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I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than de

I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than desktop.

diminish 6y ago
On the other hand, I think designers aren't that into contributing to FOSS - traditionally designers have been more on "paid" side of computation.
- 1_player 6y ago
  Not sure about that, I just think that "design" has a lower barrier to entry. A pure designer cannot one day find themselves writing code for a major piece of opensource software. A pure programmer can find themselves arranging some UI and designing a logo on Inkscape, that won't look and feel great. Put the two together and something magical can happen, though not always, as design is so easy the programmer can be overcome with hubris and discard or ignore the designer advice and do the designing himself, with obvious results.
  - codeflo 6y ago
    It’s even worse, I think. Good UX design looks deceptively easy, but is actually incredibly hard. So hard that a lot of programmers don’t even recognize how terrible they are at it, or how high the skill ceiling actually is. They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons. In a functioning software company, the managers recognize this skill difference and simply order the developers to implement what the designers suggest. They grumpily do. (It’s obviously not always so stereotypical. I’m exaggerating to make a point.) In a typical OSS project, no one can give orders. The programmers ignore any good design suggestions because they don’t recognize those, and implement their own crappy ideas instead. Sometimes while arrogantly dunking on the designer who tried to make a contribution. Consequently, UX quality is abysmal, and anyone who could fix that is driven away. I don’t see a solution to this.
    - ath92 6y ago
      I think part of the problem is also that it's sometimes more difficult to implement a nice and usable design. Instead, it may be easier to write code that does everything it needs to, but forces the user to jump through hoops to get what they want. Sometimes making software more user-friendly may even cause the code to get more "ugly", because instead of a nice and elegant piece of software that only solves the core problem, you now have to deal with all the weirdnesses of how people perceive the problem as well. Taking away complexity on the user's side almost always adds complexity to the code. And if you're the developer, it's very easy to think that the tool you created is perfectly usable, because you understand everything about the mental model that went into it.
      - mch82 6y ago
        As a product design lead, your comment and the comment you’re replying to reflect my experiences both with open source and with commercial development. For me, part of the solution has been learning how to communicate with developers. I’ve also found it helpful to broaden the scope of UX I consider to include the developer experience, data processing workflows, and the design of CLI and API interfaces.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      > I don’t see a solution to this. User testing. Making user feedback the key driver of UI related decisions.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      > They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons. Most people, let alone programmers, don't realize there's more to "design" than pictures.
    - cinquemb 6y ago
      > I don’t see a solution to this. Brain computer interfaces… UI's as they exist today are merely an abstraction layer for getting the brain to engage with and process information.
    - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
- amelius 6y ago
  Or perhaps there are too many designers? Or overconfident programmers who think they can do the design work?
  - rjzzleep 6y ago
    I'd say it's neither. Demoscene is a good example of when designers and programmers were working well together. Deviantart was a huge platform where people would share art and designs/skins. To some extent that still exists for iOS views. I think one thing that's different about the deviantart model was that back then apps used to have skinning interfaces. And then designers could focus on just skinning. You could argue that gnome themes are like that. I would disagree, but also skinning isn't quite the same as doing ux. UI/UX on Mac is a lot easier than UI/UX on gtk applications or QT applications. On top of that, I don't think most designers understand OSS. It's basically a different universe and these two world don't often interact.
    - deadelvis 6y ago
      This totally proves the point above of programmers not having the first clue about UX design, why it's hard and makes a the whole difference. It is everything BUT "skinning". It's about the users and their ability to understand how to work with your software to address their needs and expectations... not about your code, the designer or the manager. Those people are the product, NOT the user. If I had a dollar for every programmer and manager that thought they knew better and stubbornly cooked up a crappy MVP nobody wanted, I would be able to fund your OSS.
      - amelius 6y ago
        To be fair, GP said "but also skinning isn't quite the same as doing ux."
      - alexanderdmitri 6y ago
        If there's an OSS funded by developers cooking up crappy unwanted MVPs, I want in. Right now I have ten crappy MVPs to donate and can put down $20 to sponsor others. I could probably have another 5 MVPs out within the next week if work is slow.
- f6v 6y ago
  I think the absolute majority of developers aren't contributing to FOSS either.
matkoniecz 6y ago
It seems to me that the root cause is that OSS is often developed by people already using it. They are used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies. So there is much smaller motivation to improve it. And even if someone new joins project they will be often also used to weird interface once they contribute.
- AussieWog93 6y ago
  I think it's simpler than that. Unpaid developers overwhelmingly prefer to work on the intellectually "sexy" problems such as encryption or compilers, to the detriment of the boring-yet-important stuff like UI improvements and hardware compatibility (let alone proper QA).
  - pvorb 6y ago
