and other helpers come up frequently and can be turned off individually and at the user’s discretion, the user can set his/her own pace for learning his way through new applications and new uses of the computer.
Corollary: Don’t be afraid to be aggressive in your use of wizards and help. The power user can turn it off easily enough.
Users often think in terms of tasks rather than software. They want to “share their files”, not configure Samba. They want to “get the pictures off of the digital camera”, not run gphoto. So menus and user desktops need to cater to helping the beginning user find what he needs to accomplish a given task.
Because users don’t stay beginning users forever, put a simple splash screen at the beginning of all your GUIs that says the name of the application and its version. Then people can begin to make the association for themselves that they use program X to perform task Y. Then they can graduate to just running the program when they are ready to do so.
Put some thought into the programs you choose to build. Do we need another text editor? No. That category is collapsing under its own weight. Build something that does what iMovie does on a Mac or something that tells a user what the weather, news, and sports scores are every morning. Just pick something different that covers some of those tasks that aren’t already well covered.
Create a list of tasks you think people want to perform and run it by the real users you know. Ask Grandma, Grampa, little Timmy, anybody you can think of who doesn’t even know what the words Perl, compiler, or even Linux mean, what they want to use a computer for. Then start making it easy for them to do those things.
Here’s a starter list I’ve been compiling for you to start with. A poll that asked real end users to rank all these in terms of importance would tell you a lot. They could also add write in candidates that would probably quickly identify another 20 or so worthy of being on the list.
- Visio-like Diagram Editing
- Weblog/Simple Website Editing
- HTML Editing
- Download Photos, Scan Them, and Maintain Photo Albums
- Listen To Audio CDs
- Rip Music Off Of Audio CDs
- MP3/Ogg/Wav/etc. Playback
- CD/Audio CD/VCD/SVCD Burning
- Word Processing
- Spreadsheets
- Presentations
- Browse The Internet
- Personal Finances (ala Quicken)
- Perform Simple Photo Editing
- Make Greeting Cards And Other Personal Printing Projects (ala PrintShop)
- Instant Message
- Watch Videos
- Watch DVDs
- Download Music And Other Files
- Chat
- Videoconference
- Personal Information Management (Addresses, Calendar, Tasks, etc.)
- View Pictures
- Compress/Uncompress Files
- Protect Their Machine (Personal Firewall/Anti-Virus)
The idea is for a firewall that is as simple to use as ZoneAlarm on the PC and some simple software capable of scanning executables and incoming mail.
On that subject, there is a fascinating myth running around that Linux is immune to viruses. It isn’t. It definitely hasn’t been targeted heavily so far and it has the ability to better protect the user from them (i.e. a virus might nuke all of an individual user’s data but the system would still boot and run and other users of the same machine would have their data protected). But if you think users aren’t going to click on executable files that are mailed to them by total strangers then you don’t get out enough. Like touching the frozen pole with their tongue to see if it tastes like chocolate, some users do it now, and some will always do it, even when you’ve told them not to and they should know better.
- Run A Webcam
- Tax Preparation
- Keep Track Of Recipes
- Keep Track Of Collections (Baseball Cards/Comics/Beanie Babies/etc.)
- Share a Printer
- Share Files
- Clip Art/Fonts
This is not an actual task but it is a good point. My wife pointed out that most people use whatever came with Office or PrintShop or whatever they use. If we have a few discs of royalty free material they can use that can be bundled with a distribution it is just one more thing taken care of for typical end users.
Users are going to have a lot of questions about Linux. Are you prepared to answer all the common ones? Do you have a resource you could turn to that has short simple jargon-free answers to Linux questions like these?
- Can I run all my programs and games on it?
- What is an operating system?
- How is Linux any different from Windows?
- Isn’t Windows (or Microsoft) the best?
- Can I try it out?
- If it’s free, it can’t be any good, can it?
- Who is going to help me when I have problems?
If you aren’t sure if it’s easy. TEST IT!
Actually stick it in a naive user’s hands and watch them use it. Do so silently and record the results. Resist the urge to yank their hands from the keyboard to fire up a console. Let them flounder and figure out how to fix it so they don’t flounder next time.
The audience that could most benefit from Linux in the long run is not going to seek out Linux to install it.
They are the users who limp along with the same OS for years on end because it came with their computer. They do not upgrade when a new version of Windows ships, they get a new version when they buy a new computer.
That means that one of your targets has got to be the white box vendors. Walmart is already heading down this path but every Tom, Dick, and Harry who sells PCs needs to be sold on why burning 50 cents worth of CDs will give them something better to give the customer than nothing or Windows.
The same goes for the “computer guys” that set up the computers for half the population. If you are one of these next door neighbors or family members or friends who does this, you have to be sold yourself that putting Linux on the machine is going to be a better choice than pirating some Windows OS for them or making them go buy a license for it.
If part of your audience is going to be computer users who get a new machine home and it already has Linux pre-installed, there needs to be two versions of the software installation available in the distribution. One for a complete install, and one that installs most everything and holds back on final configuration of things like the network and printers until it is sitting in its new owner’s home.
During my years at Tandy a lot of time was spent on the out-of-the-box (OOTB) experience. We had the software ask special questions the first time it was run, go through tutorials, and teach people about the software that had come with their new machine. Why should a Linux OOTB experience be any less than a Windows one?
Linux installations should be pared to the necessary and sufficient to accomplish end-user tasks.
The typical end user does not require seven or eight different text file editors. One for editing plain text files and a word processor do the job just fine. This requires choices and picking winners and losers in various categories. This flies in the face of much of the Linux wisdom but it’s really the only way for an end user to get started.
Having more discs than Windows doesn’t make you win. Having better software that is better organized, covers more of the end user’s needs, and which is easier to use will win.
Corollary: Too often open source projects are fixing the same problem 50 different ways while ignoring other, equally important, problems.
Basic system administration should be made automatic and assumed for the user.
By that I mean that good habits like automatic backup should be set up by default and the user prompted only for his/her participation in swapping CDs or floppies. System updates for security should be automatic and only require basic approval.
Linux needs to be the first, but not the last, to support a system wide lingua franca of functionality that can be used by any language running on the platform.
XML-RPC, SOAP, whatever, it isn’t important. But what is important is that a Perl application can add itself to the menu whether it is running under either KDE or Gnome and have its application run. The same should be true for a shell script or a Java program. In any of these cases it is important to have the ability to integrate a program written in any language to the level of functionality that is typically only enjoyed fully by C and C++.
Doing so will enlarge the pool of developers and ease the creation of a better version of Linux for the home user. After all, many of the wizards, introductory lessons, etc. that I described in previous entries could be done just as well by developers who are more comfortable in scripting languages rather than C++. That means they’ll not only get done, they will get incrementally improved by people who might be daunted at pulling the latest version of a major application out of CVS to improve it, but who wouldn’t think twice about completely rewriting a script and submitting the updated version.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Linux has come a long way toward being a viable desktop OS for the average user, and the path to taking it the rest of the way is clear. The decentralized nature of the Linux community is an obstacle to achieving that aim, as is the pride of the average Linux developer. A concerted effort to try to understand and serve the beginning computer user will be necessary, as will be a subjugation of tribal allegiance to a particular distribution, desktop environment, text editor, or programming language, with all their associated quirks and differences. The key is beginning that “virtuous cycle” wherein users are attracted to the platform, which in turn attracts developers, which then clears the way to attract more users, and so on. Only as far as that cycle continues will Linux be a viable replacement for Windows on the home desktop.
About the Author
John Munsch is a software designer/developer with 15 years experience in the industry. He is currently working for a pharmacy software company and on his various projects (including some open source) that can be found through his
website at www.JohnMunsch.com.
> If you look closer you’ll see that it labels XL 80
> pixels right there in the properties pane. It’s a NON
> issue. (I can post a screenshot if you’d like.)
The question is, why was XL, M,… added there in first place ? And why did they changed it to a pixel value again ? I call this bad concepts and planning. Another proof for professionality ? Someone wrote here that these people are professionals. If this was the case then why do they:
a) remove all the stuff or change all the stuff
b) figure out that it sucks because people complan
c) and put that shit back there ?
They are changing around in the Desktop without basic clue without even knowing what they are doing and why they are doing it. It would be good for them instead of wasting hours of nonsens on IRC or on some stupid parties if they would concentrate on a real plan.
A piece of paper, write down what you want to fo for GNOME 2.2 and 2.4 and do exactly this. Concentrate on exactly these things and done.
Their dotplan for example is worth nothing. You get all couple of weeks a summary telling you ‘You are here <date>’ (we are planning stringfreeze).
Good stringfreeze but what stuff does actually go inside it and what targets should get approaced for that release. They only pointed out some 3-4 tools that got in, some gstreamer hallfassed support for gnome-media and that was about it. I mean as more I watch whats going on on GNOME and as more I go deeper into the materies of GNOME as more I figure out that there are no concepts behind it.
First, let me bash the “brand” section. Creating a brand is only useful if there is a huge advertising budget to make Linux a household name. This was the strategy behind “Intel Inside”, and may work for Linux. Except for one tiny weeny problem – LINUX HAS NO ADVERTISING BUDGET!
Sure, you can make a brand without advertising, like Google, but that too would be hard. Each Linux company always focuses on its uniqueness, and thus creating a multi-company brand is next to impossible.
Now, though matter how much you try, I don’t think Linux would get the consumer desktop before the corporate desktop. There is a number of reasons
1) Cost – most consumers get Windows with their machines. Rarely do they upgrade (if they do, it cost $100). I have friends that still use Windows 3.1! So unless they justify a upgrade, they wouldn’t upgrade. And if they could justify a upgrade, they wouldn’t be interested in Linux, period.
