4 ms·

Gnome and KDE are both worse than useless - They poison other, useful projects. There is never going to be a unified GUI for Linux; that requires a dictator. K

by _jal 7y ago

Gnome and KDE are both worse than useless - They poison other, useful projects. There is never going to be a unified GUI for Linux; that requires a dictator. KDE tried to provide the carrot of development-ease, Gnome tried to generate some reality distortion, but nobody cared. Carrots don't work. As far as I'm concerned, the experiment is over and it is time to embrace the chaos. Now, this is easy for me to say, I'm mostly a command-line person anyway, and have spent most of my working life dealing with horrible UI. But it does have a lot of implications for Linux that I think a lot of people are not ready to accept.

yaktubi 7y ago
Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much. They made this thing called a book once upon a time and those have worked for centuries. Same thing with UIs: the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it?
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  GNOME, Mate, Pantheon, XCFE, KDE, Deepin, UKUI, LXQt etc. created an unmaintainable mess of competing forks _while all using stacking window managers_. It's maddening how similar they all are to each other. Someone should build a dating site where understaffed Linux projects can find a matching project to merge with.
  - yaktubi 7y ago
    Well, it’s great to experiment. And gnome 2 for example worked really great. I guess I am thinking more in the realm of things like “force touch” gestures, multi touch swipes and such. They could be useful as an added bonus for power users, but I think the traditional paradigm for the OS should work by default: 1) on desktop, single/double click, drag and drop, tool tips, mouse wheel. 2) on mobile quick tap, tap and hold, basic swipe gestures (on mobile these work well but sometimes not intuitive). I’m probably missing some stuff, but I think people out to at least be able to “feel” their way around a UI. Lately there’s been so much push for minimalism like omitting scroll bars and such that make it confusing. But, again that experimentation will root out what works and doesn’t. And new devices like VR of course have yet to be discovered paradigms.
- hilbert42 7y ago
  "Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much." You are spot on, and your 'book analogy' is perfect. If it works perfectly don't change it — that is unless an innovation arrives that offers a significant improvement and that's just as easy to use. Unfortunately, most so-called UI improvements over the last 20 or so years are not improvements at all, in fact many have been quite regressive. They've annoyed millions of users who've collectively wasted millions of hours relearning what they already knew (and in the end nothing was added by way of new productivity)—and that doesn't include the developer's 'lost' time developing these so-called improvements. It's time that would otherwise have been much better spent fixing bugs, providing security improvements and or developing software for altogether new applications that we've not seen before. The question I keep asking over and over again is what exactly are the causes behind all this useless 'over innovation'. Why is it done on such a huge scale and with such utter predictability? Is it marketing's wish for something new? Are developers deliberately trying to find work for themselves or to keep their jobs or what? It seems to me that many a PhD could be earned researching the psychological underpinnings of why so many are prepared to waste so much money and human effort continuing to develop software that basically adds nothing to improve or advance the human condition. In fact, it's such an enormous problem that it should be at the core of Computer Science research.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    > Why is ('over innovation') done on such a huge scale and with such utter predictability? Promotion & NIH management sydrome. New shiny gets a promotion. Fixing a niche bug in a decades-old stable system does not. And by the time all the new bugs you've introduced are found, you'll have a new job somewhere else. So essentially, project managers' bosses not pushing back with a hard "Why should we change this?"
- anoncake 7y ago
  Before codexes – the kind of book we use today – scrolls had worked for centuries. > the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it? To get something that works better.
  - ShirtlessRod 7y ago
    > To get something that works better. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      "Experiments are bad. We've tried them once, didn't work"
gorgoiler 7y ago
> embrace the chaos Well said. Is your machine shop stocked by a single brand of tools all in the same color, or is it a mix of bits and pieces accumulated, rebuilt, repainted, hacked, begged-borrowed-and-stolen over the course of your development as an engineer? A free software Unix workstation is exactly the same. It’s supposed to look untidy. It’s a tool shed. Apologies if I’ve touched a nerve with the Festool crowd with my analogy.
rleigh 7y ago
> embrace the chaos Linux was all about chaos and herding cats until a short number of years ago. It's the "standardisation at all costs" brigade who have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It's now far worse than Windows in many aspects. Freedesktop and GNOME deserve the lion's share of the blame, but RedHat, Debian and many others enabled them to achieve this.
- foldr 7y ago
  Linux GUIs have always been worse than Windows as far as I remember (going back to the mid 90s).
  - rleigh 7y ago
    That's very subjective, and not at all related to the point I was making. It wasn't about the niceness of GUIs. Over the last decade, we have experienced a sharp loss of control and had certain entities become almost absolute dictators over how Linux systems are permitted to be run and used. Linux started out quite clunky and unpolished. It could be made polished if you wanted that. But nothing was mandatory. Now that's changed. A modern mainstream Linux distribution gives you about the same control over your system that Windows provides. In some cases, even less. Given its roots in personal freedom, ultimate flexibility, and use as glue that could slot into all sorts of diverse uses, I find the current state of Linux to be an nauseating turn off. And I say that as someone who has used Linux for 24 years, and used to be an absolute Linux fanatic.
    - foldr 7y ago
      People have had similar complaints for a very long time: https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.h...
      - rleigh 7y ago
        True. In that article though, they thought that the commercialisation wouldn't seriously affect true free distributions like Debian. Shame that did not turn out to be the case. The fear of even slight differences has effectively forced or coerced everyone to toe the RedHat line, even when severely detrimental. What we lost was any semblance of true independence.
hilbert42 7y ago
"There is never going to be a unified GUI for Linux; that requires a dictator." Agreed, but I can never get to the bottom of or reason why developers do not provide alternative UI interfaces (shells) so that the user can select what he/she wants. This would save the user much time relearning the new UI (not to mention a lot of unnecessary cursing and swearing). For example, Microsoft substantially changes the UI with every new version of Windows—often seemingly without good reason or user wishes. This has been so annoying that in recent times we've seen Ivo Beltchev's remarkable program Classic Shell used by millions to overcome the problem of MS's novel UIs. Classic Shell demonstrates that it's not that difficult to have multiple UIs which can be selected at the user's will or desire (in fact, given what it is, it has turned out to be one of the most reliable programs I've ever come across—I've never had it fault). It seems to me that if developers feel that they have an absolute need to tinker or stuff around with the UI then they should also have at least one fallback position which ought to be the basic IBM CUA (Common User Access) standard as everyone already knows how to use it. If you can't remember what the CUA looks like then just think Windows 2000 (it's pretty close).
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > Agreed, but I can never get to the bottom of or reason why developers do not provide alternative UI interfaces (shells) so that the user can select what he/she wants. It's because everybody wants you to use their thing and not some other thing. If people have a choice then some people will choose something else. This is especially true when the choice is to continue using the traditional interface everybody is already familiar with, because that's what most everybody wants in any case where the traditional interface is not literally on fire. Even in that case, what people generally want is for you to take the traditional interface, address the "on fire" parts and leave everything else the way it is. Good change is good, but good change is hard, especially in stable systems that have already been optimized for years. Change for the sake of change is much more common, but then you have to force feed it to people to get anyone to use it because they rightfully don't want it.

