Examining the Usability of Gnome, Unity and KDE 228
gbjbaanb writes "TechRadar has gathered a few users and subjected the 3 main Linux desktops to some usability testing for both experienced users and some new to the whole concept." I'm glad to see such ongoing comparisons; they encourage cross-pollination of the best ideas. On the other hand, it's a little bit like trying to determine the "best" dessert; even the most elaborate attempts to find statistical consensus won't answer the question of what's best for any particular user.
General usability should be one of the choices (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with ignoring the needs of individual users to tailor a generally good experience, _so long as power-users are still given the ability to pick the option best for them as individuals_. That last part is the important part that Apple has forgotten of late.
Re:General usability should be one of the choices (Score:5, Funny)
Re:General usability should be one of the choices (Score:4, Insightful)
Users can't fork Linux, they need something premade.
Further, users have computers skills by now, and have no desire to re-learn from scratch.
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Well, because they don't have to pay any money to obtain a copy of Linux.
Do they have to pay any extra money for a copy of Windows on a new PC? No, because the makers of Windows-exclusive trialware subsidize OEM Windows.
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> Do they have to pay any extra money for a copy of Windows on a new PC?
> No, because the makers of Windows-exclusive trialware subsidize OEM Windows.
Alright, that gets you a PC with Windows on it. Now you want to actually use it for something productive. With all the annoying "Windows-exclusive trialware" crap popping up and nagging you to buy-buy-buy, and burning cpu cycles like crazy, you first need to pay Geeksquad to remove the "craplets". Then you have to set up and use an antivirus. And then
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No-one pays "more" for a copy of Windows. They either get it "free" with the new PC they buy every 3-4 years, or they download it from thepiratebay.
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And the applications? A distro is a lot more than just the OS.
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You might find it misleading, but it's nevertheless true. The small cost of OEM Windows ($0-40 or so, depending on what other kickbacks the reseller gets) is part of the purchase cost of "the computer". Ie: it's not considered an additional cost by anyone who doesn't have an axe to grind. Ie: it's "free".
The simple fact is that there's rarely a price difference between a PC that comes with Windows and a PC that comes with Linu
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Because I didn't want a Mac and (at the time) Microsoft's 64 bit OS was too expensive and too little supported for home use. I figured I had paid for a 64 bit processor and it didn't make sense to me to not use all of it's capabilities.
Now that I'm used to the *nix way of doing things, I won't go back.
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You are trying to make a joke, right?
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So if they want something premade, why would they choose Linux instead of OSX or Windows?
Because it's simpler. Distro maintainers can pre-make beautiful, elegant and very usable desktops that suit individual needs without compromising on stability, compatibility or security. Users can just pick the breed of Linux that suits them and be immediately productive.
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Users can just pick the breed of Linux that suits them and be immediately productive.
Ignoring the 20-30 distros they may have to download to find the one that suits them, assuming they don't have somebody recommending things to them or installing it for them....
Linux *can* be super-easy, just install it and go. But it can also be a royal pain in the ass, if the distro you've installed doesn't fit the work flow you're used to, or that you need in a computer. Finding a distro that does everything you want it to do, and that doesn't give you a migraine trying to configure is a huge part of the
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And by "immediately" you mean 6 months after they start sampling all those different linux variants to actually find the one that "suits them", right ?
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That is another ludicrous statement.
You can immediately start using quality software under Linux the moment you have the desktop after your first install. The same goes for just about any OS. The moment you get to the desktop you can bring up a word processor and start writing a letter or you can bring up a spreadsheet and begin a budget, or you can launch your browser and watch Hulu or youtube flash videos, or write an email, or chat, or make phone calls.
In fact, it is far easier and faster to begin a pr
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I'd say it's the other way around, even if your name is Linus bloody Torvalds and you've pretty much written the Linux kernel and a hugely popular source management system, you probably don't want to try writing a desktop environment and all the applications you'd like to use too. This whole "sane defaults and a good out of the box experience doesn't matter on Linux because users can just customize it the way they like" ignores the fact that nobody has the time to customize everything. Nobody. Sure if you'r
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I don't roast my own coffee and I don't spin my own yarn. But if an appliance breaks, I like it if it has screws on the bottom rather than the ones in a plastic welded case. I also prefer wooden toys and things I can modify with a hacksaw...
