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Free software scares normal people

• sniggler 11mo ago
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• _qtiw 11mo ago
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• wolfejam 11mo ago
  i enjoyed your post, those remotes are too funny!!
• jasonthorsness 11mo ago
  Some reasons for this: 1. Free software is developed for the developer's own needs and developers are going to be power users. 2. The cost to expose options is low so from the developer's perspective it's low effort to add high value (perceiving the options as valuable). 3. The developer doesn't know who the customer is and rather than research/refine just tries to hit all the boxes. 4. The distribution of the software itself means anyone who successfully installs it themselves really is a power user and does like the options. Installing it for family and friends doesn't work. Probably many other factors!
  • doug_durham 11mo ago
    It takes a lot of time and energy to refine and maintain a minimalistic interface. You are intentionally narrowing the audience. If you are an open source developer with limited time you probably aren't going to invest in that.
    • cryptophreak 11mo ago
      That’s one of the great things about the approach demonstrated in the post. The developers of Handbrake don’t need to invest any time or energy in a minimalist interface. They can continue to maintain their feature-rich software exactly as it is. Meanwhile, there is also a simple, easy front end available for people who need or want it.
      • techblueberry 11mo ago
        I think There’s a survivorship problem though. This software needs to be marketed and maintained to stay in the zeitgeist. It would have to compete with competitors that do more than just the simple things. I think it’s essentially survivorship bias. The simple applications don’t get traction and later get abandoned.
    • deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  • luqtas 11mo ago
    > 4. The distribution of the software itself means anyone who successfully installs it themselves really is a power user and does like the options. Installing it for family and friends doesn't work. i have seen many comments, by lay people, out of Sonobus [0] being superb on what it does and impressive by being 100% free. that's a niche case that if it was implemented on Ardour, could fit the same problem OP describes [0] https://sonobus.net/ https://sonobus.net/ however i can't feel where the problem of FOSS UX scaring normal people is. someone getting a .h264 and a .wav file out of a video-record isn't normal after all. there are plenty of converters on the web, i dunno if they run ffmpeg at their server but i wouldn't get surprised. the problem lies on the whole digital infrastructure running on FOSS without returning anything back. power-user software shouldn't simplify stuff. tech literacy hopefully can be a thing and by quickly learning how to import and export a file in a complex software feels better to install 5 different limited software over the years because your demands are growing
  • einpoklum 11mo ago
    > . Free software is developed for the developer's own needs and developers are going to be power users * Free software which gains popularity is developed for the needs of many people - the users who make requests and complaints and the developers. * Developers who write for a larger audience naturally think of more users' needs. It's true that they typically cater more to making features available than to simplicity of the UI and ease of UX. > 2. The cost etc. Agreed! > 3. The developer doesn't know who the customer is and rather than research/refine just tries to hit all the boxes. The developer typically knows what the popular use cases would be. Like with the handbrake example. They also pretty much know how newbie users like simplified workflows and hand-holding - but it's often a lot of hassle to create the simplified-with-semi-hidden-advanced-mode interface. > 4. The distribution of the software itself means anyone who successfully installs it themselves really is a power user Are people who install, say, the Chrome browser on their PC to be considered power userS? They downloaded and installed it themselves after all... no, I believe you're creating a false dichotomy. Some users will never install anything; some users might install common software they've heard about from friends; and some might actively look for software to install - even though they don't know much about it or about how to operate the apps and OS facilities they already h ave. ... and all of these are mostly non-power-users.
• yawnxyz 11mo ago
  > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest from them and you’ll make them more productive and happy. That’s really all it takes. For those of you thinking (which 20%) following that article from the other day — this is where a good product sense and knowing which 80% of people you want to use it first. You could either tack on more stuff from there to appeal to the rest of the 20% of people, or you could launch another app/product/brand that appeals to another 80% of people. (e.g. shampoo for men, pens for women /s)
• jaggs 11mo ago
  >> 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest from them and you’ll make them more productive and happy. That’s really all it takes. One of the truest things I've read on HN. I've also tried to visit this concept with a small free image app I made (https://gerry7.itch.io/cool-banana https://gerry7.itch.io/cool-banana). Did it for myself really, but thought others might find it useful too. Fed up with too many options.
• cjbarber 11mo ago
  *Software with UI designed for people who aren't the median user scares the median user Therefore: If you want lots of users, design for the median user; if you don't, this doesn't apply to you
• squeedles 11mo ago
  Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one. Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I just need ..." is difficult. It takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of onerous management structure, to prevent the interface from quickly devolving back into the million options or schizming into other projects. Simply put, it is a desirable state, but an unstable one.
  • dayvid 11mo ago
    The contributors of free software tend to be power users who want to ensure their use case works. I don't think they're investing a lot of thought into the 80/20 use case for normal/majority or users or would risk hurting their workflow to make it easier for others
    • zeroq 11mo ago
      > contributors of free software tend to be power users or, simply put, nerds it takes both a different background, approach and skillset to design ux and interface if anything FOSS should figure out how to attract skilled artists so majority of designs and logos doesn't look so blatantly amateurish.
      • DrewADesign 11mo ago
        I have been beating this drum for many years. There are some big cultural rifts and workflow difficulties. Unless FOSS products are run by project managers rather than either developers or designers, it’s a tough nut. Last I looked, gimp has been really tackling this effort more aggressively than most.
        • graemep 11mo ago
          I am not convinced bad UI is either a FOSS issue, or solved by having project managers. I know very non-tech people who struggle with Windows 11, for example. I do not like MS Office on the rare occasions I have used it on other people's machines. Not that impressed by the way most browser UIs are going either.
• andreldm 11mo ago
  If handbrake scares them, don’t you dare to demonstrate how to use ffmpeg. I remember when I used handbrake for the first time and thought “wow, it’s much more convenient than struggling with ffmpeg”.
  • phoronixrly 11mo ago
    Handbrake's UI is in the uncanny valley for me -- too complicated for use by laymen, and way too limiting for use by people who know what they're doing...
    • dfxm12 11mo ago
      My dad, a total layman, was able to use handbrake as a step in digitizing old family video tapes. I think in the context of this thread, we shouldn't overgeneralize or underestimate "normal people".
      • sharperguy 11mo ago
        A "normal person" is just someone whose time and mental energy are focused on something other than the niche task your app is aiming to solve. With enough time and focus, anyone can figure out any interface. But for many, something which requires a smaller investment to achieve the results they need is preferrable.
        • SoftTalker 11mo ago
          Also, even the most arcane and convoluted interfaces become usable with repetition. Normal people learn the most bureaucratic business workflows and fly through them if that is their job. Then if you dare to "improve" any aspect of it you will hear them complain that you "broke" their system.
          • sharperguy 11mo ago
            Well yes you force them to find other workarounds because their current workaround are no longer relevant. Because no system will ever fit everyones usecase.
• throawayonthe 11mo ago
  the issue is real, but i'm not sure this solves it; in this case you end up with an overly specific solution that you can't really recommend to most people (and won't become widely known) using the remote analogy, the taped versions are useful for (many!) specific people, but shipping the remote in that configuration makes no sense i think normal people don't want to install an app for every specific task either maybe a solution can look like a simple interface (with good defaults!!) but with an 'advanced mode' that gives you more options... though i can't say i've seen a good example of this, so it might be fundamentally flawed as well
• wrs 11mo ago
  Oh man, I have literally done that to my parents’ remote controls. Actually more controls, because they still watch VHS tapes. But I have to admit it never occurred to me to do that to their software. Logic Pro has a “masking tape” mode. If you don’t turn on “Complete Features” [0], you get a simplified version of the app that’s an easier stepping stone from GarageBand. Then check the box and bam, full access to 30 years’ accumulation of professional features in menus all over the place. [0] https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/advanced-settings-lgcpb6dcc6fa/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/logicpro/advanced-settings-l...
• snovymgodym 11mo ago
  The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the functionality. Actual good UI/UX design isn't trivial and it tends to require a tight feedback loop between testers, designers, implementers, and users. A lot of FOSS simply doesn't have the resources to do that.
  • dayvid 11mo ago
    For a lot of usecases there is a strong 80% functionality. E.g. For Handbrake, 80% of the time I am reducing the size of my video screen grabs from my computer or phone. Don't need any resolution change, etc. There are other times I want cropping or something similar, but it's really only 10-30% of the time. If people want to have a more custom workflow they can use an advanced UI
  • ptmcc 11mo ago
    Resources or the care, tbh. FOSS is a big umbrella and a lot of it simply isn't meant for "customers". Some FOSS apps clearly are trying to build a user base, in which case yeah the points this post makes are worth thinking about. But many other projects, perhaps the majority, that is not their goal. By devs for devs, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Pleasing customers is incredibly difficult and a never-ending treadmill. If it's not the goal then it's not a failure.
  • ageitgey 11mo ago
    > The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the functionality. I'm not disagreeing with your basic take, but I think this part is a little more subtle. I'd argue that 80% of users (by raw user count) do want roughly the same 20% of functionality, most of the time. The problem in FOSS is that average user in the FOSS ecosystem is not remotely close to the profile of that 80%. The average FOSS user is part of the 1% of power users. They actively want something different and don't even understand the mindset of the other 80% of users. When someone comes along to a FOSS project and honestly tries to rebuild it for the 80% of users, they often end up getting a lot of hate from the established FOSS community because they just have totally different needs. It's like they don't even speak the same language.
