I definitely agree with your thoughts on this, but I guess I wanted to add that Linux most definitely _does_ have human interface guidelines -- they're just not

I definitely agree with your thoughts on this, but I guess I wanted to add that Linux most definitely _does_ have human interface guidelines -- they're just not the same for every flavor of Linux under the sun. Granted a lot of Linux apps tend to be "cross-environment", or just cross-platform in general, so it's less obvious than on Mac, for example. But GNOME definitely has them[1], and newer projects which have dedicated themselves to a really solid HIG are gaining a lot of traction[2]. [1] http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/ http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/stable/ [2] http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines I guess the issue comes down to more people needing to _care_ about them :)