I get the linux distribution that is closest to what I want for everyday work and then I take a hacksaw to it till it looks like I want it, hoping that I'm done for the next three years.
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Indeed. I spent the better part of ten years as a Solaris, FreeBSD and Linux sysadmin, and I can't think of any reason I'd switch from Windows to Linux on my regular desktop PC. Nor to OS X, for that matter, and our household owns four Macs.
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We've been hearing about the fabled granny user for years, but well played adding bikers in a bar!
Oh, I see. You meant bicyclists in a latte bar. Carry onthen.
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Thank you, but I do mean the grizzled heavily-tattooed leathery skin beer and a shot of whisky Harley rider type of biker.
Well clearly if they ride a Harley they have no interest in reliable technology or things that just work :)
I kid, I kid. HD has come a long way since the 80s. Just a hint though, the average Harley rider is a 60 year old dentist from the burbs. Most of the grizzled, tattooed whiskey drinking bikers I know ride something metric that is more reliable and costs half as much or a chopped up classic. Harleys are like Cadillacs. They used to mean you were cool, now they mean you're old because you still think the
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Don't under estimate the "grizzled heavily-tattooed leathery skin beer and a shot of whisky Harley rider type of biker.", they are usually much smarter than they look. The same can be said of professional truck drivers. Its just their sense of taste and style that's questionable.
Re:General usability should be one of the choices (Score:5, Informative)
They did fork Gnome, it's called Maté. [wikipedia.org]
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There's nothing wrong with ignoring the needs of individual users to tailor a generally good experience, _so long as power-users are still given the ability to pick the option best for them as individuals_.
The standards for people calling themselves "power users" really seems to have dropped. The people I think of as power users would have no problem hacking together a nice custom FVWM2 configuration that integrates all the GNOME3 libraries (including the internal notification and messaging systems -- they do have nice exposed interfaces after all) and applications while giving them exactly the custom experience they desire. I mean GNOME3 is pretty damn modular and broken into a myriad of different libraries
Re:General usability should be one of the choices (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
To customise Gnome Shell you need to write javascript. I do not have the time or the inclination to write code to re-add functionality that was available with a right-click in the last release.
People who write custom FVWM2 configs in the way you talk about it were never power-users, they're obsessives.
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How about someone who has some work to do?
Now you're just talking bullshit. There was a lot you could do in gnome (MOVE a panel, for instance, or add things to it) at the touch of a couple of buttons.
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Windows power users have always been the most hostile to Linux switching. They have learned how to do stuff in Windows but don't have broad computer knowledge. Switching takes that away from them. Up or down in terms of skill set and things work better.
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so they have patents for "white X with a black background with a white circle around it" nowadays? this has to come to an end sooner or later.
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Configurability (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what's best for everyone? Configurability. When the developers can't decide how something should work, when they have two what seem like equally good or equally bad ideas, why should they force one particular decision on the user? Why not just put an option on a big scary controll panel somewhere made just for that? Of course, for usabilitiy's sake, there'd be the normal slick and easy to read control panel, but Gnome used to have GConf (does Gnome 3 have it? I don't know). You could use GConf to configure ANY aspect of the interface, anything at all. It was a very powerful tool if you knew what you were doing with it. So set the defaults to the lowest common denominator, to the grandma standard, but at least leave the powertools where we can reach them! Put up a warning that it may break the interface, sour the milk or bring the rapture to scare off the grandma users, and only those who really know what they're doing need concern themselves with it.
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Re:Configurability (Score:4, Informative)
one little problem with that, smarty pants, you can't configure GNOME 3 in many cases with or without config file editing. instead, you have to write a fucking app or hire a developer to do simple things that used to be GNOME user configuration actions
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Please explain how to install GNOME 3 on Fedora 16 or the latest Ubuntu.
I assume you meant Gnome 2 ? - just download tarballs and compile..
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I assume you meant Gnome 2. For Ubuntu just use Mint's version:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
At the end of the file add this line:
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ lisa main upstream import
Save your file and close. Then, run this sequence of commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linuxmint-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mint-meta-mate
and you are done.
Re:Configurability (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really. OOBE is more important for the 95+% of users who are not hackers.
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But - 95% of users are on WINDOWS! 95% of Linux users are hackers. So - where do we go with this?
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"Not really. Out Of Box Experience is more important for the 95+% of users who are not hackers." (fixed it for you)
And as software developers we should be incredibly ashamed about that.