• dayvid 11mo ago
  I'd argue most software scares normal people. They only learn because of a strong intrinsic motivation (connecting with other people/access to entertainment) or work requirements which come with mandatory trainings and IT support
• fallingfrog 11mo ago
  My number one principle of UI design is this: The things the user does most frequently need to be the easiest things to do. You expose the stuff the user needs to do quickly without a lot of fuss, and you can bury the edge cases in menus. Sadly a lot of software has this inverted.
• advisedwang 11mo ago
  Meanwhile, every time Gnome makes UI adjustments along these lines, there's an outcry that it's dumbed downed, copying apple, removing features etc etc.
  • askonomm 11mo ago
    Well Gnome tells people that they should just know keyboard shortcuts for everything - which is literally something only power users know to do. Their entire design ethos is a weird opposition to itself where it is aiming to be so simple and minimal that in order to do basic things you have to memorize keyboard shortcuts as there is no visual interface possibility to do those things.
    • jampekka 11mo ago
      Where do they tell to use keyboard shortcuts? I've been using Gnome 3 since it came out and I haven't encountered situations where I could do things with keyboard I couldn't do easily with mouse.
      • a96 11mo ago
        They did in a few places about thirty versions ago.
  • jeremyjh 11mo ago
    Its an entire desktop environment, its not as simple as choosing between two different apps. Although people who make this complaint should probably just use KDE, maybe they've used Gnome for a long time and don't want to change.
    • immibis 11mo ago
      > maybe they've used Gnome for a long time and don't want to change. By using GNOME and staying with it as it changed, they suffered more changes than they would have by switching to KDE at any point.
• advisedwang 11mo ago
  I don't think free software has to aim to be for everyone. It's OK to build software for yourself and people like you.
  • ValdikSS 11mo ago
    Most people can't comprehend that. "If it's available publicly online and has a readme, it's DEFINITELY was created for me and for all other users, right?" This is so common, to the point that it's a FOSS misconception #1 for me. They can't get it that the developer can develop the software to solve only their specific problem and not interested in support, feature contributions, and other improvements or usecases.
• card_zero 11mo ago
  > I challenge you to make more of it. Huge amounts of dumbed-down software that won't do interesting things is made. There's no need to present this challenge. > a person who needs or wants that stuff can use Handbrake. That's the part that is often ignored: providing the version with the features.
• lolive 11mo ago
  Free software scares people until they have to pay for Windows.
• matheusmoreira 11mo ago
  Over the years I've gotten really tired of this obsession with "normal people" and not just because I'm one of the so called power users. This is really part of a growing effort to hide the computer away as an implementation detail. https://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/ https://contemporary-home-computing.org/RUE/ That's what "UX" is all about. "Scripting the users", minimizing and channeling their interactions within the system. Providing one button that does exactly what they want. No need to "scare" them with magical computer technology. No need for them to have access to any of it. It's something that should be resisted, not encouraged. Otherwise you get generations of technologically illiterate people who don't know what a directory is. Most importantly, this is how corporations justify locking us out of our own devices. > We are giving up our last rights and freedoms for “experiences,” for the questionable comfort of “natural interaction.” But there is no natural interaction, and there are no invisible computers, there only hidden ones. > Every victory of experience design: a new product “telling the story,” or an interface meeting the “exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother” widens the gap in between a person and a personal computer. > The morning after “experience design:” interface-less, desposible hardware, personal hard disc shredders, primitive customization via mechanical means, rewiring, reassembling, making holes into hard disks, in order to to delete, to logout, to “view offline.”
  • ValdikSS 11mo ago
    Most people don't need computer (full feature power, full power of choice) to solve their task, as could be seen with the smartphones, which are designed as appliances more or less. I don't want most of consumer electronics to act like a computer, it is a deficiency for me. I chose "dumb" Linux-based eBook reader instead of Android-based, because I want it to read books, full stop.
    • array_key_first 11mo ago
      This quickly falls apart when you need to do stuff and be productive. Reading as a pass time is a different thing. The problem is nobody makes this distinction for some reason. In my mind there's two types of software - the kind for doing things, and the kind for mostly consuming. As the wise Britney Spears once said, "there's only two types of people in the world: those that entertain, and the ones that observe" It makes no sense for your CAD program you're building a company out from to be dumbed down.
• binarysneaker 11mo ago
  Completely agree with the author. Would love most power tools to start off in "simple mode" so I could recommend them to friends/family, and have a toggle for advanced mode which shows everything to power users.
• radial_symmetry 11mo ago
  Makes a good point, but the headline bothers me. It isn't the free that is the problem, it is the complexity.
  • ang_cire 11mo ago
    Yep, the Adobe tools and basically all professionally-used CAD software are incredibly intimidating to 'normal people', and they ain't free.
    • TheOtherHobbes 11mo ago
      Same problem though. Half of UX is knowing which features to include, and the other half is knowing where to put them. Intuitive UX for the average non-nerd user is task-based. You start with the most common known goals, like sending someone money, or changing the contrast of a photo, and you put a nice big button or slider somewhere on the screen that either makes the goal happen directly or walks you through it step by step. Professional tools are workbench-based. You get a huge list of tools scattered around the UI in various groups. Beginners don't know what most of the tools do, so they have to work out what the tools are for before they can start using them. Then, and only then, can they start using the tools in a goal-based way. Professionals already know the tradecraft, so they have the simpler - but still hard - "Which menu item does what I need?" problem. Developer culture tends to be script-based. It's literally just lists of instructions made of cryptic combinations of words, letters, and weird punctuation characters. Beginners have to learn the words, the concepts behind them, and the associated underlying computer fundamentals at multiple levels - just to get started. And if you start with a goal - let's say you want a bot that posts on social media for you - the amount of learning if you're coming to it cold is beyond overwhelming. FOSS has never understood this. Yes, in theory you can write your own almost anything and tinker with the source code. But the learning curve for most people is impossibly steep. AI has some chance of bridging the gap. It's not reliable yet, but it's very obvious now that it has a chance to become a universal UI, creating custom code and control panels for specific personal goals, generating workbench UIs and explaining what the tools do if you need a more professional approach, and explaining core concepts and code structures if you want to work at that level.
• waffletower 11mo ago
  Would be nice for an inverse article -- which is often harder to achieve -- case in point: I wish iCloud had a power user interface.
  • ang_cire 11mo ago
    Oh, it has one, it's just not available to you. FOSS's issue isn't that they trust users too much, it's that they aren't taking different types of users into account. Corporate-built software that's locked down or limited like iCloud is 100% about not trusting the users.
• mikkupikku 11mo ago
  "I am new to GitHub and I have lots to say I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE FUCKING CODE! i just want to download this stupid fucking application and use it. WHY IS THERE CODE??? MAKE A FUCKING .EXE FILE AND GIVE IT TO ME. these dumbfucks think that everyone is a developer and understands code. well i am not and i don't understand it. I only know to download and install applications. SO WHY THE FUCK IS THERE CODE? make an EXE file and give it to me. STUPID FUCKING SMELLY NERDS"
  • matheusmoreira 11mo ago
    Wow, it's actually real. https://old.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to_github_and_i_have_lots_to_say/ https://old.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to... https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock/issues/2011 https://github.com/sherlock-project/sherlock/issues/2011
    • ValdikSS 11mo ago
      But that's another issue: developers make software for themselves vs "digital public goods for everyone". UI/UX (which the article is about) is part of the broader approach.
  • WorldPeas 11mo ago
    I know of one company that explicitly didn't make downloads available to dissuade this kind of hard-to-support user from using their time without materially contributing anything
• rlue 11mo ago
  The better example for this design principle is the big green button on copy machines. The copier has many functions, but 99% of users don't bother with 99% of them. For a little history on this design, see https://athinkingperson.com/2010/06/02/where-the-big-green-copier-button-came-from/ https://athinkingperson.com/2010/06/02/where-the-big-green-c...
  • a96 11mo ago
    That's a good button on a copier or a microwave. Not on a CNC mill, CAD software, text editor, chemical plant, tractor, knife... basically any object in the world that doesn't have one obvious function.
• JSR_FDED 11mo ago
  A good product manager could make a big difference to many open source projects. Someone who has real knowledge of the problem space, who can define a clear vision of what problem is being solved for which user community and who can be judicious in weighing feature requests and developing roadmaps.
• anonzzzies 11mo ago
  > claude --dangerously-skip-permissions -p "convert happy.blarf to a small mp4 file that will work on my ipad and send it to my email"
• longnguyen 11mo ago
  This has been a major UX problem for me when building my app [0] (an AI chat client for power user). On the one hand, I want the UI to be simple and minimal enough so even non savvy users can use it. But on the other hand, I do need to support more advanced features, with more configuration panels. I learned that the solution in this case is “progressive disclosure”. By default, the app only show just enough UI elements to get the 90% cases done. For the advanced use cases, it takes more effort. Usually to enable them in Settings, or an Inspector pane etc. Power users can easily tinker around and tweak them. While non savvy users can stick with the default, usual UX flow. Though even with this technique, choosing what to show by default is still not easy. I learned that I need to be clear about my Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and optimize for that profile only. [0]: https://boltai.com https://boltai.com
• jfengel 11mo ago
  As a UX guy, I'd like to note that the normal people aren't so great at knowing what they want, either. I dread "Can you add a button..." Or worse, "Can you add a check box..." Not only does that make it worse for other users, it also makes it worse for you, even if you don't realize it yet. What you need is to take their use case and imagine other ways to get there. Often that means completely turning their idea on its head. It can even help if you're not in the trenches with them, and can look at the bigger picture rather than the thing that is interfering with their current work flow.
