Shuttleworth's Take On GNOME 3.0, Coordination with Debian 320
suka writes "In a fresh interview with derStandard.at, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth talks about GNOME 3.0 — its strengths, but also about what he thinks is missing. He also mentions ongoing talks for a common meta-release-cycle with Debian which could delay the next LTS."
Pulse Audio is what I worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not worried about X breakages, personally. I even have an Intel 945G and I can live with the problems its causing. What I can't live with is the extreme instability of Pulse Audio. It crashes my apps contstantly from broken pipes. OK, people should be checking their pipes. But Pulse Audio itself crashes very frequently (about every hour or so on my machine). Rhythmbox won't go for more than 10 minutes without either crashing or audio failing. This is incredibly bad for me.
I realize that it's probably due to older, underpowered hardware (3 year old cheap laptop), but this should not be happening. I've yanked Pulse Audio from my machine altogether now and it's a lot more stable. I was also getting lock ups in Firefox every hour or so. Now that I've dumped Pulse Audio, I've only had one lock up in the past 3 days (still can't figure that one out -- related to video drivers???).
So, I plead with Ubuntu developers: either fix Pulse Audio, or punt it. The extra features it has is *not* worth the massive pain that some people experience.
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What I can't live with is the extreme instability of Pulse Audio. It crashes my apps contstantly from broken pipes. OK, people should be checking their pipes.
Everyone wanted to run ted stevens out on a rail, but he could have made laws to protect us from defective tubes!
I realize that it's probably due to older, underpowered hardware
they're not lead are they?
BAM.. yeah.. i just did that..*cheesy music and stage hook NOW*
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There's more problems than just pulse audio, there are too many daemons appearing in general. Stuff like gnome-pty-helper, gnome-keyring, ssh-agent, consolekit, hal-addon-storage, gconfd. All this stuff is fine on general purpose machines when the user mainly engages in browsing, multimedia, IM and office apps. The problems arise when you want to do something demanding like A/V work, with distros increasingly integrating services for the common usage case it's becoming increasingly difficult to get a usa
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So why not use the alternate installer and only install what you want? start with a minimal install and build from there. You aren't locked into the "desktop cd install" ffs.
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There's more problems than just pulse audio, there are too many daemons appearing in general. Stuff like gnome-pty-helper, gnome-keyring, ssh-agent, consolekit, hal-addon-storage, gconfd. All this stuff is fine on general purpose machines when the user mainly engages in browsing, multimedia, IM and office apps. The problems arise when you want to do something demanding like A/V work, with distros increasingly integrating services for the common usage case it's becoming increasingly difficult to get a usable setup on older hardware.
While a multitude of daemons might be a problem from the perspective of memory usage (if they're not properly written), they should have almost zero effect on your CPU and A/V work.
The reason is that the vast majority of system daemons sit waiting for input via sockets or pipes. There is no polling involved because this is an OS-level task. The daemon tries to read from its socket/pipe and it essentially goes to sleep. The kernel doesn't even need to touch it because it knows what the daemon is waiting f
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I left Ubuntu at the start of the year after 4 relatively happy years - PulseAudio was one of my biggest complaints.
Even if I could have got it working properly, I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get my computer to play sounds.
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DITO - with 8.10 I had to buy a webcam just so I would not get delay on my microphone when skyping. After 9.04 not even that workaround worked any longer. I have since switched to Arch even though that is likely not what I want either. I wish I was a millionaire and had money to hire a dev-team to create a proper linux distro.
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Whats the point of it? my problem with pulseaudio is I'm getting all these bugs but i cant see a singe case where its better than a tricked out alsa setup (well actually it does deal well with simultaneous log-ins, but I'm sure that could have been edged into alsa without as many problems as PA brought). Perhaps the problem is distros have invested a fair bit of time in it, and now they're in the longest que for the bar but don't want to switch because while they would get served sooner, they'd have to acce
Re:Pulse Audio is what I worry about (Score:5, Interesting)
The pathetic thing is that I've never had trouble with it because I go to the website and read the Pulseaudio/Perfectsetup document. It's too bad none of the distribution or even package maintainers seem to want to read it, ESPECIALLY Ubuntu which does things WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Insightful)
They rushed to release 4.0 and since then I'm still struggling to have all the features I used to have in KDE v3.5.
And, more important, I hope that Ubuntu people won't trash GNOME v2 from night to day like they did with KDE v3.5.
Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Insightful)
What KDE4 proofed is that you can also sit down and have really interesting conceptual changes that get introduced as big shifts.
What KDE4 proofed is that if you make really awful software that is full of bugs even long term fans will switch to using an alternative.
Actually, they will. (Score:3, Informative)
Linus did.
Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:4, Informative)
What went wrong was that distro put in the new version far too early.
I have never really liked gnome... It always seems to consume the ram like a windows desktop...
Same on OS X/PPC (Score:5, Interesting)
I use that version on OS X, thanks to Fink project. While they don't promise any kind of 'final' version at this state, I can easily keep KDE 4 applications in my OS X Dock, using them instead of iTunes for example.
They are linked to actual OS X frameworks, down to Quicktime and very interestingly they use far less CPU and resources than regular OS X apps.
There are similar reports from Windows users who binary installed it and using Amarok 2 etc. right now. While on it, is there any reason why KDE 3.5 given up when KDE 4 installed? I keep using KDE 3.5 suite on OS X too. It doesn't conflict with anything at all including KDE 4.
I think what KDE 4 is and what a huge revolution it is will be understood in 1-2 years. For example when Nokia and other members of open source Symbian foundation starts using it in some form in their smart phones.
Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Informative)
OSX 10.0 was crap, hell even Microsoft needed 3 years after Vista (with some major architecture changes).
It just takes too much time the achieve feature/stability/usability parity with the old system no matter how needed those major under-the-hood changes were.
So sorry, Gnome will take the same path as everyone else and sites will rush to declare 3.0 "A Major Disappointment". What you can hope for, though, is that distros won't be so braindead to drop Gnome 2 immediately after the 3.0 release.
Honestly, there was a time when distributions were concerned about providing a usable user experience instead of just grabbing all the latest stuff, add their configuration tools and ship that crap. See PulseAudio, great idea, terrible execution on every single fucking distro I've tried.
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If people had listened to what the KDE community said they'd still be on 3.5.10.
Slackware is probably one of the last ones to switch, as it's 12.2 is still KDE 3.5, but current is on 4.2.
Don't blame KDE for the mistakes of stupid distro-admins with no respect for their user community.
Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Interesting)
The KDE 4.0 release was a total management cock up from start to finish but it did have some positive sides. If they hadn't released it as 4.0 a lot of people wouldn't have tried it out and therefore they wouldn't have found as many issues as they did. They certainly should have worked more closely with the main KDE distributions to make it clear to end users they 4.0 was going to be a dog. With hindsight I think it would have been better to have held off on 4.0 until it was 4.1 quality. That way they would have got most of the user testing but without so much of the "I want to stab you in the eyes for making me ruin my machine".
I don't hold out much hope for Gnome bringing great new things to the party. I try it out every now and then but it just doesn't do it for me in the same way that KDE does. All the Gnome LAFs look terribly dated dumbed down. While I don't spend my days admiring the widgets used in my applications I prefer to look at something that is pleasing to the eye just like I would rather the view from my house was green fields rather than a rubbish dump.
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Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmmm, it wasn't from KDE's perspective. It's the way things have always worked. The KDE developers set themselves some goals for KDE 4.0 and they achieved them - mainly API and ABI stability. What happened was that distributors then blindly started compiling and packaging it and then whinging when they found out that their users weren't too happy with it. Virtually all distributors are braindead when it comes to putting together a whole system and looking intelligently at the software they want to use. It's why we have PulseAudio being thrown into desktop systems today. That thing isn't stable at all, let alone feature complete.
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Re:Not the KDE4 way, plase (Score:5, Interesting)
people pick up a .0 release and are surprised its not as polished and featureful as a .5? WTF?
The kde4.0 snafu really highlighted a problem in ubuntu->KDE communication, other distros got that kde4.0 would be rough around the edges and at least offered kde3.5or shipped their 4.0 with a lot of patches ect. I tend to follow kde developement from afar and I've always know that kde4.3 is the first kde4 that is end user ready.
No, distribution packagers decided KDE 4.0 was good enough to include in their releases so it got sent out to a lot of people. I don't know if you tried 4.0, but I did. It was horrible. Saying, "it was not as polished and featureful," does not describe what happened with 4.0. KDE 4.0 was a huge, massive step backwards in functionality that should never have been considered for release. It was barely alpha-grade software at release time. It still contains idiotic major achitectural mistakes (like what amounts to an entirely new, and needlessly separate windowing system for the Plasma widgets) and requires a major reorganization to what goes where (I can never find the right submenu / screen to make adjustments because they're split over too many unrelated interfaces).