The problem is when its more annoying to try and workout how change something than it is to put up with annoying features.
Giving users the ability to control their software should always be very important, its really arrogant for developers to always expect they know whats best for users.
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no no this is not s/w dev's fault in any way. just watch an average user browse the internet someday. they do all sorts of stupid things. they ignore ANY dialog that does not force them to click it. the ones that do force them to click they just click 'ok'. and god forbid if they see a 404 or timed out error. even if you ask them what error it was they won't be able to tell you. they'll say 'it didn't work' or some other vague shit like that.
if there is even a slight change from the things they are used to,
Re:Configurability (Score:5, Informative)
Configurability is nice, but defaults are very important. A good GUI has good defaults.
You could use GConf to configure ANY aspect of the interface, anything at all.
Not helpful to most users. And in theory you could use the source code to configure any aspect of the interface too.
1) Most people instead of making 1000 decisions to get a GUI that's 99% suitable for them, will make one decision to get a GUI that has defaults that are 80% suitable for them.
2) If you deviate too much from the defaults, you may have difficulty getting support. This may not be a problem for slashdotters but it is a problem for the rest of the world.
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Not helpful to most users.
But very helpful to distro maintainers who can offer a nicely customised version as a point of differentiation. Have you looked at Mint 12 yet?
Re:Configurability (Score:5, Informative)
That's kind of the route taken by KDE. It's *hugely* configurable. Want a stock ticker widget in your task bar? Fine, just unlock it and drag one in there. Want the task bar on the right side? Just drag it over. Want to make caps an additional control? It's just a checkbox in the preferences. By and large, you don't even have to use obscure registry-style editors either.
KDE 4.7 FTW.
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yeah, everything you see on a kde desktop, you can right click and choose to change its functionality. also i love the way that most widgets work on your desktop, and also on the taskbar. this is how it should be.
unity has locked its ui down tighter than windows itself! you can't even pull that dock away from the left.
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I disagree completely. KDE's configurability is asinine. When KDE apps run under another WM, they use their own KDE defaults like click-to-activate vs. click-to-select, double-click-to-activate. It's annoying as hell to run K3B under Gnome 2, because it does not behave like anything else on my desktop. The only reason I put up with it is that they did the best job of a burning utility I've seen since Nero, and maybe even better than Nero (note I'm talking the old "advanced" Nero tools, not the shiny cra
Re:Configurability (Score:4, Informative)
I disagree completely. KDE's configurability is asinine. When KDE apps run under another WM, they use their own KDE defaults like click-to-activate vs. click-to-select, double-click-to-activate. It's annoying as hell to run K3B under Gnome 2, because it does not behave like anything else on my desktop. The only reason I put up with it is that they did the best job of a burning utility I've seen since Nero, and maybe even better than Nero (note I'm talking the old "advanced" Nero tools, not the shiny crapware wrappers they install be default with the new releases.)
With the way KDE is structured on top of Qt, it should be possible for a KDE app running under Gnome to detect that fact and "import" it's settings and defaults from Gnome's environment. The reverse should also be true.
It's almost to the point of frustration that I prefer applications that just ignore any standards at all and do their own thing entirely. At least they're consistently screwed up, following their programmer's diabolical visions of UI hell imposed on the user community. :p
Heh.. KDE has a checkbox (enabled under Kubuntu, for example) to make Gnome apps behave and look more like KDE ones. I would expect that Gnome users should extend Gnome settings application to just export their settings to KDE, should not be that hard.
Btw, what really annoys me about running Gnome apps (anywhere) is the stupid file selection dialog. It's like somebodies design goal was to prevent users from accessing files, but they did it incompetently.
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I think you mean when KDE apps run under another GUI. You aren't using the word "window manager" properly. You can actually other window managers with the KDE GUI and get different behaviors.
Anyway... KDE is a full GUI, the apps inherit the behavior of their native GUI.
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You know what's best for everyone? Configurability. but Gnome used to have GConf (does Gnome 3 have it? I don't know).
Gnome 3 does have GConf but it's probably not installed by default. I had to go look for it.
In Gnome 2, you could create an icon on your toolbar for your highly used shortcuts.
