5 ms·

This is one of the reasons my desktop and as much of my phone as possible are opensource. "outdated" "old" is an actual stable experience with bug fixes and re

This is one of the reasons my desktop and as much of my phone as possible are opensource. "outdated" "old" is an actual stable experience with bug fixes and responsiveness to actual users and not product managers. The migration to swipes for everything on the phones is mind boggling. Super cool for the tweens and twenty year olds that are used to being pushed to the next thing every 2 months. My older relatives have no concept of what a swipe is and why it should do anything. Total chaos and brokenness for them and millions of others.

nebula8804 5y ago
I keep trying to adopt this workflow and it ends in disaster. For example: Yesterday I installed a clean copy of the latest release of Ubuntu. Lets ignore the numerous annoyances that are unpolished such as the mouse tracking or the OS filled with apps that are worse than its Windows/Mac counterparts. No one seems to want to produce a cohesive OS + apps anyway. The one thing that is absolutely unforgivable is an app that you expect to trust instead ends up failing you. My example: After installing I needed to compress a folder of important code and pictures. Just use Archiver right? Well I compressed the folder into a zip file. Something seemed strange. Ubuntu's file manager was reporting 0 bytes for the file after compressing. Strange, so I copied it to another folder. OK 8.5MB. Maybe the file manager was just not able to automatically refresh. The file size seemed small given the input was 300MB. Me being a little worried after seeing this and having been burned in the past, I opened the file and attempted to decompress. First, I was able to see the files so I could have stopped there thinking the file is fine but I continued and clicked extract. It failed. Turns out the file was corrupted. Imagine if I had not done this sanity check and 6 months later I go to uncompress and the archive is corrupted. That is a potential anxiety attack. This is not a joke, if you cannot ever trust the damn system to do basic things, you will constantly feel like you are walking on thin ice. Its 2021 how is this still an issue? When you go to complain you are treated with an uncaring groups or more likely an actively hostile group of people. I have been going back and forth from Linux(various distros) for 15 years now. Not once have I ever felt that I could fully trust my system. The people who develop this stuff don't seem to care about basic quality. If it works for them, ship it. I don't know how to solve this problem without a financial incentive. There are no consequences to shipping regressions and thus even though the software is free as in freedom the incentives are not really aligned with many users. Maybe I need to sit down and read through as much of the code of the OS and associated apps as possible and set specific version that I "FREEZE" on that are good known versions. But then I will not be able to get any help when something does break since im on old versions and typically googling issues returns fixes for the latest version...so now I would be left with fixing the code myself.
flenserboy 5y ago
Here is where OSS could really shine - make clones of old programs and give them modern features while keeping the old-school, actually-working interfaces. Rather than cloning the current (or near-current) iteration of Office, make a file-compatible version that's a snap to use and avoids as much interface fluff as possible. Applications are for work, and should facilitate work. Imagine a Word 5-equivalent WP (and no, AbiWord is nowhere near that), a WP 5.1 clone, a XyWrite that knows OpenType, a dBase-style interface (definitely not a clone) for a modern, free database system. Those older programs simply worked, had command systems that could be explored and learned (shoot, before the Ribbon even Office could be sussed out through experimentation), and were about work. As much as I appreciate what I can do, capability-wise, with modern systems, the people who design them don't seem to be the people who use them.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  OSS doesn't have money for good design, because good design costs money and commitment. Both are the things OSS projects struggle with.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    OSS has the best designs, at least on the desktop. And it's becoming quite competitive in mobile and touch interfaces, too.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > OSS has the best designs, at least on the desktop Where? OSS is consistently a mish-mash of unfinished ideas.
      - EthanHarv 5y ago
        Blender 2.8+ has done a pretty good job. I think in general OSS UX is pretty bad, but there are some stand-out exceptions.
zozbot234 5y ago
Swiping gestures/actions are actually a very natural affordance in mobile "touch" interfaces. They're based on the Accot-Zhai steering law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accot-Zhai_steering_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accot-Zhai_steering_law a natural extension of Fitt's law that was developed as early as the 1990s.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  The problem with swiping and gestures is precisely that it has no affordances.

nebula8804 5y ago

I keep trying to adopt this workflow and it ends in disaster. For example: Yesterday I installed a clean copy of the latest release of Ubuntu. Lets ignore the numerous annoyances that are unpolished such as the mouse tracking or the OS filled with apps that are worse than its Windows/Mac counterparts. No one seems to want to produce a cohesive OS + apps anyway. The one thing that is absolutely unforgivable is an app that you expect to trust instead ends up failing you. My example: After installing I needed to compress a folder of important code and pictures. Just use Archiver right? Well I compressed the folder into a zip file. Something seemed strange. Ubuntu's file manager was reporting 0 bytes for the file after compressing. Strange, so I copied it to another folder. OK 8.5MB. Maybe the file manager was just not able to automatically refresh. The file size seemed small given the input was 300MB. Me being a little worried after seeing this and having been burned in the past, I opened the file and attempted to decompress. First, I was able to see the files so I could have stopped there thinking the file is fine but I continued and clicked extract. It failed. Turns out the file was corrupted. Imagine if I had not done this sanity check and 6 months later I go to uncompress and the archive is corrupted. That is a potential anxiety attack. This is not a joke, if you cannot ever trust the damn system to do basic things, you will constantly feel like you are walking on thin ice. Its 2021 how is this still an issue? When you go to complain you are treated with an uncaring groups or more likely an actively hostile group of people. I have been going back and forth from Linux(various distros) for 15 years now. Not once have I ever felt that I could fully trust my system. The people who develop this stuff don't seem to care about basic quality. If it works for them, ship it. I don't know how to solve this problem without a financial incentive. There are no consequences to shipping regressions and thus even though the software is free as in freedom the incentives are not really aligned with many users. Maybe I need to sit down and read through as much of the code of the OS and associated apps as possible and set specific version that I "FREEZE" on that are good known versions. But then I will not be able to get any help when something does break since im on old versions and typically googling issues returns fixes for the latest version...so now I would be left with fixing the code myself.

flenserboy 5y ago

Here is where OSS could really shine - make clones of old programs and give them modern features while keeping the old-school, actually-working interfaces. Rather than cloning the current (or near-current) iteration of Office, make a file-compatible version that's a snap to use and avoids as much interface fluff as possible. Applications are for work, and should facilitate work. Imagine a Word 5-equivalent WP (and no, AbiWord is nowhere near that), a WP 5.1 clone, a XyWrite that knows OpenType, a dBase-style interface (definitely not a clone) for a modern, free database system. Those older programs simply worked, had command systems that could be explored and learned (shoot, before the Ribbon even Office could be sussed out through experimentation), and were about work. As much as I appreciate what I can do, capability-wise, with modern systems, the people who design them don't seem to be the people who use them.

dmitriid 5y ago
OSS doesn't have money for good design, because good design costs money and commitment. Both are the things OSS projects struggle with.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  OSS has the best designs, at least on the desktop. And it's becoming quite competitive in mobile and touch interfaces, too.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > OSS has the best designs, at least on the desktop Where? OSS is consistently a mish-mash of unfinished ideas.
    - EthanHarv 5y ago
      Blender 2.8+ has done a pretty good job. I think in general OSS UX is pretty bad, but there are some stand-out exceptions.

zozbot234 5y ago

Swiping gestures/actions are actually a very natural affordance in mobile "touch" interfaces. They're based on the Accot-Zhai steering law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accot-Zhai_steering_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accot-Zhai_steering_law a natural extension of Fitt's law that was developed as early as the 1990s.

CRConrad 5y ago
The problem with swiping and gestures is precisely that it has no affordances.