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The DesktopThe DesktopPosted Aug 15, 2012 13:45 UTC (Wed) by juliank (subscriber, #45896)In reply to: The Desktop by dskoll Parent article: The GNOME project at 15
At least XFCE 4.8 is hardly usable for the average user I think:
* The user switching applet only shows user names, which they don't know (seems fixed in 4.10, though)
GNOME 3 Fallback mode provides a more coherent and integrated environment than you could ever create with XFCE (apart from Totem and Eye Of Gnome, which look out place in Fallback mode, as they use the dark variant of the Theme, while Metacity uses non-dark borders).
Maybe I might have the chance to try XFCE 4.10 within the next year, and see what changed, but I don't think it can get much better than GNOME 3 Fallback mode for (my) average users.
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The Desktop Posted Aug 15, 2012 18:28 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] At least XFCE 4.8 is hardly usable for the average user I think: My (very non-technical) parents use XFCE 4.8 and don't have usability problems. I guarantee they'd be totally lost in GNOME 3. And that's because they're used to a Windows-XP/XFCE-like desktop. All your other points ("not styled", "doesn't feel integrated") have nothing to do with usability, which is concerned with how efficient it is to actually get stuff done.
The Desktop Posted Aug 15, 2012 23:12 UTC (Wed) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]
There was some usability study back in the day that concluded that the Linux desktop setups that looked like Windows were harder to use, because they set the wrong expectations. They worked differently enough from Windows in details that it was confusing; a setup that looked different gave people the right idea that they should be learning something new and made it easier to complete the tasks in the study.
A common intuition, including mine, was the opposite (that we should theme/configure things to look like Windows). I saw lots of Linux desktop deployments that started by picking the most Windows-like theme and putting the panel at the bottom and basically going through all the settings making it like Windows. According to this one study anyway, that was not a good approach.
I can't remember where this study was from, I'm not even sure it was ever public. And not advocating swapping out your parents, if nothing else I'm sure they're used to XFCE at this point.
But I do think it was an interesting counterintuitive finding.
I expect a lot of commentary on GNOME 3 probably comes down to "not like Windows / GNOME 2"; a lot of commentary on GNOME 2 was the same. If you define "usable" as "what people are used to" then essentially all change is wrong. In some cases that definition of usable is the right one. Depends on your goals.
The Desktop Posted Aug 16, 2012 1:30 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] There was some usability study back in the day that concluded that the Linux desktop setups that looked like Windows were harder to use, because they set the wrong expectations. Oh, I can believe that. In my case, I'm very lucky because my parents have never used Windows. I put them on Linux from Day 1. And XFCE looks different enough from Windows that it's obvious that it isn't windows, while looking similar enough that a Windows user can get used to it in a few minutes.
The Desktop Posted Aug 16, 2012 6:56 UTC (Thu) by jmspeex (subscriber, #51639) [Link] There was some usability study back in the day that concluded that the Linux desktop setups that looked like Windows were harder to use, because they set the wrong expectations.Just curious, do you remember what "type" of users were targeted by this study? Were they "average" users, users who were new to using computers, power users, ...? There seems to be a tradeoff here because most (not all) Linux users happen to be a lot more tech savvy that the average computer user. Now, you don't want to design an environment that's only for power users, but at the same time, ignoring the majority of the current users is probably not good either. How was this trade off considered?
The Desktop Posted Aug 16, 2012 16:54 UTC (Thu) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]
I think it was some kind of "office workers" new to Linux, but I really don't remember much at all other than that one observation about Windows-like setups being confusing.
The Desktop Posted Aug 16, 2012 7:19 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Certainly some complaints about Gnome 3 say it is not like something else. Dwelling on that is an easy way to ignore the real message: it is not working even as well for those people as that "something else", despite that the "something else" is (like everything) a mess. If Gnome 3 really were better, then the natural response would be to point out how people could get their work done more quickly and easily the Gnome 3 way. I have never encountered such a response. Every time, instead, it's been one of "you don't need to do that" or "nobody here cares if you need to do that". Those remarks have been expressed about practically everything I do. As a refrain it gets old very quickly.This is different from the transition to Gnome 2. Occasional expressions of contempt surfaced, such as hiding the gtk_key_theme=Emacs capability and the file-chooser text entry box, but it was clear that enough core people cared about usefulness to keep the system useful. Those people seem not to be working on Gnome any more. Gnome 3 looks prettier, in many ways, than 2, and many of the changes are, arguably, improvements. A great deal of good came out of the Gnome project. It's sad to see it go this way.
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