Blaming the users is shortsighted. Blaming the distro packagers makes some sense. But placing blame on the KDE team for the total cockup that was 4.0 is putting it where it is due. KDE4 is inching toward consistency and usability, but what we have NOW is what should have been the original release -- ignoring the massive mistakes in the redesign that remain deeply baked into Plasma.
The message here is simple: if you're going to radically redesign a product with a large user base, don't release the replacement until it's in much better condition than for minimal changes. With 4.0 and the introduction of Plasma, the KDE team should have (beyond being struck repeatedly with a two-by-four for being frelling nincompoops) skipped a release cycle in order to get things into better shape.
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Evidently, my problem is trusting a release.
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Hardy's support doesn't end until April 2011.
> but for some reason the end users started using it
The blame for that lays squarely on the shoulders of the Kubuntu team and others like it that shoved 4.x down everyone's throat and cut off 3.5 support. It wasn't the users' fault. With anything later than Hardy, you either use 4.x or you use Gnome. Some choice.
Running Hardy, because every release since then has sucked.
--
BMO
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Since 4.2, KDE works just fine. I use it all day long and have no trouble with it.
The early releases were majorly broken though. Why they made it into the distros is beyond me.
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> Since 4.2, KDE works just fine.
No, it doesn't. Especially packaged as it is by Kubuntu. I had gone off to SuSE to find a working KDE 4.x and got it, mostly. I then updated to 4.3Beta and was encouraged even more, but when fish:// broke, I went back to Hardy.
4.3 Final will probably be the actual "good release" in my estimation *if it is not rushed*. 4.0-4.3RC were in no way, shape, or form ready for release to the world.
> Why they made it into the distros is beyond me.
If they were to be in the di
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And then, what about all subsequent releases untill now? Are all of them "not for the end user"?
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I think this is what hes trying to address
Debian release team. So the Debian release team has indicated that they are very open - not about a release date but a freeze date. That freeze date would be the time where we sit around and look at all the major components and decide what the major versions would be that we collaborate around. There is no pressure that we have to agree on everything, but just actually having the conversation is useful for any upstreams who care about this information.
I understand why kubuntu choose to jump the shark (they thought it was easier to shift people to kde4.x and help get it working*, than "waste" time supporting an old version of their second rate DE), and while i belive they were wrong, i switched to debian, I'm glad that they are moving to address the problem.
*Probably not the best call as ubuntu has more end users pre developer(esque) people than most distros.
so I'll have no choice but to upgrade to Karmic
There are other distros *cough*debian lenny still has 3.
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From what I've heard EVERYTHING is a bit slow and buggy on Fedora these days. *duck*
Yay! Fixing 100 Paper Cuts! (Score:4, Informative)
https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts [launchpad.net]
Don't include Gnome 3 in the next LTS (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a Ubuntu advocate (more of a Fedora/RHEL person really) but if the well documented problems with KDE 4 are anything to go by then including Gnome 3 in the next LTS release of Ubuntu would be IMHO a big mistake.
An LTS release deserves to be of the highest quality from Day 1. To me it would be madness to base an LTS release on anything Gnome 3.0.
IMHO an Ubuntu LTS release whould be the desktop equivalent to RHEL or SLED in terms of stability. If it is not then you have shot yourselves in the foot. If this means being conservative in package selection then so be it.
Re:Don't include Gnome 3 in the next LTS (Score:5, Insightful)
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The same metrics will apply to RHEL 6. If this comes out in the same timefram as the next Ubuntu LTS then I would be willing to bet that they won't include Gnome 3.0 in release.
RHEL 5 has a service/support life of 7 years so RedHat are in the same boat and manage quite well to keep support going.
If Canonical are going to get into long term support on a serious basis then they need to adopt the same sort of conservatism in package selection as RedHat do. Perhaps getting burnt by Gnome 3 might be a lesson wor
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Beyond stability, also consider the category of the release, "Long-Term Support." Not nessicarily "most stable," but "most usable for the next five years," is what is being prioritized.
If you remember back to last year, there was debate over whether it was right to put Firefox 3 Alpha in the 8.04 LTS. The few holdouts still using Firefox 2 seem to mostly be people who dislike the awesome bar; even Mozilla's dropped support for Firefox 2 last year. Imagine if Canonical had kept with the "more stable" version
GTK (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, GTK+ is due for an overhaul. Fix the damn file picker. Get rid of all that excessive padding, maybe by making it themeable. Some consistency in menuitem dimensions would be nice.