    Yes. And good UI design requires a look of work and effort to get it right. You need many skills, or a good team to do it and that's rare in FOSS.
  - Beldin 6y ago
    It's even simpler than that. Who wants to work on changing a UI that they themselves are comfortable with? It's work with - best case - no benefit in the eyes of the developer. Worse, you likely will break workflows - including your own. Sexyness doesn't need to factor in at all. And do note the nice uncanny valley of no change: in order to improve the UI, you need to understand the program well. In order for that to happen, you need to be proficient with it. In which case, you know how to use the UI and are more likely blind to its downsides.
    - hasmanean 6y ago
      One more thing: some people have no eye for aesthetics. I’ve seen (smart) people defend a piece of code, and when I show them a refactored version, they say “that’s literally the exact same thing I wrote.” No it’s not, and yes it is, in the sense that’s a^2 + 2ab + c^2 is not the same thing as (a+b)^2, but they (should and ideally must) evaluate to the same thing. I say ideally because only in the case of using infinite precision arithmetic can you guarantee this for all values of a,b,c. People blind to these patterns cannot see how to simplify things, whether math or code or UIs.
2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
If it worked well enough, and was stable enough, I think a lot of tech enthusiasts might make the switch. Same we we put up with Linux distros. A friend has a pine phone and it’s just not good enough as a daily driver. Forget UI. It needs a reboot regularly.
- tluyben2 6y ago
  I have a pinephone; it is not good enough. Very unstable; everything (apps/wm) just keep crashing randomly; I send in crash reports. And I try the latest images every month. But yes, I think it would work. I would be happy with a phone that can run Linux desktop software with HDMI. It would need to be powerful enough (which the pinephone is very much not at all), not eat so much battery when the USB dock is plugged in with HDMI and, most importantly as you say, be stable as Linux. The pinephone feels very far removed from any of this. Personally, I don't really care about the size of the phone; I gladly give up weight for more battery life (I will have to carry a battery anyway otherwise so why not inside the phone). I guess I would rather the (6.5inch) phone have an eInk display but plug into a screen for a full Linux desktop. But sure, there is no real money in that for phone makers as only people like me would buy them. With Android they are next to useless for me though, which is annoying as there are nice Android (eInk) phones out there if they would run Linux.
  - 74d-fe6-2c6 6y ago
    wow - now that you mention it. a smartphone with an eInk display. that would be rad!
    - tluyben2 6y ago
      You can buy them today [0]. No linux though :) [0] https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones
gorgoiler 6y ago
I “just” need a browser.
Valmar 6y ago
It's a case of developer UI. Has nothing to being "allergic" to "good UI design". Being able to design something friendly to the average user, yet powerful enough to be friendly to power users, is a very difficult task to accomplish. Developers understand the latter quite well, I think, as they themselves are power user-types. The former... well, that requires having dedicated designers who know how the average user thinks, as well as perhaps guinea pigs in the form of the average user. And that might require a lot more funding, perhaps.
- slver 6y ago
  Often it feels like "developer UI" is just "slap some buttons around and hook them to the handlers, call it a day". At least that's how Gimp feels to this day.
strictfp 6y ago
It's not like the competitors are any better, in the desktop space at least. The problem in my eyes is plateauing. Once a project moves past the first couple of iterations, it rarely interests the original authors enough to make incremental improvements. And since there is no financial incentive to continue, the project usually cools down to eventually be replaced by the following iteration. This means that you rarely get mature software.
strzibny 6y ago
We have GNOME 40 now which is beautiful. I can imagine it would be beautiful on mobile pretty soon as well.
- underscore_ku 6y ago
  if you thing gnome4 is good design then linux phone is dead
  - herbst 6y ago
    What desktop approach do you consider to be modern? Or do you like to stick to the “win95“ approach of desktops?
- curt15 6y ago
  I sometimes find it hard to understand the GNOME's design rationale. When GNOME 40 moved the dock from the left side to the bottom of the screen, it created an ergonomic problem for mouse users, who now need two large mouse gestures to switch apps -- first to the upper left corner to reveal the dock, then all the way to the bottom. And in the issue thread[1], Gnome's designers seem to be carefully avoiding the obvious solution of a hot bottom edge, proposed by several commenters, which is how Mac OS has always handled an auto-hiding dock. https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/68 https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/68
  - kaba0 6y ago
    Of course it depends on the person, but I have never really used the dock for anything. I usually use the overview, or start typing the name of the app I want, or even more often just apt tab to it.
  - lower 6y ago
    I don't really understand the rationale either, but it's easy to add a hot bottom edge with this extension: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4222/hot-edge/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4222/hot-edge/
ekianjo 6y ago
> I'd be shocked if it took off. Its not about taking off - it's about having an alternative that is available even if it's just for 0.01% of users.
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  > just for 0.01% of users Who will develop it, why and most importantly what will it provide compared to alternatives?
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    It won't provide more features, but the one I want is definitely less tracking of everything through my phone, which is built-in with current vendors.
  - toggleton 6y ago
