LXDE itself is starting to come along nicely – I\’m planning on dropping KDE for LXDE when I switch from openSUSE 11.2 to 11.3. And of course there\’s Enlightenment.

Stop trying to be MacOS, and be Linux instead.

Create new paradigms, and a look\’n\’feel that isn\’t trying to ape Microsoft, Apple and so on, and lead instad of following.

There are fairly fundamental reasons why Linux is hard to use, and the shade of the icons or the position of window decorations won\’t change it. That is just gloss.

The real problems, unfortunately, are much more fundamental are harder to fix, because they are embedded in the expectations of every Linux program, and represent fundamentally confusing underlying metaphors. For example

Arbitrary distinction between location of important system files.
Invisible preference files.
Confusing and redundant file system.
No useful abstraction for dealing with installation of programs. The packaging systems (apt, yum) are stopgap solutions, but in practice each program spreads its files out across several directories. What appears in the Applications menu, then, are just \”Shortcuts.\” You wouldn\’t believe the number of users who can\’t understand this distinction. Why can\’t we make it so that if you remove the icon, the program disappears? (As it is on the Mac.)
And in general, a lack of high-quality tools for achieving certain tasks.

Except for the last issue, fixing these problems requires building a new OS. That\’s why everyone is afraid to tackle them. I think we need to throw out the current model and build a new one from scratch.

2) I haven\’t checked the links yet but I desperately hope this isn\’t so tied to Ubuntu that it makes it more difficult to install/configure on other distros. Ubuntu is a fine distro and the work that Canonical is doing is great. I just wish they hadn\’t based it on Debian.

3) It would be fun to make a desktop environment that worked like CICS. (Ok, I\’m completely joking here)

OMG! We still have this FUD in 2010? I mean seriously the \”lets toss out things an advanced user would do and then say its to hard for the average joe\” attack is just tired. Please retire it.

Why would the average user be doing anything outside of their home directory? They aren\’t going to care about any files outside of it.

Whats wrong with and invisible preference file? Thats better than a binary file that you can\’t do anything with anyway. And the user can simply show hidden files much like they do with extensions and other things in Windows.

The Sofware Center or \”Add Remove Programs\” is difficult? And I don\’t think I\’d want to remove a program by simply removing an icon. Do you know how many people accidentally delete icons? It doesn\’t matter if they believe they are looking at an icon or a program. If they click it and it works then thats all they are going to be concerned about. Amazingly they have worked with this for years on Windows without a problem. And again what does the average user need with the various libs installed by the program? They don\’t need to know where they are.

The FUD as usual just doesn\’t make much sense.

This is the problem with the UI on modern Linux. You are simply out of touch with how difficult these things are to non-technical people.

Unfortunately, echo chambers like this one will never address the real problem, because non-technical people don\’t come here. Instead, techies will constantly pat each other on the back for making an easy-to-use GUI front-end for a firewall configuration manager, forgetting that there shouldn\’t even be a firewall configuration manager.

To put it another way: if the current Linux UI were as easy to use as you say, then everyone would be using it. But they\’re not. Most people are unable to deal with a UI more complicated than that of an iPhone.

@klemmerj:

There is nothing wrong with the Mac UI, but that doesn\’t mean that we should copy it. Moreover, copying trivial details like icons and window decorations misses the point. The complicated part is dealing with the abstractions that those icons represent. Our effort would be better spent addressing more fundamental issues.

I was once a beta tester (yes, I paid my $30) for SkyOS. Robert Szeleny halted development 18 months ago because keeping up with the drivers became unmanageable. But SkyOS had many of the features that Bugmenot3 is speaking of as desirable. Perhaps the best of all features of SkyOS is the BranchFS, which might not be of concern to non-techies, but overall the controls were better than most linux desktops.

Still I do not see much of an issue with what bugmenot3 says. And I do see an issue with the way things are being taken (again) by folk who have not backed off and considered ergonomics. Does it really matter how the bells and whistles are organized? What about something that eliminates A LOT of them such as drill-down menus?

SymphonyOS has been around for a while and now a new Symphony project is starting up, called Symphony Strata. If I had time I would be volunteering to develop for them. It will be another simple desktop but this time something in true Web3 style, where the same user experience is available from your Desktop, Notebook, Netbook, Tablet, PDA, and Cell phone, quite possibly served out of your plugcomputer (q.v. it is at http://www.plugcomputer.org).