Also, either give Metacity some features, at least the bare essentials, or switch to another window manager. That non-optional minimize effect is cringe worthy.
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Jesus, the GTK file picker is not what people should be spending time on - it's already much, much better than the file picker in any other GUI framework.
Re:GTK (Score:5, Insightful)
The GTK file picker is quite possibly the worst file picker I have ever seen. Even Windows 3.1's crappy stuff was better - it might not support long filenames, but at least it didn't require one extra click in order to do anything useful.
Seriously, "browse for other folders"? I still maintain that the genius who thought that up needs to be shot.
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Seems like it's a big divide. Personally I much prefer the Gnome file picker over any other, but it has been ages (seems like years) since I last had to use "browse for other folders". No, that's not because I only ever dump stuff in a single folder, that's just because it's always expanded on my machines. I've got a couple of QT apps installed on my home machine and the file picker in their feels like a big step backwards to the old Windows days. The "places" and the cookie crumb for location can be very u
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Seems like it's a big divide. Personally I much prefer the Gnome file picker over any other, but it has been ages (seems like years) since I last had to use "browse for other folders". No, that's not because I only ever dump stuff in a single folder, that's just because it's always expanded on my machines. I've got a couple of QT apps installed on my home machine and the file picker in their feels like a big step backwards to the old Windows days. The "places" and the cookie crumb for location can be very useful.
If you have Jaunty and Gnome, the Qt apps (not KDE apps) use the Gtk file dialog by default. Try it out.
Re:GTK (Score:4, Insightful)
Picking a directory is tedious and unintuitive. When I just click the OK button to pick the current directory, nothing happens. I have to click an empty space in the directory, to 'select it', first. When I use the crumbtrail to navigate to a parent directory, it automatically selects the child directory I just came from. When I click OK does it pick the current directory, or the selected directory? Who knows. When I open the file picker later it always opens in the parent directory of the previously picked one. Why in the parent?
There are many usability problems with the current file picker.
Re:GTK (Score:5, Insightful)
Now admittedly maybe this only manifests when you're using small interface fonts (I'm using 7pt here, for reference). Taking GIMP's menus as an example, menu items with images are significantly larger than ones without - a full 25% larger (20 vs 16 px). I don't have a huge number of gtk apps on my system to check this in, but inkscape and wireshark seem to have the same issue.
This is a pet peeve of mine too. Bearing a striking resemblance to one I remember from Apple Mac systems pre colour monitors, the current design of the filepicker was in no way an improvement.
For some reason or another the "location" text field is hidden by default (and even when shown, is oddly not populated by default with the path to the current directory). What could have been useful breadcrumb-style navigation buttons were added, except all but the one representing the current directory is hidden until you click a different button (this is despite there being the entire width of the file picker for them to fill). The lack of switchable view modes in the file listing is mystifying, it seems to display "thumbnails" of images when browsing, but it doesn't seem to be possible to make those thumbnails any bigger than 16x16px.
Also the effect that draws big bold black rectangles on your screen to indicate the borders of hidden windows while alt-tabbing. Something regrettably KDE copied. I don't need this, if I wanted to waste my time with annoying and ultimately useless visual effects I'd install compiz.
In reality, once it has become difficult or event impossible to make the system behave in a manner conducive to it actually being useful for anything, it's time to look elsewhere. As I often have to remind people, just because they are happy with the default settings doesn't mean everyone will be.
GNOME 3.0 sneak preview (Score:5, Funny)
You login, which you don't actually have to do anymore because it was too complicated, and you're presented with a fullscreen dialog box that says:
"You are too fucking stupid to use this computer. You don't understand files and folders and things. Click OK to shutdown your computer. Your computer will shutdown in 28 seconds anyway, because you're probably too stupid to work the mouse. That's the thing underneath your hand. What? That's the thing attached to your arm. Ah, fuck it. 20 seconds."
That's pretty much the entire GNOME 3.0 experience. The dialog box has been in development for the last 18 months, but obviously there's still a lot of usability testing left to do, mostly by Redhat and Canonical "engineers". The OK button logic was originally written in C but they've redone that in C# running on Mono, and Miguel de Icaza is already calling the work "superb".
