5 ms·

"There are a lot of people who’d be a lot happier if they stopped worrying about other people’s 800 pound gorillas." I wonder how this sentiment would apply to

"There are a lot of people who’d be a lot happier if they stopped worrying about other people’s 800 pound gorillas." I wonder how this sentiment would apply to linux DEs. Consider the design decisions which would be made if the designers of gnome and kde thought about what would make them most productive instead of thinking about what will get people to switch from windows to linux. Perhaps, we will get a lot less dumbing-down of interfaces and an end to blind adherence to the standard windows UI and finally see some genuine innovation in this field again. This is not to say that all DEs are stuck in a cycle of continuously copying windows. FVWM (my wm of choice) splits completely. Similarly, from an eye-candy perspective, beryl and compiz bring new things to the table. Still, beryl and compiz are relatively small projects and the vast majority of coding effort goes into make nice GUIs for systems configuration and things like emulating MS Office with OOo.

aston 18y ago
If you want to go mainstream, anybody's gorilla is your gorilla. There's no reason why you can't innovate along the way, but it's pretty clear to me that if Linux is ever to make any inroads into non-geek circles, it'll need a familiar interface.
- newt0311 18y ago
  But that is my point exactly. Why is making inroads into the non-geek circles such a high priority? Most of the cash comes from voluntary donations and some very rare instances of funding. Most of the work performed on Linux kernel and associated software is not done for profit. What if the devs working on kde right now instead started to contribute to integrating reiser4 into the kernel or building up btrfs or suspend support or any of the dozens of possible improvements to the linux kernel directly beneficial to the devs themselves? It could have some interesting effects.
  - hs 18y ago
    i don't think i want to use os which kernel is designed by ui-programmer or its ui designed by kernel-programmer i think the beauty of open source is you can work on what you love, even if it's not efficient
- hs 18y ago
  osx, by definition, is no familiar (aka not windows) i see a lot of "make Windows looks like Mac OS X" from google or even "make Linux look like Mac OS X" i believe I've never seen the reverse (OSX->xp or even OSX->linux) to me linux is copying the wrong model, her role model should be osx
  - halo 18y ago
    That's at least partially because you can make Windows and Linux look like Mac OS X, but there's no practical way of making Mac OS X look like Windows or Linux.
    - unalone 18y ago
      I think that if you made something that made Mac OS X look like one or the other, very few people would bite. OS X has the most beautiful aesthetic of any computer I know. But it's not just the looks that matter. It's the functionality. You don't have a taskbar and an in-window menu bar. You have a dock and a top menu. And that's the best system I've ever worked with. You can't copy that over to Windows or Linux effectively, either. If a Linux distro was smart, it would emulate OS X rather than Windows, because fundamentally, the design is more efficient and more usable. As long as they copy Windows they're at a disadvantage.
      - halo 18y ago
        >I think that if you made something that made Mac OS X look like one or the other, very few people would bite. Only the absolute minority of people make their Windows or Linux machines to look like Mac OS X either - you're looking at a minority of enthusiasts using the fringes of operating system functionality and you're pointing to that as definitive proof that something is better. To me, that's outright flawed, especially when there are core software limitations that prevent you from imitating the Windows or GNOME UIs in Mac OS X. You can have a top-menu and a dock in Linux - there's pre-built tools that let you do that (e.g. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/global_menu https://wiki.ubuntu.com/global_menu, activate the MacStyle menu setting in KDE, combine them with a dock app like Avant Window Navigator). Only an small minority of people use them and it's not very well supported because of it, but it's certainly possible. The Linux desktop is incredibly configurable. Note that I haven't actually stated my personal opinion on the matter at all so far. I think you're suffering from a case of self-confirmation bias.
bkor 18y ago
Can't speak for KDE, but your statement regarding GNOME is totally incorrect. We follow our own UI guidelines, we do NOT blindly follow the Windows guidelines. The focus is on our thoughts on usability, not on being different. Further, people work on whatever they want.
- unalone 18y ago
  However, Gnome takes a large part of its interface layout directly from Windows. The taskbar and the window layout always seemed to be direct copies of that system. Instead of crating something new and more functional, Gnome and KDE (though I haven't tried 4) seem to just lift Windows' ideas wholesale at times, and merge them with the Linux ideas of app and system management.
  - bkor 18y ago
    For one, GNOME is usually compared with Mac OS X. I find your comparison with Windows pretty funny. Secondly, look at the gnome-shell discussion on planet.gnome.org. Further, just because Windows has things looking like GNOME doesn't mean one copied from the other. Especially not that GNOME copied from Windows. Click e.g. on the clock in GNOME. IIRC that is now in Vista.
- blasdel 18y ago
  You're right, a lot of GNOME stuff is superficial blind copying from Mac OS X, without much understanding of what actually makes OS X nice. For example: the GTK file picker dialog.

