I have seen in the linux community mindsets and statements like the above do more damage to the formation of a viable alternative to the Windows desktop than anything Matt Szulik (or Bill Gates) could ever do or say. As long as linux folks continue to deny that usability problems and bad UI designs exist in linux, as long as they continue to assume
Sure, bad UI designs exist in linux. They also exist in windows and even in OS X. Bad UI designs exist everywhere. Linux doesn't have a monopoly on them.
that end-users are stupid (I've heard the jokes in parking lot folks)
You know what. End users are stupid. But, then again, so are programmers. It just depends on when you get them. Everyone is stupid at certain times (even, or rather, especially me) and trying to deny it doesn't help.
and blame this 'stupidity' for the problems caused by some dumb programmer's bad GUI, and as long as they blame Microsoft for the
Sometimes it is the programmer's bad GUI and sometimes it isn't. There is no one size fits all here. You have to look at the specifics of each case. I'll take one example. CD tray or cupholder? Bad design or stupid user? You decide. :-)
problems on the linux desktop that they themselves created, the linux desktop ain't going anywhere. There's no amount of money Bill Gates could spend that would do a better job of derailing linux for non-technical users than the job done by linux's technical users for the last 10 years.
Well, it seems to me that for the last 10 years linux has been getting to the point where the underlying stuff was stable enough for a desktop to start emerging. And, what do you know, that's been happening. It's an iterative process, though, and there are bound to be some mistakes to begin with. Just take a look at Windows 1.0 and compare it to current versions. Saying the programmers are bad (and, by implication stupid) isn't really going to help. How about writing some interface guidelines, or editing what's already out there? How about making specific suggestions as to what's wrong and what needs to be fixed? Could the time you spend ranting about what's wrong be better spent trying to make things better?
Enough. I've got an Interface War to prepare for, I've got to rid KDE of all instances of the word "Directory", I've got a pile of Kernighan and Ritchie books to burn, and Guilder to frame for it. Frankly, I'm swamped.
To the pain, then? :-) I'm not sure that I'd want to cast myself in the role you've chosen, after all, he is the villan there. But, seriously, why does it have to be a war? Sure, things could be better. Please help make them better. In doing so, however, don't dumb everything down to the lowest common denominator and forget about the "power users" (i.e. people who aren't necessarily programmers, or even technical, but *are* smart and good enough to learn). There's a lot of room in UI design for people to be right (and wrong), so also don't assume that just because you don't like something it's automatically bad. Seriously, let's discuss specifics and figure out what we can do to fix them.
Cheers, Tanner -- Tanner Lovelace | lovelace(at)wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/ --*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*-- GPG Fingerprint = A66C 8660 924F 5F8C 71DA BDD0 CE09 4F8E DE76 39D4 GPG Key can be found at http://wtl.wayfarer.org/lovelace.gpg.asc --*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*-- "A one question geek test. If you think it's funny, you're a geek. Seen on a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'Feature'" - Joshua D. Wachs
pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
-- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