Meanwhile, the KDE people have been busy readying the next batch of widgets that you will never add to your exciting K desktop experience.
Future plans for GNOME involve reducing the 3.0 dialog box down to a single pixel, then translating the status of that pixel into the power LED on your computer. This will remove the need for a display, further simplying the desktop experience and reducing enterprise costs. KDE plans to turn its entire desktop into a widget of itself, allowing you to remove it entirely with a single right-click.
Yes, my friends: the future of the Linux desktop is no more fucking Linux desktop. What a relief.
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Yea, and I like how the "Files and folders confuse people" comes across. Seriously, if files and folders confuses you, you might want to reevaluate your need to use a computer.
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This is exactly why I hated it when MS started ramming the new term "folders" down our throats. The word "directories" suited better, as it did not conjour up invalid analogies in the minds of newbies. Now instead of just having to explain what a directory is, I now have to explain what a folder is AS WELL AS how it's not like a real folder.
Folders before windows (Score:4, Interesting)
Wouldn't surprise me if it goes back to xerox alto.
That doesn't mean that it's ultimately helpful, but it's so entrenched it seems harder tho change it than to fix it.
"folder" considered harmful (Score:3, Interesting)
MS-DOS has DIR command, not FOL. Can't blame the early DOS jockeys for this though, cause they just borrowed the convention from VMS.
At least this is one thing that MS, DEC and Unix can all agree on: "directory" is correct, and "folder" is dumb.
Re:"folder" considered harmful (Score:4, Informative)
MS-DOS has DIR command
LOL. Speaking of consistency (or the lack thereof), consider the following Powershell commands and their respective aliases (I'm going by memory here so someone correct me if I'm incomplete):
The default aliases seem to include both DOS and *nix commands, and DOS (or some stench of it), seems to be alive and well despite being officially killed off when Win2000 was released.
So, in the Microsoft world, we've gone from using 'directory' in DOS, to 'folder' in Windows, to 'Items', 'Locations' and '-type Directory' in PowerShell. No wonder everyone's confused. ;-)
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Would you care to enlighten me on what exactly is the problem? As an experienced computer user I probably don't see the forest for all the trees, so could you please describe what the problem is?
Thanks.
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
In meatspace:
They are almost synonymous. So someone with a non-computer background won't intuitively know which one is supposed to contain which.
In computer lingo:
So it's completely unintuitive.
I think the word 'file' has its roots from the days when a 'record' was still a fundamental concept. So a 'record' is a sheet of paper, a 'file' contains a bundle of records.
I prefer 'directory'. At least then it doesn't push a false analogy on an already confused mind.
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I see, thank you very much. That would also suggest that most of the icons representing directories are bad, because what they usually represent is a folder/file in meatspace terms. Am I right?
Hmm, I guess I never really thought about this stuff, but I can see how somebody deeply entrenched in meatspace terminology would have a problem with this. But does that really apply to most people - or won't most people have no problem learning the new meanings?
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:5, Funny)
Waitress: Morning! ...meatspace meatspace meatspace egg and meatspace; meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace baked beans meatspace meatspace meatspace... ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and meatspace.
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and meatspace; egg bacon and meatspace; egg bacon sausage and meatspace; meatspace bacon sausage and meatspace; meatspace egg meatspace meatspace bacon and meatspace; meatspace sausage meatspace meatspace bacon meatspace tomato and meatspace;
Vikings: meatspace meatspace meatspace meatspace...
Waitress:
Vikings: meatspace! Lovely meatspace! Lovely meatspace!
Waitress:
Wife: Have you got anything without meatspace?
Waitress: Well, there's meatspace egg sausage and meatspace, that's not got much meatspace in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY meatspace!
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:4, Interesting)
In computer-space we have either directories/files or folders/documents.
In any case, word excel and powerpoint documents can contain multiple sheets of paper, and I see a lot of people take that to extremes - for example having all the day's letters contained in one word document, or every single spreadsheet they work on in one excel document.
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
In computer-space we have either directories/files or folders/documents.
MS Windows uses "Files" and "Folders". Actually, the type of a folder is "File Folder". A "document" is a subtype of "file", because a "file" can also be an "application" or "program". A "file" could also be an "archive", which contains "files" and "folders". Some "archives" are called "cabinets". And of course all these files, folders, archives, cabinets, etc. can be seen in windows. Of course to be able to see those windows you first need to use a key, to open the lock. And to add protection from outsiders to see you files, etc. we have walls of fire. All the files, folders, etc. are stored on something called "drives"... why on earth are they not called "rooms"? And I wonder where the "roof" is in all this stuff.