  • hexbin010 11mo ago
    Sometimes we really do just want a checkbox toggle though :D Eg an app to prevent MacOS going to sleep. I want a checkbox to also stop an external display sleeping. I don't need my entire usage of the app and my computer-feature desires analysed and interpreted in a way that would make a psychoanalyst look like a hack. But yes in a professional setting people do use "Can we add a button" to attempt to subvert your skillset, your experience, to take control of the implementation, and to bypass solid analysis and development practices
• ferguess_k 11mo ago
  Although I wish Linux were easier to use -- and there are distros that aim for this, I do agree that FOSS is mostly by nerds for nerds, but it doesn't prevent other people making changes -- which is exactly what the author did. So I'd like to welcome the author to make more apps based on FOSS.
  • lutusp 11mo ago
    > Although I wish Linux were easier to use [ ... ] We're getting there. I run Linux Mint with an XFCE desktop -- an intentionally minimal setup. The system performs automatic updates and the desktop layout/experience resembles older Windows desktops before Microsoft began "improving" things. No ads, no AI. I'm by no means an end user, but in Linux I see incremental progress toward meeting the needs of that audience. And just in time too, now that Microsoft is more aggressively enshittifying Windows. What's really missing are online fora able to help end users adjust to Linux -- helpful without being superior or condescending. Certainly true for Windows, not yet true for Linux.
    • ferguess_k 11mo ago
      Yeah I agree that the difference of usability between Linux and Windows is getting much smaller, now that MSFT is trashing Windows. I do have a Linux box, and I only have complaints about small things. Double screen works, VSCode works, Firefox works too. Not much to complaint for a personal dev box. The ability to just `apt install` a bunch of stuffs and then start compiling is pretty nice. But again, I'm pragmatic, so if I'm doing something Windows related, I'd definitely use my Windows box.
    • 8note 11mo ago
      > What's really missing are online fora able to help end users adjust to Linux -- helpful without being superior or condescending. Certainly true for Windows, not yet true for Linux. claude-code actually does this really well, having used it to set up gnome on my phone, and fix all my problems without having to learn anything
    • Dylan16807 11mo ago
• kccqzy 11mo ago
  I think there is something deeper here: people have become scared of the unknown, therefore we need to hide things for them. But people don't have to be scared. In fact even for people who are using Handbrake comfortably, a lot of things Handbrake presents in its UI are probably unknown to them and can safely be ignored. The screenshot in the article shows that Handbrake analyzed the source video and reported it as 30 FPS, SDR, 8-bit 4:2:0, 1-1-1. I think less than a tenth of a percent of Handbrake users understand all of that. 30 FPS is reasonably understandable but 4:2:0 requires the user to understand chroma subsampling, a considerably more niche topic. And I have no idea what 1-1-1 is and I simply ignore it. My point is, when faced with unknown information and controls, why do people feel scared in the first place? Why can't they simply ignore the unknown and make sense of what they can understand? Is it because they worry that the part of the software they don't understand will damage their computer or delete all their files? Is it just the lack of computer literacy? I do not readily empathize with people who are scared of software, because my generation grows up tinkering with software. I'd like to understand why people would become scared of software in the first place.
  • bugsliker 11mo ago
    How do you gain the confidence that what you choose to ignore is safe to ignore? Computer damage is one potential consequence on the extreme end. On the conservative end, the software might just not work the way you want and you waste your time. It’s a mental model you have to develop. Even as a technical power user though, I want to reduce the risk of wasting my time, or even confront the possibility that I might waste my time, if I don’t have to.
    • Dylan16807 11mo ago
      How do you know the software in the article will do what you want? For handbrake you can pick a preset and see what happens. Or don't even do that: when you open it it'll make you pick a video file, then you can just jam the green start button and see if it gives you what you need. Very little time spent.
      • 11mo ago
• pessimizer 11mo ago
  Couldn't agree with this more. I'm even an advocate for simulating walled gardens with Free Software. Let people who need to feel swaddled in a product or a brand feel swaddled. It also opens up opportunities for money-making, and employment in Free Software for people who do not program. The kind of hand-holding that some people prefer or need in UX is not easy to design, and the kind of marketing that leads people to the product is really the beginning of that process. Nobody normal cares that it's a thin layer over the top of a bunch of copyleft that they wouldn't understand anyway (plenty of commercial software is a thin layer over permissively licensed stuff.) Most people I know barely know what files and directories are, and the idea of trying to learn fills them with an anxiety akin to math-phobia. Some (most?) people get a lot of anxiety about being called stupid, and they avoid the things that caused it to happen. They do want privacy and the ownership of their own devices as much as everyone else however, they just don't know how much they're giving up when they do a particular software thing, or (like all of us) know that it is seriously difficult if not possible to avoid the danger. Give people mock EULAs to click through, but they will enumerate the software's obligations to them, not their obligations to the software. Help them remain as ignorant as they want about how everything works, other than emphasizing the assurances that the GPL gives them.
• Gualdrapo 11mo ago
  When I used to be active on reddit I was following r/graphicdesign (me being a graphic designer) and one day someone asked a question about Inkscape. Not 5 minutes after that someone else on the comments went on a weird rant about how allegedly Inkscape and all FOSS was "communist" and "sucked" and capitalist propietary stuff was "superior".
  • graemep 11mo ago
    You get weird people on social media. best ignored. IN this particular case someone things more competition is communist...
• glitchc 11mo ago
  Yeah, MS took this lesson to heart with Office, and now it's a disaster for everyone, not just the power-users.
• dogleash 11mo ago
  We been knowing that. Dunno why people assume that FOSS developers are just dummies lacking insight but otherwise champing at the bit to provide the same refinement and same customer service experience as the "open source" projects that are really just loss leaders of some commercial entity.
• glitchc 11mo ago
  Yeah, MS took that lesson to heart with Office, and now it's a disaster to use for everyone, not just power-users.
• kelvinjps10 11mo ago
  I think you can see this already with websites, like there is dozens of websites like convert video to MP4, ompress this or that. And I think they are just building an UI on top of open source tools
• defanor 11mo ago
  The advice looks sensible, but not sure if it does more good than harm. I recall simplified user interfaces standing in the way, hiding (or simply not providing) useful knobs or information/logs. They are annoying both when using them directly as a "power user", and when less tech-savvy users approach you (as they still do with those annoyingly simplified interfaces), asking for help. Then you try to use that simplified interface, it does not work, and there is no practical way to debug or try workarounds, so you end up with an interface that even a power user cannot use. I think generally it is more useful to focus on properly working software, on documentation and informative logs, sufficient flexibility, and maybe then on UI convenience, but still not making advanced controls and verbose information completely inaccessible (as it seems to be in the provided examples).
  • zzo38computer 11mo ago
    I agree, that having better documentation and properly working software is a much better idea, and that simplified user interface have many problems.
• cardanome 11mo ago
  > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features Yes, but those 80% all use a different subset of the 20% of features. So if you want to make them all happy, you need to implement 100% of the features. I see the pattern so often. There is a "needlessly complicated" product. Someone thinks we can make it simpler, we rewrite it/refactor the UI. Super clean and everything. But user X really needs that one feature! Oh and maybe lets implement Y. A few years down the line you are back to having a "needlessly complicated" product. If you think it could easily be done better, you don't understand the problem domain well enough yet. Real simplicity looks easy but is hard to achieve.
• sega_sai 11mo ago
  I guess instead of a separate application, maybe some of these programs would benefit from having 'dumb' mode where only basic/most used functionality is available. I.e. when I run gimp, I most often just use it rescale the image, cut a piece and insert into a new image and every time I have to look for the right options in the menu.
• andai 11mo ago
  The article complains there's too many old school Windows-type power user GUIs in the free software space. Most of which were not actually FOSS, but Freeware, or sometimes Shareware! My criticism of Free Software is exactly the reverse. There isn't enough of that kind of stuff on Linux! Though to be sure, the Mac category (It Has One Button) is even more underserved there, and I agree that there should be more! Heck, most of the stuff I've made for myself has one button. Do one thing and do it well! :)
  • zzo38computer 11mo ago
    I agree there isn't enough. Some programs are OK (especially command-line programs), some aren't as good as the actual good quality ones. > Do one thing and do it well! This does not necessarily mean that it would have only one button (or any buttons). Depending on what is being done, there may be many options for being done, although there might also be default settings. A command-line program might do it better that you only need to specify the file name, but if there are options (what options and how many options there will be depends what program it is) then you can also specify those options if the default settings are not suitable.
• lutusp 11mo ago
  I like this idea -- a simple interface/frontend for an otherwise complicated topic, for the less skilled among us. It has intriguing possibilities beyond technology ... Q: Why does God allow so much suffering? A: What? There is no God. We invented him. Q: Doesn't this mean life has no purpose? A: Create your own purpose. Eliminate the middleman. Q: But doesn't atheism allow evil people free rein? A: No, it's religion that does that. A religious evil person can always claim God either granted him permission or forgave him after the fact. And he won't be contradicted by God, since ... but we already covered that. Hmm. If it works for HandBrake, it might work for life.
