4 ms·

The problem isn't Linux. The problem is GNOME, and to a lesser extent, KDE. GNOME is just not a good desktop environment, yet it has often been pushed as "the"

by Stiffy 15y ago

The problem isn't Linux. The problem is GNOME, and to a lesser extent, KDE. GNOME is just not a good desktop environment, yet it has often been pushed as "the" Linux desktop by various distros and vendors. New Linux users end up using GNOME, finding that it's a pretty bad experience, and then they blame Linux and OSS as a whole. Had they used XFCE, for instance, they'd probably think otherwise. If recent experience is any indicator, it isn't getting any better. People are not happy with Ubuntu's use of Unity, for instance. Anything GTK+-based or GNOME-based ends up being a miserable experience for most people.

shareme 15y ago
actually laptop users of Intel laptops like Unity and hence Ubuntu choosing unity to push the desktop exp.. Ubuntu Unity is the number 1 feature OEMs weer asking form Ubuntu..
- Stiffy 15y ago
  Not all Ubuntu users are using a laptop. It is absurd to penalize desktop users with a UI that just isn't suited to desktop use. OEMs often don't truly understand the needs and wants of their customers, as well. The recent backlash, even among laptop users, shows this quite well.
- Zak 15y ago
  I briefly played with Unity as included with Ubuntu 11.04 and felt that it was interesting, but unfinished. I find Gnome 2 very usable now, though it had rough edges for years. Unity is less usable due to its rough edges. Distributions intended to bring new users to Linux might do well to focus more on testing than new features. I've been using Linux on various laptops for almost 10 years now and I don't want to deal with instability and broken things on my production machine. New users looking for an alternative to Windows will likely find the grass is not greener on the other side. I'm not talking about ugly UI or inconsistency. I'm talking about the fact that my Thinkpad won't suspend, that my sound sometimes stops working, that my notification icons for Skype and a couple other apps were 1px for over a month while the bug was well-known. tl;dr - less development, more testing.
nagnatron 15y ago
KDE is awesome technology but overall a horrible interface.
VMG 15y ago
I disagree. I'm using Gnome3 on all my machines and I like it. My non-techie girlfriend is also fine with it.
gnosis 15y ago
"The problem isn't Linux. The problem is GNOME, and to a lesser extent, KDE." For those of you who feel a little adventuresome, may I recommend trying a minimalistic, tiling window manager? I use i3: http://i3wm.org http://i3wm.org It's very stable, very simple to use and configure, and doesn't have the bloat of KDE/GNOME. Some other popular minimalistic window managers: awesome - http://awesome.naquadah.org http://awesome.naquadah.org xmonad - http://xmonad.org http://xmonad.org wmii - http://www.suckless.org/wmii http://www.suckless.org/wmii
- rwl 15y ago
  I use StumpWM: http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/ http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/ I personally think the whole "Linux Desktop" issue is a bit of a red herring. GNU/Linux (and, I assume, other libre Unixes) is the only widely-available OS I know of where it is even possible to use a graphical environment without the "desktop" metaphor, which I see as a huge step forward. To me, the "desktop" is all about entrenching the various kinds of boring, repetitive work that computers are supposed to relieve. This insidious metaphor is implicit in everything about how desktop environments are used and developed: the way users are encouraged to scatter icons across their screen for fast access to files, instead of encouraging organization and fast access via searching; the presumed importance of "office" software that most users could replace with a typewriter and a calculator; the focus on making the environment "intuitive" from the first moment one uses it, at the expense of training the user to eventually learn to use their computer more effectively and efficiently. I would much prefer to see the free software community put its efforts into building graphical environments that eschew the desktop metaphor, and instead focus on making it easy for the user to off-load work to the machine. Part of that task is making it easy for the user to discover what the components of the environment are, how they work, and how to recombine them in novel ways. A good test for this, I think, is how well a graphical environment supports a task like data entry, because it's the kind of thing that just about every computer is going to have to do at some point, and it is often a mind-numbing task. It's often mind-numbing not because the task is boring, but because most "desktop" environments provide no way to offload the cognitive advances you can make while doing it. After a few records, you know you have to check that field C looks a certain way relative to fields A and B, or that it's faster to enter field E before fields D and B, etc.; but the software you're using provides no way to encode this information, so you have to remember this boring algorithm and execute it repeatedly yourself, instead of letting the computer handle the algorithm while you focus on edge cases. The challenge is to build an environment that a user can offload the algorithmic aspects of their work onto, without requiring the user to be a full-on programmer, at least not at first. Free software has already taken some significant steps in this direction. Tiling window managers, the OLPC's Sugar interface, and even to some extent programs like Emacs are examples. We're ahead of the game when it comes to building a new metaphor for working with a computer. We just need to recognize it.

by Stiffy 15y ago

shareme 15y ago

actually laptop users of Intel laptops like Unity and hence Ubuntu choosing unity to push the desktop exp.. Ubuntu Unity is the number 1 feature OEMs weer asking form Ubuntu..

