Desktop Linux

swhiser shiser at cloud9.net
Tue Aug 16 19:41:59 UTC 2005


Karsten Wade wrote:

>On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 14:58 -0400, swhiser wrote:
>
>  
>
>>The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get across.
>>    
>>
>
>I disagree, but that's mainly because a presentation of slides /= a real
>report.  Fortunately, I read his article[1] as well.  Or do you mean,
>because he used special Acrobat PDF extensions and non-free fonts, the
>presentation looks terrible, and that speaks for itself?  That's like
>blaming proprietary document formats being unreadable on the recipient,
>instead of the sender and they proprietary software vendor.
>  
>
Yes, Karsten the font is a large problem in Asa's presentation; but it 
violates my personal Principle of Minimalism: Do Not Compete with Your 
Visuals.  Too many letters and words.

Additionally, I disagree with many of his statements and, particularly, 
assumptions & emphasis.
-Sam




>The problem is, he is discussing Linux in general, as if it were one
>entity.  Anyone is welcome to put the kind of polish on a desktop that
>he is proposing, without having to make "all of Linux" do that.
>
>I find his ideas contradictory.  For example, in his article he
>specifically mentions the reversal of OK and Cancel in GNOME is stupid,
>then he says, "... application developers need to make some of the hard
>choices and stop falling back on the "make it a user option" solution
>that seems to be all too popular in most software these days."
>
>Well, are we to trust our usability experts to make these decisions or
>not?  He seems to think yes, and well, no.  It depends on how "valuable
>to change" an area is, versus how "comfortable" the change is.
>
>As long as the future of Linux on the desktop is couched in the terms of
>how like Windows it is for Regular Users, I think we'll do little more
>than be a Windows UI clone.  Since the Windows UI sucks, why clone it?
>
>After all, we already have Xandros.
>
>FWIW, no amount of catering will get people to be unlazy.  I tend to
>agree that a Windows2Linux migration project would be good and helpful,
>but I already encounter people who were surprised at how easy a modern
>Linux desktop is to learn.  Even if there were a feature-for-feature
>compatibility and it all looked the same, what would be the value gained
>for the few stragglers brought along?  This value would all be in the
>hands of the people prepared to sell those new Windows-like desktops to
>companies, which brings us back to the chicken-egg scenario.
>
>- Karsten
>[1] http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/008499.html
>  
>
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>
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