2) Then as for security, most consumers are ignorant and don’t know how good Linux’s security really is compared to Windows. Most of them couldn’t care less. The biggest security risks they are afraid of is viruses, but switch them all over to Linux, viola, Linux would get viruses too.
Besides, even if Windows manage to get out security fixes fast, most consumers don’t update their system often. They do it rarely. With newer versions, they have a dialog nagging them to update, but I notice many just ignore it.
3) As for Microsoft being a monopoly, most consumers wouldn’t go out and buy a unfamilar system just because Microsoft is a monopoly. Heck, many still bought Standard Oil’s fuel even with the bad monopoly press, and only stop when it was no longer dirt cheap.
4) As for commercial developers, the best way is not to attract consumers with promises of free goodies an gaining marketshare. These companies want to make money, and most likely, Linux isn’t going to provide that. If Adobe makes a version of Photoshop available on Linux, even with a huge consumer market share, do you think it would be profitable?
Linux is so close to becoming #2 is the desktop market, yet hardly any commercial developers. Meanwhile, Apple is getting loads of them. Why? They all know the Mac market is profitable, while Linux isn’t.
5) Technically, Windows and Linux is very different. On the consumer front, it is very different too. For example, lets bring up the issue of browsers. All major distributions, with the exception of Mandrake, use either Mozilla or something based on it. Windows uses IE, which works very differently on the UI stand than Mozilla.
6) Low-income people, if can’t afford a computer with Windows, I don’t think they can afford a computer without Windows. The average price for a computer is between $800-900, I don’t think they can’t afford Windows.
Most people couldn’t care less if they have Windows 98 or Windows XP, as long as Windows 98 works. Unless you haven’t notice, consumers aren’t heavy users. They rarely use their computers, and when they do, it isn’t memory intensive and isn’t on for a long time. In that case, I don’t see what’s so wrong with Windows 98, especially since Linux probably have less features than it.
The way I see it, windows just has a different target audience than linux/bsd. Linux is trying to broaden its audience, but doing so, care should be taken not to leave the old audience.
Me personally, I _hate_ GUI’s, wizards, … and I just _love_ human-readable config files. Frankly, I don’t care if john doe uses windows or linux or even bsd, as long as nobody touches my favorite kind of OS
But then again, they always ask me to solve their problems, and after about an hour on a windows box, I just can’t take it anymore and run back to my trusty openbsd box
Converting windows users isn’t easy. They all expect that they can do everything they could do before in less than a week. Hereby they just plain forget how many years it took them to learn those things in windows.
Unices are, imho, all about giving the sysadmin total control over the system. Windows is all about giving the user as _little_ control over the system as possible. These are opposite goals, designed for opposite groups of users. So if linux is going to target the mainstream, it is going to lose some (a lot) of its qualities.
However, there are other ways. Apple managed to create a hyper userfriendly and dummyproof OS, which is built on a solid BSD foundation, and, by just opening a console, gives us geeks all the power we want. Now if I could only afford a mac… (though… I’d still just install OpenBSD on it anyway :p)
Having read the article and the 100 posts so far, it seems that a lot of the usability advocates don’t really want Linux in particular. They want a free and more stable Windows, or a free and faster OS X. Of course, neither will happen because they’re both proprietary, so let’s shoehorn Linux into what we want.
Power users will be fine as long as they can still get to the command line and do things their way. Yes, he major desktops are becoming more user-friendly with each release, but at the same time, I don’t think the Linux developer community will allow any really harmful or misguided changes, for example, getting rid of text config files, or redoing the filesystem. We really don’t have to worry about seeing a “My Programs” folder under the root where all programs are installed by default, although it’s rightfully scary when a user suggests that sort of thing.
>If you don’t want to “waste your life” learning or reading anything new then you will always be clueless.
You don’t get it, right? Not everyone is interested as much in computer technology as you are and that’s good! There are people with other interests. They rather spend their time by painting a picture, studying history or whatever instead of memorizing the vi keys. And that’s the difference between a geek toy and a desktop OS. You can use desktop OSs even if you don’t want to spend a lot of time learning how to use them. They are a tool not something to make love with.
There is so much knowledge available that you have to focus your interests. It’s amazing that you haven’t realized this basic fact of modern human life by now.
The only people who are stupid and clueless around here are the geeks that seem to lack any understanding of the world outside of Emacs (yes, there is something out there).
This has gotten a lot of talk since I went to bed, went asleep and came back to work.
I used the add/remove programs as an example of something that windows users always ask for. The problem with the add/remove programs tool in Windows is one due to the way that linux has been developed and is one that cannot easily be translated because of dependencies. Almost every distro has a package tool and I like aspects of every single one of them. However, the problem is that any linux add programs remove progams tool will have to work in a drastically different way than the windows tool. Why?
Linux like Unix itself has grown organically. It did not sprout full-grown from the development of any one company. In fact it is supported by a host of companies and each project is comprimised for the most part by people who at the core of the project are doing projects because they think they are fun and are moved but not concerned by the fact that people like the distro makers are trying to make a stable product out of it.
How does this relate to package installation?
Gnumeric needs libgsf for example and libgnomeprint and other things. All these packages that gnumeric need are maintained and coded by different people that may or may not even work on gnumeric. As maintainer of distros, the natural inclination is to keep these packages seperate which leads to dependency issues. You try to install gnumeric and you need either a newer version or need to install one of these dependencies. You could try to roll the libs up into bigger packages and that might help or if you are trying to maintain those packages might actually be more of a headache. Until some of these lib packages are consolidated , the solution is to tie a user-friendly package program with an apt solution. I stated this another post.
Mandrake does something like this I understand with urpmi.
This would lead to the following example.
User downloads neato rpm off of a site.
He doubleclicks on the rpm and it warns him of dependencies.
The package program downloads those dependencies for the user and installs or updates the system with the dependencies.
As for the remove part, most package managers make removing an app as easy as unchecking a box or highlighting the app and clicking remove.
The issue for program add/remove is this:
1) Old-timers never tell newbies to go to the package management tool and click remove. To add rpms, they are not told to simply doubleclick the package and watch out for dependency warnings for RH8 to use as an example. In every mailing list, newbies are instructed to go to the command line and type rpm -e to remove or rpm -Uvh to add a program.
It seems from some of the posts that people have no idea that many of the package management tools exist or you can add a program will a doubleclick and giving the root password. It is like people do not even know the gui tools are there.
2) Package managers no matter how well built have to deal with the dependency issues and the linux community as a hold needs to work on how to consolidate the lib groups in a logical manner that will not drive the maintainers insane.
3) Because of the issues surrounding the way linux is different from windows a program add/remove tool is going to work differently and look a bit different that its Windows counterpart. For Macs, the process is radically different with installation involving simply dragging the program to a folder. They don’t have a program add/remove tool like Windows. It is different. For Linux it will be different too.
I am NOT saying that package management is adequate for linux. I am NOT sayng that it should be command line.
I am saying that by its nature that package management will be different for linux and that asking for it to be just like Windows is not quite the best solution for the problem at hand.
“They are changing around in the Desktop without basic clue without even knowing what they are doing and why they are doing it. It would be good for them instead of wasting hours of nonsens on IRC or on some stupid parties if they would concentrate on a real plan. ”
No, no focus at all.
GNOME Accessibility honored in 2002 Helen Keller Award – http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/news.html
The GNOME Usability Project – http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/
Seems you are the one lacking a clue.
@Aitvo
Dude simply don’t try it. What you showed me now are no features. There is NO roadmap in GNOME what you showed me is far off topic of my concern or what I wanted to point out. Your links are taken out of nowhere. The Accessibility stuff is not what matters here. Accessibility is indeed an important thing no doubt but this doesn’t explain the new features of GNOME what is worked on etc. Accessibility was already part of GTK2.0.
What I want is a list of things showed up detailed that explains what happens with the individual modules within the GNOME CVS tree. I give you an example:
Plan for GNOME 2.2
– Gnome-Media should get GStreamer support
– Gnome CD player should get native theme
– Rhythmbox becomes part of Gnome-Module
– Gedit will become Tab support
– Working on a native Webclient for Gnome
– this and that.
These are just examples cut out of the air. Some of them are valid things some not.
Look at KDE for example they have a clear roadmap for KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2 right now. You can go to their page read about what should happen with the code for 3.1 and 3.2, you get a insight of what they plan, what is decided and what should get hacked on.
All these things are missing in GNOME.
Nice try of yours but next time try to find better examples that at least matches what I was trying to tell you.
@Anonymous (IP: —.qc.sympatico.ca)
I don’t know what you are talking about. It is not required to COPY Windows. Needless to mention that you just wrote out of nowhere.
Windows is a full Operating System. This includes the core layer, Network, Filesystem, Desktop, Sound, Hardware support etc.
Gnome on the otherhand is just a bunch of libraries ONTOP of Linux.
Even if you really want you could never mature Linux into Windows. The point here is that the users want a working Desktop environment. One that simply works. KDE somehow made a good Desktop. Yes my KDE Desktop that I use looks exactly like Windows 200 plain. Same blue color etc. No I am not a KDE zealot because I used to be a GNOME follower for 2.5-3.0 years now usually contributed a lot of Patches, Bugfixes, Wishes, Comments etc. To say it GNOME was my Desktop of choice but in the past months with the 2.0 Version of it many things totally changed more or less to BAD (you can also read the statement of herzi ‘Sven Herzberg’ who still contributes to GNOME by doing language translations for GERMAN .po files. He also maintains GNOME.de domain) He, myself and others are really unhappy with GNOME today. If you don’t belive my own written words then you may look at that link above and get yourself some feedback what other people think.