• lateforwork 11mo ago
  You don't need two different versions of the software, one that is easy and one that is powerful. You can have one version that is both easy and powerful. Key concepts here are (1) progressive disclosure and (2) constraints. See Don Norman's Design of Everyday things. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure/ https://www.nngroup.com/videos/positive-constraints-in-ux-work/ https://www.nngroup.com/videos/positive-constraints-in-ux-wo...
  • micromacrofoot 11mo ago
    It's easy to make the powerful version It's a little harder to make an easy version Making the progressive version is very difficult. Where you can please one audience with the powerful and easy versions, you can often disappoint both with the progressive version despite it taking much more effort. In my personal experience, you're lucky if free software has the budget (time or money) to get to easy. There's very little free software that makes it to progressive.
    • lateforwork 11mo ago
      Relevant Steve Jobs quote: "Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple." So yes, it is hard to make the simple version. You have to have a very good understanding of what the user wants out of your product. Until you have this clarity, every feature seems important. Once you have this clarity you understand what the important features are. You make those features more prominent by giving them prime real estate, then tuck away the less important features in a less visible place. Simple things should be simple. Complex things only need to be possible.
      • micromacrofoot 11mo ago
        It can get very complicated when you've built an audience where you have 10 segments that think their 10% of the use case is very important and you can only focus on a couple of segments at a time!
  • 11mo ago
• otikik 11mo ago
  I have tried to use GPG several times but the UX got in the way so much. I feel it did a disservice to privacy. It gatekeeps it behind an arcane UX.
• gspencley 11mo ago
  A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to. My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user, however. When we started a new business, we needed certain applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to Windows. She hated it and begged for us to get a dedicated Windows laptop for that stuff so she could go back to Linux. Some of you might suggest that she has me for tech support, which is true, but I can't actually remember the last time she asked me to troubleshoot something for her with her laptop. The occasions that do come to mind are usually hardware failure related. Obviously the thing about generlizations is that they're never going to fit all individuals uniformly. My wife might be an edge case. But she feels at home using Linux, as it's what she's used to ... and strongly loathed using Windows when it was offered to her. I feel that kind of way about Mac vs PC as well. I am a lifelong PC user, and also a "power user." I have extremely particular preferences when it comes to my UI and keyboard mappings and fonts and windowing features. When I was forced to use a Mac for work, I honestly considered looking for a different position because it was just that painful for me. Nothing wrong with Mac OS X, a lot of people love it. But I was 10% as productive on it when compared to what I'm used to... and I'm "old dog" enough that it was just too much change to be able to bear and work with.
  • cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
    Familiarity is massively undersold in the Linux desktop adoption discussion. Having desktop environments that are near 1:1 clones of the commercial platforms (preferably paired with a distribution that's designed to be bulletproof and practically never requires its user to fire up a terminal window) would go so far for making Linux viable for users sitting in the middle of the bell curve of technical capability. It's one of those situations where "close enough" isn't. The fine details matter.
    • zahlman 11mo ago
      What do you see as wrong or missing "fine details" in, say, Cinnamon?
• chasing0entropy 11mo ago
  I feel like the author wants everything to be Apple simplified. That all users should dumb down to on off go and stop. Ask chat got for anything else. I disagree for so many obvious reasons it's pointless to iterate them. We as a society need to get MORE capable, more critical, and improve our cognitive abilities; not the opposite.
  • tonyedgecombe 11mo ago
    I’m not sure I’d describe Apple products as simplified any more, take a look at the settings in iOS for example, it has grown in complexity with each release.
    • array_key_first 11mo ago
      Yes, that's because Apple found out that the domain space is actually complex. Device configuration is complicated because devices are used in thousands of different permutations of environments and people. The simplicity Apple had was always a mistake, an artifact of their hubris.
• BeetleB 11mo ago
  > I’m the person my friends and family come to for computer-related help. (Maybe you, gentle reader, can relate.) I proactively stopped that decades ago. "Oh, you use Windows? Sorry, I haven't used it in over a decade so I can't help. If you have any Linux questions, let me know!"
  • smallstepforman 11mo ago
    I go one step deeper, a BSD or Haiku. No support calls ever …
• tehnub 11mo ago
  Are we at the point yet where we can advise people to ask ChatGPT how to install something called "FFmpeg" and have it tell them what to copy-paste into an app called "Terminal"?
• croisillon 11mo ago
  i don't have a TV at home and hence very rarely "have to" use a remote (or 2 or 3 at once, as it happens), but it's a nightmare everytime
• forshaper 11mo ago
  Love the example with the remote! People do need that!
• zkmon 11mo ago
  Banks. Won't touch any free software, unless backed by some real humans signing huge contracts for support.
  • linhns 11mo ago
    Hyperbole. I’m working at a bank, we use many free software.
    • a96 11mo ago
      Can confirm. Absolute bs and deliberate misinformation.
• Cotterzz 11mo ago
  This is useful for everyone not just non-techy types. I can't help but compare this to sites like shadertoy that let you develop with a simple coding interface on one half the screen and the output on the other (as opposed to the regular complexity of setting up and using a dev environment) Code goes here>{} , Press this button>[] , Output here>() , Which I think we need more of if we want to get kids into coding.
• ProfessorZoom 11mo ago
  ffmpeg wrappers be like
• fschuett 11mo ago
  > Free audio editing software that requires hours of learning to be useful for simple tasks. To be fair, the Audacity UX designer made a massive video about the next UX redesign and how he tried to get rid of "modes" and the "Audacity says no" problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38 So this problem should get better in the future. Good UX (doesn't necessarily have to have a flashy UI, but just a good UX) in free software is often lacking or an afterthought.
  • tourist2d 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • doublerabbit 11mo ago
    UX is the biggest debt. You're making application for yourself and somewhere down pipeline you decide that it could benefit others, so you make it open-source. People growl at you "It's ugly UX but nice features" when it was originally designed for your own tastes. The latter, people growl at you for "not having X feature, but nice UX". Your own personal design isn't one-fits-all and designing mocks takes effort. Mental strain and stress; pleasing folks is hard. You now continue developing and redesign the foundations. A theming engine you think. This becomes top-priority as integration of such becomes a PITA when trying to couple it with future features later. That itself becomes a black hole in how & schematics. So now you're forever doomed in creating something you never desired for the people who will probably never use it. This causes your project to fail but at least you have multiple revisions of the theming engine. Or you strike it lucky and gain a volunteer.
  • immibis 11mo ago
    The problem with the new Audacity isn't the new version, it's that it replaces the old version. If the new version came out but it was called "DARing" and Audacity continued to be the thing we have now, people might question the name but no other eyes would be batted. Pre-emptive anti-snark: yes, the old version will still exist... if you can dig up the right github commit and still make it compile in 2030.
    • 11mo ago
• jrmg 11mo ago
  Handbrake scares me and I’m a big nerd! I’ve been ripping old DVDs recently. I just want something that feels simple from Handbrake: a video file I can play on my Apple TV that has subtitles that work (not burned in!) with video and audio quality indistinguishable from playing the DVD (don’t scale the video size or mess with the frame rate!), at as small a file size as is practical. I’m prepared for the process to be slow. I’ve been messing with settings and reading forum posts (probably from similarly qualified neophytes) for a day now and think I’ve got something that works - though I have a nagging suspicion the file size isn’t as small as it could be and the quality isn’t as good as it could be. And despite saving it as a preset, I for some reason have to manually stop the subtitles from being burned in for every new rip. Surely what I want is what almost everyone wants‽ Is there a simple way to get it? (I think this is a rhetorical question but would love it not to be…)
  • galad87 11mo ago
    DVD-Video subtitles are often only bitmaps, and the AppleTV can handle only text subtitles. HandBrake can't OCR bitmaps at the moment.
• RajT88 11mo ago
  I like the design pattern of a "basic mode" and an "advanced mode". The "advanced mode" rarely actually covers all the needs of an advanced user (because software is never quite everything to everyone), but it's at least better at handling both types of users. Not all free software has this problem... Mozilla and Thunderbird I've had my parents on for years. It's not a ton to learn, and they work fine. Taking the case of Photoshop vs. Gimp - I don't think the problem is complexity, lol. It's having to relearn everything once you're used to photoshop. (Conversely, I've never shelled out for Adobe products, and now don't want to have to relearn how to edit images in photoshop or illustrator) Let's do another one. Windows Media Player (or more modern - "Movies & TV"). Users want to click on a video file and have it play with no fuss. VLC and MPC work fine for that! If you can manage to hold onto the file associations. That's why Microsoft tries so hard to grab and maintain the file associations. I could go on... I think the thesis of this article is right for some pieces of software, but not all. It's worth considering - "all models are wrong, but some are useful".
  • robenkleene 11mo ago
    > Taking the case of Photoshop vs. Gimp - I don't think the problem is complexity, lol. It's having to relearn everything once you're used to photoshop. (Conversely, I've never shelled out for Adobe products, and now don't want to have to relearn how to edit images in photoshop or illustrator) I don't think this comparison is really accurate, Adobe's suite is designed for professionals that are working in the program for hours daily (e.g., ~1000 hours annually for a creative professional). There are probably some power users of The GIMP that hit similar numbers, but Creative Cloud has ~35-40 million subscribers, these are entirely different programs for entirely different classes of users.
• devmor 11mo ago
  I wanted to scoff at this, but the remote example is pretty on-point. The majority of users probably want the same small subset of features from a program and the rest are just confusing noise.
