Is It Windows 7, Or KDE 4? 559
An anonymous reader writes "Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? In this video, ZDNet takes to Sydney's streets to find out what people think of what they think is a Windows 7 demonstration. The results are surprising." Or maybe they're not surprising at all.
The two guys' bottom line is nearly correct (Score:5, Interesting)
Still a nice little laugh, that video.
Hawthorne Effect (Score:1, Interesting)
It's more than that. These people are involved. Give them the OS to take home to play with and they'll probably be mostly positive too.
You want to know MY opinion about your brand new OS that you spent billions in developing? You're going to listen to ME? Wow, I've got a good feeling about this already!
What does it show? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone staging a demo can find a number of people to say oooh ahhhh.
Seriously. This is the problems with computers today. The perception of "usability" is not actual "usability."
We all know, at the end of the day, "usability" is how easy it is to accomplish one or more tasks, to a certain degree the ease at which you learn how to do these tasks, and lastly the predictability and reliability of accomplishing your tasks.
So, if something is easy to do, easy to learn, and rewards careful execution with consistent outcome, the thing is easy to use.
Now, where does flashy eye candy come in to that picture? It doesn't. That's why military vehicles are all drab colors. The criteria is utility not beauty.
Sure, I do *like* the way KDE 4 looks, but it is less usable than KDE 3.
Re:not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone who just needs to run a browser and word processor probably can't tell Windows 7 from KDE. Someone who needs to configure and administrate systems for an organisation certainly will.
True.
I actually had a long argument with my SO about Linux vs. Windows issue. My main point was this: whenever she experiences any trouble she still complains to me, and for me it is much easier to deal with Linux. So she gave it a try and it all went OK to her own surprise, she had no troubles using FF, Gimp and Pidgin.
But no punchline... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the end, they should have said:
"Have you ever heard of Linux?"
"What have you heard?"
"What you say if I told you this was Linux and not MS-Windows?"
Re:The two guys' bottom line is nearly correct (Score:5, Interesting)
Eye candy is a superficial metric (Score:3, Interesting)
Exercises like this might be fun, but they have no practical purpose.
Linux desktops aren't marketed, they are judged by their users based on useful metrics: configuration options, stability, tools, etc.
In Windows world, 95, XP, and Vista were all marketed to the public primarily by showing static screens illustrating how pretty they were. Windows' classic interface looks bland today, but it was hip in the 90's. XP's fisher price interface was a hackish step further. Aero is a half-hearted catchup maneuver to Linux and OSX, delivered in a business-minded blandness that only Microsoft thinks is "innovative". Each of those versions were marketed the same, but received differently based on almost everything except their appearance. No one has ever said UAC prompts are pretty, they're too busy being annoyed by them.
Which desktop is more visually attractive has little to do with how much can be done with it, and how efficiently.
Re:Thats it just show the eye candy. (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite piece of eye candy was the "static" when opening the photo.
When the hell is somebody going to fix that, and whos fault is it?
X? WM? Graphics Driver?
it's getting old.
Re:eye candy (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll second this. Xubuntu or Slackware with Xfce is very nice. It looks good without being distracting. It is very fast compared to the other full desktop/window managers and doesn't get in the way. Being based on Gtk it has similar customizations as gnome. KDE apps still run great under it as well. I keep trying Gnome & KDE but always go back to Xfce when I need to get some work done.
Set her up on another VT... (Score:5, Interesting)
I set up my wife on my PC on another virtual terminal - (ctl-alt-F8), it automatically logs her in on boot-up, and whenever she needs "her" stuff, it's all there for her. With all her own passwords. Plus, my "stuff" remains untouched - so whether I'm downloading torrents, or in the middle of composing an email, wp, graphic, presentation...it's all still there when she's done (ctl-alt-F7, back to me)
Simple.
cheers,
Re:Is KDE4 actually usable yet? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me that the solution to that would have been to call "4.0" "4-alpha". I'm not a big KDE user myself (I'm mostly forced to use Windows machines for my day to day workstations, and as often as not I just SSH into the servers to admin them), so I don't know what the issues are/were beyond what I've seen on /. comments, but it sure seem like they released a ".0" release without really finishing it. Which is what everyone screams at Microsoft for doing all the time. this little comment war breaks out every so often, and it always come back to "Well they/we admitted it was crap when they/we released it!". So why release it? Release the alpha as an alpha and release what is now 4.2 as the 4.0 release.
Not being either a developer or a (significant) user of the project I don't really have a horse in the race, but it sure seems like if a commercial product had done this kind of thing it would have been held up by the community as an example of why FOSS is better. Granted I don't usually pay $unspecified_large_amount_of_money to use KDE, so I guess that's something, but shouldn't a flag ship FOSS project hold itself to the same standards that it expects from its competitors?