Ok if you don’t like Windows (for whatever stupid purpose since there is no real reason to dislike Windows) then I want to ask you why GNOME recently adopted a Windows Registry like system that exactly gives us the feeling of what we hated most on Windows. The REGISTRY. I mean these things are quite stupid. Basically Gnome right now is an unfinished mixture of Windows AND MacOS-X. GNOME has inherited 2 of the worst features from both Operating Systems (to call them that way).
You said:
“The question is, why was XL, M,… added there in first place ? And why did they changed it to a pixel value again ? I call this bad concepts and planning. Another proof for professionality ? Someone wrote here that these people are professionals. If this was the case then why do they:”
I provided you with links to documentation explaining how they have focused interface development. If that’s not enough then too bad. As for KDE, yeah it’s great and all but how many commercial QT applications are there? 1 maybe 2? LOL I’d love to use KDE, but I’d rather use the desktop that everyone supports. (AIM, Yahoo, and most other commercial Linux applications use GTK.)
> You don’t get it, right? Not everyone is interested as
> much in computer technology as you are and that’s
> good! There are people with other interests. They
> rather spend their time by painting a picture,
> studying history or whatever instead of memorizing
> the vi keys.
You don’t get it either. These people don’t want to deal with the complexity of Linux if first case so they use Windows. As simple as that. So why should we care for such people ?
> I provided you with links to documentation
> explaining how they have focused interface
> development. If that’s not enough then too bad.
It is obvious for me that you simply missed the point here. You are searching for excuses only to proove me wrong but you generally fail all the time.
Again Gnome 2.0 example:
– 2.0 has pixel values written there
– 2.1 (CVS) had that changed to L, M, S and wahetever
– 2.1 (CVS some later) you told me that they put the pixel stuff back there (which I cant confirm right now)
My point was, that this kind of action is only showing that they have no real plans or clue of what they are doing. They put the pixel description in there, removed it and then they found out that it sucked and put them back in. That only shows that there are no real concepts of what they are doing. They test things because of assumptions and revert it later on. Usually if you seriously work on a project (and GNOME wants to become a so called Corporate Desktop) then I expect that these people before doing such stupid changes (and later on revert them) that they at least TALK and PLAN these things correctly before doing these changes.
And there are NO XL, XXL, XXXL icons. icons usually are made of pixels in the horizontal and vertical angle you say that this Icon has 24×128 pixels of a depth of 32bit.
Or did you ever heard of ‘My Monitor resolution is XXL now” no you say ‘My Monitor resolution is 1200x1024x24″ and everyone realizes that within one second. Saying XL or M or S don’t give precise values you can operate with.
Measurements such as M, S, L, XL were made for the industry to match some region of people. Not everyone is like the other so they need to categorize these things correcly.
e.g.
size 48-52 S
size 52-56 M
size 56-60 L
size 60-66 XL
These values are only taken as example and don’t necessarily match the reality. You never come up and tell your people hey ‘My Monitor is XL’ which may reflect something like
‘My Monitor is XL and shows around 800×600 – 1600×1200 pixels. I dont know what it shows exactly because I dont know the correct value.
Not to mention that even if the Accessibility team decided these things, no one prooves that they are right. They may be wrong too. As a last sentence. GNOME used to be a REAL FREE desktop (pay attention to REAL FREE) made by volunteers people like you and me. As soon as these companies got their hands into it as soon it started to stink.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think KDE is crap or anything like that. I really LIKE KDE, I hope that it really gets off the ground and commercial applications are released for it. Ultimately though I’d like to see a standard toolkit interface to if you want a KDE application you tell configure to use KDE, if you want GNOME tell it to use GNOME.
> Don’t get me wrong,
Dont get me wrong either, I am no KDE zealot in first case. I only use KDE right now because I think there is nothing better. As for the license of QT, I really dont care much since I get the source and compile it. As for the commercial aspect you may be right. QT requires a license to be bought so you can commercially sell your product. But if your product is good then I think that the price for the license is quite cheap 2500 USD is nothing compared the fact that you may make 10 times the money with it.
Uhh I suppose you aren’t reading my comment correctly. It’s great from a user interface perspective, look at the screenshot. Not only does it tell you in pixels, it also explains that 24 pixels is Extra Small so non geeks can understand it.
http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/panel.jpg
> it also explains that 24 pixels
Ah ok then, they might have it put back then maybe because a lot of people complained. Anyways thats just one example of many.
Let’s see, someone with a *.dip.t-dialin.net turning a thread in an out of context Gnome flamewar, complaining about Gnome developers, about companies like Ximian (funded by Gnome developers in the first place) collaborating with (dominating, according to you…) the project, lacking knowledge about latest Gnome releases, saying non geek users should stay away from linux…
…
Ali?
)))
You don’t get it, right? Not everyone is interested as much in computer technology as you are and that’s good! There are people with other interests. They rather spend their time by painting a picture, studying history or whatever instead of memorizing the vi keys. And that’s the difference between a geek toy and a desktop OS. You can use desktop OSs even if you don’t want to spend a lot of time learning how to use them. They are a tool not something to make love with.
There is so much knowledge available that you have to focus your interests. It’s amazing that you haven’t realized this basic fact of modern human life by now.
The only people who are stupid and clueless around here are the geeks that seem to lack any understanding of the world outside of Emacs (yes, there is something out there).
And you think that people didn’t need to learn Windows, MS Office, etc? If they had never used a computer before and just got a Windows CD and an Office CD and they installed them and in an hour they would be writing documents and making databases? Not really. Windows is hardly the best or the easiest, it’s just what most people are used to. Many beginners take extensive courses in Windows and Office…
Normal users don’t install their OS either, so it’s not harder to choose Emacs or Open Office in whatever UNIX GUI compared to choosing “Word” in Windows. No man-page reading required! Beginners are actually more lost in Windows since things that worked one time may not work the second time, things stop working for no reason, etc…
I’m not saying Unix has the best user interface, but to improve it don’t copy Windows but rather something *better* like BeOS or AmigaOS.
This is why I’ve been saying we should force new users to learn these things. And long live LaTeX!
My own experience is interesting, because there are a lot of juxtapositions and ironies:
I would like a good music notation/scoring/sequencing program on Linux, but I can’t get the best-known candidate (Brahms) to work on my Mandrake 8 distribution (it’s not perfect software, either, from what I understand.
On the other hand, the one I like on Windows (QuickScore Elite Level II) appears to be *orphaned.*
I like the keyboard support in Windows, though it’s improving in Linux. Still, I’m just a bit shaky with keyboard support (both in Gnome and KDE.) I don’t see yet any equivalent to “mousekeys”, nor (as far as I can tell) any way to make the mouse cursor(s) bigger. It’d be nice if I could “home” the mouse cursor, too.
On the other hand, software I have to work with every day on Windows (e.g. ArcServe, Enterprise Security Reporter, other “3rd-party” software,) has really *bad* keyboard support. Keyboard support is *vital* to me because of my eyesight. Yet I find myself searching for mouse pointers all the time on Windows. And I can’t enlarge the mouse pointer on everyone’s computer that I have to work with anyway.
I like Internet explorer, but I like Linux browsers, too. On the other hand, I’ve seen people eaten alive by IE security problems, and sometimes the Linux browsers haven’t rendered so well. On the other hand, I’ve recently discovered that there are some rendering controls in Linux browsers that I didn’t know about (or have been added.)
I like Outlook, and Mozilla Mail has sometimes been a problem. On the other hand, my Outlook seems to lock up all the time lately, and I’ve gotten used to Mozilla Mail now. But there are some attachments I can’t use too well in Linux….
My conclusion?
Microsoft has the desktop market because they’re good at American-style Dog-Eat-Dog business. Setting that aside, ain’t no reason why I should use Windows at home, except to run one orphaned piece of software. I can live witout “mousekeys” type technology and big mouse pointers at home, and I’ll welcome them if, and when, they come to Linux. If Brahms is ever finished, I won’t have any reason to run Windows anymore.
But that doesn’t mean Linux is better or Windows is worse, or vice versa.
And if I take this from a programmer’s perspective, remember that, given time and ambition, I could *fix* some of the problems I see in Linux. When will I be able to do that with Windows?
” I like the keyboard support in Windows, though it’s improving in Linux. Still, I’m just a bit shaky with keyboard support (both in Gnome and KDE.) I don’t see yet any equivalent to “mousekeys”, nor (as far as I can tell) any way to make the mouse cursor(s) bigger. It’d be nice if I could “home” the mouse cursor, too. ”
The functionallity you seek is there using RedHat 8 (or Gnome 2.x)
http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/mouse.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/accessability.jpg
“And I can’t enlarge the mouse pointer on everyone’s computer that I have to work with anyway. ”
I like to enable the locate mouse feature in gnome 2, when you press the control key it will animate a square around your mouse.
” I like Outlook, and Mozilla Mail has sometimes been a problem. On the other hand, my Outlook seems to lock up all the time lately, and I’ve gotten used to Mozilla Mail now. But there are some attachments I can’t use too well in Linux…. ”
Try Evolution, it is a GREAT replacement for Outlook.
🙂
Don’t want to start another Gnome vs. KDE thread.
Under Desktop Preferences in Gnome 2.0 go to the cursor tab. There are larger cursors.