Stiffy 15y ago
Not all Ubuntu users are using a laptop. It is absurd to penalize desktop users with a UI that just isn't suited to desktop use. OEMs often don't truly understand the needs and wants of their customers, as well. The recent backlash, even among laptop users, shows this quite well.
Zak 15y ago
I briefly played with Unity as included with Ubuntu 11.04 and felt that it was interesting, but unfinished. I find Gnome 2 very usable now, though it had rough edges for years. Unity is less usable due to its rough edges. Distributions intended to bring new users to Linux might do well to focus more on testing than new features. I've been using Linux on various laptops for almost 10 years now and I don't want to deal with instability and broken things on my production machine. New users looking for an alternative to Windows will likely find the grass is not greener on the other side. I'm not talking about ugly UI or inconsistency. I'm talking about the fact that my Thinkpad won't suspend, that my sound sometimes stops working, that my notification icons for Skype and a couple other apps were 1px for over a month while the bug was well-known. tl;dr - less development, more testing.

nagnatron 15y ago

KDE is awesome technology but overall a horrible interface.

VMG 15y ago

I disagree. I'm using Gnome3 on all my machines and I like it. My non-techie girlfriend is also fine with it.

gnosis 15y ago

"The problem isn't Linux. The problem is GNOME, and to a lesser extent, KDE." For those of you who feel a little adventuresome, may I recommend trying a minimalistic, tiling window manager? I use i3: http://i3wm.org http://i3wm.org It's very stable, very simple to use and configure, and doesn't have the bloat of KDE/GNOME. Some other popular minimalistic window managers: awesome - http://awesome.naquadah.org http://awesome.naquadah.org xmonad - http://xmonad.org http://xmonad.org wmii - http://www.suckless.org/wmii http://www.suckless.org/wmii

rwl 15y ago
I use StumpWM: http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/ http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/ I personally think the whole "Linux Desktop" issue is a bit of a red herring. GNU/Linux (and, I assume, other libre Unixes) is the only widely-available OS I know of where it is even possible to use a graphical environment without the "desktop" metaphor, which I see as a huge step forward. To me, the "desktop" is all about entrenching the various kinds of boring, repetitive work that computers are supposed to relieve. This insidious metaphor is implicit in everything about how desktop environments are used and developed: the way users are encouraged to scatter icons across their screen for fast access to files, instead of encouraging organization and fast access via searching; the presumed importance of "office" software that most users could replace with a typewriter and a calculator; the focus on making the environment "intuitive" from the first moment one uses it, at the expense of training the user to eventually learn to use their computer more effectively and efficiently. I would much prefer to see the free software community put its efforts into building graphical environments that eschew the desktop metaphor, and instead focus on making it easy for the user to off-load work to the machine. Part of that task is making it easy for the user to discover what the components of the environment are, how they work, and how to recombine them in novel ways. A good test for this, I think, is how well a graphical environment supports a task like data entry, because it's the kind of thing that just about every computer is going to have to do at some point, and it is often a mind-numbing task. It's often mind-numbing not because the task is boring, but because most "desktop" environments provide no way to offload the cognitive advances you can make while doing it. After a few records, you know you have to check that field C looks a certain way relative to fields A and B, or that it's faster to enter field E before fields D and B, etc.; but the software you're using provides no way to encode this information, so you have to remember this boring algorithm and execute it repeatedly yourself, instead of letting the computer handle the algorithm while you focus on edge cases. The challenge is to build an environment that a user can offload the algorithmic aspects of their work onto, without requiring the user to be a full-on programmer, at least not at first. Free software has already taken some significant steps in this direction. Tiling window managers, the OLPC's Sugar interface, and even to some extent programs like Emacs are examples. We're ahead of the game when it comes to building a new metaphor for working with a computer. We just need to recognize it.