Link to /.
> Frederic told that the options from the PPD file are intentionally mot
> listed in the printing dialog, the usability team of GNOME was against
> listing these options. They clutter the dialog and can be more confusing
> than useful to the user.
I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of
Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
Please, just tell people to use KDE.
Linus
> That's definitely not a point of view of the GNOME Project - we're focused
> on making Free Software appropriate for users who are smart (we don't talk
> about 'dumb users'), but just don't care about computing technology. We're
> just like every other Free Software project - fixing stuff requires the work
> and attention of people who care about the problem at hand.
No. I've talked to people, and often your "fixes" are actually removing
capabilities that you had, because they were "too confusing to the user".
That's _not_ like any other open source project I know about. Gnome seems
to be developed by interface nazis, where consistently the excuse for not
doign something is not "it's too complicated to do", but "it would confuse
users".
The current example of "intentionally not listed in the printing dialog,
the usability team of GNOME was against listing these options." is clearly
not the exception, but the rule.
Jeff, if the explanation had been "exposing PPD features is too hard, we
need developer manpower", I'd have understood. THAT is what open source
projects tend to say. Not "powerful interfaces might confuse users and not
look nice".
If this was a one-off, I'd buy it. But I've heard it too damn many times.
And only ever from Gnome.
The reason I don't use Gnome: every single other window manager I know of
is very powerfully extensible, where you can switch actions to different
mouse buttons. Guess which one is not, because it might confuse the poor
users? Here's a hint: it's not the small and fast one.
And when I tell people that, they tend to nod, and have some story of
their own why they had a feature they used to use, but it was removed
because it might have been confusing.
Same with the file dialog. Apparently it's too "confusing" to let users
just type the filename. So gnome forces you to do the icon selection
thing, never mind that it's a million times slower.
Linus
Does anyone here know a way to determine under what kernel a file was compiled?
DickBut I think people in here might have some feedback... Has anyone here tried the Dvorak keyboard layout? I hadn't heard of it until just now and I'm intrigued....
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1134910,00.html
I'd say it actually starts getting better at part 2.
By the way, my Ubuntu Breezy 5.10 install went perfectly and I found a cool script - anyone else considering Ubuntu should use Easy Ubuntu after the install, it sets up everything that Ubuntu can't legally put on the distribution (like Quicktime, Realplayer, MP3 support and all that proprietary garbage...).
jet
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The GNOME project was started in August 1997 by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena to provide an alternative to KDE.
KDE is a free software desktop environment that relies on the Qt toolkit — a piece of software written by Trolltech that did not use a free software license. Members of the GNU project became concerned about the use of such a toolkit for building a free software desktop and applications and launched two projects: "Harmony", to create a replacement for the Qt libraries, and the GNOME project to create a new desktop without Qt and built entirely on top of free software.[2]
In November 1998, the QT toolkit was licensed under the open source Q Public License (QPL), but debate continued about compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL). In September 2000, Trolltech made the GNU/Linux version of the Qt libraries available under the GPL, in addition to the QPL, thereby removing most of the objections that had fuelled years of licensing debates.[3] The licensing of Qt is still controversial for some people because the use of the GPL for a library imposes restrictions on the licensing of code linking to it, including the KDE framework and any applications written for it. In particular, in order to develop proprietary software with KDE and Qt, it is necessary to purchase a commercial license from Trolltech.
In place of the Qt toolkit, the GIMP Toolkit (GTK+) was chosen as the base of the GNOME desktop. GTK+ uses the GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL), a free software license that allows software linking to it, such as applications written for GNOME, to use almost any license.[4] The GNOME desktop itself is licensed under the LGPL for its libraries, and the GPL for applications that are part of the GNOME project itself.
The GNOME desktop is written in the C programming language. A number of language bindings are available, allowing GNOME applications to be written in a variety of languages, such as C++, Java, Ruby, C#, Python, Perl and many others.