Under Desktop Preferences in Gnome 2.0 Accessibility you can enable mouse keys. Do not how well or badly it works.
At least you get the larger cursors but like I said I have no idea how the enable mouse keys work.
The keyboard shortcuts applet is pretty good and very clean.
1. do we really need to appeal to end users?>>
<sarcasm>Oh, not at all.</sarcasm>
In the 1950’s Ford Motors tried to dictate to consumers the kind of car they should want. They did research. They did a big flashy ad-campaign. They ignored the nay-sayers within their own ranks. Ford Motors knew best what the consumer needed.
The car in question was the Edsel.
The end user is the customer.
The customer is always right. The code exists for the END USER. Period.
It seems to me that the only people bitching about Linux not being what they wanted ( aka A free version of Windows ) are people who are usually not newbies or power users but novices to Linux. A novice only has just begun to taste what he/she can do but does not really know how to completely master whatever OS they are using for lack of experince, knowledge or desire to learn beyond what they already know.
Now IMHO for example a complete and utter newbie who only uses a computer for internet access, email, writing and printing letters, listening to music on a cd, etc.. with a properly pre-configured Linux box ( running any distro you can name ) would find out that it would be more then enough for their needs because they are not looking for that extra functionality that a novice desires.
Hell they would not even know how to fix/replace a corrupted driver .dll file in XP or not to mention how to hack the reg in XP to get those annoying MSN pop-up messages to leave them alone ! You people forget to realize that a complete and utter newbies will never ever know how to solve any of the problems they would face in windows, Linux, or OS-X if the shit hits the fan. Just like they would never know how to gain access to the root account via a terminal to edit the menus or how to hack the reg in windows or even how to properly un-install a program or add hardware in the correct fashion in any OS that they are using.
I really doubt that they would even care enough to even attempt to learn any of those tasks and would rather pay someone else to accomplish any administrative maintenance work for them. In my opinion Linux can and will be a hit for newbies who don’t really use the computer to it’s fullest extent. Instead as others have mentioned they only use it as a glorified typewriter/Web-TV/calculator because once properly configured and set-up by either a OEM or a relative/friend it is very hard for them to break a Linux based desktop since is was designed with the Unix principle of being a multi-user desktop with security in mind to prevent both the user and outside forces from screwing up the machine if it is configured in the correct manner. With the right set of edited menus KDE or Gnome would be and can be setup so even your grandma could use. Hell you wouldn’t even have to worry about her calling you about the spyware or trojan she just installed via IE/OE by accident because those problems in Linux do not exist because of the vary nature of it’s design.
@Dekkard (IP: —.cm256.alanpa.supercable.es)
Well you are really mature. The Topic is about Linux and Desktops and I’m only pointing out my concerns about GNOME which is Linux and Desktop related. Now stop acting like a dumbass. If you don’t like my comments simply don’t read them by the way if you start grepping my name in the Changelogs of GNOME then you will realize that I not just complain. Needless to mention that I probably contributed more to GNOME than you ever will be able to.
<quote>The end user is the customer.
The customer is always right. The code exists for the END USER. Period. </quote>
HA!
You do not understand linux or open source at all do you?
These projects may have some contributors working for companies but the projects themselves are started and run by coders for the coders and about the coders. They code what they want and according to the vision of how they want it.
It does not matter how many people scream for a search button facility tied to the gnome-search-tool for Nautilus.
Why?
The guys who code Nautilus (not just donate patches or fixes ) are two guys that do the work in their spare time. They don’t want a search button. They want a search facility based on another program that is not ready for prime-time yet.
What people here do not understand is that many of the programs around which linux is based are like this. They are people’s pet projects and they run these pet projects the way they want to. It is their code. It is their project and if you do not like it then you can create another project based on their project with all the bells and whistles you want.
The people who code these projects, apps and such do it because they think it is fun and they do what they want. If a distro does not like then they can code their own file manager (just an example) and some distros like the old Corel did.
@Johnathan Bailes (IP: 141.156.28.—)
I wish you were right. Unfortunately things drastically changed. Another example GNOME
Look how many of the new Maintainers are working for companies who are involved into GNOME now.
Yes Maintainers because no one of them own the code they only continue where their previous Developers stopped (See Nautilus used to be a product of Eazel, the main Coders somehow are no more).
Now what do you think happen lets see:
<sarcasm>
– Developer/Maintainer hired by company to work for them.
– They work for these companies 8 hrs per day to develop on GNOME.
– The companies must have a big heart to allow them to work on GNOME and getting paid for.
– The companies for sure have NO interests in GNOME because the DEVELOPERS only say where it goes.
</sarcasm>
Wake up before it’s to late. Although these are my own opinions only. If you work for free on your own GNOME related little project then it is fine. But I am talking about the core (the stuff that is named GNOME). Look GTK nowadays got owned by Redhat because all developers work for redhat.
ATK owned by SUN even if its GPL
A lot of GNOME libs owned by XIMIAN or REDHAT even if its GPL.
All these companies that are involved in the GNOME project follow their own interests with it and be sure. I mean be really sure that they put all their interest into it. Same situation with Evolution. I often requested some features and I was told many times that they can’t simply change the things as they like because of Company order.
The problem with what you say is this mantis.
Most of the developers working on projects that actually make gnome livable like a File Manager and gtk based web browser and the gnome based crontab editor and so many projects are not getting paid to work full-time on these projects.
Many of the major contributors to Nautilus and other projects have Ximian and Redhat behind their emails but they do NOT get paid to work on so many of the projects. They are instead working on core libs or redhat-config tools or making evolution look just a little more like outlook in some totally silly way.
I understand your frustration with the direction that is gnome has taken. I still use and love gnome but I understand how many of the actions as of late could turn you screaming over to xfce or KDE for that matter.
The funny thing is that from most of the discussions I have seen in the mailing lists most of the major decisions have been driven by a few large egos as opposed to a major conspiracy by Redhat, Sun and Ximian. For example, if Ximian had such tight control, the metatheme project would have been the default theme management tool a long time ago. After all it is completely usable. Why not?
A few egos in the Gnome Foundation and desktop-devel lists thought the project was a big over-complicated mess and threw it out the window. This judgement is not completely untrue. Sun if anything has been criticized heavily in the mailing lists of more than a few projects for only giving criticism and no real input in terms of code or ui direction. Redhat has had a lot of influence on the core of the projects. This is true.
However, the tendency to want to blame a corporation as opposed to looking objectively at the big ego-filled head of Havoc and some of his bone-headed lapdogs as the core of the Gnome 2.x issues are natural but I think misplaced.
For some reason, the Gnome groups are drawn around strong-willed leader types like Havoc or in the past Miquel.
Yet, the big bad Redhat that controls the essence of the Gnome project still cannot contribute a couple of full-time programmers to help clean up Nautilus before Gnome 2.2. I swear it is like they are more worried about developing cute unified themes than bringing any real progress to the Gnome project.
“Yet, the big bad Redhat that controls the essence of the Gnome project still cannot contribute a couple of full-time programmers to help clean up Nautilus before Gnome 2.2. I swear it is like they are more worried about developing cute unified themes than bringing any real progress to the Gnome project.”
Huh?
“Christian: Tell me a little about yourself and how you come to start hacking on Nautilus?
Alexander: I’m 28 years old, currently working for Red Hat from my home in Stockholm, Sweden. I work in the OS-development group which means I work on the Red Hat distribution. I do a fair amount of desktop work, but I also maintain other system packages. ”
— http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file…
Re: The person who had great success with his parents on Windows XP. My parents still use Windows 98. Actually, my mother won’t touch the computer and my father has this recurring discussion with me regarding e-mail attachments: “What do you mean save it?” “What’s a file?” “I don’t know where my other files are; I just save them.” “What’s a directory?” I won’t let him near Linux.
I have spent the last couple of months learning what has proved to be a very exasperating operating system. I have kept at it, though. I have had the luxury of spending enough time with Linux to set up a reasonably working system. Perhaps, one day, I will actually do something useful with it.
Still, Linux saved me on one occasion. I have recently moved the four computers in the house to Windows 2000. I also have a digital camera that I wanted to use at my daughter’s party. I plugged the camera into my laptop. Windows didn’t allow a power user to mount devices. Logged in as administrator, Windows couldn’t find the software for the device it wanted to mount.
In desperation I rebooted, slapping in a Knoppix CD. When it was finished, I saw two hard drives on my desktop: hda1 and sda1. The latter contained the familiar looking file structure of the digital camera. Seconds later, thumbnails replaced icons in Konqueror. Clicking the thumbnails gave me a full sized view. Right clicking the thumbnails let me edit them in the GIMP. I quickly entered my workgroup name in the KDE control panel and moved the files to an upstairs Windows machine.
That is the direction Linux should be heading.
Read the quote Aitvo:
He works on the Red Hat distribution related to the desktop and other system packages at work and he goes home and works on Nautilus.
How do I know?
Luis Villa told me so from Ximian.
He could be wrong though.
even if a lot of code for GNOME is made by some X distribution or some X company (i don’t know because i use KDE since the 1.x series) it doesn’t mean the community has to follow them. Nobody stop you from starting a new desktop project from scartch if you don’t like the GNOME view of things, and i believe a lot of other coders thinks the same.
That’s what i meant in my original post, you don’t have to ask the community do do stuff we don’t care about. If some distro cares about popping out a window upon a cd insertion then ask them, not the community.