• nickdothutton 11mo ago
  Some TV remotes or air conditioner remotes now have a "boomer flap" which when engaged, hides 90% of all the buttons. The scanner software I use has something similar, novice mode and expert mode.
  • smallstepforman 11mo ago
    Ah yes, the infamous “klabing” feature. You open the manual and read “Press Kabling to kabling the whatchanathjng”.
• brian626 11mo ago
  Someone once told me “every setting you expose to your users is a decision you were too scared to make.”
  • Capricorn2481 11mo ago
    User: I'd like to be able to change my password Dev: I'm too brave to let you do that
  • autoexec 11mo ago
    That gets less true the more utility your software is expected to have. When it comes to software intended for the general public it doesn't take bravery to decide that every user should only ever be allowed to do things exactly how you'd want them done. I might be more likely to attribute that to arrogance. Really, for something like converting audio/video I'd just see the inflexible software with few if any options as too limited for my needs (current, future, or both) and go looking for something more powerful. It's better to not invest my time on software that is overly restrictive when more useful options are available, even if I don't need all of those options right now because it'll save me the trouble of having to hunt down something better later since I've already got what I need on my systems.
• meanfield 11mo ago
  There are literally thousands of wrappers for ffmpeg (other examples: imagemagick, ghostscript) that do exactly that. E.g. all commercial and dozens of open source video converters. So there is no lack of simple software for people who know little about the problem they're trying to solve (e.g. playing a downloaded mkv their shitty preinstalled video player doesn't accept), the problem is rather one of knowing that open source software exists and how to find it. Googling or asking an LLM does mostly present you software that costs money and is inferior to anything open source (and some malware).
  • ido 11mo ago
    Does it? I often ask ChatGPT such things and specifying I want free software options is enough (it often mentions which options are and aren’t free on its own).
    • int_19h 11mo ago
      It's great if you already know enough (or know how to read the manpage) to verify that what it tells you is really what it does. Given that e.g. LLM coding assistants sometimes end up doing things like reverting code they didn't write or deleting "useless" files, I wouldn't trust any LLM-generated shellcode without a thorough review.
• whoooboyy 11mo ago
  Free software is an anarchist mindset -- wellbeing for all, take what you need, contribute back where you can. It's scary for folks who are used to transactional relationships to encounter these different mindsets.
• initramfs 11mo ago
  True in many ways. I wanted to write an article or short blog post about how Windows 10, menus and javascript, increasingly tuck away important tools/buttons in little folds. This was many months ago. I want to write it and title it, "What the tuck?" But tuck refers exactly to the kind of hidden menus that make those so called sleek and simple UIs for the the 80% of users. The problem is that it stupefies computing literacy, especially mobile web versions. Perhaps not every casual web browser needs to sit at a desk to learn website navigation. Then again, they may never learn anything productive on their own.
• f33d5173 11mo ago
  People want features, and they're willing to learn complicated UIs to get them. A software that has hyper simplified options has a very limited audience. Take his example: we have somebody who has somehow obtained a "weird" video file, yet whose understanding of video amounts to wanting it to be "normal" so they can play it. For such a person, there are two paths: become familiar enough with video formats that you understand exactly what you want, and correspondingly can manipulate a tool like handbrake to get it, or stick to your walled-garden-padded-room reality where somebody else gives you a video file that works. A software that appeals to the weird purgatory in the middle necessarily has a very limited audience. In practice, this small audience is served by websites. Someone searches "convert x to y" and a website comes up that does the conversion. Knowing some specialized software that does that task (and only that one narrow task) puts you so far into the domain of the specialist that you can manage to figure out a specialist tool.
  • robenkleene 11mo ago
    For this example: > we have somebody who has somehow obtained a "weird" video file Why are you arriving at the conclusion that this requires complex software, rather than just a simple UI that says "Drop video file here" and "Fix It" below? E.g., instead of your conclusion "stick to your walled-garden-padded-room reality where somebody else gives you a video file that works", another possibility is the simple UI I described? That seemed to me the point of the post.
    • f33d5173 11mo ago
      The issue is that downloading a software, for most people, implies an investment in the task the software does that is unlikely to be paid off if it only does a single simple task. If I'm going out of my way to download something, then I'm probably willing to learn a few knobs that give me more control. Hence why I suggested that such a person would rather use a website. This is really just my read for why this sort of software isn't more common. Go ahead and make it, and if it ends up being popular I'll look the fool.
      • 11mo ago
• dusted 11mo ago
  I think we need to stop this madness. The disaster that is "modern UX" is serving no one. Infantilizing computer users needs to stop. Computer users hate it - everything changes all the time for the worse, everything gets hidden by more and more layers until it just goes away entirely and you're left with just having to suck it up. "Normal people" don't even have computers anymore, some don't even have laptops, they have tablets and phones, and they don't use computer programs, they use "apps". What we effectively get is: - For current computer users: A downward spiral of everything sucking more with each new update. - For potential new computer users: A decreasing incentive to use computers "Computers don't really seem to offer anything I can't do on my phone, and if I need a bigger screen I'll use my tablet with a BT keyboard" - For the so-called "normal people" the article references (I believe the article is really both patronizing and infantalizing the average person), there they're effectively people who don't want to use computers, they don't want to know how stuff works, what stuff is, or what stuff can become, they have a problem they cannot put into words and they want to not have the problem because the moving images of the cat should be on the place with the red thing. - They use their phones, their tablets, and their apps, their meager and unmotivated desire to do something beyond what their little black mirror allow them is so week that any obstacle, any, even the "just make it work" button, is going to be more effort than they're willing (not capable of, but willing) to spend. Thing is, regardless of particular domain, doing something in any domain requires some set of understanding and knowledge of the stuff you're going to be working with. "No, I just want to edit video, I don't want to know what a codec is" well, the medium is a part of the fucking message! NOTHING you do where you work with anything at all allows you to work with your subject without any understanding at all of what makes up that subject. You want to tell stories, but you don't want to learn how to speak, you want to write books, but you don't want to learn how to type, write or spell ? Yes, you can -dictate- it, which is, in effect, getting someone competent to do the thing for you.. You want to be a painter, but you don't care about canvas, brushes, techniques, or the differences between oil, acrylic and aquarelle, or colors or composition, just want to make picture look good? You go hire a fucking painter, you don't go whining about how painting is inherently harder than it ought to be and how it's elitist that they don't just sell a brush that makes a nice painting. (Well, it _IS_ elitist, most people would be perfectly satisfied with just ONE brush, and it should be as wide as the canvas, and it should be pre-soaked in BLUE color, come on, don't be so hard on those poor people, they just want to create something, they shouldn't have to deal with all your elitist artist crap!) yeah, buy a fucking poster! I'm getting so sick and tired of this constant attack on the stuff _I_ use every day, the stuff _I_ live and breathe, and see it degenerated to satisfy people who don't care, and never will.. I'm pissed, because, _I_ like computers, I like computing, and I like to get to know how the stuff works, _ONCE_ and gain a deep knowledge of it, so it fits like an old glove, and I can find my way around, and then they go fuck it over, time and time again, because someone who does not want to, and never will want to, use computers, thinks it's too hard.. Yeah, I really enjoy _LISTENING_ to music, I couldn't produce a melody if my life depended on it (believe me, I've tried, and it's _NOT_ for lack of amazingly good software), it's because I suck at it, and I'm clearly not willing to invest what it takes to achieve that particular goal.. because, I like to listen to music, I am a consumer of it, not a producer, and that's not because guitars are too hard to play, it's because I'm incompetent at playing them, and my desire to play them is vastly less than my desire to listen to them. Who are most software written for? - People who hate computers and software. What's common about most software? - It kind of sucks more and more. There's a reason some of the very best software on the planet is development tools, compilers, text editors, debuggers.. It's because that software is made by people who actually like using computers, and software, _FOR_ people who actually like using computers and software... Imagine if we made cars for people who HATE to drive, made instruments for people who don't want to learn how to play.. Wrote books for people who don't want to read, and movies for people who hate watching movies. Any reason to think it's a reasonable idea to do that? Any reason to think that's how we get nice cars, beautiful instruments, interesting books and great movies ? Fuck it. Just go pair your toaster with your "app" whatever seems particularity important.
• PeaceTed 11mo ago
  As one of the main developers of Krita said, just being free isn't good enough, the software needs to be great. I am in favour of simplified apps like this, maybe it can be a simple toggle switch in the top right corner between simple and advanced. Similar to that stupid new version of outlook I have to constantly switch back to the old version.
• charlie90 11mo ago
  maybe there just isn't a solution? people don't ask for a hammer that magically assembles every piece of furniture. sometimes the user of the tool needs skills to use it. UI/UX only takes you so far.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• throw-qqqqq 11mo ago
  > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest from them and you’ll make them more productive and happy. True but with a caveat: Those people rarely need the same 20% of your features.