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:4, Funny)
I think more people would expect it to be a wall of fire.
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, word excel and powerpoint documents can contain multiple sheets of paper, and I see a lot of people take that to extremes - for example having all the day's letters contained in one word document, or every single spreadsheet they work on in one excel document.
During the late 80s/early 90s I worked for a firm that had a satellite office with a single PC which was running Wordpress on DOS. The secretary there had a single document containing every single letter she had typed over the past three years. She typed letters for an office of 15 engineers and regularly wrote several every day.
Worse still, when she opened it (fortunately just the once per day) she would press the down cursor key repeatedly until she got to the last line. She spent approximately half an hour doing this I asked her how she found an old letter to check, and she replied it would be in the filing cabinet behind her. No matter ho many times I tried to show her how to use individual files, she went back to this single document. I once discovered we had no backup of this single file (it was saved outside of the document directory) and I still have the occasional nightmares about it.
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In any case, word excel and powerpoint documents can contain multiple sheets of paper, and I see a lot of people take that to extremes - for example having all the day's letters contained in one word document, or every single spreadsheet they work on in one excel document.
And for those types, I recommend a clue bat be applied, liberally until they get the message that one mistake and the whole day is gone. Sheesh. Makes me more FOR a license to run a computer all the time. If they are so fond of a format
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I don't think so. How many times have you heard someone say: "Put that paper in the file" or indeed, "Put those papers in the folder".
You'll find people are more likely to say: "Do you have those files?", or "What's in that folder?".
A file was always a ordered collection of papers/photos/data on a singular topic. A folder was always a place where you put
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I don't think so. How many times have you heard someone say: "Put that paper in the file" or indeed, "Put those papers in the folder".
You'll find people are more likely to say: "Do you have those files?", or "What's in that folder?".
We *may* have stumbled on a US vs UK issue here. Where the rest of the world sits, who knows?
Definitely in the UK, you would go to a stationer's and buy a "file" in which to keep paperwork. "Put that paper in a file" is something you'd expect to hear, and is exactly equivalent to "Put that paper in a folder".
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The problem isn't actually with the system. It's actually with users who cannot and will not adopt any method or organisation over their own files. Admittedly, the default folders most programs obnoxiously set complicates things, but the proof of the pudding is when you ask someone where their files are and they give you a helpless stare. Sometimes they have been using computers, and these very files, for years. yet they have absolutely no idea what a file is, where their files are, or even of their existence outside of the context of the exact program that manipulates them.
This is true, and in a way the "File->Save" UI reinforces it. You type in a name, you don't think about where the CWD is, and when you "File->Open..." all your documents are there.
Sun's old OpenWindows had a nice UI which might have helped with this. The text editor app had an icon in the corner representing the file you had open. To save, you dragged that icon to a file window. To open, you dragged an icon from the file window on to that part of the text editor. It means your save is not separate fro
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I think the word 'file' has its roots from the days when a 'record' was still a fundamental concept. So a 'record' is a sheet of paper, a 'file' contains a bundle of records.
This makes sense, some historical information can be found by looking at the ASCII control character assignments. Look at the end of the control characters, in reverse order they were supposed to be larger and larger block separators:
SPACE (word separator)
US (unit separator, like between columns in a table)
RS (record separator, a row in
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or you could be less elitist and realise that we're far beyond having to manually file things in this day and age, indeed that is something the computer was meant to eradicate.
A tagged document repository (with versioning history) would be best. Coupled with desktop search and changing the system file open window to be one that lets you use said search and tags to find the file instead of clicking through folders. Most files people want are more recent, so a default view of reverse chronological for the filetypes the application supports would be best.
You do, of course, still need a traditional filesystem view of this repository, and that is probably where the work will go in. Sure, tags could be folders, and you could have multiple ways of drilling down to the same file. You'd probably have a folder hierarchy that shows the most used tags at the highest level, then each subfolder is really a tag filter.
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Yeah.
It would be a file library like itunes is a media library. File management would be done by the implementation instead of directly (unless you wanted to, we shouldn't take functionality away).
Some applications could use tag-discovery libraries to automate tag generation.
I'd hope it wouldn't be called "Tagged Document Repository" in the end-user documentation or presentation.