by _jal 7y ago

yaktubi 7y ago

Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much. They made this thing called a book once upon a time and those have worked for centuries. Same thing with UIs: the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it?

gurkendoktor 7y ago
GNOME, Mate, Pantheon, XCFE, KDE, Deepin, UKUI, LXQt etc. created an unmaintainable mess of competing forks _while all using stacking window managers_. It's maddening how similar they all are to each other. Someone should build a dating site where understaffed Linux projects can find a matching project to merge with.
- yaktubi 7y ago
  Well, it’s great to experiment. And gnome 2 for example worked really great. I guess I am thinking more in the realm of things like “force touch” gestures, multi touch swipes and such. They could be useful as an added bonus for power users, but I think the traditional paradigm for the OS should work by default: 1) on desktop, single/double click, drag and drop, tool tips, mouse wheel. 2) on mobile quick tap, tap and hold, basic swipe gestures (on mobile these work well but sometimes not intuitive). I’m probably missing some stuff, but I think people out to at least be able to “feel” their way around a UI. Lately there’s been so much push for minimalism like omitting scroll bars and such that make it confusing. But, again that experimentation will root out what works and doesn’t. And new devices like VR of course have yet to be discovered paradigms.
hilbert42 7y ago
"Honestly the problem with all software is people trying to “innovate” too much." You are spot on, and your 'book analogy' is perfect. If it works perfectly don't change it — that is unless an innovation arrives that offers a significant improvement and that's just as easy to use. Unfortunately, most so-called UI improvements over the last 20 or so years are not improvements at all, in fact many have been quite regressive. They've annoyed millions of users who've collectively wasted millions of hours relearning what they already knew (and in the end nothing was added by way of new productivity)—and that doesn't include the developer's 'lost' time developing these so-called improvements. It's time that would otherwise have been much better spent fixing bugs, providing security improvements and or developing software for altogether new applications that we've not seen before. The question I keep asking over and over again is what exactly are the causes behind all this useless 'over innovation'. Why is it done on such a huge scale and with such utter predictability? Is it marketing's wish for something new? Are developers deliberately trying to find work for themselves or to keep their jobs or what? It seems to me that many a PhD could be earned researching the psychological underpinnings of why so many are prepared to waste so much money and human effort continuing to develop software that basically adds nothing to improve or advance the human condition. In fact, it's such an enormous problem that it should be at the core of Computer Science research.
- ethbro 7y ago
  > Why is ('over innovation') done on such a huge scale and with such utter predictability? Promotion & NIH management sydrome. New shiny gets a promotion. Fixing a niche bug in a decades-old stable system does not. And by the time all the new bugs you've introduced are found, you'll have a new job somewhere else. So essentially, project managers' bosses not pushing back with a hard "Why should we change this?"
anoncake 7y ago
Before codexes – the kind of book we use today – scrolls had worked for centuries. > the stacking window managers work well from Windows 95 and XP why change it? To get something that works better.
- ShirtlessRod 7y ago
  > To get something that works better. Despite all evidence to the contrary.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    "Experiments are bad. We've tried them once, didn't work"

