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You don’t agree? A more substantial comment would be informative. Can you give us one example of a stellar open source UI you use daily?

by jiofih 5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Firefox is roughly as good as any other browser, which is to say it does some things better and some things worse, and many things roughly the same. Blender is one of the 2 or 3 dominant tools in its field. It's a niche field, so it's not for office work, but is nevertheless an incredible tool by any standard. For almost anyone's purposes, LibreOffice is better than any closed source equivalent tool (though some of them do have specific features that are critical for some users). The only issues with it come from being forced to interoperate with data generated by closed source applications. I don't happen to enjoy using LibreOffice very much, but there's denying its "stellar" quality compared to the alternatives. [ EDIT: I really can't fail to mention VCV Rack, a libre+gratis virtual modular synthesizer. It wasn't the first such tool, but it is by far the most successful, and by far the best, at least in terms of user experience. It has also created an ecosystem of module developers (more than 2200 modules already), which is both a reason why and an indication of just how stellar a tool it really is ] Of course, as a software developer, I could name a long list of FLOSS tools that are also stellar, but you and others would likely dismiss them as not of interest to "the general public". In the context of this article, that would probably be fair.
- bzzzt 5y ago
  You had me at LibreOffice. It struggles to render a blank page on a mac (something to do with retina resolution which is default since 2012). I've tried to use it on all supported operating systems, but everywhere it's a slow starting, glitchy mess. Still the best OSS way to interop with Office documents, but not something I would classify as "stellar".
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Given that I know dozens of people who use it without such issues on various platforms, and come across similar kinds of show-stopping problems on forums for related software, I personally wouldn't lay this at the feet of LibreOffice. Your mileage may vary.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  I mean, saying LibreOffice is better than Microsoft Office is like saying eating toothpaste is better than eating soap. You'll never get a Michelin star for serving Colgate, so I'm not sure I'd call LibreOffice "stellar". But I don't think it's surprising that highly complex UI-driven applications aren't as plentiful in open source, where the sweet spot (from my perspective) has been smaller applications that scratch particular itches. Would an open suite of office tools even get off the ground today, built from scratch without funding from Sun and then Oracle? Maybe I was just burned too hard by trying to figure out GIMP.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    For most users MS Office is a nightmare program to learn and use. It's functionality is incredibly extensive, having accumulated the kitchen sink, stove and refridgerator over its long life. But this doesn't make it actually very usable for people coming to it at this point. LibreOffice, while certainly not matching the functionality of MS Office, is much closer to the subset of what most people need most of the time.
- jiofih 5y ago
  These are powerful tools, but Blender and LibreOffice are also perfect examples of “clunky” open-source. They’ve never had the kind of polish that makes software great to use.
sabas123 5y ago
VLC is as good as it gets when it comes to playing video
adrian_b 5y ago
Among user interfaces that I use daily, that of MS Windows Explorer has become, since many years, much worse than the user interface of most file managers available for Linux. The numerous extra mouse clicks that I need to do in Windows Explorer to navigate the file system or to perform any other task, compared to a non-stupid file manager, are extremely annoying. The same can be said about MS Word, which has become much worse than LibreOffice, also since many years. I have been using MS Word for 30 years, but recent versions frequently surprise me because when I have to search some command through its menus it never is where I would expect it. With older versions of MS Word, I had no need for a manual or for a help command, because I could easily discover how to do anything that I had not done before. With the newer versions of MS Word it is hard for me to discover how to do anything that I have done many times before, but not recently enough. Even if I have used LibreOffice for much fewer years than MS Word, with it, like with the old MS Word versions, I never had difficulties to discover how to do something. These days, I will never use willingly MS Windows Explorer or MS Word, instead of their open-source equivalents. These are just some of the most obvious examples of commercial programs with a bad user interface, but there are many more.
davidkunz 5y ago
I'm more of a terminal guy and don't care so much about a "stellar open source UI", but one example is the Gnome Desktop Environment, it's very polished. Today, the world runs on open source, so we shouldn't call it "clunky".