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I've been pushing this for the last six months. I think that the best example of how to use a tagging system already exists in programs like F-Spot. A tree-like tag system goes on the left. A time-line goes on top. The files are in the main pane in reverse chronological order. Double-clicking takes the main pane into "view" mode and embeds a document, image, or video viewer. Click the "edit" button to open an editor.
The "open file" dialog in applications would be the file browser with a filter for supported
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Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sooner or later, everyone re-invents VMS.
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:4, Informative)
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist [gnome.org]
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds great to me - obviously you wouldn't call it that though!
Consider gmail "labels" vs traditional email/imap folders - labels are both easier to use for novices and more flexible for capable users.
YMMV, as ever.
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The GTK file open windows do in fact integrate desktop search, as well as a recently used file list, although the standard folder view is the default, and the search and recent options are not especially prominent. I've only recently got into the habit of using them, and they certainly are, a lot of the time, far superior to digging through some confusing mess of folders.
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Exactly, so the whole 'Desktop' metaphor, including the silly unintuitive dragging about of pictures to various obscure effects on the underlying file-system has come and gone.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Glad I can still type things like 'cp -a' and 'mv'.
Re:The only thing I got out of TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
In Unix-y filesystems, you don't put files in folders. You put files in the filesystem, where they get a number (inode number). Then you can set up other special files (directories) to act as indices, linking names to the inode number - as many as you want. Voila - nest-able tags (albeit not versioned in most filesystems.)
(Actually, if Unix hadn't insisted on banning '/' and NUL from filenames, a directory could in fact link arbitrary binary data to inode numbers. Bit of a missed opportunity there
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Or you could do what MacOS does to hide the unix filesystem from the user.
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Thanks.
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OK, a little explanation:
Why is it so hard for people to grasp files and folders?
You have a folder. You put files in this folder. You may put other folders inside this one.
Really. Someone gives you a confused look, throw a couple manila folders in their face and ask them to put paper in them. Then, if they continue to be confused, slap them.
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Really. Someone gives you a confused look, throw a couple manila folders in their face and ask them to put paper in them.
Here in the UK at least, many people would call those manila folders "files".
And since when have you called paper "file"?
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Seriously, if files and folders confuses you, you might want to reevaluate your need to use a computer.
A bit harsh, but I'd agree otherwise. I think the problem is that for those that do understand the concepts of files and directories, they balk at the idea of having to use them.
Granted it's possible that the average person in daily life has an aversion to organisation, but what I see is a relatively recent and often shrill insistence that their computer (and, by extension, the applications they use) shou
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And then there's the bit that always gets me (and which annoys me with some of the Firefox 3 results and can be a touch annoying with too many Gnome Do extensions): They also want to to magically understand what they meant when they try to find files from the magical file system.
People have these fan
(OT) smart systems that suck: Wolfram Alpha. (Score:5, Interesting)
you might enjoy this article (or perhaps you've already read it?): http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram-alpha-and-hubristic-user.html [blogspot.com]
I know I did.
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I think it would be interesting if gnome users could create folders with similar semantics to the garbage bin. You could put multiple files in the container regardless
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I think there are multiple ways to take this.
One is whether you can answer a couple simple questions: where is this program's executable located, and where is its configuration located? Though in theory there are standards for this, in practice they're not followed or don't really solve the problem. The executable may end up in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /opt/bin, /opt/local/bin, etc., etc. The configuration may be in a dotfile in your home directory, it may be in multiple files in on
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My wife has her own filing system. Everything she is currently working on goes on the desktop. Her files are arranged geometrically into "folders". She has a hierarchy in her mail system. Everything outside there is pretty ad-hoc. He system drives me mad, but what can I do? Its her system.
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The only platform I've seen tackle this in anything approaching a consistent way is OS X
And the BSDs.
where you know that there's a directory where the applications live, and you can easily predict where the configuration will be ... Simply getting a consistent standard for this on Linux distros would be a big win.
The above isn't relevant to the article as Shuttlesworth was talking about the "every-day user experience" relative to the "Where is my stuff?" question. Feature-filled desktop environments is wha
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Yea, and I like how the "Files and folders confuse people" comes across. Seriously, if files and folders confuses you, you might want to reevaluate your need to use a computer.
It certainly would be nice if only people qualified to use a computer did so, but it won't happen any time soon.
Even people who have lived with computers all their lives still have no idea how they work. All they know are a handful of applications and MSN messenger.
That's because to most of the population, computers are utterly boring.