aston 18y ago

If you want to go mainstream, anybody's gorilla is your gorilla. There's no reason why you can't innovate along the way, but it's pretty clear to me that if Linux is ever to make any inroads into non-geek circles, it'll need a familiar interface.

newt0311 18y ago
But that is my point exactly. Why is making inroads into the non-geek circles such a high priority? Most of the cash comes from voluntary donations and some very rare instances of funding. Most of the work performed on Linux kernel and associated software is not done for profit. What if the devs working on kde right now instead started to contribute to integrating reiser4 into the kernel or building up btrfs or suspend support or any of the dozens of possible improvements to the linux kernel directly beneficial to the devs themselves? It could have some interesting effects.
- hs 18y ago
  i don't think i want to use os which kernel is designed by ui-programmer or its ui designed by kernel-programmer i think the beauty of open source is you can work on what you love, even if it's not efficient
hs 18y ago
osx, by definition, is no familiar (aka not windows) i see a lot of "make Windows looks like Mac OS X" from google or even "make Linux look like Mac OS X" i believe I've never seen the reverse (OSX->xp or even OSX->linux) to me linux is copying the wrong model, her role model should be osx
- halo 18y ago
  That's at least partially because you can make Windows and Linux look like Mac OS X, but there's no practical way of making Mac OS X look like Windows or Linux.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I think that if you made something that made Mac OS X look like one or the other, very few people would bite. OS X has the most beautiful aesthetic of any computer I know. But it's not just the looks that matter. It's the functionality. You don't have a taskbar and an in-window menu bar. You have a dock and a top menu. And that's the best system I've ever worked with. You can't copy that over to Windows or Linux effectively, either. If a Linux distro was smart, it would emulate OS X rather than Windows, because fundamentally, the design is more efficient and more usable. As long as they copy Windows they're at a disadvantage.
    - halo 18y ago
      >I think that if you made something that made Mac OS X look like one or the other, very few people would bite. Only the absolute minority of people make their Windows or Linux machines to look like Mac OS X either - you're looking at a minority of enthusiasts using the fringes of operating system functionality and you're pointing to that as definitive proof that something is better. To me, that's outright flawed, especially when there are core software limitations that prevent you from imitating the Windows or GNOME UIs in Mac OS X. You can have a top-menu and a dock in Linux - there's pre-built tools that let you do that (e.g. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/global_menu https://wiki.ubuntu.com/global_menu, activate the MacStyle menu setting in KDE, combine them with a dock app like Avant Window Navigator). Only an small minority of people use them and it's not very well supported because of it, but it's certainly possible. The Linux desktop is incredibly configurable. Note that I haven't actually stated my personal opinion on the matter at all so far. I think you're suffering from a case of self-confirmation bias.

bkor 18y ago

Can't speak for KDE, but your statement regarding GNOME is totally incorrect. We follow our own UI guidelines, we do NOT blindly follow the Windows guidelines. The focus is on our thoughts on usability, not on being different. Further, people work on whatever they want.

unalone 18y ago
However, Gnome takes a large part of its interface layout directly from Windows. The taskbar and the window layout always seemed to be direct copies of that system. Instead of crating something new and more functional, Gnome and KDE (though I haven't tried 4) seem to just lift Windows' ideas wholesale at times, and merge them with the Linux ideas of app and system management.
- bkor 18y ago
  For one, GNOME is usually compared with Mac OS X. I find your comparison with Windows pretty funny. Secondly, look at the gnome-shell discussion on planet.gnome.org. Further, just because Windows has things looking like GNOME doesn't mean one copied from the other. Especially not that GNOME copied from Windows. Click e.g. on the clock in GNOME. IIRC that is now in Vista.
blasdel 18y ago
You're right, a lot of GNOME stuff is superficial blind copying from Mac OS X, without much understanding of what actually makes OS X nice. For example: the GTK file picker dialog.