Re:Is KDE4 actually usable yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
The question is: Is KDE 4.2 better than 3.5.x?
I've found that 4.2
* looks nice,
* is slow to draw things on the screen,
* still has fewer things working than its 3.5.x predecessor.
Although I found that I could alleviate most of the slow screen painting using desktop effects with KWin's composition manager. However, like all the other broken composition managers out there, you get a nice desktop that can't run 3D applications.
Lure them in with spinning cubes and wobbly windows and then break their hearts by telling them that all 4 of the 3D games that exist on Linux won't fucking work until they figure out a way to launch the game with the bling disabled.
If you can live on candy alone KDE 4.2 is for you. If you want something more nutritional, KDE 3.5, or Gnome (How ya doing Linus?).
It's been joked that 4.5 will be good again and then they'll start over. We'll see. Hopefully their "revolutionary" architecture changes allow for smaller incremental changes in the future. Unlike 3.5 which apparently had to be completely scrapped and rewritten from the ground up.
Re:eye candy (Score:3, Interesting)
now all you have to do is reliably and legally run all software that runs on windows
I can tell you right now that I have been using Linux exclusively since 1995. I have not missed *any* Windows software.
I have always had a good office suite. Applix, then Star Office, now OpenOffice. I have always had netscape. I have always had modern tools of the time.
So, why would I want to run Windows software that is inherently more buggy, not designed for my platform of choice, and does not give me the freedom to inspect what it does?
Answer: I don't want Windows software on my Linux box and I miss nothing.
Re:eye candy (Score:3, Interesting)
XFCE is nice, but I think Fluxbox is nicer still, especially when used with XFCE apps. It loads in less than a second but still manages to look rather nice [imageshack.us] with transparency and stuff. The best bit though, aside from its fleety-nimbleness, is that it allows user-definable, chained keyboard shortcuts (I have {Alt+x, Alt+z} mapped to 'screen -Rd', for example). It's freaking awesome.
I apologise for evangelizing, but I just love it so damn much.
Re:Linux is awesome, but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
No need for slurp either (Score:1, Interesting)
Back in CDE days on the HP boxes, a transparent square would shrink down and drop toward the bar if it was being minimised. If it minimised it went to the screen .you don't (if you're tidy) put your documents ON YOUR DESKTOP, you put them away below your desk in the folders.
What you DO put on your DESKTOP are the documents you are currently working on.
So executable icons on the desktop? No. That breaks the metaphor. Unless you're an untidy pig.
But even if it DID drop to a taskbar, there was no need for a slurp. We don't SEE things slurp. We may see them disappear out of the field of view, run to the distance or even scrunch up. We don't see a lot of slurping.
Which isn't a problem except that you use "slurp is good because it helps the metaphor" in your defense of it.
It's as much eye candy as wibbly windows.
Re:not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife does digital scrapbooking. She was using a cheapo scrapbooking app, but started to find it too limiting. She started to insist on a purchase of Photoshop, which I resisted. So she got the free trial version, played with it for 30 days and loved it. I asked her to give gimp the same 30 days, and she did. We never did make that Photoshop purchase - she has managed to find gimp tutorials online and even a dead-tree book that has all sorts of hints, tips, and ideas for gimp. Now she does all her scrapbooking in gimp. Maybe I'll be able to sneak a switch over to Gentoo from XP on her box now. :-)
She's no techie, she's artistic. (NOT AUtistic, ARtistic.) Took a bit to get over the learning curve to the point where she was productive, but it wasn't terribly worse than the learning curve for Photoshop.
Re:not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Same experience here with The Gimp. As long as SO hasn't become entrenched in using a particular non-free application, she grasps new free apps easily. I hadn't expected her to get used to the gimp (as every gimp article on /. might have you think) as quickly as she did. Perhaps not being English helps in this case :)
Getting her switched from Microsoft Office however is a different story. Having used it for years, she was wary about OOo and balked about not being able to find various options easily.
It goes to show that moving users from what they are comfortable with is a difficult process. If the new app doesn't have a clear win (Firefox + AdBlock for instance) users won't switch easily. But if the user is new to the domain, they will try it with an open mind and learn quickly.
Re:Dumb (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, what I told my Ubuntu box to do was to look on the network for a printer. Even easier than putting a disk in. Then, when the printer became really flaky and stopped talking in TCP, and only in Appletalk, I told it to look for a CUPS server on my wife's iMac. Still easier than putting a disk in.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Ubuntu for somebody who didn't specifically want a specifically Windows program. It's ready to roll from the start.
Re:What does it show? (Score:4, Interesting)
They DO act the same.