----
So I think that is a pretty good summary of Gnome's history, but my
question to the community, how objectionable is the Trolltech license
today? Regardless of the state of each desktop environment, is it
better to support Gnome since it is truly free and, in part because of
this, will provide a better platform to build on for the future?
I've heard GTK+ is improving rapidly (since this was a weakpoint of
Gnome compared to KDE for development) and that GTK+ 2 is around the
corner with various improvements (although no backward
compatibility).
I'm using Gnome now and will support it and encourage others to use it
almost entirely on the basis that the licensing is better than KDE,
although the fact it is community developed and improving rapidly are
also key factors. Do others agree with this, or do they believe
the licensing of the Qt toolkit is not of that much importance?
When developing software, you have to treat the outside world like it is hell bent on your destruction. And that includes having to basically assume that you have to assume that the majority of users will do something dumb to break the software. In most markets, the customer is always right, with software, the customer is always stupid. I hate having to say it, but in order to develop for the masses (which I believe is one of gnomes goals), you must assume that the majority of people WILL do something dumb.
But yeah, Gnome does suck. It's slow; it's bloated; and it's just plain ugly. I'm glad to see that people are finally seeing it.
Software development for linux should focus on those people most likely to use it (yes, many are more of the 'power' user type), once those users are converted the subset of users likely to use it will naturally grow, and focus can be shifted as necessary. I think a post on /. ads to this nicely, also. I particularly think his second paragraph is hilarious.
"
And no, I don't consider a study conducted with people who are absolute computer illiterate (not knowing that the right mouse button is good for something) representative. They are a very specific subset of users, they are NOT the majority, and making design decisions based on experiments conducted on this very small subset of the userbase is WRONG. That is Linus' point. Is he politically correct? Of course not (" This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.")
My girlfriend is absolutely computer illiterate: she thinks (well, thought) that Office is the OS that runs on his laptop. Being lazy and all she often sits down to my computer (instead of opening her laptop) to browse the net. Sometimes she doesn't even notice that instead of firefox, she is using konqueror. There is a small set of functionality that users expect at specific areas of your screen: first buttons should be back and forward, they expect an input field for URLs at the top, maybe a google search bar... and that's it. If they are there, they are not really "confused" because there are additional buttons (kget, print, even cervisia) to the right side. They don't even notice it. It is the same with the file dialog: were users really bothered by the input field? I very much doubt that - and just like Linus, I was not aware of ctrl + L until someone told me here on ./. And in the past years, I hear one bogus "usability" claim from these so called "usability experts" after another (spatial nautilus anyone?) No evidence, no empirical study, just "we say so as usability experts" with some outlandish theory to back it up... so yeah, I think he is right on spot (and yeah, yeah, we know, diplomacy is not his forte).
"
I wouldn't say that Gnome sucks really - I actually thought it was fast and had a nice 'feel', and I had it installed on an old machine too. I just think their ideas on useability are dead wrong.
In many ways Gnome comes from the Mac school of UI design, where they make it really, really simple and for all things their head will remain in their ass until they have a 2% market share and are just a clone of KDE. Of course, that's the same reason why I stopped being a Mac user way back in the day. Granted, even on Windows I'd have to do stupid registry or config editing, but I could do more of what I wanted. That's why I like Linux, if something doesn't work the way I want, worst case I can tweak some code and fix it, if I'm lucky (hasn't happened yet, I guess I'm too kludgy) it gets taken back into the mainline and thrown in the next os release or patch. But that said, I shouldn't have to do much more than click an "advanced" tab or button to get what I want done 99% of the time if the ui is good (IMO). That said, several versions ago the GF could use either environment without knowing much of a difference, nor much difficulty, at least until she needed the open office pos.
I also originally used gnome for license reasons, but started getting unhappy when they switched to metacity (# of options = 3) but then still stayed away from kde because kde was on a bling spree back then. Gnome started going in that direction too, seems slower, and most importantly, doesn't understand the hints from mythtv so when mythtv calls another program and then that program quits, the task bar gets the focus...WTF? So now I use KDE when I'm going to use it enough to care.