“We were stabilizing and productizing the desktop for Red Hat 7.2, which was the first Red Hat version to ship with gnome 1.4. We mainly worked on Nautilus performance and stability, and after shipping I spent a fair amount of time merging our patches upstream.”
This implies that he is paid to work on Nautilus.
— http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file…
Now that you admitted who you are, Mantis/Joey/Ali/whatever, perhaps it’s time to show how mature you are and start signing with a single nick. Oh, and I see that you helped Gnome developers a lot… This is quite a treasure for the harmony between developers
:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80874
And if you start searching bugs like that in bugzilla with your name, you get lots of funny flamewars!
))
P.S.: To the OSNews moderators: I’ll quite understand and agree if you mod down this message. But you must admit this guy really asks for these things
@Johnathan Bailes (IP: 141.156.28.—)
Thank you, I have nothing to add there. Everything you wrote is absolutely true. I sometimes wished that the development wouldn’t lag so much. The GNOME 2.2 we get is nearly as unfinished as 2.0 was. There is so much to do. Not necessarily new features but the cleanup and the integration etc. There is so much remaining stuff. Anyways I doub that GNOME will keep up as leading Desktop because it is to much behind everything. It’s a hackers tweakers toy claimed to be the corporate desktop (which is isn’t) If you look at the tools for example Rhythmbox. Instead finishing the Programs as IS e.g. Stabilizing it etc. the Maintainer got the idea to change a lot of code and UI once again. What I want to say is there is no Finished GNOME as in ‘you can use it now’.
@Aitvo (IP: 166.68.134.—)
Only for your information. Please don’t come up with fragments of OffTopic Links with ancient Reports. It is true that Alex Larrson and Dave Camp both work on Nautilus and that Alex Larsson works for Redhat but the commits in the Nautilus CVS are not much. Maybe 10 source commits per month and 50 po file commits per month. Nothing else. The only noticable changes you may see between Nautilus for GNOME 2.0 and Nautilus for GNOME 2.2 is a new Treeview for Files and Tabbed Preferences and some less important bugfixes. All these things I don’t count s ‘big changes’ as in something you may say ‘wow that rocks, finally we see real progress’. Please some of us including me know the GNOME CVS perfectly since I work every day with it even after I switched to KDE. Please next time you reply come up with some serious things and not fragments of offtopic comments.
@Dekkard (IP: —.cm128.alnpa.supercable.es)
Yes indeed that was written by me. And you obviously don’t know the situation I was in when I wrote this. I must admit this was really a pissed day where a couple of circumstances came together. I must admit that it was wrong. But look, that bug wasn’t touched for many months and then I spent half a day sitting at home creating a fix for it. I announced it in the #gnome channel on irc.gimp.org and asked someone to commit this patch. To say over 2 days I asked a couple of people if it is ok to go in (you know, last word has the Maintainer). Then exactly 2 days after that bug arrived on b.g.o Anders Carlsson came up with his own patch (which also missed the half of what I did) and commited them on his own to the module. From my feeling he wanted to put me one over. Dunno about that but I exactly had that feeling this day. There is no real reason to glue this one mistake on my head all the time over and over again. My positive contribution hopefully weights more than this one mistake I made. But I stand behind what I did, I need to live with it and fine.
While you post this b.g.o entry here publically with the obvious reason try to dumb my name into shit (which you do over and over again).
I think that people are well aware of my tries to explain some serious things within GNOME and your tries to attack me as single person. Quite obvious who of us look like a moron at the end.
Fine mantis, you do not like Gnome.
I think we get it.
BTW, I like rhythmbox a lot. It is more stable and very quick now and at the same time he did some serious changes and included a nice system notification section applet. I think it is very slick but you do not like it.
I think that nautilus is much faster now in Gnome 2.0.3 or so and almost as fast konqueror. I get more done using nautilus with script from g-scripts site than I do in Konqueror but that is just me.
I hate menu editing through the file manager. But I like the way anjuta2 and especially the source code view for nautilus is shaping up. I think that installing fonts with fontillus is easier than the KDE font installation app.
Most of the apps I use and love in linux are gnome or gtk based. I do NOT like the way the gconf and the gconf-editor have been implemented I agree with you on that.
I really never got into the whole color selector thing coming down the pike but both the cd-burner and network neighborhood ideas coming are good. I will still use LinNeighborhood just like the KDE one office still does. Never seen any file manager give that kind of control and functionality.
I like galeon2, evolution, gnumeric, gimp, gftp, pan, xchat and yes I know that you can use them with KDE but where people say that the desktop does not give them enough options I like the fact that it does not get in my way.
This is all very personal. You don’t like Gnome or its simplified new direction. Cool. We get that.
@Johnathan Bailes (IP: 141.156.28.—)
Well seriously you need to decide what you write. One time you write that way and the next second another way. But obviously I don’t need to ask you or anyone else for permission to write whatever I think is right or not. Once again I don’t like the direction that GNOME leads nowadays but this doesn’t mean that I don’t like GNOME in general. I investigated a lot of time and engery into it and my own little projects only to contribute to this community. I also never said that I don’t like Rhythmbox. Please don’t try to turn my words. All I was trying is to make people realize of the big mistakes that recently happened with GNOME. I personally feel abused that the philosophy that GNOME was meant one day is kicked with the feet nowadays. What is wrong with that ?
Anyways happy new year (once again)
“Please next time you reply come up with some serious things and not fragments of offtopic comments.”
Uhh I was as off topic as you have been, get over it.
First of all, a disclaimer: I use BOTH windows and linux (debian to be precise). I’d just like to comment that windows is not a bad operating system. Microsoft makes lots of good products and they have some of the best engineers in the world working for them. I do not condone their business practices, however, but this does not detract from the operating system itself. One of the comments made is that windows is not secure. I make the argument that neither is linux. Linux just hasn’t been tested to the extent that windows has. As more people begin using linux, more people will find security problems as more bad things will target linux.
My next comment is on what I think linux needs to make it.
First the kernel is just fine. It is progressing nicely and provides drivers and power for a lot of hardware and its development is going just fine.
Layout and GUI are what need to change.
Layout
In terms of layout, the system needs a few things: Software needs to be divided into folders. It used to be (this can be seen in the presence of X /usr/X11R6…) There should be a common shared libraries folder such as /usr/lib and EVERY shared library should go there. Permissions need to be modified in this multiuser system to allow users to install software on their own accounts so /usr needs to be writable, but only owners can modify so any user can install their own software without worrying about other users deleting or breaking it. This would make for easy uninstalation because they could just remove folders of the programs (like OS X).
GUI needs to be completely redone. X needs to go. It’s an old system with lots of overhead and a complicated API that nobody wants to write for. A framebuffer based system needs to be put in place that allows for easy changing of resolution and refresh rates as well as fast 2D graphics with a potential for 3D graphics. The APIs need to be rewritten. GTK is a C-based API. Fewer and fewer users are understanding C-based systems. Most CS grads these days only understand highly object oriented systems. The new API needs to be C++ based, or some sort of object oriented system that provides neat and simple interfaces to all GUI/OS features. It should be optimized for media (much like BeOS). The 3D API should be based on OpenGL so that only a new framework is needed for 3D developers to get started. KDE doesn’t pass for an acceptable API because it uses language extensions and must be pre-parsed. The API must therefore be standard C++ compliant. Back to X. X isn’t needed because the remote desktop features of X are completely unnecessary for 99% of all users. The others can use VNC like Windows and Mac users do currently.
After all is said and done, Linux needs to improve responsiveness, prettyness, and organization before it can really succeed as a universal desktop OS.
Everything you’re asking here is to make linux more windows like. Everything you wanted in this article is in wondows. Security and stability isn’t really a great concern for the home user (unless ur a geek), because they don’t know about security and stability. If you put a secured system at a home user, they will probably be annoyed at not being able to do certain things than they are worried about security. In short, make linux like windows.
> In short, make linux like windows.
Simply use Windows then and leave us Linux people alone.
Essentially this article is saying that Linux (and BSD) should be more like Windows, and less like Unix. Unlike most of the folks who support this view I am not a Windows refugee, I used Unix (a shell account of Microport SysV on a 286, buggy, but it ran on a 286!) before there was a Linux, adopted Linux when the kernel version was 0.95, and currently use NetBSD partially because it doesn’t try to be Windows as much as many Linux distros currently do.
Why do I prefer *nix? Because it allows a power user to be more productive. The title of Kernighan and Pike’s introduction to the Bourne Shell and Unix system calls, etc. is called “The Unix Programming Environment”. Unix is a *programming* and technically-oriented user environment, the home of C, powerful shells, and (later) Perl. Not your Aunt Tillie’s for-dummies environment. Unless of course your Aunt Tillie ran Unix, which considering the age of this long-lived (i.e. successful) operating system environment, is a possibility… 🙂
I have no problem with GUIs, if these GUIs don’t get in the way of what this article calls the “should be deprecated” command shell. The day the powerful Unix command shell is removed or made irrelevent in Linux or other *nix, is the day that it will no longer be *nix, and might as well run as root by default and do it’s best to be a Windows emulator like Lin-dows rather than Lin-ux.
Ok then, we will make a distro that works just like Windows. It will be hard to include all the MS security glitches though, but we will succeed! We will even copy the TellyTubbyesque icons and interface. We will make it so that even the most illiterate moron on the face of the earth can spread his email viruses. We will code it i a topheavy way, making it as much of a house of coded cards as Windows. We will bash, diss, and insult the rest of the Linux community with our stupidities concerning our tastes in AOL-ish software. And when we finish, we shall call it Munschdows.