    Both big Linux Desktops(KDE/GNOME) do try to make the desktop UIs design work on a small screen. Phosh/phoc is mostly GNOME Design and Plasma mobile is KDE. And that's the point of libhandy(for GTK/GNOME apps) and Kirigami(KDE) to take desktop Applications and make them work on smaller screens. So you can use the same applications on the phone and Linux desktop. And nice bonus is that optimizing the applications to have low CPU usage will have a positive effect on the linux desktop too. In the case of postmarketOS to give that devices a second life(Hard work cause mainline linux support of most android Phones is bad).
forinti 6y ago
I'd much rather use any Linux than Windows 10.
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  Why?
  - pyrale 6y ago
    Not parent poster, but the interface works as a plaster that obfuscates the stuff I need. Add to it the many mobile imports pushed onto the user (don't care about cloud? Well, W10 cares, and it will push it at every turn) and you get a product that's built to push how Microsoft thinks you should use your computer. My aging father has used Microsoft OSes since dos, and W10 is the first product he's having real trouble moving to. The reason for that is that he's always been a pc user, and W10 is pushing mobile ux, with a very hard opt-out.
    - EvilEy3 6y ago
      Original question was regarding UI. What's wrong with W10 UI?
      - jeroenhd 6y ago
        Neither of the parents' posters, but my gripes with Windows 10 come down to these: - Unreliability of UI elements (mixed responsiveness, difficult to see what are buttons and what are labels) - Too much wasted space in their current design language, and related to that - Too much distraction by visual eye candy (background images behind buttons in the email client, for example) - Somehow, despite having every advantage in manufacturer driver support, still laggy animations - After years, search is still bad and unpredictable, to the point I have to type "updat" to go to Windows Update because "update" will take me to Bing to tell me about how to update my PC. - Inconsistencies. Many of those are because of the decades of backwards compatibility, which I can forgive, but even the modern Windows 10 apps have inconsistent designs[1]. Icons from four Windows versions that can all be seen on the same screen if you navigate deep enough through the seconds, even though Windows uses a unified resource loading mechanism for most system resources. None of the alternatives are perfect, of course, but some are just _less worse_ in my opinion. Compared to the W10 shell, Gnome feels much snappier to me. Also, after finally fixing the bug that made the Windows 10 start menu break, a new start menu bug has been introduced to my system that makes it impossible to use the search bar in the start menu when it's opened start button on my left screen, breaking "winkey > program name > enter" _again_. On Linux, audio sometimes breaks, or external monitors only work after an update. When nothing breaks, the system works great. On Windows, everything always kind of works, but not completely. Whatever I'm trying to do, something is broken in a way that's not bad enough to invest time into fixing, but still annoys me to no end. On macOS, you need to buy the expensive Apple hardware or it won't work at all. I have no need for expertly-graded colour-accurate screens sporting extreme resolutions, but you don't get any other options if you want to experience the macOS UI. I can't say much about the most recent macOS UI because I can't even run it, which makes it impossible to compare. Of these three, I've settled with Linux, especially Gnome, as the "least broken" UI. In the mid to late years of Windows 7, the Windows UI greatly outperformed most alternatives. With Windows 8, the system got very usable after the 8.1 update came out. After Windows 10, with the introduction of "operating system as a service", the UI seems to be in a perpetual state of "nearly finished, just needs a few more updates" because of the constant addition of more features and integrations. [1]: Although it's been improving, I still notice stuff like this every now and then: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/7aw5ps/i_just_noticed_how_inconsistent_the_uwp_hamburger/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/7aw5ps/i_just_no...
swiley 6y ago
Two things: 1) The GNU utilities have pretty good CLI UI design and there are plenty of us who are perfectly happy with just that and a decent WM like FVWM even on a phone 2) It's not like closed mobile stuff has a great UI either. My favorite example is Apple's camera app. Did you know you can do manual focus with it? It's absolutely impossible to discover but I think it involves a "reverse three finger pinch." I've even had it explained twice to me (and used it) and forgotten how to do it after. I can never remember how when I need it. This garbage makes the TAR UI look like it was designed by an artist.
- mod50ack 6y ago
  I mean, you say "plenty", but it's going to be only a fraction of the number of people who are perfectly happy with that sort of thing on the desktop, which already isn't very many people (even if you assumed all *nix users sans Macheads were like this, which they're not). And while you're right to say that mobile UI design can be bad, is the solution to that really throwing out mobile UI as a concept altogether in favor of ... a window manager designed for a mouse and ketboard, running text terminals on a tiny touchscreen?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  > plenty of us Which is a soooo tiny minority that it won't even show up on charts. > It's absolutely impossible to discover but I think it involves a "reverse three finger pinch." That's a shitty UX, not UI.
  - dudeman13 6y ago
    Can't have bad UI if there is no visible UI taps head
    - slver 6y ago
      There is no three finger manual focus gesture on iPhone. Not sure where he got that from.
vbezhenar 6y ago
I think that Linux UI is good. I’m using Windows because I need iCloud, otherwise Linux is better.
tomxor 6y ago
It depends on what you mean by design. Modern proprietary OS (mobile and desktop) certainly have more polish, aesthetic taste and cohesion - that last one being the most valuable when compared to much of FOSS. But in terms of usability I'm not convinced they are any better unless we are going back a good 20 years. They have improved looks at the cost of performance and significant ambiguity and thus mental overhead in learning and general operation.