• falcor84 11mo ago
  > People benefit from stuff like this While I agree that people generally feel better by getting something with little effort, I think that there is a longer-term disservice here. Once upon a time, it used to be understood that repeated use of a tool would gradually make you better at it - while starting with the basics, you would gradually explore, try more features and gradually become a power user. Many applications would have a "tip of the day" mechanism that encouraged users to learn more each time. But then this "Don't Make me Think" book and mentality[0] started catching on, and we stopped expecting people to learn about the stuff that they're using daily. We have a high percentage of "digital natives" kids, now reaching adulthood without knowing what a file is [1] or how to type on a keyboard [2]. Attention spans are falling rapidly, and even the median time in front of a particular screen before switching tasks is apparently down from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 40 seconds in 2023 [3] (I shudder to think what it is now). We as a civilization have been gradually offloading all of our technical competency and agency onto software. This is of course leading directly to agentic AI, where we (myself included) convince ourselves that the AI is allowing us to work at a higher level, deciding the 'what', while the computer takes care of the 'how' for us, but of course there's no clear delineation between the 'what' and 'how', there's just a ladder of abstraction, and as we offload more and more into software, the only 'what' we'll have left is "keep me fed and entertained". We are rapidly rolling towards the world of Wall-E, and at this pace, we might live to see the day of AIs asking themselves "can humans think?". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think [1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526 [2] https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/gen-z-typing-computers-keyboards-c83d15f0 https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/gen-z-typing-computers-keyboar... , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41402434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41402434 [3] https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/att...
• shadowgovt 11mo ago
  This is a good write-up. In addition to this issue, I've also had good conversations with a business owner about why he chose a Windows architecture for his company. Paying money to the company created a situation where the company had a "skin-in-the-game" reason to offer support (especially back when he founded the company, because Microsoft was smaller at the time). He likes being able to trust that the people who build the architecture he relies on for his livelihood won't just get bored and wander off and will be responsive to specific concerns about the product, and he never had the perception that he could rely on that with free software.
• prepend 11mo ago
  80% of people only use 20% of the functionality. But it’s a different 20%.
• kiitos 11mo ago
  i think what the author is characterizing as "free software" is probably better described as "software with bad UX"
  • warkdarrior 11mo ago
    The Venn diagram is a circle!
    • array_key_first 11mo ago
      Yes, everyone knows free software is way too complex and icky, and paid for software is super simple, minimal and user friendly. That's why I use 3D Max, Photoshop, and Excel. For the simplicity.
• alganet 11mo ago
  Photoshop is a clustershit of UI mess and professionals use it. Then, home users, following the popularity, also use it. Maybe we should just say free software is amazing and not a tool for home users, in order to get home users to use it.
• mr_toad 11mo ago
  ffmpeg -i example.mkv example.mp4 Works in almost all cases. In almost all cases I don’t want to mess with the defaults, because I know diddly about video formats.
• victor22 11mo ago
  I'd be scared too if I see a check box for iPod support, I mean, when was this software less updated, the 80's?
  • a96 11mo ago
    I know that's just an asshole comment, but for facts ipod came out in 2001 and was still sold three years ago. I'd rather never see it mentioned anywhere, but it's a perfectly valid target for a transcoder to offer.
• aucisson_masque 11mo ago
  Completely agree, that's why I love old mac software. Things were easy enough to understand for the average user, but power user still get lots of features. These kind of ui are extremely hard to make.
• agcat 11mo ago
  Love it.
• Andrex 11mo ago
  OP should check out Gnome Circle: https://circle.gnome.org https://circle.gnome.org The problem with why so many OSS/free software apps look bad can be demonstrated by the (still ongoing) backlash to Gnome 3+. It just gets exhausting defending every decision to death. Sometimes projects need the spine to say "no, we're not doing that."
  • sfRattan 11mo ago
    GNOME 3+ developers put themselves in the inevitable (and unenviable) position of defending every decision to death because they limited the user's ability to make many, many decisions that were possible in previous versions. There's nothing wrong with an opinionated desktop environment or even an opinionated Linux distribution. But, prior to GNOME 3, the project was highly configurable. Now it is not. When people start up new highly opinionated projects (e.g. crunchbang, Omarchy), the feedback is generally more positive because those who try it and stick with it are the ones who like the project's opinions. The people who don't like those opinions just stop using it. There isn't a large, established base of longstanding users who are invested in workflows, features, and options.
    • Andrex 11mo ago
      Ideally you'd want to add selectable options for users in a way that's sustainable long-term and not just panic-adding things all over the place because of user demands. That's how you get the Handbrake situation that OP article is complaining about. Gnome 3 was a big update and adding options, which does happen, is not free. There were changes from Gnome 2 and 3 and adding some options "back" from Gnome 2 is really asking for that feature to be rewritten from scratch (not all the time, but a lot of the time). That the Gnome team has different priorities from other DEs, one of them being "keep the design consistent and sustainable," is completely valid and preferred by many users like myself.
      • sfRattan 11mo ago
        > That the Gnome team has different priorities from other DEs, one of them being "keep the design consistent and sustainable," is completely valid and preferred by many users like myself. A new design metaphor can be "completely valid" and simultaneously an aggravating rug pull if it is pitched as a new numbered version of an existing program---especially an existing desktop environment that many people use daily---rather than as a new program. > Gnome 3 was a big update and adding options, which does happen, is not free. There were changes from Gnome 2 and 3 and adding some options "back" from Gnome 2 is really asking for that feature to be rewritten from scratch (not all the time, but a lot of the time). If the "next version" of a software project is really a near-total rewrite, such that many-to-most features from the previous version must be rewritten from scratch, then you should start a new project and pick a new name if you do not want your current users comparing the new version to the previous version. Whether or not those users appreciate the cost of feature rewrites to the developers' satisfaction, they already have working software with a long list of features and a version number one lower. KDE had a similar problem moving from 3.5 to 4 (also a major rewrite), but the initial wave of complaints had more to do with instability and heavy resource use because they didn't abandon the desktop metaphor entirely. They also explicitly had a roadmap of building back in many of 3.5's features as time went on, which made it a less radical transition. It's all ancient history at this point, at least on software timescales. But the Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 transition is up there with Python 2.7 to Python 3 as an example of how not to manage or implement a major change to a widely used piece of software. The funniest thing to me is I used to think of Gnome 3 as a effort toward Apple-esque design which wasn't as well put together as MacOS... But now, even though Gnome today is still not up to the consistency of 2011 MacOS, it is more consistent than 2025 MacOS because Apple has been driving drunk on desktop software design for a decade and a half.
• NoPicklez 11mo ago
  I struggle to link the title with the article. Aren't both Handbrake and Magicbrake both free? There are plenty of free tools which are very simple to use. In this particular case I'd just tell people to download and use VLC Player. But I get the point.
• megous 11mo ago
  My Pinebook Pro with i3wm is really simple to use. You power it on, all it does is it asks for one of the LUKS passwords. If you miss, it will ask again. Then it's on. You can't do anything wrong with it. There's no UI to fiddle with WiFi. It's all pre-configured to work automatically in the local WLAN (only; outside, all that's needed is to borrow someone's phone to look for the list of wifi nets in the area and type the name of selected network to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf). But there's rarely any need to go out anyway, so this is almost never an issue. There are no buttons to click, ANYWHERE. Windows don't have confusing colorful buttons in the header. You open the web browser by pressing Alt + [. It shows up immediately after about 5 seconds of loading time. So the user action <-> feedback loop is rather quick. You close it with Alt + Backspace (like deleting the last character when writing text, simple, everyone's first instinct when you want to revert last action) The other shortcut that closes the UI picture is Alt + ]. That one opens the terminal window. You can type to the computer there, to tell it what you want. Which is usually poweroff, reboot, reboot -f (as in reboot faster). It's very simple and relatable. You don't click on your grandma to turn it off, after all. You tell it to turn off. Same here. All in all, Alt + [ opens your day. Alt + ] gives you a way to end it. Closing the lid sometimes even suspends the notebook, so it discharges slightly slowerly in between. It's glorious. My gf uses it this way and has no issues with it (anymore). I just don't understand why she doesn't want to migrate to Linux on her own notebook. Sad.
• uyzstvqs 11mo ago
  GNOME's libadwaita solves this beautifully. It's simple, nice looking, yet powerful. You could absolutely use it to make an ffmpeg front-end that's both fully featured and friendly to less technical users. But if your app can't, then another good option is to have a "simple mode" and "advanced mode". And IMO, Handbreak is more complicated than CLI ffmpeg. It's really chaotic.
  • petepete 11mo ago
    Constrict fits into that niche nicely. https://github.com/Wartybix/Constrict https://github.com/Wartybix/Constrict
• oytis 11mo ago
  I mean, that's why we have software as a paid job, right?
• ap_21 11mo ago
  Reminds me of aws...
• dangus 11mo ago
  This seems just…not true? You can always cherry pick apps to fit a narrative. FOSS apps with simple interfaces: Signal, Firefox, VLC, Gnome [1], Organic Maps, etc, the list goes on and on. [1] it’s not a simple app but I think there’s a good argument to be made that it’s simpler/cleaner than commercial competitors.
• coastalpuma 11mo ago
  I do kind of think the solution to this issue lies at the OS level. It should provide a high degree of UI and workflow standardization (via first party apps, libraries and guidelines). Obviously it's an incredibly high bar to meet for volunteer efforts, but the user experience starts at the OS level. Instead of even installing a program like "Handbrake" or "Magicbrake" the OS should have a program called "Video Converter" which does what it says on the tin. There should also be a small on-device model which can parse commands like: "Convert a video so it can play on facebook" and deep link into the Video Converter app with the proper settings. Application-level branding should also basically not exist, it's too much noise. The user should have complete control over theming and typography. There has to be a standard interaction paradigm like the classic menubar but updated for modern needs. We need a sane discoverable default shell language with commands that map to GUI functionality within apps, and the user should never be troubled with the eccentricities of 1970s teletype machines.
