5 ms·

(in the context of consumer computing) The unfortunate reality is that because Windows was so dominant for so long you either have to a) conform to their inte

(in the context of consumer computing) The unfortunate reality is that because Windows was so dominant for so long you either have to a) conform to their interaction paradigms to not frustrate users or b) create something incredibly polished and simple that it 'Just Works' how users expect it to (ie Apple). Once you have people on-boarding to your platform you can distinguish yourself and build out your own paradigms, but it takes a long time, and users are unforgiving. GNU/Linux is fantastic for power users, but the moment a 'normal' user has to edit a text config file, or open a terminal, we've lost them. When they try to do something that they're use to doing (see thumbnails of their files when choosing them) and it's not possible, GNU/Linux stops being a valid alternative. > I'm not personally moved by a chan board user's gripes about being unable to quickly find their favourite anime memes to post since all their images are `[1-9][0-9]*.png` You're uncharitably trivialising the author's point. A common user task is selecting an image file from your device (to upload/edit/share). A user will often have many images in a folder and they want to quickly select the one they're thinking of. There is an almost universally accepted solution (or 'best practice') to this problem, which is rendering each image visually so that the user can select the correct one at a glance (either as a thumbnail view in a file picker, or a literal grid of images as in iOS). GNOME and Gtk have not implemented this widely accepted (in fact, expected) behaviour, despite it being raised as an issue nearly 17 years ago. Instead you (and others) argue points like "well they should rename and manage their files", "it's just an extra click", "it's not that important or else it would exist already", "its just one inconvenient thing, get over it". And there are conversations to have around those points, but at the end of the day people are going to have a negative experience with the product because "it can't even render thumbnails". And the point is that this _isn't_ an isolated issue. Every project has something like this (Apple and Microsoft still have these issues), but we're particularly bad at addressing the issue, or even admitting it exists.

fnord123 6y ago
The article is an essay written upside down. The thesis is that there was no quality competition to windows and that's why it is dominant. This is plainly incorrect. The era when Windows gained total dominance was when everyone was getting daily or weekly bsods. It is a deep and complex topic and it wasn't 'heres a bug I don't like'. Microsoft had a monopoly on the sneakernet: file formats like xls, doc, and the like needed windows computers. They had an amazing sales force. They did the illegal partnering I mentioned. Loads of aspects. Quality is not a primary component here. Just like the inherent quality of javascript doesn't drive it. It's the platform and the platform effects and so on.
- rablackburn 6y ago
  I don't disagree with anything you've just said. I think I'm just focusing on the present and future, while you are talking about how we got here. I find it much easier these days to get people to consider trying a non-Windows environment but it never goes well because of these small issues. Of course people expect things to behave in certain ways because Microsoft had an anti-competitive monopoly and most people learned about computing using their platform. It's an unfair, shitty situation. But the point remains that desktop GNU/Linux has a lot of these little UX bugs, and we're not even paying attention to them. The experience isn't as smooth as Windows because we don't have dedicated UI/UX designers thinking over these issues and trying to come up with cohesive solutions. When's the last time a new consumer-facing UX paradigm that 'just worked' came out of the open-source world? Apple churns them out, oftentimes created from scratch, and it extends to their physical hardware design (ie the ipod scroll wheel was amazing for its time, airpods are a joy to use). The open source world makes amazing things but the UX quality _is_ a major issue in the uptake of new users today.
  - mmplxx 6y ago
    > The experience isn't as smooth as Windows What is smooth in Windows 10? The GUI is a chaos in every conceivable way. Have you used it in mixed-dpi fractional scaling setting lately? Even the builtin software is plagued with legacy apps that are unable to scale well and are aesthetically alien to the modern platform. Font sizes range from ridiculously small (file explorer) to ridiculously large (Edge location bar) and there is no font scaling factor that fits them all... that is when they even honor it. Most third-party apps look ancient. Installers are often blurry and unreadable. All Qt 5.x apps show scaling problems also, this is acknowledged as an important issue in Qt bug tracker. The task view (Win-Tab) has many visual glitches: it often flickers and reaccommodates itself after the initial rendering, it's not even smooth. Some of these problems are often attributed to their compromise to maintain backwards compatibility. Well, it's just the oposite, they are mostly the result of the schism they themselves created with Windows 8 and UWP (that not even Microsoft uses for their important apps). Now they are trying to fix it with XAML Islands, WinUI 3, Project Reunion and whatnot, they throw so many names that nobody really knows what is the platform they are developing to. There is nothing smooth in Windows 10. There are some great ideas and implementations lost in a rage of hubris and incompetence that started ten years ago and it's yet to see how much damage control they manage to do now.

fnord123 6y ago

The article is an essay written upside down. The thesis is that there was no quality competition to windows and that's why it is dominant. This is plainly incorrect. The era when Windows gained total dominance was when everyone was getting daily or weekly bsods. It is a deep and complex topic and it wasn't 'heres a bug I don't like'. Microsoft had a monopoly on the sneakernet: file formats like xls, doc, and the like needed windows computers. They had an amazing sales force. They did the illegal partnering I mentioned. Loads of aspects. Quality is not a primary component here. Just like the inherent quality of javascript doesn't drive it. It's the platform and the platform effects and so on.

rablackburn 6y ago
I don't disagree with anything you've just said. I think I'm just focusing on the present and future, while you are talking about how we got here. I find it much easier these days to get people to consider trying a non-Windows environment but it never goes well because of these small issues. Of course people expect things to behave in certain ways because Microsoft had an anti-competitive monopoly and most people learned about computing using their platform. It's an unfair, shitty situation. But the point remains that desktop GNU/Linux has a lot of these little UX bugs, and we're not even paying attention to them. The experience isn't as smooth as Windows because we don't have dedicated UI/UX designers thinking over these issues and trying to come up with cohesive solutions. When's the last time a new consumer-facing UX paradigm that 'just worked' came out of the open-source world? Apple churns them out, oftentimes created from scratch, and it extends to their physical hardware design (ie the ipod scroll wheel was amazing for its time, airpods are a joy to use). The open source world makes amazing things but the UX quality _is_ a major issue in the uptake of new users today.
- mmplxx 6y ago
  > The experience isn't as smooth as Windows What is smooth in Windows 10? The GUI is a chaos in every conceivable way. Have you used it in mixed-dpi fractional scaling setting lately? Even the builtin software is plagued with legacy apps that are unable to scale well and are aesthetically alien to the modern platform. Font sizes range from ridiculously small (file explorer) to ridiculously large (Edge location bar) and there is no font scaling factor that fits them all... that is when they even honor it. Most third-party apps look ancient. Installers are often blurry and unreadable. All Qt 5.x apps show scaling problems also, this is acknowledged as an important issue in Qt bug tracker. The task view (Win-Tab) has many visual glitches: it often flickers and reaccommodates itself after the initial rendering, it's not even smooth. Some of these problems are often attributed to their compromise to maintain backwards compatibility. Well, it's just the oposite, they are mostly the result of the schism they themselves created with Windows 8 and UWP (that not even Microsoft uses for their important apps). Now they are trying to fix it with XAML Islands, WinUI 3, Project Reunion and whatnot, they throw so many names that nobody really knows what is the platform they are developing to. There is nothing smooth in Windows 10. There are some great ideas and implementations lost in a rage of hubris and incompetence that started ten years ago and it's yet to see how much damage control they manage to do now.