gorgoiler 7y ago

> embrace the chaos Well said. Is your machine shop stocked by a single brand of tools all in the same color, or is it a mix of bits and pieces accumulated, rebuilt, repainted, hacked, begged-borrowed-and-stolen over the course of your development as an engineer? A free software Unix workstation is exactly the same. It’s supposed to look untidy. It’s a tool shed. Apologies if I’ve touched a nerve with the Festool crowd with my analogy.

rleigh 7y ago

> embrace the chaos Linux was all about chaos and herding cats until a short number of years ago. It's the "standardisation at all costs" brigade who have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It's now far worse than Windows in many aspects. Freedesktop and GNOME deserve the lion's share of the blame, but RedHat, Debian and many others enabled them to achieve this.

foldr 7y ago
Linux GUIs have always been worse than Windows as far as I remember (going back to the mid 90s).
- rleigh 7y ago
  That's very subjective, and not at all related to the point I was making. It wasn't about the niceness of GUIs. Over the last decade, we have experienced a sharp loss of control and had certain entities become almost absolute dictators over how Linux systems are permitted to be run and used. Linux started out quite clunky and unpolished. It could be made polished if you wanted that. But nothing was mandatory. Now that's changed. A modern mainstream Linux distribution gives you about the same control over your system that Windows provides. In some cases, even less. Given its roots in personal freedom, ultimate flexibility, and use as glue that could slot into all sorts of diverse uses, I find the current state of Linux to be an nauseating turn off. And I say that as someone who has used Linux for 24 years, and used to be an absolute Linux fanatic.
  - foldr 7y ago
    People have had similar complaints for a very long time: https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2795788/dumbing-down-linux.h...
    - rleigh 7y ago
      True. In that article though, they thought that the commercialisation wouldn't seriously affect true free distributions like Debian. Shame that did not turn out to be the case. The fear of even slight differences has effectively forced or coerced everyone to toe the RedHat line, even when severely detrimental. What we lost was any semblance of true independence.

hilbert42 7y ago

"There is never going to be a unified GUI for Linux; that requires a dictator." Agreed, but I can never get to the bottom of or reason why developers do not provide alternative UI interfaces (shells) so that the user can select what he/she wants. This would save the user much time relearning the new UI (not to mention a lot of unnecessary cursing and swearing). For example, Microsoft substantially changes the UI with every new version of Windows—often seemingly without good reason or user wishes. This has been so annoying that in recent times we've seen Ivo Beltchev's remarkable program Classic Shell used by millions to overcome the problem of MS's novel UIs. Classic Shell demonstrates that it's not that difficult to have multiple UIs which can be selected at the user's will or desire (in fact, given what it is, it has turned out to be one of the most reliable programs I've ever come across—I've never had it fault). It seems to me that if developers feel that they have an absolute need to tinker or stuff around with the UI then they should also have at least one fallback position which ought to be the basic IBM CUA (Common User Access) standard as everyone already knows how to use it. If you can't remember what the CUA looks like then just think Windows 2000 (it's pretty close).

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Agreed, but I can never get to the bottom of or reason why developers do not provide alternative UI interfaces (shells) so that the user can select what he/she wants. It's because everybody wants you to use their thing and not some other thing. If people have a choice then some people will choose something else. This is especially true when the choice is to continue using the traditional interface everybody is already familiar with, because that's what most everybody wants in any case where the traditional interface is not literally on fire. Even in that case, what people generally want is for you to take the traditional interface, address the "on fire" parts and leave everything else the way it is. Good change is good, but good change is hard, especially in stable systems that have already been optimized for years. Change for the sake of change is much more common, but then you have to force feed it to people to get anyone to use it because they rightfully don't want it.