- slver 6y ago
  It's easy to make a light OS when no one uses it.
sergeykish 6y ago
You judge from subjective view. Should we all? I do not like macOS and Windows experience. It is full of distractions. http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png
- chovybizzass 6y ago
  MacOS is usable. Windows isn't. I like KDE because its not either and its themeable.
- slver 6y ago
  The macOS/Windows term for those distractions is "applications".
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  > It is full of distractions Define distraction in terms of computing first.
  - herbst 6y ago
    Popups, weird confirmation dialogs nobody reads, configurations hidden in X different uis without console interface, the amount of screen space wasted for whatever reasons and the possibility that the wasted space contains text and icons that suddenly start to blink and move (attention seeking apps), .... I feel distracted working on Windows or Mac. As if someone is putting stones everywhere and i have to mangle inbetween
    - EvilEy3 6y ago
      I don't see how any of this happens all the time. If I were to maximize terminal and IDE/Browser I won't see those things either.
      - herbst 6y ago
        You are likely more used to it than i am. Thing is even if i maximize my terminal on windows or mac, how much can i actually do without switching context to get some things done. Switching between software is also not what i consider distructing. Its the how, the discovery of files and software, the switching between windows, switching between possibly dozens of windows of the same kind. How many key strokes are some actions away? (Given mac is a lot better in this degree than windows). Some approaches on linux, be it gnome or kde or tiled solutions are just so much more efficient
gspr 6y ago
> The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the development paradigm that's allergic to good UI design. In good faith I'll assume you meant that "FOSS projects seem to lack good UI design". This I'll agree with, if we're talking about GUI design (others have pointed out that the CLI interfaces are usually great). I really don't think the lacking GUI design is necessarily inherent in FOSS, but I too wonder why more people with design skills aren't attracted to working on FOSS stuff.
- drums8787 6y ago
  Also don’t know about the paradigm per se, but I suspect a lot of FOSS developers are CLI first type users. Secondly, they are mostly not working in environments where GUI UX designers are part of the process. Thirdly, good UX design doesn’t happen by committee. Pure speculation on the first two.
  - myself248 6y ago
    Case-sensitive filesystems. Quod erat demonstratum.
- yoz-y 6y ago
  Good UI design usually comes from one person knowing what they are doing and the programmers willing to follow. In OSS people are often motivated by full control.
  - gspr 6y ago
    Really? In many-person collaborative OSS projects, there seems to be a decent amount of belief that others can do better work than oneself.
    - username90 6y ago
      You need to redesign your code architecture to fit the UI or you wont get a world class UI. That isn't what happens though, instead they hook in UI interactions so it looks like the designs but doesn't really work as well as you'd wish. I've never seen a developer who gladly did the architectural redesigns needed to make UI truly great.
fpoling 6y ago
Modern UI on the phones makes discovering features really hard. One often ends up with searching obscure forums just to know very useful feature like IPhone trick with holding the space bar to move cursor. I can understand that on 4” inch phones there were no space for extra buttons, but with 6” screens this became ridiculous. So much for “good” design.
- herbst 6y ago
  Not sure if apple really can be considered modern in a space developing as fast as that. From my pov apples ui is still the dated sister everyone is trying to copy from
  - zepto 6y ago
    What is more modern?
  - birdyrooster 6y ago
    Apples UI has been copied since as long as I’ve been alive
- bpicolo 6y ago
  I agree with you, but I think discoverability for me is a lot more critical for software I use infrequently versus something I'm glued to several hours a day.
  - fpoling 6y ago
    I learned about the space bar trick after 2 years of using iPhone after my son showed me a post on a forum. This made fixing typos much more quicker.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I discovered that about a year ago. I'm sure there are some other obvious things I don't know. In general, most of us who have been using smartphones for 10 years or so are probably able to adapt to new features fairly easily (assuming we learn about them). But it's probably easy to overlook how overwhelming they might be to someone who has never touched one before.
herbst 6y ago
Gnome 3 is by far one of the most modern approaches to desktops and personally i dig the look. Imo these days where foss ment ugly gui are slowly over
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
II2II 6y ago
Yes, bad UI design exists. On the other hand, good UI design is largely a matter of what people are familiar with. This is true of both open source and commercial software. If we see bad UI design in open source software more, it is likely a product of open source software being more accessible. (People are more likely to try something they can download for free than something they have to pay $1000, $100, or even $10 for.)
opan 6y ago
Do you have specific thoughts on phosh, plamo, or lomiri?
fsflover 6y ago
Did you actually see the design of Phosh? It was developed by actual paid designers, not by programmers.
curioussavage 6y ago
The idea it has to “take off” is silly. It could certainly be something similar to raspberry pi. Small market but really popular. It’s already on its way there.
- linmob 6y ago
  I totally agree. Establishing a sustainable niche is enough.
rambojazz 6y ago
Sorry but I can't stand these kind of generalizations... it's at the same level of "Everybody from <country> is <something>". I've seen many proprietary projects with a budget for UI development equal to zero (and yes, the UI indeed sucked).

