Questions for deployments of GNOME [LWN.net]

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 13:05 UTC (Sun) by zotz (guest, #26117)
In reply to: Questions for deployments of GNOME by nix
Parent article: Questions for deployments of GNOME

As with many things in life, there are tradeoffs involved.

It doesn't take a large scale installation to see the benefits that can be had for customization. (From a support point of view.)

Even something so simple as a customized selection and placement of icons on the desktop causes wasted time on support.

On a visit, it causes a slowdown, on phone support it is even worse.

Have you ever done any support?

Now, that is not to say that those same customizations which cause support inefficiencies do not result in way more daily efficienceis, they may, I just don't know. I do know they are a time waster when it comes to supporting people.

all the best,

drew

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Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 17:33 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (9 responses)

> Long occupying the number one spot on the DistroWatch hit list (which is not the same as saying this is the most popular distro), Ubuntu has a large and growing following.

They are also, very often, time wasters for the people who do the customizing. Often, I find, they are "throw back" customizations to make the keys work like some obsolete piece of software that the customizer used 10, or even 20, years ago.

These customizations have been made over and over and over again on various machines over the years.

WordStar is dead. Get over it, I say! Your brain isn't static! Learn the new defaults!

Next up on the Tech Support Catharsis Channel:

"Why I Despise Employees Who Use 'Ergonomic' Keyboards" ;-)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 18:39 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (7 responses)

So, you think that humans should adapt to computers rather than vice versa, even to aspects of their behaviour which *can be changed*?

That's ridiculous. Computers are tools, not dictators.

(I'm baffled as to why use of ergonomic keyboards would be worthy of hatred. Because you want everyone to get RSI? *Crap* ergonomic keyboards are a different matter.)

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 18:41 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

Note the smiley.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:34 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Ah, right. I wasn't sure what degree of ha-ha-only-seriousness was being applied :)

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 19:12 UTC (Sun) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (4 responses)

The issues with people adjusting to computers and vice versa was something that came up a lot during early car days (1890's and so). People would say that since they could build the car to whatever they wanted they could put the steering wheel etc where-ever they wanted. After a while 'customers' wanted to have things to be the same way in most cars. Accidents/problems were blamed on lack of uniformity and regulations were put in place.

However, I still remember my grandfather saying the same thing when told he couldn't change his car to being the driver on the right side. "That's ridiculous! Cars are tools, not dictators." Then he went on the usual tirade about the stupidity of people who couldnt see the superiority of having a car designed this way (or the different gear shift layout he built etc) and how their stupidity was why the world would be communist by 1980 etc.

It is a sad sign of humanity that we are little different from the people who fought over whether you were Lutheran or Catholic in the 1600's. We just call our religions how our desktops look vs how many times we need to kneel.

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 11, 2006 20:38 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Cars are physical objects in which errors can be dangerous to lethal and which interact with each other and with pedestrians, so you want a centralized training scheme, mandated external signals, and enough similarity between models that buying a new model doesn't require relearning everything (and in which you can borrow someone else's car without crashing it).

*None* of these things are true of computer software, except perhaps the last, and even that fails if you provide tools to allow copying and publishing of configurations (his KDE runs differently from mine? OK, use my config). Secure global-scale distributed filesystems will provide the necessary infrastructure for this (paging Google, or perhaps <http://fs.net/>).

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 3:00 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry.. but a poorly planned desktop can be lethal in the right enviroment:

Hospital
Military
Aircontrol
911 dispatch room.

In the cases where time is of an importance having someone come into a different desktop can cause major problems. In other cases it can just be additional costs because everyone has decided what is best for themselves and they spend tons of time arguing over "gee my desktop design is so much superior to yours."

These are specialized environments.. and not the general case, however I am bringing them up as counter to your globalization account that it doesnt matter. If I am misunderstanding you.. sorry.. I always seem to minunderstand evangelical fundamentalists.

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 11:22 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I was overgeneralizing: obviously consistency is paramount in safety-critical environments (see virtually every issue of RISKS, for instance).

But *most environments are not safety-critical* from a software POV. Why on earth should people in non-safety-critical environments be locked down by requirements that only make sense if safety-critical software is in use?

Configurability in other places

Posted Jun 12, 2006 7:16 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

It is a sad sign of humanity that we are little different from the people who fought over whether you were Lutheran or Catholic in the 1600's. We just call our religions how our desktops look vs how many times we need to kneel.

Yeah, going to war and burning and torturing people is the same as ranting on LWN. As a KDE and GNOME user, I feel so witch-hunted by these comments.

Questions for deployments of GNOME

Posted Jun 15, 2006 15:23 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

Hmm... so when something comes along in ten years which has a completely new set of defaults that keep getting in your way and you can find no readily apparent way to change them, you'll just shrug and say "oh well, time I relearned how to do anything anyway"? Well, good for you, but you're in a distinct minority - most of us would rather our computers fit around our ways of working than the opposite. Learning new stuff is great - learning new stuff simply because someone else preferred it that way is doing so for no good reason and is a waste of everyone's time.