In Gnome 2, you could put a terminal icon on the toolbar and a single click brought up a new instance. To do this in Gnome 3, well, you can't ... To get a new terminal window, you click on "Activities", find the terminal icon (assuming of course, you've already added it to "Favorites"), then right click on it, slide right to the m
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Why not... big scary controll panel... GConf... if you knew what you were doing with it... grandma standard... powertools... Put up a warning... may break the interface... scare off the grandma users... only those who really know what they're doing... need concern themselves with it.
Hmm. Interesting phrases.
When the developers can't decide how something should work, when they have two what seem like equally good or equally bad ideas
Do some user testing to see which works better.
why should they force one particular decision on the user?
Force is a strange choice of word. No doubt in your car, the right hand pedal is the accelerator, and to the left of it is the brake. The indicator stem might be on the right of the wheel, or it might be on the left. Do you feel "forced" by whoever it was that chose to put them that way around? Do you demand the ability to customise the location of those controls?
Imagine a car where you could customise everything. Hey you don't have to
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I might be misunderstanding, but it seems you're using a car analogy in favor of Gnome3, which is a little ironic.
In previous weekly discussions on Gno/buntu (Gnome3 and Unity), the car analogy has been used to ask why the need to change?
As you state, the accelerator is on the right, brake on the left, steering via the wheel. It's been that way for a long time. It would be stupid to make a change just for the sake of it, even though you might argue the new would would be objectively the same or even better.
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because then they have to support it. a feature is not just putting an option in the control panel. it will generate bugs over time and will require maintainence. this is why firefox is so bloated right now.they simply can't maintain it with so many configurable options. long term devs should aim for one true way style of ui. if you don't like their way, you simply use something else.
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Unless Google forks, or buys, one of the Linux desktop distros and calls it Droid, no regular human has a clue not gives a rat's ass about Linux on their desktop or laptop computer.
Or Apple does the same with BSD. Oh wait....
From the website that looks like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Techradar wants to talk and judge usability of the all-time favourite linux desktops, and yet their own website looks like THIS: http://i.imgur.com/IOyKu.png [imgur.com]
I know other browsers render it centered, but that's not the (only) point, it's that their web looks awful: about 1/4 is margins, which is OK, and of those 3/4 1/4 is the content, which is split into 7 tiny sections (just give me the whole article and don't make me page every 3 paragraphs, it's almost 2012, for christ sakes!), tiny text, tiny images, and 3/4 of crap (related content, ads, menus, more related content, more related content).
It's not like they can't provide a very valid examination of linux desktops, but their site does not inspire very much credibility when they themselves get it so wrong, IMHO.
Re:From the website that looks like this (Score:4, Informative)
The site's punishing you for using an ad blocker. I just tested Chrome with adblock, Chrome without adblock, Aurora with adblock, Aurora without adblock, IE9, Opera 11, Safari 5 with adblock, and Safari without adblock. In every case, when adblock was turned off (or not available), the page rendered correctly*. When adlbock was turned on, it rendered like a steaming pile of shit.
The remainder of your points are completely valid. Fixed-width, fixed-font size, ad-spattered, split-for-the-sake-of-page-views "design" doesn't really inspire confidence about their ability to validate usability testing. At least they don't have an always-on-top floating toolbar like so many other sites are doing. But I probably shouldn't be giving them any ideas ...
* It's worth noting that the page is still a steaming pile of shit when rendered "correctly". The only difference is that it's centered.
What "usability testing"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the "usability testing"? The linked article is just typical blogger blithering, spread over multiple pages for maximum ad insertion. They write "Since usability is a personal experience, we invited a bunch of people, from newbies to power users, to share their experiences with 3.2.". Which probably means "we asked for comments on a blog".
Real usability testing [wikipedia.org] is not market research. It's measuring how well people did on tasks, not what they said they liked.
Re:What "usability testing"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And in the computer industry it's almost always done horribly. I've participated in such studies, and they mistake "ease of learning for a complete newbie" with "usability". They are not the same. You're only a newbie on some application for a few days or weeks, but you might be using it for the next 10 years. What makes a package *usable* is not something you can learn by watching me come up to speed on the damn thing for a few hours. Let me use it day in and day out and talk to me in 6 months. I'll have suggestions about whatever scriptability you have exposed, about keyboard shortcuts, about integration with this or that... none of which I will be able to tell you in your three hour usability focus session.
Re:What "usability testing"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've participated in such studies, and they mistake "ease of learning for a complete newbie" with "usability". They are not the same.
But neither are they completely different.
