Linux not ready for the desktop? Give me a break! (NewsForge)

Linux not ready for the desktop? Give me a break! (NewsForge)

Posted Apr 14, 2003 23:15 UTC (Mon) by melauer (guest, #2438)
In reply to: Linux not ready for the desktop? Give me a break! (NewsForge) by gdt
Parent article: Linux not ready for the desktop? Give me a break! (NewsForge)

There are deserving criteria such as "ease of use" where Linux doesn't currently even come close to Windows let alone MacOS. The user interface lacks even basic design criteria such as consistency. Why are there differing procedures to print a page in Mozilla and OpenOffice and Xpdf and from the desktop? Why do I need to tell every package that the printer has A4 paper?

You've hit upon an interesting issue here. You ask why Mozilla, OpenOffice and Xpdf print differently. One answer: Use Konqueror, KWord (which has templates), and KGhostView, or the GNOME equivalents. Both KDE and GNOME are internally consistent, and both have tons of software which follows their standards. More to the point, if all your software is designed for one environment, it is much easier to use (because it all behaves the same). Yet most distros ship with both, and lots more X software which isn't consistent with either (console software/daemons are, of course, something else entirely).

May I make a suggestion to the makers of "Desktop" Linux distros: Ship less software! Seriously, try including just KDE or GNOME, and none of the "extra" X software (perhaps excepting full-screen games and similar software which one would expect to behave somewhat differently). For that matter, just include one "preferred" version of each type of software (e.g. one MP3/music file player, one mixer, one text editor, yeah you heard me!) Your competition (Windows) hardly ships with any software, why should you? People can always download and install more free software if they want. Perhaps you could sell a larger product with all that extra software for more money, as a "Plus" pack or some sort of "Expert Edition". If you must ship tons of software, then make your "default" install (the one all the newbies will choose) smaller. Make the default installation very small but very easy to understand, then let people add on from there.

KDE and GNOME are well designed interfaces. They do not lack "basic" design criteria. They lack good help files, but that's another story :). Anyway, they are each highly consistent. But mixing the two, and other software besides, breaks that consistency. Any distro which wants to be "Linux for the Masses" should keep in mind that the masses need to start sinmple, and learn from there.

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