>Ok then, we will make a distro that works just like
>Windows.
>It will be hard to include all the MS security glitches
>though, but we will succeed! We will even copy the
>TellyTubbyesque icons and interface. We will make it so
>that
>even the most illiterate moron on the face of the earth can
>spread his email viruses. We will code it i a topheavy way,
>making it as much of a house of coded cards as Windows. We
>will bash, diss, and insult the rest of the Linux community
>with our stupidities concerning our tastes in AOL-ish
>software. And when we finish, we shall call it Munschdows.
I can probably take out one of the two examples I had of bigoted idiots in the paper and substitute this instead. It wasn’t sufficient for you to post this once and have it get moderated down (interestingly enough, the only one of the 146 postings that was), you came back to post the same thing again.
OK. I’ll reply anyway, and for those of you who actually bothered to read the article, I’ll be doing some replies to your comments tommorrow. Some of them were very interesting and thoughtful.
But first let’s take these “points” one by one:
>Ok then, we will make a distro that works just like
Windows.
A: Had you bothered to actually read the article then you would have noticed that I’m not actually suggesting making Linux anything like Windows, other than successful and actually in the hands of more than a small fraction of the population… Like it isn’t now.
What I am suggesting is that we layer more _on top_ of Linux in order to make it easier for new users to pick up. Some will be migrating from Windows for sure, but I don’t think that means that Linux has to actually behave like Windows in any way, I think it simply has to be accessible and friendly, not difficult and off-putting (much like your manners).
Putting additional layers on top of Linux doesn’t prevent them from being: a) not installed or b) removed by power users like yourself. If you want to run a simple text only console today, the fact that Red Hat or Mandrake has piled a lot of stuff on top of it doesn’t interfere with your ability to do so. You just don’t run everything that came with it. Ditto the friendlier distros that I’m imagining.
>It will be hard to include all the MS security glitches
though, but we will succeed!
Lookup “specious argument”. Also consult “straw man”. Neither of these things have anything to do with what was written.
>We will make it so that even the most illiterate moron
on the face of the earth can spread his email viruses. We
will code it i a topheavy way, making it as much of a house
of coded cards as Windows.
Um, I’m hoping that the most illiterate moron on earth can use a computer. Believe it or not, they aren’t exclusively toys. People actually _need_ them for modern life. It’s no longer time for Linux to be an exclusive club and it’s going to change eventually whether you like it or not. If that forces you to go off and find some new obscure OS to champion, great, it’s doubtful you’ll be missed.
As for coding in a top-heavy fashion? Hmm. That’s certainly a possiblity. Some of the applications that people may craft when trying to make things easier may be badly written. Oh well, they’ll get replaced with something better.
>We will bash, diss, and insult the rest of the Linux
community with our stupidities concerning our tastes in AOL-ish software.
I have a feeling that any tastes other than your own are often “stupidities” as far as you are concerned. But my points have nothing to do with bashing, dissing or insulting Linux. I like Linux a lot, it’s an excellent operating system, unfortunately as it stands today it’s has a poor end user GUI. This is widely acknowledged in the community you refer to. Lots of articles have been written about it, including many here on OSNews. I’m trying to suggest improvements and point out short comings. My hope is that this is taken as constructive rather than destructive criticism.
> And when we finish, we shall call it Munschdows.
I’m assuming that the “we” you refer to here is the “royal: we as I doubt you’ve ever contributed to an open source project in your life. If you would like to see mine you can consult my website at http://www.JohnMunsch.com. I distribute code and educational materials using open source licenses. If you’d care to point out your credentials…
In the seventies, so legend has it, some computer illiterate (yes, there was no PC then) Literature university students were taught Unix commands. Half an hour later they managed to use the timesharing system and use the wordprocessing application programs to type their assignments.
I learnt to use some Unix commands on my desktop. I’m happy I took the time to do so. It’s a breath of fresh air from stuffy GUI.
“Hang on, did I hear you say, “stuffy”?”
That’s right! I encourage all newbies and even experienced Windows users to learn to type commands, instead of clicking menus, buttons and windows. It is a powerful way to empower users.
“But how?” It’s quite easy. Go to
http://ss64.com/download.html
to download the commands that you need to learn. Download the exe file if you don’t have WinRAR. If you have Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows NT4, you can print out and practise the commands reference for the command line.
For REAL knowledge, you should firstly have access to a broadband connection. This is because the command line utilites on http://www.cygwin.com can prove to be rather large. Yes, these are free Unix commands and programs that can work off a Windows OS. Yes, it’s possible to learn Unix and Linux without having to install another operating system, because cygwin provides these facilities right from the convenience of your desktop.
If you have any questions you can e-mail me at s underscore auyong (one word) at yahoo dot com.
Just before I sign off, here’s a Scripture passage to remind you about the love of God:
“For God so loved the world that He Gave His Only Son (Jesus Christ) that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Yes, Jesus Christ is calling you to follow Him and experience freedom from your sins. Obedience to Him and the Bible brings you eternal life, a chance to go to heaven, a place where there is no sorrow, but everlasting joy. Refusal to follow Him means eternal condemnation and being cast into hell.
Thank you for your time.
Once again, you can e-mail me for tech support.
Simon
I am sorry, but installing software is a mess in Linux. And yes I do use it and am learning more all the time.
Please don’t compare EMACS to WORD. WORD is intuitive, e.g. if you want to center text you click a button that looks just like centered text. Someone using EMACS has no such luxury. When Wordperfect was compared to Word, it was shown that the keystroke commands were far faster, but someone new finds that the GUI enables them to get up to a reasonable speed far faster.
when KDE 3.1 is released it will pretty much take
care of most of the complaints. patience. Linux
has made tremendoes strides in ease of use . Mandrake
Linux is very very easy to use. if everyone would
give 3.1 a test it just might be something we can
all united with.
I think the biggest problem, and I am thinking one that will never be solved because of the current Linux developer paradigm is that of the dependency issue. It is making it more complicated than it needss to be. Currentl there is this attitude of, “I must only use one version of a library at all costs”. I am talking about on the whole system now.
I am sure that when memory was cheap and libraries were fewer this was a workable solution, but for todays times it just seems stupid.
It makes a lot more sense to statically compile and provide all the libraries that are needed with your app, than to go and say, make sure you have X, Y, and Z packages.
Please don’t give portage or Apt-get or URPMI, I have tried them all and they don’t work as advertised I have had failures all the time and it can mean that certain dependencies conflict amongst apps.
It would be great to have a folder called ‘apps’ or ‘programs’. You drag the zip file you just downloaded into this folder or click on the ‘install.bin’ file. If it is a zip file the Environment, KDE, Gnome etc detects this activity, looks in the zip file called ‘install_instructions.cfg’ and based on this prompts the user for a set of instructions, like, “Add a start link to the Desktop?”. Uninstalling is a simple as clicking delete and the environment gives you the option of complete removal, partial (leave work files), etc, etc.
Let me say that if you like the dependecy thing, which I am sure can be great for servers and workstations fine build a GNU/Linux system that way. If you’re building a GNU/Linux for normal users and want to make it easy for developers to create apps for this potential larger group, do something along the lines that I mentioned above.
Its the same code just packaged and used in ways to better suit the needs of differing target users.
John,
Thanks for your article on Linux. It’s great. I installed RH8 and used it for a couple of days. I loved their Desktop but didn’t like their multimedia support (or the lack there of). No sound – nothing; so i re-installed Suse 8.1 again. It wasn’t a painless xp-riance at all, but i managed to get it up and running rather smoothly. As you said, Linux is not mature enough to be used by an average user; not yet.
Don’t you think that most applications, such as open office should be integrated better into the OS as far as looks and feels behaviour are concerned?
Simon,
“I encourage all newbies and even experienced Windows users to learn to type commands..”
You’re right, but most people use the PC to play games, surf the net, write letters, for accounting, and what have you, and don’t care about the underlying OS or H/W.
Anyway, thanks for the gospel message …. it is the most important message to humans, ever.
happy new year to all of you
> As you said, Linux is not mature enough to be used
> by an average user; not yet.
The problem is, why did you decided for Linux then, if you are not willing to read Howto’s, Manuals and FAQs ? Linux is a complete different Operatingsystem in the means of old Unix. Linux is probably more mature than you imagine, the problem is that more and more Joe Users like you come from Windows and expect that Linux is equal to it – which luckely is not. If you can’t deal with the complexity of Linux then this Operatingsystem is deinfately wrong for you. If you still think you made the right personal decission then you need to live with the fact that Linux was and will ever be a complex System that needs human maintainance. Once and forever for everyone Linux is NOT Windows. I also share the opinion of MobyTurbo (IP: —.216-194-21-90.nyc.ny.metconnect.net) here.
http://www.oeone.com
Nice to see that there are people out there coming up with solutions and who are even able to make money off it.
This is the most intelligent assessment I’ve seen to date about the state of desktop Linux and the issues it needs to address in order to gain wider acceptance. There needs to be some level of standardization. I just hope that some of the developers (Lycoris, Lindows, Mandrake, Red Hat & Xandros) are listening.
Well two little comments from me:
> Desktop Linux
There is no such thing as Desktop Linux. Going strickt with the definition then Linux is nothing more than a big archive (~30mb) full of Drivers, Memorymanagement, Filesystem etc. all necessary to serve as operating system after compile.
> issues it needs to address in order to gain wider acceptance.