I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than desktop.

diminish 6y ago

On the other hand, I think designers aren't that into contributing to FOSS - traditionally designers have been more on "paid" side of computation.

1_player 6y ago
Not sure about that, I just think that "design" has a lower barrier to entry. A pure designer cannot one day find themselves writing code for a major piece of opensource software. A pure programmer can find themselves arranging some UI and designing a logo on Inkscape, that won't look and feel great. Put the two together and something magical can happen, though not always, as design is so easy the programmer can be overcome with hubris and discard or ignore the designer advice and do the designing himself, with obvious results.
- codeflo 6y ago
  It’s even worse, I think. Good UX design looks deceptively easy, but is actually incredibly hard. So hard that a lot of programmers don’t even recognize how terrible they are at it, or how high the skill ceiling actually is. They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons. In a functioning software company, the managers recognize this skill difference and simply order the developers to implement what the designers suggest. They grumpily do. (It’s obviously not always so stereotypical. I’m exaggerating to make a point.) In a typical OSS project, no one can give orders. The programmers ignore any good design suggestions because they don’t recognize those, and implement their own crappy ideas instead. Sometimes while arrogantly dunking on the designer who tried to make a contribution. Consequently, UX quality is abysmal, and anyone who could fix that is driven away. I don’t see a solution to this.
  - ath92 6y ago
    I think part of the problem is also that it's sometimes more difficult to implement a nice and usable design. Instead, it may be easier to write code that does everything it needs to, but forces the user to jump through hoops to get what they want. Sometimes making software more user-friendly may even cause the code to get more "ugly", because instead of a nice and elegant piece of software that only solves the core problem, you now have to deal with all the weirdnesses of how people perceive the problem as well. Taking away complexity on the user's side almost always adds complexity to the code. And if you're the developer, it's very easy to think that the tool you created is perfectly usable, because you understand everything about the mental model that went into it.
    - mch82 6y ago
      As a product design lead, your comment and the comment you’re replying to reflect my experiences both with open source and with commercial development. For me, part of the solution has been learning how to communicate with developers. I’ve also found it helpful to broaden the scope of UX I consider to include the developer experience, data processing workflows, and the design of CLI and API interfaces.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > I don’t see a solution to this. User testing. Making user feedback the key driver of UI related decisions.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    > They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons. Most people, let alone programmers, don't realize there's more to "design" than pictures.
  - cinquemb 6y ago
    > I don’t see a solution to this. Brain computer interfaces… UI's as they exist today are merely an abstraction layer for getting the brain to engage with and process information.
  - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
amelius 6y ago
Or perhaps there are too many designers? Or overconfident programmers who think they can do the design work?
- rjzzleep 6y ago
  I'd say it's neither. Demoscene is a good example of when designers and programmers were working well together. Deviantart was a huge platform where people would share art and designs/skins. To some extent that still exists for iOS views. I think one thing that's different about the deviantart model was that back then apps used to have skinning interfaces. And then designers could focus on just skinning. You could argue that gnome themes are like that. I would disagree, but also skinning isn't quite the same as doing ux. UI/UX on Mac is a lot easier than UI/UX on gtk applications or QT applications. On top of that, I don't think most designers understand OSS. It's basically a different universe and these two world don't often interact.
  - deadelvis 6y ago
    This totally proves the point above of programmers not having the first clue about UX design, why it's hard and makes a the whole difference. It is everything BUT "skinning". It's about the users and their ability to understand how to work with your software to address their needs and expectations... not about your code, the designer or the manager. Those people are the product, NOT the user. If I had a dollar for every programmer and manager that thought they knew better and stubbornly cooked up a crappy MVP nobody wanted, I would be able to fund your OSS.
    - amelius 6y ago
      To be fair, GP said "but also skinning isn't quite the same as doing ux."
    - alexanderdmitri 6y ago
      If there's an OSS funded by developers cooking up crappy unwanted MVPs, I want in. Right now I have ten crappy MVPs to donate and can put down $20 to sponsor others. I could probably have another 5 MVPs out within the next week if work is slow.
f6v 6y ago
I think the absolute majority of developers aren't contributing to FOSS either.

matkoniecz 6y ago

It seems to me that the root cause is that OSS is often developed by people already using it. They are used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies. So there is much smaller motivation to improve it. And even if someone new joins project they will be often also used to weird interface once they contribute.