• metaphorproj 11mo ago
  A software should find its own niche. We have imagemagick and ffmpeg to deal with nearly everything of image/video functionality, but we still have a lot of one-click-to-finish softwares.
• Splizard 11mo ago
  If only there was an easy way to fund all the Open Source programs you like and use, so the projects who struggle with it, can put more focus into design. Seems like a win-win, take my money solution, for some reason the market (and I guess that means investors) are not pursuing this as a consumer service?
• deepsun 11mo ago
  Please don't. Please assume I'm smarter than I actually am -- I will figure it out no problems. I like complex interfaces that allow me to do my task faster, especially if I'm using it often (e.g. for work).
• tsoukase 11mo ago
  The open source UIs initially seem alien, complicated or obscure related to similar to closed-source Windows' ones. The reason is OSS projects are built by developers primarily FOR developers and not for regular users. The design principle of "Don't surprise me" and other artistic and ergonomic ones are not met. Examples are Gimp and other content editors like Handbrake, Firefox vs chrome in mobile only, even IDEs. BUT with time and a variable effort a regular user can get accustomed to the new philosophy and be successful. Either by persistant use, by using different OSS apps in series or by touching the command line. Happy user of Firefox, Libre office, Avidemux, Virt-manager (sic)
  • johnnyanmac 11mo ago
    Is Firefox v chrome even relevant these days? I struggle to even think of shortcuts that aren't identical among the two browsers. Let alone UX and features. I think the other big reason is availability of talent. FOSS is made by devs who usually are already well off and have time to contribute. You wont find as many artists nor graphic designers with the same privilege . so if there's bo designers on a project you get the bare basics.
• tmp147963 11mo ago
  I'd love applications that would let me choose how advance I want the UI to be. Kinda like Windows Calculator. A toggle between basic, advance, and some common use cases. For example, I'd love Gimp to have a Basic mode that would hide everything except the basic tools like Crop and Brush. Like basic mspaint.
• bityard 11mo ago
  Okay, TFA uses handbrake as an example, but there are probably hundreds of other attempts at a simpler ffmepg front end. Handbrake is only popular _because_ it is so powerful, not in spite of it.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• zzyzxd 11mo ago
  Abstraction needs to happen on a different layer. Because your power users are already dealing with complicated stuff and you don't want to make their lives even harder. I know about 10 people in real life that uses Handbrake. And 10 of them use it to rip Blu-ray discs and store media files on their NAS. It will piss them off if you hide all the codec settings and replace the main screen with a giant "convert to Facebook compatible video" button. Instead, do it like how iina[1] packages mpv[2]. 1. https://github.com/iina/iina https://github.com/iina/iina 2. https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv
  • walleeee 11mo ago
    This also evidences that in this case, it's more developers of handbrake just know their audience rather than a real design failure. Maybe they'd prefer to keep the user base deliberately small?
• socalgal2 11mo ago
  My interpretation: Author picks a complicated piece of software, complains it's complicated. Maybe handbrake was never meant to be used by people who need the one button solution? That one button solution exists all over the place. It has nothing to do with free vs not-free
• sfpotter 11mo ago
  The title of this article isn't supported. It should be "Complicated software scares normal people". You can have simple and intuitive free software and complicated and unintuitive pay software.
• euroderf 11mo ago
  He mentions the 80/20 rule. But I wonder if what he's describing is more like 95/5. Meaning, non-techie users are massively underserved.
• chartered_stack 11mo ago
  Like Alan Kay said about software: Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. The thing is this takes a lot of resources to get right. FOSS developers simply don't have the wherewithal - money, inclination or taste - to do this. So, by default, there are no simple things. Everything's complex, everything needs training. And this is okay because the main users of FOSS software is others of a similar bend as the developers themselves.
  • jampekka 11mo ago
    For complex things there's CLI. For even more complex things there are programming languages.
• KoolKat23 11mo ago
  Most people use windows and I'm sure associate free with freemium or android with spam notifications.
• eviks 11mo ago
  > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest from them and you’ll make them more productive and happy. That’s really all it takes. You should know the common retort - but it's different 20%! So you can't create a one-button UI that covers 80% But the challenge is real, though mostly "unsolvable" as there is too much friction in making good easily customizable UIs
• Piterniel 11mo ago
  I like when there are presets for UI. You have basic and advanced options visible when you want to.
• cadamsdotcom 11mo ago
  Brilliant. Love it! Say your family member or other person you support needs some free software functionality but not the whole UI.. Grab an LLM and make a nice single button app they can use. LLMs writing code, plus free software, a match made in heaven. It’s also a new take on Unix “do one thing well” philosophy.
• einpoklum 11mo ago
  Why are people bothered by the money-trasfer-winking so much, but not by these companies aiding and abetting a brutal and murderous regime engaging in decades-long military occupying, at first, and later - aided and abetted a genocide campaign?
• einpoklum 11mo ago
  His notion of "normal people" are people who use MacOS: > Normal people often struggle with converting video. ... the format will be weird. (Weird, broadly defined, is anything that won’t play in QuickTime or upload to Facebook.)" Except normal people don't use MacOS and don't even know what QuickTime is. Including the US, the MacOS user share is apparently ~11%. Take the US out, and that drops to something like... 6%, I guess? And Macs are expensive - prohibitively expensive for people in most countries. So, normal people use Windows I'm afraid. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide In fact, if you disregard the US, Linux user share seems to be around half of the Mac share, making the perspective of "normal people use Macs not FOSS" even sillier. ----- PS - Yes, I know the quality of such statistics is low, if you can find better-quality user share analysis please post the link.
• test6554 11mo ago
  It’s a bit like obscuring the less-used functions on a TV remote with tape. It’s like creating a new tv controller with fewer options.
  • a96 11mo ago
    Putting fewer buttons on a controller just means that all the necessary features are in a menu or require several clicks which mean that you have to know what state the receiver is in and if it's lagging. Which is all much worse than if there was a button per feature. (The usual problem with remotes happens to be that they tend to have buttons that nobody has ever used or wanted and which don't even do anything. And there's still menus and state. And the one button that has to be pushed for every feature is the one that dies first.)
• thelastgallon 11mo ago
  It is halloween. Perhaps T-shirts can be printed with "free software" and danger sign? Oracle and Microsoft can fund this startup!
• lilerjee 11mo ago
  One of my product design principles: Concise Focus only on the parts that are really needed, necessary, or the most important; hide the currently unnecessary or secondary, or simply remove the truly unnecessary and secondary; remove all unnecessary Maybe it can help you
• neop1x 11mo ago
  I think it woudn't hurt if Handbrake had a simple UI like this by default with an Expert button to get into the full UI. I like how VLC also have basic and expert modes. It's a nice idea IMO.
• KronisLV 11mo ago
  > It’s a bit like obscuring the less-used functions on a TV remote with tape. The functions still exist if you need them, but you’re not required to contend with them just to turn the TV on. For telling software devs to embrace traditional design wisdom, using TV remotes is an interesting example - cause aside from the commonly used functionality people actually care about (channels, volume, on/off, maybe subtitles/audio language) the rest should just be hidden under a menu and the fact that this isn't the case demonstrates bad design. It's probably some legacy garbage, along the lines of everyone having an idea for what a TV remote is "supposed" to look like and therefore the manufacturers putting on buttons in plain view that will never get used and that you'd sometimes need the manual to even understand. At the same time, it might also be possible that the FOSS software that's made for power users or even just people with needs that are slightly more complex than the baseline is never going to be suited for a casual user - for example, dumbing down Handbrake and hiding functionality power users actually do use under a bunch of menus would be really annoying for them and would slow them down. You can try to add "simple" and "advanced" views of your UI, but that's the real disconnect here - different users. Building simplified versions with sane defaults seems nice for when there is a userbase that needs it.
  • TeMPOraL 11mo ago
    I'd say it tells us that "good design" is stupid. Remotes are fine. Except the modern ones that have a touchpad and, like, 8 buttons, four of which are ads. People can handle many buttons just fine. Even one year old kids don't have a problem with this, which becomes apparent if you ever watch a small child play. The only people who have a problem here are UX designers high on paternalistic approach to users.
    • KronisLV 11mo ago
      > Remotes are fine. Maybe? But, like, what's the value added by a bunch of useless bullshit buttons that will never be used? Greebles to make the customers think they're buying something cool? Just put a menu one in there for the 1% of the times when you actually have to use the functionality there and don't do the equivalent of putting 30 widgets in your weather homepage. It's not like anyone is losing their life or finds TVs to be unusable due to the status quo, but it also feels like the equivalent of cutting off the ends of your roast when putting it on a pan because that's how your mom did it which she learnt from her mom, without either of you knowing that the real reason is that your grandmother just didn't have a big enough roasting pan and it's just habit.
• pepoluan 11mo ago
  I think some software -- FLOSS or otherwise -- tries to do this by hiding functionalities behind an "Advanced Mode" toggle. Which kind of fulfills the best of both worlds: Welcoming for beginners, but full-powered for advanced users. More software should be designed this way.
• GTP 11mo ago
  > 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. I also heard that, once you try to apply this concept, you see that everyone needs a different 20%. Any thoughts on this?
  • amelius 11mo ago
    Opinionated Apple seems to get away with it.
    • GTP 11mo ago
      Well, I'm not familiar with their office suite, but I bet that, if I open their word processor, I will still find a ton of features that I will never use.