Usability encompasses not just newbie experience and not just expert experience, but the whole range.
Because of that, I found this particular article's conclusions very interesting: KDE has long held the position of most scriptable, most configurable, most integrable, etc. In short, it's been a power-user's desktop (well, out of the major options, anyway). Now it is apparently the most newbie-friendy desktop as well.
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KDE used to be the dominant desktop. Then a few things went badly and it was clearly in 2nd place falling. Things were going so well for Gnome over KDE that KDE was starting to get grouped with XFCE, LXDE ... in the "also rans". Now it is looking like Gnome dropped the ball so badly with Ubuntu and with Gnome 3, and KDE 4's advantages are showing through that KDE is going to get a chance to be the dominant desktop again.
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On the other hand, it's hard to blame TFA for their usability testing methods when Gnome, Unity, and KDE have done no usability testing at all. (And then tell their users that they're wrong for liking their old workflows...)
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It's measuring how well people did on tasks
Actually it's just measuring. Presupposing "well" and "badly" isn't part of it, if the tasks are designed to measure the software accurately.
But yes, you're right, the article is a crock, and doesn't measure anything resembling usability. User comments are very useful, but only in conjunction with some hard data.
Best dessert? (Score:2)
Can we please spare the bad analogies for comments?
Sure there is variety between users (which TFA accounted for, by the way), but usability tests (done right) usually show quite a bit of objective facts (e.g. something is consistently hard to find, etc.).
The real wtf (Score:4, Funny)
Statements in the article reveal it was written, or at least researched, 2 months ago.
There has been a lot of churn since then, including in the Gnome 2 fork MATE and the variety of Gnome shell extensions making Gnome 3 more usable.
New user ? (Score:2, Insightful)
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guys just to be clear, we are talking about these kind of people:
One user, who had a nightmarish experience installing Skype on Windows 7...
yeah, this guy couldn't install skype on his windows 7 pc. that's about as dumb as forgetting how to pee. let me go over the steps required to install skype:
1. click blue e.
2. type 'skype' press return.
3. click top result
4. click 'get skype'
that's it. people who can't do this are the ones who are using computers nowadays. if you are going to do user-testing you HAVE to do it on such a person.
Never mind the usability tests (Score:4, Funny)
...how do I get in on these scientific experiments to determine the best dessert?
Unity is one of 3 Main Linux Desktops? (Score:4, Insightful)
KDE and Gnome obviously yes, but Unity is one of the top 3? Just because most recent Ubuntus foist this on users (and most feedback I've seen has been negative) - is there any data to show that Unity has even 10% of Linux desktops? While Ubuntu is popular, that just means it's bigger than any other. My totally unsubstantiated guess would be that Ubuntu is less than 30% of all desktop Linuxes installed and of that, not all are 11.x gen and many of those users have installed another desktop. So...
I would be SHOCKED if Unity is running on 5% of Linux desktops - does anyone have any hard evidence to counter this?
I wouldn't be surprised if Enlightenment or Fluxbox had bigger install base.
(I can't believe no one else has pointed this out)
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Just because most recent Ubuntus foist this on users (and most feedback I've seen has been negative) - is there any data to show that Unity has even 10% of Linux desktops?
I would not be in the least surprised if the majority of Ubuntu users never change the default UI
or do any significant customization whatever.
The problem with "feedback" to tech sites like Slashdot is that the ordinary user is unrepresented and strong negative opinions draw an instant response.
Vague rubbish. (Score:2)
Article is very vague and made up of vague anecdotes, none of the research seemed to be empirical or scientific in any way.
Overall it's rubbish.
Researchers often showed users how to achieve their goals - this IMHO means the OS has failed because the user couldn't find their way without assistance. In reality this would of entailed lots of frustration and swearing as things didn't work as expected.
KDE the replacement for Gnome 2? (Score:3)
I'm not one for shunning the new, and certainly kept an open mind when I switched from WinXP to Gnome 2 those years ago. I appreciated the quick and direct access to various folders, and the multiple desktops, not to mention all the other benefits of using linux apart from gnome 2 (repositories, updating, stability etc..)
However, I've given quite a bit of time to gnome 3 and unity, and I really think these two desktops have lost a lot of the functionality I originally enjoyed when I switched to gnome 2 - that loss of functionality combined with the increased graphics requirements of gnome 3 is a real setback.
