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Referring to my other comment, could you quantify your UX/UX assessment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1282

Referring to my other comment, could you quantify your UX/UX assessment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832

adamors 10y ago
To me it comes down to: sane default settings, ease of customisability and ability to discover stuff on my own. Add to this applications that just work™. I still remember having to write a Bash script on Ubuntu to move the mouse every 2 minutes because the screensaver couldn't detect VLC was running in fullscreen. Or having to reboot because the audio driver crashed randomly. Even xkcd has a strip about something similar https://xkcd.com/196/ https://xkcd.com/196/
itchyouch 10y ago
I think a lot of it has to do with polish. Linux GUIs can be beautiful, but the interactions with the UI tend to be functional first and stay that way. I remember when compiz came out and it was supposed to make the UIs really pop with a good graphics card. It really bridged the gap a lot, but the physics in the animation lacked a bit of timing finesse. The animations weren't terribly clunky, but they lacked a certain fluidity with the interaction. When interacting with a mouse or finger, certain things like input speed wouldn't be taken account for. Like on MacOS, a fast moving mouse cursor travels more across the screen than a slow moving mouse cursor. When scrolling, moving the scrollbars faster increase the scrolling speed while slowing down the movements slow things down proportionately in a very intuitive fashion, while a similar concept on Linux may do something very similar, it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head. It usually requires adjusting ones input and getting used to the tool. Even when the OS UI improved, individual applications also needed appropriate UI updates and UX. Since a lot of GUI apps were wrappers for underlying command-line utilities, they felt a lot like thinking in command-line mode for a GUI app or were unapproachable unless one came from a technical background. But even for people who may only use a browser, when starting a browser, the default set of fonts in a given browser were usually not that great. Not sure how much it has improved now, but I think the main culprit lies in the font rendering settings and available fonts. Getting prettier fonts have improved slightly, but a lot of the system feel comes from these fonts, especially in things like menus. So reading a webpage in some standard sans-serif may be fine on Windows & Mac, but just look slightly off on Linux. Functionally, nothing was wrong, but maybe the text box slightly overflowed outside of a div that was sized well for MacOS and Windows, but not Linux. Small things like these add up and make people feel like desktop Linux is just not quite there. I think Canonical has done a tremendous amount of work getting desktop Linux closer to being viable. This is coming from someone that's on 14.04 ubuntu. I haven't tried the lastest 16.x series, but I'm guessing it will get closer. The other challenge outside of UI/UX improvements really is commercial support that comes along with 3rd party products. When you purchase some printer and you see there is included productivity software, it will 100% work on Windows, 20% chance there is a Mac port, and usually 0% chance that it has a Linux port/version. Even when you purchase something OS agnostic like a cable modem, there will be Windows/Mac Compatible logos, but no Linux Compatible sticker making one feel like desktop Linux is relevant or even a prudent choice for someone non-technical to use.

Referring to my other comment, could you quantify your UX/UX assessment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832

adamors 10y ago

To me it comes down to: sane default settings, ease of customisability and ability to discover stuff on my own. Add to this applications that just work™. I still remember having to write a Bash script on Ubuntu to move the mouse every 2 minutes because the screensaver couldn't detect VLC was running in fullscreen. Or having to reboot because the audio driver crashed randomly. Even xkcd has a strip about something similar https://xkcd.com/196/ https://xkcd.com/196/

itchyouch 10y ago

I think a lot of it has to do with polish. Linux GUIs can be beautiful, but the interactions with the UI tend to be functional first and stay that way. I remember when compiz came out and it was supposed to make the UIs really pop with a good graphics card. It really bridged the gap a lot, but the physics in the animation lacked a bit of timing finesse. The animations weren't terribly clunky, but they lacked a certain fluidity with the interaction. When interacting with a mouse or finger, certain things like input speed wouldn't be taken account for. Like on MacOS, a fast moving mouse cursor travels more across the screen than a slow moving mouse cursor. When scrolling, moving the scrollbars faster increase the scrolling speed while slowing down the movements slow things down proportionately in a very intuitive fashion, while a similar concept on Linux may do something very similar, it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head. It usually requires adjusting ones input and getting used to the tool. Even when the OS UI improved, individual applications also needed appropriate UI updates and UX. Since a lot of GUI apps were wrappers for underlying command-line utilities, they felt a lot like thinking in command-line mode for a GUI app or were unapproachable unless one came from a technical background. But even for people who may only use a browser, when starting a browser, the default set of fonts in a given browser were usually not that great. Not sure how much it has improved now, but I think the main culprit lies in the font rendering settings and available fonts. Getting prettier fonts have improved slightly, but a lot of the system feel comes from these fonts, especially in things like menus. So reading a webpage in some standard sans-serif may be fine on Windows & Mac, but just look slightly off on Linux. Functionally, nothing was wrong, but maybe the text box slightly overflowed outside of a div that was sized well for MacOS and Windows, but not Linux. Small things like these add up and make people feel like desktop Linux is just not quite there. I think Canonical has done a tremendous amount of work getting desktop Linux closer to being viable. This is coming from someone that's on 14.04 ubuntu. I haven't tried the lastest 16.x series, but I'm guessing it will get closer. The other challenge outside of UI/UX improvements really is commercial support that comes along with 3rd party products. When you purchase some printer and you see there is included productivity software, it will 100% work on Windows, 20% chance there is a Mac port, and usually 0% chance that it has a Linux port/version. Even when you purchase something OS agnostic like a cable modem, there will be Windows/Mac Compatible logos, but no Linux Compatible sticker making one feel like desktop Linux is relevant or even a prudent choice for someone non-technical to use.