You don’t agree? A more substantial comment would be informative. Can you give us one example of a stellar open source UI you use daily?

by jiofih 5y ago

You don’t agree? A more substantial comment would be informative. Can you give us one example of a stellar open source UI you use daily?

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Firefox is roughly as good as any other browser, which is to say it does some things better and some things worse, and many things roughly the same. Blender is one of the 2 or 3 dominant tools in its field. It's a niche field, so it's not for office work, but is nevertheless an incredible tool by any standard. For almost anyone's purposes, LibreOffice is better than any closed source equivalent tool (though some of them do have specific features that are critical for some users). The only issues with it come from being forced to interoperate with data generated by closed source applications. I don't happen to enjoy using LibreOffice very much, but there's denying its "stellar" quality compared to the alternatives. [ EDIT: I really can't fail to mention VCV Rack, a libre+gratis virtual modular synthesizer. It wasn't the first such tool, but it is by far the most successful, and by far the best, at least in terms of user experience. It has also created an ecosystem of module developers (more than 2200 modules already), which is both a reason why and an indication of just how stellar a tool it really is ] Of course, as a software developer, I could name a long list of FLOSS tools that are also stellar, but you and others would likely dismiss them as not of interest to "the general public". In the context of this article, that would probably be fair.

bzzzt 5y ago
You had me at LibreOffice. It struggles to render a blank page on a mac (something to do with retina resolution which is default since 2012). I've tried to use it on all supported operating systems, but everywhere it's a slow starting, glitchy mess. Still the best OSS way to interop with Office documents, but not something I would classify as "stellar".
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Given that I know dozens of people who use it without such issues on various platforms, and come across similar kinds of show-stopping problems on forums for related software, I personally wouldn't lay this at the feet of LibreOffice. Your mileage may vary.
mrtranscendence 5y ago
I mean, saying LibreOffice is better than Microsoft Office is like saying eating toothpaste is better than eating soap. You'll never get a Michelin star for serving Colgate, so I'm not sure I'd call LibreOffice "stellar". But I don't think it's surprising that highly complex UI-driven applications aren't as plentiful in open source, where the sweet spot (from my perspective) has been smaller applications that scratch particular itches. Would an open suite of office tools even get off the ground today, built from scratch without funding from Sun and then Oracle? Maybe I was just burned too hard by trying to figure out GIMP.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  For most users MS Office is a nightmare program to learn and use. It's functionality is incredibly extensive, having accumulated the kitchen sink, stove and refridgerator over its long life. But this doesn't make it actually very usable for people coming to it at this point. LibreOffice, while certainly not matching the functionality of MS Office, is much closer to the subset of what most people need most of the time.
jiofih 5y ago
These are powerful tools, but Blender and LibreOffice are also perfect examples of “clunky” open-source. They’ve never had the kind of polish that makes software great to use.

sabas123 5y ago

VLC is as good as it gets when it comes to playing video

adrian_b 5y ago

Among user interfaces that I use daily, that of MS Windows Explorer has become, since many years, much worse than the user interface of most file managers available for Linux. The numerous extra mouse clicks that I need to do in Windows Explorer to navigate the file system or to perform any other task, compared to a non-stupid file manager, are extremely annoying. The same can be said about MS Word, which has become much worse than LibreOffice, also since many years. I have been using MS Word for 30 years, but recent versions frequently surprise me because when I have to search some command through its menus it never is where I would expect it. With older versions of MS Word, I had no need for a manual or for a help command, because I could easily discover how to do anything that I had not done before. With the newer versions of MS Word it is hard for me to discover how to do anything that I have done many times before, but not recently enough. Even if I have used LibreOffice for much fewer years than MS Word, with it, like with the old MS Word versions, I never had difficulties to discover how to do something. These days, I will never use willingly MS Windows Explorer or MS Word, instead of their open-source equivalents. These are just some of the most obvious examples of commercial programs with a bad user interface, but there are many more.

davidkunz 5y ago

I'm more of a terminal guy and don't care so much about a "stellar open source UI", but one example is the Gnome Desktop Environment, it's very polished. Today, the world runs on open source, so we shouldn't call it "clunky".