Specifically, try dragging and dropping files from a file browser on one workspace to a program on another workspace. In gnome 2 it is easy to use the workspace switcher to perform this task, but in gnome 3 it requires something like twice the time and fuss. The other problem I have with gnome 3 is the lack of 'places'. Unity's problem is I just don't get on with the slide-out dock - I find it interferes with any content I'm working with on the left side of the screen.
I haven't given KDE4 a proper test, but it looks like it might be worth my while!
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KDE still feels overly complicated whenever I go to configure things. Too many options makes it hard to find the one I want... And this is coming from someone who likes buying things with too many knobs.
XFCE has been treating me well. You might want to give it a try.
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Re:KDE the replacement for Gnome 2? (Score:4, Interesting)
KDE still feels overly complicated whenever I go to configure things.
If there is anything that's hard to configure, it's GNOME. GNOME has lots of options -- most of them hidden somewhere in GConf. It's hard to get more complicated than that. ;-)
As for "KDE"... you're both wrong and right. What you described is the KDE3 attitude. In the 4.x series many config options have been cleaned up. See Dophin (compared to Konqueror 3.x), Gwenview, or Okular. In fact, I'd argue that new applications and components written for the 4.x series are among the most clean and usable applications available for Linux -- including Plasma Desktop itself.
However, there are a few black sheep: Usually applications simply ported over from 3.x like KMail whose GUI barely changed over the years because the developers were busy with back-end renovation.
That said, that article is about the desktop environments themselves, not applications usually used together with them.
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I'm sure a lot of my comfort with Gnome2 was simply familiarity, not an inherent superiority. The OP was asking for a good replacement for Gnome2... And as a Gnome2 refugee, XFCE came pretty naturally to me where KDE did not.
Usability of the Article? (Score:5, Funny)
Resizes automatically to fit my screen? No.
Has everything on one neat page? No.
Allows you to click on the small pictures to get a higher resolution picture? No.
Is uncluttered by random links and pictures not relating to the article? No.
Is completely free of annoying social networking buttons that track pages you view? No.
Verdict
The article is annoying and not very usable.
Gnome? KDE? Unity? (Score:2, Informative)
Could not care less. WindowMaker is my choice. And that's the reason I don't care much about such 'usibility tests': I don't need to care. On Linux I am not stuck with good, bad, or idiotic design decisions. There are plenty of alternatives for almost everything.
Competence (Score:2)
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I'm not sure Windows's usability is that good, though I can believe it'd beat out some of the Linux desktop environments (at least for a certain class of users). To the extent that Windows turns out to be usable, I think it's mostly just through age: lots of Windowsisms are now familiar to a large portion of the computer-using population, and therefore that population is able to use them reasonably well, whether or not the features were actually good ideas when first introduced 10, 15, or 20 years ago.
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Oh, my, I always get a sense that I am talking with someone from another planet when I hear that. Almost any solution in Linux involves command line. Have you ever tried to install drivers for hardware on linux? I once tried to get a wireless (USB) card to attach to my desktop. In Windows, I think the driver was included (or I may have looked
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In my experience, the average person can't do any of those things in either Linux or Windows, unless you give them very precise, step-by-step instructions (and even then it's pretty iffy).
Re:Determining the best turd (Score:4, Insightful)
You can talk about many shortcomings of Windows, but they pretty much have usability figured out, right?
No, no they do not. And to talk to any typical Windows user, Windows is confusing to many users.
I can't wait for a fully-enabled Metro desktop to be unleashed by Microsoft. It caters to the absolute lowest common denominator of user. The rage it induces in power users is hilarious.
Why does Linux live in a separate world?
Because imitating the Windows UI is stupid and possibly lawsuit-bait. And I didn't go to Linux to just move to a cheap version of Windows.
--
BMO
Oh really (Score:2)
Guess you haven't seen Ubuntu lately. Its a complete rip off from OSX. Down to the icon style and placement.
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First off, how is anything you said a reply to what I've said? I didn't even mention OSX
>ubuntu is a ripoff of OSX
Explain to me how Unity, the default desktop, rips off OSX "down to the icons" when it clearly doesn't.
Explain to me how KDE or Gnome3, which are not the default desktop, is a ripoff of OSX.
>I haven't seen Ubuntu.
http://i.imgur.com/eUo63.jpg [imgur.com]
What now, bitch?