      • amelius 11mo ago
        The question is more if they left out features because they were deemed too difficult for the average user.
        • GTP 11mo ago
          In the context of this blog post, yes. But in the broader context of the quote, a word processor having a ton of features shows that you don't really get away with only implementing 20% of the functionalities.
• mna_ 11mo ago
  For me, it's the fact that I'm running code written by some random people. The code could be malicious. I don't know unless I audit it myself and I have no time for that. Remember the XZ Utils backdoor thing from a few months ago? Well how many backdoors are there in other FOSS stuff?
  • mbork_pl 11mo ago
    How is that specific to FOSS?
    • a96 11mo ago
      It's one of the main features, just incoherently rambled and backwards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#The_Four_Essential_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T... > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Free software can be audited for backdoors. Closed can not. Their backdoors will stay there indefinitely.
      • fragmede 11mo ago
        disassembler and decompilers exist.
        • goodpoint 11mo ago
          This statement is ridiculous.
          • fragmede 11mo ago
            A music CD installing a stealthed persistent kernel-level rootkit on your Windows PC would also be ridiculous, yet that's exactly what Sony BMG's rootkit in 2005 did. And guess how it was found?
      • int_19h 11mo ago
• cjfd 11mo ago
  Then we have to wait until 'normal' software becomes more scary. Various vendors are doing everything in their power to make it so.
  • NaomiLehman 11mo ago
    i think it's not about having more features but having to set and understand certain features and unless you do, the app doesn't work. like Handbrake
• palata 11mo ago
  To me, this reads as: "My friends wanted to convert videos to MP4, so I made a small GUI for them to do just that. Now I'm writing an article explaining how everything in the world can probably be solved by a single drag-and-drop and a single button". BTW, if all you can do it drag-and-drop a file, do you need the "convert" button?
• nitnelave 11mo ago
  That's broadly the same reason I created LLDAP. It's the 20% of features of an LDAP server that 80% of users need. It's been hard pushing back and saying no to all the new features. We've started work on a plugin API so that people can add features and opt in to the complexity.
• rglullis 11mo ago
  If there is one thing I believe that will come out of the whole AI bubble, is this: we will interact with applications though natural language and the "graphical UI" will be mostly about visual feedback of what operation is happening. The challenge for open source projects will be to define whether they will assume that their application will rely on some external LLM that will (hopefully) be good enough or if they will have to distill/train a specific model that can be smart enough to interact with the application tools.
• shevy-java 11mo ago
  I am not sure if I agree to the statement made, but one problem I found is that many people don't even understand the problem domain. Microsoft trained their brain to accept that they must be cashcows for them, so they don't understand that there may be alternatives. And let's be honest: Linux is still WAY too complicated for many elderly people to use.
  • ktosobcy 11mo ago
    Anectodal: just the other day I put Fedora KDE 43 on "new" (well, second-hand after lease) computer for my father as the old one was on it's last legs and... it works just fine. The machine came with Windows 10 by default and what he needed was Firefox and FreeCell, and FreeCell on Windows10 was atrocious. He likes it a lot and the only thing was that I had to put same wallpaper as he had on Windows7 and icons in the same places. The "linux is to complicated" argument just doesn't hold true anymore! It's nice and easy, including the installation (even I was surprised)
• nwhnwh 11mo ago
  Doesn't work on Sequoia, for some reason.
• hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
  The problem is you need a simple app for each of the 100 use cases. Finding such simple apps (classic is joining PDFs so you can send many docs at once) means hitting the SEO soup of people trying to sell crappy software. Being super simple ducks the problem.
• DarkLynxes 11mo ago
  The handbrake UI is not designed for "power users", the handbrake UI is designed to make available all the options the underlying technology provides, so that you may leverage it to the fullest. If you don't want that, it provides you with presets. I do understand that many users are too lazy to read a manual, do a google search, or put any minimal amount of effort in solving an issue, but making software worse or more convoluted the second you need to have a miniscule degree of extra control seems pointless. Too many people look at FOSS the same way the look at commercial end user software, they think they are the equivalent of a custom and they should get a premium custom like experience. But that's false. Most of the time FOSS is the result of fixing a developer's problem, or fixing the problems of somebody who also happens to be a developer, and then sharing it all with the world. You cannot be surprised when a software made by a developer offers every single possible setting, because that's exactly what it was meant to do in the first place. The solution is not "making software easier", the solution is to RTFM.
  • skeltoac 11mo ago
    You call the users lazy for not wanting to read software manuals. Maybe you should rtfm on what other people are actually like.
    • balamatom 11mo ago
      People are actually software-defined.
  • Juliate 11mo ago
    "Laziness", "put any minimal amount of effort", RTFM... that's exactly the kind of language and perspective that's the problem. The majority of your users are not lazy, they have gazillions of other things to think about and to do. Even when they are developers. Now, that's up to you, as a maker, to decide who your tool is serving, and for what purpose: it's totally fine and valid to target the power user, or your specific use case. Just don't act surprised, or reject the responsibility, that someone else will find a bigger audience with a lesser product, only because it is more affordable, cognitively speaking.
  • 11mo ago
• Arch-TK 11mo ago
  The remote thing seems like a perfect use of 3D printing. With the tape there, there is still a risk someone will sit on the remote and get their device into a weird state. A 3D printed cover which clips over would be rigid enough to prevent any accidents, and easy to remove if some power user needs to do something unusual.
• SwtCyber 11mo ago
  I've lost count of how many times I've had to help someone do something dead simple using tools that are, frankly, hostile to non-techies
• SuperHeavy256 11mo ago
  Ignore the people criticizing you my friend, backlash is expected in a community of power users that use Hacker News- because they favor power tools. But you've made something really nice and quite useful, and you've solved a real-world problem.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• Havoc 11mo ago
  Another option is to hide some of the complexity in an additional advanced menu That’s very much dependent on the author correctly judging what should go there though
• gwbas1c 11mo ago
  Am I the only one who thinks Magicbrake should be a browser plugin? Why? The same kind of people who find Handbrake intimidating also find the concept of files and juggling multiple applications intimidating.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• johmue 11mo ago
  yes
• Jedd 11mo ago
  I note TFA mentions 'normal' people 8 times, but never uses the word 'average'. Whereas I think they are in fact describing 'average' people. I suspect most HNers self-assess as normal, but are also self-aware enough to acknowledge (rightly or wrongly) they're not average. Certainly I have felt overwhelmed with the 'why have they broken so many conventions?' sensation with, invariably, audio apps on microsoft platforms - but OTOH the implied expectation that all software should have a comparably broken UI as mildly modern microsoft word versions expresses a collective poverty of expectations.
• amelius 11mo ago
  I don't know. I see a lot of "normal" people having better access to technology nowadays, but I don't think the world is a better place because of it. The difficult interface was a good filter.
  • LtWorf 11mo ago
    I think the filter used to be the cost.
    • amelius 11mo ago
      Children were often more tech savvy than their parents, yet they didn't have as much to spend.
      • LtWorf 11mo ago
        Children of families that could afford the hardware in the first place. Also this was always kinda of a myth often.
• paxcoder 11mo ago
  [dead]
• marginalia_nu 11mo ago
  Ultimately free software isn't beholden to its users, as they aren't paying customers. Free and open source developers are free to build whatever the heck software they want on the basis of "I find this software neat/useful/funny, you can use it too if you'd like". The way it works is you grab the sources, make a fork, implement your desired changes (e.g. hide 80% of the features), and do a release that is in line with your own vision. "But that's a lot of work" someone might say, ... and yet people routinely think someone else should do such volumes of work for them in order to ensure a project is in line with their needs.
  • Nifty3929 11mo ago
    "free to" - of course! Everybody is free to do mostly anything. TFA is making the point that, if your goal is to make software that is broadly useful (and maybe that's not your goal), then you should try to make the most common use-cases easy and intuitive, even if that means compromising on complex ones or edge-cases.
• ItCouldBeWorse 11mo ago
  [dead]
• teekert 11mo ago
  I often wonder why stuff like handbrake does not have an overlay ui, just a “drop video” field, then select “YouTube” “max quality” “Send via WhatsApp/signal” or something more logical. And then a button that says: “I’m a pro” that drops this UI. It would make the target audience so much larger.
• alkonaut 11mo ago
  Making a complicated and powerful piece of software is difficult. Just slapping a user interface that _allows_ using all the power, is hard enough. With that interface, the simple thing is difficult, and the complex thing is also difficult. The really hard problem to solve is making an UI where the simple thing is easy and the complex thing is still possible. But that requires 1) strong leadership 2) people with the correct skill set for UX design. Making a clean UI means cutting things out. And that's not easy in many large OSS projects because every menu item and every button is someone's pet feature. The leaders in the projects are often the most senior _developers_, not UX experts. It's (I'm assuming) a lot less common to have good telemetry and user labs in OSS than it is for commercial software. So you also might not know exactly what features people use and how they use them, making it even harder to remove features. I think the author is absolutely right. If Handbrake is intimidating, or hard to use without reading a manual in order to do just the simple use case that 80% of users have, then they have failed in making a good UX. A good UX would make the simple thing easy without sacrificing power for the complex case. And the author is absolutely having the right idea when making a simpler wrapper for the powerful software.
• almosthere 11mo ago
  https://ibb.co/1YPzj5CK https://ibb.co/1YPzj5CK
• MichaelHill 11mo ago
  [dead]