Well if you marry your wife then you accept her as she is don’t you ? Or do you marry her and tell her afterwards how boring and ugly she is so she need cosmetical operations ? It’s the same with Linux, you come to this plattform, you know how complicated it is and you need to accept it. You may try to find solutions to make it comfortable as much as even possible for your needs. But it makes me sick when people come out of nowhere to Linux and think it is a Desktop Operating System which it is not. Same with all the people that I met every day that asks me to show them Screenshots of how Linux looks like. Ever tried to make a Screenshot of the internal operation of Linux ? hehehe.
I read about the first 50 comments … about as much as I could stand.
It is becoming increasingly clear that people who think that Linux is ready for Joe User clear don’t have the slightest idea about who Joe User is.
I have done tech/customer support for over 4 years and I know Joe User about as well as anyone, and I will say this much …
ANY SOLUTION TO BRING LINUX TO JOE USER THAT REQUIRES ANY ADDITIONAL WORK ON THE PART OF JOE USER WILL FAIL MISERABLY.
People say “Well, new users shoudl be required to do this” or “should be required to read/know that” .. sure, I agree with you, but it ain’t gonna happen. You can’t change Joe User to make him ready for Linux – it MUST be the other way around! I’m not saying this is a good thing (indeed it is not), but it is a fact of life – deal with it.
One last thing – people who think that politics (such as DRM, Palladen, etc) are going to drive people away from Windows need a serious reality check. Sure, it will drive some people away, but as far as Joe User goes, he’s gotten so used to being f–ked by corporations in every other part of his life, it’s pretty much considered to be the norm now days. Joe User will turn a blind eye towards Palladen, just like he did for Product Activation when Windows/Offfice XP came out.
@ Andrew (IP: —.sc.rr.com)
Too much of what you describe sounds like Windows too me, which makes me wonder why you even bother using Linux?
There are install shield type programs for Linux (look at Mozillas sea installer) but there are nothing even close to Portage or apt-get for Windows, and despite Windows/Linux differences I’d still love to just be able to switch out to command-prompt on Windows and type “install mozilla” and have it download, unpack, install, and cleanup after itself rather then do it the standard way with downloading installer “manually” etc…
So in a way, Linux is really easier then Windows, people just don’t know it.
1. Linux deos need to get easier, SuSE is a good easy one, but some things in SuSE should be easier.
a. I don’t want to find some config file and edit it, all gui programs need a gui setup tool
b. A better way to install, I can install a .rpm. That doesn’t mean I don’t want a better way, when you install it should ask you if you want a icon on the desktop & ask where you want to put it in the menu, maybe even ask you what folder you want it in.
c. A compiled binary would be nice, I hate finding programs that sound good, but only come in source.
2. More commercial software, yes commercial, opensource will not die because of it, I would love to see more game also people know about Norton Utilities so they get it if they want it. For linux you have to search and most people want something now. Plus more commercial software might be good for linux.
I’d still love to just be able to switch out to command-prompt on Windows and type “install mozilla” and have it download, unpack, install, and cleanup after itself rather then do it the standard way with downloading installer “manually” etc…
So in a way, Linux is really easier then Windows, people just don’t know it.
Well, that depends now, doesn’t it? First of all, in this case, the program is called mozilla, so the command ‘install mozilla’ makes a lot of sense. But what if you wanted tod download and install MusicMatch Jukebox? Would it be:
‘install musicmatch jukebox’
– or –
‘install musicmatchjukebox’
– or –
‘install musicmatch’
Or is it case sensative?
‘install MusicMatch’
And even in the case of mozilla, how is Joe User to know the command? What happens when he screws up and types one ‘l’ instead of 2, and then doesn’t understand why it won’t work? And as far as Joe User is concerned …. the command prompt? What the hell is that, and how the hell does he get there? Keep in mind that when you say ‘Linux is ready for the desktop’, these are the kinds of questions that Linus has to deal with on a very intuitive level.
Also, even in Linux, this works well assuming you have the right distro, and even if you do, in the case of Debian, there are a lot of other hardships for Joe User which has nothing to do with app installations. Often times when a distro succeeds on one hand, it fails completely on another.
> But what if you wanted tod download and install MusicMatch Jukebox?
I agree, I’ve had such moments with portage myself (couldn’t spell rhythm), but suggested features to solve that is to have it analyse the text and suggests similar (like your regular IMdb find) hits, like if I had written :
root:> emerge rythmbox
it could perhaps say :
Package “rythmbox” couldn’t be find, where you perhaps searching for :
>> Rhythmbox [media/music]
>> Bio-Rhythm [games/toys]
That would solve such things, because I think portage (as linux) is case-sensetive and knowing that the gift p2p program are spelled giFT are not common, but having the suggestion feature would really not make it a big deal.
I’ve learned my fair share of people where to find and how to install software, and granted that they surely would want a nice GUI wrapped around portage, but aside from that I think even your newest user would learn it pretty fast and never look back.
By definition working in tech support means only talking people who are having trouble. I don’t think that’s a good sample of the user base, as it automatically excludes people who never had any trouble and those who were able to find a solution themselves.
After reading this article I felt that the author only wants a free software implentation of Windows.
You should look at this in this case : http://www.reactos.com
GNU/Linux (please note the GNU) is an operating system that was meant to be a free software implentation of Unix.
Unix was never meant to be used by any one. As a power user, using the unix shell daily I fully understand how powerful it is comparing to GUI tools. What *nix shells allow me is to express some complex tasks I want to do.
But shells doesn’t allow you to express all the things I want to do. For example, I’m a big fan of mindmaps. To draw mindmaps you need a GUI.
Every GUI operating system allow me to draw mindmaps if there is a software available. But mindmaps are a good example, they help you to gather ideas. Found where ? On e-mails, webpages, from people, and so on. Could this software allow me to connect each ideas with its source ?
GNU/Linux is only a collection of free softwares. Because *nix are operating systems designed to allow someone to answer to precise problems, there’s a lot of redudancy. It’s something I like, because I’m able to think about what I would need to answer my problem, and to choose something really adequate.
I don’t really think, ever, that something that was designed 30 years ago for power users could now be used massively.
Is something like Windows really so desirable for mass usage ? I don’t think so. I don’t think that the desktop metaphor is something interesting for the average user. Does the concept of files and folders is something that helps tasks expressiveness ?
Look at iTunes. iTunes is a software that hides completely that you are in fact manipulating files. You are only manipulating tracks, identified by its artist, name, album. This has sense.
An operating system needs to be consistent. Having a different syntax to understand for each configuration file you cross over in *nix is just something crazy. Mac OS X or KDE are good examples of this. Icons, keyboard shortcuts, way to use applications are consistent across the whole system. What is even better in OS X is that developers are pushed to design well by Interface Builder.
Every operating system needs to have central repositories for common applications data, like browser history, mails, music… Because I don’t want to use the same application every time I’m using these data, but I do want to access them without having to do imports and configurations.
The last point is about applications. Especially in a free software environment. When you can have any application you want, the only problem is finding it and using it. Leave those dependancy problem and packaging problem away. The operating system should have a central place to gather all available applications (something like apt-cache, but graphical, like BeBits, more integrated would be better) to help users to find them.
After they find it, have something like Java Web Start. A click away from running, with updates automatic checking, and downloading. After two or more uses, it should ask the user if he wants a shortcuts to use it somewhere.
GNU/Linux can be improved to be more user friendly, Apple did it for Mac OS X. But is it really the task the free software should work on ? Couldn’t we search other ideas, better ideas ?
Take a look at BrixOS ( http;//brix-os.sourceforge.net/ ), there’s nice ideas there.
By definition working in tech support means only talking people who are having trouble. I don’t think that’s a good sample of the user base
No, it’s a little more than that .. talking to people who are interested in buying new computers and wanting Internet access. When asking people what version of Windows they’re running, ‘Windows 97’ is (or was) a typical response. Joe User isn’t half as computer literate as people think he is. He’s not stupid (some Joe Users forget more in life than I’ll ever learn) – he’s just not good with computers.
Especially in a free software environment. When you can have any application you want, the only problem is finding it
Actually, that depends on what you’re looking for. There is a lot of free software (with a lot of it being quite good), but saying ‘you can have any application you want’ is stretching it a bit.
By definition working in tech support means only talking people who are having trouble. I don’t think that’s a good sample of the user base
Part of my job when doing tech support for an ISP was writing technical documents, one of which was setup instructions for installing TCP/IP and DUN in Win 95/98 (This was before solutions to automagically configure everything actually worked worth a damn).
When I first arrived, the instructions were about 7-8 pages long and almost none of the customers could complete it successfully. So, I started to tweak it – changing/adding explanations on the parts where customers had the most trouble and clarifying trouble spots. This gave me a great insight to how the common user views things and what does/does not trip him up.
By the time I had a 95%+ success rate with the setup instructions, the manual was almost 50 pages long. But if it didn’t work by the time a customer got through with it, it was because something was wrong with their computer
Lycrois, Mandrake 8.2, Peanut 9.2. All have been installed on a couple of 233mmx with 128mb memory. 2 were gift’s from me to 2 “computer dummys”. Both had used 95-98 since they came out. Both were very comfortable with in a week. Both have not looked back. One has stayed with Lycrois, the other has try all three and likes Peanut. Age of these people……both are 63 years old! I build computers for people who can’t afford them out of parts I am given, or I find on the curb. The one using Peanut is getting into the command line. Both have had there systems for about 4 months. The only problem is they have to duel boot in 98 to use AOL. I think this says alot about the state of Linux. It has a ways to go, but I for one am not afraid to show people, I mean, what are they going to do, ask me to remove it? Linux has a bright future, and I am staying with it.
