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This is my gripe too, as someone who’s recently switched back to Linux after a 10 year OSX hiatus. My current Linux system is designed and developed by thousand

This is my gripe too, as someone who’s recently switched back to Linux after a 10 year OSX hiatus. My current Linux system is designed and developed by thousands of developers who were just trying to get their stuff working for them, each of them working on a small piece. OSX has a lot more consistency because it was decreed by a few UX designers, alas, that is the price you pay for flexibility.

ageofwant 7y ago
You apply the consistency, you degree what you want. People decide to use Linux and still expect to be told what they want. Decide what you want and make it so, Linux is fundamentally a user-centric system and for it to work best it needs a creative guiding force in the middle: you, the user.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  I'm not sure this really addresses the point. macOS manages to have both user-configurability for keyboard shortcuts and consistency out of the box. On macOS, you can also define consistent keyboard shortcuts universally and per-application. This is achieved via a very simple interface in System Preferences -> Keyboards -> Shortcuts. This will apply to all applications because they must all respect and populate the macOS menu bar, the mechanism through which keyboard shortcuts and processed and thus made modifiable. Easy, friendly, user-centric. But on Linux? Good luck. Between all the various user interface libraries with their own mechanisms for defining and modifying keyboard shortcuts, not to mention those apps that hardcode the shortcuts in order to avoid the utter mess of the mixed desktop environments that so many users are forced to use in order to get certain jobs done. In this sense, Linux is not a user-centric system because nobody who makes a distribution, even the better ones, gives a toss about the user; it's all about the developer's manifestos and freedoms long before it's ever about the user. The average user who just wants to work, not sit there slaving over a billion different and wildly inconsistent configuration file formats each in different locations, who just wants the damned Copy command to require the same two-finger salute in one program as another, is resolutely not the one being catered for. Linux distributions are just as opinionated as Windows and macOS; DIY distros are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people, including the HN crowd who, just like the technically illiterate we sometimes hold our noses up to, also have lives to live.

ageofwant 7y ago

You apply the consistency, you degree what you want. People decide to use Linux and still expect to be told what they want. Decide what you want and make it so, Linux is fundamentally a user-centric system and for it to work best it needs a creative guiding force in the middle: you, the user.

zapzupnz 7y ago
I'm not sure this really addresses the point. macOS manages to have both user-configurability for keyboard shortcuts and consistency out of the box. On macOS, you can also define consistent keyboard shortcuts universally and per-application. This is achieved via a very simple interface in System Preferences -> Keyboards -> Shortcuts. This will apply to all applications because they must all respect and populate the macOS menu bar, the mechanism through which keyboard shortcuts and processed and thus made modifiable. Easy, friendly, user-centric. But on Linux? Good luck. Between all the various user interface libraries with their own mechanisms for defining and modifying keyboard shortcuts, not to mention those apps that hardcode the shortcuts in order to avoid the utter mess of the mixed desktop environments that so many users are forced to use in order to get certain jobs done. In this sense, Linux is not a user-centric system because nobody who makes a distribution, even the better ones, gives a toss about the user; it's all about the developer's manifestos and freedoms long before it's ever about the user. The average user who just wants to work, not sit there slaving over a billion different and wildly inconsistent configuration file formats each in different locations, who just wants the damned Copy command to require the same two-finger salute in one program as another, is resolutely not the one being catered for. Linux distributions are just as opinionated as Windows and macOS; DIY distros are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people, including the HN crowd who, just like the technically illiterate we sometimes hold our noses up to, also have lives to live.