Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28 [LWN.net]

Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 14:36 UTC (Thu) by xanni (subscriber, #361)
In reply to: Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28 by nix
Parent article: Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

The problem with generic names is the high chance of a collision. Unusual names are hopefully less likely to be already in use and may also be more memorable - and more likely to match search results usefully!

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Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.28

Posted Sep 24, 2009 16:36 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

For a couple of months I was using the KDE menu which didn't show the actual program name for each entry, just the description (eg. 'Web Browser', 'Music Player'). I think they've fixed that now, but it was amazing how much harder that made it to use - trying to open a program might take several seconds, where previously I could let my subconscious do it in a fraction of the time. It's particularly bad when you have two programs which do 'the same thing', in this simplified view of the world.

I think generic names might make the system easier to use for the very first time, but why optimise a user-interface for that state, if it makes it harder for ever more? What's wrong with having entries for 'Totem media player', *and* 'Amarok media player'?