PS-I have tried BeOS,Unix,and a few others, I CHOSE LINUX
For the poster you said “Some of us have Girlfriends”, I searched and could not find a linux or windows package called “girlfriends”. I even checked for Mac and BeOs. Then I searched for OS/2. No “Girlfriends” package. So I searched for Amiga. Nope. I don’t know how you have “girlfriends”, I dont’ think such thing exists. I even searched for “Have a life” and I could not find an RPM, TGZ, or binary for ANY operating system. If you have something important to say, than say it. There’s not need for this flamebait. Unless you were kidding, then I guess the jokes on me.
for anyone searching for a GUI frontend to portage, try Kportage (on gentoo: emerge kportage).
For the suggestion problem, it’s a good idea to have portage suggest you which package you are searching… why not submit the request on bugs.gentoo.org? or if you know python why not code the feature by yourself and submit it to the gentoo devel mailing list?
that’s the way opensource works, not talking, but coding
Not really like Windows. Windows has the whole registry debacle. MS also decides that with every update you should give away more rights that have nothing to do with the updates.
I would really just like more than just one OS that competes on open hardware for space in the average user domain.
Apple is a closed hardware company.
BeOS would be cool of it was kept current and had support from hardware manufacturers.
I think the hardware people would get behind a common driver specification if MS did not have such coercive power.
Please tell me again the flaws in the idea behind distro makers adopting different distros for different users. I mean more than just the make up of the packages, but the whole packaging scheme.
Yes, Apt-get and portage may be powerful, needlessly so for most users in my opinion. You did cherry pick by selecting Mozilla. Are you going to tell me that you have never been denied and install because it would affect another piece of software you need in Debian. It happened to me the second day I was trying Debian, and with more than one package.
I will say this though Debain and Gentoo are not for average users, I am just trying to say that Apt-get and Portage are not good systems for average users. I do like the idea of the average person using a system like synaptic. They could just click on the app (not the package) and it would install. Please keep in mind most people care little about the packages that go into a useful app, they care about the app. Please don’t show them something like ‘libbonobo’ etc.
Hello Andrew
> Not really like Windows. Windows has the whole registry debacle.
Well you meet the Registry shit again in GNOME 2.x called GConf. Windows Registry is imo done right while GConf is not. So basically your horrible nightmares with Registry arrived Linux now.
Yeah Ali/Mantis, we all know a centralized database in binary format in a single file is the best way to preserve applications’ configuration. Yeah, it’s “done right”, while Gnome’s gconf, with many XML files in different directories depending on the applicaction, and *documented* configuration keys is much much worse…
Now is when you say you only do positive comments about Gnome instead of trying to spread FUD
> we all know a centralized database in binary format
> in a single file is the best way to preserve
> applications’ configuration.
Exactly that is so but besides that I’m against ANY implementation of a Windows Registry like System and I’m not the only one with this opinion.
> Yeah, it’s “done right”, while Gnome’s gconf, with
> many XML files in different directories depending
> on the applicaction, and *documented*
> configuration keys is much much worse…
Ironically this is exactly the case.
> Now is when you say you only do positive
> comments about Gnome instead of trying to
> spread FUD
Call it whatever you like, I’m just expressing my opinion about that and I will probably never go away with this opinion.
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1410
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1489
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1387
Quote: Johnathan Bailes comment 135
“I do NOT like the way the gconf and the gconf-editor have been implemented I agree with you on that.”
I bet even after I came up with Links that contains some different contexts written by other people you still claim that everything comes out of my ass and I still know you will continue blaming my name on all places. Anyways be it that way people will figure out on their own even without my opinion.
Oh by the way I would like to know your real name since I think that you are in a little advantage now.
Well Ali, since you love losing discussions, but I don’t have so much time in my hands right now, I’ll just post some links and leave the too long posts (since you love links, heh):
There’s no need for me to discuss technical things with you. I already did, many people already did and rebated you, and you still use the same points. So to make it easier to answer you without losing so much time of life, someone already made a good post about your anti-gnome trollings:
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?thold=-1&mode=flat&order=1&…
And this is from a thread where you were left without valid points and showed how mature you are insulting me, my country and my parents. The audience loved it (and I plaid my role very well, out of modesty)
:
http://www.gnomedesktop.org/comments.php?op=showreply&tid=3208&sid=…
Oh by the way I would like to know your real name since I think that you are in a little advantage now.
Actually, you theoretically have the advantage cause you use different nicks, and even IPs (the ones from cyberspace.org… using lynx on a remote connection to do trolling? you sure are obsessed)
) . Anyway, I admit it’s too easy to spot your messages and identify yourself instantly. Keep trying
P.S.: The links posted in the gnomedesktop forums really show that like 10 people there have problems with the *concept* of gconf (many of them are you, actually… I specially mean the Gnome Armageddon one you wrote). Nice to see you need to resort to external links to talk badly about Gconf. Specially if those forum posts there were rebated
P.S. 2: Happy new year
> There’s no need for me to discuss technical things with you.
No there is really no NEED since your opinions are simply as valid as mine. You favorisite GConf which I have no problems with and I don’t favorisite it. Regardless to say all the problems that developers deal with each day. Ever tried to use GConf over NFS ?
> http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?t hold=-1&mode=flat&…
Nice try, I repeat here again I’m no responsible for this writing and Thomas simply add my Name into that without even have one single proove that I’m the author. I already have discussed this with Thomas on IRC and even he admits that he isn’t 100% sure but he assumed it was me. It’s not fair or correct to connect some writings to some person without being able to proove it.
> http://www.gnomedesktop.org/comments.php?op=showreply&tid=320 8&…
Ahh this is the real reason now I understand why you poop on me all the time. Dude, I’m not responsible for that writing.
> you sure are obsessed)
).
No you are and I mean this. What will be next ? Maybe you want to make me responsible for the upcomming IRAQ war ? I ‘m sick of all kind of shit being tied to me and my name. But I must admit that I replied to some of the GConf comments on gnomesupport.org but that was only meant to be a normal share of my own opinion. Look it’s MY OPINION if you don’t share it then it’s ok I can easily deal with that but I don’t like being forced to share your opinion of the great error-prone GConf that for sure never caused neightmares for developers. That’s the individuality between you and me. My right NOT to share everyone else’s opinion. That’s the rule of life that makes me individual to you. Yes I expected to get bashed for my replies on gnomesupport.org no wonder because it’s a place most commonly prefered by GNOME zealots.
Look I only express my concerns about GNOME and only GNOME. What you are trying all the time is to shit on my name and do personal attacks. Even if I take my time and try to be friendly to you and write with you instead ignoring you – you still try to construct situations to shit on my name.
OK Ali, all I’ll say is:
You were here posting the same anti-gnome points you ever use. And with a different nick, again. You can try to defend yourself anytime you want, it just won’t work, specially if you’re caught in the act
))
I don’t hate you, just your attitude. Change it and I’ll forget that “gay country” post that was yours for sure. I just know it, you just know it, everyone with a brain knows it
I’ll leave this thread, cause it’s getting down on the front page and it’s getting boring (now you try to act like a poor tormented soul again… yawn). But I can wait for your next trolling. Perhaps I’ll answer, perhaps not. It depends on how much potential fun I see there. And sorry, OSNews editors… hope you at least get fun out of this
Oh! about personal attacks… what about the “gnome developers are retarded” kind of comments? Constructive criticism, huh?
P.S.: The famous Gconf bug on NFS? You mean that’s the only thing you can come up with? Good, once it’s solved and the editor redesigned, Gconf will be perfect!
@Dekkard
Ok I see a normal frindly clarifying conversation with you is not possible since your primary goal is to put my name down.
Listen, what kind of nick I use is my own decission and guarantys me some anonymity which is my good right. This prevents trolls like you verbally attacking me all the time. Being anonymous is my good right and nothing to be ashamed of since it’s widely used by many people on the net day in and day out.
What I write and why I write is, is my own opinion which I have told you within my last 3-5 replies. It’s obvious that you haven’t read them after all since it’s not your primary goal. You don’t want to have an objective discussion with me. If this’s the case then simply let me know this and we can stop this kind of childish behave and conversation. What you do is simply poor and probably doesn’t do much else than entertaining me and some other readers here.
I welcome you everytime to have a normal clarifying and mature conversation with me but then you have to agree to it too otherwise it makes no sense. Right now you emphasize exactly the points that other people have pointed out with the bad attitude of certain GNOME zealots.
You want to be respected as person but you don’t respect the others. You simply get back what you dispense.
@ EcHo2K (IP: 212.131.234.—)
KPortage is excellent, but it’s QT, and if you run Gnome you usually doesn’t have nor want QT and a bunch of KDE libs installed.
I run Gnome2 and are waiting to see a GTK2 Portage Frontend surface, I can do everything from the console BUT I can’t get a proper browsable overview of installed/not-installed libs, if it only does that I’d be a happy and consider any features beyond that extras.
More Portage frontends to the people.
//We’ve all seen the American police shows, where some idiot gets into a car with a bottle of whisky and a shotgun, and an IQ of 3//
Er .. I’ve seen the same thing on shows from England, Italy, and Germany. Okay, maybe a M93R instead of the shotgun, but still.
Typical American-bashing idiot, who cries for our help when their country gets overrun.
For me this is something that has to happen before Linux is ready for my desktop. The main reason I’m using Windows rather than Linux to post this is the lack of a consistent GUI. Windows is far from perfect, but I consider a consistent GUI to be as essential as system stability and speed.