AussieWog93 6y ago
I think it's simpler than that. Unpaid developers overwhelmingly prefer to work on the intellectually "sexy" problems such as encryption or compilers, to the detriment of the boring-yet-important stuff like UI improvements and hardware compatibility (let alone proper QA).
- pvorb 6y ago
  Yes. And good UI design requires a look of work and effort to get it right. You need many skills, or a good team to do it and that's rare in FOSS.
- Beldin 6y ago
  It's even simpler than that. Who wants to work on changing a UI that they themselves are comfortable with? It's work with - best case - no benefit in the eyes of the developer. Worse, you likely will break workflows - including your own. Sexyness doesn't need to factor in at all. And do note the nice uncanny valley of no change: in order to improve the UI, you need to understand the program well. In order for that to happen, you need to be proficient with it. In which case, you know how to use the UI and are more likely blind to its downsides.
  - hasmanean 6y ago
    One more thing: some people have no eye for aesthetics. I’ve seen (smart) people defend a piece of code, and when I show them a refactored version, they say “that’s literally the exact same thing I wrote.” No it’s not, and yes it is, in the sense that’s a^2 + 2ab + c^2 is not the same thing as (a+b)^2, but they (should and ideally must) evaluate to the same thing. I say ideally because only in the case of using infinite precision arithmetic can you guarantee this for all values of a,b,c. People blind to these patterns cannot see how to simplify things, whether math or code or UIs.

2muchcoffeeman 6y ago

If it worked well enough, and was stable enough, I think a lot of tech enthusiasts might make the switch. Same we we put up with Linux distros. A friend has a pine phone and it’s just not good enough as a daily driver. Forget UI. It needs a reboot regularly.

tluyben2 6y ago
I have a pinephone; it is not good enough. Very unstable; everything (apps/wm) just keep crashing randomly; I send in crash reports. And I try the latest images every month. But yes, I think it would work. I would be happy with a phone that can run Linux desktop software with HDMI. It would need to be powerful enough (which the pinephone is very much not at all), not eat so much battery when the USB dock is plugged in with HDMI and, most importantly as you say, be stable as Linux. The pinephone feels very far removed from any of this. Personally, I don't really care about the size of the phone; I gladly give up weight for more battery life (I will have to carry a battery anyway otherwise so why not inside the phone). I guess I would rather the (6.5inch) phone have an eInk display but plug into a screen for a full Linux desktop. But sure, there is no real money in that for phone makers as only people like me would buy them. With Android they are next to useless for me though, which is annoying as there are nice Android (eInk) phones out there if they would run Linux.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 6y ago
  wow - now that you mention it. a smartphone with an eInk display. that would be rad!
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    You can buy them today [0]. No linux though :) [0] https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones

gorgoiler 6y ago

I “just” need a browser.

Valmar 6y ago

It's a case of developer UI. Has nothing to being "allergic" to "good UI design". Being able to design something friendly to the average user, yet powerful enough to be friendly to power users, is a very difficult task to accomplish. Developers understand the latter quite well, I think, as they themselves are power user-types. The former... well, that requires having dedicated designers who know how the average user thinks, as well as perhaps guinea pigs in the form of the average user. And that might require a lot more funding, perhaps.

slver 6y ago
Often it feels like "developer UI" is just "slap some buttons around and hook them to the handlers, call it a day". At least that's how Gimp feels to this day.

strictfp 6y ago

It's not like the competitors are any better, in the desktop space at least. The problem in my eyes is plateauing. Once a project moves past the first couple of iterations, it rarely interests the original authors enough to make incremental improvements. And since there is no financial incentive to continue, the project usually cools down to eventually be replaced by the following iteration. This means that you rarely get mature software.

strzibny 6y ago

We have GNOME 40 now which is beautiful. I can imagine it would be beautiful on mobile pretty soon as well.

underscore_ku 6y ago
if you thing gnome4 is good design then linux phone is dead
- herbst 6y ago
  What desktop approach do you consider to be modern? Or do you like to stick to the “win95“ approach of desktops?
curt15 6y ago
I sometimes find it hard to understand the GNOME's design rationale. When GNOME 40 moved the dock from the left side to the bottom of the screen, it created an ergonomic problem for mouse users, who now need two large mouse gestures to switch apps -- first to the upper left corner to reveal the dock, then all the way to the bottom. And in the issue thread[1], Gnome's designers seem to be carefully avoiding the obvious solution of a hot bottom edge, proposed by several commenters, which is how Mac OS has always handled an auto-hiding dock. https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/68 https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/68
- kaba0 6y ago
  Of course it depends on the person, but I have never really used the dock for anything. I usually use the overview, or start typing the name of the app I want, or even more often just apt tab to it.
- lower 6y ago
  I don't really understand the rationale either, but it's easy to add a hot bottom edge with this extension: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4222/hot-edge/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4222/hot-edge/

ekianjo 6y ago

> I'd be shocked if it took off. Its not about taking off - it's about having an alternative that is available even if it's just for 0.01% of users.

EvilEy3 6y ago
> just for 0.01% of users Who will develop it, why and most importantly what will it provide compared to alternatives?
- ekianjo 6y ago
  It won't provide more features, but the one I want is definitely less tracking of everything through my phone, which is built-in with current vendors.
- toggleton 6y ago
  Both big Linux Desktops(KDE/GNOME) do try to make the desktop UIs design work on a small screen. Phosh/phoc is mostly GNOME Design and Plasma mobile is KDE. And that's the point of libhandy(for GTK/GNOME apps) and Kirigami(KDE) to take desktop Applications and make them work on smaller screens. So you can use the same applications on the phone and Linux desktop. And nice bonus is that optimizing the applications to have low CPU usage will have a positive effect on the linux desktop too. In the case of postmarketOS to give that devices a second life(Hard work cause mainline linux support of most android Phones is bad).

forinti 6y ago

I'd much rather use any Linux than Windows 10.

