Winning the Linux Wars (MCP)

Posted Jan 9, 2006 16:43 UTC (Mon) by cott (guest, #6931)
In reply to: Winning the Linux Wars (MCP) by njhurst
Parent article: Winning the Linux Wars (MCP)

Sorry, guys. I have to agree with CyberDog, here.

You'd think that with the command-line utilities, at least, Unix/Linux would be consistent, but it's not. Take the "-v" option on any command, for instance. Does it mean to do something verbosely, does it print the version number, or does it do something else, entirely?

The GUI stuff is significantly worse. When people (like myself) choose a desktop like Gnome or KDE, they choose a specific look and feel. The problem is not all the apps adhere to that look and feel. If I happen to run a Gnome app while I'm on the KDE desktop, it looks like Gnome. If I run an old X app, it looks like X. I know that seems like a nitpick, but I don't think it is. Just dealing with the single-click vs double-click file selection menus can be a pain for me, to say nothing of a less experienced user. It's incredibly unusual to have this problem with Windows.

Don't get me wrong. I love Linux, but it's not perfect.

Winning the Linux Wars (MCP)

Posted Jan 10, 2006 12:21 UTC (Tue) by tnoo (subscriber, #20427) [Link] (1 responses)

> Just dealing with the single-click vs double-click file selection menus can be a pain for me, to say nothing of a less experienced user.

Exactly this single-click vs. double-click behaviour makes the Windows UI so hard to use, especially for beginners. Why on earth do I have to click once in the status bar to launch a program, but twice on the desktop? And why is a very uncommon operation (renaming a file) triggered every time I click a little bit off the icon and on the text (this is especially true in the file manager).

At least KDE is fully consitant in this respect, and much more usable than Windows.

best, tnoo

Single v Double click

Posted Jan 10, 2006 19:29 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

This one frustrates me.

There's a *very good* reason why icons require a double-click to utilise the "Open" shortcut: it's a *shortcut*.

Icons on desktops and in folders are *objects*. Things which you can click once to get a response are *buttons*. Buttons are *supposed* to look like buttons; you can blame Microsoft itself (and particularly the Toolbar team in the Office group) for screwing *that* bit of obviousness up by creating lots of buttons that don't look like buttons until you mouseover them.

Everyone likes to assume that *any* of these desktop environments ought to be "so simple anyone can learn them without training or reading", and folks, it's just not that way.

And it ought not to be that way.

What You See Is All You Get is bad enough... but everyone becomes a power user eventually, to one degree or another. And ghod help you if you make it *harder* for powerusers to get work down because you're trying to make intake training easier.