Thinking out of the box may in fact be thinking inside lots of boxes.

THINK OF ALL THE TIME WE COULD USE TO MAKE LINUX BETTER RATHER THAN SHITTING OUT YET ANOTHER GNOME/OPENBOX/KDturd(E)-BASED DESKTOP OS. ALSO, YOUR WEBSITE IS A LITTLE FUCKED ON THE RIGHT, (ELEMENTARY LINUX).

I can\’t imagine what I said that would lead you to believe that I consider Windows easy to use.

\”if the current Linux UI were as easy to use as you say, then everyone would be using it.\”

Oh really? You seem to see the OS X UI as simple but it only holds 8% of the market. Shouldn\’t everyone be using it? The truth is that people buy what they are told to buy. Marketing trumps common sense (see the iPhone) and lock-in trumps marketing (see Windows). Its quite ridiculous to believe that even if Linux was exactly what you believe it should be that anyone would use it. If you don\’t have the money to make the picture box in their living rooms tell them to use it or make the OEM\’s force them to use it then it won\’t be used.

And to be honest I don\’t know where you\’re from but this is the problem with America. Theres too much accepting that we are collectively slow and dumbing down of things than there is educating people to use advanced features. Take the iPhone for instance. Its easy to use because there are alot of things it simply doesn\’t do. We\’ve accepted that people are so dumb that we believe all that they can comprehend is a grid of icons on a black background with just the slightest hint of being able to customize.

This ends up dragging down the people that are smart. For instance my nieces and nephews who are by no means techies use my Linux computers without a question. As I said before they don\’t need to know where all the files went when they install an app. They don\’t know anything outside of the home directory. They simply use the computer based on the basic concepts of modern desktop computers. They aren\’t by any means confused or find anything difficult to use. Now I\’m all for simplification but not at the cost of functionality. And as I said before most of your simplifications deal with things that the average user doesn\’t deal with. You are trying to change the implementation of abstractions when the whole point of the abstraction is so that the user doesn\’t need to know anything about whats going on behind the scenes.

I bought three webcams that are listed compatible by V4L and tried to get them working on my desktop. I used webkam, wxCam and Cheese in my attempts. In one case I was able to get an image in all three programs. In the other two, I could only get images in Cheese. In all cases, performance positively sucked. Cheese consistently pegged my CPUs. In the case of the one camera that produced an image in all three programs, I was lucky to get one frame every couple of seconds. It was embarrassing. In the end, I had to tell my friend Linux wasn\’t ready for him.

I liken this situation to that of printing support in Linux 10 years ago. People wouldn\’t stick with a Linux desktop because printer support was so bad, and if a printer was supported, it was too difficult to configure it. The community made a concerted push, and ease of printing under Linux now exceeds any commercial desktop out there.

Desktop video needs to be the next big push for Linux. It\’s something users expect to \”just work\” and and it absolutely doesn\’t. Pretty and functional desktops are nice, but the underlying desktop infrastructure needs to work flawlessly across all desktops to draw users away from commercial products.

OK, so there are lots of improvements that could/should be made under the hood, but what are you saying? That the improvements to the user interfaces that Elementary are making is pointless? Should we stop improving GNOME and KDE, etc and get everyone to work on an underlying feature?

Absolutely ridiculous.

These people perhaps don\’t have the skill or desire to re-write X.Org, or fix the web cam situation. So instead of sitting and doing NOTHING they are doing something positive which they can contribute for the benefit of all.

What are you doing?

-c

My play box is Mint and Fedora.
My work box is Debian Lenny.
My laptop is a Mac.

Finally, in the last 5 years or so, Linux is American proof.Nearly all hardware is recognized and just works, without doing any more than plugging it in. A skill nearly 4 % of all AmericanT college grads have !

Outside of the empire Linux is very, very popular.

Sound is… well… broken!! Everyone acknowledges that… I have about 66% of my applications with working audio now!! The rest are silent… The hardware driver is there in the kernel but I don’t know how to configure the specific applications to use the SPDIF output on my (onboard) soundcard…

There are many fairly polished applications available for Linux. But it is like the Human Computer Interface was designed by a kid with a crayon. I cite the VLC configuration interface, the whole GIMP UI, most of Gnome, etc, … Most annoying however the shear inconsistency of UI quality…