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It certainly would be nice if only people qualified to use a computer did so, but it won't happen any time soon.
Would it be nice? I don't think it would. If only people who are "qualified" to use a computer did so, we'd still be paying $3000 for Pentium I-era technology. The vast majority of computer purchasers buy their computers to do something else with them, not to become computer experts. It's that large market that allows for the economies of scale that drive processing power up, and price down. Without those "unqualified" computer users, computing would still be an expensive hobby.
Re:No need to be catty (Score:4, Insightful)
But they don't get hierarchies, because hierarchies don't exist in nature.
I'd have to disagree with you here. The very words we use to describe hierarchies come from nature - look at 'trunk' / 'branch' / 'leaf', 'parent' / 'child', 'master' / 'slave'. Maybe they don't instantly, intuitively get the idea when it's used as a metaphor, but that's partly vocabulary. They'll get it quickly enough if you explain to them that a 'folder' or 'directory' is a box, and a 'file' is a bit of paper that you can write on, and you can put either paper or boxes in any box.
If they don't 'get it' when it's explained that simply, then they're below the mental cutoff for that level of abstract thought. Many people (for instance) struggle to execute a sequence of simple instructions, and cannot solve even simple logic problems. They literally don't have the mental machinery required to visualise three different entities and the relationships between them, "A is next to B and B contains C". I'm not saying they're 'idiots' or that they're worthless, they just don't have abstract thought among their strengths.
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A branch in real life is not part of a hierarchy. It's just a piece of wood attached to a tree; it's not contained in the tree in any way.
And no, explaining doesn't fix this problem. People know how hierarchies work; they just don't get them. They are not sure how to properly categorize things, and if they decide on a given hierarchy, later, they won't remember where they decided to put things because there's no naturally correct way of categorizing files. There's no obvious taxonomy; the problem becomes ev
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Actually, hierarchies really don't exist in nature. They *almost* fit how things work in nature, but every once and a while someone throws in multiple inheritance like the platypus, or someone who is both a "Student" and an "Employee", or in the family hierarchy someone will throw in a redneck or Polynesian population to gun the works. It's even worse. Sometimes, things that you thought were part of the hierarchy (e.g. in the animal kingdom, has wings versus doesn't have wings) really should be attributes s
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The trunk of a tree has large branches coming off it. Each branch has a number of smaller twigs coming off it, on the twigs, there are a number of leaves.
The moon goes round the Earth, the Earth go around the Sun. The Sun in turn goes around the Galactic center
Hierarchy's exist in nature if you look for them...
GNOME 3's solution for files and folders (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm suprised Shuttleworth didn't mention Zeitgeist [gnome.org], which is a solution to the difficulty of manually managing files and folders and is, as I understand it, being considered for inclusion in GNOME 3. The basic idea is to group files (and other activities, like web bookmarks and email contents) automatically according to human-relevant criteria, like "edited last week" or "related to this document I'm writing." It's still very much a work in progress, but it looks like it could be pretty great.
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Re:GNOME 3's solution for files and folders (Score:5, Interesting)
What's it with this "i am too stupid to put a file in a folder, and therefore it is too difficult" "philosophy"?
I have tested every single one of those "automatic" and "intelligent" file management methods, and they always resulted in massive chaos, that was never the case with simple file systems and soft links. The problem was, that you could never be sure if a file was completely gone, in what "folders/categories/tags/whatevers" is still existed, sometimes moving files was a major hassle, and sometimes it was completely impossible to organize the files in they way I wanted (and always did with normal files and folders), because those "intelligent" methods were way to stupid, simple, and yet overly complicated. Or in other words: They had the elegance of a hillbilly Godzilla in high heels, stumbling down a red carpet at the Oscars.
If you want to make it actually better, create an ontology. Make it a semantic system. Just let it be elegant, clean and efficient at the core. And then add a properly fitting new UI concept to it, that completely throws the old models and analog-analogies away.
Then you will get a system that makes sense.
I still wait for someone doing such an ontology right.
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Oh, and there'll be a new theme by the next LTS.
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Feeding the troll, I know, but Google Chrome is not using Gnome or KDE because GC is designed to be a minimum functionality netbook distro, not a fully functional desktop. It may *become* a fully functional desktop, if Google is able/willing to take development that far, but whether Google's sprawling managerial structure will be able to concentrate the resources on that one project given their entrenched resource allocation tradition of "spread wide, spread thin" is something I don't think will happen in t