EvilEy3 6y ago
Why?
- pyrale 6y ago
  Not parent poster, but the interface works as a plaster that obfuscates the stuff I need. Add to it the many mobile imports pushed onto the user (don't care about cloud? Well, W10 cares, and it will push it at every turn) and you get a product that's built to push how Microsoft thinks you should use your computer. My aging father has used Microsoft OSes since dos, and W10 is the first product he's having real trouble moving to. The reason for that is that he's always been a pc user, and W10 is pushing mobile ux, with a very hard opt-out.
  - EvilEy3 6y ago
    Original question was regarding UI. What's wrong with W10 UI?
    - jeroenhd 6y ago
      Neither of the parents' posters, but my gripes with Windows 10 come down to these: - Unreliability of UI elements (mixed responsiveness, difficult to see what are buttons and what are labels) - Too much wasted space in their current design language, and related to that - Too much distraction by visual eye candy (background images behind buttons in the email client, for example) - Somehow, despite having every advantage in manufacturer driver support, still laggy animations - After years, search is still bad and unpredictable, to the point I have to type "updat" to go to Windows Update because "update" will take me to Bing to tell me about how to update my PC. - Inconsistencies. Many of those are because of the decades of backwards compatibility, which I can forgive, but even the modern Windows 10 apps have inconsistent designs[1]. Icons from four Windows versions that can all be seen on the same screen if you navigate deep enough through the seconds, even though Windows uses a unified resource loading mechanism for most system resources. None of the alternatives are perfect, of course, but some are just _less worse_ in my opinion. Compared to the W10 shell, Gnome feels much snappier to me. Also, after finally fixing the bug that made the Windows 10 start menu break, a new start menu bug has been introduced to my system that makes it impossible to use the search bar in the start menu when it's opened start button on my left screen, breaking "winkey > program name > enter" _again_. On Linux, audio sometimes breaks, or external monitors only work after an update. When nothing breaks, the system works great. On Windows, everything always kind of works, but not completely. Whatever I'm trying to do, something is broken in a way that's not bad enough to invest time into fixing, but still annoys me to no end. On macOS, you need to buy the expensive Apple hardware or it won't work at all. I have no need for expertly-graded colour-accurate screens sporting extreme resolutions, but you don't get any other options if you want to experience the macOS UI. I can't say much about the most recent macOS UI because I can't even run it, which makes it impossible to compare. Of these three, I've settled with Linux, especially Gnome, as the "least broken" UI. In the mid to late years of Windows 7, the Windows UI greatly outperformed most alternatives. With Windows 8, the system got very usable after the 8.1 update came out. After Windows 10, with the introduction of "operating system as a service", the UI seems to be in a perpetual state of "nearly finished, just needs a few more updates" because of the constant addition of more features and integrations. [1]: Although it's been improving, I still notice stuff like this every now and then: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/7aw5ps/i_just_noticed_how_inconsistent_the_uwp_hamburger/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/7aw5ps/i_just_no...

swiley 6y ago

Two things: 1) The GNU utilities have pretty good CLI UI design and there are plenty of us who are perfectly happy with just that and a decent WM like FVWM even on a phone 2) It's not like closed mobile stuff has a great UI either. My favorite example is Apple's camera app. Did you know you can do manual focus with it? It's absolutely impossible to discover but I think it involves a "reverse three finger pinch." I've even had it explained twice to me (and used it) and forgotten how to do it after. I can never remember how when I need it. This garbage makes the TAR UI look like it was designed by an artist.

mod50ack 6y ago
I mean, you say "plenty", but it's going to be only a fraction of the number of people who are perfectly happy with that sort of thing on the desktop, which already isn't very many people (even if you assumed all *nix users sans Macheads were like this, which they're not). And while you're right to say that mobile UI design can be bad, is the solution to that really throwing out mobile UI as a concept altogether in favor of ... a window manager designed for a mouse and ketboard, running text terminals on a tiny touchscreen?
deleted 6y ago
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EvilEy3 6y ago
> plenty of us Which is a soooo tiny minority that it won't even show up on charts. > It's absolutely impossible to discover but I think it involves a "reverse three finger pinch." That's a shitty UX, not UI.
- dudeman13 6y ago
  Can't have bad UI if there is no visible UI taps head
  - slver 6y ago
    There is no three finger manual focus gesture on iPhone. Not sure where he got that from.

vbezhenar 6y ago

I think that Linux UI is good. I’m using Windows because I need iCloud, otherwise Linux is better.

tomxor 6y ago

It depends on what you mean by design. Modern proprietary OS (mobile and desktop) certainly have more polish, aesthetic taste and cohesion - that last one being the most valuable when compared to much of FOSS. But in terms of usability I'm not convinced they are any better unless we are going back a good 20 years. They have improved looks at the cost of performance and significant ambiguity and thus mental overhead in learning and general operation.