Point in fact, they don't. They have different action menus, options, etc. Dragging an icon from konqueror or dolphin creates something "different" and behaves differently than something from within dolphin or konqueror.
You've got it backwards.
Obviously I don't.
the Desktop as a folder AND as an interface is where you get things acting differently in different contexts.
"contexts" are bad things to users. Coming to a system it is difficult to grasp multiple contexts. Even as a regular user, "contexts" are a pain in the ass.
Would you like to write a document in a contextual editor like vim or OpenOffice.org?
The KDE4 desktop makes interface separate from data.
Yes, you've said basically that same thing previously and my response is the same, it is a bad idea.
You have to have a plasmoid to display a folder's contents if you want data on your desktop, which is completely in keeping with the concept.
The "plasmoid" is a cop-out for a well typed system. Why do you need plasmoids for the desktop but not in dolphin or konqueror? The desktop, conceptually, represents a physical space as does file cabinets. Just like your real 3D desk, why would a piece of paper be something different on your desk than in a file cabinet?
This is the foundation of UI design. Our lizard brains want things to be consistent.
They also always act the same... you never see a folder on the desktop in KDE4
And that is something I dislike as well. I *like* and would prefer to use folders on my desktop, because in the real 3d world, I keep things on my desk. Up until Kubuntu 8.10, I used my desktop they way I wanted to use my desktop.
you never see a program icon.
Why not? I keep things like my ipod on my desk, a couple USB drives, etc. By making the desktop artificially restricted -- "different" -- from the rest of the system you make it less easy to use.
It's in a plasmoid or in the file browser
A "file browser" corresponds to a real world entity. A file cabinet. What does a "plasmoid" represent?
What is the perpose of introducing a new concept? What does it answer? How does it make the system more usable? I've read a lot of the KDE discussions about plasmoids and they are all about an aesthetic preference from a few people, but not one discussion about how they are better or easier for end users.
It's doing exactly what you say is good, but you keep claiming that it's bad.
Then you are confused about what I have said.
Re:not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, this is a point of contention between me and my wife... Ocassionally, when Im on the computer she wants to check her hotmail email or stuff, and becomes angry when I tell her she cannot login into Pidgin unless she does it from her own user account.
"But MSN in Windows allows you to sign out and sign in again with a different username!" She says
"Yeah, but UNIX has a different philosophy, every user should have its own desktop and its own settings!"
"Why? You and all your Linux friends are a bunch of paranoid idiots! What's the point of so many passwords? Who do you think is going to try to hack you?"
"[sigh] You can then reboot into windows when I'm done with this..."
Re:eye candy (Score:2, Interesting)
Compiz is probably the most customizable WM-ish thing there is. If you don't like bling, turn the bling off. But, there are a lot of useful gems in there that are both non-distracting and useful. Plugins like Scale and Expo don't get in your face until you decide to use them. Even window shadows are useful if you are using multiple desktops. The shadows help you acclimate yourself to the window depths faster when you switch desktops (which means you need less bling to understand this concept).
I use mostly text based apps on my machine (mutt/newsbeuter/irssi and Firefox with vimperator) but, I still run gnome with Compiz. The reason is that it offers more and often easier ways to do what I want. Compiz has two main purposes, 1) To do cool things that aren't useful. 2) To do useful things that change the way you use your desktop.
I don't have any buttons on my window frames (no close/min/max buttons) because with compiz (and a good machine), they are pointless. I generally have about 15-20 windows open on a 2x2 desktop. I can see all of them with a single keystroke and select the one I want to view in multiple ways. If I'm using the touchpad during some light browsing, I have screen corners that make it unnecessary to use the keyboard. If I'm coding, I have vi like keybinds that can do the same thing.
Nothing else offers the functionality/configurability of compiz. But, it takes some time to make it work exactly how you want if you are a power user. The real question is, are you willing to accept how people think you should use your machine or are you willing to spend some time tweaking it to your needs. For the latter, there is literally nothing better than compiz.
Re:not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mojave_Experiment#Reception [wikipedia.org]
"Participants weren't asked to work with peripheral devices (such as printers or scanners), nor were they asked about compatibility with older software or hardware.[4] Participants did not have an opportunity to try the software themselves[2], but were only demonstrated certain features by a salesman."
So while calling it Mojave prevented the bad hype from geeks, they still showed it to people in a very limited capacity that didn't actually show any of the things that were being criticized. Mojave proved very little, and this video is sort of analogous to that.
With as much certainty as the Mojave Experiment provided us with, this video demonstrates that Linux and KDE are indeed desktop ready and 100% compatible With windows. It's only when you tell users that it's not Windows that they start believing the M£ propaganda and claim that all of a sudden they can't run GTA4.