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As someone who has bought applications for Mac and iOS, and also donates to FOSS projects, I would certainly buy software applications on Linux if they looked b
by newscracker 7y ago
As someone who has bought applications for Mac and iOS, and also donates to FOSS projects, I would certainly buy software applications on Linux if they looked better and had a good user experience. I really don’t want to deal with hand editing config files and running shell commands to get things to work, because while I can do those, I cannot have a sustainable system I can pass on to others who’re just non-technical common users of software.
I think Linux itself, and many applications on it, don’t look great because the developers behind those are highly technical and ideological people who can, and do, cater to other technical and ideological people. They seem to think of UI and UX as wasteful things over mere, and many a times complex, functionality (they probably also believe they’re good designers who don’t need help from UI/UX experts). Even larger projects don’t spend enough time or money to use better fonts, design better layouts, use nicer color schemes, design better user experiences, etc. (one glaring example of this is LibreOffice).
Stepping outside Linux while remaining on free software, Matrix is spending time and money on improving UX because the people behind it realize the importance of it. Within the Linux world, the attitude seems to be more of users being expected to qualify to use the system - “the users are capable and will figure it out” seems to be the background thinking.
Distributions like ElementaryOS have tried to charge (or accept, depending on how you see the website) money for more beautifully designed systems than you could get out of the box elsewhere. If larger companies take such an approach or even adopt some of the niceties from such distributions, the Linux world would be much better off.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y agoUX/UI Design seems to be fundamentally different from the rest of software development, in that it does not work well in a "Bazaar" model: there needs to be a single responsible individual that has the power to make decisions and have them respected. Another theory is that the UI actually makes up a far larger share of development work than most assume, and that this is therefore the part where limited resources are most felt. A somewhat similar part that somewhat supports this theory is the install/update process. Regarding ElementaryOS: there's nothing uglier than trying to steal a good design and just failing to even understand it.
- raxxorrax 7y agoI agree with your point for software in general. The right fonts and spacing could pimp up a lot of software if developers put effort in it. But... > one glaring example of this is LibreOffice Compared to MS Office? Excel yes, maybe PowerPoint. All other programs are inferior by now. 5 years ago I would have agreed MS Office to be far ahead in functionality and design. I use the 365 version and it is just terrible all around. And users fail even harder to create structured documents than 10 years ago. And helping them is far more difficult now because you just don't have the patience for ridiculous UI quirks of word processors anymore. Google Docs is better than Word and it is extremely simple, but uses classical design philosophies. It still uses a sensible color palette and a good font. Not that I want to advocate Google too much right now...
- newscracker 7y agoI primarily use Calc from LibreOffice for all my personal stuff. And I find the fonts and layout to be unsatisfactory. Having nicer displays with higher resolutions makes it look even worse (this is on the Windows version; the Mac version seems to look better).