slver 6y ago
It's easy to make a light OS when no one uses it.

sergeykish 6y ago

You judge from subjective view. Should we all? I do not like macOS and Windows experience. It is full of distractions. http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png

chovybizzass 6y ago
MacOS is usable. Windows isn't. I like KDE because its not either and its themeable.
slver 6y ago
The macOS/Windows term for those distractions is "applications".
EvilEy3 6y ago
> It is full of distractions Define distraction in terms of computing first.
- herbst 6y ago
  Popups, weird confirmation dialogs nobody reads, configurations hidden in X different uis without console interface, the amount of screen space wasted for whatever reasons and the possibility that the wasted space contains text and icons that suddenly start to blink and move (attention seeking apps), .... I feel distracted working on Windows or Mac. As if someone is putting stones everywhere and i have to mangle inbetween
  - EvilEy3 6y ago
    I don't see how any of this happens all the time. If I were to maximize terminal and IDE/Browser I won't see those things either.
    - herbst 6y ago
      You are likely more used to it than i am. Thing is even if i maximize my terminal on windows or mac, how much can i actually do without switching context to get some things done. Switching between software is also not what i consider distructing. Its the how, the discovery of files and software, the switching between windows, switching between possibly dozens of windows of the same kind. How many key strokes are some actions away? (Given mac is a lot better in this degree than windows). Some approaches on linux, be it gnome or kde or tiled solutions are just so much more efficient

gspr 6y ago

> The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the development paradigm that's allergic to good UI design. In good faith I'll assume you meant that "FOSS projects seem to lack good UI design". This I'll agree with, if we're talking about GUI design (others have pointed out that the CLI interfaces are usually great). I really don't think the lacking GUI design is necessarily inherent in FOSS, but I too wonder why more people with design skills aren't attracted to working on FOSS stuff.

drums8787 6y ago
Also don’t know about the paradigm per se, but I suspect a lot of FOSS developers are CLI first type users. Secondly, they are mostly not working in environments where GUI UX designers are part of the process. Thirdly, good UX design doesn’t happen by committee. Pure speculation on the first two.
- myself248 6y ago
  Case-sensitive filesystems. Quod erat demonstratum.
yoz-y 6y ago
Good UI design usually comes from one person knowing what they are doing and the programmers willing to follow. In OSS people are often motivated by full control.
- gspr 6y ago
  Really? In many-person collaborative OSS projects, there seems to be a decent amount of belief that others can do better work than oneself.
  - username90 6y ago
    You need to redesign your code architecture to fit the UI or you wont get a world class UI. That isn't what happens though, instead they hook in UI interactions so it looks like the designs but doesn't really work as well as you'd wish. I've never seen a developer who gladly did the architectural redesigns needed to make UI truly great.

fpoling 6y ago

Modern UI on the phones makes discovering features really hard. One often ends up with searching obscure forums just to know very useful feature like IPhone trick with holding the space bar to move cursor. I can understand that on 4” inch phones there were no space for extra buttons, but with 6” screens this became ridiculous. So much for “good” design.

herbst 6y ago
Not sure if apple really can be considered modern in a space developing as fast as that. From my pov apples ui is still the dated sister everyone is trying to copy from
- zepto 6y ago
  What is more modern?
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  Apples UI has been copied since as long as I’ve been alive
bpicolo 6y ago
I agree with you, but I think discoverability for me is a lot more critical for software I use infrequently versus something I'm glued to several hours a day.
- fpoling 6y ago
  I learned about the space bar trick after 2 years of using iPhone after my son showed me a post on a forum. This made fixing typos much more quicker.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I discovered that about a year ago. I'm sure there are some other obvious things I don't know. In general, most of us who have been using smartphones for 10 years or so are probably able to adapt to new features fairly easily (assuming we learn about them). But it's probably easy to overlook how overwhelming they might be to someone who has never touched one before.

herbst 6y ago

Gnome 3 is by far one of the most modern approaches to desktops and personally i dig the look. Imo these days where foss ment ugly gui are slowly over

deleted 6y ago

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II2II 6y ago

Yes, bad UI design exists. On the other hand, good UI design is largely a matter of what people are familiar with. This is true of both open source and commercial software. If we see bad UI design in open source software more, it is likely a product of open source software being more accessible. (People are more likely to try something they can download for free than something they have to pay $1000, $100, or even $10 for.)

opan 6y ago

Do you have specific thoughts on phosh, plamo, or lomiri?

fsflover 6y ago

Did you actually see the design of Phosh? It was developed by actual paid designers, not by programmers.

curioussavage 6y ago

The idea it has to “take off” is silly. It could certainly be something similar to raspberry pi. Small market but really popular. It’s already on its way there.

linmob 6y ago
I totally agree. Establishing a sustainable niche is enough.

rambojazz 6y ago

Sorry but I can't stand these kind of generalizations... it's at the same level of "Everybody from <country> is <something>". I've seen many proprietary projects with a budget for UI development equal to zero (and yes, the UI indeed sucked).