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BMO
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Windows does not score very well in usability tests - generally worse than Linux. Last I heard 7 scores better than Gnome 3, but I don't follow these things closely.
However you alluded to an important point "my home/personal machines have always been running Windows". People find it much easier to use something they're familiar with, and anybody who uses Windows fairly regularly at home or work will almost certainly find that easier than Linux.
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Really? I'd be interested to see their metrics
If they consider things like a) flash drive recognition/use, b) any USB device (most notably wireless cards) and generally driver support, they may have to revise the results
Note that I am not blaming anyone here. I am aware that drive issues have to with manufacturers not providing proper driv
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Can you provide a link to these tests ?
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Windows is pretty good but not outstanding on usability. End users frequently can't figure out how to do what they want. Right now iOS is probably the usability king.
That being said Windows is generally better than most Linux GUIs. You used the term window manager, you are using it wrong. The window manager for Windows is DWM and while DWM is very cool it is not particular user friendly or unfriendly.
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I spent twenty minutes yesterday trying to get Red Hat to recognize my flash drive. Complain about Windows all you like. It is still orders of magnitude more usable than Linux.
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I've never had to coax Linux to recognize a flash drive.
On the other hand, I recently had a problem with a thumb drive where it failed for no reason in Windows and could not be read again by any version of Windows until it was first mounted on Linux (which happened automatically).
It wasn't even mine. It belonged to someone I do "Windows support" for.
And don't get me started about the page full of options that Windows throws at you when it does actually decided to acknowledge removable media. Granny just can
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But you must recognize that you are an exception to the rule? I mean, if not my grandma, then certainly my parents (who did not grow up with computers) do regularly use flash drives to transfer/backup files.
Contrast it with me having problems (on SuSe) mounting a drive last week. Yes - it recognized the drive, but "unable to mount". Yes - eventually I got it to work. But if the solution required opening a shell, calling mount command, figuring o
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But when it's not, it is at least usually fixable on a non-geological timescale, whereas Windows and OS X are not.
Linux is trying to be all things to everyone, and it's failing some of them. Personally, I quite like Unity (OK, so whip me :-) but I'm an end user with modest requirements: I use Linux because it provides the programs I need to use, and it does so in a usable manner — for
Re:Determining the best turd (Score:4, Informative)
Contrast it with me having problems (on SuSe) mounting a drive last week. Yes - it recognized the drive, but "unable to mount". Yes - eventually I got it to work. But if the solution required opening a shell, calling mount command, figuring out where in command line to say "ntfs" and guessing which /dev/sd? matches the actual flash drive, then I say Linux lost already!
Oh, right. Because Windows will just oh so happily mount an ext4-formatted USB drive?
No-one who cares about interoperability would use a proprietary filesystem like NTFS on a USB drive. Or, at least, they wouldn't go whining about how no other computer can read it.
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You have a 4 digit /. number and haven't had problems with USB on Linux? Seriously during the 2.0 kernel days you didn't have those sorts of problems?
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Explain, in as few words necessary, how KDE is crippled.
The article came down on the side of KDE, the most configurable desktop with the most tools. KDE has the opposite philosophy that Gnome and Unity have - expose all options to the user.
And if you're going to rage about dumbing down of interfaces, I suggest that you aim your rage at Metro.
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BMO
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Yeah, KDE4 was pretty buggy at first, but lately it's been great.
gnome 3 though... what happened there.
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Explain, in as few words necessary, how KDE is crippled.
The article came down on the side of KDE, the most configurable desktop with the most tools. KDE has the opposite philosophy that Gnome and Unity have - expose all options to the user.
And if you're going to rage about dumbing down of interfaces, I suggest that you aim your rage at Metro.
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BMO
hey! don't be hating metro! there is a rumor that they will probably allow users to change the wallpaper!
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Microsoft really is doubling-down on Metro. I suspect that you won't be able to get the regular desktop on any consumer version of Windows 8 unless you fork over for either a Small Business Server edition or Ultimate. With 7 they had the "play video in the root window" to entice you to fork over 400 bux. What better way to get people to fork over 400-500 dollars just so they can get a traditional desktop?
Gawd, the Microsoft marketing department should hire me. I can think up all sorts of evil ways to e
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KDE's Dolphin does since ages.
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Of course it's fair. They compared the latest release versions, just as when everybody pissed at KDE 4.0 and praised GNOME 2.x the latest release versions were compared.